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But your walls are falling down, so you got to face me now
Rabbit, rabbit! Our miserable forced-air heating system gave me an eight-hour nosebleed last night, so the old year should consider itself satisfied with its sacrifice and give us something better in the new one, like a maximum of successful democracy and a minimum of authoritarian unrest.
I was delighted to read of the un-extinctness of the great fox-spider, whose name should tell you whether you want to click through for the photographic evidence. I was not delighted to read of the death of Sean Connery. It reminded me that I keep failing to write about The Hill (1965) because it's such a brutally relevant case study of the operation and perpetuation of abusive systems that I could just read the news if I wanted to feel that bad, but Connery gives a damn near performance of a lifetime as a model soldier realizing like a nightmare that the cruelties and absurdities of the desert glasshouse to which he was relegated for refusing an unjust order are not a perversion but merely a distillation of the mangled imperialism, racism, and toxic masculinity of military life whose authority he can no longer accept but which it may break him to fight. It was the only role in which I had seen the actor let himself be vulnerable and it fascinated me. I got onto social media and found much of my friendlist either posting or processing the 1965 Playboy interview where he defended a man's right to hit a woman ("An openhanded slap is justified—if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning. If a woman is a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I'd do it") or the 1987 TV follow-up with Barbara Walters where he doubled down on his words. I fell into the latter category. It upset me. I ended up writing on a friend's post: "I hadn't had this information until earlier today and I was sorry to find it out: it is an attitude perfectly in keeping with Fleming's Bond, but I would have hoped that Connery himself grew out of it. I don't know that he did and now the dead don't change. People are complicated and people make art and art is complicated, news at eleven." I later found this remembrance by Matt Zoller Seitz, which felt useful.
I did not know until just now about the cats of the British Museum.
I was delighted to read of the un-extinctness of the great fox-spider, whose name should tell you whether you want to click through for the photographic evidence. I was not delighted to read of the death of Sean Connery. It reminded me that I keep failing to write about The Hill (1965) because it's such a brutally relevant case study of the operation and perpetuation of abusive systems that I could just read the news if I wanted to feel that bad, but Connery gives a damn near performance of a lifetime as a model soldier realizing like a nightmare that the cruelties and absurdities of the desert glasshouse to which he was relegated for refusing an unjust order are not a perversion but merely a distillation of the mangled imperialism, racism, and toxic masculinity of military life whose authority he can no longer accept but which it may break him to fight. It was the only role in which I had seen the actor let himself be vulnerable and it fascinated me. I got onto social media and found much of my friendlist either posting or processing the 1965 Playboy interview where he defended a man's right to hit a woman ("An openhanded slap is justified—if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning. If a woman is a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I'd do it") or the 1987 TV follow-up with Barbara Walters where he doubled down on his words. I fell into the latter category. It upset me. I ended up writing on a friend's post: "I hadn't had this information until earlier today and I was sorry to find it out: it is an attitude perfectly in keeping with Fleming's Bond, but I would have hoped that Connery himself grew out of it. I don't know that he did and now the dead don't change. People are complicated and people make art and art is complicated, news at eleven." I later found this remembrance by Matt Zoller Seitz, which felt useful.
I did not know until just now about the cats of the British Museum.
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If you are ever in a pinch, it does count for the purpose, but goodness, 2020, let's work on our subtlety.
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"Subtlety" and "2020" have not been the best of friends.
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I did not know until just now about the cats of the British Museum.
I didn't know there was anything that could make me love the British Museum even more.
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It's very much of the persona, but people don't have to be their personae. I was surprised and it sucked.
I didn't know there was anything that could make me love the British Museum even more.
THE AUTHORISED FEEDING PLACE.
Sean Away
Aww <BLEEP>
- Roger Moore is already dead. What of George Lazenby?
Re: Sean Away
Still alive, as is Timothy Dalton, who can be found these days in the main cast of DC's Doom Patrol (2019–). As far as I know, Pierce Brosnan is also thriving, and I hope he stays that way.
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I hadn't even known it existed and I'm so glad it still does!
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Includes the legs, according to this other article. So not orb-weaver magnitude, but still not diminutive.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/spider-extinct-britain-uk-wildlife-ministry-of-defence-surrey-b1475817.html
It is indeed exceptionally handsome!
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I saw that! It is indeed.
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“The prefix ‘great’ doesn’t seem to do it justice, maybe it should be the fabulous or fantastic fox-spider,” he said.
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You're welcome!
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Boo hiss for forced air. The slanting Standard Time sun in my bedroom this morning picked out a positively chewable air full of dust particles.
Thank you for linking me to Matt Zoller Seitz, whose film writing is almost as good as yours:
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It's the worst! We never lived in an apartment with forced air before this one and it has been terrible for so many aspects of my health at once. We were going to move this summer, but, plague.
Thank you for linking me to Matt Zoller Seitz, whose film writing is almost as good as yours
You're welcome, and thank you very much.