I saw "Tales of the Gimli Hospital" and "Archangel" when they came out in 1988 and 1990 respectively, but missed most of the rest of Guy Maddin's films after that. I just found "Brand upon the Brain" at the Philadelphia Library, and was reminded of what an odd genius he is.
His films are weird, disturbing, and funny. They are mostly black and white, and mostly silent, and he generally invokes styles and techniques of early film-making. I just watched a couple of his short films on youtube, and had to post a link to one of them ("Sissy-Boy Slap-party") on facebook. Anyway, if you like this sort of thing, look him up, and enjoy.

Tags: calls to arms, princess underwear, weird-ass stuff my co-workers should not
Current Music: Glenn Branca, Symphony 5

For some reason yesterday's contretemps between Perez Hilton and Miss California really got under my skin. It just seems like a whole series of unfortunate decisions.

1) Who in their right mind picks a self-centered, immature, intemperate person like Perez Hilton to be a Miss America judge? Honestly.

2) Who in their right mind thinks the Miss America pageant is a suitable forum for PC? That just seems so wrong in so many ways.

3) If Miss California had made her statement under other circumstances, or in a different venue, I'd have had little or no sympathy for her. But Perez overreacted, turned it into a circus, and handed a martyr to the other side. So I'm strongly tempted to give the best possible spin to her statement.

Seriously. It was only a few years ago that same-sex marriage was being banned, and there was serious talk about a federal constitutional amendment. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but it seems to me the tide is turning quite nicely. But I don't expect everyone to change their minds at once. If we're not quite to the point where bigots have to lie in public when somebody gets in their face, well, we'll get there eventually. It seems too soon to me right now. And hearts are not won by calling people stupid.
If anything, now the Man-Lady-marriage-only crowd has sympathy and a new soap box.

Edit: the last paragraph is still harsher than I intended. What I mean to say is that all we need right now is acceptance, however grudging, that same-sex marriage (or even civil unions) should be legally recognized. Not everybody has to like it. There are plenty of legal things I don't like. But I'm not clamoring to, say, make Ayn Rand's books illegal.

Tags: beauty pageants not a suitable vehicle f, ill-advised political trolling
Current Mood: happily man-lady married

I filed my federal taxes last night, then cleaned the litterbox. I like having an indoor cat, and though I'm not crazy about cleaning the litterbox, it beats the alternative.
But maybe if I whine loudly enough our cat will magically stop pooping.

"I think this calls for a nice cup of, a nice cup of cold water." -Terry Pratchettt, Equal Rites

Tags: cat poop, ill-advised political trolling
Current Mood: chipper

I've finally started following some folks at twitter - with the occasional tweet myself. I somehow missed the whole BBS thing first time around. I followed a few newsgroups in the late 80s, but posted only one message before 1995: it was very much a n00b post, and the enormity that it would live forever on a worldwide network traumatized me so much that I ran away from the whole thing for 8 years. That, and I lost my access when I left grad school, and didn't get a computer with a modem until I got my first real job in '94.
Anyway, I'm sort of glad I waited. I waste enough time on social networks as it is, and I think I would have not had nearly as much time to drink heavily if I had been online so much back then.

Maybe I'm just a catty backstabber, but one thing that bugs me a bit about online social networks is that if, say, I want to comment on the insane behavior of one friend to another, I'm pretty much stuck with broadcasting it. I know that facebook has these friend list things, but I don't think they really solve the problem. n the other hand, it's probably best that the internet has actually made me nicer.

Tags: interwebs
Current Location: work
Current Mood: teleological
Current Music: Pere Ubu

Think of 25 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 25 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

1) Queen - A Night at the Opera
2) an introduction to experimental music, including Musique Concrete, from the local library - I have tried to find it again but can't remember the title or the names of any of the artists. The only piece I remember was played on tuned crowbars.
3) Pink Floyd - The Wall
4) Pink Floyd - Ummagumma
5) Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed
6) Talking Heads - Fear of Music
7) the Psychedelic Furs - 1st album
8) Elvis Costello - Armed Forces
9) Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
10) R.E.M. - Murmur
11) Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
12) Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach
13) Talking Heads - Remain in Light
14) King Crimson - Discipline
15) Public Image Ltd - Album
16) John Cale - Music for a New Society
17)(EP) Revolting Cocks - Attack Ships ... On Fire
18) Ornette Colman - Free Jazz
19) Lounge Lizards - No Pain for Cakes
20) Beethoven - (Yo Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax) Sonatas for Cello and Piano, Vols 1 and 2
21) Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins - Friday the 13th
22) Astor Piazzolla - Tango: Zero Hour
23) Sonic Youth - Sister
24) They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
25) The Orb - Orbus Terrarum
26) Curlew - A Beautiful Western Saddle
27) Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom
28) Swans - The Great Annihilator

This is a very arbitrary, off the top of my head list. I am a reformed music snob, and a lot of the albums I obsessed about were pretty obscure. A few of the records above I don't think I could stand listening to now (especially 1, 3, 5). I picked these because they were somehow or another a shock to my musical world view on first listen - in some cases I loved them, and in others I had no idea what to do with them, sometimes for months, but I kept coming back to them (particularly 6 and 23).

Even though I couldn't stop at 25, there are a lot of records I left off the list, too, including the ones I listened to as a kid: a collection of movie themes by Ferrante and Teicher, an electronic pop album called Ragnarok by Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause (I still have it on vinyl and it's in terrible shape, probably from being played over and over by a 10-year-old. It is apparently extremely rare), a lot of my dad's folk music collection.

There are a lot of other albums that I love (or loved), but I wouldn't call life-changing, including other albums by some of the artists listed above that I think are better albums, but that I heard later. Or jazz or classical albums that I heard casually or bought because I thought they'd be good for me, and they slowly grew on me.

Then there are records like the first album by the Cars - I heard it every day for six weeks when I was at a Youth Conservation camp in high school, and got thoroughly sick of it, but I just bought it recently and consider it a seminal work of twisted new wave/pop genius now. Go figure.

Tags: facebook memes
Current Location: home
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: mental soundtrack - Aerosmith, of all things. uurrgh.

Crime report

I missed my usual train this morning, so I was still home when Janet got up.

J: Are you biking into work today?
C: No, I just missed my train, and the next one's not until 9:10.
J: But your bike is out on the driveway.

Sure enough. We probably left the shed unlocked, though it would take very little effort to break in anyway (note to potential criminals: there's nothing worth stealing in our shed). I went out and checked, and it didn't look like anything was missing. Janet keeps her bike locked, so my guess is, someone pulled my bike out, got 2 or 3 feet away, and discovered that the back tire was flat. They must have figured it was more trouble than it was worth. It's a pretty good bike, but it is more than 10 years old.

So, sometimes procrastination pays. On the other hand, if they had taken it, I'd have the perfect excuse to buy a new bike.

I think the oddest theft (or near-theft) we've experienced is when we lived in New Haven. Janet was working outside, and someone walked up the driveway, into the fenced-in yard, and picked up a sprinkler attachment. She asked them what the hell they were doing, and they dropped it and left.

Tags: crime
Current Location: work
Current Mood: grateful

I love photo 13 in this spread from the NY Times Style section this Sunday. I hope it's visible to nonsubscribers (and that the link works on facebook: if not, the URL is
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/02/06/fashion/08evening.ready.html ).

Tags: education
Current Mood: amused

I am so ready to put up with 12 to 16 years of pathetic ineffectual whining from conservative losers. I just hope Obama doesn't slip a disc while he's bending over backwards to accomodate the people who lost the last election by a landslide.

Tax cuts. The best thing to get the unemployed back to work? Cut taxes on their nonexistent pay. The only way to get executives to work? Pay them Lotto-sized salaries, and don't tax them. Let me take a wild guess at this. If we cleared out every executive in every failing company, we'd manage to find some handful of people willing to work for half a million a year. Who knows, they might even get the companies to succeed, if their paychecks actually depended on it.

Current Mood: annoyed

For facebook. I'm posting here because the world needs to know as well. But I'll make the world click past the ( cut )

Tags: 25 things
Current Location: work (lunch)
Current Music: Amy Denio - Sub-rosa

I am way overdue on work deadlines, but I can't shake this "25 things" bit. And it's a Friday afternoon. On the other hand, I still can't come up up with 25 real things (I have about 10). So here are some fake random things:

26. I am frightened of caffeinated drinks.

27. Space aliens burn my toast.

28. I worked as a poultry veterinarian for 2 summers while I got my MFA in Concrete Sculpture.

29. I try to keep a yarmulke in the pocket of each of my suit coats. Or else a small box of crayons. Because you never know when they might come in handy.

30. When I was seventeen, I found out that I looked identical to the quarterback of our high school
football team. He had led a pampered life and was curious about what it was like to be a scrawny
nerd with no self-esteem, so we switched places for a week. Many hilarious misunderstandings
occurred, and when the week was over, we were both more than ready to switch back. Then he and his
friends pushed me around and mocked me.

31. When I was young, I dreamed of owning my own cuspidor.

Tags: intarweb, lies
Current Mood: artistic