Going West
Theory: the West, as we think of it here in the West, might best be considered a movement rather than a place. Not only does this remove the problem that nearly everywhere is west of
somewhere, it also fits our (imagined -- I've no idea if this is historical, and I suspect it isn't) idea of the progress of civilisation's cockpit, from Mesopotamia to Asia Minor (and Troy, which is supposedly where our
translatio imperii starts), to Greece and Rome, to the area that is now France, and the Holy Roman Empire, to the Netherlands, to Britain and then to North America. Weirdly, this still works if the cockpit moves to China in the next century or so.
(All of the above requires that we carefully forget a lot of things -- the Eastern Roman Empire and Russia, North Africa and the medieval Middle East, and so on. I'm not suggesting that this is good or accurate, just that it's amusing.)
St Giles Cripplegate
I was passing near the Barbican yesterday, so I dropped in to St Giles Cripplegate, where Milton is buried. The memorials are relatively unostentatious: there's a bust on the wall, and a statue, but not a big or a prominent statue. London had lovely weather yesterday, so it was quite sunny inside the church, and an organist was practicing some kind of light, slightly jazzy tune. As a whole, it lacked the cold austerity you might associate with the man, and I thought that was nice.
PR
The Lib Dems (Britain's third party) are keen on
proportional representation. Cui bono? The Lib Dems, of course: at the moment, they don't have much of a hope of regularly affecting government policy, but PR would make coalition government much more likely.
Although they don't argue for it on those grounds: they argue that it's fairer. They have a point. The trouble is, I fear that coalition governments aren't as good at governing and, after thinking about it, I came to the surprising discovery that I think good governance is more important to me than fairness.
In the Loop
I went to the cinema to see
this today. It was a good laugh, worth the price of admission. I may even acquire a DVD copy when it's cheap enough, as it feels like the Westminster-watcher's 'mates + beer' movie.
As satire, it was agreeably pessimistic. If anyone had redeemed themselves in some heartwarming climax it would've failed.
Summer Reading: Batch 1
I always plan to read more than I actually do over the summer, but such is life. Anyway, while returning the books I used for my last essay I took out a few to start with (list incoming, which'll look weird in the RSS feed 'cos it strips out line breaks):
- Later Medieval Europe: 1250-1520 (Waley and Denley): this is about the most general of general surveys, but it's recent (2001 revision) and will give me a better grasp of the timeframe I'll be working in next year.
- Metamorphoses (Ovid, Innes's translation): One of the glaring gaps in my Classical background reading. I have to fill this in.
- The Second World War, volume 2 (Churchill): I'm not expecting a rigorously historical account, but Churchill's prose is a pleasure (maybe it was the bricklaying?). I doubt I'll read all of this but I may well read most if it, dipping in and out.
- Handbook of Electioneering (Cicero, Shackleton Bailey's Loeb CL translation): I'm mostly expecting some 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' lulz from this practical guide to image management (at least, I imagine it's a guide to image management).
- Spenser's Images of Life (Lewis, worked up after his death by Fowler): A favourite critic writing on a favourite poet.
Remembering the War Dead
So these are some passing thoughts that came to me while I was watching Simoun. Simoun's heroes are pilots but also religious figures; some of the military aviation elements of the plot reminded me of the First World War aviation fiction I read when I was younger, which led on to the thought that here in Britain the dead of the First World War are somehow holy, in an oddly secular way. Why?
The war itself has, more or less, passed out of living memory. That's beginning to happen to the Second World War too, but those who are on the upper edge of middle age now were brought up by people who lived through WW2, and even I have heard one or two eyewitness accounts of events from that war. WW1 is mostly symbols now: poppies, of course, and endless rows of white crosses. It's also the war that started the tradition of Remembrance Day, and it left less of a tangible impact on our landscape — it was bombing during WW2, not WW1, that determined my hometown's streetmap. Finally, the most memorable suffering of WW2 was civilian suffering. The dominant event of WW2 is the Holocaust; the dominant event, for Britons at least, of WW1 is the Somme. So the memory of the First World War is more the memory of its soldiers in particular.
Zambot 3 #10
Gaizok definitely knows how to put the 'unusual' into 'cruel and unusual punishment'. This episode was a strange mixture of slightly farcical comedy and the standard Zambot destruction and death, but they mixed reasonably well. Not impressed by the Jin family's rescue efforts, though. It was a bit Operation Eagle Claw.
Passing Shots
- Simoun 23 (spoilers)
So the war's over, and if it stays over this'll be the point where Simoun dumps its limited military aviation elements. But of course it was never primarily about the war in the first place (which brings G Gundam to mind: G pulls a similar trick with its final arc, as it was never primariliy about the Fight in the first place).
- Agent Aika
One of those rare titles (Najica from the same studio comes to mind, as well as Strike Witches) that devalues the pantyshot through overexposure. Though the process is quite comic. Strike Witches made an effort to give each female character distinctive underwear, but Aika's cast, without exception, wear white panties. Does this mean anything?
The story, such as it is, is the wrong way round: it begins with a climax which finishes in space and features a wonderful transforming battleship/submarine/spaceship/deathsatelliteofdoom and then meanders on for a few inconsequential episodes until someone mercifully takes it behind the woodshed and shoots it.
Simoun 22
(spoilers, obviously)
Simoun's battles don't last that long, but they're often well handled, and this one was an example of that. Guragief's 'veteran returning to the cockpit' thing was good, and you can never go terribly far wrong animating a dogfight in which the climactic moment is a sky battleship diving out of the sun.
Those who wish to are invited to draw the available parallels between the situation of the sybillae and various historical Dolchstoßlegenden.
Kemonozume 01
I can't say if the idiosyncratic animation is better -- I wouldn't know -- but it's a nice change, and surprisingly easy on the eyes. What surprised me in this episode was the neat sense of humour it displayed. The final couple of scenes in particular were rather funny, in a dark way.
