All Lunar this time:

1. Morris
2. Latona
3. Remilia
4. Zain
5. Ghaleon
6. Dain
7. Wyn
8. Rena
9. Leo
10. Mia

( And cut - )

It takes me a while actually to crack open the little red packages and watch the darn things (Don't Look Now has been sitting in my desk drawer for over a month), but I enjoy those few occasions when I use actually use my Netflix account to catch up on those films that I've always been meaning to see. The results aren't always rewarding, but they are usually intriguing in some way. On the premise that the unexamined movie is not worth watching...

Suspiria - First off, yes, it is very pretty in places. Save for Jessica Harper and possibly her friend, though, the acting is downright atrocious, much of the cast (the blind man, the "gypsies", the mentally-impaired groundsman, the Nazi femme) was included solely to add an air of exploitation, and the death scenes were way too cruel for me.
To its credit, though, it did provide one set-up ("HELL IS WAITING BEHIND THAT DOOR") to prompted me to think, "OK, this better be good", and then, after the payoff, led me to reflect, "hey, I guess that was pretty good". Also, the bit with Harper inching down that corridor after figuring out the secret of the iris was very tense.
(By the way, does anyone remember the opening from Roger Ebert's review of Gerry, where he noted that Gus van Sant was like "an adult removing dangerous toys from the reach of reckless kids"? Well, Suspiria is a horrible, horrible toy to put in Eli Roth's hands. Even with all its probems, Argento's treatment will be lightyears ahead of any possible Roth remake.)

Carnivale - By all descriptions, I'd have thought this series to be very intriguing - the outré old-time visual style in an unusual setting, 1930's Dust Bowl territory; the parallel stories of a hero, unknown to himself, and a villain, also unknown to himself, developing simultaneously, with foreshadowings of a horrific confrontation in the future - not Dragonball Z-ish, but something that evoked real dread among ordinary people. There's too little happening in the actual show, though. There's no hook to get my imagination and emotions involved; it's as dry as the Dust Bowl itself. I saw the first episode and then left it alone.

Hudson Hawk - I love Bruce Willis and had been intrigued by this notorious bomb since seeing a promotional tie-in contest for a trip to Venice in Nintendo Power. Yes, horribly maligned, but it had a dashing cat burglar piloting da Vinci's flying machine in Venice; surely, there must be something salvageable here, eh?
No. It's just extravagantly unfunny and unpleasant. Siskel & Ebert, in an old At the Movies TV review, assert that Willis was trying for one of the old Hope & Crosby Road movies, which I see is an accurate assessment, but it doesn't work regardless.

The Warriors - Entertaining enough, but not as much as it should have been. It's like a version of And Then There Were None where eight people survive. Also, the Baseball Furies weren't nearly as awesome as promised.

As an irrelevant bonus, my D&D character type:

I Am A: Chaotic Good Human Wizard (3rd Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-13
Dexterity-12
Constitution-11
Intelligence-18
Wisdom-13
Charisma-9
Alignment:
Chaotic Good A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. He hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. He follows his own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society. Chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit. However, chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment because it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.
Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus

The following was a foodie meme I filled out in early September, archived and never properly finished due to my getting stuck on the "3 most memorable dining experiences" question. I finally figured out today that if an experience takes me several months to remember, it probably wasn't all that memorable, so I'm saying to heck with that question and posting the meme, past its sell-by date though it is.

( Contents may have settled during shipment )

Presented for your perusal is a complete conjugation of the Japanese verb "makuru", a neologism meaning - I am not making this up - "to go to McDonald's".

I thought it was a joke entry, vandalism from trolls who'd gotten tired of Wikipedia and wanted to move on to something more obscure. No, though - the word is in actual use.

Is this the newest step in marketing? Creating verbs now? Or did this just pop up organically, from people who thought the "maku" abbreviation would look nice as a godan verb? Is McDonald's really popular enough over there to merit its own verb? What happened to MOS Burger?

Well, there goes that idea.

I guess it was a "who dies next episode" clue instead.

Yahoo Movies has issued a list of 100 movies to see before you die. Taking a cue from the previous book meme...

Below is Yahoo's list of 100 movies to see before you die.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have seen. (35/100)
2) Italicize those you intend to see.
3) Underline the movies you love, and strikeout the movies you saw but didn't like.

1. 12 Angry Men (1957) - I've seen a little bit of it, though, and it's enough to convince me that I don't need to see any more. This is the predecessor to all the self-righteous films that exist less to bring to light and help correct a social problem than they do to canonize the white folks who champion them (see: To Kill a Mockingbird, except several degrees worse). Peter Fonda's faux, practiced little-guy modesty is just stomach-churning.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3. The 400 Blows (1959)
4. 8 ½ (1963)
5. The African Queen (1952)
6. Alien (1979)
7. All About Eve (1950)
8. Annie Hall (1977)
9. Apocalypse Now (1979) - More like "admire" than "LOVE".
10. The Battle of Algiers (1967)
11. The Bicycle Thief (1948)
12. Blade Runner (1982) - Most of it, except some of the first act. That led to me being largely confused until the final act, though.
13. Blazing Saddles (1974)
14. Blow Up (1966)
15. Blue Velvet (1986)
16. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
17. Breathless (1960)
18. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
19. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
20. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
21. Casablanca (1942) - I know I should, but romance, much less doomed, depressing romance, isn't my thing.
22. Chinatown (1974)
23. Citizen Kane (1941)
24. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - I didn't hate it, and the performances were strong, but the floaty wire work sapped the momentum from the action scenes and undermined the movie.
25. Die Hard (1988) - But, my, it's much bloodier than I remember. Fuckin' '80's movies!
26. Do the Right Thing (1989)
27. Double Indemnity (1944)
28. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) - Like Network, which is also sure to pop up on this list, its setup is developed so ridiculously and implausibly that it has absolutely none of the real-life relevance to which it so desperately aspires, and the slapstick isn't even funny. Fail-Safe, any iteration of it, blows Strangelove out of the water. (Put differently: I cannot put myself in the shoes of any of Strangelove's characters with the ridiculous decisions they make for ridiculous reasons. I can agonize, horribly, right along with the captain who cannot decide whether the voice on his intercom is really his wife and son pleading for him to turn back or a Soviet trick attempting to divert him from the last chance of some sort of justice for his country in the wake of its perceived destruction. It dramaticizes perfectly the dangers of putting an instant trigger for the end of the world in the care of fallible humans and their fragile instruments.)
29. Duck Soup (1933)
30. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - I don't remember if I LOVED it or not, though it strikes me as a pretty hard film to hate. Perhaps I shouldn't check it off as "seen", as it's one of those films that I saw so long ago that I remember hardly any of it.
31. Enter the Dragon (1973)
32. The Exorcist (1973) - Forget the pea soup and Father Merrin - like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Jason Miller's human Father Karras is the movie. Did you know Miller won a Pulitzer for playwriting the same year he was Oscar-nominated for this role? What a talented human being.
33. Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)
34. The French Connection (1971) - No one told me Roy Scheider was in this! Well, we'll just Netflix this right now.
35. The Godfather (1972)
36. The Godfather, Part II (1974) - From what I have seen of it, though, it seems like an unnecessary reiteration of the theme of the first, on whose execution you really can't improve.
37. Goldfinger (1964) - Like with Crouching Tiger, I didn't hate it, but I was rather disappointed. It's slow and talky - not pre-blockbuster era intriguing-conversation talky; more like lack-of-editor clunky - and it's kind of clunky at certain points. The bad guys - the mafia, Goldfinger himself - are too often made out to be flatly buffoonish, which undercuts the tension; ditto the long sequences, like the golf game, that exist only to demonstrate how much more awesome Bond is than Goldfinger. Sean Connery exudes style in every scene; he doesn't need directorial help in demonstrating his awesomeness, thank you.
38. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1968)
39. Goodfellas (1990)
40. The Graduate (1967)
41. Grand Illusion (1938)
42. Groundhog Day (1993)
43. A Hard Day's Night (1964) - Argh, I know I've seen one Beatles movie. Was it A Hard Day's Night? Like E.T., I suppose I shouldn't count it if I can't recall it. I do remember quite enjoying whatever it was at the time, until I accidentally shattered the glass pane in the coffee table I was cleaning while watching, after which I was a bit distracted.
44. In the Mood For Love (2001)
45. It Happened One Night (1934)
46. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) - It actually gets more depressing as you age and realize that it's a celebration of lives that haven't really amounted to much of anything, or at least as much as they originally yearned to be.
47. Jaws (1975)
48. King Kong (1933)
49. The Lady Eve (1941)
50. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
51. The Lord of the Rings (2001,2002,2003)
52. M (1931)
53. M*A*S*H (1970) - And I never will, due to the supposedly comic subplot about hating a woman because she's in a position of power that culminates with a grand-scale sexual humiliation. Not my idea of a good time.
54. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
55. The Matrix (1999)
56. Modern Times (1936)
57. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
58. National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
59. Network (1976) - Yeah, of course. In addition to my previous comments: that ending - oh, please. Faye Dunaway's firecracker performance is the only top-flight thing in the movie.
60. Nosferatu (1922)
61. On the Waterfront (1954)
62. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
63. Paths of Glory (1958)
64. Princess Mononoke (1999)
65. Psycho (1960) - Only one Hitchcock on here? Really?
66. Pulp Fiction (1994)
67. Raging Bull (1980)
68. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
69. Raise the Red Lantern (1992)
70. Rashomon (1951)
71. Rear Window (1954) - Guess I spoke too soon.
72. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
73. Rocky (1976)
74. Roman Holiday (1953)
75. Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Again, this is not an "I LOVE you, man" movie, but it sure as heck deserved to beat out "Man, it was SHAKESPEARE! And he was in LOVE!".
76. Schindler's List (1993) - Another film I saw but don't recall well.
77. The Searchers (1956)
78. Seven Samurai (1954)
79. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
80. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
81. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
82. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
83. Some Like It Hot (1959)
84. The Sound of Music (1965)
85. Star Wars (1977)
86. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
87. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
88. The Third Man (1949)
89. This is Spinal Tap (1984)
90. Titanic (1997)
91. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
92. Toy Story (1995)
93. The Usual Suspects (1995)
94. Vertigo (1958) - I think Jimmy Stewart was miscast; he's supposed to be deranged and obsessed, and yet his usual affable demeanor doesn't change a whit.
95. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
96. Wild Strawberries (1957)
97. Wings of Desire (1988)
98. The Wizard of Oz (1939) - What's surprising on seeing it today is how witty the dialogue is.
99. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
100. The World of Apu (1959)

After seeing this episode again, I think I originally forgot why exactly I quit watching the first time. It wasn't because of the upcoming Clavis episode.

( cut )

I had originally planned to go back through and write about the original thirteen episodes of Neo Angelique Abyss, the ones that really charmed me, but after a post on the Angemedia community speculating over the demise of the founding Angelique series, I'd like to do something else for now.

There was actually a 26-episode TV anime made of the original franchise, based on the latest (and apparently last) game in the series, Angelique Etoile No, I Am Not Going to the Character Tools Menu to Get the Capital "E" with the Acute Accent Every Time I Type That. Unlike Neo Angelique Abyss, it was received quite poorly, mainly due to disdain for the character animation. Angelique Original Recipe has been entirely quiet since its airing, and, while Abyss brought many new fans to Neo Angelique, its predecessor (formally called Koi Suru Tenshi Angelique) seems to have been the nail in its franchise's coffin.

I tried watching along when it first aired, but I didn't get very far - I recall it being pleasant enough, but the animation did cut corners, and it did go over a lot of old territory for those familiar with the franchise. That's part of the problem with creating an Angelique anime - with over twenty starring characters (yes), you have to go through a metric ton of history to get a new audience up to speed. I originally quit watching just before the Clavis backstory episode - it's a strong, wrenching tale by itself and essential for newcomers, but it's one knife in the character's heart after another, and as a longtime follower of the franchise, I'd just had my fill of it.

With Neo Angelique Abyss over and the prospect of no new visits from these old friends, though, I'd like to revisit the flawed Koi Suru Tenshi series and see if I can make it through this time.

So how does the first episode play now?

( Well... )

Last night, I ran across a synopsis of Southland Tales, Richard Kelly's unsuccessful follow-up to Donnie Darko. After reading, I searched around for something that would reveal what Kelly was trying to do with the apparently incoherent story and, finding no success, finally hit Wikipedia. (I know, I know, but I figured that his apologists would have snuck some propaganda into the article.) Nothing doing, but the Wikipedia entry did mention Kelly's next project, something called The Box. Curious, I clicked on the link, only to find:

An unhappily married couple receive a box from a mysterious stranger, who tells them that pushing a button on the box will award them with a large monetary sum, and simultaneously, someone the couple does not know will die.

If this sounds familiar to you, then you probably remember the Twilight Zone remake from the '80's; Kelly rips his premise from one of its more successful episodes. There, after much debate and vehement objection from the husband, the button is thrown away, only to be retrieved from the garbage and pressed by the wife while the husband is at work. The next day, to paraquote Wikipedia, the stranger returns, takes back the box, and gives them a briefcase with the $200,000. The couple is in shock and asks what will happen next. The stranger replies that the button will be "reprogrammed" and offered to someone else with the same terms and conditions, adding, "I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you don't know."

The tale plays perfectly in synopsis (perhaps not mine, but I hope I've been halfway successful) for probably the same reasons that the episode has stuck in my memory for so long - it's a clean, spare, merciless piece of storytelling that derives its tension and horror not from any superfluous flourishes but solely from the sheer terms of the simple dilemma it presents. The shock ending is not a real twist on the tale but merely the horrifically logical end product. The half-hour running length is just right. I'm loathe to slam something with Cameron Diaz and James Marsden right off the bat, and, remade straight, the story would be an excellent segment for an anthology film. It is, however, antithetical to Kelly's preferences for labyrinthine plotting, and while I can picture a successful Kelly tale entailing the arrival of a mysterious box, I cannot see any successful adaptation of this story coming from his personal style and feature-length approach.

(I always thought Donnie Darko worked best as the tale of someone who can't trust his own mind, without all the pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, anyway.)

An American Scene blogger links to a debate over whether courage is an appropriate virtue for women. (The "two sides" of the argument linked are "no" and "no, not really".)

The problem here is that the only courage they recognize and prioritize is the chest-beating 300-type courage. Glamorous courage, in other words - the kind of courage for which opportunities rarely pop up in today's society. Voicing genuinely unpopular opinions when it is necessary is not glamorous; speaking up when it might alienate friends or jeopardize your job is not glamorous; shouldering any number of civic responsibilities is not glamorous. They are, however, the duties today that call for courage and uphold our society's ostensible principles. Courage in the U.S. media a few years ago, for example, might have saved a lot of money and ruin in recent military ventures, and it wouldn't have required an ounce of physical strength to express.

This attitude has been a long-term problem, and not just with conservatives. I've seen a few liberals (film blogger the Flick Filosopher, for one) voice a frustration that their generation "hasn't found its calling", that there hasn't been one great social crisis, like WWII with the Greatest Generation, with which they could test their mettle. (This complaint is quite often linked with an infatuation with Fight Club, the film that complained that there was no place for men to be men in a consumerist society and proposed as a solution fruitless mutual poundings that corrected nothing.) They wanted, in other words, a crusade - which Obama gave them, to his great benefit. Of course, there are many problems with this attitude - most WWII soldiers did not go to the battlefront just so that they could prove how awesome they were; it is extraordinarily selfish, not to mention batshit, to wish for catastrophe just so you can boost your self-esteem; it's not as if the U.S suddenly ran out of societal problems, although the opportunities for self-glorification and societal back-patting in the soup kitchens or Big Brother programs or animal shelters are rather limited. The recent Democratic victory, though, has provided an endless festival of self-congratulation.

(I will say, however, that conservatives seem to be the only ones willing to leverage the courage issue to promote sexism - or maybe that, too, has changed post-primaries and I'm just not up to date.)

The debate also blamed in part the degenderization of courage and "feminization" of men for the U.S.'s fallen global image, contrasting terrorist groups and dictatorial bluster favorably with the metrosexuals and their eyeliner and their hand creme and their Eurotrash music, as one side embodies manly virtues, however distasteful the causes in whose service they are, and one doesn't. I'm sure that Ahmadinejad would not look favorably upon metrosexuals, but I'm not sure that's a large a factor in anti-Americanism as, say, the sybaritic indolence exemplified and exported by shows like My Super Sweet 16 that goes hand-in-hand with the "I'll do good only if it's all about me me me" attitude described above. Or the Iraq fiasco. Or - screw it; you could you probably name a dozen larger contributing factors yourself.


**(The debate touches on east Africa to demonstrate the consequences of the absence of male courage, detailing the fear and anger the women in a Somali village felt when the men failed to speak up and indict a rapist. In the larger picture, I was supposed to be disgusted that courage was no longer the exclusive province of men, but the anecdote instead jogged my memory of a giant reserve of courage right next door: all those Sudanese women who risk rape and murder just to get firewood for their families. I suppose they don't count, though, as glamorous courage never exposes yourself to a situation where you can be victimized.)

Color, Victoria Finlay - I'm fascinated by the spectrum, and the promise of a popular science/history book about the origin of each color seems a tantalizing wonderland. (Did you know, for example, that the Japanese consider light blue a different color than blue? Odd, until you realize that the West does the same thing with red and pink.) I read the excerpts from Amazon, though, and it seems to be a book on paintmaking, not on the history and science behind the colors themselves, which does not appeal as much. Stone Soup in Camden had this book for half-off, but money was tight when I first spotted it, and it was gone when I returned. I don't know if I want to risk full price when I'm uncertain on the premise.

Round Ireland with a Fridge, Tony Hawks; McCarthy's Bar, Pete McCarthy - I took a chance a while ago on A Trip to the Beach, the tale of a couple of well-to-do restaurateurs uprooting themselves to the tiny island nation of Anguilla and trying to build a little eatery there with local resources. It has considerable problems, many related to the authors' self-centeredness and lack of self-awareness when conditions on Anguilla prove less than ideal, but it succeeded in portraying the rhythm of island life, of the experience of plying a creative trade among friends day in and day out in paradise. It's like ambient writing; I'm not looking for anything in particular to happen in the book - I just enjoy the sense of place.
Ireland appeals to me, generally for half-gleaned ideas about the greenness of the land, the coziness of the villages, and the pseudo-mystic cache of the ancient isle, and, oh, my God, my views could not be more steeped in stereotype unless they included someone after me Lucky Charms. Nevertheless, in looking for something to replace A Trip to the Beach, I hit upon two books involving stop-by-stop tours of local Irish color, both including elements that give me pause. The latter seems to be (though Amazon suggests I might be mistaken) a tour of regional pubs, and though I'd enjoy learning more about this venerable institution that seems homier and more upstanding (uh, huh) than the U.S equivalent, I don't think I'm ready for a book-length bar tour. The former concerns the author's attempt to win a bet by traveling all over Ireland while, as the title states, lugging a fridge along. Whereas McCarthy's was steeped in booze, this book seems obviously fueled by it. I read a little bit from both in the bookstore, and neither seemed problematic, but both concepts pose ample possibilities for frat-boy behavior.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond - You already know about this. It's the popular science book about anthropology, a must-read for basic info on the subject - and I indeed must read it eventually, but it's tough to prioritize above books that appeal to me more specifically, and I do wonder if I'll enjoy it enough to warrant owning it at full price.


Trade paperbacks are attractive, but (as I've already said here) they combine the price of hardbacks with the durability of paperbacks. My financial situation is less than ideal, and fifteen dollars is above my threshold for throwaway spending. I have to wonder what how elastic the demand for many trade paperbacks is - if they would indeed make more money for the publishers if they were sold at paperback instead of new-release prices.

Back in high school, I took the Myers-Briggs and scored as an INTJ. I was quite satisfied with and proud of the score, which, at the time, read to me as the "best" of the personality types - the most intellectual, the rarest and most unique. Reading the description now, I must concede that, though it fits in many areas, the role of the Decider does not come naturally to me at all. My greatest weakness, one that has onset in the years since high school, is my tendency never to finish projects. I dither and don't follow things through to the end, wasting my own potential. I *should* be an INTJ, should be unique and special and accomplish great things, but I sabotage myself.

(Recent attempts to rescore myself and see if my devolved, lazy self still qualifies as an INTJ have been sabotaged by a) my desire to be remain an INTJ and consequent tendency to check myself when answering questions and b) my genuine difficulty in prizing one virtue over another in some of the dichotomies presented. Yes, a concrete, workable solution is an important goal - but does it necessarily preclude brainstorming or a quick reevaluation of the system? Doesn't the former often come from the latter? I probably do have a preference (when it comes right down to it, my own life has taught me that informed, decisive action is more valuable than letting oneself get bogged down in half-formed ideas and "what could be"s), but it is often very hard to gauge one's own thought processes accurately. Still, tonight, I tried the different tack of analyzing the test criteria itself to see which attributes described me best. After being confused by Wikipedia, which cast three of the preference pairs as the same "heart vs. head" dilemma, I clicked to the Myers-Briggs website itself, which (naturally) explains things much more clearly and definitively casts me as an I, an N, and a T. The Judging/Perceiving thing is still somewhat unclear to me; does it concern my own feelings about the outside world or what the outside world thinks of me? If it amounts to "I prefer the world to be in a constant state of flux, always becoming something new" vs. "I want the world to make some fucking sense instead of being part of one big dice game", then yes, I'm definitely a J, and if it amounts to being seen as a mercurial free spirit vs. someone with a stick up their ass, I'm also definitely a J. I'm still not sure of the question Judging/Perceiving asks, though.)

I took the Enneagram and ended up a Type 5, a "Thinker". The thumbnail information ranges from uselessly abstract to quite practical and helpful. (Gee, I really am pushing for that INTJ, aren't I?)

Fetal My Little Ponies.

I have to go lie down now.

I just learned that Larry Summers is Obama's chief economic advisor.

In related news, there's a short blip in The Economist - I'm not linking; besides me being lazy, the article is short and not that revelatory beyond its conclusion - about the lack of political interest among young people in newly upwardly-mobile totalitarian states. As you probably already know, the young and rich in Moscow and Shanghai and whatnot are generally far more interested in nightclubbing and mobile phones and online dating than in organizing to gain more democratic freedom. The article described it as a Faustian bargain between the youth and the state - we'll let you do whatever you want socially or online if you leave politics alone. Part of me chalks this up to the same self-absorption that hits whenever certain people get rich and stupid enough - the same mindset that got Obama elected, that leads you to pat yourself on the back for being brave and revolutionary while limiting your proactivity to nothing more than a single vote on a single day and calling people nasty names on the net, because these acts constitute above-and-beyond feats of selflessness on your extraordinarily relative scale. I wonder, though, if it's not due to them being used to shit like the above going down? Not misogynist shit, specifically, but stuff like the politician who was caught playing Bejeweled during a council meeting, to his utter indifference - outrageous behavior that flaunts the lack of accountability of those in power, that so dramatically reinforces how little one person's efforts could ever make in the face of such pervasively countenanced corruption.

(Depressing afterthoughts: 1) I hate posting Obama hate here, as I dislike making anyone feel unwelcome by injecting political invective into otherwise innocuous and completely unrelated material, though there are some days when it just gets too much, and 2) though I am rather disenfranchised, seeing how the entire feminist movement was infiltrated by pod people overnight, I really don't do much more myself to change things for the better in my own country than those I decry above. I donate money, but that's it. I myself am more invested in my own online activities and my personal equivalents of nightclubbing and mobile phones, and I have gotten increasingly more so ever since the world went batshit over Obama. It goes to support my thesis, I suppose, but it's no less dispiriting.)

This question has cycled out of the Writer's Block archive, but I'd still like to answer it anyhow.

Woolworths shut its doors in the U.K. last week, sending many into a frenzy of nostalgia and bargain shopping. What now-closed store or chain do you wish was still open?

The old Aeropostale. It was somewhat like a more accessable, more youth-oriented, less yuppie version of the Banana Republic in an international theme, featuring uniquely beautiful T-shirts of world landmarks - not "my parents went to the Taj Mahal, and all I got was this lousy" T-shirts, but tasteful, cleanly-composed shirts (usually just white with a full-color photograph) featuring the natural beauty of the locales. Aeropostale still exists, but only in a shoot-it-shoot-it-in-the-head way that sells the faux-Claire's stuff you can find at any teen boutique.

Man, looking at the other responses for this question brought back memories. Banana Republic! Caldor! Bradlees! Jordan Marsh! Lechmere! These used to be the staples of the '80/early '90's malls. And whatever happened to Maison du Popcorn? Help-Ur-Self? All the indoor miniature golf places!?!? All the fun specialty boutiques that made malls such a great place to hang out on a Saturday...

(I could name several other shops that, while not extinct, are certainly fewer in number but made malls special in their day. Just Fun or your version of the local arcade, though it's no mystery why those are extinct. Brookstone and all its neat yuppie gadgets you could try in-store. Mrs. Fields'. TJ Cinnamon's and all the giant-cinnamon roll places - those still exist, but they've been largely supplanted by Dippin' Dots as the to-go mall food, I believe. Electronic Boutique - we have GameStop now, but I can assure you for some undefined reason that Electronic Boutique and GameStop are two completely different things. (The latter never sold me Ultima: Quest of the Avatar or Castlevania III, for one thing.) TCBY and the local smoothie palace, still around but never as alive and thriving as they were in the '80's. G. Fox and, again, Jordan Marsh and all those largish upscale department stores that concentrated on good clothing but also sold cookware and gifts and maybe had a small baked-goods counter. Food courts - save in the largest malls, they don't really exist anymore, do they? It's mostly just a few well-known stops scattered throughout the place. You don't have one concentrated stop for a dozen little vendors - Nathan's and Taco Bell (not rare now, but it was in the '80's) and the place that sold funnel cakes.

When it comes to malls, there was nothing like the Poughkeepsie Galleria in the late '80's/early '90s. Even the interior design was classy yet friendly and made the place seem like one big indoor park. The omnipresent skylights. The pink pastel interior. The glass elevators rimmed with fairy lights. It was a wonderland.

In the heyday of the one-stop big-box stores, though, having goods spread across several shops, even under one roof, is considered inconvenient, not to mention uncompetitive when it comes to price, and so malls really are on their way out - it's all about the paved-over big-box corrals called Marketplaces now. It's too bad. My family recently tried to track down a recording device for the TV, yet we might as well have been asking the Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs for gold-plated 8-track players. Finding a decent DVD/VCR combo unit that was not a piece of junk and could actually record from the TV without a cable box took several weeks. I doubt we'd have had a problem were a Lechmere in our neighborhood, and we would have had more guidance in our purchase and higher quality assurance to boot.)

Breakfast is a broken meal. Look at those options: no one should be considering shoving sugar down their throats at 7 in the morning. Your only other option, though, is to risk a coronary, as every savory option is grease-based - home fries, scrambled eggs, omelets (the last two shouldn't be, but in the Mom & Pop eateries, forget about it), bacon, sausage... Being a vegetarian, I can't even eat the last two.

Also: too much damn bread. Toast, pancakes, waffles, cinnamon rolls, muffins, English muffins, danishes - no one wants to eat a loaf of bread in the morning either.

We need to reconsider the meal. Andy Rooney once suggested soup as a substitute, and while it's not an ideal choice for those on the go, it's a step toward something better.