It's a young man's game

Not much more to say.

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Good Reads/random Cool Sites (2/7/2010)

The Westboro Baptist Church nutter bigots held a protest outside Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. San Francisco was ready for them.

Our world may be a giant hologram. Seriously (i.e., it's a scientific hypothesis, not a metaphysical one).

The real-life Omar Little.

"Zero tolerance" runs amuck again: a 12-year-old girl was handcuffed and detained by police for doodling on her desk.

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Video favorites (February 2010)

Haven't done one of these in a while.

Fumiko's confession, I like big butresses, Billie Jean: Literal Video Version, Jersey grandma hates "Jersey Shore," and Ricky Gervais reads the book of Genesis.

Independent anime: "Fumiko's confession." (It's in Japanese but there are only five lines: "Will you be my boyfriend?" and "Sorry, I want to concentrate on baseball right now" are the dialogs at the beginning and end. In between there's a "He's so stupid!" (H/t and a fuller discussion of the meaning of the Japanese dialog: Eugene Woodbury).



I like big buttresses and I cannot lie.




There are lots of good Literal Video Versions. "Billie Jean" is one of the best ones.




Jersey grandma hates "Jersey Shore."




Ricky Gervais reads the book of Genesis.

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The Adventures of Leonard McCoy, Space Doctor (No. 15)

"Well, yes, Captain, they're female, but..."

Follow the adventures of Leonard McCoy, Space Doctor, as he explores the far reaches of space (and my house... and my backyard... and my kids' toy boxes) with his friends Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Every Wednesday and Friday, right here at ToTryANewSword.com.

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Good Reads/Random Cool Sites (2/4/2010)

The President should be able to kill anyone he wants.

Nic Cage as everyone.

Just some really nice writing: This is my story.

Giant Japanese salamanders.

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The greatest band you've never heard of

Or maybe you have heard of psychedelic pioneers the 13th Floor Elevators. If you have, you're lucky. I only found out about them last year, even though they're a '60s band.

They were only together from 1965 to 1969 and only put out three studio albums, the last coming out after they'd more or less broken up. Led by lyricist Tommy Hall, who was into psychedelic drugs as a means of raising consciousness, the band was heavily into marijuana and LSD. Ultimately, this led to the band's breakup, when lead singer Roky Erickson was busted for marijuana possession and ended up spending three years in a mental hospital rather than go to jail on a felony charge.

Erickson was one of the greatest rock singers ever. His passionate, often screaming vocals heavily influenced Janis Joplin, who was friend of the band. But Erickson struggled for decades with drug addiction and mental illness, which kept him from the fame and fortune his talent deserved.

Musically, the 13th Floor Elevators ranged from straight-up old-school rhythm and blues to tripped-out psychedelia. Their R&B songs were solid, but their psychedelic songs were awesome. They featured fuzz-tone guitars and Tommy Hall's weirdly frantic electric jug. And Hall's strange lyrics, in Erickson's passionate voice, brought the whole thing together.

Here's four of my favorites.

"You're Gonna Miss Me" (1966) The clip is from some kind of Dick Clark show. The vocal sound that influenced Janis Joplin is pretty obvious.




"Splash 1" (1966) is a beautiful falling-in-love song; I really love the lyrics.

I've seen your face before
I've known you all my life
And though it's new
your image cuts me like a knife
CHORUS:
And now I'm home
And now I'm home
And now I'm home, to stay
The neon from your eyes is splashing into mine
It's so familiar in a way I can't define
CHORUS
And though this is awful speedy
We needn't bother speaking
All we might say is understood
CHORUS
The fierceness of my feelings
rocks me like a war
It's good to know we won't be strangers anymore
CHORUS X 2

"Roller Coaster" (1966) A quintessential LSD song. You can really hear the jug on this one. It's that weird "doo-doo-doo-doo-doo" sound.




"Slip inside This House" (1967) This is kind of a tour de force of everything that was great about the 13th Floor Elevators -- the fuzzed-out guitars, the intense vocals, the weird electric jug sound, and some awesomely trippy lyrics, like these:

Every day's another dawning
Give the morning winds a chance
Always catch your thunder yawning
Lift your mind into the dance
Sweep the shadows from your awning
Shrink the fourfold circumstance
That lies outside this house don't pass it by.

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Good Read/Random Cool Sites (2/3/2010)

Those wacky Republicans! edition:

First, I just want to say that I'm really glad to live in a state and a city where the majority of people are reasonable about taxes, unlike Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Second, if you only watch one video today, make it Carly Fiorina's new campaign commercial. (She's seeking the Republican nomination for Senator from California.) This is not a parody, nor is it satire. It's a serious campaign ad by a serious candidate. Seriously. They actually put out a press release and made a website about it. And O. M. G. is it funny.

Third, Sen. Susan Collins is spouting the bogus claim -- the patently silly claim, really -- that the Constitution is intended to protect only American citizens.

Fourth, a while back, I wrote that two out of three Republicans are completely nuts. I guess I have to take that back. It's more like one in three is crazy, one in three is sane, and one in three is not sure. These are the results of a poll of self-identified Republicans:

Question	Yes	No	Not Sure
Should Barack Obama be impeached?	39	32	29
Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States?	42	36	22
Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?	63	21	16
Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?	24	43	33
Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?	21	24	55
Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama?	53	14	33
Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people?	31	36	33
Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?	23	58	19
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?	8	73	19
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?	31	56	13
Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?	34	48	18

The poll was commissioned by Daily Kos, but it was carried out by Research 2000, a reputable independent polling firm.

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The Adventures of Leonard McCoy, Space Doctor (No. 14)

"He's dead, Jim! But grateful."

Follow the adventures of Leonard McCoy, Space Doctor, as he explores the far reaches of space (and my house... and my backyard... and my kids' toy boxes) with his friends Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Every Wednesday and Friday, right here at ToTryANewSword.com.

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Equinoxious!

I was tired of shaving, so I decided to grow a beard. I didn't want to keep it permanently, though -- I hate having a beard during the summer. Coincidentally, I decided that during the week of the autumnal equinox, so I thought "Hey! I'll grow it from equinox to equinox!" Six months, from the autumnal equinox to the vernal equinox.

So that's what I've been doing. It's been about four months now; six weeks to go.

I've been trimming it around my lips, which was a mistake. I should have let it grow and combed it out of the way instead. Live and learn.

It actually looked reasonably neat for about three months. Then it went crazy and started getting all curly and fluffy and stuff. Brushing and combing no longer work. I look like a homeless giant now. I kind of like it.

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Book review: Bambi

Bambi: A Life in the Woods, Felix Salten ****

Yes, I read Bambi. Yes, I'm giving it four out of four stars.

Bambi was published in 1928, but I'd never read it before. In fact, I hadn't even known the book existed. I knew the film, of course, and since Disney almost always adapted existing works, I would have realized there must be a source if I'd thought about it. But I never did think about it, because who reads Bambi nowadays? I'd never heard anyone mention reading it. I loved animal stories as a child, yet I don't recall ever coming across anything but Disney picture books.

But earlier this month, I read Ursula K. Le Guin's book of essays Cheek by Jowl. In it, Le Guin called Bambi "a beautiful book, truthful in its observations and its emotions, disturbing, austere, and subtle." With that recommendation, I had to read it. And Le Guin is right. Absolutely right.

The book is nothing like the movie. Le Guin is right again: "The movie, for all its brilliance and seductive power, betrays the book on every level." There's nothing "cute" about this book. In fact, it's not a "children's book" at all. It was written for adults. (Although I think many intelligent and sensitive children of, say, 10 and older will like or even love it.)

I want you to read one scene that startled me with its depth and power. Bambi and another deer watch as a dog corners a fox. The "He" that they speak of is, of course, Man, the hunter, a looming presence throughout the book.

...the dog was never silent for a minute. His high rasping bark only grew fuller and deeper. "Here," he yapped, "here he is! Here! Here! Here!" He was not abusing the fox. He was not even speaking to him, but was urging on someone who was still far behind.

Bambi knew as well as the old stag did that it was He the dog was calling. ...

A weakness overcame the fox. His crushed foot sank down helpless, but a burning pain shot through it when it touched the cold snow. He lifted it again with an effort and held it quivering in front of him.

"Let me go," said the fox, beginning to speak, "let me go." He spoke softly and beseechingly. He was quite weak and despondent.

"No! No! No!" the dog howled.

The fox pleaded still more insistently. "We're relations," he pleaded, "we're brothers almost. Let me go home. Let me die with my family at least. We're brothers almost, you and I."

"No! No! No!" the dog raged.

Then the fox rose so that he was sitting perfectly erect. He dropped his handsome pointed muzzle on his bleeding breast, raised his eyes and looked the dog straight in the face. In a completely altered voice, restrained and embittered, he growled, "Aren't you ashamed, you traitor!"

"No! No! No!" yelped the dog.

But the fox went on, "You turncoat, you renegade." His maimed body was taut with contempt and hatred. "You spy," he hissed, "you blackguard, you track us where He could never find us. You betray us, your own relations, me who am almost your brother. And you stand there and aren't ashamed!"

Instantly many other voices sounded loudly round about.

"Traitor!" cried the magpie from the tree.

"Spy!" shrieked the jay.

"Blackguard!" the weasel hissed.

"Renegade!" snarled the ferret.

From every tree and bush came chirpings, peepings, shrill cries, while overhead the crows cawed, "Spy! Spy!" Everyone had rushed up, and from the trees or from or from safe hiding places on the ground they watched the contest. The fury that had burst from the fox released an embittered anger in all of them. And the blood spilled on the snow, that steamed before their eyes, maddened them and made them forget all caution.

The dog stared around him. "Who are you?" he yelped. "What do you want? What do you know about it? What are you talking about? Everything belongs to Him, just as I do. But I, I love Him. I worship Him, I serve Him. Do you think you can oppose Him, poor creatures like you? He's all-powerful. He's above all of you. Everything we have comes from Him. Everything that lives or grows comes from Him." The dog was quivering with exaltation.

"Traitor!" cried the squirrel shrilly.

"Yes, traitor!" hissed the fox. "Nobody is a traitor but you, only you."

The dog was dancing about in a frenzy of devotion. "Only me?" he cried; "you lie. Aren't there many, many others on His side? The horse, the cow, the sheep, the chickens, and many, many of you and your kind are on His side and worship Him and serve Him."

"They're rabble!" snarled the fox, full of a boundless contempt.

Then the dog could contain himself no longer and sprang at the fox's throat. [They fight, and the dog kills the fox.]

The dog shook him a few times, then let him fall on the trampled snow. He stood beside him, his legs planted, calling in a deep, loud voice, "Here! Here! He's here!"

There is profound truth in that passage. I don't know that I've ever read a better depiction of the cruelty of fanaticism, of the way that people can betray their very humanity for the sake of an ideal.

The dog's devotion is religious in type, and it's easy to see echoes of him in religious murders, in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in witch trials, and in present-day suicide bombers and abortion doctor shooters. But religious people, of course, aren't the only ones who act that way. The 20th century alone offers a long sad list of examples where people were cruel to other people -- where they betrayed all humanity -- for the sake of an ideology: Communism, Fascism/Nazism, a dozen different genocides, all carried out by people immune to pleading, immune to shame, quivering in exaltation, in frenzies of devotion to their ideologies.

The beauty of Bambi as a novel is that this kind of profound commentary on the human condition is expressed perfectly in character. The dog at all times is very doggy. If a hound dog could think and talk to other animals, those are the kind of things, we imagine, it indeed might say, and just the way it might say them.

And this is true of all the animals in Bambi. Rather than simply sticking human minds into animal bodies, as many a lesser writer has done, Felix Salten wrote about animal minds. If animals could think and talk, what kind of thoughts would make them act the way they do? That's the approach Salten took, and his writing consistently rings true. That's why Bambi works as an animal story, and as more than an animal story. Like all great novels, it has things to teach us about what it is to be human.

Ratings:
**** Highly recommended
*** Recommended
** Meh
* Don't bother

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