Kathy Forer wrote:
> Patricia wrote:
> >http://cbs.marketwatch.com/archive/20000426/news/current/jokeday.htx
> >
> >This article is pretty funny
>
> Funny ha ha or funny huh.
> Lacking the usual long-range perspective, this news item neglects to
> take into account how much we have already swerved from that exalted
> state of self-reliant purity, the communal utopianism we periodically
> re-seek. We have accepted so much already that just 50 years ago
> would have been unforgivable, 100 years unthinkable. Project it into
> 50 years from now: all we need to do is eliminate the physical
> interface -- the wiring -- and we'll again take these new tools for
> granted.
While I appreciate your take on this and enjoyed your words, this was
obviously meant to be a simple wry perspective on what IS going on around
us - a ridicule of the height of multitasking - a giggle for all those
stressed out business types in a newspaper that can be pretty dry.
Especially poignant because of the ubiquitous cell phone and its
ridiculous overuse, and not a serious piece on the failure of society. I
do have a cell phone, but it's in the car for emergencies. However I have
been known to "multitask" with media, exercise and cats.
And I meant funny ha ha.
> "In this kind of a world," Peterson said, "absurd if you will,
> possibilities nevertheless proliferate and escalate all around us and
> there are opportunities for beginning again. I am a minor artist and
> my dealer won't even display my work if he can help it but minor is
> as minor does and lightning may strike even yet. Don't be reconciled.
> Turn off your television sets," Peterson said, "cash in your life
> insurance, indulge in a mindless optimism. Visit girls at dusk. Play
> the guitar. How can you be alienated without ever having been
> connected? Think back and remember how it was."
> -- Donald Barthelme, A Shower of Gold, 1964
>
> [Though one of my favorite passages, I have trouble with this quote.
> Apparently Barthelme was being ironic in this story, a sendup of
> absurdism. I don't see it though, it reads dead-on to me.]
Would that I could be so idealistic. Unfortunately, I can't turn off my
television set, nor my computers - the stock market is my day job and
earns the green to finance my right brain dream make art world.
Barthelme's words remind me a bit of verse written by the erstwhile
Shelley that I had engraved and mounted on a bowling trophy,
"Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
Lanquor, disease and ignorance dare not come!
O happy Earth.
Reality of Heaven!"
Would be nice, huh? Huh?
Best Regards,
PK
