A Mind Occasionally Voyaging

Fair and Balanced

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:17:00 -0500

Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also founded an organization which did some violent terrorist-y things many years ago. He was never convicted of being a terrorist, but neither has he ever recanted his radical views.

He's been fundamental in the reform of Chicago's school system, and was Chicago's 1997 Citizen of the Year.

He was heavily involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project and the Woods Fund of Chicago.

Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) was on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project and was involved with the Woods Fund of Chicago.

To Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, this is hugely important. After all, if Obama really loved America, he wouldn't associate with a ~~Citizen of the Year~~ former ~~convicted~~ terrorist.

According to John McCain, when presented with an opportunity to be part of a project which distributed a $50 million grant to public schools in Chicago, or with a project that in 2006 distributed $3.1 million to local organizations in order to help with poverty relief, Senator Obama should have said "Sorry, charity is not as important as snubbing a man who did something really bad a very long time ago and has done lots of good things ever since."

Things Senator McCain seems to dislike:

Charity

Unconvicted former domestic terrorists

Sex education

Things Senator McCain seems to like:

Houses

Cars

Incidentally...

Among Senator McCain's 13 cars is a 2007 Ford half-ton pickup truck. About Henry Ford, someone once said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration." That someone was Adolph Hitler. Now, why would a true patriot like John McCain drive a car made by a company founded by a raging antisemite and Nazi-sympathizer?

I don't like jokes based on bodily fluids, excretions, or secretions.

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:55:20 -0500

Poop, urine, spit, semen, vomit. Not a big fan. Don't like fart jokes either.

The reason I mention it is that the inclusion of some vomit-based humor is the only thing I have to say against Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
2008
Michael Cera and Kat Dennings
Based on the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

I would have said that this is the most unexpected reboot of the The Thin Man franchise I could have imagined, but (a) hardly anyone would get it, and (2) It's not true. Nick and Norah has been at the edge of my radar for a while now, because Amazon thinks it's a book I'm liable to like. And despite the fact that Amazon's collaborative filtering has decided that I'm a teenage heroin-addicted lesbian spy with a cutting fetish, they often cough up entirely reasonable suggestions for books I might like.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is far and away the best movie I have seen in a very long time. Now, the last film I got dragged out to the theaters for was The House Bunny (Leah has a friend who was in desperate need of a schlocky feel-good movie. Any movie where the first 200 minutes are set in the Playboy Mansion and filled with playboy bunnies and that's the boring part is not going to fare well with me. Also, they took a sweet old man, one of my personal heroes and made him cry), so I am willing to concede that my judgment might be impaired. But it was just so unspeakably refreshing to watch a movie whose plot doesn't hinge on major characters who we are supposed to care about and respect as people acting so stupid as to imply that they are developmentally challenged (Seriously? You think that murdering your boss by throwing a bus full of screaming children at him is a good way to introduce the public to your new budget-priced weapons platform? I'm looking at you, Obidiah Stane. And no, Harry, the fact that someone was curt with you at lunch doesn't mean that in spite of the evidence of the past six years, all your friends don't care about you and don't trust you.) People act stupid, sure, but they act believably stupid, and even then, that's not what's driving the plot.

Nick and Norah is the story of two young people who are way hipper than you or I will ever be, who pretty much know from the moment they meet that they would go pretty well together, and just have to get their individual acts together so they can get on with that. Which basically means that it's like Questionable Content if Jeph didn't have to keep it going for more than two hours and could just jump straight to the climactic bits. It is also a lot like Go, which is one of my favorite movies, but without the tedious "And now that you've started to care about these characters and situations, let's just change the subject entirely." It also reminds me quite a bit of Adventures in Babysitting for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. Possibly the aspect of it being structured a bit like an Epic -- a sort of Jason and The Argonauts-style Quest Through Interesting Lands Where Most of The Good Bits Are Things Unrelated To The Goal That They Just Happen Upon On The Way, only with teenagers in a big city instead of Greeks in the Aegean.

Anyway, I've complained many times about how movies try to substitute surprise for actual quality. Nick and Norah isn't a movie that hinges on anything being unexpected. I sorted out most of the plot about five to ten minutes in, and it didn't make the movie any worse. As such, "spoilers" may be an inappropriate thing to call the revelations in my detailed analysis. But for those who might be more sensitive to such things, hit the jump...

ITCXXXVI: Free? I'll take two then.

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:59:37 -0500

More graffiti from my occasional treks through the park.

Political activism FAIL

A Conversation at the Library

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:42:40 -0500

Me: Well here's a serious question: If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?

Leah: [laughs]

Me: Just one

Leah: Two things.

Me: [fake sulk]

Leah: I really wish you'd lose some weight. We both should. Because I worry about you, and I know you haven't been watching what you eat so much.

Me: Yeah. I know.

(a pause, while I wait for her to ask the reciprocal question. She doesn't)

Me: I ask, because I've been thinking

Leah: Oh?

Me: Yeah. And I guess, maybe there's one thing I might change about you.

Leah: Um.

Me: Your last name. [produces a ring] Will you marry me?

Read This: Bad Faith

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:23:06 -0500

Ever since the McCain campaign put out this little piece of propaganda (in which McCain points out that Obama supported teaching kindergarteners to how to recognize and respond if someone tries to molest them, and treats that like a bad thing, I, who haven't been exactly slow-to-anger in matters political for a few years, have sort of shifted into an "Incoherent with rage" position. The phrase "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more," keep popping into my head.

I'm really too angry about it to formulate ideas coherently, but here's some people who aren't:

For what it's worth, I do disagree with Adam on the matter of Red-State folks being stupid. I'm actually breaking with most of my friends -- liberal and conservative here, but I don't think stupidity actually enters into it. In a quasi-unrelated article, Fred Clark over at Slacktivist talks a bit about bearing false witness. One of the things he has to say is this:

Stupidity alone doesn't make one hostile to irrefutable facts. Stupidity cannot account for their vicious anger when the rumor is debunked -- anger at the person doing the debunking, and anger at the whole world for not turning out to be the nightmare they wanted it to be.

Elsewhere, in his discussion of the epic eschatological "prophecy" novel (The scare quotes are intentional, because of my opinion of the authors' grasp of theology) Left Behind, the Slacktivist asks this:

The authors' disproportionate sense of the U.N.'s importance and their utter ignorance of its actual role and function cannot be easy to maintain. How do you convince yourself that a topic is of unrivaled significance while simultaneously preventing yourself from learning anything about it? ... But no matter how intricate or comprehensive such theories are, the authors can never rest. Unreality cannot withstand the ever-present and unavoidable contact with actual reality, so the lie must always be reinforced and reconstructed. ... He knows -- knows -- that he cannot allow himself to read that article if he wants to continue believing the things he wants to continue believing. In other words, he knows -- or at least some part of him knows -- that the things he wants to continue believing are not true.

If you've ever had occasion to research how a polygraph works, you may have heard that one of the fundamental principles on which it operates is that, simply put, it is harder to lie than to tell the truth. It requires effort. This has nothing to do with being tense or nervous. It has to do with the fact that to tell the truth, all you have to do is recall the truth and say it. To lie, you have to think of the truth, and then go out of your way to avoid it.

So, no, I don't think the red-state "Reality Show" voters are stupid. Someone who was simply stupid would not behave this way. Someone who was stupid would respond if you could just "dumb down" your message enough. But that's not what's going on here. When you show them the absolute, undeniable, incontrovertible truth, they don't fail to comprehend, they get angry. They don't just fail at learning the truth, they avoid the truth.

And that's really something. It's, as Fred Clark says, a lot of work, and it implies that they actually do know the truth -- they have to be able to recognize it in order to avoid it. They know the truth and they are wilfully ignoring it. That's actually a rather complicated feat of mental gymnastics. That's not stupidity. It's insanity.

Yeah. I said it. It's not stupidity, it's insanity. The economy is in trouble. We're stuck in an unpopular, vaguely defined war that isn't working. Our civil liberties are being stripped away. We've become a country that supports torture. And there are still people who want to vote into office a man who would continue the Iraq war for Ten Thousand Years with a running-mate who Doesn't actually know what the Vice President's job is. That's not stupidity. That's insanity.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein

But I'm not actually saying that as a personal attack or anything. I don't blame them for their insanity. It's not like I think there's something in the water or, outside a few remote areas, the result of generations of inbreeding. No, I think this is socially-induced insanity. Lots of people have pointed out that in the past few elections, many of the campaigns have sold us their candidates by presenting America as a sort of family, and we've been trying to "elect dad". In '04, a lot of this was about electing a "dad" who could beat up Iraq's dad.

So here's the thing. Something happens when you elect your dad based on the fact that he's big and strong and can kick the asses of the other kids' dads. You end up with a dad who's a bully. You know who else says, "He's consistently done the wrong thing, and I am constantly the worse for it, but I'm going to close my eyes to all that and remain loyal, and if I just love him and do what he says, daddy will stop drinking, and things will all be better someday."? People whose husbands or dads are bullies.

So no, red states, I don't think you're stupid. I really don't. And I know that you feel like you've got so much invested. And I know that it's scary and painful to face the truth. But the chickenhawks aren't going to stop warmongering until it stops winning them elections, and the religious right aren't going to stop hatemongering until it stops winning them elections, and the obscenely rich plutocrats aren't going to stop destroying the economy in order to ruby-encrust their bald-eagle-tipped walking sticks until is tops winning them elections, and he's never going to stop hitting you unless you leave him.

Oh, and one more thing. When Karl Rove says-- Sorry. I meant, when Karl "John McCain has an illegitimate black baby" Rove says you've crossed the line in your smear campaign, you have crossed the line in your smear campaign.

ITCXXXV: May also be a good name for a band

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:13:34 -0500

Graffiti seen under a bridge in Wyman Park, near Hopkins:

Quick Quiz: Does the symbol above represent:

Evil Garlic
C'thulu
(cf. IT 3) Vagina Dentada

Close Encounters of the Shiny Kind

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:54:13 -0500

On my way home tonight, I noticed some strange lights in the sky somewhere to the north:

There's a whole gallery here. Now taking theories to wtf these lights signify:

Large Hadron Collider pierces earth at an oblique angle, coming out in north Baltimore
Asgard trying to catch a late show at the Senator
Ass-kicking kegger at Loyola
Zuul and Vinz Clortho did it, thereby summoning Gozer

ITCXXXIV: Tales From The Dollar Store, Part 2

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:25:42 -0500

If it becomes necessary to purchase your pregnancy tests from the dollar store, you may need to rethink your sexual habits.

ITCXXXIII: In Which I get the Roman Numerals Right Again

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:47:39 -0500

From the pages of Smithsonian magazine:

As it turns out, both seals and humans have exactly the same facial expression for "Oh fuck, I'm about to be eaten by a shark"

ITCXXII: Tales from the Dollar Store

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:47:50 -0500

Leah digs dollar stores. A few months ago, we visited one, and I snapped a few pictures of interesting (and cheap) products. Today, we present the first in an IT miniseries, Tales From The Dollar Store

For just a dollar, Janet Jackson could have avoided that huge Superbowl scandal of a few years back.

Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:43:15 -0500

Hey all. I know I don't blog in this category very often, but ever since I started working for a living, my dreams have been trending less coherent and harder to remember. All the same, I had a long and coherent one last night, which I would like to share with you now. I largely suspect that my dream was inspired in part by the fact that I fast-wound through Knight Rider's third season premier, "Knight of the Drones" last night.

Hit the jump for the details...

ITCXXXI: But this one is.

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:16:30 -0500

Seen in downtown Baltimore:

JJ Cummings is one of the few people to successfully make the transition to mainstream florist from the adult floral industry

ITCXXX: Not dirty in the way that the roman numeral indicates

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:30:30 -0500

Part of an apartmentwarming package Leah found when she moved:

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that this roll of toilet paper was a gift created especially for you, Bozzuto Management has apparently trademarked the phrase "A Gift Created Especially For You."

ITCXXIX: Your advertizing dollars at work

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:36:35 -0500

Seen on a wall ad above a urinal in a restaurant in Timonium:

You may be thinking that seven hours seems to miss the definition of "Happy Hour". But look at what's being advertised. There is no such thing as unhappy hour at the strip club.

ITCXXVIII: Allez cuisine!

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:03:16 -0500

Seen in a Pastablitz in Ellicott City (Contrast enhanced):

Personally, I'd prefer the food be fresh and the service be good, but I'll take what I can get.