This is an image of most of the Orion Constellation. It is without a doubt the most recognizable constellation in the night sky. Everyone knows the Big Dipper, but most can’t find it without a lot of work. Orion blazes in the sky; there is no missing it.

And I hate it. I go outside most nights and look at the stars—even when I don’t go out during the day. And Orion is always there. It taunts me. Not the whole thing; just the belt. It is pretty close to a straight line. But it isn’t quite straight. Aesthetically, I find it aggravating. And it brings out my mostly latent obsessive-compulsive behavior. It needs to be fixed and yet I am powerless to do anything.

Orion is also a useless constellation. It doesn’t tell me anything about the rest of the night sky. It just sets there daring me to adjust its belt. Compare it to the Big Dipper, which is responsible for all of my star gazing knowledge. I know where three stars are thanks to it. If you follow the handle, the first bright star you come to will be Arcturus. I remember this because I follow the arc of the dipper to Arcturus. Following along further, you come to Spica. For whatever strange reason, I imagine the arc ending in a spike. And perhaps most useful of all: if you follow the front edge of dipper up, you will come to Polaris or the “North Star.”

You could use this knowledge to navigate by, but I never have. I always figure it’s easier to pull over and ask someone. But it is very useful in romantic encounters. And my knowledge level seems optimal. Most women find it charming when a man points out two or three stars. More than that makes them feel that there may be a quiz at the end of the evening.

So there you have it: two constellations, three stars, and my nightly struggles with OCD.

Afterword

I absolutely hate this song:

It isn’t that I don’t like Vincent van Gogh, although he is not exactly a favorite of mine. And it isn’t that I don’t like Don McLean, because he definitely had his moments. But this is sentimental crap. Just because van Gogh was a great artist does not mean that he was some great guy. He wasn’t trying to set us free. He was trying to sell some paintings. What most bugs me about the song is the last line, “They’re not listing still, perhaps they never will.” Oh yeah, coming a hundred years after van Gogh when the artist’s paintings sell for millions, Don McLean makes a bold claim about how “they” (that is: those idiots who are not Don McLean) will never understand him. As van Gogh would say, “Oy vey!”

This is so much better:

Antonin Scalia is 77 today. There are other people born today who have made the world better, like the great American composer Carl Ruggles. Scalia has made it worse—much worse. But I can’t get past the man today.

On one hand, Scalia is a proud iconoclast. I’m an iconoclast. I love iconoclasts. But on the other hand, Scalia is evil. Like Hitler, he combines iconoclasticism with villainy. And that is always a recipe for disaster when such a person gets power. And Scalia sadly has power and has had the annoying tendencies to outlive Hitler by 21 years (minus 10 days). (That’s right: I’m counting the days.)

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with conservatives on the court. There are 8 of them on the current Supreme Court and I’m fine with 3 of them. And 2 more are not totally reprehensible. Unfortunately for Scalia, he is a member of the Totally Reprehensible Three (TR3). I can’t decide if he is worse than Alito, but shocking though it may seem, he is certainly worse than Thomas. Thomas at least is fairly consistent. I don’t agree with where he’s coming from but I at least understand it. I don’t have a good take on Alito, because he hasn’t been there that long. He is, however, clearly a racist and sexist asshole. Sadly, that doesn’t really say much about how he stacks up in the TR3.

In the old days, Scalia had a brilliant mind. But no more! All he has to offer now is arrogance and abuse. He seems to stay on the court primarily to continue his long running protest against modernity.

Corey Robin explains Scalia well in his three part series on the colorful judge:

I don’t want to think about the man. I am just counting the days before he has a massive stroke. But I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Dying would be a kind thing to do for our country. Scalia doesn’t do kind.

Afterword

A salve for our woes:

Update (11 March 2013 7:48 pm)

I found this comment by Alex Bailin to Corey Robin’s review of American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the London Review of Books. It gets more at my thinking regarding Scalia than Robin’s:

And that is what I find so troubling with Scalia. He decides what he thinks and then comes up with something to justify it. He may have had a brilliant mind but he was never a brilliant jurist.

I finally got a chance to see Django Unchained without even indirectly putting any money in Quentin Tarantino’s pocket. That’s very important to me, because as much as I think that Tarantino is a very talented guy who at times makes fine movies, I am also convinced that he is a total dick—symbolic of everything that is wrong with Hollywood as an institution.

The first half of the film is very good. I don’t see what the big deal was about racism. Tarantino’s use of the word “nigger” is more appropriate here than it ever was in any of his other films. As for the content, it is “Tarantino does the antebellum south.” With a notable exception that I will discuss in a moment, the film is a fantasy. And what’s more, the portrayal of the slaves in generally fairly accurate. It is a welcome salve after the “We jus’ loves bein’ slaves” of Gone With the Wind. And Tarantino does a good job of making each slave an individual rather than a representative of a class.

If there is a problem here, it is with the whites, who seem like a bunch of yahoos created by a man whose only knowledge of the south comes from watching Hee Haw as a kid. Still, I can justify it. We do tend to see only the whites who are most vested in the slave system. But we know from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass that not all whites on the slave farm were hate-filled psychopaths.

The only problem with the first half of the film is that it uses a number of flashbacks to establish Django’s character. These scenes are distinctly realistic. And they are jarring compared to the main narrative that is full fantasy. They remind the viewer that the subject is no joke—there were real people suffering real torture and real lifelong servitude. And this is a real buzz kill when you’re just trying to watch a fun western where the evil slaveholders get their due. I’m afraid that their inclusion in the film is indicative of the problems that Tarantino has understanding real life. He probably put those scenes in the film because he didn’t want to be attacked for making light of the subject. But is just made it worse. This is not Schindler’s List; such a film could be made, but certainly not by Tarantino.

The second half of the film is where it all falls apart. It moves from fantasy to brainless action movie. Characters act in ways that are determined entirely by the dictates of the plot rather than their actions up to that point. What’s more, it all gets very predictable. And boring. I think that Tarantino is very often confused. He thinks he’s Sam Peckinpah when he’s really more Michael Arndt. And the less talking, the more boring his films are. Oh: the film is also about an hour too long.

But Django Unchained is not a racist movie. It is a Quentin Tarantino movie. And that means a whole lot: both good and bad.

Afterword

One thing that really struck me in the first half of the film was the way that the heroes talked about playing a part in real life. This reminded me of the commode story from Reservoir Dogs, where the undercover cop has to learn a script to use in his work. We get the same thing here. It is interesting, because I think there is a lot of truth to this. In fact, Marlon Brando used to say that there was no big deal about acting—everyone did it everyday in real life.