Ordinary Human Language

2014

by Brian Crane

December 2014

Snow Evaded, Briefly

…now home and feeling tan. ...

Full Post • Posted December 19, 2014


New Curiosities from the Curiosity Rover

A marvellous photo of the Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater on Mars has changed the tenor of my day....

Full Post • Posted December 7, 2014


Mishima on Romance and Politics

The exaggerated color of secrecy clinging to politics confirmed its resemblance to the business of romance; politics and love affairs...

Full Post • Posted December 4, 2014


Dracula Untold

An awkward but not terrible movie that, like Maleficent, sets out to humanize an iconic villain. Dracula here is both...

Full Post • Posted December 3, 2014


Only Lovers Left Alive

Two hours of being cool and solitary, artistic and messy. I could watch Tilda Swinton read for hours. Really great...

Full Post • Posted December 3, 2014


True Blood, Season Five

As per convention, I grabbed the next season of this show on a rainy day in the Fall at the end...

Full Post • Posted December 2, 2014


Blessed Insomnia

I woke up insanely early this morning, mind racing. Couldn't get back to sleep. I hate it when that happens....

Full Post • Posted December 2, 2014


Survivor Redemption Island & South Pacific

I love Survivor and have been watching (without logging) past seasons that I haven’t seen before. At this point, I’ve...

Full Post • Posted December 1, 2014


Stephen Crane on Despair

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would...

Full Post • Posted November 29, 2014


After the Banquet

-Book Cover

The first books I read by Yukio Mishima—Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion—were dense and...

Full Post • Posted November 29, 2014


November 2014

Setting Attributes with On-add Actions

In my admin file, I want to keep track of where information in a note came from: at what meeting,...

Full Post • Posted November 28, 2014


Christie on "Queer Tensions" at Dinner

… they all passed the butter to each other too politely. — Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia...

Full Post • Posted November 27, 2014


First Night in Draenor

Blizzard advertised and pushed their new expansion for nearly a year. Blog posts, videos series about backstory, a major pre-launch...

Full Post • Posted November 13, 2014


Taltos

So I’m rereading Steven Brust‘s Vlad series and this novel’s ambition threw me for a loop. On one level, I was happy to...

Full Post • Posted November 9, 2014


Teckla

I was shocked by how dark Steven Brust’s Yendi is. I had forgotten. Reading it now, I wish I could remember...

Full Post • Posted November 8, 2014


Chopin on Beginnings

The beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. — Kate Chopin, The...

Full Post • Posted November 7, 2014


Creating and Setting Key Attributes

Right off the bat I should say that I’m still learning how to use attributes. Outlines, map views, links, these...

Full Post • Posted November 7, 2014


The Voice of Vlad Taltos

Years and years ago, I read all of Steven Brust’s Vlad novels (or at least those that were available at...

Full Post • Posted November 7, 2014


Yendi

Because I’d already reread Jhereg, I started rereading the Vlad novels with Yendi. The characters are trying to solve a...

Full Post • Posted November 6, 2014


Laclos on Success

The merit of a work derives from its usefulness or from the pleasure it gives, or even from both when...

Full Post • Posted November 4, 2014


Les Liaisons dangereuses

I read this years ago, but a couple months back, saw it on my shelf and decided to flip through...

Full Post • Posted November 4, 2014


Formatting Shallow Outlines

Outlines and maps are where I do most of my work in Tinderbox, but they function very differently from each...

Full Post • Posted November 4, 2014


Creating and Organizing Prototypes

Prototypes are easy to make and manage. So much so that in my early projects I tried to use them...

Full Post • Posted November 3, 2014


Tinderbox Videos

I’ve just finished recording four Tinderbox screencap videos and plan to present them as a series over the next week. The videos start out with...

Full Post • Posted November 2, 2014


October 2014

Hallow's End

Sometimes at the end of a long hard day, you just need time in Azeroth with the fraternal unit. Sometimes,...

Full Post • Posted October 31, 2014


Maleficent

Maleficent is a character I was fascinated with as a child and who I remember today with glee because she...

Full Post • Posted October 31, 2014


More Meeting Doodles

A pumpkin headed scarecrow. ...

Full Post • Posted October 26, 2014


My New Home!

So after weeks, the move to my new web host is complete, and I'm glad I did it. Because mynew...

Full Post • Posted October 26, 2014


Mommy

Xavier Dolan’s new film is formally daring, beautiful and moving. It’s Stella Dallas with a son rather than a daughter and...

Full Post • Posted October 17, 2014


House of Cards, Season 2

House of Cards began as a study of amorality that took power and marriage as its subjects.[1] Season one offered up a...

Full Post • Posted October 15, 2014


Fire in the sky

A birch tree in the Parc des Voltigers in St-Charles-de-Drummond. It seems some trees throw fire and not nets into...

Full Post • Posted October 14, 2014


Well that didn’t go as planned…

Computing isn't digestion. You got to know things to make it work. I know nothing about server stuff. (I say...

Full Post • Posted October 14, 2014


Mishima on Tree Branches, Blue Sky

The elms stretched delicate branches high into the blue, and the clustered twigs had the sharp clarity of countless cast...

Full Post • Posted October 14, 2014


Server Transfer

Finally switching web hosts. It's gonna take a couple days. Silence until it's done probably. Fingers crossed that all goes...

Full Post • Posted October 9, 2014


Saint-Exupéry on love

Ma vie est monotone. Je chasse les poules, les hommes me chassent. Toutes les poules se ressemblent, et tous les...

Full Post • Posted October 7, 2014


Godzilla

Once, long long ago, I convinced my parents to take me to a Godzilla double-feature at the drive-in. They satthrough...

Full Post • Posted October 5, 2014


Windows to Tabs

I upgraded to Tinderbox 6 when it was released in late summer. There was a lot to love about the...

Full Post • Posted October 4, 2014


Downton Abbey

The Beav—who never watches TV—wanted to watch this show. So we started it last year, working through season one and two...

Full Post • Posted October 3, 2014


September 2014

Tinderbox: How to Make In-text Links

This is a follow-up to my post about front-of-the-manual tools in Eastgate’s Tinderbox. It explains how I make the in-text links I discussed there. Because...

Full Post • Posted September 21, 2014


Front-of-the-manual Tools

A Tinderbox file is like sculpture. You chip away at your project—first here, then there—slowly digging to find the shape of your specific...

Full Post • Posted September 20, 2014


Foundation

This novel reminded me of an epic fantasy insofar as it is fascinated with large-scale historical change, the political consequences of religion,...

Full Post • Posted September 17, 2014


Captain America: The Winter Soldier

So many people raved about this film to me that I was actually looking forward to it, and it was...

Full Post • Posted September 16, 2014


Family Tech

The announcement of the new iPhone has sent me wandering down memory lane and has me thinking about how my...

Full Post • Posted September 14, 2014


I Tried to Be One of the Cool Kids…

But it didn't work out and I went to bed: iPhone 6 fail This morning I learned that I actually...

Full Post • Posted September 13, 2014


The Mysteries of Pittsburg

The Wonder Boys is one of my favourite books. It’s fun and true without being cruel or overly sentimental. Mysteries is a...

Full Post • Posted September 9, 2014


Werther on Knowledge and Feeling

Oh, anyone can know what I know–my heart belongs to me. — Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther...

Full Post • Posted September 6, 2014


Cool. Confessions.

So. A chain of links and at the end, Scott Rosenberg explaining that blogging is becoming a thing again. He's...

Full Post • Posted September 6, 2014


Raiders of the Lost Galaxy (a variation)

As the movie opens, the Hero watches his mother die. Overcome, he runs away from his extended family. The Hero,...

Full Post • Posted September 2, 2014


August 2014

And so it begins…

The first two weeks of the semester are nearly done, and yet again, I'm caught surprised by the raw change...

Full Post • Posted August 28, 2014


Gould on the Purpose of Art

The purpose of art is not to release a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is rather, the gradual, lifelong construction...

Full Post • Posted August 23, 2014


Pain and Gain

Marky Mark and The Rock. Together. I’m going to credit them with inspiring Michael Bay to make a film that Tony...

Full Post • Posted August 22, 2014


Snowpiercer

This film managed to hit both of my biggest sci-fi movie peeves: 1 the hero “saves” the world by destroying everything...

Full Post • Posted August 20, 2014


Galaxy Impossible (a variation)

As the movie opens, the Hero watches his mother die. Overcome, he runs away from his extended family. The Hero,...

Full Post • Posted August 14, 2014


A Fistful of Galaxies (a variation)

As the movie opens, the Hero watches his mother die. Overcome, he runs away from his extended family. The Hero,...

Full Post • Posted August 10, 2014


The Guardians of the Galaxy- Variations

Over the next few days I'll be posting a series of variations on The Guardians of the Galaxy. There's a...

Full Post • Posted August 10, 2014


Laclos on Necessity

Le nécessaire avait produit le grand, le véritable effet. — Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses...

Full Post • Posted August 10, 2014


Introvert Words

Word list made while reading Quiet. * unambitious * quiet * too influenced by the people around you * pleaser...

Full Post • Posted August 6, 2014


Notes on Hypertext

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on the hypertext I took on as a summer project. It’s been...

Full Post • Posted August 4, 2014


Boyhood

The Beav wasn’t as impressed by this film as I felt he should be. He liked the concept and was...

Full Post • Posted August 3, 2014


Game of Thrones

I watched the first season of Game of Thrones because it’s everywhere and I figured I’d give it a go....

Full Post • Posted August 1, 2014


July 2014

Lucy

Like this year’s other great summer blockbuster The Edge of Tomorrow, Lucy organizes its narrative according to the logic of a...

Full Post • Posted July 31, 2014


Excession

I just read Excession, the fourth of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels, and really enjoyed it. It’s different from the others I’ve...

Full Post • Posted July 29, 2014


Thoreau on Work

I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it. –Henry David Thoreau...

Full Post • Posted July 23, 2014


Thoreau on Aiming High

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better...

Full Post • Posted July 19, 2014


Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

I really liked this movie. It was well-made and engaging, and its mix of action and mystery had a familiar,...

Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014


Speed Racer

I blew this movie off when it came out for all the obvious reasons, but I kept being told randomly...

Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014


The Edge of Tomorrow

I expect this will turn out to have been the best movie of the summer. I’m stunned by how well-told...

Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014


X-Men: Days of Future Past

I enjoyed this movie. It was predictable and self-important, but a nice distraction. Set against the other films logged right...

Full Post • Posted July 18, 2014


Arguing, Plotting and Making Hypertext

Mark Bernstein asks some basic questions of craft as he tries to write a hypertext page turner. Now, I don’t know Bernstein so...

Full Post • Posted July 16, 2014


Overheard on the street

A kid talking to his friend: “My mom said we could do whatever we want…. As long as we're good.”...

Full Post • Posted July 14, 2014


Rilke on Changing Your Life

Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is...

Full Post • Posted July 9, 2014


June 2014

The Great Lakes Museum Tour

The Beav and I are heading out for a couple weeks of vacation. We're making a road trip and the...

Full Post • Posted June 21, 2014


Robocop (remake)

This entirely competent and entirely boring film manages to surpass its source in not a single way. It has less narrative,...

Full Post • Posted June 18, 2014


Tom à la ferme

Xavier Dolan‘s first stab at a popular genre is a domestic thriller with gestures (often musical) toward Hitchcock. The Beav...

Full Post • Posted June 17, 2014


Wordsworth on the End of Term

…I breath again; Trances of thought and mountings of the mind Come fast upon me: it is shaken off,...

Full Post • Posted June 15, 2014


Faulkner on Being Right

…in the being right there was nothing of consolation nor of peace. — William Faulkner, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem...

Full Post • Posted June 11, 2014


Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time. The blurb and...

Full Post • Posted June 10, 2014


The Temple of the Golden Pavillion

This is the second book I’ve read by Mishima and it’s as dense and complex as the first. It’s also just...

Full Post • Posted June 9, 2014


Mishima on Beauty and Skill

It was skill alone that made it possible. Beauty was skill. — Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion...

Full Post • Posted June 8, 2014


Making Hypertext

My big project this summer is to create a non-fiction hypertext. I have a subject. I have the material. I...

Full Post • Posted June 7, 2014


May 2014

Metamorphosis

An adaptation of Franz Kafka‘s story. The Beav and I saw it at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. The...

Full Post • Posted May 31, 2014


The Seagull

Written by Anton Chekhov, this play is about familiar themes: city and country life, the paths available to an artist,...

Full Post • Posted May 29, 2014


Mary Tudor

Written by Victor Hugo and directed by Claude Poissant for the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier. The theatre summarizes the play as: À...

Full Post • Posted May 27, 2014


Memorial Art Gallery

A few weeks ago the Beav and I went down to Rochester to see what we could see. Our first...

Full Post • Posted May 25, 2014


Grand Budapest Hotel

The new Wes Anderson film. I have as little to say about it as I do about most of his...

Full Post • Posted May 24, 2014


About Canada, Queer Rights

-Book Cover

A book written by Peter Knegt. He’s a friend of a friend and I heard about his book that way....

Full Post • Posted May 24, 2014


Kawabata on Love from Snow Country

The labour into which a heart has poured it’s whole love–where will it have its say, to excite and inspire,...

Full Post • Posted May 10, 2014


My New Course Map

A few months ago I wrote a series of posts about revising my Tinderbox course planning file. (The sidebar links to a...

Full Post • Posted May 5, 2014


Comments Closed. Email Open.

Five or six months ago I turned comments on for posts on this site. I was curious what would come...

Full Post • Posted May 4, 2014


April 2014

The Great Upheaval, 1910-1918

A few months ago, the Beav and I went to Toronto and saw The Great Upheaval, a show of works...

Full Post • Posted April 11, 2014


The Living End

A key movie of the New Queer Cinema that, somehow, I’d never seen. And it’s quite good, especially now that...

Full Post • Posted April 10, 2014


Games, Genre Films and Books

Why is there so much genre film logged here? I've asked this question before and thrown out a tentative answer....

Full Post • Posted April 9, 2014


Who Owns the Future?

I read Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget a while back. His latest book, despite appearances, moves him to new...

Full Post • Posted April 8, 2014


HTML: Handwriting or Book Printing?

Is HTML like handwriting or like book printing? I can’t decide. If it’s like book printing, then writers complete their...

Full Post • Posted April 7, 2014


The Monuments Men

An old-fashioned movie that gives us nothing of what we expect from a war movie post-Saving Private Ryan. The tone...

Full Post • Posted April 6, 2014


Monument Men

An old-fashioned movie that gives us nothing of what we expect from a war movie post-Saving Private Ryan. The tone...

Full Post • Posted April 6, 2014


Funny Boy

I picked this book to replace Swimming in the Monsoon Sea on a course reading list and expected the difference to be minimal....

Full Post • Posted April 6, 2014


Hanging Out with the Fraternal Unit

Things began allegorically: Carpets. The only way to fly. Then settled down: A secret spot in the mountains. A good...

Full Post • Posted April 4, 2014


Confessions of a Mask

This is the first book I’ve read by Yukio Mishima. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but what I...

Full Post • Posted April 2, 2014


March 2024 2014

Spring Woods in St-Cyrille-de-Wendover

^include(/Blog Videos/2014-vids/Spring-Woods-St-Cyrille-de-Wendover.m4v)^...

Full Post • Posted March 24, 2014


Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table!

I went into this film eager to like it. I worked to be on its side well beyond the halfway...

Full Post • Posted March 22, 2014


Don Jon

Sometimes there’s the movie and there’s the movie. Here, the movie doesn’t seem to know Seinfeld’s old joke about fit single...

Full Post • Posted March 20, 2014


Mishima on the Beauty of the Shadow

The Golden Temple cast a perfect shadow on the surface of the pond, where the duckweed and the leaves from...

Full Post • Posted March 19, 2014


Philomena

This film was fine, and I suppose I liked it well enough, but I honestly can’t account for its popularity....

Full Post • Posted March 18, 2014


Scraps and Whatnots

Thor A remake more-or-less of the first movie (which I saw but apparently didn’t log) but done as a mash...

Full Post • Posted March 17, 2014


Mishima on Childhood Demons

It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2014


Ricoeur on Understanding Texts

We can understand a work only if we have understood that to which it responds. — Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Récit...

Full Post • Posted March 16, 2014


Captain Phillips

A film that begins with the worst, most stilted dialogue I’ve heard in a long time. It becomes an efficient...

Full Post • Posted March 15, 2014


Gulls. The Lake. Then Ducks

^include(/Blog Videos/2014-vids/GullsTheLakeThenDucks.m4v)^...

Full Post • Posted March 14, 2014


Nebraska

Alexander Payne makes movies that I like. I wait for them, watch them, remember them, but without ever mistaking them...

Full Post • Posted March 13, 2014


Overheard- On the Street

Two women walking. One says to the other: “You never remember the good things.” ...

Full Post • Posted March 12, 2014


Sci-fi Suspense?

Ender's Game and Aeon Flux are surprisingly similar films and stumble over nearly identical narrative problems: both want to be...

Full Post • Posted March 12, 2014


Mishima on Viewing Cherry Blossoms

Meanwhile, the cherry trees had blossomed. But no one seemed to have time for flower-viewing. — Yukio Mishima, Confessions of...

Full Post • Posted March 11, 2014


Gravity

I love sci-fi but so much of it is just terrible or silly kid stuff. This movie is proof it...

Full Post • Posted March 11, 2014


12 Years a Slave

Steve McQueen’s latest is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. Beautifully photographed and constructed. I especially like...

Full Post • Posted March 10, 2014


Oscar Wrap-up – Ordinary Human Language

Again this year, me and my friend Caitlin tried to watch all of the best picture nominees prior to the...

Full Post • Posted March 6, 2014


Robocop

I decided to rewatch Verhoeven‘s Robocop because I will surely see the remake, especially given how interesting I found the remake of...

Full Post • Posted March 6, 2014


Pandora's Promise

A documentary about nuclear power, and the environmentalists who have decided that, despite our fears, it is the safest way...

Full Post • Posted March 5, 2014


February 2014

Deadwood, Season Three

These are late in coming, but over the holidays I watched the third season of Deadwood. It was a season where the...

Full Post • Posted February 24, 2014


James on the Artist's Challenge

Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry...

Full Post • Posted February 22, 2014


The Swerve

I was given Greenblatt’s book by a friend who thought I’d be interested in the way Lucretius’s On the Nature...

Full Post • Posted February 22, 2014


Banning My Memories of India

For most of us, most of the time, banning books or burning them isn't real. Not really. These acts exist...

Full Post • Posted February 15, 2014


Overheard in a Café

Maternal wisdom: “Sit there and eat. No, eat. We have to learn to like different things in a different country...

Full Post • Posted February 12, 2014


Attributes, Agents and Links

In my original template, dates and deadlines, kinds of material and their topics, and everything else I needed to know...

Full Post • Posted February 9, 2014


Course Planning in "Wiki View"

The roots of my course plan revision reach back to the classroom wiki project I began creating last May. As...

Full Post • Posted January 31, 2014


January 2014

Course Wiki & Course Plan Revisions

My second stab at using a classroom wiki has launched. It’s going well so far: everyone has posted a profile...

Full Post • Posted January 28, 2014


The Responsive Web- A Friend Adds Info

In response to my posts about my annoyance with the move toward responsive web design and my layman's sense that...

Full Post • Posted January 26, 2014


Maclean on a Beautiful World

What a beautiful world it was once. — Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It...

Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014


Maclean on Making Something Beautiful

One of life’s quite excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of...

Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014


Maclean on Thinking

All there is to thinking…is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see...

Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014


Agents; or, There Is No Spoon

I suppose I should say something about agents before I start talking about my new course file.   Basic Agents...

Full Post • Posted January 25, 2014


Meeting Doodle

Looming purple spider. ...

Full Post • Posted January 23, 2014


Course Planning: Boxes and Links

As I explained in my previous post, I scheduled class time in my Tinderbox template by dropping notes (or aliases)...

Full Post • Posted January 22, 2014


My Course Planning Template

Although I’ve written about my original course plan a bit in earlier posts, I need to review a few points...

Full Post • Posted January 20, 2014


Course Planning with Tinderbox: My New Approach

A little over a year ago, I bought Mark Bernstein’s Tinderbox and began using it to plan my literature courses....

Full Post • Posted January 18, 2014


Wine Log: Update

Turns out I have nothing to say about wine and writing these posts isn’t helping me learn what I’m drinking....

Full Post • Posted January 14, 2014


47 Ronin

As far as heros go, it’s hard to find one more retiring than Reeves’s character here. Yet, the film moves....

Full Post • Posted January 13, 2014


Man of Thai Chi

Keanu Reeves directed this film, but what exactly was his role? (Call this a note to self: the answer will...

Full Post • Posted January 13, 2014


Maurice Le Bel

The Beav heard about an exhibit of engraving and paintings by Maurice Le Bel at the Bibliothèque du Boisé in...

Full Post • Posted January 12, 2014


Overheard at a café

“My mom sat down with me and had a very serious conversation and explained things to me. She wants to...

Full Post • Posted January 11, 2014


Engaging Students, or What Is a Computer?

The following is a quotation fromFor PC Makers, the Good News on 2013 Is That It Is Over on The...

Full Post • Posted January 9, 2014


Dallas Buyers Club

The story space of this film came alive for me as I watched because of the actors (not the subject,...

Full Post • Posted January 9, 2014


The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Seen. Logged. Will wait to speak until the third is out. Yes, that’s me stalling....

Full Post • Posted January 9, 2014


Cabin in the Woods

I remember watching horror films when I was young and enjoying them. Sharing a Lazy-Boy with my sisters, hiding behind...

Full Post • Posted January 8, 2014


The Long Tomorrow

The Long Tomorrow is a sci-fi novel from 1955 by Leigh Brackett. After a nuclear holocaust, Americans decide high population...

Full Post • Posted January 3, 2014