My belly's gotten a lot flatter since I stopped eating cheese. I guess this lactose intolerance business has its perks.

I watched Godard's Breathless again last night. I'd started watching Tous le matins du monde (1991) but the subtitles were messed up so I had to stop. But Tous les matins du monde's long static shots and sombre characters made Breathless even more fun in comparison--Breathless being a movie where Godard cut anything out he didn't find interesting, resulting in chopped up shots that feel as though someone's fast forwarding.

The early scene where Jean-Paul Belmondo talks to the camera made me realise Tom Jones was likely an attempt to use New Wave technique in an English language film. The reason I'd been watching Tom Jones, by the way, is that my anthropology teacher had mentioned it as the movie that changed cinema with its techniques, and that anyone serious about movies would have seen it--meanwhile I'd never heard of it. But, as I've said, the movie hardly turned out to be revolutionary--I suppose it should come as no surprise to me the guy didn't know what he was talking about.

Things that feel organic and exciting in Breathless feel obnoxious and phoney in Tom Jones. Like talking to the camera--Belmondo does it early in Breathless while telling us his opinions. Michel, the character he plays, models his life after characters in the movies, so it makes sense that he would engage a movie audience that's, for him, in his head. But even apart from this, him talking to the camera feels natural, a mode for him talking to himself. In Tom Jones, Susannah York flashes a grin at the camera while she and Albert Finney are engaged in horseplay--the grin accompanied by a musical sting. As though to say, "How outrageous a thing, she's looking at the camera!" It's used as a cheap ploy to give us more sympathy for the leads than for the villains in the film.

Tom Jones is a lesser film, too, for featuring character types rather than characters--the scoundrel with the heart of gold, Tom, and Sophie, the highborn young woman who loves him despite her family opinion. Breathless is a movie without heroes or villains, just poor souls trying to figure this fucking existence out. I found myself sympathising more with Patricia this time--last time I felt myself more with Michel. But that line where Patricia says she wants to know what's behind Michel's face got me last time, too. You just can't know. Which is why I don't think she's as wicked as Roger Ebert does in his review. I just think she made a mistake in dealing with life using imperfect human psychological devices.

Slime Sought

I'd been wanting to get a picture of this frog forever. The nearby river is a whole orchestra pit of frogs but this one decided to take up residence in the backyard all by himself. His song is so loud that it can be heard anywhere in the house but when I finally found him in the fountain after fifteen minutes searching I saw he was only about the size of my thumb.


This picture I took from a distance but he didn't seem to mind when I put my camera and flashlight right up beside him. He just stepped back a little into the water and rolled his eyes.




While I was searching for him, I took pictures of the many snails roaming the night.





And here's the first of the big orange spiders of the year, though at this point he's very tiny.



In the world of virtual sliminess, I got some pictures at Farstar in Second Life a few days ago;










And in the world of literary sliminess, I read the new story in the Sirenia Digest, "THE CARNIVAL IS DEAD AND GONE", to-day. A nice, Cronenbergian voyage into a future carnival of pornographic genetic and biomechanical freaks, told in first person by one of Caitlin's grouchy protagonists, who complains the whole way apparently out of insecurity. Which is fine, though sometimes I wonder what it would be like to see one of these stories from the point of view of someone really easy going and maybe even giddy. "Oh, yesterday was so much fun! Everyone was at the carnival and I saw this great mermaid and a guy with a vagina on his forehead and, jinkies, they don't have anything like this back home in Missoula!"

I Won't Entertain Enemies of the Mollusc

Still feeling the effects of last night's margarita. Part of me felt like I shouldn't drink at all, since I was getting out of school so late, but by the time I left class I was long past the point of fuck it. I'd been holding it in front of me like a carrot. I had two tests yesterday, both of which I did well on. I also got my paper back in anthropology--the, like the TARDIS, dimensionally transcendental paper, the paper that had to be five paragraphs, double spaced, 14 point font, detailing our reaction to an article, essay, or book (in my case Inside the Victorian Home), using anthropological terms to discuss it, all preferably on no more than one page.

As he was handing the papers back, the teacher explained how he was very liberal with the grading and it was uncommon for him to give anything less than a 100. He also, meanwhile, chatted with a kid about how much he loved The Bourne Identity, how he liked that it wasn't mindless action like the Lord of the Rings movies. He mentioned he liked the original version of The Fly better than the one with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. Then I got my paper back, saw I got a 95 with the barely legible comment, "Would have benefited from referring to modern US families."

Yeah? And Mr. Creosote wants a wafer thin mint. Liberal grading. Ass feathers.

I suppose I could've argued with him, but it's impossible for me not to get an A in the class now, so I guess there's not much point. I have a mild suspicion the grade had something to do with the dislike he's expressed for the English a few times. I don't think I mentioned the day I had to explain to him who Oliver Cromwell was. Last night he told us bronze was an alloy consisting of copper and brass.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with my margarita recipe.

Setsuled's Salaciously Saltless Margarita

1. No salt.
2. Slice a lemon in half and squeeze a half's juice into a cup.
3. Add about three times as much Triple Sec.
4. Fill the glass the rest of the way with Jose Cuervo Silver tequila (just a bit more tequila than Triple Sec).
5. Dump the contents into your cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Almost typed "crushed eyes".
6. Mix, pour, refrain from adding salt and enjoy.

The bits of lemon pulp gives it a nicer texture than you'll get with margarita mix. To be sure, it was much sweeter than any margarita I'd had before. And much better, in my opinion.

I also finished watching the Doctor Who serial "Warriors of the Deep", a serial disappointing in so many ways. On a sea base, in an effort to evade human pursuers he'd minutes ago been trying to make peaceful contact with, the famously pacifist Doctor decides to set off a catastrophe with the base's reactor as a diversionary tactic. When he and his companions are captured, they're quite incredulous when the people in charge don't believe their intentions are peaceful.

The episode featured the return of third Doctor foes the Silurians and the Sea Devils, though it strips the Silurians of the complexity that made "Doctor Who and the Silurians" an interestingly morally murky episode, lazily reducing them to just another pile of two dimensional villains.

The worst to me, though, was the tragic misuse of guest star Ingrid Pitt. Last time she appeared on the show, in "The Time Monster", she got to be queen of Atlantis. In "Warriors of the Deep" she plays second fiddle to a subplot villain medical doctor and dies in the third episode without even having a scene with the Doctor. And despite having apparently aged pretty well fourteen years after The Vampire Lovers, she's saddled with ugly hair, silver jumpsuit, ill-fitting surcoat, and hideous 80s bruise rouge.



Twitter Sonnet #259

Soggy cereal has itchy frosting.
Raisin-like sores dapple Snap's stricken form.
There's more sunlight in combs than we're tasting.
Hell's fire keeps Cinnamon Toast Crunch warm.
Banana teeth bite with potassium.
Hardened polar bears break their Coke bottles.
Rogue frogs vandalise the gymnasium.
Thoughtful ball bearings are robot wattles.
Copper and tin to-night doesn't make bronze.
Saltless sweet margaritas step off ship.
Magician madmen think their cocks are wands.
Some peels can make the best treaded boots slip.
Revolutions reap peels of useless fruit.
Corrosive rain renders the lawn gnomes moot.

Time Meant for Tequila

Happy Cinco de Mayo. I keep thinking about the bottle of tequila I bought the night I saw Machete and still haven't finished. I learned last night Danny Trejo plays a companion character in Fallout New Vegas. I haven't found the character yet, though I have gotten the companion voiced by Felicia Day. She's cute--I wonder if she'd mind if I dated her avatar. Does anyone know if she has a stance on the matter?

But I won't have time for tequila until after 10pm because of school--I have two tests to-day, which also means I don't have much time for this blog entry. Though I don't expect these tests to be particularly hard.

So I'll just post a couple screenshots of my SL avatar wearing clothes by my new favourite designer, Vitabela;



The mask is by Siyu Suen, but the skulls and birds hat came with the dress. I was happy with how well mask and hat worked together.






Vitabella also makes clothes in real life, some of which appear to mirror her Second Life designs.

The Three and Three Fourths Doctors

According to its Wikipedia entry, "The Five Doctors", the two hour Doctor Who special I watched yesterday, is the only episode of the original series that still exists in broadcast quality. This and a sudden vast improvement on special effects and production quality made the episode great to look at. Seeing so many past characters packaged attractively was pretty satisfying after watching the preceding two decades of episodes. It was a twentieth anniversary special, and I'm not sure how much someone might enjoy it without some exposure to the first, second, and third Doctor eras. In one two hour go, the sort of frantic string of old fashion serial escapes and amazing experiences feel a bit flat. But it's still unpredictable and the actors carry a lot of it.

Although of the Doctors present my favourite would probably be the second, it was the third's segments I thought were the best, despite the fact that he was a little more patronising with Sarah Jane than I remembered him being. The first Doctor, too, is given an odd line where he demands Tegan make tea and snacks for everyone, whereupon the fifth Doctor sheepishly explains he used to be a bit tetchy. This was somewhat charming, though I wondered if this and the third's patronising manner were somehow nods to the underlying sexism in many of the older episodes--generally sexism no greater than usual for the time in which the show was made. And then there was the awkward inclusion of women's lib via awkward speeches by Jo Grant and Sarah Jane during the third's tenure, only to have Sarah Jane turn into a helpless screamer for the early part of the fourth's tenure. One could write an interesting essay, I think, on society's relationship with gender reflected on Doctor Who.



Anyway, by the end of his run I think I'd grown somewhat fatigued with Jon Pertwee, and the switch to Tom Baker's bigger performance was a welcome respite. But yesterday I was reminded how much I liked the understated quality of Pertwee's performance. It's part of what makes some of his best serials feel so extraordinarily sinister, like "The Daemons" and "Inferno".



Pertwee also looked a lot healthier than Troughton in "The Five Doctors". Every closeup of Troughton startled me with his bloodshot eyes and as he felt compelled to perform with his old buoyancy I kept wanting the Brigadier or someone to say, "Easy, there, old man."



Meanwhile their too brief encounter with the second's companions Jamie and Zoe showed Zoe to probably be one of the best preserved companion actors, though I guess she was half hidden by shadow.



It was interesting seeing Susan again and I wish dialogue had gone into some detail about her life after "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". William Hartnell, the first Doctor, had died some years before "The Five Doctors", so the first Doctor was played for this special by Richard Hurndell who, despite being noticeably taller than Hartnell, rather convincingly channelled the original Doctor with his performance. He had so much of his mannerisms without seeming like a parody, it was fairly remarkable to watch. Though he did seem somewhat warmer than Hartnell, who always seemed sort of like he'd rather be by himself.

I guess I resist it a little, since he's the most popular Doctor (modern polls skewed by new viewership notwithstanding), but I have to say Tom Baker's my favourite Doctor. I never grew tired of him over seven years worth of episodes, he had a perfect combination of gravity and self-deprecation. From his first episode, his manner was so familiar and inviting that I felt like I'd been watching him for years already.



All this, of course, makes his absence from "The Five Doctors", other than in some footage from "Shada", so obtrusive. And yet perhaps it was for the best, because I sort of think he might have outshone everyone.

I like the fifth Doctor but this episode proved he is by far the worst dressed I've seen so far.

Images of Death and Slavery

Twitter Sonnet #258

The old concrete supports a mad new cat.
On the world's edge has always been a fog.
Round moons button a black dream zombie mat.
Distant grey flesh surrounds a fenced, chained dog.
Long red carpet tongue lolls down the white throat.
Instant dot tattoo comets crash the night.
Rattling tin fingers smell of creosote.
Keening hinges pitch to a strange new height.
Yellow dashes make roads round a bare scalp.
Straight rum vanished in a sea of off white.
The good, the bad, the ugly tangle kelp.
Glowing, foggy depths carry on the fight.
Vanished family remains in swamp suitcase.
Slaver's statue's bit by snakes at its base.

I've spent most of to-day so far, and a good part of yesterday, reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This was assigned reading for my history class, something like seventy pages for class to-night. Such a large number of pages being assigned is largely due to the teacher continually pushing back due dates on other assignments because he perceived the class was too busy or lazy to read the ten or fifteen pages he normally assigned.

But I didn't mind spending so much time with the book. Published in 1861, it's the account of a former slave named Harriet Jacobs of her life in and escape from slavery. It's rather well put together, Jacobs having been more literate than most slaves were given opportunity to become. She talks about, at one point, being forced to spend seven years living in a cramped crawl space with only sewing and reading for diversion and I'm rather curious to know what books she read.

For class discussion on the book, I was paired with a young black woman named Queen who seems to be particularly interested in slavery in America and its relationship with her ancestors. She posed a question for the class, asking us if slavery would still have been wrong if the slaveholders had all been very kind to their slaves. I replied that it was kind of a Star Trek question, that that was the sort of thing that seemed to happen to the crew of the Enterprise a lot--some powerful alien force dressed in togas or frock coats promising to give the crew all they wanted for eternity if they'd only submit the totally, and Kirk would give a speech about how men needed to have the freedom to carve out their own destiny.

It occurred to me yesterday the Doctor probably wouldn't have shot bin Laden. Though events on Doctor Who tend to stack unrealistically in favour of the Doctor's pacifism, it's still worth remembering that the Doctor's commitment to non-violence is one of the things we instinctively like about him. However, Han Solo sure as hell would have shot bin Laden (and he would've shot first), and that's one of the things we instinctively like about Han Solo.

The Doctor probably would've been willing to have sword duel with bin Laden, though, as he did with the Master in "The King's Demons", the serial I finished watching last night. It was nice to see the Doctor in a medieval setting again, but otherwise the serial was mainly disappointing for the amount of rather dumb or senseless decisions made by the characters. Much better was "Enlightenment", the preceding serial, about a group of all powerful, immortal beings called Eternals enslaving human ship crews from various eras to man space ships that look like sailing vessels.

The most intriguing part was possibly the sort of romance between one of the Eternal officers and Tegan. Being able to read the minds of their human captives, Tegan's admirer comes to be sort of dependent on her thoughts, pleading with her not to shut her thoughts off to him. It made me wonder if writer Barbara Clegg was channelling feelings she had after breaking up with a needy boyfriend. The story goes into how marvellous the Eternals are, but also totally empty without the thoughts of mortals to fill them.

Omedeto?

I've been fascinated by the spectrum of reactions on Twitter to the death of Osama bin Laden. First, from two authors I respect; William Gibson retweeted a quote from Mark Twain; "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

While Peter Straub wrote, "I hate to say this, I really do, but as a nation we can be almost aggressively simple-minded."

Even speaking as someone who doesn't support the death penalty, Straub's statement didn't sit right with me. It strikes me as a little arrogant--the jubilation on the part of the American people isn't borne of an extraordinary simple-mindedness. Rather, the respect for human life that causes one to refrain from celebrating bin Laden's death comes from an extraordinarily complicated point of view, and I'm far from inclined to look down on people for not sharing it.

I thought about Tolstoy's perspective on Napoleon, how he didn't really consider Napoleon responsible for the murder committed in his name. Napoleon, in Tolstoy's view, was merely one tool to facilitate the actions of masses of people whose attitudes had already commanded those actions, using the idea of Napoleon as a point of psychic support. One could say the same for bin Laden, which I suppose might make his death more significant to American victory than his life meant to al Qaeda success.

Nancy Sinatra said of bin Laden; "I've never celebrated anyone's death but I hope he was terrified &knew he was going to die just as his victims knew & were terrified." This is a statement I, and I suspect a lot of people, sympathise with. It's not really about hating bin Laden. It's about knowing the senseless deaths and the feelings of terror that followed in 2001 were in some way answered for, that someone can't just get away with that. That's simple, yeah, but some things are unavoidably simple.

At the same time, I'm glad there are people out there making statements reminding us that life is more complicated than our feelings, even as our feelings are important. Amanda Palmer tweeted a rather unclear statement in the form of a picture of stacks of what appear to be burnt cardboard representing the twin towers beside a hand holding a paper airplane ready to crash into them. I'm really not at all sure what this image is supposed to mean except that it's probably a goof of some kind, maybe in the spirit of Gilbert Gottfried. I tip my hat to contrariness.

This is Caterthriller

It appears to be caterpillar season again. Walking to lunch, I spotted a plant with interesting, cottony seedpods recently opened. On closer inspection I saw that some caterpillars had hatched right along with the seeds, hanging in clumps like grapes on a vine.

















Can you see the lizard in this picture?


How about this one?


And this was the only duck I got a picture of to-day;


And here's to-day's spider in my bathroom;