(no subject)

I saw "The Dark Knight," and it was really dark and really good, and Heath Ledger was as amazing on-screen as every review says he is, and then I just laughed non-stop for five minutes, after reading this WSJ op-ed from the wacky reality of Andrew Klavan :

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

This totally made me think of that SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skit, where Matthew Perry as Michael Keaton keeps buzzing in with the only reply "I AM BATMAN." Except with Bush doing that.

oui, some photos

the reason Fionn is grinning in anticipation is
( behind the cut )

theophile also took this photo of me and Fionn in our new garden:



here he is as a sort of Mephisophelian-looking father figure


and this was a ruined castle nearby that we checked out, although it had absolutely nothing on the castle ruins we found deep in the woods in the Czech Republic.

BONUS PHOTO:

step one: you put Fionn in a box...