Disks in Rotation:
DVD • Pulp Fiction
CD-ROM • D2X
CD Carousel:
• NIN - The Downward Spiral
• Sevendust - Sevendust
• Metallica - S&M
• Godsmack - 

Free Internet Tunes
• Fat Boy Slim Mixes
• Resident Evil Soundtrack

What's For Lunch?
• The curdled sweat of the non-believers. D

Daily Blog
Worked several hours last night on shaping up and formatting my old Lovecraft story essay.  It has ratings for every Lovecraft story, 1 to 5 stars, as well as a pocket synopsis and then some analysis of them.  As I'd not read it since I wrote it in 1995, I was surprised how usable most of it was.

I always think I should be improving as a writer, and I have a pretty good idea of how I can write now, so when I read something from 7 years ago, I like to think it won't be that good.  When it is adequate, I wonder if I'm stagnating.  My excuse is that I turn out so much writing now, with this site, dozens of emails a day, huge articles on the D2 site, forum posts, etc that I don't exactly drain the well, but I don't have time/inclination to really be sparklingly witty in every paragraph, and I virtually never edit anything, other than for info.  I've not reread/edited more than 5% of these blog updates before posting them.  I really should, since just a 5 or 10 minute sweep back over would no doubt improve their quality somewhat; I'd think of some clever remark to throw in here or there, fix some tangled sentence structure, etc.  I just usually can't be arsed. I mean why should I spend an extra minute fixing up the writing that hundreds of total strangers are judging me by.  *cough*

Anyway, the Lovecraft thing isn't done yet, or posted yet.  I added a bit to the capsule reviews in it, and reread them all, but there are probably 20 more stories that I need to add to it, and then I need to spiff the navigation up a bit.  Which is to say add some navigation, since it was done long ago in Wordperfect.  Hyperlinks make everything taste better.

I did add a page to the Fiction section.  It's got a couple of Xmas poems (Yes, "Xmas", not "Christmas".) one from 2001 that was posted on the D2 site, the other from 1992 that was posted nowhere.  Both are blatant rip offs of Twas the Night Before Christmas, in the structure of rhyming couplets.  Not that TtNBC was original in structure when it was written either.  The 1992 poem I enjoyed seeing now.  I just vaguely remembered it once I started reading it yesterday, and there were a few funny lines. The poem pits Santa vs. some weird demon thing.  Santa wears black leather (of course).

"What ho there you hellion," spoke the old one in black,
"It's clear you're determined, though brains you do lack.
I propose a deal, I offer a truce,
I'd like us to sit down, in front of this spruce."

Truce/Spruce cracks me up every time I read it, for no particular reason.

It didn't feel like I was surfing that much today, but damned if I don't have about a dozen news items linked to and blurbed about on the temp ideas page from today.  With minimal further ado, here they are.

I guess I'd better not write anything about the noisy drunks who live downstairs from my apartment, huh?  As usual in America, "Freedom of Speech, just watch what you say... Unless you're a major corporation, or have good lawyers."  The story attached to this cynical outburst may be seen here.  And I'm sure there's a lot more to it; the guy seems like a real loudmouth.  News for you man, judges aren't impartial and omniscient.  They are often petty and vindictive, and if you piss them off they can put you in jail for quite a while for no real reason.

The new edition of the Kama Sutra is out, and apparently it's much more female-centric than past translations, reflecting our more enlightened/non-sexist times.  Article about it here has some funny quotes.  I read a version of it years ago, when I was just out of high school and reading anything and everything on sex I could find (I don't mean porn) and used to know all of the weird fellatio, cunnilingus, intercourse, and other techniques in it, and the terms for them, etc.  It's got some very weird stuff, like 50 techniques for cock-sucking, that I unfortunately never managed to get a girlfriend to demo on me. 

The LotR:FotR DVD has been announced and it's got a lot of great stuff for fans, but it's such a cash cow, it's a bit tragic.  Two disk set with no bonus stuff coming, then a couple of months later another set with lots of extra scenes.  So fans will snap up the first one, eager for 5 minutes of TTT, and to see the movie again, and then they'll (we'll *cough*) buy the second one for the bonus scenes.  I'll try to control myself and wait for the second release, with the bonus scenes.

And you know they'll put out another special edition of it after TTT, and then another one after RotK, and then some other uber box set after all 3 are out for a year, etc.  But we'll love it anyway!

On a sci-fi topic, this article about the coming reality of a space elevator is fascinating.  Easy reusable rockets or space planes don't seem to be coming any time soon, and this is the next best thing.  It's just amazing to think of some wire going up into space; you wonder what if it hits something, say like a plane or a lower orbiting satellite?  But I guess they'll work out those details as they go.

You've probably heard about the French spree killer who managed to kill himself once in the police station.  I sort of assumed that he "fell" in the same way anti-apartheid leaders used to throw themselves into a wall a dozen times once in South African police custody.  If you know what I mean.  But there's no real hint of that in the articles, and the guy clearly had a death wish, just lacked the speed/balls to cap himself at the scene of the crime.

One interesting quote about it from one article.

France's strict gun laws require a permit, renewed every three years and only accorded to those who prove regular supervised practice. It is approved by the district police chief.

Jospin, speaking at a campaign rally in Dijon, called for a reevaluation of those laws.

"Without a doubt, it will be necessary to better monitor the application of laws governing the sale of arms in the country, which are already some of the toughest anywhere," Jospin said.

I'm sure NRA members quake in their faux leather bootsies at the prospect of actually being, you know, authorized and responsible for gun ownership, but you'll note that this is like the first mass murder of this type ever in France, while we have one monthly in the US, and almost always the ones here are by people who had every legal right to the guns they used. And even if they didn't, it's so easy to get guns illegally in the US that it's almost a moot point.

This guy with three automatic pistols was like the best-armed man in France, and by keeping weapons of mass murder out of the hands of every disenchanted nutjob, other countries avoid this sort of thing happening.  Though now that it's getting so much media coverage world wide I'm sure we'll see more of it.  The world is full of kooks who have no regard for human life, and not enough regard for their own life to not throw it away by going out with a bang.  Or several dozen bangs.  If you can keep them from having access to guns, or bombs, or whatever, it certainly helps keep down the casualties. What happened to just killing yourself in a nice private, quiet way?  Everyone wants their 15 minutes now.

Ann Coulter is just right of Attilla the Hun, as the old joke goes, so I'm unlikely to agree with her on much, but this editorial slamming Halle Barry for having big tits and being proud of them, Julia Roberts for kissing black people and enjoying it, and generally savaging Hollywood liberals at every opportunity under the guise of discussing the Oscars really amused me.  It's funny in a very bitter, cruel way, and there is so much projection going on by Coulter (pushing her own evil scheming cynical mind into every dumb actress' skull) that it's sort of queasy-inducing on a second read.  Obviously Coulter has big issues with sexuality and nudity (or at least feels she should pretend to have them, since she's an arch-conservative) in the "tut tut" sort of condescending manner that George Will displays towards... well, pretty much everything.

Nevertheless, I have to laugh at lines like this one from her editorial:

Yes, at long last, the "glass ceiling" had been broken. Large-breasted, slightly cocoa women with idealized Caucasian features finally have a chance in Hollywood! They will, however, still be required to display their large breasts for the camera and to discuss their large breasts at some length with reporters.

Elsewhere in her article:

After Washington accepted his award, Roberts leapt on him and would not let go. It was as if he had grown some sort of exotic Julia Roberts wart. Not only Washington, but, more urgently, his wife deserves great credit for their forbearance. Whatever indignities Hollywood has visited on blacks in the past, it would be hard to top this.

Yes, Blacks in Hollywood have spent the better part of the past century being passed over for every role but a butler or slave or gangster, paid a fraction what white actors are paid, and shut out of any management or producer or director positions, but that's nothing compared to Julia Roberts hugging Denzel Washington for oh, a good 10 seconds, after he won the highest honor his industry has to offer.

Like most conservative pundits, Coulter tip toes right up the edge of being blatant racism, but doesn't actually call anyone a "nigger", or even a "darkie", so she can get away with it. And of course she scrupulously edits her editorials to be vaguely offensive and hint at her true disapproval of everything, without having the balls to come out and actually say it.  Couch your racism and grumpiness in sarcastic humor and personal insults, write carefully enough to provide yourself with deniability against any objections over your stealth racism, and you're home free!

I think Coulter is pushing her luck a bit with this bit, it's pretty blatantly racist, at least in insinuation.

Whenever white liberals are in trouble, they always run to the blacks. Immediately after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Monica went to a Washington Wizards game where she hoisted some poor unsuspecting black girl onto her lap in full view of the cameras. Bill Clinton dropped the subtlety and dashed off to Africa. After his abomination of a presidency, Jimmy Carter built housing in Harlem.

But I'm sure her target audience, other conservatives who hate blacks but know enough to not come out and start slinging N-bombs, just eat it right up.

I'm sort of tempted to go through her other editorials and find offensive crap, but that's such a bloggy thing to do, find some straw man and demolish it, that I'd hate myself in the morning.

<-- Previous -- Daily Main Page -- Next -->

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.