It's things like that give secrets away

Considering my feelings for Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), I have no idea why it took me until last night to see Graham Greene and Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948), but I am very glad I finally tracked it down. It played on TCM a few mornings ago, but I was in no shape to get up for it; fortunately, there was a copy in the Arlington library. It really, really impressed me. I hope I've done it justice. If I haven't, there's Criterion.

( It's a great life if you don't weaken. )

I am not telling you everything about this film. I can't: I don't mean morally. Infinite brainspace and wordcount assumed, I could tell you everything I think about it, but that wouldn't help you with Philippe. We can look through his eyes, but we can't see through them. All we can do is peer in from the outside, the way he does with us, and try not to hurt anyone too badly by saying what we think we saw.

( You can get right down to the sewers through here. )

Tea leaves, bicycle chains and dream of Christopher, Christopher and the machine

I am drinking goat's milk hot chocolate from my Alan Turing mug. (It's from the ACM.)

My poem "The Clock House" has been accepted by Stone Telling.

It's a piece I wanted to write since the fall of 2008; it took me a year once I got started. It is for Christopher Morcom. It is also for Alan Turing.

It is Turing's centenary year. The call to grant him a posthumous pardon for his conviction for gross indecency was just rejected. (He did get a stamp.) I submitted the poem specifically for Stone Telling's queer issue.

They need more submissions. Send them some.

I did believe it possible for a spirit at death to go to a universe entirely separate from our own, but I now consider that matter and spirit are so connected that this would be a contradiction in terms. It is possible however but unlikely that such universes may exist.
—Alan Turing, "The Nature of Spirit" (1932)