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A History of Violence is nearly simplistic. This is the American fable of the vigilante. A man’s family is threatened. He takes action, reluctantly. The villains suffer. They refuse to repent. Perhaps the man is tortured. He wins out, and his family is safe. Or: he wins out, but his family is already dead. “I’m Batman.” “I’m the Punisher.” “I’m Mad Max.” The alternate is perhaps the easy out from a narrative standpoint. It’s cleaner, not having to manage both a vigilante life and a family life. It’s just as easy to imagine a scenario in which a man’s family is threatened, but not killed; it’s simple to imagine a threat of sufficient magnitude as to generate this sort of violent revenge. We’re heartless crafters of fiction. Kill one member of the family, and leave the rest alive. ...

You can do worse than the lurid fantasy worlds of Games Workshop when it comes to novels. I blame it on Britain; like 2000 AD comics, Games Workshop’s Black Library seems happy to allow authors to indulge their hallucinogenic whimseys as long as the canon is consistent. And the canon is a fever-dream to start with, so you’ve got a rather fertile base for excess. What more can one ask of RPG novels? ...

Speaking of sports — actually, first, a note on my previous. When your favorite athlete thanks God for the win? That’s probably not a casual reflex. Read this piece on sports as an avenue of proselytization. Anyway. Dr. Z writes a column for Sports Illustrated on the NFL. Fun, breezy writer; well respected, he’s been around forever. Here’s a throwaway comment from him this week: “Come in Mike H. from Wellington, New Zealand, do you read me, over? No, he doesn’t read me because I’m speaking to a piece of paper with writing on it, which shows how much I’m slipping. One more word, before I get to his question. Can you exert any influence to get the Flaming Redhead and me citizenship papers, plus help in opening an account at the Bank of NZ? If they ask what I can do, tell them I can cover rugby and do a really snappy column about the great NZ wines. Last I heard, New Zealand is a country where they don’t torture people, right?” ...

Pat Robertson said that God was punishing Sharon (original) by sending him a stroke. We are, of course, horrified. What a cruel thing to say! Then again, it’s in the same logical category as something that’s said every day, broadcast on TV regularly, and so on. “… and I thank God for helping us win this game.” Which is equivalent to “I thank God for making sure my opponents lost the game.” Which means God’s making choices about who wins and who loses. He’s gotta choose sides there. ...

My lovely sweetheart is going to be in Boston from January 20th to January 30th or so; the first weekend we’ll be mostly down on the Cape, but other than that we’re free. I’m still gonna be working that week, which means offers of daytime company would certainly be appreciated. Also we probably oughta do a dinner Monday night or something like that. Who’s in?

Someone in my family who will remain nameless for soon to be apparent reasons got me a T-shirt for Christmas. Kinda. It looks a lot like this. Except he didn’t buy it from threadless.com. He downloaded the image, printed it onto transfer paper, and ironed it onto a blank T-shirt. So I’m horrified, right? Intellectual property, the ability to profit from creativity, etc. I’d buy one except that design is sold out. But I’m also tremendously amused. Talk about your remix culture. This particular family member is like fifteen years old. He didn’t even think twice about getting the T-shirt that way. Immediate satisfaction, no wait time. ...

So far the score in the War on Christmas (original) goes something like this: Number of people who’ve told me the PC police will yell at anyone who says “Merry Christmas”: 3 Number of times I’ve been yelled at for saying Merry Christmas: 0 Number of attorneys ready to file suits against people who substitute “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas”: 1550 Number of ACLU employees in the main New York office: 170 (original) (in 2002) ...

It is somewhat unlikely that I will do a best movies post this year, because I fell in love and maintaining an LDR wreaks merry havoc with the movie-going. I liked Sin City and A History of Violence; they make a nice pair of bookends, as one’s a commentary on the memes captured by the other. Roger Ebert’s list (original) looks pretty good, though. I wanted to see most of the movies he lists.

IFMapper (original) is pretty sweet, if you’re wanting to map interactive fiction. I’ve tried a few mappers over the years, and none of them had a sufficiently low degree of friction for me to keep using ‘em. IFMapper is nicely painless.

These Depression era photos in color are amazing; the subjects are interesting, but the perceptual aspect is more so. I think perhaps we’re used to thinking of the denizens of the 30s in black and white. These color versions — surely they’re publicity stills from Seabiscuit or Road to Perdition? It seems artificial, even though it’s definitionally authentic. We don’t live in the world we live in. It’s an imaginary construct, and it’s surprising to see it as it really is. ...