Week 4 (19)
The
man has a dirty mind.
Saturday, 11:39
That’s all there is to it. You can’t make this shit up, I swear.
Our holy-rollin’ Attorney General, John Ashcroft—ashamed at giving press conferences before giant statues of a bare-breasted female Spirit of Justice, and a barely draped male Majesty of Justice (historic Art Deco statues that have graced the Justice Department since the 1930s)—has ordered them hidden behind eight thousand dollars’ worth of drapery. Grow the fuck up, already—this is Beavis & Butthead territory, here, for God’s sake. This is pathetic.
—The other explanation, of course, is that he’s embarassed to go on shredding civil liberties in front of the Spirit and the Majesty of Justice...
Oh, man. The title’s already got me salivating, my toe tapping in just the sort of excited way that makes the Spouse scowl at me and say, “Would you stop, already?” Fingersmith. I’m jealous as all hell. It’s one of the sexiest things I’ve heard in a hell of a long time—sexy in the teasing sense, the anticipatory sense, the that-which-isn’t-yet-but-will-be sense, which is one of the best definitions of “sexy” I can think of. —So I go take a peek at the cover art, and I’m ready to kiss the feet of the art director: yes, yes, exactly. Sexy. God damn. (You may not get what I’m saying; fine. You’re weird.)
You’re telling me you don’t know from Sarah Waters? Go, read this article Debra Hyde dug up for us. (The comparison with Patrick O’Brian is at once so wrong and so very, very right; the sort of unexpected spot-on left-field observation that makes a welcome hash of genre, and received notions of who exactly is supposed to be enjoying what.) You’ve got just enough time to catch up on her other two books before Fingersmith comes out. —Did I mention what a fucking amazing title that is? Damn.
Ping
Heather! Naked Spike!
Thursday, 13:47
Well. Not so much naked Spike as James Marsters talking about being naked, playing Spike. And the sock. And yes, yes to all the guff about artistic this and responsibility that, but we all know there’s more than a little desire to put that particular booty on the screen. Which is more than fine. By gum. —Actually, it’s most interesting for the behind-the-scenes squib at the end; having myself kissed someone I didn’t know very well with my shirt off in someone else’s Mount Holyoke dorm room while a camera guy and a lighting guy who was also the sound guy and a producer guy and a writer guy puttered about in the background and did this and that and a director guy said, “Hmm, let’s see, let’s try that again, only don’t pop up quite so abruptly, this time”—well. I wasn’t exactly thinking about breakfast, but yeah.
And a ping to Michael Dalton and any other Buffy fan(atics) out there: indeed, this season (musical aside) sucks. Giant hollow rattle in the straw at the end of the milkshake. Somewhere around here there’s an open letter to Marti Noxon which I abandoned when I realized it could be summed up pretty much as “Hey, you wrote ‘I Only Have Eyes For You,’ what the fuck happened?” —But talk of further seasons aside, let’s face it: Whedon and co. got their five years and their rerun contracts and their lucrative residuals; the rest is lagniappe, and even if this season has been slack, and criminally dropped the ball on more than one occasion, that’s no reason to get, y’know, snippy. (Not that Michael has been unduly snippy, mind. But others have. Yes, you, scruffy cartoonist. And the magician, though moreso the accountant. And others. I’m not going to say people take this shit too seriously—pot? kettle?—but I will note that people do, um, take it seriously. Very seriously.)
Angel, oddly enough, and to change the topic, has been the innovative risk-taking show this season, of the two of them; it’s really coming into its own, and it’s a shame it doesn’t get as much buzz or press. The show has always been a cheeky undermining of some of Buffy’s core truths, but this season has been kicking out foundation stones left and right, whether it’s soulless vampire hunter Holtz and his bitter protégée Julie standing as a strikingly, chillingly dark mirror to Giles and Buffy from that other show, or the sheer balls-to-the-wall tits-out middle-finger fuck you to a small yet still sizable and very vocal segment of the fanbase by budding a relationship between Angel and Cordelia (and yes, it makes sense, and that it does is a testament to any of a number of things). And they’ve got some really quirky shit going on, what with the whole action-hero-as-momma-bear thing (not, mind you, not the momma-bear-as-action-hero thing, which is more—reactionary; Aliens, anyone?), and they managed to quite literally shock me with the ending of an episode and a character arc (hair on end, shivers, me and the Spouse whispering “Damn,” and it’s usually just me does the theatrical reaction; the Spouse is more reserved, so when the Spouse goes “Damn” like that, you’ve Got Something).
But—yeah. Naked Spike. It’s not the glory of Buffy’s second season (go watch the reruns on FX, already), but it’s enough to keep me tuning in. —And of course, there’s always Firefly to look forward to.
Overreacting
continues.
Thursday, 08:42
Um. So. Okay. Two girls aged 11 and 12 scanned in some pictures of themselves naked and sent them to some people in a chatroom. The police are currently (as of last week) in contact with the district attorney’s office to determine if they—the girls, that is—should be prosecuted for, um, distributing child pornography.
Now. I know I’m not the only one who sees this as totally fucked up...
—Original ananova link via Flutterby.
Lessee: beyond the bizarre temp agency up across the river in Washington that wants me to pay them $145 for the privilege of applying for the various jobs they have on tap, there’s the extras casting agency I could pay $70 to get listed in their database of available talent. Head shot included, thank God.
Maybe I will call the telephone physic people. I mean, I’m positive it’s really an outfit for telephone psychics, but I can fake that. I know from Tarot. Though they probably have scripts. My Mistress Cleo accent sucks rocks, though. —Maybe I should go for the vaguely Russian Gurdjieff schtick?
A new Cuyahoga did finally appear, illness notwithstanding, and the whole sodden lump has been nominated for a Silver Clittie (if you have to ask, just go there and read up on it) for the month of January; vote early and often if you are so inclined. I’m still not entirely certain what these things are doing, or where they’re going. Beyond the obvious. “Let us say it is an act of love,” to quote the divine Eco. “Or, if you like, a way of ridding myself of numerous, persistent obsessions.” But that’s maybe too much.
Otherwise: presuming you’re interested in the fictional end of the Urfé oeuvre (and trust me, baby, it’s all fictional): “Silk and Amphetamines (Doom Patrol No. 34)” (and maybe the subtitle should be optional) should be appearing soon in Scarlet Letters—all hail the tireless Heather Corinna and Hanne Blank; “Giggling,” my first story for Ruthie’s, gets to break out into the wide world in March, so if you haven’t paid the good people for a chance to see it in all its illustrated glory (and why haven’t you), then you can read it then, shorn of pitchurs, unless I’ve decided it’s one of the more self-indulgent things I’ve ever written, and file it away; I’ve written “The Arb” for them, which may (should) appear in May, presuming I get the re-write satisfactory, so, since we writers sign a six-month exclusivity deal, that’ll be leaving the reservation sometime in November, and I know you don’t want to wait that long; I’m also supposed to be writing them a “Housewife” story in the vein of a series of post-war shorts written by Neil Anthony, but I can’t get the mix of Weimar sf and Thomas Pynchon and my own penchants to gel—odd, that; maybe it’s just I don’t know enough of immediately post-war Berlin, the infamous Zone—but worrying about that is a great way to procrastinate trying to find a fucking job, which, really, is just a convoluted means I’ve cooked up to procrastinate that fuckin’ essay on circumcision I promised someone somewhere at some point. —But that’s non-fiction, so.
And I should mention that Blue Submarine No. 6 actually ended quite well; good, solid tactics, even if I doubt anything could move that fast underwater. And one of those lovely bleak ecological morals that feels right the same way the vast impersonal cosmos feels right. And some thoughts sparked about how in one way or another a lot of Japanese adventure crap—at least the stuff I’m familiar with, the animé and manga that makes it over here, subbed and dubbed and duped—so much of it is about not being able to beat the bad guy until you’ve come to know him (or her), understand her (or him), maybe even admit somewhere inside that, you know, they’re right. A lot more respect for the antagonist, there. So it seems. To me.
And wouldn’t you know it: the telephone physics aren’t answering the phone. Maybe they are psychic...
Like
I haven’t got enough to read already.
Tuesday, 10:12
Via the invaluable Daze Reader: John Mullan over to the Guardian reviews The Beggar’s Benison, by David Stevenson, a study of an 18th c. Scottish men’s club right out of The Pearl, except, you know, that it’s 18th. c. Scotland and not 19th. c. London, but aside from that. —And I’ve still got to work my way through David L. Gollaher’s Circumcision and Jim Bigelow, Ph.D.’s The Joy of Uncircumcising! (and that “!” is as sic as they get).
For
all your medieval Irish literature blogging needs.
Tuesday, 10:04
We welcome to the blogging pool the coruscating intellect of Lisa Spangenberg, Digital Medievalist and editrix extraordinaire. —And not because she mentions us in her first entry, but because she’s been so good lately about not pestering us re: a new Indigo chapter.
We’re doing the first-person plural thing again, aren’t we. Fever. After-effects thereof. You know.
So you wake up Sunday feeling a little ill. Maybe your stomach is unsettled, but hell, you were partying the night before, to the extent that you, y’know, party these days. Dinner with friends, wine, and more of those dam’ Voodoo Ladies, since, y’know, the chai’s still in the fridge. And you make some coffee but you don’t drink all of it, and you make some oatmeal but lose your appetite halfway through the bowl, and you’re sitting down to work on your weekly commitment to the commercial website and your head feels soft and spongy and your legs are a little woozy and when you stand up after downloading a bunch of necessary graphics and stories you get those shooting spikes of pain in your joints, and now you know you’ve got a fever.
Well, fuck.
So I ended up building this week’s Ruthie’s in bed, surrounded by cats, phasing in and out of catnaps (me, not the cats; the cats pretty much stayed in catnap mode), and smiling weakly at the ministrations of the Spouse.
Fever broke early Monday morning, but I’m still bleah. Just so’s you know. (But thanks to the Ruthie’s crew for the get-well cards.) —First time I’ve had what I think was stomach flu in a long time, which is an irony of ironies; “stomach flu” is usually what I claim when I take some “personal time” from a day job. “My stomach, you know.” Easier to fake than a head cold type of situation, though I do do a mean congested voice over the phone. But I’d forgotten the sheer unending misery of nausea, and the unsettled lumpy feeling, like a greasy knot of something best left unspecified had lodged itself somewhere in my digestive tract. —Like, oddly enough, the couple of times I’ve eaten red meat in the last few years: the excellent steak that the Spouse ordered to celebrate a promotion (I had a bite; it was good); the housemate who didn’t realize that “oxtail broth” meant, you know, it had meat products in it. (To be fair, there was more than reason enough for a little psychosomatic suggestion with that one.)
But with a fever, too. So. Like I said: oogy.
How
will you celebrate?
Sunday, 12:13
Myself, I thought I might light a candle for the sanctity of the lives taken by terrorists who’ve yet to be inconvenienced by our mighty War against their ilk.
Vinnie Tesla writes, amused, because me and him keep knowing of the same people from separate and unrelated contexts (the web is a small place, chillun); Meme Misspelt mentions “Silk and Amphetamines” and an essay by Jaron Lanier on file sharing and democracy—I’ve found an interesting abstract, but not the essay itself, so if anyone’s got a link handy, I’d appreciate it; “Re: {ASSD} Property” is noted by a couple of correspondents, after not getting any email at all for, like, months, which makes me go back and re-read it and cringe at its earnest sureties and ruminate on how much more easily political convictions are to come by when one is employed full-time; Hanne Blank points out an interview with herself in Erotic Boulevard, and yes, it’s a promotional mailing list thing, but she’s cool, and the interview’s cool, and the book’s cool, so; and Cuyahoga hasn’t gotten much email at all, considering (a fourth bit was posted on Friday, and fifth should be tomorrow, so), which calls into question its value as a sell-out noise-making hey-look-at-me piece, but Mat Twassel said he likes it, and celia bateau said she likes it, and someone else said it was developing into something quite interesting, even if it was just me playing with form and amusing myself, which I am, so far, so I bow to their perspicacity. And the good Padre, as ever, abides...
nicholas urfé
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