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Saturday, September 30, 2006

It's Not Apocalpytic If the World Is Really Ending
Kurt Andersen in New York Magazine catches everyone jonesing for apocalypse. Via A&L Daily.
It's Saturday Morning; If I Were Nine Years Old I'd Be Playing Nintendo Right Now
This morning Neil sends along some Nintendo-flavored links from kotaku.com:

* Bluegrass Mario for one guitar and and Jazzy Zelda for the big band. This is awesome.

* Human Space Invaders and Human Pong.

* Mad Crazy Super Mario Painting and other "works of great and terrible genius" by Handre de Jager.
Friday, September 29, 2006

Bowmaster
Widdle away the hours while civilization ends with Bowmaster [Flash]. Via MeFi.
Ideas for Democrats
Frank Rich considers a few.
It is not easy to be a professional Democrat in 2006. Out of power for six years and widely damned as out of intellectual steam, the party is regarded in nearly every political precinct and publication as a chronic invalid, doomed to obsolescence even though nearly all the stars are in alignment for a national rejection of all things Bush. When others aren't kicking the Democrats, they are more than happy to kick themselves. The former Clinton hands Rahm Emanuel, now a hard-charging Democratic congressman from Illinois, and Bruce Reed, the president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, set the defensive tone of their election-year policy manifesto by quoting the Beckett-inflected soliloquy of Ross Perot's ticket mate, Admiral James Stockdale, from the vice-presidential debate of 1992: "Who am I? Why am I here?" These days the Democrats would seem to have fewer answers to such existential questions than the sadly disoriented Stockdale did.
The End of Suburbia
I live in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Should I move?
Yes. As soon as possible.
Happy Fun Day continues with another depressing documentary everyone needs to see: The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. It's essentially the movie version of The Long Emergency, which I've talked about before.

Here's the trailer again, and here's the official site. Have a good night.
If Professional Wrestling Rewrote American History
At McSweeney's.
2000 Election

George Bush and Al Gore meet in the squared circle for the championship title. It's a back-and-forth match. Gore gains the upper hand and hits his finishing move, the Global Warmer. But, as Gore goes for the cover, William "the Chief" Rehnquist rushes to the ring carrying a steel chair. With the referee distracted by Laura Bush, Rehnquist knocks Gore over the head with the chair. Bush goes for the cover and wins the belt. The show ends with an incredulous announcer screaming, "George W. Bush is champion, but I don't know if he deserves it!"
Living Forever Ain't What It Used to Be
'The Coming Death Shortage: Why the longevity boom will make us sorry to be alive.' From May 2005, at The Atlantic Online. Via MeFi.
But on a Lighter Note
Mr. Rogers once played Donkey Kong. All is forgiven, America! All is forgiven.
Amerika
Salon presents the taxonomy of torture. Enjoy your stay in the greatest democracy in the world.

Via Metafilter, David Corn has some more photos of waterboarding, a favorite tool of the Khmer Rouge, one of the war crimes the Japanese were tried for at the end of World War II, and, yes, now an approved interrogation confession-extracting tactic in the U.S.A. What a country.
Thursday, September 28, 2006

Oh My Sweet Lord
On the day the Republicans abolished one of the foundational principles of democracy, the 700-year-old writ of habeas corpus, in a cynical attempt to polarize the electorate for a few weeks before the election, it's hard to believe that a Republican said or did something even stupider. But thankfully, Trent Lott provides.
Lott went on to say he has difficulty understanding the motivations behind the violence in Iraq.

"It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people," he said. "Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli's and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me."
Cathy Come Home
Tonight in film theory we watched possibly the best documentary I've ever seen, Ken Loach's classic Cathy Come Home. Both YouTube and Google Video failed me, but I did find some clips. Netflix came up dry too. Dig it out if you can find it.
Sometimes Torture Is in the Eye of the Beholder
The best Daily Show clip I've seen in months. Just brutal. Sometimes I can't believe this is the world we have to live in, and as always I remain completely flummoxed by how prescient The Onion really was.

You'll Believe a Man Can Be Glamourous
Superhero comics have been around since Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer ruled the back lot, but only recently has Hollywood realized the natural connection between superhero comics and movies. It’s not just that both are simultaneously visual and verbal media; that formal connection would apply equally to the “serious” graphic novels and sequential art that want nothing to do with crime fighters in form- fitting outfits. Cinema isn’t just a good medium for translating graphic novels. It’s specifically a good medium for superheroes. On a fundamental, emotional level, super­heroes, whether in print or on film, serve the same function for their audience as Golden Age movie stars did for theirs: they create glamour. Via A&L Daily.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Jaimee Says She's Going as Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in Caftan of Tan with Henna Hackles
Hello, and welcome to Emperor of Ice-Cream Cakes, an online birthday party for Wallace Stevens that will occur throughout the entire month of October... Anyway, I want you to come; namely, I want you to send me pictures of yourself and your friends dressed as lines of Wallace Stevens’s poetry.

"Bantams in Pine-Woods"
College Makes You Dumber
Now we know for sure.
Seniors at UC Berkeley, the nation's premier public university, got an F in their basic knowledge of American history, government and politics in a new national survey, and students at Stanford University didn't do much better, getting a D.

...

Other poor performers in the study were Yale, Duke [Editor's Note: Go Blue Devils], Brown and Cornell universities. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was the tail-ender behind Cal, ranking 50th. The No. 1 ranking went to unpretentious Rhodes College in Memphis.
Rough day for Hills/avan alma maters. But you'll notice Case Western Reserve Purple Monkey Dishwasher University is still worth every penny. Also, just for Neil: Go Jumbos.
Mars
Wouldn't you like to watch the season premiere of Veronica Mars a week early? Through the magic of technology, you can.
No Grad Student, No Cry
The 10 occupations with the largest job growth, 2004-2014. Despite what grad students always hear about our dismal job prospects, college professor clocks in at number 2 with 32% expected growth.

Of course all those jobs are going to be in business and science. But still.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Athorist
Via Boing Boing, here's a nice little video on YouTube of Richard Dawkins being interviewed by someone who has apparently never heard of an atheist. It gets pretty ludicrous.
So what is the Bible?
RD: It's a collection of documents written by people in the first millennium B.C., like any other tribal mythology attempting to make sense of the world. All tribes have them, they're all different. This happens to be the Jewish one.
And the New Testament?
RD: The New Testament is a modification which has come to us because of the invention of Christianity by St. Paul in the first century.
And the accounts of the miracles are nonsense are they?
RD: Surely, yes. I mean--
The Virgin Birth?
Yes.
The Resurrection?
Yes, they're all--
The Ascension?
Yes.
All nonsense?
It's Too Hot in These Tunnels, You Can Get Hit Up by the Heat
Gawker has compiled a map of the New York City subway system organized by smell. Via Boing Boing.
Justice, American Style
How small-town courts abuse the system. Via MetaFilter.
'Balance'
It's weird German animation Tuesday, via AskMe.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Let's Fanwank
Some Monday afternoon chatfilter on who is the most powerful superhero.
The Continuing Saga
We've reverted back, everyone: we're taking email poetry submissions again. Details here.
Random Link City
* Wizard's How to Draw Superwomen. Remember kids: sexy isn't just a superpower, it's the only superpower. (via Bookslut)

* Woody Allen is in the New Yorker, and so is a critique of string theory which posits that maybe beauty isn't truth, truth beauty.

* Haruki Murakami has won 35,000 euro for his latest book of short stories. At the current exchange rate that's just over a billion dollars.

* Kottke has still more The Wire links. This show is really getting a lot of buzz lately. The first disc of season one is still sitting on my table; I think tonight's the night I crack it open.

* The only trouble with "Hugo Chávez May Have Anger Management Issues" at McSweeney's is that it obscures the important point that Bush really is the devil.

* The Ballad of Big Mike.
Send Us Your Comics!
We've been getting a lot of fiction and poetry submissions this time around. But we've had almost no comics submissions. We want to see the things you make.
Douglas Adams, Radical Atheist
Somewhere in my surfing tonight I stumbled across this interview with Douglas Adams and The American Atheist, c. 1999.
DNA: ...I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.
Sunday, September 24, 2006

The Office Values
Both parts of the in-character David Brent videos Ricky Gervais made for Microsoft a ways back are still available on Google Video. These are good.



Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Prisoners Speak
The New York Review of Books has some words about Guantánamo, as well as a contrarian take on foreign aid from Nicholas "Two Cheers for Sweatshops" Kristof.
More Author Interviews! More! More!
Listen to the voices of many of the best writers of the English language. These uncut, behind-the-scenes interviews were the foundation of Don Swaim's long-running CBS Radio show, Book Beat. Via SF Signal.
The Important Questions
What are the best zombie movies of all time? With clips, at retroCRUSH.
Friday, September 22, 2006

'Up, Up, and Oy Vey'
Comic books and Judaism. In The New York Times. Thanks to Neil for the pointer.
What's on the Villanelle?
The villanelle is the most restrictive of all sandwich forms. (via Bookslut)
$500,000
George Saunders is a bonafide, certified genius.
The DNA of Literature
Fifty years of interviews with the Paris Review. This post alone makes up for all the blogging I haven't had time to do lately. Thanks, Steve!
Thursday, September 21, 2006

BCR #4 Is Here!
And it's going in the mail this weekend. If you haven't ordered it yet, what are you waiting for?

Same As It Ever Was
Bill Clinton on the Daily Show. Let's watch.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

The Kryptonese Alphabet
There are a lot of important things going on in the world right now; translation of the language from Superman's home planet is the most important. There's a lot more at the site, too, including (just for instance) the origin of Superboy-Prime. Via Monitor Duty.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The 50 Worst Things Ever to Happen to Music
At Blender.com, where you can also uncover the 50 Worst Songs Ever and the 50 Worst Artists in Music History.
Lucky Number Slevin
What shit. If I ever remember who gave me the impression this movie was good, they're gonna pay. Listen: If you're going to try and replicate the ending of The Usual Suspects, the least you can do is be quick about it. The "big reveal" at the end of this movie takes 7 hours.
Great Moments in Sentence Construction
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

(Via Cynial-C.)
'The A-Team Does Not Respect Positive Law, Since This Statist Invention Is Responsible for Their Plight'
A-Team Stands for Anarcho-Capitalism. Today's dose of libertarian bullpuckey via MetaFilter.
Monday, September 18, 2006

'Only the Hand That Erases Can Write the True Thing'
Meister Eckhart provides a little afternoon Zen for us while I write my first paper at Duke.
The Center for Cartoon Studies
What is the shape of things as Vermont's new Center for Cartoon Studies enters its second year? The Comics Reporter interviews the founders of the place Ezra totally should have gone instead of Seattle.
Perhaps the Single Most Amazing Thing Anyone Has Ever Seen
The first level of Super Mario 3, rendered in LEGO.
The Problem with Literary Magazines
It's the format. An old post from Wet Asphalt with a lot of good thoughts about why so many literary magazines are bad and how we might make them better.
My point here certainly isn't that literary magazines should stop publishing unknowns. Rather, literary magazines need to require a lower entry cost in time and money to make it easier for readers to take a chance on them. Because that's what we're doing when we buy a magazine of short stories and poetry by writers we've never heard of: taking a chance. The editors of literary magazines need to start recognizing that, stop blaming the readers, and realize whose fault it is that their magazines aren't worth the risk.
Concerning Hobbits
Hear Tolkien reading (and singing) from Lord of the Rings through the magic of vinyl. (via MetaFilter)
Oedipus 'Buster' Bluth
I've nursed my son through four birthdays now. I know what the critics say, but it's what he wants. At Salon.
Sunday, September 17, 2006

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Cockney Rhyming Slang. Via Wikipedia.
The New Yorker in Haiku
Every week. Via MeFi.
Saturday, September 16, 2006

PhilosophizeMe
Explain Foucault to me like I was a 10-year-old.
There and Back Again
About halfway through this AICN interview with Peter Jackson he starts talking about the possibility of making The Hobbit, possibly as two films.
Friday, September 15, 2006

Katamari Damacy: A Critique
Over the next few weeks I will be introducing you to eight schools of criticism – Biographical, New Critical, Marxist, Structural, Jungian, Psychoanalytical, Feminist, and Post-Colonial – giving a little history behind each, and showing how they can be used to critique the video game Katamari Damacy for the PlayStation 2.
Best New Stories from New Jersey
I've got another little article in this week's Independent, this one an interview with the 2006 editor of New Stories from the South, Allan Gurganus. He's a cool guy.
Booklyn
Another article about the literary cred of Brooklyn, NY. PCEgan goes mysteriously unmentioned. (via Bookninja)
Thursday, September 14, 2006

Every Segway Recalled
The transportation of the future...today!
More on The Wire Being Good
Another The-Wire-is-the-best-show-on-TV profile I'm afraid to read.
'It's That Preoccupation with Literary Postmodernism That Either Endears Readers to Danielewski or Turns Them Off Completely'
The L.A. Times profiles Mark Z. Danielewsi, author of the longest (and maybe the best) book I ever read in a single, endless Saturday, House of Leaves. His new book, Only Revolutions, is out now. (via Bookslut)
'He Likes to Linger in the Dullest of Functional, In-Between Places, Like Stairwells and Bus Stops, Waiting for a Door to Show Up'
Salon reviews the new Murakami. Despite what this reviewer says, I actually think Murakami's short stories constitute some of his best work.
Stephen King Loves The Wire
He says so in Entertainment Weekly. I didn't even read this article, because I'm just about to settle in to watch the first three seasons and I want to go in cold.
Synecdoche, New York
Jay Fernandez has read the new Charlie Kaufman script. He loves it. I'm saying he really loves it.

All I can say is that it's got one hell of a good title.
'I Have Not Listened to the CD, Nor Will I, But I Nonetheless Review It Based on the Track Titles Alone'
David Cross "reviews" the new Yo La Tengo album. Also at eMusic, Douglas Wolk actually reviews the album. (via Egan)
We're Gonna Need a Bigger Blog
Would you believe I'd never seen Jaws in its entirety until tonight? Well, it's sad but true. I watched it in preparation for my film class tomorrow. Onward to 1976!
Wednesday, September 13, 2006

A Goddamned Simple, Commonplace, Gullet-Pleasing Peanut-Fucking-Butter Sandwich on the Premises of Their Fucking Pool Patio
An Overheard Conversation at the Suburban Neighborhood Pool, If the Suburban Neighborhood Pool Were in Deadwood.
Bush's Useful Idiots
Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration’s sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?
The Last Refuge of the Neanderthals
Gibraltar may have been the last refuge of the Neanderthals, according to the results of a six-year archaeological dig.
'files and 'views
* The Guardian profiles Roald Dahl and The New Yorker's David Remnick.

* In American Scientist, Kim Sterelny reviews Daniel Dennett's religion book and concludes regardless of the book's virtues that "his cultural project is doomed."

* Meanwhile, Mark Engler in Salon says nonviolence sucks. I feel like killing him for saying that.
George Orwell was never much for pacifists. He wrote of his nonviolent political adversaries during World War II: If they "imagine that one can somehow 'overcome' the German army by lying on one's back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen." To Mohandas Gandhi, his Indian contemporary and fellow anti-imperialist, he accorded only a grudging and critical respect. Yet because he viewed many pacifists as specialists in evading unpleasant truths, Orwell did admire Gandhi's unflinching honesty with regard to the Holocaust: When asked about resistance to the Nazis, Gandhi argued that the Jews should have prepared en masse to sacrifice their lives in nonviolence -- something Orwell regarded as "collective suicide" -- in order to "[arouse] the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence."

No doubt Orwell would have been skeptical of the contentions advanced by author Mark Kurlansky in his new primer, "Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea." Compared with the standard histories offered in American public education, these arguments can safely be described as contrarian: "The case can be made that it was not the American Revolution that secured independence from Britain," Kurlansky writes; "it was not the Civil War that freed the slaves; and World War II did not save the Jews."
Tuesday, September 12, 2006

In Other Words


(via everywhere)
Come on, Get Outraged
Saw The Road to Guantanamo tonight. It angries the blood.

For what it's worth, here's a dissenting view. The trouble here, of course, is the writer's not-quite-stated suggestion that if only it could be proven that the boys went to fight for the Taliban, then they would have deserved it.

And here's another footnote.
Four actors who play al-Qaida suspects in a British movie that won a prestigious prize were detained by the police at Luton airport as they returned from the Berlin Film Festival and questioned under anti-terror laws, alongside two of the former terrorism suspects they play on screen.

...

In a statement, Rizwan Ahmed said police swore at him and asked if he had become an actor to further the Islamic cause. He said he was at first denied access to a lawyer and was questioned about his views on the Iraq war by a policewoman. "She asked me whether I intended to do more documentary films, specifically more political ones like The Road to Guantánamo. She asked 'Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, to publicise the struggles of Muslims?'"
'Empires with Expiration Dates'


Isn't it time you replaced yours? In Foreign Policy.
Monday, September 11, 2006

Your Name in a Chris Ware Comic
The appearance in name and approximate drawn likeness, either as a 'supporting character' or more forthright personna, of the auction's 'winner' in an upcoming comic strip by the author/cartoonist, to appear sometime before the end of 2008 in serial (probably newspaper) form, and later to be reprinted in collected form at an unspecified, and probably quite alarmingly later, date.

I'll be happy to send a signed copy of the strip in which the person appears (which will likely be in the local weekly newspaper) but only on the proviso that the person in question doesn't get mad or otherwise grow to despise me if their likeness is construed as satirical, incorrect, unflattering or in any way unliterary. I'll do my best, however, to maintain veracity and allegiance to the general rules of propriety (unless, of course, the winner offends me, in which case he/she may appear as any variety of disagreeable and distasteful ruffian.) The winner should also realize that if his or her character ends up contributing significantly to the development of said story that the author/cartoonist cannot be held liable for any confusion, affront or life complication said appearance might subsequently engender.

The winning bidder will need to submit two relatively clear photographs along with the desired name.
Via Boing Boing and Flog!
'I've Seen Absolutely Nothing Adequate to the Event. It May Be Another Sign That Our Culture Has Grown Numb'
Slate asks: What work of art or literature has helped you make sense of the attacks and the world after them? The above is the full answer from notorious curmudgeon Harold Bloom. Smartest answer goes to my beloved George Saunders:
I can't say that anything has helped me make sense of the attacks. I suspect they were just what they felt like they were—namely, a reminder that chaos and hatred sometimes rear their heads and, temporarily, are ascendant. But one work of art that has helped me in a more general way is John Adams' symphonic work "On the Transmigration of Souls"; it has "helped" me in the sense that I've been able to use it, periodically and sacramentally, to move myself to tears remembering that day just as it was. Every time I listen to it, it re-attunes me to the real sadness of that day, the sense of ordinary lives suddenly and horribly interrupted. That, I'd say, is the real purpose of art: to sweep away the mold that conceptual and habitual thought allows to grow over even the most raw experience. And Adams does it—it's a great and courageous piece of music.
And ballsiest answer goes to Hanif Kureishi, who claims to have found wisdom and solace in a movie he himself wrote. Via Shankar, whose opinions on television are to be respected.
September 11 Zen
Although I try
to hold the single thought
of Buddha's teaching in my heart,
I cannot help but hear
the many crickets' voices calling
    as well.

-Izumi Shikibu

(Zen Calendar 2006)
Sunday, September 10, 2006

Let's Play 'Name That Tune' with Yo La Tengo
The veteran US art-rock group Yo La Tengo are famed for their encyclopedic knowledge of every kind of music under the sun. Matt Allen played Name That Tune with them to find out more.

Via the man with the encyclopedic knowledge of Yo La Tengo, blucarbnpinwheel. Don't forget to buy I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass on Tuesday.
The Four Conceptions of the Heroic
In literature...

...and in comic books.
Friday, September 08, 2006

'Where They Went Wrong Is When They Resorted to Violence'
Rolling Stone's "The Rise & Fall of the Eco-Radical Underground."
On The Beach
Going out of town this weekend. I'll be back Monday. Enjoy some vintage posters while I'm out, courtesy of RaShOmoN.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

One Thing to Do About Food
Radical and not-so-radical suggestions on how to fix our broken food supply, in The Nation. Via MeFi.
Peter Singer

There is one very simple thing that everyone can do to fix the food system. Don't buy factory-farm products.

Once, the animals we raised went out and gathered things we could not or would not eat. Cows ate grass, chickens pecked at worms or seeds. Now the animals are brought together and we grow food for them. We use synthetic fertilizers and oil-powered tractors to grow corn or soybeans. Then we truck it to the animals so they can eat it.

When we feed grains and soybeans to animals, we lose most of their nutritional value. The animals use it to keep their bodies warm and to develop bones and other body parts that we cannot eat. Pig farms use six pounds of grain for every pound of boneless meat we get from them. For cattle in feedlots, the ratio is 13:1. Even for chickens, the least inefficient factory-farmed meat, the ratio is 3:1.

Most Americans think the best thing they could do to cut their personal contributions to global warming is to swap their family car for a fuel-efficient hybrid like the Toyota Prius. Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago have calculated that typical meat-eating Americans would reduce their emissions even more if they switched to a vegan diet. Factory farming is not sustainable. It is also the biggest system of cruelty to animals ever devised. In the United States alone, every year nearly 10 billion animals live out their entire lives confined indoors. Hens are jammed into wire cages, five or six of them in a space that would be too small for even one hen to be able to spread her wings. Twenty thousand chickens are raised in a single shed, completely covering its floor. Pregnant sows are kept in crates too narrow for them to turn around, and too small for them to walk a few steps. Veal calves are similarly confined, and deliberately kept anemic.

This is not an ethically defensible system of food production. But in the United States--unlike in Europe--the political process seems powerless to constrain it. The best way to fight back is to stop buying its products. Going vegetarian is a good option, and going vegan, better still. But if you continue to eat animal products, at least boycott factory farms.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Unknown White Male
We finally rented Unknown White Male, which I've been meaning to see at least since I read about Doug Bruce in the New Yorker a ways back.

Obviously, I can't speak with any authority about the controversy surrounding the film's veracity, although I will say that a very strong air of fakiness is wafting from the entire thing. No, my problems aren't about whether the movie is true or false, it's that the movie is just bad; it's clichéd and repetitive and chronologically confused and incredibly self-important. Worse, presumably because of the close friendship between the director and his subject, it never gets the critical distance necessary to actually evaluate the nature of Bruce's condition.

And it's fake, too. Let's just be honest with ourselves about that. Whatever condition Doug Bruce actually has, it's been lost to the symptoms he is now enacting, whether that deception is deliberate or unconscious. Bruce plainly wants his story to be the inspiring (and highly commercial) story of a cynical man who suddenly sees the world through the idealism of a child, and he began working that angle from almost the very start of his situation. Maybe he's just forgotten the first million times they made that film.
'Crashblogging'
A few people blogging the end of the world: Deconsumption, Ran Prieur, Anthropik. I found these via an AskMe -- Where should I move in order to maximize my chances of surviving the apocalypse? -- with relevant precursors here and here.

(Some of these bloggers may, in fact, be crackpots. Fair warning.)
'At One Point We Had Reached the Pinnacle of Glory of the Persian Empire and Had a Beautiful Religious Philosophy That Governed the Persian Kings'
“Where are we now? Completely wiped out,” he said. “It pains me to say, in 100 years we won’t have many Zoroastrians." (via Cynical-C)
New Caprica: 67th Day of Occupation
The first of the ten Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance webisodes is up at scifi.com. The acting of the non-regular characters is a little off, but it's something.

The new season doesn't start until Oct. 6th, but you can get the second half of season 2 on DVD in two weeks. Don't watch the webisodes until you've seen the DVDs, of course -- in fact it's best if you forget you've even read this post.
1980 Was Better
Following up on this post, Lucas's 151 Changes to The Empire Strikes Back.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006

'Charlie Brown Has Never Knowingly Taken Steroids'
DISTRICT ATTORNEY OTHMAR: Wah wah-wah wah, wah, wah wah-wah-wah wah?

CHARLIE BROWN: I'm sorry, sir, but I didn't knowingly lie to the grand jury.

D.A.: Wah-wah-wah-wah?

BROWN: I did not knowingly take steroids, sir. Period. Snoopy gave me something to make me throw harder, but he said it was flaxseed oil and vitamin drops. I was tired of having the ball hit back up the middle and all my clothes torn off.

D.A.: Wah wah wah-wah?

BROWN: He's my dog, sir. He said he got the stuff from Woodstock.

D.A.: Wah wah wah-wah?

BROWN: A little yellow bird, sir.
At McSweeney's.
'Oulipo Ends Where the Work Begins'
The Believer profiles Oulipo. Via the Rake.
'Karl Never Hesitates, Is Never at a Loss for Words and Is Never Thrown by Gervais Cackling at Him Like a Demented Hen'
I don't know if anyone else out there is still listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast every week, now that you have to pay for it -- but I am, and I want to point out two moments this week that seem to be the best evidence yet that Karl is a fictional character. (Obviously I'm not the first person to think so.)

[click to read to rest]

First, after a elaborate discussion about the plight of a plane-crash survivor, Karl commented that he wouldn't be bored in such a situation because "he'd have a lot of insects to watch" (an apparent reference to Karl's bizarre obsession with bugs this season). You can detect just a hint of irony in Karl's voice as he says this, and even possibly a very small laugh as he finishes his sentence.

Then at the end of the show Karl essentially breaks character entirely, making another comment requiring a capacity for ironic self-awareness that Karl (as he is normally presented) just isn't capable of:
GERVAIS: I hope you've enjoyed this half hour of drivel, I mean, some of the most stupid things ever said. It's like he's got contempt, now, for the world, like he doesn't care what comes out of his head.

KARL: Learning can be frustrating, can't it? Maybe I'm getting you thinking. Maybe on your way home today you'll going, 'Hmm, octopus with two heads.' And if you do that for five seconds, I've done my job.

GERVAIS: Good to have a job, isn't it?
Dolphins: Not So Smart After All?
I don't normally endorse wishful thinking, but I've always been very fond of the idea that we're sharing the planet with another sentient species. So this whole thing about dolphins not being as smart as previously reported makes me quite unreasonably angry. Science or no, I don't like it one bit. Via MeFi.
'Aftershocks: September 11'
A three-day film festival next week here at Duke "about the people and countries that have been swept into the War on Terror." Should be good. If you're in the area, Screen/Society has the details (just scroll down).
One- or Two-Word Reviews of Things I've Watched Lately
Deadwood, Season Three: Awesome.
L'Enfant: Really great.
Rashomon: A classic.
Bukowski: Born Into This: Decent.
Inside Man: Just okay.
North Country: Awful.
The Front: Eh. Boring.
What's Up, Tiger Lily?: Awesome (really).
Monday, September 04, 2006

Han Shot First, &c
The original versions of the Star Wars Trilogy are finally being released on DVD next week. Cynical-C has a link to an exhaustive side-by-side comparison of the original and special editions of Episode IV.
America - II
A Broadmoor man who said he rescued more than 200 residents after commandeering a boat during the flood after Hurricane Katrina is being sued by the boat's owner for taking it "without receiving permission."
America - I
...by going back to the roots of American music, rediscovering what the critic Greil Marcus calls “the old weird America”, Bruce Springsteen will surely lead many — Americans and others all over the world — back to the glorious basics, to sounds and sentiments so old, pure and completely, eclectically American that their power is truly timeless.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night for Croc Hunting
MetaFilter informs us the Croc Hunter has died.
Sunday, September 03, 2006

Attention: You Do Not Exist
MetaFilter explains.
Banksy
Having successfully taken on the West Bank, underground British artist Banksy sets his sights on a truly banal evil: Paris Hilton. Via MeFi.
Does Bigfoot Shit in the Woods?
Only the Apaches know for sure.
For years the White Mountain Apache Nation has kept the secret within tribal boundaries. “We're not prone to easily talk to outsiders,” said spokeswoman Collette Altaha. “But there have been more sightings than ever before. It cannot be ignored any longer.”

It is a creature the world knows as “Bigfoot”.
Saturday, September 02, 2006

'You Had Offered a Guarantee That the Music Would "Raise a Smile." It Did Not. Please Remit Cost of Album at Your Earliest Convenience.'
Shankar's blog recently brought John Moe's Pop Song Correspondences to my attention as a series, not just as individual pieces. Like him, I'm pretty impressed with the overall group, and there's a few here that are just great. There was a new one on Thursday. Some others:

A Retort to Carly Simon Regarding Her Charges of Vanity
Concerning Jon Bon Jovi, Wanted Dead or Alive
Letters to Fogerty
James Taylor Issues an Update on "The Friendship Promise"
A Letter From "The Power" to Public Enemy
A Letter to Elvis Presley From His Hound Dog
What If Backwards City Had Never Been Founded?
What if the dinosaurs had survived? Or Hitler won in 1945? Or the aeroplane had been invented 1,000 years earlier? Would there even be life on earth if the moon had failed to form? Science fiction writer Stephen Baxter canvasses the possibilities.

A little alternate history in the Independent, via Gravity Lens.
Friday, September 01, 2006

CylonWatch
So who is and who isn't a Cylon? BattlestarWiki investigates.
Forget Everything You Thought You Knew About Submitting to Backwards City Review
I jumped the gun on email submissions, and the poets revolted. For the time being we're going to prefer snail-mail submissions for poetry but email submissions for prose. (For comics and art, we have no preference.) This confusing system should ensure that nobody gets submissions in the form they want.

Here are those guidelines again.
Men & Cartoons
Drawn! follows up their classic link to Michael Paulus's Skeletal Systems of Cartoon Characters with this Korean exhibition that adds full sculpture to the mix. Below: Roadrunner.



What I really wish is that this image was animated.
A History of Violence
Did anyone out there see A History of Violence and enjoy it? I found it fairly tedious and completely predictable.

If anything the graphic novel sounds worse than the film.
Submissions Are Open
It's September 1, so that means our fall reading period is now open. Check out the guidelines here. We're asking that people submit only once per reading period, and that you submit by email if at all possible. Other than that, have at it...
Submissions Are Open Zen
Hear me! In our future lives it will be hard to regain this precious human state, with all its privileges and freedoms. The moment of our death is impossible to predict. Who can say? Perhaps we will die tonight.
-Shabkar

(Zen)

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