Reality of Invisible Webs

I've just gotten back from seeing my friend Marty, who told me about this commercial directed by David Lynch;





At first I was liking it because of how Lynch seemed to be treating the concept of a commercial by taking a very sincere perspective on the situation where an object, in this case a handbag, is given significance for reasons not stated in the commercial--to get you to buy it. Marion Cotillard's character seems to be a person caught in the world of a commercial, but unaware of it, not played as a joke but as something really frightening and disorienting, as one realises such an experience would actually be.

But in the second half, I was liking it because of how it was communicating the experience of suddenly remembering a whole story that gives something an intrinsic meaning you didn't realise it had on first seeing it, and yet it was there inside your mind from the beginning. And even then Cotillard doesn't seem like she quite understands what's happening. It gives what would otherwise be a fairly commonplace story about a temporal displacement a striking credibility, using a possible past life or time travel experience as an expression of the subconscious.

Here are some pictures of a tiny white spider I saw when I took out some trash to-day;

Cannibal Ninja

Twitter Sonnet #192

Still spiders speak against human treason.
Rusted pipes infect sliding Mario.
Slingshots are unacquainted with reason.
Filling's voice repressed in the Oreo.
Dots of red wine litter all the blank sky.
Giggling horses play with floppy fake horn.
Gruesome goblins throw apples at some guy.
Paper's purity is for stamps to mourn.
Many red stones weigh on Sumner's bare chest.
TVs stretch like static silly putty.
Yellow recipes know what schnapps are best.
Sanguine frosting makes cupcake cheeks ruddy.
Batter's obliterated by steel teeth.
There are always ghost women on the heath.

There are lines of reasoning I think are a bit flawed, and bits that presume too much about audiences and readers, in this article from Overthinking It, "Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women," but I agree with the thesis. It's been a peeve of mine for a while, and it's something I alluded to a couple days ago when talking about Boardwalk Empire. I talked to someone about that episode last night who, unlike me, doesn't instinctively think about what the writer's trying to do and still has that enviable innocent perspective on art that simply accepts everything, however poorly written, as part of the story. Without knowing my opinion on the subject, he told me he thought Margaret's behaviour at the party, when she went toe to toe with the mayor and senator, was an indication that she had a secret identity, that she may in fact be Anastasia.

Rather than changing my opinion on the scene, it strengthened it--it proved to me that her behaviour at the party was wildly out of character. The article I linked to above discusses the lazy tendency writers have to presume making a female character strong or brilliant means she's a full character. Actually, this sort of thing actively sabotages the creation of a character as much as Lois Lane or Sarah Jane Smith making invariably wrong choices to wind up in the clutches of a villain. Maybe more, because in the damsel in distress case at least it could be seen as part of the writer's fantasy, whereas in the newer case it's a reflection of something artificially enforced.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a female supporting character--sometimes you need supporting characters in a story. I can't say I see Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark as anti-feminist in any way--I just don't think she's as interesting as Indiana Jones, and that's simply how the cookie crumbles sometimes. But she doesn't feel like she's borne of some kind of agenda or hang-up about women, which is fundamentally the most important thing, to me. She's not distracting or dull that way.

The Data Stream of Facsimiles

I went to play World of Warcraft last night, but was thwarted by the big new update for Cataclysm, the upcoming expansion/tweaking of WoW. I don't know why Blizzard has to be so fucking coy about how much disk space something's going to take up. The decent thing, it seems to me, to do would be to tell you up front, if not go as far as detecting whether or not your hard drive actually has enough space on it. As it was, the update stalled in the unpacking process at around thirty percent because I was out of space. I found out from Tim that WoW, during the update, needed twice the hard drive space it normally takes--in other words, I had to free up around 25 gigs for the 50 gig ridiculous behemoth. I had a hard enough time freeing up 14. I eventually, to-day, took the entire Beatles flac discography of my computer, several Jimi Hendrix flac albums, and nearly everything in my jazz folder, since I already had this stuff backed up from the last time there was a cataclysm on this computer.

Now, it was from Tim I got this information about how much space I needed--he knew because he'd gone through it. He told me he had a hard drive with just WoW and Guild Wars on it to accommodate the update. But say I didn't have Tim to call. Where would I have found out? I had to click through on the loader to some kind of fucking forum and get the information way down on a list of frequently asked questions. All for something that civilised game companies used to tell you up front as a matter of course.

The crazy thing is, this isn't even supposed to be the really big update. This is just for interface, talent trees, and things like that. I can only imagine the headache it's going to be when the continents actually get new shapes.

It sort of makes me wonder if people are going to be very nostalgic for how WoW used to be a couple years from now. People buy the original Super Mario Brothers, I gotta think there are kids now who will want to relive classic WoW in 2020. Maybe Blizzard will release a single player classic edition or something. Gods know they rarely seem to pass up an opportunity to make a dollar.



I really love that outfit.

I watched the first episode of Doctor Who yesterday with Tom Baker as the Doctor. I'd managed to completely avoid seeing any footage of Baker before actually getting to the episode naturally--I felt sort of like a time traveller, actually, considering myself a Doctor Who fan without having seen any Tom Baker episodes. I had a dream where he turned out to be an American and I got really indignant about it.

Actually, he reminds me a lot of Graham Chapman in terms of appearance and comic timing, but his voice sounds like Christopher Lee. It's amazing, because he seems to quite nimbly switch from comic to serious. He really makes Pertwee seem like a drag in comparison. But I guess I do miss Pertwee a little. It's hard to, though, when I'm currently in awe of the dexterity of Baker's performance.

The last few Pertwee serials had been good, though mainly I was noticing how much of Star Wars I felt like I was seeing in them. I mean, as far back as the Troughton era I was already noticing that Jamie and Zoe looked like Luke and Leia if you relax your eyes a bit, but the late Pertwee serial The Monster of Peladon had one of the Martian "Ice Warrior" commander guys in the role of subordinate villain to an ordinary looking human, a dynamic that reminded me pretty strong like of Vader and Tarkin.



The Ice Warrior even his an odd hiss somewhat reminiscent of Vader's breathing effect.

Last night I dreamt I was with Trisa in an enormous fake city--as in, cardboard skyscrapers actually the size of skyscrapers and we were running from Godzilla. It looked like the old Godzilla, the guy in the suit, only you could sense the size of the creature. Like it was an actual sixty or seventy foot tall guy in what must have been acres of rubber destroying everything. I'd really like to actually see something like that on film.

Energy in Shallow Water

On the way back from the dentists' to-day I saw a girl wearing a miniskirt riding a vespa down a hill on a 55 mph street. The front of the vespa protected her modesty, but I have to think she's taking some frozen genitals home. I definitely have a lot more respect for her than the guy riding a bicycle who positioned himself in front of my car at a stoplight shortly afterwards. I hate it when bicyclists think they're driving something comparable to a car.

I took some stale hamburger buns to the ducks yesterday, and had to search around for them a bit as someone else had brought a dog to the river and scared them away from their usual spot. After I'd finished feeding them, I spotted a bunch of tiny fish in shallow water among a bunch of reeds. They were pretty camera shy, scattering when I got close, but with a little patience I managed to get some decent pictures.









I don't think there are any fish in this one, but I like this picture.


One of the bees I saw on the way back.

There are a lot of damselflies and dragonflies in the area I've been dying to get pictures of, but they're too quick. This is the best I've done so far;



I watched the newest Boardwalk Empire yesterday, and it was the first episode I found to be mostly disappointing. They'd already established that Margaret, the Irish immigrant played by Kelly Macdonald, had read a lot of books when she was a servant in Ireland, and when she found herself at a party Nucky was throwing for a senator and the mayor of Jersey City where Nucky had unsuccessfully tried to convince the two politicians that women getting the vote was a serious idea, I knew she'd somehow demonstrate her intelligence to the men in a way that would be useful to Nucky, further endearing her to him and now becoming an attractive contrast to his airhead girlfriend. Which is okay, if not terribly interesting, though I was annoyed when Margaret, who had been terribly flustered and nervous meeting just with the Atlantic City treasurer, coolly and without a hint of anxiety rattled off some knowledge about world events to the senator and mayor and even argued with them a little. I knew this stock immigrant character would be trouble, and already this car is skidding all over the road. Nucky's a good match for her, though, as so far the self-confident character is worn by Buscemi like an ill-fitting suit. Buscemi has that razor sharp delivery still, and quick, big eyes--there's just too much energy uncomfortably contained. He needs more opportunities to really have a fit. In any case, he's never going to be Michael Corleone.

There seemed to be a push for strengthening the female characters in this one by people who don't appear to know how to do it--Gretchen Mol seducing that thug--because she was hot for him--in the face of him threatening her to find out Jimmy's location was all right until you remember we'd found out in the previous episode he has gonorrhoea. And as much as I like seeing Gretchen Mol naked, it bugs me that she's playing the mother of a guy just nine years younger than her. It was revealed a couple episodes earlier as a surprise that she's his mother--the scene, with him hugging her before identifying his relationship to her, was put together to make us think she might be his mistress. So there seems to be a deliberate plan to show how sexy this lady is for her age but, although all art is a con of one sort or another, this felt like a lousy trick. It's the makers of the show basically saying, "Here's a sexy older woman. But since there's no such thing as a sexy older woman, here's a sexy young woman we're calling a sexy older woman." And I'm saying this as a guy who's not attracted to older women--it annoys me.

Where Roman Emperors Go to Contemplate Flying Machines

I stayed up much later than I'd intended wandering around a sim I found through the Second Life website's Editor's picks. It's called Mythopoeia.


I was immediately impressed by the texturing. And I'm not sure how the mountains in the background work--I think with some kind of forced perspective--but they stayed rezed however far away the camera was from them.


There were several spots, connected by paths, each with its own somewhat historical theme--there was a sort of Roman area, a somewhat Persian area, and a somewhat Steampunk area, but they were all unified by and filtered through a single artistic style.


A little gypsy campsite with a playable guitar and edible soup.



A canal wound around the central store. A sea monster was roaming around in it.







Some kind of flying machine--I tried operating it, but apparently you have to be the owner. I was surprised it was capable of flight at all.

The flying machine was in front of the shop, which had various odds and ends, all of it basically furniture.


Looks like someone else fell for one of those spam e-mails from a "Mi-go prince."


I was really in love with the pianos.





There were several different kinds of thrones on sale.





Several very comfortable beds with moveable sheets.


Tou apparently prefers sleeping with the frog.






I put together this outfit a couple weeks ago, by the way. The mask and vines are by Illusions, the gold mesh is from an outfit by Captive Elegance, the wings are by Edelweiss, the little roses are from an outfit by Bare Rose, and the shoes are by Maitreya.

I listened to the local, streaming radio station while I was there, which was an Internet classical station broadcast from Lowell, Massachusetts. The DJ was very chatty, and told a story about how she zoned out one day on the way home from work but was pulled out of it when a huge raven flew in front of her car. She also introduced a piece by Michael Haydn by saying something like, "Haydn was very popular in his day, but not the Haydn you're thinking of. Joseph's brother Michael Haydn." For some reason that bugged me. I don't know much about classical music--I was aware of a Haydn, but not that there were two and that they were brothers. But imagine you are a classical music aficionado--surely you'd know the difference between the two Haydns. I suppose there is a middle group who really dig "Haydn music" without knowing there are two, but how many people could that be? Who's this lady talking to? Why does she need to so narrowly define her audience?

Ah, I think it really only bugged me because I was coming down off of red wine. Red wine and tequila seem to take the worst revenge on me. I don't mean both at the same time. Gods, that would be terrible.

Twitter Sonnet #191

Citizen shades tread boring commutes yet.
A man is rarely outlived by his pants.
At his high school, few recall Boba Fett.
Slave Leia army seeks salted Jabba.
Gold vines casually constrict on feet.
Harmless glowing paintings replace lava.
Charred rock works into an unlikely seat.
Most sofas have cracker secrets inside.
Phone teeth break slowly through soft button gums.
In LCDs do L shaped walks abide.
Indirectly, ghosts teach some of us sums.
Living abacus is a tadpole swarm.
Tiny smoke signals fill firefly dorm.

From the Chains, the Hounds, and the River

Last night I watched Mervyn LeRoy's 1932 film I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. It's a great film about hell.

It's sort of a proto-noir, in that the protagonist, James Allen (Paul Muni), is someone who would more traditionally be considered a villain, though the circumstances that lead to his initial sentencing to the chain gang form a slightly improbable string of melodrama, where Allen's forced at gunpoint to rob a diner. I guess this would be to insure the audience continues to sympathise with the man during his terrible existence in the chain gang. The movie's based on a true story, and the real life James Allen, actually named Robert Elliot Burns, had intentionally stolen in order to feed himself.



But the movie is an effective indictment of the chain gangs in Georgia of the time as we see Muni and his fellow prisoners forced to subsist on meals of pig fat and sorghum, beaten and lashed with little provocation, and receiving no treatment when falling ill. As a pre-Code film, it was also able to show the criminal element more sympathetically than those made after 1934.



The only other movie I'd seen Paul Muni in before this was the wonderful Scarface, also made in 1932. In both cases he comes off with a remarkable intensity, like Cagney in a lot of ways, including his stocky, powerful looking build and quick reflexes. But there's something fundamentally quieter, more self-possessed about him. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang has Muni playing a more regular guy, and here his intensity serves to give depth to an otherwise fairly ordinary man, which helps to convey the film's actual subject, the cruelty of the system in which Allen finds himself. Not just in terms of the penal system, but the general attitude of a society that looks down on people who can't pay for their own food, or who have ambition beyond a comfortable job at home, as Allen first lands into trouble when he becomes a drifter after several unsuccessful attempts to embark on an engineering career. When the ending of the film suggests Allen has no choice but to turn to a life of crime, we believe it.

It's this sense of inevitable doom and the character being punished for operating outside the modes of society that make this film, in my opinion, a clear ancestor of the noir.

Big Destruction

I had a dream last night about Wonder Woman and a car mechanic on the back of a large, flatbed truck speeding through residential areas. The mechanic was wearing a grey jumpsuit and was on his back under a machine of some kind. Occasionally he'd scoot out and look at a sketchbook Wonder Woman was holding up for him. Wonder Woman was wearing a plain orange leotard, the shapes of her nipples on her large breasts plainly visible. The drawing she had in the sketchbook for the mechanic kept changing, every time he looked. The only one I remember was a large, black outline of a "W" with red white and blue stars and stripes designs hastily scribbled with marker. I guess this all may have been inspired by the Jaime Hernandez comics I was reading at the dentists'.

I spent a lot more time at Tim's playing World of Warcraft than anticipated last night. He ran my human rogue through Stratholme, which got me a level up and a lot of loot. I also watched him play the beta version of Cataclysm, as he's one of the testers Blizzard hath chosen. It looks like there will be a lot of improvements when Cataclysm's released--most of what Tim showed me focused on the new Goblin player race, though. I was amused by the section of Orgrimmar shared by the Goblins and the Trolls--filled with palm trees and wooden buildings of the trolls, but polluted by a big pool of oil filled with discarded toys and bottles.

I was personally more eager to see the new Worgen player race, but Tim seemed reluctant to deal with them very much as apparently they're still rather buggy--the female Worgen in particular has a lot of mismatched texturing.

With breakfast to-day, I read "JOHN FOUR," the new story in the Sirenia Digest, a nice, post-apocalyptic tale in Lovecraft's universe taking place in a temple of Nyarlathotep with both a worthy atmosphere of dread and a certain amount of humour about the temple's dreadful denizens.

Then I watched the new Panty and Stocking with Garter belt--I'm in love with Stocking. She took off both stockings to make swords this time. I've been ogling the production and fan art on 4chan to-day.

Faces for Clothes

Some creepy mannequins I saw at Macy's to-day. I like how they're not gaunt, though I suppose they do look a bit like the baby masks from Brazil.

Their faces sort of looked like how mine felt, actually, as I'd just been at the dentist. It's interesting planning your day around a numb face--my appointment was at noon, so I figured I'd have a late breakfast, then after the appointment, I'd stop at the bank, drive downtown, and walk ten blocks to Pokez. After waiting for my food to get to my table, I figured the feeling would have come back enough to where I wouldn't bite the shit out of my cheek the way I'd done last week when I'd tried having a slice of pizza too soon. But I got sidetracked before leaving Horton Plaza mall by a chess game--first I watched two guys playing, one of them resigning I thought rather early, saying other the other guy was clearly winning and would torture him. The guy was winning, and did seem to be a better player, but both of them had been overlooking a lot. I had my impression of the winner's abilities confirmed when I played against him and won, using black. Here's what the board looked like at the end;



After the opening moves, I started laying traps which he avoided by making moves that put him in even worse positions--I was preparing to fork his King and Bishop with my Knight, which he avoided by moving his King over one space which allowed me to fork his King and Rook with a pawn. Things quickly devolved into a slaughter, but I can't say I was disappointed.



I decided to stay up a little late last night, to reward myself, I guess, for finishing the new chapter of Venia's Travels, so I finally started watching the episode of Boardwalk Empire from Sunday, but halfway through I was just too tired to stay up any longer. This was despite the fact that this episode featured the show's first really . . . I don't know how to put it, the first time the show really rolled up its sleeves and dived into itself. It was the scene where Agent Van Alden storms into a dentist's office and has the dentist inject with cocaine a man with his intestines falling out so Van Alden could interrogate him. It was all a great maelstrom of brutal weirdness around a frighteningly focused Fed, though I'm pretty sure the fact that the first thing the guy with his guts hanging out said when he woke up, "Go fuck your mother," in Yiddish, was inspired by the wonderful true story Shuli Egar told on The Howard Stern Show a couple months ago. Egar had been on a plane seated between an annoying Rabbi and the Rabbi's wife, neither of whom were willing to switch seats with Shuli in order to sit next to each other. When the Rabbi had tried to get Shuli to pass a baby to his wife, Shuli complained about the fact that the Rabbi and his wife had forced Shuli to sit between them. In Hebrew, the Rabbi said to his wife, "This is why I don't like them," not suspecting Shuli, who grew up in Israel, would understand and reply in Hebrew, "Why don't you go fuck your mother?" I suspect there are a lot of writers who listen to Howard Stern to help them come up with realistic sounding scenarios of regular ball busting guys.



I watched the rest of the episode with breakfast to-day. The show's still pretty good all together, though a lot of the time I'm just marvelling at how nicely shot a regular television series like this is now. I loved seeing Kelly Macdonald in her darling blue outfit, and she's great to watch, though the writers have some tricky ground to tread with her. The whole "innocent immigrant girl" shtick can't go in too many directions, especially since I don't sense there's much investment in her point of view. The show hasn't really connected with her yet beyond the type she's playing, though she's lovely to watch, and the scene where she's helping Lucy try on dresses was great. I'm so not sick of seeing Paz de la Huerta naked.



Twitter Sonnet #190

Long orange hair stifles bar top wasabi.
Thin roots choke the bland formica planter.
Solid vegetable cubes took a cabbie.
Carrot hosts offer canned morning banter.
Undead voices discuss zombie spinach.
Devil paper cups capture a clinic.
Suspiria lighting covets Greenwich.
Red and blue thought clouds betray a cynic.
Purple leaves preserve strange Eve's modesty.
Grains of edible sand stick to black sock.
Lettuce will grant turtles no amnesty.
Only one ship can belong to a dock.
X-ray guns spot a pink feather boa.
Remains of third flamingo of Noah.