Culture

So, how are those wacky Bush-hating Dixie Chicks weathering the storm of controversy surrounding their recent comments about our fine President? Sales plummeting? Losing money? Well. Actually, no, not in any sense. Their newest album is still #1 on the March 22 Billboard Country charts (original). That album, Home, is #3 on the Amazon popular music sales chart — and rising, up 11% from yesterday according to JungleScan. Wide Open Spaces is #39 on the Amazon charts, and Fly is #49. ...

A while back I noted the Pattern Recognition annotation effort. t.rev pointed out that it sucked so far. It continues to be more criticism than annotation, but you know, it’s the kind of thing obsessives like me read. And it’s done, except for the Themes section.

E! Online has this to say about Polanski’s Oscar: “Only in Hollywood can Roman Polanski be a convicted felon and an Oscar winner.” True enough, since — as far as I know — Hollywood is the only place they give out Oscars. It would be difficult to be any kind of an Oscar winner in, say, Des Moines.

Not much else to do with my night but mock the Oscars; I wasn’t gonna, but the opening montage reminded me of how painfully bad some of the Oscar winners have been. Thus, they deserve it. It’ll all go in this post so anyone reading this on Livejournal is missing all the fun.

I bought some Dixie Chicks CDs today. If the best argument one can think of is “I don’t agree with you so I’ll punish you economically,” one doesn’t really have much of a case, does one? Come to think of it, one would — in that hypothetical case — mostly be pouting. The only thing which could make it complete is calling one’s antagonist names.

I think any pen and paper RPG designer could warn these folks (original) about the perils of their idea. But it’d be more fun to watch them cope with finding out themselves. “Hey, let me tell you about my character!”

I got a spam today entitled “bryant, Housing market may be cooling - Rates Tick Up”. Inside there was a lengthy screed regarding Prime Minister Howard Wilson and the CIA. Some investigation on the Web revealed that it’s an excerpt from Chapter 15 of the Unauthorized Biography of George Bush (original), by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin. This appears to have some connection to David Icke. There is no visible connection at all to the housing market. ...

There are geeky ways to ask someone to marry you, and then there are [geeky ways to ask someone to marry you](http://web.archive.org/web/20080706021039/http://web.archive.org/web/20080706021039/http://www.decipher.com/content/2003/03/030603lotrengagement.html (original) “The Lord of the Rings”) (original). I think that’s terminally sweet, but it is also terminally geeky. I will now demonstrate my own geek nature by asking if the One Ring isn’t kind of the wrong symbolism for a marriage? But I will come back from the brink at the last moment by not suggesting one of the other rings as a better choice. Phew.

Salon has a little puff piece of a Cronenberg interview on line, of interest probably mostly to the fanatics like me, except for one excerpt which I will provide here. When I did “The Dead Zone,” I was very happy with the film. I was very happy with the experience of mixing my blood with somebody else’s, in this case Stephen King. When you use someone else’s work as the basis, it’s something you would never do on your own, but something you really feel an incredible empathy for and connection with. The two of you mix together — why, it’s just like sex, I suddenly realized! — and you make something that didn’t exist before. ...

What does it take to sell real estate? Brass balls (original). Glengarry Glen Ross. 3.5 minutes. Rip, remix, burn.