August 2002 Archives

A horror movie populated by extremely cheerful people. Seriously, they don't seem all that stressed by having a blood-sucking alien stomping around hanging people upside down in the greenhouse and shredding up dogs to feed the podlings that will take over the Earth. I actually started to suspect the woman *was* a podling, so insignificant was her fear reaction to these events. But it was kind of cool that she didn't faint. And she tied her boyfriend to a chair, so that's good.

So it turns out that the eight glasses of water a day thing is a myth. I hate it when disinformation is propagated by trade groups for their own benefit. I also hate it when people can't read - in my search for info on this myth, I found that the origination of the recommendation might have been an actual scientific study where they said that X number of milliliters of water should be consumed per day and (here's the important part) about half of that amount comes from the food we eat. X = about 8 glasses of water, and a legend is born. Sheesh.

Also, I've picked my candidate. Lisa Rogers is running for president. Yay! C. probably won't let me vote for her, but I'm enjoying the thought. There should be more folksingers elected to political office. Especially if they are as irritated as I am by the pronunciation "nucular."

"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" was eminently satisfying, and has aged wonderfully. Without the visuals, I'm even curious whether the time period would even be distinguishable. (Well, the reactions would seem a bit extreme unless they changed the accents to deep Southern.) While watching "issue" movies and television shows, I am often irritated that the characters don't seem to be using the best points available in their arguments - not so here. The characters' reactions are fully developed, realistic, and no one is the bad guy or the hero. Characters are, by turns, selfish, insensitive, fearful, joyful, naive, and compassionate. The film allows for a discussion about racism and race relations without polarization or playing on your sympathies. Quite an accomplishment.

Kudos as well to the Turner Classic Movies channel for having a "host" who tells you little bits about the movie and its stars at the beginning and end. Those of us who weren't around when these movies came out find these things quite interesting. As I pointed out to my grandfather wrt classical music, often these contextualizing factors help people make personal connections with unfamiliar materials, which can lead to greater enjoyment. I think he still prefers the all-music no-announcing style of radio broadcasting, but he did acknowledge my point that purveyors of non-mainstream culture often have to change to appeal to new audiences.

Yesterday I learned how to use Dreamweaver's Test Site functionality. I love it when I learn a new DWW trick, and I wish I could get one of the people who wrote it to come sit next to me and point out whenever I'm doing something the hard way. I promise I would learn quickly, so they would only have to be here for a couple of days, and I would make macaroni and cheese and tostadas for them in return. Then the Photoshop person would come by, and then I would know many useful things for the making of web pages.

My initial thought about the web, when I heard of it at Macalester, was "Interesting. Don't see why I would ever use it." Now I crave personal tutoring from programmers. Who would have thought?

Today I got every single thing done that I needed to do while I was out. The only bad thing was that I accidentally wrote on my hat again. It wasn't on my head at the time, so it was not quite as bad as it could have been. But this is the third time ballpoint has met this particular bit of canvas, and it's unnecessary. Luckily, the hat is quite washable.

I've now had cinnamon toast and pumpkin pie in the same day. :)

The world is getting worse. I'll tell you how I know: scientists have found a snake that actually rips its prey to pieces. I thought the mosquitos in my yard were bad, and that's true, but this is worse.

This is one of my favorite pieces of writing lately. I have signed up for the Powell's newsletter, which is irritating, and I believe I will stop it soon - but I have also been receiving the Review-a-Day mailing, which is great. That's where I found this, and it's what a review should be. It's about the book itself, not about the subject of the book, which about 1 out of 5 reviews that come to my inbox through this list seem to not get. There's nothing worse than reading someone's summary of a book, unless it's listening to someone's summary of a movie. Or having a snake rip you to pieces before it eats you.

[Update, May 29, 2004: I have now learned my lesson about simply linking to something I like and not retaining the text. Damn New Republic, trying to make money in a capitalist economy! Here are my favorite bits of the review of Rick Moody's The Black Veil by Dale Peck, as stored at Powell's.]

Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation. I apologize for the abruptness of this declaration, its lack of nuance, of any meaning besides the intuitive; but as I made my way through Moody's oeuvre during the past few months I was unable to come up with any other starting point for a consideration of his accomplishment. Or, more accurately, every other starting point that I tried felt disingenuous, nothing more than a way of setting Moody up in order to knock him down. One of those starting points was this: "Rick Moody is a lot of things, but he is not actually dumb." This was an attempt at charity, and though I still think that it's true enough, I don't think that it matters; at any rate, his intelligence does not make up for the badness of his books.

My gut feeling is that if you honestly do not believe that this is bad writing, then you are a part of the problem. When I finished The Black Veil I scrawled "Lies! Lies! All lies!" on the cover and considered my job done.