toastykitten

From the Wave Magazine (a free Silicon Valley rag):

TW: Judd, why did you have to show the baby coming out not once, but twice?

Judd Apatow: No, three times. You blocked one out. It’s three different angles. The reason that I show the crowning shot is if I don’t, it just looks like an episode of Friends. I’m trying to make you feel the pain of that experience, because it is the most intense moment in people’s lives. I had to do something that hadn’t been done before. My original goal was to find a woman who would allow me to shoot the baby coming out and then match it into Katherine, the same sheets, the same bed. And we got close to getting it done, but here’s why we weren’t allowed to: The state of California says you can’t do that because the unborn child would need a worker’s permit, and I can’t get it till he’s born. There is a Kurt Vonnegut problem right there. We weren’t able to do it, so it became a prosthetic.

I am slightly freaking out about China's growing economic power. I do not want China to take over the world, especially in its current state. But then I am paranoid like that. And I would really like the U.S. to get a clue, any day now. All that bitching about China not pegging their yuan to the dollar? Hello, hypocrites, you profited off of their cheap labor, and you're surprised they want their money back?

I reread Wild Seed yesterday. Octavia Butler is still one of my favorite writers. There are few people who could write so vividly and concisely, with so many original ideas. I love the way she is one of the few sci-fi writers who incorporate racial realities into her stories; people like LeGuin do it, but they never really go in depth the way Butler does, in harsh lighting, and awkward realizations.

I was thinking (a dangerous thing in this heat) about how with some writers, I forgive them their faults or I don't. For example, I read Piers Anthony for way too long a period in junior high. I liked the escapism of Xanth, and then eventually all the puns and naked 15-year-olds got to me. So I don't really read him anymore. Occasionally I reread The Martian Chronicles, but ever since I found out that Ray Bradbury [Bush]He's wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a shithead and we're glad to be rid of him. And I'm not talking about his sexual exploits. I think we have a chance to do something about education, very important. and We need enlightened corporations to do it; they're the only ones who can. All the great malls have been built by corporate enterprises. We have to rebuild cities with the same conceptual flair that the great malls have. We can turn any bad section of town into a vibrant new community. I found that I couldn't forgive him for saying those things. And it ruined the rest of his books for me.

On the other hand, I read about Roald Dahl's anti-Semitism, and I found I still enjoyed Matilda as much as I did the first time I read it. Ezra Pound, too. Maybe it's because they're dead that I can sort of brush those things aside. I tell myself that they lived in another time, and they were still considered pretty progressive for that era. Maybe it's because they're better writers.

I don't know; I feel kind of betrayed by Bradbury's views, but when I re-read the Martian Chronicles a few years ago, I should have realized that all those views were there. I just hadn't looked hard enough.

I prefer my literary cranks to be cranky like Kurt Vonnegut.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.

Maybe they should meet. I'd pay to see that fight go down.

I can imagine it:

Kurt Vonnegut: "Bring it on, bitch!" (Insert random rants about the state of America, about how Bush sucks, etc. Quote stolen from Scrubs.)
Ray Bradbury: "You should learn to read and write before you even mess with me." (Insert random rants about about the state of America, and bitching about the tyranny of affirmative action .)
Vonnegut: "Have you even seen my books? I am more prolific than you are!"
Bradbury: "Oh yeah? I just wrote a short story five minutes ago! Beat that!"

Like I said, heat produces incoherence. Time to go.