7/2577. More Than a Secretary (1936)
I keep confusing this movie with Skyscraper Souls, which was the last movie I watched in 2025, probably because both are about a professional woman who falls for a cad. In this one, Jean Arthur gets her man, but he's really not worth it, Jean.

8/2578. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
A very well told story about the early life of a man who falls in love with cinema itself. I read there's a director's cut that adds a bunch of story about the man's later life, but that could only possibly make this worse. Sometimes less really is more.

9/2579. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Jean Arthur again (TCM's Star of the Month), here with Cary Grant in an adventure tale about the early days of flight. Very entertaining.

10/2580. The Love Light (1921)
Less entertaining. It's kind of a silent version of The English Patient if that movie had been duller and taken place in the shadow of a light house. The last reel, with its a kidnapping and shipwreck, may have been necessary for a "happy" ending, but as much as I dislike The English Patient, it certainly knows that some endings shouldn't be happy.

12/2582. The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
Not the one from the Golden Age of Porn. That's The Devil in Miss Jones. This one is a thoroughly delightful romantic comedy (starring Jean Arthur again) that is definitely worth watching. But be very careful when you're googling it at work.

More to come.

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Over the weekend, a friend asked what I would do if I suddenly came into ten million dollars, no strings attached. My glib answer at the time was to refuse it. "What am I going to spend it on, art supplies?"

In hindsight I realize that when he asked the question, he knew something I didn't: a mutual friend had just received about the worst diagnosis a doctor can give. If there's anything money definitely can't buy, it's enough time.

As a wise general once said: "a death mark's not an easy thing to live with." But really, that's what we do every day. Life, by definition, is "the brief and futile struggle against inevitability." Not thinking about that truism is a psychological defense mechanism, a survival tactic. Skiing provides a good metaphor: look at the trees and you'll hit them, so we focus on the space in between instead. That's how we get by.

Being forced to look at the trees (memento mori as those pesky Romans say) is a good prompt to re-evaluate my current life choices. If I knew the end was near, would I be doing something differently? Are there experiences I'm missing? I have to say that even after some introspection, I can't really think of anything meaningful to me that I'm not already doing, that I've postponed, that I've sacrificed. I'm really lucky in that way, and I know it.

On the other other hand though, it's possible I'm wrong about why my friend was asking about the money. If he was actually thinking about giving me $10,000,000? Yes, please. I'll think of something to do with it. I'd hate for my obituary to say I passed up a fortune just because I aspire to nothing more than sitting with my dogs and playing video games.

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The only downside to watching over two hundred hours of Olympic coverage in recent weeks is the constant bombardment of advertisements for the latest entry in the Georgia governor race, Rick Jackson. Apparently, he's a billionaire, and I only know that because A) he brags about it in his ads, and B) he bought ads in seemingly every possible commercial break. From someone who likes to remind us that he's a self-made billionaire, that doesn't seem like a very effective use of money.

The story of his by-his-bootstraps, up-from-foster-care wealth isn't the only thing I've learned from his commercials. He's also really into cutting taxes. A billionaire who doesn't want to pay taxes? How novel. I wonder if neither of us pays, which one comes out ahead?

To be fair, it seems everyone in the race wants to cut my taxes. Getting rid of income tax is a hot topic in Georgia politics right now. I say "right now," but it's a fact of life that no one ever wants to pay taxes. And, as an added bonus, if the state government doesn't have any money, then they don't have to worry that some of that money might be spent on people who "want to sit on your butt, binge watch Netflix, and scarf down Cheetos," to quote the Rick Jackson on my television. What kind of worthless scum likes watching movies and eating delicious snacks? Fuck those losers!

It would be disingenuous to call Rick Jackson an outsider in Georgia politics. He has long been a prominent (and deep-pocketed) donor to state and national Republicans. His late entry into this election indicates he doesn't think he's getting his money's worth from the current candidates. Though I'm no fan of his recent vow to become "Trump's favorite governor," I have read enough about Jackson to suspect he's probably a better human being than his vainglorious attempt to buy an election would indicate. It's nice to think that there are very fine people on both sides.

Therefore, I assume Jackson would be pleased to hear that many, many, many repeated viewings of his life story have already left an impact on my life. I'm so sick of his commercials that I have nicknamed the mute button on my remote the "Rick Jackson button."

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Cue: Upbeat pop music.

Waterloo

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I was recently gifted several issues (Volume CXLV, Numbers 3-6) of The Saguache Crescent, the newspaper of record for Saguache, Colorado, for 145 years and counting. (Still just 35¢! Cheap!) It has a delightful engraved, four-column masthead of the sort they just don't make anymore.

I've been told that natives (by which I mean the descendants of white settlers who now populate the region) pronounce "Saguache" much the same as I pronounced the name of the ubiquitous Swiss wristwatch of my 1980s childhood: Sa-watch. Wikipedia says there's a bit of confusion about what exactly the word means in the original Ute language. It's either "sand dune," "green place," "blue earth," or "blue water." Maybe all of the above? In any event, it sounds like a nice place. No wonder people have been writing and reading about it for so long.

Wikipedia also alerted me to the fact that The Saguache Crescent is the only known newspaper in the world still printed on a 19th-century Linotype machine, something that's pretty obvious when you have one in your hand. Back before you watched the news on your phones, kids, they used a keyboard to assemble physical letter molds into lines that became the printing slugs that were inked and applied to paper. Because the final slugs were a single block of lead, typos—which might have been your fault but just as easily could have been the fault of a finicky machine, something no computer will ever admit to—were forever. It's charming in hindsight.

Once you go looking, you'll find plenty of web articles explaining that The Saguache Crescent is run by one man, "DEAN I. COOMBS, Publisher," as a labor of love. He prints one paper a week for his modern community of about 500 people, obviously reusing slugs as often as possible. All of which explains why all four editions of the paper in front of me contain the same misspelled headline:

"VD Love Lettesrs at the saguache public library."

And I know I'm old-fashioned, but I'm going to blame the lingering nostalgia inspired by this Old West newspaper for causing me to wonder why in the world the Saguache, Colorado, public library is getting love letters from Venereal Disease.

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