==pla|\|ing lakes==

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Good week for noir on TCM

If you're into film noir, check these out:

Monday night/Tuesday morning: Snowed Under & Wallflower.

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning: Hunt the Man Down, The Tattooed Stranger, Destination Murder.

Wednesday: Hot Summer Night & Roadblock.

Friday: M, The Blue Gardenia & You Only Live Once -- 3 of 7 Fritz Lang classics including Metropolis they're showing Friday.

Check the schedule for local times.

There's also news at TCM's site of the VCI DVD release of a stylized skeleton-budget noir Blonde Ice ("The tale of a homicidal man-eater who goes after her male victims with the self-minded determination of a cyborg..."), and TCM is running 142 romantic comedies Mondays & Tuesdays in December, from It Happened One Night to Sleepless in Seattle (urp).

2:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, November 28, 2003

Danish policemen to get free sex therapy [Undernews]

1:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, November 27, 2003

Once again, and with perhaps more relevance than say 5 years ago, William Burroughs' "Thanksgiving Prayer":

for John Dillinger (I hope he is still alive)

Thanksgiving Day November 28th, 1986

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeon destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcasses to rot

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes

Thanks for the American Dream to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through

Thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches

For decent church-goin' women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers

Thanks for laboratory AIDS

Thanks for prohibition and the War Against Drugs

Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind his own business

Thanks for a nation of finks

Yes, thanks for all the memories -- All right, let's see your arms...

You always were a headache and you always were a bore

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams

2:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

I just found out Terry Zwigoff directed Bad Santa, which is already at least a cult classic in my book

No website I could find, just this trailer from Miramax/Apple.

The review on IMDB is very negative, but I expect many people to hate this movie. And I suspect Miramax already just wishes it would go away.

But Thornton is perfect for the role, it's got John Ritter's last movie role, and it may be the best antidote to the oppressive Holiday Cheer since the Contortions' "Christmas with Satan."

Nah. Better. That song went on too long.

2:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Jill Owens sure makes Julio Cortázar's 60s phenom Hopscotch (Rayuela) sound great

The effect of all these disparate parts is to profoundly affect and alter the experience of reading, which was one of metafiction's original goals (the concept had not yet been named when Hopscotch was published). And what is amazing is that neither the structural play nor the "bohemian" characters' rhetoric is a gimmick; a sense of golden risk both illuminates and abstracts the action. Reading this book is a visceral, architectural experience. Although at times Cortázar delves into irony, the questions of truth and of relevance in fiction, of how to look at the absurdity of our own lives and find both despair and enlightenment, are absolutely sincere. I am reminded both of Cervantes, a few hundred years ago, and of the book artists of the last three or four decades, who have expanded the boundaries of what it means to write, to tell a story truly and well (or whether the real story might be found in silence).

More on Cortázar.

2:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

New Ron Howard Western The Missing looks half decent, though I'm not a big fan of his work

I'm sure Cate will be worth watching as usual.

5:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Dell to stop routing tech support calls to India for biz customers, but not home users

5:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Benjamin Schwarz states his case for reading Nicholas Boyle's monumental Goethe: The Poet and the Age (volume 2 of three, each over 800 pages)

Certainly anyone with an interest in European culture of the late 18th century -- and German thought in particular -- wouldn't want to miss this.

For years I shied away from Volume I (848 pages), and I read Volume II only when forced -- I sat on a book-prize jury that was considering it. Once finished, however, I couldn't wait to open the first volume. Even if you don't read this opus, you should know about it: Boyle's will remain one of the few towering works of biography and history of our time. Recognized as the sovereign intellect of his age -- he was a poet, a playwright, a theater director, a philosopher, a botanist, and an expert in politics, mining (!), and optics -- Goethe knew or corresponded with nearly every important European mind.

All the same, if you're not up for a graduate course in Goethe and his time, this wouldn't be for you.

2:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, November 24, 2003

If you haven't already...

... meet Pieter Bruegel

You have to see the paintings at least screen size to begin to appreciate the detail.

2:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

There are links to the "open sound" labels mentioned in the Wired article I posted about a few days ago in the left column

The couple tracks I've d'ld have been pretty good.

If you know of any others, I'd like to know. Leave comments.

The mp3 labels like notype (on hiatus moving to electrocd I think) are still in the "Online Label, Mp3 Sources" section.

2:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wealth Bondage Stories

2:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, November 23, 2003

A Taoist tale

The Water Pump

The water pump represents the workings of the karmic mechanism. Give it some water to work with, and it will return far more than you put in. This mechanism traces a great circle, an unbroken path that eventually comes back to its point of origin. The energy of this circulation gathers power as it moves along, so that when it finally returns, it is greatly amplified.

If the circle is a physical phenomenon, like the orbit of a planet or the cycle of seasons, then we can follow its path, observe its progress, and predict when the circle will be complete. We cannot do so with the karmic mechanism, because it is metaphysical in nature. Karma weaves its way in and out of the physical world with the greatest of ease, and when it goes into the non-physical realm, it disappears from view.

9:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()