Hey, Nina's in Paris!

Now, I'm jealous. What a warm familiar place! Maybe it is, as she says, like Madison.

Great Jeremy dialogue.

Blog fiction.

It will be interesting to see if novels can be successfully presented in the form of blogs. Remember when hypertext novels seemed like they might be important? Does anyone care about them now? There must be a lot of blogs that convey made-up stories about the blogger's life, with the blogger being a fictional first-person narrator. I Googled "fiction blog" and came up with a recent article in the Guardian, which included this:

Blogs are now so familiar that print writers are imitating them. An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil, the fourth novel by Canadian author Jim Munroe takes the form of a blog roommatefromhell.net written by a woman worried that her Goth flatmate is genuinely demonic. Munroe was tempted to make fun of blogging's stylistic tics. "But I tried to stay away from broader humour to look at how the character, a woman in her early 30s, uses the blog to explore her need to be public and private at the same time."

Appropriately enough, when the novel comes out in the US and Canada in September, Munroe will post the 100 entries that make up the story, one a day, on a real blog. He's also planning to add photos and links to fake sites connected to the story. "There'll also be an Is She or Isn't She? feature, where readers can vote on whether the roommate is, in fact, a demon. Depending on how the vote goes, I'll be writing and posting a bonus story that won't be in the print version."

Munroe's novel shows how blogs have become part of the cultural landscape. Rob Wittig thinks that blog fiction will become similarly popular. "I can easily see blog fiction becoming part of everyday computer-literate life, especially for the twentysomething generation. So much of their social life is being lived in messages already." Others suggest it will take a while for things to develop. The personal diary seems to work well in blog form at the moment, says Paul Ford. "But I don't think we have any way of knowing, just yet, what other sorts of stories are going to work. It's still too new."

So maybe novel-writing will end up where it started: in epistolary form, published in installments.

A sidenote: according to Munroe's website, he's going to be appearing in Madison soon, at "the world's only feminist science fiction convention."

UPDATE: My battery got too low at the café where I was writing that, so I didn't get to say what I had to say. So let me say it now. What I want from blog fiction is not a traditional print writer trying to get in on the blog action by breaking a novel up into a mere 100 entries, even if it includes a poll about what ending you want (like the movie of Clue). (Plus, please don't bore me with the following phrases: "cultural landscape," "computer-literate life," "twentysomething generation.") Good fiction blogging would involve several fictional characters, each with their own blog, linking to each other, discussing various fictional events in their lives, perhaps along with interesting other commentary on real world events. It would have to go on for years, like a comic strip that you read daily, and would contain thousands of entries.

ONE MORE THING: "Munroe was tempted to make fun of blogging's stylistic tics." Translation: Munroe doesn't care enough about blogging to have any usable ideas about how to satirize bloggers.

Standing out in a "noneccentric, nonsarcastic way."

So what did all those elite boy's school kids think of John Kerry when he was 16? From a good long article in the NYT:

"I think hatred is too strong a word ... Loathing is too strong a word. He may have seemed a little calculating to some people, and perhaps to me as well at the time, but he wanted to be liked. He may have just been a little more obvious about it. Not bad training for a politician. He wanted recognition, and in a place like that, anybody who did stand out in a noneccentric, nonsarcastic way, some people might be a little suspicious of."

The trials of being a not rich enough, not Protestant, not Republican, and openly serious about politics.

Small-time anti-Bush politics in Madison.

State Street is teeming with visitors as well as locals this Saturday after graduation. Is there any campaigning going on here in this famous hotbed of political activity? Why, yes. The Boot Bush Guy is back.



You can buy a button to display proudly on your person.



And here we see the pro-Kerry effort.



A weasel seeks shade.

Biscuits produce Apple.

Well, I guess all those biscuits Gwenyth Paltrow ate while pregnant must have really worked because she supersized that baby: it came out weighing 9 pounds, 11 ounces. And she named the baby Apple, so let the joking begin. I wonder what computer this child will choose when the time comes?

Her husband Chris Martin described the process as "a long labor." Ending with a Caesarean section, one assumes, given that size baby and that size mother. If it's a C-section, say it's a C-section. Don't do what Kate Winslet did. She recently confessed:

I've never talked about this—I've actually gone to great pains to cover it up. But Mia was an emergency C-section. I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatized by the fact that I hadn't given birth. I felt like a complete failure. My whole Me, I'd been told I had great childbearing hips. There's this thing amongst women in the world that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth, and I felt like, in some way that I couldn't join that "powerful women's club." So it was an amazing feeling having Joe naturally, vaginally. Fourteen hours with no drugs at all, but then I had to have an epidural because I was so tired. I honestly thought I'd never be able to do it. It was an incredible birth. It laid all the ghosts to rest. It was really triumphant.

"Great childbearing hips" is probably not a compliment ever aimed at Paltrow. It seems unlikely that 9 pounds, 11 ounces exited "vaginally." Bragging about natural childbirth is forgivable, but insufferable. I love the "no drugs for me at all ... until I took the drugs" preening and the whole "my hips ... my vagina" attitude, but it's really awfully lame. And it gave her an "amazing feeling"--"vaginally"--which sounds a little too much like part of your sex life.

Why the triumphalism? One way or the other, that baby is coming out. You will be there, you will endure it, but is there an accomplishment worth mentioning? Do you get an A if you escaped the knife and the drugs, a B if you took the drugs, a B+ if you took drugs only in the end, and a C if you got a C-section? Is that why they call it a C-section? Oh, and you get a D if you had that C-section with general anaesthesia? Competitive, comparative childbirth is unseemly. We go through what we go through, and very little of it reflects any particular virtue on our part. Spare me the preening, the bragging, and the sentimental goo.

ONE MORE THING: Just to state the obvious, to complete the grading scale: who gets an F for her childbearing efforts? Well, you should know by now. Who are the least eligible for the "powerful women club," the ones who really can't "handle childbirth," who really lack "childbearing hips," who really can't "do it"? They are the millions of women who have died in childbirth. See why it's unseemly to be competitive about how well you did?

"Haunted."

I read some of the reader opinions at the link for the novel in the previous post. You always have to wonder, reading those things, whether they are written by friends or relatives of the author (though the book really did sound good as described on the radio).

Ever notice how often a book is called "haunting"? Two out of eight customer reviews at that link called the book "haunting." It seems any time people actually like a book, they are haunted by it. That's rather disturbing. You wouldn't read the book at all if you knew you weren't going to like it. But then you like it and it dogs you in some eerie, scary way.

"Haunt" ought to be a strong word. My favorite use of the word is in the movie Wuthering Heights, when Laurence Olivier says "Haunt me, Cathy!" He doesn't mean he'd like a poignant memory of her to linger. He really means he wants her ghost to haunt him.

...I know that ghosts have wandered on the Earth. Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life. I cannot die without my soul.

That's haunt. I love that movie scene, but let me give you the original Emily Bronte text too:

"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!"

The screenplay stayed pretty close to the original. Replacing "Oh, God! it is unutterable!" was the sheer presence of Laurence Olivier. "Dark alone" replaced "abyss," which they couldn't trust people to understand. "I can not live without my life!"--that's great movie-talk, straight out of the original. The second "I cannot live" in the original became "I cannot die" in the screenplay. Interesting! Instead of parallelism and repetition, the movie has Cathy's death create a dilemma: "I cannot live" and "I cannot die." That's quite good. (Quality screenwriting by Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and (uncredited) John Huston.)

But I know it's futile to inform the world that they ought to preserve the strength of the word "haunt." The sad thing about taking a strong word and using it as an ordinary word is that as an ordinary word it becomes a cliché, so it really has lost its entire reason for being. A whole category of words that have had their strong meaning sucked out of them by overuse consists of words that express approval: grand, great, magnificent, marvelous, awesome. A subcategory consists of words that originally suggested unreality: fantastic, incredible, unreal, fabulous. Fortunately, there are so many of these words of praise in English, that we can fend off the cliché problem by periodically switching to a new one. I remember when no one used "awesome," then it got started, then it got overused, and then it became generally recognized that it was idiotic to say it, even as a joke. So maybe it will lie fallow for a long time and become reusable. There's no chance of "haunting" going through that process though, because though it is overused, it's certainly not overused the way "awesome" was. It's got to be quite conspicuous before people become embarrassed. On the other hand, since "haunting" is overused by people who seem to want to appear elegant and educated, maybe there is some hope that embarrassment will set in more easily.

A very quiet Saturday.

It's a very quiet Saturday here at the Law School, the day after graduation. It was 49 degrees when I left the house; you have to check the temperature before heading out on a Spring day in Wisconsin. So I drove in, listening to an NPR segment on a novel about a Japanese pearl diver sent to a leper colony. It's a nice clear day, and though I'm in my office now, putting together notes for a talk I need to do next month on federalism and medical marijuana, I plan to walk down State Street soon enough and get some coffee and a sandwich at a café--where I will undoubtedly sent up my mobile office and continue putting my notes together. That really is my idea of getting out of the house on a nice day!

Graduating the Law School class that began with 9/11.

The law school class graduating today began just days before the 9/11 attacks. How strange it must have been to go to law school, motivated for reasons individual to one's own life, surrounded by other individuals who had arrived in the same place along various different paths, as yet unknown to you, and then, in the second week of law school, to have 9/11 change everything. How did that unexpected, shattering beginning change the law school experience? I sat on the stage through the graduation ceremony today, as the Dean welcomed the throng of students and their family and friends, followed by an introduction from a University regent, a keynote speaker (the state Secretary of Commerce), and three students speakers, and not one mentioned the unusual beginning that marked law school for this class. It was only the faculty speaker, Jane Schacter, who raised the subject. How very odd--especially that not one student spoke of it.

Someone passed a handwritten note to the Dean, asking that the ceremony include the Pledge of Allegiance (there was, indeed, a flag on the stage). The Dean showed the note to me and at least one other faculty member. It would have been hard to change the program to include something unplanned and hard for this group to say the Pledge--there were many foreign students among us, most notably. But I understand the sentiment. Prof. Schacter's speech concentrated on the important legal services given to the accused and to persons who might suffer abuse by the government. The role serving the public interest through government service is much less often mentioned. The Pledge might have given the ceremony a dimension that really was missing.

Am I criticizing the student speakers for never mentioning 9/11? (It is possible that there was a mention that I missed, and if so, please correct me.) Not really. We have all moved beyond the feelings we had in the fall of 2001, feelings it seemed--to me at least--would never lose their edge. Maybe the lack of any mention of 9/11 should be celebrated: the terrorists didn't "win." They didn't knock the students off the paths they had set out on when they came to law school. It's not for me to know what effect 9/11 had. I only know the student speakers didn't mention it. What did they talk about? Overwhelmingly, they talked about what they always talk about: how much they owe to their family, how much their family helped them, how important family is, how important love is. The most profound moment was when one student asked that we thank the members of our family who are in Heaven, like her grandfather, who had taught her so much. She called for a moment of silence to think about those who had helped them. And then, because she had made herself cry, she called for a second moment of silence. The Dean got her a glass of water.

There is a certain sort of student that my heart goes out to at times like these: the student who got no help from family. Repeatedly, speakers said, "None of us have gotten where we are without the help of someone else." But surely, there are at least a few persons who did have to go it alone, who have no family, who are estranged from their family, or who are actively discouraged by their family. Surely, there are some students who lost the love of their life along the way in law school and students whose family troubles had only a negative effect. Graduation adds feelings of envy and loneliness to the burdens these students bear, and no one ever offers them a world of solace. In fact, they try to deny them the sense of accomplishment they ought to have in knowing that they did it on their own. So a word of congratulations to those unrecognized students.

And good-bye to the class of '04, those with family and those without family, those profoundly changed by 9/11 and those who held fast to their pre-set dreams. Good luck to all the great people who passed through our wonderful school these past three years.

New York to the rest of the country: go soak your head.

Here's Sam Sifton leading off his "Diner's Journal" entry in the NYT:

There are times in this city when the pulse rate quickens and sweat breaks out on the brows of the citizenry and it seems for one horrible moment as if everyone in sight is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It's just you, though.

In another place — in the cool sylvan embrace of Portland, Ore., say, or under the dappled sun of Charleston, S.C. — people so suffering would go home and soak their heads. In New York City, they go to restaurants. Restaurants of a particular sort, that is. New Yorkers are nothing if not precise in their self-medication.

It turns out, there are restaurants in New York that serve comfort food! And people there eat as a way of tending to emotional stress. How very urbane! I must try that sometime. Now, now, now, don't be so sarcastic, I hear the Voice of Sifton chiding me: in New York, comfort food is "a perfect Venn diagram of spice, salt, sweet and nutty." So are you Sam! That was perfectly delightful. I'll keep reading.

The Triplets of Belleville: pure nonsense or French anti-Americanism?

The DVD of The Triplets of Belleville is out already (though the film is still in the theaters), and it arrived in the mail yesterday. So many of the DVDs I order sit on the coffee table unwatched and eventually get shelved, perhaps never to be watched. I'm sure my DVD bookcase has at least 30 that I've never even put in the machine. But The Triplets of Belleville made it straight into the machine and got watched the evening of its arrival. It opens with a sequence that was shockingly crudely animated, but then we see that this is a cartoon on a TV that within the beautifully drawn world of the characters of the rest of the movie. The elegant detail of the line and the subtle color make a profound impression when they replace the bluntly drawn black and white TV cartoon that begins the film. So is the movie basically a dreamworld fantasy of pure nonsense or is it an expression of French anti-Americanism? I have the impression that's a debate people have about the movie. You might gravitate toward the first position if you enjoyed the movie and the second if you don't want to bother to see it or if you saw it and it put you in a bad mood for one reason or another. I find those two positions too boring to take, so let me offer some other things to think about.

1. This is basically a silent movie. There is no sound that functions as narrative. If you turned off the sound entirely, you would only miss the music and the sound effects. The music, like the drawings, are distinctive, and in no way "nonsense," unless all music is nonsense. It doesn't make sense to think of music (excluding lyrics) as nonsense. So the visual and sonic beauty of the film stand apart from anything you might have to say about the narrative. The narrative might be just something to engage you to look at drawings and listen to music for a sustained stretch of time.

2. The boy was a rather horrifying character, who seemed to exist only to ride a bicycle. He was a depressed lump until he got his first tricycle, and the old woman driving him on was perhaps helping him achieve his own heartfelt goal. Even though she seemed cruel, she was a coach. It was a grim life, and the boy's face is nothing but grim, throughout his life, but he was worse off when kidnapped and exploited for his fabulous bicycling ability. The life of the French countryside may be hard, but if you leave it and go to the big city, it will be much worse. Better to go back home and live your limited little life, because the world of commerce is the worst exploitation of all. In this, the film reminds me of the Wizard of Oz and Pinocchio.

3. The three old women were not the only triplets. The French Mafia characters were three-in-one entities. And the core family group--grandmother, boy, and dog--are a set of three. So, consider three-ness. If three-ness is central, the trinity must be contemplated. Consider the possibility of religious allegory.

4. Think about machines. The bicycle is the central machine. (You can have a bicycle triple feature--celebrating three-ness--if you watch this movie and Breaking Away and The Bicycle Thief.) But the movie has a thing about machines. A clock machine determines when the dog is fed, the trains and subways drive right by the window, music is made from a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner, a weird movie-bicycle-gambling-device is a place of imprisonment and a device for escape, and so forth. The interest in machines (especially since this is a silent movie) reminds me of Chaplin, who not only made Modern Times, which included a big evil work machine that entraps the hero, but also had the uplifting speech at the end of The Great Dictator be mostly about overcoming, not fascism, but machines. If you've read Chaplin's Autobiography, you know he was oddly overconcerned about machines.

5. Think about fire. The grandmother, alone in Belleville, sits under a bridge and lights a little fire, which causes the Triplets to appear and begin to sing. Food is acquired by using an incendiary device, a hand grenade thrown into the water, producing a harvest of frogs. And in the end, the gambling theater is exploded and set afire.

6. Is Belleville Manhattan? It's an island full of skyscrapers with the Statue of Liberty out in front, but the villainous men in suits are quite French. There is much guzzling of red wine, and the buildings are made in part of large wine bottles. There is an America diner that served big hamburgers to very fat people too. I think Belleville is a conglomeration of all things that are feared about cities and overgrown commerce. Belleville is globalization, which mixes Americans with the French, and the solution to the problem is isolationism--as the boy and his grandmother return to the little house to spend the rest of their lives soaking up the joys of poverty outside of the reach of evil commerce and big city excitement.

Justices O'Connor and Kennedy have a little something to say about the Iraqi detainees.

Gina Holland writes for AP about a meeting of international law experts that included Justices O'Connor and Kennedy as well as 28 Iraqi judges. The meeting took place last week in the Netherlands. Here's a key passage in the news story that shows the Justices' concern about the treatment of detainees:

The subject of detainee abuse did not come up, the justices said, but the way to handle deposed leader Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi leaders did....The justices did not disclose specifics of what was discussed but said Iraqis alone should determine the appropriate punishment.

"The people of Iraq and certainly the judges there will have to come to grips in time with what to do about the former regime and leaders in it and whether some should be held criminally accountable for past crimes and, if so, where do you draw the line," O'Connor said. "We don't have answers for that," she said, noting other wartorn countries have used such prosecutions as healing experiences.

Added Kennedy: "It's not for us to enter into that debate. There was some difference of opinion, but discussed in a very rational, balanced, reflective way." ... "You have to find small islands, small pockets of stability and reliability and build out from there," Kennedy said. "And it was apparent to us ... that these dedicated jurists represent a reliable source of stability, responsibility, respect for the law." ...

On the issue of Iraqi inmate abuse at the hands of U.S. military personnel, Kennedy said the Iraqi judges "innately knew, instinctively knew how concerned we were. They also knew that we can't really comment because we are actually in the legal system where we have review of military court-martials."

"They also knew we represent a process that is open, that recognizes that human fallibility is the reason we have democracy," he said.

One can only speculate about what effect the abuse of Iraqi detainees might have on the Justices' reasoning about the power of the President with respect to the Guantanamo detainees. The comments of the Justices are typically inscrutable. We are left to "innately ... instinctively" divine what they might be thinking.

Rehnquist to emulate Robert E. Lee.

Chief Justice Rehnquist will appear in an interview on CSpan's Book TV (at 11 EDT on Saturday). He has this to say about not writing a memoir:

"I've always admired Robert E. Lee. He said the reason he didn't write memoirs was he would have to deal harshly with some people whom he liked very well and who had worked with him ... And I feel the same way. You know, bland memoirs are really of no use to anyone, and they certainly don't sell. And critical memoirs, you know, where you really take off and go after some of the people who you've disliked or who have been on other sides - I just don't care to do that."

Yes, that's quite astute. Either write a good memoir or don't write a memoir. And he's right about what makes a good memoir. But there is an additional point, even more important, about how to write a good memoir: you have to put your own vanity aside and deal most pitilessly with yourself. A good reason not to become a judge is that you will have such a stake in the respect for the court as an institution that you can never drop that guard and tell all. [UPDATE: Or even much of anything.] You're committed to a lifetime of playing the role of a sober, respectable, functioning member of a grand institution.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court rules against Gov. Doyle on Indian gambling.

The Capital Times reports:

The state Supreme Court ruled today that provisions of new American Indian gambling agreements are unconstitutional - a decision that will at least temporarily reduce casino activities and create a gaping hole in the state budget.

A spokesman for Gov. Jim Doyle said the decision likely will be appealed to the federal courts.

On a 4-3 vote, the state Supreme Court ruled that Doyle exceeded his authority to create a long-term agreement, to create a new resolution approach involving waiver of sovereign immunity, and to authorize additional table games.

Adding keno, roulette, craps and poker was contrary to the state constitution and state criminal law, Justice David Prosser wrote for the majority. Betting on simulcast racing is legal because the state constitution has allowed pari-mutuel betting. Blackjack and slot machines would continue to be allowed under the ruling.

"Appealed to the federal courts"? As opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court? That doesn't make much sense: you can't redo a case in federal court even if there are federal questions. He may mean the U.S. Supreme Court, but if so, it certainly looks like a decision resting on state law grounds.

Getting the oil changed and reading People magazine.

I’m waiting for my car to be serviced, and I check out the new cars. I peer inside one and think, yeah I could enjoy sitting in this space. I look for the price. First, I see $1500 gas guzzler tax. Hmmm…. Oh, here’s the price. Over $75,000. Okay. Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to pay that gas guzzler tax anyway, and now I completely approve of someone else having to pay it. And who the hell do they think they are, driving a gas guzzler?

No Wi-Fi here, so I’m jotting down notes for later blogging. Here’s the new People magazine—all about reality TV. (A typo there led me to think: Yeah, why not have some “realty TV”? And then: I guess we do have whole channels of realty TV.)

Ooh, a picture of baby-Jerry-Seinfeld (Sascha) on page 10.

Page 12: When did Brooke Shields start looking like Joan Cusack?

Page 14: Ben Affleck hugs Jessica Lynch!

Page 20: Gwyneth Paltrow’s bare pregnant belly. Ooh, and she gave up macrobiotics and started eating biscuits for her little biscuit!

Here’s a mini-interview with John Stevens (the American Idol guy, of course—not the Supreme Court Justice): he became good friends with Diana and Jasmine, because the three of them had to do three hours of schooling a day. (Note that the non-school-age contestants have more time to relax/prepare, which could explain Jasmine’s flagging capabilities and should inspire awe for the ever-strengthening force that is Diana.)

Ah … and the pager starts buzzing way too soon. So much for People magazine, and I’m back in my car, listening to the audiobook of “Running With Scissors,” and now I’m back home, blogging.

Blogger profiles.

Okay, I went ahead and filled in the form for a Blogger profile, and I can see that it let me avoid showing some things, but it didn't even ask if I wanted an astrological sign listed. That irks me no end! And if you think you know the astrological sign of people who are irked by astrological signs ... It also rejected my photo url for being too long...

UPDATE: Sorry for having the wrong link before. (To the photograph I couldn't post.)

FURTHER UPDATE: I got rid of the astrological sign by deleting my birthday. Easy solution!