Eris Works In Chartreuse Ways

For once, I have a smidge of faith in modern education. (h/t Boing Boing)

Of course parents are reacting with "horror" to a little bit of chaos being introduced into their nice orderly testing system. How dare their children be exposed to anything creative? How dare they be made aware of the fact that there's anything going on outside the box?

“I think it’s weird that they put such a silly question on a state test. What were they thinking?” said Bruce Turley, 14, an eighth-grader at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School.

The important thing is what you're thinking, Bruce, not what they're thinking. That one question probably did more to prepare you for life than the entire rest of the test.

Also, the person at Pearson who decided to sneak even some watered-down Daniel M Pinkwater into that test deserves a raise. And then should probably be let go. And then get another raise.

I Will Miss Those Crazy Titles

Harlan Ellison says he's on his last legs, in advance of an appearance at a Madison skiffy convention.

"The truth of what's going on here is that I'm dying," says Ellison, by phone. "I'm like the Wicked Witch of the West -- I'm melting. I began to sense it back in January."

His best days as a writer might be behind him, but he can still crank out of some good stuff, and his gift for awesomely crazy titles hasn't left him. Plus, Harlan has always been the cantankerous old man every other cantankerous old man wanted to grow up to be. How can you not love this?:

My wife has instructions that the instant I die, she has to burn all the unfinished stories. And there may be a hundred unfinished stories in this house, maybe more than that. There's three quarters of a novel. No, these things are not to be finished by other writers, no matter how good they are. It could be Paul Di Filippo, who is just about the best writer in America, as far as I'm concerned. Or God forbid, James Patterson or Judith Krantz should get a hold of The Man Who Looked for Sweetness, which is sitting up on my desk, and try to finish it, anticipating what Ellison was thinking -- no! Goddammit. If Fred Pohl wants to finish all of C.M. Kornbluth's stories, that's his business. If somebody wants to take the unfinished Edgar Allan Poe story, which has now gone into the public domain, and write an ending that is not as good as Poe would have written, let 'em do whatever they want! But not with my shit, Jack. When I'm gone, that's it. What's down on the paper, it says 'The End,' that's it. 'Cause right now I'm busy writing the end of the longest story I've ever written, which is me.

Keep on raging, Harlan. The world will be a less interesting place without you.

The Dumbest Thing I Have Ever Read

OK, maybe not dumbest... "most oblivious" might be the best description.

DougJ over at BJ made reference to this blog making fun of Ayn Rand (remind me sometime to tell you about my Ayn Rand sitcom idea, starring Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory). In the comments to the post Doug specifically mentioned, I found this comment:

I can see your guys' points. The girl I recommended Atlas to suffers from very low self-esteem and passive acceptance of abuse from those around her. I figured it'd be a good read and an inspiration to start making some positive changes - especially since the main character is a female.

Yes, you read that correctly. Some Rand fan recommended Atlas Shrugged to a woman that he claimed to like, who he thought has major self-esteem issues (although if you read the whole thread, poor Jay seems to have a massive white knight complex so that's probably redundant), because he thought Dagny Taggert might be a role model for her.

There are not enough heads and not enough hands in the entire universe to adequately facepalm that one.

An Idea

This post at Volokh gives me an idea: adapt and update Dead Souls to set it in the crazy 21st century milieu of subprime mortgage-backed securities.

UPDATE: I see KevinM in the comments at Volokh had a similar thought...

At the Mountains of Malkin

Earlier today over at Balloon Juice, JC poked fun at Michelle Malkin's use of impenetrable acronyms, which in the comments partially devolved into an extended Lovecraftian riff that still cracks me up when I think about it. Iä! Iä! Lim'baugh Fhtagn!

For the record, my favorite scene in On the Road To Celephais is the one where Bob Hope gets into the yowling match with the cats, and Dorothy Lamour has to hurry them out of Ulthar ahead of the angry mob.

Sigh. They don't make movies like that any more, do they?

From Roger

Whatever else happens, life always goes on. I hope Roger's able to make it up again in September. It's not like I know him personally or anything, but seeing him in line and nodding hello is one of the familiar rituals of the film fest.

Finally!

After two days of trying I was able to get through to this work of pure genius:

WALTER
In sooth, then, faithful friend, this was a rug of value? Thou wouldst call it not a rug among ordinary rugs, but a rug of purpose? A star in a firmament, in step with the fashion alike to the Whitsun morris-dance? A worthy rug, a rug of consequence, sir?

THE KNAVE
It was of consequence, I should think; verily, it tied the room together, gather’d its qualities as the sweet lovers’ spring grass doth the morning dew or the rough scythe the first of autumn harvests. It sat between the four sides of the room, making substance of a square, respecting each wall in equal harmony, in geometer’s cap; a great reckoning in a little room. Verily, it transform’d the room from the space between four walls presented, to the harbour of a man’s monarchy.

Truly we doth live in the Age of the Mashup, although really this is just one (genius) step removed from 10 Things I Hate About Her and the like. (Holy crap, who did the casting for that? I always forget Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in it as well as Heath Ledger, and both before they were considered anything. That's arguably the James Dean and the Monty Cliff of their generation right there.)

That reminds me... I've got a script to finish. The zeitgeist seems just about ready for it.

Beyond the Veil

I'm slowly making my way through The Souls of Black Folk, and a great big idea for a short story whomped me over the head after I read DuBois' piece on going back to Tennessee to catch up on the families he'd met while he was teaching up in the hills.

Hmm. Educated man heads to rural area cut off from 'civilization'... encounters weirdness and resistance from the locals... a young girl dies... he gets out, but is irrevocably changed and haunted by his experiences...

Sounds like the basis for a Lovecraftian tale to me.

The trick will be creating the right type of Mythosy horror for young DuBois to brush up against, and to retroactively inform the rest of his life. The metaphors have to be perfect.

Edumacatin' Meself

Rather than dive headlong into Ulysses I've decided to work my way up to it.

First bit of 'training' on the list is a collection I've meant to read for a long time but never gotten around to until now, W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk.

Expect some interesting blog posts over the next couple of weeks as my brain processes it.

Reciting to the Choir

So up here in Sing City, our public transit system has been running a series of ads called 'Poetry on the Way' for years and years. (I used to kill time on longer subway rides by writing rebuttal poems to some of the more egregiously lame offerings). One of the newer poems just bugs the hell out of me, though, even moreso than most. The poem is called 'The Creatures', by Glen Downie:

Caged in your sleep may the great beasts
bless and protect you always the bears of
loving kindness the wise Blakean tigers
of wrath & the horses of
instruction Dream untroubled
by paradox of proportion - the ladybug
bigger than the cat the mouse
as large as the elephant
& wearing pants In their all-forgiving silence
may they love you in ways we fail to
these friends of first refuge
the peaceable kingdom
where the lion lies down with the lamb

OK, sure, it's pretty banal. But the phrase that drives me a bit spare every time I see it is 'wise Blakean tigers'.

The point of the whole campaign is to bring poetry to the masses, right? Entertain and enlighten and all that?

So why would you pick a poem that makes such an insular, exclusionary reference as 'Blakean tigers'?

Think about it. I know who William Blake was, and what his most famous poem was. But if you don't, the line makes no sense. Even if "tiger, tiger, burning bright" is rattling around in your head somewhere as a cultural reference, if you don't know who wrote it you've got no reason to associate it with 'The Creatures'.

In short, it's a reference that serves no purpose other than to create a barrier between the poet and the general public. If you get the reference, you're "in the club"; if not, you aren't worthy. Which might be fine for a poet and a poem in some, maybe even most, common poetic situations but is a remarkably stupid strategy for a poem that should, in theory, be aimed at a wider audience.

The most frustrating thing about it to me? It's completely unnecessary.

Downie could just as easily have said "bright-burning tigers" instead. Same meter, same number of syllables, same reference to Blake... but if you aren't someone who possesses the specialized knowledge that William Blake wrote 'The Tiger', the line still communicates something.

Something other than "I'm smarter than you, nyah nyah", that is.

(Please note the new indictment. Maybe having it in the arsenal will encourage me to read a bit more than I have been recently. I'm probably overdue for my next attempt to tackle Ulysses anyway.)