“Stripped” is the name of a message series on the Letter to the Philippians. Take a look at this graphic. I like it.
That hideous Hannibal
I took a little vacation time this afternoon. I spent this narrow slice of heaven sitting around the house, waiting for a technician to come and do the periodic inspection on my furnace. As it turned out, he arrived after the four-hour window had closed. I nearly could have worked my usual time and met him when I got back.
Michael Medved was on the radio as I waited, and this was one of those rare Medved shows where the arguing level was low enough so that I could listen in relative comfort.
Medved panned the new movie, “Hannibal Rising,” the prequel telling about Dr. Lector’s early years. After all, aren’t we all yearning to get a good close look at the dynamics that combine to produce cannibalistic psychopaths, especially when we can make it a Valentine’s date?
I used to be a big fan of Thomas Harris, the creator of Hannibal Lector. His books were harrowing, but he treated his characters with compassion and understanding. The villain in Red Dragon, for instance (not Hannibal; he was a secondary character in that one) was horrible and despicable, and you wanted him dead, but you also pitied him. This was (in my opinion) as it should be.
But then came the movie of The Silence of the Lambs, and Anthony Hopkins’ disturbing performance, and suddenly Hannibal became the star.
Then I read the book Harris called Hannibal, and suddenly everything was wrong.
Harris had (it seemed to me) succumbed to the magnetism of Hannibal as incarnated in Hopkins. He may not even realize it, but Harris seems to have started rooting for the cannibal.
So I gave up on him.
Unfortunately, Hollywood hasn’t yet.
The best portrayal of evil I’ve ever seen in fiction remains (for me) C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. It’s certainly one of Lewis’ least popular works, and I have no doubt that many readers have plunged into it, intoxicated with Perelandra, only to find themselves bogged down in the tedium of Edgestow and the Orwellian bureaucracy of N.I.C.E.
But it’s my view that if you slog through those parts, you’ll not only be rewarded, but you’ll finally understand (as in real life) that the hard parts were useful lessons.
Lewis took on the challenge of presenting evil characters without romanticizing them—and any author will tell you that’s one of the great challenges. Villains tend to grow in the telling, and to become lots of fun. Heroes have a way of getting dull and predictable. I think that’s because most of us know a lot more about evil than we do about good, and we tend to equate virtue with passivity.
But Lewis’ villains in T.H.S. are like scoundrels in the real world. They’re not brilliant and charming. They’re not lively and funny. They’re self-absorbed, humorless and devoid of empathy. The reader who works his way through the tough parts of the book will (or at least may) realize that he has spent time in an annex of Hell, and it’s no party down there.
But the community at St. Anne’s—ah, that’s another matter. There we find Lewis’ vision of a Christian fellowship operating as God intended. There we find relationships and laughter and compassion. There we have a glimpse of Heaven, bright as Narnia.
I consider it a tremendous artistic achievement. One that’s never been properly recognized.
The software won’t post without a title, so this is it
Anna Nicole Smith is dead, according to the news. Bloggers all over the country are pausing at their keyboards, pondering whether to meditate on the tragedy/waste-of-life angle or just go with the cheap joke. And having decided, they’re trying to keep the option they chose from bleeding over into the alternative.
I know what to say. I knew a woman once, a relative, who was caring and giving in every way. She hated herself utterly and used various kinds of chemicals to kill the pain. She didn’t die young, but she died long before she had to, as a result of a life-long effort to get this torturous business of living over with, without actually committing the sin of suicide.
I don’t know much about Anna Nicole, but I suspect some of the same dynamics were at work here. So I say rest in peace, and pray she found it in the only place where it’s available.
I feel like I have a cold in my brain. Not in my head, except insofar as my head contains my brain. I’m not physically stuffed up, but my brain feels like it’s congested in a couple layers of cotton batting. I don’t have a headache but my thoughts hurt. I’m not coughing or sneezing, but that little guy with Tourette’s who lives in my skull is doing his Bobcat Goldthwaite imitation a couple clicks louder than usual.
And yet I persevere, because that’s the kind of mug I am.
Here’s a suggestion, for those of you who share my skepticism about Global Warming. Next time you get in a fight with a True Believer, ask them why they’re afraid of change.
“For years you liberals have been telling us that Change Is Good,” you can say. “The only reason anybody could possible resist any kind of change is because they’re bigoted and cowardly. So how come change became a bad thing all of a sudden?”
I offer you this gambit free of charge. Use it as you will, with my blessing.
Not that it will help. The argument will end with your opponent calling you a Nazi, because that’s how these arguments always end.
But at least you’ll have added a little variety to the script.
Unless you thought of this before me, of course.
The software won't post without a title, so this is it
Anna Nicole Smith is dead, according to the news. Bloggers all over the country are pausing at their keyboards, pondering whether to meditate on the tragedy/waste-of-life angle or just go with the cheap joke. And having decided, they’re trying to keep the option they chose from bleeding over into the alternative.
I know what to say. I knew a woman once, a relative, who was caring and giving in every way. She hated herself utterly and used various kinds of chemicals to kill the pain. She didn’t die young, but she died long before she had to, as a result of a life-long effort to get this torturous business of living over with, without actually committing the sin of suicide.
I don’t know much about Anna Nicole, but I suspect some of the same dynamics were at work here. So I say rest in peace, and pray she found it in the only place where it’s available.
I feel like I have a cold in my brain. Not in my head, except insofar as my head contains my brain. I’m not physically stuffed up, but my brain feels like it’s congested in a couple layers of cotton batting. I don’t have a headache but my thoughts hurt. I’m not coughing or sneezing, but that little guy with Tourette’s who lives in my skull is doing his Bobcat Goldthwaite imitation a couple clicks louder than usual.
And yet I persevere, because that’s the kind of mug I am.
Here’s a suggestion, for those of you who share my skepticism about Global Warming. Next time you get in a fight with a True Believer, ask them why they’re afraid of change.
“For years you liberals have been telling us that Change Is Good,” you can say. “The only reason anybody could possible resist any kind of change is because they’re bigoted and cowardly. So how come change became a bad thing all of a sudden?”
I offer you this gambit free of charge. Use it as you will, with my blessing.
Not that it will help. The argument will end with your opponent calling you a Nazi, because that’s how these arguments always end.
But at least you’ll have added a little variety to the script.
Unless you thought of this before me, of course.
Fiction Posing Again as Fact
The lead story in James Taranto’s “Best of the Web” column is on a bit of fantasy report by Jay Forman a few years back, something about monkeyfishing. Is there a mindset in the press with a weakness for outrageous stories?
OK, just one more thing
This woman and I would understand each other completely. In any language.
Tonight you’ll get leftovers, and like it
Because I’m in that kind of mood.
I have to go back in to work for a meeting tonight, and on top of that I’m 56 years old, and a single guy can’t expect to live much longer than that, but that’s probably just as well because I’m likely to lose my home anyway, because my ad for a roommate has been out for two whole days and I haven’t gotten a single bite yet.
So I’m not capable of much more than rudimentary thinking. Therefore I’ll just share something I think I posted before, but that was long ago on the old site. I think it was one of the better quotations I’ve ever heard (or read).
It comes from Newton Minnow, who I’m pretty sure is no longer living. He was famous for having a very silly name, and also for being the chairman of the FCC long before you were born, back when Kennedy was president (but I was already old). He famously called television “a vast wasteland,” back then, and was remembered for it ever after. But this quotation is better. It’s a description of Europe back when it was Europe. Which it isn’t anymore.
I quote from memory.
In England, everything is permitted except for that which is forbidden.
In Germany, everything is forbidden except for that which is permitted.
In Russia, everything is forbidden, including that which is permitted.
And in Italy, everything is permitted, especially that which is forbidden.
That’s all I got, folks. Go read Lileks.
Tonight you'll get leftovers, and like it
Because I’m in that kind of mood.
I have to go back in to work for a meeting tonight, and on top of that I’m 56 years old, and a single guy can’t expect to live much longer than that, but that’s probably just as well because I’m likely to lose my home anyway, because my ad for a roommate has been out for two whole days and I haven’t gotten a single bite yet.
So I’m not capable of much more than rudimentary thinking. Therefore I’ll just share something I think I posted before, but that was long ago on the old site. I think it was one of the better quotations I’ve ever heard (or read).
It comes from Newton Minnow, who I’m pretty sure is no longer living. He was famous for having a very silly name, and also for being the chairman of the FCC long before you were born, back when Kennedy was president (but I was already old). He famously called television “a vast wasteland,” back then, and was remembered for it ever after. But this quotation is better. It’s a description of Europe back when it was Europe. Which it isn’t anymore.
I quote from memory.
In England, everything is permitted except for that which is forbidden.
In Germany, everything is forbidden except for that which is permitted.
In Russia, everything is forbidden, including that which is permitted.
And in Italy, everything is permitted, especially that which is forbidden.
That’s all I got, folks. Go read Lileks.
A Review of the Plight of Modern Bookstores
When sliding sales forced Cody’s to close its store next to the UC Berkeley campus, the poet Ron Silliman wrote on his blog that it was once the anchor of “the best book-buying block in North America.” But in the discussion that followed, the attitude was one of resignation if not indifference.
“Why would anyone want to perpetuate small independents by paying higher prices?” wondered Curtis Faville, a poet who sells rare books on the Internet. “Most of these proud little independents were poorly run anyway.”
Less harshly, Silliman suggested in an e-mail that “we’re simultaneously caught in the wonder of the new and true mourning for the losses of the old.”
It’s an unsettling if inevitable process. Half a century ago, Silliman said, he would play chess and checkers with his grandfather as they listened to the radio. “That stopped once the TV arrived, because now we all had to face the same direction,” he wrote.
Those for whom “browsing” has much more of an online connotation than a physical one barely register the shift.
“Bookstores, small or large, don’t carry what I’m looking for,” said Logan Ryan Smith, a 29-year-old accountant who publishes a literary magazine and poetry pamphlets. “I’m not going to find an Effing Press or Ugly Duckling Presse book even at City Lights or Cody’s.”
The L.A. Times has a good story on the problems of independent booksellers in our changing culture. The point Silliman makes on isolating ourselves through entertainment has impact the world over. It touches on one of reason people don’t read. We seek the tantalizing over the fulfilling. We fail to taste the richness of interaction because consumption is more immediate and comfortable.
Low-grade cabin fever raving
Had a disturbing message on my answering machine when I got home tonight. I heard the voice of an older woman, very muffled, saying something incomprehensible about snow, and being late for work, ending with “Help me out, here.”
I think.
I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know who she was calling when she accidentally dialed my number. Whatever help she wanted she didn’t get, and it’s all over by now.
But I still feel guilty.
It was almost as cold today as yesterday, but it didn’t feel as bad. That’s one of the great things about cold weather. Even a small improvement registers palpably. I remember a year when we spent several days around 20 and 30 below, and when we got back up to zero it felt positively spring-like.
It also snowed a couple inches, which pleases me because it protects the roots of my sick tree. (Yes, hard as it may be for southerners to believe, snow does actually protect the ground from hard freezing. It has an insulating effect).
I’m in low spirits tonight, and I have a dentist appointment coming up, so that’s about all I’ve got.
I’ll share this link for adult footy pajamas, shared with me by an online friend.
I could go off on a rant about the infantilization of our culture, but…
They look kind of neat, really. Especially on a night like this.