Blog Thyself
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Evening into morning — and everything is still dark.
Some overriding health issues have caused me to have not a good night, thus, creating less-ability to compose coherent thoughts, and way-harder to transfer to blog lines (was about to write paper, but that’s so 1970s).
There’s plenty out yonder in the big, wide world to write about, but there’s a small imprint in the brain that wants to scream ‘Who Gives A Shit!’ except for those under barrage of that particular shit found in all corners of the globe.
Ugly unrest is on the peppered lips of today — the Occupy protests are getting not pretty, from the mess in Oakland, to a drive-in plunge in London, to more stun-gun episodes in Washington, DC.
People are only going to get even-more pissed.
(Illustration: “Extrangement of Vision — Edgar Allan Poe’s Optics” via M.C. Escher’s ‘Hand with Reflecting Sphere‘ found here).
One item did catch my blurred, Poed eyeball — in one of those Internet video “hangouts” yesterday on Google’s social network, Google+, also streamed live on YouTube, President Obama talked about a rare subject — the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Via the BBC:
Asked about the use of drone strikes, which have increased in intensity during his presidency, he said “a lot of these strikes have been in the Fata”, or Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The strikes target “al-Qaeda suspects who are up in very tough terrain along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Mr Obama added.
“For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military action than the ones we’re already engaging in.”
A shitload of innocent people have been killed and wounded during these strikes, and folks in Pakistan are pretty-much getting pissed about the whole operation.
Obama, though, bypassed some important questions:
In a previous town hall-style event hosted by Facebook, the White House was criticised for ignoring one of most popular questions: Mr Obama’s stance on legalising marijuana.
He did not answer questions on drug policy in Monday’s event.
Dude, what’s the deal?
Poe knew.
A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Poem found here.
What? Me Ungratified?
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Graph of life-sized literary license this afternoon from The Big Picture:
Despite nerdom for six decades, I’ve always been satisfied.
So there, Mr. Cool Guy with shades.
‘Run, Forrest, Run’
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Books and movies are two completely different countries.
In one you read by yourself (unless you’re in a group-grope book club), the other you see and hear — and the two supposedly connect when the book is made into a movie.
Rare, though, when the movie comes direct off the page.
Movies can also alter the spirit of a story to achieve broader appeal.
Think of everything you found charming about the movie Forrest Gump: the feather floating over the opening credits, the signature line that “life is like a box of chocolates,” or Tom Hanks’s graceful innocence as the title character.
You won’t find any of that in the original novel.
Winston Groom’s Gump is cynical, abrasive and swears like a marine.
(Illustration found here).
Not having read the book, the difference then must be is no, they’re not relations.
Yesterday, ‘Forrest Gump,’ the movie, along with 24 others, were installed by the the Library of Congress into its National Film Registry, a repository of motion pictures judged to be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Forrest joins a killer/cannibal, a cute deer, a nasty alcoholic and a guitar-case carrying assassin, among others, in the new list, which now totals 575 movies.
“These films are selected because of their enduring significance to American culture,” said Library of Congress James Billington.
“Our film heritage must be protected because these cinematic treasures document our history and culture and reflect our hopes and dreams.”
Those so-called ‘hopes and dreams,’ though, live only in a darkened movie theater, not much in real life — reelly?
Out in the cold of Iowa there’s a shitload of GOP presidential contenders walking around, shaking hands and trying like the dickens to cuddle the hearts of those who will participate in the first big dump of the 2012 political year — the Iowa caucuses, due next Tuesday.
None of those clowns — including one clownette — is nowhere near Mr. Gump’s intelligence level.
The field is so shitty, there’s no clear front-runner.
Via CNN:
“It’s completely unprecedented to have a field and a cycle that has been this unpredictable, this turbulent late in the process,” Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn told CNN.
Tim Albrecht, the Twitter-active spokesman for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, is also surprised.
“I have never seen this level of undecided voters this late in the process. It’s a crazy year in that regard,” Albrecht said.
When Newt Gingrich couldn’t qualify for the the Virginia primary, he likened it to Pearl Harbor — remember he’s a historian.
Mitt Romney tweeted in response: “I think it’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory,” Romney said…
Fighting among losers.
In October, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir figured Rick Perry was a lot like Forrest Gump, except Forrest won a medal of honor: “I guess it’s a case of desperate man, desperate measures, as candidate Rick Perry finds himself floundering at the wrong end of the latest poll.”
Maybe Perry’s just running scared: “Now you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was going somewhere, I was running!”
Tomorrow’s another…
Floating Dreams
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Modern life isn’t what we figured a generation ago.
The world is way-more high-strung, more anxiety-filled and dangerous.
Just yesterday a couple of horrible tragedies — in Texas seven people were found shot to death in an apartment: The seven, believed to be related, were apparently in the process of opening Christmas gifts or had just finished doing so in the apartment’s living room area, said Grapevine police Sgt. Robert Eberling.
One of those dead is believed to be the shooter.
Meanwhile, in Connecticut a woman lost her parents and children in a house fire: “It is a terrible, terrible day,” Mayor Michael Pavia told reporters at the scene of the fire. “There probably has not been a worse Christmas day in the city of Stamford.”
(Illustration found here).
Some bad things are worse than others, but as the world continues to construct its own coffin, the news in the immediate future won’t be pretty.
Maybe its the high-level ability to communicate anything really quickly — there’s no hush, hush any more, not for any length of time any way, and the pulse of life will only quicken as the days grow shorter, quicker.
Technology might have made it too easy to fail.
And be driven crazy.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
A 1-year-old boy survived on Christmas after being thrown out of a second-floor window in San Jose by his mother, who then leaped out after him, police said.
…
Baby and mother were rushed to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
The baby, whose name is being withheld, is in fair condition in the pediatrics unit where doctors are checking for possible brain injury, said Donna Etchell, a nursing supervisor.
He is expected to survive.
…
“We are exploring the possibility that she does have some mental health issues,” he (Sgt. Jason Dwyer, a police spokesman) said.
“It’s not something we can talk about at length, but we do believe that did have something to do with the motive and why she took the actions that she took today.”
…
“Everybody’s going to put their heads together and try to figure out the best thing to do,” he said.
“It’s not the kind of call we want to go to ever, especially on Christmas Day.”
Or maybe any other day.
Close with Mark Twain: Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.
Not by humans, anyway.
Happy Monday!
Child of Now
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An avid movie-goer when much younger, I hadn’t set foot in a theater in years – DVDed everything — and not much appealed.
In reality, I don’t really don’t care much for the medium any more, rare now for even a video.
Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood are still dead, so there you have it.
So last night, I ventured out for a view of David Fincher’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” at the urging of a daughter now staying with me — she’d just finished the book, and wanted a look-see.
Hey, what the heck, there’s nothing else going on, so off we went…
‘Dragon Tattoo‘ sucked — up-chucking the old idiom, ‘that’s 158 minutes I’ll never get back.’
(Illustration found here).
Director Fincher, to me anyway, is one of those hit-or-miss guys that could make an interesting film all the way through, or create brilliant spots in otherwise over-drawn and tedious movies — tons of peoples (my daughters included — Brad Pitt, duh!) blubber endlessly and wax delightful over “Fight Club,” but I didn’t catch the point, the only person I felt for was the crazy character played by Helena Bonham Carter, which retardedly reveals how my sense of sensibility tracks.
If Fincher had cut about 90 percent of the first half of the intriguing “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” he’d had a really good movie on his hands — the whole, entire plot didn’t jell until the ages of Ben and Daisy had coincided — but instead another bit of tedious storytelling.
Of course, he scored big with his recent “The Social Network,” but then he had one of the better visual-arts writers around, Aaron Sorkin, on-board.
Fincher shit in his mess kit, though, with ‘Dragon Tattoo.’
My daughter also disliked it — she said the only good part of the movie was the sound/graphics with the opening credits; the whole project went downhill from there.
Indeed, the sequence was inspiring — Trent Reznor and Karen O re-shaped Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” a hard, pulsating tune, into a fluid, exploding optical scenario setting up an anticipation of a dangerous, weird and quick-paced piece of entertainment.
Wrong.
Again, my daughter wondered how people who’d not read the book could understand the plot.
True — beyond the basics, I not only couldn’t follow, but also couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind the story.
The basics being: Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), an investigative journalist, just losing a big libel case and most of his bank account, takes a freelance job with a big industrialist (Christopher Plummer) to find out what happened to the old guy’s favorite niece, who’d disappeared 40 years earlier.
Some circumstances later, Blomkvist teams with hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), the girl of the title.
The plot blunders along, but there’s no emotion, no rationale to why we in the audience should even want to follow, a storyline of a serial killer amongst the industrialist’s family and a lot of time doing really nothing, just being cold as in Sweden.
The LA Times pretty-well sums it up in its review of the film:
As readers of the Stieg Larsson novel and viewers of the recent Swedish film version know all too well, what’s on offer is a bleak and savage story of crime and punishment that features generous portions of sadistic rape, twisted torture and murders that can charitably be called grotesque.
…
Screenwriter (Steven) Zaillian has adroitly pared down the 500-plus-page book (the chatter about a change to the ending is a tempest in a teapot) and what’s on screen also benefits from the work of “Social Network” collaborators including production designer Donald Graham Burt, editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall and composers Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross.
But unlike that film, which profited from Eisenberg’s humanity in a not particularly human role, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is too frigid around the heart to be really effective.
The only bit worth noting in the film is when Salander is on screen.
And she’s a character for the ages, most definitely a child of the now — in ‘Dragon Tattoo‘ she’s a wafer-thin 25, possessing a photographic memory coupled with being a most-brilliant computer hacker, a load of facial piercings, a Gothic-punk-rockish make-up and a sullen, distrustful demeanor.
As heroine of Larsson’s trilogy — “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest ” — she’s the poster child for the damaged soul who’s both much-more intelligent and integrity-minded than appearances would indicate.
Don’t get me wrong, however, Salander would in a heart-beat kick your sorry ass real bad if wronged.
My daughter says several characters from the book were completely left out of the movie, and apparently Salander might have suffered from Asperger syndrome, characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, which would explain the apparent attitude — good at heart, but she just can’t communicate feelings, though, at first (or maybe second) glance, Salander would come across to most folks as surly and nasty.
But it ain’t so.
Some other background not in the Fincher film (via Politics Daily):
She has many secrets, some more awful than others, and has endured horrific physical and mental pain, rape and torture, and will inflict revenge swiftly, without mercy.
…
She’s a child of the millennium, and she’s old, older than hell.
She’s beautiful, and odd, very odd.
She tried to kill her father when she was 11 years old after years watching him rape and beat her mother. She set him on fire by using a milk carton filled with gasoline and throwing it into his car with a lighted match.
He was not killed but was maimed.
She was committed to a psychiatric facility and placed under a guardian who went on to torture and rape her before her 13th birthday.
I felt for Salander, in the way she moved and looked at people — long a ward of the state, her older caretaker (I didn’t catch his name), suffers a stroke and the sweetness of her care for him reveals a sincere concern.
Underneath the tough was the soft.
Too bad ‘Dragon Tattoo‘ couldn’t have been all about Salander, or at least have her more screen time — on appearance, she always warmed an otherwise frigid film.
Now most likely, I’ll have to DVD the Swedish ‘Dragon Tattoo,’ which came out two years ago without much fanfare.
One nutty thing about Fincher’s version is why?
Robert Roger Ebert (gave the Swedish adaption four stars, proclaiming in the lede to his review: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a compelling thriller to begin with, but it adds the rare quality of having a heroine more fascinating than the story.
Yes!
My Saturday night at the movies was a waste, though.
And it cost $25 for two adult tickets and a couple of small Cokes — Tattoo You!