politics

Glenn Greenwald:

But beyond just that, there is something deeply misleading — disturbingly self-justifying — about the stampede to depict John Yoo as some kind of singular, isolated aberration. It’s redolent of the scapegoating of Lynndie England and her low-level Abu Ghraib colleagues for what was official government policy. The responsibility for the torture regime does not rest with John Yoo or even just isolated Bush officials. It’s far more collective than that.

movies

A few weeks ago I watched a late-stage Soviet movie and wondered if any movies made henceforth will ever be as alien to anyone else as this one was to me.

And then I watched the “Darjeeling Limited.” And it was even more alien to me than the Soviet science fiction film.

I suppose if you’re looking for a thorough account of the WASP in his element circa 2007, you could do worse.

crime

The feeling that I’m living in the future is beginning to overwhelm me:

Websense is reporting that Gmail’s CAPTCHA has been broken, and that bots are beginning to sign up with a one in five success rate. More interestingly, they have a lot of technical details about how the botnet members coordinate with two different computers during the process. They believe that the second host is either trying to learn to crack the CAPTCHA or that it’s a quality check of some sort. Curiously, the bots pretend to read the help information while breaking the CAPTCHA, probably to prevent Google from giving them a timeout message.

I know the feeling – like déjà vu – is just a trick. I mean, I might have had the same feeling in the 1910’s reading about the first tanks being subverted by mustard gas. But the fact that these are invisible and weirdly semi-autonomous machines really kinda takes it to another level.

games

The blog post in which this game is announced to the world has two comments, whereas a recent post about a dead child actor on the web site of an ogre has 198.

I sure hope the former wins out in the long run. It’s “game changing.”

politics

1. doctor, heal thyself:

I just heard Bush give one of his officious lectures about democracy with the news that Castro is stepping down. He said that he expects the Cubans to hold free and fair elections — “and I mean free and fair, not those staged elections the Castro brothers try to foist off on the people.”

I laughed when I heard that. Two political brothers staging elections and foisting them off on the people — where have I heard that before?

2. sound advice:

Lesson one: Failure is more common than success in the transition to a democratic market economy. Lesson two: The less internationally integrated, more centralized, and more personalized a former communist regime was, the more traumatic and unsuccessful its transition will be. Lesson three: Dismantling a communist state is far easier and faster than building a functional replacement for it. Lesson four: The brutal, criminal ways of a powerful Communist party with a tight grip on public institutions are usually supplanted by the brutal, criminal ways of powerful private business conglomerates with a tight grip on public institutions. Lesson five: Introducing a market economy without a strong and effective state capable of regulating it gives resourceful entrepreneurs more incentive to emulate Al Capone than Bill Gates.

It is therefore safe to assume that if the Castro regime suddenly implodes, Cuba will end up looking more like Albania than the Bahamas.

karma

While looking at Taryn Simon’s photographs of “the hidden and unfamiliar,” I read:

In the United States, all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. Kenny was born to a breeder in Bentonville, Arkansas on February 3, 1999. As a result of inbreeding, Kenny is mentally retarded and has significant physical limitations. Due to his deep-set nose, he has difficulty breathing and closing his jaw, his teeth are severely malformed and he limps from abnormal bone structure in his forearms. The three other tigers in Kenny’s litter are not considered to be quality white tigers as they are yellow coated, cross-eyed, and knock-kneed.

Nature finds a balance.

Sometimes dramatically. Just ask Roy of Sigfried and Roy.

I can see why the fiction of hell was created – in keeping with real-world, natural phenomena. Equilibrium.

entertainment

Mass rituals have always lived beside – if not in a healthy opposition to – idol worship.

In the communal rite, everyone participates and is transported. The ego belongs to the group.

Before an altar, the ego is projected into an abstraction.

The movie camera – television, film – continues in this tradition of idol worship. Viewers focus on a few faces.

In the U.S., we have fewer carnivals, don’t we? Though there are a few efforts, here and there, to create mass play in the age of the iPod.

politics

Our new rehearsal space is opposite one of the main Church of Scientology buildings on Hollywood Boulevard.

Parking is very difficult in this area, as many of the metered spots are turned over to valet use at night. (Quite a racket.) As a result, we sometimes have to circle the studio for a few minutes before finding a spot. It’s a roundabout way to experience the city as theater.

There was a sole protester outside this Scientology property last night, holding a placard and occasionally speaking into a small bullhorn. There were, however, two cop cars, double parked, and at least as many police officers on the sidewalk. The cops were mostly bored, though one was talking to a man in business casual clothing – presumably, associated with the beleaguered group.

While looking for parking, we always slow down whenever we see someone sitting in a car. Are they about to leave? Yes? No? “Are you leaving?”

And so when we spotted an SUV in a prime location, right on the corner of Hollywood and Ivar, we all but put our car in park. Inside the vehicle was a woman in her late 30s or early 40s, dressed in business attire, using a wired headset to talk into her illuminated smartphone. Nothing out of the ordinary there – much of Los Angeles lives and dies by the mobile phone. But this particular woman was parked kitty-corner from the Scientology building. And she wasn’t leaving.

For the 10 minutes or so we circled the block, she didn’t budge, her eyes focused on the solitary protest across the street. When we’d finally found parking and were walking towards the studio, she was gone. And the protester was nowhere in sight. But suddenly, the same SUV was pulling a sharp U-turn back towards the empty spot, its driver speaking animatedly into her phone.

The protester, we learned a few steps later, had simply crossed Hollywood to get a slice of pizza.

postscript: After finishing this entry I remembered that when we’d first rounded the corner in question, there had been another SUV with a passenger and driver in the same desirable spot – both white men in white shirts. A few minutes later, they were replaced by the car and driver described above.

television

The band Battles on the BBC television show Later!

The entire segment is full of clever, rewarding details like the decision to point a camera down at the sole – and idiosyncratically tall – crash cymbal. It’s just one example of many that suggests the producers took a moment to think about about this particular band, its quirks, and how to best translate its personality to television. Win.

movies

Juno. As it was ending, I thought, “Well, it’s cute.” On the way out of the theater, Ana called it “cutesy,” which, to me, nails it.

In some ways, the protagonist is like any other movie hero – say Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo. She’s not bound by the same rules.

But I do wish she’d cried in the first act and not in the last 10 minutes. Even John McClane had more stirring moments of personal weakness. When Juno lapses, she gets mad at her would-be boyfriend. That’s it.

I want to believe kids like Juno exist in the real world. Is there such a thing as minstrelism not based on race but age? (Look Who’s Talking 42?)

For all the verbal fireworks, the sole conflict in the story is whether two 16 year-olds will go steady. Is Sixteen Candles a categorically different film or just much better?

politics

The People vs. the Profiteers via Digby:

The trailer, unit number R-89, had been lying idle for two weeks, Conyers says, in temperatures that daily reached 120 degrees. “Inside, there were 15 human bodies,” he recalls. “A lot of liquid stuff had just seeped out. There were body parts on the floor: eyes, fingers. The goo started seeping toward us. Boom! We shut the doors again.”

…It is not unheard of for trucks in a war zone to perform hearse duty. But both civilian and U.S.-military regulations state that once a trailer has been used to store corpses it can never again be loaded with food or drink intended for human consumption…

But when Bud Conyers next caught sight of trailer R-89, about a month later, it was packed not with human casualties but with bags of ice—ice that was going into drinks served to American troops. He took photographs, showing the ice bags, the trailer number, and the wooden decking, which appeared to be stained red. Another former KBR employee, James Logsdon, who now works as a police officer near Enid, says he first saw R-89 about a week after Conyers’s grisly discovery. “You could still see a little bit of matter from the bodies, stuff that looked kind of pearly, and blood from the stomachs. It hadn’t even been hosed down. Afterwards, I saw that truck in the P.W.C.—the public warehouse center—several times. There’s nothing there except food and ice. It was backed up to a dock, being loaded.”

quotes

The Chicago Reader quoted and paraphrased:

From Adlai Stevenson to John Kerry, high-minded liberals have acted as if they were blind to the root feelings that feed the followers of politicians like Nixon and Bush. Instead, they alternate between expecting a fair fight on the issues (and getting swiftboated instead) and imagining that once people realize what a bad person Nixon or Bush is, the people will turn against him.

Conservatism isn’t just a temporary delusion or a wacky distraction. In Perlstein’s view, it’s a deep-seated expression of human nature…His point: “We’re not going to eliminate them. The best we can do is to win our 51 percent. What’s fascinating is that we share this country together.

Followed by:

He’s right about this. Conservatism is not an aberration. It is a facet of human nature and a permanent fixture in American life. At the moment they have a successful political movement that first grew out of a genuine grassroots uprising and was soon funded by the aristocrats (who are always conservatives) to help them protect their interests.

otherness

I stupidly watched a Soviet science-fiction movie from the mid 80s this morning. We don’t get to see very many in-depth expressions of such a vastly different political reality.

Will Chinese movies ever shock American sensibilities?

My guess is that the American point-of-view is now so universal that no mass-market film can escape it.

stories

A few times now, on television mostly but once on the local NPR station, KPCC, I’ve caught breathless promos for “special reports” on race, gender and the Democratic presidential hopefuls.

Forty-three percent of all public school students are Hispanic and/or Black. Fifty-seven percent of college students are not men.

When will we discuss race, gender and the Republican presidential hopefuls?

movies

Far From Heaven is the best Todd Haynes movie? I loved it. Beautiful, complicated and simple. Emotionally stirring and intellectually expansive. A Living Imitation of an Imitation of Life.

movies

The Science of Sleep may be Michel Gondry’s best attempt at a movie, yet. For all of its trickery, it’s very honest.

I wonder if the protagonist is a stand-in for the director? And if so, is Gondry conceding some vulnerability, suggesting his motives for constantly showing off – changing the subject.