Midaregami

• I never understood why n⁰ = 1; this has always felt like a fundamental character flaw.
• I empathize with “otherkin,” and am very fortunate not to have heard of the phenomenon when I was a sad, lonely 14-year-old.
• My comfort movies include Anne of Green Gables, Love Actually, and Newsies. Edit: Also Studio Ghibli’s “Whispers of the Heart,” which I can’t believe I forgot to list first.
• I watched the first two episodes of Fooly Cooly and failed to see genius where so many others seem to.
• One of my greatest joys in life is a good role-playing game session.
• I don’t know enough about any given medium to be a really effective snob about it.

Brad points out that one of my great passions has interviewed the other.

That new album hits tomorrow. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Great interview with the director of Pan’s Labyrinth.

Chock-full of spoilers, so don’t read unless you’ve seen the film. And if you haven’t seen the film… well, just see it, okay?

Even Steve Jobs wants to get rid of DRM. I would spend ludicrous amounts of money at the iTunes store if it wasn’t DRMed—I already do at eMusic, but I’m always running across stuff they don’t have.

If you won’t listen to me, listen to Steve.

• wall
• finger
• who
• talk

I have fond memories of getting talk‘d on the VMS/Alpha machine back at CEC, and sometimes I wish I could just substitute a really nice .plan for my personal homepage.

You need to see Pan’s Labyrinth if:

• You have any interest in fantasy films
• You have any interest in horror films
• You like that pretty, lispy Spain-Spanish
• You are interested in pre-Christian myth
• You like good movies
• You are human

Reasons I loved this movie:

I loved its brave, beautiful heroine. If I were twelve, I would’ve developed a life-threatening crush on Ofelia within five minutes. As it was, I watched in awe of her apparent fearlessness. One could write off her bravery as artificial, insofar as she thinks of herself as the princess of a fairy tale and thus perhaps destined to triumph—One could so dismiss her, yes… until the end.

I loved its sense of the ancient—the labyrinth seems to be thousands of years old, the challenge it embodies at once timeless and startlingly relevant.

I loved its dual-layered (or multi-layered?) narrative. The story works equally well from at least two perspectives, and it functions beautifully whether you prefer the literal or the metaphorical interpretation. But wait—which is which, again? That, friends, is good writing.

I loved its indictment of patriarchy, and the relish with which it embraces feminine power. The Captain places value on Ofelia’s mother only because she is pregnant with his child, which he insists will be a boy. It is his inability to even conceive of a woman challenging him that is his undoing. Indeed, the three main “good” characters are all female. Little flourishes like the womb-shaped bloody stain on Ofelia’s book also impressed me, and although it may or may not figure into the feminist values of the movie as a whole, the fact that it was there at all is meaningful.

I loved its message—for all its complexity, its values are simple, and good.

I loved its production design: terrifying, ancient, magical, every supernatural flourish speaking of an entire tale left untold.

I loved how it was in Spanish.

I loved its ending.

Guitar Hero II is easily the only game enjoyed by every single occupant of the Undisclosed Location. Our band names:

• The Eschatones
• Absynth
• Arockalypse
• Barock ‘08

Excellent.

• Crush my enemies.
• See them scattered before me.
• Hear the lamentations of the women.
• Eat more vegetables.

Best Craigslist ad ever.

At various times when I have put forth the effort to make this attractive, slightly sweet bread for public fuctions of one kind or another, I have often been informed by helpful parties that it is not in fact real challah, because it uses butter, and moreover it is not a “festive” or “festival” dish, as I had been initially told, because Jewish people blah blah blah—by this point I am typically done listening to their helpful advice.

So the food whose recipe and braiding procedure I am about to divulge is clearly not Challah—it is not Jewish, it is not for festivals or indeed events of any kind, it “cheats” and uses butter, and in all probability is not even bread.

But: it is gorgeous, and delicious. I am going to call it “shmallah.” It is a dish I have invented and of whose correctness I am sole arbiter. It is completely original, and is the traditional festival food of whenever I goddamn well feel like making it.

Here’s how to make shmallah—and anybody that tells you otherwise is a filthy liar, and although death is too good a punishment for their vile dissembling, death, nevertheless, is what they shall have.