Blog-Sothoth

Vial Behavior

Dear Junkies:

I appreciate that you have lived in my neighborhood longer than I have, but please stop putting your vials in my daisy pot. Every day I find new vials, and they're always empty! Help a brother out.

Thanks

netflixed

I don't recall putting this in my queue; I don't remember who recommended it or how I heard of it. Until I put it in the player, I didn't know it was Vietnamese.

Cyclo is satisfyingly grim art-house fare. The driver of a pedal trike in Hanoi has it stolen, likely by the woman who rents it to him. In order to pay back his deposit he begins doing thug work for her criminal gang. Because he's lost his family's major source of income, his sister has to endure the perverse fetishes of old men for money, and things deteriorate from there. A goldfish suffers horribly. Strobe lights flash. A local club plays Rollins Band and Radiohead. The upper crust eat meals at an outdoors restaurant decorated with US military equipment. There are murders, rapes, thefts.

One of the first art-house flicks I saw was The Scent of Green Papaya. Cyclo has a peculiar beauty akin to that other Vietnamese classic; perhaps I should re-watch it after 20 years.

netflixed

Doubt holds my personal record for longest unwatched Netlix disc: I had it for more than 2 months before watching it yesterday. Just one of those choices which turned out to be less interesting upon arrival, and I kept shuffling it to the bottom of the pile.

It's worth seeing. Philip Seymour Hoffman is always worth watching, and here he goes head-to-head with Meryl Streep, who plays Bea Arthur as Maude playing a nun. The story hinges of course on doubt, the question being whether or not Meryl is correct in getting rid of a parish priest who may or may not be molesting children, when in fact she really is going after him because she dislikes his new-agey ways. The ambiguities are left to the viewer to untangle, which is as it should be.

#28

I read at a snail's pace this year. I feel curiously unmotivated, unimaginative, and unmotivated, like I've lost my soul or spirit animal. I'm not writing much, not doing any deep thinking, and when I play word games on Facebook I score far below my typical levels.

When in the dumps it never hurts to get some good Dick. Here Phil splits himself into two characters: one called "Phil," which is the rational sci-fi writer, the other called "Nick," the part of Phil who had synchronistic and mystic experiences and visions. The things that happen to "Nick" are things which actually happened to "Phil," but in his novel Dick makes "Phil" the questioner, the seeker of logical explanations. "Nick" gets to serve as Host to a re-awakening 1st-century saint of some kind, in communication with an alien satellite. Or a Communist conspiracy? Who knows for sure?

Worth a read

If, like me, you're concerned that much of President Obama's 'change' is of the 'plus ca change, plus la meme chose' variety, then the current issue of Harper's will not disabuse you of this notion. Of particular note is this article by Kevin Baker, which compares Barack Obama to another self-made intellectual from humble beginnings who confronted a global economy in rapid decline. Everything about Hoover in this article directly contradicts what I was taught in high school and college history classes.