pronolagus.com

Author: Marcus

  • Here We Go Again

    Welcome to the new site design! I basically gave up!

    I was getting tired of trying to massage the back-of-envelope-sketched layout of the previous one into a final form I liked, so I’ve started over with WP’s default freebie theme, Twenty Twenty-Five. I’m trying to make more things in general, so anything that makes getting started back to work, finishing projects, and uploading any easier gets the nod right now. I forgot to reckon with a couple elements that were tied to old templates, like the social media links, but those are less important than the posts, so they’ve fucked off for now until I have the free time to, um, unfuck them.

    As with Donald Trump’s first term in office [sidebar: my brother adopted TFG as shorthand in our text conversations some years ago and that stuck as a diminutive; but now that it’s Chief Executive 2: Electric Boogaloo1, the word “former” is outdated, so hereafter I’ll probably be substituting a ‘C’ for “current], I have quite a few drafts of posts started, but I’ve been sidetracked doomscrolling the post-election deluge of analysis, outrage, regular rage (much of it impotent), and breaking news items. I wasn’t surprised at the events transpiring since the inauguration—in fact, I expected something similar to what’s been taking place, minus the manic stomping through federal agencies Elon Musk has been doing. But the whole thing, and recognizing this pattern beginning again, has set me to soul-searching. Again.

    Doomscrolling isn’t fulfilling, but it is easy. Conversely, making stuff for others to doomscroll is a very saturated field. I think when I first started to post things online I was concerned with seeming too scattered, when so many authoritative voices then and now were insisting that one must find one’s niche to gain an audience, and therefore one has to specialize. I don’t find any rectitude or integrity in avoiding politics or current events here. I’d love to be building a space to inform as well as celebrate and analyze (and rant, sometimes), but I also struggle with my lack of reach and what makes sense to spend my time on.

    And behold, sticking to just the art and writing about the arts in general has got me where I am today! Sarcasm notwithstanding, it looks to me like most of my readers are bots—and don’t get me wrong, bots, I’m not saying I don’t like the attention, you’re just not persons. And whatever I make, I make for those. Which isn’t a complaint or a lament so much as a way to think about the future of what I post as ‘might as well throw all the various pastas at the wall for now because it can’t diminish what isn’t there.’

    I’m somewhat active in local politics, LGBTQ issues, and online/digital rights, but have mostly kept my blogging and social media posts narrowed to the creative stuff. I’ve generally stayed away from confessional writing as being uninteresting. Maybe it is interesting, though? Raw, unfiltered unburdening! Soul vomit, stinky with wretched rumination—maybe that’s exactly the stuff I should be writing! Or maybe not, but I have no idea how to know. It’s not so fun to do a ton of work just because, but I’ve still got that pestery demon that keeps jabbing me in the baby back ribs just often enough and sharply enough to irritate me, and if I make things he stops for a bit.

    It’s tricky to imagine you’re writing for an audience when, most of the time, it’s just you shouting into the digital void. It isn’t as vast as the actual capital-vee Void of the expanding physical universe2, even if it feels like it is from here on the inside. I do think I should keep trying, though. That void ain’t gonna shout at itself.

    1. Like just about every other Gen Xer you know, I can barely stand not to append that subtitle after the phrase “[blahblah] Two” ↩︎
    2. Yes, I know space isn’t truly empty, and well pointed out, your technical correctness is of the best kind. ↩︎

  • Super(b) Cinema

    Two videos I watched almost back-to-back from @wolfcrow (Sareesh Sudhakaran) about Superman (1978) and The Sound of Music rose above all the angst and sensationalism with which the various social algorithms were jamming my recs and feeds with. They’re part of Sudhakaran’s series of videos discussing the technical reasons why some classic films are still beautiful and compelling, but along with that the artistic achievements of planning, creation, and performances. They delineate a sense of wonder and humanity that I found deeply affecting in the films they analyze from the first time I saw them.

    Why superman still looks like a billion bucks
    https://youtu.be/kE9h90a12-E

    and

    Why the sound of music still looks like a billion bucks
    https://youtu.be/AEw9OYPeDOM

    They’re both terrific, but I love that Sudhakaran points out how amazing Christopher Reeve’s work was, how hard he worked to prepare and how thoughtful his acting choices were.

  • Yacht Funk

    Another music post? Fine. In searching for live Michael McDonald performances—as you do—and almost missed this. The band almost casually spins out an adept performance that is probably now my favorite version of the song:

    The Doobie Brothers – It Keeps You Runnin’ (1977)
    live in Chicago
    https://youtu.be/t45QGRSXS1I

    Everything about it is great, from Michael nailing every melodic jump and twist to Jeff Baxter’s in-the-pocket guitar solo, which they change out from the original’s keyboard noodling on the outro.

  • The One True Cult

    For various weird reasons, I had a compulsion to listen to the ‘official’ 1980 playlists on Apple Music, specifically the Alternative Hits. But it was fun to careen through them and I punched up the Rock and Pop lists to get a sense of the rest of the year’s flavors. Despite Apple’s playlists being generally pretty mediocre—and odd inclusions like a spate of German hits NOT by Falco—I was still compelled to serve up the next one in the timeline.

    I’m generally in the nostalgia = bad-for-you camp, but there were quite a few songs I either hadn’t heard or didn’t remember, so it felt somewhat new, and definitely fun. I spun through the next couple years in succession, rediscovering some forgotten treasures and skipping some well-worn 80s playlist staples. As 1983 came up, however, those shopworn standards started to become the norm.

    Nostalgia, fake friend and secret foe, started to wear me down, and after skipping most of the tracks from ’84–’87 I was about to call it quits when this fabulous sonic jewel gleamed out of the speakers:

    The Cult – Wild Flower
    https://youtu.be/bLxApTwMLJI

    I’ve never bought a Cult album, and I have no idea why I didn’t buy Electric, even just for this song. I loved the album artwork, the type design, the band photo, and could’ve played “Wild Flower” on repeat a hundred times. I’ve taken a chance on plenty of other records without knowing anything about how the music sounded, just that the cover looked cool. Even so, nothing else I’ve heard by the band, then or now, comes close to it.

    Sometimes, there’s just one, and it’s enough.

  • Now Year’s Eve

    Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of comics and dispenser of wisdom and motivational ass-kicking via the—what’s a term for less-than-infamous?—subfamous text group #BGSDlist, sent out a query for how we were planning to spend Liminal Week: the Most Disorienting Time of the Year. Technically, the year begins anew at the solstice, but nobody pays attention to that cosmic pedantry!

    After holiday intensity is behind us, but the calendar hasn’t yet ticked over, we’re in limbo, suspended in time: between the cranky, doddering old fart of this year and the fat, wide-eyed and wailing infancy of the next one.

    So I sent in the following:

    I ritually pretend I’m getting a head start on things by making Boxing Day the beginning of the new year. [This is also a chance to get a jump on fooling myself, always a healthy exercise.] 

    • I forgive myself any failings or missteps. 
    • I think about the people dearest to me and the love they’ve given me and that I return. 
    • I set my resolve, but lower my expectations (for self-kindness), and begin any new process or practice I either want to bring into my life or reestablish. 
    • I repeat the 3 guiding life principles I thought up at the end of my disastrous 30s:
    1. Go Slow
    2. Don’t Push
    3. Have Fun

    This all seems rather sage, now, the wisdom of a person much older and more competent, surely at least as old as I am now. And it baffles me how I came up with such zingy Zen, when nowadays I so often feel like I’m barely able to careen through the days without entirely collapsing in a confused heap of anxious goo.

    HNY!

  • Re: Missed Newsletter Post and Some Stuff About Outsourcing (yarr!) Content Storage

    I neglected to put it into the general feed, but the most recent newsletter went out, and it currently lives here:

    https://pronolagus.com/but-this-is-wondrous-strange-24-03/

    I think I should make a page and/or folder for these, to keep them organized and consolidated. Buttondown has been great, but best practices for futureproofing one’s own work—from enshittification, if not loss of that work—would demand keeping at least copies of everything in-house. Cory Doctorow has answered queries about him not being on Bluesky (or Threads, etc.) with a corollary principle:

    I poured years and endless hours into establishing myself on walled garden services administered with varying degrees of competence and benevolence, only to have those services use my own sunk costs to trap me within their silos even as they siphoned value from my side of the ledger to their own.
    ~ Cory Doctorow, Fool Me Twice We Don’t Get Fooled Again

    It’s also just simpler to maintain things with most of it centralized. Syndication is getting to be somewhat easier (I’m working on it but it’s still rather opaque to me), and I’m no Hank Green, juggling multiple social accounts and tailoring a lot of it to each platform. My ADHD is not conducive to time management of anything but the most rudimentary routines and processes. I have to take my creative work successes where I can get them, meager as they may be.

    My site belongs to me, I control its rules and posting and archive policy, beholden only to my peripatetic whims and passions. Lord knows they come and they go.

    ———

    NOTE: IYKYK, but the title is a reference to this Mike Rugnetta video: https://youtu.be/Upbxf2zJvBw

  • Tech Bro Insights

    Tech Bro Insights

    A collage in three vertical strips from the website main images of the people I reference in this post

    In the name of keeping up with what’s happening in the tech industry—and I’ll admit that “technology” seems rather ridiculously broad as a category to lump it all into a single industry, but here we are—I wanted to note a couple of insightful and forthright works that have helped deepen my understanding. And also firmed up my resolve to keep searching for ways to fight, circumvent, or organize against the continuing concentration of power and wealth at the expense of users.

    Questing on down to the News & Activism Dept., the steadfast Gandalf to my hapless Pippin continues to be Cory Doctorow, whose dizzyingly link-packed Plura-listic newsletter-slash-blog is indispensable. He’s become my favorite writer, a Harlan Ellison for our time (and also doesn’t require disclaimers about abusive behavior like HE) who blends activism, social commentary, and deeply human stories together.

    https://plura-listic.net/

    Paris Marx’s 4-part “Data Vampires” series on the essential Tech Won’t Save Us podcast breaks down the growing incursion of data centers into communities that are often finding vast amounts of their power and water supplies hijacked by server-packed warehouses. And, of course, there’s plenty of cross-referencing with AI hype and the head grifters leading it.

    https://techwontsave.us

    Ed Zitron is always worth reading, but a recent post thoroughly articulated the central problem of tech journalism: reporters who justify their fawning by saying that without direct access the work can’t exist. But all too often they become unquestioning mouthpieces, transcribing promises and pronouncements wholesale, even as it’s become clear the emperors are naked as jaybirds. It’s long and it’s well worth your time.

    https://www.wheresyoured.at/rockstars/

  • It’s the Artist, Not the Tools (so much)

    It’s a trope, a cliche, an idiom even, that expensive tools don’t make the work better by themselves, but in the hands of a pro—read: experienced, or ‘master’—they can work wonders. I can think of few groups where the argument over the worth or quality of the tools is fiercer and more divisive than among guitarists. Pricey gear doesn’t mean better music, but arguments rage over brands, year of manufacture, and even factory location.

    In a great player’s hands, though, even a cheap or lower-grade instrument can produce good music. So it seemed to me while I watched Zakk Wylde glide through Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” on a Hello Kitty themed, mini acoustic guitar. And it’s more than just his playing skill, he’s bringing thoughtful musicianship to the task. The sotto voce delivery was the perfect complement to his careful, quiet strumming. Almost like he’s singing to himself. The original isn’t diminished by the smaller scale, it’s evoked, memorialized, honored.

    Zakk Wylde – “N.I.B.”
    https://youtu.be/rwhvFLHIlBs

    This humbled me a little bit. Zakk (can I call him Zakk? He seems like the type to eschew formality), despite a well-documented penchant for goofballery, takes the task seriously. He doesn’t play it for laughs. Sure, the situation as a whole is silly, but by approaching it sincerely, he elevates both the music and the means of making it.

  • National Poetry Month

    There’s finally a new newsletter going out. As long as it’s been since I wrote a newsletter, though, I think it’s even longer since I wrote a poem. April is a change month, I guess.

    Outgrowth

    Endlessly, endlessly,
    routing our hearts through our heads in concert,
    rhythms both natural and constructed.
    There’s the pounding and hammering
    that drives nails through
    our best intentions every day,
    And only every day
    rising up like weeds of flesh
    and insisting
    there is so very much to do.

    The ghost speech, whispers of wind in streams repeating.

  • Linkdump for the Garden

    Linkdump for the Garden

    In the spirit of making the site more a digital garden than a blog, I collected a handful of the ridiculous number of videos I rammed into my brain the past week and seemed worthy of keeping around. Loosely grouped, they’re in these topics:

    Gaming

    Quinn’s Quest – The Wildsea

    Quintin Smith of the tabletop game review channel Shut Up & Sit Down started a new TTRPG-specific channel. This game looks beautifully designed and I can’t wait to get a copy of the book.

    Stop Performing & Start Role Playing

    Black Lodge Games – A reminder: Don’t be intimidated by pros acting up a storm in RPG session videos. What matters is having fun pretending to be someone else, like kids aren’t self conscious playing make-believe.

    Music

    Neil Young Shows How to Play “Cinnamon Girl”

    Sometimes simple alterations change the game, musically. Also, Neil is happy to show a fan the trick. Also also, that guitar is, as Neil says, “wow.”

    How Does This Famous Song Played Backwards Sound Like?

    Maybe this is the sonic equivalent of a mirror word puzzle? Someone should do fifty of these.

    “The 4th Wave of Ska” | Vampire Campfire Episode 01

    Vampire Weekend started a podcast. Hey, everyone else has, eh? The NYC music nerds yak about influences and the new album. I was hooked from the first strains of “A-Punk” a friend threw my way after their debut came out. Even though Rostam Batmanglij is sorely missed, I still love them. I can’t believe they passed up a chance to call it “Campfire Weekend,” but as the saying goes, ohs wells.