- Apparently Texas history has a liberal bias and needs to be fixed. This would be funny if these people weren’t responsible for teaching America’s children. As Mary Helen Berlanga (D-Corpus Christi) reportedly said, “Until we are ready to tell the truth about history, we don’t have a good history or social studies textbook.” [via]
- I’m not so sure about this Doctor Who alignment chart — is David Tennant’s Doctor really Chaotic Evil? — but it is interesting. [via]
- Peter Sagal on “How Many Writers Did it Take to Make The Fugitive?” Sometimes, too many cooks doesn’t spoil the broth.
- According to the Vatican’s Chief Exorcist, “the Devil is lurking at the heart of the Catholic Church.” [via]
- And finally, the street performers I see in the NY subway are never this interesting. (Though I did once see Chewbacca at Grand Central!)
movies
Monday various
- How to use a semicolon [via]
- A Muppet Wicker Man [via]
- A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things [via]
- Why DRM Doesn’t Work [via]
- And finally, how can you not like a short-short story that starts “Some time after sharks took over the skies…“?
“It flies like a truck.” “Good. What is a truck?”
It rained all day here, and so I spent most of the day inside playing computer games and just hanging out. I played a little with the dog, watched a little TV — including a little more of Saturday Night Live’s very odd first season — and not a whole lot else.
This evening, after dinner, I watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I think if I’d watched it when it first came out, when I was seven years old, it would be one of my favorite movies. As it is, seeing it now for the very first time, I just find it agreeably weird. I like what Noel Murray says about it:
…it remains an occasionally incomprehensible rush of subplots, sight gags, mythology, and bizarre fashion choices, truer to the spirit of classic adventure stories than to the letter. Which may be why people who love the film feel the way they do. Buckaroo Banzai assumes an attitude of poise and purpose in an otherwise awkward universe.
Now I think I’ll do a little late-night capping — tonight is HCC‘s third anniversary — then call it a night. There’s that darn Daylight Savings Time to contend with, after all.
ETA: I neglected to add — maybe because I still can’t quite believe it — that my eyeglasses broke today. I was cleaning the lenses and the frames just snapped at the bridge. This is especially annoying because these were a replacement pair for glasses that broke back in June, less than a year after I’d bought that first pair. This was also around the same time that another pair of glasses, bought concurrently with the first broken set, themselves broke. I think I’m going to skip going back to Pearle Vision, where I bought both of the quickly broken frames and the now quickly broken replacement pair. I’m not especially rough with my glasses or anything, and this is just ridiculous. I’m back to wearing my old set, which I luckily kept, and which hasn’t once shown signs of breaking in the decade-plus that I’ve owned them.
Wednesday various
- Juliette Wade on How much description?
My general rule for description (of people or places) is that you need to stick with the rule of relevance: if it’s relevant, describe. If it isn’t, don’t. It sounds simple, but evaluating the degree of relevance in any location is where the tricky part starts. There are three big kinds of criteria I generally use to assess this: point of view criteria, plot criteria, and story criteria.
I get a lot of stories for Kaleidotrope where I learn more about a character’s hair and eye color than a do about who they are or why they’re doing something. Most of the time, if it’s just window dressing, you can drop it. Writing isn’t a visual medium. You have the reader’s imagination to help you, and moreover will often have a less satisfying story if you don’t let it. [via]
- I really like Warren Ellis’ challenge to artists to redesign Superman…as if the artists had never heard of Superman. Some of the results are really interesting.
- Along a slightly similar route, the Hypothetical Library: “imaginary book covers designed for actual authors.” [via]
- And along a very slightly similar route, John Seavey imagines a universe in which only the first Star Wars movie is canonical.
- And finally, I just like this quote from Jonathan Carroll, so I’m posting it.
Tuesday various
- So Yoko Ono only okayed the Citroën car commercial to keep Lennon in the public conciousness? That’s good, because before this, I’m sure many people were thinking, “John Lennon? Who’s that?”
- Another from the fine line between irony and hypocrisy department: Sarah Palin Crossed Border for Canadian Health Care. Why does she hate America? [via]
- Having just recently rented or purchased some DVDs and Blu-Ray discs where this is a particular problem, I can totally get behind John Scalzi on this:
…if someone were to introduce legislation requiring home entertainment companies to have a “just play the damn movie†button at the start of every DVD, Blu-Ray or any other future movie-playing technology, I would call my Senators and representative every fifteen minutes until they voted “yes†on that bill.
- Charlie Stross on how books are made. [via]
- And finally, A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever [via]