Believe it or not, I’ve never had internet access. I didn’t want the distraction at home: better to read or write or cut up pictures or cook. The pandemic changed that. I was lucky: I had a job that worked from home. But to keep it, I had to stick my home, at last, into the world wide web.

For the first time, I binged something other than fantasy fiction. I watched everything in the Marvel cinematic universe, all of which was new to me. I watched the LotR director’s cuts multiple times. This isn’t exactly binging: it’s more decadent feast. My true binges were like main-lining sugar candy: a frothy suspension into the air-angst of the gen z v log.

To redeem the time redeem the dream (till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew), I vlogged myself to burn off the sugar high. It’s a favorite device of mine: take an banal, almost non-form (I’ve used power-point presentations, training videos, memorandums, bad pop songs…) and alienize it with my choice of words.

<Insert clickbait here>

You’ll see some familiar editing tricks, and the vlogger version of Brecht: sitting obviously before a computer camera with recording gear in plain sight. If you’ve ever watched anything on youtube you’ll recognize the opening music. In fact, the whole less-than-5-minute video is pure vlogging trope. Except everything I say.

I say: you could stay here in this shimmery blue scroll, or…you could go down down the deep well…

I suspect the jewel-in-the-well image is from The Rescuers of which I have disturbed childhood memories . I’ll re-watch it soon; “it’s in my queue!”

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is the only possible way to close.