conspiracy metatheory

Here's a thought: if it seems like almost everyone around you is part of a wide-ranging conspiracy that you're conviced permeates all relevant sectors of society, and in fact goes all the way to the top, what you're seeing might be something called "democracy."

stray thoughts on bad movies: Obsessed

1. When writers try and present the fault lines in a long-term relationship through clumsy exposition instead of subtle demonstration, it comes off like these two people should really not be married. "But, I thought this about our relationship...." "Well honey, I thought the exact opposite...." This is presented as normal before-bed conversation for these people.

2. Idris Elba seems to spend a lot of time at work talking to his wife, hanging out with his wife, and doing stuff for his wife. When he's not doing that, he's exchanging generic man-chatter with Jerry O'Connell, and making up financial gibberish. Stringer Bell would never have put up with such inefficiency.

3. All the screeching violins in the world will not make the act of trying to close a pop-up window a moment of high drama.

4. As someone who routinely fantasizes about killing home invaders, I have trouble finding fault with Beyoncé's actions in the climactic scene.

5. I take it back. I'm going to start a facebook group called "1,000,000 strong for letting the bad guy fall to his death." When a movie sets up good versus bad in such hamfistedly stark terms, we should at least be spared the Disney villain death. Blondie is an irredeemable nutjob, putative kidnapper, rapist, and attempted murderer. Trying to save this terrible person's life doesn't make Beyoncé look noble; it makes her look stupid.

a truth universally acknowedged, redux

As I mentioned earlier, I'm lately in the thrall of some seriously epic flintlock fantasy, and I'd be remiss in failing to recognize two precursors to the current infatuation: Fable II (teleport behind a bandit and shoot him with a blunderbuss? Yes, please!), and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (because giving Elizabeth Bennet a rapier just seems like a good idea). However, this brings me to the subject of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which, in full disclosure, I have not yet read. I've no general disinclination toward either Sense and Sensibility or sea monsters, but the concept is essentially sub-optimal, because if any Jane Austen novel seriously wants for some terror from the deep, it's Persuasion, in which the hero and several supporting characters are active naval officers, and a large chunk of the action takes place at the shore. The novel practically begs for a leviathan to rise up out the ocean and devour Louisa Musgrove where she stands, the vapid twit.

a truth universally acknowledged

I'm currently knee-deep in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (imagine if Jane Austen and Patrick O'Brian had a love child that turned out to be a dragon...actually don't imagine that, because on second thought it's kind of gross...), and I think that "deeply mortifying" might be one of my favorite phrases in the regency lexicon. It's more than embarrassment--it's embarrassment that makes you wish you were dead, mort, kaput, and it wells from deep inside, suffusing your very being with a shame that cries out for its own merciful destruction. As a professed fan of shame-based norm enforcement, I find the sentiment delicious.

the democratization of democracy

Yesterday I discovered that work affords me access to JSTOR, and like the huge nerd I have never pretended not to be, I spent my lunch hour downloading and reading articles from The Law and History Review. It was good times generally, except that it reminded me of one of my big academic pet peeves: contemporary scholars who think that it's still okay to drop whole sentences of untranslated French or Latin into their writing. I know just enough French to find a public restroom in Paris, and after thirteen years of Catholic school, Latin is not wholly opaque. But c'mon, what are we, 12th Century Anglo-Norman aristocrats? Can we please just speak in the vernacular like honest and virtuous yeoman as opposed to, I dunno, elitist douchenozzles?

the difference is often felonious

The importance of punctuation--a sampler:
(1) "Let's eat, Grandma!" versus "Let's eat Grandma!"
(2) "Jack the giant-killer" versus "Jack the giant killer!"
(3) "Eighteen-year-old males needed for adult film," versus "Eighteen year-old males needed for adult film."

on flying cars and blue women

I've come to love the Sci Fi convention holding that, if and when humans encounter intelligent extraterrestrial life, our innate individualism and ambition will be misunderstood as avarice and irresponsibility by other, more collectivistic races, but we'll show them, because hoo boy, when some super-ultra-collectivistic race, civilization, or network of horrifying sentient machines starts to invade, we'll save the day with our adaptability, scrappy individualism, and boyishly tousled hair. I wonder sometimes if other cultures likewise project their own interactions with otherness into genre literature in this way. Are there North Korean space operas in which roving bands of alien space cowboys are out to destroy the galaxy and it's up to the humans to stop them with blind obedience and mass chanting? I kind of hope so....for the North Korean nerds' sake.