Category: Culture and anti-culture

Miscellany

If you’re a creative sort, you have an opportunity to collaborate with Neil Gaiman. Unfortunately, the deadline is next Monday. I wish I’d heard about this earlier.

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Coming attractions: Pixy might be able to see Comets Lemmon and PanSTARRS now. The latter should be visible to those of us in the northern hemisphere soon.

There are more comet pictures here.

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Vertical, Inc., is considering whether to translate Yusuke Kishi’s Shin Sekai Yori. If an English-language copy of the novel would be worth $25 to you, go to Vertical’s Tumblr page and “like” it. They need 4500 people to express an interest before they’ll undertake the project, and I was only #699.

Kishi does have one book available in English translation. I’ll probably include The Crimson Labyrinth in my next Amazon.com order.

If you’re not watching the anime Shin Sekai Yori, you’re missing one of the finest — and most nightmarish — science fiction stories ever broadcast.

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Bambi Meets Godzilla, rebuilt:

You can watch it in 1080 if your computer can handle it.

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Professor Mondo‘s novel is now available as pixels at Amazon.com. I just got a new pair of glasses, so I’ll probably wait for the print edition and read it the way books were meant to be read, on dead trees. You can read one of his short stories here.

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A note on current events in the Catholic Church: everything you read in the secular press is complete and absolute BS. Don’t believe anything you read. I suggest checking in occasionally with Elizabeth Scalia if you want an informed perspective.

Meanwhile, here’s the Vatican version of March Madness, and Christopher Buckley’s introduction to simony.

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guess_who

Which famous British poet is this? The answer is here.

(Via Eve Tushnet.)

Insomnia and czárdás

Early this morning, after I had given up on getting any more sleep, I discovered that there are a number of full-length ballets on YouTube. Coppélia is a favorite of mine. The melodious score is worth listening to even if you are not interested in dance, and the story almost makes sense. There’s even a mad scientist (or magician). The video above is a Bolshoi Ballet performance.

Others I found include La Bayadere, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and more, often in multiple versions and occasionally in HD. There’s also opera.

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And now for something completely different: Japanese Vikings, singing songs of [censored].

Update: And the video is gone. This is what you missed.

Quote of the day, anime edition

Arhyalon, in a discussion of “aristocracy”:

So, is it impossible to show noble characters well on film?

Not at all. In fact, it is done very well over and over again today. By the Japanese in Anime.

One also sees it occasionally in British films. The Japanese and the English, both peoples with a long history of a noble class, seem to grok nobility in a way that the Americans and New Zealanders just do not.

A few notes

A couple of noteworthy post titles:

Proposition: “The collective national IQ peaked in 1967, and has eroded since.”

From the comments:

I read a study years ago claiming that, since the Late Victorian era, the average written sentence loses five words per decade. ((Um, just how long was the average sentence in late Victorian times?)) I cannot claim to know the methodology of the study, but if it’s true, we may all be communicating in grunts, soon. Actually, some of the teens I hear on cell phones seemed to have reached that stage.

Another study I read claimed that, in the late sixties, early 70’s, one needed a vocabulary of about ten thousand words to comprehend a television news show, or to read a newspaper. In the eighties and nineties, it was five thousand.

Ignorance of Botany Is Ignorance of Literature

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Wonderduck is giving Vividred Operation a close look — a very close look, from a variety of viewpoints, from many low camera angles. Better him than me. Can you guess what is a vivid shade of red? Hint: think Strike Witches.

Izu Oshima, by the way, is a real place and a frequently active volcano — sometimes spectacularly so. If Oshima gets feisty during the course of the series, Vividred might be worth watching after all.

Today’s cultural trivia

Spotted by The Rat:

For many years I used to see Kurt Vonnegut shambling around the streets of Turtle Bay, on the East Side of New York, always with a disconsolate expression on his face. I could never figure out why he looked so miserable; he was, after all, one of America’s most successful and admired novelists. Then one day, while reading Exposing Myself, I found out that Vonnegut had briefly been Geraldo [Rivera]’s father-in-law.

A double dose of culture

Thomas Hardy does the hokey-pokey:

On a morning when the grey skies rained down sleet,
I stuck my left foot into the abyss;
I shook it to and fro, and then switched feet,
And thought how all must end with death’s bleak kiss.

Update: Poe sticks his left foot in.

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J. Greely notes that the DVD of the movie Megaforce has finally been released in the USA. Out of curiosity, I searched for clips on YouTube and found this. “Awesome” isn’t quite the word.

Coincidentally, one of the links in Greely’s sidebar is “A Cubic Light-year of Cheese.”

Quote of the day

Helen Rittelmeyer:

4. Disregard the haters who denigrate blogging as a medium. Blogging is an amateur’s medium, but there is a lot to be said for amateurs. Bloggers sometimes write about things they know nothing about. Professional journalists often write about things they know nothing about. Academics write about things they know so much about that they no longer have any passion for the subject or any sense of its intrinsic interest, since, for understandable reasons, it is all now very boring to them. So don’t be intimidated by their credentials or put off by your lack of them.

See also her list of books for 2012. I will have to track down Honor Tracy.

Pre-Rush Day link dump

J.K. Rowling has been recognized in Thog’s Masterclass:

Dept of Trickle-Down. ‘There, in his poky office, Simon Price gazed covetously on a vacancy among the ranks of insiders to a place where cash was now trickling down onto an empty chair with no lap waiting to catch it.’ (J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy, 2012)

Daniel Barenboim also earns a mention in Ansible:

Pianist Daniel Barenboim is interviewed by Rosanna Greenstreet: Q. ‘What is your earliest memory?’ A. ‘In my mother’s belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.’ (Guardian, 2 November)

Christopher Tolkien doesn’t care for Peter Jackson’s movies:

Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”
This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

So is the world going to end tomorrow? Nah. I suppose you could marathon RahXephon if you’re feeling silly, but I suggest listening to Geddy, Alex and Neil instead.

These are the acceptable ways to end civilization:

… asteroid/comet, climate, massive volcanic eruption, zombie pandemic, Daleks, the Master, the Mayor turns into a giant snake monster, Gachnar (although that would be a very tiny apocalypse), gateway to Hell opens over Los Angeles, Anubis, Tripods, Triffids, Ragnarok and possibly a Farnsworth Doomsday Device.

Are you still using Windows 95?

You have two cows ….

Touched by the hot hand of bewilderment

I long regarded James Fenimore Cooper as the worst writer ever published. I’m not a slow reader — I read Patricia McKillip’s entire Riddlemaster trilogy in one long evening — but it took me a full month to force my way through The Prairie. Mark Twain was too gentle in his assessment of Cooper.

But apparently there are worse than Cooper. Amanda McKittrick Ros, for instance. Here’s the opening of her poem “Visiting Westminster Abbey.”

Holy Moses! Take a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brain lie here,
Mortal loads of beef and beer.

According to Wikipedia, “The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros’ work for the longest length of time without laughing.” Her first novel, Irene Iddesleigh, is available at Project Gutenberg. I’ll leave it for readers with stronger stomachs to attempt.

Miscellany

A duck and a cuckoo from episode eleven of Joshiraku.

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You don’t need to attempt kanji for a memorable tattoo. A weak grasp of English is sufficient.

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An entertaining historical document is online: That Party at Lenny’s.

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Welcome to Crossover Hell. A related horror: another approach to Touhou Ponies.

I wonder: how does the world of Bronies compare with the Touhou universe?

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So salt and sugar are unnatural?

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Jinrui wa Suitai Shamashita was perhaps the best show of the summer. I did a little searching to see if Romeo Tanaka’s novels have been translated yet. As far as I can tell, there’s only one chapter available in English.

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(Bumper sticker courtesy of Borepatch.)

Last and least, some political notes. Although I am a member of the Wet Blanket Movement, I do have some interest in the Fringe Party. For those who believe that all people should have the right to vote, not just the living and the residents of Chicago cemeteries, Dr. Boli has yard signs you can download and print.

Irony deficiency

From Helen Rittelmeyer‘s review of Yumiko Kurahashi’s The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q:

For one thing, Japanese literature has no tradition of satire. I did not realize this until I read it in the translator’s introduction (“only deviations from accepted socials norms have tended to be the objects of criticism . . . where there have been attempts at satire in the twentieth century . . . one gets a stronger sense of personal grievance than of objective criticism”), and if he says it, I suppose it’s true. I have heard that Americans visiting Japan are warned not to speak hyperbolically because they are liable to be taken literally, and it is difficult to imagine satire without exaggeration.

Is this true? Does Japan not have an Aristophanes or a Swift? I’m skeptical; I don’t see how a culture can stay sane or even survive without satire.

Even if it was once true of Japanese literature, it’s not true now. See Yasutaka Tsutsui, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Legend of Koizumi, Oh! Edo Rocket, Jinrui wa Suitai Shamashita, Dai Mahou Touge, ….

Update: The challenges of translating humor. (Via the Sanity Inspector.)

High culture, low culture

Thomas L. McDonald states:

I’ve said before that I consider the ink line of Charles Schulz one of the great artistic gifts of our time, and believe that Jack Kirby is a better artist than Pablo Picasso. It’s unlikely those would be “safe” opinions to have without the influence of Warhol, who once said Walt Disney was the greatest artist of the 20th century. (I agree.)

So who do you think is the better artist? Jack Kirby?

Or Pablo Picasso?

Continue reading “High culture, low culture”