Resolved: 20x10 New Year's resolution update

Here are the resolutions I made last year, and an update on how I did.

1. I will drink more chocolate Vitasoy this year than I did last year by remembering how awesome it is whenever I go to the Asian market.

Alas, I remembered how awesome chocolate Vitasoy is this year, but I'd have to drink about two gallons of it in the next twelve hours to keep this resolution.

2. I will take at least three "significant" trips.

Let's see: I went to Tennessee for friend Becca's wedding to friend Brad; went to RR'10 at friend Sharon's in Virginia; and visited friend Carl in NYC a few times. I also went with P.C. to a Matt & Kim concert in Rhode Island, my first time getting out of the car in that state. Perhaps that counts as three.

3. I will cultivate my prejudice against people who drive mini-vans through rehearsal and witty, biting commentary.

This was clearly the most successful of my resolutions, though my witty, biting commentary often devolved into simple mockery after awhile. Still, I uttered the words "stupid mini vans" more this year than any previous year in memory.

4. I will watch at least one episode of American Idol, since Ellen is on it as a judge this year.

I did not watch an entire episode of American Idol, though I did catch a few minutes of Ellen judging, and while waiting for a doctor's appointment in August I watched most of an episode of the Ellen Show. Mixed success, I'd say, in following the resolution -- though any year I fail to watch even one episode of American Idol seems like a win overall.

5. I will complete my M.A. in Cultural Production (December 2010).

Done. I need to make a few minor, sentence-level changes in my capstone paper and mail two paper copies to the CP office, but the paperwork is in, and my paper has been accepted toward the degree -- so basically done.

6. I will visit at least one museum.

A few weeks ago I took my girl to the Wilton Historical Society's "Great Trains" exhibit, which was of seven model trains in various gauges. I also visited the Tobacco Museum at Northwest Park in Windsor on a letterboxing expedition. Friend Carl took us to a museum at Yale, and P.C. and I wandered around a British museum down there. And since I took that museum education class, I also ended up at the Peabody-Essex and the DeCordova Sculpture Garden and Museum in MA, the Barker Character, Cartoon and Comic Museum, and probably a few others.

Still, despite the overwhelming success of following this resolution, since museums are less fun than disparaging mini-vans, I consider resolution 3 my best success.

7. I will make at least one new friend.

Done, and done -- though since I'm no longer living near said new friends in MA, I have to settle for Facebook-friending them.

8. I will invent at least two new kinds of purses.

Technically, I only invented one new kind of purse this year -- the book purse -- though because of the different binding methods, I've had to invent two different ways of rolling the paper to create the same effect. I also improved the look and stability of the final product by switching up the way the butcher's cotton twine was attached to the book cover, though this still may need some work to properly balance the purse.

You can decide whether this counts as one or two kinds of purse, though I'm inclined to count it as just one.

9. I will work the following quotes into conversation as often as possible: "Godzilla doesn't care what humans do"; "you can't just go around..."; "I'm not a real doctor but I am a real worm."

I forgot about this resolution, and so did not work these phrases into conversation as much as I now wish I had.

Perhaps I shot myself in the foot on this one by making two of the quotes related to weird animals (a giant lizard and a worm).

10. I will save the request for P.C. to do "the dog from New Jersey voice" for real emergencies.

P.C. was able to help me keep this resolution by refusing to do the "dog from New Jersey voice" on request.

Perhaps my next year's resolution will be to request the "dog from New Jersey" voice with profligate abandon, hoping to hear it as often as possible...

P.S. on "We're Democrats"

Quote from saveprospect.com: "It's about a right to property ownership without conditions and impositions."

Personally, I'm perfectly willing to allow people to own property "without conditions and impositions" if they're willing to haul their own water for sewage and other use, create electricity on their land, refrain from using public land, and agree to inflict no "conditions and impositions" on anyone else.

Otherwise, I'm afraid they're stuck living in a community instead of the nonexistent old West of John Wayne movies.

Local Trivia: We're Democrats first, then environmentalists. But mostly we just want the status quo to stay the same.

Driving through town last week, probably on the Big Lots shopping expedition that had me combing the state for additional seasons of Star Trek Voyager for $10 (they had season 3 at one Big Lots, making me hopeful for more -- alas, as in the series' episodes, my journey brought me to many other items along the way but did not achieve my original goal), I saw a sign that said, simply, "saveprospect.com."

Naturally, since it was past campaign season, I jotted down the web address to look up later. Such simple signs raise my curiosity and make me hope for a crackpot angelfire home page that would have been otherwise unGoogleable.

I didn't find a crackpot angelfire home page -- I'm pretty sure those have all been imploded anyway -- but I was surprised by the site I found. That is, I was surprised by the news that Prospect, CT is considering installing wind turbines (or a wind turbine). I was much, much less surprised that Connecticut residents had formed a committee to stop the turbines from being installed.

Read it for yourself, but the controversy is over the annoying sounds the turbines might make, the fall in property values, and -- most interestingly, I thought -- the wildlife and regulatory issues at stake in putting up a wind turbine in a state that so far has (they seem to claim, though I have no knowledge of this) insufficient regulation re: wind turbines.

Interesting argument on the regional level here, over an issue I thought was restricted to "Cape Wind" controversy (offshore "wind farms), and one that I think perfectly epitomizes how Connecticut and southern New England in general tends to look at things: it appeals at once to the property owner, the environmentalist, and the regulation-happy Democrat. That is a tough tightrope to walk...but it's the Connecticut way. (Note also that ultimately the hoped-for outcome is a conservative one, since it would leave things, at least in Prospect, pretty much the same.)

Unfortunately for all of us, Prospect is on a bunch of high hills and so gets a lot of wind, while Bridgeport, New Britain and Hartford, etc. are pretty much flat -- meaning we can't just move the annoying turbines to lower-class neighborhoods like we might do with other unsightly energy-producing machines or, on occasion, toxic waste.

Which means that probably, instead of wind turbines being installed, we'll end up doing what we tend to do -- being New Englanders -- and change nothing.

That's the true advantage of appealing to the disparate masses: everyone agrees with you, and nothing gets done.

PSA: HD-DVD is the new 8-Track.

I'm sure HD-DVD owners already know this, but I think it's funny to compare things to 8-tracks, especially when they're in the same hilarious situation.

Silly HD.

PSA: Mehhhhhhhhhhhrry Christmas!

That is all.

If as your Christmas gift you would like me to answer some particular superlative category for my New Year's prep post, please suggest such categories in the comments here, or via email. Examples include "your most frustrating class in the M.A. program" or "number of days you believe so-and-so would survive in a zombie apocalypse." You know, that kind of thing.

Hope your day is merry and bright.

PSA: Random books available to all readers

In deference to my recent desire to have a bedroom, rather than the library-where-I-sleep that I've had since I moved back to Local Town, CT, I've been culling the giant herd of books I'd accumulated for communal use.

If any of you would like a carefully selected, but still semi-random packet of books for Christmas, or for any other purpose, email me your address and I will send you three, or fewer, or more if you request it.

I always loved walking into the D.C. public library, whose shelving systems I could never understand, and pulling a few random books off the shelf, checking them out and then seeing what I had. This would be that, for you, but with the bonus of also getting a package in the mail around the holidays.

Let me know if there are any themes you would like your random selection of books to explore, or if you'd like them to be utterly randomized, or chosen for some other feature, such as how impressive they will look on your shelf.

Local Trivia: First I quit my job...

Hey, all.

You may have noticed over the last year or so of your religious reading of this blog (har har) that my posts on "my girl" quotes have been missing. This is mainly because I've only been working with the girl at the Pizza Hut, or had been until she was let go by a new manager who cleaned shop and then was subsequently cleaned out of the shop himself.

And things aren't really funny at the Pizza Hut. In fact, things haven't been really funny anywhere with my girl for awhile.

So I've done what I had intended to do when I began my M.A. at Brandeis, which is to quit working with her. Or at least I've indicated that I will not be working with her starting in 2011.

This is exciting for me, as I've been ready to quit for awhile. I'll still be working at my other direct care job, and probably still working with the other girl I work with. But it will definitely be a relief to have a break.

Plus now I can spend all my time reading again, like I used to. Perhaps 2011 will show a revival of the "book a week" goal. Or maybe I'll watch all those TV show seasons I didn't get to while I was busy the last year and a half critiquing all the TV show seasons I've already seen.

Or perhaps I'll actually start writing stuff on my blog again.

PSA: TV reality check

Alright, New York Times article. I actually agree with your general premise that we should look very carefully at a merger between NBC and COMCAST, in terms of the monopoly it might create. But you're marshaling some silly points to your cause.

First, yes, if NBC and Comcast are allowed to merge, it will mean that one company will own both distribution and programming capabilities.

On the other hand, that's happened before, like when TV first started and RCA owned this little broadcasting company called (what was it again? Oh yeah--) NBC. In fact, RCA created NBC in order to sell more televisions. Now, given, the production of programming and the distribution network of, well, networks (local affiliate stations) weren't taking place in exactly the same company. But affiliate stations and the network had a give-and-take (mostly take-and-take on the network side) relationship that can't be easily distinguished from what NBC and Comcast propose.

Second, if you're looking back to the old halcyon days of when cable companies had nothing to do with television production, cable networks and distributors (though not Comcast) have also been able to produce and control programming for years.

Third, there's no such thing as "online TV." TV is on TV, and online is on computers. If you mean "television programming distributed via the internet," then that's still not "online TV."

A television set is an item, and it is not a computer.

It's possible that in the future we'll still refer to short, episodic, scripted or edited shows as "TV shows," even if they've been produced and distributed with no reference to the television sets that we use increasingly even now for viewing stuff from our computers, from "online," or from various digital media players (or VCRs, if we're the lucky owners of a copy of Isaac Asimov's Robots VCR Mystery Game). It's true that those lines are blurring. But "TV" right now still means those devices that receive a broadcast signal, and cable.

Fourth, cable companies have ALWAYS fooled with pricing to make money off of distribution. This is mainly because they are companies designed to make money off of distribution.

Cable companies stand in contrast to the public good of broadcast stations, which were allotted distribution networks in the form of bandwidth when TV "came online" (haha) in the 1950s. The federal government regulated that distribution of distribution because the airwaves were a public asset. Cable companies are private, and therefore have always been after profits rather than public good. They own the cables; they get to say what they're charging to use them.

It's too late after the fact to make a private enterprise into a government-regulated one. This is partly why I was against the switch to whatever this digital system of distribution is. (That, and the fact that I can't get a freaking signal anymore. And also that poor people got screwed with those converter-box dealies.)

Those cats are out of the bag, and it's unhelpful to stand around wringing your hands and worrying about them as they run around peeing on things.

If "online TV," should it ever exist, actually wants to do anything, it's going to have to do what TV did originally, and innovate. There's no reason that new forms of distribution -- internet-based ones -- can't get as much traffic as TV has had, eventually. We're in the middle of transition, here, from a TV-based distribution model (in which actual TV shows are simply made available also online), to a web-based model.

It makes sense to me, given this transition, that behemoths of the old age, like NBC and Comcast, would begin banding together to fight the coming tide. They won't win, ultimately. The reason they're all starting to look the same is that we've already left them behind us, and from a distance, everything starts to blur.

PSA: For those who are afraid of goats (you know who you are)

There is finally help for victims of petting-zoo-related trauma -- at least for the human victims.

I'm not sure what the goats can do about petting-zoo-related trauma. ("Okay, show us on the doll where he touched you, Billie...")

"We've been poisoned by these fairy tales"

Now that my capstone paper's "final" draft is turned in, I have a little room to breathe -- or, no, wait. I still have 45 hours of internship work to do by Monday.

Okay, but I'm taking some breathing room anyway simply to register my intense irritation -- an irritation that's been building over the process of writing my paper on Criminal Minds, a paper that interrogates the fictions of the heteronormative patriarchal protector and how those are predicated on black-and-white categorizations of people who are actually, essentially, uncategorizable -- with the idea of the (pure, facist) war hero.

My objections have been stated better than I'm stating them here in Chris Hedges War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), and in The Hurt Locker, a movie that I thought successfully portrayed the ambivalence of war in our post-9/11 world in a compelling personal narrative.

In the context of my hating the Grand Narrative of the war hero (which doesn't mean hating soldiers, so don't send me any comments saying "WHY DO YOU HATE THE TROOPS??" [Actually, that would be pretty funny. Go ahead and send 'em.]), I've had a renewed interest in Don Henley's "End of the Innocence" of late. In my evangelical fervor to attain a holiness that amounted to 100% purity, I probably would have found this song scandalous as a kid and teenager. In my loosening, "maybe I'm not the boss of everyone," post-college liberalism, I probably didn't think much about it at all.

In my current state of mind, after so many months of reading about detective narratives and watching detective television shows, and seeing the connections between these (interpretive) narratives and the (heroic) war narratives we've heard -- in both their "conquering hero" and "ambivalent adrenaline-addict" iterations -- I've gone back to believing in its scandal.

In my reading of "End of the Innocence," Don Henley is proposing a personal stand against the narrative of purity that activates the "war myth" Chris Hedges refers to...in the form of loss of virginity.

Well, Don. Hold on there, buddy. I mean, how do we (women) know you don't just want to "do it," and that you're making up these political excuses for a base drive?

Except that I think women (or this one woman -- OR MAYBE IT'S NOT A WOMAN AT ALL -- who's in the song) have agency in this song. And I think that partly because the lyrics I'm focused on are contradictory, in a way that fails to fit the narrative of the virgin/whore. Henley says "let your hair fall all around me.../Offer up your best defense/But this is the end/The end of the innocence." It sounds like he might be giving an order. But it mostly sounds like he might be proposing a response to things that have already occurred, an acknowledgment that "the innocence" has already been taken. His proposed response is a political act, and one that really only women can make.

(Why can only women make this response? Basically, because theirs is the only virginity anyone cares about.)

To me, the message of this song as a whole is that there are ways to creatively and productively "opt out" of the Grand Narratives we're given, and that option necessarily involves both taking action and the renegotiation of identity in terms other than pure/impure.

In the first chorus, he's saying this in response, apparently, to a divorce. Heteronormative formations of family have failed, and his response is to propose that they (he and the person he's singing to) go back to a more natural setting (where "we'll sit and watch the clouds go by / and the tall grass wave in the wind"), a place removed from the constructs of the "normal family." The "naturalness" of this pastoral imagery is also suspect (again, is Don just trying to "get some" by going all Romantic on us?), but in combination with his statement that "we've been poisoned by these fairy tales," the relatively unscripted space of the "natural" setting allows for an alternative to the (fairy tale) heteronormative ideal.

In the second chorus (the one that makes me connect this directly to the war hero myth), he's responding to America "beating plowshares into swords" -- dystopic as that is -- and ends with "when daddy had to lie," which I think relates directly to the lie of "happily ever after" and the lie of the war myth.

[And then I took a break for several hours and when I came back I was no longer in what is obviously paper-writing mode.]

Anyway, I like that song. And you should probably like it, too.

PSA: William J. Vader III is born.

That's right, everybody: I basically have a new computer.

I say basically because in terms of externalia, William J. is the same compu-box (Toshiba Satellite Some-Numbers) I've been using for the last year and a half; but after a thorough-going repair and restore (or "store," since William J. II was always running Vista, and therefore was never fully "with it" to begin with) project run by my very own Prince Certainpersonio, William J. Vader II ceased to be in any relevant sense, and has given way to William J. Vader III, complete with Windows 7 and a new (much bigger) hard drive.

William III, I have to say, is probably the best William yet. He's faster and more capable of getting things done -- in part because my old tagalong/whiner/two-years-expired Norton antivirus is now completely gone and doesn't interrupt everything I try to do (including making formatting changes on a Word document) -- and actually seems significantly friendlier than the old, irascible William.

The end result is that I can now do things like save documents and download pictures from my camera, which may then be put on my blog.

And we all have P.C. to thank...or blame.

Huzzah.

Local Trivia: In which I become obsessed with headstones (predictably)

Lately I've been touring cemeteries in search of letterboxes related to some actual, practical artisans of colonial times -- that is, the guys who carved the lunettes at the tops of colonial (and post-colonial) tombstones.

One letterboxer in particular includes in the clues a side-trip through the old cemeteries he plants his stamps in, to view the work (gravestone-carving work) of particular artisans, and tells you a bit about each artist in the process. It's that combination of historical detail and actual, real-life experience (of the art, in this case) that makes for grade A letterboxing, in my opinion.

That letterboxer has definitely piqued my interest in wandering through ye olde cemeteries -- if you're the morose, Byronic sort, you might also get a kick out of this kind of stuff (a kick into the wind, that is, in reaction to the futility of life and the meaningless of passion and emotion in the face of that futility -- and yet you can't NOT kick, because what if some attractive women are watching, and how will they know you're thinking such deep thoughts otherwise: a Byronic kick, in other words), and so I offer you a bit of tids here. (Not just one tidbit, but a few.)

A lunette is the semi-circular part of the tops of vertical tombstones. (See more info on the parts of gravestones here.) You can see an example of an hourglass lunette here (because I took this picture of it):


This stone is from Mount Feake Cemetery in Waltham, MA and memorialized George Barker Pope and Sarah Mason Pope, both born in 1842. I'm planning on putting a letterbox version of this image nearby in the cemetery, as part of my letterboxing internship. (More on that later.)

This particular stone, as a(nother) clever blogger better informed than me pointed out, is somewhat rare, as the winged hourglass usually shows up as part of the lunette image but not the entire thing. I was less impressed with the rarity when I found that it was, like the stone mentioned by said other clever blogger, not a colonial-era stone, but crafted in the early twentieth century in a "colonial revival" age of tombstonery. (Sarah died in 1929, George in 1899.)

On the other hand, this stone and others like it, with that old-tyme-but-updated feel, certainly seems better to me than some of the contemporary gravestones I've seen: one shaped like a snare drum, one with a VW Beetle carved in relief, one with a long-haired guitar player depicted on the top. It's a bit like seeing a graveyard for hippies, but more "camp" than that.

At any rate, I imagine in 200 years someone's going to come across the long-haired guitarist, or the VW stone, and feel they've won the jackpot of tombstones. I wish I could know whether people in the early 1900's thought the "colonial revival" stones seemed pretentious and tacky.

In the meantime, I might wander Byronically around local cemeteries, seeming (but not being) pretentious and tacky.

Local Trivia: Behold the unicorns!

In search of my "Goodwill items" from a nearby city's Goodwill last week -- that is, the items I'll make stamps of, which will be planted near the Goodwill store I got said items from -- I hit the motherlode.

That's right.

Unicorns.

Not just any unicorns, though: these two identical unicorns, painted on a slant, on mirrors, by a surprisingly talented artist, are simultaneously reminiscent of The Last Unicorn (for those of you who wept at this movie when it was televised in the late 80's) and Charlie the unicorn on his way to Candy Mountain. (To those who wonder how I could have bought these, therefore, I say "Shun the nonbeliever. Shunnnnnnn.")

The first one is obviously an ode to that candy mountain: I call it "happy unicorn."

The second I call, for I think equally obvious reasons, "unicorn in Mordor."

Awesome.

PSA: No time for cameras, we'll use our eyes instead.

P.C. and I, after inexplicably missing Friday's show in New Haven, are going to see Matt & Kim tonight in Rhode Island.

Huzzah! I love going to see Matt & Kim in other states, as you may recall.

I also love it when they have new albums, and though I'm not sure how they could top Grand in terms of albums I loved to hear was out and loved to hear in general, Sidewalks seems like a pretty good next album. The "single," if such a thing exists for the indie scene, appears to be "Cameras," which nicely epitomizes both the hipster-indie aesthetic (and objection to mediation) and the evolution of new-new wave music.

The cover art also lends itself very nicely to carving into a stamp -- say, a commemorative stamp of the going-to-the-show, perhaps to be planted in Rhode Island.

Go listen to the video and be jealous of us.

Local Trivia: Welcome to 4:30 at night

Well, Daylight Savings time shenanigans have hit us again, leaving southern New-Englanders in the dark starting at around 4:30 p.m.

I know it's coming every time, but it's always a strange and confusing experience to look out into the pitch black and then look at the clock and realize it's not even dinner time yet. It's made all the more poignant this year by my letterboxing-related desire to be outside during daylight: darnitol, you Daylight Savings and your time changes, you are messing up my schedule -- and it wasn't that awesome to begin with.

In related news, I wonder if the 9:30 club in D.C. changes its name to "The 8:30 Club" for this portion of the year. Probably not, but I think they should consider it.

Local Trivia: Nutmeg-related crisis!

No, the crisis is not a lack of nutmeg, the spice -- after all, I mistakenly bought a second little jar of that last year, even though I'd never used or opened the first one -- but rather a lack of Nutmeg, the local cable access TV station.

It turns out that when I got the internship position I need to graduate this term at Nutmeg TV, that it didn't really exist; it was being granted to me by someone who didn't have the authority to make that decision; the staff member who hired me was fired soon after and left no records of the interview or his agreement to take me on as intern; and it's impossible to do the internship anyway because the station is shut down while they move to a new office. The move won't be finished until mid-December, which is exactly when my term ends.

I found this out today because I emailed said staff member last week asking when I could begin my internship, and indicating that this week would be a good time for me to start.

I have about four weeks to cram in 100 hours of required interning time. And I have no place to cram it.

I've sent frazzled emails to everyone I know who could possibly be or have a media contact; since my focus is on visual studies, it would be nice to intern at a TV station (which is exactly what I was thinking when I sent my resume to Nutmeg).

But at this point, I'm gonna take whatever I can get.

Suggestions are welcome.

It puts the wireless router in, or else it gets the hose again.

Finally, finally, I have the internets in my apartment.

Technically, they're not in my apartment, but they're being beamed magically from below by a wireless router my landlords put in -- or had put in by the official people who do such things.

P.C. handed them a wireless router a few months ago in an effort to get free internet up to the apartment, and it worked perfectly...for about two hours. When their phone stopped working (which it had done several times before), they pulled the plug on the wireless internet, convinced the way people who observed a black cat crossing their paths right before their crops failed are convinced by the coincidence, that somehow the unrelated router had ruined their already bad phone service.

But this time, oh, this time, with an officially sanctioned router, after paying the officially sanctioned $75 installation fee, I'm hoping it lasts.

It will help me continue my capstone paper research into movies and TV shows featuring serial killers, for one thing -- and to make more witty title references in blog postings.

PSA: Canadian politics GONE WILD!

"GONE WILD," that is, just like one would expect Canadian girls to "go wild" on their spring break, in 42 degree Manitoban weather: Canadian style (that is to say, not at all).

But they are hilarious, in their self-deprecating way (who remembers the Olympics closing ceremonies? Very funny stuff, Canada), despite the overall lack of Mardi Gras beads and politicking.

Here's a funny, satirical campaign video about Canadian mayor of Winnipeg, Sam Katz, to prove it. It's gone viral, so you may have seen it, but heck, watch it again. (It's not always working, so you may have to go to youtube and type in things like "Winnipeg" and "Sam Katz" -- you'll know when you find it.)

Oh, PATKITFOC. If only America could have a three-party system, you'd get my vote, straight down the party line. As far as I know, neither Democrats nor Republicans have a really strong view on kicking children in the face.

I guess in the meantime, if I want to strongly support not kicking kids in the face, I can always move to Winnipeg.

PSA: It's DEMocracy, not dumbocracy.

It seems that Iowans are going to vote with their votes on whether to allow a few appointed judges to remain in office, after said judges (actually Iowa Supreme Court justices) ruled that same-sex marriage should be legal.

That is, of course, they ruled that gay people can marry other gay people. That is all. They did not rule that gay people should be allowed to marry just whoever they want and force those other people to marry them back unfairly, even if you're not gay yourself. They did not rule that everyone has to be gay. And they did not rule that you had to stop raising your kids to cross to the other side of the street if you saw a "suspected gay person" walking down the sidewalk.

So presumably, like all other gay marriage laws, this law amounts to telling people to mind their own business and let other people mind theirs.

Apparently, Iowans don't vote for justices, but they can vote justices out. Now, I can actually understand the concept of disliking "legislating from the bench," since we're supposed to be a democracy and all that, but recently it's come to my attention that equally annoying and interruptive to public processes is what I'm going to call "benching from the ballot box."

Injecting politics into something that's supposed to be impartial and beyond us all -- "The Law" -- happens all the time in legislation, but judges' chambers are supposed to be free of that. I understand that the side that believes in "saving marriage" for only white heterosexual Protestants uses the same argument to say the judges leaned left in their ruling.

But I have to believe that judges, especially ones who refuse to pour money into a campaign to save their jobs, are at least impartial enough to be bound by the law, whether or not they personally fully agree with it...which means gay people may have the right to get married whether anybody likes it or not. That's just the way our laws are stacking up.

It's our own fault, ultimately, for giving blacks and women the right to vote, and setting all those silly human rights precedents.

In Defense of Poppery, XIII: The Human Centipede

Okay, disclaimers: I'm not saying that anyone should watch this movie. In fact, only two-point-five of the people possibly reading this should consider picking it up at the local Blockbuster, or putting it into their Netflix queue -- you know who you are. If you think it might not be you, it's not.

I'm not even particularly interested in "redeeming" The Human Centipede, any more than I would try to redeem the equally-tellingly-titled Snakes on a Plane. I'm more interested in discussing where Centipede fits into the generally available oeuvre of horror films, why it has a spot there (why that spot exists), and in proclaiming my disappointment with less-well-done horror films, such as the movie so bad I can't remember its title (IMDB reveals that it's called The Fear Chamber, and shockingly came out just last year).

The plot of The Human Centipede is simple: there's a mad scientist doctor who's only recently gone mad, who wants to sew three people together, mouth to anus, into a "human centipede." He was previously a world-class surgeon who separated conjoined twins. Spoiler alert: He succeeds.

P.C. and I chose to rent this movie (from the local, now bankrupt Blockbuster) because I felt it had been following me around for a few months; perhaps it was first hearing about it on NPR-like Sirius radio on the way to friend Becca's wedding in part of a comedy routine. Perhaps it was having it somehow pop up in ads online or somewhere I can't quite identify. Maybe it stuck with me because it's such a simple and grotesque idea. But yesterday, after an afternoon of reading about the "philosophy of horror," I felt ready to descend into the macabre world of a torture-film, and The Human Centipede seemed as good as any other.

In fact, it's better than most others, which was a pleasant surprise.

The front of the DVD quotes Eli Roth saying the movie made him sick, which was a high compliment for horror, and it's reviewed as being "surprisingly straight-forward," which is exactly what it is. Unlike The Collector, which makes a small attempt to explain the sadistic torturer's motives for entering the homes of families and then butchering them slowly ("he collects people" -- but what this means is never exactly clear), The Human Centipede has a certain elegant lack of explanation that is only elegant because an explanation is unnecessary.

In addition to the austerity of exposition (or lack of it), there's a modernist aesthetic to the German (of course German -- also, it's an apparently Dutch director's movie, though mostly in English, and subtitled, making the Japanese businessman's "Nazi!" epithet even more interesting) doctor's home, where most of the action takes place. The co-eds who find themselves victims to the doctor's plan aren't as stupid as they usually are in these movies, nor as deserving of torture, and that also streamlines the plot somehow. In general, this is a well-wrought, spare movie that revolves around a simple and simply revolting premise.

The Fear Chamber, a movie I picked up with seven others for less than a dollar each (a pack which includes the great classic Night of the Living Dead, making the other hideously bad movies worth the purchase), is the opposite in every way of The Human Centipede. The premise is so unclear that I can hardly state it here: there's a guy who likes to butcher women, for some reason, and later on he shows up in clown make-up. He stabs the detective-hero in the heart, but magically the detective doesn't die, even though he went to chase the killer alone on an abandoned roof in L.A. without calling for backup (but then, there are only 2 other cops on the LAPD force in this movie, anyway, and their investigative headquarters look suspiciously like a janitor's closet), and even though he got stabbed in the heart. But this all adds up at the end when it's revealed that the killer was selling organs on the black market, but that somehow the heart he'd removed from a psychic had been the transplanted heart that saved detective-hero's life.

In other words, it's a poorly written, poorly directed, slightly more macabre version of Return to Me.

But it's convoluted, non-sense-making movies like Fear Chamber (the title is never referenced in the movie, and its location is unclear; is the "fear chamber" the weird warehouse space the killer uses to kill victims, even though his locations appear to change? Or is it the janitor's closet where the 3 members of the LAPD meet?) that make The Human Centipede stand out. And for that, I suppose we must thank those movies that fail in their badness even to become fun camp films.

But in general, torture films do need an apologetic, even if I can argue successfully that The Human Centipede is a "good" version of such a genre. And the arguments in favor of the moral possibility of torture films (or the possibility of torture films being moral) are on about as wide a spread as the quality of the films themselves.

The best argument I've read so far, and the one that echoed in my brain as I looked over the Blockbuster's selection last night, finally to settle on the Centipede, is that great horror films -- particularly ones featuring sadistic torture scenes -- recognize, exploit, and make the viewer aware of the deep ambivalence in the human soul. While we feel the terror and pain of the victim, we are also often led (and Human Centipede is no exception in this; it dwells at length on the doctor's maniacal smiles and at times almost orgasmic pleasure with his creation, and also on the signs of his loneliness) to feel the sadistic pleasure of torture with the torturer.

This is disturbing. But it's supposed to be disturbing, and for me, that's the key. You're supposed to be disturbed by horror films.

People who don't like being disturbed, or perhaps more importantly people who aren't disturbed (but are instead turned on or made curious by these movies), probably shouldn't be watching horror films.

The most convoluted argument I've read in favor of allowing for torture films brought in the question of pornography (apparently relevant since these movies are often referred to as "torture porn"), comparing arguments about the suggestiveness of pornography (i.e., feminist argument that seeing women as objects in magazines will cause viewers to want to treat women the same way in real life) to supposed arguments about the suggestiveness of torture movies (i.e., you see someone pulling out another person's teeth in the movie and think "hey, that might be fun").

The author of that essay then spent a few sentences "debunking" the arguments against pornography, then attempted to apply the same logic to torture films, despite the fact that a few sentences don't suffice to redeem all porn from the arguments listed, and that if we agree that torture films aren't pornography, then the correlation in arguments is moot to begin with.

It was like Fear Chamber all over again; because I'm familiar with the genre, I can kind of see what he was trying to do, but it was clearly unsuccessful.

So if you like theorizing about, or pointing out the flaws in, badly made torture films and arguments about them, see The Fear Chamber and then read the third essay's final page in The Philosophy of Horror.

If, on the other hand, you like a good, well-founded disturbance now and then, but you want to feel okay about it, read the first essay in Philosophy of Horror and then catch a showing of The Human Centipede.

I can't say you won't regret it, but I can say that I didn't.

PSA: My computer is probably going slow because it's busy spamming you.

Fair warning -- don't open any emails from me that don't have a subject line. Anyone who's been reading my blog for any length of time at all should know intuitively that I can't resist putting in a subject line, and William J. Vader II has been hijacked by the viruses before, and made to do their bidding.

It's partly probably because I don't have the internets at home, and am forced to use public wireless at local libraries, that I've gotten this virus. (Or, alternately, it could be from opening non-subjected emails sent to me before this.)

I wish I could say it seemed like William was being made to spam against his will, but William II has always been a recalcitrant, reluctant-to-please machine, and it's more likely he's gleefully sending out email after email for "heath rx" or whatever Viagra is calling itself online these days, remorselessly.

Then again, maybe he's not that smart. I mean, this is a machine that has believed for several months that he has absolutely no audio output, when in reality he is even supposedly equipped with a DVD-R burner. Not that he's ever burned anything successfully for me onto a DVD, mind you. Just that he was supposed to be able to.

So be warned...and now be super-warned. Because William J. II is either stupid, or now he's really, really mad.

PSA: "Isaac Asimov's Robots VCR Mystery Game" exists.

That's right, everbody. There is such a thing as "Isaac Asimov's Robots VCR Mystery Game." This should finally put to rest all those questions that have kept you up at night, and the fears that have you bolting upright in bed soaked in sweat.

Don't worry. It's here. It's always been here. (Well, for the last twenty years or so.) You can even buy it if you need to immediately own your own copy, which, as an owner of a copy of the Atari 2600 "E.T. game," is a reaction I would understand and endorse.

I discovered this while searching for awesome things at a Goodwill in Less Local City. Obviously, I struck gold.

P.C. and I have played it once, of course, and in addition to the awesomeness you would expect to find in a campy, vintage-80's (if such a thing existed) VHS-tape-based game, it actually had some merit. I was surprised by some of the things that happened in the 40-minute video, though the fact that it never actually changes ensures that I wouldn't be surprised every time. Still, I can usually "call" the killer, motive and method at the beginning of most post-9/11 one-hour-detective/procedural dramas, and those are supposed to be the most sophisticated video-based crime-drama plots humans have produced so far (according to some criticism I read at some point) -- so good for Asimov's Robots.

The point of the game is to solve the mystery of who tried to assassinate a prominent "Spacer" scientist -- "Spacers" being the race of people who left earth for space long ago, and are as a result taller, healthier and generally more attractive than "Earthers," and also have significantly more developed technology, allowing them human-like robots and the ability to live exceedingly long lives (as long as they aren't exposed to "Earth" germs) -- and the answer to the question is different in every permutation of clue combinations.

Because the video never changes, the clues are written on double-sided cards separated into four decks (beginner to expert). You can use the clue on either side of each card, which changes the outcome; at six cards per deck, the combinations of six-clue games allow for "over 250" different results.

Of course, there aren't really 250 different characters in a 40 minute video, but part of the game is figuring out opportunity and motive, which may change with every difference in clue combination. P.C. and I found that even the beginner level cards we tried when we played required pretty sophisticated reasoning when we tried to determine why one of the robots had done it. (That time! Next time it could be a person! An Earther! Or a Spacer! Or a different robot!)

To answer your most burning questions about the details of the video, yes, the game does endorse the once firmly held theory that sophisticated people in the future would wear mute-toned spandex (for the men) and very large shoulderpads (for the women). Yes, it is full of no-name actors I haven't seen in anything else, and yes, the main character does look directly at you, the viewer, when "receiving" new clues. No, they do not use transporters.

But yes, Earth robots do look like people dressed in silver-painted cardboard with silver-painted fishbowls over their heads, as I think we all knew, deep down, that they would.

There's also a VCR mystery game, also by Kodak, of Clue. Without having seen it, I feel I can recommend it, though of course slightly less than the significantly more bizarre (and thus more awesome) "Isaac Asimov's Robots."

Local Trivia: Turtle and bunny released into the wilds, which causes me some carver's block.

I recently let loose two "fleas," which are tiny stamps that travel from person to person or person to letterbox or box to person. I promised that when a person "found" both fleas, they would gain access to a clue to another, totally awesome stamp (set). This can be difficult to do, finding two small fleas in an international hobby, so I don't anticipate scads of success.

Still, because these boxes will be so hard to find, I wanted them to be awesome. The two fleas I refer to were a turtle and a bunny, so the mystery box will be on a "tortoise and the hare" theme. I scoured the internet looking for images but stopped immediately when I saw these schematics of Jeff Zugale (L.A. artist)'s submission to the 2009 Steampunk Challenge.

His concept is a reinvention of "The Tortoise and the Hare," which in his telling becomes the tale of a scrappy backyard inventor's success over the efficient and presumably German "Hare" racing and transportation system. Look it over, and marvel at the level of detail.

Then shudder thinking about how on earth I'm going to carve that out of a flat block of 4"x6" pink rubber. And then look at the hare.

I'll stamp and scan them when I'm done.

PSA: Stamps available for some.

Hey, all. I've been slacking on the blog front, lately, in part because I've been letterboxing so much.

A one of you may have already seen stamps that were carved for her personally, on account of her getting married. But the rest of you...well, you have no proof so far that I'm being awesome at something that isn't this blog, and I feel I owe you.

If you want a rubber stamp made for you, possibly for you to "plant" somewhere in your area of the country, or for you to stamp stuff with (I won't do address label stamps, because come ON, guys), I need you to select an image that will look good in black and white and either figure out how to post it in the comments, or email it to me, or both.

I promised this wouldn't become a letterboxing blog, but I didn't promise you wouldn't get letterboxing-related presents.

PSA: What they should have done about Terry Jones

The president shouldn't have to call up a guy in Florida and ask him politely not to burn the Qur'an. I mean, President Obama is busy doing things like making sure that that guy still has the right to burn stuff, and simultaneously trying to ensure that his right to burn stuff doesn't get a whole lot of other people killed.

What they should have done, because media attention probably felt a lot like the attention of God to Terry Jones, is sent down Robert Duvall. Jones reminded me, more than anything, of Duvall's character in The Apostle, flawed and yet compelling, and Duvall recently completed another film that deals with religious themes, Get Low. His ability to listen and natural gravitas would have pulled Jones back into line with mainstream America's (for once) well-reasoned stance against burning holy books.

And that would have been good for Jones, too, who didn't seem to consider in all this hulabaloo (and it wasn't pointed out to him by the media) that God doesn't really tell Christians to burn other holy texts, and that when God was offerred "strange fire" in the Old Testament, it didn't really go well for the fire-starters.

I'm pretty sure Duvall would have brought that up.

Local Trivia: We suck much more than our ancestors. At least in pictures.

While looking for images to carve stamps out of, I found this website for Local City's historic photos, comparing images of main streets in downtown Local City from 1899, 1950, and 2002.

I find it fascinating to look at how things have changed. Perhaps you'll find it less fascinating because you're not as familiar with Local City and are not (probably) sitting in Local City's public library while viewing them. But the thing that most strikes me, and that will be able to strike you even if you've never been to Local City, is the apparent change in the quality of life (and reflected in the increasing quality of the digital version of the photos): maybe 1899's horses and buggies aren't your cup of tea, but all the awesome old-tyme cars of the 50s crowding Local City's streets hold a certain appeal to me.

I wish this "Then and Now" listing also included a photo from the 80s, when I was growing up in Local City. Before Reagonomics set in, and before all the factory work moved elsewhere (not that I blame it), I remember downtown Local City as a happening place, with a sandwich shop that sold awesome milkshakes and a toy shop from which I made my first toy purchases: a doll and a marionette, both of which I still have (somewhere).

Local City now makes me a little bit sad, because I remember what it was, and what I was, and how connected I was to Local City. Maybe it's not that the 50s were better, but that the images of the recent past, as technologically advanced and populated with "normal" contemporary cars and people as they are, seem so empty and disconnected.

Happy Birthday (observed)!

I decided to celebrate my birthday (obs.) today.

A friend made me a version of a pineapple upside-down cake, and another friend re-glued my letterboxing logbook, which fell apart in a cemetery two days ago. We're currently watching I Love You, Man for the fourth time or so, as it's a very hilarious movie (though risque -- don't watch it with the kids or the parents).

Much improved from Tonsilitis-a-thon 2010, aka "my real birthday." So happy birthday (observed) to me!

Local Trivia: Letterbox series I'm planning

My Art Nemesis: Sol LeWitt artworks

Birdhouse in your soul (Jason and the Argonauts, blue canary, outlet by a lightswitch, bee in a bonnet, lighthouse, fresh-baked yummy dessert, birdhouse)

"Where's the pineapple?" an ode to Psych

Firehouse patches

Goodwill (a stamp at every state Goodwill depicting something I've bought from that store)

...and as always, the grand scheme of things: stamps to honor They Might Be Giants.

Confessions XLVI

I lied to a cop last night while letterboxing.

It was the stupidest lie I've ever told, and possibly the stupidest I've ever heard. I can't even remember most of it now.

I feel significantly worse about the stupidity of the lie than the fact that I didn't tell the truth.

PSQ: Primary sources...

I'm in need of a whittling down of all the television shows (and possibly movies) produced since 9/11 that have some sort of detective element in them (including, say Criminal Minds, but also House), for the sake of my sanity and my capstone Cultural Production paper, which I'd like to be awesome.

I've been considering Dexter, and as such am rewatching it in the nonchalant way normal people might rewatch things -- casually, without the several episode, several day gorging I normally do "for the sake of science" -- but it would throw a bunch of interesting wrenches in my proposed thesis to focus on a show where the detective is actually also a serial killer.

I also started watching The Shield, though ditto to that one.

All suggestions are welcome. I won't bore you with the details of my thesis here, unless you request them, so I realize it's a shot in the dark, but hey -- it's all helpful in whittling.

PSA: Why I'm excited about the 21st:

"The fourth slap in "Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap" (ep.9)"

Local Trivia: In case you're looking for these things:

In an NPR written piece about the future(s) of books:

"Hardbound and paperback books may never totally disappear, but they could become scary scarce — like eight-track tapes, typewriters and wooden tennis rackets."

NPR obviously has never been to my local Goodwill, which has a surplus of all of these things -- an almost hilarious surplus of eight-track tapes, actually. I would also add "business textbooks from the 60s, exercise bikes, VHS tapes (and VCRs), countless novelty and business-logo'ed mugs, and at least one piece of every china pattern ever made."

These things are not scarce at all. In fact, they're all concentrated in almost overwhelming abundance in Salvation Army stores and Goodwills across the nation. Just ask the guys who collect Jerry Maguire video tapes.

Those guys know what's out there.

The religion of women...perhaps.

I read a well-selected article posted on FB by one of my FB friends who frequently selects articles well -- this one was from The Atlantic, a magazine I've decided I love after years of subscription, and so was already heavily weighted to be a good one -- about women's cinema...or I suppose what might be called women's cinema if such a thing were acknowledged to exist.

The author said this:

The Sex and the City and Twilight franchises may have less cosmic implications [than Eat, Pray, Love, which gives women permission to treat break-ups as a big deal], but they too allow women to self-mythologize and assign importance to matters of sex, dating, and intimate conflict—whether they're offering a fantasy of single life as a marvelous, celebratory adventure or a fantasy of literally undying, all-consuming love, what they're offering women is a chance to see their own most personal concerns dramatized and given focus. To see themselves, and their feelings, as important.

I've already diatribed about women being compelled to care about "lesser" things like fashion and hairstyles where men are less compelled, so that's not where I'm going with this.

What strikes me about this quote and this idea is that there is elitism in liking literary fiction over romance genre fiction. And it's justified elitism, to some extent, (I'd like to think) because romance fiction is repetitive and almost automatic, like porn. The point is not the content, but the chemical reaction it triggers in the brain.

These somewhat more sophisticated iterations of "romantic themes" of "sex, dating, and intimate conflict," though, aren't really only triggering chemical reactions, are they? The idea is that because we have to learn to read literary fiction, and properly, it rises above the baser instincts in us to become "art," where women's concerns (always earthy) don't rise above women's baser instincts to relate and emote, and so are not art.

But doesn't romantic fiction "teach" us to read it? We're not born knowing red roses are "romantic," are we?

The heroic epic can be said (Freud certainly would have agreed) to focus and dramatize men's insecurities and struggles, and eventual victories over those turmoils. Maybe Twilight is the equivalent of the classic epic.

I wonder these things not so much as a critic, but as a writer. I find my own fiction to rely very much on "tell, don't show" sensibilities; it explains every intimate detail of the characters in question, reasons out their actions before they even take them, and otherwise commits all the sins of genre fiction that "show, don't tell"-ers grieve over. It's solipsistic to the extreme. Even my plots involve mind-reading and getting lost in one's own inner workings...and some of my fiction couldn't be said to even HAVE a plot.

I mean, this is why I don't write fiction anymore.

But what if these inward-leaning ways of writing aren't inferior, just misused? Maybe there's a way to turn the world of an intimate relationship into the whole world, without going all What Dreams May Come on everyone and externalizing the drama.

I should probably read some more Virginia Woolf. But I suspect I'd probably better read some more LJ Smith, who I loved as a pre-teen, and who probably understood more about hero tropes (for girls) than most of the other authors I've read since.

Local Trivia, Accusations edition: Stupid Ap-man*

*I've deleted a key letter from this person's trail name, in case he ever Googles himself...because I suspect that that's the kind of person he is.

There's a fellow letterboxer who started before me who cannot spell; this is important because the way to find clues to the box you're looking for is to read them online. He often capitalizes random words in the middle of sentences and believes that every time an 's' ends a word, an apostrophe should come before it.

He sometimes writes clues on how to get to the letterbox "in character"...which is one case is "as a caveman," i.e. "Ooh, ooh, ooh, wood, walk, walk, wood, ooh, ooh, ooh, what's this hard thing?"...which could mean you're supposed to walk over a wooden walkway, then walk for awhile, then find a large stone behind which is the letterbox, but how would one know that? How??

One of his clues says to "go diagonal from the brown building." This is not a direction -- "diagonal" is not north, south, east, west, left or right, up or down; you can't "go" it.

That is not a clue, Ap-man.

Add to these offenses that Ap-man often puts his letterboxes nearby other letterboxers' letterboxes, which is taboo and considered very rude.

He sometimes plants store-bought stamps instead of homemade ones, which is considered kind of low-class unless you're a four-year-old.

Add to that that he has planted over 100 boxes, and all radiating out from Local Town, where I live, so that I almost can't go on a letterboxing hunt without attempting to find at least one of his ill-clued boxes, and you'll begin to see why I can't help ranting about this guy. He's terrible, and inescapable.

Every area has a Goofus for letterboxing Gallants to deal with. I guess as a neurotic, OCD-tending, poison-ivy-phobic, fastidious and nerdy letterboxer, I just wish he didn't seem so carefree and optimistic, assuming he wasn't stepping on anyone's toes, assuming everyone would be glad to find his hidden treasures, scattering boxes wherever he goes like a Johnny Appleseed for rubber stamps.

Happy Tonsilitis.

I'm pre-dating this post to my actual birthday, aka, The Day The Tonsilitis Started Getting Serious.

I thought 29 was going to be a rough year, because hey, it's one less than 30, but considering the improvement from day 1, it seems this year is on an upward trend that cannot be topped by any other year's.

First, my tonsilitis wasn't mono, which was a major, major plus.

Then it started getting better thanks to antibiotics, which is in its own way an equally major plus.

Soon I'll be rid of this cough and able to taste foods again, and if I'm not 30 by then, I'll be on the way to a year that will probably only improve from there.

Yay for me.

PSA: Friend Becca gets married.

Becca is married, to friend Brad!

Three cheers for a beautifully simple and beautifully coordinated wedding -- because coordination might not be what you want to think about at a wedding, but that's exactly why it's so necessary in the months and weeks before one. Nicely done.

And two and a half cheers also (because no one should get more than the bride on her wedding day) for Debbie and Jeff letting us out-of-towners stay over, and taking us to Asheville and generally being awesome.

Local Trivia: Letterboxing

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post this on my blog, since I'm pretty sure this kind of thing spreads by word of mouth, and I'm not sure this blog counts as a mouth...but since it's been taking up the majority of my non-work (and some of my work) time lately, I'm blogging about it anyway. We'll see if I'm thrown out on my tail for violating the unstated but possible Fight-Club-ian first rule of letterboxing, which is that you do not talk about letterboxing.

Look it up. I won't explain the whole thing here, except that it involves stamps, and making them yourself, and it's fun -- particularly if you're a person who played Castlevania III: Simon's Quest on NES as though it were a game about collecting the most "hearts" instead of actually questing/progressing through the frames and levels to the end. I heart collecting things, particularly non-corporeal ideas of things, and I also heart crafts. It's as though letterboxing was created by a parallel universe version of me.

Like most of the things I like, it tends toward the obsessive and caters to obsessive people, which means it will probably get tiring sooner or later. But it also can be left behind for years without maintenance and then picked back up again (like all of the crafts I do). And whenever you go somewhere new, there's probably a letterbox or two waiting for you to discover it -- and discover places you may never have seen otherwise.

As a carver/planter, my first and current theme is "They Might Be Giants." I carved the particle mans out of erasers with a box cutter and nail file, as well as the birdhouse in your soul and the purple toupee.

But last night I started using the professional materials and copied this creepy James Ensor painting, and it came out pretty well. I'd say I was hooked, but that's a rug-making joke, and this is way better than that.

I'll try not to make this into a letterboxing blog, but seriously -- look into it.

Local Trivia: Vermont edition

While in VT with P.C. and his (and my) friends on the 4th of July weekend, I went on something the kids these days call an "alpine slide." Here's a video I found on youtube of the exact slide I went on -- well, not precisely exact, as I was on the "beginner's" slide, and the video is of the "advanced." They're identical, except on the beginner's slide you might get stuck behind a mom with a two year old...or me.

I had never heard of alpine sliding before this. It's like the summer's answer to sledding and the ski resort's answer to roller coasters -- but without the tedious hill-climbing or the upside-down loops. The scariest part was, as always, riding up in the ski lift and having to jump off and run to the side when we arrived at the top. The most annoying part was getting a bum sled my first time down that almost wouldn't continue through a flat area. The fun part was, as one would expect, sliding through the trees and down the mountain to the end.

Overall, in other words, it was pretty fun, and punctuated by seeing a friend on the "advanced" track fall off his slide, just a bit, and then by a mini-golf game in which I cared very little and subsequently achieved a hole in one. (Go apathy.)

In Defense of Poppery: Inception

Inceptinated!

This defense of poppery won't include a score or a reasoning for my opinion on the recent "summer blockbuster" Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, a bunch of other guys who did a really decent job, and Joseph Gordin-Leavitt, who finally seemed to come into his own as the possible-next-Heath-Ledger I've always felt he could be. (Go find a DVD of Manic, people, and tell me how it ends; my Chinese copy never included the last chapter. That movie also includes the awesome Don Cheadle. It's as far from Third Rock from the Sun as that third rock is...uh...from the sun.)

Instead, I will use this first defense in a long while to knock down a straw man: the idea that movies (or stories of any kind) should have morals to them, and as a bonus, the idea that they could possibly be "without morals."

I'm responding, in short, to this comment posted at the NYTimes review of Inception:

"What exactly is the moral of this overly-complicated tale? The essential question of the ethics and morality of invading and manipulating the dreams of others is simply ignored, and we are left with the moral relativism of pure empty spectacle.
— TM, New York, NY"

That first question I think is a well-stated version of what I sometimes wonder about life itself. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as aptly applied to the question of what the "moral" is in movies.

When people refer to "the moral of the story," they usually mean they want to be told outright what the writers/actors/directors believe about a certain topic (Revolutionary Road's abortion, The Beach's drug lording, Inception's dream-stealing), so that we can agree with them and love the movie or disagree with them and hate it.

Any film critic will tell you this adherence to a didactic morality that determines likes and dislikes will only impede the "true" experience of the movie/story. I'm not going to go that far, since I suppose people who limit their likes and dislikes in reference to a moral compass have every right to do so -- like people who read books to see how many times the word "the" is used -- but I will say that they're doing something different than people who watch for other purposes, aesthetic, emotional, or intellectual.

To be fair, TM isn't necessarily eschewing an aesthetic reading of the movie in deference to a moral one. But TM does use the buzzwords "moral relativism" in a way that enforces the idea that TM expects the movie to offer a "moral."

(It's particularly odd to me that this is TM's criticism, as Inception seems to go out of its way to establish that meddling with other people's minds is very dangerous, criminal, and ultimately self-defeating...but then, this isn't actually a review of Inception, but a review of expectations and viewing habits.)

What TM wants, somehow, is an Aesopian statement at the end of the film, insisting that "it's not good to meddle with other people's minds." Which TM already knows, and which is otherwise peppered throughout the film in more subtle ways. So what TM is asking for, what TM needs to feel safe experiencing this "empty spectacle," is reassurance that Christopher Nolan (who directed Memento, you'll recall) believes the same thing TM believes.

Movies, like the Bible, are not designed for reassurance of preconceived notions. They're challenging, like all the stories we tell -- even the ones with interpretive "moral" statements at the end. Only "Christian fiction" "art" or similarly didactic genres fall into the trap of trapping the subjects absolutely, so that the good always ultimately win and the bad are appropriately punished.

Those genres are about a specific fantasy, and I would like to use this opportunity to suggest that no matter what the subject matter ("romantic," "tragic," or otherwise -- Christian fiction rarely delves into comedy, which usually works by irreverently upsetting the status quo), they should be grouped together under one generic umbrella. Some attempt at this has been made by designations of "family films," though this is not satisfactory to everyone.

Creating this genre would mean the end of statements like "where's the moral of this story?" It's not that the movie is "bad"; it's that you went to the wrong kind of film. I don't expect my romantic comedies to all have shoot-em-up scenes in them; it's inappropriate to the genre. So let morality mongers stick to their own genre, too, and stop complaining when they don't get what they're looking for from other films.

From now on, those who look for other things should be free to reply "you should have gone to the "moral films" section and rented something from there."

PSA: Sense and Sensibility also morphs into battle royale.

Here's a brilliant web video pointed out by friend Carl.

Watch it with the understanding that yes, linking to stuff on my blog instead of writing incisive (or any) commentary on it IS a cop-out -- and I know that -- but honestly, I think this one speaks for itself.

And in semi-Victorian English no less.

PSA: SYD morphs into Battle Royale

For the third week in a row, a dancer has been injured on So You Think You Can Dance, seriously enough that he can't perform.

On the one hand, it's kind of weird that so many people are getting hurt on SYD this season. On the other hand, if guys would keep getting kicked off for hurting tendons and knees, maybe the only girl left will make it to the end.

Still, I agree with the complaint that the show will quickly become meaningless, vote-wise, if people keep getting kicked off by their own injuries...meaningless, that is, unless you enjoy a battle royale.

PSA: Congress should extend unemployment benefits.

Not extending the relatively small, but hugely impactful (if that were a word) fee associated with extending unemployment benefits would be like paying very, very expensive dental insurance (the stimulus and bail-outs) and then balking at the co-pay when you had a real emergency ("$40?!? No THANK you!").

This is a stupid debate. If we wanted to be annoyed at paying way too much money for stuff that might not work, we should have done it earlier (and most of us did) like reasonable people. THIS money is actually directly accomplishing something, and it's WAY LESS than what we went into debt for two years ago.

This kind of thing is what taxes are for. Nobody who is not an anarchist or hardcore libertarian should be complaining.

Anarchists and libertarians, carry on. Everyone else shut up.

PSA: When I was looking up why Sharona left Monk...

I found this in the advertisements.

Just in case you wanted to become a monk instead of watching one.

PSA: Five years too late, I get pissed off about Monk.

I own the first three seasons of Monk, which it turns out, serendipitously, are the only ones I care to own. Midway through season three, as everyone but me must have known five years ago, Sharona (played by Bitty Schram) leaves the show suddenly and unexpectedly, with the sort of precipitous, badly thought-out narrative excuses that stink of contract disputes (sudden remarriage, moved back to NJ, etc). Sure, it's funny when it happens to Tasha Yar, but this departure ended up being, itself, a "skin of evil." San Francisco was better off with a little of Sharona's East Coast inflection, even if it was New Jersey, and anyone who calls her replacement Natalie "milquetoast" will receive a hearty "hear, hear!" from me.

I guess there was a contract dispute, and Sharona reappeared in one episode in the final, eighth season.

But I'm glad I don't own any of the later seasons.

Local Trivia, NYC: Little dudes atop buildings

When P.C. and I went to visit friend Carl in the N.Y.C., I began noticing little dudes on top of buildings.

In fact, it was around one park in particular -- Madison Square Park -- and the dudes weren't real people, they were metal statues. Art, in other words.

It was cool seeing the guys standing up there, though, and it made me look at the tops of buildings from then on in the most stressless trip to NYC I've been on. I have a tendency to look at the tops of buildings, anyway, and it was nice to have a reason to do it.

Here are some pictures -- see if you can see the dudes standing on the tops.

Quantifiable Living: Country song - patheticness

Social state of being: Patheticness, or the amount of pathos associated with a person involved in a social situation including or requiring a lost pet (i.e. dog), lost romantic partner (i.e. wife), lost or "beat up" pick-up truck, or any other item deemed "pathetic" by dominant culture.

Unit of measure: Country songs (Cs)

How it works: A long established link between country-western music and pathetic social situations -- one which long predates the unusually embarassing practice of collective country line dancing -- makes this scale almost intuitive, and easy to manage and use. Both the amount of social embarassment experienced by someone involved in the patheticness-incurring situation and the amount of perceived embarassment perceived as accruing to that or those individual(s) by those outside the situation may be measured by this scale.

Examples: Your credit card gets declines while you're attempting to buy feminine products: .3 Cs (for women); .6 Cs (for men)

The person who agreed to go on a date with you called out sick, but is seen later that night at the local Shake Shack with someone more attractive than you: 1 Cs

Your dog runs away with your romantic partner in your trusty beat-up pick-up truck: 5 Cs

Limits: This scale only measures the amount of patheticness involved in a social situation, not personal embarassment experienced in a non-social situation (i.e., when alone) nor any other emotion associated with the same situation. For truly accurate measures of emotionally complex scenarios, several scales must be used.

The scale also only refers to country-western songs that themselves describe pathetic situations, homogenized into the unit Cs. Garth Brooks is, in general, not involved in this scale; nor are any current or prior American Idol contestants, though the scale may itself be used in describing their rise to fame.

Confessions XLV

I instantly start resenting tour guides whose voices I deem "plastic."

I get sick of listening to the male client I work with talk about how often he goes to the gym and volunteer to tell me how much he weighs, enough that I often ignore him pointedly when he continues to do so.

I hate the overemphatic, crying-so-hard-I'm-choking-on-my-rage screaming that very young kids do...so much so that I think it may be dangerous for me to be the primary caregiver for any kids I might have in the future -- and I'm not planning on having any.

Local Trivia: In which Gene puts his eye out.

Last Saturday, after having had Gene in for a PCV valve-area cleaning (because it turns out Gene doesn't have or need a PCV valve) and suturing a new door onto his crushed passenger side (from a previous owner's collision), I drove Gene to work.

On the way, he spit out his left front blinker light onto the highway and promptly ran over it.

We're not talking lightbulb here; we're talking the entire signal light assembly. Three little wires protrude from his gaping socket now, and my turn signal clicker clicks madly whenever I need to turn left, reminding me always of what he's done.

If before I felt like the Cranstonator was a crotchety old war veteran in need of some rehabilitative attention, now I'm beginning to wonder whether he's just plain crotchety. Putting out your own eye, for spite? That seems extreme and alarming. These bids for attention are not generally what Volvos are known for; they're supposed to be safe even in dangerous scenarios, like a shark cage you can drive around in. That implies dependability to me, and things like keeping all your parts in where they should be.

On the other hand, G.C.'s radio, an after-market add with a CD player, seems to get a better signal than Betty's or than my indoor CD player/radio, so if he insists on being a curmudgeon, well, at least I'll have an extremely safe place to stretch out and listen to NPR.

Local Trivia: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewww.

Billboard on the side of I-84 East, near Hartford, CT:

[Two white women, one older, standing and smiling, arms on each other's shoulders]
"Not Your Mother's Hysterectomy!"

The billboard advertises "minimally invasive robotic assisted surgery." Too bad no one told them how gross it is to think about, let alone compare your own to, your mom's hysterectomy. It would have saved them a lot of money, and traffic-jammers a lot of cringing.

PSA: Double-u standard?

Well, the Washington Post has fired a reporter/blogger/op-ed contributor guy, David Wiegel, for writing in a private listserve email, among other things, "a joke about how the world would be a better place if Matt Drudge 'set himself on fire'."

This seems a bit like exiling the little boy who pointed out the Emporer was naked. I'm kind of disappointed he didn't put it on the official blog.

Technically, Wiegel resigned, and technically, the Post accepted the resignation after it was also revealed he'd said something about Rush Limbaugh dying and conservatives trying to "violently, angrily divide America." And technically, the Post declared that they weren't against opinions, per se, just against "the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work."

So...only the completely unconflicted are allowed to offer their opinions to the Post...which explains why they rushed to defend Drudge, actually.

The fact that these amount to a firing based on offering opinions in a non-public forum by a guy they hired partly to express his opinions (on conservative issues, no less) doesn't seem to bother the people at the Post who fired him. And I understand: the Post competes with the Washington Times for conservative readers, and this is a savvy business decision to help the Post seem less like the demonic liberal media Times readers probably feel it is. But let's not pretend it's not a choice of business savvy over free speech, because that's definitely what it is. And let's not ignore that defending Matt Drudge's freedom to say whatever damn stupid thing he wants by firing a guy who only said extreme things in private email rather than ranting them in public, is definitely a sign of conflict in the Post's business plan.

Perhaps people shouldn't be allowed to say, in any context, what seems obviously to be the truth (that the world would probably be better off without firebrand conservatives yelling at people without any solutions to the problems they're pointing out or compassion for the people they would affect), if they're working in journalism.

But it seems obvious instead that Fox News is winning here, and making the Washington Post into Switzerland won't help the paper survive. Kowtowing to conservatives who reserve the right to be jerks in public only for themselves will help the paper fade into the background, bird-cage-liner it seems to want to be, instead.

And heck -- like Wiegel with the conservatives he denigrated in email -- I'm saying this as a fan of the Post.

Imagine what Matt Drudge would say.

PSA: SYD complain-o-rama

So those of you who may be So You Think You Can Dance fans (SYD for short) have already noticed the changes this season: instead of the top 20, we've got the top 10 (well, top 11, it turns out), dancing with "champions" from past seasons -- none of the winners, mind you, but some memorable dancers -- in weird combinations, starting this week.

I respect the need to shake it up a bit after six seasons, but this is too much, SYD. I love the old champion dancers, which makes it tough to love the newbies. Is this more like Dancing with the Stars, which I've never seen? Why these changes?

At least Mia Michaels appears to be a permajudge this season, replacing Mary Murphy. I'd complain that no one will know now whether they're on the "hot tamale train" or not, but with all the changes this season, it's probably best to leave the train behind, too.

PSA: EEEEli Stone

The first three Es in my version of the spelling of the ABC-truncated show Eli Stone (which joined other shows like Daybreak, Samantha Who?, Dirty Sexy Money and a dozen other shows cut short in mid-seasons) stand for "every engagement ends," since with one end-of-the-run exception (which we don't get to see play out), every single engagement in this series (and there are a lot for such a short-running show) gets broken off. There are three broken engagements, I think, between six different characters, and in another case, a divorce.

But other than that, it's a pretty good show. Similar to Wonderfalls and, I imagine (since I've still never seen it), Joan of Arcadia, Eli Stone was a cute show that surprises you with stabs at significance. I always love Victor Garber (who doesn't?), and in Eli Stone he eventually gets to be the dad you always wish he was in Alias. Loretta "the Chief's wife from Grey's Anatomy" Devine has the constant supporting role she deserves (and several very, very respectable singing cameos) as Eli's assistant, and the rest of the cast grows on you. The lead actor from the ill-fated, years-ago show Ed, about a guy who owns a bowling alley (also seen as JD's older brother on Scrubs ), plays Eli's (dead) dad.

The second season cancellation desperation shows, and throws the show for a series of loops that can't really be justified, even with the impending doom of its end. But every show can't be Arrested Development with its brilliant use of desperate measures, nor Daybreak, with its meticulously plotted series finale. And while most of Eli Stone's plot twists feel twisty, it's almost untwisted just by the detritus of broken engagements littering the set stages: when Katie Holmes does a guest appearance (weird weird weird to see post-Cruise Katie on TV), it's clear that they leave room for her reappearance and leave Eli longing for her to return from Kenya -- though she never does -- and when the second-fiddle female lead character Eli's obviously in love with says she's over him, it's never sure whether we can believe her...The effect of so many relationships being mostly but not quite over is that every possibility remains open, always open, and so every possibility remains viable. These characters have choices, not an implacable, descend-on-you fate.

Perhaps that's the real tragedy of this show getting cut short: it's ultimately a show about process, and becoming a better person step by weird step, and it's a pity and an irony that something like that has to end. I'd like to see it unfurl over the years, ignoring character consistency and back-story and staying true instead to people's tendency to change, and change their beliefs about themselves, over time. That's a show I think 20-somethings could use nowadays.

Then again, we all die eventually, so maybe the cancellation and the end to process it represents is also true to life.

I still blame ABC.

PSA: If not the dive, the long-shot works.

Drosselmeyer, a 13-1 longshot in the Belmont Stakes (the third leg of the Triple Crown), pulled out a beautiful first-place finish, making starry-eyed, long-shot-betting OTB'ers happy this week and ensuring they can afford the inevitable benders to follow.

I guess horse racing will survive another year.

Mix: Chill Outz 3

In honor of Bryan Gaynor's dancing, here's a third "Fireflies"-inspired Chill Outz mix. There are repeats from past mixes and, yes, incredibly sappy songs on this list. And yes, there should be more Postal Service and Snow Patrol on a mix like this, but I can't get iTunes to recognize my .wma formats. If you would like all of the Chill Outz mixes, send your address to my email.

"Fireflies" -- Owl City
"Moth's Wings" -- Passion Pit
"No More Running Away" -- Air Traffic
"Kyrie" -- Mr. Mister
"Days Are Numbers (The Traveler)" -- Alan Parsons Project
"Scientist Studies" -- Death Cab For Cutie
"Save Tonight" -- Eagle Eye Cherry
"The Lamentation of David" -- Antony Pitts from Naxos Early Music
"Weighed Down" -- Jars of Clay
"Snowbirds and Townies" -- Further Seems Forever
"The Blower's Daughter" -- Damien Rice
"The Space Between" -- Dave Matthews Band
"Tiny Dancer" -- Elton John
"God Only Knows" -- Beach Boys
"Entertaining Angels" -- Newsboys
"Death And All His Friends" -- Coldplay

Local Trivia: Overheard after intro in which friend Kevin, very drunk, was explaining a dream in which he and Ben tried to move to a haunted house.

Kevin: "Long story short, needless to say, Ben and I did not get the lease."

[Because, Kevin explained later, they had not stayed the entire night as required by the owner. Pure genius horror film reasoning, there.]

PSA: SYD begins with a ROBOT.

I love love love this dancer; Bryan Gaynor (aka "Chibi"/Chibotics) from the season 3 SYD auditions has come back for season 7 auditions, to show us all (and the SYD judges) what he's been doing since we saw him on the season 3 finale performing his unique and humorous version of Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man."

Where his previous SYD performance showed (as I repeatedly pointed out, semi-gushing, to an eternally patient Prince Certainpersonio) the self-aware humor of the (potential) humanness of robots, Bryan's performance in this week's auditions showed exactly what robot-filled sci fi movies based on hardcore golden age science fiction writers like Asimov and Bova (think Bicentennial Man and A.I.) strive to show but often fall short of (though I'm told Iron Giant is awesome, and I suspect in just this way): the necessary, often telling differences between the "robot" and the "human."

Whether the reference is purposeful or not, when Bryan lays down at the end of the routine, I can't help but recall the image of Haley Joel Osment laying down next to his mother at the end of A.I. The difference is that this is real life, Bryan is a real person much like many of the people I know, and his taking on the (dance) persona of a robot is strangely fitting, and poignant as a result. Even in the few actual clips we get of Bryan Gaynor dancing to Owl City's "Fireflies," a song I'm sure he's made a lot of money for by now, we can imagine a completely different world watching the isolation and terrible, innocent hope of his robot on display. His dance is a meditation on what makes us different, not (just) from robots, but from each other, and how we might cope with that.

And unlike the more recent robotic sci-fi, it doesn't leave us all screaming piles of wreckage in the wake of software gone bad. Chibotics follows the three laws.

It's possible that only a 7-season veteran of SYD would obsess this much over a really awesome version of the robot -- or that only a candidate for an upper-level degree in "cultural production" would. But see for yourself. Go watch it. The picture isn't perfect, and they show way too much of the SYD judges reacting to his dance (we know, it's awesome, and touching! Now SHOW US WHAT HE'S DOING SO WE CAN REACT, TOO), but what you see is, I think, enough to understand what I'm talking about.

Don't watch it on a bad or jerky connection, though, as you won't know when he's being an awesome robot vs. when your computer is being stupid.

Also, keep in mind that I feel really attached to this performance, in which I see vulnerability and strength, which are rarely so obviously displayed and which are usually crushed by cynical comments -- so if you hate it or want to say sarcastic things about it, go to some random person's blog and post a comment there. That other blogger will probably be pleased and benignly weirded out, and I will be saved from a small bit of soul-death. This is a just-in-case suggestion.

The hundred suitors and the axe head: Cranstonated.

Gene Cranston has finally been registered. I've discovered in this process that I never received Betty's official CT title in the mail three years ago when I got her, but they didn't need that to finally allow me to drive the Cranstonation for realz.

Huzzah. P.C. and I have driven to his parents' house in semi-celebration, and except for G.C.'s left headlight, which fell out of its socket on the highway and must have looked to other cars like a skeleton's dangling eyeball, it all went fine.

Still -- huzzah for my one-eyed car.

Local Trivia: Tree butchery

I just watched a perfectly good, cute, decorative tree get chainsawed down by a two-man crew with a wood chopper.

I thought they were just pruning it to begin with, though I thought "that's a stupid way to prune a tree," which I know thanks to my grandma's penchant for gardening and farm-work. Then they continued past the point of pruning, and I realized what they were really doing.

It felt a bit like what I imagine watching an amputation would feel like -- though with the addition that the amputation would continue, shockingly, to every limb, and then end with decapitation.

Gene Cranston came to that.

So in the continuing saga of Gene Cranston's road-worthiness, it turned out that the check-engine-light lighting that happened post-transmission-flush was what my Ron had feared it would be: the catalytic converter.

It also turns out that because Gene is a 1994 and not 1996 or later, there needed to be a special-order converter. The O2 sensor that would normally be somewhere on a catalytic converter is actually inside a Volvo 1994's catalytic converter. This meant that changing it cost over 150% what a normal cat would cost. I got it done at P.C.'s Ron's shop because they're exhaust experts and I was tired of my Ron rolling his eyes at Gene. (Though that had stopped when he'd had a chance to spend a little time with Gene, my Ron also simply buys dealer parts for Volvos, which are three times as expensive as they should be.)

So Gene got his converter converted last Thursday. They ran him through emissions right there at P.C.'s Ron's, and he passed in training. Then they ran him again and he failed worse than ever.

When I say "worse than ever," I mean that Gene had failed by about 200 ppm in the Nox category the first time, putting out 1700-something instead of the 1522 he should have. The second test, he got worse, putting out over 2000 ppm, and this second post-training-run run, he scored over 2500. This was after the catalytic converter was put in, and after the trips to Less-local City and Far-Away City.

Friday morning, I brought Gene in for a final retest, to have them test him cold, and he passed, with only 308 ppm. Go figure.

So Gene was roadworthy on Friday, the day I had to drive him to (and for) work.

I actually took my girl to the DMV on Friday afternoon, hoping to get a number for the line (CT DMV works like a deli counter), drop the girl off half an hour away and make it back before my number was called. Friday was the last day Gene Cranston could legally drive with the temporary registration; Friday was the day he had finally passed the emissions test to get a real registration; and Friday was the day the DMV shut early for the holiday weekend.

I don't mean early-early. I mean 20 minutes before I arrived with my girl, the DMV had shut its doors to further customers. It wasn't even closed yet at 12:53 p.m. But it was closed to me and the ten other cars that arrived and turned around in its lot while I was there.

So today, today, I'm going back, and I hope to finally end the saga (and the various payments) -- but at this point I hold out little hope that Gene, abused by previous owners and reluctant to change (gears -- the transmission is still a bit sticky), will ever be the happy-go-lucky little car-that-could that Betty has been. Or at least not legally.

But maybe I'm wrong -- maybe this is less fairy-tale and more epic, and all I have left to do is slay the hundred suitors and shoot my arrow through an axe head or something. After Circe and the cyclops, that should be a cinch.

Confessions XLIV

Last night I ate honey roasted peanuts for dinner. Later I regretted it.

I also spent most of the waking hours of my shift watching Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and Better Off Ted on hulu -- though this is allowed at my job, and so doesn't constitute as big a confession as you might think.

This morning, possibly thanks to my dietary and moral weakness, I woke up with an entire leg asleep. An entire leg. The weakness didn't go away with pins and needles; instead, it seems to have spread to my entire body, giving me even worse posture than usual. Because of a Parks and Rec episode I watched ("why would anyone eat anything other than breakfast food?" "People are stupid, Leslie"), I believe that a Belgian waffle with berries and whipped cream would cure this.