You need to know, you're your personal alchemist

[sovay]

Short things:

1. I'd never even heard of Cyber Monday until this year. What is it? I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

2. R.I.P., Ken Russell. I should find somewhere to start with him that isn't The Lair of the White Worm (1988). The Devils (1971) is only coming out on Region 2.

3. I wonder why Roddy McDowall was not also cast in the film version of No Time for Sergeants. (Those are some of the dorkiest glasses in stage history.) The other two principals were: it made Andy Griffith a star. It's not exactly as though he was an unknown property.

4. I'm not sure I see the point of having a book on Derek Jarman reviewed by someone who clearly didn't like his films very much. I'm glad Bray finds his paintings important, because I know very little about Jarman's non-cinematic art, and I hope someday to visit his garden at Dungeness, ideally with rushthatspeaks, but seriously: difficult? Hard to sit through? Sententious gesture politics? Well-intentioned? I have to wonder if we saw the same movies—I am never sure what to do with criticism when that happens. (Did he miss how much of Wittgenstein (1993) is funny?) Personally, I'm looking forward to Sebastiane (1976); I have been since I knew it existed. Brian Eno did the music and it's in Latin.

5. Aphorisms by Kafka, which I hadn't even known existed. Commentary by Michael Cisco, who probably does.

I must catch a bus.

Comments

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

To quote my friend and colleague Sarit Kattan-Gribetz:

"[T]he purpose of the Roman calendar is essentially economic and, to a lesser extent, political and religious. That is to say, the two main parts of the calendar (the list of market days and list of festivals) are actually directed at commercial things. The calendar was instituted for business interaction primarily - to publicize market days, but also to denote days on which business is prohibited (e.g. festivals), when one can lend money and by when one must repay loans (e.g. the Kalends of each month), when rents are due (also the Kalends). So it is no wonder that the rabbis, in their own legal works, prohibit commercial interactions with pagans: part of what it meant to celebrate these Roman festivals was to be a part of the economic system and rhythm."

It's just the same in today's America. One of the important parts of Thanksgiving, perhaps the most important part, is the foodshopping in the days beforehand, and the goodshopping in the days afterwards. (On Thanksgiving itself, the shops are closed.) Then the process starts up again, immediately (in fact, overlapping), for Christmas. The first days of official shopping for Christmas are the same as the post-Thanksgiving shopping days.

[sovay]

The first days of official shopping for Christmas are the same as the post-Thanksgiving shopping days.

Yes: I know: ever since Santa brought up the train of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But we don't need to keep inventing new mercantile holidays for every medium of commerce.

I hate shopping.