May 2007 Archives

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon) has established a website and online petition aimed at shutting down the recently-opened Creation Museum and misinformation center in Kentucky. Everyone living in reality should go to that site and sign the petition.

For the museum's ribbon-cutting ceremony, the organization hired an airplane that displayed a banner reading "Thou Shalt Not Lie." They have also produced a brief primer entitled "Top Ten Reasons Why the Unvierse, Sun, Earth, and Life are not 6,000 years old" [PDF] and have a number of amusing "Creation Museum" T-Shirts and bumper stickers for sale at Cafe Press.

I was both annoyed and pleased that Sam Harris' book The End of Faith had almost 300 holds on it in our Seattle Public Library system when I added myself to the list over six months ago. I didn't really want to wait so long to read it, especially since it's over three years old now, but I was happy that so many others were still interested in it.

Last week, I finally got my notice that it was available, and I've been mostly pleased with it so far. I've enjoyed reading Harris' essays and debates on the web. Harris is less condescending that Richard Dawkins, but no less sharply critical about both the absurdity of religion and the myriad problems that it causes in every society in which it exerts a significant hold on the masses (which is to say nearly all societies).

Harris' central argument builds upon the issues I wrote about a couple weeks in relation to the "COEXIST" bumper sticker. Religions are inherently intolerant of each other, Harris argues, and religious moderation is a myth.

From Onion Radio News:

Detroit Tourism Board's 'Hidden Detroit' Campaign Results In 24 Deaths (audio)

In his Critique of Judgment, Kant prolifically and Germanically grapples with the experience of a human consciousness encountering and evaluating aesthetics (beauty, the good, the sublime). His work is concerned with the notion that human beings form "subjective universal" judgments -- opinions that seem purely subjective yet are made in the hopes that everyone will agree with them. He thought there was something sufficiently interesting about this seeming paradox that he spilled over 76,000 words on the topic.

In my own personal interplay between emotional and intellectual responses to art, I would describe myself as 60% intellectual and 40% emotional. A work has to engage my brain as well as my eye, but my brain's opinion wins out. Hence, I "like" a fair amount of ugly, atonal, emotionally-lacking, structural stuff because I can appreciate the idea behind it. However, if a work is mostly "idea" (like a lot of avant-garde or experimental cinema, music, and painting) I don't like it if it also lacks the emotional impact and connection.

Take, for example, Michael Snow's 1966 avant-garde "masterpiece," Wavelength, which mostly consists of a 45-minute long slow zoom from one side of an apartment to the other. On the intellectual level, I can appreciate how the film plays with the audience's expectations of narrative and foregrounds the control of the camera's fixed position, blah, blah, blah. But the emotional side of me says: "I want that forty-five minutes of my life back, you pretentious art-house wanker!"

When I sat down to determine my list of Top 25 Movies (see Top25MoviesIntro), I needed some criteria for evaluating which movies should be on the list and how they should be ranked. My intellectual and emotional responses needed to be quantified, but I also realized that, despite my aspirations toward anti-establishmentarianism, I really do care what other people think, so I needed to also factor in whether a particular movie was critically well-received or not. Kant would refer to this as Geschmack, or the community of taste.

I settled on the following formula to determine my list. Each film gets 1-10 points in each category, and the categories themselves are weighted from more to less important.

1. Objectively Good: In my considered and degreed opinion, is this a "good" movie -- well made, well-acted, well-written, intellectually challenging and stimulating.

2. Important: In the annals of filmdom, how groundbreaking is this film? Was it critically acclaimed and inspirational? Does it define its genre?

3. Enjoyable: This is the more subjective ranking. Do I actually like watching this movie over and over again? Or is the experience more like working out: I know it's good for me so I just need to power through it?

First, I note that my personal enjoyment is considered less important than the other two categories. Maybe this says something about how screwed up my brain is and that I really don't "like myself." Whatever. Second, I applied these rankings to a list of 50 or so movies, and I was surprised that a number of ones that I really liked fell off the Top 25 list. I agree with the overall results, but am disappointed that I don't get to write about some of them. Maybe I'll add an "honorable mentions" category of the end of all this.

So, here are films 25-21 according to my convoluted system.

I have resumed biking to work after a long, cold, wet winter during which I gained back nearly all the weight I had lost while on the South Beach Diet. You'd think that after my "Riding in the Rain" experience last January that I'd be hardened enough to endure all sorts of weather, but let's face it: I'm not a big fan of discomfort. "No pain, no pain" is my motto.

Loyal readers of this site will recall my pathetic, whiny posts about the "mountain stage" of my commute, which covers the 1.2 mile trek up 8th Avenue NW at a grueling, constant uphill slog (which I previously reported was a 1.75% grade, but have subsequently learned is actually a 2.4% grade). In truth, though the weather was a contributing factor to my sloth, it was that last leg of the day that really planted my expanding ass firmly on the metro bus seat and not on my bike saddle for the last several months.

I just knew there had to be a better route, and I believe I finally found it!

I have a Master's degree in film studies. Hey, I heard there was a lot of money in it! Seriously, my three-plus years dissecting not only films but film itself with my fellow graduate student eggheads effectively crippled for many years my ability to enjoy movies. I would cringe whenever someone asked me what my favorite ones were because my film-theory-addled head just couldn't reduce the answer to something as simplistic as a few actual titles. "Well," I'd sheepishly reply, "it's rather complicated."

But lately I've been giving some thought to the matter of "my favorite films" and what, exactly, that means. I'm beginning to feel, for example, that it will be Very Important for me to provide Ray with a well-rounded cinematic education. I have this vision of me staying up late one night with an older version of the boy. The room is dark but for the bluish glow of the TV. We are armed with an enormous bowl of popcorn and we are watching something like Double Indemnity.

"But why did she double-cross him, daddy?" he will ask.

"Because dames are nothing but trouble, my son," I'd reply sagely. "Nothing but trouble."

What films will I insist that he watch with me? Will they be my actual "favorite" ones, or movies that I feel are "good" or "important," or what? And what's the difference? Shouldn't the fact that I really like a movie mean that it's somehow "good?" Why is it that I don't actually like watching a lot of the really "important" ones? Should he see those nonetheless?

See what I mean when I say "It's rather complicated."

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll try to work this all out and write a bit about the 25 movies that rank highly for some combination of "my favorite," "important," and "good," and that will therefore constitute Ray's Essential Movie Viewing List for when he hits an appropriate age. (And for something like Double Indemnity, I'm thinking no younger than 5. Maybe 6.)

When someone tries to hand me out a flyer, it's kinda like they're saying, "Here -- you throw this away." -- Mitch Hedberg

Today, as I approached the vast campus green that separated me from meetings #4 and #5 of the day, I saw that the landscape was littered with student activists of one flavor or another each armed with a stack of flyers. Oh boy, I thought, I'm going to have to get my firm "No thank yous!" on for this trek.

I have a standing policy to not take flyers from people on the street because I have never, ever been handed anything that I found even remotely interesting. So, I pointed my eyes directly ahead of me and steeled myself against the impending onslaught of sloganeering and paper-waving.

But the expected deluge of harassment never occurred. I made it past one, two, three, even four earnest-looking undergraduates who simply stood idly by clutching their papers and keeping out of my way. As I neared the opposite end of the lawn, I even started to make eye contact with some of them, but to no avail. By the end of my sojourn, I began to feel outraged that I hadn't had some piece of propaganda forced into my hand by a politically-charged co-ed. It was as if they were waiting for people to come up to them to request a flyer.

I saw this bumper sticker on a car the other day. At first, I thought it was advertising a new goth band, but I quickly realized it was an attempt to promote religious egalitarianism and tolerance.

The "why can't we all get along" approach to faith is admirable but fatally flawed. The attempt to promote peaceful co-existence among all religions (and science, as iconified as E=mc2 neglects two important points:

Our Mother's Day 2007, from 5:30 am - 10:15 am:

5:30-7:45 -- Ray calls us in to his room five times to deal with one or more of the following issues:

1. Help him pull his covers back over his head
2. Help him find Peaches, his stuffed emperor penguin
3. Help him find Plum, his stuffed baby penguin
4. Help him blow his nose

7:45 -- Ray wakes up. Mama and Daddy are not exactly ready to face the day.

8:00 -- Ray is sent to his room to calm down after an anger episode. Crying ensues.

8:30 -- Ray slams the bathroom door. Daddy opens it to ask him to close it again properly. The door bonks Ray on the head in the process. Crying ensues.

8:50 -- After considering Ray's snotty nose and the fact that he has spent 75% of the last hour crying for one reason or another, an executive decision to cancel our Mother's Day brunch reservations is made. Crying (and disappointment among the adults) ensues.

9:30 -- Ray declares that he still wants to go downtown and he seems relatively settled down. The family prepares to embark. Amy realizes she left her purse at the bar we went to last night. The bar doesn't open until 3:00 pm so we'll have no closure on that until later. Damn Spaten Optimator!

10:00 -- As we drive down 2nd Ave toward Pike Place Market, Ray declares he has a stomach ache.

10:05 -- We find the Best Parking Space Ever. Things are looking up. Amy declares: "That's the first good thing that's happened all day."

10:10 -- While we walk up 1st Ave, Ray stops, clutches his belly, and spews vomit all over the sidewalk. Three times.

10:15 -- The family, defeated, heads home.

As we were exploring Vashon Island the other day, we came across this intriguing sight:

According to the Roadside America website, the "Bicycle Eaten by Tree" is apparently the inspiration for Berkeley Breathed's book Red Ranger Came Calling.

Google Map to the bike.

My new dentist is a short bike ride from work along the Burke-Gilman trail. After my appointment on Thursday, I was pedaling back to work and feeling like I was making good time when I heard the familiar shout of "On your left!" from an approaching cyclist.

I briefly registered a note of surprise that someone would be passing me since I was cruising along at what felt like a fairly decent clip. As the passing cyclist whipped past me, my feeling of surprise doubled.

He only had one leg.

When I told Amy this, she asked: "Did he have a prosthetic leg?"

"No," I glumly replied. "He was just pedaling with one leg."

Amy gently and supportively stroked my face and assured me that she felt that I was a fine, strong cyclist and that maybe I was just weighed down by my work clothes, or was feeling weak from the dental treatment, or something.

I'm kidding. She just started laughing uncontrollably.

My pal Holly (of the Self Portrait As blog) called this weekend and told me that the answer to the April 29th Sunday New York Times acrostic puzzle (the really hard one under the crossword in the magazine) was a quote from an essay by her. How completely awesome is that?!

I used to think the coolest thing in the world would be to have one's name be the answer to a single crossword puzzle clue ("40 Down - Dashing Seattlite James"), but being the answer to the entire freakin' acrostic is downright kick-ass!

We stopped delivery of the Times about a year ago. When we used to get it, I'd do the acrostic dutifully every week it appeared. I would have totally flipped out (as the kids these days would say) if I had been just doing my thing and slowly uncovered Holly's name and words in the little boxes.

If you don't know what an acrostic puzzle is, there are a couple poorly-reproduced ones at this web site. Apparently, the Times ones are also available to "Premium Subscribers" to their online edition.

I forgot to mention that my three student assistants finally 'fessed up to perpetrating the Craigslist prank on me for April Fool's Day. They admitted that the mouse-in-jello prank was merely a distraction. Indeed, I did not suspect them -- even though, in retrospect, it was obvious -- because they had already "got me."

Now, I need to come up with a suitable act of retaliation. Anyone have any ideas?

This one happened after I put the laptop away.

[As the bus pulls up next to a Denny's]

Teenage Girl 1: You know what's terrible? Denny's.

Teenage Girl 2: Oh, I know! It sucks.

TG1: It's like, the food looks good, but then you taste it and it's all yuck!

TG2: I know. It's just like Play-Doh.

TG1: (laughs) It's not like Play-Doh!

TG2: It's totally like Play-Doh! I always thought Play-Doh looked really appetizing. But it tastes really bad.

16-year-old Female: "Every time I go out in public, I lose my shoe!"

The other day, a friend of mine mentioned that her last name was actually a holdover from a previous marriage. She said she had no great fondness for her maiden name either and that members of her office had suggested she hold a contest to come up with a totally new surname. I thought that was a great idea, as I had considered changing my last name at times as well.

I just left a voice message with a software vendor whose recorded prompt stated, in part:

If this is an emergency, please contact my colleague....

What exactly constitutes a software purchase "emergency"?

"People are dying here! Buildings are on fire!! I need 20 licenses of Adobe Photoshop and I need them now!!!!"