Recent viewings
The House That Dripped Blood (1970).
Four short horror vignettes that all take place in the same old house, connected by a framing story involving a detective who's investigating a missing person case. The cast sounds promising (Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Jon Pertwee, Ingrid Pitt), but at least two of the stories fall flat, and the reason why the house (which never actually drips blood, by the way) is connected to all these gruesome tales is never very well explained. The first tale, involving a horror writer and his lovely wife who move in to the house, is not particularly convincing, although the psychological premise could have had some promise in a better production. The second, featuring Peter Cushing as a solitary retiree who becomes strangely drawn to a figure of "Salome" in a nearby waxworks museum, is almost comically silly. The wax museum looks like a rather shabby warehouse of props from B-grade horror movies (hmmmm....), except when it shows up in a dream-sequence with lots of colored lights, bright gauzy curtains, and an obviously plastic skull.
Still, the third sequence, featuring tall-&-gaunt Christopher Lee as the very strict father of a cute little blonde daughter, has a certain creepy frisson. The tutor he hires after moving to The House objects to his draconian restrictions (no toys! no candles! no school!). Creepy complications ensue. The fourth vignette features Jon Pertwee, latterly of Doctor Who fame, as an imperious, swaggering horror-movie actor whose quest for authenticity becomes a bit more cinema verite than he intended. Pertwee is in fine form stalking about the set of a low-budget production, punching his swagger-stick through the cheap scenery, chewing out the director and denouncing the low production standards. (Was the production company commenting on itself here, I wonder? Or perhaps its more famous competitor, Hammer?) When he gets his hands on an "authentic vampire's cape", strange things start to happen. It's rather silly, but it's fun to watch him go from aristocratic arrogance to rubber-faced and googly-eyed terror.
The ending is silly, of course. How could it be otherwise?
A mixed bag.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
All your records are belong to us
AT&T has reportedly announced a unilateral change in its privacy policy, stating that it owns all customer records and can do whatever it wants with them.
Do you dream of being a reality-show contestant? This might be your chance! Just have some juicy telephone conversations that other people, or political operatives, or advertisers, or voyeurs, might like to hear. Who knows, you might end up getting your voice heard in Washington DC! Or by a legion of adoring fans who pay AT&T for the privilege of listening to your late-night conversations with your girlfriend!
Sweet dreams!
AT&T has reportedly announced a unilateral change in its privacy policy, stating that it owns all customer records and can do whatever it wants with them.
Do you dream of being a reality-show contestant? This might be your chance! Just have some juicy telephone conversations that other people, or political operatives, or advertisers, or voyeurs, might like to hear. Who knows, you might end up getting your voice heard in Washington DC! Or by a legion of adoring fans who pay AT&T for the privilege of listening to your late-night conversations with your girlfriend!
Sweet dreams!
"If the government has avowed pacifists under surveillance, then no one is safe."
The AFSC Sues the U.S. Defense Department for Unlawful Surveillance (from CommonDreams). Thanks to Pablo for the link.
The AFSC Sues the U.S. Defense Department for Unlawful Surveillance (from CommonDreams). Thanks to Pablo for the link.
An imagined conversation with Ann Coulter
Derived from this excerpt from her latest book, which is reportedly selling in large numbers. Fortunately, she seems to have found some way to overcome that bad 'ol Liberal Media conspiracy that totally suppressed such works of conservative genius as John O'Neill's Unfit for Command.
Liberals love to boast that they are not “religious,” which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion.
Oh. Is it? Really? Are you sure?
Of course liberalism is a religion.
Well. I guess that settles that.
It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as “religion.”
Heavens! How uniquely perfidious! I'm sure glad that no other political groups do anything like that!
Under the guise of not favoring religion, liberals favor one cosmology over another and demand total indoctrination into theirs.
Dang. I guess I missed out on the total-indoctrination camp. I guess it was held in secret underground caverns or something. Probably with neat lava lamps and black lights and a sex orgy or something. Dammit. I always miss out on the fun stuff.
The state religion of liberalism demands obeisance (to the National Organization for Women),...
Whereas you demand only obeisance to your black-clad, imperious self. Ooh, kinky! Do you make that bad boy beg for his falafels?
... tithing (to teachers’ unions),...
Oops. There's another bill I forgot to pay.
... reverence (for abortion),...
I guess I'm not a very good liberal. But I'm sure that's an isolated aberration.
... and formulaic imprecations (“Bush lied, kids died!” “Keep your laws off my body!” “Arms for hostages!”).
I really admire today's entry on your website: "In response to the arguments of my opponents, I say: Waaaaaaaaaah! Boo hoo hoo!.... Wait 'til you get a load of what I say about liberals in the rest of the book! You haven't seen the half of it. For snarling victims, my book is Christmas in July."
See? Clear and cogent refutation, not just formulaic imprecations. Not a single cliche or epithet to be found there, or in anyone except liberals. That's the way to go!
Everyone is taxed to support indoctrination into the state religion through the public schools, where innocent children are taught a specific belief system, rather than, say, math.
Oh, those perfidious liberals! Clearly we need a tax-funded faith-based-initiative to stop their evil plans to establish, uh, tax-funded... er, um....
Hey Ann, I gotta get back to work, but it's been fun. Catch ya later!
Derived from this excerpt from her latest book, which is reportedly selling in large numbers. Fortunately, she seems to have found some way to overcome that bad 'ol Liberal Media conspiracy that totally suppressed such works of conservative genius as John O'Neill's Unfit for Command.
Liberals love to boast that they are not “religious,” which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion.
Oh. Is it? Really? Are you sure?
Of course liberalism is a religion.
Well. I guess that settles that.
It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as “religion.”
Heavens! How uniquely perfidious! I'm sure glad that no other political groups do anything like that!
Under the guise of not favoring religion, liberals favor one cosmology over another and demand total indoctrination into theirs.
Dang. I guess I missed out on the total-indoctrination camp. I guess it was held in secret underground caverns or something. Probably with neat lava lamps and black lights and a sex orgy or something. Dammit. I always miss out on the fun stuff.
The state religion of liberalism demands obeisance (to the National Organization for Women),...
Whereas you demand only obeisance to your black-clad, imperious self. Ooh, kinky! Do you make that bad boy beg for his falafels?
... tithing (to teachers’ unions),...
Oops. There's another bill I forgot to pay.
... reverence (for abortion),...
I guess I'm not a very good liberal. But I'm sure that's an isolated aberration.
... and formulaic imprecations (“Bush lied, kids died!” “Keep your laws off my body!” “Arms for hostages!”).
I really admire today's entry on your website: "In response to the arguments of my opponents, I say: Waaaaaaaaaah! Boo hoo hoo!.... Wait 'til you get a load of what I say about liberals in the rest of the book! You haven't seen the half of it. For snarling victims, my book is Christmas in July."
See? Clear and cogent refutation, not just formulaic imprecations. Not a single cliche or epithet to be found there, or in anyone except liberals. That's the way to go!
Everyone is taxed to support indoctrination into the state religion through the public schools, where innocent children are taught a specific belief system, rather than, say, math.
Oh, those perfidious liberals! Clearly we need a tax-funded faith-based-initiative to stop their evil plans to establish, uh, tax-funded... er, um....
Hey Ann, I gotta get back to work, but it's been fun. Catch ya later!
"The Dark Side of Chuck Berry"
When I was younger -- much younger -- I liked to listen to Chuck Berry's old recordings. I never got to hear him play live. That's probably a good thing, judging by this story (from CNN).
When I was younger -- much younger -- I liked to listen to Chuck Berry's old recordings. I never got to hear him play live. That's probably a good thing, judging by this story (from CNN).
Recent (partial) reads
Astra and Flondrix, by Seamus Cullen
I heard about this book when the author's recent (apparent) death was reported on a fiction listserv and in the June Ansible.
Despite the old adage against speaking ill of the dead, I have to say that I found it totally unreadable. I struggled through about fifty pages before giving up. It seems like a misbegotten attempt to blend Dunsanian fantasy with hardcore pornography. The author appears to be obsessed with providing non-stop detailed descriptions of scatology, bestiality, and improbable nonhuman sexual acts. All this is to the exclusion of anything resembling an interesting character or plot.
"Bizarrely erotic", says Dave Langford of Ansible. He's half right. It's bizarre, all right.
Not recommended.
Astra and Flondrix, by Seamus Cullen
I heard about this book when the author's recent (apparent) death was reported on a fiction listserv and in the June Ansible.
Despite the old adage against speaking ill of the dead, I have to say that I found it totally unreadable. I struggled through about fifty pages before giving up. It seems like a misbegotten attempt to blend Dunsanian fantasy with hardcore pornography. The author appears to be obsessed with providing non-stop detailed descriptions of scatology, bestiality, and improbable nonhuman sexual acts. All this is to the exclusion of anything resembling an interesting character or plot.
"Bizarrely erotic", says Dave Langford of Ansible. He's half right. It's bizarre, all right.
Not recommended.
Blogs noted and added to sidebar:
University of Nebraska Press Blog. This seems to be connected to their ongoing and much-welcomed effort to reprint classic SF titles, such as Philip Wylie's The Disappearance.
Whatever. The tauntings and mutterings of John Scalzi, SF author and recent guest-of-honor at a couple of Michigan SF conventions.
University of Nebraska Press Blog. This seems to be connected to their ongoing and much-welcomed effort to reprint classic SF titles, such as Philip Wylie's The Disappearance.
Whatever. The tauntings and mutterings of John Scalzi, SF author and recent guest-of-honor at a couple of Michigan SF conventions.
The Hollywood Librarian
I'll grant that librarians' constant obsession over their public image can be a bit tiresome. Even so, this documentary-in-progress sounds like it could be interesting. A "sneak peek" will reportedly be shown at the upcoming ALA conference in New Orleans. Shooting is said to be finished, but post-production editing and processing will cost a substantial amount, which the producer(s) hope to raise partially from donations.
I'll grant that librarians' constant obsession over their public image can be a bit tiresome. Even so, this documentary-in-progress sounds like it could be interesting. A "sneak peek" will reportedly be shown at the upcoming ALA conference in New Orleans. Shooting is said to be finished, but post-production editing and processing will cost a substantial amount, which the producer(s) hope to raise partially from donations.
The story bomb
Author Charles Finlay, in response to complaints that The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction doesn't publish enough female authors, proposes that female authors bombard the magazine's editors with at least 100 story submissions on August 18th of this year.
"Bring it on," says one of the magazine's assistant editors. Others -- to play devils's advocate for a moment -- may consider it a dubious experiment and wonder whether it's a good idea to make the editorial staff, consciously or unconsciously, add awareness of this kind of concerted effort to their selection process.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Note: more discussion here, here, here, here.
Author Charles Finlay, in response to complaints that The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction doesn't publish enough female authors, proposes that female authors bombard the magazine's editors with at least 100 story submissions on August 18th of this year.
"Bring it on," says one of the magazine's assistant editors. Others -- to play devils's advocate for a moment -- may consider it a dubious experiment and wonder whether it's a good idea to make the editorial staff, consciously or unconsciously, add awareness of this kind of concerted effort to their selection process.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Note: more discussion here, here, here, here.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Recent viewings
The Virgin Spring (1959). An atmospheric black-and-white tale of tragedy, revenge, and redemption, directed by Ingmar Bergman. The medieval Scandinavian setting is believably portrayed. This isn't the fantasy-world of cardboard castles and glittering polyester costumes portrayed by many "medieval" Hollywood movies. It's a harsh world of isolated, fortified log-cabin farmsteads surrounded by untrodden mountains and forests, a world where going to the nearest village, or to church, involves a day-long trek along muddy paths and unbridged streams. It's a world where the harsh pagan religion of Odin vies with the new religion of Christ. A world where strangers with suspicious pasts can make a new life for themselves if they resettle themselves far enough away from the scene of their crimes (but woe betide if they confide in the wrong person!) A world where strangers met in a forest might be intriguing sources of trade, entertainment and news, or murderous brigands. And it's a world where petty family disputes turn all the more bitter because of people's constant close contact with each other.
Where an aggrieved, scorned girl's plea for her god to smite her sister may have unforeseen consequences; and a family's vengeance can be terrible both to its targets and its enactor.
An excellent film. The production values may be a bit clunky next to modern productions, but the great acting, the beautiful visuals, and the palpable atmosphere carry the story.
The Virgin Spring (1959). An atmospheric black-and-white tale of tragedy, revenge, and redemption, directed by Ingmar Bergman. The medieval Scandinavian setting is believably portrayed. This isn't the fantasy-world of cardboard castles and glittering polyester costumes portrayed by many "medieval" Hollywood movies. It's a harsh world of isolated, fortified log-cabin farmsteads surrounded by untrodden mountains and forests, a world where going to the nearest village, or to church, involves a day-long trek along muddy paths and unbridged streams. It's a world where the harsh pagan religion of Odin vies with the new religion of Christ. A world where strangers with suspicious pasts can make a new life for themselves if they resettle themselves far enough away from the scene of their crimes (but woe betide if they confide in the wrong person!) A world where strangers met in a forest might be intriguing sources of trade, entertainment and news, or murderous brigands. And it's a world where petty family disputes turn all the more bitter because of people's constant close contact with each other.
Where an aggrieved, scorned girl's plea for her god to smite her sister may have unforeseen consequences; and a family's vengeance can be terrible both to its targets and its enactor.
An excellent film. The production values may be a bit clunky next to modern productions, but the great acting, the beautiful visuals, and the palpable atmosphere carry the story.
Shadows of a possible future
Liberal blogger blocked from Kentucky state-owned computers (from DailyKos)
If net-neutrality is eradicated, as the telecom lobby wishes, should we expect that internet service providers will act likewise to block websites that are contrary to their political agenda or "corporate message", or that offer competition to their high priced monopolies?
Liberal blogger blocked from Kentucky state-owned computers (from DailyKos)
If net-neutrality is eradicated, as the telecom lobby wishes, should we expect that internet service providers will act likewise to block websites that are contrary to their political agenda or "corporate message", or that offer competition to their high priced monopolies?
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Tim Hildebrandt
The co-creator of many iconic popular images of fantasy and science ficton has reportedly died.
The co-creator of many iconic popular images of fantasy and science ficton has reportedly died.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
News from the world of SF
Jim Baen, "supereditor", has reportedly had a stroke according to Steven Barnes and other sources. Baen Books has recently been instrumental in pioneering things like free, non-DRM'ed downloads of electronic texts.
Jim Baen, "supereditor", has reportedly had a stroke according to Steven Barnes and other sources. Baen Books has recently been instrumental in pioneering things like free, non-DRM'ed downloads of electronic texts.
Good news and bad news for the Texas State Railroad
It may not be flooded out by a new dam:
Dallas area denied water reservoir (Houston Chronicle)
...but will it have any money left for 2007?
Is an icon steaming into sunset? (Ibid)
It may not be flooded out by a new dam:
Dallas area denied water reservoir (Houston Chronicle)
...but will it have any money left for 2007?
Is an icon steaming into sunset? (Ibid)
Recent viewings:
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975).
Sometimes, things which one remembers from one's childhood are not as big, or as scary, as one remembers. That's the case with this animated adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling story. I remember seeing it when I was very young, and being quite scared of the two evil cobras and of what they might do to the gallant little mongoose and the people he's protecting. I seem to recall seeing it in a theater. I was surprised, when I picked up a copy of it on VHS, to see that it was only a half-hour long. Where might I have seen it? Would a film only a half-hour long have been shown in a theater? Or did I actually see it on television instead?
It's still above-average as a short animated feature, and I can easily imagine other youngsters of six or seven years old becoming as engrossed in the story as I was in years gone by. The artwork is not as impressive as I remember, but my standards have probably been distorted by the revolution in electronically-assisted animation that has taken place in the last decade or so.
An older person prone to peering into political penumbras might wonder about what such an eminently British family is doing in India, and what the native-born cobras, so intent on killing or expelling the English, might represent. But taken as an animal-fable, it's simply a good adventure story, with lots of danger and derring-do and a sympathetic and energetic four-footed hero.
One thing has not changed since I first saw the film, though. The singing bird is still annoying.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975).
Sometimes, things which one remembers from one's childhood are not as big, or as scary, as one remembers. That's the case with this animated adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling story. I remember seeing it when I was very young, and being quite scared of the two evil cobras and of what they might do to the gallant little mongoose and the people he's protecting. I seem to recall seeing it in a theater. I was surprised, when I picked up a copy of it on VHS, to see that it was only a half-hour long. Where might I have seen it? Would a film only a half-hour long have been shown in a theater? Or did I actually see it on television instead?
It's still above-average as a short animated feature, and I can easily imagine other youngsters of six or seven years old becoming as engrossed in the story as I was in years gone by. The artwork is not as impressive as I remember, but my standards have probably been distorted by the revolution in electronically-assisted animation that has taken place in the last decade or so.
An older person prone to peering into political penumbras might wonder about what such an eminently British family is doing in India, and what the native-born cobras, so intent on killing or expelling the English, might represent. But taken as an animal-fable, it's simply a good adventure story, with lots of danger and derring-do and a sympathetic and energetic four-footed hero.
One thing has not changed since I first saw the film, though. The singing bird is still annoying.
Recent viewings:
The Omega Man (1971). (Discussed previously).
Some people find Charlton Heston scary, I am told. I'd agree that his character in this adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is rather scary. But then again, he's supposed to be.
Robert Neville is the lone unaffected survivor of a plague that has either killed or radically transformed the rest of the human race. The other survivors of this plague have been transformed into grotesque vampire-like beings. Neville lives alone in a heavily-fortified house, amusing himself with recorded music and a stockpile of liquor at night and going out by day to cruise the deserted city in search of supplies to take home and dormant vampires to kill.
There are some amusing botches in this low-budget production. Most obvious are the mistakes in the opening sequence, an otherwise effective montage of Neville driving a giant 1970s convertible through deserted city streets. Unfortunately, the streets were not as deserted as they should have been. At one point a person can be seen idly strolling down the sidewalk in the background, and at another point I seem to recall seeing other cars moving in the distance. (This is, I suppose, the kind of thing that could be removed with a whisk of a digital eraser nowadays. Things were more difficult in days gone by.) In another sequence, it's rather obvious that the stuntman driving a motorcycle has only a vague resemblance to Heston.
Despite the appalling production standards, the movie does effectively convey the mental and emotional stress that Neville is under. It's believable when a sweaty, snarling Heston grabs a gun and starts blasting away at the "vampires" besieging his fortified house with a ferocious, animalistic glee that suggests that, despite his desperate clinging to classical music and other emblems of civilization, he is no longer a civilized human being. After all, what's the point in being civilized when the only civitas consists of creatures that want to kill you? His only conversational companion other than himself is an ornamental bust of a male head adorned with an incongruous hat. He's not much help. This is a man being pushed over the edge, not just of civilization, but of sanity.
Fortunately for Neville, he eventually encounters another apparently unaffected survivor, a young black woman (Rosalind Cash). You know the old saying "if you were the last man/woman on earth?" Well, not too surprisingly, after surprising each other in a derelict department store and convincing each other that they're not vampires in disguise, these two find solace in each other's company. And Neville seems to regain some of the humanity that he's apparently lost. But, of course, there are complications.
I wonder: when this movie was produced and released, was it seen as daring and progressive to portray a relationship between an icon of Anglo-Saxon masculinity like Heston and an attractive, athletic black woman?
Unfortunately, the movie at this point veers away from Matheson's bleak little masterpiece. Instead of the background and motivation which Matheson supplied for the woman, the movie supplies her with a bevy of other unaffected young survivors who welcome Neville's offer of medical help. Also, apparently for the sake of giving the audience an identifiable individual villain to hate, the movie introduces a head vampire who has turned his altered followers into a parody of a technology-hating, knowledge-hating religious cult. To the best of my knowledge, this is not found in Matheson's original book, in which the chaotic, orgiastic behavior of the transformed humans who besieged his house every night was part of the reason why Neville's revulsion against them and his murderous hunt for their daylight resting places were so understandable.
There are other plot changes which I will refrain from describing for the sake of spoilers. Suffice it to say that instead of Matheson's ending, which leads his Neville to utter the Miltonic last line (and title) of the book, the screenwriters have substituted a more hopeful ending with Neville transformed into a Christ figure whose blood, literally, redeems humanity. This is signalled in a manner so unsubtle that it provokes laughter, rather than reverence or respect. I wish they'd simply left Matheson's story alone to stand on its own merits. No doubt some Hollywood suit decided that he wanted a happy ending. Let's hope that someone, someday, has the guts to film it the way Matheson wrote it.
The Omega Man (1971). (Discussed previously).
Some people find Charlton Heston scary, I am told. I'd agree that his character in this adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is rather scary. But then again, he's supposed to be.
Robert Neville is the lone unaffected survivor of a plague that has either killed or radically transformed the rest of the human race. The other survivors of this plague have been transformed into grotesque vampire-like beings. Neville lives alone in a heavily-fortified house, amusing himself with recorded music and a stockpile of liquor at night and going out by day to cruise the deserted city in search of supplies to take home and dormant vampires to kill.
There are some amusing botches in this low-budget production. Most obvious are the mistakes in the opening sequence, an otherwise effective montage of Neville driving a giant 1970s convertible through deserted city streets. Unfortunately, the streets were not as deserted as they should have been. At one point a person can be seen idly strolling down the sidewalk in the background, and at another point I seem to recall seeing other cars moving in the distance. (This is, I suppose, the kind of thing that could be removed with a whisk of a digital eraser nowadays. Things were more difficult in days gone by.) In another sequence, it's rather obvious that the stuntman driving a motorcycle has only a vague resemblance to Heston.
Despite the appalling production standards, the movie does effectively convey the mental and emotional stress that Neville is under. It's believable when a sweaty, snarling Heston grabs a gun and starts blasting away at the "vampires" besieging his fortified house with a ferocious, animalistic glee that suggests that, despite his desperate clinging to classical music and other emblems of civilization, he is no longer a civilized human being. After all, what's the point in being civilized when the only civitas consists of creatures that want to kill you? His only conversational companion other than himself is an ornamental bust of a male head adorned with an incongruous hat. He's not much help. This is a man being pushed over the edge, not just of civilization, but of sanity.
Fortunately for Neville, he eventually encounters another apparently unaffected survivor, a young black woman (Rosalind Cash). You know the old saying "if you were the last man/woman on earth?" Well, not too surprisingly, after surprising each other in a derelict department store and convincing each other that they're not vampires in disguise, these two find solace in each other's company. And Neville seems to regain some of the humanity that he's apparently lost. But, of course, there are complications.
I wonder: when this movie was produced and released, was it seen as daring and progressive to portray a relationship between an icon of Anglo-Saxon masculinity like Heston and an attractive, athletic black woman?
Unfortunately, the movie at this point veers away from Matheson's bleak little masterpiece. Instead of the background and motivation which Matheson supplied for the woman, the movie supplies her with a bevy of other unaffected young survivors who welcome Neville's offer of medical help. Also, apparently for the sake of giving the audience an identifiable individual villain to hate, the movie introduces a head vampire who has turned his altered followers into a parody of a technology-hating, knowledge-hating religious cult. To the best of my knowledge, this is not found in Matheson's original book, in which the chaotic, orgiastic behavior of the transformed humans who besieged his house every night was part of the reason why Neville's revulsion against them and his murderous hunt for their daylight resting places were so understandable.
There are other plot changes which I will refrain from describing for the sake of spoilers. Suffice it to say that instead of Matheson's ending, which leads his Neville to utter the Miltonic last line (and title) of the book, the screenwriters have substituted a more hopeful ending with Neville transformed into a Christ figure whose blood, literally, redeems humanity. This is signalled in a manner so unsubtle that it provokes laughter, rather than reverence or respect. I wish they'd simply left Matheson's story alone to stand on its own merits. No doubt some Hollywood suit decided that he wanted a happy ending. Let's hope that someone, someday, has the guts to film it the way Matheson wrote it.
Recent viewings:
Railway Journeys : the Vanishing Age of Steam. Thanks to Fiend for this multiple-DVD birthday present, which supplied me with many enjoyable hours.
As with most sets of documentary DVDs from various sources, it's a mixed bag. Some of the contents are better than others. But even the lackluster parts of the set were intriguing to a foaming ferroequinologist like myself, as cinema-verite glimpses into a vanished world of busy railroads and omnipresent steam power. I found myself wondering, as I watched the grainy black-and-white footage, how that world could possibly be recreated in scale model form. Even given excellent visual and three-dimensional scale models and superb scenery and weathering skills, how could one ever duplicate the fearsomely majestic barrage of coalsmoke from a speeding locomotive, the constant escaping wisps of steam from aging boilers and steam joints, or the occasional wheelslips that bespeak the tremendous forces involved in starting a standing train?
Standout elements are an in-depth look at the operations of the Wabash Railroad in southeastern Michigan and an extensive compilation of railfan videos of the last days of the Denver & Rio Grande's narrow-gauge operations in southwestern Colorado.
Railway Journeys : the Vanishing Age of Steam. Thanks to Fiend for this multiple-DVD birthday present, which supplied me with many enjoyable hours.
As with most sets of documentary DVDs from various sources, it's a mixed bag. Some of the contents are better than others. But even the lackluster parts of the set were intriguing to a foaming ferroequinologist like myself, as cinema-verite glimpses into a vanished world of busy railroads and omnipresent steam power. I found myself wondering, as I watched the grainy black-and-white footage, how that world could possibly be recreated in scale model form. Even given excellent visual and three-dimensional scale models and superb scenery and weathering skills, how could one ever duplicate the fearsomely majestic barrage of coalsmoke from a speeding locomotive, the constant escaping wisps of steam from aging boilers and steam joints, or the occasional wheelslips that bespeak the tremendous forces involved in starting a standing train?
Standout elements are an in-depth look at the operations of the Wabash Railroad in southeastern Michigan and an extensive compilation of railfan videos of the last days of the Denver & Rio Grande's narrow-gauge operations in southwestern Colorado.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Maybe it is just as well
that I did not go to Hell (Part 2)
Raising Hell: '666 Party' turns rowdy
Also from the Press & Argus, a description of a novel new form of outdoor entertainment: Sphere-ing!
Having a ball at Mt. Brighton
that I did not go to Hell (Part 2)
Raising Hell: '666 Party' turns rowdy
Also from the Press & Argus, a description of a novel new form of outdoor entertainment: Sphere-ing!
Having a ball at Mt. Brighton
It's like being a hamster rolling around in an exercise ball in the living room ... except the hamster is you, the exercise ball is a 12-foot diameter bubble, and the living room is a more than 650 foot decline down Mt. Brighton Ski Area.Wheeee!
Speaking of Robert E. Howard...
A recent message from the Fiction-L listserv pointed out that the 2006 World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 2-5, will be devoted largely to REH and his works. Unfortunately, it looks pretty pricy according to this webpage and this flyer. Is anyone interested in going?
A recent message from the Fiction-L listserv pointed out that the 2006 World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 2-5, will be devoted largely to REH and his works. Unfortunately, it looks pretty pricy according to this webpage and this flyer. Is anyone interested in going?
Deceased patron support
From a job ad for a California university:
From a job ad for a California university:
6) Manages deceased patron support;...Fortunately, the rest of the ad clarifies what "deceased patron support" means:
...communicates respectfully with campus departments and/or relatives to retrieve library materials currently charged.I was worried for a moment there.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Howard Days
I just noticed an article from CNN about Cross Plains, Texas, and its most famous (former) resident. Have any of you Texas-type folks ever dropped by for Howard Days in Cross Plains? Or just to visit the old home place of the fellow who created Conan, Solomon Kane, and other heroes of the pulp age?
I just noticed an article from CNN about Cross Plains, Texas, and its most famous (former) resident. Have any of you Texas-type folks ever dropped by for Howard Days in Cross Plains? Or just to visit the old home place of the fellow who created Conan, Solomon Kane, and other heroes of the pulp age?
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Black Books
Some time back I posted a short description of this British comedy series about a cranky bookseller. If you're curious, check here. (From YouTube.)
I particularly appreciate Mr. Black's method of clearing the library... er, bookstore... at closing time.
Nice theme music, too.
Some time back I posted a short description of this British comedy series about a cranky bookseller. If you're curious, check here. (From YouTube.)
I particularly appreciate Mr. Black's method of clearing the library... er, bookstore... at closing time.
Nice theme music, too.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The View from Swampview Manor
It's not quite the pristine, sky-mirroring Lake View that real estate buyers and sellers in these parts yearn for. But I have become just a little bit fond of the swampy little millpond outside my humble little pied-a-terre. Swans, mallard ducks, Canada geese, and redwinged blackbirds seem to enjoy the pond and its brushy surroundings. I've seen rabbits galore, plus some aquatic mammal that might be either a small beaver or a large water rat. An acquaintance who lived in the same apartment complex in the past claims to have seen a red fox. I can't personally verify the vulpine, but it wouldn't surprise me.
One of these days it would be nice to take a canoe or kayak and go idly paddle about the waters to see what else I might scare up. Late last winter, I came across a bedraggled rowboat that had apparently sunk halfway into the water near a brushy trail through the undergrowth. Someone seems to have reclaimed it this spring. It sits now on the bank near the parking lot, ugly and muddy but apparently quite waterproof, since the rainwater that's accumulated in it shows no sign of leaking out. I've seen folks slowly motorboating their way around the pond with fishing poles in hand. Whether they've caught anything edible I know not.
Meanwhile, I've been occupying myself with small scale vegetative projects, as seen here. Spearmint, chives, rosemary, catnip. Plus dill, because I liked the looks of its feather fronds even though I haven't the foggiest idea how to use it, and coriander because I liked the smell. We'll see how long they manage to survive.
If anyone has any wonderful and foolproof recipes using these herbs, let me know!
It's not quite the pristine, sky-mirroring Lake View that real estate buyers and sellers in these parts yearn for. But I have become just a little bit fond of the swampy little millpond outside my humble little pied-a-terre. Swans, mallard ducks, Canada geese, and redwinged blackbirds seem to enjoy the pond and its brushy surroundings. I've seen rabbits galore, plus some aquatic mammal that might be either a small beaver or a large water rat. An acquaintance who lived in the same apartment complex in the past claims to have seen a red fox. I can't personally verify the vulpine, but it wouldn't surprise me. One of these days it would be nice to take a canoe or kayak and go idly paddle about the waters to see what else I might scare up. Late last winter, I came across a bedraggled rowboat that had apparently sunk halfway into the water near a brushy trail through the undergrowth. Someone seems to have reclaimed it this spring. It sits now on the bank near the parking lot, ugly and muddy but apparently quite waterproof, since the rainwater that's accumulated in it shows no sign of leaking out. I've seen folks slowly motorboating their way around the pond with fishing poles in hand. Whether they've caught anything edible I know not.
Meanwhile, I've been occupying myself with small scale vegetative projects, as seen here. Spearmint, chives, rosemary, catnip. Plus dill, because I liked the looks of its feather fronds even though I haven't the foggiest idea how to use it, and coriander because I liked the smell. We'll see how long they manage to survive.
If anyone has any wonderful and foolproof recipes using these herbs, let me know!
No More Gas
Pursuant to a recent discussion of small vehicles, Fiend sends this link. The "car" described might well be small enough to actually fit in the trunk of a Ford Thunderbird or a Chevy Impala.
Pursuant to a recent discussion of small vehicles, Fiend sends this link. The "car" described might well be small enough to actually fit in the trunk of a Ford Thunderbird or a Chevy Impala.
Recent reads
Bad Business, by Robert B. Parker. Spenser novels are one of my guilty pleasures. The fact that the characters do not "develop" from one book to the next -- or even from one decade to the next -- is almost a deliberate hallmark of the books. As a recent reviewer put it:
Of course, plot is supposed to be central to mystery novels, so I should probably mention that this one involves multiple dysfunctional marriages and a dysfunctional energy-trading company with certain similarities to the recently-deceased but unmourned Enron. There's skulduggery and mischief, deceit and danger galore.
An enjoyable outing, guilty pleasure or no.
Bad Business, by Robert B. Parker. Spenser novels are one of my guilty pleasures. The fact that the characters do not "develop" from one book to the next -- or even from one decade to the next -- is almost a deliberate hallmark of the books. As a recent reviewer put it:
Without waving a flag about it, Parker makes his intention clear in classic he-man style: having achieved the ideal stage of maturity, his courtly knight will not age, wither or forsake his heroic mission. And that's not all. Hawk will always be scary. Susan will always be a beauty. And there will always be a dog named Pearl in the house.Part of the appeal of the books is in the protagonist's deadpan, smart-aleck attitude. It's no exaggeration to say that I read these books more for the rapid-fire dialogue and sardonic internal comments as for the plot.
"Do you do divorce work?" the woman said.What guy with lingering adolescent delusions of lonely intellectual superiority could possibly resist identifying with this narrator?
"I do," I said.
"Are you any good?"
"I am", I said.
"I don't want likelihood," she said. "Or guesswork. I need evidence that will stand up in court."
"That's not up to me," I said. "That's up to the evidence."
She sat quietly in my client chair and thought about that.
"You're telling me you won't manufacture it," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"You won't have to," she said. "The sonovabitch can't keep his dick in his pants for a full day."
"Must make dining out a little awkward," I said.
She ignored me. I was used to it. Mostly I amused myself....
Of course, plot is supposed to be central to mystery novels, so I should probably mention that this one involves multiple dysfunctional marriages and a dysfunctional energy-trading company with certain similarities to the recently-deceased but unmourned Enron. There's skulduggery and mischief, deceit and danger galore.
An enjoyable outing, guilty pleasure or no.
Compassionate Conservatism
So here's what Republican Ann Coulter has to say about the widows of the September 11 victims. Decide for yourself whether her book and her political party deserve your support.
Don't forget -- if you serve in the military and are killed and your mother should happen to miss you and wish you hadn't died, the Republican response will be to call her a whore.
Such nice folks. Such good, Christian folks. Do you feel like voting for them this November?
So here's what Republican Ann Coulter has to say about the widows of the September 11 victims. Decide for yourself whether her book and her political party deserve your support.
Coulter, whose books include the bestseller "How to talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," argues in the new book the women she dubs "the Witches of East Brunswick" wanted to blame President George W. Bush for not preventing the attacks.And no, she's not sorry. Evidently she rather enjoys the attention.
"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by the grief-arazzis," she wrote. "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
"By the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."
Don't forget -- if you serve in the military and are killed and your mother should happen to miss you and wish you hadn't died, the Republican response will be to call her a whore.
Such nice folks. Such good, Christian folks. Do you feel like voting for them this November?
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Maybe it is just as well
That I did not go to Hell.
Large crowds line up to get into Hell (Livingston County Daily Press and Argus)
That I did not go to Hell.
Large crowds line up to get into Hell (Livingston County Daily Press and Argus)
Recent "reads"
Dead Lines, by Greg Bear (Audiobook). Since I now have a technologically advanced, modern vehicle with a CD player, I decided to experiment with listening to audiobooks on my various commutes and roadtrips. It's rather appropriate that the first one I listened to was a story involving a new means of voice communication.
Dead Lines is an intriguing thriller, but having listened to it as an audiobook, I find that it's hard to comment on it as a book. But here goes.
The protagonist is an aging Hollywood writer, soft-porn photographer and director of Z-grade movies whose career has long since gone the way of the dodo. He's been on the skids ever since the unsolved murder of his daughter and his subsequent divorce. He earns a precarious living by running errands for a reclusive, filthy-rich studio magnate who lives with his trophy wife in one of those extravagantly elaborate overblown Hollywood estates where the husband and wife can have separate his-and-hers mansions, complete with accumulated bricabrac from long-dead celluloid heroes and assorted stories of debauchery and death.
Into this happy scenario arrives a promoter seeking funding for a new kind of telecommunications device. It's an entirely new technology, one which goes "beneath" the known electromagnetic spectrum into a previously unused and unexplored expanse of bandwidth.
As people begin using these new devices, strange events start occurring. And at that point I draw the no-spoiler curtain across any further revelations.
I enjoyed the story. The reader's characterization of different voices for different characters helped both to reinforce their personalities and to indicate which character was speaking. A good listen, although I find it difficult to say whether I would have had the same reaction if I had read it in traditional form.
Dead Lines, by Greg Bear (Audiobook). Since I now have a technologically advanced, modern vehicle with a CD player, I decided to experiment with listening to audiobooks on my various commutes and roadtrips. It's rather appropriate that the first one I listened to was a story involving a new means of voice communication.
Dead Lines is an intriguing thriller, but having listened to it as an audiobook, I find that it's hard to comment on it as a book. But here goes.
The protagonist is an aging Hollywood writer, soft-porn photographer and director of Z-grade movies whose career has long since gone the way of the dodo. He's been on the skids ever since the unsolved murder of his daughter and his subsequent divorce. He earns a precarious living by running errands for a reclusive, filthy-rich studio magnate who lives with his trophy wife in one of those extravagantly elaborate overblown Hollywood estates where the husband and wife can have separate his-and-hers mansions, complete with accumulated bricabrac from long-dead celluloid heroes and assorted stories of debauchery and death.
Into this happy scenario arrives a promoter seeking funding for a new kind of telecommunications device. It's an entirely new technology, one which goes "beneath" the known electromagnetic spectrum into a previously unused and unexplored expanse of bandwidth.
As people begin using these new devices, strange events start occurring. And at that point I draw the no-spoiler curtain across any further revelations.
I enjoyed the story. The reader's characterization of different voices for different characters helped both to reinforce their personalities and to indicate which character was speaking. A good listen, although I find it difficult to say whether I would have had the same reaction if I had read it in traditional form.
Recent viewings:
The Skulls. This movie was savaged by the critics when it came out. It's really not that bad. True, the secret-society antics are silly and implausible. The plot is contrived, and the actions of certain characters are inadequately explained. But it's not nearly as insulting to the viewer's intelligence as, say, Coyote Ugly. There's some pretty photography, especially of the boat race at the beginning of the story; there are some pretty people on screen, and once you've checked your skepticism at the door the plot is sort of entertaining in a tinfoil-hat, conspiracy-theory kind of way.
The basic premise of the movie is that very old and very powerful secret societies at Ivy League colleges exert a tremendous amount of power, have a tremendous amount of money, and do lots of sinister and nefarious stuff in between handing out fancy cars, wads of cash, hired hookers, and social prestige in boatload-sized dollops to their fresh recruits. The protagonist, a poor-but-hardworking athletic-scholarship student at an unnamed Ivy League college that plasters big "Y"s all over its walls and uniforms, is tapped to join "The Skulls", a secret society evidently modelled on someone's perceptions of the "Skull and Bones" society at Yale. (Many people have, of course, noted that George W. Bush, among other political bigwigs, have been part of this group, and the movie's release in 2000 suggests that its producers sought to cash in on the resulting public curiosity.)
Our protagonist's black campus-journalist roommate and his blonde preppie not-quite-girlfriend are taken aback by his sudden and secretive new life. The roommate's instant and inexplicable resentment of his former best friend initiates the plot, such as it is, replete with murder and skulduggery. (Hah!)
As I said, the plot is somewhat entertaining once you check your critical thinking at the door. The only thing truly unsettling was the statement that all members of "The Skulls" were expected to "prove themselves" in WAR. (Yes, the word appears in giant capital letters in the film.) The movie was released in early 2000, well before the 2000 election after which "Dubya" became president. It was three years before George W. Bush launched his pet war in Iraq, and over a year before the September 11 attacks that purportedly provoked that war.
How did they know?
Perhaps someone should check into the background of the screenwriters and find out if they had Secret Knowledge -- or, even more intriguingly, if any of them have suffered mysterious "heart attacks" or been "disappeared" to Guantanamo Bay, or to private, exclusive "mental hospitals" in the past few years.
The Skulls. This movie was savaged by the critics when it came out. It's really not that bad. True, the secret-society antics are silly and implausible. The plot is contrived, and the actions of certain characters are inadequately explained. But it's not nearly as insulting to the viewer's intelligence as, say, Coyote Ugly. There's some pretty photography, especially of the boat race at the beginning of the story; there are some pretty people on screen, and once you've checked your skepticism at the door the plot is sort of entertaining in a tinfoil-hat, conspiracy-theory kind of way.
The basic premise of the movie is that very old and very powerful secret societies at Ivy League colleges exert a tremendous amount of power, have a tremendous amount of money, and do lots of sinister and nefarious stuff in between handing out fancy cars, wads of cash, hired hookers, and social prestige in boatload-sized dollops to their fresh recruits. The protagonist, a poor-but-hardworking athletic-scholarship student at an unnamed Ivy League college that plasters big "Y"s all over its walls and uniforms, is tapped to join "The Skulls", a secret society evidently modelled on someone's perceptions of the "Skull and Bones" society at Yale. (Many people have, of course, noted that George W. Bush, among other political bigwigs, have been part of this group, and the movie's release in 2000 suggests that its producers sought to cash in on the resulting public curiosity.)
Our protagonist's black campus-journalist roommate and his blonde preppie not-quite-girlfriend are taken aback by his sudden and secretive new life. The roommate's instant and inexplicable resentment of his former best friend initiates the plot, such as it is, replete with murder and skulduggery. (Hah!)
As I said, the plot is somewhat entertaining once you check your critical thinking at the door. The only thing truly unsettling was the statement that all members of "The Skulls" were expected to "prove themselves" in WAR. (Yes, the word appears in giant capital letters in the film.) The movie was released in early 2000, well before the 2000 election after which "Dubya" became president. It was three years before George W. Bush launched his pet war in Iraq, and over a year before the September 11 attacks that purportedly provoked that war.
How did they know?
Perhaps someone should check into the background of the screenwriters and find out if they had Secret Knowledge -- or, even more intriguingly, if any of them have suffered mysterious "heart attacks" or been "disappeared" to Guantanamo Bay, or to private, exclusive "mental hospitals" in the past few years.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Job search update
In case anyone's interested.
By an odd coincidence, I just applied for jobs at my two parents' alma maters today.
Looking at the numbers for the last month:
Number of applications sent in during May: 9
Number of applications which were sent in too late for serious consideration: 1
Number of noncommital responses received by mail: (will have to dig through files)
Number of "we hired someone better than you" letters: 1
Number of interviews: 2 (one in person, one by phone)
The place at which I interviewed in person shortly afterward sent a letter explaining, in so many words, that they were re-opening the search to get a better crop of applicants. Haven't heard back from the phone-interview place. Probably never will.
In case anyone's interested.
By an odd coincidence, I just applied for jobs at my two parents' alma maters today.
Looking at the numbers for the last month:
Number of applications sent in during May: 9
Number of applications which were sent in too late for serious consideration: 1
Number of noncommital responses received by mail: (will have to dig through files)
Number of "we hired someone better than you" letters: 1
Number of interviews: 2 (one in person, one by phone)
The place at which I interviewed in person shortly afterward sent a letter explaining, in so many words, that they were re-opening the search to get a better crop of applicants. Haven't heard back from the phone-interview place. Probably never will.
Recent Reads
The Loud Literary Lamas of New York, by Jack Woodford. An entertaining, book-length rant against the chattering classes of the publishing industry, circa 1950. I'm pretty sure it's the only book I've ever read which proudly displays a blurb from Harry Stephen Keeler. (Woodford satirically portrayed Keeler in a 1934 article which is available here. Coincidence? Who knows?) This is, however, balanced out by Woodford's discussion of folks like H.P. Lovecraft, H.L. Mencken and James Branch Cabell. A strange kind of cynosure, indeed, to connect Keeler and Cabell!
A sample of Woodford's opinionated, curmudgeonly style, culled from the prologue:
I find myself wondering what Woodford would think of the internet. It certainly has weakened, if not totally obliterated, the barrier between authors and readers. The following passage, from chapter 12, suggests that he wouldn't be surprised by the nature of much internet content.
An interesting sidelight: although Woodford is described as a pulp fiction writer in Wikipedia and elsewhere, and although he frequently boasts of his fiction sales in LLLofNY, a search of WorldCat indicates that he was far more successful, in the library world at least, as a purveyor of writing advice than as a fiction writer. Strange fate.
The Loud Literary Lamas of New York, by Jack Woodford. An entertaining, book-length rant against the chattering classes of the publishing industry, circa 1950. I'm pretty sure it's the only book I've ever read which proudly displays a blurb from Harry Stephen Keeler. (Woodford satirically portrayed Keeler in a 1934 article which is available here. Coincidence? Who knows?) This is, however, balanced out by Woodford's discussion of folks like H.P. Lovecraft, H.L. Mencken and James Branch Cabell. A strange kind of cynosure, indeed, to connect Keeler and Cabell!
A sample of Woodford's opinionated, curmudgeonly style, culled from the prologue:
There are readers, there are writers, there are printing presses. And there are thousands of weird characters living off the readers the writers, and the printers. Nobody knows why.None too surprisingly, LLLofNY was published by Vantage Press, one of the best known of the subsidy or "vanity press" companies. In the past, I've taken their imprint as a cautionary sign, a warning that what lay between the covers was most likely of interest only to the author's relatives and, perhaps, denizens of his home town. In most cases, I suspect that this is still true, but Woodford's cranky-but-charismatic book does have its appeal. In some ways, his disdain for the middlemen of the publishing industry seems similar to Ayn Rand's scorn for "second-handers".
There are the publishers who turn up five thousand geniuses a year and swear on their book jackets that these will be immortal.
There are the editors who tell the publishers and the public what they ought to publish and what they ought to read -- and the authors what they ought to write.
There are the critics, a portion of whom say this about a book and a portion of whom say that -- none of it important to anybody -- according to how much money a given publisher is yearly accustomed to paying for advertising.
Now the weird parasites have come to an impasse. They have hired so many mental giants to buoy things up for readers and writers that they cannot any longer afford to pay the printers without putting the prices of books so high nobody will buy them.
They can't get rid of the printers and they won't get rid of their expensive masterminds, so they want to take most of the author's royalties away from him on the theory that the author is the only real non-essential in the publishing business. But that isn't the solution. If writers' royalties are lowered they'll quit writing. Most of them don't make a living as it is.
So what is the answer to all this?
Very simple. Bring the reader, the writers and the printer together and eliminate all the weird characters.
The way to do this is obvious and a resounding start has already been made. Self-publication....
I find myself wondering what Woodford would think of the internet. It certainly has weakened, if not totally obliterated, the barrier between authors and readers. The following passage, from chapter 12, suggests that he wouldn't be surprised by the nature of much internet content.
As a matter of fact what the public really wants is comic books full of sadism, masochism, rape and arson, and everything but comedy. The sale of these things makes us all look silly -- all book authors, publishers and editors. The public embraced these abortions because present day publishers bored hell out of them.He goes on to demonstrate that certain ongoing debates in library selection policy -- "give 'em what they want" versus "give them what they need" -- are nothing new.
The publishing confraternity comeback to this would be that they are trying to levitate the public to "better things". Sure. But "better" according to whose viewpoint...From elsewhere in the same chapter:
Fantastically enough it is impossible for the average publisher to envision himself as a gadget attached to a printing press rather than a schoolmarm. When the publisher steps out of his legitimate function as a packager and forwarder, he cures people by the millions of the habit of reading books, just as real schoolmarms make windrows of brats permanently allergic to literature by cracking them over the head with the dullest of it.An entertaining read.
An interesting sidelight: although Woodford is described as a pulp fiction writer in Wikipedia and elsewhere, and although he frequently boasts of his fiction sales in LLLofNY, a search of WorldCat indicates that he was far more successful, in the library world at least, as a purveyor of writing advice than as a fiction writer. Strange fate.
Recent reads
Darker than you think, by Jack Williamson. Will Barbee, newspaper reporter, knew that there was something very strange about the sultry redhead who met him at the airport. Things got even stranger when she became, somehow, involved in the death of an elderly friend who had outre theories about the history of the human race. But he didn't know quite how strange she would turn out to be....
I hate reviews that give away too much of the story. And so I won't say much more than that about the details of the plot. I will suggest that any prospective reader -- unless he already knows the premise of the book -- should avoid reading the recent reprint edition's introduction by Douglas E. Winter, which fails to respect this principle.
Sadly, I didn't, and I suspect that the slight boredom I felt when reading most of the book resulted from that premature knowledge. I read the first few chapters with interest, and then started skimming chapters as the narrator seemed to remain doggedly oblivious to something that the introduction had made blindingly obvious.
The last few chapters, though, regained my interest by positing a dramatic alternate history of the human race. Darker than you think, indeed.
Darker than you think, by Jack Williamson. Will Barbee, newspaper reporter, knew that there was something very strange about the sultry redhead who met him at the airport. Things got even stranger when she became, somehow, involved in the death of an elderly friend who had outre theories about the history of the human race. But he didn't know quite how strange she would turn out to be....
I hate reviews that give away too much of the story. And so I won't say much more than that about the details of the plot. I will suggest that any prospective reader -- unless he already knows the premise of the book -- should avoid reading the recent reprint edition's introduction by Douglas E. Winter, which fails to respect this principle.
Sadly, I didn't, and I suspect that the slight boredom I felt when reading most of the book resulted from that premature knowledge. I read the first few chapters with interest, and then started skimming chapters as the narrator seemed to remain doggedly oblivious to something that the introduction had made blindingly obvious.
The last few chapters, though, regained my interest by positing a dramatic alternate history of the human race. Darker than you think, indeed.
Musical Chairs
The cover of the June 5, 2006 issue of The New Yorker is about as clear and insightful a portrayal of the academic job market as I've ever seen, right down to the sadistic grin on the face of the Academic Lord High Mucketymuck in the foreground. Except, of course, that the proportion of successful to unsuccessful players is far greater than in reality.
Image of the cover available here at Alas (a blog), along with some commentary which tries to tie it to affirmative action or some such.
The cover of the June 5, 2006 issue of The New Yorker is about as clear and insightful a portrayal of the academic job market as I've ever seen, right down to the sadistic grin on the face of the Academic Lord High Mucketymuck in the foreground. Except, of course, that the proportion of successful to unsuccessful players is far greater than in reality.
Image of the cover available here at Alas (a blog), along with some commentary which tries to tie it to affirmative action or some such.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity:
The chance to spend 6-6-06 in Hell. Sadly, I will be at work instead.
Edit, 6-6-06: Another article on this Doomful Day. Thanks for Fiend for the link.
The chance to spend 6-6-06 in Hell. Sadly, I will be at work instead.
Edit, 6-6-06: Another article on this Doomful Day. Thanks for Fiend for the link.
And you thought I was a packrat.
When I start thinking that I'm an irredeemable packrat, I take comfort in the existence of folks like this. And this.
Not to mention bookseller Rhett Moran, who recently posted these photos (1,2,3) of his warehouse of secondhand books that he hasn't yet had time to list on the internet.
When I start thinking that I'm an irredeemable packrat, I take comfort in the existence of folks like this. And this.
Not to mention bookseller Rhett Moran, who recently posted these photos (1,2,3) of his warehouse of secondhand books that he hasn't yet had time to list on the internet.
More on the return of Mrs. Robinson
It seems that the author of The Graduate may have some pressing financial reasons for getting back into the writing game. From The (London) Times.
It seems that the author of The Graduate may have some pressing financial reasons for getting back into the writing game. From The (London) Times.
Noted in the News:
Was the 2004 Election Stolen? (Robert Kennedy in Rolling Stone)
Will Your Vote Count in 2006? (Stephen Levy in Newsweek)
Was the 2004 Election Stolen? (Robert Kennedy in Rolling Stone)
Will Your Vote Count in 2006? (Stephen Levy in Newsweek)
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Recent viewings:
Coyote Ugly. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Do not watch this unless someone is holding a gun to your head. If that is the case, try to close your eyes and mentally go somewhere far, far away. You'll be happier that way. Trust me.
Lust for a Vampire. Another very silly movie, but this one is at least attractively filmed and has the modest virtue of being self-consciously, deliberately campy. (From the trailer: "This is one finishing school where they really do... finish you!")
The plot is horribly silly, full of cliches about central-European vampires who wear black-and-red capes and live in rotting castles on top of towering cliffs surrounded by villages full of superstitious peasants with lots of buxom blonde daughters who go tripsing merrily through the woods, tra-la-la-la-la, in their poofy peasant blouses until the Evil Vampires' big black carriage drawn by big black horses pulls up beside them and they mysteriously disappear after getting in one really good corker of a scream. (Strangely, the vampires seem to be unharmed by sunlight but wear hats and hoods and cloaks nonetheless.)
Then of course there's the dashing English traveller who simply must go charging up to the haunted castle just to show the superstitious locals what's what, you know. He finds himself being followed through the ruins by three young women in hooded cloaks, but guess what? They're not vampires -- they're students at an Exclusive Finishing School for Girls that has just suddenly opened up next door to the haunted castle! Imagine that!
This turns out to be a finishing school of very, ahem, advanced ideas for the 1830's. The girls flounce around the campus in gauzy gowns, go through stylized outdoor dance routines while the male teachers watch, and seem to have a predeliction for going topless whenever they're indoors. A good many of them seem to have Sapphic tendencies, especially one rather striking blonde girl who suddenly arrives from nowhere and whose name just happens to be an anagram of Carmilla.
Can you see where this is going?
Well, of course you can. That's beside the point.
Necks get bitten. Lovely ladies (and one or two not-so-lovely male extras) swoon and perish or are otherwise dispatched. Fetching Miss Anagram-of-Carmilla suddenly and inexplicably falls madly in love with the dashing English traveller.
You didn't see that coming, did you? Oh well. You get to see her coming. So to speak.
Did I mention that the plot was very, very silly? Watch it if you enjoy campy horror films with a touch of soft-porn. If not, don't bother.
Trivia note: According to one of the extra features on the DVD, this movie was originally to star Peter Cushing until he backed out. So did the original director. And Yutte Stensgaard, the blonde vampire-girl, was a fill-in for Ingrid Pitt, the star of Hammer Horror's previous lesbian-vampire movie The Vampire Lovers, who reportedly turned down this sequel because she hated the script. It seems that Lust for a Vampire was the high point of Miss Stensgaard's career. I suppose this must mean something.
Additional note: This fellow has a much longer and more entertaining plot synopsis in the unlikely case that anyone's interested.
Coyote Ugly. Stupid, stupid, stupid movie. Do not watch this unless someone is holding a gun to your head. If that is the case, try to close your eyes and mentally go somewhere far, far away. You'll be happier that way. Trust me.
Lust for a Vampire. Another very silly movie, but this one is at least attractively filmed and has the modest virtue of being self-consciously, deliberately campy. (From the trailer: "This is one finishing school where they really do... finish you!")
The plot is horribly silly, full of cliches about central-European vampires who wear black-and-red capes and live in rotting castles on top of towering cliffs surrounded by villages full of superstitious peasants with lots of buxom blonde daughters who go tripsing merrily through the woods, tra-la-la-la-la, in their poofy peasant blouses until the Evil Vampires' big black carriage drawn by big black horses pulls up beside them and they mysteriously disappear after getting in one really good corker of a scream. (Strangely, the vampires seem to be unharmed by sunlight but wear hats and hoods and cloaks nonetheless.)
Then of course there's the dashing English traveller who simply must go charging up to the haunted castle just to show the superstitious locals what's what, you know. He finds himself being followed through the ruins by three young women in hooded cloaks, but guess what? They're not vampires -- they're students at an Exclusive Finishing School for Girls that has just suddenly opened up next door to the haunted castle! Imagine that!
This turns out to be a finishing school of very, ahem, advanced ideas for the 1830's. The girls flounce around the campus in gauzy gowns, go through stylized outdoor dance routines while the male teachers watch, and seem to have a predeliction for going topless whenever they're indoors. A good many of them seem to have Sapphic tendencies, especially one rather striking blonde girl who suddenly arrives from nowhere and whose name just happens to be an anagram of Carmilla.
Can you see where this is going?
Well, of course you can. That's beside the point.
Necks get bitten. Lovely ladies (and one or two not-so-lovely male extras) swoon and perish or are otherwise dispatched. Fetching Miss Anagram-of-Carmilla suddenly and inexplicably falls madly in love with the dashing English traveller.
You didn't see that coming, did you? Oh well. You get to see her coming. So to speak.
Did I mention that the plot was very, very silly? Watch it if you enjoy campy horror films with a touch of soft-porn. If not, don't bother.
Trivia note: According to one of the extra features on the DVD, this movie was originally to star Peter Cushing until he backed out. So did the original director. And Yutte Stensgaard, the blonde vampire-girl, was a fill-in for Ingrid Pitt, the star of Hammer Horror's previous lesbian-vampire movie The Vampire Lovers, who reportedly turned down this sequel because she hated the script. It seems that Lust for a Vampire was the high point of Miss Stensgaard's career. I suppose this must mean something.
Additional note: This fellow has a much longer and more entertaining plot synopsis in the unlikely case that anyone's interested.
More trademark silliness
From Jim Hightower: Grover Norquist, Republican lobbyist and political strategist, seeks to trademark the term "K Street Project" and then prosecute anyone who refers to it as a symbol of Washington corruption.
Next up, I suppose, will be lawsuits prohibiting reference to the Exxon Valdez as a symbol of environmental pollution?
From Jim Hightower: Grover Norquist, Republican lobbyist and political strategist, seeks to trademark the term "K Street Project" and then prosecute anyone who refers to it as a symbol of Washington corruption.
Next up, I suppose, will be lawsuits prohibiting reference to the Exxon Valdez as a symbol of environmental pollution?
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Recent viewings:
It Happened Here
The film opens with a short documentary section in which we learn about the Nazi invasion and occupation of Great Britain. It's very convincingly done in the style of a 1940s newsreel. The grainy black-and-white footage of troops and civilians might very well have been lifted from actual wartime footage, and the simplified animations of big white arrows moving across blocky grey maps will look familiar to anyone who has watched Victory At Sea or Frank Capra's classic Why We Fight.
Most of us who grew up in the past few decades have a practically subconscious, deeply ingrained memory of this style of presentation from schools or from televised documentaries that we have learned to intrinsically trust as authoritative and patriotic. The narrator's voice in such documentaries, invariably a fatherly baritone, is the comforting voice of truth. The voice we trust.
We also learn, from this documentary footage, about how the British population adapted to the Nazi occupation. How some collaborated with the occupiers, while others formed bands of partisans to resist them. And therein lies a tale.
We witness a partisan ambush. A group of civilians, caught in the middle of the ambush, flees into the night. Some of them are killed. One, a woman, escapes and makes her way to London. As a single woman cast adrift in a city under military occupation, she must find a way to make a living. Fortunately, as a trained nurse, she has marketable skills. But the only ones hiring are the Nazis and their British sympathisers, who make up the provisional government. What else is there to do but to take whatever job is available, and sign up for whatever additional training is required for that job?
Throughout the film, Brownlow drops in and out of different styles contemporary to the 1940s. The familiar Anglo-American newsreel style of the introductory section gives way to the high-contrast, gritty-looking black-and-white of period dramas. His ability to effortlessly drop into and out of the narrative viewpoint of a wartime propagandist is particularly unsettling. The decisions made by the protagonist, and the attitudes that she adopts, are all too easily understood. After all, how many times have each of us casually adopted some attitude or image, or performed some act of which we would ordinarily disapprove, because of job requirements or social pressure?
The ending is peculiarly understated and ambiguous. Unfortunately that's all I can say without giving away spoilers. But I very impressed and moved by the movie, nonetheless.
It Happened Here
The film opens with a short documentary section in which we learn about the Nazi invasion and occupation of Great Britain. It's very convincingly done in the style of a 1940s newsreel. The grainy black-and-white footage of troops and civilians might very well have been lifted from actual wartime footage, and the simplified animations of big white arrows moving across blocky grey maps will look familiar to anyone who has watched Victory At Sea or Frank Capra's classic Why We Fight.
Most of us who grew up in the past few decades have a practically subconscious, deeply ingrained memory of this style of presentation from schools or from televised documentaries that we have learned to intrinsically trust as authoritative and patriotic. The narrator's voice in such documentaries, invariably a fatherly baritone, is the comforting voice of truth. The voice we trust.
We also learn, from this documentary footage, about how the British population adapted to the Nazi occupation. How some collaborated with the occupiers, while others formed bands of partisans to resist them. And therein lies a tale.
We witness a partisan ambush. A group of civilians, caught in the middle of the ambush, flees into the night. Some of them are killed. One, a woman, escapes and makes her way to London. As a single woman cast adrift in a city under military occupation, she must find a way to make a living. Fortunately, as a trained nurse, she has marketable skills. But the only ones hiring are the Nazis and their British sympathisers, who make up the provisional government. What else is there to do but to take whatever job is available, and sign up for whatever additional training is required for that job?
Throughout the film, Brownlow drops in and out of different styles contemporary to the 1940s. The familiar Anglo-American newsreel style of the introductory section gives way to the high-contrast, gritty-looking black-and-white of period dramas. His ability to effortlessly drop into and out of the narrative viewpoint of a wartime propagandist is particularly unsettling. The decisions made by the protagonist, and the attitudes that she adopts, are all too easily understood. After all, how many times have each of us casually adopted some attitude or image, or performed some act of which we would ordinarily disapprove, because of job requirements or social pressure?
The ending is peculiarly understated and ambiguous. Unfortunately that's all I can say without giving away spoilers. But I very impressed and moved by the movie, nonetheless.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Creating a warm bubble of agreement
It seems that Republicans in government are very fragile nowadays. So fragile that teenage girls who disagree with them must be arrested by state police, lest they shatter the delicate bubble of Republican groupthink with inconvenient reality-based thinking.
It seems that Republicans in government are very fragile nowadays. So fragile that teenage girls who disagree with them must be arrested by state police, lest they shatter the delicate bubble of Republican groupthink with inconvenient reality-based thinking.
Look, up in the sky!
Cool miltech stuff: carbon-fiber wings that may allow paratroopers to glide up to 200 miles. But that's not all: "[S]tudies have begun on a powered version which will use small turbo-jets....
Another source supplies a picture.
Of course, Leonardo da Vinci may have done it first.
Cool miltech stuff: carbon-fiber wings that may allow paratroopers to glide up to 200 miles. But that's not all: "[S]tudies have begun on a powered version which will use small turbo-jets....
Another source supplies a picture.
Of course, Leonardo da Vinci may have done it first.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Back from Toronto and Stratford
Things done:
* Saw Stratford Festival production of Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare's later tragedies, with fabulous Fiend and two friends, "Noth" and a fellow for whom I do not yet have a convenient online handle. (NOTE: the "extended synopsis" link contains spoilers.)
The Toronto Star reviewer praises the lead actor's performance. I concur, but it also seemed that the play was effective and powerful because it avoided much of the discursive banter and meandering subplots that bog down other, lesser Shakespearian plays. Every scene, maybe even every line, contributed directly to the plot. It's a lean and direct play, a bitter and cynical look at the rise and fall of a superbly capable soldier who's just too proud for his own good. Too proud to play politics, too proud to pander to the plebian mob, and thus easy prey for those more skillful in that art.
I found myself reflecting that this is exactly how many political thinkers of Shakespeare's time viewed democracy: as violent, unpredictable mob rule, subject to the machinations of designing demagogues who promote themselves by manipulating the opinions of the ignorant herd and, in the process, deliberately driving out any capable potential leaders who might threaten their position. That is, after all, what frequently did happen in democratic Athens, where successful generals and rulers were exiled from the city with rather monotonous regularity. When the founders of the US were hammering out the terms under which their new nation would govern itself, the same thoughts haunted the mind of Alexander Hamilton and others. ("Your people, sir, is a great BEAST....")
* Saw The Da Vinci Code. A busy and baffling movie. As with the book, I found it rather implausible that an elderly man dying of a bullet in the gut would be able to run all over the Louvre, composing clever anagrams to scrawl on different paintings, hiding artifacts here and there, writing intricately-coded messages on the floor, and then arranging himself in an artful pose before expiring. Entertaining otherwise. Ian McKellan nearly steals the show from stolid Tom Hanks and subdued Audrey Tatou with his irascible but debonair portrayal of Sir Leigh Teabing. Dang it, when I'm his age, I hope I have wavy hair and twinkling eyes like that.
The movie is visually good-looking, with lots of mysteriously dark settings and baffling imagery. The use of computer-generated animations to portray Robert Langdon's thought-processes was a good idea, but relying on it as a crutch so that the movie doesn't have to really let the viewer see certain critical objects and locations in their entirity is excessive.
I note that various Christian groups and individuals are protesting against the movie, although so far as I know no Catholic or other Christian clergyman has issued the kind of public calls for riot and murder that characterized the Danish Cartoon brouhaha of a few months ago.
* Watched BBC miniseries of Dorothy L. Sayer's Strong Poison, in which the aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey meets and is romantically smitten with an accused murderess, Harriet Vane. The actor playing Lord Peter was perhaps a bit older than I expected, but seemed otherwise well suited to the role. Bunter seemed a bit young but quite capable. Harriet Vane didn't have much to do in this episode, since she spent most of the time either locked in a prison cell or stoically enduring the accusations of the court. Fiend assures me that strong-willed Harriet plays a much more active role in other episodes.
* Accidentally discovered miniscule-but-lovely Cloud Garden Park in downtown Toronto.
* Debated merits of SmartCar.
* Bought a boring-but-servicable Generic Dark Suit to replace the one that was in the back of the Pontiac when it was stolen.
Things not (yet) done:
* Canoe/paddleboat race along the river in Stratford. Future fellow Stratford-goers may expect to be challenged to such a contest.
* Exploring Toronto's Music Garden.
And that was my Memorial Day weekend. Anyone else care to describe theirs?
Things done:
* Saw Stratford Festival production of Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare's later tragedies, with fabulous Fiend and two friends, "Noth" and a fellow for whom I do not yet have a convenient online handle. (NOTE: the "extended synopsis" link contains spoilers.)
The Toronto Star reviewer praises the lead actor's performance. I concur, but it also seemed that the play was effective and powerful because it avoided much of the discursive banter and meandering subplots that bog down other, lesser Shakespearian plays. Every scene, maybe even every line, contributed directly to the plot. It's a lean and direct play, a bitter and cynical look at the rise and fall of a superbly capable soldier who's just too proud for his own good. Too proud to play politics, too proud to pander to the plebian mob, and thus easy prey for those more skillful in that art.
I found myself reflecting that this is exactly how many political thinkers of Shakespeare's time viewed democracy: as violent, unpredictable mob rule, subject to the machinations of designing demagogues who promote themselves by manipulating the opinions of the ignorant herd and, in the process, deliberately driving out any capable potential leaders who might threaten their position. That is, after all, what frequently did happen in democratic Athens, where successful generals and rulers were exiled from the city with rather monotonous regularity. When the founders of the US were hammering out the terms under which their new nation would govern itself, the same thoughts haunted the mind of Alexander Hamilton and others. ("Your people, sir, is a great BEAST....")
* Saw The Da Vinci Code. A busy and baffling movie. As with the book, I found it rather implausible that an elderly man dying of a bullet in the gut would be able to run all over the Louvre, composing clever anagrams to scrawl on different paintings, hiding artifacts here and there, writing intricately-coded messages on the floor, and then arranging himself in an artful pose before expiring. Entertaining otherwise. Ian McKellan nearly steals the show from stolid Tom Hanks and subdued Audrey Tatou with his irascible but debonair portrayal of Sir Leigh Teabing. Dang it, when I'm his age, I hope I have wavy hair and twinkling eyes like that.
The movie is visually good-looking, with lots of mysteriously dark settings and baffling imagery. The use of computer-generated animations to portray Robert Langdon's thought-processes was a good idea, but relying on it as a crutch so that the movie doesn't have to really let the viewer see certain critical objects and locations in their entirity is excessive.
I note that various Christian groups and individuals are protesting against the movie, although so far as I know no Catholic or other Christian clergyman has issued the kind of public calls for riot and murder that characterized the Danish Cartoon brouhaha of a few months ago.
* Watched BBC miniseries of Dorothy L. Sayer's Strong Poison, in which the aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey meets and is romantically smitten with an accused murderess, Harriet Vane. The actor playing Lord Peter was perhaps a bit older than I expected, but seemed otherwise well suited to the role. Bunter seemed a bit young but quite capable. Harriet Vane didn't have much to do in this episode, since she spent most of the time either locked in a prison cell or stoically enduring the accusations of the court. Fiend assures me that strong-willed Harriet plays a much more active role in other episodes.
* Accidentally discovered miniscule-but-lovely Cloud Garden Park in downtown Toronto.
* Debated merits of SmartCar.
* Bought a boring-but-servicable Generic Dark Suit to replace the one that was in the back of the Pontiac when it was stolen.
Things not (yet) done:
* Canoe/paddleboat race along the river in Stratford. Future fellow Stratford-goers may expect to be challenged to such a contest.
* Exploring Toronto's Music Garden.
And that was my Memorial Day weekend. Anyone else care to describe theirs?
Update on HR 5319
The text of Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick's effort to ban most interactive web services from schools and libraries can be found here. (From Politechbot by way of Bytes in Brief.) It's also now available through Thomas (search for bill number HR 5319).
I commented on this bill earlier in May.
The text of Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick's effort to ban most interactive web services from schools and libraries can be found here. (From Politechbot by way of Bytes in Brief.) It's also now available through Thomas (search for bill number HR 5319).
I commented on this bill earlier in May.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Recent reads:
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
A startling and engrossing vision of dystopia. I won't bother to recap the basic premise ofthe book since, like me, most people reading this blog have probably become aware of that premise through exposure to the book, the movie, or the discussions that it has inspired since its publication in 1986.
The book's still worth reading, even for someone who already knows that premise. It's a tour de force of writing in which Atwood never seems to hit a single wrong note in her first-person portrayal of a woman trapped in a living hell. Even the "villainous" characters who are responsible for her enslavement are believable and, at times, sympathetic in their own twisted way. (If anyone thinks that such a society cannot exist, or that women would automatically rise in righteous rebellion against it, he or she would do well to read up on revolutionary Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, 19th-century Utah, or the present-day Short Creek community of polygamists.)
Part of the reason Atwood's story is so effective is because the reader's viewpoint and knowledge are so strictly limited that we feel as closed-in and claustrophobic as the protagonist. The reader is trapped inside the perceptions and thoughts of the"handmaid" of the title, both literally and metaphorically blinkered and unable to see anything outside the hellishly confined world to which she's restricted. We're even denied knowledge of her real name, just as that name is denied to her by the society in which she lives.
In Nancy Pearl's scheme of things, this is a setting-driven novel. My interest in the book was driven by intense curiosity about the world that Atwood created: how it worked, how it came to exist, how people managed to live in it. Although the protagonist "Offred" and the other characters she describes are indeed compelling, the impact of the novel depends almost entirely on the setting as it is gradually, haltingly, revealed, and to a lesser degree on her own backstory as it is gradually and reluctantly revealed in a series of flashbacks, dreams, and uncomfortable reminiscences. It's implied that she's been tortured into submission -- "broken" -- after being torn away from her husband and child. We know, because she describes it, that she's been put through a "training program" that most people would consider brainwashing. And throughout the novel we have a ringside seat inside her head as her memories of a better time, and her desire to escape her current life, vie with the vile things she has to do and the submissive facade she has to maintain in order to survive.
All this makes for powerful drama, but I found myself reading on not because I was particularly interested in "Offred"'s current or future emotional state, or whether she became pregnant or not, or even what her eventual fate might be, but because, in a horrified way, I wanted to know more about the world in which she lived. How did it come to be? And how did people manage to live in it? And what might eventually become of it?
A measure of this can be seen in the fact that the reader is never actually told what eventually happens to "Offred". The story she tells simply trails off into silence after a critical moment, after which we're given a kind of framing device in the form of an academic presentation about the provenance and background of the "soi-disant manuscript" that we've been reading. We don't find out much more about "Offred" than she's already told us, and we certainly don't find out what happened to her after the events she describes. What we do get is some context, a few more details about the "Gileadite regime" in which she lived, all of it couched in a stream of condescending, trivializing academic jokes that seem downright ghoulish after what we've just read. It's tempting to think that Atwood is just poking fun at the affectations of academia, but it's also possible that she has bigger game in mind. I'll leave that as a question for discussion should anyone feel so inclined.
Edit, 5/25: corrected publication date of Handmaid's Tale. Thanks to S. and Fiend.
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
A startling and engrossing vision of dystopia. I won't bother to recap the basic premise ofthe book since, like me, most people reading this blog have probably become aware of that premise through exposure to the book, the movie, or the discussions that it has inspired since its publication in 1986.
The book's still worth reading, even for someone who already knows that premise. It's a tour de force of writing in which Atwood never seems to hit a single wrong note in her first-person portrayal of a woman trapped in a living hell. Even the "villainous" characters who are responsible for her enslavement are believable and, at times, sympathetic in their own twisted way. (If anyone thinks that such a society cannot exist, or that women would automatically rise in righteous rebellion against it, he or she would do well to read up on revolutionary Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, 19th-century Utah, or the present-day Short Creek community of polygamists.)
Part of the reason Atwood's story is so effective is because the reader's viewpoint and knowledge are so strictly limited that we feel as closed-in and claustrophobic as the protagonist. The reader is trapped inside the perceptions and thoughts of the"handmaid" of the title, both literally and metaphorically blinkered and unable to see anything outside the hellishly confined world to which she's restricted. We're even denied knowledge of her real name, just as that name is denied to her by the society in which she lives.
In Nancy Pearl's scheme of things, this is a setting-driven novel. My interest in the book was driven by intense curiosity about the world that Atwood created: how it worked, how it came to exist, how people managed to live in it. Although the protagonist "Offred" and the other characters she describes are indeed compelling, the impact of the novel depends almost entirely on the setting as it is gradually, haltingly, revealed, and to a lesser degree on her own backstory as it is gradually and reluctantly revealed in a series of flashbacks, dreams, and uncomfortable reminiscences. It's implied that she's been tortured into submission -- "broken" -- after being torn away from her husband and child. We know, because she describes it, that she's been put through a "training program" that most people would consider brainwashing. And throughout the novel we have a ringside seat inside her head as her memories of a better time, and her desire to escape her current life, vie with the vile things she has to do and the submissive facade she has to maintain in order to survive.
All this makes for powerful drama, but I found myself reading on not because I was particularly interested in "Offred"'s current or future emotional state, or whether she became pregnant or not, or even what her eventual fate might be, but because, in a horrified way, I wanted to know more about the world in which she lived. How did it come to be? And how did people manage to live in it? And what might eventually become of it?
A measure of this can be seen in the fact that the reader is never actually told what eventually happens to "Offred". The story she tells simply trails off into silence after a critical moment, after which we're given a kind of framing device in the form of an academic presentation about the provenance and background of the "soi-disant manuscript" that we've been reading. We don't find out much more about "Offred" than she's already told us, and we certainly don't find out what happened to her after the events she describes. What we do get is some context, a few more details about the "Gileadite regime" in which she lived, all of it couched in a stream of condescending, trivializing academic jokes that seem downright ghoulish after what we've just read. It's tempting to think that Atwood is just poking fun at the affectations of academia, but it's also possible that she has bigger game in mind. I'll leave that as a question for discussion should anyone feel so inclined.
Edit, 5/25: corrected publication date of Handmaid's Tale. Thanks to S. and Fiend.
Recent reads:
A Skeleton in God's Closet, by Paul L. Maier.
Maier's name seemed vaguely familiar to me when I picked this 1994 book out of the library book sale, and the title, along with the bookjacket teaser copy ("A skeleton almost 2,000 years old -- will it shed new light on the life of Jesus or plunge the world into darkness and chaos?") seemed to suggest a religious thriller that I might be able to recommend to people who are still on the waiting list for the Da Vinci Code.
It turns out that Maier's name is probably familiar to me because he edited a collection of the "essential writings" of Josephus Flavius that I recently ordered for the libraries at which I work. He's a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, and he's also written novels about Biblical characters such as Pontius Pilate, but I haven't read them.
The plot of the novel in hand involves an archaeological dig near Jerusalem, in which the protagonist, a globetrotting history professor and archaeologist, unearths a grave that may hold secrets that will rock the Christian world. Complications ensue, as the Vatican and various governments around the world seek to spin the story or alter it to suit their purposes.
The historical and archeological tale that Maier spins here is intriguing because of his knowledge of archaeological technique and early Christian history. As Nancy Pearl might say, it's a plot-driven novel, in which the reader keeps forging onward to find out what new twist is going to be revealed, not because of the clunky writing or the stereotypical characters. Most readers in the western world are familiar with the fundamentals of the story of the early Christian church and the thought-system that has developed from it, and thus will find some interest in a story about how that history and thought-system would be affected if an archaeological discovery were to cast doubt on its most sacred elements.
It would be interesting to trace the threads of influence linking various books in this mini-genre of religio-historical thrillers. As mentioned above, Maier's protagonist could almost be the prototype for the hero of The Da Vinci Code. There's even a reference or two to Opus Dei, with a suggestion that it might have ill will toward anyone who presents evidence contradicting established Christian doctrine. Maier may have done a bit of borrowing of his own, too, since one plot twist involving an ancient document is very similar to the critical plot twist of James Hall Robert's 1964 religious thriller, The Q Document.
Still, it might be worth recommending to people who enjoyed DVC and are aching for another fix of Biblically-flavored historical mystery. As with DVC, I enjoyed the ride, even as I sometimes winced at clumsy prose or characters who were just too goody-goody to be true.
A Skeleton in God's Closet, by Paul L. Maier.
Maier's name seemed vaguely familiar to me when I picked this 1994 book out of the library book sale, and the title, along with the bookjacket teaser copy ("A skeleton almost 2,000 years old -- will it shed new light on the life of Jesus or plunge the world into darkness and chaos?") seemed to suggest a religious thriller that I might be able to recommend to people who are still on the waiting list for the Da Vinci Code.
It turns out that Maier's name is probably familiar to me because he edited a collection of the "essential writings" of Josephus Flavius that I recently ordered for the libraries at which I work. He's a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, and he's also written novels about Biblical characters such as Pontius Pilate, but I haven't read them.
The plot of the novel in hand involves an archaeological dig near Jerusalem, in which the protagonist, a globetrotting history professor and archaeologist, unearths a grave that may hold secrets that will rock the Christian world. Complications ensue, as the Vatican and various governments around the world seek to spin the story or alter it to suit their purposes.
The historical and archeological tale that Maier spins here is intriguing because of his knowledge of archaeological technique and early Christian history. As Nancy Pearl might say, it's a plot-driven novel, in which the reader keeps forging onward to find out what new twist is going to be revealed, not because of the clunky writing or the stereotypical characters. Most readers in the western world are familiar with the fundamentals of the story of the early Christian church and the thought-system that has developed from it, and thus will find some interest in a story about how that history and thought-system would be affected if an archaeological discovery were to cast doubt on its most sacred elements.
It would be interesting to trace the threads of influence linking various books in this mini-genre of religio-historical thrillers. As mentioned above, Maier's protagonist could almost be the prototype for the hero of The Da Vinci Code. There's even a reference or two to Opus Dei, with a suggestion that it might have ill will toward anyone who presents evidence contradicting established Christian doctrine. Maier may have done a bit of borrowing of his own, too, since one plot twist involving an ancient document is very similar to the critical plot twist of James Hall Robert's 1964 religious thriller, The Q Document.
Still, it might be worth recommending to people who enjoyed DVC and are aching for another fix of Biblically-flavored historical mystery. As with DVC, I enjoyed the ride, even as I sometimes winced at clumsy prose or characters who were just too goody-goody to be true.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Props to PLOS
The Public Library of Science has launched another free, peer-reviewed online journal, PLOS Clinical Trials.
So far neither Suburban Public Library nor Busy Bee College has added links to PLOS to its list of online resources. As it was explained to me, if administrators see that such things are available for free, they won't pay for expensive commercial databases.
The Public Library of Science has launched another free, peer-reviewed online journal, PLOS Clinical Trials.
So far neither Suburban Public Library nor Busy Bee College has added links to PLOS to its list of online resources. As it was explained to me, if administrators see that such things are available for free, they won't pay for expensive commercial databases.
EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency has a series of libraries scattered around the country which make scientific studies and other information about pollution and pollutants available to the general public.
Fortunately, the Bush administration has a solution to this problem.
The Environmental Protection Agency has a series of libraries scattered around the country which make scientific studies and other information about pollution and pollutants available to the general public.
Fortunately, the Bush administration has a solution to this problem.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Recent reads:
A Houseboat on the Styx, by John Kendrick Bangs and Peter Newell. I've heard this book referred to time and time again on fiction-related listservs. Finally I was able to order a copy for Suburban Public Library, thanks to Kessinger Publishing's extensive catalog of print-on-demand editions of public domain works.
Unfortunately, the book didn't quite live up to its billing. It is witty, and it is clever, and it is somewhat amusing, but there's no plot to speak of. The reader is essentially a witness to the arguments and conversations that Bangs puts into the incorporeal mouths of various deceased souls inhabiting a gentleman's club aboard the titular houseboat. It's clever and amusing at first to hear Samuel Johnson and William Shakespeare in animated disputation with Socrates, et al, but the novelty wears off before one reaches the end of the book.
Rumor has it that Connie Willis alludes to this book in To Say Nothing of the Dog. I expect that tracking down her allusion to it will be more satisfying than the work itself.
A Houseboat on the Styx, by John Kendrick Bangs and Peter Newell. I've heard this book referred to time and time again on fiction-related listservs. Finally I was able to order a copy for Suburban Public Library, thanks to Kessinger Publishing's extensive catalog of print-on-demand editions of public domain works.
Unfortunately, the book didn't quite live up to its billing. It is witty, and it is clever, and it is somewhat amusing, but there's no plot to speak of. The reader is essentially a witness to the arguments and conversations that Bangs puts into the incorporeal mouths of various deceased souls inhabiting a gentleman's club aboard the titular houseboat. It's clever and amusing at first to hear Samuel Johnson and William Shakespeare in animated disputation with Socrates, et al, but the novelty wears off before one reaches the end of the book.
Rumor has it that Connie Willis alludes to this book in To Say Nothing of the Dog. I expect that tracking down her allusion to it will be more satisfying than the work itself.
Graphic novel roundup
A Thousand Ships (Age of Bronze, vol. 1), by Eric Shanower For those of us who never actually got around to reading The Iliad, this volume's a must-read. Shanower portrays the events leading up to the Trojan War in dramatic, fast-moving fashion. I didn't spot any significant departures from mythology as I know it, but for those who want to check up on him, he provides an afterword in which he discusses the sources he used and the problems of chronology and contradiction that he encountered with them.
My Faith in Frankie, by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew, et al. A witty look at the problems of having a personal diety. Frankie's a cute brunette who would really like to have a boyfriend. She also has a personal diety who is, quite literally, a jealous god. Things get complicated when Frankie heads off to college and becomes the target of both a lecherous upperclassman and more sinister forces. The artwork is cartoonish and lighthearted, especially when portraying Frankie's younger years in flashback. There are some adult themes, although no explicit nudity.
Once in a Blue Moon, by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, Jennifer Quick, et al. An entertaining, anime-style interpretation of that old fantasy staple, the mysterious/magical book that transports a modern-day teenager into a parallel world of mortal combat between good and evil.
A Thousand Ships (Age of Bronze, vol. 1), by Eric Shanower For those of us who never actually got around to reading The Iliad, this volume's a must-read. Shanower portrays the events leading up to the Trojan War in dramatic, fast-moving fashion. I didn't spot any significant departures from mythology as I know it, but for those who want to check up on him, he provides an afterword in which he discusses the sources he used and the problems of chronology and contradiction that he encountered with them.
My Faith in Frankie, by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew, et al. A witty look at the problems of having a personal diety. Frankie's a cute brunette who would really like to have a boyfriend. She also has a personal diety who is, quite literally, a jealous god. Things get complicated when Frankie heads off to college and becomes the target of both a lecherous upperclassman and more sinister forces. The artwork is cartoonish and lighthearted, especially when portraying Frankie's younger years in flashback. There are some adult themes, although no explicit nudity.
Once in a Blue Moon, by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, Jennifer Quick, et al. An entertaining, anime-style interpretation of that old fantasy staple, the mysterious/magical book that transports a modern-day teenager into a parallel world of mortal combat between good and evil.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Recent viewings
Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), disk 1
There's a man who leads a life of danger
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger
With every move he makes another chance he takes
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name....
Plenty of people have heard Johnny Rivers sing the lyrics above. Not so many have seen the television show for whose US presentation they were written. Fortunately, DVDs and the magic of the Long Tail have made it possible to do so.
And a good thing, too. Danger Man (to use its original British title) is an above-average spy thriller series in which Patrick McGoohan's character, a British secret agent named John Drake, uses intelligence, personal charm and believable spycraft -- rather than explosions, violence and implausible James Bond gadgetry -- to complete the various missions to which he is assigned. And, occasionally, freelance ones of which his bosses disapprove....
It's suggested early on in the episodes I watched that Drake and his political bosses often disagree about ethics and responsibility. McGoohan went on to create a better-known series, The Prisoner, in which a dissatisfied secret agent tries to resign from a spy agency and ends up incarcerated in a surreal Village of brainwashers and brainwash-ees.
Officially, Number Six is not John Drake. But I couldn't help but notice a prominent, framed picture of a penny-farthing bicycle on the office wall of the boss to which Drake reports in one episode.
Hmmm.
Proto-Prisoner or not, it's worth checking out for anyone who enjoys Cold War spy dramas.
Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), disk 1
There's a man who leads a life of danger
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger
With every move he makes another chance he takes
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow
Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name....
Plenty of people have heard Johnny Rivers sing the lyrics above. Not so many have seen the television show for whose US presentation they were written. Fortunately, DVDs and the magic of the Long Tail have made it possible to do so.
And a good thing, too. Danger Man (to use its original British title) is an above-average spy thriller series in which Patrick McGoohan's character, a British secret agent named John Drake, uses intelligence, personal charm and believable spycraft -- rather than explosions, violence and implausible James Bond gadgetry -- to complete the various missions to which he is assigned. And, occasionally, freelance ones of which his bosses disapprove....
It's suggested early on in the episodes I watched that Drake and his political bosses often disagree about ethics and responsibility. McGoohan went on to create a better-known series, The Prisoner, in which a dissatisfied secret agent tries to resign from a spy agency and ends up incarcerated in a surreal Village of brainwashers and brainwash-ees.
Officially, Number Six is not John Drake. But I couldn't help but notice a prominent, framed picture of a penny-farthing bicycle on the office wall of the boss to which Drake reports in one episode.
Hmmm.
Proto-Prisoner or not, it's worth checking out for anyone who enjoys Cold War spy dramas.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Recent viewings
It Happened One Night. A first-rate romantic comedy, circa 1934. Claudette Colbert is a spoiled-but-lonely heiress on the run from her father, who disapproves of her marriage to a flamboyant New York playboy. On the road, she encounters a cynical newspaper reporter (a young Clark Gable, looking disreputable in trenchcoat, fedora and pencil-thin mustache). Verbal sparks fly in all directions as they spar with each other, other bus passengers, and the occasional detective trying to track down the elusive heiress. Watching the two of them spontaneously improvise ways to distract unwelcome inquisitors, while becoming steadily closer to each other, is a sheer pleasure. Some of Gable's macho posturing wouldn't pass modern-day political muster, but aside from that minor quibble it's a delightful story from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
(Note: this review was written sometime back in January and got misplaced until now.)
It Happened One Night. A first-rate romantic comedy, circa 1934. Claudette Colbert is a spoiled-but-lonely heiress on the run from her father, who disapproves of her marriage to a flamboyant New York playboy. On the road, she encounters a cynical newspaper reporter (a young Clark Gable, looking disreputable in trenchcoat, fedora and pencil-thin mustache). Verbal sparks fly in all directions as they spar with each other, other bus passengers, and the occasional detective trying to track down the elusive heiress. Watching the two of them spontaneously improvise ways to distract unwelcome inquisitors, while becoming steadily closer to each other, is a sheer pleasure. Some of Gable's macho posturing wouldn't pass modern-day political muster, but aside from that minor quibble it's a delightful story from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
(Note: this review was written sometime back in January and got misplaced until now.)
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Republicans vs. the internet (again)
Republican senator Michael G. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania has proudly announced a bill, HR 5319, that would require any library or school that receives any federal funding to censor "social-networking" websites. The latter is, according to various news sources, very broadly defined and would include most weblogging services as well as wikis, instant-messaging services, many e'mail services, and many interactive news-and-commentary sites such as DailyKos, Redstate, etc. In essence, it seeks to block access to the whole generation of interactive, user-centered web applications that are loosely referred to as "Web 2.0".
Unfortunately, Thomas doesn't seem to have the full text of this bill, HR 5319, available yet, and I'm dependent on published news summaries such as BusinessWeek, personal blog-entries, and legislative alerts from groups like the ALA.
Now I'm willing to grant that some social-networking sites may be useless or even counterproductive in a school environment. But local schools are perfectly capable of blocking troublesome websites on their own, without this kind of federal mandate. (What ever happened to the Republican love of local control, small government, and parental responsibility? Evidently, it was whisked away like a cardboard theater prop the moment they took control of the juggernaut that they spent the last twenty years screaming against.)
Furthermore, the mission of public libraries is not nearly as restricted and specialized as that of schools. Even if this bill made sense for schools, it makes no sense at all for libraries, whose computer services exist in order to link the general public with the electronic world, not to wall them off from it. And I can testify that it works. One of the regular users of Suburban Public Library has achived a bit of note lately on DailyKos for her regular commentaries about the recent changes in Medicare. That wouldn't have been possible if this kind of restriction were in place, and both she and those all across the nation who read and benefitted from her commentaries would be the poorer for it.
Even if it affected only users under the age of 18, it would be a disaster. The extremely broad ban contemplated by Rep. Fitzpatrick would in effect wall them off from the ongoing public conversations that they need to be aware of if they want to become knowledgeable adults. And, entertainingly, it might actually outlaw services like www.tutor.com, which provides live online tutoring with qualified teachers through school and library computer connections.
The rationale, of course, is to protect the children from "online predators". The reality? Once again the Republicans are using nuclear weapons to hunt cockroaches, inflicting enormous collateral damage on the vast, law-abiding majority in order to win political points for largely illusory blows against a small minority of abusive users.
Or -- to use an entirely different metaphor -- they're standing, like King Canute, at the low-water mark on the beach, holding up a hand and shouting "stop!" at the waves of the advancing tide. I don't think that interactive web applications will disappear just because Representative Fitzpatrick is afraid of them.
If this misguided bill is passed, it will serve only as one more barrier blocking those who access the internet through public spaces like libraries from being able to participate in the most active and vibrant part of the world's economy of information. And, of course, it'll do absolutely nothing to "protect" any kid who has access to his own, or his parents', computer.
Republican senator Michael G. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania has proudly announced a bill, HR 5319, that would require any library or school that receives any federal funding to censor "social-networking" websites. The latter is, according to various news sources, very broadly defined and would include most weblogging services as well as wikis, instant-messaging services, many e'mail services, and many interactive news-and-commentary sites such as DailyKos, Redstate, etc. In essence, it seeks to block access to the whole generation of interactive, user-centered web applications that are loosely referred to as "Web 2.0".
Unfortunately, Thomas doesn't seem to have the full text of this bill, HR 5319, available yet, and I'm dependent on published news summaries such as BusinessWeek, personal blog-entries, and legislative alerts from groups like the ALA.
Now I'm willing to grant that some social-networking sites may be useless or even counterproductive in a school environment. But local schools are perfectly capable of blocking troublesome websites on their own, without this kind of federal mandate. (What ever happened to the Republican love of local control, small government, and parental responsibility? Evidently, it was whisked away like a cardboard theater prop the moment they took control of the juggernaut that they spent the last twenty years screaming against.)
Furthermore, the mission of public libraries is not nearly as restricted and specialized as that of schools. Even if this bill made sense for schools, it makes no sense at all for libraries, whose computer services exist in order to link the general public with the electronic world, not to wall them off from it. And I can testify that it works. One of the regular users of Suburban Public Library has achived a bit of note lately on DailyKos for her regular commentaries about the recent changes in Medicare. That wouldn't have been possible if this kind of restriction were in place, and both she and those all across the nation who read and benefitted from her commentaries would be the poorer for it.
Even if it affected only users under the age of 18, it would be a disaster. The extremely broad ban contemplated by Rep. Fitzpatrick would in effect wall them off from the ongoing public conversations that they need to be aware of if they want to become knowledgeable adults. And, entertainingly, it might actually outlaw services like www.tutor.com, which provides live online tutoring with qualified teachers through school and library computer connections.
The rationale, of course, is to protect the children from "online predators". The reality? Once again the Republicans are using nuclear weapons to hunt cockroaches, inflicting enormous collateral damage on the vast, law-abiding majority in order to win political points for largely illusory blows against a small minority of abusive users.
Or -- to use an entirely different metaphor -- they're standing, like King Canute, at the low-water mark on the beach, holding up a hand and shouting "stop!" at the waves of the advancing tide. I don't think that interactive web applications will disappear just because Representative Fitzpatrick is afraid of them.
If this misguided bill is passed, it will serve only as one more barrier blocking those who access the internet through public spaces like libraries from being able to participate in the most active and vibrant part of the world's economy of information. And, of course, it'll do absolutely nothing to "protect" any kid who has access to his own, or his parents', computer.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Recent viewings:
Lost in La Mancha Documentary chronicle of a film production gone horribly, abortively wrong. Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python alumnus and director of films like Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, seeks to create a modern film adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' classic satire of knight-errantry, Don Quixote. Unfortunately, according to LILM, the production of the latter film has won Gilliam a reputation as a spendthrift, which limits his access to funding. Minor obstacles snowball into disasters: scheduling conflicts, ailing actors, torrential flash floods, the Spanish Air Force....
It's hard to tell what the finished Gilliam film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, would have been like. It would have featured Johnny Depp as a modern-day advertising man somehow transported into the medieval Spain of Cervantes' story, much like the protagonist of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. A couple of scenes discussed in LILM suggest that the Depp character would have been -- at least initially -- sarcastic and dismissive of Quixote's tales of chivalry. Other scenes suggest that the giants and other fantastical elements of Quixotes' tale would have been portrayed as real, or at least experienced as real by characters including Depp's cynical modern protagonist. The French actor selected to play Quixote seems well-suited to the part of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, but appears in too few completed scenes for the viewer of LILM to draw any further conclusions.
I was struck by the degree to which Gilliam's production effort seemed to be slapdash and disorganized from the beginning. He seems to have started production without any firm scheduling commitments from key actresses, with inadequate scouting of exterior locations, and (incredibly) without confirmed access to any professional-quality indoor sound stage. The various disasters that are visited upon the film crew might not have stopped a better-prepared team. I wonder -- is this kind of seat-of-the-pants flying typical of professional movie production?
I would love to see what Gilliam would make of Don Quixote, but based on this documentary, the failure of the production seems to have been the result of poor organization and preparation, not an Act of God. Let's hope he's better prepared if he ever essays it again.
Lost in La Mancha Documentary chronicle of a film production gone horribly, abortively wrong. Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python alumnus and director of films like Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, seeks to create a modern film adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' classic satire of knight-errantry, Don Quixote. Unfortunately, according to LILM, the production of the latter film has won Gilliam a reputation as a spendthrift, which limits his access to funding. Minor obstacles snowball into disasters: scheduling conflicts, ailing actors, torrential flash floods, the Spanish Air Force....
It's hard to tell what the finished Gilliam film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, would have been like. It would have featured Johnny Depp as a modern-day advertising man somehow transported into the medieval Spain of Cervantes' story, much like the protagonist of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. A couple of scenes discussed in LILM suggest that the Depp character would have been -- at least initially -- sarcastic and dismissive of Quixote's tales of chivalry. Other scenes suggest that the giants and other fantastical elements of Quixotes' tale would have been portrayed as real, or at least experienced as real by characters including Depp's cynical modern protagonist. The French actor selected to play Quixote seems well-suited to the part of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, but appears in too few completed scenes for the viewer of LILM to draw any further conclusions.
I was struck by the degree to which Gilliam's production effort seemed to be slapdash and disorganized from the beginning. He seems to have started production without any firm scheduling commitments from key actresses, with inadequate scouting of exterior locations, and (incredibly) without confirmed access to any professional-quality indoor sound stage. The various disasters that are visited upon the film crew might not have stopped a better-prepared team. I wonder -- is this kind of seat-of-the-pants flying typical of professional movie production?
I would love to see what Gilliam would make of Don Quixote, but based on this documentary, the failure of the production seems to have been the result of poor organization and preparation, not an Act of God. Let's hope he's better prepared if he ever essays it again.
Fun Fact:
Charlton Heston was born with the name John Carter. Too bad he never got the chance to play himself.
Charlton Heston was born with the name John Carter. Too bad he never got the chance to play himself.
Recent viewings:
Bowling for Columbine. Michael Moore can be a very effective documentarian, and very effective at satirizing the arrogant cluelessness of our modern-day aristocracy. He can also be pretentious, pompous, hypocritically self-righteous and meanspirited -- a textbook example of the very tendencies he mocks. Unfortunately, that's the side of him that's on display here, especially in the final segment of the film, in which he opportunistically badgers a frail and visibly ill Charlton Heston over the latter's long involvement with the National Rifle Association. It's sort of like watching a smug, fat hyena harass an elderly lion that could have broken him in half with a mere paw-flick in healthier days. Disgraceful.
Other than giving Moore a chance to bully and mock an aging hero with Alzheimer's disease, the film has no real focus or organization. It sort of wanders around aimlessly, presenting minor factoids about guns in American history and pop culture, documentary footage of the Columbine murders, and some of Moore's trademarked self-promoting media grandstanding, until Moore gets his apparently much-desired opportunity to hector a man who spent most of his career campaigning for civil rights and other American freedoms.
Not recommended.
Bowling for Columbine. Michael Moore can be a very effective documentarian, and very effective at satirizing the arrogant cluelessness of our modern-day aristocracy. He can also be pretentious, pompous, hypocritically self-righteous and meanspirited -- a textbook example of the very tendencies he mocks. Unfortunately, that's the side of him that's on display here, especially in the final segment of the film, in which he opportunistically badgers a frail and visibly ill Charlton Heston over the latter's long involvement with the National Rifle Association. It's sort of like watching a smug, fat hyena harass an elderly lion that could have broken him in half with a mere paw-flick in healthier days. Disgraceful.
Other than giving Moore a chance to bully and mock an aging hero with Alzheimer's disease, the film has no real focus or organization. It sort of wanders around aimlessly, presenting minor factoids about guns in American history and pop culture, documentary footage of the Columbine murders, and some of Moore's trademarked self-promoting media grandstanding, until Moore gets his apparently much-desired opportunity to hector a man who spent most of his career campaigning for civil rights and other American freedoms.
Not recommended.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Big Brother is listening to you
This humble little personal blog doesn't even pretend to be a comprehensive news source. But this story is just too big to ignore.
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls (USA Today)
This is in direct contravention of the law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a class-action suit against AT&T's participation in the scheme, which is forbidden by Section 222 of the Communications Act (as described in the article linked above.)
The Bush administration's response has been, basically, a big f*ck-you. "Rule of law? We don't need no schtinkin' rule of law. Shut up because we say so."
Meanwhile, Bush's appointee to head the CIA is none other than the military officer who ran this blatantly illegal scheme to spy on American citizens. Not "terra-ists" or criminals. All American citizens. That includes you, your Aunt Mabel, your friends, your co-workers. It includes everyone whom the ruling political deems a political "threat" or wishes to exert pressure on. It's well documented that this includes Catholic pacifist groups, the Quakers, and just about anyone who isn't in lockstep with the Bushite drive for perpetual war and absolute "unitary executive" power.
"Unitary executive" is a synonym for dictator.
Meanwhile, in little-remarked news, Dick Cheney's cronies at Halliburton have received yet another sweetheart no-bid contract, this time to construct a series of military prisons within the United States. The stated purpose is to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs".
Just what "new programs" are contemplated that might require such a chain of concentration camps? And why does the government need to compile a massive database of its citizens' personal communications?
Well, I don't know, not being a "unitary executive". But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, offers some helpful suggestions to our torture-authorizing Attorney General:
Meanwhile, the Army mutters something about a "Civilian Inmate Labor Program".
Elections are coming up. Gotta be ready for 'em.
This humble little personal blog doesn't even pretend to be a comprehensive news source. But this story is just too big to ignore.
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls (USA Today)
This is in direct contravention of the law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a class-action suit against AT&T's participation in the scheme, which is forbidden by Section 222 of the Communications Act (as described in the article linked above.)
The Bush administration's response has been, basically, a big f*ck-you. "Rule of law? We don't need no schtinkin' rule of law. Shut up because we say so."
Meanwhile, Bush's appointee to head the CIA is none other than the military officer who ran this blatantly illegal scheme to spy on American citizens. Not "terra-ists" or criminals. All American citizens. That includes you, your Aunt Mabel, your friends, your co-workers. It includes everyone whom the ruling political deems a political "threat" or wishes to exert pressure on. It's well documented that this includes Catholic pacifist groups, the Quakers, and just about anyone who isn't in lockstep with the Bushite drive for perpetual war and absolute "unitary executive" power.
"Unitary executive" is a synonym for dictator.
Meanwhile, in little-remarked news, Dick Cheney's cronies at Halliburton have received yet another sweetheart no-bid contract, this time to construct a series of military prisons within the United States. The stated purpose is to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs".
Just what "new programs" are contemplated that might require such a chain of concentration camps? And why does the government need to compile a massive database of its citizens' personal communications?
Well, I don't know, not being a "unitary executive". But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, offers some helpful suggestions to our torture-authorizing Attorney General:
“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.This is the "unitary executive", you may recall, who has asserted that, for the duration of the fraudulent war which he has illegally started and intends to continue perpetually, he has the power to arbitrarily arrest any American citizen and imprison them indefinitely without ever showing any legal cause for doing so.
“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.
“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”
Meanwhile, the Army mutters something about a "Civilian Inmate Labor Program".
Elections are coming up. Gotta be ready for 'em.
It's... it's.... it's....
The Amazing Flying President!
He seems to be looking for his approval ratings. Can you help him find them?
The Amazing Flying President!
He seems to be looking for his approval ratings. Can you help him find them?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
None dare call it....
Florence King, in the May 22 issue of National Review, dares speak the word that other conservatives dare not apply to Iraq.
Florence King, in the May 22 issue of National Review, dares speak the word that other conservatives dare not apply to Iraq.
Iraq "might be approaching" a civil war. It "could be spiraling into" a civil war. "If it were" a civil war. "It could turn into" a civil war. "It may be an undeclared" civil war. On and on it went: "on the brink of" a civil war, a civil war "is imminent.. over the horizon... threatening." There was even a "quasi-civil war", and, influenced no doubt by endless cancer-awareness spots, someone described a "pre-civil war" and predicted that "it could metastasize" into the real thing....
Conspiracy theorists on both sides of the political spectrum are no doubt in ecstasy over this festival of temporizing. Oliver Stone could get two movies out of it: 1) The liberal media want to start a civil war in Iraq while our troops are there so they will be killed in it, 2) A great big fat civil war is already in progress but the conservative media are under orders from the White House to play down the fiasco.
It has nothing to do with conspiracy. It's psychological projection, a head game we play on ourselves when we attribute our own situation to somebody else. WE are afraid of having a civil war, so we convince ourselves that Iraq is NOT having one.
SS France
Yet another example of our endemic cultural amnesia.
It's unfortunate that, even if I were able to afford a trip to Europe or some other overseas destination, I wouldn't have enough time to take the leisurely ocean-liner route. Nor, it seems, any ship on which to sail.
Yet another example of our endemic cultural amnesia.
It's unfortunate that, even if I were able to afford a trip to Europe or some other overseas destination, I wouldn't have enough time to take the leisurely ocean-liner route. Nor, it seems, any ship on which to sail.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Over the transom
(or, cleaning out that file of stuff I've been meaning to blog about for the last three months)
The next time you think about how much you or your employer is pouring into the gaping, sucking vortex of health insurance, just remember that it's going to a good cause.
Katrina survivors are forced to squabble with their insurance companies over whether the damage to their insured property was caused by floods or winds.
Trent Lott, staunch Republican partisan for "tort reform" to limit individual's ability to sue corporations for misbehavior, has a sudden change of heart.
Walgreens has helpfully sent me -- or, rather, themselves -- a check for $20.00. On the check is the following note, in type about 2 millimeters high.
Mike Shatzkin, speaking to a publishers' association, discusses Publishing and Digital Change : What's Next? Among the topics discussed: the "problem" of college students being able to purchase used copies of textbooks and how publishers can use digital textbooks to "solve" it. Also, how to "solve" the "problem" of a global free trade in books, which limits the publishers' ability to selectively price-gouge North American and European students.
And, lastly, the Historical Society of Michigan is planning their Upper Peninsula History conference for June 23-25 in Escanaba. I probably won't be able to make it. But anyone feels like making the trek, let me know.
(or, cleaning out that file of stuff I've been meaning to blog about for the last three months)
The next time you think about how much you or your employer is pouring into the gaping, sucking vortex of health insurance, just remember that it's going to a good cause.
Katrina survivors are forced to squabble with their insurance companies over whether the damage to their insured property was caused by floods or winds.
Trent Lott, staunch Republican partisan for "tort reform" to limit individual's ability to sue corporations for misbehavior, has a sudden change of heart.
Walgreens has helpfully sent me -- or, rather, themselves -- a check for $20.00. On the check is the following note, in type about 2 millimeters high.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Purchase of a new or transferred prescription required (prescriptions cannot be transferred from another Walgreens.) Give check to phamracist at time of prescription purchase. Offer not valid with Medicaid, Medicare, or any other governmental programs or where prohibited by law. Cannot be combined with other offers, limit one check per customer.Oh well. At least it's good for something.
Good toward any purchase except prescriptions, co-pays, liquor, tobacco and dairy as restricted.
Mike Shatzkin, speaking to a publishers' association, discusses Publishing and Digital Change : What's Next? Among the topics discussed: the "problem" of college students being able to purchase used copies of textbooks and how publishers can use digital textbooks to "solve" it. Also, how to "solve" the "problem" of a global free trade in books, which limits the publishers' ability to selectively price-gouge North American and European students.
And, lastly, the Historical Society of Michigan is planning their Upper Peninsula History conference for June 23-25 in Escanaba. I probably won't be able to make it. But anyone feels like making the trek, let me know.
A hero for our times
Rex Libris!
Preview here; Action figures here. (No, not really, but it would be pretty to think so.)
Rex Libris!
Preview here; Action figures here. (No, not really, but it would be pretty to think so.)
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
A disturbing development
Chicago gangs are reportedly having members join the military for training in urban warfare.
Chicago gangs are reportedly having members join the military for training in urban warfare.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Would you send work to this company?
More noise-n-smoke about the "book packager" involved in the Opal Mehta plagiarism case. Another author asserts that they similarly plagiarized her draft manuscript after "rejecting" it.
More noise-n-smoke about the "book packager" involved in the Opal Mehta plagiarism case. Another author asserts that they similarly plagiarized her draft manuscript after "rejecting" it.
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