you take the skyway

Up In The Air: A documentary about the way corporate culture shapes American geography, disguised as a love story. It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, “as pretty as an airport.” – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-time of The Soul Ryan Bingham (Clooney) works for [...]

and reflects no light in day or night

I work in Copley Square, one of the most photogenic neighborhoods of Boston. Once a week, if not more often, I cross the plaza to my office, by threading my way through crowds of Asian tourists. They live up to (down to?) the stereotype by pointing subcompact digital cameras in every direction and snapping pictures: [...]

I am a visitor here; I am not permanent

The Visitor: A well-tailored little indie film. Like a very nice suit. Richard Jenkins (Intolerable Cruelty, Step Brothers, etc – one of those actors you recognize but don’t know) stars.* He plays Prof. Walter Vale, a Connecticut professor who’s stagnating following his wife’s death. When he’s coerced into attending a conference in Manhattan, he sets [...]

I’ll be the fire escape that’s bolted to the ancient brick

Charles Stross, author of Accelerando and other sci-fi books, wrote a fascinating post two weeks ago (thanks to Ari for linking it). He talked about the challenge of designing society for posterity: how to make a social order that could run a “generation ship” without falling apart. Generation starships: they’re not fast. If you can [...]

I lose a dream when I don’t sleep; I’m slumbering

A man wakes up on a desert plateau. The staccato pops of automatic fire draw his attention; looking over a ridge, he sees an old man in an outmoded jacket tumbling down a hill. He picks the old man up and carries him out of the sun. The old man dies; the younger man buries [...]

we never did too much talking anyway

I would like the following euphemisms excised from polite speech: “It is what it is.” No. I disagree. Now let’s fight over it. It doesn’t much help that “it is what it is” most often surfaces as a sort of cheery fatalism, an unwillingness to tackle a problem. We can’t change the facts! If I [...]

and they brought prosperity down at the armoury

The Dispossessed: One of those novels I wish I’d found sooner. Le Guin has a beautiful economy of language not often found in fantasy writers: making the terse but poetic choice, rather than bombarding a scene. The Dispossessed feels like an epic, though it comes out fairly slim. And like all good science-fiction, the story [...]

sommes nous les jouets du destin, souviens toi des moments divins

Le Samourai: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) isn’t quite a samurai film, and it isn’t quite a gangster film. It tells a story that touches on both – three days in the life of Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a syndicate hit man who has no life outside of the job he’s hired to do. But [...]

rappenin’ is what’s happenin’

I’m abandoning political discussion for a while. Looking back over the tone of my political entries, you could charitably call them “condescending” and justifiably label them “assholish.” If someone talked about the Ravens with half the venom that I devote to the Ruling Party, I’d spit on them. And lots of people like the Ruling [...]