Update II

I am nearly done with grading, and making delicious headway on my new SF story, which is called (at the moment) Subverting The Data, and is about an Ann Coulter quotation.  No, really! (No, not really.)

In other news, I did not (yet) mop the kitchen floor.

Also, Herr Dr. Delagar and I have been watching Bones on the downloads nightly, and I am thinking I might have a paper in what is happening with the characters this season.  Didn't Brennan used to be a kick-ass tough feminist?  I seem to remember she had mad martial arts skilz and that?  What's with this how she needs Booth to rescue her from peril this season? And can't, all of a sudden, negotiate social situations?  That was a trope in season one, I recall, for a few episodes, but they dropped that shit.  Now it's back.

Also, my fuck, what's with the Patriot Act crap?  Dissidents are demons now, I see.

Well, we are on Fox Network.  But still.

On one hand, this is one of the few shows where we have People of Color in major roles as well as actual women characters in major roles, doing real things (notice how easily this show passes the Bechdel Test) like real people. 

On the other hand: boy, did it slide to the reactionary this season.  I wish I could pretend I didn't know what was up with that.

Kawaiia!

Via Bitch magazine (my issue came yesterday), I bring you the ultimate in kitty cuteness.

A cat blog from Japan, about a cat named Maru.

If your kid is anything like mine (or you are!), wails of delight will soon ensue.

Byatt's The Children's Book: Review

I've been reading A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book for the past week; I've been reading it slow, because I can't bear for it to end.  

I read Byatt's Possession way back when it was published, a billion years ago.  That one won the Booker Prize, I believe.  Then I went out and read everything else she had written, though nothing else she had written up to that point was nearly as good as Possession.  The movie, when it came out, as I recall, sucked; or anyway, wasn't nearly as good as the book. 

I was a little wary, getting this book, despite a review I read somewhere, which promised me wonders.  But oh my is it good.

It seems like it will just be a kind of Dickensian knockoff, at first, although a very well written one.  Byatt is a brilliant writer.  But as we climb further and further into the book, and Byatt reveals more and more about her characters, the layers of meaning begin to build -- and oh, this is a great book.  Much better even than Possession.  I'll just say, because I don't want to give spoilers, that it's the most truly feminist book I have read in a long time.  But not a bangy bang the drum feminist.  Feminist in the sense that she's written a great work of literature about what it means to be a woman in the patriarchy feminist.

I love this book.  I think I want to marry this book.

Also -- if you know anything about E. Nesbit's life?  That will make you love this book even more.

Stupid Girls

I love this video!

Pink: Stupid Girls

Via Flea at One Good Thing

This is Interesting

Michael Jackson almost broke the Internet.

People searching for news of his death took down Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia, among others.

A monument of sorts.

Jeez, Me Too

Poor Obama.  I know just how he feels.

"Lately, though, it seems like he'd rather talk about the resurgence of Taliban warlords...than the show."

Kill'em All

"We can kill everybody!"

So says one of the heroes in the charming movie Boondock Saints, which I so wanted to blame on George W., because WTF is not his fault?  And this movie ought to be his fault.  It should, it should.

Ick.

I had to watch it, b/c one of my students is doing an IS with me (Independent Study, for y'all not in the trade) on Villains in Popular Culture -- I won't go into tons of details, but among the works she's looking at are this movie, along with an utterly appalling TV series, of which I had been happily ignorant until she brought it to my attention, called Dexter, and that other appalling series, 24.

Sorry.  I had to go take a Xanax after writing that paragraph.  Do you have any idea what's been happening to our culture over the past ten years?  Do have any notion what the fucking Right has done to us?  Go watch 24 and Dexter and Boondock Saints.  I double-dog dare you.

Grr.  Where was I?

Boondock Saints.

These twin brothers have this vision from God --

Well, let's not start there.

Let's start with the opening, where these charming good-looking twin brothers who work in a meat-packing plant, fun-loving, hard-drinking boys, get assigned to train this evil woman -- you can tell she's evil because (a) she's a woman and (b) when our good brother is attempting to explain something to her and ever so harmlessly uses the phrase "rule of thumb" she goes off on a feminist rant about how rule of thumb referred to men being allowed to beat their wives with sticks no bigger than their thumbs and then (c) when our good, handsome brother makes a joke about how that stick obviously wouldn't be big enough, it oughta have been called rule o'wrist, hee hee, she gets all miffed (feminists have no sense of humor) and kicks him, you know, there (feminists don't fight fair).

Also, did I mention she was fat and ugly?  Feminists are fat and ugly.

Jump-cut to a bar, where good and handsome and charming brothers are enjoying a well-earned beer after having been fired for slugging the bitch feminist, even though she started the fight, and the wink they give the good woman (the only good woman in the entire movie, may I add), who has just fetched them a beer.  Yay for good women!

So sad, they've lost their job.  They not worried though!  Who cares about jobs!  Not like they've got some bitch at home to nag them, after all.  No fools these guys!

Don't you worry, either!  Soon, through some weird plot twist that doesn't make a deal of sense, they tangle with the Russian mafia, accidently kill a couple of evil Russian immigrants (bad ones!  Evil Russian mobster immigrants!  But all immigrants in this movie are evil, wicked criminal types, so don't get confused) and hey presto give themselves up to William Dafoe, who is a gay homophobic police, who can solve crimes just by wandering around the crime scene looking mystic.

And he likes vigilantes.  Why?  You got me.  Because even though he can solve crimes by wandering around the crime scene etc he hates police? (He does hate police, though we're never told why. He hates everyone, though.)  Because the judges won't convict the criminals when he brings them to court?  Because liberals and the ACLU have rendered justice in America useless?  I'm guessing this here last, but the movie never says.

Then the Irish handsome brothers, who, it turns out, speak a gazillion different languages (Why?  Mama wanted them to.  Why?  You got me.) have a vision from God, who speaks from a leaky roof.  (What?  Don't ask me.)  The vision says they should kill people.  God wants them to kill people.

Don't worry.  Just bad people.

How will they know these are bad people?

They'll know.

Well, okay, then.

So they kill bad people.  They become heroes.  Because everyone Likes Killing Bad People in America.

Then their Daddy finds them.  Turns out he Kills Bad People too!  It's a family trade!

Movie ends with them breaking into a courtroom, where an Evil Italian Immigrant is about to be released, despite all the Mountains of Evidence against him, and shooting him down in front of everyone.

Heroes!  American Heroes!

Here's the speech they make just before they shoot the Evil Italian: 

"We do not ask for your poor or your hungry.  We do not ask for your tired and sick...it is your evil that will be sought by us.  With every breath we will hunt them down.  Each day we will spill their blood til it rains down from the sky.  Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal; these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace...those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost.  We urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over into our domain."

The narrative, clearly, approves of these two, of their actions; you can see that Duffy, who makes the film, tries to give himself some wiggle room, with the bit at the end where he goes about asking "audience" members what they think, and the bit at the start with its snotty reference to Kitty Genovese; but, as with 24 and Dexter, the narrative is careful to make the people being slaughtered and tortured so evil that, obviously, the audience is meant to approve of the actions of the killers/torturers in these texts.

To say this is disturbing is to understate matters.

We'll leave the utter misogyny of the text for some later date -- though it's interesting, I'll just add, how contempt for rule of law and misogyny so often do go together.

Living in the Future

We're driving past where the new Target is supposed to some day open here in Pork Smith (I have ceased to believe this day will ever come) and while we're waiting for the light to change the kid asked me to explain why time travel* can't happen -- paradox issues, this is what she does not understand -- and I am attempting to explain, given my limited grasp of chaos theory and math in general, and all of a sudden her attention is caught by the new giant HD billboard which has come to our city, the first we have seen in these parts, which is right above that intersection, and showing -- well, who CARES what it is showing?

"Ooo!" she says, as though at a fireworks display. "Aah!"

"Yes," I say, because I have seen it a few times before. It shows an ad for Arvest Bank, and one for Wal-Mart. It says Life in Pork Smith is Worth Living! It's Huge and bright against the coming dusk, and like the big screens in Blade Runner, except it's the only screen in our world, and very pretty.

"It's--" the kid stuttered. "It's..."

"Ooo," I said. "Shiny."

She giggled and flung herself backwards in the seat. "Yes! Shiny!"

We're living in the future.

*Time travel in fiction, obviously, not time travel really. I have no hope of getting a handle on actual time travel.

Hee

Okay, only XKCD fans will like this one, but it cracks me and the kid up.

You're Reading What?

You might have noticed the minor contretemps, out in the blogosphere, started by this smug column, by Ron Charles, where he congratulates himself for being too grown-up and clever to read Harry Potter.

I'd feel better about the reactions to this column, which are nearly all scathing (see Lauren, who has collected some for us), if the commentors then didn't go on to make it clear they, more or less, agreed, in principal, with Charles.

That is, they too see reading as a Serious Goddamn Big Deal, something you do, like taking your vitamins, or, well, going to temple. Or, I don't know, the Gym? As if their library card ought to have No Pain No Gain stamped on the back of it.

As an English professor, this makes me edgy.

What's with this "good" book/"fun" book dichotomy? Texts are texts. If you don't like the puppy, don't read it. As Ben Franklin pointed out, all knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind.

So leave Moby Dick alone if you're not interested. And Faulkner, for heaven's sake. (Me, I liked Faulkner, when I was 24. Now I find him a windy old class apologist. Things change.)

What is wrong with reading books written for children, or SF, or mystery novels, or, to choose a specific example, Charles Portis's True Grit? Nothing. I read a great deal of children's fiction, as a matter of fact, and not only because I have a nine year old. Some of the books written for children are fine books. Try Hilary McKay some time. Cynthia Voigt is also very good. Some of the best writing out there is being done in SF right now --China Mieville springs to mind, and Richard Morgan, and Octavia Butler, who, sadly, died a few years ago, at the height of her career.

Read widely, that's my advice. Some of the books being pushed, today, as literature are nice enough. Most, though, eh.

Oh! And you know what's not getting enough attention right now? Graphic novels. I read an excellent graphic novel about nine months ago, The Rabbi's Cat, by Joann Sfar.

Also, it doesn't have to be reading. Reading is my vehicle. If DVDs or music or art (or graphic art or cartooning or something I haven't thought of) is someone else's vehicle, then it is. It's all our culture. We make these boxes, we make these rules. We need to get over that. Human expression. Nothing human ought to be alien to us, and as elevated as it makes us feel to sneer at someone else because their form of expression looks inferior to ours, well, keep in mind you're either doing yours because you like to do yours or because you don't. In the former case, it's no sacrifice, is it? And in the latter, you're a fool. Grow up and move on.

Edit: Also, this, via Three-Toed Sloth.