I never intend to own another television again in my life.

Nevertheless, I do watch a fair amount of television programming, though. On various platforms.

I like watching complete seasons of TV dramas back to back. My current favorite Game of Thrones is still airing weekly, and I find that somewhat frustrating – I would like to be completely immersed in that alternate reality for an extended period of time.

My favorites are reality shows. I like the really cheesy ones that Bravo does – The Shahs of Sunset, The Real Housewives of… Although eventually even I OD'd on that franchise, had to pick one and limit my viewing to that. (I picked the NY housewives – the Carole Radziwill/John-John Kennedy connection, doncha know.)

My absolute favorite genre is what I suppose one might call the aspirational reality genre. I LUV Project Runway, for example. I'm a longtime Survivor fan.

And my very favorite TV show of all time is So You Think You Can Dance. Which just started its tenth season.

The talent on SYTYCD is pretty high level. Plus I really get suckered into the stories – the girls who grew up on a diet of canned baked beans and whose mothers spent 17 hours a day cleaning other people's houses, just so they could afford dancing lessons for their daughters. The B-boys who started street dancing as a way to kill time while they were hangin' on the corner waiting to hustle dime bags.

I sit there watching and crying my eyes out.

I suppose, despite my best efforts, I am a pretty sentimental person. More or less numb these days in my personal life – with few prospects that that's ever gonna to change – but quick to be moved by the plight of helpless animals and other people's stories.

I loved to dance when I was in my teens and 20s. Some of the best memories I have are the many nights I spent in dance clubs, gliding, twirling, shaking, swooning, till I was so covered with sweat that I literally looked like I'd just climbed out of a swimming pool.

In my next life, I'd like to come back as a dancer. A really stupid dancer. This brain thing hasn't really worked out so great for me.

The ever-interesting sulphuroxide has been writing a series of meditations on the hierarchical structure of ontological reality. I'm way too stupid to follow what he's saying by leaping from thought to thought, so I only have access to the brightest and shiniest of his takeaways. Recently we've been discussing the somewhat trite metaphor: Life as the Ultimate Video Game. And I realize more and more – that's exactly how I view life. The vast majority of people I meet are NPCs. I notice them. I don't really care about them. I strategize my way around them.

I would prefer the people I meet to be Real Human Boys and Girls. On public transportation systems, I play the mental telepathy game: Cast your mind out. See if you can get one stranger to notice you're looking at them. If you can, it's proof positive that that one person is a real human being.

New York City public transportation users – alas! – are way too conditioned and savvy to ever make eye contact with someone they don't know, though. There are lots of insane people in New York City, some of them are violent, and all of them ride the subway. So even if there are real human beings on the F train that hear my thoughts, it's unlikely that any of them will look for me.

sulphuroxide notes that there are tons of contexts with completely immersive realities and that they're all competing for our attention. He calls them "planes of immanence." Often people get stuck between them because the rules of one context (read: Real Life Video Game) appear to be mutually exclusive with the rules of another. Thus we have Kevin – who's not stupid, mind you – refusing to go hear choral music because it was originally written as a Christian devotional. "I'd go hear pagan music," he says. But there is no fucking difference between Christian music and pagan music in any real sense of the word. The difference is a false dichotomy, the rules of one plane of immanence conflicting with those of another.

sulphuroxide maintains that economics ultimately determines which plateau one ends up viewing the world from.

I would disagree with that. I think it's an emotionally driven choice. Risk adverse people are more likely to be motivated by economics, but risk aversion is an emotional state.

Anyway, I've been thinking of sulphuroxide's theories in the context of entertainment franchises. Zombie apocalypses, Game of Thrones, Mad Men – each builds such a completely immersive world! Increasingly, people prefer these worlds to the planes of immanence they actually inhabit in "real" – ha,ha,ha! – life. Hence, we have the complete colonization of the human imagination by the corporate interests that own these entertainment franchises, and we also have a kind of thing that happens when people watch two of these immersive entertainments back to back. The rules are different in each immersive universe, and I have to believe this creates a cognitive dissonance. My prediction: This cognitive dissonance is going to become a bigger and bigger factor in people's daily lives…

And, of course, you also have the very interesting fact that if the Singularity ever does occur, mankind's only job is going to be consumption. Cf Fredrick Pohl's little read and extremely interesting short story, The Man Who Ate the World.

In other news, I got hired on to a writing team for a Big Corporate Client yesterday that promises beaucoup bucks if I can only keep my mind in plane of immanence of Baby, you need the $$$$.

Also, Kimmie said something very interesting on the phone yesterday. She has a Problem Boyfriend that half the time she wants to break up with. They have very good sex though. Kimmie says it's because that for whatever reason, he doesn't objectify her. He's always very conscious that he's not just having sex with someone with boobs and a cunt, but with Kimmie – who smells and tastes and moves and moans a particular way.

And as soon as I heard that, I thought, This is really why that Internet Dating site is never gonna work out for me. Objectification is exactly that thing of seeing someone as an NPC character. Unless I know someone for a relatively long period of time or there's been a significant exchange of emotional currency – not "I love you" or anything heavy, no: It can be as simple as laughing at a shared in joke that only the two of us get – I objectify them. They're an NPC. And I'm not interested in having sex with an NPC.

Just what was the point of wiretapping the Associated Press? It's not like the AP ever publishes anything but Obummer administration press releases anyway. I mean, not even fucking Nixon wiretapped the press – he wanted to, but his aides wouldn't let him so he ended up wiretapping McGovern instead.

In hindsight, I guess Biden was a wise vice presidential choice – nobody's gonna want to impeach Obummer when the alternative is Jivin' Joe.

Politics. Ugh.

In other news, the last apple blossoms are falling and I am absolutely brain dead this morning. I am drinking coffee but it's having no effect. My close up with Mr. DeMille is six days away and I still don't know the names of any Venezuelan baseball players.

Very long phone conversations with both kids yesterday, which was a real treat.

They're both doing extraordinarily well – Max preparing to take the LSAT and gearing up with his last practice runs before the San Francisco marathon, both in early June; Robin under serious consideration for the job of Outdoor Science Coordinator at Hidden Valley and professing himself "bored" with Ithaca. And I'm thinking, Thank God for that since not being bored in Ithaca would involve putting in serious amounts of time with Kyle, who just earned his first DUI a few months back, and Coop, recently discharged from rehab. If Robin doesn't get the Coordinator job, he'll be a counselor so his summer is set – lots of outdoor exercise in a wholesome environment.

It was a real conversation with Robin. He opened up quite a bit about hopes and plans and what he had been up to all year, and I felt as though we really connected, and that made me happy, happy, happy! I've felt really sad that we were so disconnected all year.

But throughout that year with practically no other communication, he always kept texting me photographs of his tests and assignments – 93%, 94%, You show great understanding of complicated subject matter, etc etc. Like he had something to prove. And frankly, given the history, I suppose he did.

"So I heard you joined a secret society!" I said. "What's that about?"

"A secret society? Wait! Dad told you I joined a secret society?"

"Yeah –"

Robin snorted. "I joined a fraternity. Dad told me not to tell you."

"Why?"

"Because you hate fraternities."

"So what? I'm not joining a fraternity."

"Right. Well, that's what I said, and I was gonna tell you when I talked to you. It's the science fraternity, engineers and math geeks, and I joined because I was having such a hard time with calculus, and this way I could get a lot of free tutoring. Also, ESF is pretty isolated from the Syracuse University community at large, and I needed a way into the Syracuse social scene, and this was it. I'm not gonna live there –"

"That's really smart of you," I said. "Yeah. If I'd been able to figure out a way to crash the Ithaca social scene, I wouldn't have been as miserable as I was there for three years. You're a tremendously savvy kid, Robin. You problem solve well."

Ben and his tremendous need to prevaricate for no apparent reason is just funny to me at this point. I mean, you should have heard Ben talking about Robin's Secret Society! Running down the list of illustrious past members. Calvin Coolidge! E. B. White! In case RTT ever wanted a reference letter by Ouija Board. Ben spun it into a 15-minute monologue.

No, I'm not going to call Ben on it. What would be the point? This is the kind of shit I lived with for 17 years, or shall I say a rather harmless example of the type of shit I lived with for 17 years.

Robin wants to come down again for a week before he starts working, which would be totally terrific. There's really no place to stash him except here in the Rutger-torium with me so I suppose I need to get one of those blowup mattresses. In any event, he would only be spending some of the time with me and much of the time with NYC-based buds. We do these huge movie-watching marathons when we're together, holed up under the covers, surrounded by animals and treats, a level of familiarity, comfort and contentment that's really precious to me.

Max is coming east in late June for a wedding in New Haven. He and Liza a/k/a The Mother of My Unborn Grandchildren will be coming to visit me as well, and then I think the three of us will try to do a two-day trip to Watkins Glen to see RTT who will be ensconced at Hidden Valley by then.

In other news, work has slowed down which is Not a Good Thing, this month in particular when I need the extra $$$.

I'm also worried about two pals who are going through extremely tough times. There isn't a fucking thing I can do for them though. Wish there was.

I'm trying to write here first thing every morning as a warm-up exercise to blow the cobwebs out of my brain. I'm inching forward ver-r-r-ry slowly on the Steinbeck manuscript, which is still nameless – very odd for me since I usually have titles in mind long before I start a fiction projects. Also starting on this year's short stories for the Stegner application. The Mark story. Writing fiction at night, which is a very different rhythm for me than what I'm used to.

So I watched The Great Gatsby last night, the critically reviled 1974 version with Mia Farrow and Robert Redford. Except for the soundtrack and Mia Farrow's performance – really, only Southern girls should be allowed to play Southern Belles – it wasn't so bad. I suppose it's time to reread the book.

Did make me wonder what the book would be like if it were written now.

Happy ending? Gatsby gets a sex change operation. His thwarted obsessional fixation on Daisy is clearly so much more than sexual (as one imagines Scott's was on Zelda.) Gatsby and Daisy move into the Gatsby mansion and live out the rest of their days as sisters together in an alcoholic stupor. Gatsby loses all her née his money in the Depression, and the mansion becomes more and more decrepit, a kind of Grey Gardens with Gatsby and Daisy holed up in two rooms filled with newspaper clippings, broken silver tea sets and animal droppings.

Eventually a reporter tracks Gatsby down on some pretext or another, and the revisionist Gatsby ends with a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-like scene where Daisy insults Gatsby – Tom was so much more of a man than you ever were, even when you were a man; Tom had a penis that worked – and Gatsby finds a gun and shoots her. In front of the horrified reporter.

In other news, everyone in my immediate circle of friends appears to be boinking each other.

Except for me: I prefer my boinking to be done with some measure of exclusivity. Meaning: I don't much care if the people I boink boink others – although, of course, having boinked moi, clearly they have boinked the best, and therefore should have no need to boink others – but I prefer not to know the other people they've boinked, except perhaps as a mysterious presence across a crowded room at a fabulous party. We'd wink, we'd wave. No one would have to pretend that they didn't have feelings that couldn't get hurt.

I should also mention that Max sent me bee-you-tee-full roses for Mother's Day. At least, I think the roses came from Max! They actually arrived without a card. So both kids came through with swag. The wheels of consumerism oiled by Hallmark smarm remain well-lubricated this Mother's Day! :-)

I continue in my Strange Mood… Possibly it's generative. I don't really know.

Had a long phone conversation with B yesterday. No doubt it was the Strange Mood, but I began thinking about spring in Ithaca, and remembering how beautiful it was, and the long walks I took with Milo on the trail in back of the Cement Bungalow, and Milo's death…

Milo died right before the Next Great Transition.

Pets often do that, don't they? Maybe it's some kind of final act of devotion.

I got B to promise to take Milo because I knew I couldn't take him with me. But then B got sick. And I was in despair. Except then when I took Milo to the vet, it turned out he had cancer. A very fast-acting cancer.

He was a really good dog. A faithful and loving companion.

B and I chatted about books and movies and Robin, which is mostly what we do. Any more personal conversation is discouraged. I am interested in his inner life, but he is not interested in mine – possibly he OD'd on it after 17 years together.

I don't think anyone is particularly interested in my inner life, come to think of it. So it's good I have this LJ where I can natter on about my inner life to my heart's content.

Last night I watched Anna Karenina, the critically pooh-poohed 2000 BBC version. I thought it was surprisingly good and well-acted. Karenin is presented rather differently than in any other screen version of the novel I've ever seen. He's actually the most sympathetic character in the piece – even after he comes under the influence of the strange mystical Countess Lidia and does his about face on the Divorce, one senses that he is behaving this way because he really loved Anna and his heart is broken and he is punishing her the way a 7 year old punishes his mother.

JUMP: Lamar, MO → Sarcoxie, MO – Football Stadium Parking Lot: 50 miles
RIGHT out of the lot… arrows back through town to HWY 71 SOUTH
1-44 EAST to EXIT 26 for Sarcoxie
Arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm

Robin and I drove to Carthage.

Not the Carthage whose ground was sown with salt, but the town in Missouri that on July 5, 1861 became the scene of the first of three decisive battles that won Missouri for the North, turning the tide of the War Between the States in the Union’s favor.

(Though I suppose one or two of the more classically educated Union officers may have attempted a little mayhem with a silver shaker looted from Belle Starr’s father’s hotel.)

“Here’s what I don’t get,” said Robin. “You know how many Confederate officers didn’t have slaves? Forty percent. So why were they fighting for the South?”

“Because the Civil War wasn’t about slavery,” I answered primly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was about state rights. I get it. Only, you know, it was about slavery.”

I’m not sure whether Robin’s angling for a serious conversation or rehearsing his latest stand-up comedy routine – “Have you ever seen two dogs fighting over a bone? Was the bone fighting?” Ba-da-da-BOOM.

I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Well, on the surface it was about slavery. And that was really too bad because, you know, there’s no way anyone can defend the institution of slavery. It’s morally repugnant. So in that way the Civil War became one of the few wars worth fighting. Only other one I can think of like that was World War II.

“But in a deeper sense it was about the right of a group of people to make decisions for themselves about their own lives, rather than have those decisions made for them by a bunch of people who lived far away in Washington D.C. and knew very little about their situation.”

“Nah, nah, Mom’s for states’ rights!”

“I am,” I said.

“So like if California wanted to relegalize slavery, you’d be for it?”

“Obviously not,” I said. “I just told you: slavery’s abhorrent.”

“But you just said that states should get to do what they want –“

“There’s a concept in ethics called ‘the greater good.’ Want me to explain it?”

“No!”

“Fine, I will. You know I feel very strongly about abortions, right? I think every woman should access if she wants one.”

“How come you don’t say ‘pro-choice’ like everyone else?”

“Because ‘pro-choice’ is political right-speak and I loves me my Mister Orwell. ‘Pro-choice’ means you get to choose between thirty-one flavors of ice cream. If you’re talking about abortion, you should say abortion. But I digress. Anyway, even though I believe strongly that women should have access to abortion, if a state decided to ban abortion, that would be okay with me. All it would mean is that if a woman who lived in that state wanted an abortion, she’d have to go some place else to get it.

“But, see, you can’t do that with slavery. It’s an absolute restriction on individual freedom. And individual freedom is the greater good.”

“So if you’d lived in the South back then you wouldn’t have owned slaves?”

“Well, I probably couldn’t have afforded them –“

“If you could have afforded them.”

“I like to think I wouldn’t. But look at Thomas Jefferson. He wrote eloquently about his opposition to the institution but he owned 600 of them.”

“Would you have fought for the South?”

“If I lived below the Mason Dixon line? Again, depends on whether I was a rich plantation owner or a poor share cropper. The South had a volunteer army. In a volunteer army, you fight your own self-interest.”

“You’re a rich plantation owner.”

“Well, then – sure.”

“Even if you didn’t have slaves and thought slavery was wrong?”

“I’d have to have slaves if I was a plantation owner. Picking cotton is labor intensive.” I sighed. “You know it’s very hard to anticipate changes in moral standards. We’re always prisoners of whatever mores dominate the present tense we grow up in –“

“Not me,” said Robin.

“Of course not you. Everyone else, I mean.”

Agreeing with Robin on points like this just might make the difference between a transient hotel and a really first-rate Alzheimers Home ten or fifteen years from now. If I’m lucky.

###

I don’t know whether Robin knows this or not but he had three paternal ancestors in the Civil War. Seleh Holden who got his balls shot off; Ben’s namesake, Benjamin Trumble; and his great-great-great grandfather Daniel Day.

Daniel Day wrote letters home. (Presently they’re in the collection of the Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold, intensely fascinated as he is with all things genealogical.) Mostly the letters complain about lice. One or two of them describe trading expeditions across enemy lines – basically you tied a white handkerchief to a stick and spent the afternoon hanging with the Reb homies, trading apples for tobacco plugs and chewing the shit.

The enmity of war always blurs a lot when you look at it up close. Though people die just the same.