[from DYS- after euphemism] The substitution of a derogatory or unpleasant term for a pleasant or neutral one; a term so used. Opp. EUPHEMISM. Dysphemistic adjective. (OED)

I support the efforts of this blogger in pointing out how much the French suck. Not only does he report revolting French behavior to English readers, he posts bilingually so that the French can also read about how they suck.

This thing sounds like either a new weight loss program or a way to power a light-bulb hat.

I don't read much Chuck Palahniuk but his new novel has an interesting version of the Weird House theme: "Rooms in summer houses on the mainland that Peter has remodeled start to mysteriously disappear -- 'The man calling from Long Beach, he says his bathroom is missing' -- [and] crude and prophetic messages are scrawled across the walls and furniture of the blocked-off chambers." Palahniuk seems to know what it's like to lose parts of yourself -- a leprosy of the soul if you don't mind -- and what it's like when the missing parts taunt and nag at you, mock you, remind you of themselves, that they're gone -- I wonder, is anything more relevant to the human condition than the ghost story?

On this day in 1945 Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Right about... now...

In related news, Guinness urges us to break this World Record. Not to mention this one.

My cable company spams me with advertisements for upcoming programs. I have to look at a big red light on my digital box until I go through several menus with my remote, open the "message", and delete it. I cannot delete it without reading it. It's usually a "special message", but sometimes it's a "very special message". It often pertains to the WWF.

Some guy inherits a replica of the White House, every physical detail the same as the one on Pennsylvania Avenue only it's located in Kentucky or somewhere. He thinks it would be pretty cool to live in the White House, just like Al Gore. So he moves into this place and starts living there, eating breakfast where the President eats it, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom, mowing the North Lawn, downloading internet porn in the Oval Office. Then something weird happens, something weirder: people in suits and military uniforms start showing up and advising him on current events; humorless men in dark suits start following him around wherever he goes, whispering into tiny cuff microphones and frisking his friends; foreign dignitaries with legions of advisors and translators arrive by helicopter to make transparent pleas and veiled threats. Then he's shuffling opening statements on index cards at the center of press conferences, and delivering hour long speeches to suspicious journalists and union workers, then to a hall full of senators and congressmen and supreme court justices packed into an exact replica of the Capitol Building. It finally gets to be too much of a distraction, so he puts the house up for sale. Smarmy guys with molded hair and ephemeral faces show up led by fast-talking realtors to tour the building and argue with one another, each willing to pay well more than the place is worth just to live in it. He figures he can make more by renting it out to these guys, so he sets up a four year lease with an option for renewal, holds an auction and rents it to the highest bidder. The new tenant smiles and waves a lot. Makes speeches. Swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the replica Republic. He's clearly insane.

I've updated this. The worst thing about insomnia is you can't sleep.

An unknown neighbor has purchased and installed the same model cordless phone as me. If you don't live in an apartment, you may not realize how annoying that is (or how I know it to be so); it's annoying because whenever they get a call, my phone rings. I answer the phone and hear as if on a ghost channel the neighbor answering hers

Haha hoho heehee, thanks to this, posterity has this (put your whiny French accent on please):

"We do not know what we are talking about." --Jacques Derrida

Today is my lucky day! I am among 1,000 individuals selected from my area to participate in a survey on National Policy sponsored by Dennis Hastert and the National Republican Congressional Leaders! I feel honored that they would consult me on such an important subject, on such weighty matters as The War on Terrorism, Homeland Security, the Economy, Education, Health Care, Social Security -- oh yes, I have opinions about these things! [Rubbing hands together....], so let's get started! Hmm... blah blah Democrats undermining blah delay or destroy every proposal blah blah recapture White House and Congress in 2004 blah blah (they seem to think I'm a Republican even though I'm registered Independent and have less than optimal respect for anybody who's not -- but shh! let's not clue them in) blah blah President has delivered blah blah bring our enemies to justice [damn right!] blah blah education reform bill -- come on already, where's the damned survey!? Democrats will stop at nothing blah blah most effective weapon is me blah blah huge undertaking blah desperately need my help to fund it -- whoa! They want me to pay them for listening to me?! Blah blah my survey answers will make all the difference blah blah I have a choice of $25, $50, $100 or even $250, well that's convenient and so thoughtful of them... blah blah I get a copy of the Confidential Results that will be presented to President Bush -- oh cool, that's worth at least $250! I see, the survey is this other sheaf of paper in the envelope from Speaker Hastert (who knows where I live) -- and I see they've got check boxes for the amount I plan to contribute -- $500? It went up already? But wait! I have a checkbox for NOT sending one of the approved amounts and sending a processing fee of $11 instead. Well, that *is* cheaper.... Oh here's the Ask America Survey -- already! I'm practically exploding with verbosity! Oh... well, it's multiple choice, so I'll have to save those essays for some other survey -- maybe Tom Daschle wants them? Maybe I'll just qualify my checkmarks with some notes in the margins... some colorful drawings... quotes from famous surveyors.... To work then! I'll have a snapshot of the final product when it's done.

It distresses me to report that this is a terrible movie. Not that I had any stake in it being good, but it was the big-screen directorial debut for Clark Johnson, who played Det. Meldrick Lewis on the series "Homicide: Life on the Streets", and since I like the guy from that role I would rather he be successful now. Not to be! (Although it's number 1 at the box office this week, which is kind of sad and embarrassing, but good for Clark Johnson anyway.) Of course one wonders whether any director would have made any difference with such a horrible horrible truly terrible script.

This movie is another in a steadily growing pile of garbage hacked out by the WGA (Writers Guild of America), which means it was written by a team of writers assigned the task and who often (as in this case) don't even have any source material (so you get the dreaded "story by" credit -- usually a bad sign). In this case there are five writers credited, two for "story by", two for "screenplay", and one just for "characters" -- which is bizarre, considering how much they resembled the cardboard cutouts the actors pretended to shoot at with their fake rifles. (What exactly does a "characters" writer do anyway? What did this one do? Did he decide that the female S.W.A.T. cop should have a kid? That Protagonist A should be kind and sensitive? That Antagonist C should feel guilty? Honestly, I can't believe I live in a society that pays "characters" writers to invent such truly vapid and uninteresting characters.)

S.W.A.T., based for some reason on the television series that ran for about one season in the 70s (with Robert Urich! -- who was Spenser in "Spenser: For Hire", which also featured Avery Brooks! -- who was Captain Sisko on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"; ah the over-punctuated titles of yesteryear!), S.W.A.T. (2003) just oozes with flab; the dialogue is the worst since, I don't know, "S.W.A.T." (1975) maybe; the plot must have been improvised or something, it's so loose and lazy; and not even Samuel L. Jackson can produce enough charisma to overcome the script. And what's with this Colin Farrell dude suddenly -- every lousy Hollywood movie seems to feature Colin Farrell these days. I thought he was that guy from "Saturday Day Night Live", the one who was just in Old School (actually a better movie than this one -- slightly).

A-and the villain in this movie was a Frenchman! A Frenchman! Was the villain! A Frenchman!

Josh Charles was also in this thing, better known as the other guy on the series "Sports Night" (the first guy being Peter Krause, now on "Six Feet Under"), and as one of the kids from Dead Poets Society. Now? Well, at least he's getting work I guess.

2 out of 10 afternoon naps

Well now it's impossible for me to ever vote for John Kerry (as if there had been a chance of it). According to the Washington Post (referring to a Philadelphia Inquirer article that only mentions it as an aside, completely missing the story as usual), he visited Pat's Steaks here in Philadelphia the other day (a standard stop for campaigning politicians) and ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese on it. Swiss cheese! This is blasphemy to any Philadelphian (it's cheese-whiz, damn it!), and has certainly doomed him for any votes here. Steak sandwiches are like a religion here, like our own private Islam, like eucharist on a roll. How dare he defile the sacred ground (9th and Passyunk) with Swiss cheese! And apparently he nibbled daintily at it too, like a schoolgirl or a French person, rather than slopping it all over the place like a real American. And he sat down to eat it! What a wuss!

The Family of Many who over-occupied the next-door-oblique apartment to mine has seized upon the opportunity afforded by my new map to move away from here. The cost of the map was astronomical but due to the debilitating psychological effects of overcrowding, they were quite willing to pay. Now I must determine what to do with this new Bag of Neighbor's Souls sitting by my desk. Perhaps the Observation Guild might make use of it; they typically have great need for arcane supplies.

Moving the Family of Many (whose new whereabouts shall forever remain unknown) proved no trivial task; several dump trucks were required, a logistics expert, and a C-5 aircraft, all of which caused a great disturbance for me and kept me distracted from my important work. The Census Bureau showed up with clipboards and attempted to count the number of children escorted from the apartment, but gave into a round estimate soon after hand cramps set in. Excavations of the vacated dwelling continue prior to the ordeal of renovations, and a loud debate has developed between the socio-archeologists and the cleaning crews over a timeline. Some meddlesome administrator appeared with a proposed schedule, but neither side could agree to the other's amendments, so the shouting and frustration outside continues even now.

Symptomatic of our Manager's cruel sense of humor, the family will be replaced by The Two Most Beautiful Lesbians in the Universe. I spied them one afternoon marching from a European car over the pocked sidewalk as if parading Vera Wang for paparazzi camped out in the bird sanctuary (Stieglitz battles Eisenstaedt for epic angles amongst the undergrowth) in order to gain a preview of their new living conditions. If one tended toward the flowery, one might describe them as luscious yet angular: California blondes in shorts and halter tops that conjure collisions between pedestrians and motorists (fire and water, the elements of their alchemy) wherever they roam. Dr. Jones is on record maintaining that lesbian union is process sans cause, and therefore a juncture of infinities (two voids in action emptying, two abysses inverted when standing), a teleological paradox. I have no idea what he means, but I can almost imagine it. The immediate future looks very distracting indeed.

This site queries Google for the most occurrences between two given terms, reporting the number of webpages on which each is found. For instance:

sex (110,000,000)
love (68,600,000)

or

Hussein (2,780,000)
Bin Laden (1,640,000)

Pretty cool.

I added a comments script in case somebody needs a life even more than I do. I got rid of the javascript popup for a while but it was ultimately better that way so I reverted (although I detest javascript). My only concerns wrt this are 1) longer load times to get the comment count, and 2) some retard-kiddie bombing the script to choke the disk. I may have to take a closer look at the code to see if there's some way of averting that threat.

My deep introspective question of the week is this: If somebody were to break into your home would you rather be there or away?

My website idea this week is a rotten tomatoes or metacritic type thing of compiled critical reviews of films, but unlike metacritic, this would actually be criticism of critics: it would review the review and the critic who made it -- in order to determine who is trustworthy and who is on the Hollywood teat. That would demand an editorial bias (easy) or some kind of polling gear to rank critics by popular opinion. The world needs this -- some critics gave S.W.A.T. a favorable review -- and lacking a firing squad, expressed public exasperation might suffice. Other kinds of critics might be criticized as well: book reviewers, music critics, talk show analysts, Neilson families, anyone assuming the role of making judgments of taste for the masses. Now... somebody get to work on this. Chop, as they say, chop.

My book recommendation this week is Beowulf. In case you didn't know, Beowulf kicks ass! Most of those in my generation and SES were put off to it by cranky under-educated English teachers forced to teach it without understanding what it was or what it could be, surrounded by eyes they themselves made dull, but just listen:

Then on the hill that hugest of balefires
the warriors wakened. Wood-smoke rose
black over blaze, and blent was the roar
of flame with weeping (the wind was still),
till the fire had broken the frame of bones,
hot at the heart. In heavy mood
their misery moaned they, their master's death.
Wailing her woe, the widow old,
her hair upbound, for Beowulf's death
sung in her sorrow, and said full oft
she dreaded the doleful days to come,
deaths enow, and doom of battle,
and shame. -- The smoke by the sky was devoured.

And am I the only one who wishes we'd kept the Old English character set? Is that cool or what?

My amusing website this week is this: What to do in a Terrorist Attack -- interpretations of the Dept of Homeland Bureaucracy's new warning signs.

My political rant this week concerns Justice Moore of Birmingham AL who has refused a Federal order to remove the Ten Commandments from a state judicial building. This is not, as everyone supposes, an issue of separation of church and state, but rather one of state's rights (which makes it significantly more important). Federal assumption of greater degrees of regulation and legislation on the part of the states (see too the new controversy over windmills in Mass.) is an important step towards the classical Imperial model, and one far away from the Republic in which we once lived and which I for one would still prefer. It should be up to communities to decide questions like these, up to municipal governments with appeal to state governments, up to the smallest possible group affected by the issue. The Federal government should have no role in it, no say in it, and should get back to the important business of designing cryptic terrorist warning signs for websites to make fun of.

My movie review this week is on From Dusk Till Dawn (1996): The main thing of interest I took from this movie when I first saw it was the abruptness of its transition from psycho-gangster movie to comedy-vampire flick; for about the first hour there is no indication of vampires, then suddenly: vampires, and the entire thing changes. I wanted more movies like this, sudden-vampire movies, sudden-alien-invasion movies, sudden-anything movies in which the fabula of one genre switches unexpectedly into that of another. I'm struck this time by how very different the two halves are, as if each had been written and directed by a different person (Quentin Tarantino is credited for the writing, Robert Rodriquez for the directing -- might they have switched roles at the border?); the tone of the film changes too, it becomes (oddly enough) less oppressive, less frightening when the vampires leap out, the tension drains, replaced by silliness and campy humor, as if commenting that the real scariness in the world is that which remains hidden just below the surface, welling up in a stranger's eyes, in the potential for terrible acts rather than in the acts themselves. Or something like that -- it's not particularly married to this theme. The movie is about that terrible potential lurking beneath the surface, and also about faith in an odd way -- well, the first half is anyway; the second half is about... vampires. This had to have been an old unfinished script of Tarantino's that he or Rodriquez stapled an ending to -- there's just no way that vampires logically follow the first hour. It's like two different movies, and the first one is much better than the second. Therefore: 6 out of 10 strawberry daiquiris (8 for the first half, 4 for the second).

My video game observation this week concerns Doom 3 (I play few video games anymore but I love shooting stuff and I'm looking forward to this one so I've been paying attention): I suppose it is now more or less official that the game will not be released this year. I think this summer id finally saw what Valve had been up to for Half Life 2 and was as startled as everybody else, then frantically returned to their own game to reevaluate; they had a state-of-the-art engine coded by a now-literal rocket-scientist, and customer system requirements to match, but what else did they have? Was there any innovation in the game design? Anything new? Were they telling any story beyond the original tagline of the original game from a decade ago (you've got a gun and eight floors of hell to get through -- good luck!)? (Which would be fine with me -- let books and movies tell stories, games should be about shooting stuff -- but the market seems to want stories now -- or maybe just the critics do? Add another category to the metacritic website!) So they went back to work and pushed their delivery date. I guess that's good.

And finally my Top Ten List this week: Top Ten things I've used as bookmarks:

10) A colorful 1000 Italian Lire bank note (worth 45 cents)
9) A wooden spring clamp clothespin
8) A white Egret feather
7) A 500 Hours Free AOL cd
6) An unused United Airlines return trip ticket from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
5) A deck of Bicycle Jumbo Index playing cards (one at a time spread out over the course of several years)
4) A single strand of auburn hair
3) A copy of Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy" translated by Donald A. Cress
2) A federal income tax return check for $1.68
1) Somebody else's finger

I've registered a new domain: importantwork.com, which I couldn't resist when I saw it unclaimed. I went with Network Solutions this time since over longer terms they're actually cheaper than Register.com, and I can move my other domains there just before they expire. I don't know what I'll do with this new one; I'm torn between working the obvious ironic angle and putting something completely frivolous there (like a poll of visitors' favorite shade of red), or since theothercountry.com will be expiring this year, maybe I'll let it go, then move this weblog to importantwork.com. That will mean deciding on a new host or staying with lunarpages (which has been fairly good but also fairly expensive even with java servlet support -- which I haven't used much anyway) compared to many "budget" and basement hosts. I've also been toying with the idea of hosting it myself.

Once decided maybe I'll register an ISSN for the weblog, which I suppose is the next step in the explosion of me-too-information-drown. But after all, important work is, well, important, right? Especially if it sez so itself?

A nothing-much-new western from Kevin Costner centered on the saddle-worn themes of the Wild West's transition toward stability, the civilizing influence of women, and the occasional necessity of democracy at gunpoint. The chemistry between Costner and Robert Duvall seems strangely off in this movie, which is a costly failing since it puts such high stakes on that interaction -- the script is more or less built around it -- and Duvall turns in a disappointing performance given his past accomplishments (it seems sometimes as if another rehearsal or two would have been of great benefit to the veteran actor). But it has one of the best gunfights since Clint Eastwood chewed on his last cheroot, and a fairly realistic-seeming one that places it next to Eastwood's late Unforgiven -- worth seeing for that alone. 7 out of 10 hypercubes (9 for the gunfight, 5 for the rest).

Because not quite everything has turned to smeg, a Red Dwarf motion picture is set to begin filming this September (that's like an hour away actually), featuring the complete cast and directed by Doug Naylor and Ed Bye (not sure what happed to Rob Grant).

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Things I'm interested in right now: border zones, Old English literature and history, and art deco.

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Phrases I insist people stop using: "sooner rather than later", "win the hearts and minds", and "line in the sand."

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Due to all the annoying jokes, I recommend changing the name of Uranus to its Greek spelling: Ouranos. Uranus is the Latin anyway, and those guys were rip-offs. Which means we should also change Mercury to Hermes, Venus to Aphrodite, Mars to Aries, Saturn to Cronus, Jupiter to Zeus, Neptune to Poseidon, and Pluto to Hades. Now get busy, I don't have all day.

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It's too bad I don't own the rights to the Lucas and Moorcock franchises. I have a story about a Dark-Side Jedi named Darth Elric who wields a black light saber that sucks out the midichlorians from its victims and howls like Chewbacca. Have I mentioned before that the word Chewbacca is in the MS Word dictionary?

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I've begun compiling my Pale Fire notes into html templates. Given the breadth of the references (Aethelbert to Zemlya) it should attract a higher class of search referrals than what I'm seeing now. (In case you were wondering, the current top google search referral to this site is "Ashleigh Banfield nude.")

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Actually, if we're changing Mercury to Hermes, we should then change Venus to Leela, Mars to Bender, Jupiter to Fry, Saturn to Zoidberg, Uranus to Zapp Brannigan, Neptune to Amy, and Pluto to Professor Farnsworth. And while we're at it, let's change Earth to Morbo.