Reality

             

            On Monday I backed up some more files on DVD. I put all of my downloaded literature and philosophy texts on one disk. Text takes up so little space that I can probably keep all of the books I will ever download on one DVD. I deleted most of the books from my computer, not because they took up space in terms of size, but they took up visual space. I guess I could have just put them all in one folder, but I was on a roll.

            I recently downloaded Discipline by King Crimson. I have the album in my vinyl collection but I haven’t bothered setting up my record player in years, and Discipline is one of my favourite albums, mostly because of Adrian Belew’s contribution to the mix. I had yet listened to his solo work, so I downloaded a collection of his albums. I’ve only listened to his first two, and although that stuff is okay, I think there must be something about collaborating with Fripp in King Crimson that brought something special out in him. In some of his solo work he rally shows to influence of having worked with David Byrne and sometimes if one didn’t know which guy one was listening to one wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. It’s easy to hear why the other members of Talking Heads supposedly once approached Belew with the idea of replacing Byrne. I also downloaded King Crimson’s follow up to Discipline, “Beat”, but while the playing is excellent, they seemed to repeat a lot of the sounds that stood out in Discipline. Because I couldn’t get more than a poorly seeded download of Three of a Perfect Pair, I decided to just download a collection of albums, but ended up accidentally downloading twelve CD box set of one album: Thrak. I decided to keep the download going now because I’m curious how they could stretch out one album over twelve disks.

            I listened to two episodes of Amos and Andy from early 1945. These stories composed one larger story. At the beginning, Amos gives Andy and Kingfish a lecture on responsibility and calls them a couple of bums because of all of the lame brained schemes they get involved in that never work out. They decide that Amos is right and so they set about trying to think of something they can do that they are actually good at. Kingfish is trying to explain that they have to find Andy’s talent so that Kingfish can promote it because promoting is his talent:

Kingfish: Did you gradulate from college?
Andy: Well, I was gonna go ta college but something got in my way.
Kingfish: What was that”

Andy: High School.

Kingfish: Brother Andy, I knows that I is fitted for bein a promoter. And now the thing for you ta do is ta concentrate on what you fitted for. Yeah, get you started on the road to success and then I’ll promote you, ya see?

Andy: Oh yeah, but that leaves you sittin down with your feet on the desk an me doin all the work!

Kingfish: Andy, you looking at it the wrong way! Lets look at it from the abstract!

Andy: From the what?

Kingfish: From the abstract! Now, I know you aint gonna be ignorant enough ta ask me what “abstract” is!

Andy: I aint huh? What is abstract?

Kingfish: There ya go! I knowd you was gonna be that ignorant! Now open your ears and listen to me! I’m gonna explain it to ya! You got your ears open there?

Andy: Yeah, but there aint nothing comin out your mouth!

Kingfish: The abstract means … ah … it means, well, let’s put it another way!

Andy: Well you aint put it no way yet!

Kingfish: Yeah well, let’s forget abstract! Let’s look at it from the subjective!

Andy: From the what?

Kingfish: I knowd it was comin, I knowd it! I could tell by the expression on your face that little word throwd ya!

Andy: Yeah well, explain that last word will ya?

Kingfish: The word “subjective”, that’s the word. Now you aint gonna ask me ta explain what the subjective is, is ya?

Andy: Yes I is!

Kingfish: Well, let’s go back ta the abstract!

Andy: Well what is abstract?

Kingfish: Well abstract is, well I’m gonna put it another way. Well you is heard of abstract of vanilla aint ya

Andy: Oh! Sure!

Kingfish: Well it aint nothin like that.

Andy: Well now we is getting someplace! Why didn’t ya just tell me that in the first place?

            It was decided that since Andy is the biggest ladies man in Harlem, what he’d be best suited for would be to give advice to the lovelorn. Kingfish helps him become a newspaper columnist but he has to use the woman’s pen name of Jessica Hart. It turns out that he is really good at this and becomes successful, pulling in $35.00 a week and he’s never enjoyed a job more. But he gets one letter from a woman that is complaining about how her boyfriend promised to marry her but backed out of it. Andy, as Jessica, advised her to sue him for breach of promise, not realizing that it was him she was talking about.

In the second episode, the woman decided not to sue Andy but to sue Jessica Hart instead.

In the evening I got ready to take a bike ride, but forgot to put on an extra layer, so I had to take everything off again to add long johns under my trousers and an extra sweater under my long sleeved shirt. When I started, it didn’t feel that cold, but after a few blocks I started to feel it on my face, and on my ears even under my hood, so I just rode up to Bloor, went to Dufferin and back home.

I watched two episodes of South Park.

The first involved almost everybody in South Park becoming restaurant reviewers for Yelp and each one thinking they were the most important one. They are all driving restaurateurs nuts with their snooty attitude and by announcing as soon as they came in that they were reviewers. Finally, Kyle gets the mayor to award each Yelp reviewer with a special golden badge so that restaurant owners could recognize them and put boogers and cum in their food.

The second was about people being shamed on social media and being shamed by cashiers at the supermarket if they don’t want to donate a dollar to starving children. PC Principal forces Butters to scan the Facebook and Twitter pages of Cartman and several other sensitive people and to edit out any negative comments that other people might have made to hurt their feelings. Stan Marsh’s father organizes a charity event to raise money to stop shaming, but the event is crashed by a guy named Reality, who looks like a silent film villain, with a stovepipe hat and a handlebar moustache. He takes over the stage and addresses the audience: “What a lovely charity event! I suppose you are all feeling pretty good about yourselves! What have you got? You waste 300 dollars by spending half a million on filet mignon and crystal glasses! (He looks at Vin Diesel in the audience) Look at you Vin Dipshit! You say fat shaming is wrong so in response you show off your ass! You’re the one fat shaming, idiot! What’s the matter with you people? You’re sad that people are mean? Well, I’m sorry, the world isn’t one big liberal arts college campus! We eat too much! We take our spoiled lives for granted! Feel a little bad about it sometimes! Now, you want to put all your shit up on the internet and have every single person say, “Hooray for you!” Fuck you! You’re all pricks!”