OK, I’ve complained a few times about the fact that I’m outranked on the Ecosystem by a guy who has not posted in nearly five months, so I won’t whine about that again. I will complain instead about the fact that I am now outranked on the Ecosystem by a blogger who, as of this writing, has not even started blogging yet.
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I watched the old Rankin-Bass animated version of The Hobbit with the kid the other day. It was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, and I saw it before I read the book, so I was actually enchanted to read the book and find out that there was even more story than I had known about, which is a nicer way to go than getting angry because something didn’t make the movie after reading the book. I found that the film stands up quite nicely; the animation isn’t very smooth, but that’s no surprise considering the general quality of Rankin-Bass animation back in the day, and the designs themselves are very nice, with an interesting watercolor style. The voice work is generally high-quality, especially John Huston as Gandalf. And I have to admit that I still have a soft spot for the goofy, 1970s style music in the film, some of them with J.R.R. Tolkien’s lyrics given the folk-treatment, and a totally new song (“The Greatest Adventure”) providing a main theme, of sorts. The reviews on the IMDb entry for The Hobbit pretty much savage the film, so this is pretty much as case of trying to see the film for where the filmmakers are coming from, and accounting for the resources at their command.
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My support for the recently “concluded” war n Iraq was never more than tepid, because I never found the evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction all that convincing, and observing the Administration’s ham-handed efforts at world diplomacy and complete inattention to Afghanistan after the initial success there, I was not particularly confident that the Administration’s post-war effort would be, shall we say, less than impressive. So here we are, with no WMD’s in sight, and Iraq degenerating into precisely the type of giant mess that does not bode particularly well for anything: a peaceful democracy in Iraq, a launching point for the neo-con goal of remaking the entire Middle East in our image, a powerful wake-up call for the Arab world, a body-blow to world terrorism…right now, I have to say that it’s seeming like more and more of a stretch to think that these goals are achievable.
In private conversations about the impending war, last winter, I would tell friends that I would support the war whole-heartedly if I could just be confident that the world would be a safer place when it was over; or, failing that, if I could at least feel that a significant step had been taken toward making the world safer. Yes, Saddam is out of power; yes, he deserved to be out of power. He was (or is) probably the worst of a whole bunch of evil men in this world. But it seems to me that when one considers removing something, one needs to at least consider what’s going to inhabit the newly vacated spot; saying “X is bad; ergo, we must remove X” does little good if X is replaced with a Y that is worse than X was, with no guarantee that Y is just an unfortunate intermediary step to something better.
I’d love to feel confident and proud of what we’ve accomplished. I’d like to be able to say, “We took on a burden, and the world is a better place for it”. But I don’t feel I can. Not when Afghanistan is a teetering mess, and we’re led by an Administration that literally forgot to request funding in its latest budget for Afghan reconstruction; when Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still alive; when Saddam Hussein is presumed alive and in money; when the WMDs that were our primary justification for this war in the first place (and let’s not pretend that they weren’t) are nowhere in evidence leading to a number of unpleasant possibilities that include American negligence and deceit both before and after the war; and when I seem to be getting up every morning to read a new headline about another American soldier being killed in a series of ambush attacks that seem more and more like a concerted guerrilla war, nearly two months after our President played Top Gun (thus restoring American manhood, as some have said) and declared “an end to combat”.
What’s unfolding right now is pretty much the scenario that I wanted assurances would not be allowed to develop, if I was to support the war unreservedly. I wish I could see just why George W. Bush’s supporters are so confident and proud of their guy and his team, because I’m looking for good news, and I’m just not finding it.
(Here’s an excellent post by Tacitus on this matter, and he is no bed-wetting liberal. Original link via Kevin Drum.)
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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING
Posting pictures of one’s cats has become something of a Friday institution around Blogistan (here is an example from Kevin Drum). And I figure, well, I don’t have any pictures to put up of either of our cats, but here’s a nice substitute:
Nice kitty!
(That’s all I got for today, folks. It’s sunny out, not as hot and humid, I’ve got some projects to work on, so I’m outta here. Or more precisely, I’m still right here, but not writing posts today. Or something. And I may take tomorrow completely off, because there is a parade in town that needs attending by me, or it’s just not the same, along with my normal workload. Isn’t it amazing how much work I can generate for myself, despite the fact that as of right now, none of it is for pay? I suspect I’m doing something wrong….)
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Well, he was never one of my favorite people, but still…wow. This guy spent a big chunk of United States history on the floor of the Senate — close to one-fifth of it to this point, actually.
(But am I a bad person if I admit that one of the first things I thought, upon hearing this, was of those “Obituaries-in-reserve” that were inadvertently left publically available a while back?)
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IMAGES OF THE WEEK
St. Cuthbert heals a child, from an illustrated copy of The Life of Cuthbert by the Venerable Bede.
If and when I ever attain significant wealth, I want to buy a few medieval manuscripts and books — I love the illustration and illumination of the pages. One of the grandest such examples of such a book is the magnificent Lindisfarne Gospels, which is the subject of an impressive online exhibition by the British Library. Amazing. (Cuthbert himself wrote some of his translations of the Latin in between the lines of the Lindisfarne book.)
Here are a couple more examples of pages from the Lindisfarne Gospels:
Amazing stuff.
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At long last, it is mine:
Reading shall commence as soon as I finish Agent of Change. The name of anyone posting spoilers in my comments will be forwarded, along with IP address, Social Security Number, and Driver’s License photo, to Hillary Rosen and Senator Hatch, as I threatened previously. Be warned.
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Robert John Guttke, a friend of mine from several years of Usenet posting, is a Minneapolis-based photographer whose work exclusively focuses on the human form (often nude, so don’t visit his site if you’re bothered by such things). He has a new calendar available of his male photography (called “Priority Male”, because the fellows in the calendar are wearing postal uniforms — “Priority Male”, get it?), and he asked me to plug it here, so plugging it, I am. The covers of the calendar can be viewed here, for those interested. (The calendar doesn’t feature full nudity, I am informed.)
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I watched Treasure Planet last night, and man, is that one strange movie. It’s not space opera per se, it’s not fantasy, it’s not science fiction…I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s a really neat movie to look at, but it makes about as little sense as anything I’ve ever seen. I just couldn’t wrap my head around Galleons-In-Space. They should have abandoned that concept and just used regular, old spaceships. I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced as much cognitive dissonance while watching a movie as I did with this one.
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Lord knows I hate giving President Bush much credit for, well, anything, but the initial tone of this MeFi post seems a bit unfair to me. This is something I’ve seen once in a while — that when Bush received the news on 9-11-01 (we’ve all seen the photo of White House Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card whispering into his ear), he merely sat there for another few minutes reading to the elementary kids in front of him. I’m not sure what else he could have done, though — information was probably sketchy at that point, and he probably didn’t want to scare the children there or give them an idea that something was grossly wrong.
I’m likewise not willing to criticize him for going to a secure location before returning to Washington that night. In fact, while I think that Bush has mucked up pretty much everything he’s put his hands on since he took office, I do think that his leadership in the immediate aftermath of that horrid day was about as good as any President could have given. It’s tempting to undervalue those things he did — speeches and whatnot — but there is a vital, ceremonial aspect to the Presidency (something which Jimmy Carter, for example, failed to understand when he tried things like carrying his own luggage in his early days in office). For that brief period, in my view, Bush got the tone of being President right, especially in his speech to Congress a week after the attacks.
(I do think that the aircraft-carrier landing was a complete embarrassment, though. But that’s something else entirely.)