Which reminds me that I need, at some point, to return to Hamann’s “Aesthetics in a Nutshell,” one of the earliest works to use the word “aesthetics” in its title. But it’s not reallyabout aesthetics — it’s about the limits of rationality or human reason in particular. It’s about the language-based nature of our knowledge and how we’re stuck in word games.
- Grocery Shopping
- Laundry
- Jericho
I woke up early and forced myself back to sleep because I was overly tired and it felt so comfortable in bed, almost as if it were a weekend, not a Thursday morning. So many off the days blur together; I’m not sure which day it is sometimes when I awake. And that is disturbing.
I showered and as usual dissertation thoughts flowed through my mind much like that water over my skin and down the drain, rapidly and coalescing from droplets to a pool, but not stopping to be analyzed or frozen.
The bus was on time, and arrived early at the transfer point. After getting what I went for I had time left over, so stopped by the liquor store for a couple bottles of cheap wine (the best kind!) before heading back to the transfer point.
And after unpacking groceries I walked to the laundromat, which was not particularly strongly in use. With only a week of dirty clothes, mostly those from California, I only needed a small, regular washer. Alas, when I returned home I noticed that my beige pants had developed a tear in the right leg, and probably not one I can repair. Now they’re off-day pants, good for wearing when going to do laundry, for example.
Thus, I need to lose that weight.
And buy new clothes.
Jen called while I was near the end of the first episode of Jericho. I got her up-to-date on my California trip, and she informed me that last Sunday, on the way home after picking up Christoph from a cat-sitting gig (she’d been with Sue and Scott at a conference) their car was totaled in a collision near Park and West Wash due to a dipshit in an SUV turning left in front of her when she had the right-of-way. They seem uninjured, but will be making some trips to the doctor nonetheless. They already have a settlement check, and it’s time to find another used car, I think.
No Woodman’s trips by car for me in the near future.
She had to call her mother back, so we cut the conversation short and I returned to Jericho.
I watched the first episode when it aired in October, and I found it amusing enough but not particularly good. Browsing “Television Without Pity” (TWP) not long ago I saw that the recent episodes had been rated rather highly by the reviewers (whereas the early ones had terrible grades), so I decided to catch up on the show — after all, nuclear apocalypse is my sort of thing.
In episode one we meet the characters, we see a mushroom cloud in the distance, and Jake (the mayor’s prodigal son) rescues a bunch of kids on a wrecked school bus. Along the way he meets the nerdy but not unattractive school teacher who will be his love interest throughout the season. In addition a subplot dealing with escaped convicts is hinted at.
In episode two we have to deal with potential fallout transferred to the town by way of storm clouds, and so everyone heads for the town’s two shelters, but, alas, the one in the hospital/clinic is in crappy condition, so instead, last minute, they take bus-loads of people to a salt mine and seal them in. Meanwhile the bad guys who escaped last episode essentially kidnap Jake’s “ex” and take her to the farm that belongs to Jake’s old farm friend and said friend’s deaf younger sister. Jake shows up just in time and with Emily’s help kills the bad guys and they make it to the storm cellar in time to seal themselves in.
Episode three begins where two left off: the rain storm. Hawkins demonstrates that he has things to hide (he goes to a storage facility during the storm and gets some nasty stuff, and has a stock of guns), the farm-boy-brother shows up, drenched — is he going to die of radiation poisoning? –, in the mines with the other group a claustrophobic teacher goes apeshit and eventually dies, and at the main shelter dad-the-mayor has the flu. Nerdy unpopular store clerk boy eats stale poptarts and plays cards with the snooty girl that won’t otherwise give him the time of day. Once it stops raining and the people get out the geiger counters tell them that it’s not radioactive … just a scare. People try to get back to normal (snooty teen behavior, back to the bar for drinks and trying to find something on TV, etc. … and eventually a giant town-wide picnic to use up the food that will go bad). They also decide to send four teams off in four directions to look for information. Jake doesn’t get very far before he is unable to proceed due to planes blocking a bridge, but from one of the two he gets the flight recorder and brings back limited information. The episode ends with cliff-hangerish material: Hawkins walling something up, Eric — the mayor’s other son, who is married, in bed with the bar owner, and the store boy finding a train of goods a few miles away.
So in episode four we get continuations of some of these plots. Hawkins clearly has “a past” and we shouldn’t trust him … but the, perhaps later, we’ll grow to again. Eric continues to go back and forth between his wife, the doctor, and his mistress, the bar owner. And clerk boy brings back stuff and restocks the store. In addition they find a guy with radiation sickness and much of the plot deals slowly and painfully with getting a few lines of dialog from him. In addition they try to gather gas so the generators can keep running. What an exciting plot. As for dying zombie guy, we discover that Hawkins knows him and they were part of a larger group/conspiracy … and they likely knew about the bombs before things started blowing up … they were only supposed to save family (no friends, other relatives) … but Victor the zombie went back to Denver to get more out.
I’m sure that Hawkins’s “thing” will be explained in later episodes. Right now we have to believe that he’s either a bad guy who helped plan and carry out these attacks, or he’s part of a group that knew about them but couldn’t stop them, so tried to save a few folks.
We could make a Dan Brown On Acid plot out of this: Hawkins and Victor belonged to a “Grail Brotherhood” or sorts, and they were protecting something important — if it’s Dan Brown, it’s something that would upset the Catholic Church, so perhaps it’s the bloodline of Christ, etc. — and since the bad guys who want what Hawkins & Co. want, and they are unable to track down and capture all of Hawkins & Co. but know the cities where they live, they just nuke any place where this secret brotherhood might be hiding. Fifty to a hundred million casualties along the way are a small price to pay if you’re a Dan Brown villain.
But later in the series Stephen King will take over, and Randall Flagg will walk to Jericho from Idaho.
Then again, Jericho is not The Stand.
