My Favorite Christmas Album totally has to be John Denver And the Muppets.

Miss Piggy is a great Feminist. Totes. No really. And I will also submit that Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas is like my favorite thing ever. 

In other words, Jim Henson was like my Santa. I miss him so much.

Being Secret Santa Sux--But I Can Help

We've all been there--the dreaded "Secret Santa" or "Pollyanna" drawing, where you have a set dollar amount to give something not-awful to a co-worker or family member. I have some coping strategies beyond the gift-certificate that might make you look like you did good. Real good, even.

The thing to do is take a good look--

Is her manicure game up to the minute?  If you have a giftee who always looks polished, right down to the fingernails, something like a multi-pack of nail top-coats, especially one that includes a nice on-trend version like a matte finish, might be neutral enough to be useful and appreciated (OPI has a nice set). You can probably rest assured that your giftee already has a manicure set with all the fixin's.  This is a nice step up.

Does he have a favorite color? Because seriously--you could not help but notice all the blue sweaters, blue ties, the blue parka, the blue swim trunks. Think inside the crayon box, and get a nice accessory that matches the favorite color of your giftee--scarves and gloves are appreciated for certain climes--but a color-conscious watch might be just in time.  (Although if you know someone who just likes color and always likes to match--there's nothing wrong with a gift that covers the rainbow.)

Sometimes you might find someone who isn't material at all--surely they have a great charity that you can donate to on their behalf! Maybe the giftee fosters animals, or cares for the environment. There are many ways to show your love by gifting worthy organizations, and that might give both of you a glow. You might want to consider giving to your local animal shelter, or maybe giving through Greatergood.org (which partners with some sites which are pretty good shopping.)

Is your giftee organized and then some? My experience of the ultra-organized and very-planned is that they don't reject a new device to plan with--and coupon organizers, dayplanners, and really awesome totes to put their important stuff in will get used. (You've missed peak Thirty-one season, but keep them in mind for next year. Or check out office supply stores and stationary shops for excellent organizer swag.)

If your someone has a pet, sometimes a good gift for their baby is as good as a gift for them. Think a really kicky collar and lead for a dogchild, or a topnotch catnip treat for that catperson.

If your person is artistic, they might love a fun form of expression like a great calligraphy set or sketch set,  or maybe just a great sketchbook or folio.  Or if you find you have a knitter or crocheter, there is no reason not to gift supplies (yarn can be pricey! even needles! a bag of big skeins isn't an awful plan for someone whose fingers are always busy--and you might get slippers out of the deal!)

You get the idea--ask, listen, see, and make sure you gift them something they will like and use. And always keep in mind gift wrap is just incidental, but it is always nice to put a pretty bow or tasteful card on a gift to show thoughtfulness.  And that is how you make Secret Santa less sucky.

All Wormholes Are Probably Connected

Okay, this is probably me watching waaaaayyyy too much genre tv, but when I read this story this week, all I could think was, well no duh, they're a network of stargates.

Because the Blight Has a Thousand Eyes (A Short Story)

We found our missing ones underground in not-so-shallow graves, breathing, and covered in what seemed like eyes.

Let me wind that back. The last six or seven years were like a blur, and things are so different now. You have to understand that at the time, people sometimes did go missing. Everyone didn't know all their neighbors.  We didn't live underground. We didn't expect to find these holes, and we never saw those eyes before.

We were very shocked that they were underground, and breathing, and covered in what looked like eyes. It wasn't normal, and it was happening very quickly, you see. It even took a while before we knew they weren't really eyes.

Not long. Maybe it was recklessness when the utility worker ran a gloved hand over those blisters before calling emergency services. (Utilities were once great systems that kept the lights on. We had specialized people who responded to medical emergencies. ) His foreman told him not to touch them, but sometimes...curiosity, you understand. Wanting to know. The way you ask about what the time was like before. He had to reach in.

The skin moved with the dense fluid under the skin, but rippled like a living thing, and shining a flashlight on them, he could see they looked so much more like eggs. Like clear little eggs under the skin, and if he looked closer?

The "pupils" of the eyes had tails. Or tentacles. Or little fins, and that was enough. And that cleared out the tunnel where the first few infected were found. The CDC shut down the site, but didn't quite shut down the rumor.

Eyes. That were not eyes. That looked like other things.

The Vampire Riviera

I dreamed about something called the Vampire Riviera the other night, so I figured I might blog about it. The area was near the waterfront, like Penns Landing. There were restaurants, open 24 hours, but they didn't seem like places meant for buying food. There were cobwebs strewn with fruit flies decorating them. The area was by no means luxe. The Vampire Riviera was an area along the waterfront where vampires gathered, no more, no less. Young vampires who accosted passersby were a lot like panhandlers. There was nothing romantic about being a vampire, unlike most novels. Talking to a vampire was like talking to a junkie--except more terrifing, in the sense that you might be bit by them. On the whole, I do not think anything called the "Vampire Riviera" should be considered a good thing. It was not a bad dream, only one that cancelled out how modern fiction treats the undead.

Thor: The Dark World. A Review

I have to give it up to the people who are masterminding the order of these Marvel franchise films--they get the comics, they get movies, they've done brilliant casting, and they've managed to make me a raging fangirl, which, admittedly, isn't impossible. But let me just express my feels about Thor: The Dark World a minute before I make some minor admissions and give away a secret that isn't one--

Okay, the elves are kind of stereotypical elves aren't they? I mean, Peter Jackson and them made elves that aren't those kind of elves for the LOTR series, but the elves in T:TDW are more of those Moorcockian/Hellboy 2 kind of elves, a bit, no? With their pseudo-latinate tongue (well, maybe that's a bit Tolkein) and the being weirdly all about elves and fuck everybody else? Yeah. Also, the movie is kind of wasting Christopher Eccleston a bit. Not like GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra kind of wasting of an actor, by simply not being a very good movie, but in the more general "isn't he mostly buried in latex and speaking elvish?" sort of way.

Also, while I like Natalie Portman and I think the two movies she been in have really made Jane Foster a pretty kick-ass smart and vital character, is it just me or does her chemistry with Chris Hemsworth's Thor never seem quite on?  I don't know why it doesn't work for me. It's like an intangible thing. Maybe I'm just projecting my feeling that their long-distance romance is always tinged with a bit of doom.

But you know what I love, right? Exactly. I love the relationship between the heroic, noble, awfully good Thor, and his seriously messed-up little bro, Loki.  The chemistry between Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as the sniping and fighting brothers who reluctantly team up to avenge their mother (Rene Russo's) death, remove the Aether (an interdimensional MacGuffin that is attracting unwanted Elvish attention) from Jane Foster before she dies from all the bad energy, and probably save the 9 realms.  That works and is worth the price of admission.

After catching Thor 2 Saturday, I rewatched the original and realized the evolution of Loki as a character. He was not quite as compelling as simply the angry young man Loki Silvertongue of the first movie, who discovered that his whole life was a bit of a lie, and that not only was he not Odinson, he was not even really an Asgardian, but a frost giant, and not even a regular frost giant, but an abandoned and unwanted runt that was left to die. The Loki who fell through space at the end of Thor 1 into the Avengers movie became a cocky badass, but here, captive, he continues to work out his pathologies, transforming the illusion his life was into becoming a master of illusions. He fronts that he simply does not understand why everyone is so angry at him. The reality is that he's a wrecked personality doing awful things on purpose. He isn't self-destuctive--he isn't capable of remorse. He just survives and schemes. He isn't good or even necessarily well-intentioned--but he can be likeable for minutes at a time. He's more developed than your average psychopath. (Or maybe I am an unrelenting Hiddleston fangirl. Also a possibility.)

I couldn't not like this one, myself. I recommed it if you've been enjoying the Marvel universe unfolding cinamtically before you of late--like I surely have. Also, saw the trailer from "Days of Future Past" and now I am so having to see that. I love that these movies borrow so much from the comics, but work so well in 3 dimensions.

Lou Reed RIP

It's odd. The moment I was most happy to hear Lou Reed's voice was at my old school, which was kind of particularly Christian and white and heard "Walk on the Wild Side" and I was still conflicted--neat enough that the song that mentioned Candy Darling and those colored girls singing was playing just before a kind of karaoke night thing the school held, and also feeling a little bittersweet that a song made the same year I was born was still radical enough if you listened, but familiar enough that its radicalism didn't, like, filter through to make some nun turn it off.

I like Lou Reed and I liked Velvet Underground--but I admit I like the Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane" better. I've liked a handful of covers of "Perfect Day" more than most any version of Lou Reed.



Because his voice always seems to remind it's like, the last day. Doesn't it?

(Anyone hear echoes of it in Radiohead's Creep--just askin'?)

But he fucking wrote Candy Says and oh. He was a poet of people and pain and things that aren't cute but real. That mattered a lot. It always should.

The Uncanny Valley of the Dolls

When I was just about old enough to actually watch tv and get stories and understand that there was no boogeyman and that there was a difference between fiction and reality, I think the thing that still unnerved me the most was the idea of the thing that should be inanimate--souless!--that wasn't. So it was that I found the trailer for "Magic" with Anthony Hopkins and a twisted-sounding dummy especially unnerving. How close is a dummy, after all, to dolls?  And being a girl, how many dolls did I have? All those smooth plastic faces, some with eyes that closed as their weirdly hollow but weighty bodies were laid horizontally--

There was a reason that stuffed animals could stay on my bed, but dolls had to be placed in the toy chest. I played with my dolls, but I could never love them. They were not "people" even if they looked like people. And perhaps the understanding--the recognition I had--of my rejection of these not quite human things made me wonder how they...saw me.

The internet is littered with images of scary dolls.  Some of them just are terribly bad fascimiles made by an inartful hand. Some are broken, reproachful, like baby zombies. And some are fashioned to be deliberately grotesque, preying upon the lurid fascinations of the unheathfully-centered mind. Their nearness to human features plays upon the sympathy we have for our fellow sentient--we inbue them with a terrifying inner life, even though they are hollow. And yet, we know there are people among us who are most alive--but are, in fact, hollow inside, as far from our understanding as what we imagine in the highly-suggestable imputed psyche of a doll.

We human beings are artificers. We capitulate our likenesses in various media, in the hopes of capturing whatever it is we think of as the human essence, from cave paintings to selfies.  One of the most unnerving of our enduring fables is the idea of the actually "made" man--the golem, the corpse-pastiche of Frankenstein, the waxwork or clockwork man. The deadly robot. The killer doll.

It's pretty kinky of us that it is the monster we create nearest to our own likeness, that has such horrors, isn't it? What does it say about us?

Necronomicon

Loved ones connect and families reunite as they discover there are things more powerful than death with the help of a very special book.

The Skeleton Dance

Spooky & adorable.

Happy Birthday Aleister Crowley!

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

                                                                   --Aleister Crowley

I'd like to take a moment to offer a memorial to a very strange man. Although considered by many to have been a Satanist and one of the worst people ever, he's exactly the sort of bad role model modern people could use. I tend to think he was exaggerating a tad about his depravity, but what do I know? Anyway, he was a bisexual lit major with occult proclivities who attracted dysfunctional women and wrote poetry. For some reason, I find that all dead fascinating. He also played chess, climbed mountains, and was also probably some kind of spy. He influenced plenty of very heavy music, and promoted sexual libertinism, drug use, meditation, yoga and seeing things for yourself.  He was probably the most interesting man in the world at one point, as well as a hot ballistic mess. And yes, some of the occult stuff is a put-on with a bunch of jokes about masturbation. 

I kind of recommend reading Uncle Al, though. He either believed in his own schtick or didn't. The point was the journey, anyway. (Go, do likewise. Or don't.)

(It was pronounced to rhyme with "holy", though.)

The Teeth of the Crocodile

So, I've been hearing about this krokodil drug that has now apparently hit the US--it rots people's flesh from the inside-out. This, right here, is how I know that I have no understanding of the addicted mindset. Because rotting from the inside out (or even the outside-in!) just seems like something that should be a sufficient deterrent to use. ("Hi, my name is Ivan and I'm going to be your pusher today. Can I interest you in some Krokodil? It has a high a lot like heroin but it's dirt cheap. Oh, and it could give you gangrenous abcesses that expose tendon and bone." "Um, gee, Ivan, I think I'm going to have to spend some more time with the menu. Do have anything good in meth?") I myself, I could never use something that gives you basically leprosy.

But that's just me. I remember those old anti-drug commercials where they used eggs as a demonstration:


That was dumb. You don't eat raw eggs, but fried eggs are delicious. It would make way more sense to say "This is a crackhead. This is a crackhead, on crack." And just show people how it really is. But today, we have "faces of meth" websites and people still use meth. And really, who do people get these drugs from? It's not like people never see people who been physically chewed up by the substances they use; it's like they just refuse to accept it personally. It can't happen to them, or, they feel like chasing the high is somehow worth the risk. But this particular drug? A flesh-eating drug? That's not a bad complexion day. That this is catching on is something of a horror to me, even beyond the Cannibal Bath Salt craze.

You might note I've opted to post a picture of actual crocodile teeth. You can look up pictures related to krokodil, the drug, if you like. I did. I'm kind of sorry about looking at them, though.

It Came From Beneath The Sea

So, it would probably not surprise my readers too much if I mentioned that I was pretty well influenced by H.P. Lovecraft regarding my estimation of what the creepiness threshhold might be.(HINT: the creepy is everywhere.) As a result, I'm sensitive to the idea the nature itself could be overturned and chaos could take over our expected pardigm of a happy, life-giving planet. I also would not be surprised if the "horror" came from the sea, just as life is supposed to have done. In fact, given that we use the oceans as our dumping ground, I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some horror from the sea that we should very well expect--and thus,  I find that I, like the folks at Grist, appreciate the plucky resolve of the humble jellyfish in their bid to shut down powerplants.

I don't know what it is about powerplants that has attracted the collective wrath of the mucosal marine menace, but I do know that, thanks to global warming, the jelly fish as a variety of lifeform has exploded in population. And I also know that most of our forms of energy have a baleful impact on the rest of the oceanic biota, especially in the form of acidification, which is outright harmful to corals, fish, the whole oceanic foodchain.

Could it be possible that, at this very simple level of evolution, the jellyfish boasts the complexity to follow orders and the simplicity to be subject to primal influences--perhaps originating from the planet, herself? Or, perhaps, some other, ocean-dwelling being(s) of greater complexity?

In other words, are the Deep Ones sending jellyfish into nuclear reactors to fuck shit up?

And if so, is it smart of us tool-using primates to send robots to do battle with them?



I welcome the eventual oceanic cybershoggothic overlords that will cap the oil wells and deliver retribution upon the overreaching monkeyfolks of the future. (No I don't. It sounds terrible. Let's don't provoke them.)

We Interrupt this Blog for An Advertisement That May be of Interest

It strikes me that October is Halloween Month, and I am momentarily fascinated by horrific things. Not ghosts, at present--I am reading Varney the Vampire, a Victorian Penny Dreadful, though, and most of my birthday booty included similarly spooky fare. I think for the next month I might undertake to regale you with things I find pertaining to dread and wonderful happenings. And suchlike boo bidness.

Do You Like Vampires and Movies? Kim Newman has Somethin' for ya.

I'm going to preface this by saying it does help a little if you are already a reader of Kim Newman's awesome takes on the supernatural, vampires, and alternate history through his other "Anno Dracula" tales and maybe his Diogenes Club stories as well (You guys! What I'm technically saying is you might like everything he writes!) But if you like movies and tv, and genre fiction--if you like subtle name-dropping and pastiche, if you like fast-paced stories and a developed fictional alternate history--and if you reaaaalllly dig vampires?

Oh, baby--this is for you. Because Newman covers the last quarter of the 20th century Hollywood style with some fangs for the memories, looking back through a cinematic lens while developing a story that will entertain as it chills. In it, the young get of Dracula slogs his way from the slums of Transylvania to the Hollywood stars, and there's no stopping him--or is there?

Well, you just have to read to see, and maybe you, too, will be aware of "the horror". I don't want to give away too much of the episodic doings that bring together characters from Anno Dracula novels past and some of the fixtures of moviedom's firmament, but it's good old fashioned disturbing social satire and art crit fun.

Linda Ronstadt: Blue Bayou

Very sad news from one of the great voices. I think this is one of the best songs I associate with her--and for some reason I've had it in my head all week.

Review: Neptune's Brood

I've been terribly lax about reviewing things, anymore. I set up "Strangely Random Stuff" in part to separate my review posts from my political posts, but then I sort of failed to hold up my reviewing end. I think the problem is that I tend to be a more enthusiastic reviewer than a slagger; I like pasing on that I found a movie or a book or a product to be really good, as a service to the consumer, while finding that slagging a work I find substandard has a gratuitous feel to it.

If you have any sense of my personality, this insight probably doesn't synch. It strikes me as a weird quirk, as well.

That said, I read Stross' Neptune's Brood about a month ago, and was only jogged into remembering to write a review when I came across PZ Myers' review of the same.  Myers, naturally, was taken with the image of a communist squid-folk society.

I can't say I blame him. I am down with the squid, myself, and an oceanic socialism. I am likewise down with Stross. And I didn't dislike the book at all--oh no. There is naturally some slightly warped humor (is a piratical assurance agency Monty Python enough for you?) and the world-building framework of the Freyaverse, even a few generations down the line, makes sense. But I did find a bit of a peculiarity that I thought might be more something I would enjoy, and not necessarily everyone else:

You know how some works of sf go on about rocket ships and how the drives allegedly would work and maybe mention robots or some other tech in plausible detail to make you feel like "Oh yes. I see how that works." Well, Stross has dug a bit onto intergalactic finance and world-building economies. Space, if you hadn't heard, is big. And someone has to pay for going into it and doing things with bits of it. And the transactions occuring in an interstellar economy would be taking place over in some cases enormous distances and lengths of time that would even be shocking to a very long-lived android.

I have to congratulate Stross for really writing a work that is mindcandy for econowonks. I thought it was fun and fascinating and maybe a bit better than Saturn's Children, in the sense that I wasn't comparing it to Heinlein's Friday the whole time. It is quite different, and I rather liked it. It's just a bit hard to review.

If you like sf with a heavy dose of economics, this is probably your kind of jawn.

Google Doodle Celebrates Erwin Schrodinger's 126th birthday

You know, I like it when ya'll Doodle nerdy at me.

The New Westerns--2 Guns and Last Stand

I had a long weekend coming, so I took off a couple days and saw a few movies, which always centers me, a little. I like movies. I like tv, or comics, or books, for that matter, but movies are like a treat. TV can be good or bad, at times--a show can have an episode that sucks in an otherwise worthy run. Books can suck with redeeming qualities, or be awesome, with reservations. Comics are comics, and I just enjoy them for what they are--a complicated medium.

But movies? To my mind, movies are a finished artwork. When a movie is committed to film, there it is. It tells its story well or poorly. The actors do a job, or they don't. The director makes the story real, or it doesn't come off well. If a movie isn't doing it for me after like, twenty minutes,  I guess it isn't good.  It should give me something to make me bother with it. It should give me a reason to want to see it. This weekend, I saw two movies I rather liked and which I think had something similar going for them--

I think they are New Westerns. They aren't about the Old West. They are about that terrain, but a new reality. The first I caught was a Netflix find: The Last Stand, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

I don't have to care for Arnold's politics to like action movies in general, or with him in them. And damn it, I do. This is kind of the story of the honest lawman who sees bringing bad guys to justice as his job, whatever the cost. He assembles a posse, which includes the western trope of a drunk sharp shooter in jail and has certain other touches that kind of feel borrowed from westerns. It is not without comedy. The way of the gun is of course, fetishized, but not unrealistically. A young gun is martyred. There is a kind of mythic unreality about parts of it (a race car that does not seem to need fuel--a bad guy who does not seem to understand his 160 lb ass will be pounded by one someone like A Schwarzenegger, old enough to be his daddy or not.) I don't recall how this one did in the theatres, but since it's a 2013 movie I already got on Netflix, I kind of want to recommend it to see it get a new post-theatre life, because it was a good action flick.  

I also want to give a little prop for 2 Guns. 

This is a more intentionally comedic action film, but it also takes place in the American SW and has elements of the Western genre. Both the Denzel Washington and the Mark Wahlberg characters are isolated from their "tribes" and find an uneasy association with one another. Their mutual language is the Way of the Gun, a cowboy Bushido. Their code is, ultimately, independent and outlaw, because they find that the the arbiters of the codes by which they had lived was false. So they make their own way.  And of course, I love the fuck out of both these actors, seriously. 

In both, there are false women and violence is seen as a solution. They aren't great feminist works, if you know what I mean? But they are excellent action movies, and entertaining--although 2 Guns has this scene with chickens I thought was a bit intense. I like chickens. I like eating them, too, but I don't like them, like, being hurt. So, what I'm saying is, there is a scene if you like chickens you won't like, but if you are okay with violence against humans, this is your kind of movie, for sure!

Also, this weekend I saw Red2. I think this is the only non-stupid movie out of three that have featured Bruce Willis this year. It isn't really a New Western, though. But I sure as hell liked it better than freaking Die Harder than A Very Hard Thing.   But based on a Warren Ellis character, so duh--redeeming fun features. Yay, if you like spy sorts of things. I do. Little bit gratuitously violent, but if you haven't noticed I like action flicks with violence by now, I can't help sort you out any. It has violence. 

Random Meat: The Angel of Meat

It's been awhile since I've posted a random meat picture. This is "The Angel of Meat" by Mark Ryden.  It's evocative of the way the meal on your plate is a gift. Flesh is a gift. You are made of meat. Ruminate on that.

Netlix Finds: I Recommend "Act of Vengeance"

I found this to be a compelling movie with a stellar cast and a gripping plot. Imagine a man was determined to be an infamous terrorist, and was to be transported abroad as such--but there is this burning question--is he?  Really?

I found this movie to be well-acted and exceptional on many levels. It directly addresses how we in the West treat suspects of Islamic terrorism, while drawing a line between the Islamist terrorists and law-abiding and deeply spiritual practitioners of the faith. I think this is definitely a movie one should put in their Netflix queue.

The Red Army Sings!

I just... well...here it goes:


Good memes.

Hold My Butter While I Wreck This Career

It's pretty difficult to have a more disastrous week than Paula Deen in the "managing one's appearances" area as, to all appearances, it was revealed that she had some fairly shocking ignorance that she has to work through. The Daily Beast covers some of the worst from the deposition in the discrimination case filed against her, which includes not only admitting using the "N-word", but also referring to her former employee as a "piece of pussy" and describing an idea for a wedding with African-Americans as servers in as a reminder of a southern plantation, kind of missing the point that the antebellum black servers in those times would have been slaves, and that people might feel some kind of way about that. Deen capped this week off though with one singularly bad day, missing an exclusive interview this morning with Matt Lauer on the Today show (although actually doing that interview would probably have been more ill-advised, come to think of it) and issuing not one, nor two, but three video apologies. The day was ended with the Food Network deciding that they really could not go ahead and renew her contract, y'all.

What has been particularly bad about this is that Deen herself doesn't seem to have grasped that it really isn't a question of how awful "the media" has wanted to depict her, but how awful keeping ignorant opinions about people and using hurtful language really is. People can refer to the recoil at racist or sexist language as "political correctness", but at then end of the day, it's only simple correctness to treat people fairly and respectfully, to consider their feelings, and not making the effort to do that as soon as you realize that your prejudices and the real world are colliding is just foolish. It seems like Deen hadn't really come to that level of introspection about it, and her apologies as a result seem awkward and forced. She seems to realize that her wounds are self-inflicted, but she still doesn't quite see how she got them.  And that is a shame.

James Gandolfini, Dead at age 51

I'm fairly shocked at the sudden death of Gandolfini, best known for his role as Tony Soprano in HBO's award-winning series The Sopranos. As an actor, Gandolfini had a great talent for conveying the inner motivations of the characters he portrayed--a kind of presence where the viewer could imagine wheels turning, perceiving the complexity of the characters through the nuances and gestures his "read" lent them. This was probably best shown through the six seasons of his run on The Sopranos, where his Tony Soprano was a character of almost Shakespearean depth--in some ways amoral, and others, too aware of the unrighteousness of his criminal enterprise, a character as conflicted as a mafioso Hamlet. To make viewers sympathize with Tony, a monster who becomes aware of himself, took an actor who could make the horrible all-too-human. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention that one of my favorite movies that he was in was The Last Castle, which, if you haven't seen it, by all means, do. His Col. Winter is another character that is difficult to like (and you shouldn't, he's a weak man). But Gandolfini made him compelling to watch.


It's a damn shame--he died far too soon.

TV-based confession. I Survive on Reviews of Mad Men and Game of Thrones.

I don't have cable and I have not watched a single episode of either of these shows, but Mondays, I now hoover up reviews of the previous evening's shows because I need to almost kind of sort of know what is going on.

Can someone be addicted to a show based on television recaps? One day I should really bother to actually watch them.

Is this a normal people problem, or only me?

I am Not Going To Hate-Watch "Does Someone Have to Go"

There is this show that is apparently going to be on FOX and I can't even. I'm going to start with the title, though-"Does Someone Have to Go".  This is what you ask an insufficiently-trained toddler in order to discover whether potty-time is immanent. It is not what you ask people to understand whether someone should lose the job with which they pay their bills and support their families. Deep-down, I want this to be a hoax, like where the "millionaire" in "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" wasn't an actual millionaire, and where it turns out that the punchline for people who wanted to watch some group of people fire somebody because they kind of think it will save all their jobs is that the show was designed just to see whether tv-watching folks at home have actually got quite enough schadenfreude regarding their fellow-workers to continue enjoying our disposable society. But I won't actually tune in because, feh. Watching cubical-rats turned into a literal feral rat-race is not my cup of post-work brain bleach.

Reality television should not try getting real.

RIP Ray Manzarek, Founding Keyboardist of the Doors

Very sad news. The Doors' music was probably the first music I heard in the cradle. Manzarek's at turns jangling and haunting organ did a lot to shape their unique sound. He'll be missed.

Angelina Jolie and the Community Chest

 I think Angelina Jolie has done a pretty brave thing not just by making the decision to take her health into her own hands regarding obtaining a preventive double mastectomy, but also by coming out and explaining why this was the right decision for her. With an 87% chance of developing the disease that painfully and slowly took away her mother, she believes she is sparing herself and her loved ones an agonizing experience, and that is a rational choice, albeit a painful one to make, not in the least because as an actor, her body is viewed as part of her art. The decision was certainly difficult, but she made the choice that she found preferable.

The point being that it was her decision--and yet (and this is somehow predictable, isn't it?) I've read so much commentary about how this was "crazy" and not she's "mutilated" and other remarkably dense things that somehow imply that her breasts, because other people have seen them, have become a kind of community property. As if she should, perhaps, have run a series of polls to make sure that the admirers of her bosom were okay with her deciding that on the whole, she would rather not wait to be diagnosed with cancer before taking care of herself.  The point also being that no one commenting actually has to live with her decision, nor can they imagine what it would be like wondering from day to day whether their own body was likely to betray them.

Where the Internet was headed all along--Cat and Sloth

 When I point out that sloths are cute and seem very prone to hugging behaviors, my husband points out that they have long sharp claws. He has a point. Still cute, though. (Ripped off from Buzzfeed. You knew that.)

RIP Chrissy Amphlett

I remember the video for "I Touch Myself" making my jaw drop just a little. That was just so hot, and 53 is just too young. Amphlett had just such an amazing rock persona. She'll be missed.

Just Like A Chap--Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer

I say!

Momma's Got a Brand New Bag--or so...

Although it isn't really a "purse-purse" in the aesthetic fashion sense that that one would normally think of purses, the Blue Q shoulder tote actually holds up as a purse in the functional sense of looking cool and holding things. I am a "carrier of stuff" by nature: a big bag person. I've been carrying mine for about a week now, and can tell you it works as a purse because it is definitely capacious enough for my needs. The straps are long enough to rest comfortably on a shoulder while wearing a winter coat (still, alas, despite allegedly being spring, a necessity so far) and it has a pocket into which my automatic Chinese Laundry skull umbrella fits neatly. It has ample room for my wallet, cell phone holder, make-up case, zip-pouch of sundries (wet-wipes, hand gel, notebook, pens, etc.) lunch bag, and one folded "shopper" that I had to also purchase, also from Blue Q:

because I am totally in love with Carolyn Gavin's animal designs and I try to use my own bags instead of "paper or plastic" wherever I go. And I have even managed to shove in a water bottle and my Kindle, so what I'm saying is, if you are a pack beast like I am, this is not a bad way to go. The thin recycled plastic material is surprisingly tough and the zipper is usefully rugged. The woven material handles are not going anywhere nor breaking anytime soon.

So anyway, the bag was a sensible choice that definitely worked out. Also, the Letterpress design is pretty cool, especially if you like an old timey motif (I know I'm a sucker for "old-timey" packaging and advertising material--this reminds me of that).

George Bush--If only he found painting a little sooner...

At my other blog, I would go into how much I don't like the administration of GWB and what a miserable, incalculable, wretched load of damage he'd done to the state of the economy, American prestige, our foreign policy, how he made a hash of the War on Terror and the dreadful Iraq war and all of that--

Yet, as a person who isn't completely insensitive to art, I will say there is something specifically appealing, if still crude, regarding his style and choice of compostion as a painter. There are definitely issues of perspective, line, and detail that take a long time to really master and which he has some consistency problems with--but his dogs do have personality. Following through to the Gawker link, there are certain things he picks up visually, like the light reflecting the smooth roundness of grapes, or the play of colors in landscape paintings, that show an aptitude that might have really taken off if nurtured sooner.

And, you know, he might have been able to avoid politics, altogether. It has been suggested that he could command quite a bit for his canvasses on the strength of his name alone. If the proceeds went to, say, Katrina victims, or war refugees, one would not think that out of line at all.

Ermahgerd, pretty corn...

 I don't know how I missed this corn porn, which was posted at, like, half-a-dozen sites I occasionally visit--but check out this rainbow "glass gem" corn. I don't want to eat it--I want to wear it. I'm speaking as a person who does not make a habit of wearing produce. But that is really some very pretty corn. (Keeeee-rist! Blogger has enjoyed eating the videos I've tried to embed, lately--sorry it took so long for me to notice this one.)

GPOY: Blue Q "Join Us" Tote

I know, that isn't exactly me--but when I saw a fox drinking wine and talking about grapes with a blue hen on a small tote bag made of recycled material, for some reason, I said "That is very relevant to my interests."

Probably because of the "being relevant to my interests."

Anyhoo, I picked up the lovely "Join us" tote from Blue Q (designed by Carolyn Gavin) when I was at Journeys Gifts in Peddlers Village, and I have to say, it's probably the cheeriest lunch bag I've ever had. Also, I like Blue Q because they seem like a cool manufacturer and their products are some of the cutest. Since this is "Strangely Random Stuff"--I have to point out that their site qualifies as strange, random, and cool stuff. Basically this is kind of an endorsement. Also an excuse to point out the totes cute tote I'm pulling my pears and Lara Bars out of, these days.

(I've ordered a shoulder bag that I may blog about because I'm kind of over expensive leather purses, but still a total mega-purse afficcionada. Bigger the better, I say. This is an affordable way to do the status bag without the status: unaffordable credit card bill.)

Jukebox: Ray Charles: Ring of Fire

When Woolite Won't Do

I sometimes rebuke my vintage clothes for that kind of warmed-over BO stank you only notice after you've worn a second-hand thing for a couple hours, and then you realize it has "other people stank" all over it, but this is so rare, that I mostly just wash the items before wearing them, and re-inspect them for anything that might look like nits, and just go ahead and add them to my wardrobe. I find that the only things I've ever come across that were distinctively demon-haunted were actual televangelists, although some evanglists were distinctively dodgy even if not exactly on tv.

What I think I'm getting at is--really, Pat Robertson? Always be banishing? It's like you're half a witch yourself.  He would feel lighter if he went white lighter.

Meat the Future: From the Printer to the Plate?

  As you can gather from the Strangely Random ouvre, I'm something of a fan of meat. And yet, I'm also something of a fan of the environment, as well as a person concerned about the ethical questions raised by our eating the other species of animal that we share our planet with. I don't subscribe to the concept of the "dumb animal"--from observation, I've come to the conclusion that pigs, cows, chickens, the animals that we have domesticated and enjoy as food, are capable of feeling and thought, even language, of a kind. No, it isn't like our version of feeling or thought, but, still. They aren't people, but they sure aren't things. For that reason, I'm fascinated by the technological answer that might avert the ethical issue--3D printer proteins! Mechanically-generated meat! How in the hell does that work? Well:

Modern Meadows CEO, Andras Forgacs, tooks to Reddit recently to answer questions that people might have about his company’s technology. If you hadn’t heard, Modern Meadows is developing technology to bioprint meat and leather goods. Funded by PayPal cofounder Peter Theil’s Breakout Lab, Modern Meadows has successfully printed a 2 cm x 1 cm x 1 mm artificial muscle. Although the price point for bioprinted meat is still outrageously high, $326,700 for their first sample, Forgas believes his company is creating the future of humanely sourced meat.

So far, very expensively. But if you think about it, it has some serious potential. One could program the ideal marbling. Boost the compostition of Omega 3 fatty acids. Do away with gristle, but maybe still retain the flavor of gelatin. And I'm a little concerned about where the materials that the printer extrudes come from. Until they've worked this all out a bit, I think I'll just work with the grass-fed, free-range, local source meats I get at the Whole Foods.

Santa Monica HS Comes Out Beautifully Against WBC

I've said it before, but the one thing I can say for Westboro Baptist is that they really know how to bring people together in a meaningful way.  Against them. But it's really meaningful and beautiful when they do.

Okay--The Onion Just F'd Up Tweeting the Oscars

Quvenzhane Wallis is a nine year old girl. She's already a really gifted actress, but she is still a nine year old girl. You really shouldn't post that about even a grown-ass woman, but whoever was on the Onion Twitter feed tonight? You really, really, really don't use that word about a nine-year old girl. People would be afraid to use that word because that is not a word that civilized people would use. We don't say it about women because gendered slurs are reductionist cheap nonsense--

But that's a nine year old girl in Hollywood you just used that on, Onion. C'mon. The media and the business and all that will surely screw with her brain enough the rest of her life over her being a woman, celebrity, actress, how she looks and how she acts without you dropping a c-bomb on her for a lazy throw-away joke. Grow the hell up and figure out the line between cruelty and humor.

Well, this is pretty neat--

My admiration, nay, crush, for Hugh Laurie continues unabated as an actor and a comedian. As a vocalist, it seems he's continuing a bit of an American accent, but being the possesor of a ridonckulous American accent myself, I can't kick at what is a pretty good rendition of a sweet standard. So, here's a little jukebox for your Sunday wee hours.

A Good Day to Die Hard Is A Weird Movie to Watch

Okay--this trailer has nothing to do with movie I just saw except that the same people and some scenes are in it. But if you were to take this trailer and spread those scenes out in a movie that served as a justification for some family-based schmaltz and some badass oneliners and some actually mentally insulting chase scene about twenty minutes in that makes you feel a little ashamed for watching--

Oh lord, this is not a smart movie. That doesn't mean it isn't an enjoyable movie--you could like it, if gratuitous car-smashing and shit getting blowed up was your deal, but I'm just saying, if you like your action pictures to make any kind of sense, and have any kind of thin pretext to justify the millions of dollars of collateral damage to cars, trucks, all kinds of infrastructure, and whatnot--not.

This movie has adopted the meta-violence attitude as expressed in such movies as The Expendables franchise, of which Willis is a part. But this isn't even a knowing wink at the gratuitous badness of action movie pretexts--the way any old thing is a gratuitous pretext for porn--for example--so much as a nearly played-straight family movie( the what?) tied up in a genre movie with some real lapses in logical sense and an obvious twist and just some sick lack of attention to the laws of physics or the complete ignorance of the limits of the human body thrown in.

What I'm saying is--this movie is kind of enjoyable, but you really got to put your dumb-hat on to like it. Willis's McClain is a cartoon. His son is a non-entity. Their situation is transparently fucked in a way you can't help but notice all at once before they seem to. And if you can suspend your disbelief that a high-speed truck chase after a terrorist attack on a courthouse can occur without a billionty Moscow police turnout including helicopters and such (because if you don't know, Moscow is kind of the capital city of Russia?), okay. Enjoy away. I'm just saying these lapses killed my enjoyment.

It isn't the worst movie--it just isn't all that good. I can't recommend it unless you are bound and determined to see it, and if that's your thing, you are welcome to it. But it is a damn dumb movie.