Don Quixote Part 2

More plot!
Less slapstick!
More Sancho!
NO LONGER SORROWFUL FACE!

I think I liked part one better.  

Closing out Don Quixote Book 1

I'm just going to close this out. Chapter by chapter is too slow for the style of commentary I do on this blog, and my reading pacing was a mess on this. I was enjoying it, but I wound up rushing it to finish a reading challenge, and got kind of skimmy. Now I've been done most of it for over a month, so I'm trying to blog it from rushed notes. So, DQ Book 1:

1. Is super episodic. More so than some actual serial novels. They just do random stuff for a chapter and it may or may not have any baring on what comes next.

2. Is a Tom and Jerry cartoon. It's just weird slapstick of them getting beat up (usually by goat herds) for like half the book.

3. The only parts anyone every remembers are in the first 50 pages. I dunno, everyone just loses interest after the windmills, I guess.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Doesn't feel fair to give it a numerical rating. Part 2 tomorrow!

"The Four Freedoms" by FDR (1941)

State of the Union: 1941

Bonus: 

What about freedom from autoplaying mid video ads? (I dunno, I'm on Firefox)

Summary: 1. Speech 2. Worship 3. (From) Want 4. (From) Fear

Commentary: 

 it is nevertheless clear that neither France nor Great Britain nor any other nation was aiming at domination of the whole world.

An actual British publication cover circa 1900

I never realized this was part of a State of The Union speech. I also thought it was later than 1940. I knew it was Roosevelt, but for some reason I thought it was from the '60s. I guess I could see Kennedy giving it. The Freedoms only show up for a few hundred words at the very end. Mostly, it's a speech asking Congress to support gearing up for WWII, lend/lease, etc. I don't think they were the main point at all, just the part people would eventually cling to.

 

I guess I should review The Odyssey movie

 Let me start by saying that I think Christopher Nolan is the most overrated director/writer/producer in movies today. Not the worst, just... kind of okay, but treated amazing. 

I will follow that up by saying that it was not even remotely accurate. Like, "loosely based on" would be appropriate. Also, Nolan really wanted us to know he read the Wikipedia pages for The Sea Peoples, Xenia, and Late Bronze Age collapse (we gotta talk about your title case rules, Wikipedia). Seriously, it's like the Netflix thing where you have to repeat yourself 6 times so the people folding laundry in the other room know what's happening. This post would be 100 pages long if I went over all the changes, so let's just go with, "WTF YOU CUT OUT THE NO BODY JOKE!?" and leave it at that.

Several The Odysseys worth of bytes have already been written about the casting. Lupita Nyong'o did fine. Double casting her as non-identical twins was questionable, but she acted well. Black lady as Hellen of Troy not an issue when your cast is multi-racial as a whole. Elliot Page, also non-problematic. Matt Damon ughhhhh. Does not have the gravitas to pull off Odysseus. Tom Holland literally just plays himself. Anne Hathaway, good job. Zendaya worked as this version of Athena, who was not particularly similar to the original, but fine in this version. Robert Pattinson was not having a good day. Usually a fan, but he was just vaguely off here.

For all that, I respect the actual, physical film making that went into it. Practical effects, minimal CGI, dozens of people running around doing stunts, all that stuff. I would rather go see a mediocre "real" movie than whatever green-screen fest Disney is planning to subject us to next. I dunno, soft recommend? Most people aren't as picky as me.

Century of the Common Man by Henry A. Wallace (1942)

 What I was trying to find last week!

Bonus: 

Speech, speech, speech!

Summary: Things are better for everyone when we're free (in the four freedoms way) and can think for ourselves. Now go beat some Nazis.

Commentary: 

 The idea of freedom -- the freedom that we in the United States know and love so well -- is derived from the Bible, with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.

I'm going to try to do the whole Bible next year. I am not sure this is going to hold up.

Through universal education, they can now read and write and form opinions of their own.

Look, it's Liberal Education in one sentence! 

If we were to measure freedom by standards of nutrition, education, and self-government, we might rank the United States and certain nations of Western Europe very high. But this would not be fair to other nations where education has become widespread only in the last 20 years. In many nations, a generation ago, 9 out of 10 of the people could not read or write. 

Like in the US twenty years from now! 

When the freedom-loving people march; when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and sell the produce of their land through their own organizations; when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively; and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them that truth of the real world -- when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead.

But in countries where the ability to read and write has been recently acquired -- mind you, 62% of the world today do not yet know how to read and write. But in those countries where the ability has been recently acquired or where the people have had no long experience in governing themselves on the basis of their own thinking, it is easy for demagogues to arise and prostitute the mind of the common man to their own base ends. Such a demagogue may get financial help from some person of wealth who is unaware of what the end result will be. With this backing, the demagogue may dominate the minds of the people, and, from whatever degree of freedom they have, lead them back into a most degraded slavery. Herr Thyssen, the wealthy German steel man, little realized what he was doing when he gave Hitler enough money to enable him to play on the minds of the German people.

I think one of the questions of our age is, now that education (in some form) is basically a given, how do you convince people that it has value? When everyone has (by force) something, it loses its value. In reality, people need to value a quality education more today, rather than just accepting mediocre the baseline.

The demagogue is the curse of the modern world, and of all the demagogues, the worst are those financed by well-meaning wealthy men who sincerely believe that their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political "it" to change the -- the sign posts and lure the people back into slavery. Unfortunately for the wealthy men who finance movements of this sort, as well as for the people themselves, the successful demagogue is a powerful genie who, when once let out of his bottle, refuses to obey anyone's command. As long as his spell holds, he defies God Himself, and Satan is turned loose on the world.

Alright, I try not to whine about Trump on this blog, but this one speaks for itself.

 The truth is that when the rights of the American people are transgressed, as these rights have been transgressed, the American people will fight with a relentless fury which will drive the ancient Teutonic gods back cowering into their caves. 

 Unless it comes from Americans. Democrats, I'm looking at you too on this one.

We must be especially prepared to stifle the fifth columnists in the United States who will try to sabotage not merely our war material plants but, even more important -- infinitely more important -- our minds.

How do we do this while maintaining freedom?

I don't agree with all of Wallace's speech, but it's well written, and I think it touched on a lot of the themes of this blog.

"Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthurt Miller (1949)

"Tragedy and the Common Man"

 Bonus: 

Not a DoaS fan.

Summary: Normal people can have tragedy too!

Commentary: This is not the essay I was looking for, but it caught my eye. I'd be curious to see how many versions of the NYTimes website are floating around in their archives. Every once in awhile I grab an article and it's still set to the 90s version or whatever.

Not impressed with this one. Miller kind of meanders from one point to another, but never actually goes anywhere with any of them. 

Don Quixote Chapter 17

 Bonus:

It's over!

Summary: DQ charges sheep, gets beat by shepherds, and does the list of warriors thing from the Illiad.

Commentary: I really need to start batching these, or this will take forever.