Monthly Archives: November 2009

Who wants me to write about John Galt?

It’s fun to see the search queries people use to find your site. Here’s two from probably the same person: “”babes on broadway” publicity still spanked” and “”bright eyes(1934)” spanking“. Spanking scenes from old movies is one very specific fetish that I’m unable to cater to. Shirley Temple movies particularly so.

Then there are the automated search queries, set up by people who want to follow blog posts about a particular topic. When I review books, I often get a hit from the author’s name the next day. I actually do the same thing myself, in order to hunt down and ridicule anyone who says anything bad about me.

But here’s one that baffles me: “site:bearstrong.net “atlas shrugged”" What makes it odd is that this query has given me regular hits for over a month.

Somebody wants to be notified immediately the next time I write about Atlas Shrugged. Don’t ask me why. Fetish queries (“site:bearstrong.net “atlas shrugged” spanking“) I can understand. This, less so. It’s a bit passive aggressive. “Hey, it’s your blog and you write about whatever you want to. I just want you to know that if you ever do write about this book that I love/hate, I’ll be there immediately to read it, because that’s how much I care. But hey, you know, whatever.”

So I’ll make a deal: If whoever is doing this explains why they care, I might write a post about Ayn Rand.

Also, my deepest apologies to all Ayn Rand spanking enthusiasts I’ve now accidentally led here.

40′s movies marathon – part 40

The Fallen Sparrow (1943, USA) – A veteran of the Spanish civil war tries to solve his friend’s murder. He meets a creepy Norwegian history professor whose stories about ancient torture techniques causes memories from his own torture in a Spanish prison to resurface, slowly driving him insane. Watched it all.

War of the Wildcats (1943, USA) – Ah, the good old days, when men were assholes. Watched: 11 minutes.

The Mad Ghoul (1943, USA) – A mad scientist has invented a method whereby you can make a person undead, and then, simply by transplanting a new heart into their body, make them alive again. God knows why. Watched: 12 minutes, then fast forwarded to see the ghoul, a drowsy student.

San Demetrio, London (1943, UK) – Cheerful sailors cross the Atlantic. Watched: 10 minutes.

The Heavenly Body (1943, USA) – William Powell is an uninteresting astronomer surrounded by stupid women and stupid black subordinates. Watched: 7 minutes.

Flesh and Fantasy (1943, USA) – Moderately spooky stories, told badly. Watched: 8 minutes.

Tender Comrade (1943, USA) – Makes coming home on leave to Ginger Rogers seem dull. Watched: 6 minutes.

The Cross of Lorraine (1943, USA) – French prisoners of war are sent to a Nazi labor camp, where they’re guarded by Peter Lorre. Watched: 23 minutes.

Hello Frisco, Hello (1943, USA) – The good thing about this musical is that it isn’t about the war. Watched: 6 minutes.

The joys of being a cultural interpreter

That Fjordman post reminded me of how tempting it is to be a cultural interpreter.

A cultural interpreter is someone who explains their culture to outsiders who know little else about it. This is a powerful role to play. You can be marginal voice inside the culture, but a great authority to people outside it. You can shape the worldview of the outsiders in a way you could only dream of doing with insiders.

A language barrier makes the interpreter particularly powerful, but the barrier can also be that there’s not much information available at all, or that your audience is too lazy to check other sources.

Fjordman, the anti-Muslim version of Johan Galtung, often plays this role in his descriptions of Norway’s descent into a Muslim hellhole. So does the commenter “kritisk borger” when he explains to the readers of Gates of Vienna that “the majority in Norway believes that they are being overtaxed, by unscrupulous politicians”. Which is stupid. But who there is going to contradict him?

I’ve played this game myself, back when I had mostly foreign readers. It frightened me to realize that I could write almost anything about Norway, in an authoritative voice, and nobody would know if it was bullshit. I’ve written a lot of stupid things. I don’t want that power.

Which means: Don’t be fooled by marginal interpreters from other cultures. The reason they’re talking to you may be that you don’t know enough to tell that they’re nuts.

Living with terrorism (revisited)

Fjordman writes about me on Gates of Vienna, a blog where people who are afraid of Muslims can come together and talk about their fears. The recent massacre at Fort Hood by a Muslim causes him to remember, and mock, something I once wrote about how to live with the threat of terrorism:

Brave is sitting down calmly on a plane behind a row of suspicious-looking Arabs, ignoring your own fears, because you know those fears are irrational, and because even if there’s a chance that they are terrorists, it is more important to you to preserve an open and tolerant society than to survive this trip.

I don’t always agree with things I’ve written years ago, but I hit this on the head. The context was that passengers had refused to let their airplane take off unless suspicious-looking passengers were thrown out first.

And what I wrote was that, yes, it has happened that passengers who look suspicious actually are terrorists, but it is so unlikely that it is cowardly to cause trouble over it. It’s okay to be afraid, because we’re often afraid for no good reason, but it’s what you do with that fear that defines you.

If what you do is cause some poor guy to miss his airplane just because he has a big beard, then you’re a coward.

This applies elsewhere too. Life can be scary, but you still have to cross the street.

40′s movies marathon – part 39

Gung Ho! (1943, USA) – We follow the 2nd Marine Raiders from training to their first combat on Makin Island. Their motivations for signing up are fairly unbowdlerized: One wants to impress a girl, another “just don’t like Japs”. When they’re transported by submarine, some of them panic, and the movie makes that seem okay, because submarines are scary. And when the fighting starts, it’s random and brutal. Watched it all. IMDB reviewers call it jingoistic propaganda, which is true but not relevant, and cliched, which is silly. This is a movie that defines what later becomes cliches. But it’s not realistic: The real battle of Makin Island was a near-failure, and I doubt that Japanese soldiers went into combat with an evil sneer on their face.

Mr Lucky (1943, USA) – This war is going too far. Now they’re drafting gangsters. Also, the gangster world is going too far. They’ve allowed themselves to be taken over by Cary Grant. Watched: 18 minutes.

Madame Curie (1943, USA) – “She was poor .. she was beautiful.” Science is hard, let’s look dramatically into the camera instead, while violins play in the background to underscore what an extremely Historical Person this is. Watched: 7 minutes.

The Outlaw (1943, USA) – Doc Holliday falls in love with Billy the Kid, which makes his former lover Pat Garrett jealous. I think. Watched: 14 minutes. Wikipedia says Howard Hughes invented a special bra to emphasize the breasts of the female lead, Jane Russell, so this movie swings both ways.

Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet

Jeg var på stiftelsesmøtet for Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet i dag. Alle partiene unntatt Arbeiderpartiet deltok. Det er morsomt å se hvor bredt denne saken favner. FrP og Rødt brukte samme talerstol til å si nesten de samme tingene. Det tror jeg ikke jeg får oppleve igjen på en stund.

På en skjerm bak talerne kunne du se antallet personer som støtter kampanjen. Tallet steg jevnt og trutt gjennom hele møtet. Jeg synes du skal skrive deg på listen her, så stiger det enda litt mer.

Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet har Lars Henrik Michelsen som leder, Vampus og Virrvarr som nestledere, og andre bloggere som Pleym og Vox Populi som initiativtagere. Ser vi konturene av at nettaktivisme kan være med på å sette politisk dagsorden? Det blir spennende å se hva dette blir til. Selve stiftelsen har iallefall skaffet oppmerksomhet, og det var mye presse tilstede.

Her kan du lese mer om hvorfor jeg er mot datalagringsdirektivet, fra bloggkampanjen i sommer.

A small wooden puppet approaches from the north

In his preface to Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson dares the reader to give up. There’ll be no gradual introduction to the world he has created. You’re thrown right in the middle of it, with confusing events happening unexplained, and a shitload of characters to get to know. If you don’t like it, go read something else.

I’m vulnerable to reverse psychology, so I accept the challenge. And for the first few hundred pages the story jumps and runs without waiting for you to catch up. Later it slows down. Gardens of the Moon does the opposite of certain sprawling fantasy novels – it begins confusingly, and converges towards the end.

The story is that an empire is invading a city, and the gods interfere. The gods are merciless beings who use humans as tools for their own purposes, and the leaders of the empire are no better. So there’s death and eternal damnation in all directions. Also a mad puppet, a girl posessed by an evil god, and an ancient beast reawakened from its eternal slumber.

So there’s little to be happy about in this world. Erikson says in his preface that his aim was to write an ambitious novel, and, well, I don’t think that it is. It’s an ambitious attempt at world building, but it’s not an ambitious novel. The bleak setting is too restrictive for that.

There are many sequels to Gardens of the Moon, but thankfully they’re self-contained novels. I haven’t decided if I’ll read them.

5 milliarder millioner trillioner fantasillioner multiplioner og 16 øre

Tor Andre har testet Kindle, og synes det er greit å ta farvel med papirboken:

Styrken til papir ligger i kombinasjonen av skumming og dybdelesing, ikke luftig nostalgi om lukten og følelsen av et fysisk produkt. Den holdningen ligner litt for mye på villfarelsen til musikkbransjen om betydningen av CD-plater.

Praktbøker vil fremdeles fungere som et nisjeprodukt, men i fremtiden vil det komme lesebrett som klarer å kombinere leseligheten til e-ink og grensesnittet på nettet. Da er papir blåst av banen som lesemedium nummer en.

Jeg testet e-bøker for noen år siden. Det var ikke for meg. Jeg kom fram til at jeg har samme forhold til papirbøker som Onkel Skrue har til pengene sine. Det er de samme bøkene selv om de er elektroniske. Men det er ikke det samme allikevel.

Jeg liker å fylle bokhyllene mine til bristepunktet.

Jeg liker å bruker bøker som veggdekorasjon.

Jeg liker å brette bøkene mine, lage eselører, skrive navnet mitt, og sette teite ex libris-merker i dem.

Og jeg liker å ha en bokkø stående på gulvet til å organisere lesingen med.

Men mest av alt liker jeg å legge alle bøkene ut på gulvet og bade i dem.

Leiligheten min ville rett og slett se naken ut uten papirbøker. Så der står jeg. Det er ikke slik at papirbøker er riktig og e-bøker feil. Men for meg er det ikke noe tema.

40′s movies marathon – part 38

Yellow Canary (1943, UK) – An English woman makes everyone uncomfortable by being pro-Nazi, and possibly a traitor. She’s exiled to Canada(?!), and spies and eye-patch-wearing Nazis follow along on the trip. Best line, spoken by a rich old woman to her husband, while their boat is being boarded by Germans: “Wouldn’t it be nice to do something violent?” Watched it all.

Air Force (1943, USA) – Wholesome pilots set out for the Pacific. Watched: 8 minutes.

Thousands Cheer (1943, USA) – The patriotic war musical is a repulsive concept. Patriotic war movies can be good. So can musicals. But mix them together, and the result is quite demonic. Watched: 8 minutes, then fast-forwarded through the musical numbers, which were all spawned in the hell-pit of Satan.

The Man from Down Under (1943, USA) – An Australian soldier adopts two orphans after the Great War, because one of them is good at boxing. That seems like a unbelievable thing to do. Watched: 11 minutes.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943, USA) – I can’t figure out these old zombie movies, where the zombies are just reanimated corpses without a will of their own. This one aims for a classy feel, as if there’s a message here, possibly about slavery. Watched: 17 minutes.

Stage Door Canteen (1943, USA) – I have a horrible suspicion that those troops on the train are headed into a patriotic war musical. Dear God no! Watched: 6 minutes.