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| Saturday, June 2nd, 2012 |
tamago
|
10:28a |
Escrow has closed
One escrow has closed. Our old house has finally, officially sold. We hope the buyers are happy with it, because it is theirs now. I'll miss the old neighborhood, but I have no regrets about selling the house. Now we have the money in the bank to buy the new house. But, since we are already in escrow on the new house, there's not really a lot of time to cash out that money in small bills and roll around on the bed with it. Though we still have the tension of escrow, being a buyer is much easier on me than being a seller. A seller's job is to wait and wait and wait and then quickly answer some urgent questions that need to be answered five minutes ago, and then wait and wait and wait some more. I hate waiting. I am bad at waiting. But it's not really waiting I could do while occupying myself with something else, in case any more of those urgent questions I had to answer five minutes ago sprang up. Escrow as a buyer is filled with activity. Inspections! Mortgage brokers! Planning for the future! And in my downtime I can agreeably entertain myself thinking of all the new furniture I will have to obtain, and my scared little hindbrain that insists I must keep on topic looks at those daydreams and says: "Oh, but it's for the house. This is a productive line of thought. You may continue." The time is going by much faster. Which is good, because this will be a longer period of escrow. But one escrow is closed. If I can survive that, I can survive the new one. And with luck, that's the last time I'll ever have to do that. |
ginmar
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12:15p |
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ginmar
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12:06p |
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communicator
|
8:59a |
Prometheus vs Alien
A bit more on Prometheus. It's got a good cast, some of my favourite actors, and Ridley Scott has put a lot into the visual design. There are one or two good scenes. It's been conceived by people who understand the first film. But it is not claustrophobic and haunted. Although it begins with archaeology and myth (that's not a spoiler, it's in the trailers) it doesn't have a primitive half-mythical feel to it. It's like the writers understood the big ideas in the first film: incubation, violation, cave, demon, humanity, blood, mouth and so on, and then wrote a script to get those symbols trotting around. See the cave, now see the incubation, now see the ghost. And it has that feeling of a story dutifully going through steps to get to the scenes they want to show, where the symbolic stuff can happen. But that means too much of the screen time is devoted to over-complicating story business, and the symbolic events don't feel as if they emerged organically from the bedrock of the plot. This film should have had half the events, and time to build characters and inter-character dynamics. I find a lot of modern science fiction (including books) over-thought and over-controlled. Perhaps it is a reaction to modern anxiety, to re-emphasise control and have a clear symbolic map. The first Alien film was not like that. It was very peculiar and bewildering, to the characters and the viewer. Anyway, you will understand I am comparing one of my all time favourite films, which is saying a lot, with something that it is not fair to compare it with. Of course Prometheus suffers in comparison. I know many people have enjoyed it, and I didn't get bored or annoyed by the new film. I think what I am dwelling on here is what this experience makes me feel about the need to let go of control, and let meaning emerge from darkness. |
| Friday, June 1st, 2012 | |
pennyarcaderss
|
11:21p |
News Post: Turnaround
http://penny-arcade.com/2012/06/01/turnaround
Tycho: I saw a single still used to promote a Hitman: Absolution trailer, a phalanx of leather-clad Battle-Nuns, and decided to skip it. I felt like I had probably seen something very similar at some point. But being mad at it is apparently a thing, a compulsory thing. Except I don’t do compulsory, and I also don’t do infantilizing chivalry. So I don’t do well at these kinds of parties. The cinematic ambitions of the Hitman games have always been prominently displayed on (or very near to) its sleeve; I watched the video to see what the deal was, and |
communicator
|
11:32p |
Prometheus
The Alien prequel Prometheus is a bit of a mess. The narrative is too complex and unfocused. Like The Thing prequel it tries hard to tick off references to its more prestigious precursor. Its got an excellent cast. The imagery is well conceived. But its like a small room with too much furniture in it. Alien is a neat sharp story. This is all over the place. Shame. |
ginmar
|
3:47p |
|
altariel
|
5:21p |
Small Press Expo at Forbidden Planet
Date for your diary: Saturday 30 June, 1pm-2.30pm, at the Forbidden Planet London Megastore, Shaftesbury Avenue - the Small Press Expo! "On Saturday 30th June, at the Forbidden Planet London Megastore, we will be hosting an event with a difference – welcoming a host of authors and editors from four small press publishers into a mini convention in our very own store!" I'll be there with the good people of NewConPress, so if you don't have Dark Currents yet, now's your chance. |
| Thursday, May 31st, 2012 |
jmswallow
|
10:18a |
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| Friday, June 1st, 2012 | |
pennyarcaderss
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7:54a |
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| Thursday, May 31st, 2012 |
ginmar
|
11:04p |
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| Friday, June 1st, 2012 | |
pennyarcaderss
|
1:05a |
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| Thursday, May 31st, 2012 |
sweetheartwhale
|
8:52p |
did time stop today or what?
Ever feel you've accomplished a week's work in a day?. Since 9am I've cleaned the kitchen including oven inside and out and fridge, done 3 loads of washing, made 3 recycling bags and one charity clothes bag, vaccumed, cleaned the bog, washed the downstairs windows,cleaned the windowsill, emptied one of the boxes cluttering the living room, washed our bedclothes, emptied most of the wardrobe floor, found 3 outfits for the jubilee, one Tae Kwondo bag and 17 work shirts, boxed and sorted dance clothes and am now sorting underwear into throw or keep bags. I just started this am and couldn't stop also, apparently, seem to have found time to read in the garden, drink one glass of chardonnay and four of Sicilian red, play chess with Mogj ( honestly..)have a bath and watch three episodes of Lost Season II.. I'm officially exhausted.See you decluttering you lot on LJ and raise you that day's work!!!!Maybe the wine helped.... :-) |
lonemagpie
|
12:15a |
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| Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 | |
pennyarcaderss
|
9:53p |
News Post: Pitchin’
http://penny-arcade.com/2012/05/30/pitchin
Tycho: Have you ever seen Art & Copy? It’s by the rad guy who did Scratch and a bunch of other awesome shit. It’s a documentary which is about Advertising, which is to say that it is about Mercenary Communication, which people have varying opinions about. My feeling is that once we are aware of its ubiquity, we may study it with greater safety; loss of containment is always a concern, but I find these weaponized memes fascinating beyond belief. The Pitch is an AMC show which transforms that documentary’s texture into a competition-style program. Having a better product is, |
gaspode
|
9:05p |
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robin_d_laws
|
9:23a |
Attn LJ Readers: Switch Feed Reminder
 Ever since I switched to blogspot as my main blogging headquarters last summer, I’ve been manually mirroring posts here to LJ. In an effort to pare annoying tasks from my morning routine, I’ll no longer be doing this. If you still want to read me on LJ (as opposed to the main site, or by following me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+), I have set up an LJ feed of the blogspot content, which you can subscribe to here.
If you want me to notice your comments, please make them on any of the above platforms.
To make sure everyone who needs to see this announcement catches it, I’ll be repeating it over the next week or so. Apologies in advance for the redundancy. |
communicator
|
11:20a |
Mad Men 5-11: The Other Woman
Mad Men this week hit another high (after a couple of slower weeks I didn't blog about). This season is a definite improvement over the last, with a very high ratio of excellent eps. I am also pleased to see that Wiener is making a massive effort to address the male gaze/female absence issue which I was talking about in my last post. In general I think television is much better than cinema at including women as equal members of 'humanity'. But I can only discuss it via massive and significant spoilers, so be warned. ( spoilers ) |
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pennyarcaderss
|
9:58a |
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communicator
|
9:18a |
The undiscovered country
I was reading a bit more of The Egoist by George Meredith over the weekend. This sentence struck me: Women are trained to please man's taste, for which purpose they soon learn to live out of themselves, and look on themselves as he looks, almost as little disturbed as he by the undiscovered. By 'the undiscovered' he means the woman's mental experience, which remains almost as mysterious to her as to men. Much of the interior life of women is never vocalised. For (women) to front an evil with plain speech is to be guilty of effrontery and forfeit the waxen polish of purity, and therewith their commanding place in the market. It's a two-step process. Firstly, it is considered inappropriate for women to express their interior life - for their thoughts to be seen. Secondly women are encouraged to identify themselves primarily in terms of their exteriority - what is seen. Thus the interior life of women is effaced even from themselves. I think that women project their invisible internal lives onto male proxies in order - paradoxically - to experience their own feelings. For example in many movies or TV shows, the male characters have the more authentic interior life; they are easier for male and female viewers to identify with, while the female character is all externality, she doesn't have an inside only an outside. It is well known that women, straight or gay, can experience vicarious desire via male characters rather than female characters: the result is either slash, or that kind of het romance which is all about how the female character is perceived by the man - the woman imagines the female character as she is seen by the man (and conversely, imagines the male character as the point of view). I am wondering how a man might feel about me writing this. He might say, 'well we also have to suppress quite a lot of what we feel, and sometimes live vicariously through imaginary female characters'. I think sometimes that can be true - men's desire to be pretty, to be weak or soft is often strictly curtailed. However, I think men are not encouraged to identify themselves with how they are seen by women, and they have a greater range of action. And another issue is that when male feelings are projected onto women - women who are sexy, or scared or pitiful for example - the next step is for those feelings to be punished in the woman. The women is a receptacle for the feelings which men disown, and she is then symbolically smashed. (ETA further thoughts from zornhau's comment - if not smashed then systematically purged of the softness and weakness which is projected onto her - I am thinking of Ripley or Sarah Connor for example) |
|
pennyarcaderss
|
4:10a |
News Post: The Reubens
http://penny-arcade.com/2012/05/29/the-reubens
Gabe: This past weekend we attended the Reubens down in Las Vegas. Tycho could not make it but I went down with Robert and our ladies to see what it was all about. On Friday the girls hung out on the strip while Robert and I went to check out the panels. The first one we walked into was something like “how I got two million dollars in free advertising!” Robert and I sat down and almost immediately we were uncomfortable. I’m not going to say the guy’s name because the entire focus of his talk was how he is able |
| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 |
tamago
|
7:47p |
IKEA Midsummer Smörgåsbord
On Friday 15 June IKEA is throwing their Midsummer Smörgåsbord. Chris, Teo and I went last year and had a lovely time, but it would have been more fun with more people. So, if you're local enough to the East Palo Alto IKEA, let me know if you're interested in joining us in celebration of the summer according to the ways of Chris' adopted heritage. I'll buy tickets this weekend for anyone who is interested. |
| Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 |
lonemagpie
|
2:45a |
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| Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 |
ginmar
|
6:40p |
|
ginmar
|
5:55p |
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