Parity Violation

So, Markdown seems like a cool enough way to compose text, especially for blogs. From what I read at the site, that is the entire purpose of Markdown. It’s not designed to replace HTML, it’s a small subset of what is possible with HTML, designed for writing. Ideal, I think for blogs.

One thing I should mention is I had some issues getting the meta plug-in to behave with Markdown and Blosxom. You see, without the meta plug-in, Markdown would process all my posts, and the vast majority are written in regular HTML. Though, I guess Markdown can handle in-line HTML, so I’m not sure what that would do… Anyway, instead of taking chances I just used the meta plug-in. The problem was it didn’t work until I renamed the Meta plug-in to 00Meta, so it would load before Markdown.

Basically, each plain text post uses the line

meta-markup:Markdown

in the second line, and this tells Markdown to process it. I originally used meta so I could set the dates of older posts to actually be the date I wrote them ,not the date I copied them onto the server. Something like that.

In case anyone cares, Markdown supports things like ordered lists:

1. This
2. Is
3. A list

and unordered lists

• This
• Is also
• A list

Of course for now I’m just enamored with a new thing, eventually Markdown will just become a tool, rather than something to blog about itself.

So, this should be my first post using Markdown, which is a way to write text files that look more or less like human readable type, and yet converts it to XHTML or HTML 4 via perl plug-in.

The sweet thing about Markdown is that it works nicely with Blosxom and the Meta plug in so I can use markdown for processing my posts… at least my new ones since I have tons of old posts that are clearly in HTML and I’m not going to convert them.

Anyway, I think I could get use to this much more sane way of writing my blog posts, or HTML pages in general. I think perhaps in combination with CSS it could be a fairly valid way of generating web pages.

Five of us watched It’s a Wonderful Life yesterday evening. Amanda and Erin had never seen it, Katie had seen it “800 times” and I had seen it probably ten times or so, but maybe only 4-5 times straight through without commercials. Scott said he’d seen parts before.

Anyway, a great movie of course. Sentimental, perhaps, but never-the-less I still get choked up when Harry says “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”

Seeing the movie makes me think of two parodies/versions. My favorite is David Pogue’s It’s a Wonderful Machine. The official Macworld link no longer works, so I found that link by googling. In this old Macworld column from 1998, a despondent Steve Jobs wishes that he had never invented the Macintosh, and his guardian angel grants his wish, and we enter a world of DOS 25.01 and no CD-ROM drives. Very funny.

The other thing it brings to mind is the fabled SNL “lost ending” in which Uncle Billy remembers what happened to the money and the mob goes to beat up Mr. Potter.

Hey, if you live in Houston and are looking for a good classical CD store – check out Joel’s Classical Shop. It’s located on Bissonet near Weslayan in the shopping center with the Randall’s. He has a pretty good selection of classical CDs, and a ever growing classical music DVD section, including the DTS Rattle/Berlin Mahler Five I’m very tempted to buy.

Plus, Joel knows a lot about classical music so he can give recommendations on a recording often. Granted, you can find pretty much anything on Amazon these days, but I try to frequent brick and mortar stores, at least when it comes to a niche market like classical music.

A group of us went to see Rent last night, at the Angelika – the monday night movie. Several people were fans of the musical/music and by and large they all liked the movie. I was unfamiliar with the musical, though I had heard of it.

I can’t say it did much for me. Musicals, by and large, come down to the music – and I was unimpressed with Rent’s music. Though, I appreciated the occasionaly riffs based on La Boheme. I suppose a song or two was catchy… but overall, I wasn’t impressed. Also, the story didn’t really captivate me. A bunch of poor artist types can’t afford the rent and several of them are sick with AIDS. Maybe there were too many characters.

Rent is of course based on La Boheme, which I love – but it occurs to me that even the story of La Boheme isn’t what captivates me – it’s the music. Opera plots are often implausible or odd but that’s opera – the music makes up for it. In fact, I heard La Boheme on CD many times without having any idea what they were singing about – when I finally heard the Ebony Opera Guild sing it at Miller Outdoor Theatre, I was rather surprised by the context of the songs. (Especially finding out the dramatic music towards the end of Act I, which turns out to be basically Musetta pretending how she hurt her foot.)

So, I guess it came down Rent’s music, which just wasn’t my cup of tea. Before you say I don’t like musicals, let me stop you right there. Here’s a list of musicals I’ve seen/heard/liked.

• The Music Man
• Guys and Dolls
• Jesus Christ Superstar (by far the favorite of this list, though really a “rock opera”)
• Wicked (One of three I’ve seen live, though this was the only one I’ve seen live by a touring production.)
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Chicago

This doesn’t count any of the various Disney animated films, like Beauty and the Beast. I’m also fairly sure I’ve seen Singing in the Rain, and heard parts of “Man of La Mancha.” But I don’t remember much of those.

Anyway, so I’m pretty meh about Rent, though I wonder how much familiarity helps in liking musicals. I know I liked Music Man the first time I heard it (I was in elementary school and they had us watch it in music class) but the others may have grown on me with repeat listenings/viewings. Can’t be sure.

Patty Crowley died last week. She was a codirector of the Christian Family Movement, and most notably a member of the Papal Birth Control Commission (who’s report Pope Paul VI ignored and instead wrote Humanae Vitae, restating the church’s oppositition to birth control). The National Catholic Reporter has the story.

The story of the Birth Control Commission and Patty Crowley and her husband is told in the excellent book, Turning Point, which I recommend. A quote of Patty Crowley’s both mentioned in the above article, and in the book is this. From the NCR article:

During a heated discussion about how the church could save face if it were to allow couples to decide how to limit offspring, Marcelino Zalba, a Spanish Jesuit member of the commission, asked, “What then with the millions we have sent to hell if the rules are relaxed?” Patty immediately responded in what became perhaps her most memorable quote. “Fr. Zalba, she said, do you really believe God has carried out all your orders?”