A friend who is a therapist told me that she has had three clients come in to deal with the effects of having been publicly humiliated and shamed on someone’s blog. All women, all publicly humiliated by men. She wonders if this is a modern condition.
I wonder if I am one of the shamers with my documentation of the apes.
Ape #1’s mom is coming to stay in the ape house for a week. The apes are now scrambling to disguise their art. Heh. I asked him who was the creator of this piece and he said it was a joint effort. Lovely image, two drunken apes collaborating and giggling over the rendering of a woodcarved diseased penis.
I have broken the vegetarian string by having a turkey sandwich for lunch, and now I feel like I’m going to vomit.
In other gastronomic news, I had an iced latte today instead of an iced coffee and it is so much more delicious. Why is that?
I really don’t like the word “gastronomic”. It sounds gross, even though it’s supposed to refer to fine dining. It’s like the word “pulchritude”, which sounds ugly but means beautiful.
What are the chances that I would come home from work and impulsively decide to walk down the block and catch a showing of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and walk in just as the previews are starting so it’s very dark and I stumble toward the middle and grab a seat and just as I’m settling in I hear a distinctive voice in the row in front of me and something flashes on the screen so the theater lights up and I see that lo and behold I have randomly strolled into a theater and randomly chosen a seat in the row behind my ARCH ENEMY who I haven’t seen in more than a year? So then I watch the movie, a nice movie, but I watch it with the constant bizarre awareness that I am watching a film about erasing people from your memory while sitting one row away from the one person on this planet I would MOST like to erase from my memory. How bizarre is that?
The whole thing made me very sad though, and I walked out just before the credits because I didn’t want him to see me.
I probably wouldn’t want to erase him from my memory though. Maybe just some of the things he said. And some of the things I said.
I just read over at MilkPlus that Michael Haneke, when asked who is the most important director working today, chose Abbas Kiarostami. I knew it! Time of the Wolf’s use of darkness, the use of that last shot off the train (which immediately brought to mind the relief-for-the-viewer-only ending of Taste of Cherry), its amazing sound design … all Kiarostami-like. Formally, at least.
Just thought I’d keep Drew happy and continue the trend. Plus, this reminds me of my apes. Plus, those quotation marks make me giggle.
Apologies to this guy, who is distraught that I have replaced him as #1 Google hit for “Scarlett Johannson’s ass.” Sorry. Sometimes we forget that every success spells someone else’s defeat.
Guess which body part I think this mouse looks like? HINT: Same body part that the Eye of Sauron looks like. And I don’t mean an eye.
link from LS, who may be horrified at what I have done with his link.
I donated to Tony’s iPod fund cuz I read his blog several times a day and he updates like a fiend and he always makes me smile. Sometimes he makes me a little mad but that’s ok too. And for all that free entertainment, he deserves an iPod I think. I only donated a cheapass $5, but hey I’m just a lowly staffer, I’m poor.
Then I come in to the office to find that the sweetest person in the world has sent me, to my office, out of the blue, for no reason, an actual message in a bottle. A message in a bottle! With sand and all. I will photograph it when I get home and get to my camera. It is the most adorable thing ever, and I think she should get a guaranteed pass into heaven for this gesture.
UPDATE: Tony got the iPod, and Apple itself kicked in $63! They must’ve seen all the free publicity they were getting from his “project”.
A reader writes in:
“Have your apes ever seen your blog?”
Silly reader, Apes can’t operate internet machines. Oh sure they can create primitive art (see here and here for the apes’ work–you can see a theme developing there in their ouevre) but I don’t think their opposable thumbs are advanced enough to find google, type in my name, come to this blog, and find their antics stashed in the sidebar.
But honestly I hope they do develop this skill, find this blog, and read it all.
Below are my comments on the Time of the Wolf post over at Milk Plus. Warning: spoilers ahead. I doubt many people will be seeing this film, but personally I think most of the film’s meaning comes in the last 3-4 minutes of the film, so I didn’t really want to talk about that in previous posts. But since I’ve already opened that can o’ worms, I might as well reprint it here:
time of the wolf may give a sense of what the refugee experience is like, but the film is hardly a mere slice of life. haneke seems to always be going for universal themes in his films, and personally i see this film as having one main point: we, as humans, need our illusions. this film strips away all society’s illusions of comfort and safety and right and wrong and what is the only relief in the end? a man cooing a bunch of nonsense about racecars and trains and other bullshit that honestly gives this devastated boy some relief. and it gives the viewer relief as well. as does the final shot off the train, even though we don’t know if it’ll ever show. it’s illusory hope, but that’s what this film is saying. illusory hope is all we have, and we NEED it to keep going.
Now there’s something you’ll never hear a big-media journalist say:
“Well, the convention has started. It’s boring beyond belief.” Dave Winer
Amen. I think the bloggers-blogging-the-convention story is much more interesting than the convention itself.
UPDATE: Atrios revealed!
I don’t really care about baseball much but when Tony Pierce writes about it I get warm fuzzies.
Heh. Boston Common linked to my post below that briefly mentions the fireworks last night, and the unsuspecting are arriving here in search of DNC commentary only to be greeted with my hooker photo. Nice.
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