- When you feel like there’s something missing from your life…
You will not see him at the Athens Olympics, but Bob Brown is one of Britain’s leading athletes. A veteran of long-distance races across the world, he is now at the front of a pack of runners attempting one of their sport’s greatest challenges—a run across the US. … Brown and the six other competitors are attempting to run the distance in 70 days—the foot-busting equivalent of a double marathon each day.
…
However, Brown is not coming to all this without training or a track record. The last country he ran across was Australia and, in the mid-90s, he was ranked among the highest in the world at extreme endurance events, which are known to competitors and fans as ultra sports.
…
For that event, which Brown describes as the hardest in the world, he trained himself to sleep for one hour at time, spent entire nights on his exercise bike before going to work the next morning (so he could cope with sleep deprivation) and spent seven-hour training sessions in his local pool to gear his mind up to the boredom of a 24-mile swim.
(via Guardian: “Keep on running,” by Simon Jeffery [July 19, 2004])
- Are you feeling run-down? Tired? Not John Corson:
“I’m feeling like my body is light. It’s the best I’ve probably felt as far as energy in 10 years,” said John Corson, 56, the day after he was struck by lightning while working outside his home.
(via AP: “Lightning Strike Energizes Maine Man” [July 23, 2004])
- Bubbling out. I have no idea what the hell to make of this MeFi blurb on “sustainable oil,” but after sniffing out a couple of the pieces cited ([1] [2] [3]), I have serious doubts. The articles claim that oil’s maybe not something formed over millions of years by the compression of dead stuff, but in fact a geological product. The research paper mentioned by just about everybody seems quasi-legit, but I’m somewhat troubled by the fact that it doesn’t seem to be referenced by anyone other than quack news services. Because, conspiracy theories aside, the fact is that major scientific revelations do not generally crop up unannounced and without much fanfare. I’m gonna go with my gut and ignore this one for now.
Tear you apart
https://www.swordbilled.com/tear-you-apart/
Oh, the elephants
I have no idea who Cafferty or Hemmer are—nor do I care—and the elephant-playing-soccer thing isn’t exactly outrageously different, but this back-and-forth is positively surreal. I don’t want to say comical, because it would’ve depended in part on how the conversation went, what w/ inflection and all that. But it’s a delightful little dialogue (what some people would call a “transcript”).
CAFFERTY: Officials in Thailand… have organized a soccer game between elephants and inmates. … [The inmates] scored first, but the game ended in a 5-5 tie. One trainer said, quote, “The elephants quite slow, but they try their best.”
HEMMER: That is a classic. That’s in Thailand?
CAFFERTY: That would be in Thailand.
HEMMER: And those elephants are pretty darn good, too.
CAFFERTY: Not too bad.
HEMMER: And a 5-5 tie. Do you brag about that at the office the next day?
CAFFERTY: I don’t know how they…
HEMMER: A tie.
CAFFERTY: They don’t have an office. They go back to the license plate factory.
O’BRIEN: I was going to say, an elephant?
HEMMER: Not the elephants.
CAFFERTY: Oh, the elephants. I don’t know what the elephants brag about the next day.
HEMMER: Thank you, Jack.
(via CNN American Morning Transcript [June 22, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/oh-the-elephants/
Unpleasant imagery
Marysville police say they arrested a 23-year-old man wearing nothing but cheese early Sunday.
(AP: “Police arrest cheese-covered naked man” [July 19, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/unpleasant-imagery/
A napkin’s a napkin’s a napkin
There are people you’d like to thank, but you’ve forgotten the list (again) and so you’ll have to hack together an impromptu speech, something cobbled together on white and faintly stained napkins from that laughable coffeehouse down the street.
But: a napkin’s a napkin.
(Of course, there are variations in size and quality and color and material and whether or not the eating establishment’s name’s somehow printed on the thing; but still, a napkin’s a napkin.)
https://www.swordbilled.com/napkin/
Elephant (***1/2)
(2003) dir. Gus Van Sant – w/ Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Jordan Taylor, Carrie Finklea, Nicole George, Brittany Mountain, etc.
Synopsis: In what is essentially a fictionalization of the Columbine school shootings (and school violence more generally), Gus Van Sant explores a day in the life of a school that about to be subjected to intense and unexpected violence from two of its students. Van Sant follows different characters as their paths cross and tangle over the course of the film, sometimes examining the same scene from several different perspectives at different points in the movie.
Review: ‘Elephant’ is good, but not outstanding. (It won the Palm d’Or at Cannes in 2003, so this point is obviously contestable.) It’s a quiet movie—there are only a couple moments, in fact, when the action is accompanied by any music at all. This, for me, was the first strike. I’m not generally a fan of quiet movies, in part because I get easily distracted. You may not. I do, and I find it hard to become engrossed. Another thing about Elephant is that it’s highly minimalist, and the script is largely improvised. Whether the former means anything, I have no idea. What the latter means is, strike #2. While the improvisational nature lends a certain credibility to what’s being said on-screen, it also detracts from the movie in some ways. I don’t care how brilliant the actors are, the dialogue, however genuine or stylistically desirable, isn’t going to be as tight as well-written scripted dialogue. These weaknesses aside, Elephant’s a pretty good movie. There are moments of genius, but the movie doesn’t manage to sustain these moments for very long. It’s well-shot, with inordinately long tracking shots that give the setting a real sense of depth and complexity. All things considered, it’s pretty well-acted, though I wouldn’t call any of the performances exceptional. The use of various perspectives to link the action and characters together is pretty clever, and helps to give you a sense that the movie is more than a single plotline. It also feeds into the sense that nothing (school violence, for starters) can be realistically said to have a single cause. Van Sant didn’t want to resolve the issue of where school violence comes from—after all, it’s not a point that can really be resolved, certainly not in 80+ minutes.
Rating: [•••½] out of [•••••]
https://www.swordbilled.com/elephant/
It’s not invented, but it brings joy to lots of people
Despite a few seemingly poor questions late in the game (e.g., “can it be used more than once?” and “was it invented?” ), and despite a few of the more arguable answers I provided, the artificial intelligence of 20Q managed to guess that I was thinking about an elephant! Imagine that.
Neat-o.
Play it yourself, if you like.
- It is classified as Animal.
- Can it run fast? Yes.
- Can it climb? No.
- Is it tall? Yes.
- Does it have a long tail? No.
- Does it bring joy to people? Yes.
- Is it a wild animal? Yes.
- Does it have a horn? No.
- Can you eat it? No.
- Is it multicolored? No.
- Is it brown? No.
- Is it comforting? Irrelevant.
- Is it considered valuable? Irrelevant.
- Does it live in grass-lands? Yes.
- Can it be used in remote areas? Irrelevant.
- Was it invented? No.
- Is it bigger than sofa? Yes.
- Can it be used more than once? Irrelevant.
- Is it smooth? No.
P.S. glancing over the instructions page, I realize that “elephant” is one of the things that 20Q is best at guessing; shows, I guess, how innovative and cutting-edge my thoughts are… So anyway, I went back and tried coffee maker—presumably more difficult—and 20Q again guessed correctly. Anyway, just FYI. I guess elephant is the kind of thing lots of people think about. I know I do, it just didn’t occur to me that it would be such an easily guessed thing.
(originally via MeFi)
https://www.swordbilled.com/elephant/
It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece
- Song parody. Web site JibJab strikes out into allegedly charted waters with “This Land Is Your Land” political parody, running into unexpected hot water from the nefarious copyright-holders of the Woody Guthrie song. EFF strikes back. (via MeFi, etc.)
- Security, what security? Respectful of Otters has an interesting anecdote about security, what anecdote essentially points out that seeming security measures are sometimes nothing more than economic security measures. Anyway, innerestin’ story.
- Some Noise. Belle Waring on Crooked Timber calls attention to a New Yorker piece on, um, Dick Cheney:
As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate’s public-address system and cued up the infamous “Seven Minutes of Funk” break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a “take no prisoners” freestyle rap battle…
Unfortunately, as other senators (along with assorted aides and support-staff members) were casting their votes to decide the winner, using the admittedly subjective but generally accepted “Make some noise up in here!” protocols, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy took the proceedings to what one aide accurately described as “the next level.”
Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) was the first to notice that the two men were circling each other, Mr. Cheney brandishing a switchblade and Mr. Leahy the jagged neck of a broken bottle.
“Oh, snap!” Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. “It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece.”
The whole article, in case you hadn’t noticed, is really worth a read (if only for the revelation of where Cheney and Leahy are kept during non-business hours, and how they’re fed).
- The End. How To Save The World has an interesting (if somewhat lengthy) post on eco-collapse. I am from time to time a firm believer in the insolubility of present-day troubles, so this post quite naturally piqued my curiosity. After all, we’d all like to know what the end’s going to be like, and HTSTW paints as realistic a portrait as any.
https://www.swordbilled.com/its-getting-kind-of-hectic-up-in-this-piece/
Thomas Pynchon, meet Homer Simpson
Starting Line-Up of Guest Voices for Season 16
Fox Press Release – July 15, 2004
…TV/film stars Ray Romano, Kim Catrall, James Caan and Joe Mantegna; rapper 50 Cent; famed architect Frank Gehry; and author Thomas Pynchon are among the upcoming guest voices on THE SIMPSONS airing Sundays (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX.
(via PLANetizen: “Gehry To Guest-Star On The Simpsons” [July 21, 2004])
https://www.swordbilled.com/thomas-pynchon-meet-homer-simpson/
The Rights of Photographers
Via BoingBoing, we find an excellent resource on what you reasonably can (and cannot) expect to photograph, and what to do if someone tries to stop you, confiscate your film, etc. Originally in PDF format, the full text follows (see next page).
Note: I’m providing the text as an easier alternative to the PDF; I’m not going to make any claims of accuracy, and if you have more than a casual interest in the rights of photographers, you’d be well advised to look into the topic more and/or check the original link to make sure the resource hasn’t been updated.
Note #2: more on the problems of photography, here
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-limits-of-photography/
Gio
As promised, here are more puppy pictures of Giovanni. Click on the thumbnail pictures to open up the big photos in (of all places) the photo gallery. If you wanna see.
Reflecting/pondering/watching a bug:
Sleeping:
Pulling on a shoelace (mine):
https://www.swordbilled.com/gio/