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To wit, lawyers (and possibly other criminal justice buffs) who also enjoyed Pirates of the Carribean: Federal sentencing laws? Really, they're more like guidelines.
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I saw a woman on the street today, wearing a T-shirt that said [geek] (except with real pointed brackets, which LJ apparently doesn't like you to use if you don't mean them). Why didn't I like it? Because it didn't say [/geek] on the back. Sloppy coding, says I.
And I read a case that referred to "a bountiful harvest for those of us who now walk the same interpretive path," and thought, shouldn't that be "those of us who now raid the interpretive larder"?
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and found it painful, but not in a bad way, if that makes any sense.( Read more... )
Also, to finish on a lawyerly-geeky note, one of the ads before the movie was for C2, Coke's new half-sugar half-Nutrasweet beverage, and the thing that really interested me about it was that the low-carb craze hit so fast that Coke didn't have time to register "C2" as a trademark; all it had was the TM next to it, and not the (R) of a registered trademark. Z. was highly amused that this was what I found most memorable about the ad. He thinks C2 is not so much about carbs as it is about tapping into the guy market, because most guys won't buy Diet Coke, but they might try something that comes in a black can. Evidence for this proposition comes from the steps outside the school, where a bunch of people including me were waiting for the fire alarm to end so we could go inside -- a group of people were discussing low-carb stuff, and one mentioned C2. The guy in the group said, "I bought that. I didn't even know what it was at the time, but it had a wicked can." He didn't say what he thought of it qua beverage. I guess image isn't nothing, after all.
And I read a case that referred to "a bountiful harvest for those of us who now walk the same interpretive path," and thought, shouldn't that be "those of us who now raid the interpretive larder"?
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and found it painful, but not in a bad way, if that makes any sense.( Read more... )
Also, to finish on a lawyerly-geeky note, one of the ads before the movie was for C2, Coke's new half-sugar half-Nutrasweet beverage, and the thing that really interested me about it was that the low-carb craze hit so fast that Coke didn't have time to register "C2" as a trademark; all it had was the TM next to it, and not the (R) of a registered trademark. Z. was highly amused that this was what I found most memorable about the ad. He thinks C2 is not so much about carbs as it is about tapping into the guy market, because most guys won't buy Diet Coke, but they might try something that comes in a black can. Evidence for this proposition comes from the steps outside the school, where a bunch of people including me were waiting for the fire alarm to end so we could go inside -- a group of people were discussing low-carb stuff, and one mentioned C2. The guy in the group said, "I bought that. I didn't even know what it was at the time, but it had a wicked can." He didn't say what he thought of it qua beverage. I guess image isn't nothing, after all.
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I went to two John Kerry events Wednesday night, forcing postponement of SV/Angel watching. Now, the only reason my picture isn't in the dictionary defining "shy" is that I'm too shy to be photographed, so this required serious fortitude in the face of multiple strangers in close quarters. Turns out I could have gone to the sit-down dinner, but by going to the lower-level shindig in the art gallery, featuring Chuck Schumer and Cam Kerry, I ran into an old friend, so that's okay.
Schumer was funny and talked a lot about judicial nominations, in deference to the lawyer-heavy audience at the art gallery. When he introduced Kerry at the dance club (the event for people younger and less generous than the people at the art gallery), he didn't talk about judges. Instead, he talked about the Sopranos, and got Steve Buscemi's first name wrong.
At the dance club, Kerry wasn't particularly inspiring, and he wanted to talk about health care, which didn't much energize the crowd, though they were willing to cheer for it anyway. I understand why Kerry's strategy can't be to say "vote for me because I'm not George W. Bush," but that's really why I was there. I wanted him to talk about Iraq and the economy – he did get around to the deficit, and the best part of his speech was when he got to foreign relations, pointed out that we need to have some support in the other 96% of the world, and then said "America should never go to war because it wants to. It should go to war only because it has to." That was a crowd-pleaser. There were too many jokes about the young folks getting drunk and forgetting what they'd heard, and there was a six-foot tall friendly joint in a sombrero painted on the wall near where we were standing (think Mr. Butts, Doonesbury's talking cigarette, and you'll get the idea), which I didn't think was exactly the right image. Then again, there was a lot of talk about 1968 ... Anyhow, I heard Kerry, even though I didn't quite see him, and that plus finding my old friend was worthwhile.
In the last bit of politics, I thought Tom Shales of the Washington Post had the best line on Bush's news conference: When Bush said "When I say something, I mean it," he said that the reporters were too polite to call out, "Then when are you going to say something?"
Then I watched SV & Angel. Loved them – no spoilers, but if the WB persists in calling new episodes "fresh" episodes, I won't answer for my actions. Not just in the on-screen bug, but every! damn! time! they came back from commercial.
In other news, the best line from last week's viewing of Jeremiah: Rivka: Would you like little marshmallows in your hot chocolate?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geekturnedvamp: Is that a trick question?
Good point.
( Westlake, SV tie-in, Macleod, Irresistable Forces, and nonfiction )
Schumer was funny and talked a lot about judicial nominations, in deference to the lawyer-heavy audience at the art gallery. When he introduced Kerry at the dance club (the event for people younger and less generous than the people at the art gallery), he didn't talk about judges. Instead, he talked about the Sopranos, and got Steve Buscemi's first name wrong.
At the dance club, Kerry wasn't particularly inspiring, and he wanted to talk about health care, which didn't much energize the crowd, though they were willing to cheer for it anyway. I understand why Kerry's strategy can't be to say "vote for me because I'm not George W. Bush," but that's really why I was there. I wanted him to talk about Iraq and the economy – he did get around to the deficit, and the best part of his speech was when he got to foreign relations, pointed out that we need to have some support in the other 96% of the world, and then said "America should never go to war because it wants to. It should go to war only because it has to." That was a crowd-pleaser. There were too many jokes about the young folks getting drunk and forgetting what they'd heard, and there was a six-foot tall friendly joint in a sombrero painted on the wall near where we were standing (think Mr. Butts, Doonesbury's talking cigarette, and you'll get the idea), which I didn't think was exactly the right image. Then again, there was a lot of talk about 1968 ... Anyhow, I heard Kerry, even though I didn't quite see him, and that plus finding my old friend was worthwhile.
In the last bit of politics, I thought Tom Shales of the Washington Post had the best line on Bush's news conference: When Bush said "When I say something, I mean it," he said that the reporters were too polite to call out, "Then when are you going to say something?"
Then I watched SV & Angel. Loved them – no spoilers, but if the WB persists in calling new episodes "fresh" episodes, I won't answer for my actions. Not just in the on-screen bug, but every! damn! time! they came back from commercial.
In other news, the best line from last week's viewing of Jeremiah: Rivka: Would you like little marshmallows in your hot chocolate?
geekturnedvamp: Is that a trick question?Good point.
( Westlake, SV tie-in, Macleod, Irresistable Forces, and nonfiction )
It's official: God hates shrimp. Because why stop at gay marriage? Thanks to Jack Balkin for the link.
I made $150 today at a creativity workshop, because I tested (according to the organizers) in the top 4% of the population based on a survey asking for non-food uses for blenders. Yep, blenders. America, what a country.
I made $150 today at a creativity workshop, because I tested (according to the organizers) in the top 4% of the population based on a survey asking for non-food uses for blenders. Yep, blenders. America, what a country.
You're invited to an invasion. (Found at Salon.) Sounds like a party.
Meanwhile, one of my other favorite destinations, Launch, has apparently changed its music delivery policy yet again, possibly in response to the ongoing lawsuit by the record companies against it, though I have no independent evidence this is true. So now I'm getting a huge number of "random picks" interspersed with songs I've rated or songs like songs I've rated. I keep hitting the "never play again" button and I would still recommend this totally free service, but it's less fun than it was three days ago.
Meanwhile, one of my other favorite destinations, Launch, has apparently changed its music delivery policy yet again, possibly in response to the ongoing lawsuit by the record companies against it, though I have no independent evidence this is true. So now I'm getting a huge number of "random picks" interspersed with songs I've rated or songs like songs I've rated. I keep hitting the "never play again" button and I would still recommend this totally free service, but it's less fun than it was three days ago.
Yes, you heard it here first. Probably not really, but the conservative Parents Television Council rated Buffy the least family-friendly show in prime time because of the sex, the violence and the occult, while SV was cited as an example of what TV ought to be doing. Salon has a link here. (That's my first added url, so it may or may not work.)
I immediately had the same reaction as Nestra: the irony of the juxtaposition is not light. Set aside the homoeroticism of SV, because that's happened on Buffy along with overt gayness. What I like most is that SV has, as one of three major characters, a genuine bad guy to whom fan reaction has been so amazing as to essentially deny that he's bad and exert lots of energy in justifying the bad stuff he does. (Shades of Spike, actually. But SV *planned* it that way, instead of getting taken over by high cheekbones and sexual charisma.) Now, I'm not saying that Lex is unredeemable; in my mind he's just careless and sets different values on peoples' lives depending on how much he personally likes them. And I love Lex the character, as I'm supposed to. But as a moral example, he's kind of ... not one, and Michael Rosenbaum is playing him so well as to make you give him all sorts of excuses and justifications. Oh, and by the way? Macking on another guy's girlfriend? Not abuse of superpowers, but not exactly Kantian, Clark.
To me, the PTC verdicts show some of the limitations of the crude "images of..." school of media analysis. There's violence on Buffy, so Buffy promotes violence. There's a strict moral order (sort of) on SV: evil always loses at the end of every episode and nobody gets laid but Papa and Mama Kent, so SV is moral and family-oriented.
What this ignores is the viewer's experience, in which the official ending may not be the most emotionally/intellectually relevant part of the program. There's no real extramarital sex on SV (forget Victoria, please; we'd all like to), but we all know what Lex would like to do with Clark. Not to mention the exploitative smarminess of having bad-girl Lana do a striptease for the benefit of Clark and hundreds of other slavering teens. I didn't notice Joss doing that to any of his characters -- until Spike, this past season, and he was at least supposed to be in his right mind, and I'm not all that comfortable with having the gender-reversed whore thing going on, either. The point, to the extent that there is one, is that the PTC analysis looks to topic choice to judge morality, but that's a pretty vapid way to judge a text.
Of course, underneath the discomfort with Buffy's occult and (gay) sex contents -- note that the Salon story and the other reporting I've seen on this don't mention that some of the sex on Buffy is not heterosexual -- I suspect there's a deep distrust of moral ambiguity, which Buffy embraces and SV does not. Part of this is Buffy's ensemble casting, which allows major characters to actually debate what the right thing to do is, as with the wonderful Thanksgiving/syphilis episode. Part of this is that Buffy's character arcs have had more time to develop, so we've seen them coming to terms with imperfectibility and the increasing difficulty of distinguishing good from evil and right from wrong. SV could do that, if it gets the courage to tackle Clark's lies and allows Lex to be sometimes a hero, sometimes a villain.
SV could also use some of Buffy's take on the consequences of violence. I was reading a comic book editorial about an X-Men in which Storm brings down an avalanche on some bad guys, and one of the characters says something to the effect of "Wow! She was so careful bringing those rocks down that all those bad guys are trapped and none killed!" The editorialist thought this was bull, as do I. On Buffy, violence at least occasionally has long-term consequences: killing a human, for example. On Angel, even more so, as when Angel left the lawyers at Wolfram & Hart to die and in the process left behind a chunk of his soul. By contrast, Clark smashes bad guys and, on more than one occasion, Lex, around like they're some combination of frisbees and Weebles. Obligingly, nobody ever dies or even gets a bad concussion at Clark's hands, even though cars blow up in SV if you look at them wrong. I'd love it if SV explicitly dealt with Clark's seriously harming someone, guilty or innocent, by choice or by accident. Power has a price, and that price isn't just responsibility.
The two shows are really so different as to be difficult to compare, even though they share the superstrong teen conceit. But if the PTC wants to put one on Santa's naughty list and the other on his nice list, I've got to disagree with their picks.
I immediately had the same reaction as Nestra: the irony of the juxtaposition is not light. Set aside the homoeroticism of SV, because that's happened on Buffy along with overt gayness. What I like most is that SV has, as one of three major characters, a genuine bad guy to whom fan reaction has been so amazing as to essentially deny that he's bad and exert lots of energy in justifying the bad stuff he does. (Shades of Spike, actually. But SV *planned* it that way, instead of getting taken over by high cheekbones and sexual charisma.) Now, I'm not saying that Lex is unredeemable; in my mind he's just careless and sets different values on peoples' lives depending on how much he personally likes them. And I love Lex the character, as I'm supposed to. But as a moral example, he's kind of ... not one, and Michael Rosenbaum is playing him so well as to make you give him all sorts of excuses and justifications. Oh, and by the way? Macking on another guy's girlfriend? Not abuse of superpowers, but not exactly Kantian, Clark.
To me, the PTC verdicts show some of the limitations of the crude "images of..." school of media analysis. There's violence on Buffy, so Buffy promotes violence. There's a strict moral order (sort of) on SV: evil always loses at the end of every episode and nobody gets laid but Papa and Mama Kent, so SV is moral and family-oriented.
What this ignores is the viewer's experience, in which the official ending may not be the most emotionally/intellectually relevant part of the program. There's no real extramarital sex on SV (forget Victoria, please; we'd all like to), but we all know what Lex would like to do with Clark. Not to mention the exploitative smarminess of having bad-girl Lana do a striptease for the benefit of Clark and hundreds of other slavering teens. I didn't notice Joss doing that to any of his characters -- until Spike, this past season, and he was at least supposed to be in his right mind, and I'm not all that comfortable with having the gender-reversed whore thing going on, either. The point, to the extent that there is one, is that the PTC analysis looks to topic choice to judge morality, but that's a pretty vapid way to judge a text.
Of course, underneath the discomfort with Buffy's occult and (gay) sex contents -- note that the Salon story and the other reporting I've seen on this don't mention that some of the sex on Buffy is not heterosexual -- I suspect there's a deep distrust of moral ambiguity, which Buffy embraces and SV does not. Part of this is Buffy's ensemble casting, which allows major characters to actually debate what the right thing to do is, as with the wonderful Thanksgiving/syphilis episode. Part of this is that Buffy's character arcs have had more time to develop, so we've seen them coming to terms with imperfectibility and the increasing difficulty of distinguishing good from evil and right from wrong. SV could do that, if it gets the courage to tackle Clark's lies and allows Lex to be sometimes a hero, sometimes a villain.
SV could also use some of Buffy's take on the consequences of violence. I was reading a comic book editorial about an X-Men in which Storm brings down an avalanche on some bad guys, and one of the characters says something to the effect of "Wow! She was so careful bringing those rocks down that all those bad guys are trapped and none killed!" The editorialist thought this was bull, as do I. On Buffy, violence at least occasionally has long-term consequences: killing a human, for example. On Angel, even more so, as when Angel left the lawyers at Wolfram & Hart to die and in the process left behind a chunk of his soul. By contrast, Clark smashes bad guys and, on more than one occasion, Lex, around like they're some combination of frisbees and Weebles. Obligingly, nobody ever dies or even gets a bad concussion at Clark's hands, even though cars blow up in SV if you look at them wrong. I'd love it if SV explicitly dealt with Clark's seriously harming someone, guilty or innocent, by choice or by accident. Power has a price, and that price isn't just responsibility.
The two shows are really so different as to be difficult to compare, even though they share the superstrong teen conceit. But if the PTC wants to put one on Santa's naughty list and the other on his nice list, I've got to disagree with their picks.
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