- Proof again that parasites are the scariest damn things out there. [via]
- Speaking, sort of, of parasitic mouth-breathers, you have read the single worst sports column ever written, right? The fact that Mark Whicker doesn’t seem to understand how his column trivialized Jaycee Dugard’s horrific 18-year ordeal — and is lousy journalism to boot — is just disgusting. Joe Wilson gave a more sincere apology.
- Speaking of Wilson, via Twitter Kurt Andersen writes:
Nobody who applauded the dude in Baghdad who threw his shoe at Bush really has any standing to accuse Joe Wilson of incivility. Right?
It’s an interesting point, but I do think it’s wrong and maybe over-simplifies. For starters, this is at least partly about context. Shoe-thrower Muntazer al-Zaidi was a journalist attending a press conference, whereas Joe Wilson was a Congressman attending the President’s address to that legislative body. There are different levels of decorum expected, if only by tradition, in those two very different settings. Also Bush is obviously not Iraqi, whereas both Wilson and Obama are Americans, and Iraq was/is a more hostile battleground than health care. (Although you maybe wouldn’t know it, from some of the “debate” and hysteria surrounding the latter.) Both the thrown shoe and presidential heckling were uncivil acts, neither the best solution at the time, but the shoe is more defensible, if only because it was born out of a shared desperation instead of politics. That Wilson was demonstrably wrong about Obama’s so-called lie, and yet has continued to spread his own lies about the proposed governmental health care… Well, it’s tough to continue drawing parallels between the two outbursts.
- James Patterson signs a 17-book deal “that will keep him with publisher Hachette through 2012.” Do the math: even if the deal goes into effect immediately, that’s 17 books in just over two years, about eight books a year. I guess it’s a good thing James Patterson doesn’t actually have to write well, huh? [via]
- And finally, this proposed Plan 9 from Outer Space remake…is a joke, right?
Plan 9 Teaser Trailer from Darkstone Entertainment on Vimeo.
books
Thursday various
- Roger Ebert on trivia:
The fatal flaw in the concept of trivia is that it mistakes information for knowledge. There is no end to information. Some say the entire universe is made from it, when you get right down to the bottom, under the turtles. There is, alas, quite a shortage of knowledge. I think I will recite this paragraph the next time I’m asked a trivia question.
- In all the talk about whether or not Google should be allowed to scan massive numbers of books and make them available in electronic form — a matter that’s still not yet resolved, due to pending litigation — there’s one question I haven’t seen raised a lot: can Google even do this well? There’s some evidence here to suggest not. Certainly, even if Google Book Search goes ahead, it may need some significant work. [via]
- Mad Max fan builds replica Interceptor, moves to Outback. I’d make a Thunderdome joke, but I think we’re all trying to get beyond Thunderdome.
- Police baffled as dozens of “suicidal” cows throw themselves off cliff in the Alps. Warning, there are some images (not terribly graphic or close-up, but potentially distressing) of the dead cows. [via]
- And finally, given that I’m taking tomorrow off, I find it pretty easy to sing the praises of the four-day workweek. I wonder if I could broach the idea of my telecommuting one day a week. Most everything I do is via e-mail, and working on manuscripts that are delivered via e-mail, and there are even some things — most recently checking if a video was on our YouTube channel, which ironically is blocked at the office — that I can only do at home. I don’t have any serious expectations that it could happen, but it’s an interesting thought. [via]
Recent movie roundup
Last night, I watched Push, which I wanted to enjoy more than I did. It’s a colorful look at Hong Kong, if nothing else, but the plot is such a terrible muddle. I think my opinion falls somewhere between Roger Ebert, who wrote:
“Push” has vibrant cinematography and decent acting, but I’m blasted if I know what it’s about.
And Tasha Robinson, who wrote:
The subject matter is propulsive adolescent fun all the way, with a pop sensibility, some nifty costume and set design, and a lot of special-effects-powered showdowns—but the execution reaches for a broader audience, one so unfamiliar with the genre tropes that it needs the assiduous extra explanation, plus time to ponder each new development. The resultant moderate pacing has its appeal; it turns Push into an ambling, broody concoction along the lines of Strange Days. At times, a more aggressive editor would help immensely. At others, Push explores its brutish future Hong Kong with a patience and sense of milieu that seems cribbed more from Wong Kar-wai than Doug Liman.
Robinson is a lot more forgiving of the movie’s faults, which stem largely from its script (front-loaded with unnecessary exposition and never truly resolving anything), but also from a sometimes confused, or at least over-stylized, visual sense. The movie is often very pretty, but it’s not always clear what that aesthetic is in service of. The location shooting in Hong Kong is, at first, one of the movie’s biggest strengths — it’s a truly exotic and vibrant city, rarely seen like this from the ground-level up, and so it’s almost its own character in the film — but by the end it seemed increasingly less organic to the story, more style than substance. The climactic action at the stuff-that-looks-cool-when-it-explodes factory just serves to drive this home.
And it’s a shame, because there’s a genuinely interesting story, with some decent world-building, lurking around the edges. It’s not a good movie, but I can’t shake the feeling that it could have been.
Then this afternoon, I watched The Time Traveler’s Wife with a couple of friends. I thought it was a decent, if unremarkable adaptation of a book that, while entertaining, didn’t really cry out to be adapted.
I liked that it addressed my main quibble with Audrey Niffenegger’s book — which I just finished reading a couple of weeks ago, actually — which was that its title was a bit of a misnomer. The book is less about the time traveler’s wife, Clare, than about the time traveler himself, Henry. While the book offers significantly more detail from both of their perspectives, I rarely felt like Clare emerged as a fully developed character in its pages, at least not outside of her undying love for Henry and their strange relationship. I liked both of them, but I felt that I got to know Henry better. Maybe it’s due to Rachel McAdams — I think she and Eric Bana are well cast, and I agree with Roger Ebert that they “have a pleasant chemistry, and sort of involved me in spite of myself” — but this Clare seems like more of a person to me.
Ultimately, I think I liked the book better, and I think it handled its underlying conceit more ably than the film. But the film is reasonably entertaining, and I’m not sorry I saw it. Maybe that’s damning it with faint praise, but it isn’t half bad.
But I think we can all agree that this is a pretty odd choice for a wedding song. Don’t get me wrong, I think Broken Social Scene do an interesting cover of the song, but even if you don’t know its history or anything about Joy Division and Ian Curtis’ suicide, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” hardly seems like the sentiment for a first dance between husband and wife.
Of course, it does kind of make me want to re-watch 24 Hour Party People…
Thursday various
- My sister is getting married in a couple of months — a little less than, actually — and I don’t think she’s taking her fiancé Brian’s last name. Apparently, however, 50% of Americans think she should be legally required to do so. I’m curious as to what these people think the legal repercussions for not taking your husband’s name should be. Thirty years hard labor? My future wife needn’t worry. I ask only a dowry of ten cows and three oxen from her village patriarch. Anyway, as I noted yesterday, my last name is frequently misspelled and -pronounced. [via]
- N. K. Jemisin on describing characters of color:
Because so much of fantasy takes place in settings that in no way resemble the real world, featuring species that in no way resemble human, fantasy writers often have trouble dealing with regular people. This is something that, I think, isn’t as much of a problem for mainstream writers, because they can simply describe the world around them and come up with a reasonably accurate representation of humanity. They can also fall back on the plethora of real-world terms used to describe human beings, racially and otherwise. But using these terms makes no sense if you’re dealing with a world that doesn’t share our political/cultural context. You can’t call someone “African American†if your world has no Africa, no America, and has never gone through a colonial phase in which people of disparate cultures were forcibly brought together, thus necessitating the term in the first place.
- Got $8,000? Why not buy your own Personal Satellite Kit? [via]
- On the other hand, if you have eight million dollars, maybe you want to bid on your very own rare T-Rex skeleton. (Maybe you could get an Ankylosaurus skeleton and make them fight.)
- And finally, if you’re going to complain about your job on Facebook, at the very least make sure your boss isn’t one of your friends. [via]
Monday various
- Need a little extra bees and honey in your sky rocket? Cockney rhyming slang to be added as an option to some East London ATMs. Silly merchant bankers!
- An interesting article on the new graphic novel version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, although I’m not so sure about the whole “comic books are the anti-book” sentiment that seems to be running through it. [via] It may be time for me to revisit Bradbury’s original novel, especially in light of the man’s own sometimes puzzling pronouncements about it in recent years. I love Ray Bradbury maybe more than any other writer, and it’s possible he’s earned his curmudgeonly ways, but it can be a lot easier to love the words than the man.
- Still, the man’s an absolute darling compared to, say, Lord of the Flies author William Golding [via]
- Dear Tom Ridge: too damn little, too damn late. I didn’t even like you all that much when you were my governor.
- And finally, John Scalzi has been getting some flack in certain circles for his write-up of design flaws in the Star Wars universe, but the man isn’t wrong. (Even the six-year-old me, who can’t help but pester, “Well, maybe the Sarlaac isn’t native to Tatooine,” has to accept that.)