Miscellaneous Catch-up

At first I thought I had a cold, but it turned out to be a nastier bug than that, so my blogging slowed down a little, as did my work routine. You don't want to hear the gory details.

Some random things to tide things over until I can devote more time. I want to blog a bit about Wall*E and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, both of which, especially the latter, I liked a lot. But I'll save that for another day. Just three initial thoughts on Wall*E:

a) The first section, with Wall-E pottering about alone on Earth, is so engrossing that it's a shame when the humans appear and the chasing around starts.
b) People who think this movie is bleak really need to raise their bleakness threshold.

c) I don't appreciate a lecture on consumerism handed to me by the Disney Corporation. But I suppose I'll just have to suck it down this once.

Has anyone read Werner Herzog's blog? I added it to my list of links in the right hand column of this page. It's graced with the terrible pun "Werner Herzblog", and I can't work out whether or not it's for real. It reads like a parody of Herzog's distinctive, deathly-serious-but-suspiciously-wry speech patterns, and features some wonderfully terse entries. Here are some favourites:

December 20th, 2007
Question:
What do the mice do when the snow storm hits?
Answer:
They spit at almighty God and persevere.

August 15th, 2007
I was offered a drink called a Snapple Iced Tea yesterday. There was a sketch of the sun on the label. A note next to this sketch informed me that this picture was not to scale. Another reminder of how completely ignorant and gullible advertisers take us for. I refused this drink, even though I was severely dehydrated at the time. I have also noticed that certain toilet tissues use images of babies on their packaging. This is highly misleading, as babies are the only people who do not use toilet paper.

Thinking about this further, it could be said that certain invalids are also exempt from using toilet paper. I have no doubts that the severely disabled will soon appear on television extolling the virtues of various toilet papers.

I suspect it's not real. I wish it was, but I don't care if it's not. It made me laugh.



I'll also put a shout out for Tativille, one of the most beautifully designed websites that's ever been dedicated to a French comic film-maker. The interface is designed after the set of Playtime, which I'm very excited about inflicting on my students this year ("isn't it just Mr.Bean with subtitles?!"). It's also slightly cold and irritating, perfectly in keeping with the central thesis of the film...