The Bobcat works in an office where all dey he is bombarded by FoxNews’ hysterical right-wing lunacy. Cracking, he opined:
The Social Bobcat: i’m getting sick of seeing this alarmist news all day long
Steven: FoxNews: scaring you shitless so you stay at home, watching us
The Social Bobcat: Bird Flu! Are Stocks Next Target? How Will Inflation Affect The Cost of Your Ride on Charon’s Boat to Hades?
At the Interpol show the tickets said that no cameras were allowed….
…yet it’s very obvious that the presence of recording devices such as cameraphones, phones used to record the music, and Canon Elph cameras would not be denied. It’s time for BGP and artists and promoters to come to their senses and realize that they cannot stop the shrinking and fidelity improvements of taping / recording / image producing devices. They should take an attitude whereby for some sliding scale percentage they will let you have access to a recording area. The better the equipment, the bigger the royalty. In the end it only serves to create more demand for the band to come back. On the up side, for the artists, if they got in on this cut they stand to beef up their bottom line. Naturally the greedy music industry will see this as another opportunity to exploit the artist for more cash, but it would be nice to find a way whereby artist and attendee both have their wants assisted in light of the ubiquity of recording equipment.
I was reading in National Geographic about the domestication of dogs and they cited a bit from “The Cat that Walked by Himself” from the Just-so Stories.
When Wild Dog reached the mouth of the Cave he lifted up the dried horse-skin with his nose and sniffed the beautiful smell of the roast mutton, and the Woman, looking at the blade-bone, heard him, and laughed, and said, ‘Here comes the first. Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, what do you want?’
Wild Dog said, ‘O my Enemy and Wife of my Enemy, what is this that smells so good in the Wild Woods?’
Then the Woman picked up a roasted mutton-bone and threw it to Wild Dog, and said, ‘Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, taste and try.’ Wild Dog gnawed the bone, and it was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, and he said, ‘O my Enemy and Wife of my Enemy, give me another.’
The Woman said, ‘Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, help my Man to hunt through the day and guard this Cave at night, and I will give you as many roast bones as you need.’
And so was Wild Dog ensnared by the craftiness of the Woman. Invariably the Woman manages to domesticate a number of other hosts before giving birth to Baby, but the format of the stories follows this great pattern of.
Animal X is lured by some bait prepared by the Woman
Animal X heads off and is followed by Wild Cat
Animal X trades freedom for comfort
Wild Cat scoffs.
I love the repetition aspect of this story – and I suspect that it’s part of the reason this story is so popular with youth - they pick up on this repetition element, but the subtle change between Wild Dog / Wild Horse / Wild Cow provide the variation that makes the familiar unfamiliar in a familiar way. Repetition and variation: the same rules guide a robin’s song and works well in a children’s story.
I recently saw the “Tarbaby” sequence fromSong of the South” and the “Say Howdy” sequence follows a similar construct.
Brer Rabbit wait for the tarbaby to say “Fine, how are you” but the tarbaby, he don’t say nothin’, and Brer Fox he lay low.
Within the next 2 minutes there are 6 repetitions of the “Tarbaby, he don’t say nothin’ and brer Fox, he lay low” cadence.
Ultimately this repetition gets the better of Brer Rabbit “Until he’s so stuck-up he can scarce move his eyeballs”.
{ Hey Disney - release “Song of the South”! Put whatever politically correct caveats and sensitivity training trailer or DVD extra on but RELEASE THIS MOVIE! }
I’m not a fan of the pop genre but here’s my dictum.
The greatest pop singer in the world at the moment is Kelly Clarkson who is shedding American Idol now that she’s milked all that image was worth. Go Kelly. You can sing beautifully.
The best pop song on the radio is Natasha Bedingfield’s “These Words” which is so happy and ecstatic it should make you bubble where you sit. It has an interesting writer’s block angle to it that I really like. Besides, this may be the first and last song where Keats and Shelley get name-dropped.
Today I had the chance to watch the season premiere of Numb3rs and I’m pretty worried about where it’s going this season.
Here’s what made the first season work:
It was for all these reasons that I was sure such an inventive show would be cancelled. It scraped by, but I’m sure the no-talent, formulaic bozos up in CBS management had some ideas on how to “improve” things.
1. Sex it up more.
In the first episode I saw the addition of Diane Farr as psychology sexpot. This has the real advantage of her being office-based and being able to wear more form-fitting stuff versus that bulky FBI gear, or FBI-formal suits and skirts that was more commonly worn by the (lamentably departed) Agent Lake (portrayed ably by Sabrina Lloyd).
2. More needless frame cuts so that the audience gets vertigo and concludes hours later that they just saw “edgy” television
Hm, it is a Ridley Scott associated endeavor, I suppose that was unavoidable
3. See 1
More inclusion of single episode hotties: All bad guys’ girlfriends shall henceforth be strippers.
4. Fix horrible intro with Talking Heads track
Good idea, no complaint. Intro sucked
Ideas for Improvement
1. Cut Krumholtz’ hair. Man I know what you’re going through. You think it’s hep and happenin’. It’s not man.
2. Why must everyone at the FBI act like they don’t get what Charlie is saying? Has anyone done a reality check on how freaking difficult it is to get a job at the FBI? Most people have graduate degrees, or bachelors degrees in (multiple!) highly technical fields. Here’s a sample:
Charlie: “We can use Baysian statistical filters to…”
(any character): I’m just a cave FBI-agent, I don’t understand your math with its pluses and minuses, what talk you about?
How about this, you lazy script writers (just because you don’t understand the concept of df/dx doesn’t mean you don’t have to do some research)
Charlie: “We can use Baysian statistical filters to…”
(any character): “Oh I heard about that, they use that to filter spam based on “key words” that, more often than not, denote spam: refinance”
Charlie: Texas Hold ‘em
(any character, preferably female, a bit of a winking moment): Viagra?
Charlie: (rogueishly) I wouldn’t know
3. Charlie should develop his romance w/ Amitra (Rawat’s character).
Anyway, I’m worried that it could be the beginning of the end.
Today I finished Macroscope by Piers Anthony. Back in junior high I was really into Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. The original 10 or so of these books were very pleasant reads at the time. They had a real knack for suspense, humor, wordplay and mischief.
I had put Anthony’s work away as something from a younger time, but recently, while doing some research on Snow Crash, it was noted that Macroscope also made use of the concept of an information bomb, a set of instructions that when encountered by the mind, could render it inoperable. I thought that perhaps it would provide some insight from the framework Stephenson was using for Snow Crash. Ultimately that turned out not to be the case, and the mind-destroying logic program was not as integral a plot element as I had been lead to believe, but nevertheless it was pretty entertaining.
The plot can be more richly framed from other sources, but it can be summarized as this. Mankind invents the macroscope (a tool for viewing far distantly remote happenings) and starts picking up on great knowledge that’s “out there”. Imagine turning on a radio and finding some chap giving you step-by-step details on how to build a teleportation device. You do so and viola, send an eggplant across the room. Well the macroscope provides information, but instead of relocating vegetables, what is taught is interstellar travel, advanced engine construction, etc. Not bad, eh?
But wait, what if, in the middle of the radio broadcast a certain tune started being played over the other information. It was interesting and catchy, and at the end it cooked your brain. The macroscope similarly is pulling in some mind-melting material and it is the task of our intrepid quartet to find out where the signal comes from, why it is there, and for what end.
I think that my biggest problem with this story was the over-emphasis on the horoscope. Based on his list of works, it would seem that Anthony was very interested in gestalt theory / Jung / Tarot during his early career and thus the story and the characters are always framed in terms of their Jungian archetype or as horoscopic avatars. It seems that each of our heroic characters are acting within a pre-perscribed pigeonhole that the author found interesting ahead of writing the story.
In the sense that the macroscope can make sense of the universe at a distance by pulling up on the most subtle variation in the field of macrons (the particles of experience that the macroscope aggregates to present its information) Anthony has an interesting ancient parallel with the idea of the horoscope. Nevertheless the cooking up of characters according to the horoscope’s formula, seems to wear on me. Specifically it created the opportunity for characters to have in-depth discussions with one another about the mechanics and function of the horoscope. While this isn’t per se bad, it is when it is to the detriment of actual characterization. Jim Dedman once said that it is against the ideal function of a film for characters in dialog to tell one another about their motivations, the reason the film medium is used is so so that the characters can show those motivations. Having characters discuss, on your printed page, the horoscopic background of another character is similarly poor form - the characters should have dialog, or challenges, or activities that help bring those qualities out.
I don’t care whether you generate your characters by Tarot, Mad-Lib, or the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, but your characters should not be discussing each others qualities and menta-characterizing the other characters. It feels cheap to me.
I thought it was a decent read, especially the sections on how technically capable civilizations tend to destroy themselves before they manage to really do anything constructive ( fL in the Drake equation, being very small) and how all civilizations tend to undermine their long-term success immediately after uncovering great and powerful technology.
Thursday night Elle and I went to visit lovely downtown San Jose to see avant-garde rock band Interpol play.
It was an excellent show in an intimate venue. Paul Banks’ powerful voice really belted out strong song after strong song. I was worried that I wasn’t going to hear “Roland” but they closed out the show with it. I was so pleased.
They also had a great lights show. Run, do not walk, to their site to see when they’re coming to a town near you.
He was referring to the fact that ethical birth-control pills, the only legal form of birth control, made people numb from the waist down.
Most men said their bottom halves felt like cold iron or balsawood. Most women said their bottom halves felt like wet cotton or stale ginger ale. The pills were so effective that you could blindfold a man who had taken one, tell him to recite the Gettysburg Address, kick him in the balls while he was doing it, and he wouldn’t miss a syllable.
…
The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex.
Thus did science and morals go hand in hand.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. “Welcome to the Monkey House”. As collected in: Welcome to the Monkey House
Click Read More for more…
The juggernaut that feeds J.K. Rowling’s bank account is not to be stopped and I, for one, shall certainly not be tossing myself beneath the wheels to use my corporeal mass to stop its onslaught.
I visited Borderlands Books after the book’s release after grabbing a tasty cr?pe breakfast with my girl Elle chez Ti Couz. We headed up from 16th on a lazy Sunday past the hipster botiques and furniture stores as we picked our way up Valencia.
I had only planned on grabbing a copy of Piers Anthony’s Macroscope, but I wound up favoring my independent bookstore my custom by grabbing the Anthony work and taking HP6 on the way. HP6 cost more, but having this place there after a tasty cr?pe is worth supporting and buying it at Costco or Wal-Mart doesn’t build the community of the Mission district.
Anyway, it was a fine book (no surprise). I must be honest, I’m very much in awe of the way Rowling’s writing style has matured with her characters. HP1 is rather cardboard-cutout in terms of both narration and character development. HP2 is more of the same, but HP3 marks a turning point, the na?ve models of behavior and understanding associated with being a youngster start to fall apart in an increasing series of morally complex situations. This real-world (wizard noir?) style writing reached its zenith in the 4th book, the Goblet of Fire. The subsequent book, Order of the Phoenix, kept with the style but I feel got a bit confused in its voice. The action sequence at the end of the book was confused, muddled, and a bit blas?. Trying to manage an enemble onslaught presents formidable challenges that seemed to muddy up the end result. It also brought in that most powerful bone of contention: prophecy. I thought this was a backwards step.
(Rowling excels at first-person action: Harry chased the Snitch, Harry and Voldemort trade barbs. This is surely an extension of her excellent feel for teenage dialog - the where of the conversation is a backdrop for the conversation)
…BUT this book turned it back up and is firmly on the footing of HP4. Here are some key focus points
Yuck, party mel?e combat (w00t D&D) returns
We see a return of group-action fighting. I still find this a bit irritating: “X did this and Y thought that but ducked under Q’s spell of something.” I realize this is an attempt to give some of the other characters some screen-time and to make it seem like the Hogwart’s class is not a bunch of potatoes plus this dynamic ?bermagus.
Nevertheless perhaps it would be better to put our supporting cast fighting, as we call in the video game trade, mini-bosses in the scene of combat versus the hurlyburly “some guy was knocked out, and this guy ran after that bad dude”. I don’t feel that any of these characters are in jeopardy - I feel like it’s a game of freeze-tag with much higher stakes. It’s an astounding display of kinetic energy, but there’s not a lot of dramatic depth associated therewith. See: Any Michael Bay film - actually don’t, just remember noise, and blowing stuff up.
Prophecy
The old nag of prophecy was trotted out in the last volume. groan Prophecy inevitably leads to narrative dissatisfaction; as my friend Roahn says, “Just who the hell is in charge here?”.
I have written extensively on this topic so this is a real sticking point for me. Nevertheless, Dumbledore resolves, with all the skill of those Greek characters for whom prophecy was so irksome (and not infrequently lethal), that odd quality of prophecy which leads to the orobous-like loop of:
Is prophecy objectively true because it’s objectively true or is it true because someone chose to believe it, and if, when they chose to believe it, did it not do just as much as if the prophecy had been objectively true in the starting case
I’ll not detail its mechanics here because it’s one of the best bits of dialog in the series.
Tying loose ends, establishing the framework
This book goes a long way in explaining the mechanics of The Dark Lord: How can he rise again, what was up with unicorn blood in part 1, what’s up with the prophecy, what’s up with his fixation on HP. Ultimately Rowling is cleaning up house for the climax of the series in the next, and final, book: Harry’s final confrontation with The Dark Lord.
Harry gets lucky
No, no, not with Hermione or Ginny, Rowling voices one of my criticisms (as many others’): Harry is not particularly smart, not particularly gifted, he just seems damn lucky. This is voiced by the darkly-tinged Snape early on in the book. I regret that this criticism is not reversed, Harry doesn’t seem prone to study (Hermione is still his reference library bitch on this one), he doesn’t really seem to have learned from the last book to this one (in the previous he tried to learn a skill, he failed, it would have been helpful, not once during the summer did he brush up on it?), he just seems to mark time on the wall and avoid getting killed or worse, expelled, through dumb luck, dumb being the operative word.
Dumbledore steps up
The benevolent headmaster, all too often a mere plot device, gets developed as a character (although I would have liked to have seen more).
Well, I’m ready for book 7 a year or so from now. I hope they release some really cool leatherbound editions for all 7 some time. Wouldn’t be cool if they made big Magic Grimoire-looking books?
Man engineers a machine. Lighting bolt! Machine becomes sentient. BONUS: Machine goes rampaging after bolt BONUS (alt.): Machine teaches mankind about being human
Witness the latest clich? debacle: “Stealth”.
What a steamy pile.
