Archive for September 22, 2006

So you’re dying to hear about the new Bond song, right?

September 22, 2006 / / 3 comments

You want to know what I think of Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name“? Of course you do.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wha..? Sorry…fell asleep.

It’s bland and boring and who the hell cares? Seriously, if they’re going Startle The World! with their Bold New Choice! for a Different! Kind! of Bond Song! then they need to keep us awake.

I hear people saying, hey, they’ve changed direction, it’s not Shirley Bassey. I agree it has been time for a change. For a while, the trend was towards attempting to replicate the success of Nobody Does It Better, the 80s gave us two rockers and some mildly pleasant love themes. But the 90s songs were all old-school belting.

So I, like many Bond fans, was hoping for a male lead singer, something new and edgy. (I had my heart set on Counting Crows, and thought after the Oscar nomination, they had a real chance.) Madonna’s song for the last movie was exactly right (except for the male part). It was a total direction change, it startled (and sometimes pissed off) the fans, and it was a huge hit.

So Chris Cornell is announced, and that sounds promising, doesn’t it? A non-traditional choice, and then there’s all this chatter about being edgy and new.

And what we get is a bland melody with a chorus that sounds like it was composed by committee. At least nothing will distract me from paying attention to the visual title design.

Friday Kittenblogging: Windowsill

September 22, 2006 / / One comment

This looks cute, but it makes fuck-all noise as the blinds rattle:

Mingo at the windowsill

» Read more..

Pentacle Battle Continues

September 21, 2006 / / Comments Off on Pentacle Battle Continues

Also per Cosette, an extremely informative post about what’s going on in the battle for religious grave markers for Pagan veterans, and a list of things you can do to help.

Extortion for Kali

September 21, 2006 / / Comments Off on Extortion for Kali

Per Cosette, we learn that Indian courts have banned “touts” at the Kalighat temple.

(Loyal readers of Property of a Lady will recognize Kalighat as the home of the idol that is the source for my newest tattoo.)

Visitors to the temple report harrassment and extortion by the touts (aka pandaas):

Sanchita Dey, a housewife and frequent visitor to the temple, says it is a harrowing experience to come to the temple.

“Once a pandaa gets hold of you from the road leading to the temple, you are completely under his control. He dictates how much sweets and flowers you have to buy. Once inside the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, the priests force you to give the money they want and if you don’t oblige, they use foul language. And after you leave the temple, you have to pay a hefty fee to the tout,” she says.
…

Some said similar controls should be enforced at other famous Hindu temples across the country, where devotees are similarly harassed.

I think that the Pagans who blame all the problems of the world on Christianity and monotheism should take a long, hard look at this article and consider what it means about the potential for corruption in goddess worship.

The New Black

September 21, 2006 / / 13 comments

I was raised by people with highbrow educations, but I do not, myself, have such an education. I was raised by people who have read the classics, who distinguish between “fiction” and “literature,” but I make no such distinction, and I haven’t read Beowulf. Or Tolstoy. Or Chaucer.

My mother in particular has highbrow tastes, and I have heard with my own ears the phrase “déclassé” pass her lips (in reference to me, of course). (In my defense, my mother doesn’t know how to use Unicode to get accented characters. So I’m not without my charms.)

Anyway, that’s me. Déclassé.

My mother likes drawing room dramas. Merchant & Ivory affairs. Wouldn’t dream of attending a genre film. No spaceships, no James Bond, no elves. Déclassé.

I am bemused by the fact that the brightest, most talented, and most creative people out there, my age and younger, are not, in fact, participating in highbrow creation. The blazing talents of 40 or 30 are working with style, even style-over-substance, with comic books and vampires and hobbits, with sloppy rock-n-roll and vulgarity.

Déclassé, ladies and gentlemen, is the new black.

Fun With Language: Walking in the Ragu

September 20, 2006 / / 6 comments

Last night:

Me, to Mingo: “No! Cats may not walk through the Ragu.”

Arthur, from next room: “The cat’s walking in the Ragu?”

Me: “The important point here is that the Ragu is in walkable position.”

Oh! I almost forgot!

September 19, 2006 / / 2 comments

Arrrrrrrr, matey.

You know what’s scary?

September 19, 2006 / / 8 comments

Having a blog and finding yourself with absolutely nothing to say. So, here’s a mini-linkfest:

I am outraged by this.

I found a blog dedicated to what may well become my favorite new show. What did I think of Studio 60 on Sunset Strip? Well, it was a very engaging way to introduce a series, but as an individual episode, it was not an act of genius. Can’t stand next to the pilot for The West Wing. I agree with the Sunset Strip blog; B+ seems about right. Bradley Whitford’s character is intriguing. Very. I wasn’t one of those Josh-crushy girls for West Wing, but Danny Tripp could definitely get crushy.

Jason at Wild Hunt has been knocking them out of the park all week. Four (count ‘em) posts on the complex relationship between Pagans and Unitarian-Universalism (start here) with lively comments, and then a smart look at the religious nature of Halloween, from both Christian and Pagan perspectives.

Fun With ESL

September 18, 2006 / / Comments Off on Fun With ESL

One of the “quarter of one” guys gave me a document to edit. The document describes how a software system works. The paragraph in question describes the tables associated with setting the page size (scrolling area) in the system.

When the user saves a page size
[The table] PaginationDetails gives previously saved page size (if any) and if not then insert given page size and if any saved page size is there then update it with given page size.

Seriously. I had no idea what this said. None.

After meeting with the author, the following is the final paragraph:

When the user saves a page size
• PaginationDetails: if there is no previously saved page size preference, then a new page size is inserted into the table PaginationDetails. If there is a previously saved page size, then the old size in the table is updated with the new size.

Monday Movie Review: Brick

September 18, 2006 / / 10 comments

Brick (2005) 10/10
Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is contacted by his ex-girlfriend, desperately seeking his help. He re-enters his former world of dope sellers and criminals, hoping to save her and himself.

You know what you don’t think when you hear that such-and-such a film is a modern film noir? You don’t think it’s a film noir. Seriously. You think it’s got a certain style, a darkness, an edge. You expect, perhaps, particular costumes or a particular tone to the dialogue and the slang. But you don’t expect it to really be film noir.

Brick is film noir. Is. Brendan is Sam Spade. Or maybe Philip Marlowe, because he’s smarter than Spade, but no, he sounds like Spade and thinks like Spade and there’s no doubt in my mind that Laura (Nora Zehetner), from the moment she appears on-screen, is Brigid O’Shaughnessy.

Except that Brick is set at a present day high school.

In a way it makes perfect sense. Noir is a perfectly valid lens through which to view high school: The social circles that barely know each other, the seamy underside hidden from the clueless authorities who think they understand, the back alleys, basements, and parking lots in which teenagers live parallel to, but not quite a part of, the rest of the world. The slang that changes as it goes along, because the whole point is to make sure no one else understands. Noir reads like high school, and high school reads like noir, with its heightened emotions; with big love, big betrayal, and enormous danger.

Most of the young cast is excellent, although Zehetner is a bit weak. Gordon-Levitt gives us a hero who is by turns as tough and smart as he looks, and then is a vulnerable, frightened kid who is faking tough and smart as best he can. Who is totally over the girl from before, and who will live and die by the hope of getting her back. His face is infinitely watchable, and the director knows it, providing a lot of close-ups; indeed, his face is so nuanced and fascinating that studying it furthers the plot. Lukas Haas has a killer supporting role, by turns frightening and funny.

This is definitely a low-budget indie, but first-time director Rian Johnson turns that into an advantage in exactly the way that the original low-budget noirs did: Empty landscapes, hollow halls, blank rooms, that seem to say that there is nothing here but the mystery, nothing but the love and loss and violence. The only real problem with the low-budget nature of Brick is that the sound is kind of fuzzy and some of the rapid-fire dialogue is hard to make out. Thank goodness for DVDs, huh?

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