This lizard on the back porch to-day let me get really close to him. I thought he was dead until I started lining up for a shot in front of his face and he scrambled away. I think he was a little cold and, looking at the photos later, I saw his leg's kind of mangled;



I think he's been through quite a lot. Looks like he dropped his tail at some point and has been growing it back for a while;



I wonder if someone could harness this power to treat human amputees. Brilliant idea that would be, I don't see how anything could go wrong with it.





I watched the first proper episode of Being Human last night. See Bri Run had told me the series cast had much better chemistry than the pilot cast and, boy, was he right, particularly in the case of the vampire Mitchell. They swapped out the guy who looked sort of like Vincent Gallo for a guy who looks sort of like Gavin Rossdale and, more importantly, who gives a much warmer performance. He and the werewolf, George, actually seem like legitimate friends now instead of people forced to live together for some mysterious reason.

I still like the original ghost girl better, but the new Annie is at least nicely vivacious, though I got a little worried when the characters used the word "relapse" when referring to something about her being a ghost. I find it silly to use fantasy monsters and entities as allegory for real life issues that can be dealt with directly. Humanoid monsters ought to be about addressing the unexplored territory of the human mind, things that we can't articulate directly. But, luckily, there hasn't been much of the former so far in Being Human. This one looks like a keeper--I really like the characters now.

I watched the final episode of Dollhouse with breakfast to-day. I went in expecting to be disappointed and my expectation was met. It was a few kinds of cynical--coasting on the great Epitaph 1 finale of season 1 for its premise and much of its drama, adding an awkward "Oscar clip" furniture breaking scene for Eliza Dushku that probably exists because she's a producer on the show, and one senseless plot development after another in the name of cheap melodrama, most notably in the form of Topher's martyrdom because this technical genius can't make a remote trigger for the explosion that somehow saves the world. There were a lot of little moments that seemed like ideas in need of fleshing out, particularly Felicia Day's crew--her relationship with the Asian Mad Max bandit, the kid Caroline, and the landscaper guy. All kinds of things introduced only to go nowhere.

All in all, a disappointing end to a series I'd still argue has a lot of great moments, especially in the latter portion of the first season and the beginning of the second. Oh, well. Better luck next time, Joss Whedon.

Last night's tweets;

Fast bipeds with tails fall prey to footpads.
Some cat monsters always have big noses.
Plastic kid octopi have absent dads.
And nowhere to go when Sea World closes.

Most Eligible Naked Werewolves

Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman

I watched last night the pilot episode of Being Human, a series Felis Demens recommended to me. It wasn't bad, and I always find it comforting to see so much fanservice for straight women and/or gay men. I hate to think of us heterosexual men having all the fun.

The show's about a werewolf, vampire, and ghost living together. The ghost is the only female character, and she appears to be the perfect untouchable female POV character amidst attractive, tortured boys, one of whom, the werewolf, is played by an actor who really seems to enjoy being naked. He actually reminded me a lot of Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters, particularly when the two men are looking at the flat they're thinking of moving into and the gag of Ray running downstairs, clearly more enthusiastic about buying the firehouse than Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, is lifted by Being Human when the werewolf does essentially the same thing.

The men are created as very clear character types, with the vampire being the aloof, emo, possible misogynist (or maybe he just feels superior to humans) and the werewolf being the affable, rambunctious footballer type. It's hard to imagine how these guys became intimate enough friends to where we see a montage of them cuddling lounging with incidental, close physical contact on the couch in their new flat, and the show never goes into how they met, but there's certainly potential for two such characters to play off each other.

I liked the ghost girl, though for some reason the writers decided to make her really touchy about the word "ghost". It seemed like a broad, cheap ploy for laughs that I couldn't really get into.

Anyway, after watching the pilot, I discovered that when the show was picked up for a series it was retooled and everyone was recast except for the werewolf. I guess I won't really have a sense of the show until I've seen a couple episodes of the real series. But I'm already disappointed to see that the woman playing the ghost in the series isn't half as attractive as the woman in the pilot.

I didn't do much else yesterday. I'm feeling pretty burnt out from that last Venia's Travels chapter, and I'm already dreading what kind of gruelling project I'll be writing for myself to-morrow in the new script.

Last night's tweets;

Child motorists hate petrol stations.
But purple dinosaurs open their veins.
Dead plush stinks of stale libations.
Giant pinballs hoard the left freeway lanes.

I watched a few more YouTube videos of Alexandra Kosteniuk. I love how Magnus Carlson walks away in a snit in this one;



I think it might be satisfying to see anyone named "Magnus" humiliated.

Castles in the Sand

My pessimism just got rerouted. I think Obama sincerely thinks he can make the Republican caucus listen to reason. I was almost convinced Obama wasn't as good as he seemed coming into office, now I think the problem is simply that he's too good. He still has faith in constructing a reasonable argument, refusing to give in to the fact that the Republicans appear only to take his statements as, "Blah, blah, death panels, blah, blah, big government."

Well. Whatever happens, I do think it's important to put reason out there, for someone, somewhere, to see and understand.

Twitter Sonnet #106

Beware the sleeping cookie scale dragon.
The shadowed mountain smells like a bakery.
Hot dough creates corpses by the wagon.
And deer puke Slurpee by royal decree.
The smart cursor is announced as "pretty".
The jurors furiously write this down.
Troubadour lawyers evoke no pity.
After some thought, the reeve thinks he might frown.
The criminal waterskin has fallen.
Ale ransacks all the warm human bodies.
A kid lost his dice to Woody Allen.
Random men now move King's commodities.
Millions of cheese wedges become white noise.
Food is valued less than McDonald's toys.

Sometimes I like to imagine the young white trash around here who dress like it's the 1980s are actually time travellers from 1985. I saw a kid wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off to-day when I went to the bagel shop to get breakfast. I thought he ought to be a Goonie.

I had to go out to breakfast because I'm out of coffee--one among several errands and chores I had to let slide yesterday because from 2pm to 6am I had to work on my comic. Subtracting half an hour for lunch and dinner--that's mainly for lunch because I worked while eating dinner--I worked on the damned thing for fifteen and a half hours. I didn't even think I was so far behind. When I started yesterday, everything was already drawn and inked, I'd completely coloured the first two pages, had mostly coloured three others. I thought I'd be going to 2am at the latest. Part of the problem is this computer, which runs Paint Shop Pro 8 pretty slow. I also need a new mouse, which has had a tendency lately to randomly make the cursor shoot across the screen. What gets me is I actually could've upgraded this computer if it weren't for hospital bills. If only I lived in a civilised country . . .

Venia's New Headaches

The new Venia's Travels is online. Sorry it's so much later than usual--I really underestimated this chapter. I guess that'll teach me to try to find an interesting way of introducing thirty new characters at once. I hope you enjoy it--I can't look at it, or anything, without my vision changing the shapes into cheerful dancing worms.

Clues of the Night

I watched The Hangover while I ate dinner the past couple nights. Good movie, reminiscent of Animal House, a kind of young men's screwball movie you don't see much anymore. I particularly liked that the plot actually held together--these guys wake up after a boozy night they don't remember to find all kinds of crazy things going on--a tiger and a human baby in their hotel room, one guy's missing a tooth, another guy's just missing. And everything ends up having a real explanation that ends up being funny and facilitating opportunities for the actors to be funny.

Also a bit anachronistic was that the movie was honest about caring about the characters instead of using irony as a weird defence mechanism. I blame homophobia.

I've been colouring all day to-day and still have a long way to go. So I'd better get back to it. I'm so tired, though, I kind of don't want to. I wish everyone was naked in this chapter, I'm tired of filling in all the little pieces of clothing.

I saw Snow the Cat to-day, so I guess the coyotes haven't gotten him. He followed me while I brought the trash cans up from the curb like an attentive lieutenant.

By far the best J.D. Salinger obituary can be found here.

Last night's tweets;

The smart cursor is announced as "pretty".
The jurors furiously write this down.
Troubadour lawyers evoke no pity.
After some thought, the reeve thinks he might frown.

Thoughtful Transportation of Goods

Last night's tweets;

Beware the sleeping cookie scale dragon.
The shadowed mountain smells like a bakery.
Hot dough creates corpses by the wagon.
And deer puke Slurpee by royal decree.

Having mentioned chess a few tweets ago seems to have gotten me on the list of over sixteen thousand people Women's World Chess Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk is following. I hadn't heard of her, but I've suddenly gotten addicted to watching YouTube videos of her playing chess.



That she thought a few moves ahead of time so quickly to that Knight fork at the end blows my mind.

I only watched three videos of her, though, because I've been drawing pretty much all day. I pencilled two pages to-day in the time it took me to pencil single pages of the whole rest of the chapter. It's lucky these last two pages ended up being easier--I keep the difficulty of drawing the pages out of mind when I write the script, so I can only hope the next chapter will be easier.

I also watched part of Obama's State of the Union Address while I was eating lunch. I thought it was rather surprising the Republicans would so blatantly avoid applauding when Obama talked shit about lobbyists. I suppose the GOP has good reason to be cocky, though.

I've been getting more and more pessimistic about the people in government nowadays, but I have to admit the guy gave me a glimmer of hope with charm alone. But it didn't take long for the reality of the Republican strategy of ceding absolutely no ground came back to my mind.

Last night I dreamt I became a club DJ and hired a stripper to be my personal assistant. I bought an angry, dancing iguana, which made my stripper/assistant upset because she already had a twelve foot long white reptile of some kind which she kept in an aquarium filled with opaque, black liquid.

All Appointments are On the Studio Lot

Twitter Sonnet #105

The Death Panels shall be blind seamstresses.
Federal Satan bots shall roam on stilts.
They'll hand welfare cheques to all addresses.
And force all straight men of age to wear kilts.
Melted, cold apples kill the cranberries.
Bread and soup pull arms off at the market.
Your CD's accepted by car faeries.
Like an eye having sex with its socket.
Coquettish checkstands tease hamburger buns.
A pretty bank teller slyly watches.
Limelight shows up as a hundred cold suns.
Frogs feebly offer a box of matches.
Five hundred thirty five chessmen frozen.
Crippled cattle's cheaper by the dozen.

Over the past couple nights, I watched An Affair to Remember with dinner, a film that works almost entirely because of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr's good chemistry. The screenplay's pretty clunky, except an observation about Grant's character--that the critic in him kills the artist in him--is interesting, and the last scene has some dialogue that's exciting for letting you watch the characters figure things out for themselves credibly.

I kept thinking how Michael Powell referred to Deborah Kerr as the most intelligent of actresses, and she does always come across as much sharper than most of even the best female leads of the era. She's able to take awkward dialogue in this movie and make it sound just about natural. I also loved her clothes;




In fact, Kerr's wardrobe is by far the most visually interesting thing about the film, which seems to be extraordinarily set bound, even for a film of the mid-1950s. The action goes from a cruise liner, a coastal French town, to New York City, and it's pretty clear neither of the leads left Los Angeles during filming. It's worst when one scene relies on Deborah Kerr finding Grant's grandmother's villa absolutely gorgeous when it barely looks more credible than a Star Trek set.

This is one of the reasons the second half of the movie is far better than the first. If you can forget that the process through which the two fall in love doesn't make much sense, despite their chemistry, the last portion is an appreciable little romance, except for a couple totally extraneous scenes of children singing.

Untranslated Warm Transmissions

So tired. This new chapter of my comic's been a real pain in the ass. I should be okay if I can pencil and ink two pages on Wednesday. Which is not to say I'm behind, I just need to get ahead to be done on time. Which I guess means I'm behind . . .

Reading about Neil Gaiman losing a sweet cat named Zoe lately, I've been thinking about how much cats impact my life. 2007 and 2008 were pretty bad years for me, and thinking back I realise now that it was due in no small part to my aunt moving out and taking her cats with her. The daily reality of existing without the cat presences you're used to is actually sort of repetitively bleak. It's a loneliness that can't be alleviated by humans. Humans have too much bullshit. A dying cat seems like a massive injustice--maybe somewhere in my mind I'm still locked into death as being related to mankind's deal with supernatural forces. Cats seem like they should be exempt.

But I guess that's exactly opposite of the way one's supposed to feel about animals. I saw another coyote outside the other night and I'm hoping Snow the Cat's okay. I haven't seen him since the storms started.

The sky's been clear for days now and it doesn't look like there's going to be more rain, though the water on the umbrella I keep in my back seat seems to have transformed into an invisible, stinking cloud in my car. Condensation coats the inside of my windows when I start the car at night. I can't wait for summer. I need to live somewhere where it's summer all year long.

Last night's tweets;

Melted, cold apples kill the cranberries.
Bread and soup pull arms off at the market.
Your CD's accepted by car faeries.
Like an eye having sex with its socket.

Tom Waits is No Weasel

The Wool Keeps Spinning

Surfing for porn a couple nights ago, I came across a site called Hot Chicks Smiling at Ground Zero (actually SFW). I guess there's something misogynist about guys getting off on this ("Get a load of the dumb broads"), but I find this observation overwhelmed by the blissful callousness on display. This may be the ultimate example of obnoxious tourists--my favourite is this one of the girl, wearing an FDNY shirt, giving her boyfriend bunny ears while a passer-by looks on in disgust.

My schedule lately has been to work on my comic every Sunday through Thursday and to take Friday and Saturday off, but there was a lot of colouring piled up from the first pages of the next chapter, so I coloured last night after dinner until just after 2am. I wanted to try to get to bed earlier, but I wanted something to do. I thought about looking to see if anyone wanted to play chess in Second Life, but, still feeling sort of ill from Taco Bell the day before, didn't feel like socialising. I ended up just watching Spirited Away again. That really is one of the few perfect films in this world.

I watched part of Vertigo again on Friday. You'd think at this point that movie would be much too familiar to me, but actually I still find every scene so rich in layers of detail I can't help but love it. It's like a great painting you can stare at all day.

I really need to find a new television series to watch with dinner now that I'm done with Angel. I don't think Mad Men's going to cut it--I noticed it's using a couple Twin Peaks directors, (Tim Hunter and Lesli Linka Glatter), which seems smart--why not choose the directors David Lynch chose? But there's something monochromatic about that show. It can't seem to get past observing in various ways that the culture in which these people live causes them to feel emotionally disconnected, so mostly it's kind of dull and depressing. Maybe it gets better, but I want a series that's proven to be valuable in every episode. As much as I complained about Battlestar Galactica, there was almost never an episode I felt like stopping part way through. I'd say the same for Angel, Buffy, Firefly, Farscape, and Veronica Mars. If anyone wants to recommend to me an hour long drama, Sci-Fi, or comedy series, I'd appreciate it.

I'm short on time to-day, so I'll have to call this a post.

Last night's tweets;

The Death Panels shall be blind seamstresses.
Federal Satan bots shall roam on stilts.
They'll hand welfare cheques to all addresses.
And force all straight men of age to wear kilts.

Meet Me in Technicolour

Twitter Sonnet #104

White mad eyes roll on sweaty skin over
Sigmund Freud's new black fibre optic beard.
A jury pool wants to be your lover--
Government dating services are weird.
Scarecrow's shredded documents have vanished.
They functioned as his liver and kidneys.
Digested telegrams are now tarnished.
His guts known to would-be Antigones.
Flax flowers awe the soul of a minotaur.
Now suddenly sleeping, he falls downhill.
A new country's across the valley moor.
He strolls through the heath barely by his will.
Sanitised glass goblets are sparkly clean.
Alcoholic Santa's simple, not mean.

I got some Taco Bell for lunch last night out of respect for the recent death of the restaurant chain's founder. Since then, my stomach's been lecturing me on why I shouldn't be so sentimental. Oy.



Last night I watched my favourite Vincente Minnelli film, Meet Me in St. Louis. A beautiful, thoroughly engaging film--you become very quickly involved in the Smith family's dramas, they're a charming group of vivid characters. I love the surprisingly earthy dialogue for a 1944 film, from the little girl talking about blood spurting from a poor guy being torn apart by horses, to the young man, having been beaten and bitten by Judy Garland, comparing the experience to gym class, only "more fun with a girl."



And, gods, is the full might of MGM ever on display here, with every insignificant item on screen full of intricate, beautiful details. Look at the window in the bathroom seen for less than a minute in the entire movie;



I loved the wallpaper in the dining room that almost seemed to glow;



The yellow drapes turned gold by afternoon sunlight;



Coming with TCM's bundle of four musicals also including Easter Parade, The Band Wagon, and Singin' in the Rain, this edition of Meet Me in St. Louis still has an absolutely gorgeous, pristine picture.

What Brings Girls to the Goblin Market

Thinking back to Wednesday's Howard Stern Show, when I laughed hysterically as Stern, Robin Quivers, and Fred Norris jokingly imagined a scenario where Quivers was gang raped by her co-workers every morning, including a bit replicating the infamous gang rape scene from The Accused, after Stern played a clip of Joy Behar asking Quivers how she survives working with men, I may be the wrong person to address whether or not casual use of the word "bitch" somehow makes light of rape. Oh, well.

Can I watch a movie without it turning out to be Vertigo in some way? Just days after talking about Cathy Moriarty's resemblance in Raging Bull to Kim Novak's character in Vertigo, I watched Wong Kar-wai's 2000 film In the Mood for Love, the wikipedia entry for which has this quote from the director;

the role of Tony in the film reminds me of Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo. There is a dark side to this character. I think it's very interesting that most of the audience prefers to think that this is a very innocent relationship. These are the good guys, because their spouses are the first ones to be unfaithful and they refuse to be. Nobody sees any darkness in these characters - and yet they are meeting in secret to act out fictitious scenarios of confronting their spouses and of having an affair. I think this happens because the face of Tony Leung is so sympathetic. Just imagine if it was John Malkovich playing this role. You would think, 'This guy is really weird.' It's the same in Vertigo. Everybody thinks James Stewart is a nice guy, so nobody thinks that his character is actually very sick.



This resembles my own feelings about the genius of casting James Stewart in Vertigo, and the odd actions of the two characters in In the Mood for Love I think would probably automatically be taken as normal because of Tony Leung's persistently open and earnest countenance. But I still see the relationship portrayed in the film as quite innocent, and maybe it says something about Kar-wei himself that he does not find it innocent.

I'm not sure if he means to imply anything sinister with the word "dark", but in my mind darkness and innocence are very closely related as both suggest a lack of moral consciousness, a lack of concern for morality, or a, shall we say, unrefined perspective on morality.

The impression I had was of two people who have suddenly realised they don't really understand how love works, having been comfortably ignorant of true passion in the socially prescribed institution of marriage. Their strange play acting relationship is an attempt to understand how to process the feelings that their spouses have shown them are natural, and which they themselves begin to feel without the influence of their intentions or courtship conventions.



Very little of this is conveyed in dialogue--the movie's vital organs are its excellent actors, music, and beautiful compositions of shots. One of my favourite examples is this very Hitchcockian shot of Maggie Cheung;



The shot lasts for a while as we watch Cheung, alone in her bedroom, almost expressionless, begin to cry. Cheung gives a very subtle performance throughout the film of someone very tightly controlled whose feelings, strange to her, are breaking through without perfect understanding from her. I thought about how much better she'd have been in Maggie Gyllenhaal's role in the movie Secretary, which I watched again a week ago. There's a bit where James Spader tells her character that she seems very "closed", but she doesn't. I like Gyllenhaal, but she exhibits far too much self confidence and warmth to ever seem closed, which is a tricky thing for an actor to do while still communicating to the camera. Maggie Cheung pulls it off brilliantly.

The above shot so nicely conveys someone tortured by being alone with herself, unable to express her feelings when she needed to and now finds those feelings endlessly reflected back on her to the point of intense pain.

I also loved shots of the hallway outside of the room where the two protagonists regularly meet in secret;



It's the often replicated shot from Cocteau's Belle et la Bete of billowing curtains in a hallway, in this case bright red curtains, a bit of environment, serving as so much of the atmosphere of the film, to exhibit the feelings of the two leads who don't know how to express feelings themselves.

With breakfast to-day, I watched the third episode of Baka to Test to Shonkanju. This show is just plain great. I loved the tagline on the faux Apocalypse Now poster in this shot;



Last night's tweets;

Scarecrow's shredded documents have vanished.
They functioned as his liver and kidneys.
Digested telegrams are now tarnished.
His guts known to would-be Antigones.

Bitches and the Related Unspoken Animal Rights Issue

Last night's tweets;

White mad eyes roll on sweaty skin over
Sigmund Freud's new black fibre optic beard.
A jury pool wants to be your lover--
Government dating services are weird.

And I wrote that before I heard about the Supreme Court significantly loosening restrictions on corporate political funding. And, oh, isn't everyone just so very upset? Oh, sorry, that was the sound of everyone not giving a fuck. Sort of like how the election of a Republican Senator in Massachusetts will mark the point in time when the president and congress went from doing nothing to doing more nothing. Honestly, how can people question the Democrats at this point? Hasn't the game been obvious for at least six months?

Speaking of uphill battles, I read this in Neil Gaiman's blog to-day;

I was going to write a long blogpost today about how I was quoted as saying I "wasn't anyone's bitch" in the New Yorker (something that I don't remember saying, because it's not the kind of thing that I'd say, unless we'd just been talking about the Entitlement Issues blogpost) and how yesterday I was deluged with FAQ emails (and a handful of Twitters) explaining, with varying degrees of civility (which I appreciated) or incivility, that having used that phrase undid all the good I'd ever done by writing positive women, supporting RAINN etc, because it showed that I was minimising the horror of rape and revealing my underlying misogyny (I think it started here); and I apologised a few times on Twitter and in the New Yorker chat; and how this morning's FAQ email has been filled with people saying "Look, I'm a feminist and I have to tell you I'm really disappointed in you for giving credibility to those people from yesterday who are trivializing very real issues..."; and how I'm rapidly moving into "a plague on all your houses" mode; but honestly right now, I haven't the heart, and probably it's only getting to me because I'm actually really worried and upset about a very small cat.

Gaiman doesn't mention that his fiancé, Amanda Palmer (who was dressed brilliantly at the Golden Globes, though I could've done without the panties), started a thread on her forum encouraging fans to design "Amanda Palmer is Not Your Bitch" t-shirts, an outgrowth of Gaiman's original statement in that "Entitlement Issues" post, which, quoting exactly, was, "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch," in response to fans asserting that they had a right to expect Martin to write and publish fiction faster.

My take on this is that the people asserting that Gaiman's statement, or even the statement which was apparently inaccurately attributed to him, is somehow glorifying rape, making light of rape, or in any way causing rape to be more acceptable in this culture are incorrect.

For one thing, the obvious; stating that someone is not a bitch does not implicitly or explicitly support the institution of bitches. If anything, it rejects that institution.

This blog post, which Gaiman links to has having started the fury against his statement, says, "The use of 'bitch' here is not merely a misogynist slur. To be someone's 'bitch' is to be sexually subservient to hir, and the phrase is typically associated with nonconsensual sexual subservience, i.e. rape. (Specifically, it originates with prison rape.)"

One might point out that prison sex is typically between two individuals of the same sex, but I suppose the response might be that the word, originally meant for female dogs, is meant to indicate that an individual designated as female and animal is okay to sexually abuse. So perhaps these folks might be better with Amanda Palmer using the word than Neil Gaiman--sort of like a white man saying he's "nobody's nigger."

It might be helpful to examine why being considered someone's "bitch" is different from being someone's "nigger". Nigger was more less used interchangeably with negro and black to refer to African slaves and their descendants in a derogatory way, to imply there is something about being black that makes one a lower being. "Bitch" can be understood to refer to anyone, male or female, of any colour, its gender component reflecting traditional, sexist attitudes about a woman's place in society. So while I think one could say the word "nigger" is something a black person is more entitled to use in humour, "bitch" is a little more vague.

Next, I'd like to point out the absurdity prescribing an appropriate word to describe someone in a state of total physical and/or emotional subservience to another. "I'm nobody's slave," might seem appropriate because, if you look back far enough, every colour's been a slave. There are still slaves to-day, and you might note that by using the word "slave" in this context, one does not seem to be endorsing it. But because slavery is widely considered to be a remote problem to modern culture, it's not nearly as funny as "bitch". Bitch has some graphic immediacy because we know on some level that it relates specifically to a form of abuse and oppression going on nearby in the modern world. An important component to humour is shock value, something that humourless people frequently fail to grasp, people who dislike any hint of unpleasantness in the public discourse. Ironically, more and more of these people consider themselves resilient and open minded.

So, people might be sensitive to a word and might be offended by it. People who've lost loved ones may be offended by Gaiman's take on the afterlife in The Graveyard Book. The prospect of offending people is often the price of being interesting or provocative--you have to rub the sensitive spots to elicit feeling.

Is the statement, "I'm no one's bitch" going to make a would-be rapist out there feel a little more okay about raping someone? Does anyone seriously think so?

Inches of Water

Twitter Sonnet #103

Wild horses will relax when you're cloaked.
Time for the belle minotaur to decide.
The round track architect was always coked.
It's the same cardboard cylinder inside.
Only good brothels may service Wonka.
Lime candy carpet coats the upstairs floor.
Zangief paid the new girl to blow Blanka.
Electricity leaves her somewhat sore.
Wind and rain to-day knocked out the power.
Some strange keys somehow showed up in my car.
Two umbrella hands point to each hour.
To rain runoff, the gutter is a star.
Elicit sandwiches subdue the cops.
Spiders disguised as lilies steal raindrops.

It's been raining pretty hard for days. I've just gotten back from grocery shopping in it--hopefully I won't need to go back out until Friday. I ate at Subway Sandwich while I was out and listened to an apparently mentally impaired police officer talk to the employees, enjoying his sandwich so much that he loudly said, "Yeah, baby!"

I have the home page on my browser set to go to a random article on Wikipedia, and when I opened Firefox earlier I saw this article about a Polish settlement with one resident. I don't know how an article about that settlement can't even mention the person's name.

I dreamt last night I was out for a long walk and forgot to bring my camera. I consequently saw several interesting things, including a spider that looked like an upside down lily with the stamens being the spider's legs and a bunch of really friendly, pale grey, smiling mice with long noses. Maybe it's time I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland again.

A couple weeks ago, I was at Tim's house when he got American McGee's Alice working on his computer. Like all adaptations of the Alice books, it's missing a lot, but it's actually an extremely good game with some of the best atmosphere I've ever seen in a video game. Chris Vrenna's score is part of it, but even more crucial is the constant ambient noises, especially a persistent creaking noise like you're in a wooden structure slowly pulling itself apart or a giant upset stomach.

I watched the final episode of Angel last night. So ends the Buffyverse viewing saga I began eight months ago. It's incredibly obvious Angel went before it's time--the ball had just gotten rolling with Illyria, Spike was still settling in. I guess Angel's death, despite being a successful show, was one of the early signs of the death of expensive fiction shows on television.

It was a good episode, despite Wesley going out like a sucker. I mean, couldn't he have been a little better prepared for his fight with the guy on dialysis? Whatever happened to his ever present firearms? But I liked Illyria's stuff, Angel signing away his prophesied salvation, and how Adam Baldwin beating Illyria up made him seem especially threatening. I gotta read the comics.

Thinking Makes It So

I found this story rather amusing; "Royal Caribbean's decision to dock ships at Haitian resort creates controversy". Royal Caribbean defends the decision by saying;

"We also have tremendous opportunities to use our ships as transport vessels for relief supplies and personnel to Haiti . . . Simply put, we cannot abandon Haiti now that they need us most."

So what are the passengers really complaining about? Having their vacations ruined. Boo, hoo. Fuckers. If there's a ghost of a chance cruise ships can help out, shut the fuck up and bear it. Being far from Haiti doesn't make it fiction.



I watched Raging Bull again last night. I was thinking about how much Cathy Moriarty as Vickie La Motta looks like Kim Novak in Vertigo, and I wonder if Scorsese had that in mind when he cast her. Her looks serve a similar function--strikingly beautiful and often sort of frozen. Neither actress conveys big emotion, and I think in both cases this is meant to reflect the male protagonist projecting his imagination on her. We see many scenes of Jake La Motta interrogating her and others because of some paranoid idea of his that he's being insulted or cheated behind his back, and her face singularly gives him nothing. We think he's just paranoid, until later when La Motta's brother, Joey, sees her at the Copacabana with some other guys. Nothing in her face told us that she would be going out behind Jake's back, and nothing in her face told us she wouldn't.

She's a stark contrast to Jake's first wife, who engages with him in regular screaming matches early in the film. Rarely do we see Vickie raise her voice, but she's hardly submissive. There's a sweet, very physical understanding between the two of them.



When she finally leaves him, she has to tell him from inside her car without rolling down the window because she knows if she lets him touch her she might change her mind. We see her packing her bags after he'd beaten up both her and his brother, only to change her mind because he put his arm around her waist and quietly pleaded.



I'm talking about what people's facial expressions say because, although there's plenty of dialogue in the movie, few of the important character and relationship developments are directly communicated this way. La Motta is controlled by his emotions, and interprets the world through them. If he's upset, there must be something wrong with the world, and he has to tear away at it until he can confirm the problem and overcome it, rarely guessing that it's his own pushing that creates the problem. We don't really get a sense that he's aware of what he does until he's banging his head against the wall in solitary confinement. And you realise the guy is stuck with himself. His irrational behaviour puts a wall between himself and others--even before his wife leaves him and his brother stops talking to him, we see Joey beat the shit out of the guys Vickie's out with at the Copacabana only to not tell Jake about it later--he's rightly afraid Jake might kill Vickie.

The title card at the end says a lot;

So, for the second time, [the Pharisees] summoned the man who had been blind and said:
"Speak the truth before God.
We know this fellow is a sinner."
"Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know,"
The man replied.
"All I know is this:
Once I was blind and now I can see."

- John IX, 24-26
the New English Bible

In spite of all his behaviour, and the vivid portrait painted of him by the movie, we can't really say Jake's a bad man. He's a likeable man, in a lot of ways. All we can say for sure is we can see him.

Last night's tweets;

Only good brothels may service Wonka.
Lime candy carpet coats the upstairs floor.
Zangief paid the new girl to blow Blanka.
Electricity leaves her somewhat sore.

More than What Things Are

I've just gotten back from my parents' house where my sister and I watched half of La Vie en Rose. I feel bad about abandoning a movie halfway through, even one as lousy as this movie had been, but I got to thinking about the other things I could be doing with my time. Focusing on the life of Edith Piaf, the film follows her childhood growing up in a brothel and being uprooted various times by her parents before becoming a street singer, all of which proved that a movie needs more than subject matter to be interesting. Director Olivier Dahan somehow managed to make everything as dull as dishwater, totally lacking in point of view. Little Edith's temporary blindness, the prostitute who cared for her like a mother being torn away from her, everything was flat and limp as a cellophane fish on a plate. Not to mention it's another movie that sees fit to go crazy with blue filters. I'll be so happy when modern filmmaking parts ways with this fad, but I suppose unimaginative filmmakers will just find new ways to be boring.

A couple nights ago, I watched Kurosawa's adaptation of The Lower Depths again, and thought about how, even more than Mullholland Drive, The Lower Depths is a story about how dreams can be both destruction and salvation. In this viewing, I found Bokuzen Hidari's monk character a little shadier, and I could believe he might be someone with a dark past, but as he says, also "a stone whose rough edges have all been smoothed". My original review for the movie is here.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I think I'm finally starting to understand the actor's suicide at the end of the movie--the prostitute runs off saying she's going to commit suicide, but doesn't. Seeing her life in large, tragic terms is the prostitute's way of coping, as we see in her story about the lover who supposedly told her her heart was as pure as a virgin. But the duty of an actor, or any artist, is to bear dreams as reality. Everyone uses dreams to cope, but no-one really buys their own delusions quite like the actor, as we can see from the gambler's statement at the end, about how they were all having a nice time until the actor decided to ruin the evening with his suicide.

I watched the second episode of Baka to Test to Shokanju with breakfast to-day--another good episode. Looks like this is definitely the best new anime of the season.

Last night's tweets;

Wild horses will relax when you're cloaked.
Time for the belle minotaur to decide.
The round track architect was always coked.
It's the same cardboard cylinder inside.

No Place for Rabbits

Twitter Sonnet #102

Trash bins withdraw into a blue shadow.
Feline, pink bellhops block confused rabbits.
Recycling's gift wrapped by a black widow.
Spiders prescribe guests' vacation habits.
Necromancers kill any thief they find.
Their kitchens are stocked with some skull shaped peas.
But undead Johnny Appleseed is kind.
Apples burn with the dust of their old trees.
Supermarkets make dust juice for your cup.
Restaurants loom on all sides of the lot.
You're of no threat to a coyote pup.
Leaving the lit space you're quickly forgot.
Doctors and Gods pass through the head hotel
The plastic girl coup will undo Mattel.

I spotted a small animal running across an island of shrubs in front of my car as I pulled up to the curb last night. I thought it might've been a large cat at first, but as I was getting groceries out of my car I saw it had stopped to watch me--it was a small coyote, about half the size of an adult. It ran away when it saw I was watching it, but I noticed a moment later it had only gone a few feet before stopping behind a shadowed shrub to keep watching me. 99 percent of the time when I get home at night there are a dozen or so rabbits congregating in the cul-de-sac, and if they're not there, I've more than once seen a couple coyotes flitting about. They seem to be getting more comfortable with humans around here--I remember seeing one get caught in the middle of a busy street, pacing and anxiously watching cars speed by on either side. My mother, who lives a few blocks away, just told me about walking at around 11am and suddenly noticing a coyote walking next to her who ran off when she looked.

I watched the second to last episode of Dollhouse with breakfast to-day. The best bits were references to "Epitaph 1", but mostly it was pretty sloppy. It was very obvious that the whole episode had been filmed before anyone remembered that Boyd had been shot in the gut in the previous episode, which necessitated the inclusion of very obvious looped dialogue over some quick cuts early on; TOPHER: "But, Boyd, you've been shot!", BOYD, "I've been shot before, and I've got meds!" I guess if gunshot wounds hold no surprises for you, they really can't have much of an effect. But that's only the most extravagant example of the episode's lack of logistical integrity as characters frequently did things that don't quite make sense (the plan to take down Rossum began with everyone just strolling into the lobby?), though it was nice that Rossum's CEO ended up being somewhat sympathetic. I liked seeing Amy Acker play Clyde, though it would've been even better if she could've managed an English accent, and Whiskey was also another victim of writer's neglect necessitating looped dialogue, in this case Topher, as everyone was fleeing the exploding building, exclaiming off screen, "I got Saunders!" even though she's clearly not present in the shot of team Adele just hanging out outside the lobby of the office building with a series of explosions inside.



Yesterday's breakfast was a little better, as I watched the first episode of Baka to Test to Shokanju, which Sal Dream recommended to me. Definitely one of the most genuinely funny anime series I've seen in a long time, it successful pulls off some great timing in sequences of absurdities. The concept is some kind of high school for summoner sorcerers whose "attack power" is based on their test scores. It takes ironic video game humour to a new level while also managing to remind me of Urusei Yatsura with its great gags based on sensitive kids reacting very personally to complete nonsense.

Fruit of the Heat Lamp

Last night's tweets;

Necromancers kill any thief they find.
Their kitchens are stocked with some skull shaped peas.
But undead Johnny Appleseed is kind.
Apples burn with the dust of their old trees.

I played some World of Warcraft last night, that makes two times in the past three months. My undead warrior's at level 54. I probably don't play enough to justify 15 dollars a month, but it's an excellent thing to do while drinking, which is what I was doing last night, a glass of Bombay Sapphire.

I got to thinking to-day about how it's actually a bit disturbing that our culture buys into really painless, fantasy wars like WoW and Avatar while our country is actually engaged in two wars. The sense I get is that the masses are surreptitiously trying to re-conceptualise the nature of war into something more innocent than movies about Vietnam and World War II of the 90s. People could afford to acknowledge the despair in those days, but to-day there's a reflexive need for denial and escape. Someone to wake us up and say, "Hey, it's not as bad as all that, really."

I'm still watching Angel, and I'm only five episodes away from finishing the fifth season. Maybe I haven't been writing about it because I've been enjoying it so much--I really feel the last season of Angel is the most perfect work of the Buffyverse--I think the makers of the show had learned by that point what worked and what didn't and were able to optimise everything. So far, there've only been two episodes I consider at all weak, the awkward Buffy related episode "Damage" and the David Boreanaz directed "Soul Purpose". But these are vastly overshadowed by great comedy episodes like "Smile Time" and "Harm's Way", mythic episodes like "Why We Fight" and "The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco", and the rather nice meditations on death presented by "You're Welcome", "A Hole in the World", and "Shells".

None of the season long character conflicts are bad--Angel and Spike's fractious relationship is funny and has an interesting arc, perfectly playing off the similarities and differences of the two characters. The premiere episode, in which director Joss Whedon put a lot of somewhat odd (but enjoyable) fanservice shots of Fred is followed by a cool werewolf episode written and directed by women that successful turns Fred into a female POV character. And Wesley's dialogues with Illyria, thoughtful and melancholy, are excellent. This show really was killed too soon. I suspect I'll be looking for the comic book continuation when I'm done watching it.

Pawns in Love

I was right in thinking that the second episode of Dance in the Vampire Bund would be better than the first, but it's still far from Akiyuki Shinbo's best work. I almost wonder if he's doing this mainly for the cash.



On the other hand, I can't remember an anime series that so blatantly portrayed a romance between a teenage boy and what appears to be a preteen girl, and it's possible it's intentionally disturbing. Shinbo's often uses his shows as commentary on otaku culture and he could be doing so again, though in this case I think it'd be more accurate to say it's a commentary on otaku psychology.



There's a scene where the young man rubs "shade gel" on Mina Tepes, the little girl vampire, while she's almost totally naked to protect her from the sun. The scene has an unambiguously sexual quality, and among other things, it got me thinking about how truly bizarre censorship is in Japan. Anyone familiar with Japanese porn (which, I suspect, is actually everyone) has noticed the ridiculous, thin black bars almost randomly placed on genitals, obscuring maybe 5 percent of the image. And nowadays, anime series often forgo the frequent naked breasts of early 90s and 80s anime in order to court U.S. licensers, but a loophole in this strategy finds sexualised, naked children to be perfectly okay. It's almost like a fetish created by censorship, self-imposed and otherwise.



The show might work better for anyone who, somehow, in this day and age, can put themselves in the mind of finding vampires disturbing. If there's a connexion between the uncomfortable scenario of a child's body in adult contexts and something demonic, there could really be something here. It could almost be The Vampire Claudia: The Series. I guess I'll need to see where it's going before I can really judge, but the idea of an adult mind trapped in a child's body takes the imagination to uncomfortable places. I suppose one could ask oneself how they'd react if she was a midget.

Again, there's a new Venia's Travels online to-day. Careful readers might have noticed the chess pieces on Venia's and Rolethir's chessboard are placed in legitimate places. I actually played a game against myself using medieval rules; the Queen could only move one space diagonally, the bishop could only move two, the pawns couldn't move more than one space in the beginning, and there were no fancy things like en passant and castling.



The trickiest thing was to remember that the Queen had very little value--I came close to accidentally sacrificing a Knight to take one out a couple times. And it's very much a game of knights, as the Rooks, blocked by the slowed pawns and without the recourse of castling, could only come into the game relatively late. I also role-played as the two characters, presuming Venia's a decent player while Rolethir was playing for the first time and had no particular desire to win. And I wanted his last move to be with his Knight, since that's the piece newbies find trickiest to learn how to use. So, first Rolethir tried to move his Knight from g1 to h4, possibly to attack Venia's Rook while freeing his own Rook to attack Venia's Knight. After putting his piece in a correct space, Venia moved one of her Knights from d4 to f3, as seen in the comic.

I modelled the pieces after the Lewis chessmen. For my fictional universe, I consider chess to have been invented in Paelywa, and maybe the Niverikiin will eventually make the Queens and Bishops more powerful since their society essentially gives women the same rights as men and their religious institutions have a great deal more power and social prominence.

Last night's tweets;

Trash bins withdraw into a blue shadow.
Feline, pink bellhops block confused rabbits.
Recycling's gift wrapped by a black widow.
Spiders prescribe guests' vacation habits.

Venia Picks on Easy Targets

The new Venia's Travels is online. And it's only 1:30am! I'm not going to sleep for hours, this is great, I can watch a movie or something!

Dreaming the Potent Illusions

Twitter Sonnet 101: Fuel

Elvis mints make padded cells of stomachs.
Avocado Faberge eggs don't last.
A possum eye for a sky's like onyx.
The marsupials watch us badly fast.
Junk food cops watch from a helicopter.
Some burritos are the saddest donkeys.
Now powering torches of the lobster--
Perpendicular water batteries.
Staples have no inherent energy.
A hand and hinge drive metal through paper.
In ice was written Yeti's eulogy.
And read by the tongue of a mad tapir.
Refrigerators hold heavy burdens.
Cold and still gods dwell in thermal cauldrons.

Looks like I'm far from alone in naming Mulholland Drive best picture of the decade--I saw on Jim Emerson's blog yesterday that several publications have also called it best of the decade. Though the reason given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, quoted by Emerson, is somewhat different from why I picked the movie; "David Lynch's psychoerotic noir is one of the essential L.A. movies -- but the more significant reason for the film's enduring critical favor may be its deconstruction of the toxic allure of the Dream Factory." The movie definitely fed into Hollywood narcissism, and I think that explains why it was better received than most of Lynch's films. That, and hot lesbian sex. Seriously--Howard Stern's said it for decades, lesbians mean ratings. Mulholland Drive makes it legitimate art. If you want something sexy that also happens to be great art, you can go to Mulholland Drive. The reason INLAND EMPIRE didn't do as well was 1)no lesbian action 2)older lead and 3) while it held up another mirror for Hollywood, Hollywood couldn't gaze twice into Lynch's glass without feeling self-conscious about its narcissism.

To me, Mulholland Drive is great not because of its perspective on the "dream factory" but because of its perspective on dreams themselves, and how they relate to a person's life. How they can both lead to destruction and salvation, sometimes both at the same time. I suppose Hollywood's a natural setting for such a story.

By the way, for those of you who would point out that the decade isn't technically over yet, I'd ask you if you'd include films released in 1990 among 80s films. If you answered yes, then I think you're just precious.

It's nice to see Spirited Away and Brokeback Mountain did so well on several of the lists. I definitely intend to check out some of the ones I haven't seen, particularly In the Mood for Love. I'm a bit surprised There Will Be Blood generally placed so highly--it's not a bad movie, I don't think, but is it really that great? Surely Spirited Away has a lot more going for it.

I'd better get back to colouring. I finished pencil and ink on the new Venia's Travels yesterday, but I to-day's devoted to colouring the last three pages. I'm well ahead of where I've been at this point on the last couple chapters, though, which is a good feeling.

Navigating by Labels

I had MSNBC on while I ate lunch to-day and saw some of Keith Olbermann's coverage of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. Astonishingly horrible, what's happened.

Olbermann went on to talk about what Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson have said about the matter, and on the one hand I have to wonder why those two should be given any attention, though on the other I suppose both men have massive audiences who hang on their every word and it might be important to have their arguments refuted somewhere. Pat Robertson's comments I found particularly fascinating, his idea that Haitians are being punished for a pact with Satan. It's similar to Robertson's claims about Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 being the fault of sinners in the respective cities where they took place--the obviously weak logic somehow makes it even more insulting. It implies Robertson will stop at nothing to blame the victims. This is what happens when people settle on fast explanations for everything in life--stagnate imaginations make them cruel.

I watched the second episode of So Ra No Wo To to-day, which was pretty disappointing after the promising first episode. Cheaper looking production values meant the town in which the story takes place appeared to be deserted as it seemed no-one was able to animate or even draw still versions of the townspeople. And the main cast coalesced in the episode, coming off as something that might be called Azumanga Evangelion--it was clear every character was a slightly tweaked version of an Evangelion character;



From left to right, we have Ritsuko modified to be kindlier, Misato modified to be grumpier, Shinji modified to be a girl and happier (with Pen Pen on her head modified to be an owl), Asuka not really modified at all, and Rei modified to be a narcoleptic. Otherwise, it's exactly the same characters, only with awkward silences in which the characters have delayed reactions to everything and utterly pointless dialogue. This stuff, along with just about all the "mundane adventures of young teen girls" style anime series can probably be blamed on people trying to emulate Azumanga Daioh. All these series, though, So Ra No Wo To included, fail to capture what makes Azumanga Daioh so good--a genuinely insightful, sort of melancholic perspective on human nature.

I'll probably still watch the third So Ra No Wo To, though. If the second episode can be this different from the first, maybe the third episode can be as different from the second. We get to see a map of the fantasy world in the new episode;



The show takes place in the town of "Seize", which I thought at first was a stand in for a coastal French town until I realised the lighter area on the upper left wasn't water. I misread "Nomansland" at first as "Normansland", the implication maybe being the Normans went to conquer England but, finding it missing, stubbornly planted their flag in the ocean.

Not exactly the most creative names for towns, there. I suppose they sound perfectly exotic to Japanese viewers.

Last night's tweets;

Junk food cops watch from a helicopter.
Some burritos are the saddest donkeys.
Now powering torches of the lobster--
Perpendicular water batteries.

Our Darling Daimyo

Last night's tweets;

Elvis mints make padded cells of stomachs.
Avocado Faberge eggs don't last.
A possum eye for a sky's like onyx.
The marsupials watch us badly fast.



With breakfast to-day, I watched the first episode of So Ra No Wo To, which so far is my favourite new anime series of the season, by a long shot. Thoughtful pacing, detailed backgrounds and the sense of a densely detailed fantasy world without exposition dumps are immensely refreshing amongst the usual crop of harem series and series about the mundane activities of prepubescent girls, though So Ra No Wo To seems to have a little of that.

I haven't caught much of the premise yet, but it seems to be set in an alternate version of late 1940s, rural France after Japan single-handedly won World War II and apparently put young teenagers in charge of most things. I think some might compare it to Strike Witches, but the background art is worlds better and there are far fewer disturbing panty shots of children.



The protagonist is a girl who looks around eleven or twelve and who wants to be a bugler for the army. But there's at least one character for us increasingly in the minority who like our cheesecake with developed breasts, the would-be bugler's mentor who's voiced by Yu Kobayashi. This is the second new series I've watched in as many days to feature Kobayashi, who plays the male lead of Ookami Kakusi, a new supernatural harem anime. This following her role as a tomboy on Nyan Koi! and the cross-dressing lead of Maria Holic. She has the kind of voice that's usually assigned to young boys, but as the female characters she plays on So Ra No Wo To and Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, her somewhat raspy voice is a real wonderful novelty among the higher pitched voices of most anime girls.

Anyway, I have a bad feeling So Ra No Wo To is going to wind up being all set up and no story, like many an anime series before it, but for now I can appreciate the decent designs.

Using Your Mirror Face

Twitter Sonnet #100

Televisions can't really be turned off.
Ronald McDonald's passed out at Wal-Mart.
Pale pervasive light tasers the new croft.
A cell phone clock keeps ticking by your heart.
Fighting after death prolongs jukebox songs.
Think how a dead chairman administrates.
Dancing supermen right musical wrongs.
Rare men survive without carbohydrates.
Colin Farrell can never be wholesome.
I wish Aphrodite had more to say.
Left behind part of a Tom Waits album.
But Brawlers beat the Bawlers anyway.
Common love letters charge for healthcare.
Next time, Ray Stantz, just think of angry air.

Guess who just got another hospital bill? It's only 22 dollars this time, but damn. This seems to be a monthly thing. It's like alimony.

Didn't get much sleep so I don't know how articulate I can be about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which I saw last night. But it's a very good movie.

It's probably Gilliam's most Pythonesque post-Python film, much of the Imaginarium cgi sequences coming off as modern versions of his Monty Python animations. The substitution of Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell for Heath Ledger's character, Tony, in the Imaginarium worked surprisingly well, as Ledger, with his deeper voice, smaller eyes, and lined face seems earthlier than the looks of the other three actors. Gilliam mentioned at his Comic-Con appearance (my videos of which you can see here) that Tony was a character Ledger specifically requested to play, and placed next to his Joker performance, we can see Ledger was interested in playing morally corrupt yet not simplistically evil characters. Themes of imminent death and mortality pervade Imaginarium, and Ledger's first appearance in the film is hanging unconscious from a noose under a bridge, so I think one might feel a little bit more sympathy for Tony than one might otherwise, had Ledger not died during filming, but he's definitely the most intriguing character in the film, along with Tom Waits' Devil.

I loved that the conflict between Parnassus and the Devil wasn't exactly a battle of Good versus Evil but apparently a battle between imagination and stagnation. The Devil himself doesn't seem particularly interested in winning, and it's evident he and Parnassus enjoy playing off each other. I think one of the reasons some critics and audiences find the movie confusing is that it fundamentally rejects a conventional moral dichotomy. Imaginarium's morals shouldn't be strange to anyone familiar with Gilliam's work, though, as once again he's promoting imagination as humanity's best quality. There's a melancholy about modern society's increasing rejection of imagination, partly inspired, as Gilliam said at Comic-Con, by audience rejection of Tideland.

If I have any complaint about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus it's that I wish it'd had more Lily Cole. I think her character could've used a little more development, but I'd be surprised if she didn't get a lot more work after this. Gilliam films her brilliantly, and I found myself marvelling that such a beautiful and strange face exists on a real human being.

Plastic Majesty

Last night's tweets;

Fighting after death prolongs jukebox songs.
Think how a dead chairman administrates.
Dancing supermen right musical wrongs.
Rare men survive without carbohydrates.

I think Rolethir would like Avatar. I think Venia would find it depressing, Wircelia would be distracted, Kakeshya would hate it, and Wuvou would be bored. In case you're wondering.

Putting dishes away to-day, I put the television on The Science Fiction Channel and caught part of Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Maybe the fact that he's an independent filmmaker explains all the goods actors in this movie. I actually would like to see a medieval fantasy film with Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, and John Rhys-Davies. I could even see myself coming around to liking Ray Liotta in such a movie, though when he was on screen I couldn't help hearing, "Kar-en! Why did you do that Karen?! That was all we had! Kar-en! Why did you do that?!" Don't think I could ever sincerely dig King Burt Reynolds, though.

The movie has some amazingly dull character conflicts sprinkled with some lame humour. I'm probably not surprising anyone with that statement.

I watched the newest episode of Dollhouse with breakfast to-day. A really good episode after a couple of really lousy ones, and it didn't take long to figure out why--this one was written and directed by Tim Minear and the previous several had mostly been under the command of team Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, and Andrew Chambliss, who look to be in charge of Dollhouse from now on, until the end. Jed's Joss' brother, by the way. I guess this is one of the signs of the series' distance from Joss' heart.

I used to think of Tim Minear as one of Firefly's weaker writers, but he's an oasis in the desert of Dollhouse' death throes now, this episode particularly good for it's references to "Epitaph 1", and I am excited that they've decided to keep this as all part of one timeline. But the linchpin of this episode was Summer Glau. Jeez, she makes you hurt in this episode. You fall for her right along with Topher, and her story makes everything else about the episode feel important. This is the best character she's played, lacking the poor planning of River and the limited scope of Cameron. I'd have liked a Bennett Halverson series.

Digital Species

I've mainly been using Second Life lately to play chess, but I went clothes shopping yesterday and got Tou some nice new outfits from Ingenue;




I saw several people using Na'Vi avatars last night--I guess that's rather appropriate, isn't it? They were exceptionally well made avatars, and I'm guessing there's an Avatar promotional sim somewhere.

I guess I was totally wrong about Avatar not making any money. As I said to Tim last night, observing Avatar's success makes me feel like I'm on a planet populated by an alien species. Aside from the engaging pace of the first fifteen minutes or so, there's really no aspect of the film I can imagine liking--the design, the plot, the acting. Contemplating the idea of sitting through the movie again makes me feel tired. But clicking on the permanent trending topic on Twitter reveals thousands of "OMG Avatar is so freaking amazing!" with maybe two or three, "Yo Avatar is a racist azz movie." I mean, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since I can't remember the last time I really liked a popular song. I tried listening to some Lady Gaga a couple weeks ago, and I kind of liked a couple songs, including "Bad Romance", but I started zoning out halfway through the album. And now I can't hear "Bad Romance" without hearing the Bababooey version ("Ba, ba, Ba-babooey, Ba-ba-Bababooey . . .").

Meanwhile, last night I was drinking scotch and really loving Easter Parade, which is hardly a masterpiece, so what do I know?

With breakfast to-day, I watched the first episode of Akiyuki Shinbo's latest series, which so far seems to be his weakest, Dance in the Vampire Bund. I was a little worried I might get busted for having child porn for downloading it as it features a pre-pubescent female vampire as its lead who seems to be topless half the time. Despite internet rumour to the contrary, I'm not turned on by children or by "lolicon", which is starting to become increasingly prevalent in mainstream anime. I tried watching what turned out to be an excruciatingly dull popular series called A Certain Scientific Railgun a couple days ago and found it was another Lucky Star style series that followed the daily routine of humourless, slightly ditzy girls who, regardless of whether or not they're actually pre-teens, are drawn that way. I'm not sure that this particular look is so popular is an indicator of a paedophilia epidemic. In a way, I can see it as a natural progression from stylisations that give characters unnaturally large eyes, which is a childish trait. I remember watching Desmond Morris' Human Animal special from the ancient, actually educational Learning Channel and hearing him suggest that the more child-like physical features of women relative to men are designed to provoke protective instincts.

Anyway, the first episode of Dance in the Vampire Bund rather uninterestingly comes from the POV of a fictional Japanese game show, coming off as awkwardly artificial, so it may not be an indicator of the series' actual quality. I do like that the Robert Pattinson caricature transforms into a giant chameleon who swings from the rafters by his tongue.




Here's the only decently formatted version of the trailer on YouTube, subtitled in Spanish as Spanish speaking anime fans generally seem to be a lot smarter than the English speaking ones. Like most anime trailers, none of the dialogue or title cards make sense anyway;



Last night's tweets;

Televisions can't really be turned off.
Ronald McDonald's passed out at Wal-Mart.
Pale pervasive light tasers the new croft.
A cell phone clock keeps ticking by your heart.

Distilled Grains

Music by Kouhei Tanaka from the Top wo Nerae 2 soundtrack.

Twitter Sonnet #99

What's a good movie without a spider?
The menu's otherwise just filled with meat.
Steady hands must pilot a TIE fighter.
Palpatine wants an Empress with small feet.
Slow clocks are getting somehow blurrier.
Evident anger is not spoken of.
A domestic dove's a mean courier.
Ancient mints see well animated love.
Inert, affectionate sacks are suspect.
Water can flow unnoticed through the walls.
Dark cats in dwarf closets demand respect.
A strange hotel was built above the falls.
Bowie's blue electric room's got gin and rye.
Yesterday's quinoa had gone hard and dry.

Apparently Artie Lange's already out of the hospital. I'm hoping he'll be back on The Howard Stern Show on Monday. Here's a clip of Stern yesterday discussing Lange's suicide attempt;



One of the things that fascinate me about this is Stern's apparently truly hurt feelings from reading comments about Lange on Stern Fan Network, an internet forum that discusses the Stern Show. The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory has been around since 2004, but from within the first couple years that I started socialising on the internet, in the late 1990s, I came to feel almost completely numb to insults on the internet that weren't self-substantiated. Artie Lange said it himself once when commenting on people he met travelling the country; "Most people are jerk-offs." The fact that anonymity is all people need to start flinging petty insults at a guy who just tried to kill himself seems to indicate that a lot of people are only ever courteous because they fear repercussions, that they have no internal faculty for shame.

So, for the most part, the internet masses have become kind of an ocean of white noise to me, except when I occasionally like to view it as a study in human behaviour. But it's refreshing to hear a casual internet user like Stern get angry about behaviour that really ought to be beneath our civilisation at this point.

Though I wouldn't say anger expressed towards people who attempt suicide is necessarily borne of cheap sadism. Once, when discussing suicide in a college philosophy class, I heard a girl very angrily denounce anyone who would try to commit suicide as being selfish, not considering how their actions will hurt the people who care about them. I think I restrained myself at the time from sarcastically remarking, "Yeah, it sucks having such selfish people around, doesn't it?" Shifting all liability to the person who tries to commit suicide is a defence mechanism--it's a way of avoiding the more complicated and possibly insurmountable issues actually surrounding the suicide attempt, and it's also a way of deflecting reflexive feelings of guilt. I doubt there are many cases where someone actually deserves blame for someone else's suicide, but not confronting or acknowledging one's own feeling of guilt will cause it to fester.

Here're a couple photos from this week.

Hazards of Freedom, Part 2

Due to a broken fire alarm somewhere in the house going off last night from 3am to 5am, I was awake to read the news about Artie Lange's absence from The Howard Stern Show that finally broke--Artie had stabbed himself nine times in the stomach last week with a kitchen knife. This is his second suicide attempt, but the first one since he's been on The Howard Stern Show, so there's well over a decade between attempts. He's supposedly been off drugs for almost a year, but the fact that he tried to kill himself with gut wounds seems to indicate he was fucked up on something. I've never heard of someone hating him or herself enough to want a slow, painful death, but I suppose anything's possible. That's not how seppuku's done, either.

My perception of Artie's issues has always been that he doesn't receive or feel he deserves the validation he needs as a human being. It's clear listening to him that it's really only something he can pull out of himself and that he might not be equipped to do so. He's always seemed to suffer worse on vacations from the Stern Show--he's tended always to relapse during the two week Christmas break, and if he was truly clean this year, it could be he couldn't handle the despair without the self-medication. I watched his latest stand-up DVD, Jack and Coke, while eating breakfast to-day, and I noticed how much funnier he is ten or fifteen minutes into his set, when he seems to get rolling and go off script a little more. I think it's the immediacy of creation and reaction Artie needs, and what The Howard Stern Show gives him, where he can work too fast and concentrate too fully to get caught up in the bell jar.

He's still alive, though there's no word on the severity of his condition. Aside from being funny and a great comedic risk taker, he also comes across on the Stern Show as a fundamentally good man. I really hope he pulls through.

I saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans last night, a movie that actually reminded me of Artie Lange a bit as it features a fundamentally good man who has problems with drugs, gambling, and a fondness for hookers. Terrance McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) isn't quite as "bad" as Harvey Kietel's character in the previous Bad Lieutenant movie--the two films are only truly related by name due to a producer's idea of creating a franchise. McDonagh is obviously consumed with a desire to do his job properly, is better at it than everyone else, while Keitel's character was sort of inept and doesn't seem to give a fuck most of the time.

The movie's like Red Harvest if it were filmed by Preston Sturges--a canny, flawed hero playing all sides in the name of justice but told with a basic humour and affection for human nature. Roger Ebert's review refers to McDonagh as, "a rapist, murderer, drug addict, corrupt cop and degenerate paranoid," but of those, only "drug addict" and "corrupt cop" are true. I hate how often Roger Ebert seems to get basic facts wrong (one of his tweets about Artie Lange to-day referred to him as "Artie Johnson"). We never see McDonagh rape or murder anyone, in fact he takes risks to prevent either from happening in a few cases. The only scene I can think might have been taken as rape was when a woman early in the movie uses sex as a bribe, but she so clearly initiates that one would have to define rape as any form of sex that is not motivated by true love to see it as rape. And I don't know where the murder charge comes from--if I remember correctly, we never even actually see McDonagh kill anyone for any reason.

But the movie does play a delightful game of one-upsmanship with itself. Every development seems more outrageous than the last, yet not too far to invalidate the fictional world created. And not all of these extremes are dark. The last fifteen minutes of the movie are so wild I'm not convinced it's not meant to be a dream or hallucination sequence.

I don't even consider this a particularly dark movie, though I know my point of view might be skewed on this. I once saw someone on a forum say my comics might be better when I grew up and realised being dark doesn't automatically make something good and my reaction was, "My comics are dark?" But there are millions of people who deal with daily realities at least as dark as Terrance McDonagh's world (though not as fantastic). I think the pool of movie critics and amateur internet movie critics is saturated with people more innocent than they realise.

But I still think Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a plain, easily entertaining film. In fact, this movie ought to have been the movie that made Werner Herzog millions so that he could make other, more challenging films. That this movie didn't get a wider release is a huge bungle on the studio's part.

Also, let me add that Eva Mendes is fucking hot in this movie. I actually never thought she was that attractive, but here she's fucking gorgeous. There's a quiet shot where she's chilling out on the porch of Terrance's father's house while it rains that took my breath away. Maybe it's the context--she kind of looks like a call girl, so she looks perfect when she's playing one. But she also gave a great performance. All the performances are good, including Nicolas Cage, who plays McDonagh with a mad, unpredictable focus.

By the way, I was informed yesterday that the "Blake" in Amanda Palmer's "Blake Says" is in fact not Neil Gaiman but a guy actually named "Blake". If someone ever writes a song about me, I demand a false name poetically related to the songwriter's grievances with me.

Last night's tweets;

Slow clocks are getting somehow blurrier.
Evident anger is not spoken of.
A domestic dove's a mean courier.
Ancient mints see well animated love.

The Hazards of Freedom

Is Ron Paul officially senile? I just watched him on The Rachel Maddow Show give the host a long, rambling, meaningless answer to something she asked. It wasn't typical politician bullshit, it was like someone fervently trying to impress their beliefs on another but having some kind of brain damage preventing the words coming from their mouths from actually matching what's in their head. I think the reason he seems so appealing to some people is that he just doesn't have the capacity to be part of someone else's programme--for better or for worse, he's a party of one, occasionally aligning himself with people he's too deluded to see are very different from him, like his grassroots support of people who wanted to wear Guy Fawkes masks for him.

Listening to The Howard Stern Show while inking and colouring yesterday, I was made to notice again how that show suffers when Artie Lange is absent. It's hard to describe what makes Artie so good on the show--it's not something you can really see in his stand-up. He seems to lack a certain psychological barrier everyone else has. He seems just a little more genuinely angry, sad, pleased, or excited than anyone else, who are always just a little bit guarded on the air. The sense is that Artie doesn't feel like he deserves the layers of psychological protection everyone else has. The guy really bears a cross, it's no wonder he seems to be dying. I do hope he gets out of the hospital soon.

Last night, continuing into to-day, I've had this strange lack of desire to listen to any music. I have to listen to something--silence isn't any more appealing. I finally ended up listening to Who Killed Amanda Palmer while drawing to-day. I tend to find myself assuming "Blake Says" is about Neil Gaiman, since it seems to be about a laid-back Velvet Underground fan. Though Gaiman seems like too nice a guy to ask to speak to an answering machine instead of a person. But the tone of the song seems to reflect how I often perceive their relationship, as being one where Palmer almost reflexively feels Gaiman needs more excitement in his life, or at least to do things that get him to feel stronger emotions. This might be the perennial struggle between the high-strung and the laid-back, though.

I did get TIE Fighter working a couple nights ago. I hadn't quite remembered how old it is--I had to run it with Windows 95 compatibility. The most striking thing is how evident the difference in gaming psychology is. In each mission, you are given a set of objectives, but there's nowhere near the level of hand-holding there is to-day. In the training mission I flew last night, primary objectives were to destroy 75% of incoming X-Wings and Y-Wings, while secondary objectives were to destroy heavy lifters that come in to steal some Imperial cargo. I found that if I stuck with my flight group and concentrated first on X-Wings, then on Y-Wings, there was no way to stop the heavy lifters. So, while you're in the middle of an intense criss-crossing of dogfights, managing your craft's energy distribution between lasers and engines, you also need to pay attention to who your flight group is attacking, figuring out what the best targets are to order them to attack, and take care to not slow down too much when destroying the heavy lifters as a regular TIE Fighter can be destroyed by just a couple hits. Collision's a real problem, too, as I found in my zealous attempts to destroy the better shielded Rebel craft I had a tendency to plough directly into their engines, something which they are more likely to survive than me.

There are a lot of controls in the game, all of them useful, and I was amazed by how much I remembered. The fundamental aspect of the gameplay distinguishing TIE Fighter from modern games is that everything you can do, all the forces you must negotiate or overcome, are all based on what a TIE Fighter pilot would have to deal with. There's nothing steering your craft for you while you fire, there's no unrealistic life meter or enemies whose entire purpose in life is to stand around until you show up so they can attack you. Everything's part of the game world, and everything has a role in the story, and the story's very involving as a consequence.



Last night's tweets;

What's a good movie without a spider?
The menu's otherwise just filled with meat.
Steady hands must pilot a TIE fighter.
Palpatine wants an Empress with small feet.

Some Day My Fortune Cookie Will Come

Shots like this make Snow White worth watching;



There's a real beauty to this movie the likes of which is only found in Hayao Miyazaki movies to-day, though the bulk of the film involves endearing dwarf slapstick. I remember hearing how tedious the old animators found it to animate realistic people, and this is evident in no-one more than Snow White herself, whose rigid mannerisms suggest something more to me than just an uncertainty of how to animate an innocent young woman. Though she is gorgeous.



A lot of people talk about the sexist nature of Snow White's character, who seems irresistibly drawn to cooking and cleaning. I suppose you could say this might be the talents of a scullery maid, but I don't think we should look to Snow White for an exercise in historical accuracy. One could say she's a product of the 1930s, which she certainly is, but she still lacks the depth of the characters in 1939's The Women or any of Joan Crawford's shopgirl films. There's something very remote about Snow White, and the impression I have is that she's the vague realisation of the filmmakers' ideal--all the human characters in the film, including the dwarfs and queen, feel like versions of parental figures, which I think Walt saw as being something children would respond warmly to. Snow White's performance of her chores isn't so much meant to be a model for young girls in the audience (though I doubt anyone minded if it was taken that way) as a rendering of what the filmmakers saw as a great female--a beautiful and irrepressibly kind caretaker. Which ends up saying a lot more about the animators than it does about any fictional female character, since she is so broadly and indistinctly crafted.



Animation of the female leads in Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty is superb, but I don't think we get to see a real female character protagonist in an animated Disney film until The Little Mermaid. The villains are another story, as even the evil queen in Snow White seems to have something to her, even if that something is still made only of her creator's fears.

Twitter Sonnet #98

Swerve out of the next off-ramp suddenly.
Erratic driving brings joy to us all.
Let's reach destinations gradually.
Always will plastic cheese be at the mall.
Never fully trust Hollywood archers.
Hold your mace carefully, Basil Rathbone.
The parade tuba's ahead of marchers.
Behind, cellist Woody Allen, alone.
My rubber bottomed car key has no ring.
Not all lights on your board serve a purpose.
For what lady do the caged blue fish sing?
Only Aayla Secura can help us.
A hard, lekku lesson's in the bottle.
There's nowhere a plain Cantonese noodle.

Unlimited Pawns

Last night's tweets;

Swerve out of the next off-ramp suddenly.
Erratic driving brings joy to us all.
Let's reach destinations gradually.
Always will plastic cheese be at the mall.

Unexpectedly slow day to-day--for some reason, I kept taking my time doing everything. Maybe I'm dragging my heels to delay to-day becoming to-morrow, when I need to take my car in to get it fixed. As in, the dent on the hood fixed, not spayed or neutered. I am happy the other guy's insurance is paying for it, but mostly all I can think about right now is how damned inconvenient it is.

Oh, and! I've heard from the hospital and it seems they've decided to bill me again! 388 dollars this time, which fortunately I happen to have right now, thanks to Christmas, though I'm going to have say goodbye to my idle ambition of upgrading my computer. Hell, I can't very well think about spending money again for a good long while as it seems that a visit to the emergency room in November has given the hospital license to take money from me whenever it wants. What's the excuse this time? "Intermediate exam". That leaves an awful lot of adjectives and nouns they can combine, doesn't it? I suppose I might yet be billed for "Procedural survey", "Dedicated probe" and "Careful scrutiny."

I suppose if I'd known about this thing, I wouldn't have spent eighty dollars on movies yesterday. I picked up TCM's musical collection of The Band Wagon, Singin' in the Rain, Easter Parade, and Meet Me in St. Louis. I also got Disney's recent release of Snow White and Criterion's new release of The Seventh Seal, which I watched last night.

I hadn't seen the movie in at least ten years, and I was surprised by what a nice sort of road trip movie it is. It's almost a party from a Lord of the Rings style fantasy, comprised of the knight, his squire, the peasant woman the squire presses into housekeeping service, the smith, the smith's wife, and the two actors, Mia and Jof, whose names remain Mia and Jof in these English subtitles, unlike Criterion's previous edition which changed their names to "Mary" and "Joseph", creating an inappropriate biblical reference. Each character is crafted so fully, and they play off each other so well, I'd have watched a series of movies about these people travelling through plague infested lands.

I've been trying to discern the exact moves of the chess game Antonious and Death play. I thought there'd be a site that had them all recorded, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. It's hard to tell what's happening as the pieces are very blocky and look similar to one another, but a lot can be seen in this shot;



This is after Death's taken Antonious' Knight and Antonious laughs as though this was a great trap he had lain for Death, using his next move to put Death in check. But we can see here how easy it was a check for Death to get out of, simply moving his King over one square, and the position of Death's rooks tell us he's already castled, which indicates the movement of his King is no great sacrifice. It kind of gives you the impression that Antonious is trying to psych out Death.