Deep Thought

Over on scendan and cinchntouch's pages, there is some serious ranting soapboxing opinion thrashing philosophizing about When Good Artists Go Bad. I've posted a bit there, but want to bring it on here.

The question is, can we separate our opinion an artist from our opinion of his art? And should we? Do we refuse to buy beautiful books, paintings, whatever from an artist because the artist is repulsive, a criminal, or belongs to the KKK?

I have a two-part answer. If the artist is alive, and will profit from your buying his art, then don't buy it. Encourage others not to buy it. But if the artist is not alive, or will not profit from you buying his art (a second-hand book, or maybe he's donated the proceeds to charity) then go ahead.

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The specific case which brought this up is Harlan Ellison groped a woman's breast at the WorldCon Hugo Awards ceremony last week. Lots of people are saying they will toss his books as a result of this despicable behavior. As far as I'm concerned, the woman who was assaulted needs to file charges, and the rest of us need to stop buying any more of his stuff. What you do with any of his stuff you already own doesn't really matter, since he's already pocketed the profits. I don't feel good about throwing away a good book, no mater how big an a-hole the author is/was. Book burning has severe bad vibes for me. I won't throw away my Poe volumes because he was a drug addict, or my Lewis Carrol because he was a pedophile. I will, however, throw away a book that sucks on its own, regardless of how pure the author.

What do you think?
[Poll #810592]

The machine that goes "Ping!"

Someone down the hall has one. It is very annoying.

Finally!

After two weeks of beating my head against the walls, finally got some engineering help and solved the mystery of why movies were not getting installed on my servers. It took maybe 3 minutes to fix it.

Now I'm kind of twiddling my thumbs because the next step, which I just set in motion about an hour ago, was to launch a script I wrote which makes 1500 copies of the movie, its trailer and movie poster, and putting each in a unique directory complete with a text file describing all kinds of things about the movie which has been tweaked to match the directory name. Should be done cranking tomorrow some time.

Strange Encounter

Yesterday after work I was sitting out on the patio at Starbuck's, and was about to start reading some trashy science fiction when a young woman (20-ish) struck up a conversation. She said her name was Yael, which is a common Hebrew name, so I asked her "Ivrit?" (Hebrew?) and she answered in Hebrew that yes, it was, and then in a mixture of English and Hebrew that her father was Israeli, and she knows I know him. She was sure I was either a friend of her father's, or maybe the father of one of her friends.

I told her I didn't speak all that much Hebrew so we switched to English. Her English was all American, her Hebrew had a slight American accent too.

Things got somewhat strange. The more we talked the more she was convinced I was one of the men her father had hired to monitor the surveillance cameras around her house & neighborhood. She thought I was kind of one of her secret service style bodyguards. Or the father of one of them.

She asked me if I was an "N". She wouldn't explain what an "N" was, but said she would give me a test to find out. "Do you love kings and queens?" She asked. I said "Only if they use their power and fortune for the good of their people". Would I kill for kings and queens? No. Would I kill for her? No, I wouldn't kill for anyone.

Apparently I failed the test, but she was still certain I was an "N". She said she had to go, and left the patio through the side doors. She walked through the store and out the front doors, and came back and said she still thought I was an "N". Back out the side doors, and one more circle back to me, to tell me she was just kidding about the killing part, and hoped I wasn't offended. I told her I wasn't. As she left she said she was on medication. "Lithium?", I asked. "No, something else".

All of this in a very pleasant, non-threatening way. She's a very average looking young woman, about 5'6", curly brown hair, brown eyes, round face, well-endowed under her brown T-sirt with pink "Punk Rock Boneyard" logo. She's about 20 lbs overweight, but it's all in her tummy. Jeans, tennis shoes.

Tonight I have a coffee date with an old friend at the same time and place. I wonder if Yael will be there.

Can You Believe This Is An Actual Candy Bar?

Picked this up at a UK train station (click for larger image)

Yorkie Bar (Front)
Yorkie Bar (Back)