Our broadband connection is on the fritz, and has been since yesterday morning. It’s a bit of a disaster especially as C was working from home the last two days and could really have done with email connection to her base office. So now I’ve rooted around in my cabinet of old computer bits and bobs and dragged out an old 56K modem and gone back to dial-up for the time being, which will be at least until tomorrow afternoon when with luck an engineer will come around and shake his head at seeing how my cable modem is hooked up to a wireless router and proceed to now know what the hell he is doing (if the installation experience is anything to go by). So yes, stuck with this dial-up and god, I’d forgotten how s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w that can be. I guess one gets spoiled. After all I can just about remember first going on-line with a (gasp) 28k modem when THAT was cutting edge speed. And it seemed amazing… I suppose it was. But it’s interesting how easily you get used to technology, and more than the speed issue, it’s very strange to once again not have an always-on connection. And I can’t even pin down exactly why, it just is.
posted by duke harringay at 8:03 PM

For the record, I kind of assumed maybe that Ross Macdonald , or Ken Millar to use his real name, was childless after reading the quote I posted yesterday. Not that I had any reason to do so, because I know that what a character in a book says and what the author actually thinks or believes isn’t necessarily the same, but whatever… Having been kidded about it this morning I just thought I’d take a look, and in fact it appears that Millar in fact did have a daughter, and that more than this, the plot for the novel in question in fact seems to have fairly accurately mirrored Millar’s own life; not least the similarities between the Tom Hillman character and his own daughter, Linda. The parallels between the car-crashing incident of Hillman’s and the event in which Linda, sixteen, drove the car her father had bought her into three boys, killing one, and then into a parked car, throwing its driver sixty feet, are very clear. Also the way the Hillman father attempts to clam up about the incident, and about his family in general closely mirrors Millar’s own attitude after his daughters incident… then there’s Hillman’s past as a Navy officer in the Pacific Theatre, and where did Millar serve in the same war? Go on, take a guess. So it seems that Millar was certainly putting past history and experience to work, at least in The Far Side of the Dollar. All of which seems to make Lew Archer’s comments even more loaded… that is, assuming you accept that Millar uses Archer as the conscience of both the individual (himself) and society.

Whatever, my interest is now pricked more than ever of course, and I guess I’ll need to track down a copy of his biography, and also check out some of his wife Margaret Millar’s novels also. Connections… connections. And in fact in the same novel a character says to Archer that he’s not actually interested in people at all, but only the connections between them. I thought that was a cool thing to say too. Not sure how much it reflects my own attitudes, but it’s probably fairly accurate. And I know it’s supposed to be a put-down, but still, I think I’d take it as a compliment.

posted by duke harringay at 5:21 PM

‘I sometimes think children should be anonymous… People are trying so hard to live through their children. And the children keep trying so hard to live up to their parents, or live them down. Everybody’s living through or for or against somebody else. It doesn’t make too much sense, and it isn’t working too well.’

Ross Macdonald, The Far Side of the Dollar
posted by duke harringay at 7:00 PM

Went to see Bowling for Columbine yesterday. Strange. Good, but strange. I mean, here he is, making a movie that, in the end, appears to be a critique of the nature of mediated fear and violence and how that mediation is driven by commerce and yet, what is this movie but a vehicle which exists implicitly within that same structure? I know contradictions are inherent in life, but still, I dunno. I’m being picky of course, but I still feel a bit like a dupe, responding to this movie in the way I’ve been expected to; because this movie is inevitably pitched at those who think a certain way, who hold a certain set of ideological beliefs, and it does exactly what you’d expect it to in that context. It plays with emotions, on indignations and on ‘clever’ humour. Let’s all laugh at the mindless policeman and the ‘brainwashed’ hick-town rednecks… whatever. And of course Moore is expert at this. He’s got it all honed to a fine art; perfectly paced, he knows just when to slip from humour to stony hard facts, understands that you can use statistics and carefully chosen data to make any kind of compelling case. And does it matter that the case he puts forward is any more ‘acceptable’ than those being put by others who manipulate different sets of data for their purposes? Well, yes, probably… And isn't Charlton Heston just a sad old shuffling man?

And of course I shouldn’t be so fucking picky at all. I mean by making the movie they DID get K-Mart to stop selling ammunition in their stores, and that’s a pretty hefty thing to have achieved in anyone’s book, so… so I guess I should quit griping and think about being more positive. And it WAS great to hear Camper Van Beethoven’s ‘Take The Skinheads Bowling’ again, whilst the closing credits over The Ramones had a(nother) lump in my throat.

Now what was I saying about mediating emotion…?

posted by duke harringay at 6:04 PM

Colder today than yesterday, and that was chilly enough. Lots of ice on the roads today and of course I took a tumble on it. Coming down off Woodbury common on a road I should have known better than to ride. I mean, I rode it Friday and it was awash with run-off from the common, so I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure what it’s going to be like after a hard frost. I guess that’s more proof, if it were needed, that I’m far from being a genius. So on the first bend, there goes the front wheel and whack, I’m sliding about twenty feet down the road on my side, swearing loudly as I go. Thankfully the reason for the fall meant I did a minimum of damage to either myself or my bike, although the corner of my lovely blue saddle is all scuffed and there’s a hole in the toe of one of my overshoes, but I figure that’s getting off pretty light. I suspect my hip and shoulder will start to ache a bit as the day wears on (in fact my leg is starting to ache a bit already), but such is life. The rest of the ride wasn’t too bad, although like yesterday I felt pretty much like a heap of crap, suffering every time the road even started to go slightly uphill. Not nice. Still, some nice views and I did make myself stop and take a photo of some farm machinery for my daily visual photographic diary. I started that again this year in the hope that I’ll finally be able to see it to conclusion. Here’s hoping…


posted by duke harringay at 2:35 PM