It's more apt for today than yesterday, really. It's about offices and desks.
At the office right now, noon, viewing the empty window seats with greedy resentment. This, as you know, is my red stapler, and I am willfully, self-consciously, regarding it with petty monomania. No one here in my part of the office today. I am tapping away in a desultory fashion about . . . oh, who cares. I should be tending to some other things but I have an entire plan of avoidance for the next half hour. Then I will stand up and do something and convince myself that the standing, doing, walking, and returning, constitutes a meaningful use of time. Around 1 I plan to work out. Around 2, I believe, I will affix a picture to the office cubicle wall.
Hold on, need to refresh a web page, check up on the world . . .
The Google news page had a link to a story about the Five Insufferable Sitcom themes. One of them was “It’s About Time,” the opening bars of which I can sing from memory after decades. I listened to it again, and was reminded of how male choruses were once ubiquitous in theme-song genre, and how they summon the early-mid-60s in a bygone sound. There was also a piece concerning Justin Bieber, and how some people are worried about him. Also, Sudan may be engulfed in violence. There, I‘m caught up.
Hold on, no, there’s a story about the kerning on Pope Francis’ tomb. Looks bad. Some insist it is intentional, because obvious mistakes are a sign that man is a flawed creature. This I doubt, or the dome of St. Peter would thunder to the ground every generation or so. Some are misinterpreting the criticism entirely, and think the critics are talking about the spelling: FRANCISVS. It really does take a great deal of cheek to look at FRANCISVS and think OMG they screwed up and wrote a V for a U?!
Whatever did we do before the internet? How did we find confident, wrong-headed statements? You had to eavesdrop in coffee shops, I suppose. No one wrote something dumb and wrong on an index card and posted it on the board at the grocery store. It would have never occurred to them. They might have written a letter to the editor, but it would’ve been weeded out. If I could go back in time and change one thing about newspapers, it would be giving the letters page over to the lunatics once a week, just so everyone got the flavor of the Vox populi. And by Vox of course I mean Uox.
Just got up, went somewhere, did something, and now I’m back. The only people I encountered were the workmen -
BREAKING: Portugal is experiencing its worst period of political instability since 1974. More as the story develops.
⁃ Sorry, just clicked on another browser tab and saw that story. I was interested, because it said Portugal was expelling 14,000 non-citizens before it held an election. BUT! After I read the story, I did one of the things I had been avoiding, and while I was upstairs making coffee I did another. Nothing has been accomplished, but the ball is now in someone else’s court, which absolves me from further action.
I think I will finish this coffee then get up and go somewhere and do something.
LATER Okay, I'm back from going somewhere and doing a thing.
Here’s what my view would have been:
This is what it is:
I wouldn't have minded this.
Even though I'd be looking at an empty building.
On a friend's recommendation I watched Bureau, which is baed on the French show Agency, or maybe it's called Agency and is based on the French show Bureau. Was good / got sloggy / might bet better. Still watching Mobland on Paramount+, which is consistently predictable and entertaining. Standard Mob stuff - except it's British!
In a reddit thread about Severance - which surely is the epitome of a certain kind of internet hell, but also interesting - someone said this.
Am I the only one who has started to watch the show in 1.5x or 2x now? Episode 8 and 9 just feel so slow to me.
Mind you, episode 8 was 37 minutes long. There were a few moments in which shots were held perhaps a couple of seconds longer than absolutely necessary, to let the viewer linger on the image or visage and deduce a story. It did not have the pace of a hectic ER hospital drama in which someone who is CODING is wheeled into the room and someone shouts 57mg ketamine, STAT while nine other doctors mill around and various beeping devices are hooked up to someone who will be this week's Important Social Issue, during which docots will have sex in a closet.
Severance was a fanciful fiction intended to be oblique and cold, and it is very self-aware. The drama and story has been swift, despite what these people say. As I mentioned before, hey want LORE and REVEALS and ICONIC MOMENTS and all that, and when they get them, they don't like them, because someone speculated about that already and they're bored.
So they watch the show at 2x and scan the subtitles.
If you do this, you are . . . cooked, as all the good moderns say.
These people all need to decompress with a mystery challenger, who has just signed in, please. By the way, I can't watch What's My Line on on Amazon / Buzzr, because they don't have the rights. It says there's a problem with the rights. It might get resolved. It may never get resolved. But you can watch subsequent seasons, post-Fred, on YouTube. They're not quite the same. It seems as if the enthusiasm of the early years has waned a bit, and everyone's a bit tired of it all. Could be just me.
The opening annoys me.
But why? What's the matter with that? Maybe it's the soft swank theme. The modern animation. The sound effects. But mostly the modern animation, I think.
It’s 1919.
Strong words from a well known grocer:
Pure as Mother made it, which seems to assume some facts about Mother that may not be in evidence.
Corby’s was a local bakery, quite high-tech. The main plant was on Georgia, so yes, Mr. W got the goods hot and fresh. The store is gone, replaced by a Post Office.
IT IS THUS DECREED
The Court of Last Resort - the housewives of Washington - have decided that “washday” must go! You can certainly understand why, what with the influx of sentient irons who are not only eager to do your bidding, but have integrated seamlessly into the preexisting legal order.
Good advice. "Foch fought the Germans through four years and no man in the world is better able to judge of Teuton treachery and Prussian perfidy than he."
A thousand times the Hun has broken his promise. The armistice was followed by a frenzy of Prussian reform.
There are Hun forces still craftily at work and there is an ugly menace confronting us and our boys who guard the Rhine.
Are we secure against a second avalanche? Marshal Foch says: "Don't be too sure!" Buy for cash with your dollars and buy on installments-and do it today.
What?
The National Cathedral gets all the press, but this is a treasure:
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is a large minor Catholic basilica and national shrine in the United States in Washington, D.C., located at 400 Michigan Avenue Northeast, adjacent to Catholic University.
The shrine is the largest Catholic church building in North America and is also the tallest habitable building in Washington, D.C.
The brand was first introduced as “Ramleh” or, more completely, “Ramleh Turkish Cigarettes”, and came complete with a stern looking Pharaoh on the package. “Ramleh” is, of course, “Helmar” spelled backwards.
What in the world would possess the marketing geniuses at Anargyros to make such a drastic move with a popular brand? The answer is competition. The Mentor company of Boston, a sly group to be sure, had been eating away at Ramleh’s market share with their similar sounding “Ramly” brand. By August of 1907 Anargyros had had enough and made the expensive change, complete with a huge advertising campaign. Luckily, the change was successful and the Helmar cigarette brand flourished until production finally stopped in 1966.
Okay, it’s this again. What are they talking about?
Bonds? Yes, according to the small print:
The war is won, but the bllls must be paid. The success of the Victory Liberty Loan Is our Job.
We are only, lending, not giving, our, money and our Government guarantees its return with interest.
Buy today. Buy to your limit!
They always talk about “Before the War Quality” to assure you that the days of rationing and substandard consumer experiences are over, because yay! We won.
Those spindly legs couldn't support a sack of flour.
In other cigarette news:
Made by the same company that gave you Helmars. Black and white ad - but you know the package was wonderfully lurid.
In case you forgot, and I can't blame you:
That'll do. Time to ante up! Joe Ohio up around noonish.
