Oni-no-Anne (one-half of the cool gamer couple I mentioned a few days back) pointed out this great audioblog and review of the World's Largest Dungeon. I think I know what I'm going to be listening to at work the next few days.
It's a good day when I log onto a forum related to our games, and I see this directed at me (my handle on these forums is "Brother Magneto", after my favorite mutant):
James is sick, Liz is training puppies, so I'm home alone. Time to do some writing.
Yesterday morning, I watched Black Sunday, on old horror movie I picked up super-cheap on a recommendation and never had time to watch. Black Sunday is Tim Burton's favorite horror movie (according to the marketing blurbs on the packaging, anyway), an Italian horror film done in the early 50s before there really were such things as Italian horror films. It's a vampire flick set in the mid-1800s, with all the appropriate gothic scenery: ruined cathedrals, old crypts, crumbling castles, mobs with torches and pitchforks, the works. It was surprisingly gruesome, too: the "mask" in the alternate title is a spiked iron affair nailed to the face of a witch with a huge mallot, and they didn't spare any blood.
It seems pretty tame and cliche by today's standards, but there were certainly a couple of wince moments, and some really cool special effects. Probably worth more as a historical curiosity than a horror film, but I've seem much worse.
Sunday morning. I slept well last night, for the first night in about a week. Seems like this cold is on its way out; I had a couple solid hours of coughing fits last night, but then it all stopped. This morning, it's just a little bit in the nose.
Last week was pretty much dealing with the cold when I wasn't dealing with work. I've got a nice little extracurricular activity from the office that's taking up most of my free time, but it's one of those things that I really enjoy doing, so the time I've put into it is really more personal therapy than work. I still have a contract with some nice billable hours left on it, and I'm planning on jumping back into that this afternoon.
Yesterday, John and Angela came over. The plan was originally to see Hotel Rwanda in the afternoon, but Angela was hung over and didn't want to see a movie about genocide, so it turned into a dinner thing. We broke out the Clue Master Detective my parent's got me this Christmas (thanks Mom!) and had some fun with that, and then with Apples to Apples. We thought about seeing the movie late last night, but tickets would have been too expensive, so we stayed in and played games and talked instead. We should get together with them more often.
Today, I'm going back to the gym this morning, and I think I'm going into the city to play cards with James and Chad. And that's really all that's happnening in my life these days. The World's Largest Dungeon group appears to be breaking up, either from lack of interest, too many characters, or whatever, which is too bad. We fought the Dungeon, and the Dungeon won.
I think I need some breakfast.
Two movies in one day? Lucky me!
Well, not really. The office kicked in so I could see Elektra; again, I'm glad I didn't pay for it. It was actually really good for about the first thirty minutes: the introductory sequence was taken word-for-word and shot-for-shot from the comics, which considering a comic book is basically a storyboard, is one of the best ways to shoot a comic book movie. The beginning of the rest of the film also follows another Elektra comic story arc, but quickly degenerates into a bunch of bad martial arts nonsense. There was even a bad-guy roll-call at one point (Baroness, Cobra Commander - ATTACK!)
The high point was the trailer for Sin City (Quicktime required to view at link), which I hadn't watched yet. Now that looks like an amazing comic adaptation!
Tonight's Netflix offering was Intolerable Cruelty, a Coen brothers romantic comedy with some big Hollywood names and some usual Coen hijinks. The plot was predictable (twice, I called out what was going to happen next), but it wasn't terrible - if you're going to watch a romantic comedy, you might as well watch one by the Coens. My only problem with the film was that they spent a good deal of time creating the reasons why Catherine Zeta-Jones disliked George Clooney, and about thirty seconds on why she actually did like him, so when they (SPOILER ALERT!) end up together, it lacked a certain authenticity.
But, it was a fine way to spend an evening.
Normally, Thursday would have been gaming night, but we cancelled due to the creeping crud, which has now decided that my lungs are OK places to rest as well as my sinuses. Liz got this one day before I did, and she is still feeling bad, so I know I've got at least one hard day left.
I hate viruses.
Even though I lived in Tulsa for four years, and attended a high school with a large population of fundamentalist Christian teenagers, and I was a religion major in college (even took a class specifically in 20th Century Christian Thought), I still feel rather clueless about the conservative, fundamentalist, Protestant worldview. I think that's in no small part to my being raised Catholic, and the fluid nature of conservative evangelical Protestantism seems to run contrary to a lot of what I learned as a Catholic, but it could just be a cultural thing as well. So I Netflixed Saved!, an indie flick billed as a teen high school comedy, at an evangelical high school. It was surprisingly serious - covering homosexuality, teen pregnancy, abortion, and so on - but most of the main characters seemed to be cariactures rather than fully-developed entities, especially the school's "fundie queen" (played by Mandy Moore).
While Saved! was obviously critical of people such as Moore's characters - those for whom faith is a tool to serve their own self-interests - it really shined in its portrayal of Patrick the preacher's son, Dean the gay kid who gets the main character pregnant, and Mary, the main character and soon-to-be unwed mother who screwed Dean to try to save him from being gay. While Mary struggles with her faith, the other two don't lose theirs, and the film ended up quite complimentary of the quiet kind of Christian who isn't out to create a running tally of souls personally saved, but is merely there to help and love his or her neighbor.
The end got to be a little heavy-handed and contrived, but Saved! is still worth a look if religion interests you as much as it does me.
In another example of why talking about a success before it is certain jinxes me every time, I started feeling awful about noon yesterday and felt bad enough to come home around two. I slept until about six, woke up, watched a movie, ate, and went back to bed. Liz's version seems to have settled as a cough, while mine has migrated up into my ever-inviting sinuses. The good news is, I really do feel better today - the aches are gone, which was a major reason for me going home yesterday, so I'm going to brave the office today, too.
Liz has spent the last two days in the throes of a coldflu, and I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and a bit of a cough. I started feeling progressively worse throughout the day, and right after work I hopped out to the drugstore to get a bunch of zinc, throat drops, cough medicine, and NyQuil. I took a combination of that last night, and I seem to be better this morning - still not tip-top, but a hell of a lot better than yesterday. My throat still feels a tad scratchy, but I think I beat the system on this one.
The Monkey King reminded me that the Monty Python musical, Spamalot, opens in New York about three days before I arrive for Toy Fair.
I'll be attending the night of the 23rd. You may worship me... now.
I haven't written any movie reviews in a while, and this blog has been a little behind on content lately, so I figured I'd get back into my thoughts on what I've been watching.
A few months ago, I got a subscription to Netflix so I could catch up on movies I didn't want to buy and I didn't want to waste my time to rent. House of 1000 Corpses was one of those, but of the movies I've gotten from Netflix, it's the only one I think I would buy, if the price was right.
The plot of the movie is largely summed up in the title: like the ax-murderer horror movies of the 1970s, four kids stop at a roadside attraction and end up prisoners of a deranged family in the title house. I didn't count, but there may very well have been a thousand corpses there. It's a raw horror film with zero hope, as it's pretty clear from about twenty minutes in that the main characters are well and rightly fucked (by their own stupidity as much as anything else). Calling it a gorefest doesn't do it justice, as it's relatively light on the gore; instead, it's a repeated, crushing nightmare of human depravity, made all the worse because there isn't some supernatural force behind it: as is implied in the beginning, everything that happens, can (and has) happen(ed) from the hands of regular human beings.
Director Rob Zombie, formerly of the band White Zombie, has a strong, if frentic, screen presence. The cuts are quick, and he makes excellent use both of hallucinagenic-like cut scenes (often with regular character dialogue still occuring), and of split-screen scenes showing reactions of characters to the horror other characters are inflicting on them.
I certainly won't say House is for everyone - in fact, I can only think of a couple of people I would recommend it to - but if you're a horror fan, this is certainly one of the better American horror movie offerings to come along in quite a while.
In case you'd like to read about a real dictator whose citizens are starving (and, by some reports, eating each other), check out this book review about a tome covering the horror that is North Korea. Or, if you're interested in seeing what it's like for an American to visit North Korea (and you're into the photo thing), check out this photo essay (it will take you a while to read the whole thing, but it's fascinating reading). Or, examine North Korea from space.
If Bush had sold us that North Korea was a nation with nukes and they were ready to use them on us, I would have bought it. Hell, I probably would have enlisted.
Tonight wrapped up the third of three weeks of playtesting over at Wolf's place. He's got a cool little adventure; I especially liked the end, there were a couple awesome little details that cemented the whole thing for me and made it memorable. I also met a very nice couple who were fun to game with; they mentioned they were looking for a game, so if we ever get up and running back into a more fantasy setting, I might drop them a line.
It's 20 minutes after midnight, and I don't feel tired at all. In fact, I feel like goofing off in San Andreas for a while.
Incidentally, if you're interested in reading more blogs from Iraq, this soldier's blog has an excellent directory of them.
A couple of days ago, Bob posted a story on his blog titled "How the Left Betrayed My Country: Iraq", and suggested that it should be required reading for anyone who opposes our presence in Iraq. As one who opposes our presence in Iraq (and, indeed, the whole sorry mess that the invasion has created in the international community), I have it a read. The article states - basically - that the leftist media has it all wrong, and that Iraqis really are grateful that we Americans came and overthrew Saddam. The story opens:
I can't take credit for writing this - it appeared in my inbox this morning - but it's damn funny, and true.
Dear President Bush:
Congratulations on your victory over all us non-evangelicals. Actually, we're a bit ticked off here in California, so we're leaving.
California will now be its own country. And we're taking all the blue states with us. In case you are not aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and all of the North East.
We spoke to God, and He agrees that this split will be beneficial to almost everybody, and especially to us in the new country of California. In fact, God is so excited about it, He's going to shift the whole country at 4:30 pm EST this Friday.
Therefore, please let everyone know they need to be back in their states by then.
So you get Texas! And all the former slave states. We get the Governator, stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. (Okay, we have to keep Martha Stewart, we can live with that.) We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Old Miss' We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get all the technological innovation in Alabama.
We get about two-thirds of the tax revenue, and you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms to support, and we know how much you like that.
Did I mention we produce about 70% of the nation's veggies? But heck, the only greens the Bible-thumpers eat are the pickles on their Big Macs. Oh yeah, another thing, don't plan on serving California wine at your state dinners. From now on it's imported French wine for you.
Ouch, bet that hurts.
Just so we're clear, the country of California will be pro-choice and anti-war. Speaking of war, we're going to want all blue states citizens back from Iraq. If you need people to fight, just ask your evangelicals. They have tons of kids they're willing to send to their deaths for absolutely no purpose. And they don't care if you don't show pictures of their kids' caskets coming home.
Anyway, we wish you all the best in the next four years and we hope, really hope, you find those missing weapons of mass destruction.
Seriously. Soon.
Sincerely, California
This article is a must-read for gamers of all stripes:
Apparently the Iraqis have not only learned about democracy, but they have been taking lessons from Dino Rossi. Why, you ask? Hell, you don't even live in Iraq, or be a citizen of Iraq, to vote in their election!
Golly, I sure hope these elections really are democratic, like Bush promised, and not an excuse to empower a bunch of vulnerable US stooges, like the world suspects.
I think we're actually destabilizing now.
I haven't done a personal update for a while, partially because I've been pretty busy at work helping to transition my responsibilites onto the new guy, and partially because there's not a whole lot to update about. The new guy is OK, but he's damned slow and doesn't seem to have a solid concept of how long it should take to do some of these tasks - nor does he realize how time-sensitive some of this stuff is. It's probably because I have more experience with how our game community tends to respond to things (negatively) and how quickly they pick up on stuff and start dissecting it (almost immediately), so I'm much more sensitive to those kinds of things. Perhaps I should tell him to begin monitoring our forums.
The big news in our life is that we're buying a house. As I said in the writing post below, I don't like to talk about things until they're sure, but this one is looking good, so I'll mention it. We found a house. The price was right. The value should go up. We're looking to stay there for 2-3 years and make a hundred grand off it. We'll see how that plan works.
Good news, everyone!
Normally I don't talk about this stuff until it's 100% sure, but this is 99%, so here goes. I got an email that my Deadworld setting for All Flesh Must Be Eaten will be published!
I do believe I may have just climbed a rung on the ladder, which puts me right around rung number three.
I got completely swamped at work yesterday, so while I was following the Huygens probe data, I couldn't post about it.
It looks like everything went as planned. You can now download the sounds of Titan, see the moon in true color, and get a composite of the liquid near the landing area.
Most importantly, however, is the fact that Huygens has detected frozen water on Titan's surface. And where there's water, generally, there is life.
The Huygens probe was designed to transmit data for ten minutes after landing - and has instead transmitted for at least an hour and a half. This is very exciting - it would appear that everything fell into place, and we're going to know a lot more about an alien world very soon!
Yup, that's what President Bush said regarding his "bring 'em on" comment to American troops in response to Iraqi insurgents. He realizes that now, Bush says.
What the fucking fuck? You mean to tell me we elected a man - TWICE - who didn't realize that words have fucking consequences? I mean, isn't that something most normal average human beings learn around Kindergarten?
Honestly, I thought I was a little nerdier than this - but I've never been very good at math.
At 7:45 ET this morning, the Huygens probe successfully landed on Titan. This is exciting beyond belief, because it means that most of the variables, if not all of them, have worked in our favor. More news as it develops.
Yesterday, the White House quietly admitted there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there likely never were (sorry, no article to link to - it was on TV last night, but it seems to have fallen off the radar at many news sites). As far as I know, this is the closest admission to any kind of wrong by this administration, even though I watched Bawbawa Watwaws interviewing Bush while I was on the Stairmaster last night and Bush brazenly said, no, he regrets nothing, we've freed Iraq. Yes, the country where 92% of the population views us as an occupying force is free. I suppose to a President who can't seem to get his approval ratings over that vicious 52% hump without a terrorist attack on American soil, 8% must still seem pretty significant.
I've always loved space and space exploration. As a kid, my parents took me to see Star Wars and Star Trek movies, and the later was one of my first television memories - it might have even been the Tribble episode. More than once, family vacations centered around trips to the Air and Space Museum and Cape Canaveral. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about the Challenger exploding, and I was moved to tears a couple of years ago when Columbia was destroyed on re-entry. I've got a great telescope my friends and I used in college to check out planets, stars, and more.
So I've been watching with some excitement the Cassini mission to Saturn. Unlike Jupiter, which we've explored thoroughly with the Galileo probe, Saturn, its rings, and most imporantly its moons remain a mystery. While Jupiter's Europa remains one of the prime candidates for finding extraterrestrial carbon-based life, Saturn's moon Titan is another candidate, along with the moon Mimas, which may consist almost entirely of water ice. Cassini has already returned startling information, like images of massive storm activity on Saturn. But the truly historical part of the mission will come next week.
One January 14th, the Huygens probe will descend beneath Titan's thick atmosphere for a two-hour ride to the moon's surface. During that descent, it will continuously radio information to the Cassini probe, which will then relay the information back to Earth. Huygens, a flat flying-saucer-like disc, contains instruments that will measure the composition of Titan's atmosphere, a microphone to record sounds (thunder will indicate atmospheric activity - and this will be the first recorded sounds from another world!), and numerous cameras to take pictures the entire way down. It also has lights to illuminate its landing area, so we can get some clear images of that, and should it survive landing, then it can analyze its landing space.
Of course, a thousand things could go wrong, from the chute not opening to the probe landing in a sea of liquid methane to the probe landing on a cliff and sliding to its doom. But we should have enough data for a unique look at a strange, new world.
The data will be rolling in on the 14th, so I'll be watching carefully and making updates as we see cool new stuff.
We watched the last five episodes of Carnivale in a mini-marathon tonight, in preperation for tomorrow's debut of Season 2. I have to say that I'm really glad to see quality writing for TV in the day of "reality shows," even if I do have to spring an extra twelve bucks a month for it.
And if anyone is looking for an apocalyptic, classical Christian, magical realist dust-bowl era fantasy, look no further than Carnivale.
This morning, we put an offer on another house. I think this is going to be a good deal, but it's scary as hell right now, and I'm trying pretty hard not to think about it.
So instead, I'm going to dink around with my website, and see if I can't come up with a cool, work-safe concept.
Having been medicated myself for ADD, I can certainly relate to the spirit of this comic strip.
Yesterday, Liz and I headed to the gym for the first time in... well.. a long time. At least two years (we quit going when we moved to Seattle). My legs feel like Jell-o, but it's a good feeling - I'm committed to this whole losing-weight thing, doing it in a healthy way, and changing my lifestyle. Now I just need to follow through.
In other news, we've been watching Carnivale on the video-on-demand, a great way to watch reruns if you have digital cable. It's an impressive show with an impressive cast, kind of a magical realism but with more sinister overtones.
Speaking of, I'm going to watch another episode or two right now. And try to write at the same time.
Want to know if you're a registered King County voter, or if your vote was counted in the messy 2004 election? The Seattle Times offers a database for this task.
Will Eisner, the father of the graphic novel and surely one of the most influential figures in comic history, has passed away according to his website.
Via Metafilter, an excellent article on the truth behind video and music piracy, filesharing, and so forth, from Wired.
Someone once asked James Joyce how work on his novel Finnegan's Wake was going. It took Joyce twenty years to write his book, and his response to this unnamed person was, "I've written six words." His friend responded "James, that's great!" And Joyce's response was, "but I don't know what order they go in!"
I did some work on my novel last week, but I've tried to sit down several times this weekend to pound out some words and I've been able to manage about a paragraph or so. It's extraordinarily frustrating; every time I sit down, it feels like writing even a word or two takes a colossal effort.
I've had these spells before, but I still don't like them.
Yesterday was my first New Year's Eve in Seattle, and boy howdy did they light up that Space Needle with some bitchin' fireworks. Liz and I joined Seth and Matt for drinks, dinner, poker, The Great Dalmuti, and conversation over at Brook and Wendi's, and rang in the new year with style. A good time was had by all. This morning, I'm realizing I've got an entire weekend in which to work on my book, watch a couple of Netflix movies, and cruise through the rest of The Simpsons Season 5. My stomach feels a little woozy (I was the designated driver last night, so it weren't the booze), but otherwise, I'm ready to tackle the weekend in full work-goof-work mode.
The best DVDs of 2004, based on movie, picture, and sound quality. If you're building a DVD library, these are the ones to get.
I usually don't rank the "best" movies (hard to do that when you've got over 430 of them sitting on your shelf), but I'll do a little list of my recommended films from 2004.
2004's Movies You Should See:
A quote from a CNN article about a New York Times editorial:
Dino "Shub-Niggurath" Rossi, the Black Goat of the Washington Woods and Mother of a Thousand Dark Young Republicans, refuses to accept Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed's certification of Chris Gregoire as governor.
The picture of the above-linked Seattle Times article really says it all: his press conference seemed more like Dennis Rodman showboating for the camera than a political pronouncement, and once again, I get the distinct impression that Rossi is in this not out of any kind of political interest, but because he wants to feel special and important, and really likes the attention. Apparently confusing Washington State with Ukraine, he's calling for a revote.
Evidence that Rossi cares only about his own ego: his mantra that the election was a "mess" and that allowing Gregoire to take office would undermine voter confidence is itself doing far more to undermine voter confidence than installing the correctly-elected governor.
One of my favorite tunes that my mother used to play for me is Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," a bluesy ballad whose meaning has been disputed since its release. There was even a movie about it at one point. There isn't much in the way of analysis available online, except for this piece that does a good job of telling us what the song isn't.
At first glance, it does appear that the song is about two young lovers discarding their baby off of a bridge, and the father later killing himself over the grief. The above article pretty much discounts that, but the author takes a rather rosy view of the song which, although can be substantiated in the lyrics, is only one reading. I've always heard something a little more sinister in these words, whether it's the bits about "nothing good ever happening on Choctaw Ridge," or just the dark, sultry way Bobbie Gentry sings the song. Living in the South, one of the things I began to recognize is that Southerners communicate as much with the things they do not say as the things they do say, and there is certainly something more going on in the song than meets the eye. I doubt it was simply the narrator rejecting Billie Joe, and I doubt it was latent homosexuality as portrayed in the film. The baby solution seems suspect as well, only because it would have been next to impossible for the teenaged daughter of poor farmers in the Mississippi delta to conceal a pregnancy from her family and then kill the baby, or have it die on her and dump its body.
However.
The song came out in the 1960s, when abortion was still illegal (and the movie sets the action in the 1950s). A more likely, if darker, reading of the lyrics is that the narrator did indeed get pregnant, but decided to terminate the pregnancy rather than face the shame of her family (and society), who obviously don't care for Billie Joe and are likely too poor to have to deal with another hungry mouth. Abortion would have been performed either by a back-alley doctor or one of those ambiguous people to whom you go to take care of these kinds of "problems," or worse, she might have tried to induce a miscarriage.
Either way, if they threw the fetus off the bridge to try to dispose of it, and then Billie Joe killed himself over the guilt (perhaps he was the one that convinced her to go through with the abortion), the song makes a little more sense. Unfortunately, we don't hear much from the narrator's point of view in the way of emotional response (just her mother talking about her not eating dinner, which is most likely a response to the news that Billie Joe killed himself), so it's difficult to tell if she's as wracked by guilt as he is. We do know she doesn't kill herself, but she spends her time throwing flowers off the bridge, conjuring an image of a half-crazy woman weeping not only for a lost love, but for a lost child.
Hey, it makes sense to me, and work has been slow this week.
Disclaimer: I do not mean to denigrate anyone's suffering by the following post, nor do I wish to minimize the horror of what's happening in southeast Asia at the moment.
Today, I logged onto CNN.com over lunch to check out the latest on the tsunami fallout in Southeast Asia. I haven't talked about it, because beyond hand-wringing about what a bitch mother nature can be at times, there isn't really anything to say. Apparently, some UN representative called the US' offer of aid "stingy" - although with Bush in the process of accomplishing his vision of a manned mission to Mars by putting one on the spreadsheets that track our national debt, I can't really fault us for being conservative here - and that may have prompted Bush to actually talk to press at his Texas ranch and announce a coaliition of aid. Good for him for taking the initiative, after the fact, but good for him.
Then I looked in the Entertainment section, where they posted a review of a film called Hotel Rwanda. The film deals with the 1994 genocide in that country, and a hotel owner who tries to save as many people as he can, a la Schindler's List.
What struck me, however, was the opening statement of the review:
Soon, for less than $100, you can own The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. In hardcover!
How freakin' cool is that?
If Northstar were American and Captain Britian were American and they loved America a lot and they were all combined with Captain America, that's how patriotic I am!
What's that, you ask? You want news from the land of zombie films? What about a behind-the-scenes look at the new Dead movie, Land of the Dead? Is that enough for 'ya?
Following our somewhat puzzling national election results, and a rather heated argument with my mother at Thanksgiving, I've been trying to figure out exactly what's going on with American politics. I've read a lot of Andrew Sullivan after I saw him duking out out with Bill Maher on whatever that show on HBO is that is like Politically Incorrect but with more cussing. I've been reading other conservative articles when I get the chance, and I've been watching liberal sites like Daily Kos trying to figure it all out. These are some things I've noticed.
Conservative voters feel alienated by liberals because they view liberals as intellectual snobs, mostly because liberals can act like intellectual snobs (see previous post, and posts made right after the election). Our message is often this: we're smarter than you, and if you don't see why your voting for Bush is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders, then you're a fucking moron who deserves to burn in your Red-State hell.
I don't necessarily disagree with this, but this is the exact same reason I hate conservatives: because a good deal of them act like this towards us, especially those in conservative-majority areas like Oklahoma. They feel that liberals ran this country for the most part of the last half of the 20th Century, and that they have been in the minority, so when they are in the majority (be it nationally, or locally), they tend to get a little prickish about it. I can't say I blame them, but I certainly don't like watching them do it to us, and I seriously doubt they like watching us turn around and say those kinds of things back to them.
Liberalism used to be the realm of Martin Luther King, Jr., of JFK and Bobby Kennedy. Our concerns are social justice: that people be treated equally, whether that means blacks have the right to vote without fear of being lynched; or if it means that a woman should be paid the same amount of money as a man for doing the same work; or if it means that gay couples should receive the same tax and health care benefits as married couples. It means personal freedoms that do not infringe of others' personal freedoms - which means that any child, regardless of their religious denomination (so not just Christians!), should be allowed to pray to themselves at school, but that the majority should not force the minority students (who also pay taxes) into saying their prayers.
It is the realm of James Madison, who believed that a Democracy existed not to enforce the tyrrany of the majority on the minorities, but to protect and treasure the minorities and allow everyone to live under one, big tent.
We've been called a lot of things: Nazis (I'm still not sure about that one), fascists, Commies, bleeding-hearts, nigger-lovers, you name it. But we were strong, and had a purpose. Our anthyms rang from the halls of African churches in the south, and from the airwaves by way of folk singers.
But it's all been supplanted; the airwaves belong to Clear Channel, who only plays artists signed to Clear Channel-owned labels (CC also happens to donate large sums of money to the Republican parties). They have managed to convince the people in the churches that liberals are not on their side; instead, we're out to get them by destroying their families, teaching their children the ways of Satan, and taxing them to death.
We have let them subvert our most powerful weapon: Christian churches. We've let them convince us that the churches are filled with dumb, NASCAR-loving rubes who hate fags and want to teach our children evolution - when, not a generation ago, those churches were the bastions of our call to social justice. And we have let them do it.
In order to regain our country - for make no mistake, this is our country, founded on the principles of Freedom and Liberty, not shallow-minded pseudo-patriotism and the willingness to sign away freedoms for corporate security - we must rediscover that we hold more in common with the people in those churches than the fat cats who now run the house. I do not believe for a moment that those Christians are really the dumb demons it's so easy to imagine; they are, or should be, our allies. It's time to reach out, to put aside the snobbery, and take back what is rightfully ours.
Incidentally, this all ties into my novel, which concerns itself with the fact that the current conservative social system is, in the end, unsustainable, which is something in our favor. But I'd rather not wait this one out; it's going to be a long road, and we cannot alienate our allies again, but I have no doubt that we can overcome.
There are some people who think the ALCU exists only to stifle conservative Christianity. These are the same people who think that it's OK to read a prayer over the loudspeaker at a high school football game, so long as it's an evangelical, Protestant, Christian prayer (no Buddhists prayers allowed!) Incidentally, they believe the former is evil because it has a problem with the later.
But, as you can see from stories about the ACLU protecting churches from eviction, protecting public baptisms, or defending students who pass out Christian literature, the ACLU is very much not anti-Christian. They simply believe that one person's religious rights should not trample another person's: that it's wrong, for example, to use the tax money of non-Christians to support the dissemination of Christianity through public prayer at a football game.
Fact: the one element guaranteed to annihilate any conservative "thought."
And the Red voters out there wonder why us Blue voters think they are easily-misled, stupid morons.
Linked from Metafilter: Flight 93 was shot down, by Rummy's own words. A slip of the tongue, a lie, or was he simply not paying attention and contradicting the official story?
I report, you decide.
I watched my DVD copy of The Return of the King Extended Edition a couple of days ago - it's a monster at over four hours long, but watching it didn't seem like it took so much time. Jackson really outdid himself; I wonder if, in twenty years, I'll watch these movies and think about how bad the special effects look compared to whatever films are out then, but for now, they are damn near some of the best stuff produced in a long time.
Thanks largely to Jon's thoughtfulness in getting me the Scarecrow video book, my list of must-rent and must-see movies has quadrupled in the last couple of days. There's quite a few in the theaters I'd really like to catch as well: it seems I missed The Machinist, but I kind of want to see The Aviator (I typically dislike Scorsese, but I'm willing to give this one a shot), and Phantom, and one other I can't think of off the top of my head.
I'm trying to convince Blogger to let me move my posts over to my new website, jasonmical.com. So far, no dice, it keeps timing out about 3/4 of the way through. This is, incidentally, why there have been no posts in the last few days.
I've refrained from commenting on the Washington governor's race, because other Washington bloggers love to talk about it, I haven't been following it as closely as I should, and it seems like a lot of bad karma is going to come out of this.
Personally, I voted for Chris Gregoire, because she's a Democrat and Dino Rossi struck me as a bit of a slimeball interested only in hamming for a camera and getting his fifteen minutes of fame. In fact, that's how his entire campaign seemed to me: less of a political venture, and more of a Bob Roberts-style rockstar event. Gregoire, on the other hand, is a classic politician, the kind of person I want as a leader - dignified, somewhat soft-spoken, intelligent, and very self-assured. Rossi seemed like he's been trying to convince people he's worth it; Gregoire's tack seemed to be to let her actions speak for themselves.
That's really been a decent summary of the post-election mayhem here. Rossi's team immediately declared themselves the victors, even though the difference was less than 300 votes. They selected cabinet members, and as Jeff suggested, probably waltzed around the governor's mansion with color swatches. And with a good reason: if you realize the contest is going to be a close one, it's often better to strut as the winning peacock, because it's going to put you on somewhat higher ground in the PR department, as your opponent is going to have to deal with you declaring victory rather than the both of you trying to achieve it.
See also Bush in Florida in 2000.
The Democrats wanted a hand-recount. The Republicans didn't. The Democrats wanted ballots that had been incorrectly thrown out to be counted. The Republicans didn't. The Democrat's mantra was "count every vote." The Republican's mantra was "don't change the rules." In fact, I saw a car driving around Bellevue the other day, and the entire rear windshield was taken up with a sign declaring that mantra: "don't change the rules."
Now - and here's a surprise - the hand recount has put Gregoire ahead, and the Republican mantra has switched to "count every vote" and, although they're not declaring it publically, "it's time to change the rules."
The Democrats want them to count every vote. They have stayed the course, and have not flip-flopped. A pity we cannot say the same for our Republican fellows. It's really a shame to see Rossi now, because he sounds like a petulant child who didn't get his way: he is starting to float rumors that the election was rigged or somehow tampered with. Gregoire, as a true leader should, has exhibited the same grace and poise she's had since the day she declared her campaign.
I don't know how this is going to end, but being a leader is about how you appear under pressure. Dancing premature victory jigs and then whining when it turns out you were wrong is not how a leader should act, period.
I did want to note, as Jeff did, that our Republican Secretary of State, Sam Reed, has also been a model of leadership (he's practically been a saint, all things considered). Instead of taking the opportunity to grandstand, a la Katherine Harris, he's been an incredibly cool customer, putting aside partisan politics to do his job and do it well. Cheers to you, Mr. Reed; you and yours give me hope that the current trend of the Republican party being hijacked by petulant rockstar-wannabe pandering politicos who care little or nothing for the values they claim to represent or the fiscal responsibility that has been the hallmark of your party will only be a passing fad rather than a lasting problem.
It's been great having Crabby here - last night, we watched part of a video we shot our junior year of college and did a commentary track for it, so I can put it on DVD and have multiple commentaries. It was great to watch some of that stuff again.
We put an offer on a house yesterday, but it was rejected. So it goes.
The Christmas gift I've used most thusfar was the book Jon got me, the Scarecrow Guide to Video. The SIFF tickets won't be good until May, and I haven't really received anything else, with the exception of a couple of nice shirts. Liz got a whole bunch of stuff - a high-end espresso machine, jewelry, and some clothes. From me.
I think I'm gonna spend some time setting up my new website, and seeing if I can transfer this blog over. I'm paying rent there, after all.
For those interested in downloading other mash-ups, I found a decent blog of mash-up MP3s of varying quality. I've downloaded the MP3J songs, they aren't bad, if you're into Monty Python mashes.
The intarwebs seem to be choked with all this "best of 2004" bullshit lately, so I figured I'd throw my own two pennies into the fountain and name my favorite album of 2004.
For a while, I'd been away from the music scene - most of the "popular" stuff was shitty, and there wasn't a whole lot going on in the rock world, especially after 1998. Rap-metal is a watered-down, apolitical, corporate excuse for teenaged rebellion, so System of a Down and Limp Dickzit just weren't doing it for me.
But slowly, music has begun to swing in another direction, a more mellow and original sound, and Seattle seems to be at the crux of a lot of it. This year I pestered people in my office to let me listen to their tunes, and I met Seth, who turned me on to other stuff. So I've encountered the Shins, Elliot Smith, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Grandaddy, and that's without going through my iPod. I loved the Garden State soundtrack, and that was close to being my favorite album of the year, but I would have to say that even better is "A Night at the Hip Hoptera" by The Kleptones.
I was introduced to mash-up music inadvertantly in college, when Mr. Stick turned me on to the Evolution Control Committee via NPR (no, really). The seed lay dormant until this year, when Seth directed my attention to A Night at the Hip Hopera. The entire album is Queen songs mashed with hip-hip tunes - a term that DJs use when then sample bits of songs, speech, or sound effects with other songs, speeches, or sound effects to create a new tune, or a mash-up song.
There's a legal question here, though, and one that the Kleptones tackle head-on in Night - in fact, the entire album is more or less about it - when does an artist's work cease becoming an artist's work, and when can another artist claim originality for using old stuff in a creative manner? They don't really discuss the artistic angle, but the legal angle, as the recording industry, already reeling from MP3 downloading, has also tried to crack down on DJs doing mash-ups, and a lot of their songs have subtle (and not-so-subtle) jabs at this.
But the argument is much older than mash-up music; was TS Eliot being creative when he used quotes, overheard conversations, and literary allusions to create The Waste Land, or was he just stealing other people's work and making it his own? The design of the poem, like a mash-up, intends to create certain feelings based on the person's associations to whatever the poet/artist is sampling. It's something I studied in college, and continue to enjoy thinking about.
But Night is much more than this: it's great to listen to at work, on the road, when you're cleaning, whenever - the creation of the album was so seamless and clean that it's a pleasure to hear the songs flowing together, which a lot of mash-up artists cannot accomplish. So huzzah to them for that.
Also cool is that you can download it for free (requires BitTorrent), and they encourage you to do this.
So for my favorite album of 2004, check out A Night at the Hip-Hoptera. You will not be disappointed.
I had a rather heated conversation with some family members over this topic during the Thanksgiving holiday, and at the time I don’t think I was effectively communicating my reasons for believing as I do. So let me lay it out simply.
I believe that American citizens should take a test before they can vote. That test should measure various kinds of intelligences, knowledge of current events, knowledge of American and global history, knowledge of geography, and knowledge of political philosophy. Many Americans would not pass this test, and many would lose the right to vote. Unfair? Un-American. Maybe – but this is what the Founding Fathers believed as they created the Senate. My support for this argument? Read on.
Image that we’ve got a small village. Here’s a few of the people who live in the village: a gourmet chef, who graduated from a prestigious culinary school; a science teacher, who has a degree in science from a four-year university; a fast-food worker and high-school dropout who happens to be an accomplished hunter; a four-star general; a college professor with a Ph.D in political science; a medical doctor; and a computer technician.
You live in this village, too.
One day, your computer breaks. To whom do you take your computer? That’s a thousand-dollar investment; you don’t want to trust it to just anyone. The computer technician has taken classes in how to repair a computer and he’s passed several certification exams. So, do you go to the high-school dropout? Nope, you take it to the computer technician. In this scenario, you have $1000 worth of property you’re protecting.
Now, you send your children to school. Who do you want to teach them about science? There’s a science teacher – not only has this person studied science, but this person has passed a state certification exam to be able to teach. All kinds of exams to graduate from college, and finally a certification exam. This is the person you want teaching science to your kids, not the chef. In this scenario, you’re protecting your kids’ education and learning – something every parent cares greatly about.
OK, so now your kids are graduating from school and you want to throw them a party. You’ve got 20 guests coming, and you want to make sure they don’t get sick from improperly cooked ribs – after all, food poisoning can mean death! Who do you get to cook your meal? Do you go to the computer technician, when there’s a gourmet chef in town who passed several exams and tests before graduating from culinary school? No way; you get the chef to cook your meal, because you can’t risk your guest’s health. In this scenario, the health (and possibly the lives) of 20 people are at stake.
Let’s say that, for whatever reason, you’ve been drafted to organize a class in gun safety. Fifty people will attend this class. Gun safety is serious business – misusing a gun, improperly cleaning it, and disrespect for the rules could result in death. Do you go to the college professor, who has never so much as picked up a gun in his life? Or do you approach the hunter, who has passed several NRA exams that certify him as a marksman? I’m thinking the hunter might make the better choice (the general is also an option). Risk: the lives of fifty (or more) people.
OK, the country has come under attack and your town needs to defend itself. Who should lead the defense? The science teacher? Why do that, when the four-star general has passed several exams to achieve his rank, and has a life of invaluable combat experience? Unless you’re a glibbering idiot, the general would be leading the defense – because the lives of a thousand people are at risk.
Now, it’s time to choose the next leader of your country. Assuming your country is like the United States, that leader has the power to annihilate 99.9% of human life with nuclear weapons – 6.1 billion people – or at the very least, as the power to ruin your nation – 280 million people. A hell of a lot more lives than the general is responsible for, or the hunter, or the science teacher, or the chef, or the computer tech. Who takes on this awesome responsibility?
Why is it supposedly a bad thing to restrict the responsibility for the lives of six billion people to those qualified to make that kind of decision? Who should be responsible for the lives of six billion people – the chef? The hunter? The science teacher? We are willing to turn far lesser responsibilities over to others, but there is some emotional response to the threat to take away the greatest responsibility of all and put it in the hands of those most qualified to make it. Why? What is the logical reason for this? What is the mental block?
It does not make sense. Period.
I'm starting to get a backlog of things to post. Damn these holidays and their time requirements!
Liz and I spent the afternoon yesterday with a real estate agent looking for houses. We found one that we really, really, really like; I'm going to talk to the mortgage broker on Monday and see if we can't work something out. When Crabby is here, we're going to take him through it (since he may wind up living with us for a while), but Liz and I absolutely loved the house. It's up in Kirkland, so it's not too far from work (nine miles away on the expressway), really close to grocery stores and so on, and still accessible to all the cool stuff in Seattle. The neighborhood is really nice and quiet, and the house has a large rec room downstairs that the previous owners gutted, but didn't do anything with - so it's taking away from the value right now, but Liz and I could do so much with it! Me with a chainsaw - sounds exciting (you do use chainsaws to make home repairs, right??)
Anyway, so far the process has been kind of a downer, but yesterday was a light at the end of the tunnel. Now, the trip to the mortage broker will determine whether or not that light is an oncoming train.
This week jumped from slow to fast to slow again. The good news is that they are finally splitting my job into two jobs at work, so I can go back to focusing on what I'm really good at: PR. The bad news is, it's probably going to end up creating some animosity, because it's part of another situation that I'd rather not get into.
I had an odd experience today, when someone on a forum related to our game started a thread about cyber-stalking me - Googling my name and reading this entire blog. One one level, I'm flattered, but on another, it's more than a little creepy. Some of the stuff that comes up when you Google me is really old, and I'm not really ashamed of it, but I would rather people didn't form opinions about me based on it, either.
Crabby will be here in three days, and we're going to look at houses again (that we cannot afford). I gave Liz some of her Christmas presents early; she loved them. It's nice to have a little money to spend on each other at the holidays. She got me an awesome present: membership to the Seattle International Film Festival. Does she know me or what?
Just got an email from my friend Arch - he and his wife Meeri had their first baby at 1:55 AM this morning! Congrats to both!
Maybe it was the meeting last night, or the fact that my brain has been working on the premise of this new novel for the last, well, four years, but I had what I like to describe as a "moment of clarity" in the shower this morning. I'm aping Pulp Fiction, but every now and then I have moments - call it insight, or some kind of enlightenment, or something - where everything seems very bright, and it's like my pupils turn into pinpricks, and like a camera on the highest f-stop everything in the entire world comes into focus for just a second or two. I prefer "moment of clarity," because it captures perfectly that feeling.
Well, this morning I had one for my novel. I saw the whole thing, laid out in front of me like a path; I know exactly where it's going to end up, what my characters are going to do, and how they are going to get there. I saw, and I am thrilled by it.
I've got a block of marble, and I've seen the statue inside. Time to get carving.
It's good to know that there are still the kinds of people out there who think rock and roll represents...
Been a bit since I did a personal update. Last week practically flew by; Saturday was a big game at work that we did for a promotional stunt to help one of our product sell a little better, and I spent the rest of the day kind of lazing around. Sunday, Liz and I met up with a real estate agent to get a better feel for what's out there and to discuss our home ownership goals, and today we're going to take a look at a house that sounds great, but might be just a tad out of our price range. It's been empty a while, so the seller might be bargained down - or there might be something wrong with it. We'll see.
Sunday evening I watched Kill Bill parts 1 and 2 in order, which I thought would help them gel into a consistent movie. Instead, it really only served to highlight their differences. The first part is almost entirely action, while the second is almost entirely story and dialogue. Not that those things are bad, but I suspect it was editing that made them so; if the movie was planned as one, long film, I have a feeling the action would have been spread over the whole thing.
Yesterday I went to an excellent Alliterates meeting, where I got some really good feedback on the first three bits of my new novel (after doing the 10,000 word chapter thing in Crocodile Man, I'm going more Kurt Vonnegut and am calling these 1,000 word vignettes "chapters.") Work keeps me busy, but not with busy work, if that makes sense; I've had the chance to do a lot of the more managerial tasks lately, and the writing bits I'm good at, while passing off the busywork to my assistant. Delegating responsibility has always been my biggest flaw, so I'm easing into it.
Oh, here's an accomplishment: at our office, time seems to get sucked into these unnatural black holes called meetings. Last week, I had no time for bullshit, and we were supposed to do an ad concept meeting for an upcoming expansion, where we figure out a concept for the ad. These are usually creative brainstorming sessions, and can get pretty (unnecessarily) lengthy, because people don't always know when to stop brainstorming and start making decisions.
Typically, five or six people attend these meetings. For some reason, only three of us could make it, which helped. Meetings are like trips to Blockbuster to rent a video: the more people you have, the (exponentially) more time it takes to choose a movie. So I came in, said "OK, here's my concept." We talked about it for a bit, came up with a good solid headline, found art we could use, and agreed.
Total elapsed time: nine minutes.
Although I doubt that session will end up on my resume as an accomplishment, it felt great to carry the big guns of authority and timeliness for once.
Seth pointed me towards a news story that proves Grand Theft Auto actually saves lives!
Pirates! was one of my favorite games back in the day; I remember seeing the box in a software store, its scene depicting close combat on a smoking ship making my fantasy-prone mind dream a thousand dreams. I picked it up out of a bargain bin some years later, having played it at a friend's house after it debuted, and to this day it is the reason I have a spare 5.25 disk drive lying around.
They released a revision, Pirates! Gold, in the mid-1990s, but for some reason I never picked it up; why bother, when I had such a great game already? But this year, I decided to grab a copy of the most recent re-make, Pirates! Live the Life, because it was on sale, and I knew it would be fun - I saw the game demoed at several conventions this summer.
I wasn't wrong; it's a lot of fun. But it's also a remake, and horribly so; I think it's one of the only remakes where they took out some cool elements from the original, and added elements that just don't work.
All the familiar stuff is here: ship combat, fencing, sailing, wooing the governor's daughter, and so on. The game structure is nearly the same, right down to the text descriptions of what's going on, even if the graphics that serve as a backdrop have greatly improved. There's a lot more ships, and now you can upgrade your fleet to shoot different kinds of shot, hold more scurvy pirates, and sail faster, but otherwise it's almost exactly the same as the original 1987 release, but with better graphics. Fencing is now 3-D, and slightly more complicated - more than once, I've found myself going for the old controls - but not terribly challenging. The trading stucture is the same, the ranks are the same, even the quests are the same - the same evil Spaniards capture the same family members and take them to the same, random, unlikely places.
If you saw a lot of the word "same" in the above paragraph, that's basically what this game is: the same thing. They never billed it as anything more than a remake, but you'd think they could have come up with more than two stock Spanish villains to chase, or some different family members to rescue (or other side-quests to distract you). Part of what made the original game so compelling was the mutitude of things you could do, at least for its time, and now it's just, well, the same.
The one notable addition is that of the dancing, where you have to perform DDR-style codes to waltz with the governor's daughter so she'll marry you. If that sounds like a nonsensical, asinine nod to pop culture, you're not the only one who thinks so. It's my least favorite part of the game, aside from the slowdown during swordfights that makes everything choppy and hard to control.
All in all, I've enjoyed playing it, I will continue to enjoy playing it, but Pirates! had its time in the sun, and I'd like to see someone offer something just as innovative, set in that era, rather than more of the same.
After devoting more than twenty years of his life to finding happiness, Lucas realized there was little purpose in looking until he removed the elephant's tusk from his midsection.
I love quotations taken out of context:
When I was first buying DVDs, I used to love listening to the commentary tracks. I remember stumbling across this website a while back, which offers commentaries made by users for download - so anyone from amateur film critics, to philosophers, to everyone else can make commentary tracks for their favorite movies and TV shows on DVD.
Seth mentioned that the project was a few years ahead of its time, and I agree; now that you can download a commentary to your iPod (or any other of a number of ways to listen to a commentary) and play it at the same time as the movie, without screwing around with CDs and other forms of media, maybe it's time to re-visit this concept.
One of my initial thoughts is to assemble some of the Alliterates, a few of the designers here at WizKids, and some others to do a commentary track about that horrific Dungeons and Dragons movie. Could be fun!
Actor Rowan Atkinson on freedoms, and a movement in the UK to attempt to criminalize religious hate speech. The first line is classic:
What a difference 24 hours makes (via Daily Kos):
Zombies? Love 'em. Love the Romero series (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead.) I like the Fulci pseudo-sequels, and I really enjoyed the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.
Heck, I even like zombie-inspired music, and I plan to protect my home against undead invasion. I plan to play the video game, and I have required reference material on my desk at work.
I'm prepared. Are you?
In the latest iteration of the "plot wheel," two brothers have made a flip book designed to help struggling writers come up with movie plots.
Fire-breathing dragons / helicopters / post-apocalyptic England / American hero.
See? It works!
My mom's a science teacher, and sent me a good link that summarizes what's been happening recently as Evolution is slowly whittled out of the classroom in favor of an uber-right-wing-Christian worldview. From the NSTA.
When I did my backpacking in 1999, there were more than a few American kids who used to put Canadian flags on their backpacks to avoid being asked political questions, or to be identified as Yanks. I always thought that was a little squirrly, but that was before the Bush administration - I'm not sure what I'd do now. If I did decide to go the Canadian route, though, a company has made it much easier.
Via Boing Boing and Seth, an educational video about How to Survive a Zombie Epidemic.
It's been a while since I've done one of those "what's-going-on-in-my-life" updates, partially because I went out of town for eight days. I spent Turkey day back in Oklahoma, with friends and family. The trip had its ups and downs, but like all trips has begun to fade into memory. Since I got back, I haven't had any time to write, but I've been busy looking at houses. Liz and I were very interested in one local builder and a new development in Renton, but actually looking at the new development, the adjacent land, and the timeframe in which the lots we'd want would be available, and we're kind of returning to square one. Which is OK. Our next step is to locate a realitor, so hopefully we can shop around and find a house that way. Or a townhouse; I'd be happy with one of those, too, provided the walls weren't too close together.
That's really all there is to report; I went over to James' to test out the new Call of Cthulhu expansion, and I gotta say, the game has gotten better. Yesterday, we went estate sale-ing with Brook and Wendi; I scored an old TI-99-4/A computer, which I'm probably gonna end up selling on eBay, because it's bulky, heavy, and I don't have any games for it anymore.
I'm just Mr. Excitement these days. Maybe I need to get off my ass and put pen to paper a bit.
From Penny Arcade:
"It is like getting a ordering a pizza and getting a free walrus. Even if the walrus were excellent, I mean truly exemplary, I'm really not in the market for it and it's not why I ordered the pizza."
For the second time in two days, I find myself linking to a thought-provoking article by Andrew Sullivan. After I watched Mr. Sullivan tear Mr. Maher a new one on whatever Politically Incorrect is called these days, my respect for him grows. Some of his views confuse me, but for the most part, he has some very interesting arguments.
I've got to share something disgusting, because somehow, it's OK to write about this stuff in your blog and your friends will get a kick out of it.
Recently, we moved the cat's litterbox into the computer room. It used to be in our bedroom (I hate having a small apartment), and it got a little, ahem, stinky sometimes. So we relocated it to the computer room, which we don't spend eight hours a day slumbering in.
The last three mornings, as I've come in here to work before getting ready for Real Work, my black-and-white cat has come in to do some business. I'm not sure what's wrong with him, because they both eat out of the same dish, but Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, he's laid down some stink. Every morning, about five minutes after I get in here, like clockwork, the room suddenly gets tear-inducingly smelly.
We asked the vet about his, umm, reek, and she suggested switching him to a food that would make him use the litterbox more. I said, I'm not sure you're paying attention - I don't really want him to use the litter box more, I want him to not stink so much.
Anyone out there have any feline dietary advice they'd like to share?
Via Andrew Sullivan, an interesting tidbit on Nietzsche and his influence on conservatives - the premise being that Nietzsche's emphasis on personal responsibility for creating a moral framework and worldview independent of religion (taking responsibility for your actions, rather than blaming them on others) is a conservative trait. I've always been troubled by this argument, and surely there are many liberals who are willing to blame "society" for the actions of an individual, but so too are there many conservatives who would blame God, or Satan, for actions, and require those religious constructs for any manne of morality. For example, those who believe that posting the Ten Commandments in schools will somehow help children act in a moral way, rather than giving children the tools to reason morality for themselves, as Frederich would have argued.
Still, it's compelling, and contains other links to other conservatives and their thoughts on the subject.
Incidentally, on the verbage of conservatism, I'm realizing that the moniker does not accurately describe the current administration, or even the current state of "right-wing" politics in the United States. I've used the term "neo-con" before, a somewhat derisive label, to describe them. I wonder if those of us on the left, who are attempting to advocate for personal responsibility and other non-stereotypically-liberal ideas, shouldn't create our own verbage to begin retaking of politics. Put simply, if the good aspects that make up conservative thought can be railroaded by the Neo-Cons, then perhaps the bad sterotypes that make up "liberal" thought in the public consciousness can become a new label, too.
According to the Geek Hierarchy, I'm somewhere between the top of the heap and the next slot down, being that I am technically published, but so far haven't been paid for writing SF.
However, the chart may have to be altered slightly for Erotic Bible Fan Fiction. Not sure if there is any where Jesus and Mary Magdalene are Furries, but I didn't really hang out on that site long enough to find out.
Here's some practical advice about not putting pornography and pictures of your children on the same Photo iPod.
I realized what I've been feeling lately regarding the current political situation in the country is summarized in an 80s tune:
"They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
'till you're so fucking crazy, you can't follow their rules."
- John Lennon, Working Class Hero
I
If I know all the answers,
I'm too smart.
If I keep my hand down,
I'm wasting my potential.
If I say what's on my mind,
Parent-Teacher Conferences result.
If I don't say anything,
I'm bottling my emotions.
II
When I make a joke,
I'm a smartass.
When I'm polite,
People tell me it's unusual.
When I use logic and reason,
I'm ignoring experience and emotion.
When I use my experinece,
They tell me I'm emotional and illogical.
III
I say we should care about children,
And they call me a Communist.
I say they are being illogical,
And they call me arrogant and self-righteous.
I make a generalization,
And I'm unfairly characterizing other people.
If I call them on the same,
I'm not being tolerant.
IV
I think hate crimes should be punished,
and I'm a Nazi.
I cry when I read about dead American soldiers I knew in high school,
and I'm using them to further my liberal agenda.
I feel killing a hundred-thousand civilians is wrong,
and I'm a bleeding-heart.
I think two people of the same sex should be allowed to express their love,
and I'm amoral.
I think creationism has no place in a public school science class,
and I'm a bigot who stifles free speech.
I think Christianity has the same faults inherant in all religions,
and I'm telling people how to live.
V
My discarded black hoodie
let me down
as much as my own faith in humanity.
VI
If I think I'm more intelligent,
Then I'm on my high horse.
If I want to be left alone,
I'm running from the fight.
When I do what I can,
It's never enough to satisfy the hunger.
When I ask just what the fuck I am supposed
To do and say and think and feel and believe
To finally still the
Unrelenting tide of criticism,
To simply be me,
Silence joins me to watch their words
Erode the padded brick walls locking my personalities from the world,
And with them,
Drops of me.
As I've noted before, I dig Vladimir Nabokov not just for his subject matter, but his lush, image-centric writing style. Both Nabokov and his wife Vera suffered from Synaethesia, a disease that makes the person associate different sensory responses with various stimuli; for example, in Nabokov's case, letters and words on a page caused him to see colors and other images.
The drug LSD reproduces these effects, but can be unpredictable, and people unused to dealing with the sensory perceptions might experience negative side effects.
Also of note is the video game REZ, which according to its sell sheet
Have some fun with Photoshopped Spider-Man comics. Some of these are priceless.
The kids singing the chorus in Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall are suing the band for unpaid royalties.
Sigh.
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