easement

or, God bless Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel.

an expert on whom I am not. and particularly grateful for his contribution to Marxism...well, it's kind of neither here nor there for me.

but the most one dimensional model of prediction that exists is the practice of taking every trend that is observable in today's society and extrapolating it out linearly into the future.

thus, in 1976, we foresaw $5 a gallon gas by 1984...in the 1990's, it was seemly to envision a 20,000 point Dow by 2010. in the 80's, the last acoustic guitar would have become firewood by the year 2000.

etc. etc.

the third law of Hegel's dialectic (of course I'm sure...I googled it) stated that the course of historical events was dictated, not by linear progression, but by each principle being replaced by the espousal of its opposite, eventually resulting in some kind of synthesis.

I actually don't find this idea all that helpful, either. I think the only approach to prediction that has any chance at all of efficacy would follow not a linear or dialectic but a chaos theory model.

but today I am specifically offering a hosanna to Hegel.

my cough, instead of following a linearly increasing model daily, has backed way off since about 1pm yesterday.

easement.

I would have titled this entry "lessoning", but I sure don't know what lesson to take away from it all.

but I can go from the living room to the bedroom without blacking out. I can dream of watching The Monkees on Tuesday without being asked to leave for constant unseemly noise.

not to mention the two gigs Monday and Wednesday.

and I can hold the theory that it was all an extended side effect of the drug, one which will lessen every day over the next three weeks as normalcy tries hard to return.

as opposed to the first real effect of the cancer itself, destined to get worse each day until October 7. that thought had a little more airtime in the brain these days than I have chosen to previously give it.

now...that don't mean I'm ready for the President's Council on Physical Fitness test right now.

sleeping a lot, weak as can be, shoulder not great.

but it's the previous batch of shit. not a new one.

this, I can deal with.

easement. (?)

Stewart Saves His Family revolves around an easement as well.

"I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone it, People Like Me!" that Stewart.

now, the reason I saw this movie was not that every movie based on a character or featuring a comic from Saturday Night Live has tenure for me. as I basically missed Elvis due to my age placement, I similarly kind of skipped out on Saturday Night Live. and I am ready to be told I missed something...that if the 60's were a golden age for music, the seventies were for comedy, and largely due to this show.

or I am as likely to side with Johnny Carson's joke, the last week he was on the air...that NBC was so pleased with the success of Saturday Night Live that next year, they were considering doing a comedy version of it.

and I can't claim to have sidestepped the impact of, or have only so much appreciation for, SNL having thoroughly enjoyed Animal House (yeah, Nat'l Lampoon, but with Belushi), Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, even dare I say it Beverly Hills Cop. and I remember happening by an original broadcast of The Wild and Crazy Guys that, honesty dictates I confess, I just screamed over. it was almost nonconsensual. I didn't want to like it. but I was a jello mold.

but seeing all related movies has seemed like a Mystery Science Theatre 3k experiment in endurance to me.

I liked Stewart Saves His Family.

I think first because it's a complete lie. he does no such thing. Luke Skywalker, maybe; Stewart, no. he makes a little therapeutic progress, and finds a relationship with his brother. and, God knows, that's close enough. but, no.

maybe second, because a right wing target is easy to draw a bead on for those guys...but I am a cynical enough apolitical hippie guy that somewhere on the far fringes of self help, there could indeed be some room for humor. Stewart is Flakey Foont...he's trying, like all of us...you have to give him his struggle...but no matter how well you understand where his family trauma comes from, he's as unlikely a psychological leader as anyone anonymous you might find at a meeting. when his show is cancelled, he goes to bed for six days with a bag of Chips Ahoy. or, I hope, multiple bags...one over six days wouldn't be a respectable tantrum, hardly even a snack.

I think third, though, is because the family imbrogio Stewart gets embroiled in isn't the first thing you'd see in a movie. it smack of real world discomfort, just the kind of thing that would stab into one's private world and point out one's inadeptness at dealing with Chamber of Commerce fatuousness.

an easement.

I cite the Wikipedia article on the movie, which carries the warning that it may be too wordy or detailed for some readers. thanks for watching out for me. I won't be writing for you anytime soon.

At a bar in Minneapolis, Stuart is playing pool with Donnie. He tells Stuart that part of Aunt Paula's house, which the Smalley family has inherited, was built onto the property of neighbor Orville Egeberg, so, in order to sell the house, the Smalleys have to pay a $3,000easement, which is more than they can afford. So Donnie wants Stuart to talk to the neighbor to try to get a more affordable price for the easement. Donnie has a beer with a couple of friends who want Stuart to drink with them. Donnie defends Stuart's desire not to drink. The friends decide to beat up Stuart, when Donnie steps in and brawls with the friends.

The next day Stuart goes to the home of Aunt Paula's grumpy unfriendly neighbor Orville Egeberg, but the meeting does not go well, and now Egeberg wants $10,000 for the easement. Stuart tells the family that he has consulted with a lawyer who told him that, by asking for a lower price for the easement, he essentially repudiated the original contract which in turn gave Egeberg the opportunity to set new terms (the $10,000). This of course angers the rest of the family despite their having put Stuart up to this stunt in the first place. But Donnie insists that, if Stuart were to lie and say that the conversation between Stuart and Egeberg never took place, they might get a chance at restoring the price to $3,000. But the ever-honest Stuart objects to the scam. Donnie distributes to the other family members photocopies of Stuart's journal where he has highlighted specific passages regarding Stuart's negative feelings about each member of his family ("I hate my mother," etc.).

dysfunctionality ensues. and you have to watch the movie, or, if you have more time to spend, read the Wikipedia entry to find out what happens next.

I just always thought it was an interesting turn of phrase..."negotiate an easement".

like money is thought of as an easing.

like dis-ease...finding a way to lessen your diseasement, which would be lessoning indeed.

I feel better. it backed off. many and no explanations. thank you, Stewart, for negotiating my easement. thank you, Hegel, for making space for the pendular when the linear was very frightening.

thank you, gentle reader, for disregarding the Wiki warning of wordiness for this blog.