Archive for May 30, 2008

Banned Book Project

May 30, 2008 / / 7 comments

I’m stealing this from Evn.

How it works: these are the 110 top banned books. Bold what you’ve read, italicize what you’ve read part of. Read more.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I tag everyone. Go read.

I Love NY

May 29, 2008 / / Comments Off on I Love NY

Today I love being a New Yorker:

Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

In a directive issued on May 14, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”

The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

In a videotaped message given to gay community leaders at a dinner on May 17, Mr. Paterson described the move as “a strong step toward marriage equality.” And people on both sides of the issue said it moved the state closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions in this state.

“Very shortly, there will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and probably thousands and thousands and thousands of gay people who have their marriages recognized by the state,” said Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side and has pushed for legalization of gay unions.

I got nothing to say except YAAAAAY!

Tuesday Trivia Solutions

May 27, 2008 / / 4 comments

All solved!

» Read more..

Tuesday Trivia: Special Edition

May 27, 2008 / / 8 comments

All solved!

1. “I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered in some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic – embryonic – fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn.”
Solved by Trevor J (comment #1).

2. This movie received nine Academy Award nominations; the most for any film that did not receive a Best Picture nomination.
Solved by Melville (comment #3).

3. In this movie about two men who become increasingly enraged with one another after a chance encounter, one of the main characters attends Alcoholics Anonymous. His AA sponsor discusses the connection between anger and addiction with him.
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #4).

4. “You had a leak? You call what’s goin’ on around here a leak? Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat.”
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #5).

5. One of the lead characters is a novelist who writes A Country Made of Ice Cream.
Solved by Melville (comment #3).

6. Tim Robbins full frontal (I think this is the only such movie, and if I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will tell me and I’ll have to come up with another clue).
Solved by Tom Hilton (comment #4) and maurinsky (comment #6) (3 minutes apart).

7. “It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.”
Solved by Trevor J (comment #1).

Monday Movie Review: Iron Man

May 26, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Iron Man

Iron Man (2008) 7/10
Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a boy-genius weapons developer and one of the richest men in the world. In Afghanistan to demonstrate a new missile, he is kidnapped and ordered to build the missile for his kidnappers. With the equipment his captors provide and the assistance of another imprisoned scientist (Shaun Taub), he invents a device to keep the shrapnel in his chest from invading his heart and killing him, and creates an Iron Man suit to effect his escape. Directed by John Favreau.

I could totally review The Apartment, but here I have that rare occasion when I’ve actually gone to a blockbustery movie on a holiday weekend, and okay, not “the” blockbustery movie, but whatever. So I feel obligated to review Iron Man.

There is something about the Iron Man comics that has always been a little stiff, a little stodgy, a little “establishment.” Tony Stark is that rare creature among superheroes; his job is basically not threatened by his secret, nor is his day to day life made particularly more difficult. Okay, sure, heart condition. But the iron suit helps that, it doesn’t cause it. Iron Man comics, even when they were a brand new thing, somehow seemed Old Guard; he’s about America and Industry and he’s got that kind of Bruce Wayne wealth and power and butler and women, and all of that adds up to, “They made a movie? Really? What for?”

On the other side of the equation is Robert Downey, Jr. Hollywood was clamoring to Give That Man a Franchise, which was a damn good idea. Downey is at the peak of his watchability in this film, he is infinitely entertaining to just slap up on the screen and let him do his thing, which Favreau (a talented director who tends towards the very-good-but-not-great) is smart enough to let him do.

Most first superhero movies have 3 parts; the origin, the becoming a hero, and the actual adventure. And most such movies spend too little time on the actual adventure. Iron Man definitely suffers here; the origin in Afghanistan could easily lose twenty percent; the invention of the super-sophisticated suit back home could lose thirty. But for all of those scenes, Downey is on-screen approximately one hundred percent of the time, and every time your mind wanders he pulls you back.

This is a good cast; Terence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow are both far better than they have the right or reason to be, Jeff Bridges phones it in, but his telephone work is better than most actors live. Shaun Taub is wonderful. But this is a one-man show and the movie would, in a word, stink without Downey.

Everything that isn’t Downey is technology and effects, and they are damn good. The suit both looks like the comic book version and is believable; it blends with the rest of the action, and that’s not easy; we’ve seen plenty of movies screw that up. The script avoids several clichés that had me cringing when I thought I saw them coming; only the villain is cardboard.

There’s an ending that kind of irritated me and charmed me in equal parts, and then a post-credits bonus ending that is delightful. So stick around for the very end.

Sunday Meditation: Brief Meditation

May 25, 2008 / / Comments Off on Sunday Meditation: Brief Meditation

A while back, I promised techniques for brief meditation and brief prayer. If you’ve got a life overwhelmed by demands—small children, a noisy space with no room for quiet—than traditional meditation instructions that require twenty minutes of peace and quiet might seem laughable. But if you have such a life, you need the peace that meditation can bring even more than the rest of us.

First, work on grounding and centering. I mean, focus your meditation entirely on getting good at that, until you can do it in about five seconds. That’s easier than it sounds and it’s crucial for brief meditation.

The trick to the five-second grounding and centering is, first, to practice, and second, to leap in. Ground and center as if. As if you could do it in five seconds. Don’t say, well I’ll try, simply know you can; the resource is, truly, already within.

It is helpful to have a trigger; a crystal you hold, a picture you gaze at, a visualization you use. Imprint that trigger by using it whenever you ground and center; ultimately, simply using the trigger will start the process, as if you’ve pushed a button.

Once you have relaxed your mind and body into the centered moment, you can use that moment for prayer or meditation. Sometimes all you have time for is the centered moment, but even that can bring benefits to you.

The easiest place to find a meditation moment is in the shower. Even the most harried among us has to shower, and the relaxing feeling of hot water, the sound barrier as it rushes about us, is ideal for taking that deep breath in, finding your center, and remembering who you are. This is a moment when you can reach out to the Goddess, or ask for inner wisdom, or for strength. This is the moment when you can find the compassion that lives within you, and bring it to your day.

Another good moment for brief meditation is when you’re getting dressed. Instead of just throwing on whatever, take a moment to look at your closet or dresser and know that beauty is of the Gods, and bring beauty to yourself.

And again, when you open the refrigerator. Nourishment is the Earth Mother, it is the Harvest and the Hunt. Ground and center, and from a centered space, open the fridge and let the feeling of sustenance and satiety become a part of you.

If you can commit yourself to seeing the sacred in the ordinary, then there are many such moments you can find, and they will become a source of strength and peace for you.

So You Think You Can Dance & The FAT Guy

May 23, 2008 / / 7 comments

Oh NOES! FAT PEOPLE!

…is basically the attitude, right? Scary to even think of a fat person on a dance show. And this guy actually lifted his shirt to show his big fat belly during his dance, so of course that clip made the “coming up” segment before every commercial. Let’s laugh at the fat person!

But I happen to love So You Think You Can Dance so I decided to set aside my strong misgivings about the way fat people are treated and watch the season premiere last night. Overall, it wasn’t a great premiere; a lot more focus on gawking at the losers than at showcasing dance, but let’s get back to Fat Guy.

First, we are gawking at a fat guy. And not just any fat guy, a weird fat guy with a fur hat. Lookie! Fat people can’t dance, they can only do shtick. And that’s a choice. Hundreds upon hundreds of people auditioned; a dozen got shown on TV; fur hat guy was not the only big person who auditioned, so the choice was, let’s show someone laughable.

Second, the judges leap right into OMG FAT WILL KILL YOU. It’s unhealthy. We’re telling you this for your own good.

But there were a couple of things that I actually liked. Crazy, right?

First of all, these judges are choreographers and former dancers, so I have a certain sympathy for any anti-fat prejudice they may have; they are from a world where it is so much the norm, I kind of doubt they’ve been exposed to any alternate views. What Nigel ultimately said to the guy was this: ‘Every dancer’s heart rate goes up when they dance; health is measured by how quickly your heart rate comes back down. And look, you’re still panting. That’s not okay.’

That’s great advise, because it’s not about weight; if he’s fat and not panting that’s healthy, and if he’s thin and panting that’s unhealthy. So yay Nigel.

Finally, Mia pointed out that the guy’s written bio said he didn’t want to be a thin dancer, and she asked him about it, and the conversation got to that he didn’t think he was a good enough dancer to compete with “real” dancers, he just thought his size and costume made him amusing to watch. And Mia engaged that directly, telling him to learn to love himself and not to pigeonhole himself, and that perhaps he could be a great dancer but he needed to let go his own preconceptions and find out. And after the initial question about his size, she never added “and lose weight,” which I thought was miraculous.

Maybe it’s the tyranny of soft expectations. Maybe it’s like being so happy that a woman is allowed to get a job in a traditionally male field that you tolerate the lower pay. But after that offensive promo spot, there was something lovely about engaging with the guy as if he was a real human being. Fancy that.

Constitutional guarantees trump democratic majorities

May 22, 2008 / / Comments Off on Constitutional guarantees trump democratic majorities

In an article about gay marriage that refutes a new Republic article by Ben Wittes, Glenn Greenwald reminds me that I find smart people really, really hot:

That a law invalidated by a court is supported by a large majority is not an argument supporting the conclusion that the court’s decision was wrong. Central to our system of government is the premise that there are laws which even the largest majorities are prohibited from enacting because such laws violate the constitutional rights of minorities. Thus, the percentage of people who support the law in question, and how lengthy and painstaking the process was that led to the law’s enactment, is totally irrelevant in assessing the propriety of a court decision striking down that law on constitutional grounds.

Contrary to Wittes’ extremely confused argument, a court striking down a law supported by large majorities is not antithetical to our system of government. Such a judicial act is central to our system of government. That’s because, strictly speaking, the U.S. is not a “democracy” as much as it a “constitutional republic,” precisely because constitutional guarantees trump democratic majorities. This is all just seventh-grade civics, something that the Brookings scholar and those condemning the California court’s decision on similar grounds seem to have forgotten.

(Emphasis in the original.)

The problem, of course, is that we don’t really teach “seventh grade civics” anymore. I kind of wonder if that’s a coincidence. I kind of wonder if destroying our educational system (most recently with No Child Left Behind) is, in fact, part of a Republican strategy to take over America by making Americans too ignorant to know the difference.

But I digress.

Here’s the thing. Minorities have rights. Even unpopular minorities. Even Jews and gays and Witches and blacks and Mormons. Even, y’know, Puritans, who came here because (wait for it) MINORITIES HAVE RIGHTS. And this, this is AGONY for conservatives. Unless, of course, they’re in the minority.

You see, the entire argument is disingenuous. Conservatives wish to argue that “judicial activism” is Bad Bad Baddy Bad when it does terrible things like prevent discrimination against gays, but when judges, I dunno, enforce discrimination against gays they aren’t in any kind of agony about judges overruling legislative action.

But Greenwald says it better. And smarter. And with restraint. Which is what gets me hot.

Yesterday’s search terms

May 22, 2008 / / 3 comments

I just installed a new blog stats WordPress plug-in (the old one was slowing page load to an agonizing pace, so I uninstalled it, and I’ve been flying blind for a couple of months).

This one shows you daily search terms used to find your site. For yesterday, they were:

nathan fillion
dermot mulrooney
intelligentpeople.com worth
howdy
after he’d murdered shelley winters
handprint tattoo
birthday present trivia
clarice starling fbi training
what did ennis mean at the end of brokeb
controversies of body art

Um…?

What’s wrong with this picture?

May 21, 2008 / / Comments Off on What’s wrong with this picture?

My friend just had triple bypass surgery. He lives alone and has no family locally. He was discharged yesterday; probably too soon medically, but insurance companies are rat bastards.

So anyway, I brought him groceries and made him dinner. First night home from the hospital, I figured he’d be weak and needy and it felt good to be helpful.

So I discussed with him what he was eating and what he liked, and then I went to the store, and got him so breakfast muffins (I checked the fat and sodium on everything), some grape tomatoes, a thing of cantalope chunks, a variety of low-sodium canned soups, a couple of different juices, a think of cleaning wipes so he could clean up without staying on his feet too long, and a package of chicken breasts. (I grilled up the chicken when I got to his apartment, gave him a small piece of chicken with some tomatoes and melon for dinner, and refrigerated the rest of the cooked chicken.) So, you could say they were heart-healthy groceries.

Now, doing his shopping meant skipping my own shopping, so I quick grabbed a couple of things that we needed. So in a separate bag were Coke, donuts, and bacon.

Seriously. The anti-heart groceries. Fuck you, heart!

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