Matt Ruff's Blog, page 52

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Matt Ruff

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My kind of science fiction

Last Sunday's New York TImes magazine offers a portrait of a modern odd couple. Peggy is a hospice worker whose job is to help people die with dignity. Her husband Robin is an economics professor who plans to have his brain frozen in hopes of living forever. They have issues, and apparently their situation is not uncommon within the cryogenics movement:

Peggy's reaction might be referred to as an instance of the "hostile-wife phenomenon," as discussed in a 2008 paper by Aschwin de Wolf, Chana ...

Vampire Bill?

Over the weekend Lisa and I finished rewatching the BBC vampire-hunter miniseries, Ultraviolet. This morning I went web-surfing for information about Sue Hewitt, who composed the soundtrack, and stumbled across a fan site that mentioned how one of the supporting cast members, Stephen Moyer, went on to play "the lead vampire" on HBO's True Blood. I would never have noticed this on my own and didn't believe it at first (neither did Lisa when I told her), but yeah, it's true, as you can see in t...

Contra Ebert, the title may not prove prophetic

Despite savagely negative reviews, The Last Airbender was #2 at the box office this weekend, earning an estimated $70 million.

Now that's a twist I didn't see coming!

So, I guess that's a rental, then

Via james_nicoll  , Rotten Tomatoes rounds up
"If you thought it was bad when writer-director M. Night Shyamalan was channeling Rod Serling, wait till you see him try to be George Lucas."

"Who would have thought Shyamalan would have come up with a movie that makes his Lady in the Water look positively sensible?"

"The picture drags along the ground like a fresh corpse..."

"This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 201...

El riesgo siempre vive

You were, and always will be,
Why, open a shop, of course.

If cats ran British Petroleum

Via Juan Cole:

"To get us out of this mess we should tax other countries, like Canada."

More suggestions for the Republican Party agenda from the America Speaking Out website:

"Old people contribute very little to the economy and are total downers. Cut off all government benefits at 75. If you want to live until 95, work until you die or save up more money earlier in life. No more free rides. "

"Reduce the size of the U.S. to that of a city-state like the Vatican. This will result in enormous savings."

"My daughter went to private school and she just told me dolphins ar...

"So James Joyce's prose is now being very slowly pummelled into incoherence by cosmic rays."

...from William Gibson's BEA luncheon talk. [via james_nicoll  ]

"...but young, fresh and not refrigerated too long are what the Republicans are all about"

As you may have heard by now, the RNC has created a website, America Speaking Out, where American conservatives, or Internet pranksters posing as American conservatives, can post suggestions for the Republican Party agenda. (You can also vote thumbs up or down on other people's suggestions.) Enjoy it while it lasts:

"The moon is American soil and therefore should be accessible only to Americans. I propose that we stop the illegal use of the moon and moon-related activities by foreigners. If ...