Be Very Afraid

I finally saw The Witch last night.  If you like your horror intelligent, off-putting, and highly ambiguous then grab your broomstick and fly to the nearest Netflix.  (Huh?)

It wears its low budget proudly on its sleeve.  It uses very simply physical effects with just the right smidgen of CGI and natural lighting to recreate the feel and tone of the New England frontier of the 17th century.  There is capital-C Civilization and there is The Wilderness, and it's clear from an opening shot which side you should want to be on.

And there's plenty to love for early American Literature nerds as well.  The script borrows heavily and directly from the letters, journals, and court documents of the Puritans.  The most significant scene in the film has a young boy directly quoting John Winthrop in a very clever nod to underlying tensions of Puritan theology (god must love me because he obviously hates me!).

It's really good.  It's arguably one of the most Feminist horror movies ever.  And you'll want to sleep with the lights on when it's done.

"Don't Boo, Vote"

I've been watching the DNC sporadically, and kind of nibbled on the low-lights of the dumpster fire that was the RNC.  (Baio-mentum!)

Is there a word for a pretty strong optimism met with deep, complete fatalism?

I was telling my (Korean) boss the other day that I'm a life-long Democrat.  I like Hillary (but would've voted for Bernie if he'd pulled it out).  And I was explaining to him that due to the partisan divide in America, Trump was going to get at least 40 percent of the vote no matter what as the Republcian nominee.  On the other hand, Hillary winning by even five percentage points nationally was actually a landslide in modern American politics.

The larger point is, I'm going to vote.  I'm going to do what I can to get my friends and co-workers to vote.  I'll donate a small bit of cash.

And if at the end of the day that isn't enough, and Americans really are stupid or cynical enough to pull the lever for the Orange Mussolini, well, I'll be greatly saddened.  But I won't be crushed.

I can only sacrifice so much of my psychological well being to the fact that so many of my fellow Americans are racist clowns.

And for better or worse, that's why this blog will probably be less political in nature than it has been in the past.  There's everything to say about this spectacle of an election, and then again nothing at all.

Register to vote, please.

No Difference Between The Parties

I'd humbly suggest that there's a qualitative difference between the party of Michelle Obama and the party of Scott Baio. #ImWithHer

— July James (@wetcasements) July 26, 2016

Daegu is making me melt. This is all I got.

Books!

Another timely delivery from Seoul's WhatTheBook?  We've got three authors I've never read before: Han Kang, Kim Stanley Robinson, and two by Matt Ruff.

Lovecraft Country has a very cool, pulp-themed cover in hardback.

True Fact

I approve of everything in this piece as to how "You Can Say It: Summer Is Garbage."  Here's a bit on sleeping:

"Either you are cooking slowly in a bain marie of your own sweat or you are woken at 3 AM by some inexplicable sunrise or else every single animal in the world has decided to go loudly insane in the heat and as such are growling and chirping outside your bedroom where you, sticky with your own grotesque perspiration, toss and turn on top of a comforter and underneath a sheet because down means up and up means down here in summer, the worst season of the year by far."

Leave my bedroom AC on when I got to sleep and risk waking up with pneumonia?  Pretty bad, but the only alternative to waking up in a pool of my own dank sweat.

Oh Daegu summer, I do not like you one bit.

Uncharted Territory

I'm willing to bet the strangest part of the multi-month dumpster fire that has been Trump won't be the ongoing convention which has, indeed, been something to marvel at for all the wrong reasons.  No, I'm guessing the real Twilight Zone moments will come in about October, with Hillary owning a healthy 8-10 point national lead in polling, and a deep blue Electoral College outlook.

Because that's when Donald Trump, a man who could never possibly allow himself to be beaten by a mere woman, announces that he has received credible threats of a HRC / CIA / Obama assassination plot against himself and his family, and he'll be throwing the nomination back to the Republican Party at a point when it's far too late for them to launch any credible resistance against eight more years of Democratic White House, and probably Senate, and maybe House rule.

I don't normally offer financial advice but it you think popcorn futures were going up last week, just wait until this fall.

From Foreign To Common

To say the least, America has a complex relationship with foreign food:

"When immigrant food is brought into the American fold, another big question, aside from whether it will be thought of as high- or low-end, is how long it will be considered exotic; food can be a useful entry point to thinking about how immigrant cultures are absorbed into the American mainstream, and what 'mainstream' might look like in just a few decades. Only 80 or so years ago, The New York Times published an article that, to make a point about how radically Americans’ eating habits were changing, imagined a 'hodge-podge' of “strange dishes” that a family at the time could plausibly plop on the dinner table next to each other, no matter how objectionable such a spread may have seemed. Those strange dishes? Spaghetti, meatballs, corn on the cob, sauerkraut, fruit salad, and apple pie. Yesterday’s strange hodgepodge is today’s boring dinner.

For quite a while, in fact, 'foreign' food was simply shorthand for German food. That’s what writers in the Times meant virtually anytime they referred to foreign food between the 1850s, when the paper was founded, and around the 1920s. In the mid- to late 1800s, when relatively poor German immigrants were first arriving in the U.S. en masse, their sauerkraut and sausages were denied incorporation into the American culinary canon. Decades later, only after generations of Germans built wealth and social capital, the hot dog’s American-ness does not require elaboration."

It's an interesting article, but it seems like a lot of foodie trends these days are towards "authentic" (scare quotes!) street food rather than towards the upper end of the dining scale.

Nice

The saddest thing about terrorism is that it's cheap and it works.

What About The Voice of Geddy Lee?

Rush, "Bastille Day" live

True Fact: My band in high school covered this song.  It almost got one of us laid once.

Rise Above

Chvrches ft Hayley Williams, "Bury It"

Had a very long and, to everyone's surprise, very productive meeting with my co-workers on the research paper.  Our methodology is starting to take shape as part of a two-part study (student projects and a select set of one-on-one interviews).

Let's celebrate with some Scottish synthpop, shall we?

New Adventures in WTF, Korea?

I don't think anybody looks forward to a job interview, but in South Korea people, especially women, really don't appreciate them for obvious reasons:

"Among those who said they had unpleasant experiences, 26 percent of them said they felt so because the interviewers ask them questions that are private and totally irrelevant to the job.

Kang, a 26-year-old female job seeker, was recently asked questions like “What kind of man do you like?” She said she is afraid of taking interviews now. 

Another female job seeker surnamed Kim said she had a similar experience. 

She answered the type of man she prefers and the male interviewer winked at her and said, “then you would want to date someone like me.”

Ugh.