Tuesday, January 28, 2003

At War with the Johnsons Terry Jones (of Monty Python) has identified with remarkable precision the basic problem of logic in the Administration's position toward Iraq in this absolutely hysterical piece over at CounterPunch (thanks, Guy!). I guess it takes someone with such a highly-developed sense of the absurd to figure out how this President's mind works! 2:13:52 PM    Emphasize This! [] Locked Up I noted with surprise the other day that the person slated to give the Democratic rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address tonight is none other than the pleasant but utterly inessential governor of my own great state of Washington, Gary Locke. Locke has the distinction of being the only Asian-American governor in the continental US, and has successfully defended his office by beating two extreme right-wing Republicans by fairly decent margins, but as anyone living north of the Columbia River will tell you, the man is a total lightweight. He has trouble holding the interest of his own staff, much less the citizens of Washington, and it's hard to imagine he has anything riveting to share with that sliver of political junkies nationwide who tune in to the "opposition response." Like many states, Washington - particularly the Seattle area - did great in the 90s and is now suffering a long, painful hangover. The budget is in a shambles, yahoos with pitchforks set fire to the tax code through our perverted initiative process every election cycle, and after 20 years of jawboning, we can't seem to get a transit system built. Homey little issues, perhaps, but not national agenda material. We have little contact with Iraq (although I suspect we are on the target list if North Korea decides to lob a nuke our way), so it's hard to imagine that Locke could bring anything in terms of credible criticism in an area where it is most desperately needed. When even my friends who hate Bush are asking where's the Democratic voice to challenge him, I have to ask, is Gary Locke the best they've got? Where's Bill Bradley? Or Sam Nunn? Or (heh heh heh) Bill Clinton? 12:15:12 PM    Emphasize This! [] Cities of the Fantastic Something about the density and activity of an urban environment has always captured the imagination. As technology has advanced, visions of the urban environment have taken a turn for the fanciful. Bringing these visions to the silver screen has been a cottage industry since at least the 1920s, starting with Fritz Lang's Metropolis and extending into our own day via Blade Runner, Dark City and many others. In fact, oppressive urban set design is practically a requirement of most contemporary science fiction films. Urban imaginings have also had an interesting literary life. Jules Verne fantasized extensively about the shape of a future Paris (pictured left), and, during the "golden age" of science fiction in the 1930s, urban utopias and dystopias were a common theme. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is a wonderfully poetic meditation on the inner life of cities as reflected in a series of portraits of imaginary metropolises. Recently, Schuten and Peeters, two European graphic novelists, have produced a series of intriguing and beautifully-drawn volumes exploring the phyiscal, social and psychological dimensions of what they call the "obscure cities" - imaginary cities with analogues in the real world. The web site contains more details and information. 10:21:04 AM    Emphasize This! []

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