Month: February 2005

Cal has gone home to New Zealand. I am back in Edinburgh. We are no longer a couple.
Because we are moving in different directions and doing so on different sides of the world we decided to break up.
Everything is cool. (Although, strange.)
Peace, all.

Cal’s last week in the UK.
Don’t expect any posts from me for a while, then.

I predict that the stupid academy will do this:
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Jamie Foxx – RAY
(because… he’s playing a famous dead person! who was blind! and the dead person said it was good before he died! you’re not gonna argue with a dead man are ya?)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Morgan Freeman – MILLION DOLLAR BABY
(possible surprise for Alan Alda, but I’m backing Freeman, even though he’s playing the same damn narrator character he always plays. Actually, that’s the best reason there is to pick him.)
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Hilary Swank – MILLION DOLLAR BABY
(It’s gonna be her or Bening, and Bening has the stink of a loser on her, which the Academy can smell a mile off. The Academy like Kate Winslet but they’re waiting for her to put some distance from Titanic before they start looking at her – Jim Cameron’s ‘King of the World’ still rankles. No Leo gong for the same reason.)
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Cate Blanchett – THE AVIATOR
(always a hard one. traditionally goes to The New Girl, but I’ve got to back Cate – she not only delivered a great, effective, real performance that transcended its mannerisms, she did it about a Hollywood star. The Academy loves itself above all else.)
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
SHARK TALE
(okay okay I’m kidding THE INCREDIBLES give me a break)
ART DIRECTION
THE AVIATOR
(also a tricky one. now that the LOTR behemoth is gone, it’s an open field. Aviator’s AD was actually damn good, but I think it’ll get it because it’s the movie most of the Academy will have actually bothered to watch.)
CINEMATOGRAPHY
THE AVIATOR
(only Flying Daggers can match it, and the subtitle thing is still a killer)
COSTUME DESIGN
RAY
(call it a hunch)
DIRECTING
THE AVIATOR
(FINally they don’t have an excuse not to)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
SUPER SIZE ME
(it’s the one everyone saw and everyone liked and it has brought about tangible change)
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
Don’t know any of the nominees, but I hope Plympton wins the animated and Two Cars wins the live-action.
FILM EDITING
COLLATERAL (not sure on this one, but Mann is cool)
MAKEUP
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
(so. much. blood.)
MUSIC (SCORE)
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
(again, call it a hunch)
MUSIC (SONG)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH
(This award makes my brain weep salty neurochemical tears. I’m gonna pick ‘Accidentally in Love’ from Shrek 2 because it is the movie the Academy actually saw.)
BEST PICTURE
THE AVIATOR
(it’s marty’s year, baby)
SOUND MIXING
RAY
(because… it’s about music and that!)
SOUND EDITING
THE INCREDIBLES
(because I have no idea. just because.)
VISUAL EFFECTS
SPIDER-MAN 2
(slim pickings in this category this year)
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
SIDEWAYS
(and what the hell is Before Sunset doing in this category??)
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
THE AVIATOR
(possible surprise outcome: THE INCREDIBLES)

Well. Remember that run of posts I had where I rambled on about reconfiguring Christmas as an experience to better serve our personal situations and values?
I had intended to follow up in mid-January with a ‘so how did it work out’ post. Then I got busy so I didn’t.
And I’m still busy now but not so busy I can’t finally get around to this at last. To wit:
How did Christmas work out for you, then, anyway?
Did the consumer stuff get you down and/or dominate your experience?
Did the familial obligations lead to misery?
Or was the consumption under control and the family stuff a joy? Or what?
How was Christmas, this time out?
What, if anything, do you want to change for next year? (Because now is the time to start seeding the notion of change with your loved ones.)
It’s far enough away that we might have some perspective on the whole shebang. And we can start right now figuring out how the next one’s gonna work.
I’m genuinely interested to hear how this Christmas went for anyone out there reading this. Please take a moment and tell me.
My answer is a bit of a cheat, because this Xmas was so random and atypical it’s hard to compare it to anything. Overall it was great, but three Christmases away from home was one too many. I’d always figured on being away from home for two, and probably three, but I knew this Christmas that there was no way I’d miss a fourth. Save me a place at the table, mum and dad…

I’ve become a slow reader.
I’m still reading Ulysses. I reached the half-way point today. Half. Way.
I blame the rest of my life. By heck, time was, could read t’work of classic literature in a half-week, me, and keep up with t’journals, newspapers, television, all that like, and play sixteen games of that solitaire at once, no peeking, and dig up my meals from t’garden me mam grew in the basement of the neighbour’s house, and milk the hedgehogs four times a day, and be tucked up in bed before sunset, with t’hedgehogs, they like that, and then still have time for a comic book before lights out.
Damn great book though.
Also: Cal and I went away for the weekend. It was nice.

Some things I recommend you look at. Not an exhaustive list.
Nate visited Brazil, staying in a favela and then attending the World Social Forum. Amazing photos and really interesting reading; start here.
Something cool from Matt: a blog entry sparked by the quote “We are so troubled by how people die and yet untroubled by how they live.” Read it here.
Heather’s blog still makes me laugh more than anything else in the web. Read it all. Featuring: kyoot happy baby pictures!
Making Light’s been covering a sting operation on an exploitative vanity-publisher. Fifteen professional writer-types got together to write the worst book they could, then watched as their baby, Atlanta Nights, went through the “rigorous screening process” and was published! Both the dishonesty of the publisher and the sheer awfulness of the book must be seen to be believed. Start at the overview here.
Finally, a webcomic I can relate to: Alien Loves Predator.
There. Get busy.

My daughter would be 10 by now.
I remember being 10. Vividly.
———–

My girlfriend didn’t realise she was pregnant until she had a miscarriage. This isn’t exactly a secret but it I’ve only ever told a handful of people. The ten-year thing must be significant if I’m still thinking about it in February, when the proper anniversary is in mid Jan sometime.

I think it means that I should mark the occasion. Hence this post.

So now you know.

Frankly, I’ll take the peace where I can get it. Condi can take all the glory she likes as long as the world gets something that looks like a positive step.
Well, to be more precise, it’s the opportunity for a positive step. Nothing’s actually changed. The onus is still on Israel to start making some changes.
The Palestinian hardliners, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have both pledged to honour the ceasefire and watch to see what Israel will do. Whether because they’ve been battered by Israel or because they’ve always been open to compromise, it’s a definite claim for progress.
It’s the Israeli hardliners who are the real problem. They are a large political bloc and they’re not satisfied with how things are going. They want greater Israel, regardless of pragmatism or justice. They have enough electoral power to make Sharon’s position fragile.
I figure that Sharon will do his best to keep Israel’s side of the ceasefire until the Gaza pullout is underway. The hardline Israelis are increasingly a thorn in Sharon’s side, and they are expected to protest the pullout with violence. Such violence, set against a wider peace, will allow Sharon to marginalise them. (Of course, once the Gaza pullout is complete, all bets are off.) (And the Gaza pullout itself is a problematic thing, but we won’t go there in this post.)
Of course, the whole thing is fragile – it will only take a couple of whackjobs in Palestine deciding that the ceasefire is a failure and violating it with a bombing to send the whole place spiralling back down. Or some Israeli army nutjob taking the approved levels of oppression and control a few steps too far. And I’m sure there are plenty in positions of authority in the Israeli army and in Hamas/Islamic Jihad who will soon be itching for the resumption of hostilities.
But it’s too easy to be cynical. For all these problems, it is a peace. I hope it lasts, and I wish the people of Israel and Palestine well.
———-
Now you’ve read that, read this reality check from the always-fascinating Rafah Pundits.

Mongoose Publishing‘s magazine Signs & Portents is running another of my articles in issue 21, out in April:
Derailed – If you enjoyed the Breakout Control setting from S&P15 then you are going to love this. So shocking and disturbing that Matt Sharp had to seek counselling from Monty the Mongoose after he edited it!

I’m kind of surprised they’re running it, to be honest. When I’d finished it I wondered if anyone would dare. It isn’t your typical gaming scenario, that’s for sure.

I’ve also got something special lined up that will probably appear in issue 22, but I can’t talk about that yet.

In other news, took delivery of the Freaks & Geeks Deluxe Yearbook Edition DVD Set Thingy. It is an astonishing thing. Best. TV show. Evar.

[Man, I’m sure this is going to do wonders for my reader base. “Hurrah! More wordy pseudo-intellectual wank from morgue!” Oh well, tough. I blogged about the etch-a-sketch pen, didn’t I?]
As always, read the comments. Matt’s response to my post was longer than my post 🙂 The main point to come out of that discussion, to my mind, is this quote from Matt:
I suppose a part of Morgues new vocab could be a way of referring to news media without referring to each individual company or without referring to them all as media as whole. The first is too fine grained and the second not granular enough.
This is one important axis in which the vocabulary is limited. We talk about a biased media, but both of those words get loaded with meanings that suit whoever is deploying them. This is how language is meant to work, after all – flexibility of meaning is an incredibly handy thing.
In this kind of battleground of ideas and propaganda, however, terminology as loose as that can cause major problems. It’s too important an area to allow these problems to remain.
(It’s important to recognise, too, that the looseness of definition serves both ‘sides’ of the debate, as it allows both of them to sustain their mythologies of victimisation. If the vocabulary is to grow, and meanings are to become more useful, we who aren’t directly involved in spinning the argument will have to do it from out here. We’d be doing the reverse of Syme’s Newspeak – adding new words to express gradations and meanings that currently obscured. Allowing new consciousness and new understanding.)
So. More process thinking… how can we think about ‘media bias’? What questions could this new vocabulary address?
Media:

• What media are we talking about?
• What form of outlet (print, radio, etc)?
• What organisation (NBC, Instapundit, The Guardian)?
• To what extent can we group different media forms and organisations together?

Bias:

• What sources of bias are there? (Author’s or publisher’s opinion, structural effects, deliberate strategic misrepresentation, genuine error or foolish interpretation…)
• How sensible is it to talk about bias, singular? How can we tell how many different influences are at work? Do conflicting influences cancel each other out or make an item more biased? Does it make a difference to the consumer of information where the bias comes from?
• How informed is the consumer as to the potential for bias? How powerful is the consumer in filtering out that bias?
• Is it ever possible to have reporting without bias? If there is always some bias, at what point do we start worrying about it? Is there an ‘acceptable bias threshold’?

Let’s connect this to a real-world example, too.
During the attack on Iraq, the BBC was seen as carrying a pro-American bias by the UK left. The very same service was seen as carrying an anti-American bias by the US right. (Granted, the definitions of left and right differ from UK to US, but that alone can’t account for the difference.)
So. Was the BBC biased pro-USA or anti-USA? How can we tell?
I don’t know. I just wish I had something good to say to those morons on the internet who still call it the Ba’athist Broadcasting Corporation.
(And lets not forget, as no doubt everyone reading this realises, that ‘left’ and ‘right’ are themselves little more than useful labels that have been calcified through spin and overuse to the point where they obscure the reality of political thought and activity.)