Kablammo!

I thought I had problems when I only had a single New Year’s party to ditch this year. Woe is me, look at what I have to decide between:

• Toronto
• Highland Park
• Chicago
• Jersey City
• Princeton

Every place has people I want to see, and all but one have people I haven’t seen in ages. But I’m probably going to end up at the one with people I last saw two weeks ago.

So it goes.

Kindlasti selle viis on juba tuttav.

Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui märjad on su oksad!
Sind kastis minu vaene põis,
ennem kui pingest lõhki lõi.
Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui märjad on su oksad!

Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
sa oled mulle kasuks!
Ei pidan’t vetsu kõndima
kui leidsin sind nii lähedal.
Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
sa oled mulle kasuks!

Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui kollaselt sa tilgud!
Kuldset dušši võtnud sa,
sest mitu õlut joonud ma.
Oh kusepuu, oh kusepuu,
kui kollaselt sa tilgud!

Before I begin, I should make it clear that I have the utmost admiration for Roger Ebert’s movie reviews. Even in the rare instances where I completely disagree with him on a film, I can understand his viewpoint since he explains it so clearly. There have been times, too, when I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a movie but been unable to articulate why, only to read his review and have him elucidate my own opinion for me. His crusade against pan & scan home video is also something I approve of wholeheartedly.

That said, here are excerpts from things Ebert has written [reasonably] recently. I’m using one movie review and some Answer Man columns as the basis from which I’m extrapolating what may or may not be his actual point of view, and I hope I’m not misrepresenting him. I’m not writing this out of malice.

Here is the first.

The reason we cannot accept pedophilia as we accept many other sexual practices is that it requires an innocent partner, whose life could be irreparably harmed. We do not have the right to do that. If there is no other way to achieve sexual satisfaction, that is our misfortune, but not an excuse. It is not the pedophile that is evil, but the pedophilia. That is true of all sins and crimes and those tempted to perform them: It is not that we are capable of transgression that condemns us, but that we are willing.

Here is the second.

Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

And here’s something in the same vein.

As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games.

What I gather from this is that Ebert is much more tolerant and understanding of pædophiles than of videogame players. Pædophilia, by his thinking, is “a deep compulsion, which is probably innate,” and the struggle against it lifts the pædophile to transcendant nobility. Making a film about this topic, then, Reveals Something So True For All Us Sinners, which as any filmmaker knows is a very good way to Make A Real Difference In The World. Or something.

Videogames, on the other hand, are nothing more than a waste of time that might occasionally feature a pretty picture displayed on a screen. And they are incapable, by definition, of ever becoming anything more. Moving pictures on a screen, as we all know, are only capable of artistic merit when the author is in control. Interactivity is the kiss of death when it comes to art, by this logic. (Much more on this later.)

The worst part is that people who play videogames are actively making a choice to become worse people. They have the audacity to use their leisure time on something other than reading Great Works of Literature (or watching Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit of course), which is an unforgiveable transgression against society. Videogames, and by extension the players of them, are to be written off as a loss. A sadly avoidable loss, but not a tragic loss because tragedy is an art form.

It is not that we are capable of transgression that condemns us, but that we are willing, and wasting those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic may be the worst transgression of them all. So a child rapist who is honest-to-God sincerely trying to reform (and, let’s say, reads Tolstoy in his spare time) is presumably a better person than a guy who plays a game or two of MLB 2005 to unwind after work.

» » Continue reading . . .

Just as my stocks of Sisu ran dry and I began to despair of ever again tasting my favorite Finnish salmiakki, and just as I had given up all hope of ever finding mp3s of CMX’s new album Pedot, I got a package in the mail that made it all better.

Thanks to the three of you.

Song of the Moment: «Uusi ihmiskunta» — CMX

The short-lived clear-soda craze of 1993 was one of the happiest times of his life, for he had relished switching inattentive friends’ gins-and-tonic for rum and Coke and fondly remembered the resulting spit-takes.

This particular blog-meme is rather less obnoxious than most, since it’s completely free-form. Without further ado, I present 15 things about me and books.

1. The last book I was assigned to read for class that I actually bothered to read was The Great Gatsby for Mr Sullivan’s American Literature class in the 11th grade. I had intended to just skim the first few chapters so I’d be able to fake my way through the in-class discussions we’d have, but I found myself completely transfixed and unable to put the book down until I finished it.
2. My approach to books is similar to park ranger advice for wilderness areas—I take only words, and I try to avoid leaving even fingerprints. I don’t like creased spines, dog-eared pages, or wrinkly spots from a sweaty palmprint; and I absolutely cannot stand people who underline passages or, God forbid, lick their grubby fingers every time they turn the page.

   Oddly enough, though, I don’t mind if a book gets a bit mangled or bent from being crammed into an overstuffed backpack or a jacket pocket that doesn’t quite fit, nor do I mind buying used books that exhibit every kind of normal wear and tear.

3. I used to be a voracious reader, but I stopped around the time I went to college. Or, equivalently, I stopped around the time I switched to contact lenses.
4. For some reason I decided to read the unabridged version of Stephen King’s The Stand a few months ago. The most lasting impression I was left with was that the book was very very long. That, and I didn’t like the supernatural mumbo-jumbo stuff near the end very much. I liked it better when it was just the stories of people trying to deal with an awful situation.
5. I have started many more books than I have finished. I’m not counting those books whose first pages I’ve read in a bookstore or a library, just the ones I’ve bought or borrowed with every intention of reading the whole way through. Off the top of my head, some books I’m theoretically in the middle of include:
   • The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie.
   • Something Happened, Joseph Heller.
   • Võõras (L’Étranger), Albert Camus.
   • Popmuusika a la Vittula, Mikael Niemi.
   • Necessary Illusions, Noam Chomsky.
   • Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
   • Rehepapp, Andres Kivirähk.
   • Ma armastasin sakslast, A. H. Tammsaare.
6. On a related topic, while there are a number of books whose opening lines I remember (or remember the gist of), I can only think of one ending line that has really stuck with me:
   

   The extra three were for leap years.

   It’s from Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

7. I’ve read more books in Piers Anthony’s Xanth series than I care to admit.
8. I’ve read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series from beginning to end three times now.
9. The most worthless book I’ve read is probably either Hederick the Theocrat or a Harlequin romance novel whose title may have been The Daddy Dilemma.
10. I wish more books were printed on bible paper.
11. My favorite book of all time is probably Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. I must have read it 100 times in elementary school.
12. Three more bits of very important formative reading:
    • Zoobooks.
    • D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths.
    • Anything and everything to do with dinosaurs.
13. My least favorite book of all time is the textbook for a feedback control systems course I took. Not only did I loathe the class and despise the professor, I hated every aspect of the physical book itself. It was poorly written and organized, and the index was short and useless to the point of being downright insulting. There were few examples in the text, and many of the examples that were provided had typographical or mathematical errors in them. The book was not available used and cost significantly more than our other engineering texts, which were expensive enough to begin with. Its dimensions were such that, if left to its own devices for even an instant, it would flip to a different page or just close on you altogether. I could go on.
14. It blows my mind to think of what tasks like typesetting, pagination, indexing, revising, and picture printing entailed before computers.
15. The last book I read was Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, which I recommend wholeheartedly for much more than just the genesis of the meme-meme. The case studies of peculiar organisms are invariably fascinating, and Dawkins talks shit about the Pope at one point, more or less.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite tracks from this year.

• «Special»—Mew.
  This is a fine example of Mew’s penchant for interesting and atypical rhythmic constructions. The song doesn’t quite go where you might expect it to, which makes it well worth a listen, particularly in its context on the album. And the Glass Handed Kites flows together so smoothly it’s hard to single out a particular song as noteworthy.
• «Godspell»—The Cardigans.
  The once-rampant popularity of “Lovefool” belies the fact that the Cardigans have been one of the most consistently good bands over the past 10 years. Nina Persson has a wonderful set of pipes and she’s not afraid to use them, as this song indicates. The way the sound keeps flirting with a nice hard-rock feeling doesn’t hurt either.
• «Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts»—Wolf Parade
  Please forgive Wolf Parade all the hype, and the band name, and the name of the song, and the fact that the first half of their album is entirely unremarkable, and the super-lo-fi sound. Just listen to this song. It’s not going to change your life, but it just may brighten your day.

More is coming, but comment if you have suggestions.

The other day I ran across a GPO publication, specifically a pamphlet printed in 1955 under the authority of the 84th Congress, after the ratification of Wright Patman’s House Concurrent Resolution 85. It’s called “Our American Government”. Here’s a picture.

As you can see, the cover of the pamphlet clearly states “…our American government interestingly and accurately portrayed” (emphasis mine).

I have the pamphlet for the same reason I am the proud owner of a monstrously ugly (and surprisingly well-fitting) plaid suit with matching vest: my aunt is in the process of clearing out some of the copious amounts of junk that have accumulated over the years in the house where my grandmother lived. Some of said junk is decidedly more choice than the rest, and I’m not above rescuing it from the recycle bin though God knows I certainly have enough useless junk of my own accumulated already.

(Incidentally, the pamphlet was, back in its day, part of the materials that my grandparents used to study for their citizenship exam. But I digress.)

Anyway, as a point of comparison, here is the full text of the 2000 edition of “Our American Government”, printing authorized by the 106th Congress. What do you see on the front page? For one thing, you don’t see any snazzy eagle designs, but that’s just because this text-only version has GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE to it. For another thing, though, you don’t see any mentions about being interesting. Or accurate, for that matter.

Both 2000 and 1955 have the same general format, basically acting as a FAQ for the Federal government. Each gives the reader a good sense for the workings of the three branches and the two cameras and whatnot, and both editions mention the elaborate system of bells installed in the Capitol and throughout the several House office buildings.

The 2000 edition even soundly thrashes the 1955 in its inclusion of full texts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (including all Amendments) as appendices, but it has some failings of its own — for one thing, the number of questions answered is down from 300 to 178! Some of this can be explained by the merging of some sets of related questions into a single answer, but that can’t hide the fact that 2000 just has less information than 1955 did. The inclusion of the Constitution is all well and good and commendable, but it’s reprinted here and there and everywhere — I’ve literally never been unable to find the text of the Constitution when I needed it. It seems to have been included here at the expense of some very important (and interesting) information.

Information like this:

201. Is Abraham Lincoln the only President to have been born in a log cabin?
     No. Presidents Jefferson, Jackson, Fillmore, Buchanan, Garfield, and Arthur were all born in log cabins.

Song of the Moment: «My Friend Dario» — Vitalic

You know, there was a time when CD liner notes would include messages like this:

VISIT THE CARDIGANS HOMEPAGE:
http://lindstedt.mech.kth.se/~moch/cardigans/cardi.htlm [sic]

How times have changed — indeed, how times changed by the time they released their next album, when they were the proud owners of their very own domain.

People I know:

• Bruce Greenspan
• Butterflynn
• Critical
• EstonianPunkCat
• Fire_Hazard
• Hille
• Manganese
• PBones
• Scarlett1304
• Spine Porridge
• Supachump
• SushiDeJaneiro
• Tomahagne
• Vaarikaisand
• WordToKyle
• Zepsub
• Zot

Things I read:

• badscience
• BillMon
• CommonDreams
• DailyKos
• Dan’s Data
• ebalogaalne
• Hullabaloo
• I, Cringely
• In These Times
• Ironic Sans
• Language Log
• Literal-Minded
• MediaMatters
• Paul Graham
• Salon
• Slacktivist
• The Economist
• The Gadflyer
• The Grauniad
• The Nation
• The Onion
• The Register
• The Superest
• Unclaimed Territory
• Wikipedia