Robert Altman, 1925 - 2006

Robert Altman died a few weeks ago.

What an innovator. Altman was one of the people who broke new ground in motion pictures in the 1960s and 1970s. His output is amazing to me, he never stopped; it seemed like he made a new movie every year. Pretty much everything he's made is worth watching, and more than a few off them are classics.

The first I knew of Robert Altman was MASH. Re-runs of MASH were a staple of my young television years, and in my mid-teen years I got around to watching Altman's version of MASH. I must admit that I didn’t like it at first. It was too different from the t.v. version of MASH.

Then Short Cuts came out and I really like that movie. After that I became a committed Altman fan. I watched MASH again and really enjoyed it. I've seen most (if not all) of Altman's movies since then.

Most recently, I saw McCabe and Mrs. Miller for the first time in nearly a decade, and it still hypnotized me. It's well worth a few hours of your time, as is nearly everything Altman did.

The Christmas Party

So today they tried a new tactic to force my attendance at the annual workpalce christmas party. I have managed to dodge three of four christmas parties. The one I attended was immediately after work. All the other parties have been in the evening.

I dislike parties in the first place. A three hour christmas party with my co-workers feels like about six hours' worth of torture. And I don't want to take the 30-40 minute drive home, shower, dress up fancy, then drive back to the party where I have nothing to eat but overcooked meat no one to walk to (my coworkers discuss three topics and three topics only: 1. their children 2. their spouses and 3. their church activities.

But today a co-worker came to me and asked what food I was bringing to the party. She was very crafty, trying to box me into attending the party. But I am no amateur at ducking unwanted social obligations, and no matter what she tries I am not attending that fucking party... There are about four coworkers I can tolerate, and they won't be at the party either.

This is not the first time she's tried to corner me into attending some fucking social funtion. I find her persistence quite offensive. I don't force my opinions on other people (I don't tell her that if she wants to lose some weight then perhaps she oughtt to not snack every moment of the day; I don't tell the married people that I'm sick of hearing about their no-good spouses) so I find it very bothersome when people try to foist their nonsense on me.

Especially when it's people who want to set me up on dates with their divorced daughters...

Notes Towards a Revisionist History of Abductions - Part 2

There you are: animal reactions; the Enchantment; electromagnetic effects, poltergeists and abductions altogether, as though this was Hopkins ufology full of repeater, haunting abductions and night sieges. 1964 ufology had no way of handling material like this. In a sense this case seems pivotal to the UFO debate. If a careful, competent investigation on the 1960s had shown the strange lights to be truly anomalous then we would have to admit that the scales had tipped against the psychosocial approach. On the other hand, if investigation had confirmed what ufological experience suggests - that reports of UFOs seen night after night turn out to be astronomical IFOs - was so in this case, we should have come close to proving the psychosocial approach. It seems to be typical of the whole subject that it is unlikely such a resolution can be made.

Jack Palance, 1919-2006

Jack Palance died recently. He was 87 years old.

I was first aware of him as the host of Ripley's Believe It or Not In the 1980s. I loved that show when I was a kid.

A few years later, I became aware that the host from Ripleys had not only done a lot of movies, but that he was a great actor. Sudden Fear, ShaneRequiem for a Heavyweight (which I rented on video a few months ago; it was an early performance, and one of his best), Panic In the Streets, City Slickers. Big roles or small, Palance was always memorable. And he played excellent villains, he'd make your skin crawl.

There's one scene in the outstanding war movie Attack! that has always stuck in my mind. Eddie Arnold is the cowardly commander, risking the lives of his soldiers for political gain. And when Palance finds out, he tells Arnold:

"Listen to me, Cooney! If you put me and my men in a wringer - -if you send us out there and let us hang ... I swear, I swear by all that's holy, I'll come back. I'll come back and take this grenade and shove it down your throat and pull the pin!"

Palance delivered that line with a terrifying ferocity.

That rough face of his looked as it did because of injuries he suffered in World War II, and the reconstructive surgery required to put him back together. It's amazing to me that his iconic face is the result of a tragic accident.

i got the no pussy blues

when nick cave talks, i listen. and grinderman is fucking amazing. if the album's as good as "no pussy blues" i'll be a very happy boy...

nick's playing guitar -- i think it's the first time he's ever recorded with that instrument, and i like the results. it's primative in the best way.

sweet wedded bliss

the couple upstairs had another alcohol-fueled fights last night. this was of epic proportions, one of their best. or worst.

it began with husband shouting, "No! No! You don't understand!" wife sounded very meek and apologetic.

half an hour later, they were lauging and joking and the television was turned on and the fight seemed to be over.

another thirty minutes passed, and then wife was on the offensive, shouting her usual refrain: "you asshole! you asshole!"

they do this routine about once a week...

sweet wedded bliss

The Secret News

(with apologies to George Carlin)

Here is the Secret News:
All people are afraid.
No one knows what they are doing.
Everything is getting worse.
Some people deserve to die.
Your money is worthless.
No one is properly dressed.
At least one of your children will disappoint you.
The system is rigged.
Your house will never be completely clean.
All teachers are incompetent.
There are people who really dislike you.
Nothing is as good as it seems.
Things don't last.
No one is paying attention.
The country is dying.
God doesn't care.
Shhhhh.

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN; Like Cornered Rats, GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

About a week ago some left-wing bloggers began circulating rumors that Bush had secretly signed something called the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that "allows the president to declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppress public disorder.'" I couldn't find the text of the law at the time, formerly H.R. 5122, or a reliable media account, so I decided not to report on it.

I can now confirm the bloggers' account. Bush signed the JWDAA hours after the MCA, in a furtive closed-door White House ceremony. There is, buried deep down in Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA, a coup. The Bush Administration has quietly stolen the National Guard away from the states.

Japanese Researchers Find Dolphin With 'Remains of Legs'

Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.

Unless, of course, the scientists have it backwards and the dolphins are tiring of the oceans and are evolving rear legs so that they can swarm over the land and eliminate us from the food chain!That's it for us monkeys...

New UFOs pimped out with techno babble, by Aaron Sakulich

At the end of the 19th century, people reported spotting UFOs that looked sort of like super-blimps. The idea at the time was that airships had been invented by some backwoods tinkerer, who for some reason was often named Wilson. The craft had propellers, wings, huge bladders filled with gas, gears, or any number of other perfectly human accoutrements. The reports of "encounters" with these UFOs are fairly benign; occasions such as a young man reporting that a 'martian ship' had crashed in a forest (it was a hoax) were very much the minority.

In the 1950s flying saucers acted very strange. They usually looked like rockets, and did things such as trail smoke or sparks. Some of them even had propellers. And not just some on the fringe: no less than J. Allen Hynek held a 1952 case from Kansas that involved a flying saucer sporting an array of tiny propellers in the highest regards.

I've wondered about this subject myself: when witnesses report UFOs, the strange aircraft often seem to be a step or two ahead of the technology of the day...

Notes Towards a Revisionist History of Abductions - Part 1, by Roger Peterson

Other abduction stories were on the airwaves if not in the air, for the March 1957 edition of the long John Nebel radio show featured John Robinson, a sidekick of Jim Moseley reporting a dramatically spooky, if not very plausible, abduction tale. The gist of it was that in 1944 Robinson had a neighbour named Steve Brodie who one day saw (in Robinson's apartment) a copy of one of Ray Palmer's magazines featuring the Dero. Brodie yelled out "He speaks of the Dero!", and proceeded to tell Robinson how he had been prospecting out west with a companion in 1938. One day they encountered two mysterious cowled figures who paralyzed brodie by pointing a rod-like device at him. When the companion tried to flee, they fired at him and Brodie heard him scream, and smelled burnt flesh. When one of the figures placed 'small earphones' behind his ears he lost consciousness. From time to time he came to, in a place which fellow prisoners told him was the cave of the Dero. Each time his brain began to clear, the cowled one adjusted the earphones and he lost consciousness again.

He eventually came to, walking the streets of Manhattan two years later. Brodie showed Robinson scarred patches behind his ears, a little smaller than a silver dollar. Since his ordeal Brodie claimed he was unable to eat meat (cf John Avis). Time passed; Robinson left the apartment but on returning for a visit found that brodie had disappeared. Another neighbour told Robinson that he had seen brodie in Arizona, wandering about like a zombie. We are presumably supposed to conclude that he was back under the control of the Dero.

It is in this unlikely tale that we first encounter the implants (behind the ears, as in Invasion of the Martians) and other abductionist staples such as the paralyzing rods and the doorway amnesia.

The Road

I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's new novel The Road a few days ago.

It's a little unusual for him to publish books so close together -- No Country For Old Men was published only last year (and that book is being adapted by the Cohen Brothers as a motion picture; I think they could do it well.)

So I bought a copy of The Road and cleared a few days on my calendar. Typically, I devour McCarthy's books. He's one of the best writers alive, and he's never failed to knock me back on my heels.

The Road did amaze me, no doubt, but in a way that was very unusual for me. I could read only a few pages at a time. The Road was simply too emotionally heavy, too heartbreaking. Sadder than almost anything I've read. I'd read a few pages, then I'd have to stop -- I was feeling breathless, feeling weighed down. I'd read a few pages and start to cry, and then I'd have to stop reading.

It took me about two weeks to finish The Road (No Country For Old Men required two or three days for the first reading)

Maybe my reaction to The Road was unusual. I'd recommend it -- with a few qualifications. The prose is, as usual, beautiful and staggering, but the mood is almost unrelentingly bleak and sad. Maybe not the book to read if you're in a sour mood.

Meet the New Boss (?)

So the Republicans have had their asses stomped in this election.

Even though I voted a straight Democratic ticket yesterday (for the first time in my life) I can't get too enthusiastic about the Democrats: just wait; they'll screw things up in a few years. I tend to vote Democrat because they seem to care about people, while Republicans tend to care about money. Broad generalization, maybe, but that's how I see it.

And though I've never been a big fan of the Democratic party, I have been a staunch Republican-basher for ten or fifteen years. So at least we have an end to the Republican stranglehold on the U.S. Government.

The Embarrassment-in-Chief Bush has had nearly everything he's wanted the last few years, and what has it gotten us?

*A government that lied and lied and lied and lied and continues to lie to support their illegal, illogical and unpopular war in a country where none of the troops speak the language or understand the culture;
*A government that can't formulate a plan to accomplish any goals in the other quagmire (anyone remember Afghanistan?)
*The loss of prestige and reputation in the world;
*Rampant war profiteering;
*A Republican administration that tried to cover up the fact that one of their own asked teenaged boys to describe how they masturbate;
*A drunken Vice President who shot a man in his face and wasn't charged with any crime;
*Lunatic Christian idiots who have far too much sway on the government (not all Christians are maniacs, but the ones who are crazy are more than crazy enough to make up for the normal ones);
*Tax cuts for the super-rich, while the President says that it's good for the economy when jobs are sent overseas (what that means is that it's good for a company's shareholders to send jobs overseas -- screw the working class if they can't find a decent job)

Need I go on? You get the idea. Let's just hope the Dems don't make a worse mess of things than Bush II did (is that possible?)