Eccentric Flower:199904/there are days
From Eccentric Flower
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april eighteenth there are days There are days when I have to remind myself that I am not always on the side of freedom of information. They are almost always days when I have read a discussion of copyright issues. I believe in a very strong copyright law, simply because I want to make my living selling my writing, and I can't do that unless my creative output is protected. As far as I'm concerned, the outpourings from my brain belong to me and I am the only one who can make money from them. If that's selfish, so be it. If strong copyright is censorship (and I read something today that argued it was, so don't laugh), then so be that too. There are days when I have to remind myself that, given the circles I move in, having friends at Microsoft is inevitable. I don't hate Microsoft as much as some do, but they do some boneheaded things. Here I was on the journals list spewing vitriol about Internet Explorer's latest misfeature, which bogs down web servers with needless requests and intrudes on user privacy ... and then I saw an email from Anita, who contracts with Microsoft ... and I blushed a little. Doggone it, can't I like Anita and think she's sold her soul to the devil? There are days when I have to grit my teeth and accept the fact that jargon is inescapable, and that we have all become so fixated on not possibly causing any offense to even the smallest set of temperamental people that the art of stating something without obfuscation is all but lost. The other day on the subway I saw a woman reading a flyer about an organizational meeting for the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor. My best guess is that this means "substitute teachers." What was wrong with that phrase? There are days when I can only shake my head and wonder at the cluelessness of the movie and television factories. First there was an excellent article in Entertainment Weekly on why the sitcom is moribund. (Brief summary: Shows are now written to cater to advertisers' wants instead of viewers' - the demographic has replaced the audience.) Then I went to see Go - a fine movie, by the by, see it posthaste - and saw a trailer for The Haunting of Hill House. This, as you probably know, is a Shirley Jackson novel. Calling it "horror" does not exactly do it justice. It is an extremely non-conventional ghost story with a lot of its suspense deriving from psychology and deep undercurrents. It would be a hard book to adapt - although it's been tried before - even with the best director. Know who's directing it? Oh, no, do take a guess. Please. Jan de Bont. The gent who did Speed and Twister. Think he'll be able to bring the necessary degree of subtlety and restraint to the material? Me neither.
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