| In which I try to enter academic cantankerdom early |
[Feb. 9th, 2010|03:52 pm] |
So right now I'm writing a quasi-academic, quasi-op-ed piece that is, essentially, me facing the community of queer theorists and, in a George Costanza tone, bellowing, "I've got a lot of problems with you people!"
On the plus side, I might finally stop raving about Foucault to strangers on the street, because all the hate and frustration will finally be out of my system (at least until I'm finally forced to take that queer theory class next semester!)
On the negative side, if I ever do get this article published, I might be aborting my academic career faster than a Christian private school girl with a married boyfriend in his 30s. |
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| I watch movies |
[Feb. 7th, 2010|11:11 pm] |
Moon - This is one of those films that's impossible to discuss in depth without spoiling, but fortunately there's so much more to this movie - Sam Rockwell's performance and a quiet type of sci-fi that's unfortunately rarely seen coming out of Hollywood - than the twists. Also this might be the only film ever made that will have a poignant use of an emoticon.
The House of the Devil - Someone recommended this to me as "The sort of horror movie Rob Zombie thinks he's making, but isn't." I don't think that's quite fair, although I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to do a consciously retro movie. Sure, some of the signs are obvious to the point of distraction - Walkmans were big and bulky then! Look at the credit font! - but it was a lot of fun to see in what ways and how well the film imitated the sort of things low-budget horror movie makers really were doing at the time. I have to say too it's just fantastic to have a nostalgic horror movie that doesn't distance itself from its subject with layers of irony; hopefully this will kick off a backlash. Plus...Mary Woronov! Enough said. |
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| Precious Lessons |
[Feb. 7th, 2010|04:06 pm] |
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Lessons I Learn From The Shows I Watch: If your daughter is a computer genius/religious fanatic/terrorist, do not download that digital copy of her consciousness that she made, ESPECIALLY not into any killer robots you're designing for the military. |
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| TONI TONI MORRISOOO-OOOON |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|10:42 am] |
So once upon a time I was an English major as an undergrad. Having classes taught Derridans and other assorted postmodernists showed me that I was mainly interested in literature for its cultural, political, and other historical contexts (my brief time toying with being a Religion and Philosophy double major also taught me that ontology and theology will never fail to simultaneously bore and annoy me, but I digress), thus was written my origin story as a History buff. At the time, though, I was very much into studying early modern British literature, especially the literature of the Restoration era, enough that I toyed with the idea of getting a special "British Studies" degree. However, it was a small college with a particularly small English department, so when you got to the 400-level choices were rather limited. In fact, instead of an undergraduate thesis we had a big seminar paper at one's last semester, and the choice of seminar always just came down to two or (if you were lucky) three choices. The logical choice for me would have been the Milton seminar, but I was intimidated by both the stories of the class and the professor's reputation, so, contrary to all the points I'd racked up as an Anglophile, I took the other seminar offered that term: Toni Morrison.
It wasn't a bad choice, and I did enjoy the class and the excuse to read (what was then) Toni Morrison's entire ouevre. But what I loved most was my never initiated idea for the seminar's presentation. My friends and I thought it would be fun to do a commercial for a Toni Morrison action figure, modeled after the action figure commercials ofthe '80s and '90s. There'd be a post-apocalyptic landscape with rocky, ragged ground and a red sky, along with a thunderous male choir singing "TONI TONI MORRII-SSSOOOOOOON." As two kids enthusiastically play with their Toni Morrison action figure, exclaiming once in a while "Toni Morrison is awesome!", there will be shots of Toni Morrison punching through a brick wall with "WHITE MALE CANON" spraypainted on it and Toni punching an Oprah action figure as the kid playing with Toni exlcaims, "That's for your shitty 'Beloved' adaptation!"
And, of course, both kids really ought to be white and male, because it's just perfect somehow.
I guess it's not too late. Anybody got an action figure that can be quickly transformed into a Toni Morrison action figure? |
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| How I nerd |
[Feb. 1st, 2010|04:57 pm] |
As pal Chuck would say and as anyone who follows my posts here and on Facebook should know, I've put most of my Nerd Experience Points into movies, comics, pop culture, and history. Now there was a time when I was a fairly heavy computer and console gamer - honestly, when you grow up where I did and you're not interested in hunting, sports, the opposite sex, or being part of a Protestant church's youth group, you kind of have to be in order to stay sane - but the need to allocate my leisure time better and, much more importantly, poverty caused my habit to cut off around the start of the Playstation 2 era and the end of the adventure gaming era. Today almost everything I play that isn't Europa Universalis"-related are console RPGs, text and point-and-click adventure games, and general games from the Atari and Nintendo/Sega eras.
So most references to things like Halo go right over my head. But recently a friend made a reference to being a master of unlocking and...I got the reference! We really must find victory in all the small things. |
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| Fetish tolerance |
[Jan. 29th, 2010|04:57 pm] |
Poll #1518433 Fetish tolerance (Part 1 in a series, maybe)
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41I have a harder time wrapping my mind around... |
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| those who don't learn from history yadda yadda |
[Jan. 26th, 2010|10:11 pm] |
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Hmm, a "superpower" country that's stuck in a war in Afghanistan and spends a surreal amount on its military while ignoring much-needed domestic reforms and clinging irrationally to a moribund economic ideology...didn't something like that happen before? |
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| You're a funny man, Sully. That's why I'm going to kill you last. |
[Jan. 21st, 2010|02:51 pm] |
The health care debacle, and the tremendous degree Obama and the Democratic party "leadership" are responsible (unless one of those who believes that the entire goal of the "reform" from the start was to give a thinly disguised bailout to the health insurance industry, in which case the "reform" was a smashing success), is bad enough. But what really puts the glass shards in the shit-cake is having to read about the Obama apologists lecturing me and the rest of us leftists for daring to question their leader's (in)actions. The new delusion line seems to be that we liberals were expecting Obama to push some radical reforms (like, I don't know, giving the US the same kind of health care system the rest of the post-industrial world enjoys; is that "radical"?) and we're being "unreasonable" to expect such things from him.
From my own recollections and through the magic of this device that allows me to go back and read what people actually were saying circa Election Day 2008, it does appear instead that most liberals were willing to admit that Obama was a Clintonian Democrat, but that in the wake of what was unquestionably a catastrophic presidency there might be a chance of seeing two or three actual reforms. I suppose it was naive for us to expect even a popular president and congressional majority rising in the wake of a thoroughly discredited party and ideology would accomplish anything substantial in these decadent times, but I don't recall many people expecting Obama to actually change the parameters of the game. On my part, I may not have been eagerly anticipating a public option, but I definitely was not expecting there would be an insurance mandate. Does anyone even remember that opposition to the mandate was one of the main points Obama used when running against Hilary Clinton?
The silver lining is that the need to constantly apologize for his latest cause celebre is somehow driving Andrew "Bell Curve" Sullivan to startling new heights of idiocy. Here, once again hiding behind the e-mails of his readers (who hilariously always agree with Sully 110 percent), Sully makes the point that all of Obama's critics everywhere are wrong and incoherent because they're saying different things! Way to defend your faith*, Sully.
*Not that we don't all know as well as we know that red is red that Sully would ditch Obama the second Obama loses most of his popularity, but you know what I mean. |
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| I watch movies |
[Jan. 10th, 2010|01:57 am] |
I've been taking the winter break as an excuse to watch all the big releases that came out in 2010, because usually I allocate my movie watching time toward seeing things like Texas Chainsaw Massacre II and SS Girls.
Doubt - Like so many play adaptations, this film always feels strangely limited in its scope, but that's a trite complaint. It starts out seeming like a simple battle between a hardened, reactionary schoolmaster/nun, played by Glenn Close Meryl Streep (d'oh!), and a progressive priest, portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, but the film slowly and subtly unfolds the layers; Close Streep, who spends much of the movie deliberately cultivating the reputation of a tyrant among the students she oversees and who hates just the idea of any and all reforms, is revolted at the mere mention of corporal punishment, while Hoffman's rebellious priest is revealed to not be so rebellious when it comes to women's roles. It's more restrained than some might expect from a movie about the subject matter - the Catholic Church and pedophile scandals - but given how so many recent Hollywood films seem compelled to hammer its message right into viewers' skulls this should be considered a good thing.
Rope - This has been one of the few Alfred Hitchcock films I haven't seen yet...until today. Even more than a movie like Doubt, I think the movie suffers from its theatrical origins, since with the action of the entire film restricted to one set and to mostly conversations Hitchcock has fewer opportunities to display what makes him one of the all-time greats (although he does compensate for this by experimenting with making the film appear to be one long take). So the strength of the film largely rests on the script, and honestly it's not that good, impeding at almost every chance the story's own exploration of the idea of murder as art and an intellectual exercise, which culminates in a monologue by Jimmy Stewart's character that sounds like it has been extracted from a freshmen comp critique of Nietzsche. Finally, I have to admit casting Jimmy Stewart as a cynical intellectual who half-seriously preaches a doctrine of murder justified solely by intellectual superiority is...well, counter-intuitive. Hitchcock himself was unsatisfied with the end result, yet I will say it's worth watching, because, hey, it's Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart (albeit a bizarrely miscast Jimmy Stewart!).
Paranormal Activity - I saw The Blair Witch Project when it first came out and really disliked it. Recently I watched this film and really liked it, even though in some ways it's more or less the same movie as Blair Witch but in a very different setting. Maybe my tastes have just changed or maybe the film does a better job with what it has and with its characters' relationship than Blair Witch, but I think it was a very successful horror film, probably one of the most successful of the decade. At the very least, in a decade when so many mainstream horror films and even their low-budget counterparts relied entirely on visual excess, it was a breath of fresh air to see one that followed a "less is more" philosophy to horror. The one complaint I can see - besides one scare that borders on overturning the aesthetic established by the rest of the film and looking like something out of an average b-grade horror flick - is that the boyfriend might be seen as acting too much like an idiot-cum-asshole. I would argue, though, that he is a fairly realistic representation of how many people who aren't already true believers would react if their significant other was the focal point of supernatural happenings.
Drag Me To Hell - Like any b-movie geek, I love the Evil Dead movies and was thrilled to see Sam Raimi attempt to recapture the spirit of those films. Oh, and does he ever! In fact, the movie seems like an attempt to remake Evil Dead as a female-centric narrative, and it's to Raimi's credit that he has Alison Lohman kick about as much ass as Bruce Campbell. I should warn people that there is a scene of animal-targeted violence and usually that kind of thing does bother me, if not ruin the entire film (yes, yes, I'm one of those awful people who can't stand seeing animals hurt or killed in films but I don't mind almost any type of violence on humans that can be screened; whatever), but here...well, you can't describe almost anything in a film like this as not being gratuitous. At least there was a plot reason for it. Anyway, what actually did sour the entire film for me was the ending. ( Spoilers ahoy! ) |
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| KILL EVERYTHING, DESTROY EVERYONE |
[Jan. 8th, 2010|12:17 pm] |
So this morning I woke to find that I was turned down for a job - and never was even asked to interview for it - even though I had more than enough relevant experience and a professional connection. Now I'm stuck with the excruciatingly low-paying, high-work demand TA job* for the semester and once again wondering if I'll ever get the university administration experience I need, since the more than two years I spent working as a university office assistant apparently doesn't put me in the running for a...university office assistant job.
I know, I should be thankful I'm working at all and have that tuition waiver, but it's hard not to feel just a little discouraged and pissed off.
*Yeah, apparently even though I have to grade papers, go to weekly meetings, go to lectures, and lead discussion sections it pays even less than my last TA job, which involved just going to lectures and grading, because technically it comes out as fewer hours. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 8th, 2010|11:35 am] |
A meme going around:
Were I a summonable creature, what kind of ritual would you craft to summon me?
Burn a copy of Foucault's Histoire de la Sexualité while chanting names like Bruno Mattei and Herschel Gordon Lewis, of course. |
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| i watch movies |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|02:15 am] |
So I've been spending my holiday vacation trying to live life like tomorrow may be my last day, wandering aimlessly in the wilderness, meeting new people from so many different walks of life, finding the miraculous within the mundane...aw, just kidding, I've been spending a lot of time just watching movies! Here are just the ones I want to comment on:
Halloween II (Remake) - I really need to just stop watching Rob Zombie movies, because they never fail to frustrate me to my breaking point. It's not because they're awful, but because Rob has such a fantastic eye for visuals and an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-1980 trash cinema, but somehow he keeps missing the je ne sais quoi of what makes gory slashers and the like work on the most fundamental level. For someone who obviously has a love for off-Hollywood horror films of the '60s and '70s, his films seem to have more in common with the most recent generation of slashers, with their deliberately disposable asshole characters and emphasis on shocks over atmosphere, than with the type of classics and klassics he constantly reveres.
But it is true that Malcolm McDowell and his interpretation of Dr. Loomis does go a long way toward salvaging the film.
Coraline - I finally got around to seeing this and, while I expected I'd enjoy it on some level, I honestly think I'd declare this a classic. The one element that impressed me right off the bat is how it's such a rare thing to have a movie with a child protagonist that comes across as authentic. I've seen reviewers comment on how hard it is find Hollywood movies with child protagonists who actually swear and the like after the mid-'80s, and I think it's almost as hard to find cinematic kids who are allowed to be smart and kind of bratty. Besides that, I thought it was one of the better films with computer animation that I've seen this side of Pixar and that it avoided the pitfalls of trying to be "goth-cute." Above all it just seemed to have that perfect synthesis of visuals and story.
Up - Again, visuals, story, beautifully combined. And, yes, there were at least two scenes that made me tear up.
Whatever Works - I'm not much of a fan of Woody Allen, not because I don't enjoy or appreciate his films but because for whatever reason I just never felt compelled to immerse myself in his works. But I was really curious to see a Woody Allen movie starring Larry David and to see if it is possible for someone who grew up in rural Virginia to die from a New York Jew overdose. Well, I survived, and it was really interesting to watch, since it was basically a light comedy for Huffington Post readers. Without giving too much away, it's a complete inversion of the old Hollywood "effete urban liberals are changed for the better when exposed to authentic small town/rural values", and as such it works pretty well. And it works because the film never lets David's character not be at least a little ridiculous. Maybe people used to Allen's famous classics will be disappointed, but it was a unique, fun little film (especially if you do have the Huffington Post as a bookmark on your web browser, but even if you, like me, once in a while feel like a hick trying to break into Bohemia).
Theater of Blood - Okay, if you like Vincent Price at all, you must see this film. It's basically The Abominable Doctor Phibes, this time with Price playing a vengeful actor who kills theater critics in ways echoing murder scenes from Shakespeare's plays. And, in my opinion, it is exactly as much fun as it sounds. Honestly this should have somehow been the sequel to Dr. Phibes instead of the lackluster Dr. Phibes Rises Again. |
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| our crappy decade |
[Dec. 29th, 2009|06:49 pm] |
Wonkette presents the Top 100 Things of this Rotten Decade. My own favorites:
#98: Joe Lieberman never got to be Vice President.
#94: Sarah Palin didn’t get to be vice president, and had to “give back” all those fancy clothes.
#82: Even though it’s probably Too Late, all kinds of Hippie-Earth-Lover stuff like solar and wind power, pesticide-free food and casual lesbianism became Mainstream.
#77: No matter what stupid embarrassing fad you briefly embraced in decades past, it “came back into style” during the ’00s, so you don’t have to feel so fucking stupid anymore, because look at that asshole ….
#75: Ron Paul.
#74: The Ron Paul Blimp.
#73: Tea Party, Teabaggers, etc.
#71: There is basically video of whatever you think of, on the YouTube or one of its pornographic equivalents.
66: Michael Chertoff didn’t get a chance to kill you and eat your heart. |
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| rambling on |
[Dec. 29th, 2009|02:03 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Ween - Cold Blows The Wind | ] |
My Favorite Two Topics
I'm posting too much about politics, which is depressing. I suppose by now I should be used to the fact that I'm living in a time when even the Democrats make Richard Nixon look liberal and just cope with it through a thick layer of sarcasm. Well, I guess that's what I've already been doing, so thankfully there's Glenn Greenwald to keep me from seeing contemporary American politics as nothing but a black comedy. He is honestly my political messiah (although he and I really need to have a long sit-down concerning his perplexing support of Andrew "Bell Curve" Sullivan).
As for the other thing I constantly whine to strangers about, my love life (or lack therof, I seem to have men crawling out of the woodwork all of a sudden. Not only did the guy who I thought had dumped me pre-first date resurface with many profuse apologies, but a few others have suddenly shown an interest in my Morrissey-esque self. I suppose I should celebrate, but, again, being my Morrissey-esque self, I can only scream, "Where were you bastards in the past few years?!"
Suddenly my love life (or lack thereof) is in danger of becoming as convoluted as a story arc in "Sex and the City", except the only organism seeing any action is (TMI, I guess) my right hand. Maybe I should just write about pop culture ad infinitum.
New Who
I liked it quite a bit, and honestly I don't get why some people who have defended RTD's past epics are at best lukewarm toward it. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I loved the "master race" quip. Sue me.
Christmas
I didn't realize just how homesick I was until I made it back to Virginia and could see mountains and deep forests again. Plus it was nice being in a place where I didn't stand out for saying "soda" and "the-ate-er" (in total honesty, I didn't even think of myself having an actual Southern accent until I ended up in the Midwest). I'm actually glad that I get to stick around for a couple of weeks before I have to head back and start worrying about starting a new job and moving house.
The one thing that bothers me, though, is...why the hell did my parents get me a Tyler Perry movie for Christmas? Is it a heavy-handed way to bring me back to Jesus? Or do they assume that as a gay man I'll love anything that involves a man dressed up as a sassy black matriarch?
Orson Scott Card
Well, my favorite insane bigot hasn't written anything of note lately, as far as I know, and you people still haven't sent me a copy of "Empire" to mock in this space, but I had noticed certain denizens of the 'net chastising others for the futility of refusing to buy Card's work. Debating the effectiveness of boycotts against an artist or whether or not they should be punished for their personal (albeit extensively publicized) beliefs are both valid questions for debate, but what irritates me are the people who act as if there's a movement to punish Card for his opinions on, say, tourism expenditures in his home city of Greensboro, NC. It's not even like he's being boycotted for his opposition to gay marriage; he believes sodomy laws should be reintroduced and enforced and that homosexuality is a mental illness. There's just a bit of a difference there, folks.
Anyway, I thought I'd share this detailed (very detailed) analysis of Card's homophobic arguments here. As proud as I am of my own little rebuttals of Card's arguments, the writer put way more effort into it than I even did (or could).
Careerisms
Nothing to report, but...anybody out there a literary agent interested in European history? Anyone?
That's it. Hopefully 2010 will bring with it more to report. |
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| so I saw The End of Time Part 1... |
[Dec. 26th, 2009|01:57 am] |
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Fans unhappy with the superhero-y tone of RTD's "Doctor Who" epics might hate it, but I did love the requisite cliffhanger/"Oh shit!" ending. So far I like it quite a bit better than "The Sound of Drums"/"The Last of the Time Lords" and "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" (but here's hoping RTD doesn't write himself into a corner...yet again). |
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| No doubt this post alone will stop me from ever having a political career |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|09:50 pm] |
Something else to be weakly waved away by the Obama apologists, I suppose.
A recent report that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs may have received preferential treatment getting doses of the swine flu vaccine was enough to give Ebenezer Scrooge the yips. Then came news that in order for us to get back the taxpayer bailout money we loaned it, Citigroup is receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks from the IRS.
And there's a new study this week, "Rewarding Failure," from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEOs of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.
In 2007, that amounted to 575 times the median income of an American family. Now, thanks in part to the banks' monumental malfeasance that led to our economic swan dive, food stamps are now being used to feed one in eight Americans and a quarter of all the kids in this country. A new poll from the New York Times and CBS News reports that more than half of our unemployed have borrowed money from friends and relatives and have cut back on medical treatments. The Times wrote, "Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work ... causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities."
All I want for Christmas is a revolution, preferably à la française. |
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