- Two from Roger Ebert: on racial intolerance and on why he tweets.
- On the set of David Lynch’s Dune with Sean Young. Weirdly fascinating. I wonder if it’s at all worth revisiting that movie. I keep thinking I’ll re-read the book, but I think I’m worried it will just encourage me to read them all. [via]
- Charlie Stross on the iPad [via]:
The iPad doesn’t feel like a computer. It feels like a magic book — like the ancestor of the Young Lady’s Primer in Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. It’s a book with hypertext everywhere, moving pictures and music and an infinity of content visible through its single morphing page. The sum is much weirder than the aggregate of its parts. Criticizing the iPad for not doing Netbook-or laptop-like things is like criticising an early Benz automobile for not having reins and a bale of hay for the horses: it’s a category error.
- The Sea of Galilee is out of fish. [via]
- And finally,inside the Vatican’s private library. [via]
Month: June 2010
A puzzling Sunday
I went to sleep last night at a somewhat sensible hour, which is actually kind of rare. Many is the Saturday night that I’ve spent late-night capping, acting snarky towards informercials and Darren McGavin long into the wee hours. It’s all a bit zany — you know, a bit madcap, funster. Frankly I don’t fully understand it myself, but the kids seem to like it.
Today was a pretty quiet day. I worked on the Sunday New York Times crossword, which for a change I really disliked, thanks to a theme that seemed way too clever by half and ultimately just hurt my brain. Lots of people seemed to love it, however, and the puzzle’s constructor had sense of humor enough to retweet my negative comments. But I still didn’t enjoy the puzzle, which is ultimately something of a curate’s egg: inventive in its construction but headache-inducing in its execution.
Afterward, I joined my writing group for a little free-writing, then came back home to watch television with the dog. My parents drove out to Port Jefferson to see my aunt, who’s been in the hospital since yesterday with an irregular heartbeat. She’s feeling well, and has been moved from the critical care unit, but the underlying problem hasn’t yet been diagnosed and/or fixed. So we’re all hoping for the best.
Then for dinner, Chinese food: “The fortune you seek is in another cookie.” Talk about too clever by half.
And somehow that filled a Sunday. Time, I think, for bed.
Body shots
I had a pretty decent, if largely uneventful, Saturday. I got a little more caught up on Kaleidotrope slush, finally reading everything submitted earlier than last month. And I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who, which I quite enjoyed. Next week’s looks like another everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink’s-kid-brother sort of episode, but you certainly can’t accuse Steven Moffat of not having a plan. This evening I also watched Jennifer’s Body, which I can’t pretend to have enjoyed very much at all. Less than halfway through, I switched the lights back on and pulled out my iPad for distraction. Scott Tobias and Kyle Ryan go a long way towards explaining what’s wrong with the movie. It’s like a very badly written version of Ginger Snaps. I wish I could say the movie got better as it went — I genuinely enjoyed Diablo Cody’s previous movie, Juno and the one episode of United States of Tara I’ve seen — but I think it would be wrong to lie. Better to just move on…dot org. (Ugh.)
I did manage to get caught up, ever so briefly, in today’s World Cup match between the United States and England. I like soccer — I played for several years, up until sixth grade, and tried out (very unsuccessfully) for my high school team — but professional matches can appear to be very boring, with only brief spikes in excitement when someone gets close to scoring a goal. Those appearances might be deceptive — the rest of the world can’t be completely wrong, can they? — but I don’t think I’ll be getting up first thing tomorrow to watch the US in their next match, or any of the other matches. If I happen to catch some more, I’ll maybe watch, the same way I watched this year’s Olympics, but that’s probably it.
Beyond that, it was mostly just a quiet Saturday.
June 11
Today was a pretty exhausting day, though only because at the end of it, when I came home, I offered to set up a small fence in the backyard for my mother. It’s an improvised affair, with some wire mesh stretched between two large poles between the house and the fence, there just to keep the dog from helping himself to vine-ripened tomatoes (a delicacy he discovered a taste for last summer), but it took over an hour of pounding and digging to get the thing set up. My right arm still feels like it’s hammering.
Other than that, however, my day was actually very boring, with nothing much to report. I am glad tomorrow’s Saturday, I’ll say that much.