Save The Wire

I'm concerned that the best show on television is about to be canceled. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but The Wire deserves another season. HBO ought to renew it. If you haven't seen The Wire, check it out — even of cop shows aren't your thing. The first season is available on DVD now, and the second will be out in January. The third just concluded its run.

Thirty-Four

Yesterday, December 6, The M celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday. It was a quiet celebration with the parents, following a somewhat restrained party on Saturday night. Saturday night's affair was supposed to be bigger, but one of the participants fell off his bed and broke his arm, so owing to swelling and the big ol' arm splint, the crowd convened at the Hub of Western Civilization, where there were drinks and food a-plenty.

N----- R----- was in attendance. She mentioned that last year at The M's birthday bash, she'd had a bit too much to drink and joked (loudly and insistently, enough so that someone else in the bar — a total stranger — yelled from across the room, "Play it cool, M! You're a'right.") about marrying The M and bearing his children. M replied, incredulously, "you were joking??"

She also said she needed to have some food, because she'd need to eat something before she started drinking "or else I'll be spending the night here."

"We've just run out of food."

But seriously.

Turning thirty-four has brought about a reflective mood, and so I'm compelled to write here some of the things I've learned and observed to this point.

Apart from God, friends and family are it. Nothing else matters, nothing else is as important.

Long-time readers will know that this year saw the tragic and untimely death of the husband of a friend of mine. An old and dear friend of mine, but one who I'd lost touch with after her wedding. It had been ten years (almost to the day; terrible and tragic don't even begin to describe it, but I won't be detailed in this forum) since we'd spoken, but in some ways it was like we'd never stopped talking. Except that she's grown, matured, and changed — like the blossoming of a flower. And except that I'd forgotten little tics and mannerisms of hers that are indeed endearing.

The rekindling of that friendship is simply an unqualified good; the circumstances surrounding it were horrible, but it's been beneficial to me, and I am thankful for it. Not least because she's been through terrible adversity, and she still laughs. It's inspiring, uplifting, and amazing. Just to watch her going through the day-by-dayness of it all.

Which leads to two other observations: The first is that you can't plan anything, not really. Because you never know what the future holds. The corollary of that, I guess, is the by-now hackneyed "live for today," because today is all we have.

The second concerns her and her faith. She is a Christian, by all accounts a good one. Her character has always been informed by that fact. But now it strikes me as different than before. It's a thing of beauty to behold.

I have been — and still am — struggling with the role of Christianity in my own life. Watching her, well...I'm moved by it. In an intellectual way, I suppose I understand it, but the experience of it is something else again.

Which, I guess, leads to the nice and tidy conclusion — again, a thing I understand intellectually but struggle with emotionally — that nothing is permanent, nothing should be taken for granted. The only thing that's permanent is God.

I know that. I'm not sure I believe it yet.

And even if I do, I'm not sure that I like the consequences. It's tough, getting rid of your own ego.

More Cool Stuff than I Have Time to Read

http://artsandlettersdaily.com/

Sweeeeeeet.

Before I Lose It, An Anti-Derrida Comment

An interesting article, here. I'm not sure I agree with or understand it, totally. But I have an intense dislike for Derrida; it's a pleasure to read, "This isn't an insight, it's a tautology. Necessarily, every X excludes not-X, else it would not be X."

Or my favorite:

[S]kepticism about the existence of truth and/or absolute value, and our knowledge of either, has been a staple of Western philosophy in one form or another, from the Sophists to Hume to Michael Dummett. The problem with Derrida is that, unlike these other important philosophers, Derrida has no arguments that are both good and original; his case for skepticism is the stuff of bad sophomore-year philosophy papers.

My problem with Derrida is that he, so far as I can see, destroyed the act of reading for its own sake. While I'm not sure that's exactly technically correct — it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Proofreading, Typesetting, &c

Does it bother anyone but me that people seem to have utterly forgotten the art of proofreading and -- the subject of today's post -- typesetting?

Ever see a sentence like this:

"You're crazy as hell", she said.

Everyone knows -- or at least, The M thinks everyone ought to know -- that the comma after the quotation marks should actually be inside the quote, like this:

"I am not," he replied, more calmly that she had any right to expect.

The comma outside the quotes looks as though it's about to kill itself because it's so freakin' lonely.

I know, I know. Dude, get a life. Don't you have better things to worry about?

Yes, I do.

But none of those things seem so pressing at the moment as the problem of the improperly placed comma in a quotation. Especially since that flaw appears everywhere in the otherwise brilliant novel I'm still reading.

What happened to standards?

I mean, of course, pre-Clinton standards. After that guy, there's really no point in having a discussion about standards.

Offensive, Bigoted, etc.

This cartoon is one of the most reprehensible things I've seen in a long, long time.

Which party's the racist one again?

Belated Election Post &c

Wow. I can't believe I haven't posted anything to the Blog since before I left for Knoxville.

The Conference was great. All the papers were good, the food was good, the company pleasant, and the Webmaster's award ( a plaque and a signed Cormac McCarthy book) was a complete suprise.

The Marty Party went off well, too. Lots of folks, lots of food, lots of fun, and a late ending. It's always a good party when the last guests leave at 5 a.m.

I'm still not used to non-daylight savings time. It's gettin' dark way too early here.

I'm also happy that W. won the election. No surprise there, for anyone who's read more than a couple posts here.

I don't much like it that the "referendum on Iraq and the War," once W. won it, became "the moral values election."

And — as to the influence of the fundamentalist/evangelical vote — some of the people looking down their noses at the inbred evangelicals ought to occasionally attend churches; they're public places, after all. I suspect that most of the talking heads who are paid to have opinions haven't ever even been to church in a red state. Some evangelicals are nuts, but most that I've known aren't.

Off to Knoxville

Well, in the morning, I'm off to Knoxville, Tennessee, for the annual Cormac McCarthy Conference. I'll not be presenting a paper this time, but I will be documenting the affair with the new camera. As one of my bosses put it, some folks are curious about what kind of people would attend a Cormac McCarthy Conference.

Here's hoping that the weather will be good and that the fall foliage will be nice. Back on Sunday.

Meet Miss Quentin

This is the first picture I've taken with my digital camera. Well, the first one I'm willing to share, anyway. Say hello to Miss Quentin. 

Nineteen Hours.....

That's how long I was at work Thursday. From 9 a.m. to 3:45 in the morning on Friday.

And back again at 10 a.m. Friday. But I did leave at 2 -- nice short day for the M, who was delirious from lack of sleep. One of my bosses said, "the last time I pulled an all nighter, I was drunk."

Well, I wasn't, so I remember it all too well.

I'm still recovering.

The Mainstreaming of Porn

While I'm still working like crazy this week, this article is worth reading. It's old now, but I think it's probably more relevant now than it was when it was written since its notions, even just a few years out, seem almost quaint.

Not Dead Yet

For those of you who may be following this particular blog, I'm not dead yet. Lots of work at work, together with a month-long succession of parties, has contributed mightily to my not posting here more regularly.

In tech news, I did finally break down and order my first Mac.

In other news, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell continues to be a great book, though I've not had the time I'd like to devote to it.

And one of my very good friends has just up and moved to Nashville.

I finally saw the Robin WIlliams episode of Inside the Actors' Studio. That's made me reconsider going into acting as a profession. Though I believe myself to be a writer at heart.

Bush's lackluster performance in the debate the other night was a little depressing. He's still gonna win the election, though. About a year ago, maybe longer, I told a friend of mine that Bush would get 60% of the popular vote. I stand by that prediction; I just don't see any sort of real groundswell for Kerry between now and the election.

Wrapped in Plastic

After reading several reviews, I went to the local bookstore yesterday to buy a book. This particular book, which runs to about 800 pages, is by a first-time author named Susannah Clarke. It's called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I'm very early into the reading of this one, but it's clever, and I'm enjoying it a great deal so far.

It's no doubt going to be a publishing sensation, so remember that you heard it here first.

BUT...despite the apparent goodness of the book, I'm miffed about it. And I'm feeling sort of like I just sinned. Because the book was not browsable at the bookstore. It was sealed, tightly, in clear plastic shrink wrap. Perhaps this was done to protect the white dust jackets, but it's hard to say. I think this is one of those books that will come with either a white or black jacket, so protection from scuffing during shipping may very well be the issue.

In any case, going to a bookstore to buy a book, even one you know you're going to buy, is usually a very tactile experience. The pleasure of browsing through a book, reading its jacket copy, and sampling at random from the (in this case) novel shouldn't be difficult or impossible. You should be able to hold the book in your hands, to thumb through it, look at the copyright page (if you're a collecting sort and interested in editions and the like). You should be able to feel the type on the pages and smell that new-book smell wafting up at you when you leaf through the pages.

None of that was present in this case, because the book was wrapped in plastic, sealed up as if it contained vulgar or prurient material, as if the publishers didn't really want anyone to actually read the book.

I could have removed the plastic wrap, I'm sure. But part of me rebels at the notion of opening something I haven't yet purchased. Besides, what is one then to do with the small wad of thick crinkled plastic?

The book as commodity. What's the point of going to a bookstore if you can't look at a book before you buy it?

Books. Wrapped in plastic. Harumph.

President's Remarks to the Unity Journalists of Color Convention

President's Remarks to the Unity Journalists of Color Convention:

Now in terms of the balance between running down intelligence and bringing people to justice obviously is — we need to be very sensitive on that. Lackawanna, for example, was a — there was a cell there. And it created a lot of nervousness in the community, because the FBI skillfully ferreted out intelligence that indicated that these people were in communication with terrorist networks. And I thought they handled the case very well, but at the time there was a lot of nervousness. People said, well, I may be next — but they weren't next, because it was just a focused, targeted investigation. And, by the way, some were then incarcerated and told their stories, and it turned out the intelligence was accurate intelligence.

I post the above because SadPunk has re-opened the subject of "sensitive" war. I looked for the speech he mentioned, and I believe it's this one — and I believe it's this quote.

Funny, Funny, Funny

A friend of mine sent me the following.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational [also here — I could spend days reading this kind of stuff] once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the 2003 winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

Between Books

Oh my. Finished Everything is Illuminated last evening. What a ride.

One of my favorite passages:

Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who has lost a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your grear-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love.

That's excerpted from a larger passage, which I won't quote here. That's not all — just a small sample.

So-Called "Baby" Carrots

VivaLaLesley disputes my information about baby carrots. The following is taken from Cooks Illustrated's E-Notes, April 2001.

"BABY" CARROTS

While researching our story on roasted carrots [. . .] we learned that the popular bagged "baby" carrots in the supermarket qualify as "babies" in terms of size only. The diminutive carrots are pared-down versions of a special variety bred for extra sweetness and color. The large carrots are forced through a machine that peels and trims them down to their perfect little size.

Books, Books, and More Books

Yes, Everything is Illuminated continues to be great — so great that I don't want to write here because I'd rather read.

However, I've been thinking about this particular subject for a while now and wanted to at least get started. I like lists, though they can be maddeningly frustrating sometimes. Here, then, are ten books I love — these books are on this list not only because I love them, but because they were world-changing as only a few books can be in any given lifetime. Order is not especially significant here; these are off the top of my head.

• Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. It's a close race between several C.S. Lewis books, as I adored the Chronicles of Narnia when I was only a boy. Recently having reread them, I discovered that they're even better than I remembered they were. Also on the short-list from C.S. Lewis are The Abolition of Man and The Screwtape Letters. But Mere Christianity wins out because of the luminous quality of its prose and because of my peculiar reaction to reading it. I was raised Church of Christ and went to private Church of Christ school. So I took Bible classes nearly every day until I was 18 or so. They were quite in depth, and yet encountering Lewis in Mere Christianity when I was 18 was life-changing — "oh, now I see what all the fuss is about!"


• The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy. Absolutely one of the finest novels I've ever read. Other contenders from McCarthy include Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses (my first McCarthy novel, and so in some ways always the best), but The Crossing wins because of its sheer power. Reading it was like being run over by a train. Repeatedly. In a good way. I've never ever been so wrung out by a book.


• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. Friends of mine mock me for loving such a hippie book as this one, and suggest that I ought to shut up and read Walden. But this book is practically unique in my experience; it's a book about nature and God and death and life and all the other big issues. Somehow it's also about little things, specific things, and the human quest for understanding, knowledge, enlightenment, and maybe even perfection. Its prose is marvelously light but multifaceted like a poem; you think you're done with an image and then it returns in a new light where it can be seen differently. I have encountered few books as perfect as this one in my reading life.


• The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro. I've never read a biography of anyone else that even comes close. Magesterial. LBJ rises up from the pages of these three volumes and breathes, shouts, berates, rejoices, struggles, steals, lies, cheats, and gets his way in his very own fashion. You may not like him, but he's never ever boring. Three volumes here, and Caro's not done yet. I for one can't wait for volume four.


• The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. Dated, maybe, but for flat-out great storytelling, it can't be beat. A beautiful, tragic, and epic book. One of the crowning literary achievements of the twentieth century in any form.

Those are the books I knew would be on the list when I started. Now, I'm going to have to do some thinking to flesh out the ten.

Everything is Illuminated

A good friend recommended that I read Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel, Everything is Illuminated. Having just started the book — I've read about five pages — I am already compelled to mention it here.

It's not thus far an easy book to explain, but it is hilarious; the first part of the book is narrated by a Ukranian translator writing in English, and the effect is riotous. A sample:

Many girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle, and the Unyielding Zookeeper. If you want to know why so many girls want to be with me, it is because I am a very premium person to be with. I am homely, and also severely funny, and these are winning things. But nonetheless, I know many people who dig rapid cars and famous discotheques.

I'd like to quote more, but to do so would be to give away too much — I'll simply say that this book, so far, is inventive, original, and one of the funniest things I've read in years.

CNN.com - Cheney blasts Kerry over 'sensitive war' remark - Aug 12, 2004

CNN.com - Cheney blasts Kerry over 'sensitive war' remark - Aug 12, 2004:

The Kerry campaign Thursday said that the senator's comment was being 'taken out of context' and the 'meaning twisted' by the Bush/Cheney campaign.

Kerry spokesman Phil Singer told CNN the Democratic candidate was referring to cooperation with allies. President Bush himself, Singer said, used the word 'sensitive' in a similar context in March 2001, when he said the United States should be 'sensitive about expressing our power and influence.

Since nobody over at the Kerry campaign has posted this speech, it's difficult to say, based on the one sentence, whether Singer's correct or not. But, based on the one sentence, "fight" does not equal "cooperation with allies." Yeah, Kerry mentions allies in the same sentence, but that's about all.

CNN.com - Cheneys Go After Kerry - Aug 11, 2004

CNN.com - Cheneys Go After Kerry - Aug 11, 2004:

[Mrs. Cheney] was responding to an audience question about Kerry's remarks last week to the Unity 2004 conference in which he said, "I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side."

I have looked for the rest of that speech, the one Kerry gave to Unity 2004, but it's not posted online — at least, not at the John Kerry site. And not at the Unity 2004 site.

The reason I've gone to the trouble of posting that quote is that Kerry campaign staffers are now practically denying that he said it. Grammatically, there's no question that "more sensitive" there modifies "fight."

I'll post an example from Kerry's folks soon.

VP's Remarks in Dayton, Ohio

VP's Remarks in Dayton, Ohio:

But a good defense is not enough, and so we have also gone on the offense in the war on terror — but the President's opponent, Senator Kerry, sometimes seems to object. He has even said that by using our strength, we are creating terrorists and placing ourselves in greater danger. But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the world we are living in works. Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness. (Applause.)

Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a "more sensitive" war on terror. (Laughter.) America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. President Lincoln and General Grant did not wage sensitive warfare — nor did President Roosevelt, nor Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur. A "sensitive war" will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more. The men who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity. As our opponents see it, the problem isn't the thugs and murderers that we face, but our attitude. Well, the American people know better. They know that we are in a fight to preserve our freedom and our way of life, and that we are on the side of rights and justice in this battle. Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed. (Applause.)

I listened to what Senator Kerry had to say in Boston, and, with all due respect to the Senator, he views the world as if we had never been attacked on September 11th. The job of the Commander-in-Chief, as he sees it, is to use America's military strength to respond to attacks. But September 11th showed us, as surely as anything can, that we must act against gathering dangers — not wait for to be attacked. That awful day left some 3,000 of our fellow citizens dead, and everything we have learned since tells us the terrorists would do worse if they could, and that they will even use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons against us if they can. In the world we live in now, responding to attacks is not enough. We must do everything in our power to prevent attacks — and that includes using military force. (Applause.)

All Geeked Out

Today was my second sick day. Again, I slept a lot. But in between sleeping episodes, I've been contemplating what I'm going to do about my new home theater room. The plans have been drawn up, and construction should commence soon, so I'm becoming very concerned about what equipment is going into that room and how I'm going to get it there.

My big dilemma is display technology. I used to sell high-end A/V, but DLP and LCoS and LCD displays are all technologies that simply weren't available a few years ago.

With the advent of DLP, especially, the cost of actually installing a projector has become -- dare I say it -- almost reasonable. It's still going to cost a fortune, of course, compared to what normal people would consider sane. The point is that high-end TVs cost nearly the same as high-end projectors, and you avoid the problem of the enormous box. Of course, with LCD and Mitsubishi's new DLP displays, the problem of the big box is all but gone anyway.

Too many choices to make, really. But I'll muddle through.

Two Weekends and a Sick Day, Part Two

Last weekend, a good friend of mine got married. After his first date with her, he called me up in the middle of the night to let me know that he was going to marry her. That was about two years ago. Lo and behold, he did just that on Sunday.

I was at the bachelor party on Friday night, where the groom was injured by a fairly nasty fall and the best man got a black eye. I merely got tackled by the groom, but otherwise made it through unscathed. This particular bachelor party ended about 1 a.m., but I would have gotten worried had it gone on much longer.

The oddity of the evening was capped by the groom's asking me to be a groomsman. I had previous plans that I couldn't break, so I missed the rehearsal dinner. Now, I've never been a groomsman before, but this was an especially casual wedding, so there was no tuxedo rental involved or anything like that. The bride and groom decided to have the wedding in their back yard, which turned into something like the mosquito coast during the ceremony; there were so many mosquitoes buzzing around that I kept seeing groups of them flying around my eyes. As a groomsman, I couldn't exactly swat them, though there were a few occasions where brushing them away from my face was, though uncouth, the only thing to do. They'd sprayed the yard before the ceremony, but I think the spray just made the mosquitoes angry.

After the ceremony the groomsmen escorted the bridesmaids out of the improvised chapel, and — wouldn't you know it — my escort took a dive, stepping into a small hole in the yard that was covered by the white fru-fru runner. She didn't fall, prompting a friend to say, "Not only are you a competent groomsman, you're a damned hero."

Indeed.

I was also unaware that the groom has a younger sister who ought to be a supermodel. Another friend said she was "twice my height," and that's true. The sister, however, informed me that she "played me" at the rehearsal dinner I missed. I asked her if she'd done a competent job. She assured me that she had.

In between all the wedding events, my parents and I cooked dinner for some family friends. That occupied most of the day and night on Saturday. Wound up being a relaxing and pleasant evening.

And that pretty much catches you all up to date.

Now, if I can only get rid of this stupid cold.

Two Weekends and a Sick Day, Part One

It's been busy lately, and the level of busy-ness has apparently caught up with me. I took a sick day from work today due to a cough and sore throat incident, and so now I'm on some pretty powerful antibiotics and a narcotic cough syrup.

Whether I'll be back at work tomorrow is an open question; all I wanted to do today was sleep.

But that's following two eventful weekends. Weekend-before-last I saw, and was terribly disappointed in and offended by, The Village. It's quite simply one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Its dialogue was pretentious, its acting workmanlike and uninspired, its script and story so dull and predictable that reading the side of a cereal box holds more shock and surprise. I say the movie offended me because its secret surprise ending was as silly and trite a thing as could be imagined. Someone said about something, there's no there there. That's how I feel about The Village.

Seeing that movie made it incumbent on me to see another, to cleanse the movie palate. I saw Before Sunset that same weekend, on Sunday night. The difference between a good movie and a bad one has never been so apparent to me as when seeing those two movies back-to-back. In Before Sunset, you see good acting combined with intelligent writing and un-showy directing, and the cumulative effect is one of making you forget that you're watching a movie. Which, of course, the best movies always do. Before Sunset is small and confined, but that allows it to probe and prod in a way few movies do anymore.

In between the two movies, I went to the Botanical Gardens for another concert — this time, Lyle Lovett. Worth every penny. Lyle is not only a great performer, he's a great songwriter, and some of the songs he performed I'd not heard before. I was struck by the quality of the Large Band as musicians, and equally struck by the economy of word and phrase in many of those songs. It was a good show on a beautiful night — worth the trip.

I can't say the same for Antiques Roadshow, which was also on that Saturday. That was hours of standing in line as part of a huge crowd, all of us carrying heavy boxes of stuff, not enough of it on wheels. The two-and-a-half hour wait in line was capped by about ten minutes of what seemed like perfunctory and dismissive appraising. It wasn't an experience that I'd want to miss, but I'm not sure I'd do it again.

So that was weekend-before-last. Next up, a week of work, followed by last weekend's events.

Ride of the Valkyries....Really?

So, I watched the post convention blowout for Kerry. John Williams and the Boston Pops, fireworks, and so forth. Nice display. Kind of grating to hear John Williams music (like Superman, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.) against that scene.

I kept wishing for Born on the Fourth of July. No dice, but what I got may have been better. It was certainly more...odd.

Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." You know the one, with the blaring french horns and all. The problem is that its most famous use in the last several decades was as source music in Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

We all know that Kerry, by the way, served in Vietnam.

But we also know that the scene in Apocalypse Now that Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" overlays is one in which American soldiers in helicopters massacre Vietnamese civilians with machine guns.

Kerry's admitted to committing atrocities in Vietnam. Perhaps few people know that, but the collision of John Kerry, Vietnam vet, with "Ride of the Valkyries" is most unfortunate because of the reminders that it dregdes up from our collective movie-going past.

The Night Owl Strikes Again

Finished Motherless Brooklyn. Great book. Am excited about the prospect of the movie. If nothing else, it'll be a tour de force for Norton.

Also, need to mention that I have to be at work in seven hours. Ick.

Lyle Lovett and Antiques Roadshow coming up this week, both on Saturday. Should be fun, but maybe a bit hectic.

Sunday, Laundry Sunday

As is usual on Sunday, I'm doing laundry. I actually prefer to do laundry on Friday night or Saturday, but sometimes it gets put off a day. Yesterday, I went with my cousin and my mom up to Ripley, Tennessee, to an estate sale. Pretty stuff, some of it, but I wound up with more questions than answers about some of the more expensive items there, so I didn't buy anything except a couple of ceramic bowls that will be ideal for proofing bread and the like. You can never have too many giant mixing bowls.

I'm hungry. I'm also feeling vaguely sociable tonight, but it's too late, really, to call anyone and instigate anything.

So perhaps I'll just dry my clothes and try to finish Motherless Brooklyn. I'm close, but I think I may be just far enough away from the end of the novel so that finishing it will keep me up later than I ought to be.

I did see two great movies over the weekend, The Magdalene Sisters and City of God. The former I may never watch again, but it was a brilliant piece of work about a chapter of history of which I am completely ignorant. The latter also concerns a place about which I knew little, but cinematically it was reminiscent of De Palma, Scorsese, Tarantino, Coppola, and Soderbergh, to name a few. I was expecting depression from City of God, but it wasn't depressing; the violence, poverty, cruelty, and corruption present in City of God were assumed to be the norm and thus were not questioned, just stated. Alternately, The Magdalene Sisters has a moral tone; implicitly, a place outside the asylum exists from which actions inside it are judged. Judgments, if any, in City of God are more tenuous, because the only world present in the film is that of the City.

That's not to say that City of God doesn't view what goes on in the City as being wrong and horrific, but the two films deal with violence and depravity in completely different ways.

An Amazing and Slightly Terrifying Photograph

The Drudge Report posts a photo of a storm that must've hit Miami this evening. It's truly an amazing photograph. 

Another Book on the Reading List

Dang. It's always something.

First it was William F. Buckley's new autobiography, which awaits my perusal following Motherless Brooklyn.

And now, it's Roger Kimball's The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art.

Q&A with Kimball is available on the National Review's Web site. I read the article looking for excerpts to post here and found that exercise to be fruitless, primarily because I enjoyed it all and don't feel like quoting out of context.

I am not currently a subscriber to either The National Review or The New Criterion. I have a feeling I ought to be a subscriber to both.

All that comes before in this post is an example of what a little late-night Web surfing can do; I was going to link to Rich Lowry's Tuesday article, "W.'s Double Binds," which begins:

Sometimes a political figure becomes so hated that he can't do anything right in the eyes of his enemies. President Bush has achieved this rare and exalted status. His critics are so blinded by animus that the internal consistency of their attacks on him no longer matters. For them, Bush is the double-bind president.

It's an interesting article and kind of fun, even if you're not a rabid right-winger like I am.

Weekend Parties & Photos

This weekend was full; Saturday night I hosted a grill-out party; it was fun, and it went late, but I think the mosquitoes ate more than the people did — and the people ate a lot. In fact, the party spilled over into Sunday morning. Folks went home, and then some of them came back tonight for round two. Too bad that work beckons in the morning for everyone.
 
I've decided that a digital camera is in my future. As well as a Mac. I've wanted one for a while now, but the lure of iPhoto and the other iApps is too strong to resist once one's actually considering a digital camera. Plus, OS X rocks.
 
I don't know that I'll take the G5 plunge now or wait for the new G5 iMac. I'd rather have the pro machine with the 23" HD monitor, but justifying it in terms of hobby-like photography is tough.
 
But the real problem is with the camera. I'm conflicted; I'd like a small and portable camera, because I figure I'll get more use out of that type of camera; I have an old Eos Rebel that I love, but it's big and bulky and difficult to travel with. Not the kind of camera you can take with you and snap photos any old place. It's what I might call a "destination camera." The sort of camera that requires constant planning for its use. You take it with you when you're going someplace where you're sure you want pictures. So I'd like the portability of something smaller.
 
I'd also like, however, to get the resolution and picture quality that's available from nice lenses and mondo-megapixel cameras. Additionally, everybody and his brother is making digital cameras nowadays; sifting through all the different models to find one that's appealing may take some serious time.
 
I've looked at cameras from Canon and Minolta, and I've read good and bad things about both. But that's just scratching the surface. I've used a Kodak EZShare, but it's a couple years old.
 
Several of you out there have digital cameras, I'm sure. Your comments are welcome and would be of some assistance as I begin the trek into the wilderness of digital camera-buying land.

A Dark and Stormy Night

After a day of agonizing heat and humidity, a cold front is in the process of coming through tonight; it's brought thunderstorms with it, and some relief from the sauna-like weather of earlier today.

Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler.

Motherless Brooklyn continues to be an enjoyable read, though I've not been able to devote as much time to it as I'd have liked. On the way from Amazon.com is William F. Buckley's newest book, his autobiography, Miles Gone By. Buckley, whatever one may think of his politics, is a consummate stylist; and I've heard that this book contains a number of essays that don't deal with the political; I'm anxiously awaiting this book's arrival.

I've been agonizing about my own writing; part of my job involves editing, and the writing I'm seeing because of that is in every sense atrocious. I know that reading poor quality writing negatively impacts my style. I'm concerned about this issue because I'm to write a paper on Suttree for the 25th Anniversary Celebration of same that's to be held in Knoxville, Tennessee, this October.

Finding time to reread Suttree and write a coherent, cogent paper about it is not going to be an easy job between now and October. I still have plenty of time, but I need to get to work soon.

Summer Colds & Weddings

I've spent most of the day, at work and after, battling what seems to be a summertime cold. I'm not bad off yet and hope not to be. This is a cold that apparently arrived on the plane with my sister, who was here last week. My mother's had it, and I've felt poorly all day.

There's nothing worse than a cold in the summertime.

Got an invitation from an old friend to his wedding, which is in August. The quest for someone to accompany me has now officially begun. Going to weddings alone is horrible.

Also talked to The Girl tonight. She's as happy as a clam. This, of course, was after a week of phone tag. I heard a brief report on the radio today that mentioned the pope's saying (and I'm not Catholic, despite my Italian last name) that sometimes life was so hectic that it made it impossible for people to pray and think about things. (I am sure the pope put it better than that, but his basic sentiments I won't disagree with.)

In fact, I read an essay by Mark Helprin, "The Acceleration of Tranquility" an eternity ago, and I thought then it was an epoch-making essay, in that it summed up nicely the problems with the age we're living in. Most of what he said then is more true now than when he wrote the essay.

That, in fact, is one of my favorite Helprin essays. Another, which was the first Mark Helprin I ever read, is "Against the Dehumanization of Art."

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

I am, and have been, a staunch Bush supporter viz. the War on Terror (up to and including the Iraqi campaign). When I happened across the news feed that appears now on the right pane of the site, I just couldn't resist posting it. It took all of two seconds to add.

Meeting Cormac

I've mentioned before that I'm the Webmaster over at The Cormac McCarthy Home Pages. Few people know how that came about; here's the story.

I was fortunate to have been allowed, while in college (1989-93), to interview Shelby Foote, who came to school and spoke one morning. During the course of our chat (I was nervous, and tapes of the event betray such by my constant mmmm-hmmms and other verbal tics), I asked him who his favorite contemporary novelist was. Foote remarked that Cormac McCarthy was "very good"; in Shelby Foote's argot, that's high praise indeed.

This interview was conducted in the spring of 1992, just before All the Pretty Horses was published. Foote said he'd read the galleys and the novel was (again) "very good." I waited several months and bought All the Pretty Horses the first time I saw it for sale.

I read about half of the book and then went back and bought three more copies — I'd been something of a book collector before, but encountering McCarthy induced a case of full-blown bibliomania that's not let up from that day to this.

I also became an evangelist for McCarthy, proselytizing as I was able, giving away copies of the book (most of the rest of his work was then still out of print), and generally talking about this obscure writer McCarthy at length to anyone who would listen.

All the Pretty Horses went on to become a runaway best-seller. And the reclusive McCarthy became famous. He still didn't give interviews, though, so little information existed about his life, and no critical work existed apart from Vereen Bell's The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy and John Sepich's Notes on Blood Meridian.

It turned out that the latter book had been published on the occasion of the first McCarthy conference, which was held at Bellarmine College in Kentucky in 1992. I didn't yet know it, but I'd later meet most of the small circle of scholars and enthusiasts who were at that conference.

Papers from the First Conference were assembled into another book, edited by Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne Luce. I picked up a copy of that book upon its publication.

Then in 1994, I broke up with Psycho Homewrecker, the (now ex-) girlfriend. That left me with a lot of free time on my hands. And the second volume of The Border Trilogy, The Crossing had been published earlier that year.

Also, about this time I discovered the Internet. I had an account with the old Prodigy Service, which offered "Personal Web Pages." I got a book on HTML, taught myself, and put up a page devoted to McCarthy and his work. At the time, it was practically the only site devoted to McCarthy in existence.

I collected material about McCarthy, wrote a short biography, and made lists of available criticism and reference books. Then, one day out of the blue, I got an email from Edwin T. Arnold, who I mentioned above as having co-edited the papers from the First Conference (Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy). I was, in a word, dumbstruck. I sent Dr. Arnold an email back asking if he were The Edwin T. Arnold who'd edited Perspectives, and he said he was indeed. He and some of the folks from the First Conference were contemplating forming a Society, and lo and behold, they asked for my help. Wanted me to be their Webmaster. For this, I'd get some content for my site, my Internet access paid for a while, and a seat on the Society's Board.

And the rest, as they say, is history. I attended my first McCarthy Conference in (I believe it was) 1995, and continued to participate on a more-or-less yearly basis from then on. I presented papers, had a few articles published, and generally established myself as something of a raconteur on the subject.

Again, out of the blue, I got an email asking me if I'd contribute the entry on Cormac McCarthy for the Dictionary of Literary Biography's 20th Century American Western Writers volume. I wrote that, too.

I now know and am good friends with many of the Society folks, who continue to host conferences and now publish voluminously about Cormac McCarthy. I'm continuing my maintenance of the Web site, because McCarthy's work is endlessly fascinating to me.

In October of 2002, I flew down to Houston, where several Society folks had gathered to witness the first production of McCarthy's only play, The Stonemason. McCarthy, to the shock of all of us involved with the Society, had indicated that he'd attend. Several of us met him and talked with him. He and I discussed the weather.

He's slight-of-stature with piercing blue-gray eyes that always seem to be probing something. He talks in a warm, affable manner, and his demeanor almost belies his considerable intelligence.

And that's how I met Cormac McCarthy. Other stories exist, from other people, about how McCarthy once called them up on the phone, wrote them letters, and the like. The Society as a whole, however, has taken a hands-off view toward his personal life, preferring to honor his requests and let him live his life in peace. We admire the books.

Things I Learned from James Bond?

Upon reflection, I'm struck by the fact that around that same time, I was reading Robert Ludlum's books: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Conspiracy, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, etc.

It's possible I could have picked up the below-mentioned tip from Robert Ludlum. But Bond's just so much cooler. Even if, as I heard once, you shouldn't shake a martini because it bruises the gin.

Things I Learned from James Bond

Or, The Doug Wamble Ramble

A few weeks ago, I went with friends to see Harry Connick, Jr. The venue was an outdoor park, and the six of us congregated there and waited for the show to start. At the last minute, the show's organizers had announced an opening act. It was to be a fellow named Doug Wamble, who plays a kind of loose acoustic jazz/blues.

One of the group I was with not only knew who Doug Wamble was, but went to high school with him. High school was a while ago, and the two of them had lost touch. But once the connection had been made, it was the topic of conversation throughout the night.

The show ended, and my friend decided that she should go find Doug Wamble. All of us had been drinking (not excessively, but enough to make all of this extremely funny), so we went with her on what's now known as the Wamble Ramble. We left our table and ventured over to where we thought Doug might be — the tour buses.

At this point, I began thinking about James Bond. When I was about twelve years old, I read all the James Bond books; those are like crack to a teenage boy. I bought all of them in paperback, and I'm quite sure I drove my parents batty by my repeated trips to the bookstore every third day or so to get another two or three books.

I now remember very little of those books, but one piece of advice they offered has stuck with me. If you don't know where you're going or what you're doing, acting like you do — walking at a determined pace and without looking like you're lost or otherwise clueless — can get you a long way. I'm not sure if the others were aware of this particular piece of advice, but that's what I was thinking about when we embarked on our little quest.

Shortly, we were stopped by security. He asked us where we were going, and the Wamble Ramble instigator spoke up for all of us. She said, "we're trying to get to our cars."

Look like you know what you're doing, I'm thinking.

She was very confident.

Security guard buys her story, and proceeds to walk us to the back gate. He doesn't know, and we don't say, that our cars are clear around on the other side of the park. He lets us out, and we mill around. Now, we're still carrying coolers full of ice, food, drinks, and the like. That stuff's starting to get heavy. And we have a long walk ahead of us.

Fortunately, the night was cool. We soon happened upon a large chain link fence.

Trouble.

There was a gate, though, and it happened to be open. The chain and padlock were there, but the gate wasn't locked. We scooted on through. Lucky for us, because if we hadn't made it through that gate, we'd have had to double back — and I'm not at all certain the security guard would have thought so much of the "getting to our cars" story the second time he heard it from us, especially since we'd then be walking in the opposite direction.

After a bit more meandering, we made it back to the cars, and the night proceeded uneventfully from there. More drink, lots of good conversation, and the recollection of being thwarted by a security man who seemed to be taking his job a little too seriously.

Coda: my friend did manage to get in touch with Wamble. She called his agent.

So that's what I learned from James Bond. Look like you know what you're doing.

It's too bad, though. One might suppose there were a lot of other more interesting things I could have picked up from 007 but didn't. Bond was always good with the ladies. Plus, he had some cool toys.

Not too Pretty, but....

Added an RSS feed to the Blog this evening.

Well — added something like one. An Atom feed (per Blogger), and a piece of script that lets me parse RSS feeds from other sites. My example, in the right pane, is the iTunes Music Store RSS.

Information about how to do this came from:

http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/

More on this experiment later.

Paul Simon Still Rules After All These Years

I'm buying the new huge Paul Simon CD set; I'd prefer to wait until the albums are released in SACD or DVD Audio, but I heard this track the other day, and I am for some reason completely captivated by it. It's a demo of "Homeless" that was evidently recorded prior to Simon's South African trek.

QuickTime
Windows Media Player

Sometimes, simplicity speaks for itself.

What The M is Reading

Last night, I started Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. That means I've abandoned both Gould's Book of Fish and Simon Winchester's Krakatoa, which have been sitting on my bedside table for a while now, untouched.

Lethem's book is intriguing, as the narrator has Tourette's Syndrome, so is given to sudden verbal outbursts. The Tourette's is mostly not being played for laughs, but it does make for an interesting and different read. I've had this book for several years now, have heard good things about it, and have been meaning to get to it for a while now.

I also hear that it's to be a movie next year, starring and directed by Ed Norton.

Another comment about my reading of late: I've been reading almost nothing but mysteries for the last several years now. I'm not sure when this happened, but it's definitely a trend in my reading habits.

Turnabout is Fair Play

http://www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com/

A film about a guy's trying to get an interview with Michael Moore, who apparently won't grant him one.

A Strange Group of People

My family is a strange group of people.

Before the big patriotic concert, there was large family gathering. Food everywhere. My sister's in town, too, so she was there. My dad's family doesn't get together much, but when they do, it's almost always a hoot.

My dad's family is the crazy side. How crazy depends on the day. They weren't really crazy today, only moderately so. Not enough alcohol was consumed to make anybody talk too much. I did see pictures of my grandparents and great grandparents that I'd never seen before. Strange, looking at pictures of relatives that have been dead since well before I was born. These were folks from the Old Country, too.

Stranger and Stranger

The life keeps getting stranger and stranger. "The girl" has moved back here from another city, but she's dating another guy, and they're pretty serious. She and I have had our big talk, and the outcome was much like I'd expected, but not what I'd wanted. However, her moving back here has allowed us to reconnect with each other. We talk more, and actually get to see each other from time to time now, so things are good. Most people have too few friends. When you find a good one, you'd best hang on to 'em.

Another friend, an old and dear friend, recently lost her husband in a terrible tragic accident. After having been out of contact with her for ten years, we're suddenly talking again. Waking up and finding myself in that situation one morning was something I'd never expected.

Just goes to show you, you can't plan anything. Not really.

I'm trying to do what is right and good; beyond that, I don't know.

The weekly trivia team has exchanged Blog addresses. I haven't yet provided mine, because the Blog has languished so long that it needs some content before I let anyone else know its whereabouts.

In other news, attended a supposedly patriotic concert event tonight. Thought that the folks performing had mistaken the holiday. It's Independence Day, not the Fourth of July. Someone ought to shoot the producer of that show; sound was bad, too.

At the end, there were fireworks, though. So, all in all, I'm happy. There's not much that feeling the explosion from fireworks ruffling the cuffs of your pants won't make up for.

Notes After a Prolonged Absence

I have decided to renew my commitment to my Blog. Henceforth, it shall be about what interests me. As that varies from day to day, so will the subject matter of this blog vary.

Today's topic is the nature of the Blog itself. I've discovered that a friend of mine has a Blog. And this friend, who happens to be female, does not know that I know of the existence of her blog.

The question of the moment is: am I obligated to tell her of the existence of my Blog? And if she knew of my Blog, would she be obligated to tell me?

I feel as though I'm spying on her. The Blog is personal, somewhat private, but — as it's on the Web, public.

What are my ethical obligations here?