Culture

Coercion as a Way of Life

An article by Marilynne Robinson entitled "The Tyranny of Petty Coercion" caught my eye as especially relevant to some of my life experience of late.

Bashing

Bashing is bullying calculated to silence.

Spiderman

Spiderman is a liberal.

Criticism

Criticism is tough, perhaps harder on the giver than it is on the receiver. This is due to the fact that many people take criticism as an attack.

The Day After Tomorrow

Fire or ice? The promos for this film suggest both.

Haitian Proverbs

Conspiracy is stronger than witchcraft.

Anti-War Films

The theme of both films isn't so much anti-war but anti-stupid-leaders who put people in impossible situations.

Achilles the Heel

I am amused to find a new Hollywood attempt to tell the story of the Trojan War, sans the fidelity to the story told by Homer and everyone else.

Overheard, Overhead, Over the Hill

It's a sure sign of geriactrification when you realize that you were alive when the songs being played on drug store music systems came out.

Goldilocks Robbed the Three Bears

Baby Bear smashes what is left of his chair over Goldilock's head.

Canonical Proportions

I decided to go on a hunt for my Buddha nature.

Paul Goodman Buried

A man who may have the most to say about our age and time is silenced by the modern marketplace that he criticized.

Reagan and Prozac

Yule Heibel often writes of a future -- and a present -- where human beings have become assembly line products.

Caligula Now?

Do you see what I see?

Of Clovis Points and Automobiles

The man (or woman) who chipped the stone into the shape of a pointed leaf thought of these problems that went with ensuring the kill....

Towards A Genuine Culture

When we find ourselves asking "If I had it to do over again" questions and come up with the answer that we should have grabbed for more of the toys and sigals, it does not seem to me that we have thought through our existence very well at all.

Another Goodie
Anyone else remember this program and its near hit closing theme?...

Red Son

Is it Pax Americana or Pox Americana? Are we really standing for Truth, Justice, and Freedom or just Control?

The Legend of 1900

It's another one of those European films which slipped past the notice of Hollywood, perhaps because it touched on experiences too deep and too subtle.

Yule, Meet Angelyne

Be careful Yule. Angelyne is a much beloved LaLa Land Institution.

The Presence of Pollock

Bill J. (who doesn't do art of any kind as far as I know) wants to be able to name the elements in what he sees and connect them to real world objects. I feel that there are things which are unnameable. The best art practices the presence of those.

For Yule and Betsy

I purchased this copy at Barnes and Noble over the weekend.

Francesca Woodman: Tortured Artist Doll or Person?

Could it be that Woodman created these images in a "high" period? Could her suicide be founded on something else and these pictures leave us with no clue about the motives? I think it is likely.

News from Camp Granada

It's the fortieth anniversary of the song that Alan Sherman made famous: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

Education for Death

Rightists have become craftier since the fall of Prescott Bush's idol Adolf Hitler, concealing their notions of superior and contempt for the word of Christ by holding out the Bible and saying that they live by it. They still, unabashably, replace the sacrifice of Christ with a sword.

Der Fuerher's Face

Note the similarity of life in the dream sequence to what the Right wants to promote in America today: no more paid overtime, the demand that you have to "love the leader because he is the leader", the emphasis on making bombs and more bombs, "we bring the world new order", etc

On selling our bodies, our monuments, and our sports to the highest bidder

I do not pay to advertise someone else's product.

Harry Potter, Rocky Horror, and Star Bores

I shall probably die without ever having seen Rocky Horror. I might read a Harry Potter book some summer if there's nothing else around. At the present, I have no plans of watching Survivor or Episodes 1 through 3 of Star Bores

Scott Joplin

I worked out a system of pressing the flesh of my upper arm as I lay on my dormitory bed listening to the Maple Leaf Rag and other syncopations of the American Chopin.

I'm Not Different. I am.

I'm secure with being myself in the world. But the fear these critics of mine show when I mention what I like -- the way they parody me as a snob and a know-it-all -- says a lot about them.

Baghdad Museum Project

Will Ashcroft seek warrants to search the houses of the millionaires who are part of the market for these relics?

Snowballing

Whispery grunts and then I stammer "Lynn. We don't share those secrets, what we did before we married."

Sistine Chapel 1979

Who will buy this wonderful religion? I thought I heard them saying to each other.

Phillip Glass

Phillip Glass. The name suggests transparency. His music sets tones between you and the things that lie within finger reach and past that.

Velveteen Rabbit

Someone tell me: what happened to the skin horse?

A Film for Our Times

Catch 22

This isn't dilemna: this is despair.

Valyermo - Stations of the Cross (4)