Liddy does seem to be ridiculous, and not so much a Nazi sympathizer (which would be, as has been pointed out, at least an ethos) as a sympathizer with any group that values obedience, conformity and brutality over intelligence and compassion (hence he can have equal respect for the Israeli far right as the Nazis). Developing a simple tolerance of pain to mask an essential moral weakness, building perverted notions of bravery in denial of the fact that he's too much of a coward to face the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 6:58 AM on October 14, 2008

I thought this was the unofficial campaign theme of John McCain.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 2:18 AM on October 7, 2008

And if not, then at least we burned those fuckers alive.

I like your thinking.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:24 PM on October 6, 2008

Poplar?
posted to MetaTalk by Grangousier at 5:42 AM on October 3, 2008

Please let Trig be short for Trigonometry, and Track short for Tracheotomy. Please.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:00 PM on August 30, 2008

"Pro-life"?

Abortion is a non-issue, at least as far as national and international politics goes. Perhaps it's a sign of the insularity of a lot of the United States, I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether the United States is really as insular as it seems to be. Though it seems to be autistically so in places.

The United States is an imperial power in decline, in that difficult stage before the next imperial power really manifests... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 6:10 PM on August 30, 2008

And traffic violations kill a lot of people. But they don't bring down empires.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 6:19 PM on August 30, 2008

Sure. Theoretically, they also detest adultery, but they're still supporting McCain.
That's because they say "adultery", "abortion", "homosexuality" and so on with a silent "other people's" in front of them: Other people's adultery, other people's abortion, other people's homosexuality: these are disgusting and unforgiveable. My brother's adultery, my daughter's abortion, my homosexuality: these things are merely regrettable.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:08 PM on September 5, 2008

I understand, meanwhile, that Palin is a mirror.

No, I think most of us know the difference between looking into a mirror and being distracted by a shiny object.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:53 AM on September 14, 2008

You can't spell "Palin" without spelling "pain".
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 5:20 AM on September 18, 2008

holy wow this thing is long...

I bet you say that to all the boys.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:07 PM on September 23, 2008

Take me to the bridge!

/James Brown
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 5:36 AM on September 29, 2008

Ah, when we're all celebrating the inauguration of President Palin in a few months' time, how we'll look back on this thread and laugh.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 6:36 AM on September 29, 2008

“No living birds have true teeth ... because their distant ancestors did away with them more than 100 million years ago, probably to save weight and make flying easier”

Good to see Lamarckism hasn't been totally abandoned.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:18 AM on September 27, 2008

I've probably mentioned it before, but I live my life by two short phrases that I got from the back of a matchbox, twenty or so years ago:

Strike gently away from the body.
Keep away from children.

Works for me.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 3:58 PM on September 26, 2008

Crowley did not study with Gurdjieff. He met him once. Crowley is as over-rated as Gurdjieff is misunderstood. IMO, of course.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 10:37 AM on September 25, 2008

Sorry, that probably seemed a bit terse and wierd - I was posting from my phone, and wanted to keep it short. But anyway, Crowley visited Gurdjieff's place at Fontainebleu in 1925-6, according to one of the residents there, C.S. Nott:

I got the impression of two magicians, the white and the black – the one strong, powerful, full of light; the other also powerful but heavy, dull and ignorant ...

[Alfred] Orage [Gurdjieff's secretary for a while]... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:48 PM on September 25, 2008

Ah, the twelfth-generation film I was referring to is the second link (and the others like it), only either cleaned up or a few generations back. The Circles is wonderful, I think - the piano version is possibly the best thing Thomas de Hartmann wrote - reminiscent of Sati or Cage's In a Landscape
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:54 PM on September 25, 2008

Does McCain even need to turn up? They could just use one of those talking GI Joe dolls, and when he's asked a question, you pull the string in his back and it gives you either "I was a POW", "My opponent is a Muslim extremist and he eats babies", "It's all the fault of the Washington Liberals" or "Look! Over there! Terrorists!"

That would free him up to... do whatever the hell he thinks he can do for the American economy on a Friday night.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:16 PM on September 24, 2008

I really have a yen
To go back once again,
Back to the place where no one wears a frown,
To see once more those super-special just plain folks
In my home town.

No fellow could ignore
The little girl next door,
She sure looked sweet in her first evening gown.
Now there's a charge for what she used to give for free
In my home town.

I remember dan, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 11:34 AM on September 18, 2008

I just found out I am registered as a Republican. Weird.

Cool, that means they'll let you vote!
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:32 PM on September 18, 2008

Iran doesn't give a crap about the WTO, economic investments and normal diplomatic relations.

Looks like they've got a lot in common with the United States. You guys should talk!
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:45 PM on September 19, 2008

This is what Michael Reiss actually said. Make of it what you will.

I find it interesting that Dawkins' objection quoted in the first article is that he's a clergyman at all, not any particular views he might hold.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 2:02 AM on September 15, 2008

.

Apart from everything mentioned above, I'm very grateful for Everything and More, his book about infinity.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:46 AM on September 14, 2008

Genius, and a master of the language, too. Always annoyed that the histories of Manchester leave him out. I wonder whether Happy Mondays weren't a more user-friendly version of what Hannett was doing with Clarke on Snap Crackle & Bop. Not that Ryder has anything on Clarke on the lyrical front.

I've got to see him once, at the tiny basement club Bunjies (so it must be over ten years ago, because that's when Bunjies closed) after he was more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 5:10 PM on September 13, 2008

Although it still annoys me that I didn't get to meet the man, I learned most of what I know about design and typesetting working with the great art director Amelia Edwards on Sendak's version of I Saw Esau (the Opie collection of children's verse) for Walker Books. A tremendous though long-winded experience - we originally set the poetry (in Pagemaker - this was 1990), printed it out and had it made into booklets, which Sendak sketched on, then we scanned in the sketches,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 11:12 AM on September 12, 2008

Oh, and it goes without saying that Sendak is a giant, possibly the giantest.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 11:13 AM on September 12, 2008

.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:40 AM on September 10, 2008

Obama who "who "talks one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

She probably doesn't realise that one needs a certain flexibility of approach if one is trying to address an electorate of more than five thousand people.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:40 PM on September 5, 2008

That should be Cerberus, shouldn't it?

Commercial movie writing is all about stereotypes, as the characters seem to be functional more than anything else - everything (and everybody) exists purely to further the plot. The characters aren't people at all, merely narrative functions.

Movies that are developed from character rather than narrative function tend to throw up very different results, though the only example I can think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:52 AM on September 5, 2008

And if most of this has already been answered - apologies, I read most of this thread on my phone, where I'm less inclined to follow links.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:54 AM on September 5, 2008

A really sad thing about the abortion issue is that promising to reverse Roe/Wade gives the Republicans so much traction with people who otherwise disagree with them that I can't see a Republican government actually coming good with the promise. Poor devout people selling out their principles for what they see as one big principle, never to get anything in return apart from shafted.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 11:20 AM on September 1, 2008

McCain’s Plans To Make Natural Disaster Backdrop For His Convention
I don't see what's natural about the Bush presidency.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 12:24 PM on August 31, 2008

Personally I'd have cast Hugh Laurie as Number Six and Stephen Fry as Number 2. Not that that's of any relevance.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 2:11 PM on August 30, 2008

A-and The Prisoner is my second TV memory (after Tomb of the Cybermen). I was able to establish (when they repeated the series in 1976), that the episode was Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, probably the least interesting episode to have seen, but when you're four everything on television is interesting. I even used to watch the test card.

I probably saw Fall Out, too, but it will have been... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 5:37 PM on August 30, 2008

We don't need any more novelists and there are enough novels already.

Stanislav Lem said this - it's either in A Perfect Vacuum or One Human Minute. That enough books had been written, and that from now on if we wanted to publish a new one we'd have to get rid of one of the old ones. I think - I can't find the precise reference, but it's been fun looking. Lem is fab.

Anyway, rather tellingly, he put this insight into a book.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:57 AM on August 30, 2008

And something that I think is quite important about the internet as opposed to physical media - if you make (say) 1,500 copies of a CD it suggests that you assume up to 1,500 people would be interested in buying it. Putting something on the internet makes it theoretically available to billions of people, but there's no inherent assumption that anyone will be interested. Everything I've ever put on the web (and a lot of it is quite difficult to find, even if you want to find it and know what... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 5:26 AM on August 30, 2008

Dr. Benway, carrying his satchel pushed through the passengers crowded around Lifeboat No. 1. "Are you all right?" he shouted, seating himself among the women, "I'm the doctor."
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 10:23 AM on August 25, 2008

Thank you very much. I'm sure you're lovely too.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 3:47 PM on August 24, 2008

homunculus: How about Galactus?
I thought Galactus was a Republican... He'd certainly do less damage than McCain.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 3:31 AM on August 23, 2008

Is it too obvious (I don't think anyone's mentioned it), that the readership for these books is female? To judge by the blurbs on their covers, many popular women's magazines (Take a Break Magazine, for example) thrive on similar first-person tales of misery and suffering, and another precedent I'm reminded of is the 1970s girls' comic Tammy (where a startled, largely male, editorial team found that the more they made their heroines suffer, the more their readers liked it, at... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 5:26 AM on August 13, 2008

This set me off on an epic meditation on progressive rock and my Grand Theory of The Edge (Why Charlie Parker and The Ramones are groovy, yet Kenny G and Green Day not), but I'll save you .

If you like this sort of thing, you might like North Sea Radio Orchestra very much. I do.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 4:20 AM on August 9, 2008

Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep
And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too
The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls
And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker
Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams
But Emily... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:39 PM on August 8, 2008

Oh, and seconding the final chapter of The House at Pooh Corner.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 1:44 PM on August 8, 2008

Might I suggest that a way to get where you want to is not to think about the kind of music that you want to make, but to listen to the music that comes out when you're just noodling around, particularly with other musicians (or CDs. Or the TV - put the TV on and jam to whatever comes up - try to find something that works, even with the nastiest ads).

5-string banjo has some of the most eccentric tunings anywhere, and I suspect it still has some oddnesses to surprise us.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by Grangousier at 12:27 AM on August 4, 2008

Having played in the Guitar Craft New Standard Tuning for a long time - CGDAEG - which evades some of the problems described here to some extent by being almost all fifths (like violins or cellos), I can state conclusively that it's physically impossible to tune a guitar, by which I mean it would violate the laws of physics.

(Interested parties might find this book to be of use.)

I mention it, because even though the strings are more consonant... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by Grangousier at 12:17 AM on August 4, 2008

I'm going to hate it when these things finally take off and no one walks anywhere anymore. And this shit will come, because people are too lazy to walk and are just waiting for a way to avoid it.

Ultimately turning into....
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 3:58 AM on August 2, 2008

I can't think of the English word for that

I believe the term is "village idiot".
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 2:30 AM on July 28, 2008

So that's where it came from...
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 3:02 PM on July 27, 2008

Amazing.

One thing that surprises me is that the vast majority of this is British. We appear to be the number one supplier of cheesy library music to the world.

It makes me very proud.
posted to MetaFilter by Grangousier at 3:45 AM on July 27, 2008