Frightened Rabbit

Q. and I went to see Frightened Rabbit on the recommendation of D. and J. It was raining; we walked to the venue, which was in a sketchy neighborhood; we waited in line. Once we entered, the venue was (at first) too cold, then (when crowded) too hot. The concrete-floored pit had no chairs, so we stood through the entire experience. The stage designer opted for the unusual choice of lighting the audience directly with strobe lights throughout the performance, while leaving the onstage performers cloaked in darkness. The other audience members provided targets of observational humor (before the concert began) and sources of aggressively misanthropic behavior (during the performances).

The opening band was decent. The headliners did nothing for me (or Q.). We went home and listened to the Bastion soundtrack as a palate cleanser, and felt much better.

Conclusion: We have, without our own knowledge, become old and crotchety. We do not like being up late, being out late, having to stand for a long time on a hard floor, or breathing other people's secondhand fumes/body spray/aerosolized hair gel. We do like one song to contain different chords, comprehensible lyrics, and stage lighting which illuminates the performers and does not induce seizures.


This post's theme word is cockshy, "the game of throwing missiles at a target; such a throw," or "an object of criticism or ridicule." The cockshy hipster audience provided much ammunition for our cockshy mockery.

It's made out of chocolate!

Chocolate: now for your powertools, decorative ducks, and other tchotchkes.

A window displaying fine craftsmanship.

This post's theme word is millinery, "fancy hats," or "the trade, craft, or business of fancy hats-making." Every subdiscipline has its own specialists: the farrier, the milliner, the chocolate-sculptor.

Don't watch "Only God Forgives"

I saw "Only God Forgives." It was a wretched non-movie. The blurb describing it as an "ultra-violent revenge saga" is too generous. It is ultra-violent, to be sure.  But this is one instance where specialized film-buff jargon gets in the way of actually describing the series of images and sounds that you will be forced to watch. The descriptor "controversial" should be interpreted as "terrible, unless you are so film-pretentious that you have wrapped around MAXINT."

There is no plot; it's not even that some things happen, then other things happen. NOTHING happens. Is part of the movie a dream sequence? Possibly. Is the entire thing a cruel, nightmare-inducing practical joke played upon viewing audiences? That is the only explanation that makes sense to me.

Ryan Gosling has no lines and does his best not to move his body or face while on-camera. I cannot explain why. It's a movie.

Perhaps the entire operation is a response to the evidence that modern movies are entirely formulaic and predictable. Formulaic movies make it easy for the audience to understand what is happening with only a brief sketch on-screen: a moment of a man's eyes meeting a woman's during a musical cue, and we understand they are destined to overcome odds and love each other. Only God Forgives is the other end of the spectrum: no matter how much we see on-screen, the audience never understands what is happening, has happened, or will happen. The violence was unexpected and sociopathic, except when swapped for just-as-unexpected-and-sociopathic "mercy." The soundtrack provided no context or cues, and seemed completely divorced from the images, even during karaoke scenes.

Robbie Collins deserves a gold star for penning the phrase "spits in the face of coherence" in his review, another highlight of which is the apt summary: "The film’s characters are non-people; the things they say to each other are non-conversations, the events they enact are non-drama. Meanwhile the camera is forever rolling off down corridors, as if someone forgot to apply the handbrake on the rig. "

My viewing companion A. described his experience thusly:

The good part about this movie was that the main police guy [Vithaya Pansringarm] looked like an Asian Geoffrey Rush. And man, Geoffrey Rush is great. I really like him.

Geoffrey Rush was not in this movie. That's right: the best part of this movie is that it might remind you of Geoffrey Rush, famous and excellent actor, who exists and was not in this movie.


This post's theme word is exscind, "to cut out or off." I wish I could exscind the memory of this movie from my mind.

Eldrich food

We ventured forth and proved our mettle. The monster is slain, the protein is obtained, behold: eldrich food! It lies, coiled and marinating, a supplication to the gods of savory delicacies.

This post's theme word is infulminate, "to render thunderous." The slow cooker's magical powers infulminate the simplest food, magnifying its flavors to a roaring avalanche so powerful that all metaphors are mixed (not unlike the marinating sauces!).

Drama on the horizon

As seen out the window, through the rain and darkness: the horizon in silhouette.

This post's theme word is festinate, (v. tr.) "to hurry or hasten" or (adj) "hurried or hasty." The festinating weather blew a storm across the road in just a few minutes.

Book sold!

With the conversion of swap.com to a book reselling site ("valet service"?), I have defaulted back to selling my secondhand books on Amazon. This is not as great --- the books get exchanged into money, and some of the money is tithed away; I prefer books getting swapped into other books. Plus there is no "media mail" in this foreign country where I live, so shipping inevitably eats up my supposed profit.

That said, I do have a lot of books. Which I am trying to whittle down to my core library of essentials. I'm one surplus book closer to this goal. Huzzah much-neglected Project Simplify!

Suggestions for other ways to find new homes for my books are welcome.


This post's theme word is awumbuk, "the feeling of heaviness and sorrow you feel after your guests have departed." Selling or trading books leaves me no awumbuk aftertaste, although recycling or trashing them would.

Doomsday Book

Connie Willis' Doomsday Book is amazingly good. It features time-travelling Oxford historians of the future, rural English peasants of the past, and the epidemics and personal connections that intertwine their lives across hundreds of years. It is excellent. I had intended to ration out the nearly 600-page novel, but instead ended up reading it in one contiguous binge. It is not a tense page-turner, but such a quality novel, with intriguing characters and plot, and well-written, that I did not want it to end. And indeed, as the book in my right hand dwindled, I became increasingly worried about the yet-unresolved fates of the many characters.

The themes concluded on the melancholy, yet woven throughout was a persistent thread of the hopefulness of all academics and those who seek and disseminate knowledge. I can see echoes in Doomsday Book of To Say Nothing of the Dog, but the shared world and frantic action which were used to comedic result in that book, were used to other ends in this. Computers, paradoxes, math, history, survival skills, the art of consuming a gobstopper, and the curious evolution of the English language, are each given focus in turn. Intelligent characters keep their senses of humor while determinedly solving problems and achieving goals. 

So good. You should read it.


This post's theme word is calque, "a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation." Wikipedia informs us that determining a word is a calque is often more difficult than identifying mere loan words.

Now You See Me

Now You See Me was slick, shiny, sparkly... produced within an inch of its life. It had no plot to speak of, except in tones of aggravation, e.g.:

• why is the camera continuously spinning?
• why were there 5 main characters? It would have worked with 2. (It would have been better with 1, who wakes up at the end and dreamed the entire movie! There, I improved it.)
• why were there so many attempted plot twists? Unnecessary.
• why does each magic show last 90 seconds? wouldn't a real-life audience riot after such a short show?
• does Morgan Freeman simply walk onto the set of a movie and declare, "I am in this movie now"?

If you want a film with a clever caper, watch Ocean's Eleven instead. If you want a film where Morgan Freeman is a shadowy authority figure, watch Wanted instead.
If you want a film about magic which will make you think, watch The Prestige instead. (Thinking during Now You See Me may result in sprained neurons, and should be attempted only by professional movie critics receiving hazard pay.) If you want to turn off your brain for a 120-minute experience, go take a nap under a tree.

Honestly, you should nap under a tree anyway. It's beautiful outside.


This post's theme word is charivari, "a confused, noisy spectacle." Avoid the charivari of this movie; I have endured it to forewarn you.

Coventry Cathedral memorials

Previous experience from only Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog had incompletely prepared me to visit Coventry Cathedral. (And inaccurately, for there were no time-travelling historians to be found. I looked.)

The destruction wreaked by the bombing and fires was accurate, though.

What remains is a memorial of and to World War II. The Cathedral was a real thing before it was a destroyed monument, and so it itself contained memorials like this one for World War I.

This post's theme word is intromit, "to enter, send, admit." Coventry Cathedral now intromits sunlight and the elements, as well as tourists and the religious.

Shakespeare's birthplace

This picturesque half-timbered building, subject to such immaculate preservation and dense precision gardening, is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Its preservation, picturesqueness, and landscaping are all the result of this fact; for now is the heyday of our fanatical devotion to Shakespeare's work, and everything associated with him can earn valuable tourist income.

Well, almost everything. I did not pay to take this photo. I did not buy any of the many beautiful editions of his plays for sale in the adjacent Shakespeare store. They are all available free in searchable electronic version, which is how I prefer to consume my ancient texts. Parchment and clay tablets are so burdensome.


This post's theme word is parnassian, "of or relating to poetry." Shakespeare's parnassian fame is the bane of many schoolchildren.