The boys down in statistics have been hard at work this week making all sorts of calculations and everyone here in Administration is pleased with their efforts. We are told that their full findings won’t be ready until the end of the year, but they have shared a few tidbits with us. I’ll quote from their memo directly:
“While it’s true that language is dynamic and continues to evolve on a daily basis thanks to online usage, it follows that such prolonged exposure and constant contact can hasten the natural entropic cycle of a slang expression or catch phrase. In this regard, we are pleased to report that the acronym G.O.A.T. and “If you know, you know” can both be safely retired and we need not revisit them again. The former has been overused to describe everything from Blue Bell Ice Cream flavors to ball point pens, rendering its initial connotation with sports figures such as Wayne Gretzky completely moot. As for the latter, the first person to type those reductive and asinine words in a tweet has been found and pummeled into submission, whereupon he promised not to utter or type that ridiculous phrase ever again, lest his thumbs and pinkies be broken so that he can no longer type on his phone.”
So, good news all around!
Pupdate for July 2023
The Bunker Mascot has continued to improve, and she is overall keeping her strength up and, I daresay, getting stronger. She’s running more, seems to have regained some of her leg strength, and—in a move which has made life easier for everyone—began navigating the climb up the steps at the end of the day.
I’m still taking her down in her harness in the mornings, because she’s not so good at slowing her descent and I don’t want her to strain her knees again. She endures this ignominious treatment with the stoic dignity befitting her office. And, if the stars are in their correct alignment, she can climb onto certain couches and ottomans, like back in the day. It’s a far cry from the zoomies, but I’ll take it.
The Secret C-PAP Underground
The news of my new cybernetic enhancement was met with a flurry of public, and also private, communications welcoming me into the club—evidently there is a C-PAP underground that I am now a member of, which should come in handy when I need to replace filters in a warzone or require a jury-rigged hose to get me through the night. A secret societies go, I’ve seen worse.
Getting Back to Blogging
Our precious Social Media Infrastructure continues to crumble as more and more people leave their preferred communication platforms and sign up for multiple start-up endeavors because, as we learned from the MySpace Migration of 2008, you never know what’s going to pop and when. And while I’m certainly no different (markfinn.bsky.social) than the rest of you, I for one welcome the heat-death of the Age of Social Media. I think we’ve seen for ourselves that for every positive to having everyone’s voices going off at once, there’s a corresponding negative, and I think the minuses far outweigh the plusses for any number of reasons you’d care to list.
Being less connected by things like Facebook and Twitter always blipping and chirping at us will be a good thing. There was a time, back in the 1990s, when the Internet required intention to visit. You had to go into a room with a phone, sit down at your desk, type some shit into a program, and this thing would eventually open up and allow you to communicate with people you’d made an effort to find, read blogs you intentionally subscribed to, and maybe do a little shopping on a person-to-person basis, like on eBay. I know, I know, those days are dead and gone and they aren’t coming back...but they kinda COULD come back, just a little bit, you know?
What if the only way to get your political fix was by subscribing to actual news sites, people’s blogs, and substack newsletters? It wouldn’t keep bad actors off of the Internet, but it might deter some folks from subscribing—paying money to—the conspiracy-theory-whackadoos of the world. What I mean is, they wouldn’t just cross your path, online, suggested by an algorithm, or liked and commented on by your Uncle Mitchell, who has been building a nuclear bomb shelter out back of his double-wide man-cave for over a decade now, so that some chittering little screed makes it onto your carefully curated wall, unbidden. The wingnuts of the world would be free to write whatever jibber-jabber they wanted on blogs, in newsletters, etc. but unless you subscribed to it, and told it to show up in your RSS feed...you’d never see it.
Can you feel the temperature on the Internet dropping ten degrees overnight? I can. And if someone forwards you some nonsense about chem trails and chupacabras being part of the faked moon landing, you can delete it, unread, like you do already.
I would miss some aspects of that ‘instant gratification’ that came from checking a post you made, over and over again—dopamine is a powerful drug, y’all—but I won’t miss the Fear of Missing Out, the ugliness of online mobs, the outsized emphasis on a site that was designed to communicate in phrases no larger than a bumper sticker, and the legion of bots, spiders, sock puppets, and opportunistic troll farms that have become a gray market underbelly, rewarding our worst behavior with cash.
Public Appearances
I’ll be tagging along with Josh Rountree on August 2, at Interabang Books in Dallas, at 6:00 PM to help promote Josh’s novel, “The Legend of Charlie Fish.”
Those of you in the Dallas area should come out, as it will be a lot of fun to hear me and Josh shooting the breeze and maybe even reading from books and stuff.
Those of you who can’t make it to Dallas on August 2, you’ve got another chance to see all of this in its unvarnished splendor when I drop anchor at ArmadilloCon August 4th-6th. I’ve got some great panels lined up, and a reading, for those of you who like to hear me spin a yarn or two. I will also be talking about King Kong and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Justified: City Primeval (FX/Hulu)
Raylan Givins is back! His summer fun road trip with his daughter is interrupted by a couple of scofflaws that he has to deliver to Detroit, where he runs afoul of a prickly judge and a zealous defense attorney. Independently of that, a real shithead runs afoul of the prickly judge and kills him. The whole thing is a mess, and Raylan is a fish out of water, and everyone is making sure he knows he’s not in Kentucky anymore.
We’re three episodes in on this four-part mini-series and I’m both relieved and a little nonplussed by the show. Don’t get me wrong—it’s great to see Timothy Olyphant in the hat again, truly, and he doesn’t seem to have lost a step. However, he’s got a sidekick for this outing, his real-life daughter, and, well, you know, I don’t wish to speak ill of her, at all—that’s not acceptable—but she’s not a good fit for this role. Either that, or some of the writing decisions about Raylan’s fifteen year old daughter were not decisions I would have made. Maybe a little of both.
I read City Primeval, the Elmore Leonard book that this story takes large chunks of plot from, and it’s obvious and clear in the book who the Givins character is. Some stuff came right out of the book, and some of the connective tissue and superglue they used to put Raylan in seemed unnecessary.
But I don’t care. I really don’t. This won’t be anyone’s favorite iteration of Justified, but no matter. Let’s chalk this one up to everyone getting their sea legs again, and move on to the next mini-series. Minus Raylan’s kid. I need three more of these greenlit, right after they solve the writer’s strike and everyone gets back to doing what they do best.
Good timing: my new Substack is called "Chupacabras: What Aren't they Telling Us?"
Seriously, though; I too welcome the end of Web2.0 (or whatever it's called). I'm a terminally online guy, but spending a day in the rock tumbler that is Threads was enough for me. It's literally every wrong turn we've ever made about the internet in one place. For now, I'm content with Feedly (why did they kill Google reader?!), and Substack, with a few quick visits to Twitter to say hi to old friends.
I’m no authority, but I think there are 8 episodes of Justified City Primeval.
You’re probably right in that it will not be anyone’s favorite iteration of Justified.
But its an irrefutable proof of concept that the Raylen Givens character works as a protagonist outside of his Kentucky home locale and that Timothy Olyphant can still play the hell out of it.
Here’s hoping that we get what they used to call “a novel for television” for Justified every couple of years or so. I wouldn’t mind that at all.