Ocelopotamus

News, culture, and politics. Not necessarily in that order.

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No Backsies

October 24th, 2007 · Books, Culture, Education, Fantasy, Fiction, Film, Human Rights, LGBT, Lit, Media, Politics, Science Fiction

LOLDumbledoreI haven’t weighed in on the whole gay Dumbledore thing, partly because everyone is already talking about it, and I usually view OcPot as a place to post about things that deserve more attention than they seem to be getting.

But Minnesota Malcolm brought it up in the comments to this post last night, and now that the backlash is setting in, I have an angle. I woke this morning to find a piece called “Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet” staring at me from Google News, and it turns out to be written not by a homophobe but by gay writer John Cloud, taking a “glass not only half full, but chipped and dirty” approach to the revelation. Essentially, the piece argues that outing Dumbledore outside the pages of the books, after the series is over, is too little and too late.

It starts out with a couple of very amusing passages about gay subtext in other popular works of fantasy:

Yes, it’s nice that gays finally got a major character in the sci-fi/fantasy universe. Until now, we had been shut out of all the major franchises. Tolkien, a conservative Catholic, wrote a rich supply of homoeroticism into The Lord of the Rings—all those Men and Hobbits and Elves singing to each other during long, woman-less quests. The books and their film versions feature tender scenes between Frodo and Samwise. But in the end Sam marries Rose Cotton and fathers 13 children. Thirteen! You’d think he had something to prove.

Other fantasy worlds have presented gay (or at least gay-seeming) characters, but usually they are, literally, inhuman. George Lucas gave us the epicene C-3PO and the little butch R2-D2, and their Felix-Oscar dialogue suggests the banter of a couple of old queens who have been keeping intergalactic house for millennia. But their implied homosexuality is quite safe. There is no real flesh that could actually entangle, just some electrical wiring.

… and then comes to its point about Dumbledore:

… as we know, Dumbledore had not a single fully realized romance in 115 years of life. That’s pathetic, and a little creepy. It’s also a throwback to an era of pop culture when the only gay characters were those who committed suicide or were murdered. As Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (1981) points out, in film after film of the mid-century—Rebel Without a Cause; Rebecca; Suddenly, Last Summer—the gay characters must pay for their existence with death. Like a lisping weakling, Dumbledore is a painfully selfless, celibate, dead gay man, so forgive me if I don’t see Rowling’s revelation as great progress.

Lasting books cease to be their authors’ property; we are now all free to imagine a gay life more whole and fulfilling than the one Rowling gave Dumbledore. But it would have been better if she had just left the old girl to rest in peace.

It’s a witty and entertaining essay and I sympathize with some of its points, but ultimately it fails to justify its thesis.

While it’s true that it would have been more powerful to out Dumbledore within the books themselves, I think Cloud is seriously underestimating the positive value of even this after-the-fact revelation by Rowling. In the world of fandom, what an author says about her work is instantly canon, and is eagerly heard by fans who want to keep the world of the books alive in their imaginations just a little bit longer. I think this revelation may have more power now that the books are a popular and established part of world literature than it would have if it had occurred early in the series.

So I’m glad the old girl is out, and that, to paraphrase Tony Kushner, the world of fantasy only spins forward.

Because if anyone seriously doubts that Rowling’s announcement is doing more good than harm, here’s the proof: something else Google News served up, from the Indian Web site DNA. It’s a post titled “Parents not happy with gay Dumbledore,” featuring comments from some parents in India who are up in arms about the news. Check this out:

Rowling has ruined the charm by saying that Dumbledore is gay. My daughter was curious and asked me why Rowling was calling him gay. I was embarrassed but had no choice but to explain homosexuality to her.

And this:

How does Dumbledore being gay make a difference to the story? Now that Dumbledore’s sexual orientations are out in the open, I’ll have to explain to my kids the meaning of gay.

Parents forced to suddenly drag that shameful subject out into the light! Oh, the horror!

Obviously, it’s not just the kids who are getting a teachable moment here.

Of course, there are voices of enlightenment and tolerance in India, as well:

I have no qualms about Rowling’s revelation of Dumbledore being gay. My son is familiar with the concept of homosexuality what with so many films and shows with gay characters.

… and this, from a “clinical psychologist and psychotherapist”:

Parents must thoroughly understand homosexuality, and the characters in the Harry Potter series of books. They should then be able to explain homosexuality to their children.

For instance, they should tell the child that homosexuality is a result of hormonal changes due to which a person is attracted to the same sex. It is also important to tell the child to respect and accept homosexuality as normal.

… as a side note, I don’t think it’s been established that hormones are the cause of same-sex attraction: I think the biological foundation of homosexuality is more likely related to the structure and wiring of the brain. But the essence of what the commenter is saying here is right on the money.

And I think we can assume that the conversations taking place in India this week are happening pretty much around the world.

Parents who were content to let their children grow up in ignorance and develop the resulting knee-jerk hatred of gay people that inevitably develops from that ignorance are now having to discuss this issue with their children, and justify their condemnation in terms of a beloved character.

Thousands of children all over the globe are having that ignorance shattered, and that hatred nipped in the bud, as they learn that someone they feel they know was gay.

The value of that is incalculable.

So thank you, Ms. Rowling. I haven’t always been your biggest booster in the past, but this time I’m giving you credit where due.

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Of Dykes, Blankets, and Blockheads

October 23rd, 2007 · Books, Comics, Culture, Fiction, Journal, LGBT, Lit

Via Roz, which Dyke to Watch Out for am I?

Which Dyke to Watch Out For Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com
You scored as Mo

You are Mo, a guilt-ridden, kindhearted liberal who doesn’t relax enough. You are ordered to buy a pint of non-organic, dairy ice cream and watch Comedy Central for a week. PBS will still be there when you get back.

Mo
90%

Sparrow
75%

Stuart
60%

Clarice
60%

Toni
50%

Lois
40%

Sydney
35%

 
But then, I already knew that. I’ve been a devoted Alison Bechdel fanboy since I moved to Chicago in the late 80s and started reading Dykes to Watch Out For in Outlines. I bought all the early book collections as they came out, and at some point in the early 90s when one of the local queer bookstores got in a series of buttons of the individual characters, I bought the Mo button, which I used to wear on my jacket for Too Much Light performances. That was during the period in which, based on my music collection and my politics, I decided I’d make a pretty good lesbian myself, it it weren’t for a) being phenotypically male and b) liking dudes so much.

Of course, Bechdel’s recent graphic novel Fun Home takes her work to a whole new level, and if by chance you haven’t read it, you owe yourself the pleasure. I’d been meaning to read it for a while, then last fall Jorjet lent me her copy, and I wound up giving my sister a copy for Christmas.

Fun Home is one of those books that crosses all sorts of boundaries in its appeal, and taps into something larger than the very personal story it tells. This is the mark of a superb writer: Although nearly all of the specifics of Bechdel’s childhood were different from mine, on some hard-to-define level I felt like I was reading about my own childhood. A matter of mood, tone, and perspective, I think. The wonderfully realized characters and the brilliant little nuances of Bechdel’s drawings are the main course; the well-turned allusions to Joyce and classical mythology are icing.

As a bonus, I was reading it on the train one morning last fall, and the young woman in the seat next to me asked what I was reading. She hadn’t heard of it, but the drawings caught her eye and she wrote down the title. We had a nice conversation about graphic novels in general, and she recommended Craig Thompson’s Blankets, which I hadn’t heard of but wound up loving. It tells the story of the author’s fundamentalist upbringing and eventual liberation from the literalistic, inerrantist approach to religion. And as a memoir of a post-1960s Midwestern childhood, it makes a very nice companion read to Fun Home.

Speaking of Dykes to Watch Out For, over at the DTWOF blog, Alison Bechdel has a meditative post about the new biography of Charles Schulz (titled Schulz and Peanuts). She links to Laura Miller’s characteristically thorough review in Salon and a piece in the NY Times about Schulz and “the cult of the suffering artist,” with an accompanying illustration of Charlie Brown as Van Gogh.

All of which have me thinking not only about Schulz himself, but how well any artist comes out of it when subjected to such exhaustive scrutiny — and, as the Times piece notes, the biographer’s need for a strong framing device. Trying to force a person’s entire life into a narrative framework, as any biographer must do, is inevitably going to cause some warping to either the life, the framework, or most likely both. Best to remember that a portrait is never more than a subjective interpretation of its subject, a necessarily flawed if useful lens through which to view someone who’s no longer around.

And if, when we examine the remnants and the record of an artist’s life, the artist seems substantially different from his art, it seems to me that the bridge between the two lies somewhere in the hidden places of the artist’s inner life — an essential but private location we can’t visit ourselves, but can only read about in the guidebook the artist left behind.
 

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The War on Halloween, Anderson Cooper, and Keith Olbermann’s O’Reilly Defense Initiative

October 22nd, 2007 · Climate Change, Comedy, Culture, Journalism, Media, Politics, Video

Here’s a little video roundup to keep you entertained while I try to scrape together the time to post something more substantial.

First off, Mr. Colbert points out the enormous black-and-orange elephant in the living room … the War on Halloween! That’s not going to be very popular in the candy corn belt. 
He really enjoyed that bit about the five stages of pumpkin grief, didn’t he?

Next up, Stephen interviews Anderson Cooper, while Anderson giggles fetchingly. (Also, some stuff about melting ice and vanishing species.) 
Speaking of Anderson Cooper … oh, what the heck. Is the letter G grouchy — or not grouchy?

 
I just love the dreamy way he says “gastroenteritis.” Sigh.

And here’s a very entertaining one from earlier this month that I didn’t get to post because I was hiatus-itizing … Keith Olbermann shares some valuable strategies for defending yourself if you’re ever ambushed by Bill O’Reilly’s stalker-goons.

 
Remember: Malmedy … Mackris … Loofah.
 

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On My Reading List: Naomi Klein’s New Book, The Shock Doctrine

October 16th, 2007 · Activism, Books, Climate Change, Culture, Film, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Infrastructure, Journalism, News, Politics, TV, Video

Shock Doctrine US coverDaily Kos has a review up of Naomi Klein’s new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Harper’s ran an excerpt from The Shock Doctrine in the October issue which was, as the DKos review says, riveting, and immediately put the book on my must-read list. I’m planning to pick up a copy at Women and Children First Books next time I’m over there.

Klein’s 2000 book No Logo forever changed the way I think about branding and advertising — some of you might remember that I devoted an early episode of The Partly Dave Show to pieces inspired by No Logo. Naomi Klein is the kind of writer who helps you to connect dots that you knew were there, but didn’t realize were part of a larger pattern. But that’s just the beginning: Klein then goes on to give you a name for that pattern, fleshes out where it came from and how it got to be so powerful, and helps you see how the pattern has been reshaping the world you live in without your knowledge, and how it’s likely to do so even more dramatically in the future.

Here’s Ms. Klein on Real Time with Bill Maher, talking about the book. This is a great interview, and Klein does a fantastic job of summarizing some of the book’s ideas for Maher’s audience. (Nice line about Giuliani, too.)

 
And here’s a short film inspired by the The Shock Doctrine that Alfonso Cuarón (director of Children of Men and Y Tu Mamá También) scripted in collaboration with Klein, directed by Cuarón’s son Jonas. (There’s also an interview with Cuarón and Klein about how the film came to be.)

 
If you can get your hands on the October Harper’s I highly recommend reading the excerpt there. (Subscribers can read it on the Harper’s Web site.) Or, okay, here’s an open link to the same excerpt on a Canadian Web site.

A couple of key quotes from the excerpt that get at the book’s main thesis, and why it matters:

“Every time a new crisis hits — even when the crisis itself is the direct result of free-market ideology — the fear and disintegration that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic re-engineering. Each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy. The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned, that is on display in Baghdad.”

And:

Not so long ago, disasters were periods of social leveling, rare moments when atomized communities put divisions aside and pulled together. Today they are moments when we are hurled further apart, when we lurch into a radically segregated future where some of us will fall off the map and others ascend to a parallel privatized state, one equipped with well-paved highways and skyways, safe bridges, boutique charter schools, fast-lane airport terminals, and deluxe subways.

In particular, the excerpt lays out how “disaster capitalism” is creating an entire economy, in which enormous private companies like Blackwater take over disaster response and reconstruction, with goods and services concentrated on the wealthy while the poor are left to shift for themselves.

Much more after the jump …
[Read more →]

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The Bowie Video Vault: Live “‘Heroes,'” “My Death,” and “Fashion”

October 16th, 2007 · Culture, Music, New Wave, Video

This is a gorgeous live version of Bowie’s “‘Heroes'” that gets better as it goes. A really nice contemporary-sounding take on the song (so good I don’t even miss the synth, which is saying something), and a very graceful performance of it by Mr. Jones. The YouTube page doesn’t say where it’s taken from — if anyone out there knows, speak up!

 
While I’m doing live Bowie, I know I’ve linked to this before, but this live version of Bowie performing Brel’s “My Death” with pianist Mike Garson (the man whose rococo piano flourishes gave the Aladdin Sane album its rich and fabulous texture) still takes my breath away. Radically different from the familiar Ziggy concert film version, but no less powerful in its more rhythmic and sensual way.

 
Finally: If, like me, you think of Bowie’s “Fashion” every time you hear “Girls & Boys” by Blur, this is for you: Bowie performing “Fashion” with Damon Albarn.

 
Beep beep.

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On The Christians and The Gays, and Keeping the Flock Together

October 15th, 2007 · Activism, Blogs, Culture, Journal, LGBT, Music, Politics, Religion, Spirituality

pink flockSo there was a new study written up this past week, supplying evidence that young people in America are rejecting Christianity because they see it as “hypocritical, judgmental, and anti-gay.”

The vast majority of non-Christians — 91% — said Christianity had an anti-gay image, followed by 87% who said it was judgmental and 85% who said it was hypocritical.

Such views were held by smaller percentages of the active churchgoers, but the faith still did not fare well: 80% agreed with the anti-gay label, 52% said Christianity is judgmental, and 47% declared it hypocritical.

Kinnaman said one of the biggest surprises for researchers was the extent to which respondents — one in four non-Christians — said that modern-day Christianity was no longer like Jesus.

“It started to become more clear to us that what they’re experiencing related to Christianity is some of the very things that Jesus warned religious people about,” he said. “Which is, avoiding removing the log from your own eye before trying to take the speck out of someone else’s.”

One of the problems here is that right-wing fundamentalists have spent decades appropriating the term Christian, defining it as if it applied only to themselves and their narrow views — and the media have not only allowed them to do it, but actively assisted. Liberal and progressive Christian traditions have been silenced and marginalized in political discourse. And so the result is that the term Christian has developed unfair connotations of bigotry and small-mindedness that it doesn’t really deserve.

Here in Chicago, you can find Protestant churches of just about every denomination, from Baptist to Lutheran to Presbyterian, proudly displaying rainbow stickers on their marquees to affirm their gay-welcoming spirit. And of course the gap between how American Catholics feel about homosexuality versus the edicts of the Vatican is well-covered ground. The American Episcopalian church has made so much progress overcoming homophobia that they’re now on the verge of schism with homophobic Episcopalians in Africa, who alas, have much further to travel on the subject.

Fortunately, we do have some smart, progressive Christian voices in the blogosphere these days — and maybe over time they’ll manage to help get the good news out that being Christian doesn’t have to mean being homophobic.

I can’t help thinking of my first Joan Baez concert, at the Peoria Civic Center circa 1985. At the end of a brilliant concert, peppered with Joan’s drolly hilarous anecdotes and pointed political commentary, she led the whole audience in singing “Amazing Grace.” As the last notes died away, she waited a beat and then fired off, “Take that, Jerry Falwell!” before stalking offstage to thunderous applause. I’ve been in love with her ever since.

I was a college freshman at the time and probably at or near my peak of atheism and religion-rejection. I’d kicked Christianity out of my life around the time I came out to myself, and Joan’s concert was for me a powerful demonstration that there was a vibrant Christian Left tradition alive and well in America — a strain of Christianity that seemed more in sync with the actual teachings of Jesus himself, with whom I felt I’d never quarreled. After all, to be a right-wing conservative Christian, you have to pretty much ignore Jesus’ teachings on war, peace and violence, poverty and wealth, the death penalty, and compassion for criminals and society’s outcasts — and for that matter, not care too deeply about being good stewards of God’s creation.

Nonetheless, they’ve controlled the microphone in America’s religious discourse for a long time now. You have to listen a little harder to hear the voices of the Christian Left through the corporate media’s filter, but they’re there, and they help keep me grounded.

In other news, I’ve always been a big fan of Barney Frank, but I’m so disappointed in the congressman from Massachusetts this week, as he continues to aggressively defend the attempts to pass ENDA without coverage for transpeople. His lack of comprehension about this is downright baffling. This is not 1997. Back in the 90s there were still plenty of gay people who didn’t “get” the transgendered thing, but there’s been a lot of learning done over the past decade. Even those of us who don’t personally know transpeople have seen Boys Don’t Cry, we’ve watched Moira turn into Max on The L Word, and for pete’s sake Anna Madrigal is one of the guiding saints of our community.

We are one LGBT community now, and you can’t peel us apart. An attack on one of those letters is an attack on all of them, and if it takes a little longer to protect all four of them than it would to protect an elite subset of three, so be it — because our solidarity is our power, and there are no back seats on our bus.

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The Golden Compass: Official Trailer and Featurette on Daemons

October 12th, 2007 · Books, Culture, Fantasy, Fiction, Film, Lit, Music, News, Science Fiction, TV, Ursula K. Le Guin, Video

The official/final trailer for The Golden Compass is out, and the more I see of this film the better it looks. I am somewhere between guardedly optimistic and completely geeked out.

 
Also, here’s a nice little featurette called “Defining Daemons,” which looks at the animal companion-spirits that accompany the characters on their journeys.

 
Personally, I think Hester the rabbit steals the show.

Finally, there’s a statement from Philip Pullman up on HisDarkMaterials.org, saying:

I’m very happy with the work the filmmakers have done, and no-one wants this film to succeed more, or believes in it more firmly, than I do.

… which is very encouraging. I seem to remember early on reading a quote from Pullman saying that the filmmakers hadn’t consulted him very much, which I had found worrisome. So I’m glad to know that at the end of the process Pullman is happy with the film, and we aren’t going to be subjected to something like the way Ursula K. Le Guin’s work has been dragged through the mud by arrogant and incompetent filmmakers in recent years: A&E’s abominable version of The Lathe of Heaven, the Sci-Fi channel’s execrable “adaptation” of the first two Earthsea books (Le Guin tells the whole sorry story of the “generic McMagic movie” they made in savagely droll style here), and for that matter the disappointing Goro Miyazaki Earthsea film.

In all of those cases, the fact that the filmmakers completely shut Le Guin out of the process and ignored her input resulted in disastrously bad final products. (By contrast, the 1980 public television version of The Lathe of Heaven, in which Le Guin was allowed to fully participate, remains one of the best science fiction films ever made. And, not incidentally, was the film that inspired me to buy my first set of Beatles 8-track tapes — it’s still the best use of a Beatles song in any film or book ever. It’s too bad that they had to replace the sublime Ringo-riffic original with an inferior cover version of the song in order to be allowed to release it on DVD, but at least the idea of it is still there.)

Finally, confidential to Jane in NC, since I know you’ll be reading this post: the Lawn Ornament Theater Watership Down piece is on the way soon. I’m hoping to take some photos of the “actors” to accompany it …

***
UPDATE: The brilliance of Hester the rabbit-daemon is apparently courtesy of Kathy Bates. Yeah, that works.

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Standard Bearers from the Past

October 12th, 2007 · Books, Culture, History, Human Rights, Lit, Meta, News, Politics, Science Fiction, Torture

chess piecesSo yeah, I haven’t really tended to be one of those fancy-schmancy bloggers who manage to blog about things on the same actual day they happen. My schedule tends to keep me careening along in panic for several days at a go, and then I manage to steal a few hours to spit out a few blog posts, and then I start storing up links and snippets of things I’ve read until the next time I get a chance to blog.

But what with all the moving and the five-alarm copyediting project, there’s been so little bloggery around these parts the last few weeks I barely know where to begin. My links and snippets are piled up so high they rival the stacks of cardboard boxes in the room that may one day be my TV room, if I ever manage to create enough space in there.

Well — how about this, for starters. This piece is almost a week old, but I think it’s definitely one of the past week’s must-read stories.

So, in case you missed it: Cheney, Bush, and their cheering section at Fox News have spent most of the decade arguing that see, we have to torture people in order to Defeat Evil and Keep America Safe. But everything will be okay if we just don’t call it torture or admit that we’re doing it! Okay?

But now a group of US veterans have stepped forward to politely point out that they never found it necessary to torture anyone when they successfully interrogated Nazis during World War II.

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners’ cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

… The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

“During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone,” said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. “We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

I can’t help thinking of something Isaac Asimov once wrote:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Unless you’re very, very incompetent. In which case, it’s probably the first and only thing you try.

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Breakthrough

October 7th, 2007 · Journal, Meta

I just found my alarm clock!

Who knows what I’ll discover next? My toothbrush? Checkbook? Antique riding crop?

Maybe even some time to blog …

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Update on the Movery

October 2nd, 2007 · Cats, Chicago, Culture, Internet, Journal, Kiwi, Meta, Mr. Blue, Pets

ErnestineOcPot is still on hiatus for at least a couple-few more days. But yesterday, down in the comments to the hiatus post, Miss Rubbery Nun asked how I was doing and I thought I’d repost my answer here for anyone else wondering how the move went:

Survived. Just barely. No thanks to AT&T, who, in their classic brilliant style, decided to transfer my landline to my empty new apartment two days before they were supposed to, leaving me with no Internet access (I had DSL) and no home answering machine for the weekend. I’m on dial-up for the next couple of days, till my new cable modem gets installed. I got about eight hours of sleep spread out across the last three days, and I think I lost 10 lbs. in 48 hours from the continuous stairclimbing.

But I’m here. And the cats seem to be finally calming down a little. They were tharn for the first 24 hours and once they ventured out of their carriers Mr. Blue kept hissing at Kiwi like he’d never seen him before. But last night they turned the corner, I think, and are starting to realize that they have not been delivered to the Land of Dragons. Yet.

A few additional notes:

The prior tenant left a few things behind in the kitchen, including a half-full carton of eggs. However — and this is why I love my neighborhood — they were cage-free organic eggs. So all right, then. For that I’ll overlook the Grape Nuts in the pantry. Mister.

Also, if you live in Chicago and you need movers, book USA Moving and Storage. Don’t even consider anyone else. DJs Dave & Kristine recommended them and they were stunning. I’ve used professional movers five times now and USA Moving and Storage were the first company that didn’t try to deceive, shortchange, bully, or intimidate me in any way. Just four amazing guys who cheerfully worked at lightning speed — it was almost surreal to watch them move, like a speeded-up film sometimes. My brother-in-law and I stood watching one guy wrap up large furniture items in protective plastic, and it was like watching a spider wrap up a fly in its web, only faster.

And they never gave me so much as a stray reproachful look, despite being asked to carry dozens of 40-lb. boxes of books down three flights and up two. (The guys from the last company I hired — the company that screwed me over the worst — actually lectured me and tried to make me feel guilty for owning so many books. I kept thinking, umm, yes, books are heavy. That’s why I’m paying you guys money to move me instead of inflicting this on my friends. Of course, they wound up only moving half my stuff and the rest got inflicted on my friends after all — shout-outs to Jim S. and Val, and anyone else there that night, if you’re reading! — but at least I tried.)

(Why did they only move half my stuff, you’re asking? When I booked the move, the Nice Lady in the office of the Shake You Down Moving Co. assured me repeatedly that if the move went over the amount of cash I had available, they’d bill me for the rest and give me 30 days to pay. When the moving guys showed up, suddenly the terms changed to Cash Only Right Now or We Break Your Head — Thanks for Booking the Shake You Down Moving Company! After some discussion, the guys magnanimously decided that the cash I had in my pockets was worth about half my stuff.)

Anyway, did I link to that wonderful Chicago moving company USA Moving and Storage? Here, let me link to them again. Just don’t book them the same day I’m moving next time, because I’ll throw myself out a window if they’re already booked solid when I call.

And let me reiterate the moral of the post from yesterday: Don’t give AT&T any more power over your life than you have to. I’ve long wondered whether DSL or cable modem is the better choice — many considerations both pro and con for each — but this past weekend answered that question for me. Because if your phone line gets arbitrarily taken away due to a bureacratic screwup by a huge, arrogant corporation that doesn’t have to provide good customer service because, as Lily Tomlin used to say, we’re the phone company — well, in that case, you’ll lose your Internet connection, too.

And The Phone Company will gladly keep you on hold for 45 minutes of mobile phone time, when you should be packing because the movers are coming tomorrow, and then spend another half hour of your desperately needed time cheerfully refusing to resolve your problem or do anything to make up for how badly they’ve screwed up your life, or even admit that the problem is entirely 100% their fault with no collaboration on your part.

And the next time you call them to try to resolve a problem, after they’ve refused to help you they’ll end the call by trying to convince you that you should order even more “services” from AT&T — give them power over your long distance service and Internet connection and lord knows what else — so they can arrogantly and unapologetically screw you over in those areas of your life as well.

Anyway, hello RCN cable modem. I had RCN for dial-up in the early 00s, before the DSL line, and while I have no illusions about RCN’s customer service, at least I’m not putting all my eggs in Ernestine’s basket. (And I have to say that the guy who just showed up to install my RCN connection was a tall-dark-and-handsome Central European fellow who cheerfully discussed Milan Kundera with me for a couple of minutes after efficiently installing my modem. So there is that.)

Oh, and thanks for the tag, Mr. Hall. I’ll get to that soon …

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High Ate Us: OcPot on Temporary Leave of Absence Till Early October-ish

September 24th, 2007 · Food, Journal, Meta

dragonAs you can probably deduce from Kiwi’s guest post a few days ago, the packing operations have escalated from Major to Serious. It’s now less than a week till the movers come, and all holy heck is being unleashed. Mountains of books, CDs, and various other items are indeed being dismantled and certain dodgy pieces of furniture have been relocated to a nearby alley.

In regard to Kiwi’s specific complaints, especially regarding the “dragon,” I would like to point out that the new dragon (a Kenmore canister model) that I recently purchased at Sears is significantly quieter than the old dragon, not that the boys seem to notice or appreciate that difference. I also do my best to warn them when the dragon is about to appear: Okay, guys, I’ll say, going to be doing a bit of vacuuming now, try not to take it personally, okay?

Sometimes I even try to shoo them from the room where the dragon is going to manifest its evil ahead of time, but this never works. They just look at me like I’m crazy right up until the moment the monster I have prophesied appears. Cassandra must have felt much the same.

At any rate, speaking of things I have prophesied, as I head into this last week of beat-the-calendar packing, I need to press the pause button on Ocelopotamus until after the move.

So, please know that the lack of activity here for the next week or two is temporary, and that your favorite imaginary tree-climbing pachyderm should be back online sometime around the second week of October, once Kiwi and Mr. Blue and I are settled in our new abode, and have managed to reconnect ourselves to the Interwebs.

Oh, and: For new visitors here who may be unfamiliar with Kiwi, there’s a recent photo of him here.

In the meantime, while the site is on hiatus, I got you a little something to keep you entertained, which I spotted at the grocery store last week:

entertainment crackers

… “Entertainment Crackers”!

Mind you, I’m not sure exactly how they’re supposed to entertain you — what, do they do impressions or something? Or maybe they dance around in little feather boas singing “Let Me Entertain You,” like Ginger Grant? And then Mary Ann serves you a coconut cream pie. Mmm, coconut.

Well, keep an eye on them. They’re bound to do something interesting sooner or later. After all, the box wouldn’t lie, would it?
 

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Video of the Week

September 24th, 2007 · Culture, Foreign Policy, History, Journalism, Media, News, Politics, TV, Video

In case you missed it, Keith Olbermann was on fire this week. His special comment was possibly the most powerful I’ve seen him deliver. And his ultimate point about the sacred dividing line between the civilian leadership and the military is one that needs to be heard more often — too many people don’t seem to understand that life under martial law begins with the loss of that separation.

Be sure to watch through to the end — that’s where the real fireworks are.

 

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Nodilogue (and Blogscratching)

September 22nd, 2007 · Blogs, Chicago, Culture, Fringe, Internet, Journal, Performance

MadgeI’m a little behind the times with this, but I wanted to offer some belated shoutings-out and linkback lurve to my fellow participants from The Nod this past Wednesday evening.

Don Hall and Joe Janes did a great job of hosting the evening, making everyone feel welcome and creating the opportunity for the gaggle to mingle a little before the actual blog readings commenced. (Note: When a gaggle mingles, it can create either a mangle or a giggle, depending on how expertly you manage the process. It should not be attempted without a first aid kit and the jaws of life close at hand.)

In fact, Joe and Don cleverly broke the ice by putting together a fascinating art installation in the hospitality lounge of the Uptown Writer’s Space, entitled “Pringles with Smeary Blue Writing on Them and Assorted Miniature Cookies in a Variety of Oddly Shaped Plastic Compartments: an Investigational Juxtaposition” which had us all merrily discussing the semiotics of snack foods and illegible movie trivia.

And eventually we all had a great time reading from our blogs, despite the fact that there’s really no good way to read a YouTube video aloud. As a matter of fact, the bloggers in the “open mike” first half were every bit as good as the ones in the “featured” second half, so the whole evening was entertaining and just made you want to Be a Better Blogger. Sort of like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, only bloggier and without so many plastic utensils and things.

In addition to Don and Joe, participants and attendees for the evening included Nat Topping, Thea Lux, Lindsay Muscato, Big Calabaza, Greg Wendling, Amy Guth, Keri Myslinksi, and Paul Rekk.

But for my money the evening was stolen by a feisty 84-year-old lady blogger named Madge, whose work was read in absentia. She couldn’t be with us because she was eating a sandwich. Also, making sure she wasn’t going to get tipped in a canoe anytime soon.

Don and Joe are planning to make this a regular event, so keep an eye on the official Nod blog.

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Observations on the Recent and Continuing Unpleasantness

September 20th, 2007 · Cats, Culture, Essays, Journal, Kiwi, Mr. Blue

Disturbing changes are taking place in the world, and we do not know what they signify. We are afraid that something terrible is going on, some fundamental destructive process that is entirely outside of our experience. You can read this in our wide-eyed stares, our defensive crouches, our tendency to go into hiding for longer and longer periods of time.

The clumsy and unpredictable god of this place seems to have gone out of his mind. The familiar landscapes we know and cherish are being destroyed, dismantled, rearranged before our eyes. Entire mountains disappear on a whim; the caverns where we seek refuge are excavated and turned open to the light. New towers spring up to loom over us, placed inauspiciously so that we cannot climb and conquer them. There are less soft places and more hard places. We’re not sure where to turn for comfort or certainty.

Also, the dragon comes more often now, with its terrifying and unearthly howl that destroys all composure and routs us from our nests. These rampages used to occur only once or twice a month; now the dragon wages daily campaigns of terror against us. The god walks behind the dragon as always, seeming to approve of its screaming and the whirlwinds that spring up in its wake. We wonder how he can ally himself with this abomination, why he does not seem to react against — or even perceive — its basic and inherent evil.

And: I cannot say for sure, because I do not count very high, but it is my suspicion that there are less toys around than there used to be. So far we still have plenty to eat, but given how destabilized our environment has become, how can we feel confident that this will not change?

There have been more strangers lately, too, and they always bring a plague of noise and clomping and raised voices, while engaging in all sorts of pointless and inappropriate activities. I do not trust any strangers since the Long War many seasons ago: For two weeks, all day long, an aggressive band of outlanders invaded and demolished our home, tearing every window out of every wall, covering all the soft places with filthy tarps, and leaving peculiar chemical smells in the air.

I can’t begin to describe to you the crashing and the pounding and the screeching of infernal engines that drove all sanity out of the world for hour upon unending hour. My adoptive brother and I had barely begun to forget one day’s horrors before the next were upon us. And though eventually the invaders left, and peace was restored, it was a hard lesson in the ultimate vulnerability of our situation.

It must be noted that the clumsy god did nothing to halt any of this. He is no reliable protector of the peace, and no comfort in times of crisis. Surely he could have employed the dragon to drive these vandals from our demesne if he had wanted to: but the dragon is never used to protect our borders, only to promote fear and confusion within them.

My brother and I have lived in this place so long, with the clumsy god, that we don’t even remember how we came to be here. I have dim dreams sometimes of another country, where there were many others like my brother and me, and a great many others like the god with their huge faces and grasping hands. I am always small and helpless in these dreams, and after a while all those indistinct hands and voices kaleidoscope into nonsense. But they are only dreams: I have no idea where they come from. The truth is, all I know is this one familiar place, the home my brother and I have always shared.

Now we are afraid that this recent erratic behavior is a sign of some greater catastrophe looming behind it—some awful impending fate that the god knows of but we don’t.

And I confess: I’m afraid that we are going to lose the world entirely. That soon the sky itself will be torn from above our heads, and the walls of the world peeled away to reveal nothing but an infinite barren void. That we will be chased endlessly from cold star to cold star by an army of howling dragons and brutish barbarians, never resting, never warm and fed again, while the god does nothing to help us.

Right now he is sitting quietly in his usual place, tapping out nonsensical rhythms with his claws: his usual way of amusing himself. My brother sprawls at his feet, sleeping. In this moment of quiet, one could almost believe that the world will continue as it always has. But I do not think so. I watch him warily, and wonder what’s ahead.
 

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