2016 — 13 August: Saturday
From time to time1 I enjoy dipping my toes back into some of the pleasures I've enjoyed in the past. Don't we all, as we traverse this short-lived vale of tears?
Consider the comic "Preacher". Spawned (and I use that word advisedly, as in phrases like "spawn of the devil") in 1995. It's a silly but enjoyable yarn of supernatural shenanigans, derring-do, and dastardly deeds, all astringently laced with black humour, outrageous satire, some delicious diatribes, and some very skilful writing. Far removed, I suspect, from the average contender for the Booker Prize. The first seven issues were collated into graphic novel form...
... which is how I first encountered this class act. I began reading2 it on 8th February 1997. As — lest you fear for the irredeemably lowbrow taste I have in 'literature' — I did these other three equally worthy books that I happened to pick up on the same Saturday trip into Eastleigh:
I can easily explain how I know when I bought a book as I semi-obsessively track my purchases. How I know where I bought them is harder to explain. So I try not to worry about it.
Fast forward (as they used to say in the Land of the VCR) from 1997 and you arrive — rather sadly, I fear — at the new TV series of "Preacher" that I began watching yesterday evening. I've only tried the pilot episode so far. It has some promise, but to be honest I found Laura Kuenssberg's examination of the recent "Brexit: the battle for Britain" rather more interesting and (slightly) more to my taste. (I couldn't help feeling as I watched it that it had much the same elements of horror, too.)
That horror...
... is similarly evoked here:
Social media, now the primary news source for most Americans, leads us into echo chambers of similar-minded people, feeding us only the things that make us feel better, whether they are true or not.
Slippery stuff, that reality.
From page 122...
... of a depressingly-thorough report:
Blimey!
42% of marriages now end in divorce, leading to "blended" families in the "sandwich" generation. I'm half listening to "Your Money and Your Life" but it's pointing up the fragility of modern society. I'm reverting to a book.
When did it become way past time for lunch?
For the record...
... my i5 NUC is still running Linux Mint 18, but Cinnamon has just been supplanted by MATE. Let's see if that crashes... about all it's got on so far is NoMachine, access to the WD NAS (and thus all my music), and I'm 'driving' it as before from BlackBeast.
This afternoon's more retro theme:
