Fiction writer as generalist

to the extent that the fiction writer is a generalist, he/she is our
savior.

correction: the quick brown fox jumpS over the lazy dog

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog  - much better

Begin forwarded message:

From: schmebble <kburget@gmail.com>

Date: January 19, 2008 11:00:48 AM EST

To: kevin@waltzing.org

Subject: [LOAM] the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

all 26 ltrs of alphabet

--
Posted By schmebble to LOAM at 1/19/2008 11:00:00 AM

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

all 26 ltrs of alphabet

Eleanor Rigby

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
It just struck me today, they come from T.S. Eliot. He's the source
of inspiration for this song. Never put that together before.

Reagan as Race-baiter

The Conscience of a Liberal (Paul Krugman)
- Clipping Loc. 1158-63 | Added on Sunday, December 30, 2007, 01:44 PM

movement inevitably brought itself a much wider range of enemies.
Enterprising politicians took notice. Ronald Reagan, who had opposed
the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Act—calling the latter
"humiliating to the South"—ran for governor of California in part on
a promise to repeal the state's fair housing act. "If an individual
wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting
his house," Reagan said, "he has a right to do so." Above all,
public perception of the civil rights movement became entangled with
the rising tide of urban disorder—a linkage that served to
legitimate and harden resistance to further civil rights progress.

Sportif

the thing about people being "kept"; the sportif clothes of Blaike
Hairen (sp subverted) playing soccer that belied his martial arts
bravado_ andd this in so many other spheres - the key to seeing the
thing that is mediating experience , keeping us from an apprehension
of reality in a country hijacked by a rapacious elite

Get the same vibe off Anderson Cooper. This suited-up quality will
keep him from seeing and feeling what's at stake. Brought to mind the
"strong anthropic principle" and my inability to get my mind around
it. That we can even pose the question is all the proof that is
needed of the specificity of our evolution. How can it be so? You
run aground, or into parodies like Pangloss's "Best of All Possible
Worlds" Perhaps not "best" but it's the one we got of which we are
the final exponent.

very very smart

so say the associates of him
but one who at the false summit
could go no higher
called the mountain as very
very high
it's a bit meaningless, isn't it
as if to claim the birdseye
for onesself.
the claim should merely
be "smarter than me,
as far as I can tell"

a lot 'o camels

in Camelot

Dream for Candy

Had a dream in which Sevi was begging to buy candy at a store, two
kinds: Buzzies & Oyster Gods

Movie: There Will Be Blood

Kind of good, kind of grows on me 24 hrs later. A feast of
recognitions, from the manner of titles and opening chords right out
the Shining as homage to Kubrick, to Murnau, to Sherwood Anderson to
Terrence Malick to Cormac McCarthy, to Altman to I don't know, even
Beckett toward the end. It was largely engrossing, nice to begin as
silent film basically for the first 20 min. Daniel Day Lewis
inhabiting as he does, more thoroughly than any actor living I
believe. He even makes someone like Ben Kingsley seem all artifice.
The thing is sort of Emersonian in its take on capitalism.
Plainview's character remains the protagonist throughout and you are
made to understand him from the point of view of the refusal to lie
and to always self-rely, to not be a hypocrite and depend as Eli
Sunday ultimately reveals by the end. (funny by the way how we he
goes crazy sermonizing, his voice sounds like Gene Wilder going crazy
in Young Frankenstein) Yes, no doubt that Eli is the evil to be
avoided and Plainview the exusably evil American thing. Sure he's
ruthless, but brutality aside, it's not actually very condemning of
him. He's not just some silly pastiche of a villain like Day Lewis
played in Gangs of New York. His enterprise is singleminded as any
artist's and therefore self-justified, self-protected. That it
therefore tries to make the action hinge on his reaching out to the
one character that represents a lifeline, the "son" he has cared for--
it's just always a bit more askew and conceptual than I think was
intended. There was a glimmer of a chance at it when Plainview was
put through the ludicrous baptism by Sunday, but it doesn't come off.
The son remains a symbol, not a person, so the conceit never twines
with the emotional intention. By the end, the face-off between
Plainview and Sunday in the bowling alley, while quite a send-up,
remained ultimately allegorical. As in here's where capitalism and
religion are revealed for using eachother and look how we recognize
that legacy here around us today in the US of A. But on an emotional
level it fails, retreats to the abstract in a way that Malick at his
best, Badlands and mostly in Days of Heaven, managed to avoid. Thin
Red Line straddles it mighty precariously and The New World, while
graphically gorgeous is a sarcophagus of refried sentiments. The
coolness does have that fastidious feel of the Kubrick hand--a kind of
detachment in retreat. (For an antidote, could use a strong dose of
Cassavetes, and it would lose all concern with appearing smart and
tough) Still, for what I'm calling shortcomings, the film is perhaps
alone in its championing possibilities in cinema today, in what was a
routine occurrence with Altman and most of the great filmmakers in the
70s. It asks something of you. It does strange inscrutable things
and wants you to pay attention. That cipher of a boy. The great
unsettled disorientation of the scene in which the doctors and others
wrestle to peer into his (presumably destroyed) eardrums. The
crispness of the scenes between Plainview and the men from Standard
Oil; the Altmanesqe sheer presence of those moments where the actors
seem to jump the tracks, go scriptless (again, toward Cassavetes at
its best). This is what can and should be done. Would that I were
doing it... How the hell to get there.

Hearing Jhumpa Lahiri read Mavis Gallant

read some ponderous story about 20 somethings in Spain in the 50s I
thought hey there's one I can cross off my list, maybe two.

A thing that often happens

Pure and admirable artist in some other discipline decides he/she has
some slam dunk idea for a shit movie.

Fly Voltaire!

The Airline with Power in The Best of All Possible Worlds!

the redundancy of confederates

pack of lies

lack of pies