random

I dreamed that I went on a date with Larry David. Not real life Larry David, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" Larry David. He took me to an expensive restaurant, but then he went out for a minute and got mistaken for a bellboy in the hotel next door, so he spent the rest of the evening carrying suitcases up and down the stairs and whining.

I like it when dreams are plausible :]

WALK! - - my big walk tutorial

How do I put my work after Fellini's? Let's try.

This is a tutorial I've been working on for a while, after thinking a lot about how they teach walk animation in schools and books, and how each animator discovers a very different reality when he or she go out to their first jobs. I've shown the method that works for me, and I hope it helps other people as well.

Life-altering

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.

The Chronicles of Narnia, The Problem of Susan

I read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" when I was young, and of course was completely oblivious to the whole Christian agenda in it. This month I finally made time to read the entire series, and I'm very happy that I waited until I was equipped to understand everything they try to teach. It would've been so depressing to have read and loved all the seven books as a little girl, and then at the age of 33 to re-read them and discover all that religious crap in there.

A couple of the books are pretty good, though none of them managed to really move me. Their most exhausting feature is the fact that all the characters are a bunch of religious nags.
Their best quality is that, despite the Christian agenda, they don't suffer from slave morality. It's a Christianity evolved from the Greek traditions, not the Judaic ones. They don't turn the other cheek, they are proud without being vain, they know that they're entitled to certain things and they don't hesitate to fight for them. Oh, and they don't take any crap from Muslims.
The other thing I love is that Aslan is the way we all wish God would be. He is present. He shows up when you call out to him. He is scary, but you can nuzzle his fur, you can bury your face in his mane, and know that he will give you lion kisses and tell you what to do. He might punish you, but always in a way that allows you to keep your dignity, and he'll always tell you his reasons for it. He doesn't leave a cryptic book to try to interpret his will, he comes to you in a flash of light and tells you what to do. How nice of him.

Book seven, "The Last Battle", is to me the worst one. It starts fine with the struggles against the false Aslan, but then the whole storyline of the second coming and the voyage to heaven feels so forced and unnecessary, not to mention morbid. And then of course there's the evil trick C.S. Lewis decided to play on the character of Susan. Evil and mean and pathetic. Luckily, Neil Gaiman has written and answer to this book in his short story "The Problem of Susan", which I enjoyed reading immediately after "The Last Battle". One day I'll meet Mr. Gaiman at some book signing or something and thank him for "American Gods" and "The Problem of Susan".

Crying

This is my favorite version of Roy Orbison's "Crying":



And this is even better:

Caution, spoilers:

I never cease to be amazed at how many deep insights into the human condition can be found in the Battlestar Galactica series. I know that every time I rant about it I only get the result of looking like a total geek, because how can there be deep philosophical and social truths in a series so filled with space fights and evil (yet sexy) humanoid robots? A while ago I talked about what good art needs to be, i.e. allegorical, personal and immortal. In its highest form, for me, art deals with what it is to be human. Certainly a story about the battle between the "real" and "artificial" humans, and about the preservation of the human race in face of complete destruction, in the hands of some talented people, has the potential to be amazing. And that is exactly what the Battlestar Galactica series is. An amazing work of art. It looks at how humans relate to their political structure, their religion, their culture, in such a clear way, in such a deep and critical way, that you can see it mirrored in everyday life, and in historical events, and understand them more clearly because of it. It allows itself to be political, yes, but not in a petty, fashionable way which will lose its relevance in five to twenty years (Avatar), but in a way that will always be relevant.

Listen to this: In the end of the series' second season, the humans find themselves electing one Gaius Baltar as their president. This person is incompetent, vain, weak, untrustworthy and prone to playing into the hands of the enemy. He has been flattered into running for president by some malicious forces who aim to use his power as their own.

In 2006 the people of Israel found themselves electing as their prime minister one Ehud Olmert. He was not put in place by malicious forces as head of a puppet government. The conditions which brought him to power were stranger and more complicated, but he did share many of the qualities of the fictional Baltar.

After doing his bit of damage, Baltar is kicked out of power and replaced by the previous president, Laura Roslyn, who then spends a lot of time and energy to punish Baltar for all the mistakes he has made and all the lives he has cost. She never gives a moment's thought to the people who worked behind the scenes, or to her own mistakes, one of them huge, which brought Baltar to the presidency.

After doing his bit of damage, Olmert was also replaced, not by a beloved and able "benevolent dictator" like Roslyn (if only there was one available), but by some people who haven't exactly earned my respect either. Still, to this day, the nation's rage at this man for being a bad prime minister is tireless, and we can see him every day in the news being dragged to court for some old corruption scandal.

What has this bit of science fiction taught us about how people behave in real life? How about this: some people are weak, vain and corrupt. When we give them power, they will use it for vain and corrupt purposes. If there is danger about, their weakness will cost lives. This also: in a democracy, voters are easily fooled by demagogues, and easily made to act on impulse. And if they make a mistake, they don't like to blame themselves, and don't want to look at the people who deceived them. Suggest that the system is flawed? Never. They'd rather take it all out on the person who failed where no one in their right mind could've expected him to succeed.
And so it goes.

Test

This is a test

As you can probably tell, the test post gets to stay on because the kitty is so damn adorable. And distinguished.

ונדטה עקובה מדם

בקיץ הזה יש לי כוחות לונדטה עקובה מדם אחת, אבל שני נושאים בוערים על הפרק. אחד: תסרוקות ה"הלוואה וחיסכון" שמזהמות את נופי הארץ. שתיים: השימוש הדבילי בקיצור "ת'-". שניהם מציקים לי כבר שנים, ובזמן האחרון הגיעו למאסה קריטית. התסרוקת הנ"ל מהווה מפגע סביבתי כל הזמן, אבל החשיפה המוגזמת של אבי בניהו בימים האחרונים הופכת את הבעיה לצורמת ורלוונטית מתמיד. מצד שני הקיצור של המילה "את" ל"ת'-" נפוץ בקרב שתי אוכלוסיות שאני שונאת במיוחד: אנשים בלתי מגניבים (פרסומאים) שמנסים לדבר לקהל הצעיר והמגניב, ומשוררים עצלנים שלא מסוגלים לחשוב על דרך מקורית יותר להרוויח הברה. אביב גפן, למשל, שייך לשתי הקבוצות האלה, ולכן משתמש בקיצור הזה אולי יותר מכל אדם דובר עברית אחר.י

אז אם, כמו שזה נראה, מלחמה חסרת מעצורים היא בלתי נמנעת, אני צריכה להחליט מי יהיה האויב.י

A realization:

All things considered, I'm probably not a ... what's that term again? A people person.