Morgie's Lost Writings

Come on, admit it. You do it too, don't you? I'm convinced that everyone googles themselves at one time or another. I probably do it at least a couple of times a year. I search on Morgana, the handle under which I used to freelance for Computer Games Strategy Plus as well as under which I wrote reviews and walkthrus to upload to the Gamers' Forum on CompuServe. It was also my handle for sysoping in some of the TEG forums on CIS. I also search on Morgie, a short form of that handle someone gave me as a nickname (amusing to have a nickname of a nickname), and of course, I search on my real name in its various permutations.

When I search on Morgana, I'm feeling nostalgic about my hard core gaming days and I can take a bit of a stumble down memory lane as my alter ego lives on in acknowledgements on user created DOOM and Heretic levels here, here, and here, a Gamers' Forum transcript of a conference with Origin around the time Ultima 8: Pagan was about to be released, and the once famous-in-Gamers' Lehua's Myst EndGamers Wall of Honor. Some of my gaming-related writings are still available on the web as well. My walkthru of a 1990s era graphic adventure games, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within from Sierra is available on a couple of web sites, although this appears to be the non-revised version and the original archive had several illustrations that apparently have not been preserved. My solution to the turtle bones puzzle in The Dig, a graphic adventure from LucasArts, is available too. Until recently I was also able to find my walkthru for The Dig on the web. My hint file for getting past the search light puzzle in Noctropolis from Electronic Arts also survived. I had uploaded these only to the CIS Gamers' Forum and I note that none of the sites to which I've linked here ever asked my permission to put these files up, nor did any of the folks who decided to upload them. I would have appreciated the courtesy of a request for permission which is why I put a copyright notice on the files. But I forgive everyone -- for the simple reason that these are now the only copies I can find of these pieces.

It's surprising to me that these are available after all this time and I was lucky to be able to capture copies. When I think back to all the work I put into these, it's nice to know they had some staying power. I did most of my gaming-related writing in or around 1995, and the games I wrote about are the sort that you have to use a program like DOSBOX to run now. The hint files have likely outlasted the useful life of the games, for the most part.

I'd dutifully copied all of my collected gaming works from computer to computer every time I upgraded for years, but I must have made the determination at some point to let my gaming material go. Maybe when I was making a rather half-hearted attempt to become a writer of literary fiction. Maybe when I was pregnant. I can't now recall, but I regret having lost them.

I know it is a long shot, but if anyone out there from the old CIS days or otherwise still has any of my stuff, please drop a line and let me know as I'd love to get copies. I found a hard copy of my review of Merchant Prince, but I am missing: walkthrus of Ripper (this was a huge document as I recall and was uploaded to CompuServe in two archives, I believe it also had accompanying graphics files) and Johnny Mnemonic, and reviews of Dreamweb, Noctropolis, Sim Health (as I recall this one, I did it in play form with the characters being Hillary and Bill Clinton), Millenium Auction, Bad Mojo and Syndicate. If there were others, I'm now not recalling what they were. But I'd love to be reunited with any or all of them, so if you can help please let me know and I'll be your best friend.

Pinky swear.

**Morgana**

Is it Smart to Vote Dumb?

Since when is being smart a bad thing?

To hear the Republicans talk, the last thing we want is someone who is "professorial" or "academic" running the country. Instead, we should have someone who is as average as Joe the Plumber, someone "real" Americans (i.e., not those who do notoriously well in school like the Jews and the Asians) can relate to because he isn't smarter than we are. In fact, he's not too smart at all. And his VP pick is dumber than a post but supposedly someone you'd want to have a beer with. Personally, I'd rather have a beer with someone really bright who would have farther to fall if he or she ended up drunk. Then at least the conversation would still be average, rather than stupid.

As best I can tell, this anti-intellectualism spate seems to dovetail with the general GOP fear-mongering. It can't be that they really think McCain, with his houses and cars and spousal millions isn't "elite." The argument seems to be: at least McCain isn't threatening. We don't have to worry that he'll do something that's too hard for us to understand. That he'll pull a fast one on us because we can't keep up. That he'll trick us, and take advantage of us -- that we have to listen carefully to his words because he's so smart we can be assured he'll choose his carefully and we might be being lied to without even realizing it.

Tell you what. I'm with Jon Stewart on this one. I won't vote for someone for President unless I think he or she is as smart as I am or smarter, or if that's not possible, at least pretty close. Why would doing otherwise be a good idea? Although Forrest Gump and Chauncey Gardner may be able to muddle through and come out on top, why would it make sense in anything other than fiction and satire to take such a risk? We had a President for the last eight years to whom Paul Begala referred as a "high functioning moron" on national television. And look where it got us.

It's unfortunate that people of "average" intelligence aren't as wowed by intellectual brilliance as people of average looks are of exceptional physical beauty. It just isn't valued in the same way, even though it is arguably more important to the survival of the species. By a lot. It's sad and more than a little disturbing to think that being an intellectual, i.e., someone who has a high degree of intelligence and uses it, is something so many people in this country consider a negative.

I admit I may have been in denial about how strong the tradition of anti-intellectualism is in this country, and not only on a political level. I have put Richard Hoftstadter's book on this subject on my reading list; just reading the reviews is enlightening. I've come across in my own career a belief that where you go to school isn't important, that how smart you are isn't important, it's how practical you are and how well you solve problems and interact with people that is important. This seems to me a false dichotomy: either someone is smart and well-educated or a practical thinking problem solver and has people skills, but not both. In reality, it simply serves the purpose of organizations not to have critical thinkers doing that critical thinking thing they do that sets the boat a'rocking, so intellectualism becomes devalued.

I accept that there are many kinds of intelligence and that all have value. A President of the United States requires multiple types of intelligence to be effective. It's rare, though, in my experience, to find an exceptionally smart and well educated-person who, on balance, doesn't have better ability to think practically and to solve problems than someone who isn't smart and well-educated. I also think a curious, open mind is more likely to be an understanding and empathetic mind. Since the President's job is to represent all of the people, not just those who voted for him or her, understanding and empathy should not be underestimated.

It's no wonder that public education in this country is in a shambles when our leaders don't value intellectualism. If Obama wins, at least there's a hope that being smart will be cool.

And I'll go out and buy some new shades.

**Morgana**

Was Dorothy a Slytherin?

From about midway through my first pregnancy until a few months ago, a period of nearly five years, I read almost nothing unrelated to work unless it involved pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or child care. This was extremely unusual for me. My first choice for pleasure reading is generally literary fiction or nonfiction involving theoretical or abstract concepts. But I found myself unable to concentrate enough to lose myself appropriately in a novel, and unable to wrap my brain around anything requiring thinking in abstractions. At first I attributed this to preoccupation with the pregnancy, then to hormones, and finally, after the first birth and even more after the second, to sheer exhaustion. When it continued to my youngest's second birthday, I wondered whether having babies had permanently damaged my brain. Then one day a few months ago, to my amazement and delight, I discovered that the reading (and thinking) ability I thought had been lost had all come back and actually seemed even sharper than before. Perhaps it's true that "mommy brain" is actually a good thing.

During those lean reading years, the one exception was the Harry Potter series. I hadn't read these books, though of course, since I don't live under a rock, I'd heard about them. I have adult reader friends who loved them, and whose opinions I generally respect though they have different tastes. Most are genre fiction readers, mysteries or science fiction. With a few exceptions in the fantasy realm, that isn't really my thing. But I thought the books would be easy reads and I couldn't read anything else, so I picked the first one up in 2005 around the time Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. I read the entire series through Half-Blood Prince, becoming something of a fan in the process. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, I read it pretty much in a couple of sittings, then I started the series over and read the whole thing again. And then I read it a third time. I probably would have read it a fourth time had I not discovered His Dark Materials when I was looking for a movie to watch on pay per view and ended up with The Golden Compass. (I found the movie unintelligible having no knowledge of the books, but was intrigued, read the books, and found them so interesting I ended up, after discovering my reading ability had returned, wanting to learn about the science underlying the fiction. Hence my recent readings in cosmology, astronomy and physics.)

Let me be clear. I'm not saying Harry Potter is great literature. But I still enjoyed it, and it hit the spot when I couldn't concentrate on anything that left too much unsaid. I could even find things to enjoy in the writing. I remember saying "Wow" aloud when I finished reading the confrontation scene between Harry and Voldemort in The Goblet of Fire. And the light-speed pacing of the Battle of Hogwarts scene seemed exactly right. (I also remember cringing every time a character was embarrassed. It seems Rowling could only show this through the character turning red, pink, blushing, or some other version of color flooding to their cheeks, and it often seemed this was happening every other page or so.)

Harry Potter has been criticized for, among other things, being derivative, and it's fairly hard to miss the debt the series owes to other epic fantasy tales of good versus evil. They're apparent at the highest level, as well as in the detail. At a 3000 foot level, the plot of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars movies and Harry Potter can all be summarized as: an orphaned (seemingly or truly) anti-hero (Frodo, Luke, Harry) is thrust into a situation in which he becomes the world’s redeemer from ultimate evil (Sauron, the Emperor, Voldemort), coached by an aged and powerful sage (Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Yoda, Dumbledore). At ground level, just as one example, the One Ring of Tolkien's trilogy and Slytherin’s locket-as-horcrux both cause negative personality changes in the wearer, are physical burdens far greater than their size, and display human-like willfulness.

But then, I challenge anyone to find a wholly original story anywhere. Being derivative, in and of itself, isn't something that should necessarily equate with bad. To my mind, a lot depends on how well the derivation is done; whether it offers anything new or just rehashes that which it is derived from, and whether it has any hint of self-awareness when it ventures into derived territory. Clueless is Emma, West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet, and Ulysses is The Odyssey but not because their authors obliviously thought they were the first to tell these stories.

The next time I read Harry Potter, likely when my oldest is old enough to enjoy having them read aloud, I'll try to remind myself to look for nods to its progenitors in the writing. I can say now, though, that I think Harry Potter does offer some new things, one of which was completely unexpected -- a new way of looking at The Wizard of Oz.

As I was reading through Harry Potter the third time, I also happened to be reading The Wizard of Oz to my oldest son. Although I've seen the movie countless times, it must have been thirty years since I'd last read the book. I don't often hear adults talking about rereading Oz the way they'll talk about rereading LOTR, the Narnia series (which I never read as a child and couldn't get into as an adult), or even Le Petit Prince. Either it doesn't compel rereading, or it's not cool to admit to.

Reading Oz again after all that time close on the heels of three jaunts through the Potter books, I identified a few obvious parallels. First, the witches in both stories can travel by disappearing ("disapparating") and reappearing ("reapparating"), and in both stories doing so requires a specific physical action of turning the body in a circle on the spot. Second, both protagonists, Dorothy and Harry, are protected through a "mark" on their foreheads originating in love. Dorothy bears the good witch of the North's kiss; Harry, the scar Voldemort razed into his forehead when Lily took the curse meant for Harry, sacrificing herself out of love for him. Third, the Winkies in Oz are a subjugated people who must do as they are told; Winky in Harry Potter is the name of a house elf, a member of an enslaved race that must obey their masters.

The most interesting of these parallels, however, is the one that casts a rather strange light on Dorothy.

The Mirror of Erised (Erised being "desire" mirrored, or spelled in reverse), central to the plot of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and discussed in later books as well, shows the viewer the deepest desire of his or her heart. The viewer need not be, and generally isn't, aware that this is what the mirror is showing. I thought about the Mirror as I read my son the part where the four companions each have their private audience with Oz the Terrible.

In The Wizard of Oz, Oz appears to each of Dorothy and her companions in a different form that reflects an innermost desire, but with a twist. Each different appearance shows what the next companion to have an audience with Oz most wants to see.

To Dorothy, the wizard appears as a giant head, the Scarecrow’s desire for a head full of brains. To the Scarecrow, who sees Oz next, Oz is a beautiful maiden, obviously the Tin Woodman’s desire for a heart so he can fall back in love with the Munchkin girl he was to marry. To the Tin Woodman, next in line, Oz is a horrible monster, a frightening appearance that evokes the Lions sought-after attribute of courage. And to the Lion, Oz appears as a self-sustaining ball of fire, which evokes Dorothy’s deepest desire, to depart life in Oz and phoenix-like, return from the flames into a new life back in Kansas. Each companion, after getting a debriefing from the one to see Oz immediately before him, expects to see Oz in one of the forms already experienced and is to some extent banking on it. Here's L. Frank Baum's description of what the Tin Woodman is expecting before he goes in to face the monster:

He did not know whether he would find Oz a lovely Lady or a Head, but he hoped it would be the lovely Lady. "For," he said to himself, "if it is the head, I am sure I shall not be given a heart, since a head has no heart of its own and therefore cannot feel for me. But if it is the lovely Lady I shall beg hard for a heart, for all ladies are themselves said to be kindly hearted.

Where it got really interesting was when I realized that each of Dorothy's companions, had they been spirited out of Oz and into Harry's world, fairly could be assumed to have been sorted into a different Hogwarts House based upon their primary character attributes. Each character's associated attribute is the one he mistakenly believes is lacking in himself and coincides with his heart's deepest desire, which he will ask Oz to provide: Scarecrow/Ravenclaw ("Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure"); Tin Woodman/Hufflepuff ("just and loyal"); Lion/Gryffindor (bravery; and by the way, the house emblem is a lion). The only House not represented is Slytherin, known for its cunning and ambition. And for turning out the most dark wizards of any House.

What of Dorothy? Would she have been a Slytherin? I think the answer might be yes.

If Dorothy hadn't been misaligned through a weird literary equivalent of a substitution cipher, she'd have seen Oz as fire; idiomatically, a fire in her belly -- a passion -- an ambition -- in this case to return home to Kansas. It is this ambition that drives her from the moment she lands in Oz, and she shows no end of resourcefulness in its service along the way. She bargains with her companions for their company and the skills they bring to the party by offering to do what she can to get Oz to help them get what they most desire (the lion is welcome to join, for example, because his presence will scare away other wild beasts). Here's what she thinks to herself after listening to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman debate whether brains or heart are better:

Dorothy did not say anything, for she was puzzled to know which of her two friends was right, and she decided if she could only get back to Kansas and Aunt Em, it did not matter so much whether the Woodman had no brains and the Scarecrow no heart, or each got what he wanted. What worried her most was that the bread was nearly gone, and another meal for herself and Toto would empty the basket. To be sure neither the Woodman nor the Scarecrow ever ate anything, but she was not made of tin nor straw, and could not live unless she was fed.

Not that it's always inexcusable or even selfish to look out for number one. If you're a mom, or even if you've only had one, you can't really blame Narcissa Malfoy for her single-minded focus on saving Draco even if it meant betraying the Dark Lord. Her loyalties are with whoever can help her most, as are those of most Slytherins. Look at all the Death Eaters who gave up on Voldemort and built new alliances after his seemingly inexplicable defeat at the hands (head?) of a one-year-old. Dorothy has the same tendencies. Here's what our heroine thinks after Oz is exposed as a fraud:

Even Dorothy had hope that "The Great and Terrible Humbug," as she called him, would find a way to send her back to Kansas, and if he did she was willing to forgive him everything.

There are many more such examples, but I'm not going to make more of an undergraduate thesis out of this than I already have. Suffice it to say, the case can be made.

This doesn't mean I think Dorothy is evil. She remains one of my favorites from childhood, particularly when she's Judy Garland. But not all Slytherins are evil. Some are just banal. And some, like Severus Snape, are heroes in disguise.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole thought experiment for me was wondering whether Jo Rowling had any inkling that she'd thrown this aspect of a classic heroine into relief when she penned her own books. Those of us who've studied literature, and who've sat in creative writing workshops helpless as the living crap is kicked out of our brainchildren, have experienced the weirdness of a reader pointing out something that, uncannily but definitely, is present in the writing -- though not at all part of the conscious creative process. My guess on this one is a big fat goose egg. But isn't it pretty to think so?

**Morgana**

I Am Woman; I Am Not a Potato

The 2008 United States Presidential election is now assured to be historic regardless of who wins. Either an African American will be President or a white woman will be Vice President. That's an amazing thing, and a surprising thing -- given the continuing conservative bent of the not-so-silent majority in this country.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who make less than $200K a year continually vote against their own economic self-interest by voting for Republicans. A friend of mine (despite her politics) actually related to me the other day, quite seriously, that the Republican party really cared about the little guy. Hello? Clue phone: it's for you. The sad part is, she's not an NRA member, a pro-lifer, or a Christian Fundamentalist -- at least I can understand their attraction to the GOP even if they're not rich. What I don't get is how a woman who is none of those things can possibly think it's a good thing to vote Republican. Another thing I don't get: members of my tribe voting for Republicans, because they think that is the best way to assure a pro-Israel administration. Yet the Republican party and their judicial appointees are the very people who take every opportunity they can to blur the already somewhat muddy line between church and state further in favor of church. But I digress.

The question I really came here to pose is, what are the Republicans (or perhaps Senator McCain without the aid of Republican strategists) thinking with with his selection of Governor Sarah Palin as running mate? This is supposed to win over Senator Hillary Clinton's supporters? Do they honestly think that women such as myself will vote for their ticket simply because a woman is on it? We're supposed to abandon all principle and vote based on chromosomes? Do they think we're potatoes?

James Carville on CNN tonight said it pretty well; there's not much overlap between Clinton and Pat Buchanan, whom Palin supported for President. If the bet is that Clinton women will support Palin because she's a woman, that's a very bad bet based on the faulty anology that any woman is to women what Obama is to African Americans. From what I've observed, Obama has the support he does among African Americans not simply because of race, but because of the simple reason that his politics and those of his supporters are aligned.

I have been a Clinton supporter from the beginning of her campaign, but because I thought she was the smartest, most tenacious candidate, and didn't have a naive bone in her body about what it would take to get things done in the humongoid, pluralist bureaucracy that is the United States government. I never doubted her heart was in the right place. I don't just believe. I know that she would have tried to do what she said she'd do if elected President. The fact that she is a woman was a bonus, and a big one. A really big one. I would have loved to see this country mature enough to vote a woman into the most powerful office in the land and indeed, the world. Other democracies have done so, why not this one.

Clinton was the only candidate with the depth of knowledge on the universal health care issue necessary to solve that issue successfully. And she was pilloried by pretty much everyone for her prior efforts in that regard, back when everyone ran in a dither shouting socialized medicine, next stop the US Soviet -- and by the way, a First Lady has no place doing anything other than hosting luncheons, baking cookies and reading to first graders for a photo op.

She (understandably because such a breach of trust isn't supposed to happen in this country) trusted the Bush White House when they said a vote for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq was a vote to do so only if diplomacy failed. It's one thing to stand up on the floor of the Illinois State Senate and say the war is a bad idea. It's quite another to be a United States Senator from the state of New York who asked a specific question and was lied to, outright, by her President. And again, she was vilified for it within her own party as well as without.

Bah. Let's not kid ourselves. Partly this was because she is a Clinton, and they have no shortage of detractors, and even enemies. But mostly it was because she is a woman. The sorts of things said about Clinton even by mainstream media during her campaign were appalling and simply would not have been tolerated had they been said about African Americans or any other racial group.

I had decided to sit out this election. I would never have voted for McCain. The Supreme Court is far too important to leave the selection of Justices to him. But I couldn't bring myself into the Obama camp. The things that most bother me about Obama are a couple of incidents similar in nature, one involving NAFTA, where one of his aides was quoted as basically saying not to worry, Obama was only saying the correct thing to get elected and had no intention of rocking the boat once the tiller was in his hand. While I never doubted Senator Clinton's good intentions, I have had reason to doubt Senator Obama's.

But this latest move by McCain has pushed me into action. It feels personally insulting that he and/or the Republicans appear to think putting up a woman with mediocre academic and political credentials and a straight down the line conservative stance on the issues is somehow a substitute for Senator Clinton. I'm insulted that they appear to think the women of this country are, to a one, potatoes: brainless, without principle, and all grown in a patch together. And yet, they have the audacity to put a woman up for the second highest office in the country. (I guess that's not too surprising given Senator McCain's own view of the office of Vice President.) I'm insulted that they think we would want this woman to be the one who pushes through those 18 million cracks our candidate made in the glass ceiling of Presidential politics. What they don't seem to get is that it matters just as much who does it as that it happens. Because whoever does will set the expectations and the stage for those who come behind her. The wrong person will be as much of a setback as the right one will be a catapult forward.

The way I'm feeling now, I'll vote for Obama. He's smart (not as smart as Clinton, but smart nevertheless), he's got a knack for finding common ground, and he's got Joe Biden, who, like Clinton, I have no doubt has his heart in the right place. Choosing Biden, once it was obvious Clinton would not be the choice, was something of a litmus test: it showed how Obama approaches shoring up the areas in which he is less expert than others. Like President Kennedy did before him, he's shown that his approach when he takes office will be to surround himself with the smartest, most talented and experienced people in every field to advise him rather than ideologues and sports fans. He'll do that and he'll be ok in his areas of lesser strength -- he'll learn what he needs to learn, and he'll apply his intelligence and education to make the right decisions. And in any case, the Democratic ticket is the last, best hope to keep the Supreme Court from a clear conservative majority with the power to affect all our lives in a profound and horrifying way.

This Presidential election will make history either way. But history is not the same as progress, in all the areas in which we need it so badly in this country. The economy. Civil rights. Health care. International relations. Education. Science. Stopping the war, and stopping the terrorists. Optimism for the future. Only the Democratic ticket's win in November can bring the hope for these things, as well as making history.

**Morgana**

In Lieu of Chocolate Lava Cake

Whatever else personal blogging may be, it can't help but be self-indulgent at least to some degree. I celebrated a birthday recently and in its honor have decided to engage in a bit of unabashed self-indulgence and trot out my Top Ten Favorite Male Actors List. It was either that or chocolate lava cake, and I think on balance, I'll regret this bit of self-indulgence less.

All of these men are not only brilliant artists and versatile craftsmen, they're picky about their roles. And they seem like interesting people. They're the top ten stranded-on-a-desert-island-with, but also the top ten have-dinner-with.

For years I've had eight or so favorites, and in the interest of the list decided to expand to an even 10. This turned out to be a challenge because once I'd pushed the envelope I ended up with more like 20 and had to axe about half. Without futher ado, here are those that made the cut in alphabetical order (because I just couldn't choose who would go first otherwise), and why:

1. Daniel Day-Lewis: He was in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time -- one of my alltime favorites, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which he played a devilish, womanizing, yet politically principled Czech doctor who loses his practice rather than recant a negative opinion he expressed about the Soviets after the 1968 invasion of Prague. One of the few times when a movie was actually better than a book, and I love Milan Kundera.

Who could forget Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning performance in My Left Foot? Or what I would be willing to bet would win the most female votes for sexiest scene ever filmed, in The Last of the Mohicans, where he reclines on the forest floor and does essentially nothing but look at Madeleine Stowe -- yet the heat and tension in that look are not only palpable, they're practically overwhelming. And I haven't even seen There Will be Blood yet.

2. Benicio del Toro: He almost lost out to Clive Owen, but in the end I had to go with del Toro on the strength of his bedroom eyes. Those delicious, pronounced lower lids. He was stunning in Traffic and 21 Grams. I'll be interested to see how he does with Che Guevara in Guerrilla.

And he was in a movie with Johnny Depp, and one with Amy Irving.

3. Johnny Depp: Aside from his physical beauty, how many young American actors can step into a period piece, or a character piece, as easily? How many are the reason a Disneyland icon gets reworked? How many would be willing to take on Gene Wilder as the just as iconic Willy Wonka? How many can hold their own amid the likes of Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway?

The French connection is a plus, as is the humor in a quote attributed to him, which whether he really said it or not, is spot on: "When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit."

And he was in movie (Chocolat) with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time.

"Anysing furzer, Mr. Corso?"

4. Leonardo DiCaprio: Did someone say bedroom eyes? His have that wonderful lower-lidded roundness, too. Those eyes were the first things I noticed about him, back in the Marvin's Room era, followed quickly by the shocked realization that I was looking upon the most perfect example of male beauty I had ever seen. Later, I saw Total Eclipse and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (with Johnny Depp) both on cable, and then Romeo and Juliet -- all interesting and challenging choices for someone who easily could have allowed himself to be typecast into nothing but modern romantic leads. In this he is similar to Johnny Depp, and that's one reason I like both of them.

I also like getting little emails under his name about environmental topics. I have no idea how I got on this mailing list, but it's so momentarily charming to see that email in my inbox and pretend it's him just checking in to say hi.

For personal reasons having to do with who accompanied me to see the film in the theatre, I have difficulty watching Titanic again when it comes around on one of the movie channels. Other than that, I never pass up a chance to see a DiCaprio film.

And he was in a movie with John Malkovich.

5. Ralph Fiennes: He was in another of my favorite movies of all time, Schindler's List, albeit as a murdering Nazi. Indeed, he has had an incredible run in the villain department, including without limitation the ultimate bad guys of the Book of Exodus (the voice of Ramses in Prince of Egypt) and of Harry Potter's wizarding world, Lord Voldemort. I didn't know before I saw him in The Goblet of Fire that he had been cast as Voldemort. It took a few minutes of hearing his voice to recognize it, followed almost immediately by the realization of whose face was under the snaky, masky make-up, and then, a millisecond later, a feeling of almost providential inevitability. Of course. Who else? By that time, the precision and authority of the Fiennesian heightened-to-stage-proportions physical movement left no room for doubt.

The energy, intensity and passion that makes him an excellent villain also makes him a wonderful Heathcliff, to my mind every bit equal to, though different from, Olivier's definitive interpretation. I would have loved to have seen him as Hamlet on stage. He can play sweet, vunerable, hapless characters (Oscar and Lucinda, The Constant Gardner) equally well. The bath scene in The English Patient could force a run off vote in the sexiest scene on film category, though Mohicans still wins.

And he was in no fewer than two movies with Juliette Binoche, though unfortunately, not with Lena Olin. Thanks to Harry Potter, he will likely have been in a whole slew of them with Alan Rickman by the time the series is over.

6. William Hurt: I'm only partly joking when I say he was the reason I moved to New York. I never ran into him the entire ten years or so I lived on the Upper West Side where he was also living at the time. During the same period, without even trying, I ran into Gene Shalit several times near Rockefeller Center and once in Columbus Circle. So it goes. I did have the privilege of seeing Hurt perform live in the Circle Rep production of Beside Herself -- worth the price of admission for that privilege alone.

I saw Vantage Point the other night and was reminded of all the reasons I love his work. He does things I don't think anyone does better, as in the scene where his body double has been shot. He stands watching the aftermath on television while his Presidential aides scurry around and the camera cuts away and then back to him several times. Though he barely moves a muscle, even the frenetic activity surrounding him cannot compete with the look on his face -- an empathetic sorrow that combines shocked disbelief with horrified, utter belief. This ability to simply be, in silence, yet to convey so much, makes him fascinating to watch. Kiss of the Spider Woman, before Molina walks into danger for love. The Big Chill, when Chloe takes Nick's hand for the first time. Children of a Lesser God, when he sits alone, missing Sarah.

I have always loved the idiosyncratic rhythms with which he delivers his lines. Pausing between words or phrases where no one else would. Running together words or phrases no one else would think to run together. Letting a sentence trail into an afterthought, where anyone else would emphasize the words he threw away. Subtley inflecting or refusing to inflect a word against the grain of common reading, and through that smallest of choices, imparting a greater meaning. All of these rhythms come naturally to him, and they all, always, work.

Then there's the scene in Body Heat where, through sexual tension hanging in the air thick as key lime pie, he hurls a chair through the window to get to Kathleen Turner. Still not a clear winner over Mohicans, but close enough to tie.

He speaks French. And he was Viggo Mortensen's big broheem in A History of Violence, and in (different) movies with Amy Irving and Holly Hunter. Holly Hunter, by the way, really ought to be in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.

7. John Malkovich: I know a man who calls Malkovich "the thinking woman's crumpet," which is a great description.

Malkovich has one of the most distinctive voices in theatre and film, and his often underplayed delivery uses it to great effect, turning even a mundane activity like the towel-ordering in Being John Malkovich into a delight. He brings layers upon psychological layers to his characters, whether they were originally created by great literary talents or not. I've adored his work since I saw him for the first time in Places in the Heart, in which he inhabited his character's blindness so convincingly. I'm also always impressed when an actor who is no intellectual slouch takes on character with mental limitations and renders him with the respect, humanity, and emotional complexity owed him, as Malkovich did with Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men.

It's really hard to say what he does best. He does so much so well. His roguishly manipulative characters, like those in Dangerous Liaisons and The Portrait of a Lady, are masterful, but I also enjoyed seeing him tote guns with a cadre of other bad guys in the action flick Con Air. I had the honor of seeing him on stage in Burn This years ago. I sat third row center, and I must say he is most definitely a crumpet in the flesh. His crumpetness is evident throughout The Sheltering Sky, another of my all time favorite films. And he speaks French.

In his long, stellar career, he has been in movies with any number of amazing actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Viggo Mortensen and Liev Schreiber. And though he hasn't been in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time, he's been in one with Debra Winger which is awesome in its own right.

8. Viggo Mortensen: He almost lost out to Gary Oldman (who is so phenomenal that he manages not only to look differently but to act so completely differently in each role as to be barely recognizeable as himself) and then had to put up his dukes against Jeremy Irons. But I had to give it to Mortensen because he was Aragorn, for God's sake -- arguably the hottest male character in all of fantasy literature, and well before Sirius Black was a twinkle in Jo Rowling's eye. Besides, he writes poetry. He paints. He writes music. He speaks French and several other languages. If you have a thing for renaissance men as I do, he's your guy.

Before he was Aragorn, he was Walker Jerome, "The Blouse Man," in A Walk on the Moon with Liev Schreiber. In addition to the seductive shmatte salesman, he played the sexily sweaty weapons guy in Crimson Tide who faced a dilemma on which the fate of the world turned, and the head of the Navy SEAL training program in GI Jane, a character with much more depth than initially meets the eye. Afterwards, he played a small town hero who was good at killing people for a reason in A History of Violence with William Hurt. He performed admirably in all of these and others, including a movie with John Malkovich.

But by far his meatiest role, over the expanse of three movies each in itself an epic, was that of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. When I first heard Mortensen had the part, I thought it was miscast. "No," I thought. "You meant Daniel Day-Lewis." We'd already seen him as a ranger-type in Mohicans, amazingly light-footed in his runs through the forest; the Strider of the trilogy is weathered and craggy, rather like Day-Lewis' John Proctor in The Crucible; and he wears long hair so well. It is a tribute to Mortensen's abilities that the mere word Aragorn now automatically and indelibly conjures his image in the minds of hundreds of thousands of LOTR fans. I don't think the same can be said for some of the others in the cast.

9. Alan Rickman: Thinking woman's crumpet, part deux. Could there possibly be a better Severus Snape? He steals every scene he's in. Drawled vowels, staccato consonants, perfect comic timing. He has a great occlumens' face; never cracks more than a smirk (and then only at Harry's expense), but when he wants to communicate, expresses more with the arch of an eyebrow than could be said in a five minute monologue. Which probably also explains, in part, his casting in Galaxy Quest. The last Harry Potter episodes are where Snape's story steps into the spotlight and so too should Rickman. Early in the story, Snape is intimidating and nasty, but we don't really know why. As the story progresses, he develops into a tragic, romantic hero. Or perhaps more accurately, anti-hero. Like Heathcliff, his cruelty, while it cannot be excused, can perhaps be explained through his hellish childhood and the soul-warping power of an obsessive love denied its object. In the hands of a lesser actor, I might have some concerns about how Snape will continue to develop; I have no doubt that in Rickman's, he'll be nothing less than spectacular when all his layers are finally laid bare.

I also enjoyed the evil Hans of the original Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (the long-haired, bearded look was quite fetching), and the tempted married man in Love, Actually. One of my favorite of his performances was as the pioneering white heart surgeon working in partnership with a black technician in the segregated South in the HBO movie Something the Lord Made. This film was fascinating for many reasons, including its look into the world of medical research in the first half of the last century, where talented persons without medical degrees or even college degrees in some instances worked in an apprentice-like system where opportunities arose out of professional associations and relationships rather than degrees and resumes. He was great as the arrogant, driven medical academic, oblivious to anything outside his own ivory tower (including the very real discrimination, financial hardship and exclusion from recognition his apprentice experienced). Rickman conveyed as well that the obliviousness was in part because his characters saw no barriers between himself and his apprentice, color or otherwise -- he saw only the astonishing work they were able to do together.

And he was in movies with Ralph Fiennes and Johnny Depp. And Kate Winslet, and several with Emma Thompson.

10. Liev Schreiber. My boyfriend looks a bit like him, so I'm biased.

That said, Schreiber is one of those presences that's so commanding he's hard not to notice. As much as I like Viggo Mortensen and as much as he was a great goyische adonis, I found Schreiber's character in A Walk on the Moon so sympathetic, well-meaning and charming that I wanted to slap Diane Lane a la Cher in Moonstruck and tell her to snap out of it. He made a character that easily could have been typed a soulless nebbish into just a good guy trying to do his best; his tragic flaw was spending too much time as a responsible breadwinner and not enough being an exciting and romantic lover. He can also play the opposite; as in the slick, married playboy of The Painted Veil.

As Orson Welles, he had a difficult task. It's one thing to play someone larger than life who is fictional and entirely another if that person was real. And yet, he not only pulled it off, he did so in spades. I also appreciated his peformances in The Manchurian Candidate and The Sum of All Fears. I'd love to see him on stage.

Alas, there can be only ten. If I didn't stop here, I'd be having my chocolate lava cake and eating it, too.

**Morgana**

What Puts the Space in Cyberspace?

Before CompuServe Information Service became a web-based shadow of its former self following the AOL takeover (which the New York Times described in 1998 as "traumatic" for the "computer intellegentsia" who made up the core of loyal CIS subscribers, and among whom -- despite my inability to cure the home networking problem described in my debut post -- I then counted myself), it was a truly remarkable place for many, many reasons. I was thinking today about one of those reasons.

For those who spent a lot of time there, CIS felt as though it had a physical geography. I had a conversation about this once with Nightshift, chief sysop of a number of gaming forums her company, The Electronic Gamer, had contracted to provide on CompuServe. For a number of years, I was an associate sysop in Gamers' and later, Action Games, two of the TEG forums. In any case, I still remember talking with her about how we and many users referred to the forums as though they were in physical space: "I just saw so and so over in GAMBPUB" or "I'll be up in FSFORUM" or "I'm popping out to ACTION." This was quite something, particularly when you consider what most of CIS (apart from its online games and perhaps WorldsAway) was not.

When you're in a graphical multiplayer game universe like WoW, it doesn't take much imagination to feel as though you're in a physical environment. Towns are located at certain points on a map, terrain and weather patterns change with geography, ships and zeppelins have regular embarkation/debarkation points and routes. Even outside of such obvious examples, mere interface features can suggest a feeling of movement through space. Using a web browser that moves you one page to the "east" each time you follow a link can make you feel as though you are literally moving "west" when you page back.

When I logged on to CIS for the first time in 1992, I used what would now be viewed as a very primitive-looking graphical interface called Compuserve Information Manager, or CIM. CIM was relatively new then; previously, CIS was accessed through the even more primitive command line interface in terminal emulation. Using either CIM or terminal emulation, the primary means of transport from place to place were "go" words. "GO GAMERS," for example, took you to the Gamers' Forum. This wasn't exactly suggestive of compass directions, and yet, many of us came to view our experience that way.

To be more precise, in my case, I perceived the architecture of my experience from a hub and spokes perspective. I almost always logged on to Gamers first, and from there would "move" to other forums. Gamers was the hub, the other forums I frequented were the spokes. Although I felt I was moving almost from room to room in space, I did not perceive multiple storeys in my hub and spokes building (except that my email box was in the basement). Role Playing Games was to my left, the Game Publishers forums were in a line to my right, starting with GameAPub, with Game Developers forum beyond that. Flight Sims was in front of me, in a northwesterly direction. Sports Sims directly in front. Action Games was behind me. I forget the locations of the others. When I went, occasionally, to non-TEG forums or venues on CompuServe it was rather like getting on a plane in my hometown and arriving at a point hundreds of miles away. Why?

I'm partial to the explanation that people, accustomed to orienting themselves in their surroundings by means of mental maps, also form mental maps of frequently travelled routes in online "spaces." This was my working hypothesis as I went out the front door of Morgana's Spot to see whether others had explored this question. Indeed, some have. The idea appears, for good or ill, in a number of essays I found during a quick stroll through web space, for example: "Lost in Cyberspace," "Passage of the Flaneur,""What Kind of Space is Cyberspace?." And to bring us full circle, the New York Times, the year after the article about the AOL acquisition of CIS, reported on the effort to "map" cyberspace.

I have to say that I have never had that same hearth and home feeling about the greater web. Apart from my home page and webmail page (to immediate right from my home page, or so it feels), every journey is like an exploration into uncharted territory where one can get lost, or even fall into a technological trap and end up with a virus or worse. Of course, I haven't been active in the social networking phenomenon. Perhaps MySpace and similar sites put some of the space back into cyberspace. I guess I'll find out -- if they're still around and popular when my kids are old enough to become addicted to them.

**Morgana**

The Image Vault

I have a vivid memory of a short film about a mouth and a goldfish.

I'm sure I saw this film twice, in two different art museums, years apart. Although I can't remember specifics of the first viewing, other than the twinge of recognition I had during the second, I'm fairly certain the second museum was New York MOMA. This means I likely saw the movie for the second time before 1995. I remember the MOMA showing. It was in a dark room with open doorways at the end of a row of galleries; a room designed for walking into, taking a thoughtful, unhurried look at the work displayed, then meandering to other exhibits while the movie runs on in a continuous loop.

This particular film has no dialogue. In fact, I don't recall any sound at all. The action is simple: a person's open mouth fills to overflowing with water, which starts to trickle from the corners and down the chin. Then a single, live goldfish appears in the water, as though it was there all the time and has just swum out from a shadow. The goldfish flicks its tail and fins, giving the impression of swimming in this limited space, this shallow mouth-pond.

Why I remember this movie, simple plot and all, is a mystery. In retrospect, the images that play in my memory seem funny, even absurd. But I think the recollection's longevity has roots in a different, more immediate effect tied up in the viewing. Somehow, when I saw this -- perhaps only the first time reinforced by the second or perhaps both times -- I believe I found it vaguely disturbing. Although I don't know whether this is true, I find myself believing in hindsight that I was disturbed because I expected (and perhaps feared) something other than a goldfish as I watched that mouth. I must have been a teenager at the first viewing; as daunted as I was preoccupied by all things sensual.

Since I recall seeing this snippet twice in art museums (at least one of which is decidedly world class) I thought it reasonable I'd find at least a reference to it on the internet. It's truly amazing what you can find when you try to search for something like this. The depth of feeling for pet goldfish is staggering. Literally hundreds of questions have been posted, pleading for help with sick fish presenting mouth symptoms. Not to mention the magic tricks, party videos, etc. Go ahead, try it. Plug in +goldfish +mouth and maybe +film or +art and see what you get. But not what I was looking for.

I'd love to know the name of this film, the artist, the year it was made. Maybe in a few years it will turn up, as the reference to "Oh, To Be a Gypsy" finally did.

**Morgana**

Words, Music and Memory

My boyfriend is the first to admit his singing voice is not his best quality. While trying to sing melody he might, through luck or accident, hit a harmony line temporarily. In a few notes, he'll be back in musical nowheresville.

The other day, he walked in from a jaunt to the local library, toting Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan Was Her Name and singing nonsensical words to a tune of his own invention. My two little boys (ages 2 and 4) for whom any singing is still good singing were eating it up, vying for the chance to hold and shake the book. (The big, plastic googly eyes on the cover are irresistible to the preschool set.)

Despite the unfamiliar tune, which wasn't so much carried as dragged over gravel and through potholes, I recognized the song. I'd learned it in Girl Scouts with different words, though with the same tune notated at the back of the book. Our version, "Madelina Cadelina Hoopasteina Walkaneina Hocus Pocus Locust," bore no other resemblance to the version in the book, except for the verse about her teeth ("She had two teeth in her mouth, one pointed north and the other pointed south"). My favorite verse ("Her neck was as long as a telephone pole, and right in the middle was a big fat mole") was missing entirely. When I joined in the singing, I found I had to sing my version. Anything else felt wrong.

Of course, this proprietary feeling had almost nothing to do with the song itself, and much to do with the tangle of personal history. Retrieving the song from deep memory felt a lot like pulling a heap of untended fishing line from belowdecks, or a lump of unkempt thread from a sewing basket's dregs. Up came a mass of threads leading every imaginable direction, looping back over and under themselves, all apparently emanating from large knot invisible under a mat of looser stuff. Tugging any of these lines to see where it went could cause another elsewhere to clench making the knot harder to loosen later, but I had faith I'd be able to deal with anything my own extended metaphor could dish out. I started pulling a thread called "cool songs from Girl Scouts that the older girls taught the younger ones like me."

The internet is remarkable when it comes to stuff like this. If something exists, if you didn't simply imagine or dream it, traces or even the whole thing will show up on the web eventually. I had tugged this "cool camp song" thread many years before with little success, but this time I struck the motherload. As it turns out, the three songs I was looking for are all folk songs commercially recorded in the early '60s, ten or so years before I learned them.

First, I looked for a song we'd referred to simply as "Redeemed." I hadn't found it at all in prior internet searches, but this time I found numerous references. It's actually named "To Be Redeemed." The Kingston Trio recorded it on an album called New Frontier. A version (not The Kingston Trio's) can be heard here. We sang it to a slightly different tune, and with slightly different words. When I hear the song in my head, I still hear it the way we sang it. Next, I found "Crow on the Cradle." The names Pete Seeger and Judy Collins both come up in connection with this song. The Judy Collins version is on the album "Maids and Golden Apples." Jackson Browne has also performed it. A version (by none of these people, but which showcases the words) can be heard here. The tune we sang was somewhat different, but the words are essentially the same. The last is Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Codine," found on her album It's My Way! Here's a cover of it that I thought was interesting. Again, slight differences in the tune and the lyrics had been imported into the version we sang.

Finding these was comforting in a sappy way, like coming across a much-loved but forgotten childhood tchotchke. I went looking for more scouting songs and found: "Linstead Market" (we sang "Carbonaki go instant market," pretty far from "Mi carry mi ackee go a Linstead Market," but with the identical tune in the interesting mandolin rendition found here; "Spider's Web" (we sang it "made of silver light and shadows, that I weave in my room each night, it's a web made to catch a dream, hold it there until I waken, then to tell me my dream was all right") sung here as "Dream Catcher Lullaby" with a slightly different tune than we used; and then a sort of holy grail, a database of folk song information called The Mudcat Cafe, where I found discussions of variations on lyrics of "Barges," "Rose, Rose," "Dem Bones (Gonna Rise Again)," "White Coral Bells," "Rise and Shine" (we called it Noah's Ark) and many others.

The most suprising find wasn't a camp song at all, but a song my mother taught me. I've never met someone outside her family who knows this song, and I had looked for it on the web unsucessfully before. This time I found a single reference to "Oh, To Be a Gypsy." I just spent more time I can rationally justify trying to find a free online piano program that would allow me to record and provide the melody, to which we sang only the first and last of these four verses believing that to be the complete song. My mom died more than 10 years ago. This song was special to us, partly because it seemed so private. Finding it turned out to be the thread that made another tighten, in a bittersweet but strangely validating way.

We still have a "private" song, or at least one I haven't yet found it on the web. The words are:

Goldenrod, where do you find your gold?
Butterfly, how do your wings unfold?
This is a story that's never told--
Butterfly, how do your wings unfold?

And I'm sure I didn't dream it.

**Morgana**

Greetings...

Well, this is new. For someone who has been online in one form or another for almost 20 years, it's a little embarrassing to admit this is my first foray into the blogosphere. Please bear with me as I start to explore this medium.

I considered focusing on a niche that might be useful to someone somewhere, but alas, I no longer have a niche. Once upon a time I used to be fairly well-versed in and reasonably good at computer games, particularly turn-based computer role-playing games and graphic adventures. I sysoped in several gaming forums on CompuServe back in the day (1993ish to 1998ish), beta tested commercial game software and wrote reviews, walkthrus and hint files in my spare time which I had a lot more of than I do now. Oh to be young, able to stay up all night playing, then haul oneself to work in the morning, get home after a 10+ hour work day (at something about as far removed from computer games as you could imagine) and do it all over again.

I pretty much stopped playing with any degree of intensity in the mid-1990s, although I went through a World of Warcraft phase for about a year until my home network died suddenly one day last October and my desktop started to sound like a lawnmower. My main character, a Tauren shaman named Unchychunch, was about level 65 at the time and just starting to get really interesting. It's emblematic of what my time is like now that I haven't solved the network or the computer problem yet. The hours on support calls that appear necessary just aren't going to happen any time soon.

Popping in here from time to time may happen once in a while. I don't know what I'll write about yet. Not having a niche is kind of nice, though.

**Morgana**