Random 10 7/3
Just shy of half were guessed last week. Let’s see how you fare this week:
Guess the lyric, win no prize! It’s just that easy! Good luck!
June mix
A surprisingly short mix this month:
- “Papa Was a Rodeo” by Kelly Hogan & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
- “Listzonmania” by Phoenix
- “Laughing With” by Regina Spektor
- “If the Tide Swings” by Reed KD
- “The Transformers Theme” by John Anealio
- “Are You Gonna Move it for Me?” by the Donnas
- “Summerland” by the Woodlands
- “I Wanna Go Home” by Van Morrison, Lonnie Donegan, and Chris Barber
- Can We Stay” by the Woodlands
And maybe a bit of a cheat, including two songs by the Woodlands at the end there. Still, some good tunes. I could listen to that Kelly Hogan track again and again.
Random 10 6/26
Last week. This week:
- “Basket Case” by Warren Zevon, guessed by Betty
She’s pretty as a picture and totally crazed - “London Calling” by the Clash, guessed by Clayton
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin - “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Stephen Malkmus & The Million Dollar Bashers (orig. Bob Dylan), guessed by Generik
You’ve been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books - “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas, guessed by Clayton
You know the preacher likes the cold - I Know This Bar” by Ani DiFranco
It’s not that far from old Voelker’s Bowling Alley - “The Spirit of Giving” by the New Pornographers
Mark says the herald angels won’t hear it - “Spiderman” by Jill Sobule
I’m in my costume, my mask and tights - “Cancer for the Cure” by Eels
Buckle up and endure now, sweet thing - “What Makes the Cherry Red” by Christine Fellows
Here’s the line break to remind you there has been a struggle - “Michael Myers Resplendent” by the Mountain Goats
No one emerges triumphantly from it
Good luck!
Bookninja-like reflexes
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Have you voted for Heather for Bookninja guest blogger yet?
I’m just saying. You really ought to. |
Wednesday various
- Ugh. Next year, the Best Picture category for the Oscars will have 10 nominees. This sounds like a bad idea all around, but we’ll see in 2010.
- Product placement happens all the time, but what happens if the product you’re placing disappears before your movie rolls out?
Also back, if not for long, are the Autobots Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a GMC TopKick pickup), which have suffered a fate more terminal, at least to the brand, than any meted out by the Decepticons: General Motors has sold Hummer and discontinued the TopKick. [NY Times: Invasion of the Robot Toys, Redux]
- Remember when MySpace was cool? Yeah, me neither. But it once was the hot property. Nowadays, not so much. [via]
- Well this is just terrifying: Great white sharks hunt just like Hannibal Lecter. [via]
- And finally, two quotes from an interview with Ursula K. Le Guin [via]:
This distinction makes most sense to me: Science fiction—and the correct shortcut is “sf”—uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it’s doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors. “Space opera” is nice, but I’d call Star Wars sci-fi, because it’s what most people mean when they use the term. Sci-fi uses the images that sf—starting with H.G. Wells—made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It’s fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I’ve written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.
The rule is, you only invent what you have to. And that’s pretty much what’s right in front of the reader. Let’s say it’s an ansible. I do not, in fact, invent the ansible. I do not explain how it works. I cannot, but shhh. I simply present the device as working, and as coming from a society which is far in advance of ours in science and technology, having spaceships that can travel nearly as fast as light, et cetera. And this background or context creates expectation and softens up the readers’ credulity so that they’re willing to “believe in” the ansible—inside the covers of the book. After the ansible had been around for a while, I invented the man who invented it, Shevek, in The Dispossessed. And he and I played around with some pretty neat speculations about time and interval and stuff, which lent more plausibility to the gimmick itself. But all I really invented was a) the idea of an instantaneous transmitter and b) a name for it. The reader does the rest. If you give them enough background/context, they can fill in the gaps. It isn’t just smoke and mirrors. There has to be a coherent vision of how things hang together in that society/culture/world. All the details have to fit together and be thought through as to their implications. But, well… it’s mostly smoke and mirrors. What else is any fiction?
Tuesday various
- Remember when Bryan Fuller’s return to Heroes was heralded as the thing that would turn that show around (much to the consternation of Pushing Daisies fans and people who’ve happily given up on Heroes for quite some time)? Well, yeah…not so much. Fuller is leaving the show.
- Speaking of shows that maybe don’t know when to quit… Is it possible that Scrubs is now its own spinoff?
- Not wanting to be left off of the beating-a-dead-horse bandwagon, Steven Spielberg and friends are hard at work on an Indiana Jones 5. Please, make it stop.
- Have you ever wondered how medieval porpoise was cooked? Well wonder no further. [via]
- And finally, because you seriously need to see this, in all its delicious awfulness, if you haven’t already:
That just may give the Star Wars Holiday Special a run for its money as the worst thing George Lucas has ever (indirectly) wrought. [via]
Monday various
- Liz Hand asks, “So do kids even know about dummies anymore, let alone know to be scared of them?” If they follow the link she provides, I think they will be. I know some of those dummies scare me.
- Say…wanna win a piece of the moon? You have until June 29. [via]
- Dan Meth’s Futuristic Movie Timeline. [via]
- Harold Ramis on Ghostbusters:
The comic edge of Ghostbusters will always be the same. It’s still treating the supernatural with a totally mundane sensibility. In the world of ghostbusting, there are certain givens. You’re always going to have some new invented technology, some pseudo-science that sounds right because we drop enough familiar terms from physics and engineering, and pseudo-methodology, something that people will think they may have read something about before. People may have actually thought there was a Zuul or a Gozer. You say “ancient Sumerian deity,” and that’s enough, people will think you read a book and you know something.
- And finally, though you’ve probably seen it already, here’s the very funny John Hodgman at the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner:
Hodgman himself talks about it in a little more detail here, suggesting, “If the protesters in Iran have never heard of Doctor Who, their efforts now are undeniably geekish.”
The Perils of Picoult
There’s an interesting profile of author Jodi Picoult in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine — albeit one focused more on the type of books she writes than on the author herself, and one in which Picoult emerges as sometimes almost strangely non-present even when the focus of the piece switches back to the biographical:
Asked at the time to recall her adolescence, she found herself agreeing with the idea that the things we remember from those years are often the most vivid occasions of melancholy and humiliation. Picoult can summon up the memory of having her fingers smashed into a locker by a hallway bully but little else of her younger life in any great detail, she told me.
It must be said, I have never read any of Picoult’s books, and I was only vaguely familiar with her name before I saw the trailer for My Sister’s Keeper. But, as the Times notes, she “has found enormous commercial success as the most visible and dedicated practitioner of a subcategory of contemporary genre fiction that might best be described as the literature of children in peril.”
Or, as Michael Schaub of Bookslut puts it, “Jodi Picoult wants you to know your child is probably dying right now.”
From the trailer for the film, and my basic understanding of the plot — “Anna Fitzgerald looks to earn medical emancipation from her parents who until now have relied on their youngest child to help their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate remain alive,” says the IMDB — that definitely seems to be the case. More than anything, the basic story seems to force one into taking an ethical stand on something that is unlikely and contrived, spelled out in what the Times calls “tidy ironies and florid prose.” Well yes, I do think raising a daughter solely as donor stock for her older, cancer-stricken sibling is probably a bad thing. Morally dubious at the least. So thank you for telling that me I’m right in thinking so. If anything like that should ever actually, you know, happen, I’ll be sure to know that it’s a very bad thing.
However, as the Times points out, “[w]hile Picoult’s notion of what constitutes domestic incident may stretch ideas of plausibility, it rests on a level of forensic detail that requires wide-ranging research.”
Which makes me wonder: if the story wasn’t set in the real world, would its being unrealistic bug me? If Picoult’s novels were, that is, science fiction, would suspension of disbelief take me the distance I need to go in order not to smirk at their implausibility? Isn’t this the “what if?” we expect, or even demand, from genre fiction — this extrapolation of real-world ideas and research that takes us beyond the possible and to the extremes, in order to see just where those extremes lie? Science fiction is by no means exempt from the requirements of believability, but there’s a big difference between asking readers to imagine a “what if” scenario (and the ethical quandries such a scenario implies) and asking them to believe that it does exist, in the here and now, and ooh, isn’t that scary?
And yet Picoult isn’t envisioning a near future in which genetic planning is commonplace; she isn’t writing science fiction. As the Times notes:
Tellingly, Picoult does not see herself as a genre writer but rather as a purveyor of social commentary (as if the categories were mutually exclusive) and of what we might call service fiction. “Maybe the average reader is not facing the daily challenges of a mom whose child is dying of cancer, for example, but she probably had an argument with her teenager that morning about something inconsequential that left her feeling frustrated and certain there’s no middle ground between them,” she told me. Picoult said she hoped in some sense that her books were the way to that middle ground.
We shall see. I don’t expect to run out and read the book anytime soon, but it does look like I’ll be dragged into seeing the movie this weekend. Neither looks especially bad — despite some pretty mixed reviews of the book and the Times‘ warning that the ending is “so insistent in its shock value that it may inspire the reader to deposit the book under the wheels of a minivan.” — but clearly I have some reservations.
That’s one way of putting it
Thud on the dangers of taking Twitter feeds at face value:
Even before the Civil War a lie could travel halfway around the world before the truth got its boots on. Now it happens before the truth can even find its socks.
Iran all the way home
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Forgive the pun of the title and the silly photo to the left (which I found via GersonK).
As you might have heard, there are some things going on in Iran recently, and much has been made of the role that Twitter is playing in the unfolding events, both there and abroad. I myself Tweeted about helpiranelection.com earlier this week, a site that asks you to get the word out by turning your Twitter icon green. (Green was the campaign color of Iranian opposition opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi and has therefore become closely linked with his supporters and others protesting supposed election fraud in the country.) It doesn’t seem to have worked for me — my icon stayed just the same — but maybe that’s okay. I’m starting to wonder if Heather wasn’t right when she wrote, “The thing is…this whole ‘green twitter for Iran’ thing reminds me of the whole #amazonfail thing.” Because we all know how that turned out. A lot of well-intentioned but misdirected fervor, it showcased Twitter’s incredible ability to communicate and organize people quickly — but also to more quickly spread disinformation and rumor than more conventional means. |
Which is why it didn’t seem completely out of left field when Joshua Kucera asked, What if Twitter is leading us all astray in Iran?
None of this is to excuse the behavior of the government after the election results came out. Or to diminish the bravery and courage of the people who are out in the streets in Tehran getting beaten. But what if it’s based on a lie? A Twitter-fueled, mass delusion of a lie? That the one third of people who voted for Mousavi convinced themselves, via a social media echo chamber that selectively picked rumors and amplified them until they appeared true, that they in fact represented two thirds of the country? And then tried to bring down the government based on that delusion? Maybe it’s not the case this time. But doesn’t this entire episode seem to show how such a thing could happen? And then what? [via]
It’s why I’m more and more agreeing with David Simon, who writes:
…high-end journalism is a profession. It requires daily full-time commitment by trained men and women who return to the same beats day in and day out. Reporting was the hardest and, in some ways, most gratifying job I ever had. I’m offended to think that anyone anywhere believes American monoliths, as insulated, self-preserving and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures and chief executives, can be held to gathered facts by amateurs presenting the task—pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care who it is they’re lying to or who they’re withholding information from.
Twitter can be a valuable tool, but it is not an unbiased news source, and it will very often get things wrong, even if only unintentionally. Maybe we should think before we accept everything we read there, before we rush to turn our icons green in support of a cause we don’t quite understand, or to throw fuel on a fire that’s already led to riots and death. As Chris McLaren puts it:
In many, many cases it is essential that we learn to engage our damn brains before our emotions get involved to the points that it becomes nigh impossibly difficult to do so.
Update (9/21/09, 8:46 PM): The New York Times lays out the problems with Twitter in the Iranian election aftermath much better than me. Which I guess is sort of the point. I’m an occasional blogger, with opinions certainly, but who knows practically nothing about Iran. What I’m not is a professional journalist. And neither, as it turns out, are many of the people Tweeting about this.
Friday various
Bullock plays a feared, powerful book editor, a job that apparently consists entirely of reading unsolicited manuscripts while riding an exercise bike, and trying to coax authors into appearing on Oprah. Yes, this is exactly what the job of book editor consists of, just as the job of book author involves nothing but music-filled montages of frenetic typing, feverish concentration and crumpled-up wads of paper. Red pens are sometimes stategically employed in either case.
And authors need coaxing to appear on Oprah?
Mr. Allen’s unwavering belief in an empty cosmos made somewhat less bleak by the charms of old movies, older music and much younger women is one of the few things left we can count on. If the man ever gets religion, then we will know we’re really in trouble. Frankly, this new one doesn’t look so great either.
“I don’t want to sound like a luddite old-fart, [but] I kind of worry about the ‘digital generation.’ Kids today don’t have the freedom to be bored. There is something really important about boredom, and how you choose to fill it. If I had had the Internet at age 14 or 15 and had been able to expose myself and connect with people that way, I don’t know if I would have gone and messed around with the piano. Kids can definitely use the Internet creatively, but I think that there is something important about incubating on your own. I think boredom, space, time, and development need ‘unconnectedness.’ These kids are so connected, and they are never bored, because they don’t need to be. I think that’s dangerous. I think boredom is important.”
Random 10 6/19
Last week. This week:
- “Union Song” by the Nightwatchman
There’s a thunder cloud exploding - “You Could Be Happy” by Snow Patrol
Is it too late to remind you how we were? - “If I’m Dreaming My Life” by David Bowie
Was it air she breathed? - “Run Like Hell” by Pink Floyd, guessed by Clayton
They’re gonna send you back to mother in a cardboard box - “Play the Game” by Queen, guessed by Kim
Light another cigarette and let yourself go - “New Speedway Boogie” by the Grateful Dead, guessed by Generik
Things went down we don’t understand, but I think in time we will - “Road to Nowhere” by Talking Heads, guessed by Clayton
And we’re not little children - “Roll Me Away” by Bob Seger, almost guessed by Kim
Took a bead on the northern plains and just rolled that power on - “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, guessed by Clayton
She was practiced at the art of deception - “Johnny 99″ by Los Lobos (orig. Bruce Springsteen)
The bank was holdin’ my mortgage and they were gonna take my house away
And so it goes. Good luck!
Zombies on the brain
Here are three zombie-inspired links: Zombie Neurobiology [via], Zombie Legos [via], and China Mieville’s proposed literary movement, “Zombiefail ‘09-ism” [via]:
…this will be the movement for those tired of the unrelenting imperialism of zombies in horror–and now other–fiction. The writers’ position will be that what started as an invigoration (one hesitates to say ‘revivification’, in this context) of an antique trope has viralled to the point where its ubiquity makes it ambulonecrotophile kitsch. Zombies that once stalked the cultural unconscious like baleful rebukes are now cuddly toys, dead metaphors (ba-boom) at which we can’t stay mad. Paradoxically, out of very respect for increasingly degraded zombies, Zombiefail ‘09-ist writers will either explicitly undermine their banalisation by melancholy mockery of them, or refuse to write about them at all, instead plundering various mythoi for more neglected monsters with which to end the world.
I’m not sure I can jump on the “fewer zombies” bandwagon, however tongue-in-cheek, and even if we maybe are reaching a saturation point. Books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are supposed to be surprisingly good, Plants vs. Zombies is great and addictive fun, and there’s no end of intelligent discourse on zombies to be had. Just because there are zombie toys, that doesn’t mean that zombies can’t also be scary. (I’d maintain that those zombie Legos are pretty darn creepy in their own right.)
Still, Mieville isn’t wrong; their ubiquity maybe has undermined some of what made zombies so frightening in the first place. Certainly it’s happened with other boogeymen, notably vampires. As Zach Handlen writes in his reivew of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s new novel The Strain:
Vampires aren’t scary anymore. Blame Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, Hot Topic, whoever; whatever the reason, blood-sucking fiends lurking in the shadows no longer carry the same old skin-crawling cultural cachet. Which presents a problem for writers who still want to use them.
But every problem is a challenge if you look at it in the right light. I have no doubt there are still new and inventive takes on the zombie still waiting to be created. Even 28 Days Later, which Mieville includes among the “negative influences” his movement will shun, can be seen as a reaction against the sort of campy Romero knockoffs that dominated zombie pop culture for most of the’70s and ’80s. No doubt something — or many different things — will come along to react against the camp that’s since followed it.
Then again, even in Romero’s movies, it’s rarely the zombies who are the most frightening people.
