Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   real talent
Sunday, December 14 2008
I had another big date with my electric chainsaw today at the site of the massive fallen redoak. This time I cut through the trunk in two places, each cut a rather time consuming undertaking. At one point I had to go and get my huge post hole rock-pounding bar to pry the trunk up a few inches and stop it from pinching. It's amazing the size of objects that can be moved by human effort alone with a lever sufficiently long, stiff, and strong.
Later I managed to move nearly all the loose pieces of wood (that is, all of the tree except for its trunk) back to the woodshed, where I split it into fragments. Gretchen saw me out there splitting the wood and she came out and asked if she could try. I take it for granted how easy it is for me to swing that maul, not thinking of it as much of a test of strength or a demonstration of skill. But watching Gretchen struggling just to lift that maul over her head and then tepidly swinging downward to almost no effect, I realized that my one-chop splits reflect real talent.

Speaking of real talent, let's hear it for the Iraqi shoe thrower, the press-conference attendee who nearly clocked President Bush with not one but both of his shoes! It's a little late in Bush's miserable eight years to be still seek vengeance against him, but after seeing the press sleep through most of that period, it was gratifying to see a reporter lobbing a couple of hard balls for a change.

Tonight Gretchen and I watched a DVD of the movie Be Kind Rewind. It wasn't long into the film that I started hating it. I knew it was just a stupid movie, but the promotion of the idea that a human being could be magnetized (and that such permanent magnetism could erase a whole movie rental store worth of tapes) felt like an insult to my intelligence. And it certainly didn't help that all of this idiocy was placed in the person of Jack Black, one of the most unpleasant actors in modern cinema. I found myself enraged at the social implausibility of a cool cat like Mos Def (the actor playing the other main protagonist) having any sort of relationship with the Jack Black character whatsoever. Again, it was as if my intelligence was being clobbered by an Iraqi shoe. Evidently some big shot in the movie industry had made the moronic decision that this movie had to be a Jack Black vehicle. That decision came very close to destroying this movie.
What saved it, though, was the introduction Melonie Diaz playing the role of an impromptu actress grabbed from a nearby dry cleaning business to help with the "sweding" of films. After Jack Black's magnetism destroys all the VHS cassettes in the store, you see, Mos Def and Jack Black have the idea that they can replace them with versions they film themselves, a process they call "sweding." From that point on, the movie develops a wonderful magical realist energy that propels it all the way to its inconclusive (if uplifting) end. I'd like to see this movie redone, but with its first 20 minutes replaced by sweded scenes starring anyone but Jack Black.


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