Recent viewings
Aria (1987). This is a very odd film. Ten directors were, apparently given carte blanche to produce short films to visually accompany music from various operas. In effect, it's like opera MTV.
The nature and quality of the results is all over the map.
Ken Russell's dreamlike "Nessun Dorma" is easily the most striking and memorable. In the film's most arresting visual image, a woman appears to float in midair among softly glowing clouds while mysterious barbaric figures adorn her body with gleaming rubies. There are subtle hints that all may not be quite as it seems, however. It's an effective surreal short film, and unlike some of the other ones, it has a story which arguably has something to do with the text of the song.
Franc Roddam's "Liebestod" is a dramatic, if depressing, tale of a pair of beautiful but troubled young lovers headed for Las Vegas.
Derek Jarman's "Depuis de jour" offers an affecting series of images as an aging woman fondly recalls a love affair of her youth.
Unfortunately, there are more misses than hits.
The opening segment, "Un ballo in maschera" by Nicholas Roeg, is a rather silly story of political intrigue about "King Zog" of Albania and an attempted assassination. For no apparent reason, King Zog is played by a woman in unconvincing male drag.
Jean-Luc Godard's segment "Armide" has a pair of young women acting distracted and fondling themselves while watching a bunch of musclebound bodybuilders work out. The bodybuilders ignore them. The women strip and start dancing around naked. The bodybuilders still ignore them. The women start threatening them with knives in between seduction attempts, and then start posing "artistically" and screaming in orchestrated rythym. Yes, it's as stupid and exploitative as it sounds, and even more pretentious.
Bruce Bereford's "Die Todt Stadt" offers more naked eye candy, but at least the lovers don't do anything weirder than strip each other out of their sumptuous Renaissance costumes and sing (or, rather lip-synch) to each other naked on a bed.
Julien Temple tries to follow the adulterous spirit of "Rigoletto" with a story of a kinky Hollywood husband and wife, each of whom is secretly cheating on the other. Unbeknownst to each other they simultaneously take their lovers to something that looks like a bordello with themed rooms. He takes a starlet to the "Neanderthal Room". She takes a gigolo to the German mountaineer room. He fondles stuffed animals and tries to get his "date" to take Ecstacy. She dresses up in a baa-lamb costume while her lover dresses up in a Alpine yodeler's outfit. Farce ensues as the cheating hubby and wife almost catch each other repeatedly while wandering around the bordello. Yes, it's as silly as it sounds. No, the comedy doesn't work. Neither is it particularly sexy, unless you happen to share the weird fetishes hinted at.
There's also some kind of story apparently being told through a series of interludes between the segments, in which an opera singer arrives at the opera house, walks through its various rooms, costumes himself, and finally performs the climactic song from "I Pagliacci" to an auditorium empty except for one woman. I suppose there must be a story there, although I couldn't tell what it was.
It's a mixed bag, sort of like sitting down and watching ten randomly-assorted MTV videos.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The highly-selective War on Terror
The U.S. releases a suspected terrorist sought by the Venezuelan government on credible charges of planting a bomb on a Cuban airliner and thereby murdering 73 people.
From a New York Times editorial:
Well, isn't it nice that the Bush Administration is terribly concerned about people being tortured. The lesson here? Terrorism and mass murder are A-okay with the Bush Administration if you have the right connections.
The U.S. releases a suspected terrorist sought by the Venezuelan government on credible charges of planting a bomb on a Cuban airliner and thereby murdering 73 people.
From a New York Times editorial:
Upon Mr. Posada’s capture, the government of President Hugo Chávez demanded his extradition. But the Bush administration has refused to extradite Mr. Posada to Venezuela or Cuba, claiming that it fears he will be tortured in those countries. In fact, Washington’s reluctance is more likely linked to Mr. Posada’s history as a Central Intelligence Agency operative and a darling of extremist sectors of the powerful Cuban-American community in Florida (he tried to assassinate Fidel Castro with C-4 explosives placed in an auditorium packed with students in Panama in 2000). Twenty-two months have passed since Venezuela formally asked for his extradition, offering 2,000 pages of documentary evidence to substantiate its claim, yet the State Department has not even acknowledged receiving the request.(More news here in case you're one of those people who refuses to believe anything reported in the New York Times).
Well, isn't it nice that the Bush Administration is terribly concerned about people being tortured. The lesson here? Terrorism and mass murder are A-okay with the Bush Administration if you have the right connections.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Recent Reads
Zounds! A Browser's Dictionary of Interjections, by Mark Dunn. The author of Ella Minnow Pea helpfully defines and traces the origins of hundreds of exclamatory utterances. Some are well known: Bah! Gadzooks! Grr! Jeepers. Others, like "imbars bidbib", are uncommon enough that I wonder whether the savvy reader should apply its meaning to the tome in hand. If so, it's a clever joke embedded in an entertaining and otherwise useful little book.
Zounds! A Browser's Dictionary of Interjections, by Mark Dunn. The author of Ella Minnow Pea helpfully defines and traces the origins of hundreds of exclamatory utterances. Some are well known: Bah! Gadzooks! Grr! Jeepers. Others, like "imbars bidbib", are uncommon enough that I wonder whether the savvy reader should apply its meaning to the tome in hand. If so, it's a clever joke embedded in an entertaining and otherwise useful little book.
Recent reads
Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay. A thriller with a protagonist as twisted as the enemies he pursues. Dexter, you see, is a psychopathic serial killer. But that's alright, sort of, because his stepfather, a retired cop, carefully trained him to submerge that side of his personality in everyday life and selectively direct it only at people who, in some way, deserve such treatment. Murderers, for example. Child rapists. And so forth. And since Dexter works in an urban police department, he has lots of targets to pick from, targets who would otherwise go unpunished for their wicked misdeeds.
Dexter also has difficulties with relationships, because as he constantly reminds the reader in first-person narration, he is totally incapable of feeling normal emotions like love or friendship. He's learned to fake it, and even has a girlfriend and a more-or-less normal-looking family relationship with his adoptive sister. But it's all based on observation and imitation of other people, not on actual feeling.
The plot thickens when a bevy of murder victims start showing up around the city, all killed in ways that seem oddly familiar to our twisted antihero. Is Dexter himself somehow involved without consciously knowing it? Or could there be someone else out there who shares his bizarre compulsions?
Dexter is a warped and disturbing character, but most readers will feel a degree of sympathy for him, not only because he narrates the book in a wryly self-deprecating fashion, fully aware of his own problems, but because most of us have had similar, if less extreme, feelings. Who has not, in the throes of some great upset, wished torment on another human being? The sane among us know to suppress those urges, but like Dexter, we feel them all the same. It's an exaggerated take on the old Freudian battle between the id and the superego.
Lindsay effectively develops his plot, with tension rising steadily as Dexter and his mysterious nemesis/alter ego inexorably converge upon each other. It's an effective one-shot thriller, but I question whether the scenario he's created can sustain a long series of books, let alone a TV show. One possible avenue for further development would be to explore the moral, emotional and psychological ramifications if the coldly-controlled Dexter were to accidentally choose an innocent person as victim. This could easily happen, even given his access to police files, given the number of convicted criminals who are eventually proven innocent. How could he, then, justify his own existence, if he no longer had the excuse that his victims "deserved it"?
Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay. A thriller with a protagonist as twisted as the enemies he pursues. Dexter, you see, is a psychopathic serial killer. But that's alright, sort of, because his stepfather, a retired cop, carefully trained him to submerge that side of his personality in everyday life and selectively direct it only at people who, in some way, deserve such treatment. Murderers, for example. Child rapists. And so forth. And since Dexter works in an urban police department, he has lots of targets to pick from, targets who would otherwise go unpunished for their wicked misdeeds.
Dexter also has difficulties with relationships, because as he constantly reminds the reader in first-person narration, he is totally incapable of feeling normal emotions like love or friendship. He's learned to fake it, and even has a girlfriend and a more-or-less normal-looking family relationship with his adoptive sister. But it's all based on observation and imitation of other people, not on actual feeling.
The plot thickens when a bevy of murder victims start showing up around the city, all killed in ways that seem oddly familiar to our twisted antihero. Is Dexter himself somehow involved without consciously knowing it? Or could there be someone else out there who shares his bizarre compulsions?
Dexter is a warped and disturbing character, but most readers will feel a degree of sympathy for him, not only because he narrates the book in a wryly self-deprecating fashion, fully aware of his own problems, but because most of us have had similar, if less extreme, feelings. Who has not, in the throes of some great upset, wished torment on another human being? The sane among us know to suppress those urges, but like Dexter, we feel them all the same. It's an exaggerated take on the old Freudian battle between the id and the superego.
Lindsay effectively develops his plot, with tension rising steadily as Dexter and his mysterious nemesis/alter ego inexorably converge upon each other. It's an effective one-shot thriller, but I question whether the scenario he's created can sustain a long series of books, let alone a TV show. One possible avenue for further development would be to explore the moral, emotional and psychological ramifications if the coldly-controlled Dexter were to accidentally choose an innocent person as victim. This could easily happen, even given his access to police files, given the number of convicted criminals who are eventually proven innocent. How could he, then, justify his own existence, if he no longer had the excuse that his victims "deserved it"?
Recent reads
The marriage of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Walter Pater (excerpted from his novel Marius the Epicurean.) At one time I actually intended to read Marius the Epicurean. Pater's prose dissuaded me from this intention within a few pages.
However, his ornate, pseudo-archaic style is more palatable in small doses, and this adaptation of the well-known legend from Apuleius flows quickly by at a modest 64 pages. The first few pages are the toughest going, as two of Pater's rather stilted characters stumble across a copy of Apuleius's Transformations, or The Golden Ass, and being exploring its forbidden tales of magic and misadventure. Once the story of Psyche and her mysterious, supernatural lover begins, Pater's boys are as thoroughly forgotten as Lessingham in The Worm Ouroboros. The story is a classic fairy tale, perhaps even a direct ancestor of the kind of tales that the Grimm brothers collected centuries later. Edmund Dulac's stylized watercolor illustrations in this 1951 Heritage Press edition, both naughtily naked and oddly innocent, add an occasional splash of color to the handsome printing.
The marriage of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Walter Pater (excerpted from his novel Marius the Epicurean.) At one time I actually intended to read Marius the Epicurean. Pater's prose dissuaded me from this intention within a few pages.
However, his ornate, pseudo-archaic style is more palatable in small doses, and this adaptation of the well-known legend from Apuleius flows quickly by at a modest 64 pages. The first few pages are the toughest going, as two of Pater's rather stilted characters stumble across a copy of Apuleius's Transformations, or The Golden Ass, and being exploring its forbidden tales of magic and misadventure. Once the story of Psyche and her mysterious, supernatural lover begins, Pater's boys are as thoroughly forgotten as Lessingham in The Worm Ouroboros. The story is a classic fairy tale, perhaps even a direct ancestor of the kind of tales that the Grimm brothers collected centuries later. Edmund Dulac's stylized watercolor illustrations in this 1951 Heritage Press edition, both naughtily naked and oddly innocent, add an occasional splash of color to the handsome printing.
Academic career advice:
Ignore the students as much as you can. Or, as a pseudonymous writer in the Chronicle puts it, Don't Give It Your Best. Whether students learn anything doesn't matter to your career.
Ignore the students as much as you can. Or, as a pseudonymous writer in the Chronicle puts it, Don't Give It Your Best. Whether students learn anything doesn't matter to your career.
"He had congratulated me when I told him about my new teaching job and then had issued a warning: Don't give it your best," he said. "Don't do more than the bare minimum you can get away with. This system will chew you up and spit you out if you aren't careful. Take care of your own interests, your own work."...
...I can't help noticing a pattern when I look around at other recent Ph.D.'s on the job market with me. The ones who have had job interviews, and offers, aren't the ones who seem most dedicated to their teaching. They're the ones who have most aggressively pursued publication....
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Recent viewings
The New World (2005) . Pretty, pretty scenery. Pretty, pretty people. Pretty, pretty cinematography.
Deadly dull and deadly slow plot.
Q'Orianka Kilcher (cousin to singer Jewel Kilcher) is a lithe and attractive Pocahontas, with quick, graceful, leaping, dancing movements reminiscent of a wild doe. Colin Farrell, unfortunately, is comparatively lifeless as Captain John Smith. He seems to spend most of his time either silently moping or aimlessly wandering in slow motion through the wilderness, gazing about with a soulfully moronic look on his face.
Director Terence Malick is pretty clearly playing on the noble-savage motif here. Pocahontas's people all move like ballet dancers portraying idealized wild animals, while the English colonists other than the saintly naif John Smith alternate between brutal stupidity (grubbing for gold in muddy hillsides instead of building shelters or collecting food) and stupid brutality (killing and cannibalizing each other, attacking the Indians, etc.).
Realpolitik does turn out to play a role in the life of the Indians (or "naturals", as the colonists call them), as Powhatan and his advisors contemplate killing Smith and the rest of the colonists to keep them from seizing the land. As the famous legend relates, Pocahontas saves Smith's life and then, in the film, prompts her people to supply provisions to the stupidly starving English. Smith, after returning from his sojourn among the "naturals", unwittingly becomes part of a coup against the former leader of the colonists and must take on the role of a hard-counseling leader to chivvy the reluctant, lazy and badly organized English into surviving the winter. This is an improvement over wandering aimlessly through the woods, although there are intimations that it will lead to him treating Pocahontas badly.
Unfortunately, I can't report on the second half of the movie, because I fell asleep.
The New World (2005) . Pretty, pretty scenery. Pretty, pretty people. Pretty, pretty cinematography.
Deadly dull and deadly slow plot.
Q'Orianka Kilcher (cousin to singer Jewel Kilcher) is a lithe and attractive Pocahontas, with quick, graceful, leaping, dancing movements reminiscent of a wild doe. Colin Farrell, unfortunately, is comparatively lifeless as Captain John Smith. He seems to spend most of his time either silently moping or aimlessly wandering in slow motion through the wilderness, gazing about with a soulfully moronic look on his face.
Director Terence Malick is pretty clearly playing on the noble-savage motif here. Pocahontas's people all move like ballet dancers portraying idealized wild animals, while the English colonists other than the saintly naif John Smith alternate between brutal stupidity (grubbing for gold in muddy hillsides instead of building shelters or collecting food) and stupid brutality (killing and cannibalizing each other, attacking the Indians, etc.).
Realpolitik does turn out to play a role in the life of the Indians (or "naturals", as the colonists call them), as Powhatan and his advisors contemplate killing Smith and the rest of the colonists to keep them from seizing the land. As the famous legend relates, Pocahontas saves Smith's life and then, in the film, prompts her people to supply provisions to the stupidly starving English. Smith, after returning from his sojourn among the "naturals", unwittingly becomes part of a coup against the former leader of the colonists and must take on the role of a hard-counseling leader to chivvy the reluctant, lazy and badly organized English into surviving the winter. This is an improvement over wandering aimlessly through the woods, although there are intimations that it will lead to him treating Pocahontas badly.
Unfortunately, I can't report on the second half of the movie, because I fell asleep.
Recent viewings
Why should the Devil have all the good music? A low-key documentary about Christian rock music, focusing particularly on the Cornerstone music festival in Bushnell, Illinois. The movie consists almost entirely of interviews with members of Christian rock groups, interspersed with short live segments of their performances. The bands portrayed range from wretchedly untalented to moderately good. Unfortunately, the most musically appealing performer, Larry Norman, is not prominently featured, even though the title derives from a saying popularized by him.
The subjects of the film bring up plenty of interesting issues about the Christian rock genre. Is it just a pale, sanitized imitation of "mainstream" pop music? Should Christians separate themselves from that mainstream? Some of the subjects eagerly discuss throwing away their collections of secular music and carefully avoiding exposure to non-Christian radio. Others acknowledge playing in bars and similar venues, partly because they need the gigs, but also partly because they want to avoid being typecast or becoming trapped in an insular musical ghetto. Some of the musicians are interviewed amongst open beer bottles, with occasional vocabulary words that may surprise some of their fans.
A substantial part of the film is devoted to musicians and festivalgoers discussing homosexuality and how the church should relate to homosexual people. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the musicians are more open and tolerant -- at least on camera -- than most official denominational spokesmen.
It's not the most exciting documentary ever made. Nor is it a definitive overview of Christian rock music. I strongly suspect it's not even particularly representative, since most of the bands featured are hard-rock or metal-influenced. But if one is interested in the subject, it provides food for thought and discussion.
Why should the Devil have all the good music? A low-key documentary about Christian rock music, focusing particularly on the Cornerstone music festival in Bushnell, Illinois. The movie consists almost entirely of interviews with members of Christian rock groups, interspersed with short live segments of their performances. The bands portrayed range from wretchedly untalented to moderately good. Unfortunately, the most musically appealing performer, Larry Norman, is not prominently featured, even though the title derives from a saying popularized by him.
The subjects of the film bring up plenty of interesting issues about the Christian rock genre. Is it just a pale, sanitized imitation of "mainstream" pop music? Should Christians separate themselves from that mainstream? Some of the subjects eagerly discuss throwing away their collections of secular music and carefully avoiding exposure to non-Christian radio. Others acknowledge playing in bars and similar venues, partly because they need the gigs, but also partly because they want to avoid being typecast or becoming trapped in an insular musical ghetto. Some of the musicians are interviewed amongst open beer bottles, with occasional vocabulary words that may surprise some of their fans.
A substantial part of the film is devoted to musicians and festivalgoers discussing homosexuality and how the church should relate to homosexual people. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the musicians are more open and tolerant -- at least on camera -- than most official denominational spokesmen.
It's not the most exciting documentary ever made. Nor is it a definitive overview of Christian rock music. I strongly suspect it's not even particularly representative, since most of the bands featured are hard-rock or metal-influenced. But if one is interested in the subject, it provides food for thought and discussion.
On a future without cheap oil
The author of The Long Emergency opines here about the likely social and economic consequences of the depletion of the world's oil reserves. As do I, below:
Unfortunately for people in the US who would prefer to live without consuming huge quantities of oil and gasoline, it's practically impossible to do so, short of moving to a farming commune and reverting to a subsistence lifestyle. Outside of a very few urban core areas, there is practically no local public transportation, and workplaces, stores, and other vital points of contact between the individual and the society are spread so widely that for most people walking or even bicycling is not an option.
Driving to work is one of the key fuel-wasting American tendencies cited by folks like Kunstler, and the one that is least flexible in response to fuel prices. But there are at least three nearly insurmountable problems that prevent most people from living close to work as Kunstler and New Urban theorists suggest.
One, of course, is the "old-urbanist" insistence, echoed by many suburbanite NIMBYs, on segregating different property uses in widely-separated geographical areas. You can't walk to work if the zoning laws prohibit appropriate housing in the area near the workplace. Nor can you walk to the grocery store if the zoning laws prohibit retail establishments near the designated areas in which housing is permitted.
But even if zoning laws were instantaneously revoked, how is one supposed to live close to work when employers close, merge, layoff, and blithely relocate their physical locations at the drop of a CEO's country-club membership? The idea of renting corporate locations rather than owning them, so that the company can perpetually seek lower rents and hop-skip-and-jump around the country like a deadbeat debtor on the run from creditors, may look good to MBAs in the head office. But it makes it impossible for employees to make any long term plan to live close to where they work.
And what of those who are caught up in the US economy's continuing elimination of full time jobs, and must work two or three part time jobs to stay solvent? How likely is it that those multiple part-time jobs will be withing walking distance of each other, or within walking distance of an affordable place to live? And how likely is it that coordinating these multiple part time jobs will allow time for the leisurely and infrequent schedules of public transportation, if it even exists between the various locations involved?
The situation's much the same for intercity travel or travel to rural destinations. Air travel is wasteful of fuel as well as being unaffordably expensive, and Amtrak's lack of service is a perennial joke. To take one example, I couldn't travel between southeastern Michigan and Toronto by rail even if I were desperate to do so, because there is no such service.
I suppose these are just a few examples of the way in which our entire culture is fundamentally built on the concept of cheap and ubiquitous personal transportation.
The author of The Long Emergency opines here about the likely social and economic consequences of the depletion of the world's oil reserves. As do I, below:
Unfortunately for people in the US who would prefer to live without consuming huge quantities of oil and gasoline, it's practically impossible to do so, short of moving to a farming commune and reverting to a subsistence lifestyle. Outside of a very few urban core areas, there is practically no local public transportation, and workplaces, stores, and other vital points of contact between the individual and the society are spread so widely that for most people walking or even bicycling is not an option.
Driving to work is one of the key fuel-wasting American tendencies cited by folks like Kunstler, and the one that is least flexible in response to fuel prices. But there are at least three nearly insurmountable problems that prevent most people from living close to work as Kunstler and New Urban theorists suggest.
One, of course, is the "old-urbanist" insistence, echoed by many suburbanite NIMBYs, on segregating different property uses in widely-separated geographical areas. You can't walk to work if the zoning laws prohibit appropriate housing in the area near the workplace. Nor can you walk to the grocery store if the zoning laws prohibit retail establishments near the designated areas in which housing is permitted.
But even if zoning laws were instantaneously revoked, how is one supposed to live close to work when employers close, merge, layoff, and blithely relocate their physical locations at the drop of a CEO's country-club membership? The idea of renting corporate locations rather than owning them, so that the company can perpetually seek lower rents and hop-skip-and-jump around the country like a deadbeat debtor on the run from creditors, may look good to MBAs in the head office. But it makes it impossible for employees to make any long term plan to live close to where they work.
And what of those who are caught up in the US economy's continuing elimination of full time jobs, and must work two or three part time jobs to stay solvent? How likely is it that those multiple part-time jobs will be withing walking distance of each other, or within walking distance of an affordable place to live? And how likely is it that coordinating these multiple part time jobs will allow time for the leisurely and infrequent schedules of public transportation, if it even exists between the various locations involved?
The situation's much the same for intercity travel or travel to rural destinations. Air travel is wasteful of fuel as well as being unaffordably expensive, and Amtrak's lack of service is a perennial joke. To take one example, I couldn't travel between southeastern Michigan and Toronto by rail even if I were desperate to do so, because there is no such service.
I suppose these are just a few examples of the way in which our entire culture is fundamentally built on the concept of cheap and ubiquitous personal transportation.
Freedom's just another word
Continuing the proud marketing tradition of calling things by their exact opposite, a commercial aircraft designer proposes a seating arrangement called "Freedom". Looks more like packaging materials for a shipment of deactivated androids to me.
Continuing the proud marketing tradition of calling things by their exact opposite, a commercial aircraft designer proposes a seating arrangement called "Freedom". Looks more like packaging materials for a shipment of deactivated androids to me.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Behind the Walter Reed scandal
Yup, it's the usual suspects again. From the Miami Sun-Sentinel:
Yup, it's the usual suspects again. From the Miami Sun-Sentinel:
For those too horrified to read the details, here's a snapshot of the administration's greatest domestic disaster since Katrina.But, hey, you happy Bush supporters out there, I guess you don't really need to worry about that. Just slap another "Support the Troops!" bumpersticker on your 12 mpg Hummer and keep careening down the highway, flipping your middle finger at everyone and braying that libruls don't "support the troops" because they "hate America." After all, it's not as if you'll ever end up in a veterans' hospital.
It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as The Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.
Second, starving veterans' care. Since 2001, federal allocations for veterans' medical care lag behind overall health care spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.
Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. Enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses.
The final piece is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel, one reason for the shoddy care.
If you think this is an aberration, look at other ways our healthcare safety net is being dismantled.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Recent reads
Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis.
Two very different books based on the premise of an Oxford University scientific team discovering a means of time travel and using it for historical research.
Doomsday Book, published in 1992, relates the story of Kivrin (Engle?), a student of medieval history who travels back in time to further her studies. Unfortunately, things get complicated. She becomes deathly ill shortly after arriving. Worse yet, due to an error in the time-travel process, instead of arriving in a relatively safe time that she can observe without major hazard to herself, she's arrived immediately prior to the onset of one of Europe's worst outbreaks of the dreaded Black Plague.
Willis does a wrenchingly good job of portraying the less pleasant aspects of medieval life and the brutal impact of the Plague on the people and society of that time. This is juxtaposed with the modern-day impact of an influenza epidemic that strikes 21st-century Oxford while Kivrin is "away", and complicates the efforts of her friends and co-researchers to rescue her from the unexpected hazards of her assignment.
To Say Nothing of the Dog, published in 1997, takes the same basic premise and plays it for satirical effect instead. The Oxford time-travel program has been effectively hijacked by Lady Schrapnell (!), a wealthy donor obsessed with rebuilding the cathedral in Coventry which was destroyed by a German air raid in World War II. A stickler for perfection, she insists that every detail be exactly correct, every single piece of decor exactly reproduced, every possible surviving piece of ecclesiastical furniture found and retrieved. Unfortunately, a particularly ugly piece of Victorian frippery known as the "bishop's bird stump" has so far eluded her, and the deadline for the dedication of the rebuilt cathedral is rapidly approaching. It's a crisis!
Our intrepid protagonist, Ned Henry, is a researcher who's suffering from the effects of a few too many time-hops taken too close together. This tends to result in mental vagueness and eccentricity. But no matter! Lady Schrapnell insists! The Bishop's Bird Stump MUST BE FOUND!
Willis has great fun playing with the comical possibilities of time travel, the culture-shock of modern men and women attempting to explore the Victorian era without calling undue attention to themselves, and the impossibly convoluted complexities of just how a time-traveller's actions may or may not affect the course of history. In the process she delightfully weaves in bits of Wodehouse, Sayers, and of course Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, to which she alludes in the title. Victorian social classes, dogs, cats, scholars and icthyophiles all receive sharp and well-placed satirical jabs. Not to mention the status of women, the eccentricities of rich egomaniacs in all eras, and the omniscience and omnicompetence of The English Butler. It's great fun from beginning to end.
I must thank Fiend for provoking me to move these books to the top of the daunting and ever-growing pile of Books To Be Read. After reading To Say Nothing of the Dog, I can, perhaps, understand the trepidation she once expressed about the prospect of going boating. Also, her comments about the possible viciousness of swans.
Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis.
Two very different books based on the premise of an Oxford University scientific team discovering a means of time travel and using it for historical research.
Doomsday Book, published in 1992, relates the story of Kivrin (Engle?), a student of medieval history who travels back in time to further her studies. Unfortunately, things get complicated. She becomes deathly ill shortly after arriving. Worse yet, due to an error in the time-travel process, instead of arriving in a relatively safe time that she can observe without major hazard to herself, she's arrived immediately prior to the onset of one of Europe's worst outbreaks of the dreaded Black Plague.
Willis does a wrenchingly good job of portraying the less pleasant aspects of medieval life and the brutal impact of the Plague on the people and society of that time. This is juxtaposed with the modern-day impact of an influenza epidemic that strikes 21st-century Oxford while Kivrin is "away", and complicates the efforts of her friends and co-researchers to rescue her from the unexpected hazards of her assignment.
To Say Nothing of the Dog, published in 1997, takes the same basic premise and plays it for satirical effect instead. The Oxford time-travel program has been effectively hijacked by Lady Schrapnell (!), a wealthy donor obsessed with rebuilding the cathedral in Coventry which was destroyed by a German air raid in World War II. A stickler for perfection, she insists that every detail be exactly correct, every single piece of decor exactly reproduced, every possible surviving piece of ecclesiastical furniture found and retrieved. Unfortunately, a particularly ugly piece of Victorian frippery known as the "bishop's bird stump" has so far eluded her, and the deadline for the dedication of the rebuilt cathedral is rapidly approaching. It's a crisis!
Our intrepid protagonist, Ned Henry, is a researcher who's suffering from the effects of a few too many time-hops taken too close together. This tends to result in mental vagueness and eccentricity. But no matter! Lady Schrapnell insists! The Bishop's Bird Stump MUST BE FOUND!
Willis has great fun playing with the comical possibilities of time travel, the culture-shock of modern men and women attempting to explore the Victorian era without calling undue attention to themselves, and the impossibly convoluted complexities of just how a time-traveller's actions may or may not affect the course of history. In the process she delightfully weaves in bits of Wodehouse, Sayers, and of course Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, to which she alludes in the title. Victorian social classes, dogs, cats, scholars and icthyophiles all receive sharp and well-placed satirical jabs. Not to mention the status of women, the eccentricities of rich egomaniacs in all eras, and the omniscience and omnicompetence of The English Butler. It's great fun from beginning to end.
I must thank Fiend for provoking me to move these books to the top of the daunting and ever-growing pile of Books To Be Read. After reading To Say Nothing of the Dog, I can, perhaps, understand the trepidation she once expressed about the prospect of going boating. Also, her comments about the possible viciousness of swans.
Poetry Saturday
Sheepherder Coffee, by Sam Hamill.
From the anthology Poets Against War.
I used to like sheepherder coffee,
a cup of grounds in my old enameled pot,
then three cups of water and a fire,
and when it's hot, boiling into froth,
a half cup of cold water
to bring the grounds to the bottom.
It was strong and bitter and good
as I squatted on the riverbank,
under the great redwoods, all those years ago.
Some days, it was nearly all I got.
I was happy with my dog,
and cases of books in my funky truck.
But when I think of that posture now,
I can't help but think
of Palestinians huddled in their ruins,
the Afghan shepherd with his bleating goats,
the widow weeping, sending off her sons,
the Tibetan monk who can't go home.
There are fewer names for coffee
than for love. Squatting, they drink,
thinking, waiting for whatever comes.
Sheepherder Coffee, by Sam Hamill.
From the anthology Poets Against War.
I used to like sheepherder coffee,
a cup of grounds in my old enameled pot,
then three cups of water and a fire,
and when it's hot, boiling into froth,
a half cup of cold water
to bring the grounds to the bottom.
It was strong and bitter and good
as I squatted on the riverbank,
under the great redwoods, all those years ago.
Some days, it was nearly all I got.
I was happy with my dog,
and cases of books in my funky truck.
But when I think of that posture now,
I can't help but think
of Palestinians huddled in their ruins,
the Afghan shepherd with his bleating goats,
the widow weeping, sending off her sons,
the Tibetan monk who can't go home.
There are fewer names for coffee
than for love. Squatting, they drink,
thinking, waiting for whatever comes.
Thank you Stanford!
Stanford University unveils an online copyright renewal database. For reasons which are explained in their page about the collection, this makes it much easier for anyone who wishes to reprint books published between 1923 and 1963 to determine whether the book is still under U.S. copyright.
Props also to Project Gutenberg and others who are involved in this and similar projects.
(Found via Paul di Filippo's listserv comment pointing to BoingBoing.)
Stanford University unveils an online copyright renewal database. For reasons which are explained in their page about the collection, this makes it much easier for anyone who wishes to reprint books published between 1923 and 1963 to determine whether the book is still under U.S. copyright.
Props also to Project Gutenberg and others who are involved in this and similar projects.
(Found via Paul di Filippo's listserv comment pointing to BoingBoing.)
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Forbidden knowledge
Monsanto petitions the US government to ban milk producers from stating whether or not their cattle are drugged with artificial bovine growth hormones.
Because then customers might, um, make choices. And we can't have that.
Monsanto petitions the US government to ban milk producers from stating whether or not their cattle are drugged with artificial bovine growth hormones.
Because then customers might, um, make choices. And we can't have that.
WHOOSH!
French set new rail speed record.
Meanwhile, the speed of Amtrak trains is reported to be asymptotically approaching zero, as dawdling empty freight trains take precedence over passenger trains in defiance of the railroad's contractual obligations.
Gee. I wonder why so few people take Amtrak!
Perhaps the US is no longer a technology leader after all.
French set new rail speed record.
Meanwhile, the speed of Amtrak trains is reported to be asymptotically approaching zero, as dawdling empty freight trains take precedence over passenger trains in defiance of the railroad's contractual obligations.
Gee. I wonder why so few people take Amtrak!
Perhaps the US is no longer a technology leader after all.
Spring in the U.P.!
Southeastern Michigan received only a light dusting of the stuff. Only a few inches.
Southeastern Michigan received only a light dusting of the stuff. Only a few inches.
Just what are those benchmarks, anyway?
George Bush’s Land Mine, from Common Dreams.
George Bush’s Land Mine, from Common Dreams.
The supplemental appropriation package requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of “benchmarks” President Bush established in his speech to the nation on January 10 (in which he made his case for the “surge”). Most of Mr. Bush’s benchmarks are designed to blame the victim, forcing the Iraqis to solve the problems George Bush himself created.
One of the President’s benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is how the President described it: “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.” A seemingly decent, even noble concession. That’s all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his brevity was gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.
The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war....
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Watch what you eat
I'm guessing that most of the people who frequent this quiet little corner of the blogosphere are already aware of the recall of dozens of different brands of pet food which have been contaminated with either rat poison or a chemical used in manufacturing plastics and resins, depending on whose lab analysis you believe. If you haven't, check it out, especially if you have a pet that might be affected.
But the story gets more disturbing. Now the Boston Globe is reporting that one of the substances blamed for the contamination may have also been shipped to plants that manufacture processed food for human consumption. Oh joy! (See this diary from DailyKos, and the comments following, for further discussion.)
This blog seems to be following the story closely, and links to an AP story that identifies the US importer of the tainted wheat gluten as ChemNutra. (They also suggest that it may have come through other sources as well.)
Maybe it's time to start eating nothing but whole fruits and veggies, buying meat directly from rural relatives, and baking my own bread using that much-neglected bread machine that's been sitting around since a long-ago Christmas.
Personally, I find it disturbing that a company named "ChemNutra" even exists. It summarizes, in an economical nine letters, much of what's wrong with our food sources.
I'm guessing that most of the people who frequent this quiet little corner of the blogosphere are already aware of the recall of dozens of different brands of pet food which have been contaminated with either rat poison or a chemical used in manufacturing plastics and resins, depending on whose lab analysis you believe. If you haven't, check it out, especially if you have a pet that might be affected.
But the story gets more disturbing. Now the Boston Globe is reporting that one of the substances blamed for the contamination may have also been shipped to plants that manufacture processed food for human consumption. Oh joy! (See this diary from DailyKos, and the comments following, for further discussion.)
This blog seems to be following the story closely, and links to an AP story that identifies the US importer of the tainted wheat gluten as ChemNutra. (They also suggest that it may have come through other sources as well.)
Maybe it's time to start eating nothing but whole fruits and veggies, buying meat directly from rural relatives, and baking my own bread using that much-neglected bread machine that's been sitting around since a long-ago Christmas.
Personally, I find it disturbing that a company named "ChemNutra" even exists. It summarizes, in an economical nine letters, much of what's wrong with our food sources.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Recent listens
Charlotte Greenwood, episode 440808, "Train Ride to New York", via OTRCat's compilation of railroad-themed radio programs.
Charlotte Greenwood is a suburban housewife who is tall and thin. That's the central joke in this 1940s radio sitcom. In this episode, Mrs. Greenwood attempts to go to New York by train. The wartime train is overcrowded. Other people jostle her and insult each other. A golf bag falls off an overhead rack, imprisoning her. (Because she's so skinny. Get it?) The conductor is clueless. She gets off the train and tries to make her way to a different train. A helpful railroad employee gives her a ride on a maintenance car. She bumps her head on an overpass. And so on and so on. The best part of the show is the Pepsodent advertisement, which has a catchy jingle.
The most interesting thing about the episode, from a historical perspective, is the depiction of wartime passenger trains as crowded and unpleasant. This sounds plausible given the existence of gasoline and rubber rations for the civilian population and the fact that the railroads, after struggling through the depression of the 1930s, were stretched to capacity to handle the surge of wartime traffic during 1941-1945. There's even a public service announcement at the end urging listeners to avoid all unnecessary train trips, which suggests that the entire program may have been intended as a piece of wartime psychological conditioning to help reduce civilian use of railroad service.
Unfortunately, a good many people who experienced such overcrowded and slow service during the war learned the lesson too well. They permanently associated all rail travel with such conditions, and stayed away for good after the war.
Charlotte Greenwood, episode 440808, "Train Ride to New York", via OTRCat's compilation of railroad-themed radio programs.
Charlotte Greenwood is a suburban housewife who is tall and thin. That's the central joke in this 1940s radio sitcom. In this episode, Mrs. Greenwood attempts to go to New York by train. The wartime train is overcrowded. Other people jostle her and insult each other. A golf bag falls off an overhead rack, imprisoning her. (Because she's so skinny. Get it?) The conductor is clueless. She gets off the train and tries to make her way to a different train. A helpful railroad employee gives her a ride on a maintenance car. She bumps her head on an overpass. And so on and so on. The best part of the show is the Pepsodent advertisement, which has a catchy jingle.
The most interesting thing about the episode, from a historical perspective, is the depiction of wartime passenger trains as crowded and unpleasant. This sounds plausible given the existence of gasoline and rubber rations for the civilian population and the fact that the railroads, after struggling through the depression of the 1930s, were stretched to capacity to handle the surge of wartime traffic during 1941-1945. There's even a public service announcement at the end urging listeners to avoid all unnecessary train trips, which suggests that the entire program may have been intended as a piece of wartime psychological conditioning to help reduce civilian use of railroad service.
Unfortunately, a good many people who experienced such overcrowded and slow service during the war learned the lesson too well. They permanently associated all rail travel with such conditions, and stayed away for good after the war.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Aaiiighhh! That face!
I'm not sure that their statements necessarily follow from the answers I gave....
| You Are a Conservative Democrat |
 Frankly, the way most other Democrats behave embarrasses you greatly. You pride yourself on a high level of morals, and you have a good grasp on right and wrong. It's likely you think America needs to get back to its conservative, Juedo-Christian values. Why aren't you a Republican then? Because you believe the goverment helps more than hurts. |
I'm not sure that their statements necessarily follow from the answers I gave....
Recent viewings
Once Bitten (1985). An amusing period piece. The plot is pure silliness. A sexually frustrated high school student has an unyieldingly virtuous girlfriend. He and his goofy loser highschool nerd friends go to a swinger's bar in order to rid themselves of their unwanted virginity. A sexy female vampire, who needs to drink the blood of virgins in order to maintain her svelte appearance, is waiting at the bar. Turns out that she has to get that virgin blood by biting her enraptured victims on the "inner thigh". Wackiness ensues.
The pleasures to be found here are in the details. The abode of the vampire (Lauren Hutton) is the epitome of what folks of the 1980s considered to be high style: endless expanses of featureless white modernity, with occasional abstract art and shiny black electronics on display, plus a mincing butler (Cleavon Little) who manages to combine drag queen bitchiness with English-butler officiousness. The costumes worn by the high schoolers at their Halloween dance are a full-color, sequins-and-synthetics catalog of 80s cliches, from Flock-of-Seagulls hair to the Blues Brothers to poufy feminine outfits apparently made entirely of semitranslucent gauze.
Then of course there's the rock 'n' roll dance-off for possession of the beleaguered hero between the sexy vampire queen and the girlfriend, during which the virginal girlfriend decides that the way to win is to start stripping off her Raggedy-Ann costume so that she's suddenly doing Dirty-Dancing style moves around the high school auditorium in white gymnasts tights and a lacy transparent skirtlet. This makes at least as much sense as the rest of the plot. It's never explained, for example, why the Sexy Vampire Queen is uninterested in the blood of Virtuous (and presumably Virginal) Girlfriend, despite the fact that several of her previous victims are shown to have been female.
Best line: "Mark doesn't want you because you're mean and evil. He wants me because I'm nice and sweet and pure. So FUCK OFF!"
Followed, of course, by the rallying cry of the vampires: "After that virgin!"
And, oh yes, the nerdy male virgin in question is played by a young Jim Carrey, whose rubberfaced physical comedy is nicely balanced against geeky earnestness until the movie finally devolves into lamebrained chase-sequence farce.
Before it does so, there are a few nicely understated ironic digs at vampiric cliches such as the monochromatic black wardrobe and the inconvenience of not being able to see oneself in a mirror. (Just how do Sexy Vampire Queens apply their flawless makeup, anyway?)
It's stupid and silly and blatantly pandering, and its gets more so as its lame plot wanders aimlessly toward a painfully dumb conclusion, but it has a few amusing moments.
Once Bitten (1985). An amusing period piece. The plot is pure silliness. A sexually frustrated high school student has an unyieldingly virtuous girlfriend. He and his goofy loser highschool nerd friends go to a swinger's bar in order to rid themselves of their unwanted virginity. A sexy female vampire, who needs to drink the blood of virgins in order to maintain her svelte appearance, is waiting at the bar. Turns out that she has to get that virgin blood by biting her enraptured victims on the "inner thigh". Wackiness ensues.
The pleasures to be found here are in the details. The abode of the vampire (Lauren Hutton) is the epitome of what folks of the 1980s considered to be high style: endless expanses of featureless white modernity, with occasional abstract art and shiny black electronics on display, plus a mincing butler (Cleavon Little) who manages to combine drag queen bitchiness with English-butler officiousness. The costumes worn by the high schoolers at their Halloween dance are a full-color, sequins-and-synthetics catalog of 80s cliches, from Flock-of-Seagulls hair to the Blues Brothers to poufy feminine outfits apparently made entirely of semitranslucent gauze.
Then of course there's the rock 'n' roll dance-off for possession of the beleaguered hero between the sexy vampire queen and the girlfriend, during which the virginal girlfriend decides that the way to win is to start stripping off her Raggedy-Ann costume so that she's suddenly doing Dirty-Dancing style moves around the high school auditorium in white gymnasts tights and a lacy transparent skirtlet. This makes at least as much sense as the rest of the plot. It's never explained, for example, why the Sexy Vampire Queen is uninterested in the blood of Virtuous (and presumably Virginal) Girlfriend, despite the fact that several of her previous victims are shown to have been female.
Best line: "Mark doesn't want you because you're mean and evil. He wants me because I'm nice and sweet and pure. So FUCK OFF!"
Followed, of course, by the rallying cry of the vampires: "After that virgin!"
And, oh yes, the nerdy male virgin in question is played by a young Jim Carrey, whose rubberfaced physical comedy is nicely balanced against geeky earnestness until the movie finally devolves into lamebrained chase-sequence farce.
Before it does so, there are a few nicely understated ironic digs at vampiric cliches such as the monochromatic black wardrobe and the inconvenience of not being able to see oneself in a mirror. (Just how do Sexy Vampire Queens apply their flawless makeup, anyway?)
It's stupid and silly and blatantly pandering, and its gets more so as its lame plot wanders aimlessly toward a painfully dumb conclusion, but it has a few amusing moments.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Recent reads:
The Borrowers, by Mary Norton.
This classic kids' book was highly recommended to me, and so when I came across a slightly browned paperback copy in a local book sale, I took the opportunity to check it out.
For the uninitiated, the "borrowers" of the title are miniature people who live in the spaces in the walls and floor of a house somewhere in England, presumably sometime during the 19th or early 20th century, since there are references to Queen Victoria and to British interests in India. The author doesn't explicitly say so, but I can't help but wonder whether they were intended to depict one way the "little people" of rural myth might have adapted to the spread of urbanization.
Of course, it's also evident that the author has imbued this particular family of "borrowers" with decidedly English middle-class attitudes and fears of the "outside". The descriptions of their living spaces under the floor and behind the wainscoting, cluttered with furniture improvised from "borrowed" household items, bring to mind Connie Willis's adage that the Victorian era was so repressed because no one could turn around without knocking something over. And I can certainly see why the clever, adventurous and unstoppably curious Arietta would appeal to any equally curious and adventurous child who felt stifled by a parent's sense of propriety and fear of the "outside world". The fact that Arietta's ability to make a connection with the outside world brings both danger and, potentially, salvation to the "borrowers" must also have been noticed by any careful reader.
The story both opens and closes with a framing story in which a young girl hears the story of the "borrowers" from an older relative, and for a book intended for a juvenile audience, the story closes on a disquietingly ambiguous note. Although the author wrote several sequels, which strongly suggests that a dire fate did not overtake the protagonists, it is not clear at the end of The Borrowers just exactly what has happened. At a critical point, we're returned abruptly to the framing story, where the young listener and her aunt go on to discuss what *might* have happened.
I wonder whether this was intended to parallel young readers' thoughts when, say, a favorite pet mysteriously disappears amid a conspiracy of adult silence? Or, perhaps, as an analogue to later discussions regarding concepts such as religious concepts, which cannot be proven beyond a certain point and must proceed on the basis of supposition and faith?
The Borrowers, by Mary Norton.
This classic kids' book was highly recommended to me, and so when I came across a slightly browned paperback copy in a local book sale, I took the opportunity to check it out.
For the uninitiated, the "borrowers" of the title are miniature people who live in the spaces in the walls and floor of a house somewhere in England, presumably sometime during the 19th or early 20th century, since there are references to Queen Victoria and to British interests in India. The author doesn't explicitly say so, but I can't help but wonder whether they were intended to depict one way the "little people" of rural myth might have adapted to the spread of urbanization.
Of course, it's also evident that the author has imbued this particular family of "borrowers" with decidedly English middle-class attitudes and fears of the "outside". The descriptions of their living spaces under the floor and behind the wainscoting, cluttered with furniture improvised from "borrowed" household items, bring to mind Connie Willis's adage that the Victorian era was so repressed because no one could turn around without knocking something over. And I can certainly see why the clever, adventurous and unstoppably curious Arietta would appeal to any equally curious and adventurous child who felt stifled by a parent's sense of propriety and fear of the "outside world". The fact that Arietta's ability to make a connection with the outside world brings both danger and, potentially, salvation to the "borrowers" must also have been noticed by any careful reader.
The story both opens and closes with a framing story in which a young girl hears the story of the "borrowers" from an older relative, and for a book intended for a juvenile audience, the story closes on a disquietingly ambiguous note. Although the author wrote several sequels, which strongly suggests that a dire fate did not overtake the protagonists, it is not clear at the end of The Borrowers just exactly what has happened. At a critical point, we're returned abruptly to the framing story, where the young listener and her aunt go on to discuss what *might* have happened.
I wonder whether this was intended to parallel young readers' thoughts when, say, a favorite pet mysteriously disappears amid a conspiracy of adult silence? Or, perhaps, as an analogue to later discussions regarding concepts such as religious concepts, which cannot be proven beyond a certain point and must proceed on the basis of supposition and faith?
Recent reads:
High Tide in Tucson, by Barbara Kingsolver. I started to read this 1995 collection of Ms. Kingsolver's essays years ago, but for some reason got distracted after reading the first few essays. I remembered only her desciption of the hermit crab who stowed away in her vacation luggage and subsequently took up residence in a terrarium in her Arizona home, regulating his days according to the tidal rhythms of a nonexistent ocean, and her account of the high school librarian who gave her access to the world of books that changed her life. (That, and the reference to Edward Abbey "taking the TV out to the backyard and shooting it again." It's the *again* in that sentence that makes it funny, I think. Just one example of Ms. Kingsolver's faultless skill at her craft.)
Recently I had occasion to pick up the book again, and I'm glad I did. It's a captivating collections of thoughts and observations from a smart woman who possesses a degree of what we in these degenerate modern days hesitate to call wisdom. Hers is not the facile wit of the Dave Barrys and PJ O'Rourkes of the world, who gleefully toss of cynical confections of mockery that refuse to recognize any actual emotion, any actual consequences or permanent significance to the words or ideas with which they play and profit. Kingsolver lives in a closely-observed world where the events of one day are connected to the next day, and the next, as well as to the day before, a world in which ideas determine not only how we view the world, but how we shape the world, as well as the way the world shapes us.
Humor is definitely present in these pages, as when Kingsolver ruefully describes her attempt, at the behest of her publicist, to impersonate a rock musician as part of the Rock Bottom Remainders, an amateur band made up of authors which for several years in the early 1990s toured the circuit of library and booksellers' conventions. But there's also thoughtful consideration of the world she lives in -- the world we all live in -- and passion ranging from outrage at the cynical shortsightedness of warmongering politicians, to veiled accounts of despair recollected in tranquility, to clearsighted hopefulness in the final essay.
The times and places that these essays were first published also give a glimpse of just how far a writer, even a successful writer, must cast the net in order to make a living at her craft. They range from local newspapers to Smithsonian to Parenting to the New York Times Magazine, with occasional speeches to library and booksellers conventions and introductions to other people's books thrown in for good measure. As one might expect, this means that the subjects addressed range all over the map. But Ms. Kingsolvers' vivid gift for observation and her clear-eyed view of significance in the things she observes provide a connecting thread, and those essays which are informed by events in her own life are arranged chronologically so that the connections from one to the next are readily apparent.
Highly recommended. I'm going to have to make more of an effort to track down her other writings.
High Tide in Tucson, by Barbara Kingsolver. I started to read this 1995 collection of Ms. Kingsolver's essays years ago, but for some reason got distracted after reading the first few essays. I remembered only her desciption of the hermit crab who stowed away in her vacation luggage and subsequently took up residence in a terrarium in her Arizona home, regulating his days according to the tidal rhythms of a nonexistent ocean, and her account of the high school librarian who gave her access to the world of books that changed her life. (That, and the reference to Edward Abbey "taking the TV out to the backyard and shooting it again." It's the *again* in that sentence that makes it funny, I think. Just one example of Ms. Kingsolver's faultless skill at her craft.)
Recently I had occasion to pick up the book again, and I'm glad I did. It's a captivating collections of thoughts and observations from a smart woman who possesses a degree of what we in these degenerate modern days hesitate to call wisdom. Hers is not the facile wit of the Dave Barrys and PJ O'Rourkes of the world, who gleefully toss of cynical confections of mockery that refuse to recognize any actual emotion, any actual consequences or permanent significance to the words or ideas with which they play and profit. Kingsolver lives in a closely-observed world where the events of one day are connected to the next day, and the next, as well as to the day before, a world in which ideas determine not only how we view the world, but how we shape the world, as well as the way the world shapes us.
Humor is definitely present in these pages, as when Kingsolver ruefully describes her attempt, at the behest of her publicist, to impersonate a rock musician as part of the Rock Bottom Remainders, an amateur band made up of authors which for several years in the early 1990s toured the circuit of library and booksellers' conventions. But there's also thoughtful consideration of the world she lives in -- the world we all live in -- and passion ranging from outrage at the cynical shortsightedness of warmongering politicians, to veiled accounts of despair recollected in tranquility, to clearsighted hopefulness in the final essay.
The times and places that these essays were first published also give a glimpse of just how far a writer, even a successful writer, must cast the net in order to make a living at her craft. They range from local newspapers to Smithsonian to Parenting to the New York Times Magazine, with occasional speeches to library and booksellers conventions and introductions to other people's books thrown in for good measure. As one might expect, this means that the subjects addressed range all over the map. But Ms. Kingsolvers' vivid gift for observation and her clear-eyed view of significance in the things she observes provide a connecting thread, and those essays which are informed by events in her own life are arranged chronologically so that the connections from one to the next are readily apparent.
Highly recommended. I'm going to have to make more of an effort to track down her other writings.
Recent reads
Blade Runner, a movie. By William S. Burroughs.
To avoid any possible confusion: it's not the movie. It's not even a movie. It's a short book-length discussion of a hypothetical movie, and its plot bears no resemblance whatsoever to the plot of the 1982 film with Harrison Ford.
Burroughs projects a terrifying urban dystopia, a national human catastrophe brought on by a dysfunctional health system. Exorbitantly-priced medical care is denied to the working middle class, while politicians buy votes and peace with extravagant giveaway programs to drug addicts and people on welfare. Gargantuan, cash-spouting medical and pharmaceutical lobbies repeatedly block legislative proposals that threaten their profitable strangleholds on the population. Demagogues use the resulting inequities to feed racist hatred and spark bloody riots. Overpopulation and a proliferation of genetic disorders lead to government edicts making sterilization a precondition of health care. Doctors are forbidden from providing medical services outside the official health care system. Some of them, predictably, go underground. The government hunts them down. And the wheel keeps turning.
The plot, such as it is, is secondary to the setting and the backstory. I found myself disappointed when Burroughs turned, about halfway thorugh the book, from backstory to story.
In the meanwhile, we find out what a "blade runner" is. The phrase makes perfect sense in context and has nothing to do with replicants.
The most interesting parts of this book are Burrough's nightmarish vision of dystopia, and his prediction, in 1979, that the availability of health care to the middle class would become an explosive political issue. It's unclear what influence the book may have had on the movie, beyond the title phrase and the overwhelming sense of a filthy, overcrowded urban hell ruled by oppressive government and business entities.
Blade Runner, a movie. By William S. Burroughs.
To avoid any possible confusion: it's not the movie. It's not even a movie. It's a short book-length discussion of a hypothetical movie, and its plot bears no resemblance whatsoever to the plot of the 1982 film with Harrison Ford.
Burroughs projects a terrifying urban dystopia, a national human catastrophe brought on by a dysfunctional health system. Exorbitantly-priced medical care is denied to the working middle class, while politicians buy votes and peace with extravagant giveaway programs to drug addicts and people on welfare. Gargantuan, cash-spouting medical and pharmaceutical lobbies repeatedly block legislative proposals that threaten their profitable strangleholds on the population. Demagogues use the resulting inequities to feed racist hatred and spark bloody riots. Overpopulation and a proliferation of genetic disorders lead to government edicts making sterilization a precondition of health care. Doctors are forbidden from providing medical services outside the official health care system. Some of them, predictably, go underground. The government hunts them down. And the wheel keeps turning.
The plot, such as it is, is secondary to the setting and the backstory. I found myself disappointed when Burroughs turned, about halfway thorugh the book, from backstory to story.
In the meanwhile, we find out what a "blade runner" is. The phrase makes perfect sense in context and has nothing to do with replicants.
The most interesting parts of this book are Burrough's nightmarish vision of dystopia, and his prediction, in 1979, that the availability of health care to the middle class would become an explosive political issue. It's unclear what influence the book may have had on the movie, beyond the title phrase and the overwhelming sense of a filthy, overcrowded urban hell ruled by oppressive government and business entities.
News noted
"Just following orders."
US military commander orders soldiers to 'kill all military-age men' and execute Iraqi prisoners.
No doubt this is because they "hate our freedom".
In the aftermath of World War II, we imprisoned and executed Nazi and Japanese commanders for doing exactly the same thing. This commander was given a "formal reprimand." That'll teach him.
An army of mercenaries, answerable to nobody
This disturbing news article describes how Bush-administration ideologues and far-right-wing "entrepreneurs" have used US tax money to build up a mercenary, private army that purports to be answerable neither to military justice nor civilian law. This is one of the exact complaints that the Declaration of Independence makes against the King George of its time: that his government was hiring mercenary armies that were answerable to nobody and, as a result, were predictably brutal and oppressive.
It also raises the very serious question of just who such a military force would be loyal to if a rogue President, or a militarist faction, decided to seize power by force. It's not for nothing that the Constitution requires military officers to swear loyalty to the Constitution, not to whatever person happens to hold political office at the moment.
And on top of everything else, it's a stunningly bad deal for the government, a blatant war-profiteering racket that siphons money out of federal coffers into the pockets of far-right Republican cronies at an amazing pace:
Bloodthirsty psychopaths such as the commander discussed above would, no doubt, benefit from being in a mercenary army where their butchery would be immune from any oversight. And politically-connected corporations like Blackwater no doubt find it highly profitable. The rest of us should beware.
[Edit, 3/29/07. Corrected link. Thanks, Pablo.]
"Just following orders."
US military commander orders soldiers to 'kill all military-age men' and execute Iraqi prisoners.
No doubt this is because they "hate our freedom".
In the aftermath of World War II, we imprisoned and executed Nazi and Japanese commanders for doing exactly the same thing. This commander was given a "formal reprimand." That'll teach him.
An army of mercenaries, answerable to nobody
This disturbing news article describes how Bush-administration ideologues and far-right-wing "entrepreneurs" have used US tax money to build up a mercenary, private army that purports to be answerable neither to military justice nor civilian law. This is one of the exact complaints that the Declaration of Independence makes against the King George of its time: that his government was hiring mercenary armies that were answerable to nobody and, as a result, were predictably brutal and oppressive.
It also raises the very serious question of just who such a military force would be loyal to if a rogue President, or a militarist faction, decided to seize power by force. It's not for nothing that the Constitution requires military officers to swear loyalty to the Constitution, not to whatever person happens to hold political office at the moment.
And on top of everything else, it's a stunningly bad deal for the government, a blatant war-profiteering racket that siphons money out of federal coffers into the pockets of far-right Republican cronies at an amazing pace:
In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina its forces deployed in New Orleans, where it billed the federal government $950 per man, per day -- at one point raking in more than $240,000 a day. At its peak the company had about 600 contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi....."The company openly seeks more opportunity for military-style "homeland security" assignments in the domestic United States, blurring the distinction between military force and domestic policing:
"Since Katrina, it [Blackwater] has aggressively pursued domestic contracting, opening a new domestic operations division. Blackwater is marketing its products and services to the Department of Homeland Security, and its representatives have met with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company has applied for operating licenses in all US coastal states. Blackwater is also expanding its physical presence inside US borders, opening facilities in Illinois and California...."This distinction, for those of you who slept through the more entertaining parts of your civics classes, exists in order to keep rogue politicians from using military force to attack political dissenters, and to keep ambitious military "men on horseback" from seizing power a la Julius Caesar. What is the motivation for eliminating this distinction, as the Bush junta has consistently insisted on doing, first by militarizing the domestic National Guard for overseas conflicts, and secondly by placing unaccountable, mercenary military forces into domestic law enforcement positions?
Bloodthirsty psychopaths such as the commander discussed above would, no doubt, benefit from being in a mercenary army where their butchery would be immune from any oversight. And politically-connected corporations like Blackwater no doubt find it highly profitable. The rest of us should beware.
[Edit, 3/29/07. Corrected link. Thanks, Pablo.]
All God's angels are belong to us
The Mormon church claims trademark ownership of images of angels blowing trumpets. How dare those mere gentiles depict angels drinking coffee?!?
The Mormon church claims trademark ownership of images of angels blowing trumpets. How dare those mere gentiles depict angels drinking coffee?!?
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Recent reads
Pledged : the secret life of sororities, by Alexandra Robbins. Oh. So that's what all that nonsense back at college was about. I sort of observed it from what might be called an anthropological distance -- all the identical hairstyles, synchronized socializing, and earsplitting screeching-in-unison at two in the morning. Oh well. None of them would have gone out on a date with me, anyway.
Strapped : why America's 20 and 30-somethings can't get ahead, by Tamara Draut. Pablo the Electronically Absent would no doubt enjoy this book. It makes many of the same observations that he's been wont to make: that financial adolescence now stretches well into the thirties for the average adult nowadays, and that the economic and political systems are more stacked against this demographic than at any time in history. Draut backs up these assertions with both anecdotal and statistical evidence, but unfortunately the solutions she offers are not likely to be enacted, given the strong incentives that both politicians and businesses have to continue abusing young adults. After all, the soon-to-be-retiring Baby Boomers are where the votes and influence reside. Who cares about the well-being of a bunch of people who have no political contributions to offer and are too busy to vote?
The Red House Mystery, by A.A. Milne. The author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories tries his hand at a murder mystery. Parts of it are mildly witty, but other parts are so veddy veddy British that they seem almost like a parody of the English Country House Murder Mystery. This is one of those novels in which characters say things like "Right-O!" and "Ripping!" while sipping tea on the croquet court. Or in the wood-paneled library (with requisite dead body) or the inevitable secret passage. There's some reason to think that the author was aware of this. The most egregrious character is explicitly intended as a kind of dimwitted Watson-analogue, to which the brilliant amateur detective must explain all his deductions for the benefit of the reader. It finally comes off as neither fish nor fowl, neither serious enough to be satisfying as a detective story nor satirical enough to be satisfying as parody.
Pledged : the secret life of sororities, by Alexandra Robbins. Oh. So that's what all that nonsense back at college was about. I sort of observed it from what might be called an anthropological distance -- all the identical hairstyles, synchronized socializing, and earsplitting screeching-in-unison at two in the morning. Oh well. None of them would have gone out on a date with me, anyway.
Strapped : why America's 20 and 30-somethings can't get ahead, by Tamara Draut. Pablo the Electronically Absent would no doubt enjoy this book. It makes many of the same observations that he's been wont to make: that financial adolescence now stretches well into the thirties for the average adult nowadays, and that the economic and political systems are more stacked against this demographic than at any time in history. Draut backs up these assertions with both anecdotal and statistical evidence, but unfortunately the solutions she offers are not likely to be enacted, given the strong incentives that both politicians and businesses have to continue abusing young adults. After all, the soon-to-be-retiring Baby Boomers are where the votes and influence reside. Who cares about the well-being of a bunch of people who have no political contributions to offer and are too busy to vote?
The Red House Mystery, by A.A. Milne. The author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories tries his hand at a murder mystery. Parts of it are mildly witty, but other parts are so veddy veddy British that they seem almost like a parody of the English Country House Murder Mystery. This is one of those novels in which characters say things like "Right-O!" and "Ripping!" while sipping tea on the croquet court. Or in the wood-paneled library (with requisite dead body) or the inevitable secret passage. There's some reason to think that the author was aware of this. The most egregrious character is explicitly intended as a kind of dimwitted Watson-analogue, to which the brilliant amateur detective must explain all his deductions for the benefit of the reader. It finally comes off as neither fish nor fowl, neither serious enough to be satisfying as a detective story nor satirical enough to be satisfying as parody.
Recent viewings
The Pompatus of Love. The movie that dares ask the question, what on earth did Steve Miller mean? Pompadours of Love? Impetus? Prophetess? What?
In some ways it's a standard light romantic comedy, with two major differences. It's written from the masculine viewpoint, rather than the usual feminine viewpoint. (In fact, it's very much like a male-oriented version of Sex in the City. ) And it eschews the traditional contrived happy ending for a rather inconclusive collection of ambiguous outcomes that leave the lead characters not much different than they were at the beginning.
Unfortunately, the four male leads are rather obvious stereotypes. There's the Studly But Shallow Fratboy, the Blue Collar Guy, the Insecure Intellectual, and the Sensitive-but-Flaky Artistic Guy. Their various romantic entanglements are amusing but never really seem believable. Whether the inconclusive ending is satisfying probably depends on the viewer's tolerance for self-consciously hip nihilism.
The Pompatus of Love. The movie that dares ask the question, what on earth did Steve Miller mean? Pompadours of Love? Impetus? Prophetess? What?
In some ways it's a standard light romantic comedy, with two major differences. It's written from the masculine viewpoint, rather than the usual feminine viewpoint. (In fact, it's very much like a male-oriented version of Sex in the City. ) And it eschews the traditional contrived happy ending for a rather inconclusive collection of ambiguous outcomes that leave the lead characters not much different than they were at the beginning.
Unfortunately, the four male leads are rather obvious stereotypes. There's the Studly But Shallow Fratboy, the Blue Collar Guy, the Insecure Intellectual, and the Sensitive-but-Flaky Artistic Guy. Their various romantic entanglements are amusing but never really seem believable. Whether the inconclusive ending is satisfying probably depends on the viewer's tolerance for self-consciously hip nihilism.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
A candidate for weirdest fantasy book cover of all time:
The Little People by John Christopher (Avon 1968)
Nazi leprechauns. With whips. In a haunted castle. Not to mention the teenage nymphomaniac and the drunken lawyers.
Somehow I doubt that I really want to read this book. The cover's amusing, though.
The Little People by John Christopher (Avon 1968)
Nazi leprechauns. With whips. In a haunted castle. Not to mention the teenage nymphomaniac and the drunken lawyers.
Somehow I doubt that I really want to read this book. The cover's amusing, though.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Automated readers' advisory?
www.whatshouldireadnext.com.
I've tried a few sample searches. The results are intriguing. Stealing a cue from a television character mentioned in the previous post, I tried searches for Walker Percy's Lancelot and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, both books which I have read and enjoyed.
Recommendations for Lancelot:
The Thanatos Syndrome - Percy See Amazon UK | US
Leftism Revisited: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot - Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn See Amazon UK | US
Dubai - Robin Moore See Amazon UK | US
The Darwin Conspiracy - John Darnton See Amazon UK | US
Leisure: The Basis of Culture - Josef Pieper, T.S. Eliot, Alexander Dru See Amazon UK | US
Father Elijah - Michael O'Brien See Amazon UK | US
Crossing the Threshold of Hope - Pope John Paul II See Amazon UK | US
Love in the Ruins - Walker Percy, Percy See Amazon UK | US
The Lighthouse - P.D. James See Amazon UK | US
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L Sayers See Amazon UK | US
Other Percy books are a no-brainer, and the links to Catholic writings and to nonfiction discussions of leisure, culture and politics make sense. I'm puzzled by the recommendation of Dorothy Sayers, although it should be noted that Fiend does happen to be a Wimseyphile. Coincidence? Or kismet?
Recommendations for The Fountainhead:
Glengarry Glen Ross - David Mamet See Amazon UK | US
Hangman's Holiday - Dorothy L. Sayers See Amazon UK | US
The Truth Machine: A Speculative Novel - James L. Halperin See Amazon UK | US
A History of Reading - Alberto Manguel See Amazon UK | US
Ordinary Wolves - Seth Kantner See Amazon UK | US
Dave Barry Talks Back - Dave Barry See Amazon UK | US
War and Remembrance - Herman Wouk See Amazon UK | US
Bringing Out the Dead - Joe Connelly See Amazon UK | US
Future Shock - Alvin Toffler See Amazon UK | US
Paradise Lost - John Milton, John Leonard See Amazon UK | US
More Sayers! Why?
The Toffler makes sense for its focus on politics and culture, the Milton for its heroic and epic scope. Mamet makes sense for the strong sense of conflict that pervades the works of his that I've seen, although I haven't actually read the one cited. I'm not so sure about the others. What does Dave Barry have to do with Ayn Rand?
Going a bit farther from the well-beaten path of popular fiction, I next tried James Branch Cabell's Jurgen. Their suggestions:
A Stay by the River - Susan Engberg See Amazon UK | US
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn - Robert Holdstock See Amazon UK | US
12TH NIGHT - William Shakespeare See Amazon UK | US
Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy - Robert Wilson See Amazon UK | US
The River Why - David James Duncan See Amazon UK | US
Little, Big - John Crowley See Amazon UK | US
Job: A Comedy of Justice - Robert A. Heinlein See Amazon UK | US
Focault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco, William Weaver See Amazon UK | US
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett See Amazon UK | US
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco See Amazon UK | US
That's not too bad. I can see connections to most the ones that I recognize. 12th Night's hyperverbal wordplay has its parallels in Jurgen, as do the humorous take on fantasy conventions found in Terry Pratchett and the intellectual complexity of The Name of the Rose. The recommendation of Heinlein's Job is, I suppose, inevitable, since it's basically a science fictional rewriting of Jurgen.
Moderately impressive for an automated system. Added to the sidebar.
www.whatshouldireadnext.com.
I've tried a few sample searches. The results are intriguing. Stealing a cue from a television character mentioned in the previous post, I tried searches for Walker Percy's Lancelot and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, both books which I have read and enjoyed.
Recommendations for Lancelot:
The Thanatos Syndrome - Percy See Amazon UK | US
Leftism Revisited: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot - Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn See Amazon UK | US
Dubai - Robin Moore See Amazon UK | US
The Darwin Conspiracy - John Darnton See Amazon UK | US
Leisure: The Basis of Culture - Josef Pieper, T.S. Eliot, Alexander Dru See Amazon UK | US
Father Elijah - Michael O'Brien See Amazon UK | US
Crossing the Threshold of Hope - Pope John Paul II See Amazon UK | US
Love in the Ruins - Walker Percy, Percy See Amazon UK | US
The Lighthouse - P.D. James See Amazon UK | US
Gaudy Night - Dorothy L Sayers See Amazon UK | US
Other Percy books are a no-brainer, and the links to Catholic writings and to nonfiction discussions of leisure, culture and politics make sense. I'm puzzled by the recommendation of Dorothy Sayers, although it should be noted that Fiend does happen to be a Wimseyphile. Coincidence? Or kismet?
Recommendations for The Fountainhead:
Glengarry Glen Ross - David Mamet See Amazon UK | US
Hangman's Holiday - Dorothy L. Sayers See Amazon UK | US
The Truth Machine: A Speculative Novel - James L. Halperin See Amazon UK | US
A History of Reading - Alberto Manguel See Amazon UK | US
Ordinary Wolves - Seth Kantner See Amazon UK | US
Dave Barry Talks Back - Dave Barry See Amazon UK | US
War and Remembrance - Herman Wouk See Amazon UK | US
Bringing Out the Dead - Joe Connelly See Amazon UK | US
Future Shock - Alvin Toffler See Amazon UK | US
Paradise Lost - John Milton, John Leonard See Amazon UK | US
More Sayers! Why?
The Toffler makes sense for its focus on politics and culture, the Milton for its heroic and epic scope. Mamet makes sense for the strong sense of conflict that pervades the works of his that I've seen, although I haven't actually read the one cited. I'm not so sure about the others. What does Dave Barry have to do with Ayn Rand?
Going a bit farther from the well-beaten path of popular fiction, I next tried James Branch Cabell's Jurgen. Their suggestions:
A Stay by the River - Susan Engberg See Amazon UK | US
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn - Robert Holdstock See Amazon UK | US
12TH NIGHT - William Shakespeare See Amazon UK | US
Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy - Robert Wilson See Amazon UK | US
The River Why - David James Duncan See Amazon UK | US
Little, Big - John Crowley See Amazon UK | US
Job: A Comedy of Justice - Robert A. Heinlein See Amazon UK | US
Focault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco, William Weaver See Amazon UK | US
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett See Amazon UK | US
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco See Amazon UK | US
That's not too bad. I can see connections to most the ones that I recognize. 12th Night's hyperverbal wordplay has its parallels in Jurgen, as do the humorous take on fantasy conventions found in Terry Pratchett and the intellectual complexity of The Name of the Rose. The recommendation of Heinlein's Job is, I suppose, inevitable, since it's basically a science fictional rewriting of Jurgen.
Moderately impressive for an automated system. Added to the sidebar.
First and maybe only post about Lost
I've watched the first two seasons of this program. Although the first season was captivatingly weird and mysterious, subsequent episodes seem to be losing steam and losing direction. Instead of getting around to explaining the Black Smoke, the airplane crash, the Hatch, etc., the show seems to keep introducting subplot after subplot, new character after new character, and complication after complication purely for the sake of complication. And am I the only one who finds it annoying that the show's authors seem to have a consistent habit of killing off the attractive female characters, usually immediately after they've formed a romantic or sexual attachment? For a while the second season seemed like almost a weekly snuff show, in which one attractive female character after another would become romantically or sexually involved with someone, then promptly be killed off. I find this irritating to say the least.
I have to admire the reading tastes of the people on the ill-fated Oceanic flight, though. The books purportedly salvaged from their luggage, and seen being read by Sawyer and the other castaways throughout the show, make up an impressive collection of interesting books. Walker Percy, Ayn Rand, John Steinbeck, even Vladimir Nabokov. Not a single trashy romance novel or quick-get-rich marketing book or ranting Ann Coulter screed among them. How typical is this of the people you see in airports?
Edit: I notice that someone tried to comment and Enetation, as usual, malfunctioned. Try clicking on the number sign (#) to get to a view of this post which links to Google comments. I know, I know. When I get time.
I've watched the first two seasons of this program. Although the first season was captivatingly weird and mysterious, subsequent episodes seem to be losing steam and losing direction. Instead of getting around to explaining the Black Smoke, the airplane crash, the Hatch, etc., the show seems to keep introducting subplot after subplot, new character after new character, and complication after complication purely for the sake of complication. And am I the only one who finds it annoying that the show's authors seem to have a consistent habit of killing off the attractive female characters, usually immediately after they've formed a romantic or sexual attachment? For a while the second season seemed like almost a weekly snuff show, in which one attractive female character after another would become romantically or sexually involved with someone, then promptly be killed off. I find this irritating to say the least.
I have to admire the reading tastes of the people on the ill-fated Oceanic flight, though. The books purportedly salvaged from their luggage, and seen being read by Sawyer and the other castaways throughout the show, make up an impressive collection of interesting books. Walker Percy, Ayn Rand, John Steinbeck, even Vladimir Nabokov. Not a single trashy romance novel or quick-get-rich marketing book or ranting Ann Coulter screed among them. How typical is this of the people you see in airports?
Edit: I notice that someone tried to comment and Enetation, as usual, malfunctioned. Try clicking on the number sign (#) to get to a view of this post which links to Google comments. I know, I know. When I get time.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Halliburton flees US jurisdiction
No kidding. The Wall Street Journal reports that Halliburton, the monster megacorporation that corruptly controls billions of dollars worth of US military logistical operations thanks to the influence of Its Man In Washington, is moving its headquarters to... Dubai.
This is the same outfit whose stooges in the US government darkly hint that anyone who objects to the dismantling of American's constitutional government, or its war in Iraq -- er, I mean, the American war in Iraq -- just must be on the payroll of unspecified sinister interests. Because giant multinational corporations are, like, patriotic and stuff, and anyone who objects to torture, murder, lying, and corruption on their behalf could only be doing so because they "hate America".
Uh, right. And the timing of Halliburton's flight from United States jurisdiction couldn't possibly have anything to do with a change in the direction of the political winds. And it most certainly has nothing to do with spiriting corporate records, revenues, and officers out of the United States before criminal investigations can reach them. Because they're just so darned patriotic, you know. No doubt it's purely a coincidence that Dubai is in one of relatively few wealthy developed countries that have no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Additional commentary here, here, here, etc.
If anybody out there still believes that Dick Cheney, George Bush and the rest of the War Party are "patriotic Americans", that was a pot of scalding-hot coffee that just got dumped over your head. Perhaps you should wake up and smell it.
No kidding. The Wall Street Journal reports that Halliburton, the monster megacorporation that corruptly controls billions of dollars worth of US military logistical operations thanks to the influence of Its Man In Washington, is moving its headquarters to... Dubai.
This is the same outfit whose stooges in the US government darkly hint that anyone who objects to the dismantling of American's constitutional government, or its war in Iraq -- er, I mean, the American war in Iraq -- just must be on the payroll of unspecified sinister interests. Because giant multinational corporations are, like, patriotic and stuff, and anyone who objects to torture, murder, lying, and corruption on their behalf could only be doing so because they "hate America".
Uh, right. And the timing of Halliburton's flight from United States jurisdiction couldn't possibly have anything to do with a change in the direction of the political winds. And it most certainly has nothing to do with spiriting corporate records, revenues, and officers out of the United States before criminal investigations can reach them. Because they're just so darned patriotic, you know. No doubt it's purely a coincidence that Dubai is in one of relatively few wealthy developed countries that have no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Additional commentary here, here, here, etc.
If anybody out there still believes that Dick Cheney, George Bush and the rest of the War Party are "patriotic Americans", that was a pot of scalding-hot coffee that just got dumped over your head. Perhaps you should wake up and smell it.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Recent Listens
Boston Blackie: Derailed Gold Train (episode 461224) and Old 86 Is Missing (episode 470924). Episodes from OTRCAT’s compilation of railroad-themed episodes of classic radio shows.
Boston Blackie comes across in these programs as a kind of Americanized version of Lord Peter Wimsey. Certainly Wimsey must have inspired his debonaire attitude, his evident ready access to money, his logical approach to problem-solving, and his habit of getting involved in mystery cases as a kind of hobby. From our side of the Atlantic, he seems to have derived the crushing fists that every self-respecting American private eye is obliged to possess, an American accent, and the sentimental American fondness for the underdog. As the introduction proclaims, he’s an “enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend.”
Interestingly, the character seems to have originated as a criminal in his earliest fictional appearance. Just one more example of how far a character concept can drift, I suppose.
In Derailed Gold Train, Blackie uses good basic investigative skills to solve a mysterious sequence of events that seem to have no logical cause or connection to each other. Unlike certain fictional detectives, he doesn’t sit around in a parlor or a penthouse apartment and intellectually ratiocinate his way to an infallible solution. When it’s necessary to identify a wrecked car, he doesn’t, say, immediately recognize it as a rare model produced in a limited edition and purchased only by a handful of ultra-wealthy customers whose names he just happens to have memorized. Instead, he pries open the wreck, takes down serial numbers, notes its mechanical characteristics, and then checks with a car dealer who can identify it from such information. It’s quite refreshing to hear a fictional detective tale in which the investigative methods actually make logical sense, and the correct answers are not necessarily obvious from the beginning. Beware of red herrings, O unwary listener!
In Old 86 Is Missing, a train has mysteriously disappeared between stations. Decades later, Clive Cussler used a similar plot device in 1981’s Night Probe!, and relied on the same inevitable solution that Blackie discovers. There is a limited number of things one can do with a stolen train, after all.
Improbable coincidences and improbably complicated criminal schemes rear their ugly heads in the plots of these episodes, and Blackie, for all his physical and intellectual prowess, seems to have a bad habit of getting himself into tight spots in which the unexpected timely arrival of the police proves very convenient indeed. But the series is enjoyable, and for the most part it plays by the unwritten rules of the honestly-written detective story.
For those who enjoy such things, Boston Blackie features a lot of incidental organ music, some of it quite good. Oddly, each episode also includes several uninterrupted minutes of energetic organ music at its close, far more than the few seconds that one would expect as a musical transition to the next program. Did the radio station keep an organist hanging around the studio to fill up whatever time the dramatic performance failed to occupy? Did they have dead air to fill because they failed to sell enough advertising on these particular dates? After a few minutes, I found myself wondering if the series should have been called Boston Blackie And The Mad Organist.
Boston Blackie: Derailed Gold Train (episode 461224) and Old 86 Is Missing (episode 470924). Episodes from OTRCAT’s compilation of railroad-themed episodes of classic radio shows.
Boston Blackie comes across in these programs as a kind of Americanized version of Lord Peter Wimsey. Certainly Wimsey must have inspired his debonaire attitude, his evident ready access to money, his logical approach to problem-solving, and his habit of getting involved in mystery cases as a kind of hobby. From our side of the Atlantic, he seems to have derived the crushing fists that every self-respecting American private eye is obliged to possess, an American accent, and the sentimental American fondness for the underdog. As the introduction proclaims, he’s an “enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friend.”
Interestingly, the character seems to have originated as a criminal in his earliest fictional appearance. Just one more example of how far a character concept can drift, I suppose.
In Derailed Gold Train, Blackie uses good basic investigative skills to solve a mysterious sequence of events that seem to have no logical cause or connection to each other. Unlike certain fictional detectives, he doesn’t sit around in a parlor or a penthouse apartment and intellectually ratiocinate his way to an infallible solution. When it’s necessary to identify a wrecked car, he doesn’t, say, immediately recognize it as a rare model produced in a limited edition and purchased only by a handful of ultra-wealthy customers whose names he just happens to have memorized. Instead, he pries open the wreck, takes down serial numbers, notes its mechanical characteristics, and then checks with a car dealer who can identify it from such information. It’s quite refreshing to hear a fictional detective tale in which the investigative methods actually make logical sense, and the correct answers are not necessarily obvious from the beginning. Beware of red herrings, O unwary listener!
In Old 86 Is Missing, a train has mysteriously disappeared between stations. Decades later, Clive Cussler used a similar plot device in 1981’s Night Probe!, and relied on the same inevitable solution that Blackie discovers. There is a limited number of things one can do with a stolen train, after all.
Improbable coincidences and improbably complicated criminal schemes rear their ugly heads in the plots of these episodes, and Blackie, for all his physical and intellectual prowess, seems to have a bad habit of getting himself into tight spots in which the unexpected timely arrival of the police proves very convenient indeed. But the series is enjoyable, and for the most part it plays by the unwritten rules of the honestly-written detective story.
For those who enjoy such things, Boston Blackie features a lot of incidental organ music, some of it quite good. Oddly, each episode also includes several uninterrupted minutes of energetic organ music at its close, far more than the few seconds that one would expect as a musical transition to the next program. Did the radio station keep an organist hanging around the studio to fill up whatever time the dramatic performance failed to occupy? Did they have dead air to fill because they failed to sell enough advertising on these particular dates? After a few minutes, I found myself wondering if the series should have been called Boston Blackie And The Mad Organist.
Recent Reads
Pioneer Preacher : a biographical narrative about a Baptist missionary pastor in west Texas, by Opal Leigh Berryman.
In the early 1900s, George Carroll Berryman, his wife, and their young daughter moved to La Mesa, a tiny, struggling settlement on the high and treeless plains of west Texas. In the years that followed, he and his family faced drought, disease, and despair, not to mention rowdy cowboys, horse thieves, mysterious murders, political backbiting, malicious gossip, the Ku Klux Klan, the confused amours of flighty young men and women, and the oily machinations of aggressive evangelists trying to profit from his groundbreaking missionary work. Their daughter, Opal, was there to see it all.
She acknowledges, in her comments on the back of the book jacket, that she has selectively condensed events from eight years of her family’s life in west Texas into the space of two narrative years in the book, but insists that “[T]he delineation of our life at La Mesa was pretty much as we lived it. The northers, the sandstorms, the bedbugs, the pesthouse were very real. What I have tried to show is that the hard and lawless West that has been pictured in fiction as a land of bad men was also a land of good men, who worked to make it better. This is the actual story of our lives there.”
It’s natural to compare this book to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. If anything, Pioneer Preacher is grittier and more immediate. Opal tells her story in the first person, and although she as narrator is innocent of the full meaning of much of what she describes, the reader can see the forces moving behind the events and conversations she describes. She’s privy to disagreements and arguments between her father – a liberal and tolerant man who strives to see and bring forth the potential good in all around him – and her more conventionally-minded mother. They argue, and they struggle, but it’s never in doubt that they are fundamentally and faithfully devoted to each other even when they disagree. Young Opal also indirectly observes the workings of bigotry of all kinds, racial, political and religious, in the community, as well as the threat that lawless men pose to its safety and development. Her father’s well-intentioned efforts do not always succeed, and good people sometimes suffer in ways that he cannot alleviate, but his wisdom and intentions are never in doubt so far as his daughter is concerned.
George Carroll Berryman was plainly a hero to his daughter, and her memoir is a superb account of life on the west Texas frontier. It deserves to be better known and more widely read.
Pioneer Preacher : a biographical narrative about a Baptist missionary pastor in west Texas, by Opal Leigh Berryman.
In the early 1900s, George Carroll Berryman, his wife, and their young daughter moved to La Mesa, a tiny, struggling settlement on the high and treeless plains of west Texas. In the years that followed, he and his family faced drought, disease, and despair, not to mention rowdy cowboys, horse thieves, mysterious murders, political backbiting, malicious gossip, the Ku Klux Klan, the confused amours of flighty young men and women, and the oily machinations of aggressive evangelists trying to profit from his groundbreaking missionary work. Their daughter, Opal, was there to see it all.
She acknowledges, in her comments on the back of the book jacket, that she has selectively condensed events from eight years of her family’s life in west Texas into the space of two narrative years in the book, but insists that “[T]he delineation of our life at La Mesa was pretty much as we lived it. The northers, the sandstorms, the bedbugs, the pesthouse were very real. What I have tried to show is that the hard and lawless West that has been pictured in fiction as a land of bad men was also a land of good men, who worked to make it better. This is the actual story of our lives there.”
It’s natural to compare this book to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. If anything, Pioneer Preacher is grittier and more immediate. Opal tells her story in the first person, and although she as narrator is innocent of the full meaning of much of what she describes, the reader can see the forces moving behind the events and conversations she describes. She’s privy to disagreements and arguments between her father – a liberal and tolerant man who strives to see and bring forth the potential good in all around him – and her more conventionally-minded mother. They argue, and they struggle, but it’s never in doubt that they are fundamentally and faithfully devoted to each other even when they disagree. Young Opal also indirectly observes the workings of bigotry of all kinds, racial, political and religious, in the community, as well as the threat that lawless men pose to its safety and development. Her father’s well-intentioned efforts do not always succeed, and good people sometimes suffer in ways that he cannot alleviate, but his wisdom and intentions are never in doubt so far as his daughter is concerned.
George Carroll Berryman was plainly a hero to his daughter, and her memoir is a superb account of life on the west Texas frontier. It deserves to be better known and more widely read.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
New York health Nazis ban butter, meat
The much-lauded New York City ban on trans fats prohibits butter and meat. Surprise, surprise.
The much-lauded New York City ban on trans fats prohibits butter and meat. Surprise, surprise.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Under investigation? No problem, we'll just fire the prosecutor.
More on the Bush administration's policy of firing any federal prosecutor who investigates a Republican. But woe betide any prosecutor who fails to pursue a Democrat aggressively enough to suit a Republican senator! (From the NYT.)
More on the Bush administration's policy of firing any federal prosecutor who investigates a Republican. But woe betide any prosecutor who fails to pursue a Democrat aggressively enough to suit a Republican senator! (From the NYT.)
Monday, March 05, 2007
We got trouble, right here in....
... Livingston County. Certain folks are up in arms about other people's children reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Augusten Burroughs in high school English classes. And having failed to convince the school board and the population at large to obey their demands, they've adopted a new tactic.
This particular storm's been brewing for a while. Ms. Fyke and her followers initially tried to get the school board to remove the books from the high school, and adopted this tactic only after their demands were rejected by the school board after a period of comment from parents and other people. (Fyke apparently does not children or grandchildren in local schools.)
Fortunately there seem to be folks -- including bookstore owners and library directors as well as the state branch of the ACLU -- who are willing to stand up to well-funded bullies.
... Livingston County. Certain folks are up in arms about other people's children reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Augusten Burroughs in high school English classes. And having failed to convince the school board and the population at large to obey their demands, they've adopted a new tactic.
"If it's determined that these printed materials are sexually explicit matter as defined in the statue, and the distribution of which to minors constitutes a criminal offense, whether it would be a school officer or a library or bookstore person wouldn't make a difference," said Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse. "There are no exemptions for those people."The Michigan state code appears to contradict Mr. Morse, but that's not to say that the zealots and a like-minded prosecutor, or one who wishes to court their votes, couldn't make life uncomfortable for booksellers, teachers, or librarians who defy their dictates.
Morse, U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox received letters of complaint last month from Vicki Fyke of the Livingston Organization for Values in Education that assignment of four books in the schools may violate laws against distribution of pornography to minors.
Morse plans to have an answer by Monday, and Murphy referred the matter to the FBI, a move his office called "routine" but free-speech groups called "bizarre."...
This particular storm's been brewing for a while. Ms. Fyke and her followers initially tried to get the school board to remove the books from the high school, and adopted this tactic only after their demands were rejected by the school board after a period of comment from parents and other people. (Fyke apparently does not children or grandchildren in local schools.)
Fortunately there seem to be folks -- including bookstore owners and library directors as well as the state branch of the ACLU -- who are willing to stand up to well-funded bullies.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Poetry Thursday (Times Two)
Cowardice Tries to Repeat, by Walter Kaufmann
Cowardice tries to repeat
throws that succeed,
seeks what is obsolete,
snug as a creed,
lacking the courage to meet
unheard-of need.
Simply by being the first,
undefiled flings,
those that are unrehearsed
are granted wings.
What is repeated is cursed:
rote never sings.
Father Feeney, by Walter Kaufmann
Outside the Church is no salvation.
With acrobatic exegesis
the Church attenuates this thesis:
non-Catholics can escape damnation.
Said Feeney: You have to belong
to Mother Church or go to hell.
Said Mother Church: You infidel;
keep quiet, Feeney, you are wrong.
The Father claimed his view was true
and backed up by one pope at least;
his archbishop defrocked the priest,
the Jesuits expelled him too.
Then he received an invitation
to come and clear himself in Rome.
It's forged, he said, and stayed at home.
The answer: excommunication.
Now even Feeney ought to know,
if he is right then he is wrong,
for he himself does not belong:
where does he think that he will go?
Cowardice Tries to Repeat, by Walter Kaufmann
Cowardice tries to repeat
throws that succeed,
seeks what is obsolete,
snug as a creed,
lacking the courage to meet
unheard-of need.
Simply by being the first,
undefiled flings,
those that are unrehearsed
are granted wings.
What is repeated is cursed:
rote never sings.
Father Feeney, by Walter Kaufmann
Outside the Church is no salvation.
With acrobatic exegesis
the Church attenuates this thesis:
non-Catholics can escape damnation.
Said Feeney: You have to belong
to Mother Church or go to hell.
Said Mother Church: You infidel;
keep quiet, Feeney, you are wrong.
The Father claimed his view was true
and backed up by one pope at least;
his archbishop defrocked the priest,
the Jesuits expelled him too.
Then he received an invitation
to come and clear himself in Rome.
It's forged, he said, and stayed at home.
The answer: excommunication.
Now even Feeney ought to know,
if he is right then he is wrong,
for he himself does not belong:
where does he think that he will go?
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Recent not-quite-reads
Dark Sleeper, by Jeffrey E. Barlough. Barlough does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of Dickensian England -- its homey joys, its warmly-glowing hospitality, its delightfully eccentric intellectuals, its coldly vicious misers and desperate criminals. I won't give away any secrets of the plot, but the cover painting of the paperback edition, depicting a Victorian coach being drawn through a mountainous, misty moonlit landscape by a pair of wooly mammoths, should suggest to the careful reader that the quaint village of Salthead may lie far, far beyond the boundaries of Queen Victoria's realm, no matter how many British mannerisms its inhabitants continue to cultivate.
Sadly, I did not read the entire book. Have I mentioned that I find Dickens atmospheric in small quantities but deadly dull in large ones? Someone with more patience might enjoy this book more than I did.
Dark Sleeper, by Jeffrey E. Barlough. Barlough does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of Dickensian England -- its homey joys, its warmly-glowing hospitality, its delightfully eccentric intellectuals, its coldly vicious misers and desperate criminals. I won't give away any secrets of the plot, but the cover painting of the paperback edition, depicting a Victorian coach being drawn through a mountainous, misty moonlit landscape by a pair of wooly mammoths, should suggest to the careful reader that the quaint village of Salthead may lie far, far beyond the boundaries of Queen Victoria's realm, no matter how many British mannerisms its inhabitants continue to cultivate.
Sadly, I did not read the entire book. Have I mentioned that I find Dickens atmospheric in small quantities but deadly dull in large ones? Someone with more patience might enjoy this book more than I did.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Roadtrip in Retrospect
Off to Toronto Friday. Fight with traffic. Fight fight fight. Grrr. Arrive with minutes to spare. Rush to theater with Fiend. Rush rush rush.
The Threepenny Opera! A fast-paced, lively production with Mack the Knife played by an actor who -- cleanshaven, with his hair slicked back, and from a distance -- kept reminding me of a certain brother o' mine. The production took full advantage of Kurt Weill's tunes by incorporating dance routines that complemented them. A few were self-consciously stagey, but some were quite effective, most notably the sensuously, struttingly cynical "Tango-Ballad" between MacHeath and Jenny Diver. The latter can be played as either a pathetic victim or a smoldering she-devil of vengeance. Soulpepper opts for the she-demon, a slinky, Goth-eyed Jenny who plainly despises her former lover and his past treatment of her all the while she dances with him. Polly Peachum's costume and attitude seem to be derived from the image of an English society lady, which of course just augments the contrast between her and MacHeath's usual associates. The idea of portraying the play's dramaturge as a leering butcher with a mocking Anglo-Jamaican accent makes sense, but the cleaver and the hunks of meat and literal bucket of blood that he (or she) disports with are, maybe, just a bit too overtly symbolic.
Saturday: Eugene Onegin, as performed by the Metropolitan Opera. This is an interesting development: live broadcasts of operatic performances, presented in movie theaters around the globe at prices considerably less than one would pay to see the show in person. There were some technical glitches with the first act. A faint, high-pitched buzzing noise overlaid the music, and the movie theater's retractible screen did not rise fully, leaving the top few feet of the screen dark. At one point this had the unfortunate effect of making it look as though the camera were focused on the leading lady's towering, twenty-foot-tall torso while she sang her heart out with her head chopped off and out of frame. Fortunately both flaws were corrected for the second and subsequent acts.
The closeup shots also served to point out one of the conventional fictions of the opera, the fact that the people playing the roles are frequently significantly older than their characters are supposed to be. This is inevitable, of course. Those gloriously powerful voices are not developed or trained overnight, and it would be unusual indeed for any real 16 year old to actually be able to creditably sing the role of purportedly 16 year old Tatiana.
The story in Eugene Onegin moves in a leisurely fashion, with long musical diversions serving to illustrate the characters' internal thoughts. Essentially, it's the story of a doomed flirtation between a naive but intelligent country girl and a callow and self-absorbed young man, the title character. She, living on an isolated country farm, is smitten at first sight. But since he has attained the worldly age of 22 (22!), he rejects her love, claiming that he's too old for her, he's beyond all that, scarred by the world, etc. etc. Clearly, he's read Byron at far too impressionable an age. The first part of the opera concentrates on her viewpoint; the second focuses on him. In what can only be called Opera Logic, he decides to flirt with his best friend's girlfriend at a ball, in order to get revenge on the friend for his boredom at the party. This escalates into deadly duel and disaster as no one, neither protagonist nor freind, seems capable of exerting common sense. I suppose that Opera Logic of this kind is common in the genre -- otherwise there would be a lack of Byronically dramatic moments to immortalize in song.
At any rate, it all ends badly for one of our callow protagonists, but not so badly for the other. The music is beautiful, although unlike more informal operettas such as Threepenny, it has no catchy, self-contained songs that one is likely to hum or whistle while leaving the theater.
Later Saturday night:
Gasoline to drive to Toronto: $2-$3 per gallon
New operating system software: Price undisclosed.
Girlfriend who knows more about updating your laptop computer's operating system than you do: Priceless.
Sunday evening: Oscar time! Huzzah for Pan's Labyrinth, about which more later.
Off to Toronto Friday. Fight with traffic. Fight fight fight. Grrr. Arrive with minutes to spare. Rush to theater with Fiend. Rush rush rush.
The Threepenny Opera! A fast-paced, lively production with Mack the Knife played by an actor who -- cleanshaven, with his hair slicked back, and from a distance -- kept reminding me of a certain brother o' mine. The production took full advantage of Kurt Weill's tunes by incorporating dance routines that complemented them. A few were self-consciously stagey, but some were quite effective, most notably the sensuously, struttingly cynical "Tango-Ballad" between MacHeath and Jenny Diver. The latter can be played as either a pathetic victim or a smoldering she-devil of vengeance. Soulpepper opts for the she-demon, a slinky, Goth-eyed Jenny who plainly despises her former lover and his past treatment of her all the while she dances with him. Polly Peachum's costume and attitude seem to be derived from the image of an English society lady, which of course just augments the contrast between her and MacHeath's usual associates. The idea of portraying the play's dramaturge as a leering butcher with a mocking Anglo-Jamaican accent makes sense, but the cleaver and the hunks of meat and literal bucket of blood that he (or she) disports with are, maybe, just a bit too overtly symbolic.
Saturday: Eugene Onegin, as performed by the Metropolitan Opera. This is an interesting development: live broadcasts of operatic performances, presented in movie theaters around the globe at prices considerably less than one would pay to see the show in person. There were some technical glitches with the first act. A faint, high-pitched buzzing noise overlaid the music, and the movie theater's retractible screen did not rise fully, leaving the top few feet of the screen dark. At one point this had the unfortunate effect of making it look as though the camera were focused on the leading lady's towering, twenty-foot-tall torso while she sang her heart out with her head chopped off and out of frame. Fortunately both flaws were corrected for the second and subsequent acts.
The closeup shots also served to point out one of the conventional fictions of the opera, the fact that the people playing the roles are frequently significantly older than their characters are supposed to be. This is inevitable, of course. Those gloriously powerful voices are not developed or trained overnight, and it would be unusual indeed for any real 16 year old to actually be able to creditably sing the role of purportedly 16 year old Tatiana.
The story in Eugene Onegin moves in a leisurely fashion, with long musical diversions serving to illustrate the characters' internal thoughts. Essentially, it's the story of a doomed flirtation between a naive but intelligent country girl and a callow and self-absorbed young man, the title character. She, living on an isolated country farm, is smitten at first sight. But since he has attained the worldly age of 22 (22!), he rejects her love, claiming that he's too old for her, he's beyond all that, scarred by the world, etc. etc. Clearly, he's read Byron at far too impressionable an age. The first part of the opera concentrates on her viewpoint; the second focuses on him. In what can only be called Opera Logic, he decides to flirt with his best friend's girlfriend at a ball, in order to get revenge on the friend for his boredom at the party. This escalates into deadly duel and disaster as no one, neither protagonist nor freind, seems capable of exerting common sense. I suppose that Opera Logic of this kind is common in the genre -- otherwise there would be a lack of Byronically dramatic moments to immortalize in song.
At any rate, it all ends badly for one of our callow protagonists, but not so badly for the other. The music is beautiful, although unlike more informal operettas such as Threepenny, it has no catchy, self-contained songs that one is likely to hum or whistle while leaving the theater.
Later Saturday night:
Gasoline to drive to Toronto: $2-$3 per gallon
New operating system software: Price undisclosed.
Girlfriend who knows more about updating your laptop computer's operating system than you do: Priceless.
Sunday evening: Oscar time! Huzzah for Pan's Labyrinth, about which more later.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Recent Reads :
The Victorian Album, by Evelyn Berckman.
I picked this up for a negligible amount in a library sale. I was intrigued by the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, in which the narrator describes her interest in Victorian photographs and their subjects. Like her, I've noticed the way that those posed, stiff, high-contrast photographs look entirely different than the glossy, toothily-grinning portraits of today.
Of course, unlike the narrator, I have never had to find lodgings for myself and a grown daughter in an overheated urban housing market. And although I have lived in my fair share of dilapidated buildings, and explored my fair share of dusty attics full of previous tenants' discarded possessions, I have never come across quite the kind of situation that she encounters. No ornately embossed black binders filled with Victorian family photographs, no cranky and socially-ambitious landladies on the premises, no mysterious packages of correspondence to spin a tale of a century ago.
I enjoyed the atmosphere of the tale, and the way the author developed the central linchpin of her tale subtly enough that I, like the narrator, didn't see what was happening until almost too late.
The Victorian Album, by Evelyn Berckman.
I picked this up for a negligible amount in a library sale. I was intrigued by the first few paragraphs of the first chapter, in which the narrator describes her interest in Victorian photographs and their subjects. Like her, I've noticed the way that those posed, stiff, high-contrast photographs look entirely different than the glossy, toothily-grinning portraits of today.
Of course, unlike the narrator, I have never had to find lodgings for myself and a grown daughter in an overheated urban housing market. And although I have lived in my fair share of dilapidated buildings, and explored my fair share of dusty attics full of previous tenants' discarded possessions, I have never come across quite the kind of situation that she encounters. No ornately embossed black binders filled with Victorian family photographs, no cranky and socially-ambitious landladies on the premises, no mysterious packages of correspondence to spin a tale of a century ago.
I enjoyed the atmosphere of the tale, and the way the author developed the central linchpin of her tale subtly enough that I, like the narrator, didn't see what was happening until almost too late.
In other news....
News stories that have caught my attention lately, but about which I can't add much more than other sources:
The Bush administration's politically-motivated firing of highly-regarded US attorneys in order to replace them with its own partisan hacks. This was, naturally, done through yet another sneaky provision packed into the so-called "Patriot" Act, which, it's increasingly obvious, was never intended to have anything to do with preventing terrorism at all. One of the fired attorneys, Carol Lam, is receiving Bush-style payback for investigating a corrupt Republican congressman. Several are in districts that are home to prominent Democrats (Arkansas, Nevada, New Mexico....). Hence the push to dump the well-regarded attorneys in those jobs and replace them with Republican cronies who can be depended upon to gin up "investigations" of Hillary Clinton, Harold Reid, Bill Richardson, et al, just in time for the 2008 election.
Elsewhere on the frontlines of the war against fascism, the forces of freedom were defeated when a US Circuit Court of Appeals renounced the doctrine of habeas corpus, disregarding the plain language of the Constitution. ("The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." -- Article One, Section Nine). The government's case amounts to the assertion that the right protected by this portion of the Constitution doesn't exist, and that it may unilaterally sieze anyone, at any time, and imprison and torture them indefinitely without ever filing charges or showing cause. The case now goes to the Supreme Court -- if that body, dominated by Bush appointees, deigns to hear it.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a somewhat milder law that prescribed indefinite detention without cause. (The Canadians, unlike the US, have let torture remain the domain of third world hellholes.)
And, hey, does everybody know that Britney shaved her head? Yes? Yes? Okay, just checking. Gotta keep up with the important stuff.
News stories that have caught my attention lately, but about which I can't add much more than other sources:
The Bush administration's politically-motivated firing of highly-regarded US attorneys in order to replace them with its own partisan hacks. This was, naturally, done through yet another sneaky provision packed into the so-called "Patriot" Act, which, it's increasingly obvious, was never intended to have anything to do with preventing terrorism at all. One of the fired attorneys, Carol Lam, is receiving Bush-style payback for investigating a corrupt Republican congressman. Several are in districts that are home to prominent Democrats (Arkansas, Nevada, New Mexico....). Hence the push to dump the well-regarded attorneys in those jobs and replace them with Republican cronies who can be depended upon to gin up "investigations" of Hillary Clinton, Harold Reid, Bill Richardson, et al, just in time for the 2008 election.
Elsewhere on the frontlines of the war against fascism, the forces of freedom were defeated when a US Circuit Court of Appeals renounced the doctrine of habeas corpus, disregarding the plain language of the Constitution. ("The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." -- Article One, Section Nine). The government's case amounts to the assertion that the right protected by this portion of the Constitution doesn't exist, and that it may unilaterally sieze anyone, at any time, and imprison and torture them indefinitely without ever filing charges or showing cause. The case now goes to the Supreme Court -- if that body, dominated by Bush appointees, deigns to hear it.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a somewhat milder law that prescribed indefinite detention without cause. (The Canadians, unlike the US, have let torture remain the domain of third world hellholes.)
And, hey, does everybody know that Britney shaved her head? Yes? Yes? Okay, just checking. Gotta keep up with the important stuff.
A sisterhood of bigots
The national leadership of Delta Zeta sorority has made it known (NYT) that only skinny Caucasian airheads with a "dedication to recruitment" are welcome as members.
To their credit, half the remaining members at the DePauw campus quit in disgust. The rest... well, I guess they'll fit right in.
DePauw's response here. Delta Zeta's response here.
Fortunately for Delta Zeta's preferred class of members, those strict membership standards don't seem to extend to tiresome matters like not being a criminal, or passing a drug/alcohol screening. After all, it's not as if they'll ever have to apply for a job.
Online Athens, of Athens Ga., reports that 1 of 3 students arrested in 2006 were Greeks, with Delta Zeta the second-leading sisterhood of collegiate crime. In Ohio, the sorority has been suspended from campuses due to abusive alcohol-soaked hazing practices ("Activities of Sororities Stir Concerns...". Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 10, 1990). And in Texas, Delta Zeta seems to be very successful at recruiting cokeheads. Of course, this sort of thing doesn't matter to Delta Zeta sisters, as long as your daddy can pony up the bail money and "fix the charges" whenever those tiresome police bother you about stuff like that. Silly police! Don't they know that they're only supposed to arrest fat people, and brown people? Like, OMG, y'all !!!
I guess if you want your skinny white daughter to be a drunken, coke-snorting airhead with a criminal record, by all means have her rush Delta Zeta. At least you'll know that she won't become friends with anyone who isn't just like her.
The national leadership of Delta Zeta sorority has made it known (NYT) that only skinny Caucasian airheads with a "dedication to recruitment" are welcome as members.
Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.
The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits.
To their credit, half the remaining members at the DePauw campus quit in disgust. The rest... well, I guess they'll fit right in.
DePauw's response here. Delta Zeta's response here.
Fortunately for Delta Zeta's preferred class of members, those strict membership standards don't seem to extend to tiresome matters like not being a criminal, or passing a drug/alcohol screening. After all, it's not as if they'll ever have to apply for a job.
Online Athens, of Athens Ga., reports that 1 of 3 students arrested in 2006 were Greeks, with Delta Zeta the second-leading sisterhood of collegiate crime. In Ohio, the sorority has been suspended from campuses due to abusive alcohol-soaked hazing practices ("Activities of Sororities Stir Concerns...". Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 10, 1990). And in Texas, Delta Zeta seems to be very successful at recruiting cokeheads. Of course, this sort of thing doesn't matter to Delta Zeta sisters, as long as your daddy can pony up the bail money and "fix the charges" whenever those tiresome police bother you about stuff like that. Silly police! Don't they know that they're only supposed to arrest fat people, and brown people? Like, OMG, y'all !!!
I guess if you want your skinny white daughter to be a drunken, coke-snorting airhead with a criminal record, by all means have her rush Delta Zeta. At least you'll know that she won't become friends with anyone who isn't just like her.
Amusing Youtube videos
Several people have sent me links to amusing videos on Youtube lately. Some of the best:
Beer a la Rube Goldberg
March of the Librarians
Medieval Helpdesk (aka Introducing the Book)
Several people have sent me links to amusing videos on Youtube lately. Some of the best:
Beer a la Rube Goldberg
March of the Librarians
Medieval Helpdesk (aka Introducing the Book)
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Poetry Thursday
On Turning Forty
by Walter Kaufman
The years of hope and promise passed --
a spreading smile on water, then
a fleeting grin that turns
into reflection trembling with
the mockery of change.
No refuge in the future left,
no certainty of promise kept
though many broke and drowned,
and no clear image of a past
that grins and grows.
On Turning Forty
by Walter Kaufman
The years of hope and promise passed --
a spreading smile on water, then
a fleeting grin that turns
into reflection trembling with
the mockery of change.
No refuge in the future left,
no certainty of promise kept
though many broke and drowned,
and no clear image of a past
that grins and grows.
Recent reads
Allies of the Earth : railroads and soul of preservation, by Alfred Runte. Runte presents a well-written and impassioned argument in favor of long-distance passenger rail travel. His recollections of the past glories of trains such as the Phoebe Snow, his praise of the way that railroads can harmoniously interact with the landscape, his criticisms of the aesthetic atrocities of the highway and airline industries, and his cynical dissection of the political and accounting practices that have governed Amtrak are all worth reading, but I doubt that he will make many converts from among those who are not already enamored of rail passenger travel.
Allies of the Earth : railroads and soul of preservation, by Alfred Runte. Runte presents a well-written and impassioned argument in favor of long-distance passenger rail travel. His recollections of the past glories of trains such as the Phoebe Snow, his praise of the way that railroads can harmoniously interact with the landscape, his criticisms of the aesthetic atrocities of the highway and airline industries, and his cynical dissection of the political and accounting practices that have governed Amtrak are all worth reading, but I doubt that he will make many converts from among those who are not already enamored of rail passenger travel.
Added to sidebar:
SF Weekly
Locus Magazine
William Contento's Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections
The FictionMags Index
SF Weekly
Locus Magazine
William Contento's Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections
The FictionMags Index
John C. Wright on, well, just about everything
Sci Fi Weekly has a long and intriguing interview with SF author John C. Wright, in which he discusses everything from his own books to classic pulp SF cliches to religious conversion to philosophy, theology, Occam's Razor, Karl Popper, and the tendency of recent YA fiction to focus on topics such as "rapist elfs sodomizing boys with thorn bushes." I have so far avoided reading his books, but perhaps that will change after reading this interview. Excerpts:
Sci Fi Weekly has a long and intriguing interview with SF author John C. Wright, in which he discusses everything from his own books to classic pulp SF cliches to religious conversion to philosophy, theology, Occam's Razor, Karl Popper, and the tendency of recent YA fiction to focus on topics such as "rapist elfs sodomizing boys with thorn bushes." I have so far avoided reading his books, but perhaps that will change after reading this interview. Excerpts:
At some point after your first three epics were completed, you converted to Christianity, having been a resolute humanist before. How did this come about?Religious dogmatism and "Christian Fiction" seem to get the satirical treatment, however:
Wright: Now, this is a difficult question to answer, because to talk of these deep matters automatically provokes half the audience, and bores the other half. I will try to be as brief and delicate as I can.
Humanist is too weak a word. I was an atheist, zealous and absolute, one who held that the nonexistence of God was a fact as easily proved as the inequality of five and twice two.
However, my disbelief began to erode as fatherhood and war pressed upon me the realities of the world. I was a Stoic, a disciple of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Seneca, who say the ground of morality is duty; but I was also a liberal of the classical Enlightenment, which says toleration is the ground of morals. Both these strands in my philosophy were naïve: Humans cannot live by the strictness of the Stoics; humans ought not live by the laxness of the liberals, libertarians or libertines. The two strands did not match. Modern philosophy, which is based on self-interest or utilitarianism, is unsuited both for war and for fatherhood. Growing aware of the defects in my system, I sought something with more experience and wisdom....
Has your writing altered fundamentally in spirit since your conversion?
Wright: Well, my next book is titled Crusaders of Aslan Slay the Vile Heretics of Mars, which is an uplifting children's fantasy story about a magic lion ripping to shreds Semi-Arians, Gnostics and Albigensians. On Mars. The sequel will be called A Handmaid's Tale of Mars, in which a benevolent all-powerful theocracy, by strictly enforcing the biblical notions of sacred matrimony and sacred virginity, uplifts the dignity of women. On Mars. And then Matrix of Mars, where a Chosen One from Zion will die and return from the dead, fulfilling the Prophecy and overthrowing the Diabolical Architect of Deception. On Mars. Oh, and Left Behind on Mars, where Michael Valentine Spith, the schismatic founder of a heretical antichurch, turns out to be the Beast from Revelations. But aside from that, no, no obvious Christian influences on my writing. None.
Relax, just kidding! These books take place on Venus, not Mars....
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
On books and libraries and copyright
The last of the batch of short news and commentary links I plan to post today.
From DegreeTutor, a discussion of the continuing usefulness of libraries.
From Tim O'Reilly, the useful factlet that only 4% of books published are being monetized, i.e., are under copyright and commercially available from the rightsholder. He estimates that 20% are in the public domain, leaving approximately 75% of all published books in the "twilight zone" of being out of print but still "protected" by copyright law.
This illustrates a couple of key points that I've harped on before. The doctrine of "first sale", which permits secondhand sellers and libraries to distribute physical copies of published materials that have been properly purchased from the intellectual rightsholder, is critically important because it is currently the only means of access to 75% of all published material. And our current regime of perpetually extensible copyright is simply insane, allowing the interests of those who control access to 4% of published material to dictate that another 75% of the world's published material be suppressed indefinitely for their sake.
The last of the batch of short news and commentary links I plan to post today.
From DegreeTutor, a discussion of the continuing usefulness of libraries.
From Tim O'Reilly, the useful factlet that only 4% of books published are being monetized, i.e., are under copyright and commercially available from the rightsholder. He estimates that 20% are in the public domain, leaving approximately 75% of all published books in the "twilight zone" of being out of print but still "protected" by copyright law.
This illustrates a couple of key points that I've harped on before. The doctrine of "first sale", which permits secondhand sellers and libraries to distribute physical copies of published materials that have been properly purchased from the intellectual rightsholder, is critically important because it is currently the only means of access to 75% of all published material. And our current regime of perpetually extensible copyright is simply insane, allowing the interests of those who control access to 4% of published material to dictate that another 75% of the world's published material be suppressed indefinitely for their sake.
How to make money as a book reviewer
"Over the last seven years, Donald Mitchell, a 60-year-old strategy consultant in Boston, has made $20,000 writing book reviews on Amazon.com...." (From Forbes)
"Over the last seven years, Donald Mitchell, a 60-year-old strategy consultant in Boston, has made $20,000 writing book reviews on Amazon.com...." (From Forbes)
I am not alone
... and I'm not the only one who hates stupid, badly designed mandatory online application software.
... and I'm not the only one who hates stupid, badly designed mandatory online application software.
Dangerous movie alert
Ed Abbey's book The Monkey Wrench Gang, famous for inspiring Earth First!, is reportedly in production as a movie. No word yet on whether Homeland Security agents will be videotaping and profiling everyone who goes to see it.
Ed Abbey's book The Monkey Wrench Gang, famous for inspiring Earth First!, is reportedly in production as a movie. No word yet on whether Homeland Security agents will be videotaping and profiling everyone who goes to see it.
Minnesota legislators have a sense of humor
... as evidenced by this bill before their House of Representatives.
(Lifted from Off Center by way of Neil Gaiman's blog)
... as evidenced by this bill before their House of Representatives.
(Lifted from Off Center by way of Neil Gaiman's blog)
Silly me.
I find this news story quite entertaining. No one in their right mind favors drunk driving, of course. But it seems rather unsporting to convince people they're too drunk to drive by rigging a bathroom urinal to talk to them.
I find this news story quite entertaining. No one in their right mind favors drunk driving, of course. But it seems rather unsporting to convince people they're too drunk to drive by rigging a bathroom urinal to talk to them.
Calling all geeks
Looks like this year's lineup of guests at Penguicon (April 20-22, 2007, in Novi, Michigan) includes Charles Stross, author of The Atrocity Archives and other ghoulishly geeky literary delights, and John Kovalic, creator of Dork Tower and illustrator of Munchkin. Also, Steve Jackson, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, and other interesting folks. If anyone's contemplating being in Michigan this spring, this would be an entertaining weekend to aim for. Where else can you commune with open-source programming geeks, gaming geeks, SF geeks, and Geeks With Guns all at the same time?
Looks like this year's lineup of guests at Penguicon (April 20-22, 2007, in Novi, Michigan) includes Charles Stross, author of The Atrocity Archives and other ghoulishly geeky literary delights, and John Kovalic, creator of Dork Tower and illustrator of Munchkin. Also, Steve Jackson, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, and other interesting folks. If anyone's contemplating being in Michigan this spring, this would be an entertaining weekend to aim for. Where else can you commune with open-source programming geeks, gaming geeks, SF geeks, and Geeks With Guns all at the same time?
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