I haven't really referenced other blogs in here as of yet because when I started this blog about a year ago, I hadn't really started reading any of them much. But as the months have passed, I've slowly and irrevocably been becoming addicted to reading quite a few blogs.
Still, though, as I've primarily considered my own blog/journal here to be more a supplement to my already-established online projects on Sepulchritude and my own Bat Cafe than a proper blog in the current customary way, I didn't really think about possibly redoing my blog here in the way it should be if I were going to try to actively participant in that thing now known as the "blogosphere."
But. Even without having a "proper" participatory blog, seems like I got minorly dragged into that sphere nevertheless by a side route. A couple weeks back, when I was reading Andrea Harris' often amusing Spleenville, I noticed she mentioned our "I, Claudius Drinking Game" in one of her entries. Cracked me up. I left the following comment there:
______________Just thought I'd drop a note and say hello as I happen to be the co-author of the "I, Claudius Drinking Game." It kinda startled and amused me this morning -- when I just happened to be indulging my relatively recent secret addiction to perusing blogs -- to suddenly see a link to something old of mine (it's a piece from 1999, part of an online 'zine).
It's bad enough to have a secret addiction to blogs -- I mean, it started harmlessly enough some months ago. One, two blogs that I checked in on occasionally. Now, I'm up to a couple dozen that I regularly read a few times a week with frequent side trips to other ones when an intriguing link beckons. I knew it was getting bad. I was becoming a blog junkie. But I deluded myself it was okay -- I was only reading them. I hadn't actually left a comment anywhere, I hadn't participated, I hadn't actually gotten truly sucked into the blogosphere.
Uh-huh.
So, the full impact of my own doom hit me full force this morning when I saw this link when I thought I was only just doing "a little morning reading."
Thus, I thought I might as well give in and say hello. And mention that I've been enjoying your blog as well as many, many others for a while now.
Thanks much,
M Bat
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I also noticed one day not too long ago in reading our traffic logs for "Suffering is Hip" that the "I, Claudius Drinking Game" also was mentioned in Eve Tushnet's weblog in mid-September. I have read Eve Tushnet's interesting weblog from time to time, but the week she mentioned it, I must have been busy with mundane life maintenance matters and had neglected doing much reading online that week at all. Whatever the reason, I hadn't actually seen the reference in her blog when she'd made it and ended up only discovering it by seeing referrals from it in our own traffic logs a couple weeks or so later.
Today, I sent off an entry to Eve Tushnet's amusing little contest for coming up with philosopher drag queen names as well as sending off an email to my affable co-editors about it (as they're sure to find it amusing and I know they'd be good at coming up with some entries). But I'm a bit late referencing this contest as it was first posted a couple of weeks or so back, and the deadline for entries is next week.
See .... this is my quandary about attempting to cite things in other blogs -- even wonderfully bizarre things like this contest. I enjoy reading quite a few blogs regularly when I have the time and could probably link to noteworthy entries (or merely the random things that catch my fancy), but I know I do not have either the time nor inclination to be as attentive and as timely about citing links and articles as the serious bloggers are.
Still, I think I will when I have the time try to reference other blogs when I see something that particularly catches my fancy. Just I know I won't either be consistent nor thorough about it -- which is no reflection at all on what's out there but merely due to the limitation of my own time constraints.
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(Also, I know I will have to explain what the hell I'm talking about for those who read my blog/journal thingie here who aren't actually familiar with the world of blogs out there and various bits of blog customs and jargon. I suspect from what I see in my traffic logs, that most of my audience might happen to be unfamiliar and unaware of all that. So, for their sake, I'll try to briefly explain a few relevant bits soon or perhaps find a link to a decent introductory explanation).
I love accidentally stumbling onto something wondrous when I am bouncing through web sites looking for something entirely else.
I wasn't even looking for anything close to Surrealist or Dada just now -- but some link -- well -- rather dadaistically bounced me onto this lovely page on Surrealism and Dada.
Usually on the web, as I'm sure y'all know from experience, clicking or merely mousing over some inadvertent link half by accident will condemn you to advert hell. The pop-ups of pornland, a morass of travel booking adverts, or -- my personal fave -- a particularly insistent and infernal webcam ad that has been popping up for at least two or three years straight. The same friggin' ad. At least, this is what happens to me in my version of a web-esque No Exit.
So, I was utterly stunned and euphoric to have accidentally bounced myself over to this page where a Duchamp piece told me I hadn't been thrown into the cavern of advert land! I have no idea what I clicked on to get there either .... Someone was being a clever little surrealist javascript coder somewhere, I guess. Hehe. Well done.
But! Even better than the Duchamp at the top of the page .... I was excited to find towards the bottom a link to a Quicktime version of the 1929 film "Un Chien Andalou." Which, if you don't know, is a film done by Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel when they were just kinda fooling around with what was then the new medium of film.
Yay.
I first saw "Un Chien Andalou" ages ago in college in a seminar on classic avant-garde films. I don't remember all the films we saw during that course, although I recall a few of them: a film version of Sartre's "No Exit," a few other Buñuel filims ("Exterminating Angel" amongst others) and also two or three short evocative pieces by Maya Deren.
And, sadly, I don't think I've seen any of them again since.
Perhaps why I got so overly-excited at the idea I could watch the whole of "Un Chien Andalou" in my browser.
If I were a proper film buff, I would cart myself regularly to some arthouse theatre because, yeah, I know they run all of these old films at such places from time to time. But I guess I'm not a proper film buff.
And I just don't go to movie theatres much. Everyone thinks I'm insane when I say simply I don't like watching movies in movie theatres.
"But you gotta see THIS film in the theatre," they wail. "You have to see it on the big screen!"
No. I don't. I don't like movie theatres.
"Why not?" they wail.
It's an idiosyncractic aversion and irrational. Like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, that's the way I am.
Besides, those rare times when someone does succeed at dragging me out to a movie, they then get to feel very accomplished because it's pretty well-known amongst my acquaintances that I don't go to the movies.
Instead, I watch old movies on cable at 3:16 am and enjoy myself thoroughly.
Or I find a Quicktime version of "Un Chien Andalou" on a web page at 5:48 am and shout out loud with glee.
I am replete.
Au printemps.
A post on Dr. Weevil's blog notes that not only is today the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, but it's also the anniversary of the day Cicero was murdered.
He quotes Livy's full gory description of it. Cicero's murder that is, not Pearl Harbor. Oh, I didn't really have to clarify that, now really, did I?
Come to think of it, though, an account of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Livy would be something, wouldn't it?
Personality Quiz - What Poetry Form Am I?
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Couldn't resist this quiz. Quite wonderful little example verses, too, for all 16 different possibilities of poetry forms.
(found on RavenBlog)
I'm sure everyone reading this has heard by now that Joe Strummer's dead. I've seen it mentioned umpteen times all over the place the last couple or so days.
Now I'm not going to do a Ghost of Christmas Punk Past in homage to him here (although I do wish him a requiescat in pace). But I am going to defend a movie he was in: Straight to Hell (from 1987 and directed by Alex Cox). I've noticed that the few times Strummer's film credits have been mentioned in the recent tributes to him, the mentions seem a bit reluctant, and this movie is spoken of almost gingerly -- as if those brazen enough to mention this film are under the impression the movie was not ..... any ......good.
Not any good?? Not any good?? I beg to differ. Straight to Hell is the best western since Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys from 1968!!!!
Yeah, yeah, I know everyone hated it. The critics. The fans of Alex Cox's previous movies. The people who paid to see it in the theatre. But why believe them??? Take my word for it* -- it's brilliant.
Admittedly, the squirmish would probably find it boring as hell, especially when it goes on for long stretches about relatively nothing. People who are expecting a plot that makes sense might be bemused. Others might just object to Courtney Love.
But I am unashamed to admit I adore this movie.
As its tagline says: It's a story of blood, money, guns, coffee, and sexual tension.
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* do note you take my word for it at your own risk as I am occasionally accused of having questionable taste. After all, I do happen to adore "Lonesome Cowboys," too, which suffers from some long stretches and plots not plotted itself. Although in "Lonesome Cowboys," instead of Courtney Love, you get Viva!
