SELF-PROMOTION: My new Reason column is called "The East Turned Upside Down: carnival and conspiracy in Ukraine."

posted by Jesse 7:39 PM

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HUMOR ME: I used to think I had a good ear for irony. Then I realized I was assuming that everyone was kidding, always. For years I was convinced that Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were a very subtle comedy act. I still like them better that way.

posted by Jesse 3:23 PM

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SELF-PROMOTION: My new column for Reason Online bids good-bye and good-riddance to Yasser Arafat. It also has some kind words for binationalism.

posted by Jesse 6:22 PM

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SILENT SURREALIST SERENADE:

There It Is (Harold L. Muller, 1928): This 19-minute gem stars the great Charley Bowers, who also wrote the film and was responsible for the animated sequences. To my surprise and pleasure, Turner Classic Movies aired it late Sunday night. I had watched it once before, about a decade ago, and had despaired of ever seeing the short again -- it wasn't even included in the recent Bowers DVD set.

The plot involves a Scottish detective and a haunted house, but the plot is beside the point. Bowers was a homegrown surrealist whose films feel like lost collaborations between Buster Keaton and Jan Svankmayer; the story takes a back seat to the gags, and the gags take a back seat to sheer madness.

If you missed the broadcast, don't despair: The film is available in the new More Treasures from American Film Archives DVD set, available at better video stores and hopefully, one day, from Netflix.

posted by Jesse 2:03 PM

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SELF-PROMOTION: I continue my rhetorical jihad against the red-blue war in a piece today for TechCentralStation.

posted by Jesse 4:23 PM

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PUBLIC NAPS: Christopher Alexander (or one of his collaborators) on sleeping in public:

It is a mark of success in a park, public lobby or a porch when people can come there to sleep.

In a society which nurtures people and fosters trust, the fact that people sometimes want to sleep in public is the most natural thing in the world. If someone lies down on a pavement or a bench and falls asleep, it is possible to treat it seriously as a need. If he has no place to go -- then, we, the people of the town, can be happy that he can at least sleep on the public paths and benches; and, of course, it may also be someone who does have a place to go, but happens to like napping in the street.

(A Pattern Language, 1977)

Anyone who reads that passage as an invitation to the homeless hordes -- or, alternately, as a declaration that a few benches here and there will solve the homeless problem -- needs to read it again.

posted by Jesse 2:40 PM

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WITH A RED-BLUE YELL: I had hoped all the partisan robots would settle down once the election was over, but of course they only got louder. The folks who spent the campaign saying Halliburton is a front for NAMBLA are now muttering that they're ashamed to be Americans and want to join Canada. The folks who spent the campaign fretting that John Kerry is a sleeper agent for the Viet Cong are now claiming that they're the only "real" Americans and, in general, confusing "51%" with "98%." In a classic illustration of the thesis that you eventually become the thing you most hate, the Kerrybots are now terrified, resentful, and convinced that the culture is poisoned; the Bushbots are smug, self-congratulatory, and as condescending when they discuss the coasts as a Hollywood producer deriding "flyover country." These two tribes have more in common with each other than they do with ordinary liberals and conservatives, but they insist on speaking for the red states and the blue states as blocs.

Ordinarily I'm reluctant to play the social engineer or to propose a Pol Pot–style resettlement, but I'm a moderate, pragmatic fellow who's willing to compromise a principle or two. So here's my plan. We round up all up the robots and give them their own state. There can't be too many of them; they'll probably fit in Delaware. They can enjoy the tax-free shopping there, maybe try to build a blog-based economy. And the rest of us can live our complex, confounding, infinitely varied lives in peace, free of all those foolish red and blue stereotypes.

posted by Jesse 11:50 PM

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SELF-PROMOTION: I wrote an Election Day column for Reason Online. It's here.

Also, the new print edition of Reason is out. It includes an interview with FCC chief Michael Powell conducted by Drew Clark, Nick Gillespie, and me. Available at better newsstands.

posted by Jesse 5:27 PM

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ANOTHER DAMN VOTE: I'm back from the polls. That may be the most chaotic voting experience I've ever had. I wish I knew who was in charge of it, so I could vote against him.

I bit the bullet and voted for Badnarik. Elmer got my nod in one of the local races.

posted by Jesse 11:42 AM

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