January 2010 Archives

I have no idea what the heck this image is all about, or why I find it so weirdly appealing. And yet... I cannot look away. And it brings a mystified smile to my face. And I think I'm suddenly craving a corn dog.

You gotta wonder how Carrie Fisher feels about being the focal point for a whole mess of bizarro nerd fetishes. Do you suppose if she had the chance to do it all again, she'd tell Uncle George she didn't want to be in his movies after all, because she just couldn't face the long decades ahead knowing that one day there would be a photoshopped pin-up of her in a Hot Dog on a Stick uniform?

(Via.)

I don't find myself nodding in agreement with John Scalzi nearly as often as I used to. A definite air of belligerent self-satisfaction seems to have crept into his blogging, and I've gotten mightily tired of him hacking on stuff I happen to like -- this entry, in particular, managed to piss me off at least three times before I reached the end; people who know me well can probably guess which parts pressed my buttons -- but I've got to hand it to him, he really knocked the ball out of the park with this:

Obama’s real problem is that in Congress, his allies are incompetent cowards and his adversaries are smug dicks. I find it genuinely appalling a Democratic president has to prod his party members in the Senate, with a 59-seat majority, to stop acting like spooked children. The lot of them need to have a stick jammed up their ass, because it’s clear they don’t have much in the way of a spine. As for the Republicans, a recent reader was distressed when I said they were “hopped-up ignorant nihilists,” but you know what, when your Senate operating strategy is “filibuster everything and let Fox News do the rest,” and the party as a whole gives it a thumbs up, guess what, you’re goddamned nihilists. There’s no actual political strategy in GOP anymore other than taking joy in defeating the Democrats.

Which is more or less exactly what I've been saying lately, but expressed so much more colorfully... Kudos, John, kudos.

It's been a while since I got on my high horse about the routine maiming of the English language by non-English majors whose job descriptions don't require an in-depth knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style. (People who aren't me, in other words.) That's because these proofreading pet-peeve entries are largely dependent on what I've been encountering out there in the wild, and it just hasn't seemed worth my time or yours to call out yet another example of incorrect apostrophe usage. (Good God, I see that everywhere; what's the matter with our schools these days, anyhow?)

In the last few days, however, I've noticed several examples of something a little more substantive: the frequent misuse of the word "breath" when the writer obviously means "breathe," as in, "I can't breath because the air pollution is so bad." Specifically, I've seen this popping up on Facebook and also in the comments on the Salt Lake Tribune website, which leads me to wonder if this is perhaps a Utah-ism, like our preternatural affection for Jell-O. (That's not a myth, incidentally; we eat a hell of a lot of Jell-O in these parts.) Even if it isn't unique to this state, though, it certainly is prevalent here. Interestingly, this tic doesn't seem to cross over to verbal speech; people don't say "I can't breath" when they're talking, only when they're writing. But writing, of course, is my professional purview, and it's what drives me crazy when it's done incorrectly.

So, let's run through it, shall we?

Breath is a noun. It is the parcel of air that you inhale or exhale, as in, "I took a deep breath."

Breathe is a verb. It is the act of inhaling and exhaling, as in "I breathe deeply."

See? Easy, isn't it?

You know, this actually reminds me of another Utah thing I may have written about before, the confusion between "loose" and "lose." I repeatedly see people writing that they are "loosing their minds" or that they "feel like a looser." Nope, sorry, kids. You lose your keys; that guy over there is a loser. However, your pants are loose because your diet is working. Get it?

And we have time for just one more thing, a funny typo that I caught at work this morning: someone wrote "protocol" as "proto-call." As in the evolutionary precursor of a call, I guess, like smoke signals.

Well, I thought it was funny.

Today's episode of The Bloody Red Pen has been brought to you by the number 1138...

I don't have a whole lot to say about this; I just thought it was an awesome photo, and it's one I've never seen before.

I took it from the Facebook page of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Here's the information that was posted along with the picture:

Robert Landau, Native Guy And Photographer, Interview

Q-What is your favorite photo you've taken and why?

A-“Back in the 1980s I had a book published on the Sunset Strip billboards, called Billboard Art [Chronicle Books]. I was living near Tower records and every week there would be new hand painted pop art masterpieces promoting the latest Rock and Roll and movie stars. I took a photo of a street scene with a woman carrying a grocery bag walking under a billboard depicting an image of Christopher Reeve in Superman costume streaking across the landscape. It epitomized for me the surreal nature of Los Angeles with all its dimensions of overblown Hollywood pretense versus the reality of ordinary daily life.”

My power went out this morning at 7 a.m.

I was awake at the time, more or less -- my alarm had sounded 15 minutes earlier and I was indulging in my usual routine of bashing the snooze button half a dozen times before I finally get up, wishing all the while that the idiots who design these things would give me a full five minutes in between bashings instead of only three -- and I heard the ceiling fan and the furnace fall silent.

Now, the power used to go out all the time when I was a kid. My hometown was pretty far out in the sticks back then, before the suburban sprawl creeping outward from metro Salt Lake finally caught up to us, and I guess we only had a single set of transmission lines coming into town across the far and wide desert, or some damn thing, because any time the wind blew, something would short out somewhere and we'd be in the dark for a few hours. I used to think it was fun, actually. I can't remember ever being afraid of the dark, and having to use candles struck me as a neat change from the usual routine.

To be honest, I still don't mind the occasional outage, although given how much of my work and entertainment now revolves around electronic gadgets, I tend to get bored more quickly than I did when I was a kid. Even so, I was completely unprepared for just how truly, alarmingly inconvenient it is to lack electricity during the hour when I'm getting ready for work.

I think we need to send this video to each and every Democratic politician in the country. And probably to a lot of the rank-and-file Dem voters, too. God, how I cringed at the "Make them like us" line. So. Frakkin'. True. As if Cheney gives a damn about whether people like him. Or, to cite a somewhat more admirable figure, FDR. He was well aware people hated him and his agenda. And he thrived on it. The modern-day Democrats need to recapture some of his spirit, and fast. Personally, I think a good first step would be to call the GOP on their constant threat of filibuster. Call their bluff, and make them stand up on the floor of the Senate and read the phone book for 32 hours straight like Jimmy Stewart did in Mr. Smith... and videotape the whole damn thing for use in the next campaign season.

Via Sullivan.

I've been fuming for several days now, thinking I wanted to write a nice, long, expletive-filled, no-holds-barred rant about recent political developments. About cowardly, disarrayed Democrats who don't have the conviction of their own ideals, and about a President I still basically like and respect, but who really needs to get it through his head that the other side ain't going to play nice with him, like ever, and it's time he drops the "cool and aloof" thing and actually leads his frickin' party. A party that I continue to vote for because I really have no other choice -- it's not like a third-party candidate has a chance in hell of getting a national seat; Mr. Nader, I'm still pissed at you! -- but which continually lets me down and embarrasses me.

I was also going to rant about the other side of the aisle and how unbelievably infuriating it is that the Republicans' entire political strategy consists of stamping their feet and shouting "no" like recalcitrant four-year-olds. And about how maddening it is that the "no strategy" actually seems to be working, and that they get away with saying any old kind of bullshit thing because they never, ever back down and no one ever calls them on it. And about what a damn, ironic, tragic shame it is that Ted Kennedy spent his entire career trying to make it so no one had to worry about ending up homeless if they happened to get sick, but now that the health-care reform bill is finally only a whisker away from passage, it's about to vaporize because his seat has been taken by one of those recalcitrant four-year-olds, and it'll be another 20 years before anyone dares raise the subject again, just like the aftermath of Clinton-care. And I was going to hold out a special ration of bile for those damn-fool Massachusetts Democrats, who lost Teddy's seat because they were so friggin' complacent and apparently thought they were simply entitled to it.

Then I was going to go on about how vile it is that the Supreme Court just handed the electoral process over to anonymous, impersonal business entities. And how useless this country's news media is for treating politics like a football game that's all about who wins and who loses instead of explaining the things people really need to know (like, for instance, how the U.S. really does not have the best health care system in the world and how the bill that's about to vaporize, while imperfect, could make things better, or what a bad idea it is to formally recognize and condone the influence of corporations in politics). And how the country that won World War II and sent men to the bloody moon is now filled with ignorant pussies who dress their children in suits of armor to ride bikes, and are ready to give up any civil liberty for some ineffable guarantee of "safety," and who vote for whichever candidate tells them the scariest or most infuriating story. And so on and so forth.

But every time I called up a fresh Notepad window and actually tried to compose this rant, I couldn't seem to get much beyond the bare bones I just outlined. I just couldn't manage to get wound up enough about it. I know, I know: this happens sometimes to men my age and it's nothing to be ashamed of. But still...

Instead of the soothing roar of my own bile, all I could hear in my head was dialog from a movie, echoing slightly the way it does when you're walking across the parking lot of a drive-in theater. Dialog from Escape from New York, to be precise, a scene very near the end when Lee Van Cleef's Houk asks Snake Plisskin -- Kurt Russell -- if Snake intends to follow through on an earlier threat to kill him. And Snake gives it a moment's consideration, then growls, "I'm too tired."

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I'm just tired...

And this is pretty much how I feel about that:

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May I just briefly mention how really frakkin' weird I feel every time I think about the fact that I'm actually walking around in the year 2010?

It's the curse of being a Gen-X sci-fi fan, I guess. Thanks to all the silly stuff that obsessed me as a kid and a teen, there are certain dates that hold a powerful resonance for me and probably don't faze ordinary people in the least: 1999... 2001, of course... and now 2010. Still to come are 2015, 2019, and 2029, the Year of Darkness, in which Skynet comes up with its dastardly plan to end the human resistance once and for all. In the case of that one, I think I'll forgo my usual lament that the real future doesn't match the cinematic version...

As I've been puttering around the house on this day off honoring the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., I've been listening to a segment of NPR's Talk of the Nation called "The 'Post-Racial' Conversation, One Year In." (Recall if you will that many observers believed President Obama's inauguration a year ago would usher us into "post-racial" America.)

Now, if you think about the recent flap over Harry Reid's "Negro dialect" comment, Rush Limbaugh's ridiculous insinuation that Obama is politicizing the Haiti disaster, and the barely disguised (or not-at-all disguised) racism of some of Obama's detractors -- not to mention the quickness of some of his supporters to label any opposition to the president racist -- it seems pretty clear to me that we're still a fair distance away from being over the sticky issue of race in this country. But that's something I've been hearing my entire life. Far more interesting to me is the question of what exactly "post-racial" is supposed to mean. What is this goal that our society seems to be eternally reaching toward, one stumbling baby-step at a time?

Reposting something from a couple years ago that still moves me and says what needs to be said on this particular federal holiday:

He may not have searched for lost treasure, discovered ancient civilizations, or killed aliens in outer space, but he was one of the bravest men this country's ever known.

And he did fight monsters.

-- Michael May

And now some of the greatest words ever spoken on American soil, right up there with the Gettysburg Address, in my humble opinion:

This is the promise, the duty, and the destiny of America. Equality, respect, and dignity for all, no matter who or what you may be. We're still not there yet, but we're getting closer all the time. And that's pretty exciting...

In case you missed it, this past Friday was the one-year anniversary of the so-called "Miracle on the Hudson," in which airline captain "Sully" Sullenberger successfully ditched his crippled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River alongside Manhattan without losing a single life. (Human life, that is; God only knows how many poor birds got themselves puree'd inside Flight 1549's massive CFM International turbofan engines.)

This morning, there's a new video floating around the 'net that shows what happened after the passengers and crew were rescued. It's a fascinating timelapse of the salvage operation that lifted the sunken airliner out of the freezing waters of the river and got it placed onto a barge. The photographer had a perfect vantage point, and the video is really quite beautiful. In particular, I found the ice surging and waning around the plane's wing and vertical stabilizer -- the only parts of 1549 that were above the water for three days -- weirdly hypnotic. Give it a look:

Exclusive unseen video footage of the Miracle on the Hudson, flight 1549 New York City from David Martin on Vimeo.

I am one of those weirdos who sentimentalize and anthropomorphize machines, especially those that perform beyond expectations to save the lives of the people who ride within them, so I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I teared up a bit when 1549 re-emerges into the air. Of course, the music probably helps. It's a selection from the soundtrack of Michael Bay's Transformers, and I found it unexpectedly effective.

The guy who created this video, David Hugh Martin, has posted a number of still photos and some comments here; I found his video via Andrew Sullivan.

To the worthless lump of failed humanity whose obnoxious children ruined my dinner at Sizzler the other night, the guy who sat at a table with all the adults of your extended clan, obliviously stuffing your soft, quivering jowls with all-you-can-eat shrimp while your noisy little brats went unsupervised in a nearby booth and generally behaved (and sounded) as if they were playing on a jungle gym in some open-air playground about a mile away from civilization:

You suck.

No, seriously, you do.

You see, the fact that your meager dreams evaporated years ago and your self-respect is dead and buried beneath that admittedly awe-inspiring paunch of yours does not absolve you from your parental responsibilities to actually, you know, parent. Yes, I know the only glimmer of pleasure you can strain from your gray and miserable life is the time spent discussing football stats with your equally corpulent brother-in-law over heaping plates of fried crustaceans. And I'm certain that your admirable ability to completely ignore the high-pitched squealings of your misbehaved progeny is an adaptive mechanism to protect what little intellectual capacity you may have remaining in that stupid round noggin of yours. But believe me, what you seem so adept at filtering out while you eat was unbelievably irritating to every other person in the damn restaurant. And as you're the one who spawned the offending creatures, the responsibility for them irritating me ultimately falls on your ample and well-cushioned shoulders. So allow me to offer you some suggestions on how you should have handled the situation...

I was just shy of my eighth birthday when Elvis Presley died at the age of 42. His was the first celebrity death -- possibly the first death, period -- that I can recall being aware of and understanding as death, i.e., the permanent state we're all doomed to achieve sooner or later, which those we leave behind experience as loss and pain. It was, with no exaggeration, a transformative event in my life. You want to know the origins of my compulsive obituary-writing? Blame Elvis Presley. Or more precisely, blame the way our culture responded to his passing.

I actually wrote my very first dead-celebrity tribute for Elvis. I had this red leatherette agenda book, the sort of thing businesspeople scribbled their appointments in before the advent of Day Planners, PDAs, and BlackBerries, a piece of branded corporate swag. It was given to me by our neighbor's adult daughter, who worked for an airline. I imagine she thought I'd enjoy looking at the photos of jets that were interspersed between the calendar pages. (She was correct, of course.) But even at that early age, I was trying to express myself in written words, to record the things that seemed to matter. In other words, I was dabbling at keeping my first diary in that book. And on a page dated August 16, 1977, I was inspired to write the following in the shaky, block-printed letters of a young boy who hated to practice his penmanship: GOODBYE ELVIS, WE'LL MISS YOU. (I think I probably stole that from Walter Cronkite's evening broadcast that day, but hey, I had to learn how to say these things from someone, right?)

Hear ye, hear ye (I've always wanted to say that):

My lovely Girlfriend, who has slaved tirelessly and with very little recognition for a wholesale carpet dealer for the past 10 years, was this afternoon elected to the position of Vice President of the Utah Floor Covering Association, an industry trade group concerned with, um, floor coverings. And the industry that trades in... floor... coverings. Ah, hell, the truth is I have no idea what the UFCA actually does, but I imagine I'm going to be learning much more about it over the next year. Anne has already informed me that I'll be required to make myself available as her arm-candy for occasional functions, and she will likely be doing some business-related traveling as well. (The travel may or may not include me, depending on our respective schedules.) And, as if all this wasn't exciting enough, she will most likely ascend to the presidency itself in only a year.

I'm very proud of her. I don't know that this is going to be a game-changer or anything, but it's bound to be a very interesting experience for her, and a good resume' builder. And besides, "Madam Vice President" has kind of a sexy ring...

This either speaks to the utter banality and base immaturity of the average conversation on social-networking sites, or it serves to craft an endearingly human side to beloved but admittedly two-dimensional characters. Or something. Whatever is going on here, it makes me laugh:

There are a few more here

Via.

I had such plans for my annual holiday break. I was going to blog. A lot. I was going to sort through a couple thousand digital pictures I've taken over the past year and be brutal and efficient about deleting all the sub-par ones, and then I was going to Photoshop those that needed it and post the whole lot of them to Flickr. I was going to set up the digital picture frame my parents gave me for Christmas a year ago, and I was going to send long-overdue and just plain long emails to several people I haven't contacted for a while. I was going to give my house a thorough cleaning, and go through my clothes and pull out a bunch of stuff I no longer wear and give it to charity, and I was going to sit in the sun streaming in through the window and read a fat novel and sip hot cocoa. I was going to listen to a whole mess of podcasts I've got saved on the computer and go to some movies, which, believe it or not, I haven't really managed to do for the past couple months. I thought I might even take a nice drive up to Park City one afternoon and try breathing some less-smoggy air for a change. And when all that was done, I was going to actually write... not the lame-o crap I do around here all the time, but real writing, creative writing. Fiction, in other words, the stuff I used to think I was going to spend my life making.

And just how many of all those planned activities do you suppose I accomplished? Well... I managed to do a couple of memes for the blog. Yay me.

So what did I do over the break? I visited friends on Christmas Eve. I had a very rare stress-free Christmas Day with my parents. I spent an afternoon with my buddy Jer, who I only see a couple times a year because he lives in Vegas, and I enjoyed the annual reunion dinner with The Dudes, i.e., my buddies from the old multiplex days. I also enjoyed a New Year's Eve video party with a different subset of friends I like to call The Usual Suspects. (Geeks that we are, the evening's viewing selection was 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Of course.) And then I did penance for that party all the next day. (I've decided that champagne doesn't agree with me; every time I drink it, I end up with one of those headaches that sits right behind your retinas and threatens to explode your eyeballs any time the treacherous daylight sneaks through a chink in the window blinds.)

I helped The Girlfriend's parents organize and store their Christmas decorations, and was rewarded with a little road trip out into the hinterlands for lunch at one of those small-town greasy spoons I love so well, a place called the Stockton Miner's Cafe (sorry, no web presence that I could find). I hung some framed photos that have been sitting on the living-room floor for several months. And I managed to see a movie, Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes. (For the record, I liked it. Well, I liked the story and the performances, at least -- people who are screaming about revisionism don't know their Holmes -- but I am never going to get used to the modern way of putting together an action scene. Undercrank the camera, freeze for a moment, then overcrank and smash cut to something else, all shot in close-ups so you can never see where anything is in relation to anything else... ugh. The action in Sherlock is a lot more intelligible than the messy fights in those damn Bourne movies, but I still long for a nice steadicam shot once in a while.)

And all that stuff was great, it really was. But now, as Ray Liotta says at the conclusion of Goodfellas, it's all over, and I'm back at work in the comma mines and feeling like a tremendous failure for not crossing off a few items on that "to-do" list...