Animation (by at least one measure) hits the century mark.
Lest you think this blog has turned Republican, rest assured this is just an image I was going to put on an invite that ended up not getting used after all. I'm not going to recap the whole evening, but the food including everything from macaroni & cheese and corn dogs (genius, that) to caviar, which only a couple brave souls tried. One of those brave souls was the family tabby cat, who licked at the stuff a little bit and then promptly puked his dinner into the food bowl. That's one more rich person's habit I guess we won't be picking up.
Got an email confirmation this morning that "A Civil Discussion" has been accepted into the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee. There's no information posted there yet, but I'm sure there will be. That makes the first out-of-state festival for the film, which I consider a milestone of sorts.
Now don't forget to go rate it at the IFC Media Lab.
Two posts I highly recommend. One from firedoglake for those of us who haven't fired anything more powerful than a bb gun, and one from Rude Pundit, just because.
Incidentally, I've now seen a couple different posts passing along thoughts of gun owners/hunters on this story. As far as I can tell, according to these guys (who know about these things), the notion that this is somehow not Cheney's fault is baloney. Seeing as how these are the same people that the Republican party has been depending on lately for votes, Cheney may have shot more than just an elderly lawyer here.
The Dick Cheney shooting accident should be an interesting story to watch. I'm not going to call it a "hunting" accident, because he was no more hunting than I am a wildcat wrestler for scooping our resident tabby cat up off the floor. The stories only a few hours old, and I'm already seeing parallels drawn between the ineptitude of the administration and the old fart who can't tell a penned-up quail from a lawyer, and while "cover-up" may be too strong a word, it looks like they sat on the story for a good day. Maybe I'm suspicious, but that to me sounds like they were huddled together trying to make sure they got their stories straight.
Anyway, I highly recommend checking out the blogs at left for parallels and snark galore.
IFC has set up a place called the IFC Media Lab for independent short films on-line, and I submitted "A Civil Discussion" to it (hey, it was free). As of right now only seven people have rated it out of the 77 views its received, and it's not doing so hot. Anyway, if you're so inclined go take a look and let's see if we can't at least get the number of views up, eh?
I've been thinking about giving transparent media a refresh, and these might provide some inspiration.
Juan Cole tells the Tale of Plame, and includes lots of pictures for any Bush devotées still out there.
Media: Artzybasheff's Neurotica: "One of the key concepts that an animator deals with every day is anthropomorphism... In most cases, this is applied to animals or teapots, but this aspect of caricature has barely been explored in mainstream animated films. Boris Artzybasheff was a master of anthropomorphism. He was able to give life and personality not only to animals and objects, but to ideas."
So I heard a bit of the speeches/eulogies at Coretta Scott King's funeral yesterday on the way home from work, and was mildly surprised at some of the political overtones, but then figured she was an activist, so why not. Later I found out that I had heard only a small segment of the speakers, and probably missed out on some of the best stuff. Still later I found out that some conservatives were none too pleased with the statements made. (Quote of the day from firedoglake: "They really don't seem to like being called racists. After putting so much effort into it you think they'd be proud.")
So like SusanG over at DailyKos I'd like to offer a heads-up. When my hit points finally reach zero, I don't care if anyone talks politics or not but if anyone says something that I might have disagreed with, the assembled crowd has my permission to pelt the speaker with whatever is handy. Instead of roses or lilies, I want there to be one of those horseshoe-shaped arrangements like they give horses when they win a big race that says "Congratulations" on it. I don't care if the funeral is at a church, but I do want "Amazing Grace" sung by someone who means it. Failing that, just bring a boombox and play the Ladysmith Black Mambazo/Paul Simon version. If there's a person of the cloth (which is sometimes unavoidable), I'd like have the Imperial March played when he comes in. When you take me to wherever my body's going to go, for god's sake don't use a hearse and stop traffic on the way. Just strap me to the roof and give me a heave-ho into the woods, then go home and have a barbecue. And serve ice cream.
Oh, and if anyone criticizes the arrangements, screw non-violence and pop them in the mouth.
firedoglake: 02/05/2006 - 02/11/2006: "This isn't a thoughtful President with the entire nation's best interests in mind -- it's a playground bully who wants everyone's lunch money so he and his pals can get more candy after school."
So apparently the cops are now sorry they hauled Cindy Sheehan (and others) out of the SOTU speech, and now are sorry and want to drop the charges. I say that's not good enough. This is just a kinder, gentler version of the kind of crap the cops pulled during the last Republican convention in New York City. First, they haul off and/or arrest the protesters on whatever pretext they can come up with, then when the event is over and done they want to release the folks who've been held, drop the charges, and hope everyone forgets what happened. Not that I can do a damn thing about it, but it's about time people quit stifling political speech in the first place. I'd like to see someone actually lose their job for this kind of arrest, so that the next time some authority figure wants to toss out someone for making a statement they think twice about doing it.
Just because I want to be sure this story gets as much play as possible:
I didn't watch the State of the Union speech last night, but since that's one of those things you can't really escape without a lot of effort (like listening to commercial radio in the morning, *shudder*), I heard a couple of tidbits. Sounds like it was the usual collection of platitudes, wish lists, and crowd pleasers. I was find with it until NPR played the soundbite where Dubya calls for "civil discourse." Here's what raced through my head in the 2.5 seconds it took for me to hit the power button in disgust:
And just to top things off, it turns out Cindy Sheehan was invited to the State of the Union, and got arrested for displaying some sort of protest message on a t-shirt. God forbid we should have political speech in the Capitol building.