EveTushnet.com |
|
|
Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood
Archives
February 02 March 02 April 02 May 02 June 02 July 02 August 02 September 02 October 02 November 02 December 02 January 03 February 03 March 03 April 03 May 03 June 03 July 03 August 03 September 03 October 03 November 03 December 03 January 04 February 04 March 04 April 04 May 04 June 04 July 04 August 04 September 04 October 04 November 04 December 04 January 05 February 05 March 05 April 05 May 05 June 05 July 05 August 05 September 05 October 05 November 05 December 05 January 06 February 06 March 06 April 06 May 06 June 06 July 06 August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 E-mail Me! Note: All emails will be considered for publication, with name attached, unless you request otherwise Other Eve Sites Eve's Published Journalism and Fiction Questions for Objectivists Against Therapeutic Cloning (Part I) Love in the Time of Cloning (Part II) Nietzsche vs. Eros Non-Blogs Shamed Dogan for Missouri State Rep Torture FOIA Nat'l Religious Coalition Against Torture Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center Arts & Letters Daily City Journal Dappled Things Doublethink Godspy Institute for Justice National Catholic Register Pregnancy Centers Thunderstruck Yale Free Press Daily Stops Amy Welborn Hit and Run MarriageDebate The Corner Unqualified Offerings Sicut cervus: Resources on God and homosexuality Dreadnought discussion boards "Gay sex or Jew. How come Jew won?" The Long Conversion of Oscar Wilde Gay marriage in the Church and the blessing of same-sex friendships (a response to John Boswell, but interesting in its own right) Same-sex love in the Western Church (Alan Bray) John Heard on Augustine and love between men Ron Belgau autobiographical essay Belgau "Love That Does Not Count the Cost" "Not Exactly Natural (Stunning, Nonetheless)" (me) sequel (me) gay sublime (me) Some stars from a constellation that hasn't been drawn yet (me) In which I attend an ex-gay conference (scroll down for lots of stuff, then up for reactions) Homosexuality & the Church: Two views (mine is view #2) Courage US Catholic bishops to parents of gay children Why you should ignore Paul Cameron Some Iraqi Blogs Iraqi LGBT UK Konfused Kid LivesStrong Inside Iraq Salam Pax 24 Steps to Liberty Iraq Blog Count More Good Reads Abhay Khosla About Last Night After Abortion Agenda Bender The Agitator Alias Clio Balkinization Cacciaguida Child of Divorce - Child of God Christian Persecution Church of the Masses Cigarettes Claw of the Conciliator Club for Growth Colby Cosh Daniel Mitsui Dark October 618 Disputations Disputed Mutability Dreadnought ePiscoSours E-Pression First Things For Keats' Sake Get Religion Holy Heroes Jeremy Lott Journalista KausFiles Kelly Jane Torrance Libertas Mark Shea Marriage Junkie Megan McArdle Millinerd Monster Brains Mumpsimus Noli Irritare Leones Now the Green Blade Riseth O Joyful Light One of the Jones Boys Overlawyered Oxblog Paleo-Future Ross Douthat Scrutinies Sean Collins ShoeBlogs Stop Torture The Rat Virginia Postrel VJ Morton WaiterRant I'm Syndicated! 
|
Thursday, November 27, 2003
WHICH NABOKOV CHARACTERS ARE YOU? I took the chick version and got Ada, from Ada, or Ardor. Haven't read the book, but pretty much every sentence of the description in the quiz results made her sound radically not-like-me. Whatever. The guy version made much more sense for me (insert joke about conforming to one's gender role here)--Cincinnatus C., whom I liked. Via Crescat Sententia. Wednesday, November 26, 2003
POETRY WEDNESDAY: Two songs I've been listening to the Whiffenpoofs sing... "Down By the Salley Gardens" (Yeats) Down by the Salley Gardens My love and I did meet; She passed the Salley Gardens With little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, As the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, With her would not agree. In a field by the river My love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder She laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, As the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, And now am full of tears. "Black, Black, Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" Black, black, black, is the color of my true love's hair. Her lips are something rosy fair. The purest eyes and the prettiest hands, I love the grass whereon she stands. Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair. Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair, Her face is something truly rare. I know my love and well she knows, I love the grass whereon she goes. Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair. Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair. Alone, my life would be so bare. If she on earth no more I see, My life would quickly fade away. Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair. POPE INNOCENT III ACTION FIGURE. Too bad the Latin on the scroll ("Hohenstaufens, kiss my @#$!") is apparently mistranslated. Nonetheless, fun stuff. Kermit and Fozzy: Movin' right along, footloose and fancy free. Fozzy: You're ready for the blogwatch! Kermit: Is it ready for me? Church of the Masses: Rave review of "Big Fish," and a question: Why are the good movies lately all wet? Permanent Damage: Interesting column on the difference between reviewing and criticism. Obviously, the lines are much blurrier than this, but his basic distinction interests me: "The purpose of reviews is to tell the consumer how to spend their money. ...The way the reviewer gets and keeps an audience is by dressing this three-word-max up with as clever (or pithy, if it's clever-pithy) a song and dance as possible, so that, ideally, even if you never agree with the reviewer's conclusions, you still return each review for the sheer enjoyment of watching the reviewer dance the steps. "...Critics, on the other hand, are supposed to examine, deconstruct, draw connections and disconnections, and generally place a text (we'll use the word in this instance to refer to any artistic 'product') in a greater context, whether historical, aesthetic or whatever, to draw out the meaning of importance of a text, a body of work or school of thought. ...Good criticism is always an exploration, an invitation to others to join in on the process. (I guess a short, snide version would be that reviews tell people what to think, and criticism tells them how to think.)" read the rest! People interested in issues of marriage, gender and parenting, and (specifically) same-sex marriage, really should be reading MarriageMovement.org and MarriageDebate.com (and not just because I edit the latter site!). MM.org features the thoughtful stylin's of Elizabeth Marquardt and David Blankenhorn; MD.com is more narrowly focused on the SSM debate, is wilder and woollier, and is specifically intended to provide about a 50/50 split between supporters and opponents of SSM. End of plug. My parents' new cable package includes not only an all-'80s music channel, but a separate all-New Wave music channel. I was in hog heaven. I could listen to that New Wave channel pretty much endlessly. WHY I WILL NEVER GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL: Ratty sent me this quote from a book she has to read, Mieke Bal's Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (2nd edition): "Narratology studies narrative texts only in so far as they are narrative; in other words, in their narrativity." "And sorrow flows not from the absence of those good things we have never yet experienced but from the loss of those to which we have been accustomed." --Pericles, "Funeral Oration" Tuesday, November 25, 2003
THE BOOK OF RATINGS. Rates everything from danger symbols (Flammable: "It's kind of similar to the old Campfire Girls symbol, but Campfire Girls are flammable, so that's okay. It's just kind of...boring. At best, it makes me crave s'mores. I think what it needs is a guy suffering") to--hilariously--state quarters (Arkansas: "Rice. A diamond. A duck. A lake. I feel like the Arkansas quarter shows the possible answers to some demented multiple choice question the Devil keeps in his @#$"). I have this hideous feeling that I will spend way too much time poking around this site. UPDATED! The Norse Gods one is pretty sweet. Also, there are many comics-themed ones. And I think I agree with every single comment in the Sesame Street Characters one. Via Polytropos. PAPER ROCKETSHIPS, INK-DARK MOONS: Comics reviews. In which we see how little comic books have in common with one another! Medium is not genre. But if you're reading this post, you probably already know that. Junji Ito, Uzumaki vols. 2 and 3. Here's my rave review of Uzumaki vol. 1, the killer-spiral comic. Here's Bruce Baugh's take on the series. I'm less positive about the later two volumes than he is; I didn't think the story wrapped up well. The ending seemed to me to go on too long and reach too hard for a "cosmic" feel. Also, the creepiest images--the ones that linger like the impress of clammy fingers on the back of your neck--are in the first volume. However, 2 and 3 do offer some effective chills (what happens to the man-snails really got to me), and these comics are cheap enough that if you liked vol. 1 you should check 'em out. Volume 1 really is fantastic; brrrrr. Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate, A Small Killing. A sad, creepy, utterly distinctive book. I initially checked this one out because of the advertising theme: An ad designer en route to Moscow to sell cola shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union stops off in his home country, England, and becomes convinced that a small boy is stalking him and intends to kill him. The story is part horror/thriller (of the "quiet chills" genre), part broken homecoming, part commentary on advertising, identity, and wilfully abandoning one's conscience. The story is really powerful, and Moore's writing is evocative without going into that overblown PoetrySpeak that so many people think conveys pathos. The ending does suffer from the same problem on a personal, emotional level that V for Vendetta suffered from on a political or philosophical level. I don't think Moore convinces us of his more hopeful overtones; the ambiguities and darker layers are much more believable. He sells yesterday better than tomorrow. But the art. Clownish colors, carnival-looking people (like the carnival from Something Wicked This Way Comes...), artificial without being difficult to follow. The pictures heightened the unhappy mystery of the writing, while also adding an element of humor that the book needed. Just really fine stuff. You should read this. Mark Millar, various artists, and the Marvel Hive Mind, Ultimate X-Men vols. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. There's so much wrong with these comics. Huge stupid plot holes... interchangeable female characters (quick, without referring to their powers, love interests, or backstory--just personality--tell me what differentiates Jean and Storm)... a world that falls apart in your hands if you examine it too closely. But I was reading these during downtime at the preg ctr when the other counselor asked me what I was reading: "You're grinning from ear to ear!" Ult. X-Men is so--much--fun. Dumb, dumb fun. I ordinarily am not a big fan of comics that are mostly stuff exploding, but for whatever reason this one really kills me. I don't care that it often stops making sense. I just like the pedal-to-the-metal, 90 mph in a school zone feel. I like the high stakes (um, OK, as high as you're liable to get in an X-book anyway) and the interchangeable wisecracking comic relief. The series starts with a bang--huge not-quite-as-stupid-looking-as-usual Sentinels tracking down and killing mutants everywhere--and basically keeps yelling the whole way through. This is the McDonalds french fries of comics... and I love McDonalds french fries. I did notice one vaguely substantive thing, in between all the flashbangery: This title doesn't feel nearly as much like a series about leadership as, e.g., New X-Men. I think that's because the power and authority imbalances between Xavier and his students are too great--we all know who the leader is, so there's no real point in exploring the issue. Fortunately, the book does a good job of hitting the "are the X-Men traitors to their kind?" theme, and I am even more obsessed with treason and betrayal than I am with leadership, so I'm satisfied. Mmmm, french fries. MORE MATTER LESS ART: Finished Anne Carson's Beauty of the Husband, twenty-nine poems (she calls them "tangos," which strikes me as prissy) and a coda, about marriage, infidelity, and divorce. What is good in this book is very good; what is bad in this book is truly annoying. The good: "The husband swallows his ouzo and waits for its slow hot snow inside him." "Her voice sounded broken into." "...under a black umbrella/in a raw picking wind." There's something like that--some phrase that catches exactly right--on just about every other page. Harsh, physical writing. The anger and the conversations are very well-written. There's a three-page exchange between the spouses that starts in fury ("Coward./I know./Betrayer./Yes./Opportunist./I can see why you would think that...") and slowly collapses into resignation, self-defeating attempts at connection, and artsy, self-dramatizing grandiosity. It adds up to a gripping, sad segment. The bad: Oy, this book is pretentious! I kept wanting to smack everyone implicated in the poems' production. Each "tango" (grrr) has an obscure, usually Keats-citing, usually way-too-long title, a hurdle you have to get over in order to get to the poem, like those ugly concrete Jersey barriers they put up around the White House a few years back. There is much much much too much John "The Dying" Keats in this book. I am not a Keats fan anyway (with the exception of "This living hand, now warm and capable," which is one of the four poems I know by heart) but even if I loved the guy madly I think I would be sick of him after seeing his poetry and (muddled) thinking larded throughout this book. Anyway, too much of this book is the poetical equivalent of a German art-flick. The philosophy is shaky. This only really gets in the way at the very end (although I suspect it's also responsible for the surfeit of Keats). I mean, anything that ends, "Here's my advice,/hold.//Hold beauty," is not thinking as hard as it thinks it is. The self-centered concerns work perfectly when the poems are describing the anger and betrayal of a wronged wife; not so much when the poems attempt to discern some kind of Meaning In It All. Overall: TBOTH is a fast read, and well worth the time it takes--those phrases really do linger. WHICH EDWARD GOREY BOOK ARE YOU? "Dancing Cats and Neglected Murderesses--You are a bit bitter in some ways about how life has treated you, but you will do anything to change it around...anything!" Via Mixolydian Mode. Monday, November 24, 2003
THE SONG CLOCK: Oakhaus's post on songs that remind you of breakups you've known (mine is in the comments) reminded me of a post I'd been pondering for a while--listing the songs that colored and reflected an entire period in my life. Don't know if you care, but here is the soundtrack for the movie that is me: High school: Severed Heads, "Contempt" and "Hot With Fleas" Coil, "Tainted Love." Actually, I'll listen to pretty much anybody's version of "Tainted Love." The Smiths... um, everything, really. Manic-depressive jukebox featuring "I Know It's Over" and "Vicar in a Tutu," though my actual favorite Smiths song is definitely "Rusholme Ruffians." A.K.A. Harlot #1, everything... especially their one and only release, "100% Criminal Candy." Huggy Bear run through a shredder in Port-au-Prince. Click here for more info. Chumbawamba, "Morality Play in Three Acts" Vestpocket Psalm, "Ocean" and "Broken" Violent Femmes, "Look Like That" and "Add It Up" Nirvana, "Lithium" Louis Armstrong, "Kiss of Fire" The Slits, "So Tough" Bratmobile, "Where Eagles Dare" and "...And I Live in a Town Where the Boys Amputate Their Hearts" Huggy Bear, "Carnt Kiss" (and much more) Summer before college: Nas, "If I Ruled the World" The Clash, "Rudie Can't Fail" Jane Hohenberger, "Mirror" Skunk Anansie, "Weak" and "I Can Dream" Fugees, "Family Business" and "Fu-Gee-La" Vestpocket Psalm, "Sonic Reducer" Nina Simone, "Sugar in My Bowl," "Real Real Real," and "My Man's Gone Now" Elvis Presley, "Blue Moon" Big Mama Thornton, "Unlucky Girl" The Adverts, "New Boys" ("A tendency to intellectualize, won't let things be/Your conversation locks my doors then throws away the key/You can't help me") 1996-7: Elvis Costello, "Little Palaces" The Roots, "Do You Want More?!?!?!?!?!" Sex Pistols, "Sub*Mission" U2, "One" Elvis Costello, "Green Shirt" Rolling Stones, "I Don't Know Why I Love You" Talking Heads, "Mr. Jones" 1997-8: Cat Power, "Ice Water" Patsy Cline, "Strange" and "She's Got You" Theme from "Vertigo" Aerosmith, "Falling in Love (Is So Hard on the Knees)" Elvis Costello, "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" Aerosmith, "Sweet Emotion" Phil Collins, "Mercy Street" Nirvana, "Drain You" Elastica, "S.O.F.T." 1998-9: Theme from "Lion in Winter" Nena, "99 Luftballons" Men in Hats, "Safety Dance" Cher, "Believe" (this one is NOT MY FAULT!) UB40, "Red Red Wine" 1999-2000: ABBA, "Take a Chance on Me" and "Dancing Queen" (these really aren't my fault either...) Twisted Sister, "We're Not Gonna Take It" Theme from "Laverne and Shirley" Levellers, "One Way" and "Another Man's Cause" Theme from "Labyrinth" Queen, "Princes of the Universe" Madness, "It Must Be Love" Dead or Alive, "You Spin Me Right Round" Rolling Stones, "Mother's Little Helper" Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" Nirvana, "The Man Who Sold the World" and "Pennyroyal Tea" David Bowie, "China Girl" Summer 2003: Elvis Costello, "Lipstick Vogue" Patsy Cline, "You Belong to Me" Hank Williams Sr., "I Saw the Light" Blondie, "Dreaming" and "(Touched by Your) Presence Dear" Elvis Costello, "Return to Big Nothing" Severed Heads, "Life in the Whale" Marc Almond, "Blond Boy" and "Tenderness Is a Weakness" Siouxsie & the Banshees, "Nightshift" Fall 2003: Elvis Costello, "Battered Old Bird" Vestpocket Psalm, "Sonic Reducer" Dead Milkmen, "Stuart" and whatever that song is about the lesbian left-handed midget albino Eskimo ("Life can be pretty hard for that young lady") Patti Smith, "Horses," "Kimberly" ("Countries/Fall into the sea/It doesn't matter much to me/As long as you're safe, Kimberly") and "Elegy" Avengers, "Cheap Tragedies" Devo, "Uncontrollable Urge" The Cramps, "Bikini Girls With Machine Guns" and "Dames, Booze, Chains and Boots" Always: Morrissey and Siouxsie, "Interlude" SPEND SPEND SPEND: Part two of my short story, "Desire," is up now. It's been a while since I posted part one, so you might want to start at the beginning; but if you only want the most recent section, it's here. LONDON CALLING: More Dappled Things--this time, his trip to London. I went there with The Rat two summers ago, and told you all about it here (random notes), here (travelogue), and here (the Imperial War Museum, which was just amazing). Anyway, some excerpts from Father T's adventure: "I was very pleased with the state of the Liturgy througout the city. ... "I saw a very good exhibit called Gothic Art for England at the Victoria and Albert Museum (conveniently next door to the Oratory). The exhibit had, logically enough, English art (royal, ecclesiastical, and secular) from the Gothic period. In the ecclesiastical sections, there was something very poignant about seeing, item after item, a label which would read something to the effect of, 'This is the only example of X known to have survived the Reformation.' .... "...In the next days, I realized that most of the city seemed to be under 24-hour camera surveillance. On the one hand, it made me feel very secure. On the other, an American naturally feels suspicious about surveillance cameras in public places. One poster on a public bus had a little bus driving along with a half-dozen disembodied eyes hovering overhead and an announcement that read, 'You're safe under the ever-watchful eye. CCTV being recorded and monitored 24 hours a day.' Maybe it's just me, but I found that a bit creepy. "...British food is a bit heavy on the potatoes-and-frying side, but the dishes were always tasty, and London is full of ethnic restaurants, much like Washington, DC...." (Eve again: Actually, what the delectable English breakfasts we ate really reminded me of was Southern food: heavy, fatty, fried, and catering to an intense sweet tooth.) GABRIEL PROJECT: Father Tucker at Dappled Things says his diocese is starting up a branch of the Gabriel Project, which gives material, emotional, and spiritual support to families in need. I had the honor of speaking with the Silver Spring branch on Saturday morning; they're a great bunch of people. I was supposed to touch on some of the themes of my Weekly Standard piece on life at a pregnancy center (subscribers-only link, sorry). I was a bit scatty (7:30 AM is not a normal Saturday wakeup time for me!) and I think I spoke too fast, but here are some notes on what I said: First, I talked about two problems that come up again and again at the center: fatherlessness, and an understandable but misguided view of marriage. As I said in the Standard piece, there's a line on our interview form where we're supposed to record what the client's father would want her to do if she's pregnant. (There are similar questions about her mother and the baby's father.) But I almost never am able to fill that line out, because so few of our clients are even in touch with their fathers. In fatherless families and fatherless neighborhoods, it's much harder for women to a) know what to look for in a man, a sexual partner, a potential husband; b) know what they can demand of a man--they don't have to have low standards!; and c) believe that there's any point in waiting for marriage. For many of our clients (not all, certainly), "waiting for marriage" sounds about as realistic as "waiting to win the lottery." That plays into the second problem: Marriage is viewed as the last item on life's to-do list. You get married once you're financially stable, once you have a nice place to live, once everything else in your life is set up. This view is based on totally understandable and even accurate premises: Marriage is a big deal and people don't want to rush into it. But the marriage-last view causes major trouble when it runs up against reality. For a lot of our clients, if you wait until you're financially stable to get married, you just won't get married. (And marriage itself is likely to increase your financial stability.) If you wait until you're totally "ready" for marriage... well, I mean, lots of us are definitely unready for marriage, but is anybody totally ready? And, most importantly, if you're not ready for marriage--if you're not financially and emotionally together enough for marriage--what on earth are you doing sleeping with a guy? By the time our clients come in for their pregnancy tests, of course, they've already figured out the huge flaw in their program: Sex makes babies. And there's more: A lot of clients respond really strongly to something I cribbed from this essay--a line from the movie "Vanilla Sky": "When you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise, whether you agree to it or not." This really resonates with women, and we talk about making sure that your body isn't, essentially, writing checks your mind and heart don't want to cash. It's really important to talk about the emotional and spiritual dimensions of sex outside of marriage, not just the basic, biological facts. This point offered a segue into the other thing I wanted to talk about: what works? What can you say in an hour (at most!) that will actually resonate with a woman and help her make good decisions about her life? The major theme I hit here was how often our clients want to do all the right things. They have the right ideals. They want to get married. They want a closer personal relationship to Christ. They want to be good mothers. They want to finish college or high school. But the things they're doing now work against achieving their goals. You're less likely to graduate from high school if you're having sex, with its attendant emotional drama and possibility of pregnancy. You're less likely to make a good marriage if you date and sleep with men you know to be unreliable. You're not going to have a close personal relationship with God if you don't go to church and don't try to bring your life into line with God's will. Etc. What I do, quite often, is a kind of counseling jujitsu--if you listen sympathetically (and God knows people often need someone to listen to them) and ask a few guiding questions, often the client ends up basically counseling herself. Sometimes I'll offer advice--things that have worked for me in similar situations--or agree with her points and underline them by using snazzier, more memorable language (like the "Vanilla Sky" thing above). Other counseling sessions require more from me: information (I have a quick, no-more-graphic-than-it-needs-to-be description of a D&C abortion), or presenting the Gospel, or gently, carefully pointing out things the client may not want to acknowledge. But often it's just encouraging her in her goals and brainstorming things she can do to make achieving those goals more likely. The other thing, the much harder thing, that I need to do in these situations where the client wants the right things, is simply convince her that her goals are attainable. How do you show someone that a good marriage is possible when she hasn't seen one? How do you show someone what life in Christ should look like when she thinks the people at her church are all gossipy hypocrites? That's a lot harder; it usually takes a longer-term relationship than the counseling session can provide. I try to hook my client up with other people--our parenting class, for example, or our Mentor Moms program, or a good church, or a well-loved teacher. We talk about whom the client trusts, someone she can talk to about marriage and dating. We also talk very practical, basic, step-by-step stuff: Don't hang out with friends who will lead you astray. If you're in a situation where you think you might do something wrong, leave, or go to the bathroom and pray, or move (e.g. instead of hanging out alone at the guy's apartment, go get something to eat). It's easier to picture small-scale actions than the big goals for which they serve as preparation. I can't remember how I closed the presentation. Probably I just realized I'd been yattering for a while, and stopped. But everyone was very nice about it! Anyway, lovely people, wonderful program. I'm quite grateful that I got to see it. A HAIKU POEM FOR THE CHEERIOS: Search-engine requests that brought you to this fine blog. In chronological order, earliest first. where to publish a short story about necessity to give up a cat women are faster rat silhouette nifty same sex encounters ("nifty"?) elvis and twin towers wallpaper nikita dallas vodka bar photo service aaron burr philip nolan's legal problem (yes, Aaron Burr did have something to do with a slight legal problem for Philip Nolan...) usa boy to boy forking sexy net come evolution not revolution clothes pants maggie gallagher idiot a Haiku poem for the cheerios A BIG BULLDOG AND A BIG USA FLAG IN THE BACK SHIRT IT IS MANLY WHITE famine theme park will my jewish mother in law hate me (yes) western trashcans jokes on bk of Ecclesiastes good manners cover up our animal selves nifty dandy good grief expressions jenifer aniston's most moving quote inflatable alligator christian faith latex clothes similar to porn blog wars slogan for scalia's family (Hey, it's been way too long since we had a good contest here... why not send in your suggestions for Scalia family slogans? Coats-of-arms will also be accepted) "The girl had taken a Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, 'My daughter is a nurse,' or 'My daughter is a school teacher,' or even, 'My daughter is a chemical engineer.' You could not say, 'My daughter is a philosopher.'" --Flannery O'Connor, "Good Country People" Friday, November 21, 2003
OUTSOURCING TORTURE: Body and Soul is your source for news about the guy the INS shipped to Syria for torture. More on this from me Monday, for serious. I cried for you I died a thousand times for you I committed endless crimes for you I sold my soul to some blogwatch to do with as he will... Coming soon at this site: Watchmen; why I started investigating Catholicism, why I was almost an English major, and what all this has to do with same-sex marriage (you cannot escape!); the song clock, plus The Breakup Song. Coming soon at MarriageDebate: more links than you can shake a stick at. I have to go to my volunteer job soon, but by Saturday morning I'll have linkaliciousness there. Krubner has a whole host of interesting stuff posted right now. I was especially interested in his posts on farm subsidies, "love punks," and underground music in central Virginia. But really, the whole site is worth your time. Motime Like the Present: The last word (for now!) on "eye-level aesthetics," God, and stuff. Movie Palace: His horror movie picks. Fascinating. I must see "White Zombie"!!!! Via Johnny Bacardi. The Old Oligarch: Yet more male headship! This time with practical examples, which is helpful to me, since honestly I have mostly seen relationships that either rejected headship outright or had so completely entered into "the more excellent way of love" that headship was not noticeable. The Medicine Wheel: If, like me, you are an X-fan with a specific thing about Cyclops, you must check out this site. Minisinoo is a published writer, and I can see why. Seriously, this site has provoked my writerly instincts and definitely fed my Cyke jones. This is fanfic the way you wish it would be. Wednesday, November 19, 2003
I can almost taste your blogwatch As I reach out for your face And I strike... Body and Soul: Maher Arar update (guy INS shipped to Syria, where he was tortured). Forager23: "Eye-level aesthetic" and Love and Rocketsness. I am going to look for Grip, which I hadn't even known existed until just now. Motime Like the Present on an "eye-level aesthetic." I find his insouciance about the difficulty of figuring out ethics disconcerting, though he's right that Nietzsche collapses into Platonism. That's because Nietzsche rejects a) eros and b) a personal God. Anyway, here's me on figuring out how to treat people right. I wish it were as simple as just looking everyone in the eye. "Space Ghost Coast to Coast," featuring William Shatner! Via Franklin Harris. I'm about to post a LOT of Goodridge (same-sex marriage case in MA) links at MarriageDebate, so check in in about 15 minutes. I wonder if that was the most random concatenation of blogwatch topics thus far. Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Used to ramble through the park Shadow boxing in the dark Then you came and caused a spark That's a four-alarm blogwatch now... Body and Soul: Good, long post (with very well-chosen pictures) on women's subordination, agency, and individuality, focusing on what the new book The Bookseller of Kabul notices and fails to notice. Jane Galt: Recommend economics books for beginners! I did find Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson quite readable and very intro-level, and PJ O'Rourke's stuff is fun too. Her commenters add suggestions from varied political/econ perspectives. The Old Oligarch: More on male headship--an exchange between him and Mommentary. "RUSH LIMBAUGH IN THE CONFESSIONAL": That's the title of Mark Shea's latest column for the National Catholic Register. It's good stuff--sadly, not online. Excerpts: ...I was raised in a household where I darkened the door of a church or Sunday school maybe 10 times before I started seriously trying to understand Christianity in college (and at least one of those times was because there was a meeting or something at the local Methodist church). I can tell you all about deep-seated guilt. Crippling, unrelieved guilt. ... The amazing thing to me in becoming Catholic was the discovery that you could actually go somewhere and unburden your soul of all the miserable, wretched, shameful things you'd been lugging around for years. To my astonishment, delight and intense relief, God would really take that load away and not only forgive you but also give you the grace to be the new person you wished you could be. I get teary just thinking about it. Some of the most poignantly sweet moments of my life have come in the confessional. ...I thank God for that mercy, not only because it is sweet but also becuase it is so rare in this dangerous world. I think of that brutal fact as I have watched Catholics on the Internet make amazingly naive demands that Rush Limbaugh should have just gone on the air and "come clean" with 20 million people by confessing his addiction struggles, criminal activities (assuming there have been some), and so forth. ...A person struggling with addiction tends to hide that struggle, not only because he is ashamed (particularly when he's a noisy public figure) but also because he has plenty of good reason to fear that the public (God bless it) is made up of cannibals who would eat their young if they get half a chance. ...Me: I think Limbaugh was wrong to recommend locking up addicts, largely for the reasons that Limbaugh himself is now discovering. [for the rest, you'll have to find yourself a "dead tree" copy of the Register...] MASSACHUSETTS COURT LAME-OSITY: Hey there. If you want my take(s) on the Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision, or SSM generally, click on over to MarriageDebate.com, or check out my series on the subject. MD.com is also currently hosting a debate on whether children need mothers and fathers, or just two committed parents. There's some stuff there that constitutes a partial reply to John Jakala's points about gender. (I haven't forgotten you, JJ! More later--I'm totally swamped with work right now.) Anyway, we try to keep MD.com 50/50 pro-con on SSM, so whatever your opinion, please email me if you have something to say. Know that you will be edited for length! Also, if you want me to blog your email on the site, please include a quick one-line biographical note (a la "Eve Tushnet is a freelance journalist in Washington, DC"). Thanks.... Oh, and Eugene Volokh has been blogging quite a bit about the decision--he's a law professor who supports SSM but is pretty concerned about the way the court reached its decision. HEY, A KENYAN BLOG! Catholic stuff, sports stuff, Kenyan stuff. He likes Bowie (yeah!) but hates Nietzsche (boo!). Niftiness from the referrer logs. Monday, November 17, 2003
ANALYZE THIS: Unqualified Offerings delves into the New York Times "how're we doing in Iraq?" chart, and concludes that the Times is painting sunshine on the data. He makes a good case. EDITED TO ADD: He's also two hedgehogs. (They tell me that cryptic one-line links encourage readers to make with the clicking.) HOW CAN YOU KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM, AFTER THEY'VE SEEN CRP? Well, it's been a while since I gave you all a post on farm subsidies. So here's something from today's Washington Post, a profile of a dying Montana town. Excerpts: "...Like thousands of small towns on the plains, Geraldine is bleeding young people. "The town has lost 23 percent of its population since 1970. But the high school has shrunk even more: By 53 percent since 1970, from 103 students to 48. There are 11 students in this school year's graduating class. In 2007, there will be six. "...Stagnant farm prices are part of it, as is the declining birth rate, the trend toward larger farms and the increasing sophistication of farm equipment. Modern tractors, equipped with global positioning devices and autopilots, allow a single operator to farm several thousand acres without a hired hand. Five years of drought have also forced families off the land. "But perhaps the most important reason for the depopulation of Geraldine and eastern Montana is a 15-year-old federal subsidy that pays farmers to grow native grasses on their land, rather than grain. "Called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), it was intended to remove fragile, easily eroded land from production and stabilize crop prices by reducing the amount of grain that farmers grow. Thanks to the CRP, 40 million acres of farmland are out of production across the United States, including 3 million acres in Montana. ... "The program has had a salutary effect on wildlife in the plains. Farmers say they have never seen so many pheasants, deer and antelope. Geraldine's football field is on the edge of town, and during practice last week, pheasants chortled in the nearby grass and deer wandered to within reach of a long punt. "The CRP, however, has also had the unintended consequence in Montana of emptying small-town schools, according to farmers, bankers and local federal officials. ... "Since the program locked up about 20 percent of county farmland, scores of business owners that cater to farmers have closed up shop across Chouteau County. Most moved away, taking their children with them. ... "Thanks to the CRP, it no longer has a single dealer that sells farm implements. To buy a tractor or get parts, farmers have to drive 70 miles to Great Falls. ... "Young farmers with children are disappearing because the CRP makes it possible for elderly farmers to stay on their land. Normally, the cost of paying their land taxes would force retired farmers to sell farmland or lease it, usually to up-and-coming young farmers. With CRP money rolling in risk-free, they have no financial reason to do so." more LOOK A HERO IN THE EYE: At first, I didn't quite know what to make of Motime Like the Present's call for an "eye-level aesthetic." And you know, I'm still not sure I grasp what he's saying. It seems like he's contrasting the "eye-level" view to both a "reverent" view of e.g. superheroic characters, and a "cynical" view. Let me riff just a little on these categories, and try to clarify what I would mean if I said what Motime says. Since our basic philosophies are really different, this may not be what he's trying to say at all! EDITED TO ADD: Be forewarned, this post is quite rambly and moves freely between real life, excellent art, and pop culture ice cream. Since it's about the images that shape our worldviews and actions, though, that seems okay to me, since we draw these images from all three of those sources. 1) "Cynical": I really can't stand art/pop works that get their kicks from looking down on people. Easy target: Is it just me, or is the punchline to 90% of Ted Rall's cartoons, "Americans are really stupid"? One of the reasons I like the Silver Age Marvel stuff I've read is that although it's quite obviously unserious, quite obviously aware of its own absurdity, it doesn't try to make you feel like an idiot for reading it, and its attempts to make you feel like you're "in the know" and supercool are lighthearted, ironic, and not meant to make you feel like you're better than everyone around you. A lot of cynical art participates in the sentimentality of machismo--it's "soft," womanish, to admit that some people really do great things, that some actions are genuinely heroic and worthy of our admiration. More on this in the Watchmen post coming soon. And speaking of Watchmen--often a piece of art and/or pop culture will be derided as cynical when it's really not. I don't think the "point" of Watchmen is that heroism doesn't exist. You can deflate old cliches, force a degree of insistent and even scathing humility, without retreating into boring old photo-negative cynicism, a worldview that's still controlled by the old cliches simply because it tries to always do the reverse of whatever they did. 2) "Reverent": Well, obviously, I think there are some things or Persons to whom we do owe reverence! There are also ways of showing love of, for example, beauty, simply by making beautiful images. (Not to open the "Alex Rossenstahl" can of worms again, but I loved the flames-in-darkness of his Human Torch in Marvels, which I thought was not reverent toward the character so much as toward the rawer beauty of fire and night. But also--didn't I just say I didn't want to talk about this?--I think Marvels, the only Ross thing I've read, makes the reg'lar-guys characters more glamorous than the superheroes. End of diversion.) But it's really easy to slip into idolatry or back-patting when portraying heroic figures. (The back-patting comes in when you feel good about yourself because you recognize the goodness of this heroic figure and identify with him.) This is one reason that the idea of a reverent picture of Superman makes me feel vaguely sick to the stomach. Power is sometimes sublime; the sublime evokes awe; awe is a kind of fear; but our response to power should not be an overly-quick slide from blank fear to awe. (This is one reason I think God's words to Job are not about raw assertion of power, but about what it means to be a creature--what our options are, really.) So if something akin to this rambly free-association is what Motime's trying to get at, I'm with him. 3) "Eye-level": I think this phrase is--or could be!--meant to convey a perspective on, at least, other people (not sure about non-human stuff like beauty, let alone God), that is neither idolatrous nor prideful. (Ha, I'd bet money that that isn't how Motime would put it!) Not groveling; not delegating the responsibilities for right action to other people, the mythic "heroes"; but also not humorless, unable to see the ironies and the gaps between oneself and one's self-perception. Thinking about this stuff made me think about Wei Jingsheng. Wei is a genuine hero. He defied the Chinese Communist government and spent almost 18 years in the laogai or Chinese gulag. If you read his letters from prison, one thing that strikes you immediately is the humor (this really comes out in his letters to Deng Xiaoping). Wei is an immensely ironic guy. He's also convinced that he has not done enough for China; anytime an interviewer tries to praise him, he quickly says that the ordinary, unknown people of China are the true heroes. This, to me, exemplifies what an eye-level view of the world looks like--neither precluding heroism nor turning it into just another excuse for self-love. If that is totally not what Motime meant, I'm all ears--this post is intended as much to poke and prod him to write more about his views as to express my own. PALOMAR, MI PALOMAR: Your two Love and Rockets links of the day: Sean Collins wants to know how he can stop worrying and learn to love Los Bros. Hernandez. He's plowing through Music for Mechanics but finds it slow going. I can totally see that--I love M4M but I read it well after I'd already started to care about the characters. Sean's problem, really, is that he feels like he needs to read a series from the beginning in order to get into it, and L&R starts slow and rusty. I can't rightly improve on the suggestion here that he get over his usual aversion to starting in the middle, and try out some of the later books--The Death of Speedy, or Flies on the Ceiling, or maybe just stand in the store and leaf through books until something grabs him. Now we turn to the Battle of Brother Against Brother. It's funny, I never would have guessed that the comicsphere consensus is that Gilbert is a greater artist than Jaime, since, like Johnny Bacardi, I much prefer JH. This doesn't matter a huge amount, since a) pretty much everyone acknowledges that both brothers are geniuses, and b) Gilbert did create the best L&R book of all, Poison River. Nonetheless, let me put in a couple words for Jaime's particular genius. His drawings are sparer, more "in glorious black and white," more elegantly stylized, more Weegee, less rough than his brother's. Both are masters of facial expression, but Jaime's pictures have that high-contrast gloss to them--a crisp, hot-lights noir feel with very black blacks. (Best showcase for this might be Chester Square.) Both brothers are known for their strong, appealing women, but I find Jaime's chicas more knockabout and (somewhat!) less idealized--less the Generic Strong Woman. Both brothers seem to have peaked, sadly, but I've liked the quiet, postpunk denouements of Jaime's characters better than the everyone-goes-to-America soapiness of Gilbert's. Again, all these comments should be taken with the understanding that I do agree that Gilbert is a one-in-a-zillion master of the art. To some extent, I'm just bein' contrary. You should seek out and read both of these guys' work, forthwith. MISSING LINKS? Here's a roundup on the weekend's Iraq/Al Qaeda opining. The Weekly Standard piece, based on a memo from Douglas Feith, laying out the case that Saddam cuddled Osama like a five-year-old girl with a kitten (stuff in italics is from the Feith memo): "Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17, and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of the reports have information on operational details or the purpose of such meetings. The covert nature of the relationship would indicate strict compartmentation [sic] of operations. "Information about connections between al Qaeda and Iraq was so widespread by early 1999 that it made its way into the mainstream press. A January 11, 1999, Newsweek story ran under this headline: 'Saddam + Bin Laden?' The story cited an 'Arab intelligence source' with knowledge of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. 'According to this source, Saddam expected last month's American and British bombing campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support Washington. Saddam's long-term strategy, according to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift if formally.' [Eve adds: This bit is important because many people asked why a secular Ba'athist freakshow would ally himself with an Islamist freakshow--what was in it for Saddam?] "Intelligence reports about the nature of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda from mid-1999 through 2003 are conflicting...." more Rebuttal from the Washington Monthly, calling the Iraq/Al Q claim "The Weakest Link": "When it comes to international terrorism directed at the United States, however, there is mounting evidence of Saudi complicity, but virtually none on Saddam. "... Far from being 'harbored' by Saddam, Ansar al Islam operated out of northeastern Iraq, an area under Kurdish control that was being protected from Saddam's incursions by U.S. warplanes. Indeed, some of its members fought against Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. ... "...The contacts were not, as Tenet's language suggested, ongoing for the past 10 years. Most had occurred during the mid-1990s, in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. At that time, Sudan's Islamism had sent so many spies and terrorists flooding into Khartoum that the city resembled a jihadist version of the bar scene from Star Wars. There, some of the world's most infamous terrorists, such as Hezbollah mastermind Imad Mugniyah, frequently crossed paths with foreign intelligence agents, including, Tenet claimed, Iraq's. But even if Iraqi agents had had contact with al Qaeda operatives, notes one former intelligence official, 'that's what all intelligence officers do. They try to get in touch with the bad guys, the enemies, and co-opt them in some way, with money or something else'--which is quite different from forging a working relationship. ... "...First, as far as we know, there were no significant contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda after 1998. Second, these Iraqi overtures do not appear to have been reciprocated." more Reactions from Matthew Yglesias : "Second, much of the alleged link seems to pertain to al-Qaeda way back in its Sudan days when it was a pretty different organization. Links from then are much less significant than links from the era between the '98 embassy bombing and 9-11, and way less significant than evidence of post-9/11 links. ...Note that the information becomes much sketchier after 1998. In particular, there are several uses of the tactic employed by Powell at the UN where one extremely slender thread (i.e., a guy who 'claimed' to have gotten a job in Malaysia 'through the Iraqi embassy' was at a meeting) is used as an excuse to provide an extended discourse on the bad acts of some al-Qaeda members. I have no doubt that the folks involved in that Malaysia meeting were bad people, but the question was the link to Iraq. The only evidence of such a link is the say-so of one man that he got the job through the embassy, and even if he did get the job through the embassy that hardly proves he was given it in order to collaborate with al-Qaeda...." more Oxblog: Parsing the DOD memo: I don't speak bureaucratese, but I have to say it sounds like Josh (who is undecided on the memo's salience) is stretching--hard not to read the memo as a disavowal of the WS's interpretation. (Which doesn't mean the WS is wrong!) David Adesnik asks the political questions; Josh replies. David's most compelling question, to me, is this one: "Why has the information turned up now? Why would the White House sit on information that would vindicate its decision to invade Iraq? The Standard article says the information was compiled in response to a request by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Why the heck would the administration wait until the Senate showed an interest before doing some serious research on the Saddam-Osama connection?" Mark Shea: "So while it will be a very fine thing if, in fact, a support of Al-Quaeda is out of the way. But it will be a very bad thing if, in tradeoff for that, we transform ourselves into a nation which says the ends justify the means. The question that still needs to be attended to is the justice of the war as it was when we launched in it in March when Bush said there was no connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda." You can use this handy search results page at GlobalSecurity.org to find multiple statements by George Tenet on this question. Link via one of Yglesias's commenters. Me? Still confused. Sorry.... IT'S TIME TO PLAY THE MUSIC, IT'S TIME TO LIGHT THE LIGHTS: Today is the feast day of my patron saint, Elizabeth of Hungary! Youth culture watched my blog, And I don't think it's fair... Hit & Run: The rest of the world knows a lot more about American culture than we know about theirs. No duh, huh? Anyway, Tim Cavanaugh uses a quiz show to illustrate this basic truth, and adds a Somerset Maugham recommendation. Movie Palace: Good grief! Scads upon scads of reviews of old-time cinema gems. Via Motime Like the Present. NEW PLAY BY AESCHYLUS! I forget where I found this. "Cyprus's national theater company, Thoc, plans a modern-day world premiere of Aeschylus's Trojan War story Achilles in Cyprus next summer. The play will then be performed in Cyprus and Greece. "Scholars had believed the trilogy to be lost forever when the Library of Alexandria burned to ashes in 48 BC. 'But in the last decades archaeologists found mummies in Egypt which were stuffed with papyrus, containing excerpts of the original plays of Aeschylus,' Thoc director Andy Bargilly told Reuters...." more Sunday, November 16, 2003
"THERE ARE NO HAPPY ENDINGS--BECAUSE NOTHING ENDS": So I feel a bit odd about the histrionically anti-happy-endings post from Wednesday night. It's especially weird since my current story (first scene here!) actually does have what I consider to be a genuinely happy ending. So yeah, what the world needs now is love, sweet love... or something like it. BLOGROLLING THUNDER: The blogroll (to your left) has been flensed and reorganized. The biggest changes are, obviously, the creation of an "Iraqi Blogs" section (totally stolen from Healing Iraq, who also features a supercool soldiers' blogs section) and the shifting "daily reads" list. I actually try to check in on people who aren't on my daily-reads list quite frequently--chronic insomnia has its benefits--so the changes should be taken solely as a measure of my personal change in focus (less politics, more Christ and narrative), not as a measure of which blogs I think are/aren't awesome. IS THAT YOUR REAL MASK?: Ampersand posts on a subject that forms the major theme of the short story I'm blogging: gender or sexual identity. He links to a post that separates out six categories of identity. This post reminded me, actually, of Mommentary's post about the literary characters with whom we've fallen in love. I found it genuinely hard to distinguish between characters I'd fallen for and characters with whom I'd identified. (I'm a narcissist, I guess...!) |