I am Kyle's self-indulgence

While I'm not a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails' music, I love the way the last several albums have been distributed. I blogged about the exciting viral marketing campaign for Year Zero, but I haven't mentioned the far more significant news of the two releases that followed it.

You may have heard that earlier this year Nine Inch Nails (or Trent Reznor--I'll be using the two more or less interchangeably) released Ghosts I-IV for free on the internet. Following Radiohead's pay-what-you-want album, this release received much less attention in the press, even though Trent Reznor gave fans higher-quality audio files through his cooperation with bit torrent clients.

It may have been easy to overlook Ghosts I-IV because it didn't feel like a traditional album: it's a collection of instrumental pieces that probably wouldn't have been at all successful if released in a traditional medium.

But this past week Nine Inch Nails announced yet another release, and this time it's a more traditional, 10-track album with vocals and everything. Once again, it's given to everyone for free online, and in multiple high-quality formats.

All of this is pretty exciting, coming from a successful, high-profile artist. Yet I think the biggest news about this album is a detail that most people have overlooked. Both Ghosts I-IV and The Slip are released under a Creative Commons License. In other words, fans can not only download the music for free, but they can also freely distribute it, perform it, sample it, remix it, or incorporate it into any other work (This American Life has used music from Ghosts in two of their shows). The only conditions are that the original artist is credited and that the derived work is noncommercial and released with a similar license.

To understand the significance of this, consider what has been happening in our culture with music recently. In an attempt to reign in filesharing and to increase profits, music distributors have been claiming stringent control over what is done with music after it has been purchased. Fans are told they are not free to copy music for their own personal use or even rip CDs to an mp3 player. Coffee shops are getting in trouble for playing music in their stores without permission. There is talk of charging radio stations for each song they play.

While the mainstream music distributors are pushing toward greater limits on what consumers do with music, Trent Reznor has come along and given permission to not only download his albums, but to use them for any non-commercial purpose, completely free of charge.

So while Radiohead gets the big headlines for a one-time free album download (and they'll always be my personal favorite band), Nine Inch Nails deserves the real credit for leading the way to a whole new way of distributing and licensing music.

Evangeline: from the Greek euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον), meaning "Good News"

This is Evangeline Mae, born May 6, 2008 at 8:10 a.m. She weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces.

We are calling her Eva.

Her mom and dad are very excited...

...and so is her brother.

Here's the other video I mentioned below. I've been trying out Google Accelerator, but it seems to mess up YouTube. I keep getting messages about videos no longer being available and my files fail to upload. When I disable the Accelerator YouTube works fine again.

Anyway, enjoy the video.

Daniel had a lot of fun playing with the helium balloons left over from the baby shower. I tied them to small weights to keep them from floating to the ceiling.

I spent a good twenty minutes removing tiny amounts of weight from one to try to achieve equilibrium, so it would just hover in midair. I ended up with a balloon that falls back to earth very, very slowly. As Daniel would try to catch it he would accidentally bump it back up into the air, and then wait for it to come back down again.

I tried uploading that video too, but YouTube won't take it for some reason. I'll have to try again later.

I've nearly finished reading Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk, and I'll definitely be seeking out more of her writing after this.

It's hard for me to say exactly why I love her so much. She writes creative non-fiction essays, about which she says, "This is not a collection of occasional pieces, such as a writer bring out to supplement his real work; instead this is my real work, such as it is."

I had previously read her most famous work, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, first for a graduate English class and then a second time, more carefully, after I heard her mentioned as a Christian writer. The first time I read Pilgrim I didn't notice anything about Dillard's faith. The book is mostly observations on nature, and whatever spiritual reflections it contains are of a very general sort.

In Teaching a Stone to Talk Annie Dillard exposes her faith much more directly. She writes on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles, but what keeps me coming back to her is just the way she has with language. She often takes a very roundabout way to get to what she wants to say, but it doesn't matter because every sentence is enjoyable to read. Sometimes I get so engrossed in the way she writes that I don't care if she ever gets to the point. But she always does, usually in one great punch that ties together all of the little anecdotes and loose threads that she had carefully placed along the way.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. It's called "God In The Doorway." It's one of the shortest essays in the book, but it is a great example of how she leaps from thread to thread, not showing the connections until the very last sentence. I also happen to love the point she makes here. This would be a great essay to read to the family on Christmas day.

One cold Christmas Eve I was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner-my parents, my baby sister, and I. We had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas Eve. Our stockings drooped from the mantle; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.

I had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs. There was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and cold winter blew around my dress.

Everyone was calling me. "Look who’s here! Look who’s here!" I looked. It was Santa Claus. Whom I never-ever-wanted to meet. Santa Claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. My mother’s voice was thrilled: "Look who’s here!" I ran upstairs.

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you’d been bad or good. He knew when you’d been bad or good! And I had been bad.

My mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; I wouldn’t come down. My father encouraged me; my sister howled. I wouldn’t come down, but I could bend over the stairwell and see: Santa Claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; Santa Claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. I never came down. I don’t know who ate the cookies.

For so many years now I have known that this Santa Claus was actually a rigged-up Miss White, who lived across the street, that I confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making Santa Claus, God, and Miss White an awesome, vulnerable trinity. This is really a story about Miss White.

Miss White was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. She liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure. She would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp. I liked her. She meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as Santa Claus, I ran from her again.

That day, a day of the following summer, Miss White and I knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. It was a large, strong hand lens. She lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. The glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. It burned; I was burned; I ripped my hand away and ran home crying. Miss White called after me, sorry, explaining, but I didn’t look back.

Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. Miss White, God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.

For now it seems that the hubbub over Jeremiah Wright has quieted some, although I'm sure we can expect it to resurface in the general election, assuming Obama receives the Democratic nomination (here's hoping!). In case you don't know what I'm referring to, some of Barack Obama's political enemies have been making a big deal out of comments by the pastor of Obama's church. Apparently, when people can't find fault in a candidate's platform, voting record, or personal life, they will try guilt by association.

The whole thing got me thinking: if I were running for political office (God forbid) what kinds of quotes would they dig up from my church's pastors in order to cast aspersions on my character? There would certainly be a lot to choose from.

Erika and I first started attending our church because it closely supported the campus ministry we were involved in. We also liked the small, personal atmosphere of the church and its democratic approach to worship and teaching (meaning the church relies primarily on individuals' personal reading and interpretation of scripture).

The church is an evangelical Christian church in small-town Missouri, which means that about 99% of the members and 100% of the leaders are Conservative Republicans, which doesn't bother us so long as people don't preach politics as gospel truth. Mostly we get along great with these people and come away edified from Sunday services. However, with the Christian Conservative movement stepping up its activity in the last several years, there have also been a number of awkward moments at church.

When we first started attending this church the minister was a dimunitive Christian version of Jeff Foxworthy, only much more likeable. I don't want to use his real name here, so let's call him Mark. He had a good teaching style and usually preached valuable lessons for Christian living. Occasionally he would bring up current events and issues in a very vague way, but we learned to tolerate it because, like I said, this is just what it's like to be a Christian in Missouri.

There was one Sunday, though, when Mark started preaching about Galatians chapter 3. I'm sure he made several points about the passage, but the one he spent the most time on (and the one I remember most vividly) was verse 1: "You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified." I say he focused on that verse, but really it was the single word "bewitched" that he latched onto. He followed it onto a long tangent about the TV show Bewitched and how we think it's harmless entertainment, but what we're laughing at is witchcraft, which is the work of the devil. Then he started talking about the evil of Harry Potter (yes, this happened when all that silliness was going on).

I thought this was already bad enough, but then Mark began reading quotes from a newspaper story that he had read in an e-mail newsletter. There were members of the congregation tutting and shaking their heads when Mark read quotes from children like

"Hermione is my favorite, because she's smart and has a kitty," said 6-year-old Jessica Lehman of Easley, SC. "Jesus died because He was weak and stupid."

or

"I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School," said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of hell. "But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies."

I immediately recognized these quotes from The Onion, having been a loyal reader for years. When I showed Mark that they were from a fake story in a satirical newspaper he assured me he received it from a trusted source. This source eventually admitted its mistake, and Mark was good enough to say so in the next week's sermon (although he still maintained that Harry Potter is witchcraft).

Some time later Mark left the church over a personal scandal, and we were all very upset over him leaving, especially under those circumstances. The church quickly found a replacement in a man named Michael. He was a family man and a farmer who had just recently entered ministry after attending bible college. It's very difficult for me to talk about him without bitterness. Frankly, some of his sermons made me nostalgic for Mark's quaint attacks on Harry Potter. Michael believed that there is One Truth, which is the Truth he learned in bible college. He believed all Christians must believe in that One Truth, and any deviation is heresy.

I'm not exaggerating.

One of his first sermons was about the importance of baptism. At one point he actually said these exact words: "If you don't believe baptism is necessary for salvation, then I question whether you're really a Christian." I do no believe baptism is necessary for salvation, so you can imagine what it felt like to hear him saying that on Sunday morning. That was the first time Erika and I considered leaving the church. There would be others.

Michael was pastor at our church during 2004, which was the darkest year for Christianity I have seen in my lifetime. The religious right went into overdrive trying to convince Christians to reelect George W. Bush. Some churches began to resemble political rallies and there were reports of Democrats leaving their mega-churches en masse. We saw a little of this in our small church, as on the Sunday when Michael gave a sermon on abortion (as if he needed to convince anyone there that abortion is wrong) and after the service he handed out pamphlets about each of the presidential candidates' positions on the matter.

That day was the closest Erika and I have ever come to leaving the church.

Ultimately we decided to stay, for the same reason that we endured previous offenses. We were loyal to our church and not its pastor. We started attending there because of the people and the atmosphere. During the years we had been there, we had grown to love those people even more, and we did not want to leave them. We felt that these people are what make the church, and not the man who stands on stage and talks for 45 minutes each week.

I'm very glad we stayed. Eventually Michael left over disagreements with the elders on theology, meaning that his interpretation of scripture was too narrow even for our church's very conservative leadership. We've hired a new pastor since then, and we like him pretty well. He's not perfect (no Christian pastor is) and there have been a few things he's said that I've taken issue with, but overall I think he's a good teacher. Even if he weren't Erika and I would still stay in our church because we know that being Christian doesn't mean we embrace or even accept the words of whoever happens to be preaching at the moment.

The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power) - The Flaming Lips
A Day in the Life - The Beatles
What Planet Is This?! - The Seatbelts
Imagine That - Ani Difranco
Pink & Blue - Outkast
Green River - Creedence Clearwater Revival
Beercan - Beck
Scatter Heart - Björk
Cling to the Cross - Lost and Found
Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips

It's April, which in Kirksville means it's time for everyone to haul out all of the large trash that has accumulated over the last year and set it on our front lawns. At some time during the week the city trash collectors will come by and pick up whatever oversized trash would go uncollected in a normal week. The unusual thing about it is that we don't know what day they will visit each street, so we all set our trash on the curb on Monday and wait up to a week for it to be taken away.

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The Onion: Stop Making Movies About My Books (by Dr. Seuss)

It's icky, it's tacky, it's awkward, it's wrong.
The Whos look like ferrets, it's an hour too long.
What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!

But still you keep making them!
Just how do you dare?
Sell my life's work off piecemeal
To every Tom, Dick, and Har'.

This must stop! This must end! Don't you see what you're doing?
You're defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
And when it's dried up and you've sucked out your pay
There'll be no going back to a simpler day,

When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
Instead you'll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
You'll have plenty to watch while you're burning in hell.

This is a post inspired by the 10 weird things I do post by Lonnie aka PHSChemGuy.

I have to warn you: the first two are so weird that I don't normally tell people. If you want a glimpse into my strangest habits, read on.

1. I use numbers I see to play a bizarre number game in my head. I started doing this about grade school or junior high when I would walk home from school. To entertain myself I would take each house number I walked past and add, subtract, multiply, and divide the numbers to try to come up with zero. When that became too simple I started using exponents as well and made it my goal to generate strings of numbers that can then be recombined and repeated without end. Weird, I know. This little mind game actually turned out to be pretty useful because it helped me to remember addresses and phone numbers. I still do it to this day, although I think about it so much less that it's almost become a subconscious act.

2. I mentally rearrange letters in words to conform to patterns on the keyboard. This is kind of like number one in that it is a mind game for my own amusement that I don't really share with people for fear of being thought weird. I think it started when I learned how to type and I began typing letters in my head. Again, that didn't entertain me for long so I created a set of configurations on the keyboard where each finger is used in order from left to right, striking keys in alternating rows, as in awcftnji, zwdvthmil, etc. Sometimes when I am struck by a particularly interested word I see how many of its letters align with one of these patterns. If I find one that fits well, it gives me a secret nerdy thrill.

3. I put off shaving as long as possible. I'm not sure if this is really weird so much as lazy. I just don't like to shave, so I let my facial hair grow until it becomes completely unsightly, and then I shave it off. This is usually three or four days. If I'm feeling particularly lazy or stressed out I'll let it go a week. Trying to shave at this point is very painful, so I may just shave the sides of my face and let my goatee grow. This usually lasts only a month or so, at which time I shave it all off.

4. I am a completionist. Okay, so this is probably not that unusual, but Lonnie included it on his list so I figure I can too. When I decide I like a musician or a writer I begin to collect all of that person's works, beginning with the most readily available, and gradually moving to the nearly impossible to find. The Internet has made this much easier so that if I decide I want to hear a basement recording made by Beck in 1992 of which only one copy was made, all I need is a computer and a fast connection. In this way I have been able to acquire every available recording by Beck, The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, and Sufjan Stevens, plus everything written by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

5. I refuse to carry a cell phone. This probably arose at first from my general disdain for telephones. I don't like the idea of an invention that allows anyone to interrupt me in my home at any time--why would I want to carry such an awful device around with me? If I'm honest, though, I have to admit that it has become an issue of personal pride. As cell phones become more commonplace, I become more special in my refusal to carry one.

6. I meticulously organize my computer desktop, but let my physical desktop be completely messy. Don't ask me why. For some reason creating order on my computer is intrinsically rewarding and I will spend time organizing it that is totally disproportionate to whatever time I save when looking for a file later. Of course, this is another reason I love Google Documents so much.

7. I make up songs to sing to my son and my dogs. I blame my wife. I don't think I ever did this before we were married, but now we create songs for everything: making dinner, giving Daniel a bath, getting in the car, or just to be silly.

8. I watch every special feature on every DVD I own. Although I do enjoy behind-the-scenes documentaries and director's commentaries I suspect this has more to do with the idea of completeness again. It bothers me to think there could be some valuable information that I am missing out on.

9. I carry a book with me everywhere I go. Okay, I know this may not sound that unusual. But when I say I carry a book everywhere, I mean everywhere: the bathroom, the backyard, the dentist's office. If I'm going to wait somewhere for ten minutes I will make sure I have something to read. I think I have fostered in myself a need to be entertained at all times, and I get bored if I don't have anything to do or read for even short periods of time.

10. I eat french fries two at a time. I have no idea where this comes from, but my wife and I both do it. Maybe I picked it up from her. When we eat french fries we put exactly two in our mouth at a time. Erika even goes so far as to pick two fries that are similar in size, but I'm not that picky.

I've been letting Google pretty much run my life for some time now. Gmail contains all of my correspondences and personal contacts; Google Reader tracks all of the blogs and websites I read; Google Calendar keeps track of all my appointments for me; I even use iGoogle to bookmark all the important websites I need. Google owns me.

But for the last year I've become even more reliant on their services via Google Docs, a free online word processor. I started using it for work because it was easier than transferring files from home to work and vice versa with a flash drive. I was always dealing with multiple copies of documents on two computers and I could never remember which one was more recently updated. With Google Docs I discovered I could start writing an assignment at school, save it online, then go home and open it immediately on my personal computer, knowing that any revisions I then will show up when I access it from school the next day.

Since then I've uploaded all of the files on my school computer to Google Docs, and I'm in the process of uploading all of my home documents dating back to things I wrote in high school. It feels good to have everything I need in a single program that I can access from any computer at any time. I love that I can tag a document in multiple folders, further eliminating the need for duplicate copies. Then there's the search feature that makes all of Google's services special: I can search for a document I created five years ago, even if I don't remember the name of it, just by searching for a few keywords that I remember about it. This is especially helpful as my document account is approaching 1000.

As services like this are increasingly moving to web-based programs I'm getting to a point where a computer's actual disk storage is irrelevant: everything I do for school, including planning, creating assignments, grading, and writing IEPs, I do in a web browser. My home computer I use to store my media: music, movies, and the like, and I wouldn't be surprised if someday even these, like all information, are stored online and accessed remotely.

Somehow this event escaped my notice until today. Maybe I'm not reading the right blogs.

Over a week ago an event was held to give Iraq veterans an opportunity to tell about some of the atrocities they witnessed and committed during our ongoing war.

From The Nation:

While on tank patrol through the narrow streets of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, Pfc. Clifton Hicks was given an order. Abu Ghraib had become a "free-fire zone," Hicks was told, and no "friendlies" or civilians remained in the area. "Game on. All weapons free," his captain said. Upon that command, Hicks's unit opened a furious fusillade, firing wildly into cars, at people scurrying for cover, at anything that moved. Sent in to survey the damage, Hicks found the area littered with human and animal corpses, including women and children, but he saw no military gear or weapons of any kind near the bodies. In the aftermath of the massacre, Hicks was told that his unit had killed 700-800 "enemy combatants." But he knew the dead were not terrorists or insurgents; they were innocent Iraqis. "I will agree to swear to that till the day I die," he said. "I didn't see one enemy on that operation."

I think it's important to listen to them not because I think our nation's soldiers are particularly cruel or immoral, but because this is reality. Whenever reports have entered the news about American soldiers committing atrocities our national leaders have assured us that they are isolated incidents committed by a few bad seeds.

"This is not an isolated incident," the testifiers uttered over and over, to the point of liturgy, insisting that the atrocities they committed or witnessed were common. The hearings were not organized to point fingers at "bad apples" or even particular squads, several testifiers said.

The truth is that war can cause normal, decent human beings to do inhumane things. War is by nature cruel and immoral, and the Iraq war is no exception.

Because today is Pi Day (3.14) I decided to try something different: In my iTunes search bar I typed the word pi so that I would see only the tracks that have those two letters together in either the song title, artist name, or album title. I then set iTunes to random and hit play to see what popped up.

Sunship Balloons - The Flaming Lips (from Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell EP)
Like Spinning Plates - Radiohead
The First Full Moon - Sufjan Stevens (from To Spirit Back The Mews)
Cassiel's Song - Nick Cave (from Faraway, So Close: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
My Dark Life - Elvis Costello and Brian Eno (from Songs in the Key of X : Music from and Inspired by The X-Files)
In the Flesh? - Pink Floyd
Inspiration - Gipsy Kings
The Spirit - Jandek
All We Have Is Now - The Flaming Lips (from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots)
Sit in the Middle of Three Galloping Dogs - A Silver Mt. Zion

I finished reading The Road today. I can't remember the last time I found a book this engaging. For the last two days I've spent nearly every spare moment reading.

I know the book was a huge bestseller, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was even given the official endorsement of Oprah's little book club, so I doubt I have anything to say about it that hasn't already been said. All I'm going to point out is that Cormac McCarthy simultaneously writes some of the most horrible scenes I've ever read and the most tender, in a way that reminds me of John Steinbeck.

I'm going to have to read some of McCarthy's other books now. Thank you to Melanie and Andrew for turning me on to him.

Yesterday I started reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road (It's a wonderful book, by the way--the kind I would stay up all night reading if I didn't have to take care of my 1-year-old son the following morning). Here is the first paragraph:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

As I read this opening what really stood out to me was the grammatical style, and I couldn't help thinking what kind of comments this book would receive if given to a high school English teacher for an assignment. "Fragment. Fragment. Fragment. Don't needs an apostrophe. Fragment."

When I first started teaching English I thought it was important to strike a balance between the necessary evil of teaching formal grammar and my desire to make language exciting and creative for students, although I wasn't always sure of how to do it. I think that one tactic I settled on was teaching students about using different writing styles for different occasions: what is appropriate for a novel may not be appropriate for an academic paper. I still think this is true, but I've always felt there's more to it than just that.

While reading Cormac McCarthy's writing (this is the first novel of his I've read and now I'm wondering why I waited so long) I've figured out a different reason for teaching grammar. What I've realized is that while McCarthy breaks the rules of formal writing, it is not at all chaotic or disorganized. In fact, I would say that he writes in a very consistent style that has its own consistent set of rules. This kind of writing must be very intentional. I'm sure there's a reason he leaves the apostrophes out of contractions like cant, dont and wont, and I'd love to hear him explain what that reason is.

I think that intentionality is the difference between good writing and bad writing. If a student is going to choose to use sentence fragments, it must be a deliberate choice, which requires knowledge of the formal rules of grammar and a clear purpose for violating them. And above all, grammar should be taught with the understanding that any stylistic choices must be made with the audience's reaction in mind.

I think I'll show my students this passage from The Road next time I teach about sentence fragments in a regular education English classroom.

(These images come straight from the source)

The Comedian doesn't look too bad, but the image has kind of a faux-grainy, airbrushed MTV look to it. Not exactly realistic, but not horrible either.

I see Zack Snyder is channeling Tim Burton's Batman for the Nite Owl character. Again, not quite what I think the story calls for. I really wish directors and costume designers would quit slapping plastic armor on every live-action superhero they see, especially in Watchmen. Don't they realize how stiff that makes their movements? Watchmen is about the real-world practicalities of superheroes, not this over-glamorized stuff.

Are those plastic nipples? And a belly button? Are these people taking design tips from Joel Schumacher now?

Well, this is much, much better. But then, Rorschach's costume is just a trench coat, a hat, and a black & white mask. I guess that's pretty hard to get wrong.

What the hell is Laurie supposed to be doing here? Seriously, has there ever been an occasion in the history of mankind when a person has had a practical reason to adopt such a pose?

I think the best we can hope is that these are merely promotional images that have little do with the actual look of the final film. Maybe it's a really clever plot point wherein the characters in the world of the film posed for fake publicity shots, but they are actually the authentic and practical human beings that we see in the comic book.

Or maybe Zack Snyder is making Watchmen into just another glamorous big-budget action film.

Why couldn't Paul Greengrass have been allowed to direct his version?

For the last few days Neil Gaiman has been writing on his journal about the benefits of giving books away for free online. The first major post was here, in which he wrote:

This is how people found new authors for more than a century. Someone says, "I've read this. It's good. I think you'd like it. Here, you can borrow it." Someone takes the book away, reads it, and goes, Ah, I have a new author.

Libraries are good things: you shouldn't have to pay for every book you read.

I'm one of those authors who is fortunate enough to make my living from the things I've written. If I thought that giving books away would make it so that I could no longer make my living from writing and be forced to go out and get a real job -- or that other authors would be less likely to be able to make a living -- I wouldn't do it.

And then in a follow-up post in response to a concerned bookseller's e-mail he wrote:

The books you sell have "pass-along" rates. They get bought by one person. Then they get passed along to other people. The other people find an author they like, or they don't.

When they do, some of them may come in to your book store and buy some paperback backlist titles, or buy the book they read and liked so that they can read it again. You want this to happen.

Just as a bookseller who regards a library as the enemy, because people can go there and read -- for free! -- what he sells, is missing that the library is creating a pool of people who like and take pleasure in books, will be his customer base, and are out there spreading the word about authors and books they like to other people, some of whom will simply go out and buy it.

Pretty cool stuff.

By the way, this whole discussion was prompted by Neil getting Harper Collins to put the full text of American Gods online for free. I've read nearly all of Gaiman's writings and I think this is his best prose work. So if you haven't already read it, go to the free online version and check it out.

I found this blog through Honzo. It's full of vicious satire that makes me feel small and shallow. Here are a few posts that were especially hard to take:

#18 Awareness

An interesting fact about white people is that they firmly believe that all of the world’s problems can be solved through "awareness." Meaning the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.

#25 David Sedaris

White people universally love David Sedaris. So if they ever ask you “who are you favorite authors?” you should always reply “David Sedaris.” They will instantly launch into a story about how much they love his work, and the conversation will go from there, and you don’t have to talk about books any more.

#28 Not Having A TV

The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don’t have a TV.

#41 Indie Music

They are always on the look out for the latest hot band that no one has heard of so that one day, they can hit it just right and be into a band BEFORE they are featured in an Apple commercial. To a white person, being a fan of a band before they get popular is one of the most important things they can do with their life. They can hold it over their friends forever!

#44 Public Radio

White people love stations like NPR (which is equivalent to listening to cardboard), and they love shows like This American Life and Democracy Now. This confuses immigrants from the third world. The see the need for radio as a source for sports, top 40 radio and traffic reports but they don’t quite understand why people who can afford TVs and have access to Youtube, would spend hours listening to the opinions of overeducated arts majors.

#64 Recycling

Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

#75 Threatening to Move to Canada

Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs are so strong, that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly similar to the one they live in now.

Ouch.

The Onion News Network: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

I mentioned Micah P. Hinson once briefly after discovering a single song by him on a podcast. Since then I've bought his two solo albums and I'm happy to say that all of his music is excellent. Have a listen.

Diggin a Grave on 103.1 FM

She Don't Own Me on BBC Collective:

It's hard to believe this guy is younger than I am. The first time I heard him I thought he sounded like an old, weathered country/folk singer.

And just because this song is so brilliant, check out the studio recording of She Don't Own Me.

Whenever I've watched the Oscars in the past I've been very interested in the short film categories, even though I'm not at all familiar with them. Perhaps it's the fact that they are so unknown that makes that section of the awards unpredictable and exciting.

This year, with the help of YouTube, I've decided to familiarize myself with the short animated films so I can have some idea about what ought to win. I thought some of you might be interested in doing the same. Here are all five nominees for Best Animated Short:

I Met the Walrus
The full film is unfortunately not on YouTube, but you can see a preview here. It looks pretty cool.

Madame Tutli-Putli
This strange little film about a woman on a train is frightening and beautiful.
Part 1
Part 2

Even Pigeons Go To Heaven
A very cute French film about a miserly man buying passage to Heaven. Watch it here.

My Love
I don't really care for the romantic story or the paint-on-glass visual style, but some of the dream sequences are interesting.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Peter and the Wolf
Yes, it's another interpretation of the classic musical composition. It's mostly well-done, and the creators even tried adding new dimensions to the story, including a pacifist ending, but ultimately I found little in it to set it apart from the many incarnations that have come before.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

My pick: Madame Tutli-Putli

I just read that David Fincher intends to direct the Neil Gaiman-penned screen adaptation of Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole.

Take a moment to wrap your head around all that.

Daniel's latest thing is spinning around in circles until he gets dizzy and falls down.

Sometimes I wonder: what did Erika and I do for entertainment before we were parents?

I finally got to see the Coen Brothers' latest offering last night. I had given up hope of catching it in the theater, but the Academy Award nominations popularized the film enough that it actually came to our little theater in Kirksville.

I've obviously been very anxious to see No Country For Old Men: Joel and Ethan Coen are my favorite filmmakers of all time, and for a graduate English class I even wrote a paper analyzing the depiction of American landscapes in their movies. As soon as I learned the premise of their newest offering I knew it would fit perfectly with the thesis I once spent a semester developing.

After finally getting to see movie, however, I had mixed feelings. Sure, it's a magnificent artistic achievement: brilliantly acted, directed, shot, and edited, No Country For Old Men certainly deserved all of the praise it's been given. The only things missing from it are those things that made me love the Coen Brothers: their snappy dialogue, their post-modern manipulation of film genre, and the element of the surreal or supernatural in their movies.

The movie in the Coens' body of work that No Country For Old Men most resembles is their debut, Blood Simple, which also featured a protagonist being pursued by a relentless killer in the midst of a barren Texas landscape. It similarly lacks the humorous dialogue of the Coens' other films, although if you look closely you can see the brothers begin to play a little with the film medium. In one scene the camera moves down the length of a bar and must move up and over a drunk man passed out across its path. The photographer of Blood Simple warned the Coen Brothers against this shot, saying it would draw the audience's attention to the existence of the camera. The Coens replied that this was the exact effect they desired.

Even such subtle playfulness with audience awareness is absent from No Country For Old Men. Many critics have claimed it is their best work because of this fact, but that playfulness is what made me love the Coen Brothers in the first place. With their three most recent films adapted from other people's stories, I would like to see them direct an original script more in the style on which they built their reputation.

Nevertheless, it's unfair to judge a movie against what I would like it to be, so I must acknowledge that in every way No Country For Old Men is an unqualified artistic success. The scene between Carla and Chigurh alone is worth the price of admission, and features the most inspired line I've heard spoken in a movie theater in a long time: "The coin has nothing to do with it. It's just you."

Post-script: After writing this I checked the Coen Brothers' filmography at Wikipedia, where I saw that one upcoming project is an adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union. While I would love to see this, I still maintain my preference for original Coen Brothers stories (which we will apparently get in Burn After Reading).