anonymous

One of the good things about having a blog is, well, if it's a diary kind of blog as opposed to one where you get AI to write your posts, and as we all know that is the future of blogging, and with luck soon only AI will read blogs anyway, and will rehash old bloggery into new content for the pleasure of other AIs, but anyway, if it's a diary kind of blog then you can be reminded of things you really could not even believe, much less remember. Like apparently about 15 years ago I was not only watching Doctor Who but watching it like a fan. Admittedly, a fan who might stop watching it at any moment (I guess I did, because now I barely even recall ever watching it, after, you know, 1975) but writing about it like someone who thought that to watch Doctor Who was to be a valuable participant in the zeitgeist. I mean WOW. 

I could link to that post but on the other hand, who cares. 

Laura and I are in Adelaide and we have been doing fieldwork all day, it's been really good. She has been the driver. It was a very productive day. Hot take: Mt Barker (SA) is not a bad town. I just remembered something funny. I was in the Christian op shop and the two ladies running it were talking about someone else. One lady: She just talked and talked. Other lady: Oh well of course she would because [completely ran the sentence into the ground because she realised I was there even though she had no idea who I was of course but she had basically forgotten she was in public I think]. It was funnier the way she did it though unfortunately but I've written it down the best I can and we can move on. 

severance

Late-ish to the party I have been watching Severance sporadically over the last few weeks. I am about 3/4 through the first season. I am blogging about this in large part because I've noticed, looking back occasionally through old posts as I do, that certain shows and films have loomed incredibly large in my life at certain times when I really thought that taking them on linked me to the zeitgeist, and then later that zeitgeist was so dead I didn't even remember the show or the film, let alone being so into it. I suppose this is not different, it's just a show, though it's a good one particularly in the sense that it has a tremendous design ethic and so much of it is people walking down nondescript corridors and delivering dialogue to each other in sparse rooms. That gives the concept room to breathe.

There are similarly no weak characters or actors in the series although I feel that in one sense Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken and John Turturro are kind of wasted, insofar as while they do good competent work here we didn't need famous people to do this work, only to sell the show. But that's OK, it's not my money, it's Apple's, a part of which comes from money I give to Apple to make tv shows for me. 

It is not a difficult show to follow, I assume, though I do also find that every time I finish an ep, and then read the wikipedia summary, there are things I didn't realise that surprise me. I don't have this problem with Homicide by the way. But then there are no wikipedia summaries on Homicide. 

A lot of people talk about Severance being of-the-moment in its exploration of the value of a complete disconnect between work and home life. But seriously, is that an aspiration? Most people, I thought, were more concerned these days with the blurring of the boundaries between the two. Anyway, I am not watching it as though it were social commentary.