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8:43 PM: Eleventh-Hour Election Post
Election Day is tomorrow. I suppose it's past time I posted my take on it...
All things considered, I'm feeling really good about this election. Four years ago, I explained why I wasn't going to vote for any of the major-party candidates. (In the end, I did write in "Al Sharpton" as my protest vote.)
There are, of course, intelligent positions for wanting either George Bush or John Kerry to be running the country for the next four years. If you think that either of them is well suited for the job -- if you really and truly want either of them running the country, as opposed to merely preferring one over the other -- then by all means, I encourage you to go ahead and vote for the one of your choice. That's the way the process is supposed to work.As it stood, I was unhappy that Dubya won, but equally relieved that Kerry lost. Both of those feelings have remained strong in the four years that followed.
If, on the other hand, you don't think either is an especially good choice, but you're planning to vote for the one of the two whom you dislike the least, I would strenously suggest that you be a part of the solution, rather than perpetuating the problem.
By contrast, this time around we've somehow been blessed with two major-party candidates who appear capable of doing the job competently. Short of one of them dropping dead and promoting one of the potential veeps—down the rabbit hole of what-ifs lies madness—there's no bad outcome here. No matter what happens tomorrow, the country wins.
This assessment is predicated on the assumption (hope?) that, once past the election, the candidates will snap out of campaign mode and revert to their normal selves. Judging either Obama or McCain on the drivel they and their campaigns have been spewing for months now, I'd have to conclude that they're just a pair of dirty lying politicians and go through yet another election cycle voting for someone other than the top two choices. (Calling McCain a clone of Dubya is as ludicrous as calling Obama a socialist, and vice-versa.) But I'd rather believe that each candidate has concluded that it's impossible to win a U.S. presidential election by fighting fair. If I were more cynical, I might even conclude that they were right; as it stands, while both have disappointed me, I'm inclined to judge them by their non-campaign modes.
There's more to go on in McCain's case, and I suspect that he's actually better equipped to be an effective president than Obama is at this point. He does have more experience: in general, in Washington, and in working across party lines. And if Obama is elected, I am going to be fervently hoping the conservative members of the SCOTUS hang in there until a non-litmus-test based administration gets in. Still, there are legitimate policy disagreements between McCain and Obama, I prefer the latter's positions more often than not, and I do think he'd be competent at the job... so tomorrow I plan on gritting my teeth and muttering darkly while flipping the little lever next to his name.
But after that, I'm going to be happy no matter what. It's nice to feel able to vote for a major-party candidate for only the second time in five presidential elections. It's even nicer to have both candidates be somebody I could see myself voting for.
Some days, it's nice to be an American. I think this one's worth celebrating.
Monday, October 13, 2008
12:33 AM: Oh, for Christ's sake.
From the Los Angeles Times, regarding a McCain rally in Iowa:
Before McCain spoke, a Christian pastor offered a prayer that seemed to ask for divine intervention on his behalf. "There are millions of people around this world praying to their God -- whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah -- that [McCain's] opponent wins for a variety of reasons," Pastor Arnold Conrad said. "And, Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens."What I'm struck by isn't that there's some pastor out there making a mockery out of his own religion, but that this was at a rally McCain was at... If we were to apply the standards his own campaign wants to use for Obama, this would indicate that McCain himself is likely opposed to Hindus, Buddhists, and Moslems, and that he believes that God Himself will be terribly embarrassed if McCain doesn't win, so He'd better step up. Heck, by the standards of his campaign, it wouldn't even matter if McCain had come straight out and said it wasn't so.
I wouldn't say any such thing, of course, because those standards are ridiculous. But it'd be nice if somebody would say it ain't so. All the campaign has said in response is...
"While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama's judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief," Wendy Riemann, McCain's Iowa spokeswoman, said....which, you'll note, stops far short of disagreeing with anything Pastor Conrad said. It doesn't at all address the question of whether God's reputation is on the line here. All it does is say that while there may indeed be questions about Obama's religious background, they're not as important as his other flaws.
Speaking as a theist, it's hard to express how disgusted I am by this. Because I do believe God's reputation can be affected by current events... not by which side in a given contest wins or loses, but by the behavior of those who profess to follow Him. This sort of thing isn't doing Him any favors.
I'm with Diane Duane on this: "I also really wish I could email stuff like this to C.S. Lewis. Imagine the response."
Sunday, October 12, 2008
8:25 PM: Apparently, my life is a B movie.
Your result for The Director Who Films Your Life Test...
Roger Corman
Your film will be 41% romantic, 27% comedy, 42% complex plot, and a $ 24 million budget.
An action-complex tale about a complex character that is you. Corman was responsible for a very early Jack Nicholson film, 1963's The Terror (Francis Coppola was associate producer), filmed in three days! The actor who plays you will emote complexity like Jack ... maybe Christian Slater or Gwyneth Paltrow. Also, Roger filmed the original Little Shop of Horrors film -- which in the 1980s was the basis for a hit Broadway musical and another film. All his films were shot for mere thousands of dollars, sometimes completed within the week. Roger knows talent, and knows how to keep costs down with complex stories such as your life story. His versions of Edgar Allen Poe stories are considered classics (The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum), and also directed Deathsport and Bloody Mama in the 1970s. Oh, yeah, man, this guy will make your film a cult classic!
Take The Director Who Films Your Life Test at HelloQuizzy
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Over on my favorite word blog, Neology, Jed Hartman's proposed an online version of the game Encore, with a twist.
[In the usual game,] one person suggests a word and other people try to come up with a song whose lyrics contain that word.In the usual version, relatively common words tend to be chosen, as having everything sit around trying to think of the one song that has a really obscure term would be both frustrating and boring, while bouncing back and forth between teams trying to think of unused songs with the word "red" is a lot more engaging. But, he points out, in an online game, this can work differently.
But just thinking of the song isn't enough; for it to count, someone has to be able to sing at least eight consecutive words of the song, including the specified word.
Depending on how you're playing, players can take turns trying to come up with more songs that contain the given word, until nobody can think of any more.
But one of the things that appeals to me most about the game in the abstract (though this makes it a rather different game, and probably less fun to play in person) is coming up with words that don't appear in very many songs--possibly even a word that's a hapax legomenon within the space of all song lyrics. I mean, okay, there are really an awful lot of songs, so the chances of a given word appearing in only one are very low. But when I hear a particularly unusual word in a song, I often think "That would be a good Encore word."So he came up with a list of 26 words, from A to Z, and invited people to play. A few days later, Vardibidian offered his own list. You're encouraged to go check them out and take on the words left unsolved there... meanwhile, I'm jumping in as well.
Rules: For each of the words listed below, come up with a song whose lyrics contain the word. (In each case, I do have one in mind.) For it to count, you have to be able to sing (or, rather, type) eight consecutive words of the song, including the specified word. Repetitive lyrics count; that is, for our purposes, "Love me, love me, say that you love me" is nine words.
No fair using Google, checking your CD collection, and so on. Let's keep it honest.
One additional rule in my case, which I do not recommend for anybody else wanting to try this, for it proved to be a pain in the neck: none of the songs I have in mind contain the word in question in its title. So, for example, the song I'm thinking of that contains the word "frequency" is not REM's "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?"
Scoring is entirely meaningless, but nevertheless is as follows: you get one point for a successful answer that's not the song I had in mind. You get two points for a successful answer that is the song I had in mind. And, at my sole discretion, you get three points for a song that's not the one I had in mind, but which I totally should have thought of. (This would include any song I've sung at karaoke; it wouldn't include a song I heard on the radio a zillion times but never actually knew the words to.) In each case, I can think of only one song with the lyrics offhand, but I haven't given it that much thought and my knowledge is hardly encyclopedic. If people have already found two songs with a given word, best to give it a rest and move on to the other words.
None of my songs are wildly obscure.
The list:
anaconda
bitterness
caffeinated
Dubuque
eclair
frequency
gravedigger
haver
islets of Langerhans
Jeremiah
ka-dingity
luxury
Milwaukee
naught
overcoat
potential
question[1]
reminisce
shebang
tantric
unemployed
vitriolic
workfare
xenon[2]
yarmulke
zinfandel
(As guesses come in, bolded words will indicate that nobody's come up with a lyric for it, italicized words will indicate that somebody's come up with a lyric that wasn't the one I had in mind, and just plain words will indicate a direct hit.)
Footnote 1: There are probably way too many songs with question, but I gave up on finding anything particularly unique. I do have something in mind, though...
Footnote 2: Truth be told, while there's an obvious song containing xenon, I can't quote eight straight words from it including that word among them. But I would like to think somebody can; if so, that person gets five -- five! -- meaningless points and extra bragging rights.
Put your entries in the comments, and have fun! And should you make a list of your own -- which doesn't have to be alphabetical -- let us know that as well.
(All done! See the comments.)
Monday, September 29, 2008
7:12 PM: Just discovered this while on the job...
For years, I've been calling for the addition of a "None of the Above" option in elections, with such votes not actually affecting the outcome, except insofar as expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo while directly combating claims of voter apathy. It turns out Nevada enacted this in 1975. Go Nevada!
(In the 2004 presidential election, 3,688 Nevadans opted for "None of These Candidates.")
Sunday, September 21, 2008
8:52 PM: Things I Did Not Know Until Just Now
Sábado Gigante has been hosted by the same person since it debuted 46 years ago.
The real name of said person (whose stage name is Don Francisco) is Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld.
...apparently, we really do control the media.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
12:40 AM: No. No. No no NO NO NO.
NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, and will probably be of no interest if you haven't already read it.
They've hired Eoin Colfer to write a sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy. A book, which, if Adams's widow is to be taken at face value, will resurrect Arthur and Marvin. One would like to think this will at least be set in the years between books 3 and 4, but I suspect one would be optimistic. I suspect they're going to try to undo Mostly Harmless, perhaps taking its cue from the wretched BBC conclusion.
A word on that. After Adams's passing, the BBC adapted the final three books of the series to radio format, neatly closing the circle that began when the first two books were adapted from the radio versions. On the whole, they were quite good. Yes, in parts they contradicted both the books and the original radio episodes, but that was entirely in keeping with every other incarnation of this series. Except for the ending, the spirit of the original was kept intact.
Except for the ending.
The bastards gave it a happy ending.
History is replete with this sort of thing, of course. For centuries, Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, King Lear, was performed with the final act changed so that Lear and Cordelia both live, and the latter marries Edgar. Pygmalion is still performed with the implication that Eliza and Higgins will get together, shredding Shaw's intentions in which an empowered Eliza leaves for good. (Shaw was a fan of Ibsen's A Doll's House, which similarly got slapped with an ending in which Nora stays for the sake of the children.)
The two best books in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy are the first and the last, in completely different ways, for completely opposite reasons. The first one works because Douglas didn't know how to write a book; the last one works because he finally mastered the form.
The first book was based on the radio series, albeit highly modified. It is hysterically funny, trampling over genre conventions, digressing all over the place, and basically not resembling anything seen in print to that point. It ends in the middle of nowhere, not for effect, but because Adams couldn't keep a deadline if his life depended on it, and his editor finally had to tell him to just finish the page he was on and send it off already. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this wouldn't work. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, it wouldn't work. This was the exception, the one which breaks all the rules and succeeds brilliantly.
It was a fluke, and flukes are very hard to duplicate.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe came close, but that was a direct continuation of the first, based off the same source material, and picking up from the page where Douglas had had to stop writing. After that, he found himself in the position of figuring out what to do from there.
The third book, Life, the Universe, and Everything, was supposed to have been a Doctor Who arc. After the script was rejected, Adams set about adapting it to the Hitchhiker's world, using Slartibartfast—of all beings—as a stand-in for the Doctor. It's easily the weakest book in the series.
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is marginally better. I wasn't thrilled with the Earth being brought back, let alone virtually the whole book taking place on Earth Mk II, and I didn't much care for Fenchurch. It is, however, the first book in the series actually written as a book first, and it's a step toward Adams figuring out how to write them properly. Plus Marvin finally, finally gets to power down.
Between this and the final book, there are two more important evolutionary steps: the Dirk Gently novels. These are fiendishly complex interlocking puzzles, good in their own way, but a bit too challenging and not as engaging as the Hitchhiker books.
Mostly Harmless is the one where he finally got it right. Like the Dirk Gently books, several plotlines are woven together so that everything falls into place at the end, but this time it's an easy read, it has engaging characters, and it contains a more mature version of the sci-fi zaniness so sorely missing from the fourth book. And it has an utterly perfect ending. The final pages, where Arthur gains the peaceful realization that it's all finally over, the Vogon captain gets to put a tick in the box, and the Grebulons stop getting television, can't be improved upon.
It's a terrible thing to admit, but when Douglas Adams died an untimely death at the age of 49, part of me was relieved. It was sad on a personal level, absolutely. And I'd have liked to have read other books of his in other series. But he had occasionally made noises about possibly returning to Hitchhiker's and resurrecting the whole gang, and I could not see how he could do so without destroying what was already the best of all possible conclusions. The one slight silver lining in his death was that the series would stand as-is. Or so I thought.
The BBC version, incidentally, goes up to the ending given in the book, and then proposes some alternatives for what happened next. What they come up with strongly resembles the lost ending to Casablanca from The Simpsons, and is just as bad in exactly the same ways. Personally, I've edited my copy of the MP3 to redact that bit.
And now somebody's going to try to do the same thing in print? Good lord.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
[whew]
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A couple of weeks ago, I was sent a review copy of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls, by a friend who worked on it. I think this is a terrific idea, and I'd like to encourage more people to send me free books.With that said, the one minor hitch in sending me a book to review is that I'll probably review it. I have, in fact, done just that over on my long-neglected booklog. And while I'm entirely certain my friend wouldn't want me to post anything but my actual opinion, and it's not a totally negative review, I'm still feeling apprehensive about how well it's going to go over. I've lost friends over less.
Just remember: there's no such thing as bad publicity!
(Also: the author is about to make a whole bunch of media appearances, and they're probably worth watching or listening to. The case he makes is a good one.)
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
I will reluctantly grant that Mark Evanier makes a valid point about New York pizza.
Mitch Wagner has an excellent column about the benefits of embracing piracy.
Did you know you can now add products from anywhere to Amazon.Com wishlists?
If you've somehow missed it, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a musical tragedy in three acts, is now on Hulu.
After viewing that, you'll probably want to check out Felicia Day's other project, The Guild.
I'm not big on "save our show!" campaigns (aside from Hiatus, of course), but if you are, Save Mr. Rogers is worth a shot.
The problem with having read through the entire archives of Girl Genius in one weekend is that now I have to read it one page at a time, three times a week, like everybody else. I want instant gratification!
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