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Sunday, November 11th, 2007
Tonight we watched What Have I Done to Deserve This?, an early movie of Almodóvar's -- well, "I watched" -- Ellen begged off about halfway through, saying it was not her cup of tea. To be honest not really mine either -- there was plenty of visual beauty in the film and some fine acting, and moments of genius; but watching the movie seemed on the whole more like a chore -- something to sit through because you want to catch bits of nuance and technique in his later movies -- than a pleasure. I had a similar reaction a couple of weeks ago to Godard's Band of Outsiders, that the movie just didn't come together as a coherent work of art, that it was not well-directed.
posted evening of November 11th, 2007: Respond
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Over at Unfogged, they're talking about books people are embarrassed about not having read. For me this usually comes up (nowadays I mean -- ten years ago I was incessantly feeling embarrassed about my lack of intellectual achievement) in the context of books which I should have read in order better to understand the book that I am reading at the moment, and enjoying, and I'm feeling like the enjoyment is a false consciousness because I don't have the background necessary to actually enjoy the book. Like last night on the way home from the Truman Sparks show, I was reading Pamuk's marvellous introduction to the Turkish edition of Tristram Shandy, and my dormant feelings of embarrassment about being unable to get through Sterne were reawoken -- I thought I had gotten over that during the group read at Is There No Sin In It?* last year. Other authors Pamuk is making me feel bad about my lack of acquaintance with: Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Victor Hugo. But Pamuk also gives me hope that I may pick Shandy up again someday: Behind the smoke and noise of his anger, there is the knowledge that great literature is what gives man his understanding of his place in the scheme of things, and so, reminding himself that writing is one of the deepest and most wondrously strange of human activities, he picks up the book again in a moment of solitude.
*What is the standard formatting to indicate a no-longer-active web site? It seems kind of weird to italicize the name of a blog, but a link would not be appropriate.
posted afternoon of November 11th, 2007: Respond
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I saw their show last night at Piano's, on Ludlow Street. Sweet -- it took them a couple of songs to really get it together but once they were in the groove, they rocked hard. I wish Adam's voice (or the amplification of his voice) were a little clearer though -- as it was I have absolutely no idea what the lyrics were. I was unexpectedly able to stay for the whole set and I'm glad, because the last two songs were the best thing about it. Got home kinda late though. The opening act, Cheyenne, was pretty great too -- I was sorry only to see their last couple of songs. Instead of watching most of their set, I stood with Adam outside the venue and listened to this French maniac raving about Baudelaire. Which was good at least for a laugh.
posted morning of November 11th, 2007: 1 response
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Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Listening to The Basement Tapes today, I was thinking about how the opposition between immersing oneself in the experience of listening and retaining one's identity through analysis, is a good framework for thinking about art and the creative process. I've been listening to this record pretty frequently over the last couple of weeks and thinking about writing a blog post concerned with how it is different from Dylan's other music that I like, and similar to The Band's other music that I like, or along those lines -- but then there are moments (especially during "Bessie Smith") where I'm suddenly singing along and identifying with the music instead of thinking about it. I love those moments.
posted afternoon of November 10th, 2007: Respond
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OK: The comment spam filter I have in place right now is working (so far); but it would be pretty easy to circumvent if a spammer was determined enough. But I have in mind a pretty simple way to expand it and make it secure, and way better than the captcha images that everybody hates. (Drawback is, it relies on Javascript, which not every browser supports. This could be gotten around a couple of different ways.) I am going to try and implement it over the next few weeks and then I will write it up and try to get other people using it -- it's way better than captchas. (I won't write it up until it's in place because the writeup would include information on how to get around the current, insecure filter I have in place.) Update: Oh wait, no it actually wouldn't be much more secure than the current scheme. A little harder to get around I guess.
posted afternoon of November 10th, 2007: Respond
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Last night I got hit with my first really major spam attack. So, this morning I implemented a solution I've had in mind for a while. I'm not totally sure it will work but we'll see. If it does work, it's pretty elegant and would require substantial amount of legwork on the part of the spammer to circumvent it, work that I'm pretty sure my site is not worth. Again: not disclosing it in public but if you're interested, let me know and I'll tell you how to do it. Note: I just deleted a ton of comments without checking. If you left one last night, I deleted it and I apologize. Update: Well the spam is coming fast and furious all morning and getting intercepted by my trap! Groovy, we'll see how it holds up. Update: It gets even better! Now Lynx users can leave comments without getting tagged as spam. If you are trying to leave a comment and getting rejected as spam, let me know.
posted morning of November 10th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, November 9th, 2007
Boy oh boy, tonight I rebooted the new server for the first time since I got it running back in late September! Why, you might ask -- it was not sick, nothing was wrong with it. Well: I inherited an oldish flatscreen monitor from my workplace -- a reboot was necessitated in order to get the computer talking to the screen. That's kind of big news; the old monitor was the one I've been running with ever since I inherited the previous computer from my previous workplace back in 1996 or thereabouts. It was a totally inappropriate monitor for the purpose it was serving; a monstrous, 22" CRT that must weigh over 30 lbs., that totally dominated the desk even though it was never turned on. The new screen will be a much better neighbor for the other things on the desk.
I was a little concerned when I rebooted and the web site was not accessible; I had sort of assumed that apache set itself up, when I installed it, to run as a daemon without anyone having to log in. Turns out that's not the case! Anybody want to tell me how to make it so? sshd starts automatically, which is good. Took me a little while to figure out how to start mysqld -- this would also be a great process to have loaded automatically when the system boots.
And: After I posted this, I noticed its id was 877 and I thought that's weird, wasn't I posting stuff in the 880's earlier? And I looked at my database backup from this morning (!) and saw that there were indeed more posts than I was seeing on the site. Kneel before me, Mysql! I know how to backup and restore databases! (And thanks, Mysql, for making it so easy to do, that a lazybones like myself can do it.) So... If you're commenting on this post and want to tell me how to get mysql and apache auto loading, it would be great if you could drop a hint about how to make mysql exit gracefully as well, because it sure seems like it did not do that this evening.
Update: Developing... it looks like to make apache and mysql load on boot, I need to put them in /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Now, my computer has no such directory; but it does have rc?.d where ? is a number from 0 to 6 or the letter S. There is also etc/init.d. I should be able to figure this out...
posted evening of November 9th, 2007: Respond
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Looking for that READIN post you read and enjoyed last year, but can't find it? I've added an Archives page that should be of some use. Posts are sorted by topic and by date. Let me know if you like it or if you think of any features that would make it more useful.
posted morning of November 9th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Reading Pamuk's essay "How I Got Rid of Some of my Books", this evening, I was identifying almost completely with its author. The reader's complaint about having too many books and not wanting the ownership attachment to the contents of his library is, well, kind of commonplace* -- I've heard it voiced by many different people, felt it myself too; but Pamuk's voice is so distinctively concise, rings so true, I felt like the essay was me speaking. This is something I get with a lot of the books and stories and essays that I really enjoy, I will identify myself strongly with the author/narrator (or sometimes with a character) and perceive the book as being about me. Egotistical maybe but it can be very pleasant. So then I was reading his next essay, "On Reading: Words or Images", where he lists three pleasures he takes from reading:
- The pull of the other world I mentioned earlier. This could be seen as escapism. Even if only in your imagination, it is still good to escape the sadness of everyday life and spend some time in another world.
- Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six, reading was central to my efforts to make something of myself, elevate my consciousness, and thereby give shape to my soul...
- Another thing that makes reading so pleasurable for me is self-awareness. When we read, there is a part of our mind that resists total immersion in the text and congratulates us on having undertaken such a deep and intellectual task...
And I thought (note that I was here not identifying strongly with the text, I was outside it taking notes) Hmm, I would agree with all of those points -- but I would add 4. The opportunity to identify with the author. But well, this is really in opposition with point (3), identifying with is the same as immersing yourself totally in the text -- so they are opposite poles both with some attraction for me. I think immersing myself too quickly and uncritically in a text can lead to lazy reading, and that this journal is in part a way of working to keep myself from reading that way. Real immersion of the kind that comes through understanding the text, is a consummation devoutly to be wished -- I had a lot of this when I was reading Snow. In "How I Got Rid of Some of my Books", Pamuk references Flaubert, whose works I have never read, but this statement makes me want to: Flaubert was right to say that if a man were to read ten books with sufficient care, he would become a sage. As a rule, most people have not even done that, and that is why they collect books and show off their libraries.
*As is the opposite sentiment, expressing the exhilaration of having books and the love of books as physical objects -- the two sentiments can coexist quite contentedly within one reader -- indeed Pamuk gives voice to the latter one just a few pages later in "The Pleasures of Reading", when he says: After finishing certain pages of this wondrous book, my eyes would pull back from the old volume in my hand to gaze at its yellowing pages from afar. (In the same way, when I was drinking a favorite soft drink as a child, I would stop from time to time to gaze lovingly at the bottle in my hand.) -- which image reminds me strongly of Sylvia.
posted evening of November 7th, 2007: Respond
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Truman Sparks has two shows in NYC this weekend -- one in Bushwick, one in Manhattan! Go check 'em out.
posted afternoon of November 7th, 2007: Respond
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