Image is everything !

My close friend Steve has an uncanny knack for carefully mulling over any idea or issue you throw at him, and coming back with an elegant solution or response.

In the "As if I didn't have enough things going to fill my time" category, I've recently taken up an interest in amateur DJing. Obsessively image conscious as I am when it comes to pretty much everything, I naturally felt that I immediately needed a moniker and a corresponding logo - even without a gig in sight. Well actually I *do* have a gig coming up now, but I didn't at the time when decided I needed an "image". Just shows to go (sic) - you can never be too prepared.

Enter Steve. He found the name and designed the logo.
It's a reference to the character Lestat in Anne Rice's vampire novels. It's also a reference to - OK here it comes - a sort of nickname I've been stuck with for several years. Actually it refers more to a sort of ... grinning, mischievous alter ego who's been known to *ahem* ... take over my person from time to time.

But I'd best leave that for another post. Or two. Or none !

Deep Thoughts ... but without Jack Handy

Time for a change of tone around here.

Between Vonneguts, I recently finished reading Monty's memoirs. One excerpt struck me as being particularly applicable to life as a whole:

" To exercise high command successfully one has to have an infinite capacity for taking pains and for careful preparation; and one has also to have an inner conviction which at times will transcend reason. Having fought, possibly over a long period, for the advantage and gained it, there then comes the moment for boldness. When that moment comes, will you throw your bonnet over the mill and soar from the known to seize the unknown ? In the answer to this question lies the supreme test of generalship in high command. "

My friend Sherman's take on this is worth sharing:

" It's not just generalship. Let's say you're trying to prove a theorem. There can come a time when you have to commit a large block of effort to an approach which no logic can establish will work, or ought to work. You only have your intuition to go on, and that, in the teeth of the fact that others before you, and better than you, have not found a solution.

Let's say you're on a hike. There can be a point of no return. That is, if you go on past that point, there won't be time or strength to return the way you came. You will be committed to succeeding with your planned hike, even parts of it that for all you know may involve difficulties which your preparation and map study didn't reveal. If you go ahead, you're going ahead in part on faith.

And then there's getting married.

Even for ordinary life, and ordinary people, there come times when decisions of the greatest moment must be taken although the consequences are incalculable. Having done what one can to think things through, the day comes for throwing the bonnet over the mill. "

Maybe part of my problem these days is that I may have read waaayyy too much Vonnegut in the past few weeks. But once you get going with him, it's hard to stop.

After Deadeye Dick, Jailbird, Player Piano and Mother Night, I'm currently finishing Hocus Pocus. A quick excerpt:

" Life was like an ocean liner to a lot of people who weren't in prison, too, of course. And their TV sets were portholes through which they could look while doing nothing, to see all the World was doing with no help from them.

Look at it go ! "

OK one more:

" Crucifixion as a mode of execution for the very worst criminals was outlawed by the first Christian Roman Emperor, who was Constantine the Great.

Burning and boiling were still OK. "

I suppose there's a half decent case to be made for the theory that just about every epoch has possessed its own firm notions of what constituted " Modernity ". Probably ever since archrivals Grokkk and Thorgg beat one another senseless with gazelle tibias for the right to mate with Uuja.

Ok, maybe not that far back. For argument's sake, let's say the Renaissance.

Witness this image, a poster for an MGM flick from the 1920's entitled "Our Modern Maidens".

Surely if anything could provide an interesting starting point for a Modernity vs. Postmodernity debate, this would rank high. I actually thought about this for a while today, and it was a welcome change of pace from Austria-Hungary.

But then it got a bit tiresome, and I found myself daydreaming about assembling a time machine from old washing machines and a few interlinked Nintendo consoles, and setting the dial to 1923. Mission: Meet some Modern Maidens. Hang out, maybe go dance a Charleston or two, see where things led from there.

Then - mercifully - the train reached my stop.

On a different note ...

This photo was taken by our cousin, currently serving with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. A supply convoy making its way through ... nothingness. Emptiness can be deceiving ...

Then of course, there's always Albania. A friend of mine, also a consultant, just got back from a gig there a while back. He managed to bring me back the one thing I'd asked for - an original printed-in-Tirane edition of anything by Hoxha. My glee cetainly must have provided Judy with yet further evidence of my questionable mental stability.

Then we rented the recent Clive Owen vehicle " The Inside Man ". A decent flick, entertainment-wise. I like Clive.

Anyway - without giving away the plot - a recording of a speech by Hoxha is used as a plot device at one point in the movie.

Funny isn't it how life works - you hear nary a word about Enver Hoxha for years, and then suddenly * wham * - books, movies ...

Just thinking about the Austro-Hungarian Empire today (again.) The thing was litterally blown to smithereens by the end of World War I. Today, over 15 countries - most of them impoverished and unstable to this day - can be found in the South Eastern part of Europe the Empire straddled in 1913.

Running the place must have basically been like watching a schizophrenic try to herd a dozen rabid cats.

They sure had beautiful paper money, though.