macroLisanomics

Or: Can't see the trees for the forest. And intentionally not looking for trees, at trees. Big picture time. Got the picture. No point in looking, squinting, focus, care.

Probably some parts of the brain are in charge of some versions of big picture thinking. I don't care about that either. Cuz mine have taken over, and they don't care why or how.

Left work early today for the big Michael Moore event---a talk and screening of his next film, to be released free for downloading for everybody else next week. When I arrived, the line was around the block, the long way. Down Liberty to Division and up Division to Washington, where it'd wrapped around the corner a coupla dozen people before the spot I took, and in minutes another hundred were further back than I.

I liked being in the line. I liked where I ended up in the theater, with the earnest tattooed one on my right and the tiresome Australian nutcase on my left. Michael was okay, too, once he finally came on, and though there wasn't much in his going-on of note. It was a little creepy that the security guys were dressed like Secret Service. But the crowd was alright, and I have some fondness for Michael Moore. This is the guy who stood up there last time and told us all how to sneak into the theater we were sitting in.

Near the end of his remarks he did a kind of rallying of the troops, chastisizing faintness of heart here x weeks out before the election. Barack Obama will win, he assured us, and in a landslide. Then a few minutes later we who had been cheering together at the right lefty quips started watching the film, which is made from footage of weeks of rallying before the last presidential election.

I didn't make it through. Not even halfway. And I doubt I'll ever download what I missed. I just knew sticking around would be as fruitless as sitting through Claire of the Moon in hopes an eventual sex scene might redeem that one.

There could be no ending to undercut the glaring big picture of the picture that the audience tonight seemed willfully blind to. It was the same rallying then, on the screen, four years ago. Any warm fuzzies in the communion of the crowd of the tentatively hopeful this evening were no warmer, no fuzzier than those of the crowds the movie was showing us. And we all know what happened then. And the time before that. So there we sat, people clapping & hollerin' along with the soon-to-be-foiled, four-years-ago people onscreen, and it was just like the hypothetical shouts of "U!S!A!" off the back of a flag-bearing pick-up that all had jeered at an hour before. Or maybe it was worse.

I don't recommend the film, and I don't care that I didn't stick around to see it all. I saw enough to know. It was a huge fucking downer.

Trees can be depressing, no doubt, but the forest is the worst. The forest is sobering. Stone cold sobering, to the point of pointlessness.

It's been a week of long shots for me, and I mean it like in the cinema, not at the horsetrack, sad to say. I could tell you exactly when it started, the magic words. I couldn't tell you why or how it's snowballing, like momentum in the stock market, or, to stick with the frozen precipitation, an avalanche. I don't care, either. How and why are trees.

I'm not looking at trees. I let them be killed.

And while I'm at it, if you call me up on the phone all sloppy unsober yourself, and that's the big picture there, that's what I'll see, and it'll paint all the trees one big solid swath of deep, dark green, like it's doing with everything else.

The lens has pulled back so far I think it may be stuck. It may be gonna stay this way.

macroLisanomics

Or: Can't see the trees for the forest. And intentionally not looking for trees, at trees. Big picture time. Got the picture. No point in looking, squinting, focus, care.

Probably some parts of the brain are in charge of some versions of big picture thinking. I don't care about that either. Cuz mine have taken over, and they don't care why or how.

Left work early today for the big Michael Moore event---a talk and screening of his next film, to be released free for downloading for everybody else next week. When I arrived, the line was around the block, the long way. Down Liberty to Division and up Division to Washington, where it'd wrapped around the corner a coupla dozen people before the spot I took, and in minutes another hundred were further back than I.

I liked being in the line. I liked where I ended up in the theater, with the earnest tattooed one on my right and the tiresome Australian nutcase on my left. Michael was okay, too, once he finally came on, and though there wasn't much in his going-on of note. It was a little creepy that the security guys were dressed like Secret Service. But the crowd was alright, and I have some fondness for Michael Moore. This is the guy who stood up there last time and told us all how to sneak into the theater we were sitting in.

Near the end of his remarks he did a kind of rallying of the troops, chastisizing faintness of heart here x weeks out before the election. Barack Obama will win, he assured us, and in a landslide. Then a few minutes later we who had been cheering together at the right lefty quips started watching the film, which is made from footage of weeks of rallying before the last presidential election.

I didn't make it through. Not even halfway. And I doubt I'll ever download what I missed. I just knew sticking around would be as fruitless as sitting through Claire of the Moon in hopes an eventual sex scene might redeem that one.

There could be no ending to undercut the glaring big picture of the picture that the audience tonight seemed willfully blind to. It was the same rallying then, on the screen, four years ago. Any warm fuzzies in the communion of the crowd of the tentatively hopeful this evening were no warmer, no fuzzier than those of the crowds the movie was showing us. And we all know what happened then. And the time before that. So there we sat, people clapping & hollerin' along with the soon-to-be-foiled, four-years-ago people onscreen, and it was just like the hypothetical shouts of "U!S!A!" off the back of a flag-bearing pick-up that all had jeered at an hour before. Or maybe it was worse.

I don't recommend the film, and I don't care that I didn't stick around to see it all. I saw enough to know. It was a huge fucking downer.

Trees can be depressing, no doubt, but the forest is the worst. The forest is sobering. Stone cold sobering, to the point of pointlessness.

It's been a week of long shots for me, and I mean it like in the cinema, not at the horsetrack, sad to say. I could tell you exactly when it started, the magic words. I couldn't tell you why or how it's snowballing, like momentum in the stock market, or, to stick with the frozen precipitation, an avalanche. I don't care, either. How and why are trees.

I'm not looking at trees. I let them be killed.

And while I'm at it, if you call me up on the phone all sloppy unsober yourself, and that's the big picture there, that's what I'll see, and it'll paint all the trees one big solid swath of deep, dark green, like it's doing with everything else.

The lens has pulled back so far I think it may be stuck. It may be gonna stay this way.