💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20190705 captured on 2022-04-28 at 17:36:31.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Today, I read Tomasino's update on his move to Iceland and was shocked to see a much too kind reference to myself[1]. In any case, the phlog entry got me looking back into the details of Tomasino's move and since then I've been spelunking through the depths of his phlog. It's fascinating stuff. If you haven't dug into the Tomasino archives, I highly recommend it. Gopher is definitely a form of asynchronous communication and I don't think it gets any more asynchronous than this. I stumbled across a phlog post from January 2018 in which Tomasino discussed the impact of a TV show, Northern Exposure, on him. He described it as a 'profound and personal' 'mystical connection.'[2] I have a TV show that impacted me similarly: M*A*S*H. I can't remember not knowing the characters. I remember sitting in the grass outside the house when I was about four years old and hearing the theme song, and then going in to watch it. It's hard to believe that my parents let me watch the show at that age, but they did. I watched it as I grew up and after it ended in 1983, I often watched the reruns. Then, when we went to Maui in May, it was on in the evenings and I started to watch it again. Since then, I've been re-watching it online, from the beginning. When I think about where I got my values, that show had a major impact. Hawkeye Pierce (perhaps minus the philandering!) shaped my views as much as Tommy Douglas, Jesus Christ, or my Grandmother. I will never be a militarist. I will always be cynical. I am a humanitarian. And I will always feel trapped in a situation not quite of my own choosing.... That outlook, I think, stems from those M*A*S*H scripts and hours of exposure to the ideas of whoever was writing them. When I went to university, I learned many things, but I think that the cynical, critical, analytical, and humanitarian outlook fostered by the social commentary at the heart of M*A*S*H was as responsible for my successes as anything I read for my classes. Somewhere, in some phlog entry, Tomasino mentioned Joseph Campbell and his statement that "all myths are true." I think I would add that when it comes to our personal experiences, all myths are equal. We each carry a personal mythology, and a sense of ethics absorbed unintentionally from works of fiction, that we cannot really escape. From our own vantage point, the power of those stories is every bit as strong as the 'official' mainstream mythologies (be they religious, nationalistic, or otherwise) foisted upon us by our societies. Perhaps they're stronger. I'm kind of tickled to think that Tomasino's universe of saints includes Ed, Marilyn, Shelly and Holling. That show really was epic in a weird kind of way. For me, it's Saint Sherman, Saint Radar, and Saint Margaret. Amen. By the way, if you're too young and you haven't watched M*A*S*H or Northern Exposure, holy hell you're lucky. Start watching! [l] gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20190705-some-replies-from-iceland [2] gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20180104-northern-exposure