But Not For Me

Hm, I keep reading all these things about how great MarsEdit is for blog editing, but in my first session with the trial download, I can't get prettymuch anything to work.  Won't talk to the blog, won't save the draft.  Could be cockpit trouble, I suppose.  Maybe I should try again after I've made the switch (sigh) to Leopard.  Then again, I also hear that Coda is supposed to be teh hotness for web-everythinging, and it does more stuff, so maybe I should give that a try.  And you know, this post is going to be interesting to exactly no-one who ever reads this blog.  In fact, it isn't even interesting for me.

Update, 4/1/08 (and no, this is not an April Fool's): Tried MarsEdit again on my fancy, new, Leopard-runnin' Sex Machine.  Sucks even worse.  Ate a very long post without warning.  Off the island, MarsEdit!

Good Riddance (and: TOTBAW #1: Steamroller Edition)

Spitzer's out, good.  What a dumbass.  What a disappointment.  What an arrogant stooge.  Could there possibly be anything more foolhardy than to make your reputation by antagonizing the rich and powerful, and then turn around and take insane risks that make you vulnerable to the very same enemies that you worked so hard to earn?  The voters sent Spitzer to Albany to kick Joe Bruno in the nuts, and all he ever did was trip over his own.  There really ought to be a word for the indignation caused by an offense, not because of its proximal harm, but because of its violation of the hopes invested in the offender.  That word is all I could feel when I first heard about this.

And you know, I like the "there ought to be a word" idea so much, I do believe I'll make it a series.

As a silver lining, Spitzer's replacement sounds pretty good so far.  From Gothamist: "As the first black NYS Senate minority leader, Paterson was an advocate for tougher domestic violence laws, a $1 billion voter-approved stem cell research initiative, and a statewide alternative energy strategy."

I Know What I'm Doing for My Birthday This Year

Oh, man.  The first time I saw Contempt, I was literally slack-jawed by the time it was over.  Not only was it visually mesmerizing, but it was engaging in a way I'd never experienced with a movie before, as if this movie about the dissolution of a relationship actually was the dissolution of a relationship that I was in.  That's what was so stunning about it; the narrative itself was almost (but not quite) beside the point.  Instead, what it offered was a sort of communication between the director and viewer about the experience of directing and watching movies.  Only, not in a "we're-in-on-the-same-joke-aren't-we-clever" kind of postmodern way.  Rather, in a "directors-and-viewers-are-actually-humans-and-we-have-an-actual-relationship-even-if-you're-distracted-from-it-by-the-story" kind of way.  I was (and am) not a particularly sophisticated viewer in terms of film history or theory, yet picked up on this very quickly; it was unmistakable.  I was emotionally wrung out by the end of the famous long apartment scene, but still ached for all that beauty onscreen -- of Bardot, of the Mediterranean, of the Modernist dream embodied in the Villa Malaparte, of a thrilling era that I just missed -- just like you might ache for the body of a lover long after you know the relationship's doomed.  I would actually catch myself holding my breath at times while I watched.

Damn, what a movie.  And that was when I saw it on the small screen...