By Demand

So I was harrassed the other day about not updating.
Thank you, Mr No-Blog.
Expect reciprocity when yours is up and running. ;)
Accordingly, here is the demanded update. Be warned. You asked for it.

First things First

I was the Recommended Blog of the week at Recro-Secretarial this week!
Whoot!
Everyone should accordingly go there and take in the bliss therein contained!
It's not for no reason she's called secsy.
(It's a pun, geddit?)

Also, I was the second person to sign up for the Sinister Weblog.
Set up again by Secsy. Check the new neato ad down to the bottom of the page.
I imagine it'll be huge by next week as these things spread like no-one's business and every Sinister kid and his brother has a blog, but I was in On The Ground Floor. Oh yes.

The I Still Don't Get Girls Dept.

I found the most disturbing document I've ever seen at work today.
We have unisex bathrooms (ick) because it's Whole Foods Market. I saw a slip of paper on the floor there, and being bored, picked it up and read it.
It was the directions for our Organic Tampons.
Ew ew ew ew!
They were explicit, dude. Like more explicit than any girlfriend I had ever was with me! "Use your hand to ease open the skin that covers your vaginal opening."
Now, I'm intentionally ignorant of how these things work, but do they really need INSTRUCTIONS?
It got worse the more I read. The last instruction: "Never insert more than one tampon at a time."
I mean: ??!?!
The icing on the cake: "Always remember to remove the last tampon at the end of your period."
What, do you forget these things are up there? Honestly!
I was so disturbed I couldn't talk to a girl for over an hour...

Go See This Film

Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927.
My hokey. This is the most incredible thing I've ever seen.
I've seen German Expressionism before (like The Cabinent of Dr. Caligari) but it never worked like this. This was beautiful. The imagery was genius. It was beautiful and powerful. The Overcity was Epic, Megalithic, but simple and understated which made it more effective. Think: a modern Stonehenge.
The Undercity was bent and exaggerated, perfect for the sunconscious mind.
And the acting. The acting! It came off perfectly even without sound. It was stylized, but it was so in sync with the rest of the production that it wasn't an irritant like it could have been. There was a fluidity of movement counterpointed with mania that gorgeous. It was like mime.
It was simple enough to be mythic and archetypal but complex. Actually I think simplicity is an illusion created by functional complexity. It all comes together in a unity of purpose, function and uniqueness -- Aquinas' claritas, unitas and quiditas -- so seemlessly that looks easy. Everything occurs at once together without conscious effort. Understanding occurs spontaneously. That's why the fairy tale that is a depiction of the ego versus the id or the concsious verus the subconcious or the workers verus the elite is so deceptively simple.
That sums up what I like best about it: everything in this works together in the telling of the story. No disperate elements. Of course, that's how it's supposed to work always. The danger with expressionism, I find, is that the conventions used overshadow the story instead of serving it.

This Week's Big Idea

Actually, I've been noticing this for quite a while recently, and I imagine I'll go on for some time.
It's music producers' work, or what you hear when in a song.
I was listening to Belle and Sebastian's "Seeing Other People" on their mixtape I made that I always listen to in my car when I noticed Belle Campbell sawing away on her cello at the end of the song. I'd never noticed before. I went back and listened, and it's there the whole way through, but very quiet up until the end. It adds so much to the song to have that there at that point, I think this great, solid bass sound underneath the rest of the music.
SInce then, I've been listening intensely to all the music on that tape (and everywhere else). I think it has to be music you know very well to really appreciate it, to hear something different the 150th time, but it's very rewarding to suddenly realize:My god! The drums in Lazy Line Painter Jane!
Actually, I LOVE THAT SONG. The organ in that has done to save my soul than anything else in my life. I listen to it obscenely loudly. In summer I will make an ass of myself as I have been screaming along with it this winter with the windows up and will continue to do so with them down when it is warmer.

Book of the Day: White Darkness. The TARDIS arrives in Haiti, 1915. Ancient evil stirs. Vodoun (apparently how you really spell voodoo, along with zombi or jumbi for zombie) appears. World War I is waged in Europe and the US prepares to take over Haiti. Egregious references to H P Lovecraft arise (The local pathologist cum anthropolgist [Is this an odd combination to anyone else?] is named Howard Phillips. Cue the subtle flashing neon light.)_
Did you know the US ruled Haiti from 1915 to 1934? Me neither.
I realized with a start this book is TEN YEARS OLD. I remember buying it in Waldenbooks in Valley Hills Mall. I haven't read since I first bought it. It seems clunky and a little hacknied, which isn't too odd as it is the author's first novel. And it's strange how the series has changed from the uber-manipulative seventh Doctor who is actually not very heroic and strangely distant with a transparent past to the all-too-touchy feely Human Eighth Doctor with no memory.
Not that I'd know. I haven't read a new Dr Who book since June. June, people. Please, Britons! Pity me and bung one in the post for me! They're cheap!

Word of the day: houngan: a voodoo priest

This entry brought to you by: Perry Como, "Papa Love Mambo"; Baxendale, "Music for Girls", Harry Belafonte "Man Smart, Woman Smarter"; Art Attack, "I Am a Dalek"

Recommended new music from WXDU: Pac/Cal and Survive and Advance, Vol II (a new comp from MERGE records, featuring Lampchop, the Buzzcocks, the Magnetic Fields, Superchunk and lots of other great stuff 16 of 18 tracks are unreleased matieral)