I watched Magnolia again last night. Well. Part of it; I had forgotten, unsurprisingly, how harrowing it can be and it was rather late, so the whole three hours was not in the cards. I actually hadn’t seen it since the first time I saw it, in the theater. After that three hours, I said to myself, “It’s going to be a while before I can watch this again.” I still agree with myself. On the other hand, I’m also even more certain that I need to, and that I want to, and that I want to think about Magnolia much much more. ...

I have very fond memories of The Westing Game. Today, I stumbled across a link to an Ellen Raskin page (original) of rare quality. Turns out she was a graphic designer and an illustrator as well. The page includes scans of her original manuscript for The Westing Game and a pretty extensive discussion of her typesetting directions. Good reading. There’s also, of course, a bibliography and biography.

Ernie the Attorney made an offhand comment about programmers as artists (original) the other day, which got me thinking, although I half suspect it was meant to be tongue in cheek. Still… artists? I’m not sure; I think the various tribes of computer professionals (programmers, system administrators, network administrators) are more akin to court wizards. We are comfortable and fluent with devices that almost everyone’s forced to interact with every day. It’s a prestigious position; the unwashed are constantly reminded how much they need us. It’s also a set of occupations that until fairly recently has been taught in the medieval style. All the best sysadmins I know learned from other skilled masters. We have no formal apprenticeship system, but the trappings are all there. ...

Giving into temptation, Popone now has a stats page. I mention this because it led to an important Weblog discovery: you aren’t a real weblog until you’re getting more hits from Googlebot than from Netscape browsers.

Simone is a pretty good science fiction comedy, and I’d recommend seeing it before it leaves the theaters. I’d been looking forward to it for a while; Andrew Niccol directed Gattaca, which was one of the better SF movies of the 1990s. Since then, he wrote The Truman Show, confirming my belief that he has an understanding of deep SF themes. One big difference between Simone and Gattaca is that Simone’s a comedy. Niccol had trouble getting into the rhythm of comedy early on, but fortunately he had Al Pacino (as Viktor Taransky) and Catherine Keener (as Elaine Christian) to smooth over those rough bits. The pair of them carry the movie over the early awkwardness, and the core themes of the movie take us the rest of the way. ...

Coming on DVD in 2003: Animatrix. That’s 7 directors (presumably anime directors) doing shorts in the world of the Matrix. Funky. I dig the trailer.

Jeff Cooper is an actual law professor, and so much more qualified than I to discuss the legalities (original) of declaring war on Iraq sans Congressional approval. He read the Security Council resolutions I referenced earlier and reports that their goals have been achieved. So there you go. Parenthetically, and I mention this because it’s been brought up from time to time, Clinton also used (original) the 1991 Security Council resolutions as justification for military action against Iraq. So it’s not as if Bush doesn’t have some precedent. Clinton’s stance was that enforcing the no-fly zones was a means of preventing further Iraqi aggression against neighboring states, which was in fact mandated by the UN. Although the UN didn’t approve the no-fly zones. Muddy waters.

KCRW has a live Aimee Mann performance (original) available via RealAudio; the date is 8/27/2002. It’ll probably stick around for a while — they’ve got a 3/4/1996 performance (original) archived as well.

Won’t you join me in my quest to convince WizKids Games (original) to release a Grant Morrison miniature for HeroClix DC (original)? Grant’s a legitimate character (with superpowers) in the current DC continuity, having appeared briefly in Suicide Squad Volume 1, issue 58. Thus, he’s appropriate fodder for a HeroClix minature. I encourage you to write support@wizkidsgames.com politely registering your interest in such a figure. It’s probably good to mention that Morrison exists in continuity, as per my geekish notes above. ...

Cory Doctorow’s got a story in Salon: “0wnz0red.” (original) Cute title, yes. A sort of amusing story, layered over with a political agenda. The Honorable Computing gimmick is pretty close to Microsoft’s Palladium technology.