Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

4 January 2004

Year End: Somethings Other

I suppose I did more than watch movies in 2003.

I liked The Jayhawks' Rainy Day Music, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, and the new albums by the Black Keys and Fountains of Wayne. I dug the White Stripes live at the Warfield — Jack White always puts on a good show.

I enjoyed the documentary-in-book-form about Saturday Night Live called Live from New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller and the not-so-recent novels Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker and Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. I enjoyed the even-less-recent short story collections Will You Please Be Quiet Please by Raymond Carver and The Stories of John Cheever, which I've not yet finished.

On TV I watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart pretty much daily, but the only primetime television show that I've seen lately is the new Fox series Arrested Development, which makes me laugh out loud. I'm not sure if they can keep up the pace, but so far it's like a Wes Anderson movie, only more manic, and it's episodic in a way that only TV shows are.

The discovery of the year for me, though, may be Internet weblogs. It's strange, because you start to feel like you know something about the authors of these blogs, even though you've never met them. Even my friends' blogs tell me things about them that I didn't know until they started gibber-jabbering electronically.

Three weblogs in particular are daily must-reads for me, although I've never met their authors in person. Rather than give inadequate descriptions of their sites, I encourage you to read them for yourself:

filmjourney.org by Doug Cummings,
Long Pauses by Darren Hughes,
and the blog by James Tata.

Thank you all for pointing me to books, movies, music, and articles that I never would have found on my own. And thank you for your insight.

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