chalst

Political blogging is far too often an exercise in spiteful egotism, but there is one political blog I swear by...Lounsbury on MENA...

Special interest blogs are alright, though. I keep one, but you'll be better people for not reading it, so no link.

...

"Cripes...." [/i]

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Cripes. Now there's a word...

Count me as more than sceptical, wasn't he the foremost opponent of contraception in the Catholic church.

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Yep, but the argument is that's because his job was foremost orthodoxy enforcer in the Catholic church, and when his job description changes to foremost common-ground finder in the Catholic church, he'll become all fluffy and liberal.

Now, feel a deluge of skepticism passing over you.

Some folks are arguing that Ratzinger will be a moderate, and even (via Larvatus Prodeo):

...an Italian journalist said to be well informed lays out some speculations on Benedict’s papacy, including the suggestion (with some supporting evidence) that the Church may revisit its prohibition on condoms.

Count me skeptical, but...

Maybe the magic keeps him looking younger. Then, some of us just age gracefully... :closedeyes:

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Yeah, but they've established that as magicians age, they "look like magicians". Just look at the guy in the bar from haunted (the scene where Map confront's JC.

 

Apperantly, you can use magick to teleport to someone's house and beat the shit out of them, make someone's hair strangle them, and make a bunch of convicts go crazy; to reduce wrinkles, use Oil of Olay.

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Still, JC's had some, urrmmm, unconventional therapies (Demon blood transfusions, makeovers, etc.). His biological age might have a not-entirely-straightforward relationship to his chronological age...

While we're on the subject, a question: does the Una character from the Morrison story "Early warning" occur in any other story arcs?

Jacobean.

 

For example, if I were to say so-and-so had been involved in "a Jacobean mess," what would that mean to you?

 

I'm trying to use the expression in my writing but, alas, I do not think I can twist it to mean what I want it to mean.

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I wouldn't be sure that I'd got the right meaning, I think, but I'd guess you'd be alluding to James I's moniker "The Wisest Fool in Christendom", and would be talking about a mess caused by being too

clever by half.

Andrew Sullivan has been excellent recently. For example:

This was not an act of continuity. There is simply no other figure more extreme than the new Pope on the issues that divide the Church. No one. He raised the stakes even further by his extraordinarily bold homily at the beginning of the conclave, where he all but declared a war on modernity, liberalism (meaning modern liberal democracy of all stripes) and freedom of thought and conscience.

and

And what is the creed of the Church? That is for the Grand Inquisitor to decide. Everything else - especially faithful attempts to question and understand the faith itself - is "human trickery."

Ratzinger's takes a "circle the wagons" approach to matters of theology and doctrine, that rejects the idea that the Church is engaged in any kind of dialogue with its congregation, but instead arrives at its pronouncements after a process of closed-door discussions between senior theologians. And believes that Church doctrine should be narrowly enforced, little room for personal conscience...

Perhaps Pope Torquemada I would have been a better title...

Sorry CK: missed your reply first time around. How do the regulars keep track of replies?

Very interesting! See, that's what makes you "smart" and me "dumb." I certainly don't feel I need the competition. I love books, of course, but I really like to be entertained, not necessarily stimulated - and I'm an aspiring novelist who has freelanced and has a couple of unpublished manuscripts in the drawer. Charles, is German your native tongue, because your English is friggin' awesome! What's your doctorate in?

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I'm not German, only lived here for 4 years. Thanks for the kind words about my english, my German is only a little better than lousy... Got my doctorate in logic.

Maybe I used the wrong words in the poll, but it interests me to see how you all are interpreting them. I mean, when I think dumb I think "not book smart, not sophisticated, simple." And maybe it is a grass is greener situation but I have consistently pushed toward the simpler in my life and feel I'm better for it. I just feel a lot of the qualities that I hold the most precious - kindness, consideration, empathy, sympathy, equality - are often missing among the smart and composed. Maybe I'm being unfair, that's just the way I see it.

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Not a matter of the words for me: I'm sold to the book-smart way of life. I sometimes like simple ways of life, in a community that focusses on the non-intellectual: I lived in a hamlet of about 50 people for a year, whilst I wrote up my doctorate, but that was hardly in isolation from texts, and to be forced to live in such a place for the rest of my life would be like prison for me. I need argument laced with an element of intellectual competition, and I need a steady diet of new ideas.

We're not all wired up the same way, of course...

Charles

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But they also have created an atmosphere of thought-crime in itself, and I feel frightened AND safe because of them.

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I like this way of putting things...

Do you know Scott McLemee's writing, by any chance?

Charles

"B".

Voted loud and proud.

I enjoyed their review of Saved!, which very intentionally targeted fundamentalist social hypocrisy:

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/saved.htm

 

My experience was the same as yours, Selkie, I was feeling bummed, then I tuned into this thread, got onto the Capalert site, found and read the review URLed above, and now I'm in a much better mood.  These people are so self-righteous, censorious and dirtyminded that they are unintentionally very funny to those of us who oppose their social politics.

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Good call! That's an eminently linkable and comment-worthyreview...

Charles

...

 

Down this road, that never seems to end,

Where new adventure, lies just around the bend.

 

So if you want to join me for a while

Just grab your hat, come travel light - that's hobo style.

 

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want settle down,

Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home.

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Ah, the Littlest Hobo. A truly great made-for-TV children's classic!

Charles

My answers:

1. JC

2. I could try to use that amazing magic JC used to vanish Chas's car at the beginning of Son of Man, and see if it worked on a demon. It might, you know.

Nothing shameful about enjoying the odd film or two directed by John Boorman, but I guess my deep obsession with his films is a bit of a guilty pleasure. I even liked Exorcist II; The Heretic: better than the film it sequelled; ambitious, you see?

In the right frame of mind, certain lyrics have a very suggestive quality, especially if one is a pyromaniac...

#1. Big Black: Kerosense, about, got nothing to do, Kerosense about, got nothing to do, Kerosene about...

set me on FIRE!!!

#2. Talking heads: Fight fire with feiyoooor!

#3. Killdozer: ...I east strange mushrooms in the woods

I'm feeling odd, I'm getting higher,

I THINK I'LL START A FOREST FIRE

All lyrics from memory, probably the last one is wrong...

Postscript: almost forgot Firestarter...

If Hegel was right about reading the news being the modern sacrament, then you, son, are guilty of BLASPHEMY!!!

Wash your mouse out with soap and buy 1 copy each of The Sun, The Times and The Daily Mirror...

Charles

#1. Billy the Kid:

#2. The hairy chap from Easy Rider:

#3. A character Dennis Hopper played:

#4. Billy died for you:

Pretty varied tastes I have when it comes to fictional identification, eh?

The adaptation that pissed me off most was of Rob Roy, and I don't even like the book (the Walter Scott version, that is). One scence in particular: in the film we see the diabolical english redcoats arriving in Rob Roy's home glen, steal up to his house, burn it and rape his wife. She, being the shy, retiring type she is, can't bear to tell Rob Roy of her shame, and this tragedy looms over the rest of the film like a cloud. This is a pretty free adaptation from the scene in the book, which has the same brigade of redcoats being caught by Rob Roy's wife and sons, who proceed to lynch said redcoats to death in a pretty brutal and grotesque manner.

Thanks for all the excellent responses to my comment on Kubrick's adaptation.

Also, In the book, I felt like I knew little Alex, and while I didn't like him, there was some sympathy for him.

Well, this is subjective. I can't say Alex is one of the literary characters I've most strongly identified with, though I get your point. But I felt some sympathy for Alex in the prison induction scene, one of the scenes I'd point to as one of the film's strongest,

This all ties in closely with the 'free will' parable which is at the heart of the book. By concluding with Alex actually appearing, of his own free will, to progress - to grow - away from the cycle of violence in which his youth has been mired, the point of the book becomes very different.

If there's another point to the book, it's how our free wills are constrined by our environments. The film gets across very well the atmosphere of dehumanisation, especially in the prison scenes. The sliminess of the probation agent comes across better in the film that the book, as well.

As a general point in defence of the film, that Kubrick didn't capture faithfully everything Burgess was trying to do (and often, not convincingly succeeding) with in his book isn't to say the adpatation was a failure. A failure is an excercise in butchery.

I'll leave Mark with the last quote, though, which I agree with:

The book works as a parable for growth and maturation in a manner with which the film never attempts to engage.

And Clockwork Orange a buggered up adpatation? I think jaynova's idea of what consitutes a good adaptation is different from mine!

Think about what theatre directors do with classic plays like Shakespeare. The most celebrated realisations of these try to put the play in a new light. Think of the Richard III film with Ian McKellen: wonderful, wasn't it?

To say that an adaptation changed things about the original is not, by itself, a condemnation of the adaptation. What's important is how these changes are justified.

The Constantine movie doesn't sound all that awful, certainly not in the Judge Dredd sort of leagues, but it doesn't seem to rise much above the level of a Hollywood action flick, and I'm not so interested in those, so I think I'll pass.

If we are after disastrous realisations of central comic book characters, the Judge Dredd movie stands out. Raised a bit of a stink, though not as much as I heard around the Alan Moore LoEG adptation...

Hi folks,

I'm Charles Stewart, 34yo married father living in Berliin, and working as a post-doc in logic and computer science. Been reading Hellblazer on and off since around the end of the Delano arc, got into it from the B&W Titan paperbacks. I'm not keeping up with the current story, and I doubt I will watch the film.

HB auhor likes: Delano defines JC for me, but I think the Ennis arc was very good for HB in terms of bringing in more well-rounded characterisation. Favourite single issue: Sundays are Different (or maybe the Chas befriending story?); favourite story arc: the Family Man. From more recent worlk: found Haunted a bit too nasty for my taste , liked Highwater.

Outside HB? Well, I used to read 200ad when I was a teenager, but apart from that I don't read much in he way of comics. Music: punk, minimalism, blues, baroque, Persian, central African euro-influenced.

Nice to meet you all,

Charles

PS. My avatar is a youngish William Burroughs.