alasdair

Well, this one is a little awkward, but only from the point of view of anyone who is reading back through the archives of my blog, because I talked about this film only two posts ago.

It’s Pixar’s Up. I loved it. Simple, plain, uncynical, sense-of-wonder stuff that made me laugh and cry. Beautiful animation, excellent writing, and a marvellous cast. Proof, if proof were needed, that you don’t need explosions, tits, or anything remotely dark and gritty to make a truly superb piece of cinema.

That’s quite a short post, for something that’s meant to be an exercise in encouraging me to write regularly and write more. But I’m loathe to talk about the details of the film, because there might be people reading this who haven’t seen it yet, and they really need to see it, unspoiled, at the first opportunity. Plus, as I say, I’ve already written about why I love Up before, and don’t really want to repeat myself.

So here, in no particular order are some other films I love, and a few reasons why. I’m not sure that these are my favourite films, they’re just films it occured to me to mention when dwelling on the subject.

The Matrix – just the first one, you understand. Pop-gnosticism is something I love, and The Matrix is a particularly shiny, impressive and exciting varation of the species.

Sunshine – I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it’s an extended meditation on heroism and glory using one of the most effective metaphors I’ve seen, and seen in that light, it has a very tight script, even including the slasher-SF monster figure.

10 Things I Hate About You – Equal parts Shakespeare and teen romcom, with a remarkably good cast. It’s just daft fun. Plus, it has Alison Janney, and I’ll watch anything she’s in.

The Ninth Gate – Barely connected to the book, I am a sucker for a well done occult conspiracy thriller. This is exactly that. It works according to a logic all it’s own, and the is-it-real-or-not nature of the movie probably puts a lot of people off, but I really enjoyed it.

Adaptation – Simultaneously a refutation of, and a strict adherence to all the rules that Robert McKee lays out in his book “Story”, simultaneously an deconstruction of the art of writing for film, and an emotionally gripping story, this is the sort of film that I imagine other screenwriters watch and cry into their beer, because they’ll never be as good as Charlie Kaufamn.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1607

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December 2nd, 2009: Here are some links I assembled for you guys! I drew some Guest Rikers for everyone's favourite Commander Riker blog. And Kate Beaton and John Campbell and Kean Soo and Jeff Rowland did too! I am reminding you of how Dinosaur Comics stuff makes great presents for people you love and EVEN people that are just pretty okay! I am also reminding you that the USPS International (Non-US) Priority Deadline for ordering this stuff is December 8th, and that's in SIX DAYS! This concludes the links I assembled for you guys! – Ryan

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1282260.html

http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/266194034

i arrived late monday night in DC to visit my dad (jack), little half-brother (alex, who’s 15) and step-mother donna. 
my sister and her beau, gareth, came down with me on their way back from the boston thanksgiving to their european homebase in holland.

i was overwhelmed by everything yesterday, have to admit it, still haven’t quite done a complete reality check, still haven’t gotten my period.
i wager 50 bucks on getting on the plane without a tampon. we LOVE that.

maybe i should buy some tampons at the airport.

WHEVS.

i ignored life, business, and reality and instead concentrated on the actual news today.

we visited the Newseum, which is a stone’s throw from the capitol building, it opened about a year or so ago where the national hotel used to be
(famously, where john wilkes booth stayed before assassinating president lincoln.)

it was HEAVY fucking DUTY….like i twittered: i don’t recommend going while experiencing PMS unless you want to cry every few minutes.
the admission is twenty bucks (as opposed to the national gallery and pretty much every other DC museum, all free and funded), it’s slightly glossy & hi-tech, BUT you can’t go wrong when your fodder is the biggest, most gut-wrenching life-changing events of the last century and how they’ve been portrayed.

outside the museum, for all to peruse, are the front pages of every major newspaper in the country, by state, so you can read ALL the daily headlines.
very cool to see how it all compares and stacks up….

(stolen from http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/Newseum%20Headlines.jpg, all the other pictures are by MOI or my sister)


they have a huge section of the (west) berlin wall…..that’s alex, my little bro….

and an INCREDIBLY moving exhibit of 9/11, including a section of the antenna from the south tower and a ton of papers that came out on 9/12…..

a great lincoln’s-assassination exhibit….i photographed a bunch of the imagery b/c i think i’m going to start going, aesthetically, in a faux-painted-b&w photo direction this year.
i simply love it every time i see it, the high contrasts and the surreality:

this pulitzer-prize-winning photo was taken just blocks from my house in the south end of boston…..
i’d never seen it.
there was a HUGE fire in the back bay in 1976, the year i was born.

crazily/wonderfully, the child in this photo survived the fall…..

…and i ran into two priests who were PSYCHED by the woodstock exhibit…..

i’d been twittering my ass off from the museum (most of the former shots made the stream)
and this wonderful chick jaime (@wojo4hitz) was reading my twitter and working in the DC courthouse one block away.
she staked me out and when we left the building she came up to me. we walked for about 10 blocks and caught up on life & media.
she was rad, and an AVID follower/filmer of tegan and sara. it was my first hardcore “i found you through t&s and love you” fan and i felt special.
thanks tegan and sara.

my sister took windswept pictures…..
then we Did A Fancy and went to the private bar of the national press club, since my stepmother donna has an in (her father, don larrabee, used to be the president - ooh lala).
we drank beer and discovered that they had an upright piano that had once been played by harry truman while effing lauren BACALL sat on it looking fancy.

can’t beat that…..


and went home just in time to watch obama give his address on the old school boob toob.
(transcript: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/01/obama-afghanistan-speech-text-excerpts_n_376088.html - or just youtube search “obama west point”.)

we’re sending 34,000 troops to afghanistan. ok. what does it mean? fucked if i can tell you. i can tell you that the man Gives Damn Good Speech. 

i haven’t had a TV for so long that it FASCINATES me to see those people moving on the big screen. 

it brought up an interesting point, having spent the whole day in the newseum.

granted: i am PMSing.

i cried at the berlin wall photos.
i cried at the 9/11 footage, the reports from the reporters about what it was like reporting from ground zero, the footage of people unable to speak without weeping about watching people jump.
i cried at the HINDENBURG going down.
i cried at the JFK funeral footage.
BAD DAY TO GO TO THE NEWSEUM, AMANDA?

but while looking over an exhibit of the DC sniper with my sister, i brought up an interesting topic…..

i don’t read the news. well, sometimes i do. sometimes i junkie out, on it. but rarely. less and less.

i rely, like many people do, on the “if it’s important, it’ll find it’s way to me” system, and when i’m feeling LEISURELY i’ll pick up the new york times and skim it cover to cover, with special attention given to the arts section.
i remember following current events back in 2004, 2005, i’d be home from tour and read the paper every day after yoga. 
near my period days, i’d cry at pretty much any article that involved faith, death, war, or humanity (hint: i could not read the paper while PMSing without crying two or three times. for real. i didn’t need to keep a calendar).

at some point i stopped. got busy. did business of band and touring life instead. checked email instead of the news.
i figured i did not need this extra information of faith, death, war, or humanity in my life. 

i never went into a total vacuum. but mostly…? BBC world news in the car when i was driving at home (rare) and that was IT.
fuck it.

i mentioned this to my sister.

(my sister at this point was appalled and pointed out that it was my human obligation to know all news).

i hadn’t known about the DC snipers (she was appalled). i hadn’t known what exactly the unabomber had done, or even that he was caught (she was aghast). 

where had i BEEN? what was i DOING? 
i don’t know. other things? does it matter? i’m not sure.

i’ve always been incredibly spotty in this area, to say the least. i couldn’t name you a shitload of vice-presidents and i cannot tell you how a bill becomes a fucking law.
i haven’t had a TV in my presence since i left my parents house at 18.
my grasp of history is like my knowledge of music, incredibly specialized and really useless (i can tell you a lot about german unification and the revolutionary war in the states, and i know NOTHING about pretty much anything else, and don’t think i’m kidding. but i also didn’t know exactly who kurt cobain was when he died. i miss a lot).

in addition, i think i started making excuses when i started traveling the world and considering myself a resident of Nowhere, Planet Earth.

the question posed was: what do we need to know about what and why? 
how educated do you need to be, and why?

does it matter if i don’t know that that people in DC were getting gunned down by a couple of crazies form the trunk of a car?

how much of how much do you need to know?

i make the argument frequently that we’re overstuffed with information. there’s just too much, period. 
we don’t need to know how many people are dying all the time everywhere. we’re not BUILT that way, dammit.
we’re psychologically equipped to deal with the deaths of our own village. MAYBE the next village over. 
that’s IT.

i brought up the recent trip to china i was on, where i saw people who i could only assume, in their small village lives, had only a VERY PASSING GRASP of national affairs (much less american affairs) in their sphere and it made very little difference to their families, their work, their world.

i do, however, know and feel to the core of my being that as an american, i’m coasting and basically letting a ton of people do my job for me  by not constantly voting in my local elections and not calling my senators when something’s important. sometimes i let myself off the hook by blogging about political things and pointing lots of people in a certain direction. but only sometimes.

it brings up TONS of issues, political, personal, and non.

now i need to know:
how many of you follow the news, how much, and more importantly, WHERE?
newspaper? online? tv news? radio? pacifica? huffpo?
every day? once a week?
more importantly….why?

note: perezhilton doesn’t count. neither does TMZ or tuning into the daily show (though you get points, i suppose)…i’m talkin’  ”the actual news”, even though i know that in itself will start an argument.

i’m really curious.

and if you don’t tune in, why….?

and

do you feel guilty? 

x
afp

p.s. in NOT actual news news, i’m in the huffington post today…
a FANTASTIC in-depth article by holly cara-price that discusses a lot of great things: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/holly-cara-price/amanda-palmer-ino-rulesi_b_375071.html

http://www.photobasement.com/senator-speaks-on-gays/

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Sen. Chris Buttars is tired of gays stuffing it down his throat all the time and putting it in his kids face.

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You sure there’s not enough room on the couch for us both? Positive.

kitteh iz such a cowch hog.

Picture by: shyanne Caption by: lummox via Advanced Lol Builder

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/12/one_more_heave.html

We're going in deeper to get out sooner.

That was the core message of President Obama's long-awaited new strategy for Afghanistan which Gordon Brown foreshadowed earlier this week. It represents a balancing act between the military's request for more troops and increasing public demands to know when "our boys" will be coming home.

Cynics will note that the beginning of British withdrawal is timetabled for 2010 - election year - and that the start of the American withdrawal is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011 - just before the long year of presidential campaigning starts in earnest.

Last weekend, Gordon Brown was rewarded with a politically valuable - albeit totally misleading - headline proclaiming "Our boys home for (next) Christmas" which led David Cameron to warn that "we should never look like we won't see it through".

Both prime minister and president will insist that, strictly speaking, they have not set a timetable. Instead, they will argue they have set a series of "targets or milestones" which are "conditions-based" and are designed to force the pace of the handover to Afghan troops.

This morning, the head of the armed forces, Sir Jock Stirrup, made it clear that he could live with that while stressing that he didn't believe that Afghan forces would be able to take the lead right across the country until 2014. So, a more accurate headline might have read "Our boys maybe home for Christmas in five years' time (if everything goes to plan)".

There are clear parallels with the planned military surge and handover to home-grown forces in Iraq. There are clear difference too which have been pointed out to me by worried sources on both sides of the Atlantic. Unlike Iraq, they say, Afghanistan has no recent history of a strong central government, of an effective army or of a political infrastructure.

Both President Obama and Prime Minister Brown's hopes now rest on:
• the military's ability to halt Taliban momentum
• training up enough competent Afghan forces to begin taking over parts of the country next year
• the buying off of those not ideologically committed to the Taliban
• the strengthening of Afghan's central and local governance

Few doubt that the first is achievable. Many doubt how far the rest are.

Last night in America and the past few weeks in Britain have been largely about politics.

The president has seen off those - including, let's remember, his own vice president - who have warned that America should step back from a Vietnam-style quagmire.

The prime minister has successfully confronted the coalition of disaffected military leaders, the Sun and the Tories who demanded to know "Don't you know there's a bloody war on?".

Both will now hope they can emerge from the shadow of Afghanistan to fight their political opponents on other fronts. They have done so with a strategy which can best be summed up as "one more heave".

Below are key extracts of Obama's speech (with my headings) in case you've not had time to read it for yourself:

The mission

"We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001..."

"Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy - and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama Bin Laden - we sent our troops into Afghanistan."

The problem

"Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backwards. There is no imminent threat of the government being overthrown, but the Taliban has gained momentum. Al-Qaeda has not re-emerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe-havens along the border. And our forces lack the full support they need to effectively train and partner with Afghan Security Forces and better secure the population."

The strategy

"[A]s Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan."

The objectives

"We must deny al-Qaeda a safe-haven. We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's Security Forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future."

"[T]hree core elements of our strategy: a military effort to create the conditions for a transition; a civilian surge that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan."

The timetable

"[T]he absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan."

The politics

"If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow."

"[T]here are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history."

"[O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

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What’s going on with that smile?

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