Monochromatic Outlook

In the past few days I’ve seen two main­stream films with very explic­it sex scenes. By “main­stream” I don’t mean Hol­ly­wood, they are both def­i­nite­ly art­house films with inde­pen­dent stu­dios and dis­tri­b­u­tion. But both want to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as art and car­ry the NC-17 rat­ing rather than the untrade­marked ‘X’ or ‘XXX’. These films are: “The Brown Bun­ny” and “Nine Songs”. Oth­er than the explic­it sex, the only thing that these films have in com­mon is that they … Read the rest

Such a fan as I am of the Russ­ian authors, it’s sur­pris­ing even to me that I wait­ed so long to be acquaint­ed with Tol­stoy. Anna Karen­i­na was a long and chal­leng­ing read, but in the end very rewarding.

As the open­ing lines indi­cate, this is a book about fam­i­lies. It’s real­ly sev­er­al sto­ries con­nect­ed togeth­er by being about the same set of peo­ple. For most of the way through, Tol­stoy is sly. He drops hints about his cul­ture and … Read the rest

This is a reread. It was the first of Solzhen­it­syn’s work I ever read and it start­ed me on a life­long fan­hood. I don’t know why I get so much out of read­ing about Sovi­et labor camps, but I do seem to have an obses­sion with oppres­sive regimes. Stal­in­ist Rus­sia is par­tic­u­lar­ly heart­break­ing to me for a num­ber of rea­sons, not least of which that Stal­in’s purges seem to have gone unno­ticed by his­to­ry. Per­haps because there was no “hot” … Read the rest

After call­ing SGI and ask­ing what the last sup­port­ed ver­sion of IRIX would be for an Indigo2 work­sta­tion, I spent an exor­bi­tant amount of mon­ey for a sec­ond­hand set of CDs on ebay. OK, not exor­bi­tant com­pared to the $600 retail price of IRIX, but still more than I’ve ever spent on Oper­at­ing Sys­tem soft­ware ever.

I did research and tin­kered and did more research and more tin­ker­ing and final­ly today I get the answer to why my installs … Read the rest

So today at the Inten­sive Out­pa­tient Pro­gram we had Art Ther­a­py. We were sup­posed to draw some­thing rep­re­sent­ing the theme “com­pas­sion.” Well, my art needs some ther­a­py; I’ve been frus­trat­ed over my seem­ing com­plete inabil­i­ty to put pen and paper. I’ve been total­ly blocked and hon­est­ly ter­ri­fied of drawing.

So today I made a pret­ty bad pen­cil draw­ing. After the ses­sion, the art ther­a­pist said that I showed some skill and asked me if I’d ever con­sid­ered work­ing in art. … Read the rest

This was anoth­er short one, but the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry lan­guage was a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to wade through. With over­com­pli­cat­ed com­pound sen­tences, I got a lit­tle of an idea of what a chore it must be to read my writing.

It was not as rel­e­vant a read as I expect­ed. I guess I’d thought this would be a man­i­festo illu­mi­nat­ing the rights of man, and part of Com­mon Sense did in fact fill that bill. I thought, how­ev­er, that this would be … Read the rest

I’ve kept this copy since junior high and I’m sure I haven’t read it since sev­enth or eighth grade when I had to read it as part of my edu­ca­tion. I’ve kept it for what? 22, 23 years with­out read­ing it again, just rid­ing on the fact that I had read it. Of course, I did­n’t recall a sin­gle pas­sage from read­ing it the first time when I went through now, with the sin­gu­lar excep­tion of the descrip­tion of … Read the rest

dra­cun­cu­lus would enjoy JFK’s account of Thomas Hart Ben­ton’s reply to an inquiry whether he had known Andrew Jack­son. Ben­ton said, “Yes, sir, I knew him, sir; Gen­er­al Jack­son was a very great man, sir. I shot him, sir. After­ward he was of great use to me, sir, in my bat­tle with the Unit­ed States Bank.”

Jack Kennedy is part of this nation’s iconog­ra­phy, and as one born too late to know any­thing about the time and events of his … Read the rest

I’m unde­cid­ed on whether I’ll see the movie. I enjoyed Swof­ford’s mem­oirs so much that I’d hate to have them spoiled for me by Hol­ly­wood. Swof­ford is artic­u­late and direct, a rare and good com­bi­na­tion. He has an easy, relaxed writ­ing style that invites the read­er to relate even to expe­ri­ences with lit­tle in com­mon to his own.

The sub­ject mat­ter fas­ci­nat­ed me. I have some shame for not hav­ing served, and read­ing about oth­er peo­ple’s sac­ri­fices holds some inter­est to … Read the rest

It’s Novem­ber and I’m only halfway through my goal of fifty books for the year, so yes, I’m look­ing at the slimmest vol­umes on the shelf. I tore through this last night before bed and this morn­ing before break­fast. I’m left with bit­ter feel­ings about it and almost wish I had­n’t read it. I feel good for hav­ing bought it and help­ing to sup­port Ianthe Brauti­gan, but the psy­chic act of read­ing this book which Richard Brauti­gan nev­er chose to … Read the rest