Reheated (128)
As I’m a little under the weather, some items from the archives:
Their Happiness Hurt My Feelings.
The intersectional perils of Zoom meetings. With mad people.
Other taboos include references to “simple activities like family dance parties,” which are apparently a thing, and “gardening with a spouse.”
Curiously, given the stated importance of “sensitivity” and being mindful of what things might mean, we aren’t invited to ponder the kind of person who would resent someone else’s wedding photo. And then complain about it. Or whether such neurotic affectations, these unhappy mental habits, are something to be actively encouraged. In the name of progress. At a university.
On ‘anti-capitalist’ lifestyles and a misremembered sitcom.
Practically every week the couple’s survival is dependent on the neighbours’ car, the neighbours’ phone, the neighbours’ unpaid labour, a convoluted favour of some kind. And of course they’re dependent on the “petty” bourgeois infrastructure maintained by all those people who haven’t adopted a similarly perilous ‘ecological’ lifestyle.
The Goods’ highly selective rejection of bourgeois life is only remotely possible because of their own previous bourgeois habits – a paid-off mortgage, a comfortable low-crime neighbourhood with lots of nearby greenery, and well-heeled neighbours who are forever on tap when crises loom, i.e., weekly.
To seize on The Good Life as an affirmation of eco-noodling and a “non-greedy alternative” to modern life is therefore unconvincing to say the least. The Goods only survive, and then just barely, because of their genuinely self-supporting neighbours – the use of Jerry’s car and chequebook being a running gag, along with convenient access to Margo’s social contacts and expensive possessions.
And insofar as the series has a feel-good tone, it has little to do with championing ‘green’ lifestyles or “self-sufficiency.” It’s much more about the fact that, despite Tom and Barbara’s dramas and continual mooching, and despite Margo’s imperious snobbery, on which so much of the comedy hinges, the neighbours remain friends.
If anything, the terribly bourgeois Margo and Jerry are the more plausible moral heroes, given all that they have to put up with and how often they, not Tom’s principles, save the day.
Literary World Unveils Doomsday Machine.
Underwhelming artists threaten to strike, world continues turning.
For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
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They’re threatening me with a good time.
The threat – a period with no poetry readings by poets no-one seems to care about – does seem rather limited in its consequence.
I’m still processing the logistics of a strike by unpopular novelists. As I said at the time:
Better stock up on those canned goods, people.