Uncool, Uncalm ... Collected

All the Hits!

April Fool

All the Drama!

Wor(d)s in Progress!

Jeff Glovsky (dot) org

der Traum

Dream Scene

In a town like Long Island — rainy, dull and seaside-like — we’re drunk, four of us, in a car driving round.  One of our group is this girl I used to hang with; she’s all tingly trashed warm now and needing to pee ...

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Wor(d)s in Progress:  from "Central Park"

by Jeff Glovsky

"Writer", ©Jeff Glovsky

Not Very '90s

“If you’re really a mean person you’re going to come back as a fly and eat poop.”
- Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)

I have been asked -- my follower sent me an email -- why I never got around here, or anywhere online, to mentioning Kurt Cobain to mark the 20th "anniversary" of his stupid death.  When jazz guitarist Jim Hall passed, I put up a couple of his tracks on SoundCloud.  I nod in respect to dead writers often ... To "celebrate" the 34th year of a world without love, I posted a piece about Lennon here.

But April 5th came and went with barely a pause ... for remembrance ... stage diving ... a global moment of angst or moshing.  No one seemed to light candles, or say much.  The kids in alterna-clothes, spirited teens once, kept creeping up in age, towards forty ... and Courtney Love keeps being dissed or ignored - in short, regarded like she's batshit and kept in the attic.

While a cursory google, if you will, of the phrase, "Courtney Love found the jet", may induce a giggle or two, the fact that EVERY snarky twenty-something with a phone or keyboard picked up on that "meme" to insult the woman, is wholly sad.

That's the soul difference between us and them ... the gaping divide between our Generation X -- Kurt's, Courtney's, mine -- and our Gen Y, Z and Millennial offspring ... younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, eventually grandkids:

Any self-effacement or actual humor is vanished.  Our kids today -- unoriginal, uninspired (except to "share") and largely untalented -- get off on maligning and effacing others ... with no hint of playfulness -- no irony -- and whether or not it's truly deserved, or they have any clue who they're talking about when they're cutting, and pasting ... and narcissistically, or derisively, "sharing".

Apparently, Courtney Love was on the Tomnod website, participating in the online challenge they've got there.  She (now infamously) tweeted,

"Prayers go out to the families #MH370 and it’s like a mile away Pulau Perak, where they 'last' tracked it 5°39'08.5“N 98°50'38.0”E but what do I know?"

According to their website, "(t)he Tomnod mission is to utilize the power of crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images."  The Search for MH370 would seem to be the perfect measure of that platform, which has previously mapped search campaigns for Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the ruinous Oklahoma tornado of May 2013.

As far as I can tell ('but what do I know?'), Courtney Love was participating.

How is that batshit (or "deranged", as it's actually been nastily written in some places)?  And why are there literally pages on Google, serving up dozens of this obnoxiously mocking "story" about her participating?

I can't help thinking Kurt Cobain would have loathed what the internet has become for most people:  less an information superhighway, and much more a clogged high school corridor of cliques, desperation for acceptance, intolerance, peer pressure and bullying ... from which even the strongest among us prefer to escape.

The damaged and fragile do not stand a chance.

RIP (GenX) KC

"Fade to Memory (Old School)", ©Jeff Glovsky

Jeff Glovsky dot Net

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Death (of) Comedy

In the foolish, early days of April, the offensive, 'there is no there there' coverage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 became subsumed (at last!) ... though sadly, by yet another American gun massacre.

The latest Fort Hood shooter, apparently miffed because he was told "no" about something, and catapulted into infamy on April 2nd of this year, is not even the most recent entry on this terrible "list of rampage killers" (also check out the workplace edition!) ... admittedly -- tragically -- in the words of Wikipedia's editors, "an incomplete list, which may NEVER be able to satisfy (!) particular standards for completeness (WTF!?!)" (... emphases mine).

Oh, and David Letterman announced his retirement.

A few sad doorknobs unhinge and fall off of life's frame, and late night television shuffles again ... Ah, normalcy!  A relief!  Welcome respite!  from wild-eyed theories, internet queries, emotions and directionless everything regarding the lost airplane ... from search efforts to public statements to misplaced anger ...

Directionless.  No pride or shame (a flight simulator??) ...

No happy landing.

I was thinking this on a trip last week ... At the airport, an announcement in accented but unbroken English:

"Do not let your baggage out of your sight.  If a stranger approaches you, and asks you to watch or hold baggage, or you are asked to carry an item or gift, you should not comply.  You should report all suspicious activity to uniformed personnel or the airport police."

I was struck by the innocence of this entreaty.  Simple strangers bearing gifts ... One should tell the police ... How 20th century!

It's high time the world's airports scale up their public service announcements to reflect the potentials of this day and age:

"If your plane disappears or falls out of the sky, or you see a passenger punching a flight attendant (or vice versa!) -- or a group of histrionics annoying other passengers -- please use your cell phone camera to share."

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A Death of Self

... would've loathed what the internet has become

The Vacuum Sucks (Make It Stop)

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." - Gertrude Stein

During the past month or so, I've been out of touch.  Chilling in my Lederhosen, watching fulsome Fräulein frolic, I made the Fehlentscheidung of finding CNN one day.

Fuck.

As if glum-looking Martin Savidge, actually inserted in a flight simulator (!) to add his reportage to the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 saga, were not enough ... there was also professorial Don 'Is It Preposterous?' Lemon, delighting in his role as head of the class; a sitcom's worth of, so I'm told, recurring characters, offering "analysis" and fielding Twitter questions!  There was this weatherman ... thrilled to be part of an actual news something, putting his expertise about radar to use ... and there was long-time CNN friend, weird Richard Quest.  Although not nearly as off-putting -- loathsome, really -- as certain of his unnamed colleagues ... Weird Richard is (also) nonetheless no Larry King ... and seemed as uncomfortable being part of the nightly MH370 sitcom, as it made me uncomfortable to be staring at, into, its terrible vacuum.

Thus trembling with empathy, unable to sleep, I step out into the early morning night and gaze upward ... The pierce of the Morgen fills me with all manner of repulsions, as I think about the pain of the flight victims' families:  that is, the helpless, being eaten alive, gnawing suffering from being subjected to this cruel ('Savidge') joke ... an early, unending April Fool's gag (a flight simulator?  Really??) ... and feeling, as well, the joke's perpetrators' own sense of shame and embarrassment.

I felt for Weird Richard!  Squirming there, the day I tuned in ... and Unsmiling Martin ... both clearly unwanting to be part of the gag, but contractually forced to try and put it across.

It was literally the most wince-inducing 3 minutes I've spent, doing anything, in quite some time.

Now, as somewhere a prideful Hund barks in German ... and feet clop, with purpose, to unlock a parked car ... the stars dim, with my hopes of ever being informed.
 

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Thoughts with Malaysia Flight MH370 ...