Month: June 2008

I’m not listening (except, y’know, to your phone calls)

Every time I think this administration can’t get any worse, they go and prove me wrong:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

Although, as John Sclazi adds:

Also: Hey, you know what I would do if the White House told me that it wouldn’t accept an e-mail with a Supreme Court-ordered document in it? I would PRINT IT OUT and DELIVER IT BY HAND. Because you can do that. Seriously, now, does every single appointee of the Bush Administration have the IQ of a LOLCat? “Oh noes! Theyz not openz our e-mailz! Our public policiz is rooned!” To be flummoxed by a recalcitrant refusing to download a file suggests, well, that you are a candidate for mulching.

Unstoppable monsters

From the Sci-Fi Wire:

Matt Reeves, who directed the monster thriller Cloverfield, told SCI FI Wire that plans for a sequel film have been put on hold until the filmmakers can come up with an idea as interesting as the original.

I didn’t hate Cloverfield, but I did find it disappointing, and I think a sequel (or prequel) is such an unnecessary idea. Which I guess all but guarantees that it will be made.

However, I think it should be said, of the things Cloverfield had going for it — and it had some few things, not too many, but a few — I don’t think interesting ideas were really among them.

But you don’t really care for music, do ya?

An absolutely fascinating essay on the cultural history of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”:

If its use is becoming less common, that’s because its overuse has erased the line-by-line, verse-by-verse meaning and replaced it with an overall feeling of sadness. You hear those opening chords now and the words hardly matter. The visual emotions it was used to counterpoint have overtaken the lyrical content. This is the nature of tools–they are imprinted by their materials–and there’s nothing wrong with tools per se, but making a Matisse into a washcloth would erase some of the details, and Hallelujah’s overuse has had a similar effect.

In twenty-five years, Leonard Cohen has gone from a punchline on a TV show to a sideways joke mixed with a tribute in Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea”–“give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld so I can sigh eternally”–to a totally serious starring role in a song by Fall Out Boy, a band not especially known for their irony. It seems like this has been accomplished by an emotional flattening–reducing a song about the varieties of grace to a mere lament. But this is not the only direction the song could have gone in. Something of Cohen’s defiance, sensuality, and triumph could just as easily inform a cover.

Of the versions of the song that I’ve heard, I think Jeff Buckley’s is still my personal favorite.

Boom-de-ah-dah, boom-de-ah-dah…

Warren Ellis writes:

Every single goddamned day a new idea just falls out of the sky.

Who’d want to live anywhere else?

Which naturally brings to mind this recent xkcd strip and the pretty terrific Discovery Channel commercial that inspired it. That sheer joy of being alive, of learning new things, and not knowing which new thing is going to happen next. Seriously, I think I could watch the commercial for hours and not grow tired of it.*

I’m also reminded of two other things. First, this quote from T. H. White’s The Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

And the other, oddly enough, is Doctor Who, which admittedly has been on my mind of late, as I’ve been watching both this new season and some of the older episodes.** One of the things I really love about the show, in just about all its incarnations, is the obvious joy the Doctor brings to his new encounters. Dangerous aliens? Spooky monsters? Impossible situations? Sounds like fun!

The world can be a dangerous, difficult and scary place sometimes. But it can also be just…awesome.

* Although that enthusiasm is tempered somewhat by Barney the Purple Dinosaur’s version. In my six years of summer camp, I don’t think I ever heard this particular campfire song.

** The first couple of Peter Davison episodes, to be specific.