Saving Myself

I've had the novel The Moonstone on my nightstand for months. Haven't read it.

I even moved it onto my "current reads" category on goodreads.com.

Today I read the introduction by PD James. And then I read the author's note.

And then I stopped. I just can't seem to read it.

Wilkie Collins is an amazing author. The Moonstone is supposed to be the second detective story ever written. The first, and according to most, the best mystery novel ever written.

Collins wrote my favorite book of all time, The Woman in White.

The Moonstone is his last novel. (Which is fine because he is quite dead.)

I've been enjoying looking forward to this book for so long. Is it crazy that I'm nervous to read this book?

Chris Rock talks to Leno about Polanski

I have been so mad about this whole defense of Polanski situation that I couldn't blog about it. And I'm still too mad. But I will say that I think it is interesting that one of the few celebrities who is willing to stand up and say, "Hey, this guy is a child rapist, send him to jail" is Chris Rock.

Jezebel has the pertinent clip if you are curious.

Oh, America, why?

I found it at Freddy's!

Funny things.

This morning while I was having my teeth cleaned I overheard a dental hygienist talking to a boy about 11 in the room across the way.

Dental Hygienist: How long do you brush your teeth?
Kid: Uhm... two minutes?
DH: I don't think so. How about you try for five?
...
DH: Any fun plans before school starts?
K: Visiting dad in Hawaii.
DH: Oh that will be fun. What will you do there?
K: X-Box.
DH: Not the ocean?
K: There are jellyfish.
DH: Jelly fish aren't as scary as all your teeth falling out.

Bonus funny:
Excerpt from ebay auction, "Nothing can compare with this Scarf:"
Nothing. Well, maybe other scarfs. But that is it.

Neil, stop looking at me like that.

Hilariously sultry Neil Gaiman talks about vampires at Entertainment Weekly.

Says Neil, "Come lie down on this velvet settee. Nothing weird here. RAWR, baby."

Where did they get this pic? Is Neil doing tasteful boudoir photos now?

Not that I'm complaining.

Unpopular Opinions.

1. The return of the North Korean prisoners.

I've been wondering if having Bill Clinton retrieve the prisoners was the right thing to do because the journalists have more or less admitted that they knowingly approached/crossed the NK border. Hey, guess what, screwing around with border crossing, particularly in this case, is pretty obviously dangerous. Furthermore having Clinton show up to speak with Kim Jong Il only gives him and the people starving to death in NK the belief that they run diplomatic relations and moreover, that kidnapping our citizens is an ok way to open up said relations.

I wonder if we would have bothered sending Clinton if they weren't pretty women and the sister of a popular journalist (I also wonder if these journalists correctly assumed that if they got caught, they'd get away with it because they are well connected women). If they were middle aged white guys they'd probably be breaking rocks right now and I might not even know they were there.

Saying that we should have left these journalists there is a very upopular opinon, so it was incredibly gratifying to read this article on Slate and find that I'm not the only one who is skeptical about the diplomatic situation in NK.

2. Inglorius Basterds.
Part of me is interested in the way Terrentino artfully styles his violence, but all the kind of porny over-the-top violence and general proliferation of hate is on my nerves lately.

Recently I declared "No more Nazis!" Having just finished The Book Thief, which was admittedly very good, I relized that I really could live without reading about Nazis for oh say the rest of my life. Not simply because the crimes perpatrated by the Nazis were horrendous and dreadful to read and imagine. But becuase Nazi soldiers were also people trapped in unimaginable positions, most of whom did very little to end the terror of the day, but who were also people victimized by their government in every concievable way.

Furthermore re-imagining these terrible acts, romantacizing, villanizing and obsessing is not a suitable way to never forget. Using Nazis as standard bad guys trivializes what happened in WWII, not just to Jews, homosexuals, and other persecuted groups, but to the German people.

I also feel like using Nazis as the standard bad guy, and WWII as the standard setting for the bulk of western literature is incredibly lazy. Making hiding a Jew in your basement, evading Nazis, or fleeing Germany a literary standard makes your book one fictional tale among growing thousands, ever dwarfed by true stories that make the made up ones seem stale and trite in comparison.

And finally I'm tired of being told who to hate and that hate is ok. Desecrating corpses is wrong, torturing POWs is wrong, and hating for shits and giggles is wrong. There are no good guys who take scalps. If the tale was told in real life I would be well in favor of rounding all the Basterds up for a psych eval if not trying them for war crimes.

To those who say there deserves to be some stories of vengence for the Jewish People, I would respond that I wonder how or why anyone could get even with such atrocities.

I read an interesting article about Inglorius Basterds today and a child of a real member of the British X Troup of Jewish comandos wrote:

"When Manfred arrived at the Terezin camp, prisoners crowded around the jeep. Weak and dispirited, they were too stunned to utter a word. He found an inmate who directed him to his parents—emaciated and indeed hardly recognizable. As his father recounted their experiences, which included a stay in the notorious Belsen camp, his father told him that Jews would never get revenge for what had been done to them. “We cannot be that cruel,” he said.

For a man like Ganz, World War II is neither a distant nor amusing memory. He doesn’t seem likely to be engaged by Tarantino’s comic-book violence. “To me, the reality was brutal enough,” he says. "

I couldn't agree more.

Soooooooo, define clunker.

So, the new C.A.R.S. program. I've been thinking about stimulating the Japanese economy by purchasing a vehicle that, you know, works and yet my car does not qualify for Cash for Clunkers.

This set me to wondering about who, precisely, would benefit from this program. Not the environment (at least not in the immediate short term). And not the poor; I figure that I am about as poor as you can get and still reasonably purchase a brand new vehicle. However, I'm not quite poor enough that my car (though 13 years old) qualifies. Someone who makes what I make would have to be pretty unreasonable to keep a car worse than mine. (After all, you have all been recommending that I dump the car for two years.)

I think to qualify you need to make at least 35K and be an enormously cheap bastard.

OR: trade your car with a poorer person and then you both win. They get a 13 year old, but still better, car and you get 4K.

I am thus curious (but far too lazy to research) about whom this bill was intended to assist. Not American auto makers, this is not limited to them. Not the working poor, they can't afford it. And not really the environment. So I guess this is posturing against OPEC?

Interesting choice.

Abandoned Blog Blues

Sorry (again) about the blog abandonment.

I'm really in awe of the folks who can really focus on writing almost everyday. I swear I am just as interesting. In fact, right now I am really busy negotiating world peace and baking things.

Actually, I've just been dogsitting in a house with no internet access, and blogging from the iPhone is not the most horrible thing in the world, but it isn't exactly a joy either.

SO, in order to not write about the turbulence in my personal life and/or my trip to Indiana to visit my estranged father and brother (culminating in my brother being arrested), let's chat about things on film.

So I saw Transformers 2 last weekend and while my buddy Deuce really enjoyed it, I'm going to have to say that might be the worst movie I have ever seen that was not a SyFy original film. I've seen Ice Spiders. Twice. So please believe me when I say that that was needlessly the worst movie ever made and not in a good way.

I also saw The Proposal. Yes, these romantic comedies are very predictable, and in fact I may have watched already seen The Proposal when it was called My Fake Fiance (an ABC Family Movie), starring Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence (still totally hot) wherein they also hate each other but plan a fake wedding (because Joey is in debt to a mobster named The Monkey and Melissa wants fee housewares) but then they fall in love for realz. However, The Proposal was very well made (even compared to the movie magic that was My Fake Fiance). Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds are very gifted comedic actors who also look good naked. So good for you two!! (Betty White really did steal the show though.) So, in conclusion this movie will undoubtedly end up in my humiliating collection of chick flicks:

While You Were Sleeping (Sandy B. rescues a man she has had a crush on from certain death, then his family thinks they are engaged. And she almost marries him when he wakes up, but has fallen in love with his brother- Bill Pullman- instead.)

Last Holiday (Queen Latifah thinks she is dying so spends all her life savings to go on a vacation where she charms everyone and eventually wins the love LL Cool J and, wait for it, doesn't die, but instead learns how to really live. *tears gushing*)

Sweet Home Alabama (Reese Witherspoon runs away from her small town life and husband, becomes famous and invents a whole new past but is forced to return home to get her divorce, but doesn't get a divorce because she still loves him and learns loves herself.)

Crossing Delancy (Amy Irving works in a book store and takes care of her bubbie. Her bubbie wants to set her up with a nice Jewish man, but he sells pickles and Amy really wants to be with this famous womanizing author... or does she? Hint: she doesn't. Also what woman doesn't want to be with a man who has unlimmeted ammounts of delicious pickles?!)

I have no idea why I am telling you about my dvds of shame. I'm not saying they're good. I'm just saying I like them.

Anyway, I also watched Miracles (which apparently aired on TV, though nobody bothered to tell me) starring Skeet Ulrich as a miracle investigator with the Catholic church who has a crisis of faith after an authentic miracle is ignored and goes to work for a private society investigating paranormal events.

I really wish America was ready for a show that says, "I know you enjoy thinking of God like a cross between Stanta Claus and your grandpa, but you know, having an omnipotent being paying too much attention to you is maybe scary." There is a reason that the phrase "God fearing" exists. It was a pretty interesting and complex show, and I am really sad that it was never allow to mature and complete the creepy storyline. The question being, is God "good" and how do you know when God is influencing you versus something "bad" influencing you. Since Miracles was canceled I will never find out.

What's cutier than a puppy?

Tom Hanks AND a puppy.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tom Hanks Care Package
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

This is what it is like to be me.

I should preface this story with a note:
I love throwing things away. LOVE it. I find it incredibly satisfying.

Yesterday I was rummaging around in my closet and found these nice gray slacks. Still fit, look good. So why don't I wear them? No idea.

So I wear them today... and hey, guess what, I don't wear them because when I sit and lean forward, they spontaneously unzip themselves. Which is undoubtedly why they were jammed way back in the recesses of my closet.

So. The you go. I will give away/donate dozens of nice clothes, but I can't get rid of the spontaneous nudity pants? I am a crazy person. Also, if my shirt wasn't tunic styled, everyone in the office would know about my striped undies!

In other news, I want, nay, NEED this. Or conversely need to spend less time on design blogs.

Thanks, internet!

My finds of the day:
1. Kind of interesting article about Guillermo del Toro on Wired. Includes a chart with numbers of pictures of unicorns denoting the level of liklihood of completion of the films he is currently attached to. (Yes, I ended that sentence in a preposition. That can be done. It is a stylistic choice. So, suck it, haters.)

2. SyFy (HATE typing that BS- Hey "SyFy" you should change your name to the Fake Reality Ghostbusting Network.) is making Alice in Wonderland mini series (keep your fingers crossed for steampunky goodness) along the lines of Tin Man (which I actually found virtually unwatchable but enjoy on the premise and design alone) starring all sorts of interesting sci-fi folks. Via Hollywood Reporter/io9. Does this mean I can simal-stalk Lt. Gaeta, Dr. Frank-n-Furter, and Connor from Primeval all at once in my next trip to BC to visit the parents? YES, yes it does. That seems like an appropriate mother daughter activity.

Also, this came up on my Google Reader this morning and I can't stop loving this guy's work. (Though it does very much take me back to my utz utz club dancing silly early 20's)

Exciting Footage if You're a Super-Nerd

Which I am. HD footage of the surface of the moon from Japan's KAGUYA Explorer.

This one is at about 7 miles up:


This one is at 13 miles:

RAWR!!!!

Starwars + Magnum, PI = Happy Quiana




For comparitive purposes, the side by side view of the actual Magnum, PI opening and Han Solo, PI:

Things on my "mind":

Fantastic 5-part article on Slate about animal testing and a dog at the center of the fight against animal cruelty. Interesting political story.

Where my interests intersect: space, the spirit of scientific discovery, and fashion. Via WWD.

My obsession with Jonathan Adler's designs is carried to the ultimate humiliation. Someone please prevent me from spending $70 on this butter dish. Jim, hide my wallet!!

So, someone is pulling a fast one on us, right?

Advanced Cat Yodeling.

This video changed my life. (If life=mood this afternoon.)

Canada Tire, You Shifty Bastard!

How Canada Tire unwittingly discovered how to manipulate consumers based on their purchase via NYT.

Interesting Aticle on the high cost of living below the Poverty Line

I keep trying explain why it the same sorts of expenses cost the poor more to people (particularly at work) and I think that this article does an excellent job.

Something to watch 3000 times in a row.

Very Serious NPR Interview