Hypnotism Wagon

One of the snails wandering in yesterday's rainstorm.

I went through it to Tim's house where I found him frustrated by his downed internet. He didn't even have Fallout New Vegas on his hard drive anymore because he'd needed the room for the Rift beta--an MMORPG he tells me isn't bad, but probably won't draw him away from WoW. He has been talking about switching to Guild Wars 2 when it comes out, though, something that's been tempting me, too, as it's subscription free.

There's not much else to say about yesterday. Here's my attempt to draw Jo Grant and the third Doctor from memory;



I think I did much better with Jo. The Doctor's not even wearing the proper outfit--he looks like a Doctor, I guess, but one that never existed.

Here are a few more recent doodles from my notebook;



Wircelia takes bad notes.

Lord of the Crabs

Yesterday was very long--I got up early and I had class until 10pm. The teacher for my last class was very sick and said he was going to let us out early, but instead kept us all three hours, the last half hour of which he spent reading to us posted traffic and courtesy signs translated into English from other languages to illustrate the differences in how things are expressed in different languages. He was showing how there's no such thing as a perfect translation, something I'm rather glad to see being taught. It's something that's too often overlooked.

Afterwards, I watched the first part of The Return of the King with dinner. I wish that screenplay had been more carefully written. There are lots of lines that rub me the wrong way, and I notice more of them each time I watch the movie. Legolas saying, "Game over," has bugged me from this first, but this time I got stuck on Gimli saying, "He can't hold his liquor!"



Am I to assume they've been drinking pints of liquor? I know they have brandy in Middle Earth. But I feel like mead would've been a more appropriate beverage for the great hall of Edoras. Anyway, I don't think brandy should be so frothy.



I also hate the lighting when Aragorn finds Eowyn sleeping later in the hall. It really flatters her with that cool blue, fur trimmed blanket, but for "not yet dawn" that's some real blazing moonlight. Then, of course, Aragorn steps outside for one of the worst day for night shots in recent film history, though I kind of forgive the film for this after hearing how dangerous it was to film at night in Edoras.

There's still so much I love about those movies, though. Return of the King is probably the weakest, but I adore Minas Tirith. Gandalf riding through the streets gets me every time.

Of course, all the little anachronisms in the Lord of the Rings movies can't begin to approach World of Warcraft's levels. I had to pretty much accept from the start that WoW's basically a junk drawer of unfinished parts. As I've said before, mainly like a minigolf course.

I'm still working on getting the companion pets achievement with my hunter. The other day I got the daily fishing quest pet, the little crab, which happens to look exactly like my hunter pet crab;



It's like I have the daddy crab and the baby crab. I named the crab after Artie Lange, which made me lament failing to name my monkey pet Bababooey. I went for the King Lear reference instead and named him Gloucester. Oh, well. At least he's not blind.

The Smile That Dripped Time

Twitter Sonnet #234: Musical Diva Edition

Red leprechauns captured radio rock.
Convincing chords dropped a running houyhnhnm.
Hundreds of fleas can fit in a tube sock.
Strange elements form a dark stratagem.
Strange moss taints the empty Windows task bar.
Roots grip the edge of an icon's grid point.
Crosswalk vines choke a centaur bike's sidecar.
Fetlocks were used to replace an arm joint.
Balloon animal arms can lift Santo.
Happy sausage filling bursts through the skin.
Killers shall be licensed by a Mento.
Tiger candy pancakes boil within.
Music circumcision snips sound penis.
Scottie beamed furs from wet-nurse to Venus.

Last night I watched The House That Dripped Blood, a movie that drew me entirely by its rather impressive cast; Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Denholm Elliott, Jon Pertwee, and Ingrid Pitt. Pitt looked gorgeous, though not quite as good as she did when reunited with Pertwee for the Doctor Who serial "The Time Monster".



Though Pertwee, in The House That Dripped Blood, was already dressed rather as he would be as the Doctor;



I wonder if frilly shirts were a perpetual clause in all his contracts. In this case it made sense because he was playing a movie star known for portraying vampires--and this was made back when it was generally understood vampires dressed this way. His role seemed to me like it was originally meant for Christopher Lee as it seems to be poking gentle fun at Lee's career playing Dracula, though I've learned the role was in fact originally offered to Vincent Price.

The House That Dripped Blood is an anthology film, the best segment of which was the one in which Lee does appear--as the high strung father of a strange, sheltered little girl. Though, honestly, none of the stories are particularly good. Scripted by Robert Bloch and based on original stories by him, they come off more as fun schlock.



Not bad looking schlock, though. The titular house creates a nice, distinctly late 60s haunted house atmosphere. The above composite, false perspective shot reminded me of The Children's Hour.

I went from watching a film with the seeds of Doctor Who to a Doctor Who serial with the seeds of a future film--"The City of Death" featuring Julian Glover--General Veers from The Empire Strikes Back and Walter Donovan from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There's even a scene where he causes a man, through special effects, to rapidly age to his death in a moment. Which I guess says something about karma in fiction.

Generally speaking, it was an exceptionally good serial, mostly written by Douglas Adams--and, I realised, the second Doctor Who serial, after the pretty good Destiny of the Daleks, to air in my lifetime. There's a lot of nice location shots in Paris and some well used humour, though the Wikipedia entry again quotes critics complaining about it at the time. Even the positive quotes seem to indicate the narrower imaginations Who's critics had at the time, like this quote from Jacqueline Rayner in reference to the unprecedented location shooting; "you're suddenly, almost violently, made aware this is happening in our world... with people just getting on with their business and two Time Lords walking through it. I don't think I've ever experienced that with Doctor Who up till now... it's the tiny touches of mundanity amid the fantastical that lift the story even higher."



She is right, though. It's also one of the serials to benefit from creating effective supporting characters for the leads to react to, in this case a detective named Duggan, whose tendency to solve problems by punching them is continually mocked, praised, and criticised by the Doctor and Romana. One of my favourite exchanges is between Romana and Duggan, after they've broken into a cafe for no apparent reason;

ROMANA: You should go into partnership with a glazier. You'd have a truly symbiotic working relationship.

DUGGAN: What?

ROMANA: I'm just pointing out that you break a lot of glass.

DUGGAN: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

ROMANA: If you wanted an omelette I'd expect to find a pile of broken crockery, a cooker in flames, and an unconscious chef.

Beastly Symptoms

I really wish I hadn't read the Wikipedia entry on bladder cancer last night. Now I have to wait more than a month to find out if I have it. I sure wish the urologist had seemed less concerned. This shit's going to be a distraction, I can already tell.

I was listening to the Ikiru soundtrack yesterday morning and since then the theme has been repeating in my head. I keep wondering, if I do have cancer, whether I could live up to Watanabe's example. Would he have spent three hours a night on WoW or Second Life? Well, I guess there was that scene where he played a lot of pachinko.

The sky's overcast to-day and it's been raining off and on. During one of the lulls, I took five stale hamburger buns to the ducks. They seemed happy to see me, though they wouldn't venture onto the land until I was done, when they followed me around a little as I took some more pictures of the area. I love the flattened look created by the light through total cloud cover.




When it started raining afterwards, I hung out with Snow, who was huddled on the back porch.



Then, for some reason, he decided he needed to challenge the rain and ran out into it.




I wanted to mention how great last week's Sym-Bionic Titan was. Set entirely in a swamp as Ilana, Lance, and Octus investigate the latest alien threat, the episode has some brilliant subtext as the characters discuss dating and Princess Ilana's somewhat sheltered past in that regard. Then the alien, whose ship looks remarkably like a sperm cell, infects Ilana with something that slowly begins changing her into a monster, a fact she feels some evident shame about and attempts to hide, an apparent metaphor for adolescent sexual maturity, really nicely executed.

The Spear of Destiny

Guess who had his prostate checked to-day? Me! I'm the lucky one! I also had my genitals fondled, though it won't be until late March that I'll have a fibre optic implement snaked up my urethra. This despite the urologist not finding anything wrong in his other tests. I guess he has to dot every i, cross every t, and spit every penis.

I guess it's to check for bladder cancer. He seemed really stumped by the amount of blood in my urine that day, and he seemed outright alarmed when I told him I normally get up to pee around three times a night. Is that really strange? It doesn't seem like it could possibly be.

He asked about whether I'd had a history of kidney stones, I said I hadn't and that they'd checked for them with a CT scan when I had my first UTI.

"I wouldn't want to put you through another one," he said, "because of the radiation."

"Yeah, not to mention they're expensive," I said. "And the last one was before I had insurance."

"Oh, so you probably had to pay like a thousand dollars."

"Er, seven thousand, actually."

He seemed shocked, and a little disbelieving, "No, that . . . that's wrong, that can't be right. There's something wrong with that."

"I'll say."

To think the man who'd just penetrated me would turn out to be so innocent. Seriously, though, in case anyone's wondering, the prostate check wasn't that bad. It just felt sort of like I needed to take a massive shit. I hear they're important for guys to get who're around fifteen years older than me, so take it from a 32 year old with a mysterious ailment--they're nothing to be scared of. And it probably lessens the trauma of any potential future prison sex you might have.

I had a busy day to-day. The clinic was across town, and I had to make my way through rush hour traffic to get to class--I almost didn't make it, despite leaving the clinic with three hours to spare. I probably shouldn't have stopped for lunch.

I also had to do some reading for class earlier in the day. The teacher had assigned two chapters for us to read, but one of the first things he did when I got to class was ask us, "Did any of you manage to read both chapters?" Most people seemed not to know how to respond to this question en masse, except me--I replied automatically with a somewhat indignant, "Yes."

He ended up covering just one of the chapters, assuming most of the class hadn't managed to read both. What the fuck? The chapters were each around fourteen pages, and we had four days to read them. But even putting that aside, why even assign them if he's going to assume we didn't read them?

Last night I watched the first episode of Eagleheart, Chris Elliot's new show. It's nice to see him on television, and Adult Swim seems like the perfect fit for his humour. It's also nice to see Maria Thayer of Strangers with Candy.

Siphoning Hunger

Twitter Sonnet #233

A shy, satisfied Klingon conquered bread.
Soft loaves of victory rise in the steel.
Stainless walls hold the yeast of doughy dead.
Desert surrounds half an old lemon peel.
Chutzpah's all a decent dress requires.
Trophy finger nails replace the sequins.
Pink paper fills pockets of vampires.
Hell hides clone armies of Anna Paquins.
Ancient surgeons hide in a youthful mob.
Walking lipstick people resent dolphins.
Slow nebulae sheath a tasteful pink blob.
Nostromo's Mother sent cards to orphans.
Maraschino sloughs from lace artery.
Hair's washed with acid from a battery.

I've seen nine Bette Davis movies now (not counting the first twenty minutes of Now, Voyager) and I saw my favourite last night, All About Eve. It's not a perfect film, but it's certainly a sort of grand film.



Although the ending wonderfully makes of the film a single piece, mostly All About Eve feels rather like two movies spliced together, with aging theatre star Margo Channing (Bette Davis) at the centre of one and theatre critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) at the centre of the other. Aspects of the two movies, in my opinion, even sabotage each other to some extent.

The story of Eve Harrington's gradual, parasitic relationship with Margo is amazing entirely because of how it reveals Margo to be the most intelligent person of her social circle, the only person who senses imminent doom in the form of her ambitious and ingratiating understudy, but is considered too irrational to overcome the "good sense" of her friends. Only Margo can see through the blanket of delusion everyone's woven about themselves entirely with politeness. Everyone knows at some level that Margo's getting too old to continue playing young parts, but only Margo can really face it while everyone else lets propriety keep up the fiction until it becomes cruel. Only Margo can see the portent of the unnaturally subservient position into which Eve's placed herself--everyone thinks it's Margo's jealousy that causes her to see anything sinister in Eve's motives, but it is precisely Margo's ability to see past her own ego that allows her to see Eve's attachment to the star ultimately has little to do with tribute.

In one of his many great, well delivered lines of the film, Addison says to Eve, in response to one of her typically, extremely humble assertions in reference to her acting ability, "I think the time has come for you to shed some of your humility. It is just as false not to blow your horn at all as it is to blow it too loudly . . . We all come into this world with our little egos equipped with individual horns."

Eve Harrington is actually the weakest point in the film to me. She's played by Anne Baxter, who has none of the extraordinary star quality the other characters see in her. One wishes she and Marilyn Monroe, who appears in a very minor role, had been switched in casting. And for the sake of Margo's story, Eve's reveal as a cut and dry con artist, who'd purposely fabricated elements of her past, is less interesting to me than a story of an unselfconsciously ambitious young actress, someone who at first only seeks to supplant her idol on a subconscious level, pursuing a subtler sort of cutthroat path that would perhaps mirror Margo's past.



On the other hand, Eve's unambiguously wicked character serves to make the George Sanders storyline more delightful. Addison DeWitt is both thoroughly evil and totally sympathetic. It's impossible not to like him, largely due to Sanders' performance, and possibly also because he's so ruthlessly honest with himself. It put me in the mood to watch again the version of The Picture of Dorian Gray where Sanders plays Lord Henry.

The Ducks are Outside

I watched the first episode of Welcome to the NHK with breakfast to-day. It's another series that seeks to deal with the NEET/hikikomori phenomenon head on. I think one could gain real insight into Japanese cultural evolution by observing that anime of the 80s and 90s tended to centre on young men stressing about their college careers (Maison Ikkoku, Ah! My Goddess), while anime lately, when it's not about high schoolers, centres on lone young men reacting against society (Code Geass, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, Death Note, etc). Welcome to the NHK, rather than taking the somewhat tangential approach of Eden of the East, introduces its hikikomori lead rather amusingly, the show in general coming off as both zany but with credible enough characterisation. But I'm so used to starting an anime only to find it to be intensely bland, or vapidly moe, that I'm having a hard time opening my heart to this one.

I went to feed the ducks afterward, but found that they were all on a side of the river where I couldn't easily throw bread to them. I think they were scared off by the extraordinary number of dogs out to-day and the shirtless middle aged guys pathetically rowing a huge red boat around the little body of water. I threw bread vainly against the wind, trying to reach this lone mallard;



I took a few pictures, though;








I ran into Snow afterward;



That's one maniacal yawn, I must say.

Now's No Time for Voyaging

Having a lazy Saturday. All my Saturdays seem to be lazy lately, though--I always stay in my pyjamas 'til afternoon playing chess in Second Life. I won two and lost one to-day.

I watched part of Now, Voyager last night but had to stop because it turns out that movie is really really bad. I'd been in the mood for chick flicks lately that I've never seen before, so I googled "greatest romance movies" and things like that. I found some truly lousy lists, like this AFI one. Moonstruck ahead of Vertigo? Bullshit. Though I think an argument could be made neither movie belongs on the list at all.

An Affair to Remember certainly doesn't belong at number 5. I'm okay with Roman Holiday at 4, though it certainly doesn't feel like it should be that high up. I appreciate the acknowledgement of King Kong's sexual subtext, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it belongs on this list. One might as well include Citizen Kane. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner definitely doesn't belong and Picnic doesn't belong on any list that might indicate there's something positive about it. It seems like It Happened One Night should certainly be higher.

Of course, another problem with the list is that I've seen almost everything on it. If any of you would like to recommend some chick flicks to me, I'd appreciate it, so long as you avoid recommending movies featuring Barbara Streisand or Cher. Unless it's a movie where the two of them compulsively start clawing at each other at some posh wedding. And then only if there's lots of blood.

I need to go get some lunch, then maybe I'll go to Tim's and play some World of Warcraft. Things have been easier for me since he moved some of his high level characters back to Horde. Here's one of his characters running one of mine through Scarlet Monastery and experiencing one of the many post-Cataclysm graphical problems;

I Had Every Potato

Twitter Sonnet #232

Open eyebrows choke on a glasses frame.
Extinct female noses pointed inward.
Sometimes fetching are glasses on a dame.
These findings were withheld by Bob Woodward.
Hasty notes congealed into newspaper.
Truth stretched on the silly putty version.
iPads slip from the hand of a leper.
Touch screens cater to oily emersion.
Snail slime badly highlights Kindle's key text.
Vending machines unstick for The Secret.
Potatoes rise for the barbeque hex.
No one can copyright the lone egret.
Rum changed for oil inebriates trucks.
Deep space observers are randomised ducks.

Just checked my claims status and found my health insurance turned my four hundred dollar clinic bill into a sixty seven dollar clinic bill. That was a pleasant surprise. Paying sixty dollars a month actually counted for something. Maybe I'll even be able to afford the stroke I'll probably have after all the fucking salt I had for lunch at Mickey D's to-day. Getting an oil change necessitated another visit to the Wal-Mart at lunch time. Their french fries are almost pixie sticks of salt. I'm assuming the yellow potato matter had some nutritional value.

I had some vending machine potato chips last night during school--I got two bags, actually, since I've noticed that whenever I buy something from a machine and I think at it, "I just know it's going to get stuck," the item invariably gets stuck, so I had to buy two. I had to, because I was just too hungry. Just hours earlier I'd vaguely planned on moving my normal dinner time to 9pm, forgetting my Thursday classes end at 10pm.

My anthropology teacher, Mr. Blood, had all the students write their names on the whiteboard last night and he took polaroids of all of us standing in front of our names. I wonder if he's jerking off to the male students or the female students. He said he was doing it because he had another learning disability (in addition to the one that gives him trouble spelling) that prevents him from remembering students' names easily. Maybe I have the same disability, because it seems to me it must be hard remembering the names of thirty students for a once a week class when you're presumably teaching other classes as well.

But . . . at least now he won't forget our names. "People like it when you remember their names, right?" he asked, and I immediately wondered how true that is. It's something I've heard before, but I honestly can't see myself caring.

While talking about language, he mentioned the voices of the Jawas in Star Wars are actually several recordings of different African languages played simultaneously, sped up, and played backwards. He asked the class how many of us had seen the original Star Wars and two people raised their hands, one of whom was me.

Two people.



After class, I had a mountain of mashed potatoes, carrots, and a veggie burger while watching Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It's hard to generate new feelings about that movie--I haven't watched it in a couple years, but I watched it so many times in high school I can still speak lines along with the film. My perspective on Laura Palmer's character has somewhat broadened, though. Watching as a mopey, dramatic teenager, she's easy to identify with, but now I'm fascinated by how unrelated her different scenes feel to one another. I realised, in terms of what they say about her character, the only thing that unites them is the distance Laura has from a single, consistent personality. She really feels shut off, which makes sense, and also mirrors the story about Bob wanting her body for his next host. One could see the abuse he inflicts upon her as dismantling her existing identity.

I was thinking about who Judy might be--the Judy that David Bowie's character mentions and who's mentioned again by the monkey near the end of the film. Googling for information, I see she was originally meant to be Josie Packard's sister in an earlier version of the script but, of course, I'm always looking for Vertigo references and I wondered if it might be a reference to Judy Barton, the true identity of Kim Novak's character in Vertigo.

It's not as crazy a theory as it might sound, as it's an established fact that Laura Palmer's cousin, Madeleine Ferguson, is named after Madeleine Elster and Scottie Ferguson from Vertigo.

But regardless of whether or not it's meant to be a Vertigo reference, I like looking at it as one. Bowie says, "I'm not gonna talk about Judy, in fact we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it." When the monkey mentions Judy, it's after Mike and the Man From Another Place get their garmonbozia (pain and sorrow) from Bob, which I tend to interpret as getting in touch with repressed feelings. The monkey might then represent an aspect of the human psyche beneath layers of psychological mechanisms--a more innocent, animal part of the human mind. That's the part that would mention the Judy that Bowie said couldn't be talked about, the real person underneath Madeleine Elster. If we're to take Judy as a reference to Laura herself, as this blogger does, it could refer to the real Laura buried under the different identities she contrived for herself to cope.

I find the drug deal scene funnier every time I see it.

Whalebone or Steel

Reading for school has encroached a bit on the reading I've been doing for my next comic, but to-day I finished reading the chapter in Judith Flanders' Inside the Victorian Home called "The Parlour," a chapter somewhat extraordinary for having nothing to do with the parlour. In fact, the word "parlour" only occurs once, towards the end of the first paragraph;

A good marriage allied families, reinforced caste, and upheld the morality of social norms. It was, for all society's insistence on private domesticity, a public act, one that was planned and executed in the public areas of the house: the parlour, the less formal reception room, when planning the match en famille; in the dining room when entertaining the prospective suitor; and in the drawing room for the formalities of the ceremony.

So the parlour is only one of several rooms to play a part in the 37 page chapter's true subject, marriage in the Victorian era and the unjust position women had in terms of the perceived necessity for them to marry by a relatively young age and their tremendously inferior social position compared to their husbands, who were expected to treat them somewhat like children. This was all interesting, and, in fact, intensely useful to me, as I doubt I'm spoiling much for those familiar with my comics by saying the main characters are going to be women. Why not simply call the chapter something like, "Marriage and What It Meant to Victorian Women"? Well, that would break up the pattern of each chapter being named after a specific room in the Victorian home. Though all previous chapters, while sometimes featuring interesting and relevant tangents about Victorian culture, had mostly been about those rooms. The immediately preceding chapter on the drawing room had gone into great detail about how drawing rooms were decorated, maintained, and what sort of behaviour was expected from people in the drawing room. I would have liked more information on the parlour aside from the fact that it was "less formal."

Mostly the impression I get is that Flanders' attention wandered to something she found more interesting, but she seems to have felt some strange obligation to at least appear like she was adhering to her originally chosen subject matter. Once again I'm getting the impression of a neurotic author somewhat dominated by her insecurities. The fact that the last portion of the chapter is about how women who didn't concentrate on the home were considered insane by society almost felt like Flanders indirectly saying, "So I'm not concentrating on the home! Are you going to call me hysterical, you pompous neanderthal?!"

Again, I say, easy, Flanders. Relax. You're doing fine. Write about whatever you like, you're free now.

Disappearing, Reappearing Riches

A bit groggy to-day, but I still generally feel better than I have in weeks. I had the first alcohol I'd had in over two weeks last night, just a hot toddy. I might soon try making the mulled cider from this site of Lord of the Rings recipes Virginia Corbett tweeted a link to to-day--I'm assuming the "cider" is alcoholic.



Not to-day, though--I have too much reading to do. I think I did well on yesterday's quiz, which was open note, but my notes are still mostly doodles.



Reading about the Spanish conquest of the Americas put me in the mood for Mexican food to-day, so I walked to the Rubio's for a burrito, lingering on the way to follow the egret a bit, who I've decided to call Ixta after a character in the Doctor Who Aztecs serial.





And here's one of the many lizards who were speeding across the path;


I brought the burrito home and watched the last episode of "The Armageddon Factor", one of the worst Doctor Who serials I've seen. It was written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who seem to alternate between writing the really bad ("The Invisible Enemy") and the pretty good ("The Underworld"). Unfortunately, "The Armageddon Factor" more closely resembled "The Invisible Enemy" with its arbitrary plot twists and characters who seem more like they're drawing on the experience and imagination of a couple television writers rather than the experience or imagination of the characters they're supposed to be. The villain, called "The Shadow" (who most assuredly did not know what evil lurks in the hearts of men) has a lie detector he uses only once, relying on vague physical torture on other occasions to extract information later parts of the serial decide he already knows. Then there's the Doctor's temporary ally, Drax, mistakenly thinking the Doctor wants Drax to use a shrink ray on him (for no apparent reason).

But the serial did feature the introduction of the beautiful Lalla Ward as Princess Astra and who I've learned takes over, for some reason, the role of Romana from Mary Tamm in the next season. It's nice to be able to expect more Lalla Ward, but I'm going to miss Mary Tamm, who looked particularly gorgeous in this serial.

Mindful of the Living Force

Twitter Sonnet #231

Mind banana tissue squeaks against skull.
A big bearded barber makes scalps smile.
Penguins hide hair clippings at the south pole.
Shave and haircut blanket marks a mile.
Marks miss easy old straight razor hinges.
Cold docks lubricate for superbowl dick.
Fergie ate Axl in eating binges.
Body condom Tron fans never get sick.
Vegan mayo is cucumber semen.
Infinity's pomegranate's stripping.
Jedi flowers have lightsabre stamen.
Anger confers flesh to Wal-Mart's keeping.
Metal crops crack on gold wrapped chocolate teeth.
Foil autumn leaves fly over the heath.

In a bit of a hurry to-day because I have a quiz in my history class and I have to stop at the book store to buy a scantron. They used to just hand those out in high school--they bilk you whenever they can in college I guess. I yesterday thought about how my big hardback Inside the Victorian Home was less than half the price of the awkward magazine/text book for my History class. And did I mention the forty dollar parking permit? It used to be nine dollars.

I go to parties for hors d'oeuvres and walk blocks instead of paying for parking--just like Gilbert Gottfried, who replied to one of my tweets yesterday. Sure, it wasn't anything big and he replied to a million people, but it made my whole month, I think.

To-day I seem to have been tweeting a lot of animation related things. On Saturday I watched the Clone Wars movie, which serves as the first episode of the cgi Clone Wars television series. Tim had been recommending the show to me for some time, insisting that it gets better as it goes. The movie picks up essentially where the great Genndy Tartakovsky micro-series left off and borrows a lot from Tartakovsky's character designs and general aesthetic, which serves to highlight, for me, the flaws of cgi compared to traditional cell animation, as the characters in Tartakovsky's series were a great deal more expressive. The cgi show also lacks Tartakovsky's keen visual storytelling instincts, featuring far less remarkable action sequences. All in all, though, it wasn't bad, not nearly as bad as I was expecting, anyway, and Christopher Lee has a substantial role, which alone argues for the thing's virtues.

There are plenty of things that don't make sense--like the Jedi council deciding to give Anakin an apprentice, and there's the general, depressing sense of a much smaller Star Wars galaxy than the one conveyed in the original trilogy, a feeling I'm used to from the prequel films. But I'll stick with it a while and see where it goes.

Of course, it was blown out of the water by the latest episode of Sym-Bionic Titan, which I watched shortly afterwards. I was delighted to see the show's continuing the robot, Octus', relationship with Kimmy, and in general the episode featured a string of evocative incidental character bits that distinguish great animation.

Angels, Devils, Aliens, Cowboys

I can't remember the last time I looked forward to a movie so much. Maybe The Dark Knight. But this--there are so many ways to look at it that makes it sound good. Indiana Jones teaming up with James Bond. The simple fact of Harrison Ford in a science fiction film--I think this could easily be the best Harrison Ford film since Last Crusade. Thank goodness it's Jon Favreau at the helm instead of a studio processed plastic man like Brett Ratner, McG, or Zack Snyder. I still can't believe Christopher Nolan is producing Snyder's Superman movie. Boy, that's going to suck, and it's going to tank for the same reason the last one did, and the same reason the Hulk movies did--no-one wants Superman or Hulk movies right now. And Thor? Ha. They might've brought in the 300 crowd if they'd sold it like the downright white supremacist looking The Eagle, but they chose to go with a vaguely futuristic, leather body suit Valhalla, and therefore milquetoast.

That Cowboys and Aliens trailer above isn't the Super Bowl one--I like this one better--but it was the best looking movie advertised during the game. I went over to my parents' house yesterday to have snacks with everyone and stare blankly at the screen, managing to not hold the names of both teams in my memory for two seconds. J.J. Abrams' Super 8 looks like it might be decent. Like Cowboys and Aliens, it's produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by a Howard Stern Show regular. It's always exciting when the Stern Show's tied into a good movie or TV show. I've been meaning to try watching Fringe for some time just for Eric the Midget's cameo.

I actually had some more to say about The Idiot yesterday but I was in a rush to get to my parents' house by a certain time. What I wanted to add was, I keep thinking about Nastassya Filipovna as a tsundere. Now it almost seems like Dostoevsky had been watching that type of anime for some time and decided to dive in and add some depth to the tsundere/innocent guy dichotomy. Discussing Nastassya with Aglaya, who had been receiving letters from Nastassya trying to convince her to marry Myshkin, the prince says;

". . . That unhappy woman is deeply convinced that she is the most fallen, the most vicious creature in the whole world. Oh, don't hold her up to scorn, don't cast stones at her. She has tortured herself too much with her underserved feeling of shame. And what in the name of heaven is she to blame for? Oh, she will cry out every minute, in her state of exultation, that she is the victim of people, the victim of a depraved and evil man; but whatever she tells you, you may be sure she is the first to disbelieve it, and to believe with her whole heart that, on the contrary, she is herself to blame. When I tried to dispel those dark feelings she suffered so that my heart will never recover as long as I remember that dreadful time."

Again, there's evidence of abuse in Nastassya's youth that Dostoevsky never explicitly spells out, though we know who the "evil man," her adoptive father, is and it's not hard to figure out what he did. Myshkin repeatedly insists Nastassya is a madwoman and also that he no longer loves her but rather pities her. I'm not sure that last part is accurate insight on Myshkin's part, but if it is, there's a way of looking at it that's extraordinarily sinister. I've seen Myshkin referred to as a Christ-like figure in some reviews and responses to the book, but an impression I've sort of been getting is Myshkin as God, Nastassya as humanity, Rogozhin as the Devil, and all the other characters being members of a heavenly court. As I said, Nastassya Filipovna is rarely spoken of or mentioned by name but the effects of her existence continually manifest in the other characters and she seems to be the spark that begins all the debates on government, philosophy, and psychology all the characters engage in. The fact that the book begins with Myshkin and Rogozhin meeting each other on a train creates a scene almost like God and the Devil making their wager over Job. From this perspective, Myshkin's love for Nastassya dimming and believing she's better off marrying Rogozhin has quite a terrific resonance. This is a really good book.

I played six games of chess to-day and here's the only one I won;



I was playing white--my last move was the knight to e7, taking a bishop there, whereupon the black player resigned. Complete blind luck on my part. I'd had my knight at d5 in the hopes of trading it for his knight at f6 to break up the collaborative threat of his pair. Then black moved the Queen, his bishop's only protection, probably to put double threat on my bishop and set up for an eventual attack on my King. You have to spin so many plates in chess.

Guilt versus Terror

I'm cautiously peeking out at this world without antibiotics. I had a cup of coffee with breakfast. So far so good. This may well be the first day in two weeks I'm not sick. It's a little hard to tell since a lot of what I guess are the after-effects of ciprofloxacin seem like they could be related to uti--abdominal cramps, shooting pains in the sides of the lower abdomen. But I remember these from last time, and my doctor didn't seem at all concerned then. Though I will say my abdomen has simply never felt the same since the first time I took cipro. I used to like to sit crossed legged on the ground or on a chair, but now I can't do that for long periods without getting light-headed.

Of course, I'm also feeling symptoms that may be from skipping the crunches I usually do every morning as you're not supposed to exercise with cipro, apparently having something to do with inhibited growth of muscle tissue. When I go without crunches, my belly tends to feel like a windsock.

I read most of the new Sirenia Digest with breakfast to-day. Instead of a new story or vignette, it was the first chapter from Caitlin's upcoming novel, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. I probably won't ever read the whole book, as I doubt I could bring myself to while I'm still banned from Caitlin's journal--I feel weird enough reading the Digest--and that's probably at least partially contingent on Sonya speaking to me again, which isn't likely to happen in twenty lifetimes. But it was a good first chapter, written mostly in first person narrative that switches sometimes without changes in quotation marks for brief moments to third person. This isn't as jarring as one might think and in fact creates a rather fluid narrative.

Most of the first portion of the chapter, in fact, is devoted to a discussion of storytelling philosophy. Partly I think this is still Caitlin dealing with her relatively newfound propensity to tell stories in the first person after years of a professed dislike for the mode*. But also it seems to me something characteristic of a lot of writers at roughly the same stage of career--that is, a compulsion to write about one's craft. It reminds me of how David Lynch's last two movies have been about Hollywood--it's natural that these artists should be interested in making art about these things in the interest of drawing on their own experiences, or rather, dealing with the issues closest to hand. This has the unfortunate effect of limiting the audience somewhat, as I think the casual reader, who has no serious interest in the mechanisms and realities of artistic endeavours are put off by having their latent naive prejudices challenged. I remember once talking to a family member about the prospect of becoming a professional writer. Seeming doubtful about my commitment to the career, he told me, as though it were incumbent on decisions I'd made, "Of course, we'd love to see you on Oprah." This indicated a whole web of preconceived ideas about what success means as a writer that I didn't even begin to know how to untangle.

Anyway, I count myself fortunate, rather than clever, for not desiring to make my fiction about my fiction yet. I'm not sure Caitlin, or most artists, have much real choice when it comes to their muses.

The chapter also dealt with the recurrent theme throughout nearly all Caitlin's work of a character trying to convey, and feeling a resentment for not being able to inspire an appreciation for, the effects of a very serious, solemn, fantastic or dreadful experience. This seems to be the nature of the perpetual "ghost" Caitlin's work continually returns to, and thinking about the recurrent obsessions of my own work, I realised I'm more concerned with characters dealing with the impossibility of receiving forgiveness for something they've done. As I was thinking this, Caitlin actually brought up the issue in the form of unintentional lies causing harm, lies germinated by the unreliability of memory. Of course, she seemed to present this as being a relatively insignificant fact of life, which made me smile.

A lot of the chapter, too, discussed the nature of the insanity the narrator perceived in herself, and the potential unreliability of the narrative. I was immediately reminded of a portion of The Idiot I read a few nights ago where Hippolite, a young man dying of consumption, decides to read aloud late at night to a party of his drunken friends a "last conviction," a statement he's written. In the second paragraph, where he still seems to be relaying the purpose of the statement, Hippolite says of the statement;

Since there will not be a single word of falsehood in it, but only the truth, the final and solemn truth, I am curious to know what impression it will make on me, at the hour and the very minute I'll be reading it over. However, I should not have written the words 'final and solemn truth'; it's not worth telling lies for two weeks, because it's not worth living two weeks; that's the best proof that I shall write nothing but the truth. (N.B. Not to forget the thought: am I not mad at this moment; that is, at certain moments? I was told positively that in the last stage of their illness consumptives sometimes go out of their minds for a time. Must check this to-morrow at the reading, by the effect on the audience. Must settle this question with the utmost precision; otherwise I can undertake nothing.)

He goes on to relate a story of an act of charity he undertook and a discussion on the nature of charity before discussing a painting in the home of another of The Idiot's characters, Rogozhin, of Christ on the cross that was atypically raw, that seemed to convey to Hippolite an impression of death unconquerable by Christ. The statement ended with Hippolite's expressed intention to commit suicide by shooting himself. When the statement's concluded, half the people in the room ignore the statement as the bluster of an adolescent, while the other half, including Prince Myshkin, the titular idiot, take Hippolite's expressed desire to commit suicide seriously. When Hippolite does attempt to shoot himself, he fails due to a missing firing pin, and there's some discussion as to whether he really meant to commit suicide at all.

This whole scene is followed by, and is, in my opinion, wonderfully juxtaposed with, a scene where Myshkin is awakened the next morning on a park bench by Aglaya, one of the two central female characters of the story. The other, Nastassya Filipovna, hasn't even been mentioned by name since around the book's halfway point--this scene takes place around three fourths in. Yet Filipovna's existence exerts a palpable influence over everything that happens and all the characters. In talking about Hippolite's suicide attempt with Aglaya, the prince concedes it was, of course, a ploy to inspire admiration in the others, but the prince adds that this desire for love is not something he looks down on Hippolite for. Aglaya observes, wisely, in the prince's later opinion; "I find all this very wrong, because it is very crude to look into a man's soul that way and judge him as you judge Hippolite. You have no tenderness; nothing but truth and so you are unfair."


*Jeez, I'm remembering English words a lot better without the antibiotics.

Attend Radioactive Conduits

Twitter Sonnet #230

Chilly apples liquefy for old film.
Clear cloth wraps the innocent new mummy.
Imitation fruit Runt eyes gird the realm.
Dry hands crackle electric Gin Rummy.
Three sided coins ignite in the eight ball.
Squid man posters project upside down grins.
Rubber chips flake off the mad spongy wall.
When Swamp Thing has a gun, nobody wins.
Circling sewer spirits spit their soda.
Root beer dribble contaminates the lake.
Bubbling cola thoughts plague barracuda.
Under giant fireflies they soon bake.
Cocoanuts connect with fate's red thin thread.
Aliens won't distinguish breast from head.

I see Anderson Cooper's leaving Egypt. That's probably a good idea. I think he was assaulted, what, three times? I'm pretty sure he got it worse than any other prominent western reporter. He should've brought Kathy Griffin to protect him.

There was some discussion of the situation in Egypt in my History class a few days ago. One girl hadn't heard anything at all about it because, she said, she didn't have cable. I was reminded there are large portions of the population that still get their information and entertainment through television, and a slightly smaller portion who don't have TiVo and are forced to go by television network schedules.

There's a nostalgia synapse firing in me somewhere asking if life was better when I had to arrange and remember to be at the television at a certain time whenever I wanted to see something specific, or when I discovered new things just by seeing "what's on." Generally I develop new interests by following chains of my favourite artists' interests--if the author of one book likes another, I'll check that one out, if a director I like is influenced by another director, I'll check out that director.

Though, when I'm roaming around on Second Life, I do run into internet radio stations exposing me to random things. That's how I discovered I rather dig Nicki Minaj.



Like most rap, I'm still put off by how much her lyrics seem to be about how great she is, but I love her vocal stylings. She actually seems to have a range of emotion, unlike a lot of rap which tends to grey itself out with monotone anger, like irate auctioneers. A good contrast to Minaj is this "diss" of her by Lil Kim. Kim's delivery is so lifeless, it's particularly sad that she seems to think she's getting Minaj good somehow.

I have a big headache to-day. I want coffee so much . . . I guess I'll just have to keep making do with water.

Arranging Grey Matters

To-day's the last full day of antibiotics. I have to take one to-morrow morning, and I'll probably wait until at least Sunday before I have a cup of coffee, but this caffeine withdrawal just hasn't gone away. I remember it didn't last time I had a uti, either--I waited a fortnight, thinking I could save a lot of money if I stopped with the coffee. But my brain just never got back on its feet, and I got other weird aches, too. I'm married to coffee, for good or ill, I signed a contract with the coffee devil.

I lost five games of chess in a row to-day. I hate making excuses, but I suppose I ought to at least allow acknowledging the antibiotics, caffeine withdrawal, and the fact that I hadn't played chess in a week. That day I was pissing blood, by the way, I placed eighth in a chess tournament out of sixteen players, my tournament best so far. Of course, that was also my last day with coffee.

I have been playing about two hours of WoW a night the past couple nights. I've had a blood elf rogue named Adeltrude for a few weeks now--I created her to be an engineer to use all the ore my hunter's getting with her mining profession, the eventual idea being to make the engineering pets for Sichilde, to work towards that pet achievement. I find I prefer to find things to do below level 60, as my level 60 characters tend to drop out of my interest threshold when they get to Outlands.



Boy, I love those little duckie lapel pins. I want them. Though I guess I don't have the right coat for them.

Now if he'd just switch back to his big brown hat from his earlier episodes his outfit would be perfect. That fuzzy greenish one he's had since "The Seeds of Doom," I think, is just too small for him.

The Longer Gun Decides

I see Howard Stern's gotten a Twitter account. Among the only six people he's following so far is, most intriguingly, Girls in Yoga Pants. I just spent a few minutes looking at cotton spandex stretched taut over women's crotches.

Last night I watched Dirty Harry. I was a bit put off at first by what I felt was a movie populated by cheap caricatures presented as real people--the guy attempting suicide was particularly abrasive, obviously there to make a point about how Harry's insensitivity wins the day. But once I got into the film as a fantasy, I enjoyed it. As a lot of critics said, it's a right-wing fantasy, but despite being a solid lefty myself, I'm usually pretty good in indulging in fantasies ideologically opposed to me. Anyway, when you reduce it to the idea of single-handedly making the world a better place, it's a story anyone can enjoy. And my liberalism is hardly threatened by the unlikely set of circumstances and skewed representation of the law that the film uses to show how great it would be if one man with a big gun had total authority.

When you compare Dirty Harry, which aroused a furore of controversy, with 300, a film far more rife with bigotry that was casually accepted by the world with scarcely more people complaining than me and Alan Moore, one can see how greatly times have changed. Here's a quote I found rather curious from the Wikipedia entry;

Feminists in particular were outraged by the film and at the Oscars for 1971 protested outside holding up banners which read messages such as "Dirty Harry is a Rotten Pig".

So remember, if you're a feminist, that means you agree 100% with those protestors.

I suppose this bit from the Wikipedia entry was from a fan of the film and demonstrates the sort of strawman villains set up by the film being carried over into real life. Feminism is necessarily a pretty big umbrella when one remembers it's simply a belief in the justice of gender equality. Sarah Palin considers herself a feminist, yet she supports a number of policies many (like myself) would claim are antithetical to gender equality.

I was curious about what the "feminist" criticism of Dirty Harry was, but googling only got me reviews by people complaining about the supposed feminist criticism. But I would guess some criticism was drawn by the fact that the movie has no female characters but lots of naked women--Harry sees a woman stripping in her apartment through his binoculars while on a stake out, there's a scene in a strip club, and one of the victims of the film's villain, the "Scorpio killer," is a teenage girl found naked.

The movie might have been made by sexists, but I don't see it as a particularly sexist film. Certainly not like Madigan (also directed by Dirty Harry director Don Siegel). Unlike Madigans several screeching and selfish peripheral female characters, the one time Harry talks to a woman, the wife of his injured partner, her anxiety over her husband's dangerous career is sympathetically portrayed. Mostly Dirty Harry seems like it was put together by guys who don't know much about women and have realised it--they don't even attempt exploring female characters, and see no conflict in showing some gratuitous female nudity. I'm not sure I see a problem with it myself--as much as the political ideology of the film, any application to real life is dependant upon the consciousness of the viewer.

In the context of the film's sexual innocence, though, Harry's larger than average magic gun takes on even more fetishisitic significance. I kept thinking of Taxi Driver, and it occurred to me that Taxi Driver may well have been a sort of reply to Dirty Harry. The lonely, sexually immature and fascist philosophy is presented in Travis Bickle who is then surrounded by a more realistic world. The humane exercise of Taxi Driver is in how we don't hate Travis for these personality traits.

Wild is the Wind

The wind's been oddly vocal to-day. I woke up about an hour before my alarm to what sounded like the heavy wood gate outside swinging open and shut. I went out to find it firmly latched, and it was some time before I realised what I was hearing was a tree against a fence outside my window, pressed periodically harder against it by the wind. At least I didn't hear, "Heathcliff, let me in!" I'd let Catherine in, of course, but I doubt I'd have much success wooing her.

Boy, the weather here in San Diego, my east coast friends, you can't imagine! I went out to-day and felt at times the need for a jacket! You can't dream of the misery.

Okay, so it's not that bad, but I am glad I won't have to walk to class in it to-night because I dropped my Japanese class. I was almost done with the homework assignment due to-night when I realised every one hour assignment was taking me at least four hours to finish. This is because I need to look up practically every word I write, and check proper verb conjugations, in many cases because it's something the teacher hadn't covered in this class, or in the one I took ten years ago, though I had to accommodate for my poor memories of that, too. I was getting it done, and I actually did well on the katakana quiz, but I simply don't have time for this and the work for my other classes, let alone any work on a comic. I'll probably work on my Japanese in my spare time enough to where I feel like I can hit the ground running with Japanese II another semester.

Certainly that's not what happened this semester. I've been shushing the superstitious part of myself that says getting two very distracting illnesses in a row--one of which made it physically impossible to attend the first day of Japanese class--was an omen of some kind. I'd have liked to have waited to make the decision whether to drop the class until after I was off antibiotics and could have coffee again, but the deadline to drop a class while still getting a refund is Friday. Anyway, it doesn't make much difference if I take it now or later.

Yesterday I got a call from the clinic I went to on Saturday, telling me I had a follow-up appointment to see a urologist. This alarmed me a bit--I still hadn't heard the results of my urine test, and the doctor had told me that if there hadn't been bacteria in the sample, a urologist was going to have to shove a needle up my dick. He didn't put it that way of course--it would be to check to see if I did have bladder cancer. It seemed a bit excessive to me to see a urologist for just a follow-up on a uti. I wasn't able to find out until to-day that my urine test had indeed confirmed I had uti. Apparently the urologist wants to run tests anyway because there was so much blood.

I'm honestly less concerned about the discomfort than I am about the cost. I know I'd charge a lot of money if I had to put things in penises. I hope these "tests" won't amount to more than gentle fondling.

Happy Groundhog Day, folks!



Twitter Sonnet #229

Querulous red fish protrude from Hell Bowl.
"Cranfae" are guards of the red tart berry.
It's said Orson left a Welles shaped ground hole.
Treacle sprang from dormouse Virgin Mary.
Souvenir grapes confer raisin wisdom.
Suitcase catacombs hold scores of Maya.
Salt's a quarter from the vending kingdom.
Coke has forged for us a newer agua.
Water damage reminds us all to drink.
Bear in mind the worst rain's always your own.
Plugholes claim four babies for every sink.
Prevent losses with an orange traffic cone.
Bending trunks bow groaning plank barrier.
The lone bull is a looped plague carrier.

Rare Maps

There aren't quite so many clouds about my mind to-day. Still, I want this week to be over. I probably shouldn't be walking as much as I have been--you're not supposed to get exercise on the antibiotics--but it turned out the school parking permit was forty dollars. That's just too much to pay for a parking lot that's usually full anyway.

When I got on campus last night, I realised I'd left my bottle of water in the car, and wandered the school fruitlessly searching for a vending machine that sold real water, rather than just Dasani. I finally found some at the college book store, and I sat on a bench outside trying to read my history text book, which is this annoying, youth pandering thing. A sixty dollar magazine with a floppy, glossy cover that kept sliding off my lap whenever I reached into my backpack. I suppose it's a little better than the trio of books for my Japanese class--I need to somehow juggle all three while doing my homework. I'm not the greatest multitasker.



Last night I watched a really great pirate film, the 1950 version of Treasure Island. The only other version I've seen, the 1934 version, I couldn't even get through twenty minutes of, due to how incredibly put-on Jackie Cooper was in the role of Jim Hawkins. But old Hollywood didn't have a lot of good child actors--they almost always seemed just mannered than delivering a performance.



Bobby Driscoll in the 1950 version isn't much better--and was an extraordinarily ugly child on top of it--but other aspects of the production made up for it. The footage is a nice, waxy Technicolor with lots of great shadows, except the day for night shots which turn everything into silhouettes.



Of course the highlight is Robert Newton as Long John Silver. I could barely believe he was the same man who played the bland protagonist of Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn. In Treasure Island, he relishes in broad eye rolling and squinting while still managing to be subtle in a role that creates virtually all the tension in the movie due to Silver's duplicitous intentions and the complicated position he holds in Jim Hawkins' heart. We immediately know there's something off about him when Jim sees he's missing a leg and connects it with the warning Billy Bones issued. But the immediately following scenes have Silver as a fascinating, natural man who seems capable of telling a story one could happily listen to for hours. We're always watching him closely because the plot asks us to, and Newton makes great use of the attention.

I hadn't seen the movie since I was a kid, and the strongest memory I had of it was a real dread associated with the image of the black spot. It seemed so unclean, on the torn paper, and intrinsically tied to death.