From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #475 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, February 1 2008 Volume 16 : Number 475 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Another quick Feg survey [2fs ] Re: puppet Spike [lep ] Re: on not inhaling [Carrie Galbraith ] Re: It's early, but I think we've got a contendah... ["Stewart C. Russell] Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: It's early, but I think we've got a contendah... [2fs ] Re: song request [kevin ] Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle [kevin ] RE: Now THIS is fucking cool! [Michael Sweeney ] Fwd: New Pornographers Early Ticket Offer [Steve Schiavo ] Re: song request [Michael Sweeney ] Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue [2fs ] Re: yet another iTunes WTF [2fs ] Re: on not inhaling [lep ] Re: puppet Spike [Capuchin ] Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle [Capuchin ] Re: puppet Spike [Capuchin ] Re: on not inhaling [kevin ] Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue [Steve Schiavo ] Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! [Rex ] Re: puppet Spike [2fs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:47:54 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Another quick Feg survey On 1/31/08, Rex wrote: > > On Jan 31, 2008 4:26 PM, Michael Sweeney wrote: > > > Brian Hoare wrote: > > >btw. probably too late to mention cilla black death. > > > > ps - Phil Spector of Death? > > > > Kudos to you both. I can't recall now whether I made it up or stole it from someone...but here's the name of a band that does country-style covers of Metallica songs: International Harvester of Sorrow - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:49:46 -0500 From: lep Subject: Re: puppet Spike 2fs says: > > way more out of that than watching people who have no principles deal with > > the random events of a purposeless universe. > > > > And that's why I don't like Battlestar Galactica. > > > I've just started watching BSG - I just finished Season 1, so no damned > spoilers please - but insofar as you went from your last sentence in the > preceding paragraph to the sentence about BSG, I disagree that the > characters in BSG uniformly "have no principles". Maybe I'll think > differently once I've seen a few more seasons...but could you explain what > you mean as much as you can w/o utterly spoilerizing S2 and beyond? personally. i've watched all the existing episodes (multiple times, actually), and i would very much disagree with the contention that the BSG characters have no principles. Some of them don't, certainly. But some of them do, in so far as one can have principles in an imperfect world. Meaning, they aren't *perfectly* principled...but, who is? btw, jeff 2fs - let me know when you want to go back to talking gender issues on BSG, now that you've watched some of it ;) xo - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:43:09 -0800 (GMT-08:00) From: Carrie Galbraith Subject: Re: on not inhaling - -----Original Message----- >From: Jeff Dwarf >(Not that I don't prefer Obama over Hillary, but I think his momentum >has dissipated substantially). My problem is I don't want to see a Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton pattern. That would make it a minimum of 24 years held between 2 families. I don't like or agree with it. And I don't trust it. - - c, who was for Edwards but I guess that's not gonna happen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:55:40 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: It's early, but I think we've got a contendah... Stacked Crooked wrote: > > now, if you look at a map, you might wonder, "why > in fuck would you drive through london on the way from toronto to detroit?" Because it is, in fact, almost perfectly en route between toronto and detroit? Maybe a bit of a stretch if you're 401'ing it, but Hwy2 zaps right through ... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:57:34 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue Jill Brand wrote: > > My husband hates beets, and many fegs seem to. I don't mind them, but I > agree that they kind of taste like dirt. You ever had beet chips? Man, they're good. Beware of the tiny shards, though - if they get damp, they reconstitute into Big Red Stainy Smears. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:01:57 -0500 (EST) From: kevin Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle Last I heard the Backstage was gone, so... - -----Original Message----- >From: Benjamin Lukoff >Sent: Jan 31, 2008 7:39 PM >To: Jason Brown >Cc: fegmaniax@smoe.org >Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle > >On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Jason Brown wrote: > >> Well, last i checked the Tractor is still in operation! But >> apparently no clubs have ever closed outside of the downtown core! > >There is no hipster life beyond the core, apparently ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:02:30 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue Tom Clark wrote: > > I can't say I "hate" cilantro. ... > Ironically I love coriander! but coriander = cilantro. Confusedly, Stewart PS: Go and see The Carolina Chocolate Drops. So what if they are in a movie that Oprah funded. They totally own. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:04:44 -0500 (EST) From: kevin Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! >>(It's okay - for my money, Clapton's version of "Little Wing" has it all >overHendrix's - or at least, it transforms it so utterly that it's nearly >adifferent song. I still like Hendrix's original...but I think of them >nearlyas two different songs that happen to share words and chords.)< > > >...I'm with you there, totally, brother...(I even like the also-different >version by Sting...) Can't speak authoritatively but I'd understood Sting's arrangement was lifted more or less in toto from Gil Evans. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:06:43 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: It's early, but I think we've got a contendah... On 1/31/08, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > > Stacked Crooked wrote: > > > > now, if you look at a map, you might wonder, "why > > in fuck would you drive through london on the way from toronto to > detroit?" > > Because it is, in fact, almost perfectly en route between toronto and > detroit? Maybe a bit of a stretch if you're 401'ing it, As opposed to 109'ing 'em? I think he meant London, England. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:10:41 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: yet another iTunes WTF 2fs wrote: > > It seems to be making the classic error of treating numbers as if they're > just different characters Yeah, but you wanna watch where that might go; proper parsing should put "1% of Monster" and "Five Percent For Nothing" between 0 and 1. You'd also never be able to find "Infinity" at all. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:28:18 -0500 (EST) From: kevin Subject: Re: song request >fegs, >I'm collecting suggestions for any songs that might work with this year's >Burning Man theme - American Dream. any suggestions would be appreciated - >esp as the list has a mich wider and deeper appreciation of music than >many of the folks in the camp. basically we'd do anything to avoid having >to hear ring of fire over and over again. > >already suggested >American Woman >American Music - Violent Femmes >America - Rammstein >and of course Robyn's america First thing that comes to mind is Paul Simon's "American Tune." I'd also toss in Mr. Reed's "The Last Great American Whale" and of course JB's "Living In America." Chuck Berry's "Back In the USA" wouldn't hurt either. A little off but a personal fave is "All-American Alien Boy" by Ian Hunter. Or Randy Newman's brilliantly warped "Sigmund Freud's Impersonation Of Albert Einstein In America," or "Rednecks" or "Sail Away" by the same composer. That's all I got at the mo. Americans dream of gypsies I have found Of gypsy knives and gypsy thighs That pound and pound and pound and pound And African appendages that almost reach the ground And little boys playing baseball in the rain / R. Newman ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:37:09 -0500 (EST) From: kevin Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle No, nor the Backstage or the Offramp either, or any of countless other casualties of Seattle's apparently terminal case of gentrification... -----Original Message----- From: Benjamin Lukoff Sent: Jan 31, 2008 7:18 PM To: kevin Cc: "fegmaniax@smoe.org" Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle No mention of the Tractor eh? On Jan 31, 2008 11:09 AM, kevin wrote: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/musicnightlife/2004154856_deadclubs31.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 02:38:01 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: RE: Now THIS is fucking cool! Kevin wrote:>> >>(It's okay - for my money, Clapton's version of "Little Wing" has it all> >overHendrix's - or at least, it transforms it so utterly that it's nearly> >adifferent song. I still like Hendrix's original...but I think of them> >nearlyas two different songs that happen to share words and chords.)<> >> >> >...I'm with you there, totally, brother...(I even like the also-different> >version by Sting...)> > Can't speak authoritatively but I'd understood Sting's arrangement was lifted more or less in toto from Gil Evans. I believe you're right -- and that Evans (and/or some of his band personnel) was on the "Nothing Like the Sun" version back in '87... Michael "Man, I really liked the moods and music of 'NLtS,' maybe a bit of 'Ten Summoners Tales' too...but almost nothing else of ol' Gordon's after that" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:47:58 -0600 From: Steve Schiavo Subject: Fwd: New Pornographers Early Ticket Offer Information should be free, I guess. Just don't everybody buy up JeFF's tickets to the Madison show. > On Saturday go to http://thenewpornographers.ducatking.com/ to > order your tickets. This hasn't been announced publicly yet so you > will be some of the first people to buy your tickets. AWESOME. Just > don't sleep on this. > > > The website is http://thenewpornographers.ducatking.com... Here are > the tour dates..... > > APR 9 Phoenix Concert Theatre Toronto, ON - Canada > APR 10 Crofoot Ballroom Pontiac, MI > APR 11 Newport Music Hall Columbus, OH > APR 12 Carnegie Music Hall of Homestead Munhall, PA > APR 13 State Theater of Ithaca Ithaca, NY > APR 14 9:30 Club Washington, DC > APR 16 Toads Place Richmond Richmond, VA > APR 17 Georgia Theatre Athens, GA > APR 18 The Cannery Nashville, TN > APR 19 Pageant St Louis, MO > APR 20 Riviera Theatre Chicago, IL > APR 21 Orpheum - Madison Madison, WI > APR 22 Beachland Ballroom Cleveland, OH > > > all dates w/Okervill River > - - Steve __________ I can't resist an anime that includes a small, cute, violence prone girl with a scythe. - John ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 02:53:10 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: on not inhaling Jeff Dwarf wrote: >(Not that I don't prefer Obama over Hillary, but I think his momentumhas dissipated substantially).< ...Oh no, not after the SC landslide win and the Kennedy endorsements -- his Big Mo is shiny and minty fresh once again...and I can't wait for Super Duper Deluxe Extravaganza Tuesday! Michael "Already early voted -- yesterday, in fact -- guess who for..." Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 02:57:37 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: song request Melissa wrote: >fegs,I'm collecting suggestions for any songs that might work with this year'sBurning Man theme - American Dream. any suggestions would be appreciated - -esp as the list has a mich wider and deeper appreciation of music thanmany of the folks in the camp. basically we'd do anything to avoid havingto hear ring of fire over and over again. already suggestedAmerican WomanAmerican Music - Violent FemmesAmerica - Rammsteinand of course Robyn's america< Paul Simon's "America," but, even more so ('bout a hundred times) his "American Tune." Mournful and essential... Michael "I know they were semi-obvious, but..." Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:15:31 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue On 1/31/08, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > > > > PS: Go and see The Carolina Chocolate Drops. So what if they are in a > movie that Oprah funded. Speaking of which: Am I hallucinating, or did I actually see, in a store recently, a cover of "O" magazine that did *not* feature Oprah? Also: dogs and cats join the same political party; water flows uphill; Larry the Cable Guy wears shirt with sleeve. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:16:12 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: yet another iTunes WTF On 1/31/08, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > > 2fs wrote: > > > > It seems to be making the classic error of treating numbers as if > they're > > just different characters > > Yeah, but you wanna watch where that might go; proper parsing should put > "1% of Monster" and "Five Percent For Nothing" between 0 and 1. You'd > also never be able to find "Infinity" at all. Heh-heh. (I gather you're competing with Brian H. for Lauren's affections...) - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:52:17 -0500 From: lep Subject: Re: on not inhaling Rex says: > I'm okay with all of those, but I loathe mayonnaise beyond all rationality > for all of those reasons. It's just enough more... I dunno, jiggly or > something than sour cream to make it... man, I need to stop thinking about > it now. Barf. i wasn't sure if i was ready to talk about this. i'm still not. but if i can help *one* feg, it will have all been worth it. when i was teenager, and at least twice as concerned about my hair as i now am, i read about an "at-home" conditioning treatment that involved washing your hair, towel-drying it, putting mayonnaise on/in it, and waiting 1/2 hour for the miracle of soft, shiny hair to occur. well, even thought i despised mayonnaise, i figured "do it for the soft, shiny hair!!!" and "how bad can it be...it's not like you're *eating* the mayonnaise!!!" the weird thing was i believe almost lasted the entire 1/2 hour. all the while, nauseous and remembering foul childhood jokes involving punchlines of "...and it turns out: it WASN'T mayonnaise." the horror. as ever, lauren p.s. but frak it if i didn't have the softest and shiniest hair ever. p.p.s. and, uh, haven't tried it, but miracle whip is supposed to be a wonderful exfoliant. but it has to miracle whip, not mayonnaise. - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:05:43 -0600 (CST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: puppet Spike On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, lep wrote: > Capuchin says: >> And that's why I don't like Battlestar Galactica. > > i.e. because it's been tainted with realism? Well, sure... I mean, just the other day I was fighting against this Cylon and... Oh, wait, no. Not at all. It's not realistic because it's contrived and phony. And yet, it uses none of that contrived phoniness to any meaningful effect. Furthermore it, like Lost, has no overall theme and is simply a string of made-up events with no particular goal or message. The whole point of fiction is that the author has complete control over the universe. Random events, then, are not just random. If they have no significance or purpose, then the author has failed to control the universe. At that point, all you have is half-assed reality. And I can get full-assed reality everywhere else I go and that's way more satisfying in my hankering for the random, pointless, and irrational. J. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:09:20 -0600 (CST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Jason Brown wrote: >> Well, last i checked the Tractor is still in operation! But >> apparently no clubs have ever closed outside of the downtown core! > There is no hipster life beyond the core, apparently If it happens outside the downtown core, it's clearly not intended to be of general interest. And I was shocked that this guy was (in his badly written little guided tour) DRIVING a van around... to a bunch of locations on a circuit less than two miles. No wonder the downtown core is culturally dying. J. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:35:52 -0600 (CST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: puppet Spike On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, 2fs wrote: > Um, I think this would have been a "good thing" on the level that if > Wesley were a human being Well, see, that's the part I don't get. Wesley's not a human being. Never was, never will be. He was invented to tell a story and if he were played out different at all, he wouldn't be Wesley becaues that wouldn't be Wesley's story. He'd be a different guy... named Wesley (so it's still Wesley's story but... fuck. You get the idea.). If I'm ever thinking of fiction and I think "Boy, I wish ___ would have happened", it's because I think it better suits my undrestanding of the theme rather than my desire to watch or read about some fictional person feeling more or less joy or suffering. That just doesn't make sense to me. I love fiction and I feel, when appropriate, what the characters feel, I think. But it's for a reason related to the reason behind the work. (My comment about BSG was, initially, just meant as a random joke, but there's truth in it and I went ahead and explained some of othat in my previous post. But I would say here that I think BSG's purpose [like the aforementioned LOST] is just light entertainment. So maybe wanting more good feeling there makes sense becuase it feels better and that's all light entertainment does. I don't know... I just don't get that kind of involvement in light entertainment. I'll just watch The Mighty Boosh for that. Hell, I don't think I can stand multi-full-hour-episode plots in my light entertainments. I need more substance than that. [Then there's Arrested Development... which I think is, in some ways, a parody of shows like BSG and LOST and is able to be hilarious only by poking fun of these contrived, convoluted, pointless situations.]) > he suffers far out of proportion to what he deserves...even though he's > done several things that are pretty fucked up, ultimately he's a decent > human who still tries to do the right thing. Well, I don't believe in "deserves", so I don't quite know how to address that. The whole point here is that bad things happen to decent people every day. Go talk to some working poor (if you're not already among them). And it's not a person's decency that should make you want good things to happen to them, it's their very humanity. You shouldn't wish suffering on any real person. If our fiction were merely to show us the best possible things happening to people, we'd have nothing but pornographic light opera. But what kind of thoughtful analysis does that inspire? > I agree with almost everything you wrote below...but once again, the > Jeme Tone Bender renders whatever it was you wanted to say, above, into > a pointlessly hostile setting. You really should learn to see that, I'd > say. I think I meant that first question as both rhetorical and genuine. I mean, I don't understand what a person gets out of a thing like Buffy or Angel if they're really moved to wish the best for the characters. I don't know what those people think the show is or why it exists and I certainly don't see what they can enjoy about it. The shows concern themselves largely with the suffering of good people. If you want there to be less suffering, shouldn't you be watching an entirely different kind of show? And actually, my tone monitor DID make me go back and change my opening line in that email... but I'm not going to share what I'd written the first time. > This is certainly true on the plot level - but I think Lauren's smart > enough to figure that out, but was responding (as I said above) in terms > of Wesley as hypothetical person, or something. I mean, to me it makes > perfect emotional sense to say what she said (however poorly I might be > explaining it), even while acknowledging that, dramatically, it would > have weakened the series. Just to re-iterate, I don't understand how you could keep those two ideas in your head: Wesley as a real person with feelings that you want to protect and Wesley as a fictional character who exists only to tell a particular story. > Like: Wash had to die (oops! spoiler...) for a host of reasons, but that > doesn't mean that, since he was such a likable character, it kinda > sucked that he did. "Did" both die, and have to do so. I'm interested to know why you think he had to die. I have my own theory, but I'm interested in yours. > I've just started watching BSG - I just finished Season 1, so no damned > spoilers please - but insofar as you went from your last sentence in the > preceding paragraph to the sentence about BSG, I disagree that the > characters in BSG uniformly "have no principles". Mostly, I just think the events on BSG were randomly strung together... that the writers didn't have much of a clue from story-arc to story-arc what was happening. I think the strongest evidence for this is the constant use of flashbacks to things that we didn't see happen that were supposedly part of earlier timelines already covered by episodes we've seen. Like they were going back and saying, "Boy, I wish we'd shown THIS happening back there." And so they'd write and shoot it and pretend it had. And since there's no direction and they're constantly back-filling the story, you have no sense of direction and no sense of purpose to the actions (since you're probably not seeing the bits that really matter anyway). As for the characters, I feel like there are "character development" scenes where people talk and there's an attempt to give a character a voice and there are "plot development" scenes where the story is moved along, but the individual lines of dialog could be shuffled around with little to no effect. > Maybe I'll think differently once I've seen a few more seasons...but > could you explain what you mean as much as you can w/o utterly > spoilerizing S2 and beyond? I think I got it out. I stopped watching somewhere in the third season. > Or maybe you were just making a random joke - I can be obtuse as well > ;-) I kind of did mean it as a random joke, but I thought to put it there, so it must have been related somehow -- and clearly it was. J. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:39:43 -0800 (GMT-08:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: on not inhaling >p.p.s. and, uh, haven't tried it, but miracle whip is supposed to be a >wonderful exfoliant. but it has to miracle whip, not mayonnaise. Always knew there had to be a meaningful use for miracle whip... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:56:08 -0600 From: Steve Schiavo Subject: Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue On Jan 31, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Tom Clark wrote: > I can't say I "hate" cilantro. I just avoid because to me it > tastes like dish soap - which seems to be the common complaint > against it. Ironically I love coriander! A little cilantro and some lime juice make humble Pace Picante Sauce into a thing of wonder. At this time, I have no plan to taste dish soap. - - Steve __________ I can't resist an anime that includes a small, cute, violence prone girl with a scythe. - John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:53:03 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: on not inhaling Carrie Galbraith wrote: > >From: Jeff Dwarf > >(Not that I don't prefer Obama over Hillary, but I think his > >momentum has dissipated substantially). > My problem is I don't want to see a Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton > pattern. That would make it a minimum of 24 years held between 2 > families. I don't like or agree with it. And I don't trust it. I don't like that either, but I prefer it to either McCain or Romney. > - c, who was for Edwards but I guess that's not gonna happen I was still going back and forth between Edwards and Obama until Edwards pulled out; I've never considered Clinton in the primary, though I guess I'll be voting for her in November. "I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them." -- Tom Lehrer "The eyes are the groin of the head." -- Dwight Schrute . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:38:01 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! On Jan 31, 2008 5:32 PM, 2fs wrote: > ] > Well, Cash had such gravitas he could probably sing "Louie, Louie" and > turn it into a grand tragedy...that said, my favorite version of "Hurt" is > the one my friend Steve sent me, where it was worked into a medley of > Christmas songs retrofitted with NIN lyrics. "Hurt" was done to the tune of > "Little Drummer Boy," sung by a guy who sounded kinda like TMBG's "aren't > you the guy that hit me in the eye?" part of "Fingertips"..."I hurt myself > today, pah-rumpa-pum-pum..." It's what Trent deserves - being turned into a > comedy Christmas number. And it is for such things that they invented teh LOL. Even just imagining it is good for a chuckle. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:39:06 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: puppet Spike I suppose if anyone here hasn't seen _Serenity_, there are spoilers aplenty below. The simple way to solve this is to go pick up the DVD and watch it, now, before reading this message. On 1/31/08, Capuchin wrote: > > On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, 2fs wrote: > > Um, I think this would have been a "good thing" on the level that if > > Wesley were a human being > > Well, see, that's the part I don't get. Wesley's not a human being. > Never was, never will be. He was invented to tell a story and if he were > played out different at all, he wouldn't be Wesley becaues that wouldn't > be Wesley's story. He'd be a different guy... named Wesley (so it's still > Wesley's story but... fuck. You get the idea.). It's exactly being able to hold both thoughts in your head at once. The fiction reflects on reality, and you imagine that if you actually knew a person *like* Wes, etc. If there's no loopback to reality, then the fiction ceases to have meaning. Of course he's not a "human being" per se...but the extent to which he's emotionally persuasive as a character, the extent to which his situation can mean anything to us real human beings - well, that's the level at which people make the emotional leap to momentarily wondering, damn, that's too bad. I suppose it's analogous (not the same, though) to someone you know having a terrible experience, but a terrible experience which in the long run makes them a better person (and they know it, too): you wish there would have been a way that was less horrible for them, even if you (that's "you both") recognize that ultimately the bad experience was beneficial. > > > > he suffers far out of proportion to what he deserves...even though he's > > done several things that are pretty fucked up, ultimately he's a decent > > human who still tries to do the right thing. > > Well, I don't believe in "deserves", so I don't quite know how to address > that. The whole point here is that bad things happen to decent people > every day. Go talk to some working poor (if you're not already among > them). And it's not a person's decency that should make you want good > things to happen to them, it's their very humanity. You shouldn't wish > suffering on any real person. I know what you're saying at an ethical level, concerning actual humans...but then, if we're talking about fictional characters who *aren't* actual humans, why *shouldn't* we, say, wish suffering on them (after all, your last sentence does say "on any *real* person")? So why not "deserves" in the realm of fiction, even if in reality you don't believe in it? I don't believe in the concept of deserving things as an actuality (that is, I don't believe people get what they deserve, good or bad), but certainly the concept of "deserts" is fairly well-established, and is therefore usable in fictions. I mean, no one in real life is affected if you wish well on a fictional character...and no one suffers if you wish them ill, either. Of course bad things happen to decent people - but if "deserves" isn't in your vocabulary, how is "decent" there? Or rather: what difference should it make, dramatically, if bad things happen to "decent" people or non-decent ones, if it's not their decency but their humanity that counts? Fiction quite often implicates us in moral orders that, in real life, we might abhor. Frankly it's hard to make fiction that doesn't do that...because it quite often relies on conflict, and if we want to be utopian, it's hard to make deep conflict: all conflict resolves into surface tension, misunderstanding, etc. But real, deep, irreconciliable conflict creates drama...but it also creates a kind of inhumanity, in that no matter how much we try to sympathize with those on the other side of the conflict from the one we endorse, the very irreconciliability of the situation ultimately means we...wish them ill (i.e., wish ourselves, those holding our position, well. Please recall "irreconciliable," etc.). > > > I agree with almost everything you wrote below...but once again, the > > Jeme Tone Bender renders whatever it was you wanted to say, above, into > > a pointlessly hostile setting. You really should learn to see that, I'd > > say. > > I think I meant that first question as both rhetorical and genuine. I > mean, I don't understand what a person gets out of a thing like Buffy or > Angel if they're really moved to wish the best for the characters. How do you mean "really"? I think it's a both/and: at some level, they "really" wish the best...even though at other levels, they understand dramatically that that can't be...and even that their emotional connection to the characters arises largely *through fellow-feeling with those negative situations*. if everything always went wonderfully for Angel, he'd seem like a cartoon character, and we wouldn't believe him as human-emotion-surrogate, and we probably wouldn't care about what appear to be moral dilemmas explored by the show...because moral dilemmas can be explored only by people (including fictitious ones) who are capable of choosing wrongly and/or of suffering despite having chosen rightly. (Incidentally, that's what I meant by "deserves": the mismatch between a right moral choice and poor consequences...even if in the world we know, or should know, that such correspondence cannot be expected.) > > > Just to re-iterate, I don't understand how you could keep those two ideas > in your head: Wesley as a real person with feelings that you want to > protect and Wesley as a fictional character who exists only to tell a > particular story. Honestly, and non-snarkily: sometimes I think there's a certain emotional dysfunction in your character. The situation I described seems fairly straightforward to me, and the lack of reconciliability perfectly normal as well. > Like: Wash had to die (oops! spoiler...) for a host of reasons, but that > > doesn't mean that, since he was such a likable character, it kinda > > sucked that he did. "Did" both die, and have to do so. > > I'm interested to know why you think he had to die. I have my own theory, > but I'm interested in yours. Well, for one thing, the fact that Whedon et al. had actually killed a major character meant that in the battle scenes that followed, we could *not* rest easy in the usual assumption that major characters in a movie will survive whatever's coming to them. When Simon's hit, we're more acutely aware that he could die - we cannot say, oh, he's one of the main characters, so they'll save him so he'll be around for the end of the movie. As to why it's Wash - I think it's because he's sorta the Willow of the Firefly crew (Willow circa S3 or S4): the person who's the most everyday, the most emotional but centered, the most vulnerable yet comic. He's not a warrior, so we can't assume he knows death is a possibility in the way that, say, Zoe or Mal knows. And I'm not sure exactly how, haven't worked it out yet, but the fact that he's married to Zoe, and that there remains a bit of sexual tension between Mal and Zoe, yet Wash is working for Mal, gives a little more frisson to the situation than would be the case if Wash were a mere ingenu. I think there's also something to the fact that he's portrayed as very competent at what he does: still, despite all that, and really through no failure of his own, he's killed anyway. There's no magic ticket you can buy, in other words, that will exempt you - it's not a question of goodness, competence, etc. In many ways, I think Wash is the character much of the audience would identify with, also: skilled in a specialized area, but still idiosyncratic, slightly awkward, but ultimately loveable, even if he doesn't really fit in in some ways (it's a ship full of pirates, essentially - but here's Wash, being opposed to violence - out loud, several times). That's not enough - he still dies. The deaths of many characters at that point in the film would have been pretty powerful - but I think Wash's is the most. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #475 ********************************