a.k.a. sucker
Two months ago, the attempt to add a new harddrive to our old home PC backfired gloriously, with first the harddrive not being recognized, and then the onboard controller dying in the fray. Reluctantly I decided to upgrade the main system components, and so I bought a mainboard, processor and memory from Tiger Direct, completing the simple harddrive upgrade, and left with essentially a completely new system. The decision was eased by a substantial rebate offered by Tiger on two of those components.
When it came to claiming these, however, I found that after collecting several documents and tediously typing in information on a rather complex online page, I still had to send in quite a bit of paperwork, so that I then might receive a check in the mail six to eight weeks later. If prepared the letters, put them in my jacket to take to the post office and forgot them there.
Six weeks later I stumble across them, finally send them off, only to then learn that of course the rebate can’t be honored any more, because the time window closed. I write them a friendly email asking for mercy, and receive a cut and paste decline.
Valued customer, that’s me.
It’s fun watching the two stabs Hitchcock took at this story almost back to back, seeing the development of his style and technical proficiency, as well as the parts of storytelling that work in neither story. There is an interesting remark on the DVD of the producer of the remake being told by Hitchcock to watch the original Lorre vehicle, to see if that could be remade. The producer made some remarks about Hitchcocks development since then, which apparently hurt the man’s pride – odd, since the earlier work is so obviously flawed. When interviewed by Truffaut much later, he himself made the talented amateur / professional comparison between the two version’s directors, but in the early fifties he obviously still didn’t have the necessary distance from his earlier work. Maybe that’s why he only went half the distance in fixing the flaws, leaving the quite unconvincing spy splot of assassinating a politician in a public auditorium, and the cartoonish police.
The romantic mood and intimate, at times claustrophobic, cinematography, of this compelling masterpiece pull you in closely, and make you experience the melancholy mood and longing of the main characters first hand, for an almost dizzyingly intense experience. The end left me scratching my head a bit, with especially the disconnected footage of De Gaulle suggesting that I maybe missed a whole level of allegory to the plot, but then again, maybe not. It matters little either way.
Let me start by saying that we didn’t actually deliberately rent this. Rather, we inherited a box with four VHS tapes of Hitchcock classics, three of which I had never heard of. The fourth was indeed a classic, so we watched that. I should have been suspicious at the distinct snapping sound I heard when the movie was out of its box – the marketing trap had sprung.
If you liked the quirky humour of the lyrics of Sparks last album, Lil’ Beethoven, and the bombast of their musical arrangements, you’ll probably also love their newest bundle, though you might not find enough songs markedly distinct from the previous work for comfort, that the spirit behind something like “As I sit Down to Play the Organ at the Notre Dame Cathedral” is indistinguishable from that coming up with “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall”, and might even claim that this is but an exercise in preparing something according to tried recipe, and thus not as delighful as Lil’ Beethoven was. And maybe I’d agree, but it’s still a damn good album. And that Cathedral song rocks. Or pipes, or whatever. Halleluja, I got faith.
Sometimes one opens a book, or reads a first line, and immediately it’s clear that the thoughts and concepts that went into the work were sorely missing from the world, yet nobody had realized it before. Such is the case with this gem of philosophical reasoning. An essay on the essence of bullshit, and an attempt to explain its apparently increasing dominance of today’s communication, this work should be the basis for a much more thorough study of the phenomenon. The exhilarating delight and sheer fun of reading a serious deliberation on the issue must not distract from the fact that this is not satire, nor is it humorous, except insofar as it is a surprising and complex study of a phenomenon commonly thought to be not worthy of such study. To be sure, this combination of surprise and incongruency of means and perceived complexity of the subject are what makes the first reading such a pleasure, and look superficially like a satire of moral philosophy. But to stop at that level would be to mistake the work for its subject, and to miss the chance to develop the tools to attack the toxic prevalence of bullshit in all the public spheres of communication.
There isn’t much I’m going to say about this magnificent genre marriage of film noir thriller with highschool drama, except: go, see it. A remarkable script, pitch perfect performances, a multitude of lovely details and references: Just go, already.
There is mythological evidence from the middle ages, suggesting the Swabians were a jolly, lively people then, full of vigour and joy. You wouldn’t think it today, and the introductory section of this book, meant to show Swabians in the best possible light and endowed with a preface by Cleverle Späth, is a case in point. The most salient features of the Swabian mind, his thriftyness, his shrewdness, his xenophobia, take some stretching to be made into qualities, and with some, most notably the Kehrwoche, even Larson’s well meaning prose fails to create any appeal or sense. The anecdote of Larson interacting with Willy Reichert, Arnulf Klett and the likes are positively painful, but admittedly that might be just to me, and just because they hit too close to home.
I have a weakness for the crop of evolutionary psychology and anthropology that has sprung up in recent years, and this one on the evolution of the human chimpanzee and the specific problematic baggage he brings from this evolutionary history is no exception. Of particular interest, both for content, as well as for the insight into the genesis of such book it provides, is the chapter on differential development of human societeties, that later bloomed into a full grown book of its own: Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond writes delightfully entertaining, and his examples are fascinating. The only drawback is the bleak picture he paints for the future of this planet and our species, sounding just as correct today as it did 15 years ago, when he wrote it. The only difference being that the monster of major climate change caused by us monkeys no longer is something to be feared decades in the future, but seems to wait just around the corner. Maybe we can gang up on it, kill it and eat it. That strategy served us well in the past.