John & Belle Have A Blog

Fanboy Monday

I can't believe they held a Photoshop contest, and no one stole my damn Botero idea! (via boingboing)

Also, there's this (via Gary Farber). Funny.

WHEDON: But I am a little removed from all of the larger stuff, because I planned my stuff out at the beginning, and of course, the Universe is quaking at all times, so I kind of have to get through, and then when I need to walk into the world, I call somebody, usually Mike Marts, and say, “Who’s alive? Who can be in this? Who’s in the Fantastic Four? There are six of them now? And they’re sinister? Okay.” But I just try and get up to speed when I need to. It’s hard for me – this is my first time at Marvel.

Was Something Wrong With "Second Bull Run Jolie-Pitt"?

John and I plan to name our next girl "Chickamauga." She'll totally have her own Uncle Tupelo theme song, too.

Snarked Out, Snaped Out

And this is a set of visual aids for a CT post.

Virtue

This is a set of visual aids, to accompany a Valve post. Basically, the question is: when did 'virtue' retire to lady's bedrooms; when did it start being so silly?

Insane Clown Cross-Eye

Tired of that rhino picture. Zoe likes to draw clowns as well. The eyes have it.

Also, this was a very funny thing in Slate yesterday - pulpifications of classic lit. And it contains a link to this site, which I'd never seen - poulpe pulps - though I guess it's been linked all over (women and cephalopods in compromising situations, but totally work-safe). This seems like the ultimate PZ Myers/Tom Franks mash-up, in terms of preoccupations.

Rhinoknees

Man does not live by fonts alone. Certainly, 5-year old girls don't. Here is Zoë's latest and, I think, perhaps her best. A thoughtful rhino:

The knees have it. She's given it Hembeck knees! Not that drawing like Fred Hembeck is the tiptop taper on the candelabrum of artistic achievement. But what a thing for her to have reinvented for herself.

Also wonderful, of course, is the way the line representing the chest miraculously turns into a pensive look of concern. Also, the surprised - what is that on top? - ears? an extra unicorn horn? Anyway, it looks surprised and alert, like Tintin's little ... whatever that thing is his hair does.

Fonts bleg, copperplate edition

I'm in the process of learning bookmaking with InDesign because I'm gonna move into publishing, man. (I'm knocking the CT Chris Mooney book event into shape, then I'll do more ambitious things with some Valve events.) My question for you is: how do I tell whether I own a given font? Like most people I've gotten most of my fonts without noticing where or how. So probably they were acquired honestly. Once upon a time I bought this 100 font pack, but I couldn't tell you now what was in it. And bunches of free fonts downloaded. But in my wild youth I may have installed a thing or two, or - er, 100 - that don't belong to me. Example: I'm using a couple flavors of Copperplate in the CT book. How can I tell whether I own it? Does Copperplate come with Office or any Adobe product? How does one check?

You use a lot of garamond, Dylan dog.

Link.

Profound Thought of The Day

If Ngo Dinh Diem had just held those elections in 1956 or whatever in South Vietnam, he could have saved everybody a whole lot of trouble.

Jim Henley was posting the other day about the US being sore losers while Iran was a sore winner. The thing I found surprising about Vietnam the first time I went (12 years ago now!) was that the Vietnamese were not sore winners at all. Very gracious, actually. Like, yeah, we kicked your ass, now c'mon over here ya big lunk and gimme a hug! There was more general goodwill in the south, with people associating America with $$$ and cool movies. Trouncing the French Army, the US Army and the Chinese Army during one 20-year period has to make a little country feel pretty good. Sure, they knocked over Cambodia too, but that was a weekend thing.

It was also my first real encounter with Soviet "consumer" "goods". Air conditioners? Not so good. Two-stroke motorcycles with all the mighty power of a sick ladybug? Um. Seriously, we're talking about a country (the USSR) which had a fatality rate for television sets. That's just sad. And remember how those evil leftists at the CIA and State Department were always saying their army was a bunch of shit, while Doug Feith mark 1's secret group learned of their true, giant shark-borne laser technology that was about to destroy America OMG!!!!! I remember reading an article once about how the Israelis captured a bunch of Soviet tanks (when fighting Syria?) and re-kitted them. Apparently the US wanted to wargame with the originals, but they sucked so incredibly badly that we had to rip out the guts, put some decent tank engines and guns in there, and then wargame. Funny stuff.

Scruff Boy Alien

This is Scruff Boy Alien, the King of Pluto. In the Plutonian language 'boy' means man. So he's all grown up. He's the biggest bully in the Solar System, and a new but wildly popular addition to Zoë's nite-time story routine. He's turning out to be, like, the Wolverine of nite-time story characters. This could get tedious. (Mom didn't understand that his name was 'Scruff', so she spelled out the wrong word. And Zoe's rendition of 'boy' is unsteady. But it'll do.)

Truckin

Zoë is going through a sort of 'keep on truckin' phase, if you see what I mean. This is a self-portrait.

The Complete Mr. Arkadin

In case all this comics stuff is dragging down the lofty tone around the joint, please notice that Amazon has a whole bunch of Criterion Collection DVD's marked down almost 50%. Seven Samurai, The Third Man, M ... the new release of Orson Welles' The Complete Mr. Arkadin (which I've never seen. Is it good?)

W.A.N.T. Not, Waist Not

OK, I'm not going to take out the Photoshop for this and embarrass myself, but it really would be funny to do superhero outfits on Boteros (per this post.) Because it occurs to me they really do have Liefeld features, but in reverse. Obverse. Converse. Convex. Whatever. Even less waist, I'm trying to say. Not SNAP and SWAY. Rather, WANT (Waists are not there.) Consider:

Hey Kids! Hegel's Logic!

No one is allowed to argue about whether Hegel is a continental philosopher in this thread.

Moving on, my Wittgenstein post was a tad sneaky because the Wittgensteinian-style argument (which Adam thought was dubiously Hegelian-Lacanian, hence an example of Holbo trying to drag the argument onto his analytic turf)) is really Hegelian. Zizek says he conceives of "the identity of my Hegelian-Lacanian position and the philosophy of dialectical materialism as a Hegelian infinite judgment" (p. 5). Here is Hegel on negative infinite judgment, from the Logic:

§ 1382
The negative judgment is as little a true judgment as the positive. But the infinite judgment which is supposed to be its truth is, according to its negative expression, negatively infinite, a judgment in which even the form of judgment is set aside. But this is a nonsensical judgment. It is supposed to be a judgment, and consequently to contain a relation of subject and predicate; yet at the same time such a relation is supposed not to be in it. Though the name of the infinite judgment usually appears in the ordinary logics, it is not altogether clear what its nature really is. Examples of negatively infinite judgments are easily obtained: determinations are negatively connected as subject and predicate, one of which not only does not include the determinateness of the other but does not even contain its universal sphere; thus for example spirit is not red, yellow, etc., is not acid, not alkaline, etc., the rose is not an elephant, the understanding is not a table, and the like. These judgments are correct or true, as the expression goes, but in spite of such truth they are nonsensical and absurd. Or rather, they are not judgments at all. A more realistic example of the infinite judgment is the evil action. In civil litigation, something is negated only as the property of the other party, it being conceded that it should be theirs if they had the right to it; and it is only the title of right that is in dispute; the universal sphere of right is therefore recognised and maintained in that negative judgment. But crime is the infinite judgment which negates not merely the particular right, but the universal sphere as well, negates right as right. This infinite judgment does indeed possess correctness, since it is an actual deed, but it is nonsensical because it is related purely negatively to morality which constitutes its universal sphere.

Note the similarity to the Wittgensteinian 'the world is all that is the case' argument. (Well, no surprise; they are both Kantians, in their highly divergent ways. They are working out the ways of paralogism, as it were.) Compare Zizek on the importance of Hegel on "the spirit is a bone".

Anyway, thanks for the Lacan hints, Adam. That helped.

Infinite Parallax Crisis - Weekend Pectoral Edition

Man cannot live by Zizek alone. I see that Feminist Law profs are getting themselves all in a lather about something we noticed ourselves.

Now the FIRST thing I would note is that it, if there is one thing Rob Liefeld has proved, it is that some form of blue energy makes it possible to be HALF a feminist law prof - or at least to dress like a hot lady lawyer - and HALF Lady Supreme, with Little Orphan Annie eyeballs.

Fragments of Parallax

We got a link from Dave Chalmers! In the hopes of provoking some commentary on Zizek-on-Chalmers from Chalmers himself, I'm going to type up more. But first, here's the epigraph I've chosen for my review of The Parallax View:

The clock face will slowly turn away, full of despair, contempt, and boredom, as one by one the iron pillars will start walking past, bearing away the vault of the station like bland atlantes; the platform will begin to move past, carrying off on an unknown journey cigarette butts, used tickets, flecks of sunlight and spittle.

Where is that from? Some will know. More about it later, probably when I finish the review. First, the bit I already quoted:

The Parallax View - Now, with extra zombies (for all we know)!

Please note that a new comment policy is in effect. See sidebar. Now. To work. I'm supposed to review the new Zizek book, The Parallax View (short circuits), for The Common Review. (Adam K. groans. Hey, what can I say? They asked, I said yes.) Zizek is now writing about David Chalmers (who has a wonderful home page and even one of those new-fangled blogs.)

One of my colleagues looks over my shoulder, as I remark Zizek's foray into analytic philosophy. "He knows about Chalmers?" Can you imagine my response? But my question for you, dubbleyou, concerns Zizek on Heidegger:

For it is all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature ...

I'm reading Batman in the Sixties. I like this frame.

I told you why I changed my mind

My iPod is happily loaded with recent purchases - see sidebar. They are working out nicely. The Richard Thompson cover of The Who's "A Legal Matter" (previously discussed in comments) is good, for example. But Mr. Thompson changes the lyrics. This happens all the time; singers must have their fun. But ... well, I'll give you the whole thing, indicating the change at the bottom.

I told you why I changed my mind
I got bored by playing with time
I know you thought you had me nailed
But I've freed my head from your garden rails

Now it's a legal matter, baby
You got me on the run
It's a legal matter, baby
A legal matter from now on

My mind's lost in a household fog
Wedding gowns and catalogs
Kitchen furnishings and houses
Maternity clothes and baby's trousers

Now it's a legal matter, baby
Marryin's no fun
It's a legal matter, baby
A legal matter from now on

I told you why I changed my mind
I got bored by playing with time
I know you thought you had me nailed
Well, I've freed my head from your garden rails

Now it's a legal matter, baby
You got me on the run
It's a legal matter, baby
A legal matter from now on

You ain't the first and you ain't the last
I gain and lose my women fast
I never want to make them cry
I just get bored, don't ask me why

Just wanna keep doing all the dirty little things I do
And not work all day in an office just to bring my money back to you
Sorry, baby

Thompson modifies this to:

... immature little things I do
And not grow up and be responsible for someone truly wonderful like you

Thompson is singing in self-consciously loose fashion by that point, so there isn't any danger he's taking himself too seriously. Yet mayhap he is evincing a touch of over-concern that the audience will miss the point that the guy's a jerk. Not really a cool dude at all. I took that to be fairly obvious in the original.

The track on the album I really like is Tommy Keene's cover of "Tattoo". It's super twinkly. Tommy who? No, Who is the band. Tommy is the concept album. Vaudeville aside, google does not disappoint. I'm very sorry I can't tell you where to get the Who covers album, which was a freebie Mojo magazine thing. [Oh, crumbles, the mp3 link has expired. oh well.]

More Rambling Thoughts About The Philippines

My face hurts really badly which makes it hard to concentrate on things, so bear with me here...One of the strangest things for me in employing a maid is negotiating our relationship. I actually have much more experience than a normal American in interacting with live-in help. My grandfather had a housekeeper (Margaret Best and God rest her soul!) for many years. My father's mother, too, had a maid/cook/goddess of domestic arts who took care of me a lot when I was a girl, Annie Washington. My grandfather on his deathbed had Annie swear to take care of my grandmother when he was gone, and this she faithfully did almost all the rest of her life, even though she really wanted to live in the country on her brother's farm. Even when she was 80 years old she could lift my grandmother in and out of the bath like she was a sick child. So, anyway, this is not completely new to me the way it is to most expat women who come here to Singapore and end up hiring a maid. But it's still weird.

Deep Thoughts

I dreamt that several of the agents were sitting around CTU, with nothing particularly to do, arguing about Ayn Rand and libertarianism. This took up two whole episodes of a season of 24. Do you think that would work? (That was the dream. And you were there, and you were there, and you were there.)

It's at least a better than this idea I came up with yesterday. Zoë's friend, Sophia, has got a new Furby. And Zoë has a Furby. So they got together to play with their Furbies. If you stick two Furbies together they will talk to each other. Sort of. Once in a while you pretend to feed them and they make yummie noises or else indicate they are not hungry. So I thought you could just plant a camera for two hours and call it "My Dinner With Furby". Very existential.

Alternatively, some sort of minimalist Beckett production could be in the offing.

Scott Kaufman and I were discussing how Eddie Izzard is very funny, when we got together in Irvine. I notice this DVD is now seriously marked down. Is it the one where he talks about strategies for winning at Risk? The whole Madagascar thing? I think maybe I'll get it.