Sunday 4th of March, 2001
Had big plans for today, all of which fell through. Well, not really big big plans - tidying plans, hoovering plans, that sort of thing. Still...
Go through this page putting in the now obligatory pointless links. Can't find anything biographical on Tony Wilson (perhaps I should have looked for his alter ego Anthony H. Wilson).
Yesterday I wrote an essay-long reply to a question on a bulletin board, and today I sent an even longer addendum. No one seems to want to reply, however. Perhaps I'm not provocative enough. Perhaps I'm too provocative. I ask for extra points for using the word "hegemony". Most people on the bulletin board want to shop songs to Taxi or hype their MP3.com sites. They don't want to hear about hegemony.
Set up trackers throughout the site, so that I can see if the person or so who logs on is looking at this page or, indeed, that.
First thing this morning I got the Women In Afghanistan petition email. This evening the same person sent me an email which says, basically, don't answer it, all is madness. Apparantly, the person who set the thing in motion hadn't worked out the logistics of unleashing an exponentially increasing junk mail upon the world, particularly one which wasn't a scam. This web page explains all.
I never joined in after the first time (I've got this email several times), and what's outlined is precisely what I expected. So the cynical part of me is feeling a bit smug.
I'm tempted to start an email petition calling for the end of email petitions - see how far it gets.
Watch Manhunter on DVD. It isn't better than Silence of the Lambs, that's for people who like to be perverse to say. Not that it isn't a good film - it is. But there's too much 80s Rock - it's difficult to take a psychological thriller seriously when it sounds like Journey. And the end, with Will Graham and his buddy on the Lear Jet putting it all together, is just too Boys' Own for my kidney - there's a real joy in the empowerment by access to technology. It probably appeals to the same people who like the idea of reducing Ripley to a sleeping Damsel in Distress in Gibson's Alien 3 script.
It is interesting to compare it with Silence of the Lambs - whereas in that film, there is a constant moral indeterminacy (despite the solidly unsympathetic villain), in Manhunter, we are on the side of the (frankly quite bland) hero all the time. Structurally, the two films are very similar (I haven't read any of the books, so I can't comment on them), but, whereas in Lambs the identity and location of Jame Gumm is kept quite fluid until Clarice (accidentally) stumbles across him, in Manhunter the identification of Dollarhyde is too easy - there is no complexity to the process, which makes Graham's leap through the window anticlimactic. I enjoy the film while I'm watching it, but, afterwards, get all critical. Michael Mann's Miami Vice is one of the great misunderstood TV series - when it was on, I'd tell people that it was (sometimes at least) great, and they'd mock me. And I still think I'm right.
Perhaps another viewing of the series would change our minds, one way or the other.