I realize that Parade is a magazine in much the same way that Kid's Post is a newspaper, and that I shouldn't look to it for hard-hitting journalism. So while last week's adoring profile of Ashcroft did give me the shivering horrors, it was my own fault for allowing myself to become bored enough to read it. But I just have to mention something in this week's issue. James Brady's "In Step With..." column is usually just a celebrity kiss-up, but this time he interviewed a soldier in Afghanistan. I'm not picking on the soldier, but read this:

[Brady asked] just who is the enemy -- the Taliban, al-Qaeda or local warlords? He thought about his answer and consulted briefly with Army Maj. A.C. Roper, who had helped set up our interview.

"The enemy is anyone who's against the peace in Afghanistan," he answered.

And this is where the Pogo quote goes, obviously. But setting aside the nonsensical answer, notice the part where two soldiers had to confer for a few minutes in order to figure out an answer to the question "Who are you fighting?" Is it just me, or is that kind of creepy?

On to lighter things. For instance, here is an article by Joseph Epstein, who appears to be crazy. For when that link is no more: it's an opinion piece about the scandalous fact that sometimes movies report historical events inaccurately. There is one funny line in it: "Titanic and Pearl Harbor are two notorious instances of attempts to show that major catastrophes provide a very nice background for meeting girls." But the actual point of the article, which took a while to find, is that fiction shouldn't be, um, untrue. No, seriously. He says that art "must never... contradict known truth." He admits that it's okay to speculate about things we don't know for sure about historical events, but there can't be any alteration of the facts. None. This is the closing paragraph:

Plausibility, finally, is the morality behind all narrative art, whether that art be epic, novel, short story or movie. But no one can be plausible, let alone truthful, when he goes up against the known facts. If moviemakers wish to be taken seriously, contravening the facts is the quickest way to lose their authenticity -- as well as that small but discriminating part of their audience that genuinely hates to see truth violated.

Now, I'd sympathize with him slightly if he was just talking about movies that make claims to great accuracy. I agree that it's annoying when people repeat "facts" they learned from fiction, but that's a problem with ignorant people, not fiction. I also disagree with Epstein's peculiar claim that audiences now are more likely to confuse fiction with truth than audiences of the 1940's and 1950's. People now are more skeptical about news coverage, much less entertainment.

What really intrigues is me is the idea that all stories must be factually accurate whenever a historical event is represented. Any contradiction of known "facts" just ruins it. I'm not even getting into the part where our understanding of the "truth" can change radically over time. I have to wonder what Epstein reads, or watches, because historical inaccuracies are hard to avoid. No Richard III for him. No Forrest Gump either, though, so I guess that balances out.

Last night (er... Thursday) I finished the first book of Don Quixote. I'm not quite halfway through it, but close. Since I feel like I've done enough recapping for the day, I'll mention some of the random things I wanted to mention so far, just because. [Johanna, you can probably skip this because I already told you about it. So there.] I knew I was getting close to the end of the first book when, all of the sudden, we skipped a few days. I'm pretty sure that for three hundred pages the longest break in the story has been while the characters slept. Then, suddenly, in the middle of a paragraph, there's this sentence: "In six days time they reached the Knight's village." So absolutely nothing important happened for nearly a week, when up till this point every single conversation was recorded. Sounds like Cervantes was getting bored.

I'm not really complaining, though it probably sounds like it. It was just awfully abrupt, and also it amused me.

This edition has footnotes at the bottom of pages and at the end of the book. I think the distinction is that the ones on the page are from the original translation, and the ones at the end are from modern editors, but I missed the part where they actually explained that. It's mostly amusing because the footnotes from (I assume) the translator are occasionally slightly snarky comments about other translations. There is one footnote that amused me a lot for its randomness: when the Canon appears towards the end of the first half, there's a footnote that says, "This canon of Toledo is Cervantes himself all along." Given what he says, and my very cursury understanding of the book, I can believe that, but maybe a little supporting evidence is called for when you declare something like that. The certainty of "this character represents the author" entertains me.

I have dog-eared a fair number of pages, which I wouldn't have done except it's a $3 paperback. I'm nice to hardbacks, I swear. I don't know why I feel defensive about that, but I do. On the other hand, I like going through my paperbacks because I tend to dog-ear pages, because then I end up rereading the whole page to figure out what I thought was noteworthy. And sometimes I can't figure out why I marked a page, which makes it like a mystery. While writing this I spent a few minutes looking over pages, and thinking, "Um. Well there must be something funny here. Somewhere. Um. I'm bored now." You should bear in mind that it's past 2 AM right now, so maybe my brain isn't up to the challenge.

So looking through Don Quixote, there are a bunch of pages I marked for no reason that I can determine right now. I have a vague feeling that in some cases I was noting odd stylistic things. One part that I really liked was when a fight breaks out and everyone's reaction is noted: "The curate cried out, the landlady shrieked, her daughter wept, Maritornes howled, Dorothea was distracted with fear, Lucinda could not tell what to do, and Donna Clara was strangely frightened." I kind of want to do a recap that way: "Angel is perturbed, Cordy is worried, Gunn is concerned, Fred is upset, and Wesley is uncertain." I dunno.

Of course, it's possible that my mind is just focused on the recaps for Angel right now; I marked one passage because I'm sorely tempted to use it in the recap of the finale. It'd be easy to do, but I think I might be the only one who'd get the reference. Not that this has stopped me before, but y'know. There's a point at which even I think I'm being too obscure.

Towards the end of the first book, things get more meta as characters discuss whether there is any merit to the romances Don Quixote has read. And everything I've heard indicates that the second book is like that, but more so.

I made up the part about there being cut scenes on the Wonder Boys DVD. I'm such a liar. There was, however, a very strange bunch of clips where Curtis Hanson talked about the various locations in the movie, which were just to set up random "history of Pittsburgh" trivia items. I seemed like such an odd thing to do. It's not like you see especially scenic parts of Pittsburgh (having visited the place a few times, I'm not sure there are any scenic parts), so I'm not sure what the logic behind that was.

I finished the recap and watched Wonder Boys. Go me. Wonder Boys was neat, and not at all what I expected. Of course, that wasn't hard, because all I knew about it was what I saw in the trailers -- and by the way, weren't there bits in the ads that weren't in the movie? With the book pages blowing out of the box and al around Michael Douglas? I kept waiting for that to happen and it never did. Did I just make it up? Anyway. It was good. Tobey Maguire was very cute indeed, and now I understand why Johanna loves him. (I forgot to mention, but I did start watching Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, which Maguire appears in briefly, so it's like I'm having a little Maguire film festival accidentally.)

I had a slight problem because the DVD was scratched or had goo on it or something. I tried cleaning it, which helped, but it sort of stuck a little at the start and end. Like, the very end. So I think I missed a few seconds just before the credits. Aside from that I enjoyed it; it was funny and more meandering that I expected. Johanna said she liked the movie more than the book, because it's hard to like the characters in the book, but they seem much more likable in the movie. I can see how that might be. I'll probably get around to the book eventually.

And there was a message at the start of the movie that said it had been "edited for content." Now, that annoys me quite a lot. I want to know what was cut, and I want to know who to complain to about that. Fuckers. I haven't looked at the extras yet, which I think includes some cut scenes, so maybe that will clarify things. Still though. Edited for content?

Oh yes, and while I was out running errands today, I discovered that Texas Rangers is finally out on video/DVD. So I called Johanna to let her know, and she got mad that I couldn't go over to her house and watch it right that minute. I have this standing obligation to watch movies featuring Dawson's Creek actors with her. It's traditionally part of her birthday present. I would have had to take her to see it in the theater, but it had a, shall we say, limited release. During the week or two it was in theaters, the closest place it was playing was about an hour's drive away. Which I think was beyond the call of even a birthday present.

So now that's another thing I have to watch. Johanna almost demanded that we watch it tomorrow, but then she realized that we'd probably want to have alcohol handy. Maybe next weekend.

Gosh, let's see if I can remember everything. I gulped down the Lemony Snicket book, of course. It made me want to reread all of the Unfortunate Events books, which is unfortunate since I myself only own one. And also I don't have time. Because what I really want to do is go through them all and take notes and do crazy things like that because that's my immediate response to puzzles. Even though I know I won't be able to figure it out, because I'm sure it's planned that way. So I guess it's just as well that I don't have access to them. Well, I could go to the library. But I'm not allowed to do that, because of all the other piles of things to read and watch.

And then, as I suspected, I got my Amazon order on Monday. The Salmon of Doubt, yay. I'd read many of the pieces before, in other books or online, but there was still plenty that was new. And it all made me a little sad, because Adams was just such a neat guy. Several pieces also made me want to go to Australia. Right now! Let's all go! Okay, probably not. But someday. And since I'm not actually that big on being a tourist, that ought to indicate how well Adams sells the place.

Oh, and there was also a speech Adams gave that made me wish I had someone handy to explain a few parts. I was doing okay until there was an offhand reference to how quantum theory solves the problems associated with the wave/particle behavior of light. Or something like that. I may go look it up and see if I can puzzle it out, but I do better with that stuff when I can interrupt and ask questions.

Also in the order was another Farscape DVD -- the last two episodes of season 1. Because there are commentaries again, damn them. So I watched that.

I also watched more Danger Mouse. Still a couple of episodes I haven't gotten to yet. That'll probably be a nice way to start Saturday.

After all that, I made a little more progress on Don Quixote. But not much, because then there was a new Angel and I caved in and watched most of a very blah Buffy, and on Wednesday I hung out with Johanna and watched those shows (because she'd missed them, and I wanted to see her reaction to Buffy), plus the always-stunningly-terrible Dawson's Creek. I can't wait until that's syndicated. It's my 90210, okay? So bad. I love it. Still miss Drue, though.

Where was I? Don Quixote? Yeah. Not much further. At least I did stop at the end of one of the story-within-a-story interludes, so it was a good breaking point. I really do like it, it's just so... long. And the paragraphs are long. And the sentences are long. So it's hard to read a lot of it in one gulp because I start skimming without noticing, and all of the sudden I realize that I have no clue what's going on.

And then I got some movies I'd ordered from Netflix, and some of Joe Bob's Sleaziest Movies in the History of the World. And today I got a DVD of Fargo from Wing, which was very sweet of her. So suddenly I've got about twelve hours of stuff to watch. Someday. Okay, last night I couldn't sleep, so I watched one of the Netflix movies: Psycho. The original, damn it. Technically, I watched the extras, which are cool. There's a long "making of" piece with interviews with Janet Leigh and the AD and Hitchcock's daughter, and that's really neat and chock full of trivia. And then I put the movie on and fell asleep. And woke up occasionally when the strings on the soundtrack would go "Weet! Weet! Weet!" because someone was getting killed. So I'll watch it again later when I'm awake. Not that I haven't seen it before. But it's so good! The other movie I got is Wonder Boys, so ideally I'll get to that on Sunday after the recap's done.

I think that's everything. Phew. Oh! I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I'm boy-crazy so I'll mention it again. Last night on Letterman there was this astrophysics major from Toronto on doing a Stupid Human Trick (he pulled a tennis racket around his body while juggling). He was very cute and very geeky and I decided that he's my new imaginary boyfriend. And then Natalie Portman came on to him! Grr.

Saw Spiderman today -- at a matinee full of little kids. Though I suspect that would be better than a later matinee full of teens. And actually the kids were pretty quiet. The movie was fine. Although the Green Goblin's glider looked like it would be more fun than web-swinging. And I kept getting distracted by comparing it with the first Batman movie -- nothing in particular, just my usual overanalysis.

I was bummed because all of the movie previews looked stinky, except for Men in Black 2. Didja notice that in the studio logo, the Columbia Pictures woman is wearing sunglasses? Hee. But Eight Legged Freaks and Bad Company and XXX and Minority Report? Bleh.

Then I went to the bookstore so I could get Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography. Uh, and a copy of The Door -- they did an interview with Tom Lehrer! Neat.

Didn't get much reading done this week because there's too much dang television on. And I've been trying to get lots of chores done around the apartment. I'm trying to get the recap done early (well, by my standards) -- I should finish it tonight, yay. I'm on about page 260 of Don Quixote, but I barely touched it this week. Busy, busy. Need to make more progress on that, because any day now my order from Amazon will arrive, and then all will be lost.

Oh, and another thing cutting into my time is my Danger Mouse DVDs! They came early last week, and are ever so much stranger than I remembered. And I've got Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas to watch, which I'll probably do tonight.

So basically, I'm too busy reading and watching TV and seeing movies to have time to write about them here. Two more weeks till Angel is done for the season, and then I'll go back to updating a little more often. And in more detail. Now I have to go finish copying a videotape while I read, and then I can finish the recap. Pant, pant.