I got a couple of hits on “night hares feri”.
Go know.
Archive for Deborah Lipp
Okay, I just joined Netflix
So if I don’t like it, I blame pretty much everyone I know.
Bet higher
My father used to say that if you always win at poker, you’re not betting high enough.
This is one of my favorite sayings. It’s applicable in all sorts of situations. In magic, you find all sorts of people who hedge their spellcasting bets, who won’t risk their karma, or risk being wrong, or risk failure. And thus there’s all sorts of good work that never gets done. As Isaac says, the Gods gave us our magic well knowing we’re mortal, and there’s nothing admirable about refusing to put your ass on the line.
The saying applies to politics as well. Why has Feingold got only one co-sponsor to his censure resolution? The Democrats are hedging their bets. To a (wo)man, they’re making sure they don’t bet too high, and they’re doing it even when there’s a pair of aces in the hole.
I admire Howard Dean. He bet high and lost on the flop. His comeback as chairman of the DNC is earned, because he took the honest risk instead of playing it safe. I admire Al Gore less. He says ballsy things, but not during his Presidential campaign, only from safe retirement on the assurance he won’t run.
What I want to see is the Dems listening to my father’s advise, betting higher, losing some, and winning bigger. I don’t think they’re listening, though.
This is a drum we need to bang until it’s deafening
Via several sources, but here’s the Bitch.
Some pharmacies are now refusing to fill prescriptions for post-abortion vitamins and antibiotics.
Because “pro-life” means “pro-bacterial infection”?
Nah, because pro-life means pro-fetus and anti-woman. Because pro-life is code for “if you have sex, bitch, we’ll punish you. With forced pregnancy, with HPV, and with infection. You deserve it, slut.”
That’s what it means. Nothing else. If they have any story about pro-life they would be furiously against this. And we need to bang this drum. Loudly. Everywhere. This needs to be the poster child of pro-choice, pro-woman sanity. Because these people are insane and if the HPV vaccine battle hasn’t proven it (which of course it has) this is the nail in the coffin of their frickin crazy-ass movement.
Spring
I love this time of year. I was just out, running a long, annoying errand, and I got such a thrill from it.
First you get the crocuses. You see a robin. But the trees are bare and the weather sucks. Then there’s a warm day, and on the second warm day I took my rosemary plant outside. Then it dropped to 35° and I hope m’darling rosemary survives.
Then you see some buds. Then some more buds. You start to hope.
Then there’s a day like today. Suddenly, there’s forsythia everywhere, furious with yellow. There’s white dogwood and bright flashes of pink cherry blossom and crabapples. Everywhere you look, there’s blossom.
And you look at the other trees, about half of them still, bare and wintery, and you think “It’ll happen. It’ll come.”
Too Good for James Bond
Via CBn comes this fabulous review of the new Aston Martin V8 Vantage. It’s not like I’m ever going to buy a $150,000 car (or even know anyone who does) but the review is so well-written, so entertaining…here’s an excerpt:
Now I don’t mean to boast, but after a couple of minutes of brushing my electric toothbrush automatically switches to an intermittent buzz to stop me wearing my teeth down. It’s quite useful for those days when you might all too easily stand semi-comatose in front of the bathroom mirror all morning, and I can’t help thinking they should fit something similar to the new Aston Martin V8 Vantage to stop you frittering away entire afternoons gazing at it in a similar dribbling trance.
Like those Michelangelo sketches at the British Museum or that photo of Sienna Miller in February’s Vanity Fair, this car is hypnotically, intoxicatingly divine.
Moderation: The Far Right’s Little White Lie
Tom has been obsessively blogging about wingnuts in sheep’s clothing.
Dobsonite theocrat Ron Luce takes great pains to project an image of good old non-political evangelism in his teen ministry; he seems to be succeeding. The Catholic Church sponsors a media campaign designed to project an image of moderation for the anti-choice side. Welcome to the future. Christian authoritarians are becoming less like Fred Phelps and more like Ron Luce and Monika Rodman. The public face is friendly and non-threatening; the reality is Vision America and Operation Rescue.
I have long noticed this tendency of certain far-right Christians to put on a false front in order to seduce the masses. This is the essential tactic of “Jews for Jesus,” they say they’re Jewish rather than Christian in order to more easily convert Jews, not because it’s in some essential way the truth. They believe in Jesus, therefore they’re Christian, ba-da-bing.
My dear friend, who is a devout Mormon, points out that this is against the teachings of Christ. He tells his followers not to “hide [their] light under a bushel.” If you’re Christian, you’re supposed to say so.
This is one of Jesus’s better ideas. “I am what I am, if you don’t like it, bite me” is more or less my philosophy, and a damn sight better than painting a false front.
Keeping you posted
Modemac posted an update link on the Subgenius custody case, which is still up in the air.
Anyone who thinks this doesn’t affect them, because Subgeniuses are just too weird, doesn’t read much.
Monday Movie Review: Inside Man
Inside Man (2006) 10/10
A bank robber (Clive Owen) has planned the perfect crime, but must deal with hostage negotiator Frazier (Denzel Washington), the bank owner (Christopher Plummer) and a high-level political fixer (Jodie Foster). Directed by Spike Lee.
Inside Man opens with a monologue by Dalton Russell (Owen’s character) spoken directly to the camera. Quickly, we learn that Russell is smart, cocky, forceful, and interesting. He has the audience on his side, without any special pleading—we’re ready to go, so let’s watch the robbery!
From there, we follow his trip from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan, as he picks up his gang. As fabulous Bollywood dance music plays (I’ve already bought the album), Lee’s camera pays attention to detail; to road signs, to architectural facades, to streets, to traffic. This is all very particular, we are in this place, with these people, and it looks like this. It sets the entire movie up; there’s mystery, excitement, and particularity. A bank robbery movie with two big actors as cop and robber, respectively, sounds generic, but there’s nothing generic about Inside Man.
The opening music also establishes a Spike Lee trademark: Ethnic diversity, both with and without hostility. At one point, Detective Frazier’s team cannot translate a crucial audiotape, because they cannot identify the language. ‘Hell, this is New York,’ the detective says, ‘Put it on loudspeaker, someone in the crowd outside will know.’ And he’s right.
Although Inside Man isn’t predictable, there are things you can predict. As I sat in the theater, knowing that this would happen, or that wouldn’t happen, it was because I was coming to know the characters, not because the plot was transparent. Tightly written, the plot only gives itself away when it wants to, but it is not just plot construction that is well-written. The people are well-written; the actors live in their skin, the director gives them room to breathe, and the screenplay never asks them to betray themselves. At one point, a news reporter says that ‘a planned robbery spiralled into a hostage situation,’ which is a typical sort of thing to say. But we know better, Russell’s plan included taking hostages from the beginning—we don’t know why, but we saw it happen, and we also saw that Russell is careful, calm, methodical. Nothing “spiralled” here.
Later, when we are shown something that is unbelievable if the characters are who we think they are, we know we have been tricked. We are meant to know; the late-movie reaveal of the trick is underplayed; it’s more confirmation than revelation. We have been led to trust the characters more than the looping and surprising machinations of the plot.
Surprising it is, and there is significant pleasure to be had in watching it unfold. Also in watching the characters unfold, watch Detective Frazier get smarter, watch the interviews with the fifty-some hostages, any of whom might be the bank robbers—the police just can’t sort everyone out. Minor characters—a hostage with a few lines about noticing a woman’s breasts, a grandmotherly hostage who was humiliated by having to remove her clothes—are all well-drawn. The filming is excellent; everything we look at is worth a second look. This is the sort of movie that will be worth watching again on DVD, because the visuals are rich and intricate.
