LATE STAGE CAPITALISM RAT RACE

I don't know if it's worse to willfully sink or pretend the tsunami is just a baby wave.

It baffles me that people around me seem fully functional and even thriving in the year 2024 when all I know is climate doom, the widespread injustices of our surveillance state, the fall of democracy at home and a genocide overseas. In late stage capitalism but also the microcosm of elite higher education, the constant lurch towards productivity (for what?) and self-optimization (for who?) and networking for a future I'm not certain will exist leaves me queasy, paralyzed. The end times alarm is never not blaring in my brain, and the noise often induces a kind of depressive dysfunction. I can't help but feel morally deficient for this; like there is something weak and deeply defective in me because (to put it lightly) I just can't hack it.

One of my tethers out of this self-deprecating spiral has been a quote from Sinead O'Connor:

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

I give us permission to acknowledge the illness of late stage capitalism—to lie in it as long as it takes for us to understand that well-adjustedness (complacency?) is not a normal or meaningful response to the conditions we live in. These are some poetic resources that have helped me do this:

“Adventures in Shangdu” from Engine Empire by Cathy Park Hong (poem // dystopian cityscape)

Excerpt: On a beautiful day in May, when the sun burns through the carbon haze like blood jets from civic posters and white magnolias shoot out like flags from toy guns, we will ride our tall bicycles together.

No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (satirical experimental novel // dystopian internet void)

Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn't have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.

There's laundry to do and a genocide to stop by Vinay Krishnan (poem // living in 2024)

Staircase Wit by Rhiannon McGavin (poem // youth in the end-times)

The New Me by Halle Butler (novel // corporate hellscape)

Severance by Ling Ma (novel // pandemic corporate hellscape)

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (novel // hibernation from corporate hellscape)

Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I'd slept enough, I'd be okay. I'd be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. 

I also give us permission to hope for and work toward a better future. To rely on ourselves but also each other—whatever happens to the earth and the economy, all we will have for certain is each other. I'm trying to embrace that one certainty.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver (poem // sanctuary of the self)

Good Bones by Maggie Smith (poem // dare to hope)

The Orange by Wendy Cope (poem // leaning on each other)

Playlist by me (playlist // social alienation in late stage capitalism)

Finally, I give us permission to create art out of our feelings and experiences, because sometimes that feels like the only way to render them meaningful.

anyways... replace cops w geese bc at least geese hate all humans equally

MacGyver... but it's birds.

Stay with me, okay? I know it sounds crazy, but it fits so perfectly. Let me preface this post by saying that I have never wished I could draw so much in my life. If I could, you could bet your bottom dollar that this post would be a bunch of fan art of the MacGyver gang as birds. And if anyone can draw and wants to illustrate this fowl idea I've concocted, feel free to add to this post! Please, please, someone draw this.

Anyway, let's meet our cast:

Angoose MacGooser

The smartest goose. A honkin' genius. Can pick any lock with his little webbed toes. Favorite food is bread (this is appropriate because bread is bad for geese and MacGooser is self-destructive and can't stay away from things that hurt him.)

Jackdaw-ton

He may be small, but he's got a big heart. Sniper birb. Black feathers help him blend in with the night, and they let other birbs know he likes rock n' roll. Best friend of MacGooser, tries to keep him from eating bread (not an easy feat). Like a father to both MacGooser and Rileagle, but he's barely mature enough have fledglings himself. Surprisingly good at shooting guns, though lifting them can be a problem.

Rileagle Davis

Beautiful, regal, a queen amongst birbs. Sharp claws, for hacking into mainframes and kicking the bad birds' tail feathers. See that sharp mouth? It's not just literal. She's like the crack of a whip. And she got style. Look at those feathers.

Wilt Hummingbozer

First off, this bird is fly (get it?). MacGooser's best birb since they were both eggs. Knows how to dress for any situation. Sweet as nectar. Not just nosy because of the long beak - very interested in other people's business, but only for their own good. Fast. Smart. Good looking. And loves flowers.

Mattyngale Webber

This bird is in charge. May have a sweet voice, but can roast even the scariest of hawks with a chipper tune. Not only can she sing, but she's scary good at making bad guys sing their secrets, too. Basically the mom of the other birds, even Jackdaw-ton, who thinks he's a grown-up bird but definitely is not. Might be a small birb, but is the strongest, fiercest, and kindest of them all. All who meet her either fear or love her (or both). Usually both.

Murduck

Ever seen a duck obsessed with a goose? You have now. Infatuated with Angoose MacGooser, who is also his greatest enemy. This duck may be smol and cute, but it brings death with it. Has filed down bill to a deadly point. Also completely insane. He's gone quackers, you might say.

Desiraven Nguyen

Mysterious, feared, closely associated with death. Like most ravens, is smart and loyal. Remembers who her friends are. Unlike most ravens, is actually an omen of death - if you're a bad guy. A true badass birb. Proteccs MacGooser when Jackdaw-ton isn't around.

Albatruss Taylor

Underneath the grumpy birb face, there's a grumpy birb soul. But deep within grumpy birb soul, there is good birb. Rich boi with big wingspan and questionable morals 85% of the time. Once tried to blow up MacGooser and Rileagle, but he apologized and they're good now. Sexy British accent to his nasal double-brays. Has commitment issues. Again, looks grumpy, is grumpy, also good (sometimes).

Coducks

Shadowy organization of terrorists. Not all members are ducks, and not all ducks are bad (just Murduck and the ducks in Coducks). Think to save birb-kind that all humans and some birbs must die. Think they're hot stuff, but not as scary as they look (see picture for reference).

Movie Review | Silverado (Kasdan, 1985)

After a certain point, probably sometime in the '70s, westerns had become so scarce that a new one, by virtue of being made, functioned as a kind of statement. Certainly movies like Unforgiven and The Proposition are designed as reflections on the genre rather than mere exercises in the form (and this reflective quality extends to movies that traffic in western aesthetics, like No Country for Old Men). But even movies eager to bask in the simple, unpretentious pleasures of the genre come off like statements through omission, by virtue of being so rare. Silverado is one such film, and a pretty good one at that. This is a movie about good guys being good, bad guys being bad, spinning pistols and being crack shots, hopping on horses and riding into the sunset. If any of those things sound good to you, you're likely to have a good time with this anyway, but some astute casting goes a long way in making this work.

The heroes are played by Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Kline and Kevin Costner, who are roughly given equal weighting, although Glenn is perhaps the most alpha. Glenn is perfect for westerns, with a face so leathery it might as well match his boots and so craggy it blends into the harsh landscape. (I've heard him described as weird looking, which is a bit unfair. Rugged is a better term, and if you squint, he's maybe even a little handsome.) He has a certain low key presence that suggests confidence without overplaying it, and is instantly credible as a man who's averse to violence but awful good at it if the need arises. He's also the coolest looking of the bunch, with a hairdo and wardrobe that look stylish and modern without compromising the period. (Black Friday is coming up and I can't promise I won't order some western wear as a result of this movie, although I suspect the short jacket he wears for much of the movie would not look flattering on me.) This was during the period when Glenn was being pushed as an action hero, and his work here fits nicely with The Challenge, a pleasingly excessive swordplay movie with a well used Toshiro Mifune, Man on Fire, a thriller whose artfulness better matches the samurai-inspired quality of its source novel than the more jagged Tony Scott adaptation, and Wild Geese II, the sober followup to the cheerful mercenary shoot 'em up. Glenn had also donned a cowboy hat in Urban Cowboy, where he stole the movie from John Travolta, and it's nice to him put on a hat and play a good guy this time around.

Glover is someone I always think of as very old, likely because his best known role includes a famous line of dialogue commenting on his age. This is the role I've seen him where he comes off the least geriatric, and like Glenn, he brings an unforced heroic quality (and his character is a better shot too). His introduction can remind viewers of the extremely lame ways modern movies will try to pander to righteous sensibilities by having a character face racial injustice (or some other kind) in an awkwardly written scene, but the one here works because of two indisputable facts: One, Glover is kind of cool in this, and two, watching him beat up racists is objectively enjoyable. Compared to him and Glenn, Kline comes off as relatively genteel, but in a way that creates tension between his desire for respectability, his violent past, and his need to pick up a gun again for the sake of justice. His might be considered the Henry Fonda role, and he has some nice, maybe romantic chemistry, with a saloon operator played by Linda Hunt. And in contrast to all of them, Costner is the most excitable, bringing some of the spontaneity and anarchic energy of a young Tom Hanks. I've usually seen him cast as an everyman, which can help ground a movie (like in the frantic, paranoid JFK), but it's nice to see him in a completely different mode. (In contrast to Glenn's costuming, Costner's is a little more flamboyant and goofy, in keeping with his character's youthful indiscretion.) If you like these actors, you'll get a lot out of the way the movie savours their distinct presences.

The strong casting carries over to the rest of the film as well, including the aforementioned Hunt, Brian Dennehy as the heavy, a purposefully incongruous Jeff Goldblum, and the list goes on. To borrow a phrase from the We Hate Movies podcast, this was made in an era when studio movies had deep casts (good, recognizable actors all the way down). This is directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and like Raiders of the Lost Ark, for which he wrote the screenplay, this is deeply nostalgic for the films of yore, although the innate significance of a western made in this era probably forces it to be more sprawling and quite a bit less terse than the B-westerns that would have inspired it. It's not as good as that movie, as Kasdan lacks Spielberg's immaculate action direction. (Consider a scene where Costner guns down two foes, one on each side. Kasdan chooses to cut when holding the shot would have made the punchline land better.) But at the same time, the baseline of craft in studio pictures at the time was a lot better than it is today, and on the whole this is quite enjoyable, especially if you like hanging out with the stars and spending time in this setting. I know I did.