Watch this footage of identical twins recounting a carjacking / car accident.
The footage brings to mind a case from half a century ago that's very foggy in my mind. No doubt I'll spend the next few hours / days / weeks trying to recall the details.
More on Paula and Bridgette Powers in this 30 minute documentary: The Twinnies — Birds of a Feather
What a fascinating world we live in. These women are nothing short of extraordinary.
Jon Fosse is a Norwegian writer who seems to be having a bit of a day in the North American sun since winning the Nobel Prize a couple years back. He was already well-known outside of North America as he’s the most produced living playwright in Europe. So respected is he in his native land, the Norwegian government has granted him a lifetime stipend for his future output.
Fosse refers to himself as a writer of Mystical Realism (as opposed to Magical Realism). He’s probably most famous for, in many of his best-known works, a lack of full stops and the repetition of very simple language. Though Cormac McCarthy‘s use of punctuation was spare, it does not match Fosse's. For instance, there is not a single period to be found in Septology’s 700 pages. It compares to no other writer I’m familiar with and if forced to create some sort of analogy, I’d probably go to the hypnotic music of Philip Glass. You think it’s the same thing being repeated ad naseum until you allow yourself to be escorted by it and begin to feel the subtle differences make contact with you. It is an eye-opening revelation when it hits you. David Milch once said of this realization, “Oh! This guy’s been fucking walking with me!,” though he was referring to Kierkegaard.
Let me illustrate the repetition with the opening of Boathouse, one of my favorite books by Fosse, written before he ditched the full stops:
I became aware of Fosse after reading Ruth Margalit’s review of Septology, with the most compelling bits being:
Fosse’s writing is bleak, impassive, mournful, circuitous, almost insistently inscrutable. It is also deeply spiritual — and not in the manner of Instagram-friendly New Age aphorisms. …
At times while reading the first two books of Septology, I walked around in a fugue-like state, wondering what it was that I was reading, exactly. A parable? A gospel? A novel bereft of the usual markings of plot, time, and character? The answer appeared to be all of the above, but although I usually balk at anything mystical, the effect was haunting and cumulative. …
Fosse’s interest[ed] in doubling: both the multitudes we each contain — all the roads not taken — and how we grow estranged from ourselves over time.
This doubling is all throughout his work — at least in everything I've read: Septology, Boathouse, Aliss at the Fire, Trilogy, Morning and Evening, A Shining. I'm not talking about doppelgängers, but repeated names and characteristics existing both simultaneously and throughout time, many of the stories becoming ouroboroses of theme and language.
Again, I'll go to David Milch, as I often do, as he is a firm believer in the connectedness of all things. Sort of a panpsychism but not that individual everythings have conscience, but that there is one conscience of which we're all part. I'm not religious but suspect such a belief disagrees with Fosse's Catholicism — though I'm happy to believe that both men are correct and that there is no conflict. (Mickey Newbury once asked:* "Did God make time to keep it all from happening at once?" and James Lee Burke has repeatedly said we're all "in a dream in the mind of God.")
Of course, I am reading Fosse in translation, all by Damien Searls — a man who learned Nynorsk (the language Fosse writes in) specifically to read Fosse. Some of the Fosse I’ve finished I haven’t read myself, but have had it read to me. The master narrator of his work is actor Kåre Conradi. Here he is reading the same Boathouse excerpt as above:
Try that for four and a half hours — or 28 in the case of the seven books that make up Septology! Fosse, especially as read by Conradi, has a way of burrowing into your conscience until, yes, he is walking with you.
*Here’s Bonnie Prince Billy covering that Newbury track:
Next month, top-notch film streamer Mubi will start publishing books under the imprint MubiEditions.
They're taking pre-orders for their first title, READ FRAME TYPE FILM, but obviously this isn't an endorsement as I haven't seen it yet.
Bound to sell out, like all issues of Notebook, a magazine they've been publishing for years now. Each issue is gorgeous and filled with great content.
I've known that Polaroid was reborn out of the Impossible Project, but I wasn't aware that they'd released an instant camera that can be fully manual. This is the Polaroid I-2.
Reviews are pretty positive. Here's YouTuber In An Instant's review: A Generational Camera:
Larry David does an absolutely wonderful job of skewering Bill Maher in this opinion piece in the NYT: My Dinner With Adolf.
But it wasn’t just a one-way street, with the Führer dominating the conversation. He was quite inquisitive and asked me a lot of questions about myself. I told him I had just gone through a brutal breakup with my girlfriend because every time I went someplace without her, she was always insistent that I tell her everything I talked about. I can’t stand having to remember every detail of every conversation. Hitler said he could relate — he hated that, too. “What am I, a secretary?”
If you're confused as to the context, this is from last week:
I've hated Maher for decades. This feckless horseshit is an excellent example of his dangerous stupidity.
The excellent notes app Voicenotes (iOS, Android, Web) has launched a new feature called Pages which allows users to publish audio notes to a web page where they'll appear in reverse chronological order for anyone with the page address to listen to them. Visitors can also subscribe to a Page and be notified when new content is added. Listeners do not need to have the Voicenotes app.
This is a wonderful service for poets, diarists, or anyone else keen on sharing their thoughts with friends, family, lovers, or other subscribers.
Pages is just an added-on aspect — it's not the app's main purpose, just a very lovely frill. Voicenotes is an comprehensive note-taking app that I use multiple times a day. It's the easiest way I've found to record thoughts and ideas before they're gone.
For now, the app does have a free tier, though I suspect they'll be getting rid of it soon. You can sign up for a monthly or annual subscription and if you sign up with this link, I'll get a small kickback should you decide to become a subscriber. Play with it for 15 minutes and I'll be you'll be hooked.
I always find the videos by Bill Hammack (a/k/a EngineerGuy) explaining everyday items to be fascinating. He consistently manages to explain the complex ideas behind simple items in an understandable way.
Here's one on the common soda can, which he calls ingenious:
And one on the soda bottle ("Masterful"):
Carole Cadwalladr’s recent Ted Talk, “This is a Digital Coup” is worth a listen. If you’re unfamiliar with Cadwalladr’s work, she’s one of the main reporters who broke the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook story (and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer for it) almost a decade ago. She was sued for her last Ted Talk, and is visibly nervous during this one, though the courts vindicated her.
I don't know what YouTube user Hoog has to do with the AnyDesk software, but this video was extremely well done: How To Disable a Robot Dog:
Nardwuar does bizarre and entertaining interview with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. I'm all for it.
