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By Joshua, March 25, 2010 5:28 am

Many Americans, but certainly not all, are angry about the passage of the health care bill.  Some snippets from a NYTimes article about this anger:

At least two Congressional district offices were vandalized and Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a senior Democrat from New York, received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.

Ms. Slaughter also reported that a brick was thrown through a window of her office in Niagara Falls, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, said Monday that her Tucson office was vandalized after the vote.

Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan and a central figure in the measure’s abortion provisions, reported receiving threatening phone calls.Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking black lawmaker in the House, said he received an anonymous fax showing the image of a noose.

John Boehner likes the anger, but not the way it has manifested:

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, spoke out against violence but encouraged Americans to continue to find ways to counter the legislation. “I know many Americans are angry over this health care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change.”

Who is responsible for the anger?  Well, there is no one answer.  Some folks hate the bill, some folks hate all American politicians, and some folks hate just the Democrats.  Some Democrats are charging that the Republican leadership is to blame, in part, for violence:

Democrats also raised questions about some of the imagery and phrases being employed by Republicans against the Democratic architects and backers of the measure, noting that a Republican National Committee Web site urging supporters to fire Ms. Pelosi has her surrounded by flames. A Facebook page of Sarah Palin singling out Democratic members for defeat because of their votes defines their districts by the crosshairs of a weapon’s sight.

Republicans dismissed objections to the imagery. “The message of our Web site is clear, it is time to put Nancy Pelosi out of a job,” said Katie Wright, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Some Democrats are complaining that Republicans are unable to focus on other parts of their jobs, like showing up to committee meetings:

Senate Democrats accused Republicans of delay tactics and of forcing the cancellation of unrelated committee sessions over anger about the health measure.  Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Claire McCaskill of Missouri were furious that Republican objections prevented hearings Wednesday on the Pentagon budget and the training of Afghan police officers.

“The obstruction has become mindless, it’s become purposeless,” Mr. Levin said.

Anger, and hate.  Campaign literature and other political advertisements often have images of flames and weapons.  I got many of these in the 2004 and 2006 elections delivered to my door (I kept them; they’re fascinating in their depiction of guns and violence to make political points).  I think such imagery has no place in peaceable democratic politics, as purportedly what we have in America.  I am not convinced that such imagery creates violent actions; nor do I think it facilitates violence; the folks who threaten lawmakers with violence would do so without prompting from the political leadership.  They do it because they lack a sound moral center.  I do see such imagery as a reflection of American society’s violence fetish. (It is not just America, of course; Avatar would not have made 2 billion dollars if it was just America who liked shoot-’em-ups).  I argue that American politicians should recognize this, and strive to be above such imagery.

What place does anger have in American democracy?  Apparently, now, an exalted place.  Boehner likes the anger.  Dems liked the anger over Bush’s policies; it helped them win the House and Senate.  Anger is useful for politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike.  Everyday Americans get angry when the policies and politics don’t swing their way.  But democracy is supposedly a long-term process.  Eventually, the Dems will lose power and the Repubs will be back.  Dems will get angry over whatever happens then.  It is vital that the anger, which is always there, passed like a medicine ball from one side to the other, does not become the violence portrayed in political leaders’ campaign advertisements, or the violence the morally-bereft advocate for.

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By Joshua, March 3, 2010 4:20 am

These new pictures of the Earth are stunning.  They are much better than the picture of the Earth I took a week ago:

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By Joshua, January 25, 2010 7:50 am

Happy birth-day to David, the The Waterglass Editor Emeritus who is busily celebrating his birth-day on his new blog.

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By Joshua, November 12, 2009 4:44 am

The Mrs. and I saw the world premiere of 2012, the latest end-of-the-world film by Roland Emmerich.  Never before had I wanted the end of the world to come so quickly.  To say this movie is trite garbage is to miss the point: the point is amazing special effects, manipulative-tear-jerker scenes about saying goodbye to loved ones, and more amazing special effects.  I was entertained for the first one and a half hours, but the last hour drags by so unenduringly that, really, you can’t wait for the end of the world.

The plot without spoilers:  An international network of scientists discover that the world will end in the year 2012.  Solar flares and stuff will heat up the Earth’s core, causing the cataclysmic chain reaction destruction.  Meanwhile, characters from broken families are going about their business, until one of them learns the truth from a seeming nutjob out in Yellowstone park (played “brilliantly” by Woody Harrelson) who, like that guy from “A Beautiful Mind” pieced together the pieces and made all the necessary connections.  Mayhem ensues.

John Cusack stars, with Oliver Platt and Chiwetel Ejiofor.  If it wasn’t for Platt and Cusack and Harrelson, this movie would have been completely awful.  Ejiofor was good, but its hard to play a scientist, and he didn’t stand out.  There is a Russian guy who was also very good, if not a little hard to understand. 

I saw the film opening day here in Warsaw.  It was Poland’s Independence Day, no joke.  The theatre was packed. 

Some observations: 

1.  Considering how many digital people hung for dear life or fell out of digital windows as the digital buildings crumbled and exploded, I guess we’re are a long way from 9/11, when such images were so perverse most news outlets refused to show real people who hung on for dear life or fell out of real windows as the real buildings crumbled and exploded. 

2.  Considering the mass carnage of 2012, I got the feeling that the director really hates the world and is playing out his kill-just-about-everybody fantasies.

3. Considering that every main character either (a) came from a broken family (estranged, separated, divorced, widowed) or (b) or no family at all, I also got the feeling that Emmerich is not much into the traditional family model. 

4.  Most strikingly, for me, was that every time a character prayed to the Lord, they died in some horrible way: whether it was the Jesus statue in Rio falling on people or the Vatican collapsing and killing the faithful who gathered ’round the Pope, to more micro-prayers, it was clear from Emmerich that in his world, the Lord has no intention of saving those who pray.  This severe anti-religion stance would not be so striking, but it kept happening over and over without advancing the plot in any way.  Emmerich wanted to hammer that point home, and he did.

Folks, the 2012 website is more interesting than the movie itself, especially “The Experience” page.  The idea of a whole new world after apocalypse is interesting, but 2012 only glances at the possibilities.   I suppose Emmerich is saving the good ideas for 2012 the television series. 

The Waterglass is 15 percent full on this one.

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By Joshua, November 10, 2009 5:00 pm

The following is a review of Infinite Jest, a novel by David Foster Wallace published in 1996 and clocking in at 1,079 pages.  It took me two months to read it.  Do I recommend it?  There’s a big caveat to reading this book that I feel people should know, but I save it for my review proper.  Since my review has spoilers, the rest is below the fold.

Continue reading 'Book Review: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace'»

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By Joshua, August 18, 2009 4:42 am

That’s the title of LeRoy Steven’s compilation of musical screams:

A few months ago a peculiar item called “Favorite Recorded Scream” began to trickle into New York City record stores. Pressed on 12-inch vinyl in an edition of 500, it has little on its red cover except a list of 74 songs, each linked to a Manhattan record shop. But anyone curious enough to buy it would find that the record is exactly what it says it is: an audio catalog of scream snippets — each a few seconds long — chosen by employees at various record stores in Manhattan. It includes samples of recordings by the Stooges, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, De La Soul, Slayer, Bjork and dozens of others. Spliced together on Side 1 into a continuous, bumpy howl, the whole thing lasts only 3 minutes 32 seconds.

Its creator is LeRoy Stevens, a 25-year-old artist.  Last fall Mr. Stevens moved to New York from Chicago, and to get his geographical bearings he plotted a map of every record shop in Manhattan and vowed to bring to each a questionnaire asking for every clerk’s favorite scream and why.

Experienced as a piece of music, “Favorite Recorded Scream” offers a riveting if unsettling tour through decades of popular music. Buddy Holly’s carefree whoop in “Oh Boy!” goes right into James Brown’s sensual falsetto in “The Payback,” and the Swedish metal band Meshuggah is not far behind with the guttural cry of “I.” Throughout, favorites like the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” repeat at somewhat regular intervals, as if cleansing the scream-palate with a spritz of familiarity. The clerks’ ballots (collected on Mr. Stevens’s Web site, leroystevens.info) contextualize the range of expression in the music, from the Slits’ free-spirited “Shoplifting” to the “horrific first-person existential crisis” of Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop.”

On Side 2, the 74 screams are separated from one another by 10 seconds of silence, forming an index not unlike the “breaks” compilations used by hip-hop D.J.’s. The record is for sale for about $15 at various stores in Manhattan; some also sell it by mail order through their Web sites.

Mr. Stevens, who works at a bakery and at the Guggenheim Museum (“building walls,” he said), didn’t get copyright clearance to use any of the samples, but he said that for the most part he was not worried. “I read somewhere that you have seven seconds that you can sample,” he said, adding that every sample except one is seven seconds or less. But the fragment from Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” is eight seconds, he said, “and Pink Floyd seems like a band that might sue you.” Entertainment lawyers said there was no law protecting unauthorized commercial use of samples of any length.

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By David, August 1, 2009 9:06 am

PhD student Joel Tenenbaum is ordered by federal court to pay $675,000 to various record labels for illegally downloading and sharing songs.  It seems like a lot.  But is it?

The trial was an almost entirely one-sided affair. Plaintiffs built their case with forensic evidence collected by MediaSentry, which showed that he was sharing over 800 songs from his computer on August 10, 2004. A subsequent examination of his computer showed that Tenenbaum had used a variety of different peer-to-peer programs, from Napster to KaZaA to AudioGalaxy to iMesh, to obtain music for free, starting in 1999. And he continued to infringe, even after his father warned him in 2002 that he would get sued, even after he received a harshly-worded letter from the plaintiffs’ law firm in 2005, even after he was sued in 2007, and all the way through part of 2008.

Tenenbaum is a scofflaw dumbfuck who, like many of his generation, has no respect for copyright.  With Web 2.0 and everyone demanding free content, it’s refreshing to see that the jury in this case stood up for what’s right.

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By Joshua, June 26, 2009 1:05 am

Lead singer of the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson, is dead at 50:

Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums — including “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” — and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most popular artists of all time, died Thursday, CNN has confirmed.  He was 50.  He collapsed at his residence in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, California, about noon Pacific time, suffering cardiac arrest, according to brother Randy Jackson. He died at UCLA Medical Center.  Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said an autopsy would probably be done on the singer Friday, with results expected that afternoon.

“Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said. “To say an ‘icon’ would only give these young people in Harlem a fraction of what he was. He was a historic figure that people will measure music and the industry by.”

He will be missed.

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By David, April 29, 2009 12:27 pm

Angry, pinch-faced woman named one of the 100 most beautiful people:

Michelle Obama, who has achieved celebrity status and has wowed the world as a fashion icon, made the list for the first time.

“I had a father and a brother who thought I was beautiful, and they made me feel that way every single day,” Obama told the magazine.

“I grew up with very strong male role models who thought I was smart and fast and funny, so I heard that a lot. I know that there are many young girls who don’t hear it. But I was fortunate,” she added.

Beauty doesn’t mean what it used to.

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By Joshua, April 14, 2009 2:47 am

Here’s your latest celebrity news!

Legendary music producer Phil Spector found guilty of murder:

After about 30 hours of deliberation, a jury on Monday convicted music producer Phil Spector of second-degree murder in the death of actress Lana Clarkson more than six years ago. Wearing a black suit with a red tie and pocket square, Spector showed no reaction as the verdict was announced. Now 69, he faces a sentence of 18 years to life in prison when he is sentenced May 29.

Legendary actor and director Mel Gibson’s wife files for divorce:

Mel Gibson’s wife of 28 years filed for divorce from the actor last week, citing “irreconcilable differences.”  A spokesman for Mel Gibson, 53, issued a short statement Monday that he said was on behalf of both husband and wife:  “Throughout our marriage and separation we have always strived to maintain the privacy and integrity of our family and will continue to do so.” People.com quoted an unnamed source saying the couple split three years ago, around the time of Gibson’s infamous anti-Semitic rant after he was pulled over in Malibu, California, for drunken driving.

Legendary porn star Marilyn Chambers dies:

Porn icon Marilyn Chambers was found dead in her Los Angeles home Sunday night, but investigators do not suspect foul play, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokesman. A family member found Chambers, 56, in the mobile home where she lived in the Canyon Country area and called police Sunday evening, sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitemore said.  Chambers began her career in 1970 as a model for Ivory Snow soap, and starred two years later in the porn classic “Behind the Green Door.” “She was a really nice girl,” said actor Ron Jeremy, who co-starred with Chambers in adult films starting in the 1970s.  Chambers’ death was a “total shock,” Jeremy said, because they had been scheduled to sign a contract Monday to perform together in an off-Broadway “tongue-in-cheek” re-enactment of the porn classic “Deep Throat.”

Well, that’s it for Celebrity Roundup!  Tune in to The Waterglass for all your Celebrity news!

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By David, March 1, 2009 10:30 am

And now…the rest of the story:

Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona. He was 90.

Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.

“Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation’s history,” Jim Robinson, president of ABC Radio Networks said in a statement. “We will miss our dear friend tremendously and are grateful for the many years we were so fortunate to have known him.”

He will be missed.

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By David, February 22, 2009 9:11 am

The people behind the Oscars are fretting:

The people who put on the Academy Awards are in a flopsweat panic as the hours tick away before this year’s big broadcast, which is having its major rehearsal and technical run-through today. For weeks now, they’ve been begging me and the other journalists who cover the Oscars not to trash the planning and performances for this year’s telecast like we have in years past. Because their frustration and fear is that, if Sunday’s top-to-bottom reworked show can’t bring back viewers after 2008’s sunk to its lowest ratings ever, then nothing will. And the worst part is that not even Hollywood wants to participate in the Oscars anymore.

It goes on, mostly ignoring some simple facts.

First, most people don’t feel a connection to Hollywood.  A bunch of rich actor pukes who earn more in six months than most of us make in ten years, and writers who strike and delay production of our favorite TV shows.  Who wants to see a show hosted by people we don’t like giving awards to other people we don’t like for making movies we don’t watch?  Slumdog Millionaire?  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?  Are you kidding me?  If they want to congratulate each other, there’s no reason why they have to do it on television.  Just let them go to Lutece, open up some bottles of Cristal and vials of cocaine, and have a blast.  It’s no longer our business.

Not only that, but most of Hollywood holds a very large percentage of us in contempt (that is, the 46% who didn’t vote for Barack “I Won” Obama).   In fact, some of them outright hate us.  That’s fine, because we don’t like you either, and you’ve showed us that having money and acting talent doesn’t at all mean that you’ve got brains or class.  Most of you don’t.

So you’ll have to forgive us for not watching you lick each other on national television.

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By Joshua, January 26, 2009 4:23 am

Instead of new content, why not repackage old content and sell it in 3 minute increments on-line, laced with crappy advertising?  GOOD IDEA:

…at the headquarters of Discovery Communications … a small team of editors mines the 23-year-old video vault of the Discovery Channel for animal attacks, dinosaur animations and scientific oddities. Old shows that ordinarily would not be repeated on Discovery or its other cable channels can be repackaged online, turning every week into “Shark Week,” three minutes at a time.  As users spend more time watching videos with advertisements attached, they are fast becoming an incremental moneymaker for media companies.

When the executive vice president for digital media at Discovery, Josh Freeman, arrived from AOL in mid-2007, he said, he concluded that Discovery “was just leaving money on the table” in online video. Now, he says, the company is playing catch-up.

“Cheetahs are still killing gazelles the same way they did 3,000 years ago,” Doug Craig, the senior vice president for digital media production, said, “and on top of that, we don’t have to pay residuals.”

That’s just great.  This is what the internet has become: a repository for old content that magacorporations want to sqeeze the last few dollars out of.  Says Mr. Freeman:

“Those dollars are going to come,” he said. “I want to be there when they do.”

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By David, December 30, 2008 1:15 pm

One can’t help but snicker at this little tidbit:

A boat carrying international activists, including former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and medical supplies to the embattled Gaza Strip sailed back into a Lebanese port on Tuesday after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, organizers of the trip said.

The crowds on the docks in the Lebanese port city of Tyre were jubilant and cheering as they welcomed the vessel.

The boat, which set off from Cyprus Monday wanted to make a statement and deliver medical supplies to embattled Gaza. The trip’s organizers said the boat was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza, at the time of its close encounter with the Israeli navy.

“Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side,” McKinney told CNN Tuesday morning. “Our mission was a peaceful mission. Our mission was thwarted by the aggressiveness of the Israeli military.”

Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, denied there had been any shooting although the two ships had made “physical contact.”

Palmor said there was no response to a radio warning to the Dignity, and the vessel then tried to out-maneuver the Israeli patrol boat, leading to the collision.

Cyprus state radio said the Cypriot government would seek explanations from Israel over the incident.

“What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11?”

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By David, December 15, 2008 4:57 pm

Me: *washing an omelette pan*

Aggie: *comes in, peers* “I already washed that one!”

Me: “It had grease spots on the edge here.  See?”

Aggie: “I’m seasoning it!”

Me: *puts now-clean pan on cutting board* “You can’t season a non-stick pan, you doofus.”