Read this following the story about 3 A's no longer being enough for uni. There's definitely something weird about uni entrance for some courses now. It almost seems now that seventeen year olds need to have already completed a career in medicine to convince medical schools they can start training.
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]]>This is footage of the Cramps' legendary (amongst a few earthlings, at least) gig in a mental hospital in Napa. It was funny to follow Fodor's discussion of the relationship between the internal and the external by reading about the death of Lux Interior.
I enjoyed this post about the 'Twisted Elvis from hell' which begins:
It's hard to think of Lux Interior as dead, despite what reports say. Then again, it was always hard to think of him as alive
and suggests that:
Lux actually wore his interior on the outside
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]]>It's a great article and I think it shows quite clearly that Clark is wrong and there is a difference between my mind and my iPhone (or there would be if I had one).
Linguistically, its got classic Fodor style with jokes about how much philosophers get paid, two uses of 'begging the question' in the old-fashioned 'proper' sense (presupposing the answer to a question rather than just raising it), a nice explanation of the problem with slippery slope arguments, applied in passing to the question of whether abortion is homicide.
Apoa came and sat beside me while I was reading it so I started to explain it to her. Her brain quickly exploded but she also realised right away that she was on Fodor's side.
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]]>'Blazing a Trail' - festschrift paper on intonation and relevance theory
PALA 2008 presentation - talk on inference and stylistics, looking at a Chekhov story
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]]>Kiloh doesn't understand why I think this is so funny B-))))))
]]>Dug was having a go at me yesterday for wearing fancy skintight clothes on my bike (I could swear I wear baggy jeans and a jumper but anyway). I'm guessing he'd enjoy this piece by Baxter on Rapha's 'not hardcore' attitude to cycling.
I also got interested in the procedural disjunction in the middle (how's that for posing? ;-)
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]]>I'm enjoying Kim Severson's Live Thanksgiving Blog. It's the back of eleven (am) over there and her superior brother is getting on her wick:
I have almost used all the turkey stock for the stuffing, which means I am in the weeds for the gravy. I have some stock in the freezer, which I will have to pull out and simmer with what's left from what I made last night. He, of course, notices this.
'This always happens,' he says. 'That's why I always buy an extra turkey neck and some wings and make extra stock.'
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]]>Meanwhile, Apoa spent the day at a life drawing class and making etchings ('real etchings, not like what we do at school'). We were very impressed with her work as well as her report of the class itself, which had the added bonus of being incredibly cheap.
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Not sure what I make of this yet, but I'm always game for a bit of early adopting. The 'tree' reminds me of the way the network of categories on The Lecture List is designed to be created by users.
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]]>I guess everyone's seen Sarah and Hillary on SNL
I feel slightly silly, but I do find this one amusing as well.
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]]>Well they finally did withdraw their complaint and let the film back up.
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]]>I was about to send a post to tell you about SON (the film directed by Daniel Mulloy and produced by Ohna) appearing on the YouTube screening room when this happened.
Dug is better than me at pointing out how crazy this is. It seems that someone at Paramount decided to file an infringement-of-copyright complaint on the basis that the film showed footage from Son of Rambow. SON consists entirely of original footage. Can they really be doing this just because the word 'son' is in the title?
They're obviously quick to act when it comes to randomly trampling on 'little' people, but so far they haven't even acknowledged Ohna's messages pointing out their mistake let alone withdrawn their complaint.
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]]>In the old days, I used to talk about films I'd seen. There have been an awful lot of awfully good movies recently. Earlier in the year, I saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly free of charge, thanks to those nice Time Out people. I remember when the book came out and everyone was talking about it. I'm not sure what my image was but I never got round to reading it. What a mistake. The film is incredible and it inspired me to start reading French again, since it's a fairly short book and of course easier when you've just seen the film. I then read it in English so I've had three goes at it now.
In the past couple of weeks, I've been to see three films which were all great in different ways.
Wall-E gave me that special feeling of being in a noisy cinema full of giggling kids which falls completely silent when the film begins, and of course we're talking about an opening twenty minutes with practically no dialogue. The film then does lots of different things to you, lots of allusions for those in the know (I only partly follow them), and a winning mix of despair and hope, culminating in an unmissable, beautiful and positive end-title sequence.
Last week, I had a few hours to kill waiting for a train in Sheffield and crossed the road to the showcase cinema. It was toss-up between the Julian (Diving-Bell) Schnabel film of Lou Reed's Berlin and Mamma Mia You know which one I went for, right? I cried non-stop through the whole thing. As it finished, the woman behind me said 'That was a real feel good, wasn't it?' which I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with.
But I think the winner of the absolute-must-see-movie-award has to be Man on Wire which we saw last night. Absolutely incredible, and working on your mind in so many different ways afterwards. You have no choice but to see it in the cinema before it disappears. How long till it appears on a double bill with Man on Fire I wonder? Has anybody made Man on Tire yet?
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