Cries and Whispers of the Herd

Well, I was aurally browsing with my XM satellite radio and settled on the BBC World Service's Culture Shock program (or progamme, if you prefer, mate).

Good show, guv'nor.

I heard an entertaining yet Brave-New-World-ish interview with a fellow from North Carolina expounding on the virtues of scent marketing via his firm ScentAir, as I naughtily mused to myself: "Would the interviewer please be so horrifically naughty as to ask blatantly about the ScentAir availability of the human equivalent of what I saw my dog do a few hours ago while encountering another canine, sniff-sniff?"

Then an engaging and thought-provoking chat with Mark Earls, linked a few words preceding to his own blog, author of Herd: How To Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature. (Presumably, the American edition will be about mass behavior.) Among other things, the Duke of Earls spoke in the BBC interview of humans as "we creatures," which got me thinking about my sloppy blogging habits (i.e., the poor grades I deserve for my discourteous lack of blog-comment reciprocity), the "we" nature of blogging itself (despite blogging's radically ephemeral nature), and the challenges this concept poses for an avowed solipsist. But, deep down, and across and above, I believe we are indeed "we creatures," we the people. Curiously, Earls and the BBC's Tim Marlow noted how Western and Northern European society drifted from "we" to "I" several hundred years ago (the Enlightenment? the Reformation?), but the rest of the world still believes in "we" (or us, grammatically). I suppose all that -- Excuse me: We (the royal we) suppose all that is a bit of an oversimplification. And that also gives us the chance to voice the subjective view that most people misuse the word simplistic.

So then I browsed the BBC's World Service site and discovered Ingmar Bergman has died.

The BBC reported that:

British film director Ken Russell told the BBC: "He [Bergman] could hardly bear to watch his own movies, apparently they made him so miserable," he said. "To have done 50 films with such a variety of misery is quite an achievement."

Bergman had five marriages and eight children, and his work often explored the tensions between married couples.

But Bergman confessed in 2004 that he could not bear to watch his own films because they made him depressed.

"I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable," he said. "I think it's awful," he said in a rare interview on Swedish TV.

See, I'll bet Ingmar Bergman didn't comment on any other blogs either.

Or even read his own, if he had one. It would make him too miserable (to read his own, not yours, or yours, or yours either).

That's my excuse (I mean rationalization) (I mean rationale).

Yeah. Sure.

Flagged But Not Flagellated

A zero day. Got up; let the dog out; breakfasted; blogged; revised blog template (not sure even I like it; do you?); went back to bed; stayed in pajamas until a shower at 6, post meridiem.

Relished some reading, too (not the kind of relish that goes with that gross hot-dog-eating contest at Coney Island).

Finished a collection of novellas called "The Woman Lit By Fireflies" by Jim Harrison. The first piece features the eponymous Brown Dog, in what appears to be his debut literary appearance. Brown Dog is one of the most colorful characters in modern American literature, to this reader. I was introduced to Jim Harrison on the recommendation of Cort, a colleague who now calls me Brown Dog in passing at work. The collection's title piece is, well, luminous. A woman ditches her husband and spends a night alone in a cornfield. How's that for stalking one's demons?

Was I depressed today or simply indulging in some hard-earned rest? Probably more the latter. Or maybe not.

The temporarily empty nest gets refilled shortly, with youngest daughter returning (a few days early) after a stay on Block Island and with elder daughter in Berlin back in the, back in the, back in the US of A.

No great American novel (or story or poem or blog) written during this one week's worth of nest vacancy.

None yet.

A passing rumble of amateur fireworks.

My feathers are not ruffled by it, though I admit to a fluttering as the decibels increase.

Listened to the BBC on XM satellite radio a bit today. Good to hear that reporter Alan Johnston is freed from Gaza. Listened to some baseball on XM too. The Giants won today, aided by a grand slam by Fred Lewis, twice now in his rookie year (something never done in the team's San Francisco era). Alas, though, Mr. Lewis is no Willie Mays. He may not even be a Nate Schierholtz.

And now, the sweetest coda to the day and counterpoint to the sporadic neighborhood firecrackers: a lazy summer rain steadily sprinkling on the sidewalk (a pleasure exceeded only by the symphony of raindrops tapping on a car roof).