Speaking of Poe, to-day represents the bicentennial of his birth.

Yester-day, I received a copy of The Call of Cthulhu (2005), which I watched this morning.

I come at this movie from the perspective of one who has read all or most of the fiction by HP Lovecraft, but actually liked only one of his pieces (The Rats in the Walls, Weird Tales, March 1924). I read Lovecraft's work largely because of its cultural significance; and especially, in particular, because it informs some work that I do admire (for example, Michael Shea's brilliant story, The Autopsy[1]).

Most films based upon Lovecraft's work, certainly every other Lovecraft film that I've seen, take great liberties with the material. Call of Cthulhu works sincerely to be faithful, and its makers had the clever idea of trying to give this film the look-and-feel that it would have had, had it been made shortly after the story was published — The Call of Cthulhu (2005) is a black-and-white, silent film.

And my over-all evaluation of it is very positive. This film will be enjoyed by most fans of HP Lovecraft, and by most admirers of horror films from the silent era. It will also appeal to those who enjoy films that are well made on extremely tight budgets.

I have some quibbles and qualms. The acting is too naturalistic; part of what makes classic horror films work is the very unnaturalistic acting in them, and it would have been better if the acting had captured the look-and-feel of 1926 or '7. The costuming doesn't look authentic when the men are in suits, for the simple reason that the collars are too low on their necks for the periods in which scenes are set. I reälize (from watching the extra features on the DVD) that it was terribly hot and uncomfortable when most of these scenes were filmed; but, while that and budgetary constraints might excuse the flaw, a flaw it remains. The direction and cinematography gives most of the film a look that is probably too modern; though there is something of an extra burden for the audience in the cinematography of the typical film of the silent era, this film needed either greater contrast, or the grey-scale of someone such as Carl Theodor Dreyer. While montage is used to good effect in this film, it is a bit anachronistic; it was considered avant-garde into the sound era. And, while I appreciated that text (title cards and what-not) did not linger as if each member of the audience had to sound out the words, the happy speed wasn't very authentic. Cthulhu probably would have worked better as drawn and painted animation, and in any case his neck is probably a bit too long and certainly far too thin. And, while the use of green screen was, through most of the film, remarkably adept, given the budget, it was rather evident in some of the swamp scenes.

But my recommendation is that the reader nod at these qualms and quibbles, and watch the film in spite of them. It's almost surely worth 47 minutes of your time.

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[1] The Autopsy first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec 1980. It has since been reprinted at least a dozen times, including in Dark Descent 1: The Colour of Evil (Hartwell, ed; 1990) and in Aliens Among Us (Dann & Dozois, ed; 2000).

Spybot-Search&Destroy produced a false positive yester-day. It notified me that KHALMNPR.EXE was a Trojan horse program. In fact, KHALMNPR.EXE is a basically benign program from Logitech.

The Spybot-S&D folk know about this problem, but are not planning to effect a correction until Wednesday. If you've already let Spybot-S&D effect the ostensible repair, you should be able to reverse that using Spybot-S&D; you can also reïnstall the Logitech software.

I am still fighting the flu that I reported here on the 7th. The symptoms have varied somewhat, and have generally been less during my waking hours than when I sleep. Most days have seemed to represent gradual improvement, but this morning was very wretched. My throat was especially sore and it hurt quite a lot to swallow. I had other symptoms, typical of a flu: headache, fever, sinus and nasal congestion, and body aches.

Last night, I got some saline solution with which to flush my sinuses. Because I wanted to do that, instead of just to moisturize my nasal passages, I needed an ærosol. At the Hillcrest CVS/pharmacy, the only ærosol saline with the right sort of nozzle for spraying the stuff into one's nose was mentholated. I cannot say that I enjoyed the experience of a mentholated solution in my sinuses.

Also, the can had some blatting on it about homeopathic principles. I was especially amused by the note that, since the ostensible curatives were only present in homeopathic amounts, there would be no side effects. Indeed. I figure that, because of the hydrological cycle, if homeopathic principles were correct, then we'd all be in perfect health.

As I was buying one thing of saline to spray in my nose, it occurred to me to buy some saline for my mouse first-aid kit. Fortunately, I didn't need a special nozzle for that.

Perhaps we should demand an apology on this score from Al Gore. After all, he told us that he took the initiative in creating the Internet.[1]

[Up-Date (13 Jan): I was informed by Gaal, in a comment to this entry, that the Times had somehow fabricated this story. (The BBC presenting the story as if it were their own research, but the chances that they would have independently fabricated the same details are slim indeed. So the Times has been caught-out in one way, and the BBC in another.) Meanwhile, the BBC story has been significantly edited, so that the sentence quoted above no longer appears, and we are instead told

A recent study by American research firm Gartner suggested that IT now causes two percent of global emissions.

]

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[1]Note that Snopes.com demonstrates that Al Gore did not claim to have invented the Internet. But what Gore did claim (and they even quote this) was

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Snopes, which can be very much about spin rather than clarity when it is their ox that is about to be, er, stabbed with a horn, wants to claim that there's room for debate about whether his claim of creätion is justified, because the Internet is not a homogenous entity and didn't spring into being at once. Well, not much in this world is homogenous and static, but it is simply disingenuous to claim to have taken the initiative in creäting something that already existed because one pushed to fund its further development.

These days, with the weather colder and often wetter, when out-of-doors I generally wear my Peterman duster and my Jaxon nubuck leather safari hat. Throw-in the L.L Bean Wellington boots, and you have what the Woman of Interest calls my mouse-boy outfit. (I am not, never have been, and never plan to be a cowboy, but I have had mice and plan again to have mice.)

Meanwhile, I still have the Wolverinesque sideburns.

To-day, I was walking past the Hillcrest CVS/pharmacy, with the sideburns, duster, and hat (but wearing Skecher's trainers). A couple of fellows, in all seriousness, asked me if I were Amish. I told them that I was not, but one said to the other He's one of those. and asked me what I was. I'm an atheist. The fellow seemed to take that as confirmation of what he'd thought. Perhaps he uses an odd taxonomy.

Here's an example of a wretched journalistic practice:

One should not begin with a news story with a lie, and then correct it. The head-line here doesn't refer to a post-war record. A head-line is often the only part of the story read, and almost always the first part of the story read. So people with no sense of history — because their educators in the school system and in the main-stream media don't impart one to them — are filled with anxiety and rage. The emotional effect lingers even after the correction is given, and some never get the correction.

The economic news has been bad, but it simply doesn't compare to that of the Great Depression — which itself shouldn't be seen as necessarily our worse down-turn. (Those who uncritically presume that it was should look into the Depression of 1837.)

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One should, BTW, be careful to distinguish amongst different statistics:

• the number of jobs lost,
• the unemployment rate,
• the employment rate,
• changes in these rates.

Note that the article acknowledges that the unemployment rate is not at a post-war high; it has, rather, climbed faster than at any time previous in the post-war period. The unemployment rate itself was worse at the end of the kinder, gentler Administration of GHW Bush.

Second, when there is job creätion as well as job loss, people may lose jobs but spend relatively little time unemployed. (Being dismissed from a job is still a stressful experience for most people, but not necessarily equivalent to being materially impoverished.)

Finally, the unemployment rate is not simply the complement of the employment rate. The unemployment rate, which tries to measure the number people who are seeking employment and unable to find it, is a fairly junky statistic. On the one hand, it doesn't count people who would choose to work if the were offered a job, but who have just given-up hope of finding one; and it doesn't count people who are under-employed, wanting full-time jobs but only able to secure part-time employment. On the other hand, it does count people who aren't sincerely seeking employment, but are going through the motions of seeking a job so that they can continue to collect benefits from programmes that require them to seek employment. The employment rate is simply the percentage of people of working age who have jobs. It has problems — including that it counts under-employed people — but it's less junky that the unemployment rate.

I managed to scald the lower front of my right thigh to-day.

Most of the length of the hose to my shower-head was made of three concentric layers: an inner-most layer of a relatively soft plastic; a middle layer of plastic mesh, apparently designed to keep the inner layer from expanding outwards; and an outer-most layer, apparently designed to protect the inner two layers and to help the middle layer contain the inner-most layer. Some weeks ago, the outer layer started to fail near the shower-head, where the hose was most stressed. Then the middle layer began to fail. The inner-most layer began to bulge in the area of failure, like something out of a Hal Roach comedy.

Relatively early in this process of decline, I stopped at the Hillcrest Ace Hardware and bought a new hose. But I decided to keep using the old hose until I I expected it to actually rupture. Yester-day, I told the Woman of Interest that I thought that I should replace the hose before my next shower.

But, to-day, I procrastinated, not wanting to delay my shower. Well, as you anticipate, the hose ruptured. In fact, it ruptured as I was rinsing the shower stall with the hottest water that I can get from the tap, which is really quite hot in my apartment. I got sprayed various places, but the part that hurts most noticeably is that part of my thigh.

I guess that I should have got a flu shot earlier. In any case, the minor congestion and sore throat of yester-day is clearly flu to-day. The throat is much worse, with the lymph nodes in my neck sore and swollen, and I have a fever. I hope that this illness is something that I can throw-off within a day or so.

One of the significant gaps in my classic horror movie collection has been that I haven't had a good copy of the Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). Because this movie has slipped into the public domain, there are many different editions, which raises the obvious question of which one should get.

Over at Silent Era they have a review of various editions. They are quite certain that the version to get is the 2007 edition from Image Entertainment.

However, while the 2007 edition includes something like 40 seconds of footage not found in the 1999 edition from Image Entertainment, the the 2007 edition omits about 12 second of footage that is in the 1999 edition.

I ordered a copy of the 2007 edition, but growled and fretted about those 12 seconds. Finally, in the context of the reviewer having pin-pointed where the missing footage would go, I decided to get also a copy of the 1999 edition. I am going to rip these two DVDs, splice those twelve seconds from one file into the other, and burn a new DVD from that.

I'm not sure just what I'll do about the sound-track — I'll probably just let it go silent during the intervals from the 1999 edition.