As finishing Jekyll and Hyde keeps sucking up brainpower, I’m not quite up to writing any reviews. But I’d sooner look at Virgil Finlay’s classic art anyway.
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I thought I was done but they keep pulling me back in!
While I’m rewatching a number of movies for Jekyll and Hyde, I thought I was done watching anything new. I’d seen it all except for a couple of films that simply weren’t available.
Oops. This week my research reading turned up one for the appendix and two films miraculously turned up on Amazon or YouTube. I can’t think of any way it could happen again, though. Due to the rush to get the book done, only one movie gets a review this week.
The appendix-bait is PARIS — WHEN IT SIZZLES (1964) [the on-screen titles show a dash though the poster below does not] because there’s an uncredited Mel Ferrer playing Jekyll and Hyde (i.e., he’s dressed in a top hat and cape, drinks a foaming potion, transforms) in a party scene. Otherwise I used this as a talking lamp while I worked on other stuff.
A Hollywood studio head (Noel Coward) realizes they have 48 hours before shooting starts for The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower and they haven’t received one page from scriptwriter Richard Benson (William Holden) or even a hint what it’s about (even if Benson were a genius this is absolutely batshit). As Benson’s living in Paris, the studio sends over Gabrielle Simpson (Audrey Hepburn) to become his minder: cling to him like a leech but get the damn script written!
Richard, it turns out, hasn’t written one damn thing so now he and Gabrielle have to conceive and write the script in two days. In between supposedly witty banter, they toss off ideas — war movies! Horror movie! Love story! — before settling on a caper film. As they imagine it out, and also imagine themselves as the two leads, the characters constantly shift — is the pretty girl the master safecracker Rick meets reallly an innocent tourist? What if she’s a police spy? Or a prostitute with a heart of gold? And what does it mean that the girl is going to steal the Eiffel Tower?
This is one of those movies with the ingredients to make a fun, quirky film but it just doesn’t work. Hepburn is adorable, as always, but she and Holden don’t have the spark they did in Sabrina, the dialog is annoyingly arch and the story feels less quirky than “let’s throw some more stuff at the wall! Something’s got to stick!” Part of the problem was that Holden had fallen for Hepburn on Sabrina and having her within arm’s reach but uninterested turned his alcoholism, already bad, up to 11. The director had to work around Holden’s problems which led to adding Tony Curtis in a supporting role and Marlene Dietrich in a cameo (details here). It didn’t help; the movie tanked as it deserved to. Still, Hepburn looks adorable and irresistible, as always. “It is a well-known fact that I am not only a brilliant safecracker, I am a liar and a thief.”
Filed under Movies
“Half-a-million boots slogging through hell” — wait, pushing to finish a book isn’t that bad
A good, productive week, even if I feel quite wiped out.
Last weekend was our annual writer’s group Christmas Party. Smaller than usual, still fun, and we’re still pigging out on leftovers. However it’s an exhausting day setting up for it, from cleaning to cooking (chili, cornbread, beer bread, fruit compote). Next year we’re going to plan better and do some of the cleaning earlier in the month (stuff can be moved out of the way).
Of course, I had to move my computer up to my office and out of the way. Turns out someone knew the password.
One of my goals for next year is cleaning up my room. Quite aside from my guest (a doll from my mother’s play therapy practice) it’s disorganized enough even I can’t stand it.
Anyway, that left TYG and me wiped out Sunday, though we managed to put the house back into shape. Fortunately I’ve been sleeping well lately — every so often I’ll go through a no-insomnia stretch and this is apparently one of them. As I mentioned last week, waking up “late” throws me off my game but this time I seem to be coping.
I got two stories in for The Local Reporter, one on local first responders winning an award and one on local GoFundMe projects. And I’m feeling more confident I can finish the book. I rewrote about 40 percent of the text, wrote more on the Hulk chapter and put some more thought into the title. The rewriting showed me it’s in better shape than I realized. Yay me.
Very little else got done. I have several tasks I want to complete but I’m confining myself to the absolute necessities right now. I may be writing this weekend — I’ll probably put in at least one day — but it won’t be as exhausting as the party. Not that I mind — we don’t entertain much so it’s nice to have one big event every year.
Plushie had his recheck Monday. The review is mixed: he’s improving, though not as fast as they’d like. Surgery might still be necessary but maybe not. So we continue what we’re doing (exercise, walks, PT) and have another checkup in January. Fingers crossed. He also got his eye exam and despite his glaucoma, his peepers are still holding up. The vet was quite astonished he’s almost sixteen. That pleases us.
And I sold one copy of Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast last month. Thank you, unknown buyer, for giving my book a shot.
Bonus photo, here’s Snowdrop under the Christmas tree. So far neither cat has attempted to climb it.
Night of snow
Not a lot of snow but it came down overnight and stayed on the ground.
And on the cars.
Fortunately no ice so we could walk the dogs in safety.
Keeping with the snow theme, here’s Snowdrop visiting us in the bedroom.
Filed under Miscellanea, Personal, The Dog Ate My Homework
Undead sexist cliche: we need masculine leadership
As Jesus and John Wayne details, the religious right’s embrace of toxic masculinity is built around the idea that society has become too feminized, too soft, too girly. Women have too much power and we have to fix that by making society masculine and patriarchal again because patriarchy is soooo awesome! Spoiler: patriarchy is stupid, unjust and generally shit. Nor is the world so dominated by women that being a misogynist jackhole makes you a cool rebel.
As you know, the whole point of calling these posts (and my book) Undead Sexist Cliches is that these arguments have been around forever. But Moira Donegan’s column about the right-wing’s opposition to women voting points out that one of the arguments is that women are just too nice. They care. They have empathy. They don’t support the ruthless domination and violence that the strong, realistic men know is necessary to protect them. They’re “resentful about sex and status, insecure about their masculine identity, engaging in juvenile fantasies of power and dominance.”
These guys are the movie villain who sneers that compassion is a weakness. Well, compassion for the “undeserving” — I’m sure they feel entitled to compassion from others. “Fascist parties always glorify the virtues of manliness (by which they typically mean some form of brutality) and despise the supposed weakness of womanliness (how they interpret empathy, moderation, and compromise).”
This gets to become a circular thing. Being ruthless and cruel is supposed to be manly, therefore being ruthless and cruel is commendable. Pete Hegseth’s “War Department” gunning down innocent fishermen is just being strong and powerful, according to TechBro Joe Lonsdale who thinks we should go further: “We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others. Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable.” (It may not be a coincidence that he’s a co-founder of Palantis, whose current CEO wants to make war crimes legal).
The more cruel you are, it appears the more butch you are. And this isn’t a fringe position. The Heritage Foundation a few years ago put out a Project 2025 promotional video in which a woman staffer (see, they can’t be misogynist!) said the foundation wants to end recreational sex and restore consequences to sex. There is no reason to advocate for that other than thinking women are enjoying sex too much — because lets face it, they ain’t thinking of consequences falling on men. It’s always going to be Hester who wears the scarlet letter. And they have no problem with teen pregnancy if the teens are married.
Now the foundation has hired the odious woman-hater Scott Yenor who thinks we should once again be a world of public men and private women. As the National Organization of Women says, Yenor “has pushed for employers ‘to support traditional family life by hiring only male heads of households.’ He has openly called for a return to the English common-law concept of ‘coverture marriage,’ in which women lose the right to vote, work in professions, or hold property—ceding all authority to their husbands.”
I can’t say I’m shocked — for the right wing, Yenor’s the mainstream — but I am repulsed.
I’ll leave with this quote about educating women from Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley), courtesy of Matriarchal Blessings: “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.”
For more of me venting about the loathsomeness of misogyny, check out Undead Sexist Cliches in paperback or ebook.
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
Erika Kirk, sign language and Calibri
Erika Kirk has repeated the usual defense of her murdered husband Charlie’s racist and sexist comments: they were taken out of context! In the articles I’ve seen about her recent CBS interview she doesn’t provide any context; in one case she says she doesn’t know it. But her husband was a wonderful human being who didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body, so the context has to be wrong!
(On a side note, the interview was a turkey as far as attracting advertisers and eyeballs)
That’s arguing backwards from the conclusion she wants (Kirk was an angel!) to rewrite the facts. The context for his claim he feels unsafe when he sees a black airline pilot was that airlines are hiring unqualified POC because of DEI, but that’s an assumption, not a fact. As I’ve said before, if it was legal to discriminate against blacks and women in hiring, people who make this argument would never wonder if some unqualified white person had got the job. Nor does Kirk’s calls to crush feminism or claims Democrat men are all low testosterone benefit from context.
That put me in mind of another Kirk oddity: “Can we please just do away with giving half the screen during these emergency briefings to the sign language interpreters?” Apparently the context for that is that the Felon doesn’t like having sign language interpreters when he speaks because it’s bad for his image. I would guess the context for the Felon’s decision is some kind of bigotry against the disabled — as witness Marco Rubio declaring the Biden State Department using Calibri font (supposedly easier for people with visual disabilities) was DEI crap and they’re switching back to Times New Roman.
Which explains, I think, why they’re losing support: I can’t imagine that even among the most loyal Republicans, anyone who’s not directly affected will be thrilled by this typeface policy or the opposition to ASL interpreters. A number of people might get even more pissed. But they just can’t help themselves.
Filed under Politics
More covers, less sex
I’d rather not fill two days in a row with cover posts but it’s been hectic lately. Here, covers that aren’t as sexy as yesterday, but still make me want to read the book.
I’m not sure why this John Schoenherr cover works but it does.
Josh Kirby’s cover is a classic approach — lonely wanderer facing signs of civilization. I’ve read the book years ago but don’t remember it.
Allen Anderson’s cover makes me think the story is sexist as hell, but I wouldn’t mind reading it in hopes it’s better than that.
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Another Sex Sells! cover post
Robert Maguire’s cover is PG in what’s actually shown but I think it’s R in its execution.
Seabury Quinn supposedly wrote nude scenes into his Weird Tales stories because he knew they’d get the cover spot. In this case, illustrated by Margaret Brundage.
Another Earl Bergey lingerie cover (see also here).
And finally this one. Like Nikki, nothing obvious but the pose, the breasts pushing through the shirt, the reference to “pure lust” — they make me think this is much sexier than it probably was.
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Being nibbled to death by ducks is not as dramatic as a silver bullet, but it’s still a win
The LawDork blog looks at some of the Necrotic Toddler’s recent defeats: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from ICE custody, grand juries keep refusing to approve bullshit indictments, and the Indiana legislature ultimately refused to support a Toddler-backed redistricting effort (the Repub. Governor is Not Happy).
That doesn’t mean it’s over or that the country won’t suffer lots more damage before the Toddler Administration and his party of toadies goes down (if that should come to pass). They will get increasingly unhinged and talk increasingly tough, like Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino talking about how much he’d like to handcuff Rep. Ihlan Omar.
But every defeat shows Republicans are not unstoppable and that encourages more people to stand up and be counted. Like my title says, slow erosion is not as effective as a silver bullet but it’s harder to stop. The Felon and his party beat back impeachment; multiple people saying “No!” takes more effort to squash.
The Felon, despite having pushed hard in Indiana, is now lying that he didn’t push for it. Nope, not his fault. House Speaker Mike Johnson parrots the same lie. The Felon is also freaking out that given his (non-existent) awesomeness, he should be the most popular president ever so how can his polls be so bad? Not to mention he thinks it’s treason to ask questions about his health.
And Colorado has reminded the Felon he can’t pardon people convicted in state courts, even if they are his supporters. And another Felon loyalist appointed as an “acting US attorney” has had to step down.
There’s a long road ahead but perhaps we’ve started on it.
Filed under Politics
“There is no alternative” means “STOP TRYING TO THINK OF AN ALTERNATIVE.”
A while back someone contacted The Local Reporter about using AI to help reporters like me cover meetings. They have some LLM that will watch the meeting, pinpoint all the key moments and cut them out so I don’t have to watch them myself. Won’t that save time?
A smart manager friend of mine said large language models/AI are actually good at this. And when we do Zoom meetings for the Wandering Grove anthologies, we’ve used Zoom’s chatbot to take notes. But tracking a meeting or a business conference is different from following a government meeting. Will the LLM highlight the things I’d catch? Will it identify all the points that need to be in a good article? The only way to know is to watch the meeting myself and compare, which erases any gains. So no
Plus I suspect this free service is only the beginning; at some point it’ll be “well now that we cover the meetings, why not have us write them up?” Maybe not but a recent article asserts LLMs are doing exactly that, writing stories for harried editor/journalists who may be the only employee at their current paper. It’s efficient (according to the article) and as long as the editor fact-checks, completely harmless. Besides, writing takes money for journalism and time and papers have less of either so why not? It’s inevitable!
Call me cynical but I suspect a lot of editors who go this route are not going to fact-check. They may not even think it’s necessary — after all you can trust the machine, right? You can’t, as the article notes, but once you start using this kind of shortcut more shortcuts will probably follow. As C.S. Lewis says, the slide into bad behavior — in this case, unprofessional and lacking in devotion to their craft — starts small, then accelerates.
And as the title of this post implies (quoted from the Cory Doctorow piece I link to below) this shit is not inevitable. The swelling use of AI isn’t some natural force. It’s not like cars, telephones or electric power where people rush to use it because it’s so much better than other options, it’s because the tech industry spends billions to promote it as wonderful, awesome, the best thing ever! Everyone who opposes it is the maker of the horse-drawn carriage insisting the automobile is a fad! No, there are ton of serious questions and problems, as covered in some of my past Science-tagged posts. The author of that article runs a consulting firm advising the media on the use of LLMs — I’d say it’s in their interest to see the media use more of them.
As Cory Doctorow points out, the kind of thing that the article is talking about is reducing writers and editors to reverse centaurs. Like the classic centaur, they’re a hybrid of man and machine but in this situation all the power and control lies with the machine. The editor or writer relying on AI has given the machine the challenging, interesting part of the job; all that’s left is checking to see if they’ve done it right. And if a screw-up slips by, well clearly that’s not the machine’s fault — it’s the fault of the human in the loop.
The point of massively pushing AI is not to make things better; it won’t. The point is that companies can fire most of their staff (in a given field), leave the rest as reverse-centaurs and use the labor savings to increase profits. Quality will go way down, but who gives a crap? The salespeople swore it would be just as good! And as Doctorow and Daniel Graeber say, the people who get fired will be capable, highly paid and doing real work — the administrators will, of course, exempt themselves from being replaced, however useless their jobs.
AI spreads partly because it promises a frictionless experience — none of the awkwardness of dealing with flesh-and-blood people and their errors which can be a seductive appeal. At the link, Jill Filopovic discusses why that’s wrong; I’ll add that the idea (which Filopovic quotes, but does not support) that an algorithm, because it’s logical and has fewer random errors, must do better than a human being, is bullshit. So, I think, is Pete Hegseth’s claim chatbots are the future of warfare.
(of course it also spreads because it can do things like make us pay more for groceries)
Of course AI will create new forms of friction, like having to wade through AI-generated bullshit to find a real story or a real author. Here’s an extreme example. Plus accounting departments are seeing a rise in employees who create fake expense reports with LLMs.
“There’s a difference between tools and technologies. Tools help us accomplish tasks; technologies reshape the very environments in which we think, work, and relate. As philosopher Peter Hershock observes, we don’t merely use technologies; we participate in them. With tools, we retain agency—we can choose when and how to use them. With technologies, the choice is subtler: they remake the conditions of choice itself. A pen extends communication without redefining it; social media transformed what we mean by privacy, friendship, even truth. ” — from an article about how higher education is breaking itself by embracing AI and trying to make teaching and learning both frictionless.
Chanda Prescot-Weinstein suggests part of the problem is the increasing emphasis on education as nothing but a tool for our careers and a hoop we have to jump through, and that this is wrong: “Knowledge is worth your time because of how it shapes your mind. And the authoritarians may take many things from us, but they cannot take our minds (unless you let them). So, I know it’s very hard right now but that intellectual work is worth your time, even when it’s not obvious how you will profit from it. You are more than a future source of profit, and humanity’s survival depends on all of us understanding this.”
Against this argument we have dubious claims that AI will democratize education so schools must adapt or die: “A business student can ask ChatGPT to explain supply chain optimization or generate market analysis in seconds. The traditional lecture and test model faces its blockbuster moment.” Because before ChatGPT nobody ever had the option to look things up in a textbook or a library book. Apparently, though, there’s a cottage industry built on promoting AI to students.
Then there’s the perennial appeal of using AI to create your own media. As I’ve said before “give AI a prompt” isn’t creative — and I’m curious how many people are really keen to do this as more than an idle amusement (let alone if, as the article notes, they can’t infringe copyright). At least one videogame company has dismissed this sort of thing as “creating” for people who aren’t creative.
The AI Is Inevitable crowd skip over the price of using it too, like the demands data centers make on power grids and water supplies. That said, the Felon of the United States is on the side of the AI techbros (though that doesn’t stop him selling computer chips to China) and they are determined to fight any restrictions on their delusions of grandeur. Although the collapse of the AI bubble might.
