SLACKER SCANDAL: AREA MAN CONTINUES TO FIDDLE AS ROME NEARS 12TH MONTH OF BURNING

Heresy. Torshin has removed Raiders of the Lost Ark from his (extensive, I may add) list of recommended movies, citing vague things about lack of character development and 'just because it's fun doesn't mean it's a good movie'. I would argue that just because it's fun it doesn't make it a bad movie either, but there you go. Everybody then should go here, and take a look at the films on his list (comparison is important), and see if you think Indy 1 deserves a place among them and we'll get some public discussion thing going on via blogs (I can claim it's vaguely thesis related. It's the Habermasian Public Sphere people! The HABERMASIAN PUBLIC SPHERE, ah, who am I kidding). I'm mostly interested because it seems a pretty automatic edition to me, and I'd like to see if public opinion is with me, or if it just proves I'm an Indy fanboy (which I wouldn't consider myself to be at all, although watching them again recently on TV made me realise how much I enjoyed them, and would look forward to a 4th installment, although with some reservations) as well as a SW one. Of course it's a list of Torsh's own particular choices, so public opinion is largely immaterial and will not result in him changing it or anything, but I'm intrigued now. I suggest those with blogs comment if they are interested, or perhaps people could weigh in with an opinion briefly at Tark's guestbook. I know Nic and Tim are mostly with me so far. I could perhaps expect people like Jed and Arc to come down on the side of the argument that presents George Lucas (especially) and / or Steven Spielberg as people with no talent (but a staggering amount of luck), but I don't know.

The extended discourse on this matter between Nic, Tim, James and myself and this subsequent blogging have of course merely proved themselves thesis avoidance devices this evening. I have though succeeded in printing out a number of useful articles and reading them in the 4 hours I have been here, and managed to surprise myself by rediscovering some enthusiasm for the whole enterprise. Perhaps the key is late nights and energy drinks. At any rate, in a surprise move I have every intention of doing some more work as soon as I finish writing this. No, really! I'm wondering about it myself. At any rate I keep coming across these examples in articles of like these mega-blogs that attract 25,000 plus readers today, and what's most interesting is that I've never heard of them. I submit for your interest anyway Andrew Sullivan, (who can apparently push a book into the Amazon Top Ten best sellers just by giving it a good review) Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and Dave Winer at Scripting.com. These 3 guys are apparently some of the biggest figures in the blogosphere, and Dave Winer is virtually Godfather of Blogs (he's sort of credited with having the first one.) Unfortunately (well for me, anyway) Sullivan and Reynolds are both hawkish right wing conservatives, although Sullivan at least comes up with some interesting thoughts on things like abortion and same sex marriages (not as 'anti' as you might think). Reynolds can be reasonably funny. However their 'shut up liberals, let's bomb Iraq' gets a bit much after a while. This kind of thing (from Sullivan, I include the link as he does) being typical:

"Is this the League of Nations? The answer, I regret to say, is yes. If France, Germany and China succeed in ensuring that the war to disarm Saddam doesn't have the sanction of the United Nations, then the U.N. is effectively dead as a viable international body."

Hmmmm. Interesting to see though what the opposite end of the political spectrum thinks about things.
Dave Winer on the other hand is super enthusiastic about personal publishing and has many links to interesting tidbits. They're all worth at least a look anyway I think.

Today I succeeded in severely damaging my bike. I wish there was a good story behind this, something about it being run over by an 18 wheel truck just seconds after I dived off it to knock some damsel in distress into a position of safety (possibly Gwynneth Paltrow, she's in the country), but sadly the actual story goes as follows: I went around a corner too fast, didn't trust my tyres to turn sharply enough, and rode, at approximately 30 kmh, into a concrete wall. This act of somewhat amazing incompetence proved doubleplusungood for my front wheel (although it turned out surprisingly OK for me, all things considered) which was mortally wounded, unless there's some magic that can be wrought on it at some kind of wheel-shaped objects straightening plant. Inconveniently, I believe wheel-shaped object straightening is something of a cottage industry around these parts and could prove hard to locate, and I may have to replace the wheel and possibly other bits damaged beyond my ken at some cost. Curses. Should have trusted the tyres.

On the links page now we should have (Hey, look everyone! Links! Sorry Mark, your appearance was overdue, just had to sort my life out. Apologies to others too who will probably be there shortly pending a review) another cool blogging thing: some bright spark got it into their head to publish probably the world's most famous diary (apart from maybe Anne Frank's), that of Samuel Pepys, in blog form, a day at a time, with annotations and visitor comments. Excellent authentic historical stuff, and a great way to read it, especially if you were put off by tackling the whole print version due to its enormity, or the fact that you were formerly a callow young youth who went 'History? Diary? Pshaw!' at every opportunity (as I was). Perhaps I should start keeping daily print diaries on the off chance that I become a famous literary figure in the future, inadvertently. Pepys though was an adulterer who lived through the splendidly decadent Restoration, the Plague, and the Great Fire of London, so I'll have to have the old Chinese curse applied to me to even compete.

Right, as everyone has now gone home but me, it must be time to do some work. To finish this evening, an excellent quote from Joseph Heller I came across at random which went something along these lines:

'I'm often confused when I read something saying I've never written anything as good as Catch 22. I mean, why expect it from me? Nobody else has, either.'

Snappy. Not too far off either, I think.
Right, back to the readings.