I was intending to have a busy movie weekend, but after City of God I really didn’t want to see anything else. I actually went down to the Copley Place to see Intacto, but it was sold out twenty minutes before showtime, so I punted to City of God. The Copley is a lousy excuse for an art house theater, but it was the only place in town showing Intacto; thus, I wound up in a cramped little bandbox with a floor that sloped up to the tiny little screen. Pathetic. ...

Hey, it’s about time for Richard Thompson to release a new album (original). There’s a sample song (in WMA format, boo hiss) here (original). (Thanks to Jim Henley.) The album looks pretty stripped down, just him and Danny Thompson and Michael Jerome, who was the drummer on his last tour. I saw one of those shows, and I thought Jerome was really good. The first track is titled “Gethsemane” — I can’t wait. ...

This picture (original) is reportedly a shot of the Columbia’s wing from early on her last mission. Maariv is an influential newspaper in Israel, so it would seem this is not a Photoshop job, although I wouldn’t rush to conclusions regarding dents and cracks. I don’t think there’s enough detail in the picture to be sure of what we’re seeing.

OK. I didn’t particularly want to poison the Columbia tragedy by saying something partisan, and I kind of hoped I wouldn’t find myself wanting to. For the most part, nobody in the blogosphere has gotten political about this. There’s been idiotic froth on both wings in comment sections, but you have to expect that, and for the record I find “Bush will use this to push the war!” and “This is Islam’s fault!” equally repellent. ...

I went on a mini RPG binge this weekend, and wound up with quite a bit of good stuff, but the gem of the lot was Charnel Gods (original), by Scott Knipe. It’s a PDF supplement for Sorcerer, and it’s so good it prompted me to buy that game, but it stands perfectly well on its own; at five bucks, there’s no excuse not to buy it if you’ve got any interest in — but I’m getting ahead of myself and reaching for the conclusion already. Tsk. ...

Warren Zevon’s holding in there, but this piece isn’t really about that. His bravery awes me.

I was musing about pulp settings the other day. Off the top of my head: It’s the 1930s, and the Romany have taken to the skies. After the Hindenburg disaster, the public shied away from hydrogen dirigibles; but Paulo Pettersen, the sort of engineering genius who comes along once in a generation, believed he could make the vessels safe enough. What’s more, he convinced quite a few others of the same, and la! Before anyone realized it, the Romany flew, rising up above Europe in first a dozen and then a hundred great silvery balloons. ...

This story pretty well summarizes the state of affairs in Turkey; it’s a country with two ruling factions. The military is very wary of Islamic rule and has in the past led coups to prevent Islamic government. The most recent military action was in 1997. The current government is rooted in political Islam. What Turkey does will depend on who wins the current power struggle, and it may be a military victory. ...

The London Times published this thoughtful discussion of reasons to be anti-war; it sums up a lot of what I’ve thought and said, but better, cause they’re the Times and I am not. (The epitome of blogging, here: all I’m really doing is pointing to an article that agrees with me. But damn, it’s a good article. Oh, and yeah: via The Volokh Conspiracy. Now it’s a real blog post…)

If I was smart enough and lucky enough to do anything I wanted in life, I might want to do [something like this](http://web.archive.org/web/20200324075615/http://web.archive.org/web/20200324075615/http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/table/explore6.html (original) “Large monitors - Four frames ([1/2]/1)”) (original). “The Waste Land” is special to me. (Via Metafilter.)