Only a Blockhead

VOX is closing down at the end of the month, so Only a Blockhead is moving. 

Our new address is:

http://onlyablockhead.typepad.com/blockhead/

Update your bookmarks, please, and come and see us soon.

--The Management

It didn’t keep me awake at night, but all my life I’ve wondered how the universe came into being. If it came from anywhere, that anywhere would itself have had to come from somewhere. The concept of a creator God didn’t help, because where did God come from? Any explanation always ends up as some form of the Eastern creationist myth of the world standing on the back of a turtle which stands on the back of… and so on, until you come to the insoluble mystery of what the final creature stands on.

So three cheers for Stephen Hawking, who apparently has solved the conundrum.

Considering this has been exercising philosophers since Aristotle, what a privilege for it to have happened during my lifetime.

--Julian

P.S. Vox, the host of this blog, closes on September 30. We'll have details of Only A Blockhead's new home, and how to get there, within the month.

It’s September 2, 9:30AM and the sky is a brilliant azure blue. The cicadas whine. Large butterflies flit in the shadows of the undergrowth.

Here on the coast, the beach houses--with food and drink, fresh water showers and lockers if you want them—closed on the last day of August. They're being dismantled for the season, but the sun shines and the sparkling sea still beckons. The water is warm and inviting if you’re willing to play Russian roulette with the jellyfish: a nasty sting one day and nothing the next.

The solar panels sock out electricity day after day. This has been and is the hottest summer since 1898 when records began. Which means that quite possibly we're living through the hottest summer ever.

--Julian

Here's what I read in August.  Click through for squibs.

     Renegade by L. Timmel Duchamp

     Bluets by Maggie Nelson

     Black Jack, Volume No. 11 by Osamu Tezuka

     2666 by Roberto Bolaño

     Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

     Alamut by Vladamir Bartol

     Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace

—David

The other weekend, we took our bicycles to the Miura Peninsula and cycled along the coast in the hot sun. There were picturesque fishing ports and rocky cliffs. We stopped off at beaches for a swim and steaming bowls of salty ramen in beach house restaurants.

With its tuna catch in freefall, the fishing port of Misaki in the south is in economic decline. After a superb fish dinner, we visit a bar where we learn that Konan High School in Okinawa beat the local Kanagawa team to secure the 92nd Koshien High School Baseball Championship that afternoon. After the TV news, ageing stars sung popular songs from the Showa Era. When we left, we were still the only customers, just as we were at the portside ryokan where we spent the night. The breeze that blew through the open windows from across the water was cool, and later at night even cold belying the summer. Fishing boats puttered into the harbor in the middle of the night, and fishermen and women were hard at work before dawn.

The next day, we passed more picturesque ports and rocky shores, and stopped to swim at the beaches as we made our way up the coast and home.

--Julian

Some Americans are bigoted assholes.  Others are heroic.  Most, it seems, just don't want any trouble.

The Blockhead network has served me well.  NC Tate recommended London/Robinson in Space to Julian, who bought the DVDs, and then passed them on to me.  I am grateful.

They are tremendous films that, in choosing the essay as their guiding form rather than narrative, do something startlingly and wonderfully new.  I am reminded again of Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crud."  I like to rag on cruddy movies, and occasionally make noises about being tired of the form in its entirety, but then I experience something like this, and see that, yes, the crud is out there, but it's silly to judge a form by its crud (and that, in any case, at least ninety percent of novels and music are also crud).  Rather, we should seek out the masterpieces. 

Another Robinson lover has suggested that Los Angeles Plays Itself is a masterpiece at the level of the Robinson films.  It is, like them,  essayistic, a film, that is, that tries to do something different.  I look forward to the DVD plunking into my mailbox, and also to the third of the Robinson films, which should be out soon.

—David