Why You Will Not Find Me on the Facebook or the Twitter

The Old Man writes,

I used to think of bloggers as really hip & up to date, but now blogging seems so 2007. For 2008 we got Facebook & now for 2009 Twittering.

Since I never got into blogging, I certainly have no involvement with Facebook or Twittering, and tend to view them as a further debasement of the currency of the written word.

But I’d love to see you post your thoughts on these things.

And you know, I’ve been meaning to do so for a while now. It’s true that blogging has started to seem sort of quaint and archaic, that the real action has shifted to technologies offering even-more-instant gratification. I have made a personal policy decision to steer clear of these things, and here’s why.
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Closing the File on David Lynch

Usually I only write about movies to point people toward the really great ones or to warn them away from the really awful ones. I had hoped that today’s entry would be one of the former, but instead it must be the latter.

After ducking it for two years, I finally summoned the courage to view David Lynch’s most recent film, Inland Empire. I had been afraid of it because a) I worried it would continue the accelerating downward spiral that had afflicted Lynch’s work ever since Wild at Heart, and b) it is a big film, almost three hours long.

But after revisiting Twin Peaks my affection for Lynch was restored to such an extent that I approached Inland Empire with cautious optimism. The cast includes a number of old-timey DL favorites such as Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, Diane Ladd, and Grace Zabriskie, as well as Jeremy Irons and Nastassja Kinski. In interviews, Lynch waxed enthusiastic about the possibilities digital filmmaking had opened up for him, and about the positive impact of transcendental meditation on his creative life. It seemed just possible that Inland Empire would mark a return to form for a filmmaker whose work once brought me a great deal of pleasure.
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Baroque Obama

This combination of words popped into my head last night for some inexplicable reason, causing me to giggle foolishly for several seconds. So in an idle moment this morning I deicded to consult Ye Olde Internete to see who else had had a similar experience, and what they’d done about it.

It didn’t take long to find this picture, which was posted on Flickr by someone calling him or herself “givepeasachance”:

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It was followed by a note that says:

Bloggers: I don’t mind you posting this, just please provide a link back to this page. Cheers.

Which I have now done. Over and out.