Saturday, July 12, 2003
Too much salt, not enough water. That's the story of my life. Or at least my physiology of late.
Yesterday I did a very respectable 1,465 words on Chapter Six of Murder of Angels. I hope to do as well today.
I discovered this morning that I've not had a "day off" since June 24th, Spooky's birthday, so I'm going to have to take one soon. Even writers deserve days off every now and again.
Last night, after sushi, we saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and enjoyed it a great deal. Stuart Townsend, as a deliciously wicked Dorian Gray, has entirely redeemed himself for having anything to do with that terrible adaptation of The Queen of the Damned. I loved Peta Wilson's Mina Harker and thought that Jason Flemyng's Jekyll and Hyde out-Hulked the gumby-on-steroids-and-flubber absurdity from this summer's The Incredible Hulk. I have a handful of nitpicky complaints. Here and there the CGI needed sprucing up, there was some lamentable inconsistency in the make-up/effects for the Invisible Man, and one or two groaner lines of dialogue ("Call me Ishmael."). But all in all, it far exceeded my expectations. Sean Connery, as someone has said already, played Sean Connery, which was fine. Great action, jaw-dropping eye candy, a clever film that ended far too quickly. I expect it will be overshadowed by Pirates of the Caribbean, which is a shame. We wore our steampunky best to the show last night and people kept asking us which line was for Pirates. It's all the same to them, I suppose. Alternate-timeline Victorian Englands and pretty pirate movies. Anyway, LEG joins the small group of comics-to-film adaptations that I have truly loved: Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), Spiderman (2002), both X-Men movies (2000 and 2002) - okay, there have been more good superhero movies than I thought. And LEG is one of them.
If only the "real world" had such a delightful unnaturals to deal with our tyrants.
I think I shall begin a catalogue of the admitted lies and half-truths that the Bush Administration told to drag America gleefully into Iraq. It will keep us busy for some time to come, I think. We can start with CIA Director George J. Tenet's admission last night that it the agency knew that Bush's State of the Union accusation that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire uranium from African sources to build nuclear weapons was unsubstantiated "intelligence" (love that word) when the CIA gave the speech the green light. Of course, Bush just shrugs and points a finger and tells us that's what he was told to say. That's one. That's a good one. We'll have another tomorrow. And the day after that, perhaps. And I'll add this. A sexual indescretion was enough to impeach President Clinton. Isn't telling lies that lead to the unnecessary deaths of more than 100,000 people, thousands of them civilian (many of whom haven't died yet, but will), and lying to a nation so that it becomes a party to those killings, at least equal to Clinton's faux pas?
Ah, and an all too appropriate quote from Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and, as Adolf Hitler's designated successor, the second man in the Third Reich — "Naturally, the common people don't want war. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Thanks to Aiden Mile for bringing that to my attention. Perhaps I shall e-mail it to the White House.
To the word mines . . .
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