Cuparius.com

If people must use the word "blog," which I find odious, they ought to at least spell it 'blog, since it is a contraction of the more attractive word "web log." Are two syllables too many? "Two syl-la-bles?!?" the philistines choke. "How can we use two of those in a word???" I know, let's say blog. Og no like big words. Og say blog. Og go make blog now. See Og blog.

I'm still trying to decide what to do with my newly acquired knowledge of cascading style sheets. Now that I know how to use them, I am bereft of ideas.

One thing that irritates me is the necessity of using closing tags for <DD> and <DT> when applying style sheets. BLOODY annoying. Browser (in)compatibility is another irritation. I'll not delve into that right now.

You might be wondering about the meaning of the title of today's update. It has no meaning. It was the first word that popped into my head. Make of that what you will.

Och, I almost forgot, I do have some good news. I am employed again! I am now working for an arts & crafts store, which won't make me rich, but it will pay the bills whilst I pursue my dream of self-employment. And it will enable me to buy groceries. I miss groceries.

And now to discuss some movies, none of which I have seen at the cinema (because tickets cost money). At long last I saw Beau Geste (1939) from beginning to end, and a fine picture it is. Starring Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Brian Donlevy, et al, it is a tale of three brothers, the French Foreign Legion, and an enormous sapphire called the Blue Water. I was also impressed by the movie, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), a vivid Technicolor portrait of the life of a fictional British general from 1902 to World War II. It is comical, sobering, and entrancing. It was co-directed by Michael Powell, who did a splendid job on Black Narcissus, one of my favorite films.

Prince Valiant (1954), in case you couldn't guess, is not a great film. It is very, very, very, very far from being a great film. The first half isn't even close to being a mediocre film. The potential for MST3K-type mockery, however, is very high, and I only wish Joel (or Mike) and the 'bots had had a chance at it. I remember seeing the movie as a wee lad of probably eight, and there were two things that made a lasting impression on me. The first was the prevalence of American accents. As a child, it grated on my nerves to hear knights of the Round Table speaking in middle class American accents, or Sir Gawain ("portrayed" by Sterling Hayden) talking like a U.S. Marshall riding through Tombstone, Arizona with a sixgun at his side. Actually, his Sir Gawain reminded me somewhat of the police chief on Monk, except that he inspired antipathy and derision. I know what some of you may be thinking. It's a childish movie based on an American comic strip. What do I expect? It was the cartoonist, after all, who decided to have Vikings interacting with Arthurian characters when the Vikings didn't even land in Britain until 300 years after Arthur's time. I would make that allowance were it not for the fact that they did have at least one British actor in the movie, James Mason, and he played the villain. Naturally, I sympathized with him. I was (and continue to be) annoyed by American family films that consistently cast Americans as heroes and British as villains. As a child, it made the film nigh unendurable for me, but as an adult I can now laugh at the performances.

The second thing that made an impression on me was the action in the second half of the movie. As my younger brother observed, it is as if it were actually two separate movies, divided by the single act of Prince Valiant receiving his father's signet ring, which was the signal for him to return home and come to his parents' aid. From that moment on, the action is brisk and daring. Despite an embarrassing forest of horned Viking helmets, there is an amazing castle seige, a variety of brilliant and believable stunts, and to top it off, the scene I remembered most clearly from my youth: the climactic sword duel. This is no misplaced fencing duel like the one in The Adventures of Robin Hood, but a savage exchange of blows of broad-bladed swords and battered shields. It was a riveting fight sequence, free of the camera tricks now commonly used to disguise the clumsiness of the fight choreography and the combatants, such as sudden close-ups and jerky camera movement to suggest and simultaneously conceal the action. I remembered it as a great combat scene, and it lives up to the memory. If you decide to watch the movie, prepare to groan through the first half, but you may be pleasantly surprised by the second.

Incidentally, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), starring Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, doesn't stand the test of time. The dialogue and plot are ridiculous, and the movie is, as a whole, surprisingly boring. Claude Raines, playing Prince John, is (as usual) insufferable. I thought I would find some amount of merit in this film. I thought I could recall deriving some enjoyment from it, but I guess it must have been something else. Maybe I was smoking a particularly good cigar at the time and I was distracted by the pleasure. The movie itself offered very little in the way of pleasure.

Two days ago I watched Bringing Up Baby (1938) with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It wasn't the greatest comedy I've ever seen, but it was funny (and vastly better than Arsenic and Old Lace). Hepburn certainly stole the show. I always like her best when she's at her zaniest.

That sums up most of my recent viewing (apart from television). As for recent reading, I enjoyed World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven. I bought it at a used bookshop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, let's see, about 16 years ago. And I've finally read it! Woo (as they say) hoo! And you know, it was a good book! It is part of Niven's extensive Known Space series of novels and short stories, the most famous of which is Ringworld. 'Tis a damned good series, if you like science fiction. And I do (like science fiction). Ahem.

The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton by Larry Niven is another Known Space novel I bought in Milwaukee and finally read. It's actually a collection of short stories that share the same titular protagonist. The subject matter is ghoulish, having to do with organlegging (the abduction of individuals in order to harvest their organs for the black market) and a future government in which all executed criminals end up in the organ banks and the number of crimes that carry the death penalty are increased until even parking violations result in capital punishment because the supply of transplants cannot keep up with the demand of Earth's ever-increasing population. I never said it was a comedy. It's good, though.

Not so spectacular was Antiquity: From the Birth of Sumerian Civilization to the Fall of the Roman Empire by Norman F. Cantor. It is a brief overview of Western civilization, and as such, one cannot expect too much, but one should be able to expect accuracy, if not detail. One glaring example is his comment in Chapter Four on the Romans: "It was an infantry army; until the fourth century A.D., there was no cavalry to speak of." That would have been news to the Romans. I can effortlessly flip to a page in 100 Decisive Battles from Ancient Times to the Present by Paul K. Davis and find written on page 62 (on the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C.): "Pompey's army of eleven legions, or approximately 45,000 men and 9,000 cavalry, was far superior to Caesar's in number." I can turn to page 65 (on the Battle of Actium) and read: "Antonius marched with nineteen legions, containing some 80,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry, into Greece in the winter of 32-31 B.C." No cavalry to speak of, eh? Another careless error, which is probably not the author's fault, is in the key to the map "Roman Expansion to 201 B.C." The legends, "Acquired after the First Punic War, 238 B.C." and "Rome at the beginning of the First Punic War, 264 B.C." should be switched. Cantor generalizes perhaps a trifle too freely, but the book serves its purpose adequately, although it reads like a thinly veiled lecture for an undergraduate course, which it probably is.

And now, I need to do something else. Ta'ra for now...