Boston. SRSLY. And Amtrak to boot. How could you expect this to NOT happen?
I think the screwups in Iraq have largely been caused by very smart people whose ideology led them to think that they had grasped the essentials of the situation there, despite scary stuff like not knowing the difference between Shia and Sunni.
I disagree. I think the screwups in Iraq were caused by people whose ideology led them not to give a tenth of a shit if they grasped one iota of the situation there. They understood perfectly well what they were doing; successful management just didn't figure into it.
The rest of it's spot-on though. Can you say "Show, don't tell?"
Mitch #173: Funny thing, I'm sure that my evaluation of Eternal Sunshine is affected by the context in which I saw it, i.e. enrolled at a college full of film majors who thought it was GOD. I don't have any significant dislike for the movie, I just see it as sort of an offshoot of the kind of dystopia stories that I abhor (ones where the plot relies on large numbers of people inexplicably accepting some doctrine that is obviously a total crock--like memory erasure being a good thing), and I really can't see it as THAT good.
Had I not been surrounded by idiots fawning over how OMG DEEP it is, who knows?
Eternal Sunshine is SF for people who don't like SF. It's not terrible, but the story strikes me as pretty average. Same deal with The Matrix, really. ("What if the world, like, isn't real, man?")
The way I see it, everybody is a closet science fiction fan. Another thing I can never help but laugh at is when I see people who look down their noses at science fiction reading it, watching it, and printing it in magazines that "don't accept science fiction."
...
I'm reminded of an experiment that pops up in pretty much every chemistry textbook ever written, in which a beaker of salt water and a beaker of freshwater are placed under a glass dome. Evaporation and condensation causes all the water to eventually end up in the saltwater jar. This experiment really works, but it takes, like, ten years. So shall it be with literary fiction. I honestly think things will get better, just not for a good long while yet.
From "Take Your Literary Out of My Sci-Fi, You Dirty, Dirty Author!" in Spinning Whorl #3, an article which I guess I really ought to post on my blog.
Bruce Cohen #3: Considering the amount of extreme cases of psychiatric disorder, I'm sure it would make for some interesting material. Those characters are all so frakked up, I don't know how they'd stand each other. Think about it:
Lucky = Paranoia
Sonny = Tourette Syndrome
Trix Rabbit = Peter Pan Syndrome (or pedophilia?)
Tony the Tiger = Mythomania (sugar frosted cereal making you physically fit? Right...)
Sugar Bear = Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease (ever notice how he seems completely oblivious to everything and continually seeks Sugar Crisp as though having forgotten he just had some?)
Throw in the Kool Man for some narcissism and you're good to go.
March was particularly WARM in Arkansas? Bastards.
I write female fiction and male nonfiction. Which is almost interesting.
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| 2007 | 10 |
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