See you on the TV, call you every day,

Fly across the blogwatch just to let you get your way…

(I offer this song free to anyone [sister?] who wants an example of RPS in pop culture. My apologies if she is already on it.)

The Agitator: “Police are increasingly going to homes with agents from regulatory agents under the guise of ‘code inspections.’ Once inside, they then search for criminal misconduct. The process negates the need for a search warrant because it’s allegedly a regulatory inspection, not a police search.”

Alias Clio: Response to my woman-as-icon posts. A powerful post about the “trap of iconization”–I think this is totally true, but what I posted about is also true; and so anyone who finds himself (I think mostly it will be “himself”–?) drawn to either rejection or embrace of woman-as-icon should consider the ways in which this feminine iconicity is true and the ways in which it’s false and hurtful.

In other words, if you’re following this discussion at all, Clio’s post is vastly worth your time. …Comments also worth reading, especially since this is a good example of a discussion in which everyone is agreeing with everyone else but choosing different examples. So if you think either Clio’s post or mine is simply missing something, check out her comments.

The intermittently-adorable Mickey Kaus on Maggie Gyllenhaal (scroll, y’all). I can’t completely agree–I thought she was hot sauce like Tabasco in the excellent 1/3 of Secretary, and forgave the movie 1/3, though unfortunately the last third was the ending of the movie–but, yeah.

Mmmusing: “…This creates a special kind of conflict in the directionally-oriented structures of Western music. The music tells us we’re going forward towards something, but our minds may get stuck in particular moments that have already passed.” Via About Last Night. Ratty, read this! Tell me what you think! (…No, I’m totally not above exploiting my friends.)

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto: Hit & Run links to this story of troops bonding with their robots, and says, “The piece raises a lot of questions about the increasingly blurry lines that separate the human from the machine.”

I’m skeptical of that, in part because I’ve heard vets talk about the troops’ pet cat, etc., and they really didn’t seem to think that loving that cat like crazy blurred the lines between feline and human. Like, at all. I think soldiers are probably capable of figuring out that the robot is not a person. (I’m pretty sure the strong emotional responses to tests that would blow up robots described in the article, for example, would apply to the troops’ pet furry beasties as well. And animals have been awarded medals, if memory serves. Doesn’t mean soldiers who cuddle kittens think cats are people.) …You could either take this as my statement that robots are normal, or my statement that pets are weird. (I still miss my old dead horrible psycho cat.)

Unqualified Offerings, unsurprisingly, has the best quote.

Is it Faulkner, or is it Memorex? Acecakes in awesomesauce. Via About Last Night. I scored only 58%, despite actually recognizing one WF quote. More on him in a bit.

Top 25 Noir Films via ditto. “And I live in New York, New York the city that never shuts up….”

Churches in the Great War. Via Daniel Mitsui.

And in last place, Grindhouse-style posters for classic movies. ZOMG, more awesome than your mind can possibly handle. The colossal squid of awesome movie-poster-parody links.