A comment about explicit sex

Sliding slowly back into posting again. I'm just under two weeks behind on my Friends List and came across the introduction Neil Gaiman wrote for one of the collected volumes of Reed Waller and Kate Worley's "Omaha," The Cat Dancer. This is the concluding paragraph:

Omaha The Cat Dancer is a soap opera, but it's drama, not melodrama; it is a funny animal comic, but the funny animals are real people; and it's neither erotica nor pornography -- simply a story in which the virtual cameras continue to roll while people take their clothes off and make love (just as they do in the world you and I inhabit) -- delineated with an unblinking charm which has the odd effect (for me, at least) of making one wonder where all the sex has gone in the other fictions one reads or hears or sees...

Roger Ebert's book on movie cliches points out that 95% of the sex scenes in big-budget films show the first time that the characters involved have sex together. One of the virtues of "Omaha" which is implicit in Gaiman's assessment above is that the acts depicted therein are more likely to be between--or, occasionally, among--characters who have long-standing relationships. (As the series went along and the status quo was shaken, this was less true--a lot of scenes showed new partnerships forming. But for the central relationship of the story--Omaha and Chuck--I don't think we ever saw their first time together, even though we saw several flashbacks to early points in their love affair, including their first date.) This not-looking-away after the first time was very important to the story, because it underscored that sex is a continuing part of the lives of humans and doesn't go away after the First Encounter.

Over the NYRSF Work Weekend last week, one of the people in attendance explained to all assembled that in his experience, most of the explicit or semi-explicit sex scenes in novels are superfluous--that the same narrative effect is achieved by leaving things to the reader's imaginations. "Omaha" proved, again and again, that character, plot, mood, all the aspects of story are all as much at play in sex as in any other human activity.

A note on the third Harry Potter movie

As noted in my previous post, I'm working through a two-week backlog of Friends Lists posts, and a post from negativeq about the film helped me realize one thing that I quite liked about the film but which might be off-putting to many viewers.

nellorat said that she saw a number of reviews which said the film was pitched completely at the cogniscenti, that only people who had read the book could possibly understand what was going on. We have a solid counterexample of that in our own family; supergee, who has read none of the novels, had no problem at all following the third film. However, I do agree that the film moves very quickly from point to point and often leaves it to the viewer to make significant connections. The incluing is done at a ferocious clip, and people who aren't familiar with the

This does make me wonder how anyone is ever going to make an even remotely satisfying version of Order of the Phoenix. The pre-Hogwarts section alone--the first two hundred or so pages of the American version of the novel--could easily take two hours of film to handle properly. Maybe a series of films per novel, the Kill Bill of the wizardly world? I'm not as worried about the adaptation of Goblet of Fire; the plot in that is more bloated and less intricate, and I suspect it will compress down to a satisfying 150-180 minutes. But Order of the Phoenix--man, a lot happens in that, and almost all of it is important....

(As to things I missed from the book: I hadn't noticed until sarah_ovenall mentioned it, but, yes, the shape of Harry's petronus isn't explained, and that's a shame. A bigger shame is not explaining the origin of the Maurader's Map. Either of these would have taken only a sentence or two from an appropriate character and would have, imho, added significantly to the film's development of the theme of Harry's deep-rooted connection to his father. But the film wasn't a poor one for those gaps, and otherwise I thought that the handling of the material for adaptation was very skillful. I wasn't sad to see Quidditch's role tremendously reduced, although Prisoner is the first of the novels in which Rowling can be seen to understand exactly how little sense the rules of Quidditch make. I also agree with Sarah's observation that the main characters spend far too much time in muggle street-clothes and not enough in their classroom robes.)

Both of the Sides are the Same

Last night, I was trying to think of ways in which Bill Clinton (and Al Gore as his right-hand man) were on the same moral level as Rutherford Bush and Dick Cheney. Specifically, I was trying to remember if Clinton ever openly supported a military coup against a democratically elected leader of a nation. Bush has done so twice since Sept. 11th, in Venezuela and in Haiti, and possibly other times I'm not thinking of.

I suppose that with a deep stretch, one could view USA/NATO support for the Kosovars against the Serbian government could be counted that way, but that's really pushing it. And Clinton stumbled into the wrong side of the worst genocide of the 1990s, when the US ended up providing support to the refugee camps after Rwanda, which were run by included the architects of the genocide.

Anything else?

Rat update

The bad:

I believe that supergee has already posted the news that Dr. Butch's cancer is inoperable. Right now, he's in no evident pain or even reduced facilities, although it would be nice to know whether progress is being made on the whole breeding endeavor. We have no idea how long he has; I know he'll make the most of it.

The good:

Aimee Semple's foot is doing fine. She has had no post-surgical probelms and had the suture taken out today with a minimum of complaint. The biopsy is back on her growth, and it's definitely not cancer.

Isabella, Aimee's mama-moodle, is also doing great--the swelling from the kidney infection is tremendously reduced, and Dr. Gross is optimistic that the antibiotic shot she received today will be all she needs. (She'll get a followup inspection next week just to be sure.) And their mite problem seems to be on the run at this point; one more treatment at the end of this week and with luck all of the rats will again be mite-free.

This good news almost counterbalances the fact that our hot water heater died yesterday morning, spewing several gallons of water in the file room and necessitating an expensive replacement. Almost, kinda.

Oh, and we have a poltergeist; today two different pictures have fallen off walls in rooms I was not in.