Inspired reading

I've been picking my way through the latest issue of the small press mag Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet rather than read the whole thing in one jump. The nice thing about this approach is that neat surptises keep popping up.

Case in point: Benjamin Parzybok's short story "The Coder." The story concerns a software company that has important railroad contracts, but only one programmer. He doesn't speak to anyone, writes near-illegible but perfect code, and lives on the building's roof. It lives up to that premise, too.

Trust me, I'm not just plumping a fellow Ben. Nor am I the only one to appreciate it.

A choice of a Hobson kind

So, this week Richardson dropped out, after being swamped again in the New Hampshire primary. Yes, we are at a point where the Democratic field gets cut in half after two electoral contests.

*sigh*

I know I'm late to the party here. Hell, I'm showing up at the address after the charming gay couple who threw the party have packed up and moved to Seattle. Still, I'll go ahead and ask. Why is it that the media decided back in--pretty sure on this--late 2006 that HRC and Obama and maybe Edwards were the only serious presidential candidates on the Dem side. And why has that stood all this time. Well, the words "self-fulfilling prophecy" come to mind.

Richardson in particular I liked because he had a firm out-of-Iraq position, was one of the least bellicose candidates on Iran, and he actually addressed how badly Americans got screwed in the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill, and yes, Congress actually had the balls to slap the words "Consumer Protection" on that turd. Of the other second-tier candidates, I didn't really trust Dodd and have always kind of disliked Biden, in part because they're not responsive on bread/butter issues like the above. And yet they were real candidates, and should have been treated as such. Even Dennis Kucinich's run is considerably less flaky than you might think. Last time around he came in a respectable second in the Hawaii primary, winning six delegates. True, he was the only protest candidate left after Dean dropped out, but at that point no one was supposed to vote for anyone but Kerry, so Kucinich was reaching someone. As long as he's in the race, though, he'll be treated like a clown.

Who's responsible for this state of affairs? Well, who benefits? The list is pretty long. The parties don't like surprises, and so funnel money towards hopefuls that won't give them any. Usually the Republicans are better at this, but Bush's hopeless lack of appeal has thrown them a tad off game. Still, both parties are working it.

The media, too, have a part in this. Playing kingmaker is more likely to work when you've got a small number of potential kings.

All signs point to a conspiracy. Which does not mean a small group of men running the world from an underground bunker (that's a cabal, not a conspiracy.) In this case, it doesn't even mean working closely together towards a common goal. But there are a few people working to avoid something they don't want. Namely, that democracy thing we're trying to export.

zzzzzzzzzz

Much to say, I'm sure, but not tonight. Too tired, must sleep. Actually, not too long ago I dozed off and dropped the Nintendo DS I was playing with. Luckily a) I was on a mattress, and b) it wasn't an action game.

N1 I1 C3 E1

At Starbuck's tonight I saw a table of I think seven people playing Scrabble. They could possibly have been students in the same class, as this is a college town. But the most boisterous of them was a man possibly in his fifties, or more likely sixties. I'm pretty sure they weren't all related, as one person was black and another seemed not to be white exactly. So I'm not sure how this group found each other, but I take them as a good sign.

Slash fiction

I went to see Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd today, which is surprising. What's the surprise? That it's still playing. It's the kind of movie that you might expect to close after one weekend. That's not to say it's bad. More that it's intense, in a sometimes uncomfortable way.

This goes beyond the borderline 3D splatter effects. It also transcends the fact that Sacha Baron Cohen's package poked through his breeches in all his scenes. (Shades of the massive black box in his Borat wrestling scene.) For a big-budget film opening in holiday season--and a musical no less--this is remarkably bleak. Burton and his cast follow the all guts/no glory elements of the storyline to their logical conclusion, and there's not a happy ending in sight.

There is a lot to enjoy here. The black humor, for one thing. Helena Bonham Carter has a great deadpan delivery, which smoothes over scenes like Mrs Lovett pouring a tall gin for an older-than-his-years urchin.

And the music of course. Johnny Depp has his first singing role here, and his tenor and Cockney phrasing both have Bowie written all over them. Burton naturally has an affinity with Stephen Sondheim's work. Sondheim may be the Broadway composer most influenced by Kurt Weill, and he passed that influence onto Burton's other favorite musician, Danny Elfman. And "Sweeney", the Brechtian Victorian gothic, was primed for Burton to take hold of it.

But perhaps it's not just a matter of a director being suited to his source material. The times the movie was made could be on its side too. Benjamin Barker's life falls apart when he is thrown in prison
without apparent charges. Timothy Spall's Beadle Bamford is a public servant whose only concern is how well he enforces the will of his master, and by that standart he's an admirable success. And aside from Sweeney--who's a psychopath after all--the people seem to accept this as natural.

Now I don't mean to suggest parallels... Oh, wait, I guess i just did.

Good stuff

Gary Younge has an excellent column in the current Nation, related to Europe and the OHMIGODTHEMUSLIMSARECOMINGWHEREAREALLTHEWHITEBABIES sentiment. An excerpt:

But the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not "Islamofascism"--that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning--but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority.

For fascism--and the xenophobic, racist and nationalistic elements that are its most vile manifestations--has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe. Its advocates not only run in elections but win them. They control local councils and sit in parliaments. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In Norway it is 22 percent; in Switzerland, 29 percent. In Italy and Austria they have been in government; in Switzerland, where the anti-immigrant Swiss People's Party is the largest party, they still are.

This knowledge is a healthy corrective. Since 9/11 there's been no shortage of people selling racial and religious dread. Ideally, Younge might convince pro-Western patriots to take another look at both their facts and their allies.

And he's just a good writer too. On this side of the Atlantic we too often think of British idiom as an automatic mark of intelligence. It isn't, but the UK has produced its share of sharp stylists, and Younge may be joining them. I'll take him over the sour wino who preceded him.

Expulsion

Brief post before I go off to beddy-bye.

I borrowed a VHS tape from the library recently. To be specific, it was Polanski's Repulsion, in which Catherine Deneuve does some fine walking wounded. Anyway, after I was done watching, I ff'd/rewound and tried to eject. No can do.

I attempted to eject the tape several times after that, each time failing. In fact, the tape would peek out partially, then sink back in and start playing again. I turned the VCR off and kept it off for several days while trying to figure this thing out.

What I finally did tonight was to hit "Eject" again and unplug the machine while the slot was open. Again, the tape was partly out, so I gently pried it the rest of the way with my fingers. It's not totally 100% rewound at this point, but it will have to do.

This has been another exciting adventure...