Trivia that matter
I believe this is the sketch that Steven refers to:
There actually is an [Official Monster Raving] Loony Party. They take themselves a little too seriously.
The only political party in which I have even the slightest interest is the Wet Blanket Party, who are not running any candidates this election.
There is no sensible party.
So, as the USA lurches toward kakistocracy, I have a choice between gonorrhea and syphilis Kang and Kodos a crook and a clown in November. Like hell I’m voting for these jerks. (It doesn’t help that the crook’s running mate is a devout member of the American Catholic Patriotic Association.)
The following are the candidates I’m considering for November. Any of them is a better choice than the Evil, Stupid, Libertarian or Green party offerings.
Eve Tushnet on Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means (recommended):
Agatha Christie apparently liked Muriel Spark a lot, and one similarity I noticed–which goes along with the novel’s arch, judicious tone–is that both novelists paint human nature in shades of folly and wickedness. Those old-fashioned words (a Christie character in The Pale Horse explicitly points out how nobody calls things “wicked” anymore) have found no adequate modern replacement. Folly, in particular, is a category we have a hard time naming. Christie generally portrays even her characters who do great and lasting harm–the instigator/victim in The Mirror Crack’d, for example–as extremes of a trajectory the best among us follow now and then. Folly can destroy a life; folly is an inevitable tint in every human action. Folly is ridiculous and deadly, and normal.
Further reading: Tushnet on a rather different book, Florence King’s When Sisterhood Was in Flower (recommended).
I thought of this ancient E.B. White story the other day and found it online:
Irtnog
Along about 1920 it became apparent that more things were being written than people had time to read. That is to say, even if a man spent his entire time reading stories, articles, and news, as they appeared in books, magazines, and pamphlets, he fell behind. This was no fault of the reading public; on the contrary, readers made a real effort to keep pace with writers, and utilized every spare moment during their walking hours. They read while shaving in the morning and while waiting for trains and while riding on trains. They came to be a kind of tacit agreement among numbers of the reading public that when one person laid down the baton, someone else must pick it up; and so when a customer entered a barbershop, the barber would lay aside the Boston Evening Globe and the customer would pick up Judge; or when a customer appeared in a shoe-shining parlor, the bootblack would put away the racing form and the customer would open his briefcase and pull out The Sheik. So there was always somebody reading something. Motormen of trolley cars read while they waited on the switch. Errand boys read while walking from the corner of Thirty-ninth and Madison to the corner of Twenty-fifth and Broadway. Subway riders read constantly, even when they were in a crushed, upright position in which nobody could read his own paper but everyone could look over the next man’s shoulder. People passing newsstands would pause for a second to read headlines. Men in the back seats of limousines, northbound on Lafayette Street in the evening, switched on tiny dome lights and read the Wall Street Journal. Women in semi-detached houses joined circulating libraries and read Vachel Lindsay while the baby was taking his nap.
For some inexplicable reason, this old comic strip popped into my mind this morning.
Upon Hearing Leaf Blower on a Fine Spring Eve
It’s the Divine Right of Neighbors
To run their motors loud
At the sitting hour, proud
I’m like Sitting Bull, Red Cloud
Aghast what Pale Face has allowed.
*****
I am so much more enlightened than you.
*****
Consider the winners of the four categories [best novel, novella, novelette and short story] over the last five years:
• 2015: 4/4 women
• 2014: 3/4 women
• 2013: 4/4 women
• 2012: 2/4 women
• 2011: 2/4 women
Fifteen stories written by women have won the main prizes in the Nebula awards in the past five years, and five by men.
I never cared much about the Hugo awards. They have never been anything more than popularity contests, and that they have been demonstrated to be meaningless is mildly amusing and nothing more. The Nebulas, on the other hand, are determined by a vote of the SFWA membership, i.e., actual writers, and reading the annual volume of Nebula winners was one of the ways I found writers worth following many years ago. But I find it difficult to believe that nowadays women write three times as many of the best stories as men. So, the hell with the Nebulas. I think I’ll read Tim Powers instead.
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Every few years I clear my evenings for a week and re-read The Lord of the Rings — I’ll probably do so again sometime this summer. I also enjoy most of his other fantasy-oriented works published during his lifetime. However, I’ve never gotten beyond page 20 in The Silmarillion. It turns out that I’m not alone, and The Silmarillion is the worst book with Tolkien’s name on it. It may be worthwhile to check out his other posthumous books, after all.
*****
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Does the term “vibrancy” actually mean anything? (Note that the word “diversity” has become its own antonym.)
(Via Isegoria.)
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Every man his own rhinoceros: at last, a political party I can join. Unfortunately, it’s Canadian.
(Via Francis W. Porretto.)
Francis W. Porretto on Ghost in the Shell:
Ghost In The Shell is the absolute pinnacle of its art form. There’s nothing else in the anime oeuvre to compare with it, especially as regards graceful writing and philosophical depth. Masamune Shirow will be remembered for centuries for the story. The makers of the anime can be justly proud of the finished work. That Hollywood should choose to make a live-action version is merely additional praise of the original.
So what is this SJW concerned about? That central character Motoko Kusanagi, a round-eyed, big-bosomed cyborg, will be played by round-eyed, big-bosomed Scarlett Johansson, one of the foremost female action stars of today. “Whitewashing!” “Racial exclusion!” “Cultural appropriation!” “Insert your preferred SJWism here!”
These…persons deserve nothing but contempt. They’re the true bigots and squanderers of cultural treasures – all cultural treasures. That a brilliant piece of anime, known mainly to devotees of the art form, should be picked up by a major Hollywood studio and cast with a terrific, somatically perfect leading lady is an act of high praise…but no! “The character has a Japanese name!” Therefore, by SJW rules, she must be played by a Japanese actress. Failing that, at least one with an epicanthic fold.
Anyone who grants these cretins the smallest sliver of time or shred of respect is doing a disservice to the entire human race.
I wouldn’t say that the first Ghost in the Shell movie is incomparable in its philosophical depth — there’s Serial Experiments Lain, at least — but it is a superior work, and the remake, if competently done, should lead its more adventurous viewers to seek out the animated version.
TS:
The general election is dead to me, reduced to a mere curio object.
So abysmal are the choices that I have absolutely no skin in the game. I can write in PeeWee Herman.
Bonus quote from Mrs. Darwin:
But thanks to Trump virtually clinching the nomination by winning Indiana, I’m freed from the tyranny of the party. I don’t have to identify as a Republican anymore. When someone asks me if I’m a Democrat or a Republican, I can say neither! And for the first time, I can vote for someone I like for president. Who gets my write-in vote? Which person do I actually think would be best suited to run the country? It’s almost overwhelming.
(Illustration via AoSHQ.)
Update: Steven finds some positives. His post is in the appropriate category “Weird World.” Note particularly points #5 and #9.
Did you ever get the feeling that, if only you could figure out just what the hell was going on, you’d wish you hadn’t?
Solomon in all his glory couldn’t touch my coffee options!
Hillary Clinton or Cannibal Corpse: Easy Decision
(Via Ubu.)
Only one or two of the candidates are as bad as Mussolini. The others are, well, better than Mussolini. I think.
Moore notes also that “Many people have lead perfectly good lives under perfectly awful governments;” which is probably true but not particularly reassuring.
I came across some startling numbers in an article on politics and dating while skimming though this morning’s Wichita Eagle.
Those in the Clinton camp are more likely to be female (176 percent) and gay (606 percent), and Trump supporters are more likely to be unemployed (82 percent) or retired (96 percent).
I suppose I ought to track down the original Washington Post story to see if the surprising statistics originated there, but I have better things to do with my lunch hour.
Those who sing pray twice; therefore it stands to reason that those who sing bad modern church songs commit heresy twice.
I’m not especially worried about Skynet taking over the world any time soon given that the current state of the art in AI, with all of the best minds and the most resources behind it, is the autocorrect feature on my phone.
I wonder if the reason that so many characters in The Wind Rises smoke so much is that Miyazaki wanted to annoy health nazis, such as the ones who placed the full-page ad above in The Hollywood Reporter.
While going through my archives, I came across an egregious example of cultural appropriation, recorded several years ago at a performance by a local ballet troupe. Be sure you’re sitting down before you view the horror, lest the shock stagger you.
Unsurprisingly, a search online for “peter pan cultural appropriation” turns up many exposés and testimonies, from The Smithsonian on down.
It’s not just Native Americans who are victimized in Peter Pan. Pirate culture is treated without utterly without respect. An otherkin is labeled a “fairy” and reduced to an object of moe. This toxic tale in its various forms has warped the sensibilities of innumerable impressionable children for generations.
Our unraveling as a nation draws ever nearer. When we can no longer look at the deaths of others without seeing whether those deaths can be bent to serve some political narrative, time has pretty well run out.
See also Professor Mondo.