Incredible Photos of Costa Concordia

The Guardian has shared some absolutely stunning photos of the Costa Concordia, the once-mighty ship now reduced to little more than a mechanical beached whale.

Truth be told, this thing has more drama than the Titanic, what with the captain abandoning his ship before evacuating the passengers and the mystery of the "small technical failure." (read this article for more on the Captain's malfeasance). 50 years ago, the role of captain would have been perfect for Kirk Douglas. Now, whaddya wanna bet they'll give it to diCaprio? But I digress...

Here are some of the highlights from the photos:

A military patrol boat approaches what must now be the most dangerous water slide ever:

Concordia drifts off to sleep:

Port out, starboard...out:

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Cheese, A Recognized Spiritual Hazard

Bernard Basset, a relatively famous Jesuit in the 1950's/60's, set out to educate the common man in all things God-related. However, there were hiccups. Stan Carey highlights one of the best of them (the foul effects of cheese on the soul!):

I was home in suburban London in 1946 and back in the world of extramural studies when this weird, nocturnal visitation shattered my calm. I had no possible reason to expect so violent a disturbance; by my own subjective standards I was more than normal when I retired to bed that night. Perhaps I was overworked and a little worried, for I had a wisdom tooth that might prove impacted, but no wisdom tooth in history has toppled a man’s faith overnight.

To show how unexpected it was, Margery, when told about it, immediately ran through the items of the previous supper and attributed my atheism to the cheese. She herself, so she said, had sniffed the cheese secretly that evening and had judged it very mature. She smelt it once, replaced it in its carton and then took it out for a second sniff. Knowing how much I liked cheese, she had quietened her scruples, thus unwittingly contributing to my sudden distress. Had I roused her in the night as I should have done, she was sure that her first, semi-conscious explanation would have been “Cheese”.

Margery informed me that cheese was a recognised spiritual hazard and that St Margaret Mary kept a piece down for just ten minutes and this when commanded under Holy Obedience.

Bernard Basset, We Agnostics: On the Tightrope to Eternity

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Book Review: Lost Books of the Odyssey, Or, You Don't Know Nuthin' Bout Odysseus

The premise is simple: Odysseus, wily storyteller, told different versions of events to different audiences, all the better to protect himself and his family from the wrath of gods and enemies. The Odyssey, as written by Homer, is but one version of events. 44 variations have been excavated from an archaeological site, providing the titular Lost Books of the Odyssey.

The scholarly pretense is effective. After all, there's no question that Odysseus is a trickster, a deceiver of men. In 44 vignettes, Zachary Mason offers a series of witty counterfactuals to The Iliad and The Odyssey. Some stories are simple retellings, others add color and fill in the gaps in these stories of gods among men.

As apocrypha should be, Lost Books is both fragmented and non-linear, owing more to the experimental ministrations of Borges or Lord Dunsany than to the narrative excellence of Homer.

Unlike many experimental works, however, Mason's connects with the heart as well as the head, making Dunsany a sort of apt comparison. The beauty of The Odyssey is precisely that its leads are so familiar; we are already aware of two similar yet different "canon" versions in the Roman myth and the Greek myth, so why not 44 other retellings? We have emotional attachments to Homeric concepts of heroism and bravery that Mason neatly turns on their heads. (To be honest, I'm not sure this book would work QUITE as well for people who aren't familiar with the Homeric tales).

I suppose I should mention that not all 44 work (one or two are too fanciful even for this fanciful concept), but none fail to entertain. Personal favorites include an O. Henry-esque tale of Medusa, Odyssey fashioning Achilles as a clay simulacrum, and Odyssey returning home to Ithaca only to find himself already there, seated by his wife. These are some of the less experimental tales in the book. I will not spoil the rest for you here.

Zach Mason deserves credit not only for bravery (messing with Homer? Seriously?) but for creating a wonderfully diverting work. Next, he's moving to Ovid's Metamorphoses. I can't wait.

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2012 Reading Manifesto

So far, I've been light on resolutions, because I've adopted a different approach this year. Rather than some idealized list of things I'd like to achieve this year, I wanted to think a little bit more seriously about what's realistic to achieve, and what I would genuinely benefit from achieving.

What I'd like to do in 2012 is to only read novels in translation. Realistically, I'm going to aim for 70%. Amazingly, about 70% of the books I read in 2011 were written by women, so I know this sort of limitation is achievable.

Ideally, I'd visit a different country with each new work, but I'm not sure that's something I could actually do. At any rate, my resolution affords me the opportunity to delve deeper into my beloved dead Russians, offer some thoughts on the efforts of translation, and hopefully learn to love some authors whose work has been long forgotten in English-speaking nations.

I aim for a mix of seminal favorites and contemporary hits (therefore, I won't be reading a hundred books by Bolaño). I can finally read 100 Years of Solitude, Heinrich Böll, more Murakami, Cosette and Borges.

Also...

This year, I'm going to attempt, yet again, to read 100 books. I only made it to 45 this year, which is a pretty healthy hint that I cannot both read 100 books and watch 100 movies (which I did, hooray! or...oops?).

Hopefully I don't drown in experimental fiction, so wish me luck! Please leave your recommendations in the comments.

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The Evolution of Diane Lockhart

The New York Times livestreamed an absolutely fantastic roundtable conversation between the writers and stars of The Good Wife. The conversation touched not only on the show, but on the role of women in the media, on liberal tendencies to blind themselves to certain realities across the aisle, on censorship on network television, and most importantly, Josh Charles' erotic lunging.

I'm unable to embed the video, but you can (and should) watch it here: http://new.livestream.com/channels/387/videos/76513

What really surprised me was how little attention was paid to the romances and intricate plotting of the show, and how much was paid to the construction of particular characters. Unexpectedly, much of the conversation centered on Diane Lockhart, who has become one of the most revolutionary characters on television, but almost wasn't.

According to the rules of Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and whatever excuses for television they air on Fox, a woman over 40 is characterized by loud desperation. They leap to men like moths to a flame, despite the fact that the biological tick-tock has long ago stopped (for the most part).

And yet, Diane gets a sexy dalliance of her own. It's not even remarkable that she's an outspoken feminist Democrat, and he's a gun-toting tea party member. It's remarkable how normal their relationship is. It's sexy, it's exciting, and it's constrained, the way all relationships suffer from circumstance (Alicia would agree, I'm sure).

This is because time hasn't fundamentally transformed Diane Lockhart. Most women aren't transformed purely by time, there are usually other factors in the mix (again, ask Alicia). Diane is happy with her lot in life, and when she lashes out, it's against existential threats, not against the ravages of time or against "men".

Speaking of existential threats...

As Robert King points out, Diane was originally conceived as "the mentor who tries to sabotage the mentee," an idea that comes off as arch and a bit troubling in the the pilot. Luckily, the first episode is the last we see of that.

By the time real tension flares up between Diane and Alicia, Alicia and Will's liaisons are actually threatening Diane's entire livelihood, not some fictional idea of what it means to be a woman in a man's world.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the second half of the season is the development of the idea that Diane is an alternate universe version of Alicia. Until now, Diane has been a peripheral character in Alicia's world, and it makes sense that Alicia had to reach a certain point in her own journey for Diane to really enter her life in a more meaningful way than mentor-mentee or boss-subordinate.

Alicia almost had to put her private life to bed before she could enter the electron-proton dance with Diane. They're opposite sides of the same woman, and it's fascinating to watch these opposites fight against each other for primacy. I can't wait to see what happens, but if I continue this silly metaphor, I bet it'll be nuclear.

I think one of the best decisions the Kings made was to shift Diane from being an antagonist to Alicia to being a more general force of her own within the firm. She's never just protecting herself, she's protecting all those who work with her, even Will and Eli, who pretend they don't need a moral center.

She isn't bitter, she isn't regretful, this is her life, and she loves it. It's a character that stands apart from any other on television, where middle aged women are continually played as personifications of loss and/or longing (loss/longing of looks, loss/longing of years, loss/longing of choice, and so on).

Which is why the McVeigh storyline works so well: she experiences emotion as a normal human being, not as some cliché subset of gender and age.

She's an inspiration to all of us because, unlike so many other female characters on television, she's real. She gives us a roadmap for how to live our lives, how to balance our ideals with pragmatism. She doesn't live in a cloud, nor is she consumed by her own neuroses.

Diane Lockhart love letter...out.

 

(primary image credited to liveitout.tumblr.com)

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2011: My Year With David Foster Wallace

In the minds of many acolytes, 2011 means the last major release of work by David Foster Wallace, incomplete though The Pale King remains. For long-time fans, I suspect this release closed the book on a tender love affair. For this newbie, the media hoopla actually alerted me to Wallace, and enabled a love affair of my own.

Reading Infinite Jest perfectly split my year. After the trauma of wedding planning and the joy of actually getting married, I chose to recharge my emotional and intellectual stores with one of the most difficult books ever written (difficult being relative, I assume).

I had warmed up with a number of his non-fiction essays, proselytizing E Pluribus Unam and many others to all who would listen. I cooled down with some of his short fiction, even though none could live up to IJ.

But on the day I reached Jamaica, I began Infinite Jest. And my memories of romance, sand and boats intertwine perfectly with the misadventures of one Hal Incadenza and all the characters that thread out from him. I was left with an existential sadness when I finished that novel, which probably won't be wiped away until I give in and read it again.

Now, I barely remember pre-DFW 2011, filled with Freedom and Room and other single-named novels that linger in the memory, but not the soul (I make a neat exception for Just Kids, by Patti Smith).

Many speak of his remarkable facility with language, of the colors of mental illness that thread through all of his work, of his deep impenetrability, like he's some bad boyfriend we're all trying to change.

What makes him so appealing to me is none of those things. It's his sensitivity, his hyper-awareness of all that makes us human and all the forces that would deprive us of that quality.

Do I have plans to read The Pale King? In short, yes. I will not make a promise as to when, however. I suspect five more readings of IJ will come first.

Previous: The Moment that Infinite Jest Broke Me: Ruminations on Tennis

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Apps for Apes, aka, Nothing Can Ever Be As Cute As This

A gorilla keeper at the Milwaukee County Zoo posited a what-if on her facebook: what if her gorillas had iPads to play with? Well, as it turns out, they kind of hated it, but the orangutans went bananas. Thusly, Apps for Apes was born.

See (more pictures here):

Following the successful pilot in Milwaukee, Apps for Apes aims to provide iPads to orangutans in multiple zoos, and even provide wi-fi. (MONKEY FACETIME!!!)

According to The BBC, the orangutans are particularly fascinated by clips of David Attenborough.

The animals have, Mr Zimmerman said, been captivated by watching television on the devices, particularly when it featured other orangutans, and even more so when they saw faces they recognised.

The BBC article also reports that app developers are looking to develop apps that are designed similarly to apps for small children, with simple interaction and visual cues.

However, trust my inner dystopian to only see the dark side. This could be the first sign of a horrible prison life, where we may be kept in captivity, but hey, at least we'll have iPads.

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