Meta-Fizzix
Monday, May 19, 2025
Meta-Fizzix
This blog is mainly a place to connect and look at things in the world apart from the unsatisfying daily circus that makes up our news and politics. Ignoring news and politics, there’s enough in the world to put us in a state of awe and gratitude anew every day—for instance the Special Animal Friends Cynthia introduces to us.
News and politics serve to enflame and enrage, which is the source of the energy that powers the internet. Or so it often seems, at least when it comes to social media.
There’s too much other stuff in the world to waste precious life on rage and mental inflammation. There are unique human experiences everywhere—wondrous, sad, happy, tragic—that we can relate to. Occasionally, only just out of reach.
Such it was that I only recently learned of the death of Françoise Hardy after hearing her sing, after choosing some French pop music to accompany my attempt to learn French. I learned that she passed away in June of last year at the age of 80.
Who was she? According to Wikipedia, a singer-songwriter, astrologer, writer, and actress. She sounded like this in the 1960s:
She was born on January 17, 1944, in German-occupied Paris, in a hospital whose windows were blown out during an air raid bomb blast, which she believed made her temperamentally anxious. Her mother was a commoner: a single mother with two daughters. Her father was absentee, from a wealthy family, who apparently had relations with Françoise’s mother as a paramour. Françoise grew up lonesome, disapproved by her maternal grandmother, but sent to very good schools in France and Austria. She grew up to be fluent in French, German, Italian, and English. She would sing songs that made the pop charts in each.
Françoise received a guitar as a high-school graduation present, and set her mind to making a living from making music. Latent talent, pluck, and charm undoubtedly jostled one another to propel her forward in spite of her natural shyness. From her first French hit in the early 1960s, she seemed to go from achievement to achievement.
For the rest, I recommend the Wiki article, which is quite extensive, and which clearly has been edited by appreciative fans. It describes her influences and those she influenced, her dabbling in other venues, including astrology and Gaulist politics.
What more is there to say? Life is strange, bewildering, marvelous—and so much greater than what’s in the news and politics where we live.
RIP Françoise Hardy (Jan. 17, 1944 - Jun. 11, 2024).
Good morning. On our perennial theme of "AI is going to take over the world by frustrating us to the point that we all drink ourselves to death," I just got an email from our eye doctor, reminding me that Daughter D has an appointment tomorrow.
"Please confirm your appointment by clicking the button below," it requested, so I, being the kind of person who follows directions, clicked on the soothing sky-blue oval that said "Confirm."
This took me to an otherwise blank screen that reads, "Uh oh! (in bold) It appears that you have already completed this action."
Am I to deduce from the "Uh oh!" that I have done something catastrophically wrong, and that we will arrive at the office tomorrow only to be told that our appointment, and perhaps our very selves, are "not in the system"? Or what?
I hope that programmer steps on a Lego with his right foot and then hops into a fresh cat spew on his left.
So 1960s. It reminded me of the Muppet Show.