There was a time when the face of George W Bush could make me laugh. That time has passed. Fighting back tears of rage is likely to be my current response. But perhaps you still have your sense of humor. This will take you to the Bush/chimpanzee compare-and-contrast page. The photo to the left is the only one that doesn't have a match, because "I can't find a chimp making a face as dumb as this is."
My correspondent, Empress in Pittsburgh, sent me a link that has been keeping my cheeks wet (I cry when I'm amused). "Microsoft designs the iPod package." Does anybody know where the music came from? It's so - catchy-Khatchaturian! And I know I've heard it before.
It's true: I never run Loose Links anymore. I hardly ever find candidates! But here's a treat for all you Dubyers. He is such a jerk! He always was a jerk, and it was always obvious that he was a jerk. How'd he get through? (Sadly, I'm not really asking.)
¶ Is nostalgia bad for your brain?
¶ There's a shoelace site.
¶ The iPod flea.
¶ The Faux Faulkner Prize.
¶ The Poorman soups up the Bayeux Tapestry for Our Times.
¶ Shakespeare ancient and modern: an excerpt from Troilus and Cressida given twice, once with modern English pronunciation and once in a conjectural reconstruction of English as it was spoken in Shakespeare's day. I'm not persuaded; the old is as easily understood as the new. But it does sound gamy and streetwise. (Thanks, Édouard.)
¶ Watch that tip! Someone has launched an audacious, possibly actionable site for the exposure of lousy tippers. It may not still be up when you read this.
¶ Outsource your job! Have techies in Bangalore do your job at a fraction of your price, and spend minutes a day supervising them! Now, that's knowledge! Why is this article appearing in The Times of India?
¶ Metro logos from around the world.
¶ Most blog readers don't know the word "blog."
¶ Whether or not it is general for Young Republicans to prefer to support the war effort on the home front, Operation Yellow Elephant, a new collaborative blog dedicated to exploring this issue, recently penetrated a Young Republicans convention, and captured this amusing snatch of cognitive dissonance.
¶ We all like to get wet in the summer, but it's not always easy to get to the beach. And besides, at the beach you have to play nice. A water-gun assassination tournament - now might be the ticket.
¶ And, finally, Forty Things That Happen Only In the Movies.
¶ The Blogosphere is abuzz with pages devoted to the new date of infamy: 7/7. The most interesting may turn out to be the Wikipedia entry that is already under construction. I wonder if Tony Blair will garner the same warm feelings that were directed at our fearless leader almost four years ago.
¶ Although I didn't think that Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece about torture at Gitmo needed flogging by me, Amy, at The Biscuit Report - whose site is indeed named in reference to the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCTs - has linked to to a Q&A at the magazine's Web site in which Ms Mayer speaks somewhat more frankly to Amy Davidson. (Thanks, Amy)
¶ To cheer yourself up, visit La coquette. It's author has put anonymity behind her, and even provided a charming portrait photograph.
¶ Department of Don't Know Whether To Laugh Or To Cry: Ian Frazier rips the Democratic Party, in The New Yorker.
¶ And, finally, could Jeff Bezos be the new John Wanamaker? Would customer service explain why he's still there?
Mindful that not everybody in the world is celebrating the anniversary of American Independence this weekend, I persevere, with two links of particular interest to Blogosphereans.
¶ The short and stormy life of Suck, a rogue Web site set up at Wired Magazine in 1995 by engineers who were sure that the suits didn't understand how to exploit the Web at all. I remember reading about the site at the time, but the name was off-putting (genug schon) and I was not looking for ways to spend more time at the computer. Ha. So I never even tried to figure out how to access it. But Matt Sharkey's detailed account of developments and personalities, "The Big Fish," is well worth the (long) read. Ten years ago, in WWW history, takes in everything but the big bang.
¶ Want compensation for the things that you shill from your blog? Tickets, goodies, just plain cash? But you don't want the clutter of ads? Well, invisible advertising can be arranged, right in your entries! An icky business.
I daresay it's healthy to suspect everyone of doing this. I don't do it. I've never been asked to do it, and I won't do it when and if I am. I haven't even hooked up with Amazon's associate program, even though I often link straight to their sales pages. I'm fully devoted to visitor support. Not that that has yielded anything, either.
¶ Here's a link that simply won't hold until the weekend (you've noticed my new rubric?): Max forwarded this news item showing Vladimir Putin getting away with something that might well lead to murder where he comes from; a bit of Googling brought forth an image of the ghastly loot. Max writes, "Occasionally you'll see articles in the Globe about the thuggish hypertrophied Partriots players flashing [rings such as this] around town."
¶ And while I'm linking and you're laughing, Joe Jervis has just promulgated a Decalogue for the Blogosphere. Go thou and do likewise. (I think that the preceding paragraph violates Rule No. 2.)
¶ It has been a long week, and I've but one link to pass on to you. Toxic Studios is a Norwegian digital animation outfit that Andy Towle at Towleroad discovered, in connection with June Pride events. You must by all means watch the Oslo Europride promo, entitled "A Sad Story" (it's anything but), but don't miss Toxic's video resume. Click the "Showreel" tab on the page d'acc and sit back. What you'll see has the air of a commercial made five years from now. The only mistake that these gifted designers have made is in choosing their moniker; there is nothing toxic about Toxic.
¶ Patricia Storms has done it again: be the first on your block to read her new strip, The Guttenberg Code. Chuckles galore! Patricia writes that she was inspired to write the strip by a publishing lament by author M J Rose, a name new to me.
¶ Have you discovered Sublethal? Ronnie Cordova is a published writer who produces malignant but elegant esquisses on his blog. The published pieces, linked from the sidebar, tend to be funnier, but who wants funnier? Tinctured in psychopathy, the posts do not invite comment.
¶ What will Maria do? Porn-star Mary Carey, "fully-converted" Republican, is thinking of running for Lieutenant Governor in Californ-eye-o. She was a featured guest at a Republican fundraiser that raised $23 million. Be sure to listen to Ms Carey's report of how much fun the party was.
From the obituary of eminent book editor Edward Tinsley Chase, dead at 86,
Mr. Chase is survived by his wife of 56 years, Ethelyn Atha Chase, a past chairwoman of the Academy of American Poets; two sons, Edward Thornton Chase of Mount Vernon, N.Y., and Cornelius Crane Chase of Bedford, N.Y., the comic actor known as Chevy Chase; two daughters, Prof. Cynthia Chase-Culler of Ithaca, N.Y., and Daphne C. Rowe of Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and nine grandchildren.
Yesterday's most shocking story was the news of two young commercial airline pilots who, ferrying an empty plane between depots, decided to "see what it could do." They ran the jet up to 41,000 feet - and the engines died. The pilots, aged 31 and 23, tried to glide to a landing but failed. They were killed in the crash; fortunately, no one else was.
Anyone who says "cool" has to go back to extended homeroom.
¶ Sometime this weekend, find fifteen minutes and a mug of good coffee, and, as quietly as possible, tune into Fast Film, an incredible production that Jason Kottke pointed to a few days ago. Open up your viewer as much as you can and pay attention. Consider watching it twice; it's fairly difficult to follow the first time through.
Virgil Wildrich has taken frames from some three hundred American movies, many of them instantly recognizable, and cut, pasted, and folded them in perfectly spellbinding ways. There is some terrific sly humor, but the feel of Fast Film is dark, with more than a touch of Eraserhead (although none of that classic's glacial pacing - quite the reverse). Hollywood clichés are simultaneously paraded and mocked, and unearthing the significance of many of the movie's collaged scenes will doubtless drive a doctoral thesis or two some day.
Fast Film is more than your ordinary fun Internet video. It's a loving work of art. So: no multitasking while you watch it.
Note: although there are no even remotely indecent scenes, children will probably find Fast Film upsetting.
¶ As you know, Tom Cruise is a man of faith. He believes in - vitamins. Bachem Macuno, the creator of a brand-new blog, serves up a parody interview with the actor, who is made to say
What about vitamin F? Vitamin G? We’ve got the whole rest of the alphabet of undiscovered vitamins that nobody is pursuing. It’s so obvious, it boggles the mind.
Many chuckles.
Note: Bachem Macuno's site is a little off-color.
¶ The Poorman rakes up the follies of The National Review. Andrew isn't the nicest guy in the world, but that's just as well, for he's a born satirist. Ideology is always laughable, but satire's magnifications (in the guise of distortions and exaggerations) are always handy, because they show why ideology is laughable.
¶ Here's a page by P D James on murder by secret poison - a necessarily lost art. What is Baroness James's secret? She writes so knowledgeably about murder and yet is so pitiless about murderers. That is, she seems to know all about murder's motivations, but remains a pillar of rectitude. Perhaps there's a fold of repression that keeps the spring in her writing set to just the right tension.
¶ Be the first on your block... to exploit a novel use of GPS. My, but isn't it curious that men's briefs and boxers are not on offer?
¶ According to Ms NOLA, The Washingtonienne is not a good book, and she hasn't seen it in any of the stores. (One of the things that she brings to her new job is an alertness about book placement.) This excerpt may suggest why. (kottke. org)
¶ My daughter Ms G just got back from Houston, where in between family visits she saw the new (or recent) light rail trains. She had been following them for a while on the Internet, ever since encountering a write-up of the problems that Houston's METRO is having fending off automobile attacks. Are Houston's drivers really that bad? Or are they waging guerilla war on behalf of John Gaver, who upon his subtly subtitled "Keep Right" Web page blames the trains.
¶ Tom Tomorrow knows how to use silence to devastating comic effect.
¶ Spice up your holiday weekend with the Crazy Green Frog. This fragment of an episode becomes more hypnotic if you return to it every fifteen minutes or so. Perhaps you'll figure it out.
¶ Beans on toast for breakfast? I like to be smart, but if that's the ideal way to start my brain's day, I'm in trouble. (kottke.org)
¶ Paris Inconnu. Semi-secrets are always fun, and Paris is always irresistible. Look for the lite version of Benjamin's Arcades Project. (L'homme qui marche)
¶ You call this progress? Bicyclist beats driver and straphanger in race from Junior's to Columbus Circle. (Gothamist)
¶ Last week, Jason Kottke reported that a bottle of maple syrup had tipped off its shelf in the refrigerator and broken on the floor. Yeesh, what a mess. But it was all for the betterment of mankind. Mr Kottke received a bouquet of Heloise-like tips from friends - well, some (the liquid nitrogen) not so Heloise. (By the way, Heloise is still going strong, at least as a brand.) And being the nice man that he is, the domestically-challenged computer whiz has shared them all with us: How to Clean Up Maple Syrup.
¶ Here's something else that I stole from kottke.org. What goes around comes around, and sometimes revenge is so sweet that a spoon stands up in it. Testicular Karma.
¶ For a fine photoblog of New York (mostly) that grows by one shot every day (more or less; I haven't tested this), visit Joe's NYC. Not surprisingly, I discovered it at L'homme qui marche.
¶ Finally, for those of you in search of the answer to everything in the way of human difficulties, help is at hand, if you can hold a few books. Perhaps you've already heard of Alpha Theory.
Bon weekend à toutes et à tous!
¶ Update: horses gallop free in Manhattan! Read all about it!
¶ George has a blog. You can still become one of the first hundred visitors.
Friday at last; attentive readers will know why my being glad has nothing to do with ending the week.
¶ Don't miss Joe.My.God, where Joe Jervis is telling yet another riveting story. Climax today! All I can say is that North Carolina, Joe's home state, seems to produce a lot of good storytellers, and that one of its sons should wind up nestled in New York's beau monde gai is simply great for all of us. The link will take you to the first installment of "Chances."
¶ The other day, I did a bit of De fil en aiguille. The phrase means passing gently from one thing to another, as a threaded needle might stitch by stitch go almost anywhere. It does a far better job than "surfing" does of describing the experience of trying out the links on a newly-discovered Web log. (Even if it didn't, I'm tired of insidious sports metaphors, and feel a purge coming on.) My wandering, in any case, began at Metamorphosism, which I'd rather neglected lately, and then followed an entry link to Sublethal, which I'd never been to before. Sublethal seems on first glance to be a sequence of highly-wrought prose poems, and it reminds me of writing that I attempted, without Sublethal's success, in my last year of college. But it was the blog roster that held me rapt for about an hour. Not a single site was disappointing, and one, Outer Life, caught me the way Tomness did almost two months ago. Here was a voice that I wanted to hear more of. Note: don't be deceived by "My Photo."
¶ This morning's email brought an item from my sister that had been around so much that its links were all broken. Is there a term for a jokey link that's forwarded and forwarded and forwarded until you have to open fifteen windows to see what it is? (I would write to Carol a lot more often if she would stop sending me these things.) And then, in this case, not to see anything? Happily, there was a bit of text, and using that, I found what she was talking about: the Lego Church. Unfortunately, I am no longer capable of looking at vast, glassy churches, even in miniature, without feeling queasy, and when I look at the photos of this model evangelical cathedral (so to speak; no bishop involved), I see the daydreams of Albert Speer.
¶ Religion in New Jersey: Rev. Mark Giordani blesses the motorcycles (including his own Harley) after Mass; A megachurch in Montclair that seeks a move to an office campus 21 miles away runs into local opposition grounded partly in traffic concerns and partly in racism.
¶ Glitch or Dress-Rehearsal? The yuan, China's currency, floated for twenty minutes on Friday, 29 April. Also, if you can get your hands on it, The Economist's leader this week is about oil, and the importance to turning to alternative sources of energy right now. Interestingly, the piece sees bad times ahead for everybody in the energy game: not just consumers, but producers and refiners as well.
¶ The vintage ads, mostly from the Fifties, collected at Ephemera Now, reflect a society that was at the same time less sophisticated and more artificial than our own. It was forthright, and even somewhat ingenuous, about expressing its desires, but these desires were not quite genuine. They were confounded by the longing for an innocence that would guarantee conformity. "If I did not know what I know," you can almost overhear the bygone magazine readers whispering to themselves, "I would be just like everybody else, and that would be great." There seems also to be the notion that innocence breeds success. To look at these drawings is to begin to understand why the Fifties spawned so many remarkable zombie films.
Pop Quiz
Kathleen is on her way to North Carolina this morning, to spend the weekend were her parents in Durham. Late last night, she conceived the idea of making turquoise-and-gold bead necklace for her mother, with, as its centerpiece, a drop of Venetian glass containing a bit of gold foil. Kathleen has gotten to be proficient at this art, which is more about hunting down the beads than stringing them, in the end. While she hummed along, I crawled into bed with the last pages of Saturday, Ian McEwan's new book. More a magnificent verbal sculpture, a David for our times, than a novel. Because I have never closed one of Mr McEwan's books without being blown away, I can't help wondering how Saturday will hold up among the others. Reviewers have been calling it a "response to 9/11," but that's awfully reductive. While I'm thinking of better things to say about Saturday, however, I find that I'm incapable of writing about anything else. So I shall have to fall back upon a
¶ History of Post-It Notes, from The Rake, a Twin Cities publication. Greg Beato's account of 3M engineer Art Fry's persistence about putting a failed adhesive to practical use makes for irresistible reading. It is also a story about healthy corporate inertia, which puts up a resistance that forces inventors to improve everything about their work, from the thing itself to the marketing campaign. And it is a story about consumers that will remind you of the ten people you know (at least) who used to say, until they got one, "What would I ever do with a computer?"
¶ Calling Harvard, Yale & Princeton for Class of 2024 Early Decision. You kind of want to meet a three year-old who can get himself, on a Queens bus, to the movies, to see Robot, don't you? I can only hope that Clarence Ricky Davis will have his own Web log by the end of the year.
¶ What a dummy I am! I didn't know that the CSX Corporation (formerly the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad) owns the High Line - not the City. Why hasn't the city condemned the property and taken possession? My feeling about private property of any kind: use it or lose it (and selling is a kind of losing). While I like the idea of a promenade along the elevated roadway, I think that there ought to be more than just shrubs and bike lanes. How about a surrealist street fair? Where nothing is for sale (and the "vendors" are subsidized by admission fees). Or perhaps a marché aux puces for individuals trying to empty their storage units. (That would be me.)
And you thought I wasn't doing these any more. Nonsense! I was just in for a rethink. Whether Loose Links ever returns as a daily feature is uncertain, perhaps even unlikely. However! Thanks again to Max for inserting a small hatpin in the appropriate spot.
¶ In other words for sending me a link to what may be the world's first bilingual Flash curriculum vitae. Set to "Turkey in the Straw," Alexandre Gueniot's animated resume appears to have landed him a job at Microsoft. By all means, select the CV en français, even if your French is rusty to nonexistent. It's just funnier.
¶ And to go with that, here's something that's been lying around for a while (as it were): Orgasmic Simulation.
¶ Message to the New York Times Book Review: hire Patricia Storms to pick up where Mark Alan Stamaty left off. ("Dude, you're touching me.") The rest of youse can get your yoickilators revved up for the weekend.
¶ When you're through laughing at the above, wade through this magnificently pointed sign-of-the-times piece by Joe Jervis.
Something funny in the mail. (Thanks, Arlene)
Pfizer Corp. is making an announcement today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. Pepsi's proposed ad campaign claims it will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one.
Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink. This additive gives new meaning to the names of cocktails, highballs and just a good old fashioned stiff drink. Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of Mount & Do.
The long term implications of drugs and medical procedures must be fully considered: Over the past few years, more money has been spent on breast implants and Viagra than was spent on Alzheimer's research. It is believed that by the year 2030, there will be a large number of people wandering around with huge breasts and erections who can't remember what to do with them.
America the Beautiful.
¶ The greatest American diplomat of the Twentieth Century (or perhaps since Benjamin Franklin), George F. Kennan died last night in Princeton, aged 101. Kennan devised a strategy of "containment" for dealing with Soviet Communism, but his recommendations were often misunderstood or twisted to suit the goals of powerful leaders. I thought that I had mentioned his 1993 book, Around the Cragged Hill, at some point on Portico, but it seems that I haven't. An unblinking elitist, Kennan writes of "persons of high distinction" with an assurance that will strike many of today's cynics as hopelessly quaint.
¶ At Open Democracy, Robin Wilson reports, not too optimistically, one hopes, that the McCartney sisters, bereft of their IRA-slain brother Robert, have launched a campaign to expose the IRA and Sinn Féin as Leninist, anti-democratic organizations that will not do the Catholic cause any good. The White House has taken note; Gerry Adams was frozen out of the traditional St Patrick's Day gathering there.
¶ If, like me, you wonder what baseball players testifying before Congress about steroid use are doing on the front page of the Times, or anywhere outside the Sports section, you'll probably agree with Blondesense.
¶ Reading Zoe in Brussels this morning, I learned that the site had won a Bloggie. I had decided not to vote this year, because I'm still a little new at this, and I haven't had time to read all the contestants, or even the ones that I would understand. But I ran through the awards, and pretty soon as I was staring at Michael Chu's site, Cooking for Engineers. Mr Chu has designed an incredibly interesting graphic for recipes, and he writes knowledgeably about equipment. I wonder what my culinary life would have been like if there had been blogs. Congratulations to Mr Chu!
¶ Thomas Meglioranza is the baritone who sang the part of Jesus so beautifully at the New York Collegium's presentation of Bach's St Matthew Passion a week ago last Friday. He came across my entry about the performance, thanked me, and left a calling card. That happened yesterday. I visited his personal site, Tomness (he's got a professional one, too), and read the entire Web log, which he started last summer. He writes brilliantly about the singing life, or at least about those aspects of the singing life than anybody who loves music will find interesting, such as: how do you carry yourself at a performance of Messiah where, as a baritone, you go for an hour, plus intermission, without singing. At one point (at Marlboro), he gets to hear what Mitsuko Uchida thinks of his approach to Schubert's Winterreise.
I also continued my work on Winterreise, which culminated in a dining hall performance of the first 12 songs. The day before our performance, Mitsuko Uchida came to listen. I had sung these songs, and lots of other Schubert, for several people at Marlboro, including Ken Noda, Ernst Haefliger, Irena Spiegelmann (the German diction coach at the Met), and had been getting some extremely positive feedback. It was therefore both...
You'll have to click here to read more.
¶ Princeton has put up a video interview with Harry Frankfurt, author of On Bullshit, and you can watch it in snippets or all at once. Most interestingly, perhaps, Prof Frankfurt does not have a clear idea of what should be done about it: it's possible that torosplat serves a purpose. I quite agree that it shouldn't be punished, but as to do what-to-do? Recognize it. (Thanks to Majikthise.) The professor also points out that, given the widespread expectations that the citizens of a democracy will have an opinion about everything, reliance upon the subject of his study is inevitable.
¶ Shelley Powers at Burningbird has a field day with gender differences regarding hyperlinks. All I can say is "Phew!"
Mags shook her head. “No, this attitude isn’t universal among men. There are many guys who see a link as nothing more than a way of inviting a conversation or passing along useful information. They link without regard to the consequences, and the most they hope for is that it might spark an interesting discussion.”
She stopped wiping the counter and leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “The power-link guys have a word for men who link just to link,” she whispered. “They call them linkless.”
At that point, a couple of people entered the bar and Mags hurried off to do her job, leaving me to think on our extraordinary conversation. The more I thought on Mags words, though, the more I could see the truth in them. Much that has confused me about this environment is explained if one considers for a moment that some men think of links as some form of virtual penis.
The (imaginary) conversation with Lawrence Summers is sweet fun.
¶ Today's Nobel Prize for Hasslehandling goes to Andrew Kirk, bless him.
"I've come to realize that I'm almost addicted to the sick little pleasure I get from lashing out at these things," said Mr. Kirk, 24, a freelance writer from Brooklyn who collects and returns magazine inserts.
What a great idea! Instead of cursing those annoying little reply cards that tumble out of magazines and require endless bending-over, start combing your periodicals for them as they come in. When you've got a stack, just drop it in the mailbox. Don't bother filling out the cards; the recipient will have to pay for blank cards as well as for written ones. Send a message! Congratulations to Times reporter Ian Urbina for uncovering such healthy passive aggression.
¶ And I thought I'd seen everything. This aerial shot of the city really took my breath away. Hats off to Jesse Chan-Norris!
¶ Have you met the best of the right-wing pundits, R. Robot? Mr/s Robot is a "rhetoric simulator" that has been fed Newt Gingrich's style manual for praising coreligionists while demonizing liberals. The perfect send-up of insulting conservative twaddle, it demonstrates the level of critical thinking that you will find at such sites as Powerline. In other words, Mr/s Robot doesn't think very clearly but s/he's burning with passion for sure.
¶ At kootke.org this morning, I discovered a site, Long Tail, that is hosted by the editor of Wired, Chris Anderson. The title refers to the extended, flattening end of the Pareto Curve, which shows, among other things, that in any scale-free network (eg the Web) there will be only a handful of very busy nodes (eg Web sites) and a galaxy of quiet ones (eg the Web log that you are currently visiting). I believe that Mr Anderson is on to something that I've been expecting, in my intuitive, uninstructed way since I started playing with my new Peanut in 1985. The spread of computational power is slowly undermining mass marketing, which attends to the eighty percent of stuff that nearly everybody wants or needs while ignoring the fragmented remainder. This remainder constitutes the long tail, and the Web has made it possible (for the first time in history) for the twenty percent of stuff that almost everybody does not want or need to find the handful of people who do. The everyday word for this is "niche marketing," but the term is fundamentally stupid, relying as it does on an architectural term that suggests nothing about networks. Naturally, this reshaping of markets starts at the top, among relatively affluent and educated computer users. But it will spread throughout civilization wherever electricity is available.
¶ "The Drugs I Need" is the latest from Consumers Union, which has launched a campaign to require drug companies to release all of their research about the pills that they peddle. And you thought that Consumers Union was the center of the Humorless Galaxy! Pay attention to the disclaimer announcement at the end: "If you experience psychotic episodes, you're crazy." And I wondered how JibJab was going to make a living! Speaking of JibJab, my "Second Term" poster just came back from the framer. I'm going to hang it in my bathroom.
¶ Ms Nola writes, "when are you going to write about rufus and kelly?" Kelly is of course Kelly Clarkson, the American Idol winner, who has a song that's all over the Web. That is, people are talking about it everywhere. After a while, I wanted to hear it. I asked Ms Nola if she knew a handy way of downloading it, but I still feel a certain resistance to downloading from iTunes; there's something about the whole Napster/iPod universe seems off to me. Faute de mieux, Ms Nola offered to run across the street to Circuit City to buy the album. Now that I've heard the song, I feel the same way that Jason Kottke did at first. I think that I may leave it there. ""Since U Been Gone" reminds me powerfully of the much better Cars song, "Since You're Gone," and not just because of the title; it also reminds me of the creepy music playing in the background when the creepy serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs tries out his latest couture. Two days later, I can't remember a thing about the song other than what I've just written.
As for Rufus Wainwright, I'm still adjusting. To show you how clueless I am, I had to wait for Ms Nola to point out that the second disc in Want Two is a DVD of Mr Wainwright in concert at the Fillmore, not a CD. It will be some time before I can discuss my overwhelmation by the concert's opening number, "Absence," the fourth (usually) of Berlioz's Nuits d'été. Until countertenor David Daniels's recent recording, the song was almost always sung by a woman, and even Mr Daniels sings it in the contralto range. Rufus Wainwright, whom I'm inclined to regard as a baritone with high notes, belts it out as if it were one of his own songs. There is not a trace of "classical music" or "crossover" in sight. The song was evidently written for him. So, as I say, I'm still adjusting, waiting to get beyond the "prodigious talent!" phase of my critical response. Here's an interview with Tim Adams from The Observer.
¶ La Coquette is on a roll. Not only is she getting good seats on Parisian runways, but she's contributing to Parisist, the unfortunately-named latest colt in the Gothamist stable. (I wrote to her to complain; it ought to be called Panamiste - "Paname" is the almost exact counterpart of "Gotham," and "Parisist" sounds like a disease.) As my own contribution to the fashion blitz, I propose Style.com's portfolio of Anna Piaggi snaps. I can't remember when Ms Piaggi, editor of Vogue Italiana, first leaped off the pages of the Times and lodged herself permanently in my brain, but for my money this jolie laide is the most fashionable person on the planet. Stop that giggling!
As Kathleen is spending the day with her partners in "retreat," there was no time for a big breakfast, so I slept in. It was gloriously cozy, and I ought to have stayed in bed. Because when I got up and read the Times, my spirits hit an iceberg. Ordinarily I'm dismayed by the current regime, but distanced enough to hope that my countrymen will know whom to thank when it comes time to swallow their medicine, but occasionally I wonder if any conceivable medicine will cure what seems to me to be an approaching catastrophe (cherchez les dollars?), and then I get really upset. On top of that, it's very boring to sound like Chicken Little. Is the answer to avoid the Times?
¶ The deaths of Atlanta judge Rowland Barnes and several others is not a story about gun control, although I have heard of judges who have ordered their deputies to refrain from bearing firearms in court, precisely to avoid what happened on Friday. It is a story about human depravity, and as such not, perhaps, to be commented on very extensively, much as one might mourn a good jurist. But if race turns out not to have anything to do with this story - in the form of inferior everything for most blacks - I'll be surprised.
¶ Not wishing to sound like Chicken Little, I'll say nothing about this
latest in a series of
alarming editorials that, in my view, understate the problem.
Oops, I almost goofed there.
¶ A story from Thursday's Times has been bothering me, and the falling-dollar editorial underscored it, for the biggest irony going these days is that America is responding to an era of untrammeled globalization with official isolationism. Adam Liptak reported that the United States has withdrawn from the protocol that would permit the International Court of Justice at The Hague to hear the claims of fifty-one Mexican nationals who claim that they were tried in American courts without the right to consult a Mexican consul. The Bush Administration has ordered local prosecutors to review and reconsider these claims in light of international law; the point of our withdrawal from the protocol is that we're going to do the policing and not let a foreign tribunal interfere. It has been pointed out that only thirty percent of signatories to the consular convention subscribe to the protocol, and that the United States is now with the majority. So much for our fine, shining example to the world.
¶ Peter C Whybrow has diagnosed the American public as emerging from a manic streak. As anybody ought to know, manic binges are usually followed not by periods of healthy good sense but by deep depressions, and it is really to stave off the inevitable that bipolar people push their mania further and further into unsustainability. There is also a nasty note to manic exuberance that, once you have heard it, makes it very easy to distinguish enthusiasm from something darker. And I realize that I have been hearing that nasty note for years now. Not from anyone to whom I’m close, but in interviews with ordinary people and with the tempo of the popular culture itself. There is also a mania in blogging, as I’ve discovered. Dr Whybrow claims that Americans are beset by a mania for the acquisition of goods and status that are supposed to take the place of personal relationships, so insofar as I’m really trying to connect with other people on my four sites, I don’t think that my efforts are a substitute for something else. But I’d be lying if I denied that I want to be more widely read and recognized than I am, and the suddenness of my ambition has almost unbalanced me.
Writing about American Mania in today's Times, Irene Lacher notes that the book has been criticized for failing to offer "solutions." Dr Whybrow quite rightly respond that the "solution" is for everyone do to what he or she can do to check the mania. Since this mania is caused not by malfunctioning neurotransmitters but by a toxic popular culture, one good idea might be to - yep - turn off the TV.
¶ Getting to yesterday's Times a day late, I discover two new blogs in the Arts section. Two celebrity blogs. These aren't hoaxes, like Bill Clinton's Diary or the fake Nick Nolte site that was pulled down by the actor's attorneys shortly after it was reported by kottke.org. And not only are these blogs what they say they are, but they accept comments, too.
formerlyROSIE is Rosie O'Donnell's Web log. It is written in free verse. It is also quirkily candid.
then p town
6 months after tv
saw a painting at a tiny gallery
that moved me
i never bought a piece of art b4
the guy in the place said it was 6000 dollars
and even though i am rich
it seemed insane
The last two lines won me over. But reading a few entries at one go wasn't a good idea, because of the distorting sheen of celebritude. Ms O'Donnell is a very well-known woman, and she can have few truly spontaneous encounters; they're spontaneous for her, perhaps, but her interlocutors, as Henry James would have put it, are all at least slightly dazzled.
Even though I can't remember seeing Ms O'Donnell in anything but Another Stakeout (1993), her personal and professional lives were much in the news. Until today, however, I had never heard of Wil Wheaton, whose blog, WIL WHEATON dot NET, has apparently been going on for years, although I can't find the archives and have to take John Schwartz's word for it. Mr Wheaton is an actor, formerly a former child actor who spent his teens on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Guess who never saw that. Mr Wheaton appears to be a genial man with an interesting path, and he is perhaps as well-known now as a blogger as he is as an actor.
¶ Patricia Storms discovers that hers is not the only BookLust in town. It is my understanding that, while what you write has copyright protection, the label that you slap on it when you're done does not. And a good thing, too, or there could only be one of The Four Seasons. The only way to lock up a title is to register it as a trademark, a process that, unlike automatic copyright, is anything but convenient. I recently saved myself some trouble in this department with a spot of prudent Googling.
Two links today. No fair opening the second before the first.
¶ Having said everything that there is to say about links and permalinks, I have addressed the topics of Web log comments and HTML tags for commenters at Miss Gostrey's Guide. You may read the latter entry if you think it might prove useful, but you really must read the former. So off you go, right this minute. If you want to mix it up, post your thank-yous to me on kottke.org or Towleroad. Be transgressive if you must! But comment!
¶ Today's second link is great fun, and once again I have Patricia Storms to thank for it. Drawn is a linkblog to interesting graphic sites, and, frankly, I could hardly get past the second entry's link to "Nosepilot." This is a must-see, but I will let Drawn take you there.
¶ In case you were thinking that recent bleating about democracy's progress in the Middle East was bankable, réveillez-vous. Lebanon, like Iraq, is a confection, a state carved out its neighbor, Syria, after World War I. It is famous for its cedars and for its civil wars.
¶ In case you're blasé about international affairs (news you can't "use"), cheer yourself up with the true-life story behind Million Dollar Baby.
"That guy in the movie played by Clint Eastwood took the easy way out by killing her rather than having to deal with what her life would have been like,"
says the original boxer's sister.
¶ Why is this guy shouting? He wants tort reform! Doesn't everyone? Consult the ad, paid for by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, to see how your state ranks for "lawsuit abuse." Why, what d'you know: Delaware tops the list. Delaware, home state of most American corporations, notoriously friendly to executives and boards, notoriously hostile to shareholders and stakeholders. Unquestionably the best. Interesting name for a lobbying group, "Chamber Institute," but perhaps not ideal: chamber groups don't have percussion. Oh, I get it: "as in Chamber of Commerce." Wonder why they didn't use that. Enough with the sarcasm. This ad is offensive.
¶ The Giuliana Sgrena incident, in which the abducted-and-released Italian journalist was wounded, and her companion killed, when her car, en route to the Baghdad airport, approached a checkpoint at a speed that soldiers judged dangerous to themselves, has sent a tremor through my delicately-balanced equanimity. [Rant deleted.] The Times has a prudent editorial that focuses on the laxness in current rules of engagement to which so many innocent deaths have been attributed. Whether the incident vindicates Eason Jordan, the CNN executive whose remarks on the subject of soldiers "targeting" journalists - during an off-the-record session at Davos of which, yes, there is no official record, so that Mr Jordan cannot counter the blogger whose posting stirred up a fracas on the right - led to his ouster, it is difficult to say. Or, rather, it's easy to say, very easy, and bloggers on both sides of the aisle are saying one thing or the other. The fact that Ms Sgrena is a reporter for Il Manifesto, a newspaper of Communist orientation, certainly clouds the issue, although of course it shouldn't. Like the Times editors, I don't hold the soldiers reponsible; they're working under impossible conditions. I blame the Pooh-Bahs in Washington who created those conditions, whether actively or by reckless disregard.
¶ I can't ordinarily bring myself to visit Powerline, the Radiculan Web log that pounds its chest like King Kong when it isn't eating liberals for breakfast, but I had to make an exception today, after I heard about a "victory party" in Minneapolis that several of the Powerline collaborators will address. What are they celebrating? Having brought Dan Rather down. Here are the details, for any of you living in the environs of the Twin Cities. (How long will it take for some kind soul to clue Hindrocket in on certain implications of his nom de plume?)
¶ The current issue of The Atlantic arrived yesterday, and I haven't had time to read the cover story by David Foster Wallace on "Talk Radio," but I've glanced at it, and how the story has been printed may well upstage anything that Mr Wallace has to say. Subscribers can download a PDF file that reproduces the story's look in print, but the snippet of the story that's available to everyone short-circuits the magazine's cleverness by utilizing real hyperlinks instead of the printed simulations, which are really nothing more than colorfully reformatted footnotes. Mr Wallace has always been fond of footnotes! See if:book for interesting comment.
¶ Where is Joseph Mitchell, now that we need to to know more about Jerry the Light Man, one of New York's "Eccentric? Moi?" characters? Gothamist does a yeoman job, but to think what Mitchell would have made of this is to shed a tear over the ephemerality of mortal fun.
¶ Roboto Supremo. In the old days, Susan Sontag told us, disaster films massaged our dread of nuclear holocaust. Now, it seems, they can just as well be put to work to ventilate the Fear of Commitment. Vincent Varnado shows how a great script can save so-so visuals.
¶ But you don't like science fiction. You like reality! You want to see the new show about Breeding Republicans: Hannidate.
Every once in a while, you have to dream up a Google search and see where it takes you. There's nothing, for the moment, that you need to find out; or perhaps you might say that you need to find something that you didn't know about. My cerebral randomizer came up with "Indian blogs."
¶ I started with Bombay blogs, which didn't yield much of anything, at least not on the first screen. Through a link at the bottom, though, I came across this interesting, literate posting about 'Peters' - Indians who are a bit more anglicized than the people they hang out with. It's apparently Madras slang. (There is also a very pungent remark toward the end of the post about being reminded of The Pianist.) The blogs on the HT Sulekha site seem to lack some basic navigational tools, and comments are posted like entries, in descending order. Only members can comment.
¶ Dehli turned out to be a more profitable destination. (Perhaps I ought to have Googled Mumbai.) In no time at all, I was reading the reflections of a young accountant keeping a journal of her reactions to men and to movies, in a style somewhat more carefully literate than is common in such productions here, but studded throughout - duh - with Hindi. That's what I take it to be, anyway. The result is spicy - as to style, not content. Life, as it goes... has a modest but intriguing blog roster, too, and soon I came across Confusing Musings, where the references, not the grammar, reminded me even more forcefully that these blogs are written in a second language.
¶ I don't really know where Simla took me geographically, but it did introduce a serious current-affairs site, Vichaar.org. As this excerpt shows, critical thinking works just as well in India as it does here.
A lot of discussions and debates can occur about whether the tsunami toll in India could have been minimized - but there is one fact that is staring the government in its face - two hours elapsed between the Indonesian quake and the tsunamis that hit southern India, when no action was taken by the Indian Government.
What if it were a nuclear strike ? If the Indian government cannot adequately detect major geological events and safeguard our population with a two hour warning window, what chance do we have of preventing unnecessary casualties if the window is even lesser?
¶ And presently I was back home. Varnam, a site about Indian history, is run by an insourced software engineer currently living in California. That's where I got the link to the photograph of Alampur Temple, above.
¶ From our Department of Yikes & Dismay comes a report by Majikthise cataloguing the extravagant lies about the Terri Schiavone case that are flourishing on right-wing blogs. This is a must-read exposé of pernicious nonsense, all of it prompted by vindictive in-laws. I hope that Lindsay Beyerstein follows up on the attacks that will no doubt be mounted against her investigation.
¶ As I become more convinced every day that faith and religion are two different things, and that the doctrines of liberal tolerance that are built into all Western democracies protect one (faith) and not the other, I find myself growing impatient with youngsters whom I suspect of exploiting religious practices to mix it up at school. That puts me especially out of sympathy with young women who insist on wearing veils and gowns that their religions, they claim, require. Does this make me a bigot? Yes, certainly, under certain kinds of scrutiny. I was in any case, somewhat discouraged by a story in today's Times about a judgment of the British Court of Appeal in favor of eccentricity. Let's hope that the local authorities consider a suitable compromise, requiring the student to wear a uniform modified to accommodate her modesty. Religion has no place in public life, and that includes public schools.
¶ Don't get your hopes up, but the political climate in Sugar Land, Texas, may be shifting.
¶ Pop Quiz
¶ Phew! Or rather, as my friend June Siegel says, "Writing begets writing." Item: I've just written two comments on Book Second, Chapter 1 that, together, rival the original in length. (How I flatter myself - it only took a little over two hours, and I do exaggerate, although it may not seem so to casual visitors; the link will take you to the