Take the wheel and drive by

[sovay]

I would strongly prefer to have started the year without respiratory crud. I travel tomorrow nonetheless. Have some things from the internet.

1. I love the idea of a ship's biscuit love token.

2. I had never heard the story of Lee Sallows and the self-enumerating pangram.

3. This poem sticks with me: Martín Espada, "Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913."

4. Worth reading in full, especially the parentheses: Matthew Cheney, "The Narrative of Dead Narrative."

5. I can't remember which recent news item provoked me to leave myself the note "FUCK THE GHOST OF JOSEPH BREEN AND ALL HIS NECROMANCERS," but I'm sure it's still relevant.

I understand the concept of statistical outliers, but I still have a very hard time believing in the Boomer-Millennial culture wars when my father calls me up to discuss in detail the fourth-season finale of Lucifer (2016–).

Comments

[sovay]

and secondly, the mouseover comment to the latest Wondermark.

I was just catching up on Wondermark recently! It's one of the comics I forget exists for months at a time. I enjoyed this one.

The Ford Government taking over the movie-ratings system in Ontario?

That looks right.

I’ve had a hard time believing in generations ever since I concluded that I was too young, and simultaneously at least one of my parents was too old, for me to belong to Gen X (at least as it was being defined in the mid-nineties.)

I believe I am classifiable by birth year as either late Gen X or early Millennial and just about everything that has ever been said about either group, including by members of either group, has made me feel like I came in sideways from some other timeline. I don't expect to feel seen by media—I don't think I use the phrase except facetiously—but I feel especially un-seen when I run into things like this sincere appreciation of It Chapter Two:

"Andy Muschietti's 'It Chapter Two' is going to wind up a foundational text when we're trying to signify the generational split by which everyone's currently transfixed. This is a movie about the ceiling of Gen X responsibility, about the people who, by now, were supposed to be adults, but when asked to take responsibility for their emotions and livelihood, could at best manage one . . .

"Gen X and Millennials are the last group of children raised before the Internet. We didn't know about global climate change until it was too late. We became addicted to social media, some of us already married with kids by then. We were born sarcastic but could afford it because it seemed like there would be adults to take things more seriously. Now? There is no adult in the room anymore. For better or worse, that's us now and if we don't fix everything we're doomed.

"That’s what 'It Chapter Two' is about. Look at your friends now and remember the friends you used to have. Those drunks who you used to make dick jokes with, who've seen you in your underwear, who know what your weaknesses are but don't care really because theirs are worse? . . . I'd bet money that most Millennials know that feeling only too well. That if they could just force their old friend group back together, they could get something back that was taken along with the time they've lost."

The looming horror of extinction, fine. The rest is so far from describing my relationship to either my friend groups or my responsibilities that all it does is tell me that, if its assessment of generational cultures is correct, I am likely to be incomprehensible to most people when I try to talk about the things that actually hurt me, and I feel like that most of the time already.

[edit] The problem is that by now I know to avoid articles with Millennial anything in the title, but I thought I was going to read a film review, and I feel bitten.

[sholio]

I believe I am classifiable by birth year as either late Gen X or early Millennial and just about everything that has ever been said about either group, including by members of either group, has made me feel like I came in sideways from some other timeline.

I'm more solidly on the Gen X side of the line (1976) but otherwise ... hard same. I guess it's easier for me to ignore in Millennial thinkpieces because I really have never thought of myself that way, but I don't really relate to most of the Gen X generalizations either, and loathe the generation-war/generation-is-destiny mentality that seems to have become common on both ends of the generational divide, as if birth year is the new zodiac.

[sovay]

and loathe the generation-war/generation-is-destiny mentality that seems to have become common on both ends of the generational divide, as if birth year is the new zodiac.

+1.