Whispers amongst the tintamar

Is there any better feeling than the feeling of accomplishment? When you really feel like you've got hold of the beast's neck and ripped off a solid chunk of success, now that's a good day. Two days ago I had one of those days. The ideas would not stop even for the enevitable need to finally sleep. I just love the mad rush of thoughts and consciousness that is the frenetic beat of wild inspiration. Needless to say, I also fear the unforgiving power of that, ultimately, madness, but one must ride the big wave sometimes. Otherwise, it's all just a lot of talk and a badge.

A year in the life of an unlikely Astrophysicist

So, which is my third favorite word behind regardless and anyways, I read Candy Girl this past week, and it was super rad: so funny and smart and observant. I have to admit I felt like some wierd voyeur looking through the anthropological peephole of perversion by the end, but such wit. Who can resist? On top of my own enjoyment, the guys I work with, many of whom haven't read a book since high school, are clamoring to borrow it. It's now being passed around the warehouse. If you can get people to read who wouldn't otherwise, then yr doing something right in my book.

My own private Auld Lang Syne

As I've mentioned, I hate the way we go about year ending reflection in this country. The idea that everything can be boiled down into a list of ten things makes entirely no sense to me, and why does everything have to be ranked anyway. If pushed to do it, I still don't think I could tell you whether I liked The Bloody Fortress better than The Bicycle Thief. I like them in different ways, and they certainly both struck me with different emotional tones, but to say definitively that one is better than the other. I won't do it, and shame on every film critic on the planet for cowtowing to editors on this front. Still I do want to get in on the look back on the year past even if in a belated fashion. Actually I wouldn't have it any other way.
So I'm just gonna jump into this because it's been roaming around in my head for a week now. I saw Black Snake Moan for the first time last week, and I was alternately harrumphish and happy with the outcome. There's just something about Craig Brewer's work that is a little off putting to me, and it's not the controversial nature of the subject matter. I have no problem with an old black man chaining a young white woman to a radiator per se, but doing that within the confines of an otherwise naturalistic film and trying to make it play without feeling forced like a conceit is tough. Brewer doesn't quite get there unfortunately because I'm totally rooting for him even if his filmmaking career may be coming to an end. How he got Black Snake Moan or Hustle & Flow made within the studio system is beyond me. I can't even imagine. Anyway, I had a point here.
The point being that Black Snake Moan seemed to fit in some kind of indiestyle counterpoint to the film Juno which has been in my mind a lot since seeing it a couple of weeks ago. It has quickly become the yardstick by which witty turns of phrase are going to be judged, and it also on some level deals with tough issues. Therein is really the problem. While Juno is the film that I preferred, Black Snake Moan is undoubtedly a more complicated and in some ways a much more honest film. It's messy and while neither of them have endings with the perverbial Hollywood bow around them, the end of Moan felt more like it was leading into the complications of life than Juno did.
Although there are some thematic undercurrents that both films share, obviously these are two very different films tonally. While I worry about a film that makes pregnancy seem like a mild inconvenience, I enjoyed Juno immensely, and while I appreciated the ideas of love tolerance that permeated Moan, the film seemed to much like a conceit, the blues movie, for me to really get to a place of willful suspension of disbelief.
Anyway, I think there's something in these two films that play off each other and make me think of them in some sort of comparative analysis, so I'll try to get into that a little more deeply. I have to say, I find it difficult to use the blog forum to say much in the way that is all the way to meaningful and considered. I do like that off-the-cuffness. Sometimes though I want to go a little deeper, and I just find it difficult to get there without maybe starting somewhere else. If that makes any sense.

Is it any wonder?

There was a confluence of events last week that has me thinking about the state of the world once again. I have to admit that I've been cynicized by my own failure to engage successfully in the political process or do much that was of any use to anyone anywhere. That about sums up how I feel about myself right now. It's not that I don't pay attention or care. It's just that my own Quaker background requires a supererogation from its adherents. The Q's have been on the forefront of progressive movements since the early days of the American colonies, and their modern counterparts are no slouches themselves. Well, except for me that is.
Anyway, the point I was trying to get at through all that was that I read the book, Three Cups of Tea, last week, and was pretty blown away at what this guy Mortenson is doing trying to build schools in rural Pakistan. It's really important work, and I applaud him for it. The world could definitely use more earnest, determined, slightly goofy souls like his appears to be. If only I weren't such a selfish, cynical bastard, I might do something useful too. It's a good lesson in the application of yr own spirit to the problems you see at hand around you. Not all of us can be that seriously determined, but it's always inspiring to see that kind of pluck in action.

randomness abandonment

I just read an article that claimed the most expensive bottle of champagne sold at auction for eighteen grand. I just have to say that with something like fifty percent of the world's population living on less than 2 dollars a day that is just another blinding example of the shameless and unfortunate structure of our world. Some dude gets semi-drunk for more than a whole African village may spend in a decade. How did we get here? How did we get so callously unconcerned for the global village we all live in? I know I sound all hippy-dippy, wishy-washy, but seriously, we should really reconsider our national social organizations. I'm not calling for armed insurrection or anything, but maybe just a little bit more American will put into equalizing human opportunity. The idea that capitalism rewards those who deserve it is such an illusion. I mean come on, some dumbass paid 18 grand for a bottle of bubbly. What justly world improvement did this jerk-off lay on us to be able to afford that? I ask you.