{"id":3261,"date":"2008-12-15T18:15:05","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T23:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2008-12-15T15:54:07","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T20:54:07","slug":"monday-various-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3261","title":{"rendered":"Monday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>     <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>It occured me to yesterday, as I was musing on story ideas, that there&#8217;s something amiss with the &#8220;zombies&#8221; of movies like <em>28 Days Later<\/em> and its sequel. This isn&#8217;t a problem that extends, necessarily, to the human flesh- or brain-eating variety you see it many other films, but it is something to look out for. In <em>28 Days Later<\/em>, the monsters are not, strictly speaking, zombies at all, but humans infected with a rage virus. It provokes them into doing nothing but destroy and kill, lash out in rage beyond all reason. They&#8217;re a little like the Incredible Hulk with an insatiable blood-lust. And yet they never seem to lash out at <em>each other<\/em>. There&#8217;s no in-fighting; in fact, there&#8217;s often what looks like cooperative effort. Which doesn&#8217;t really make a lot of sense. The friend I discussed this with suggested that maybe the virus is intelligent enough to direct the host&#8217;s efforts, to focus its energies on spreading only to the non-infected. And that is a possible explanation. But when the uninfected become scarce, does the virus just <em>switch off<\/em> temporarily? Does it go dormant, with an accompanying calm?\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">Obviously, some of this is for dramatic purposes &#8212; would it be at all scary to watch zombies fight amongst themselves? &#8212; and it probably requires another viewing of the films in question. <\/font> <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/li>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Whole Foods&#8217; less than wholesome <a href=\"http:\/\/newseasonsmarket.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/were-just-trying-to-mind-our-own-local.html\">legal maneuverings<\/a> has me feeling a little ambivalent about their <em>Top Chef<\/em> connection &#8212; although product placement has always been sort of ridiculous on that show. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waxy.org\/links\/\" title=\"Waxy.org Links\">via<\/a>]\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">I&#8217;m still enjoying <em>Top Chef<\/em>, by the way, although I think overall I enjoyed last season more. That&#8217;s partly because of the contestants, but also partly because of some of the weird challenges and kinks in the format they&#8217;ve introduced this time around. Two contestants sent home the first day? A Thanksgiving episode, when the show was filmed over the summer? Still, I find it hard not to get caught up in it week to week. I studiously avoid reality television, but this is the one exception. <\/font><\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Translations are interesting things. The German translation of Warren Ellis&#8217; novel <em>Crooked Little Vein<\/em>, for instance, is apparently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/?p=6859\"><em>God Bless America<\/em><\/a>. That&#8217;s a little weird, though apparently par for the course with German reprints, and it is a great cover. The Spanish version is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/?p=6858\" ?p=\"6858\"><em>Torturous Path<\/em><\/a> &#8212; closer, but still a little off. I&#8217;m reminded of the joke that says the phrase &#8220;struck dumb,&#8221; when fed through a English-to-Russian translator and back, becomes &#8220;beaten senseless.&#8221;\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> I wasn&#8217;t in love with the book, I must admit, when I read it a few months ago. It felt a little like Ellis warmed over at times. Already, vast swaths of the plot and characters are forgotten &#8212; poof! &#8212; from my brain.  <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>So apparently, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/education\/7776046.stm\">people lie about the books they&#8217;ve read<\/a> to impress others:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex appeal too.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">This seems like old news to me &#8212; although outside of a classroom, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever lied about reading something. (And even then, I never felt good about it.) I was reminded of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/101969\/\">this 2001 Slate article<\/a>, discussing the classics that academics often skip:<br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">In his novel <em>Changing Places<\/em>, David Lodge describes a literary parlor game called &#8220;Humiliations&#8221; in which participants confess, one by one, titles of books they&#8217;ve never read. The genius of the game is that each player <em>gains<\/em> a point for each fellow player who&#8217;s read the book\u00e2\u20ac\u201din other words, the more accomplished the reader, the lower his or her score. Lodge&#8217;s winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he&#8217;s never read <em>Hamlet<\/em>.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">I&#8217;m mildly embarrassed by some of the books I haven&#8217;t read &#8212; I have read <em>Hamlet<\/em> &#8212; but I like to think I&#8217;m above lying about it, even to impress women.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>James Frey, the discredited author of <em>A Million Little Pieces<\/em> &#8212; you remember? The man who betrayed Oprah&#8217;s trust &#8212; is writing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/archives\/2008_12.php#013829\">third book of the Bible<\/a>. Oh yeah, this will end well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It occured me to yesterday, as I was musing on story ideas, that there&#8217;s something amiss with the &#8220;zombies&#8221; of movies like 28 Days Later and its sequel. This isn&#8217;t a problem that extends, necessarily, to the human flesh- or brain-eating variety you see it many other films, but it is something to look out &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3261\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}