well thank goodness

I go away for a bit and when I come back and open the papers and I see

1. The world-ending flu epidemic has arrived

2. By 2100, South-East Asia will have lost something like 50 percent of its capacity to produce food because of global warming

Fortunately, the first catastrophe cancels out the second. *relief*

Epic Badness

I am reading Paradise Lost. It is Milton’s epic about Satan’s fall from heaven and how he corrupts Adam and Eve.

It is EPIC. (hence the genre)

I’m a little surprised at how much it reads like really really well-written Warhammer fiction. By which I mean, it’s very martial:

‘All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
With orient colours waving: with them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array’

and jazz like that. But also throw in a couple hundred references to Biblical history, Grecian mythology and classical lit by page 30.

It’s one of the first (I think, the first) sympathetic portrayals of the devil that is also epic lit. Unintentionally sympathetic. Imagine the Lord of the Rings (the books) but everybody is evil, there’s a meter, and Frodo is Lucifer.

A Softer World is so fun.

I like how people who read for fun always seem a little bit more optimistic about how shit things can get sometimes. Not a substitute for God, of course, but it’s kinda cute

Karen O <3

Gotta love the pseudo-German at 0:13

Team Unlimited Democracy

STARRING:

Barack Obama as the generic leader-type (duh)

Nicolas Sarkozy as the impulsive one

Junichiro Koizumi as the eccentric nerd

Tony Blair as the aristocratic one

Vladimir Putin as Batman

and Bill Clinton as the voice of their orbiting space-station headquarters

They would fight Kim Karnage, the diabolic, and Achmed the Terrorist.

TV execs reading this, I want a concept credit and merchandising rights

Meh

So The Economist did an article on the over-subscribed US uni class of 2009 and rising student loans, as well as under-funding in most universities. It’s always rewarding keeping up with current affairs for those moments when the news you read intersects with your real life, even if the news is invariably shitty.

Oh well. I need to start reading up on the Tories and Labour soon. I barely know more about UK politics than European ones, but it’s going to be such a slog. Gordon Brown is so irredeemably boring. Don’t you current-affairs kids think the world was more interesting when Blair, Koizumi and Bush were around? More hopelessly incompetent sometimes, sure, but at least they had style

(well ok, Obama’s really interesting. I wonder what it would have been like if Sarkozy, Obama, Blair, and Koizumi all came to power at the same time. The world ruled by these young, hyper-charismatic types. Sweet. Maybe they could form a Justic League)

how exceptional

From today’s ST:

‘American artist paints Earth for Earth day’

…conveniently forgets to include other countries.

Milan Kundera

Brr. Reading Milan Kundera will make me old before my time. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is horrifying in a breezy way. Took me awhile to get over the prose. Kudnera has a message on practically every page, and sometimes it can be quite condescending. He also sometimes sounds as if he thinks he has a monopoly on being miserable and everything should be an amazing revelation for you. Oh well, it’s quite worth it for the philo.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

I’m cram-watching the series. It. Is. So. Good. All you atmo-freaks (I’m looking at you ali) will really like this one. Take Japan’s penchant for futurism times one billion, add a healthy dose of blade-runner, secret government agencies, cyborgs, robot geishas, and some obligatory set battle pieces and you have a fun fun show.

I like how intelligent it is. The big themes of course are identity, and whether AIs can have souls, but you also have more subtle commentary on Japanese media society, the otaku, and dystopian post-WWIII. It’s always the little details that colour future dystopias, like the shot of industrial smokestacks lining the skyline in Blade Runner and the giant Jap-ad blimp that hovers over Harrison Ford in the abandoned tenement.

Here, we get throwaway references to WWIII, a huge battle on a rusted ‘abandoned anti-radiation scrubbing rig’ off Okinawa, and oh all those delightful future-tech roadside vendors who of course wear straw hats and peddle cheap Made-in-Taiwan cyberbrains. This is a universe that is real, and has a history.

Quite a guy-show though. Lots of un-necessary skin-shots, the title character’s uniform looks like a kevlar leotard (?) and there’s so much vice. Oh, and did I mention the set battle pieces? Still, the vibe it gives off is a subtle portrayal of seedy internet culture taking over the future, so it doesn’t feel too cheap.

And anyway, how can you say no to those adorable spider-tanks

there’s a war going on

Articles like this one really bring home the immediacy and reality of war. A really good ‘embedded journo’ piece on a Taleban ambush of a platoon he’s attached to. Reading current affairs makes it easy to forget that these things are happening to real people

I wish I could show you the IHT I’m holding right now, with a shot of a spec running for cover towards the camera

Photos and voice-over, NYT.