Random updates

It's been busy in Felix's World lately. For anybody who's fallen out of the loop and still remembered to check this obscure little blog, I'm still living in southeastern Michigan and working two jobs, at places I choose to call Suburban Public Library and Busy Bee College, neither one of which is willing to staff its library with full time professionals.

I recently returned from a perfectly lovely trip to the Great White North, where Fiend and I managed to go cross-country skiing without inflicting any self-injuries graver that bruised dignities.

Tomorrow I'm headed off to a symposium at the University of Michigan which I hope will cast some light on the perplexing world of mass digitization projects such as the ones that Google and Yahoo have famously undertaken. After which I'll abscond across the border like a 1920s bootlegger goin' back for more of what keeps him goin'.

I'm a published ... indexer.

Today marks my first contribution to Bill Contento's and Phil Stephenson-Payne's admirable FictionMags Index. Now perhaps all those old issues of Railroad Magazine that clutter up my humble abode will become useful.

Over the Transom

Miscellaneous news stories that have caught my attention lately:

Phyllis Chesler discusses The Failure of Feminism in a Chronicle excerpt from her recent book.

Because feminist academics and journalists are now so heavily influenced by left ways of thinking, many now believe that speaking out against head scarves, face veils, the chador, arranged marriages, polygamy, forced pregnancies, or female genital mutilation is either "imperialist" or "crusade-ist." Postmodernist ways of thinking have also led feminists to believe that confronting narratives on the academic page is as important and world-shattering as confronting jihadists in the flesh and rescuing living beings from captivity....

The title of this upcoming action movie is about as straightforward as they come: Snakes on a Plane. I guarantee you, people will still ask what it's about.

Meanwhile, Canadian customs officials are warned by this CBC story: "[A]nyone who handles imported goods should call the authorities if they spot anything slithery."

Crunchy Cons, a book-length followup by Rod Dreher to an earlier article in National Review, seems to be arousing some discussion both on the NRO website and from local blogger Dave of Suds & Soliloquies. I'm not going to comment until I get a chance to read the book, but it seems likely that I'll find something to agree with.

Jonah Goldberg, naturally, wants to excommunicate Dreher from the One True Church... er, I mean, the Bushite Republican party.

Huzzah for Mad Science!

Avigon : Gods and Demons, by Che Gilson and Jimmie Robinson. Several years ago, I browsed through a comic book store in a suburb of North Dallas. I was looking for the hardbound collections of Will Eisner's The Spirit which had recently been reviewed in library trade journals, but something else caught my eye while I was there. It was a slim, dark graphic novel titled Avigon, by Che Gilson and Jimmie Robinson. The style of the artwork was unique and strange, with a kind of surreally playful Gothic style to it. (Robinson, in an afterword, refers to the style of the book as "the Tim Burton thing".) More importantly, the story was considerably more subtle and morally complex than one usually finds in this type of publication. When I looked for further information on the web, I found reference to an upcoming expanded version of Avigon's tale, to be published under the title Avigon : Gods and Demons.

I waited for it. And waited. And then waited some more. At one point I even looked up the telephone number of the publisher and called them. No information.

Finally, in 2005, the expanded book appeared. I have some mixed reactions to it, but I'm glad that I can enjoy it and try to get it into a library or two for other people to enjoy.

The titular character, Avigon, is a "clockwork" -- a mechanical being who possesses no rights, but does possess the ability to think. She also possesses the ability to wonder why she has no rights and whether she would be better off escaping from her circumscribed life in the mansion of her creator, the serenely egotistical "clockworker" Pulsifer. Outside the doors of that mansion lies a world of baronial indulgence for the privileged aristocrats, of Machiavellian patronage-games for the most skilled artisans, and industrial chaos for everyone else. A world in which "clockworks" are treated as disposable chattels, the lowest of the low, who can be used and degraded shamelessly or set to destroy each other in gladiatorial combats for the amusement of their "betters". After all, they have no feelings and no souls. Or that's what all the authorities say, anyway.

I won't reveal the twists and turns of Avigon's tale, nor the outcome of her curiosity. But it's an intriguing and atmospheric tale with a number of surprising twists in it. The original publication of Avigon left the story hanging after a critical moment in Avigon's quest, a bitter disappointment that left everything about her nature and her future in doubt. The expanded version provides both more background and a continuation of her tale that leads to a resolution of sorts. It's something of a disquieting resolution, but it can be read as a kind of redemption.

Disquietude notwithstanding, it's highly recommended for anyone who enjoys atmospheric, moody graphic novels.

Girl Genius : Agatha Heterodyne and the Beetleburg Clank (A Gaslamp Fantasy with Adventure, Romance & Mad Science, by Phil & Kaja Foglio).

Poor Agatha Clay. She's a poor student, in both senses of the word, at Transylvania Polygnostic University. The University's motto -- "Know Enough to Be Afraid" -- suggests that its curriculum involves something more menacing than calculus and Renaissance poetry. That suggestion is right, for Agatha lives in a world ruled by Mad Science, in the person of eccentric and megalomaniac inventors possessed of "the Spark", or the ability to create robotic creatures called "clanks".

Old-time readers of Dragon magazine will no doubt remember Phil Foglio's long-running cartoon feature, What's New with Phil & Dixie. Since leaving Dragon, it appears that Foglio has worked a spell doing similar cartoons for the company that produced Magic : The Gathering, done covers for books, and embarked upon several comic and graphic-novel ventures. One of those ventures -- the "Xxxenophile" series -- appears to be, shall we say, a Very Graphic Novel indeed.

Happily, the Girl Genius graphic novel series doesn't fit that definition. It's an enjoyable and adventurous romp through a strange, steampunk-ish world in which the grim reality of murderous realpolitik mingles with the bizarre whimsy that characterizes all of Foglio's work. Agatha, of course, is more than she appears to be, and the conclusion of the first volume points toward all kinds of interesting complications. I'm looking forward to the subsequent volumes.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys whimsical adventures.

You can't take the sky from me

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in?

You scored as Serenity (Firefly).

You like to live your own way and don’t enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Serenity (Firefly) 88%
FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 69%
Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 69%
Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 69%
Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 69%
Enterprise D (Star Trek) 69%
Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 63%
Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 63%
Moya (Farscape) 63%
SG-1 (Stargate) 56%
Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 56%
Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 3%

Shiny. Thanks to the Itinerant Librarian for the link.

The Future Is Now

If anyone wants to outfit their apartment to resemble 10-Forward, give this guy a call. Better do it quickly, though. An unconfirmed listserv report indicated that his interior-design company has declared bankruptcy and the STNG-themed flat is up for sale.

Briefly noted

Some interesting discussion of perpetual copyright over at Making Light.

Censorship and censorship

There's been much discussion in the news and on the web about the famous/infamous Danish cartoons and the mob violence of fanatical Islamists who demand worldwide censorship powers over them and all other publications in all nations everywhere in the world.

Whether the cartoons are any good, in terms of artistic or humorous merit, is entirely beside the point. The demands for censorship, and the mob violence, are the only political issues here. There are several theories about the reason for these riots.

One: Muslims (or at least the ones involved in rioting or instigating riots) believe that they have the right to censor any idea, anywhere, that they dislike because Muslims are divinely ordained to rule the world. It goes without saying that anyone who wishes to live in any other type of society than a Taliban-style theocracy must categorically reject such demands just as they must reject similar claims coming from self-styled "Christian" theocrats and all other would-be absolute dictators.

Two: Radical Islamist imams and cynical politicos in Islamic countries have deliberately whipped up a demagogic frenzy in order to promote themselves and keep the attention of the discontented mob focused on something other than the dismal social, intellectual and economic failures of Islamist societies. As Eric Hoffer argued in the True Believer, mass movements can arise without belief in God, but never without a belief in a Devil. Hatred is a great unifier. "And slime had they for mortar...."

Three: The Islamist mindset is simply incapable of understanding the concept of intellectual freedom. Like the dogmatic Marxists of the twentieth century or the Inquisitors of the medieval Christian church, they can see only whether a particular publication is useful to their party or not, and assume that anything that is published must represent the political agenda of some kind of ruling class. This theory is supported by the actions of Islamic governments in condemning the Danish government. They appear to be completely ignorant of the possibility that anything could be published which does not represent the views of the government in power. Islam's historical insistence on religious control of government, like the old-style Communist insistence on the worship of the Party to the exclusion of all other religions, may create a mindset which is simply incapable of understanding that freedom can exist in other cultures. (Those who wish to apply this dismal analysis to the Bush Administration's foreign policy are free to do so, but that's just too depressing for me to address at the moment.)

Those who know me will not be surprised that I'm no more inclined to give Islamist demagogues veto power over my mind, or anyone else's mind, than I'm inclined to give such power to purportedly "Christian" demagogues or to secular censors.

Quite simply, a civilized society that wishes to have any intellectual freedom or tolerance of any kind cannot afford to surrender to thuggery. Rewarding thuggery leads to more of the same. And more. And more. And more. If fanatical Islamists can successfully silence newspapers or cartoonists by threatening mob violence, why shouldn't fanatical "Christian" fundamentalists do the same? Or fanatical devotees of any other sect or political faction? Or, for that matter, political parties or business corporations that find certain facts or ideas to be contrary to their interests? After all, they'll be left behind in the war for absolute supremacy if they fail to use every weapon at their disposal.

This is not a hypothetical question. There are any number of individuals and groups that would happily use such power to intimidate and silence others. Consider the Eric Rudolphs of the world, as well as the Osama Bin Ladens. Consider all the potential Unabomers and EarthFirsters and Operation Rescue-ers and Weathermen and Timothy McVeighs and Fred Phelpses out there.

Does anyone, other than bloodthirsty fanatics and would-be dictators, really want a society in which anyone who threatens to incite violence is rewarded with the power of censorship? A world in which the most violent fanatics set the rules for everybody else?

It's freedom, or censorship. A pretty simple choice. The only real question is whether the civilized part of the world has the guts to stand up to the fanatics who demand censorship of all thoughts other than their own.

Meanwhile, in Austria....

Unfortunately, it's not only would-be Islamist censors that have made the news lately. Consider David Irving, who was recently sentenced to three years in an Austrian prison for stating in 1989 that the Nazis did not murder Jews at Auschwitz. (Note: Irving has since changed his position, according to the current version of Wikipedia's entry about him. He apparently continues to claim that the Holocaust was exaggerated. He's widely regarded as a racist loon, although some more generous interpreters think he just wants attention.)

Censorship of dingbat conspiracy theories is just as misguided as censorship based on religious fanaticism. Worse, it gives ammunition to the slippery-tongued apologists for Islamist demagoguery, who argue that European censorship of Holocaust-deniers justifes Islamist censorship of anything and everything else.

A bad show all 'round, except for the saving grace that European governments have, so far, refused to cave in to the would-be Islamist bullies. Let's hope that Europe someday manages to embrace intellectual freedom consistently. Letting the loons have their say, and be openly debunked, is healthier than letting them fester in secret and cultivate an insular, self-referential sense of apocalyptic, "righteous" martyrdom.

Another flavor of censorship

... may be on its way to your Internet connection if your freindly telecom conglomerates get their way and eradicate the principle of "net neutrality". It'll be interesting to see how this works out. Will the telecom conglomerates succeed in holding Internet content hostage for ransom payments? Will the mega-corporations succeed in using a pay-for-play Internet to block everybody else's content but their own? Wait and see. Or not, if you're so inclined.

RefGrunting in retrospect

I was going to RefGrunt this morning at Suburban Public Library. Unfortunately, I haven't had enough time to sit down.

So far, in the first hour, we have:

8 requests for "temporary" internet passes
1 tax question
1 inquiry about a library program
1 relatively quick reference question ("how do birds fly?")
1 extensive reference question ("looking for average home heating costs for this county")
1 person who couldn't figure out how the printing system worked
1 person who first asked for an internet pass in the mistaken belief that the internet terminals were the only library catalog access
1 "where are the bathrooms"
2 complaints from library timesheet clerk who is processing last week's timesheets and objects to me working during hours when she thinks all decent people should be asleep
1 request for local newspaper's classified ads

Too much work to do to keep RefGrunting, unfortunately, so that will have to serve as a snapshot of my life.

Utterly corrupt

So here's how arrogant and utterly corrupt the Republican party is. They've appointed indicted crook Tom Delay to control the ongoing investigation of himself.

No kidding.

Bill Moyers has more, as usual. I'm a bit dubious of his proposed solution, but he does an unparallelled job of describing the current situation.

Don't like the facts? Just classify them!

To no one's particular surprise, the Bush administration has been secretly re-classifying thousands of documents previously released, declassified and even published by prevous administrations.

Mr. Aid [a historian] was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."....

While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.

I guess that's one way to avoid embarrassing factual revelations. Just classify them. Except, of course, for the identities of intelligence agents whose spouses who fail to parrot the company line.

Thanks to Library Underground and to Louise, who supplies more detail in her blog.

The fundamental difficulty that the Bush Administration seems to have with these documents is that they represent politically-relevant information which is not subject to dictatorial censorship and spin-doctoring. And that's something that would-be dictators just can't tolerate.

I wonder -- will they be confiscating the published volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States from the nations' libraries?

Look out, there are bloggas!

The Laughing Librarian supplies a musical tribute to library "bloggas". It's... it's... it's....

The Blogga Song!

Enjoy on a computer that has sound enabled.

A book I haven't read

Since I can't find time to blog about books I have read, logically I should blog about books I haven't read.

Prayers for the Assassin, as described in this CNN story, sounds like a potentially interesting what-if story. Apparently taking a cue from Max Barry, the author has set up not only a website to support sales & discussion of the book, but a "news channel" for stories and an upcoming "election" set in his version of the year 2040, in which the former United States is split between Islamic and Christian theocracies.

Oh, and speaking of Max Barry, it looks like he snuck out another book while I wasn't looking. Anybody read it?

Recent Viewings

Wonderfalls is another of those clever, quirky shows that the Fox network inexplicably greenlighted and produced just so that they could have the sadistic thrill of murdering it in its crib. In this case, the geniuses at Fox Central Headquarters cancelled it after showing a mere four episodes, out of order, in constantly-changing timeslots. Presumably this was so that they could devote its broadcast time to airing yet more episodes of Who Wants To Marry A Transexual Billionaire Who Has Sex With His Daughter's Pet Hermit Crab On Temptation Island While Eating Live Cockroaches, or some such quality entertainment.

Jaye, a cynically disenchanted slacker with an Ivy League degree in philosophy, works in a tacky gift shop in Niagara Falls and lives in a trailer park, much to the dismay of her high-strung, overachieving family. One day, to her great shock and dismay, she begins hearing voices. Animal figurines in the store, cartoon drawings on the television or on the sides of packing boxes, stuffed animals, start inexplicably giving her cryptic commands which inevitably prove prophetic, although maddeningly vague in their use of pronouns.

Since Jaye's a confirmed skeptic about matters of religion, this is quite unnerving. "Are you God? Are you the devil?" she asks. She doesn't get an answer. Only more cryptic, vague, prophetic commands, which inevitably alter either her life or the lives of the people around her, whether or not she obeys them. I found myself wondering whether Jaye's name was meant to be an oblique allusion tothat other young lady who heard voices, Joan of Arc, or possibly to Job, whose life was turned topsy-turvy for inexplicable Godly reasons.

Similar tropes have been used in other programs, such as Joan of Arcadia, which Fiend has discussed elsewhere. I haven't seen those shows and can't comment. But Wonderfalls is definitely worth checking out. The show's jaunty but unsettling theme song sets the tone for the characters and the plot. It's by turns satirical, romantic, dramatic, and deeply weird. And always funny.

I would have loved to see how later episodes would have developed the story further, but I am glad that at least the first year's worth of episodes were issued on DVD rather than being buried forever in the dungeons of the Evil Empire. Or would that be the Stupid Satrapy? The Dumb Domain?


Xanadu. Okay, okay. This one's definitely a guilty pleasure. The leading actor seems to be barely capable of reading his lines, let alone acting, and the dialogue among the secondary characters is so head-thumpingly awful that it makes After School Specials look like Oscar material. Most of the dance sequences and the "glamorous" costumes worn by the dancers are howlingly tacky. The plot... well, let's just say it involves an errant muse, a Sensitive Artist, and roller disco. 'Nuff said?

And yet there is a kind of pleasure to be found here. A few of the dance sequences, especially one nostalgic number involving an aging but still amazingly graceful Gene Kelly, do have a kind of surreal magic to them. Some of the visuals, like the strange, Art-Deco exterior of the abandoned theater, have a kind of otherworldly look about them. And I'll admit that there's a sentimental and self-indulgent side of me that likes the idea of a Sensitive Artist-Type Guy being inspired by a supernaturally beautiful and mysterious muse from far, far away.


Death Race 2000. This one I consciously rented as a Bad Movie. I had seen it once, years before, and remembered it as being the kind of movie that one laughs at, rather than with. The kind that you watch with friends so that you can gleefully mock its ineptitude and bad taste. After all, how much more ludicrously awful can you get than a movie about a cross-country road race in which the drivers get points for running over pedestrians? ("It's Euthanasia Day at the Geriatric Ward!")

Amazingly, it's even worse than I remembered. (And hence, in some ways, better). Nine-tenths of the movie is hilariously low-budget and cheesy, like the race-starting scene, in which the "futuristic" city in the background looks like a painted backdrop from a high school play. And just when you think the scenery can't possibly get any less convincing, a glowing-green smear that's apparently supposed to represent a monorail train goes gliding across it. The titleboard at the beginning of the movie literally looks like someone drew it with a magic marker. The only things in the movie that seem to have had any serious effort expended on them are the racecars, which are glossy, shimmering, ridiculous stereotypes sculpted in fiberglass. The Mafia-themed car has machine guns pointing out of its grille. The cowgirl-themed car has big, shiny, sharpened cow-horns mounted on the hood. The Nazi-themed car, driven by "Matilda the Hun", has a V1-style rocket engine mounted on top. And so forth.

It's also absurdly violent, even by modern standards. There were several scenes that actually made me & the other folks watching it wince, while the laughter literally died away to guilty, shocked silence. But for the most part the violence is so outlandishly cartoonish -- literally stealing a gag from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in one case -- that one can't help but laugh, guilty feeling or not.

David Carradine, as "Frankenstein", the nearest thing to a hero in sight, spends most of the movie wearing a squeaky black latex-and-leather outfit and squinting and sneering through an S&M-style mask. (You see, he's a repeat competitor who lost various body parts along the way. "He lost a leg in '98, an arm in '99 ... With half a face and half a chest, and all the guts in the world, he's back!" Or so the official story goes.)

Sylvester Stallone goes way, way over the top in portraying the worst of the racers, a stereotypical Tommy-gun-toting gangster. The rest of the cast suicidally follows him right over the top like so many thespian troopers maniacally charging into the qualitative equivalent of a B-52 carpet-bombing.

There are, of course, the usual 1970s Z-movie gratuitous nude-scenes and frightening amounts of blue eyeshadow.

The movie actually does have a few moments of effective satire on blustering politicians and inane television broadcasters. Watch for the fascist Mr. President's rant about the "treacherous French."

"It is no coincidence, my dear children, that the word sabotage was invented by the French...."

Prescient, no? There's also a touchingly creepy Frankenstein Fan Club, whose president is a dead-on parody of the kind of zealous fan who claims to understand her idol's "inner pain" by consulting "dreams, and letters from other fan club members". And you don't feel guilty at all when a certain annoying hipster finally gets what he has, literally, asked for.

On the whole, it's prime MST3K fodder. Enjoy. If you don't mind the sight of guys being speared through the crotch by giant knives bolted to cars, that is.


Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A very atypical outing for both Jim Carrey and Kate Winslett. What are we, really? Do we get to choose what we want to be? Pick and choose those parts of our past that we want to acknowledge, and eliminate the rest? If we could do so, would it be wise?

A thought-provoking movie that I'd discuss further if I weren't about to fall asleep at 3:30 in the morning.

The books, I think, will have to wait until later.

Late, late, late

Well, I was going to head home after checking in those last four boxes of books for Suburban Public Library. But then I looked at the pile of books and videos that I've been meaning to comment on for the past couple of months, and my conscience got the best of me. Not to mention the fact that several of them are overdue and the circulation staff will get mad at me if I don't return them.

Congratulations!

Books noted

Loredana : A Venetian Tale, by Lauro Martines. Machiavellian maneuvers, sensuality and skulduggery in early-Renaissance Venice. I skimmed all but the first few chapters, I'm afraid. The titular heroine was just too much of a prattling ninny to keep my attention.

Marvel 1602 -- by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, et al. This was a fun excursion, not only from reality, but from the canonical other-reality of the Marvel comic-book universe. What if the mutant powers of Marvel's comic-book characters had arisen several centuries earlier, in the Elizabethan era?

I probably missed some of the insider allusions, since I have only a minimal familiarity with the mythos of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, et al. I'm completely unfamiliar with the character of Nick Fury, for example, who in this excursion into counterreality is cast as Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, a role seemingly modeled on the historical Sir Francis Walsingham and charged with foiling the plots of the dastardly Inquisition and others who seek to harm Good Queen Bess. Some of those enemies seek power for its own sake; others, like James of Scotland, the Queen's nearest relative, fear and hate the so-called "witchbreeds" and seek to eradicate them.

The story and the characters are vivid enough that I had no trouble following the story, despite my unfamiliarity with the prototypes for certain characters. The artwork is excellent, dark and moody, and there's plenty of action and surprises and tragedy as well as occasional humor. (There's an amusing running joke about a young apprentice named Peter "Parquaugh", for example.)

Very nice. I did have one unanswered question by the time I reached the end of the story. There's a ship in the story that bears the name of "The Eagle's Shadow". Is this another example of Gaiman playing homage to James Branch Cabell, or is he making the same point as the author of this book?

More...

...on The Long Tail. A book I plan to buy!

Random stuff noted:

Chris Bertram, of Crooked Timber, is offended. (Much as "JSM" of Adequacy.org reminded people of the real lesson of September 11.)

Appalling romance covers. They're strangely fascinating. Like train wrecks.

Added to blogroll:

Norma,The SF Hub , Conservator, FIRE (and blog).


One of my colleagues at Busy Bee College recognized "Norma's" website when she espied it over my shoulder. Should I be concerned?