September 04, 2008
You Pinheads.
"Really? One of the most outrageous double standards you've ever seen?"
The media-political complex may be about to field the first female vice-president or the first African American president, but some things never change. They're all still lying sacks of . . . well, you know.
September 03, 2008
List Compulsion Meme
Considering the haphazard, spotty quality of this list, I definitely don't feel saddened by my haphazard, spotty experience with it. Nevertheless, it is a fun list. Of course, coming from me, that means nothing . . . have I mentioned that I love lists?
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you own.
3) Underline the books for which you have seen a movie or TV production.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Really?)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (in-progress, but well over half)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 leak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (Rather a lot Austen . . . and this one's pretty obscure)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Hmmm . . . didn't I pretty much just see this on here?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (The list fails. The end.)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (Also known as Simon Birch)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Yeah, definitely Austen-heavy.)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Gattaca should count as a movie version)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Ick.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Ad nauseum. Quite a lot of Dickens, as well.)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (C'mon, what gives here?)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Apocalypse Now TOTALLY counts.)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (One of those tiresome "children's" books that was really written for adults.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (Bunny book!)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (This list seems to lack an awareness of metonymy.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
August 30, 2008
Tough Call
You know, I'm beginning to think that the history of American presidential elections might be a very interesting subject indeed. Everybody knows that 2008 is a historic election year; even more so now, because at the end of it we will have either the first African American president, or the first female vice-president (not counting Glenn Close, of course). Fewer people realize that this will be the first election to see a senator ascend directly to the presidency since JFK in 1960 . . . but I've seen it mentioned here and there.
What I haven't seen anyone talk about was a discovery I made last night, as I contemplated the difficulty of knowing exactly how either candidate might handle himself in the White House. In the last 56 years, there has not been a presidential election where the public could not simply cast their vote either for or against the policies and accomplishments of the previous administration. Every election since 1952 has involved either a president up for re-election, or that president's vice-president. Check out this blurb about the '52 election and see if it sounds familiar (yes, it's paraphrased from Wikipedia):
National tension and weariness after two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War set the stage for a hotly-fought presidential contest. The Democratic Party nominated Governor Adlai Stevenson II of Illinois; Stevenson had gained a reputation in Illinois as an intellectual and eloquent orator. The Republican Party countered with popular war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Of course, there are a lot of interesting differences. This was at a time when "war hero" meant World War II, in those heady, patriotic days before Vietnam. Then, too, it was the Democrats who were the unpopular incumbent party, coming off of 20 years in power with Harry Truman at a record-high 66% disapproval rating (later surpassed by Nixon and Bush II).
During the campaign, Stevenson ran on a contrast between America under Herbert Hoover and the Republicans at the height of the depression and America under the Democrats at the beginning of the prosperous 1950s. His speaking style was eloquent and thoughtful, but he was branded an "egghead" and an intellectual . . . not the best label at the height of McCarthyism. Ike, meanwhile, chickened out and embraced McCarthy publicly, though he loathed the man and his tactics in private. His campaign blamed the Democrats for the trouble in Korea, and for the encroaching malaise of global Communism.
The Republicans hit a portentuous snag when Eisenhower's running mate, Richard Nixon, was accused of accepting large, undeclared gifts from donors after he had accused the Democrats of similar ethical lapses. Ike nearly dropped him from the ticket, until Nixon gave a stirring TV address that came to be known as the "Checkers" speech (see below, particularly from about 6:06 to 7:23 . . . it's crackerjack).
Anyway, I'm about to hit a tangent in earnest and be researching and writing for hours, so I'll just stop there. The point is . . . pay attention. This is going to be unique.
August 21, 2008
August 19, 2008
Thunderbolts, Saints, and Blue Tigers
So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges of the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It is true that the church told some men to fight and others not to fight; and it is true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means that the church preferred to use its Super-men and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be some good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be some good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other. They existed side by side [...] the paradox of the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is: Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved.
-- G.K. Chesterton (from "The Paradoxes of Christianity" in Orthodoxy)
Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task; he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it. If he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day, he would get on slowly. But if he altered his favourite colour every day, he would not get on at all. If, after reading a fresh philosopher, he started to paint everything red or yellow, his work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except a few blue tigers walking about, specimens of his early bad manner. This is exactly the position of the average modern thinker. It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example. But it is literally the fact of recent history.
-- G.K. Chesterton (from "The Eternal Revolution" in Orthodoxy)
August 14, 2008
August 07, 2008
Defining Terms
Sadist - One who checks out library books exclusively from the bottom shelf knowing that someone will have to put them back.
Masochist - The unpaid volunteer that puts them back.
July 31, 2008
Absent Much?
How have I not posted in 2 months? Well, you start to write something up, and then you put it off, and then more stuff happens, and it starts to pile up and free time isn't as easy to come by as it once was, before you were working at the library (even though it's only part-time), and you're still pretending to keep up with your movie blog (oh, yeah, that's still on, by the way) and doing summer-y type things and . . . this sentence has got to end somewhere, how about here?
So, yeah, the last few months are a bit blurry. I'm still working 22 hours a week at the library, and that's going well-ish. I don't care for the hours (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, all day Friday, and Sunday afternoons), but they could be worse, I suppose. Being back on the front lines of customer service (and a free service at that) has renewed my faith in human stupidity, but I'll hold off on sharing specific stories for now. When I harp on the subject, some of you get the mistaken impression that I'm bitter about it (or maybe it's just that I must be harboring a desperate bitterness and cynicism for thinking such horrible things about my fellow man).
In lieu of that, allow me to pass on this link. Warning: Shockingly NSFW language . . . but so funny. And for the record, no, I have not yet posted here. But I've been sorely tempted. Maybe if I had any sort of internet access at work. *grumble, grumble*
Pretty soon after I started, I rearranged my schedule to steal away to West Texas and see the family for a few days. Everyone was there at the same time, at least for a few hours (Brett arrived late from Austin . . . or I arrived early, depending on who you ask) for Ian's 16th birthday. Other June activities included a visit to Longview to see the Scholls before they picked up and left the state for good (or so they think), and visits with the Gallaghers, etc. And I saw the greatest animated movie ever (WALL-E), which you should definitely go see.
July started with a bang and a trip to Kilgore for the Texas Shakespeare Festival, attended by the Wheelers, the Gallaghers, the Barbours (Geoffrey and parents, before you go jumping to conclusions) and the Randy. I was only able to attend 3 of the 4 performances because of having to work on Sunday (much hate), but I saw "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" (an early play by the guy who wrote "Amadeus") on Thursday night, "1776" on Friday night (the 4th!), and "Julius Caesar" (sort of) on Saturday night. I had to miss "Twelfth Night," and I'd rather not talk about it.
"The Royal Hunt of the Sun" was a very interesting play, though the pacing dragged in spots. On the surface, it's about Pizarro and the conquest of the Incan empire, but it shares many themes with "Amadeus" as well. When Pizarro is forced to hold the Incan king (and god incarnate) during the second act, the two form a bizarre friendship. Atahualpa leads Pizarro to the distressing realization that he lost his faith in Christianity a long time ago, only to replace the void with . . . himself. As the parallels between Atahualpa and Christ build towards the climax, the play raises all sorts of interesting questions about the fine (non-existent?) line between faith and madness.
"1776" was an excellent production. The musical talent was top-notch, the orchestra was great, and, of course, it's just a really fun show. You'd have to work pretty hard to screw it up. We all enjoyed it immensely. "Julius Caesar" was . . . let's say "interpreted" in a way that, from where I was sitting (just a few rows back from the stage) defied explanation. Some elements really worked; others, not so much. It started off looking like an '80s music video (yes, they Rick Rolled Caesar . . . don't click that link!), shifted to '40s noir in the middle section, then went all Matrix at the end. But it's a great play, and you can't keep good material down.
The following weekend involved a 24-hour train ride from Longview to Joliet, Illinois with Rachel and Wilson to attend the Moore wedding. It was a unique, but not entirely unpleasant, experience. And I'm talking about the trip, not the nuptials. Scholl has part of the low-down on all of those shenanigans up on his blog, so I'll leave the rest of that admittedly monumental task in his *ahem* "capable" hands. Maybe someday his account will arrive at the actual day of the wedding. I, for one, would love to know how that all went down (but that's another story). We got back to Waco on Monday evening. That weekend, Randy and the Gallaghers came for a visit and we went to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, so that was fun.
Anyway, it's late and it's technically August now and I have to work all day tomorrow, so I'll bring this rather unsatisfactory report to a close. That's the bare-bones account of my summer (which isn't yet over, actually). Still, this post has got to end somewhere, how about here?
June 01, 2008
Celtic Women
Doug and YouTube recently introduced me to a ridiculously-talented group called "Celtic Woman." After wandering through many of their songs (and listening to a few of them a couple dozen times), I went out today and bought one of their CDs: "A New Journey." I highly recommend it . . . here are a few of my favorites. It's quality stuff.
The Voice
The Spanish Lady
Dulaman
At the Ceili
May 27, 2008
Horton Goes to Japan
I should probably post about that whole wedding in California thing, but I'ma wait a few more days for that. Things are feeling a bit hectic after the trip . . . I slept for about 16 hours on Monday, and today was my first day at the new job (part-time at the Waco Public Library), then there were errands to run and whatnot. So this evening I took Rachel to see Horton Hears a Who! at the dollar theater (Tuesday is $0.50/ticket all day!) and relax.
It was a pretty funny movie, and probably the best feature-length Seuss adaptation to date. Definitely worth the fifty cents. There was a great scene that I found on YouTube to share. Funny stuff. Oh, and if anyone knows of a blog entry about the wedding elsewhere, feel free to speak up (especially if they have pictures, which I do not).