When an intense, paralyzing blizzard began descending upon the Sandhills of Nebraska late yesterday afternoon, Thursday afternoon, I was looking forward to several hours of posting good stuff from Skins’s island in the DUmpster because, well, I wasn’t going to be doing anything else and I wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.
As the cold and wind and snow came down, I noticed a similarity with something I’d seen in a movie on youtube, reminding me I meant to order the DVD of it, which I did. It’s from 2002, six hours long, Napoleon. Its depiction of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812 was very much like the way the Sandhills looked as this blizzard roared through.
Friends had come by earlier in the afternoon, knowing that I’d probably be snowed in, and “in case anything [sic] happened,” it’d take a long time to haul me out. Ever since the heart attack twenty-two months ago, they’ve seemed suspicious of what I’m up to. (The heart attack had gone on for two hours before I finally summoned help; for the longest time I thought it was simply a temporary aberration and would go away.)
Having ordered the DVD, I went over to Skins’s island to check on the primitives. It was about as animated as a nursing home at midnight; I figured maybe I’d gone over too early, and so watched a movie about Frank “the Enforcer” Nitti. Because I’m deaf, I “pre-watch” movies, or excerpts of them, on youtube, to see if a DVD of it’s worth getting.
I have to watch a particular movie several times before I finally “get it,” or most of it. And I tend to like really long movies, so this “pre-watching”’s a good idea, saving me hours and hours and hours. I always liked Frank “the Enforcer,” who strikes me as having been a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet. He had a reputation to the contrary, but I suspect that was just an act, a facade.
However, the movie about him that I watched, wasn’t worth ordering the DVD.
I went back to Skins’s island after that, finding it still dull and uninspiring. The primitives these days aren’t as high-quality as the primitives used to be. In fact, nowadays they’re pretty damned boring, nothing novel or exciting about them. I then went over to Manny’s message board, to check his primitives, but knew in advance there was probably nothing there.
And I was right; there was nothing there. It looks to me as if the past three months, say beginning early December, participation over there’s declined precipitously. The place appears to be going the way of Big Jerry’s democratwarrior and Big Andrea’s oldelmtree and the rabbi’s liberalunderground, which is to say it’s slipping into oblivion.
But because it has a few members who were pretty good when they were on Skins’s island, one wishes Skins would move in, and gently anschluss, re-absorb, Manny’s message board back into Skins’s island. He could do this by assigning certain of his primitives to go there and get on board as stealth members, slowly-but-surely prodding Manny’s message board back to where it belongs.
Having gone 0-for-2 in my attempts to find something postworthy for the DUmpster, I made a last desperate attempt, going over to see what the left-wing was discussing on DU Jr. Decent and civilized people participate there too, but decent and civilized people don’t provide comedy material, and so I pay attention only to what the fringe whacks there are saying and doing.
After looking it over, I guessed, well, maybe in the middle of the night something exciting’ll happen.
So I went and watched another movie on youtube; I was interested in getting a DVD of the 1963 film 55 Days at Peking. I watched only half of it, though, as I was getting disappointed.
Given its subject—the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900—I’d hoped to see a lot of chop-chop, but this first half was mostly only dialogue, hardly any action.
I’m deaf; while I can deal with some dialogue, I can’t deal with a lot of it. So I prefer movies with action, with motion, with people and things moving around. Watching lips flip-flap, and nothing else, gets old in a hurry.
After giving up halfway through that movie, as it was very late, I checked DU Jr. one more time, and then got undressed and hit the sack for the night, the blizzard still raging.
One of the two reasons I live out here despite the disadvantages is that the house has more windows than walls; one can see the greater world outside no matter where one’s at inside the house; I don’t care much for feeling closed in, hidden. (The other reason is because of its location, it’s ideal for cats, and they can romp and play as they wish without worry of human-caused damage.)
When I woke up this morning circa 5:00 a.m., it was light enough both inside and outside to see that the snow and wind and cold was still relentlessly blowing. A couple of years ago, the property caretaker had put up mirrors in this place, as a safety precaution, as I don’t “hear” anything unless I’m seeing it…..thus making the sides and back of me blind spots.
I usually don’t pay attention to them because I’m so used to them, but this time in an anomalic fit of vanity, I stopped to admire myself reflected in a full-length one put up on the back of a door. Eat your hearts out, primitives, if you could see this, I thought to myself; the rewards of the strenuous, nondecadent life. After which I emptied the bladder, made coffee, and got dressed.
Well, here it is, now 8:00 a.m. and it’s still snowing, and Skins’s island, Manny’s message board, and DU Jr. are about as lively as the catacombs of Rome in mid-winter. So I suppose franksolich will go off and watch another movie…..
