Janus & Juliet
Well, it’s January, and everyone is trotting out their Best Of lists for the previous year. I’m not much for lists myself (sorry, Kelly Sue), although I did finally get on board the YMDB.com train.
Anyway, I was reading the Onion AV Club‘s round up of the best books of 2004, and was forced to come to the sad realization that I did very little pleasurable reading this past year, and, indeed, very little reading at all. 2004 for me was the year of television, as I embraced television on DVD and indulged in a fair degree of BitTorrenting. I was so engrossed in preparation for my class on Jehanne d’Arc and my production of The Philadelphia Story that I was frequently burned out on reading after having done so much research. Not that the reading wasn’t pleasurable, but it wasn’t what I normally read for pleasure.
All of which means nothing has yet to surpass the best new novel I read three years ago, Julian Gough’s Juno & Juliet. And was the best book I read in 2004, as I had to re-read it to prepare for a book discussion group filled with six nervous sophomores who were each wondering why on earth I had chosen this book to make people read over the summer (Answer: Depreciating remarks about John Barth, positive comments about Gregory McDonald, and the best Acid Trip Revelation put to pen — particularly because the insight evaporates with the high, as it should).
But thinking about J&J made me wonder what the author had been doing since 2001 and indeed what he might have done before. So I spent a few hours last night trying to track down the “satirical serial” he wrote, as well as the “successful stage play” he co-authored, according to the About The Author copy. No luck. Also no luck finding downloadable versions of songs Gough sung with Toasted Heretic, despite the fact that he expresses support of internet music distribution venues.
“Oh, I love Napster. I hate the music industry, I’d love to see it destroyed. Please feel free to download Toasted Heretic songs from Napster, Gnutella, AudioGalaxy, MP3.com…”
However, I was able to find a PDF file of a chapter from Gough’s upcoming work, as published in the British Council for the Arts’ anthology New Writing 12. Entitled “The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble”, the anthology says that the excerpt is about “how a dead-goat-compensation scheme gets out of hand and the UN steps in”. How this will fit in with the entire novel, to be titled Jude O’Reilly, and which his CV describes as the opposite of “beautiful, realistic, psychologically acute, and narrated by an intelligent 18-year-old girl”, is yet unclear. Some more information is provided by the Arts Council by way of an MS Word document (55 Kb) interviewing Gough about the excerpt, and this wholly unrelated link to a RealAudio interview with the author is also quite fun.
However, none of that answered the question I’d originally hit the net to find out. So if anyone can let me know what the title of his play was, I’d be extremely grateful.
Journals: Live and Otherwise
If I had a LiveJournal, today’s header would look something like this:
Feeling:
Cold.
Listening to: “Like the Weather” by 10,000 Maniacs, In My Tribe
Fortunately, I keep myself to merely blogging, which is slightly less touchy-feely. The lack of comments and drama is really what appeals to me; I understand that many people feel that the greatest potentiality of the graphic interface computer is one of interactivity, but I’d rather not interact with every house-ridden emotional basketcase available simply in order to fulfill my computer’s potential. And, as a Konfabulator widget cheerfully informs me, I am using between seventy-three and ninety-one percent of my CPU capacity at the moment, so I feel like potentiality is pretty damn close to being achieved. Or perhaps I simply need a new computer. First, however I need a graduate degree and a job.
One more thing about journals: after being asked by a fellow student about what a high school freshman might enjoy reading, I pulled out my sophomore-year diary, in which I recorded each book I read over the course of my sixteenth year. I was pleased to find a vaguely practical use for the contents, for — as with every time I pull the journal out every few years, once the previous pain has receded — I re-experienced my usual response to reading the facile writings within: why haven’t I set this on fire and scattered the ashes?
Something to think about when I revisit these blog entries in twenty years.
Twenty-Nine
Wooooo.
The Fun never stops.
The close of my twenty-ninth and the commencement of my thirtieth year. I don’t have the typical base-ten digital fear that consumes so many people, but I would feel much, much better about Turning Thirty if today hadn’t been — to be unmitigatedly crude for a moment — such utter gash.
However, here’s lovely belated wishes to Dina Solomon, who is unfortunately not the D. Solomon listed in the Berkeley city telephone directory, and therefore didn’t hear from me on Sunday night.
Arlo and Albert
w00t! Got name-checked in Jimmy Johnson’s daily ARLO & JANIS website, in which he shares thoughts about the world, the cartooning process, and the context behind some of of his strips. And, most wondrously, he reprints a few archival strips each weekday, so not only do web-savvy readers get the ordinary daily dose of A&J, but about three to five additional blasts from the past.
A few months ago Mr. Johnson announced that he was taking requests for strips, and I had already sent in a request prior to that, with a nice little caveat about “I don’t know if you take requests, but…” It seemed too quick to fire off the same request, so I waited until what seemed like the appropriate time. It wasn’t until he mentioned that some sequences where he abandoned traditional structure and went off on a tangent from the ordinary “family-friendly” comic strip format, that I felt I could do so. For it was this very aspect that got me to read the strip regularly, after finding a truly bizarre sequence where Arlo takes a break from appearing in the strip and has an alligator stand in for him. Really good cartooning, he mentions POGO in the commentary, and I get an online shout-out; what could be better?
Planet of the Goddamn Monkeys
My reaction to the election:
“YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”
Also, in accordance with the predictions of John Titor, I am going to start buckling down and preparing for the great Separatist Civil War of next year. Liberals in the Northeast who wish to separate to form their own union should start taking advantage of the recent assault rifle law lapse and stock up on munitions. The God-Botherers in the Heartland are all better-armed than we, and we therefore need to made sure that the Minutemen are ready for 2005.
I’m only half-kidding at the moment. In a week or so, I’ll be all-kidding, but until then I am going to brainstorm some ideas of logos for a Liberal revolutionary resistance, indicative of our regional propensity to transition from silversmith to outraged idealist at a moment’s notice. Hopefully by the time I’ve finished those, the adrenaline will have worked its way out of my system, to be replaced with resignium, the chemical enzyme that allows one to hunker down and acknowledge that wishful thinking doesn’t affect the status quo.
Election: Don’t Panic
When you vote today, make sure you actually hit the right button.*
Actually, the above image has nothing to do with electioneering, but is instead from Sony’s Official HITCH-HIKERS’ GUIDE TO THE GALAXY website, which is currently scant on content. However, the initial Macromedia Flash presentation has a sparkling eight humorous animations. Don’t just click the button twice, reload and keep clicking and reload again to get the full sampling. I’d also point you towards the teaser trailer, but it’s mostly just special effects and spacescapes (a word that is achingly close to being a palindrome), and features no prominent Kenny Baker or Zooey Deschanel, so I won’t bother.
*There are a number of ‘blogs quoting a story about Texas voter fraud, which claims that it is “for real”. I have yet to delve into the professional news reportage about it, so I’m choosing to believe that this is grass-roots party paranoia-mongering at the moment. Be careful what down-to-the-wire decisions you make in the heat of worry and adrenaline, and don’t believe everything you hear in the next twenty-four hours.
NH Constitutional Amendment
On November 2nd, when New Hampshire voters will be carefully filling in ovals with Number 2 pencils and wondering if we’re still a battleground state that people will be watching carefully on the Big Map to see if we, litmus-like, turn red or blue, there will be a Constitutional Amendment tacked on at the end of the ballot.
The question is asking voters to indicate whether they support a change in the New Hampshire Constitution, one that, depending upon who you ask, either limits or clarifies the power of the NH Supreme Court. The question provides voters with a dense, but reasonable-sounding piece of legalese after asking
Are you in favor of repealing and reenacting Part II, Article 73-a of the constitution in order to clarify that both the judiciary and the Legislature have the authority to regulate court practices and procedures…
You’ll notice that there isn’t actually a question mark anywhere forthcoming, despite the initial “Are you” preface that would seem to demand it. Grammatics aside, this is a stupid bit of deliberate confusion. Anyone who’s done any work in statistics or research will tell you that a question that asks if the constituent is in favor of a repeal creates a dual-vector, a vague confusion as to what is actually being asked. At the end of the indirect question, voters aren’t sure if when they mark “YES” they are supporting the thing they just read or in favor of getting rid of it.
This is either a spectacularly bad piece of wording, or it’s a deliberate attempt to confuse readers and thereby skew results.
And, lastly, voters are asking to substitute language when they have no easy means of comparing the revised statute to the original. You’ll note the question only provides the revision and provides no clear idea of what the original language indicated. The average voter therefore has no idea for what he or she is voting. But that’s okay, because the NH State Legislature has provided a helpful “Voters’ Guide” that describes the purpose of the amendment. But wait! Said “Guide” also fails to cite the original language from Article 73-a of the NH State Constitution. The guide, in fact, only states the benefits of the proposed amendment, and lists none of the controversies or possible conflicts that such a change might create. And since the “Voters’ Guide” was printed and distributed by New Hampshire’s Department of State, one would hope that it wasn’t producing and distributing materials that could be construed as lobbying for the creation of unequal power between the branches of government!
Luckily, the NH Civil Liberties Union filed suit agains the producers of the Guide, and it is no longer available for download from the NH State Department website.
As a public service here today, I’d just like to quote, in their entirety, the Constitutional Article, as it stands, and the proferred revision.
November 22, 1978 Version of [Art.] 73-a.
[Supreme Court, Administration.] The chief justice of the supreme court shall be the administrative head of all the courts. He shall, with the concurrence of a majority of the supreme court justices, make rules governing the administration of all courts in the state and the practice and procedure to be followed in all such courts. The rules so promulgated shall have the force and effect of law.
Proposed November 2, 2004 Version of [Art.] 73-a.
[Court Practices and Procedures.] The chief justice of the supreme court shall be the administrative head of all the courts in the state. The chief justice shall have the power, with the concurrence of a majority of the other supreme court justices, to make rules of general application regulating court administration and the practice, procedure, and admissibility of evidence, in all courts in the state. The legislature shall have a concurrent power to regulate the same matters by statutes of general application, except that such legislative enactments may not abridge the judiciary’s necessary adjudicatory functions. In the event of a conflict between a rule promulgated by the judiciary and a statute enacted by the legislature, the statute, if not otherwise contrary to this constitution shall prevail over the rule.
As a bonus, a link to articles from the Portsmouth Herald and Boston Globe about the controversy, in which it is alleged that the amendment is politically inspired by people who are unhappy with both the State’s decision on school funding, and the way in which the decision was made. Chief Justice David Brock and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Nadeau both oppose the measure, but then, they would, wouldn’t they. Then again, they’re probably best qualified to, *ahem*, judge what effect the amendment would have. However, the best thing I’ve seen on the whole shebang is from the NH Bar Association, which is good reading. Unfortunately, the site seems to be down at the moment, so the prior link is a Google cache. Still, good analysis.
We have taken your blog hostage
Above image stolen from PythOnline. It feels very Gilliamesque, so well done, corporate interns.
Sorry about the long delay. Normal weekly updates commence immediately. And I’m still updating more frequently than the Memecenter‘s patron saint Jen Frickell. So that’s something, then.
Official Kaiju Bootleg
Got the Official DVD Bootleg from Kaiju Big Battel today, and there is definitive evidence of both Peter and me in the trailer for the upcoming Swarm feature. I rack in a fantastic three visible appearances with two offscreen or weapon-only shots, while Pete makes do with two recognizable cameos and the same number of offscreen or special effects appearances.
Granted, almost all of the above tally occur for mere fractions of a blurry second. We each have one clear, obvious moment of screen time, but Pete’s hand gets another few seconds of very obvious camera time, so he wins on that front.
For those of you without the DVD or with crappy Pause/Still functions on your player or computer, here are some stills from the trailer:
I’m in off-blue, on the right, with the dagger and the hair.
Uchu Chu is about to land on Peter, who is offscreen.
Peter is dead center, with rusty pipe raised over his head.
In order from right to left:
The big blurry maroon thing is Commuminion, then Pete, then me.
Still can’t figure out where we are in the above images? Click on each for images with clearer indication.
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