Electronic I Ching Calculator

The second Dirk Gently book, "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul", is arguably not as good as the first one - it's less poetic and less well structured, but it has more "cool stuff" in it, such as this:

 He had never before even guessed at the existence of such a thing. And to be able to move from total ignorance of something to total desire for it, and then actually to own the thing all within the space of about forty seconds was, for Dirk, something of an epiphany.

The electronic I Ching calculator was badly made. It had probably been manufactured in whichever of the South-East Asian countries was busy tooling up to do to South Korea what South Korea was busy doing to Japan. Glue technology had obviously not progressed in that country to the point where things could be successfully held together with it. Already the back had half fallen off and needed to be stuck back on with Sellotape.

It was much like an ordinary pocket calculator, except that the LCD screen was a little larger than usual, in order to accommodate the abridged judgements of King Wen on each of the sixty-four hexagrams, and also the commentaries of his son, the Duke of Chou, on each of the lines of each hexagram. These were unusual texts to see marching across the display of a pocket calculator, particularly as they had been translated from the Chinese via the Japanese and seemed to have enjoyed many adventures on the way.

The device also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to "4".

"1+1" it could manage ("2"), and "1+2" ("3") and "2+2" ("4") or "tan 74" ("3.4874145"), but anything above "4" it represented merely as "A Suffusion of Yellow". Dirk was not certain if this was a programming error or an insight beyond his ability to fathom, but he was crazy about it anyway, enough to hand over 20 of ready cash for the thing.

"Thank you, sir," said the proprietor. "It's a nice piece that. I think you'll be happy with it.

* * *

The little book of instructions suggested that he should simply concentrate "soulfully" on the question which was "besieging" him, write it down, ponder on it, enjoy the silence, and then once he had achieved inner harmony and tranquillity he should push the red button.

There wasn't a red button, but there was a blue button marked "Red", and this Dirk took to be the one. He concentrated for a while on the question, then looked through his pockets for a piece of paper, but was unable to find one. In the end he wrote his question, "Should I buy a new fridge?" on a corner of his napkin. Then he took the view that if he was going to wait until he had achieved inner harmony and tranquillity he could be there all night, so he went ahead and pushed the blue button marked "Red" anyway. A symbol flashed up in a corner of the screen, a hexagram which looked like this:

3 : CHUN

The I Ching calculator then scrolled this text Across its tiny LCD display:

"THE JUDGEMENT OF KING WEN:
"Chun Signifies Difficulties At Outset, As Of Blade Of
Grass Pushing Up Against Stone. The Time Is Full Of
Irregularities And Obscurities: Superior Man Will Adjust
His Measures As In Sorting The Threads Of The Warp
And Woof. Firm Correctness Will Bring At Last Success.
Early Advances Should Only Be Made With Caution.
There Will Be Advantage In Appointing Feudal Princes.
"LINE 6 CHANGES:
"THE COMMENTARY OF THE DUKE OF CHOU:
"The Horses And The Chariot Obliged To Retreat.
Streams Of Bloody Tears Will Flow."


Dirk considered this for a few moments, and then decided that on balance it appeared to be a vote in favour of getting the new fridge, which, by a staggering coincidence, was the course of action which he himself favoured.

March 8-th 2012

Usually I don't make a big deal out of international whatever's day, but today I feel inspired, so here are a few nice things about women:

Riots - from Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses"

This is so beautiful, I had to share it. The book was published over twenty years ago, which isn't that much really, but long enough to make us think "look how the same rituals still exist".

Just a little background to the story, not even to help you understand what's happening, but because it's funny to us Mediterranean types: one of the book's characters, Gibreel, wandering around London and being homesick for India, wishes for warmer weather. Because there are supernatural forces at play, the weather does become unusually hot, and so the city erupts into the usual hot-weather activities: riots, police brutality, minority protests, false arrests and so on.

So, the attached pages describe the police seizure of the night club where the protesters keep their headquarters, as seen on the TV news:

The Three Musketeers 2011

People who didn't spend their primary school years carrying around Alexander Dumas' novel everywhere they went, can probably let this year's cinematic adaptation pass without comment. I am not such a person, and also I'm not a person who likes to let things pass without comment. And so, here we are.

From this point on, this post contains spoilers for both the book and the movie. The movie, of course, cannot be spoiled, and if you haven't read the book by now you have only yourselves to blame.

The creators of this film obviously found some of the book's elements too vulgar for their tender tastes. For example, all the nasty extramarital affairs, and unsightly female deaths. So they took them all out - the gentle queen Anne, of course, did not have an affair with Buckingham, and the sweet young Constance was not, of course, married. How could she be? She was waiting for the love of her life to ride in from the sticks on his orange horse. And of course she survives all the dangers on the way to have her kiss at the end of the movie. Even the wicked wicked Milady gets to live - and why shouldn't she? Her worst crime in the film was loving her career more than her moody boyfriend Athos. Surely spoiling her outfit with a little salt water is enough to sort her out. Also gone are the captain of the musketeers De Treville - one of my favorites characters, the musketeers themselves - apparently disbanded just before D'Artagnan shows up due to double-dip recession, and most of the plot, especially everything that happens after the diamonds adventure.

Strangely, after cleaning the storyline of these nasty nasty things, the writers found that they needed to add some vulgarities of their own - as big and vulgar as they could think of. So they turned the musketeers - the only three they had left (hey, the title only calls for three after all) into some kind of Mission Impossible secret scuba squad (I'm not kidding, they scuba!), added flame-throwing air ships (they make the annoying trip to and from London so much easier), turned the Duke of Buckingham into a total douchebag (that way the queen couldn't possibly like him), crash-landed into the roof of the Notre Dame, and, of course, had D'Artagnan kill Rochefort in a long and boring rooftop sword fight. At the end of the book, of course, D'Artagnan and Rochefort become friends, but that would've just confused today's tender-hearted viewer. Oh, and Rochefort had an eye missing. Scars are so subtle.

Having said all that, I need to insist that there were several excellent things in this movie, which made it almost worth watching:

All of the production design was breathtakingly beautiful, as was Milla Jovovich (what the hell is that woman made of?!). Most of the casting was spot-on, in ways that it hasn't been in previous adaptations. D'Artagnan was an adorable young goofball (the kid leading the horse), and so was the king - excellent! It was very smart to make them so much alike, in fact in all their scenes together they look like they're about to collapse into each-other's arms.

Usually the Cardinal and Athos (feather hat guy) are the sexiest men in the story, but this time Athos was totally flat, and Christoph Waltz as the Cardinal was good, but unexciting. This made room for two very sexy actors to take the parts of Porthos and Aramis (the big one and the one with the cross). I dare any hot-blooded  woman to watch this film and not fantasize about a threesome with those two!

The fact that they made Buckingham a strutting douchebag bugged me, but on the other hand Orlando Bloom as a strutting douchebag was great, and it's about time for him to lay off the elf stuff.

In conclusion ... oh hell, I don't have a conclusion. Long live the king, long live Paris, long live the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Musee d'Orsay!

Where the passive-aggressive assholes shop!

This commercial is my current pet peeve. For those of you who don't speak Hebrew, the idea is that the husband wakes up in the middle of the night with a cold, so he wakes his wife up and sends her to "Super Pharm" to get him some medicine. While there, she spots the nail polish rack, buys two almost identical colors, and asks him which one looks better. Luckily for him, she got him headache pills.

Mmmm, where to begin, where to begin?

First of all, kudos for managing to degrade both men and women equally. Really, nice job.

Secondly, here's my definitive list of midnight medical conditions that would justify waking up the spouse: if you're bleeding in a way that might cause loss of consciousness. If you are choking. If you're experiencing heart or appendicitis symptoms. If you've soiled the bed in some way. If an internal organ has popped out. If your water broke. If a wild animal is eating your face. If you woke up and don't remember who you are. Anything else wrong - you wait until morning. If you wake up with a cold, put on a warmer shirt, a scarf maybe, make yourself a hot tea quietly! then try to go back to sleep.

Thirdly, and more importantly, is this: I know that I'm very old-fashioned and outdated, but I remember when commercials used to send the message of "buy this, it's what all the successful people are buying". All the cool kids eat these chips, all the rich businessmen have this car, all the modern women wear these shoes, etc. Lately, and I didn't notice exactly when this happened, the people in the commercials are bastards, swindlers, morons, they have bad marriages, dysfunctional relationships, they are bad parents - and still I'm supposed to want what they have! How'd you like to be stuck in line behind this passive-aggressive asshole? Not that this one would ever be caught shopping for himself - I'm sure that his wife buys everything for him, from underwear to birthday presents for his parents.

In conclusion, the next step that I recommend for the creators of this commercial, is what Bill Hicks used to recommend to all advertising and marketing people, i.e. this:

OK, one more. This one is really cool:

"Which represents good and which represents evil --" he asked me, "the rifle or the rubbery, jiggling, giggling bag of bones we call the body?"
I said that the rifle was evil and the body was good.
"But don't you know that this rifle was designed to be used by Americans defending their homes and honor against wicked enemies?" he said.
So I said a lot depended on whose body and whose rifle we were talking about, that either one of them could be good or evil.
"And who renders the final decision on that?" he said.
"God?" I said.
"I mean here on Earth," he said.
"I don't know," I said.
"Painters -- and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians," he said. "They are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!"
How was that for delusions of moral grandeur!
Yes, and now that I think about it: maybe the most admirable thing about the Abstract Expressionist painters, since so much senseless bloodshed had been caused by cockeyed history lessons, was their refusal to serve on such a court.

Jon Stewart's interview with Marion Jones

I saw this interview almost a month ago, and I'm still pretty broken-hearted about it. I'm not a big lover of sports, but I remember watching Marion Jones in the 2000 olympics and being completely won over by her. She was so amazing and so charming, and so far ahead of everyone else in every race, it was like watching a new species of human being revealing itself for the first time. Looking through 10 years' perspective and loss of innocence, it's pretty clear that she's on performance-enhancing drugs, but back then it was impossible to imagine anything dishonest behind that adorable face, that wonderful childish excitement. I may be a sucker for a pretty woman, but remembering that glowing victory I do believe her that she didn't know about the drugs.
Whatever happened, I'm appalled that they sent her to prison for it. Prison? For cheating in a sports event? People really do take sports way too seriously, I mean really!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Marion Jones
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

P.S.
It reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut says in his introduction to "Bluebeard" (one of the best books I know) -
May I say, too, that much of what I put in this book was inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during the past century. Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children's games as well -- running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.

A quote from this week's "Mad Men"

Don: "Peggy ... I'm glad that this is an environment where you feel free to fail, but..."

I wish I had heard this a couple of months ago, I could've had tons of fun with it at the job I just finished.

Proud Mary

Every time that job hunting season rolls around, which can easily happen more than once a year, I find myself looking for "Proud Mary" on Youtube. Something in me wants to believe that I have the option of tossing everything out the window and hitching a ride on a riverboat. The biggest problem with this plan - I live in the desert. Still, it's always nice to hear that song again.


Of course, whenever I search for it, there's a decision to be made: Creedence Clearwater Revival, or Tina Turner. The Creedence version has the obvious advantage of being the original, but it doesn't make you dance around uncontrollably in your chair. The Tina Turner version is much more in line with the rebellious mood of a nearly unemployed animator, but it has several disadvantages: first of all, in every concert version, you have to suffer through a stupid little "nice and easy" speech that she's been doing since the seventies. Secondly, and speaking of the seventies, if you choose a clip from the Ike Turner era, it's hard to enjoy it without thinking about domestic violence. Then again, whichever Tina Turner video you pick, there'll be lots of legs in it.


Here are three options: the Creedence original, the most 80s of the Tina versions, and one thats Ike-included, beautiful but always disturbung:







P.S. The Ike one is the best, there's no getting around that.

80-s hell

I haven't been to Europe in the past few years, but last night we had dinner in kind of a touristy place, and there were several people who were dressed hideously, who all spoke in different European languages (Spanish, Dutch). Therefore, I'm forced to conclude that Europe is drowning in a return of 80-s fashion that's much worse than what we're having around here.

Helen Mirren - 1975 Parkinson interview

Helen Mirren is turning out to be the love of my life. I've certainly been in love with her longer than with anyone else. Anyway, this is a remarkable interview which shows how classy she's always been, and how little she has changed over the years. It's also a very good lesson for us "modern and independent women" on how to keep your dignity in a conversation with someone who insists on keeping it vulgar, how to always be saying something interesting, and still be innocently sexy.
By the way, although she looks like she's in her early twenties, and Michael Parkinson keeps talking to her like she's a hello kitty sex doll, she was actually thirty years old that year.

Earth-shattering news: Israel discovers the surgical circumcision

A few days ago, this article had me staring at the screen with my jaw hanging open for a long time. Unfortunately I only have it in Hebrew, but I need to write about it in English because I want as many people as possible to be able to read it (after all, I'm up to ten readers now, and the responsibility lies heavy on my shoulders).

The article tells that most people in Israel aren't aware of the possibility of performing their sons' circumcision in a hospital, by a certified medical doctor. This is exciting news, as the overwhelming majority of circumcisions in the country are done by a mohel, a religious man who has (hopefully) recieved the specific medical training needed to perform the ritual. Apparently the thought of taking the baby to a hospital almost never occurs to any of the proud parents:

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3884593,00.html

So, the situation is as follows: you have decided to create life, fragile and priceless. You have chosen the absolute perfect person to do this with, someone who's genes and personality you can rely on with this task of tasks. You have decided to make the necessary sacrifices of body, time, energy and finance, for as many years as it might take. You have cared for this delicate and magical creature from the time it was smaller than a grain of sand, and until the moment it was ready to emerge into the world. Now it has arrived, tender and helpless, and relying on you for everything it needs to survive.
Now, at this point you are convinced that the Almighty Creator wants you to slice a sensitive piece of this child of yours in His name. This might be an odd thing to wish on your child, but let's say that you really believe that it's the best thing to do. But why does the thought of taking him to a hosplital never occur to you? You were just in the hospital, weren't you?
No, instead you are going to invite a shaman, a primitive man who probably doesn't even believe in evolution, to perform a barbaric ritual, to put his sometimes ungloved hands on your precious little angel, to say an incantation while cutting a piece of him off, and then - just in case the whole event wasn't homoerotic and canibalistic enough - to put his filthy perverted lips on the wound and suck the blood out until it stops running. And just to add the extra touch of festivity to the occasion, you'll have all your loving family in the room to grimace at the baby and eat themselves into a coma.

As usual when I'm scared and confused, I turn to the wise men of my faith for words of wisdom and guidance. Therefore I leave you with this quote by Woody Allen, through the fictional character of Professor Levy from "Crimes and Misdemeanors":

“Now the unique thing that happened to the early Israelites was that they conceived a God that cares. He cares, but at the same time he also demands that you behave morally. But here comes the paradox. What’s one of the first things that that God asks: that God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son to him. In other words, in spite of millennia of efforts we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of God. This was beyond our capacity to imagine.”

And just because it would be cruel not to add them, here are the other two Levy quotes from that film, which are available on Youtube:

This one about love...


...and the voiceover of the ending:


Good night.

The most unconvincing couple in the history of sitcoms:

"Roseanne" season 4, Tom Arnold and Sandra Bernhard:

Anna Karenina

After six years, I have finally managed to get rid of that horrible woman. May she never darken my doorstep again.

Observation: I am not particularly moved by tales of all-consuming, inherently destructive love. Nor am I partial to lengthy lectures on late 19-th century agricultural ethics.



P.S. Now I can finally watch the movie :D

איתו לנצח

יש עכשיו גרסה של השיר הזה בביצוע של בחורה. אני לא מאמינה שאני צריכה אפילו להדרש לזה - השיר הזה ל א  ע ו ב ד  אם הוא לא מבוצע על ידי גבר!י

כמובן שזה משקף בצורה מושלמת את ההבדל בין שנות התשעים לשנות האלפיים: תשעים - חתרנות ושמחת חיים, אלפיים - גיי אור סטרייט, אנחנו רק רוצים להתעבר ולשרת בצבא.י

Lady GaGa and Beyonce: "Telephone"

In this horrible decade of mediocrity that we live in, which couldn't be wished away by all the people who celebrated its end two and a half months ago, there lives a magical princess named Lady Gaga. She created her name from a Queen song - one of their later, tamer songs, not their early and truly good ones.Well, she couldn't very well call herself Lady Liar or Lady Mustapha, could she?

And while her idol Freddie Mercury was burning himself out on sex drugs and rock'n'roll, she was getting a good musical and religious education, to prepare her for her first record deal at the age of 19. And even though she had all the right role models, all she could ever write for herself were boring little pop bubbles that make a ga-ga-ga noise in your ear. Fortunately for her, she also had a real talent for design, which helped her make some great looking videos for her not-so-great songs, and made her very famous and successful indeed.

But, the princess couldn't stay in her little bubble of success; she had dreams of being Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott. But instead of trying to create her own Kill Bill, Natural Born Killers or Thelma and Louise, she thought it was enough to reference their aesthetics, in a nice safe way that was in no danger of making little girls run away from home and shoot people.

And so, in Lady Gaga's new video "Telephone" she's in a prison, where all the inmates are wearing her cool costumes. And she is naked in her cell, but only to disprove the rumors that she is a hermaphrodite. And she dresses like Madonna and kisses a woman, but only the one that looks most like a man. And she is released by her lover, but she is let out, she doesn't break out in an insane bloodbath. And her lover is the sexiest pop star in the world - Beyonce - but she'll never kiss her, because Beyonce does look like a woman, and besides everybody knows that she's married to a scary thug. Instead they have a weird little dialogue in which Beyonce isn't allowed to use any "cuss" words. And their car says "Pussywagon", but they probably didn't get it from the hospital rapist. And they end up in a diner, where they poison a guy - the most "female" crime of all - they most certainly don't stab or shoot or beat anyone to death. Instead, they dance. And at the end they hold hands and together decide to not jump into the Grand Canyon. After all, how can you "be continued" if you die in the end?

Perhaps if George Carlin had been among Gaga's inspirations, she would've been exposed at some point to his "It's not enough to know which notes to play, you gotta know why they need to be played", and we would've been spared this roaring rampage of regurgitation.

כתבת השבוע 1

Edge of Darkness

Remember those movies they used to make in the 80-s with the evil corporation, and someone who discovers something, and they get killed, but they were related to Mel Gibson, so now Mel's going to do whatever it takes, and he's not going to play by the rules, and everyone's afraid to talk, and there's a henchman with too much gel in his hair, and there's a car coming right at Mel, but Mel shoots into it and kills the driver at the last moment, and it turns out that there's a US senator involved, but that won't stop Mel either because all he wants is justice? Don't you ever wish they made another one of those? No? Well, they've made "Edge of Darkness" anyway: