Repetitive things usually annoy me: repetitive motions like finger-tapping, repetitive sounds, even spoken choruses in songs when the rhythm of speech fights the beat. (That’s not repetitive, exactly, I guess, but it bothers me in the same way.) One of the things I thought was most charming about WALL-E, though, was the way the animators lingered on the little repetitive motions their characters made — how the characters were given time to be entranced with the movements of their stubby hands or with the lighting of an old Zippo. It’s sort of babylike, sort of animal, that kind of fascination; I’ve seen my cat do the same thing.

Before the movie — which we saw at the Alamo Drafthouse in south Austin — we sat through a number of Pixar shorts, all of which I profoundly disliked. T. kept looking over at me and laughing because I looked miserable. This was mostly because I really hate slapstick, whether cartoon or live-action. I was the sort of kid who watched the first Home Alone movie through my fingers not because I was scared for tiny Macaulay Culkin but because I felt awful for the crooks he was knocking around. But also I think I disliked the shorts because they don’t have those graceful little moments of discovery. They’re designed for visual gags and broad, predictable humor. And transparent cuteness. WALL-E included some visual gags and predictable humor and transparent cuteness, too, but that wasn’t the whole joke. It wasn’t a joke. It was a good movie.

From the preface to “The Female Wits,” a 1696 play anonymously published in 1704, satirizing Delarivier Manley, Mary Pix, and Catherine Trotter. The (also anonymous) writer of the preface describes Trotter and Pix as:

… two Gentlewomen that have made no small Struggle in the World to get into Print; and who are now in such a State of Wedlock to Pen and Ink, that it will be very difficult for them to get out of it.

I’m thinking about stealing that for my “about” page.

You can also find me on Twitter now, far more frequently than here. Turns out that prospectus-brain can easily manage tiny “what are you doing?” posts. Prospectus-brain can also handle: fussing with new Wordpress installations for the digital humanities project update blog (link soon!); googling gluten-free places to eat in Austin; reading NY Times articles. Prospectus-brain needs to get back to the actual prospectus, however.

I tend to link nice things I find on the internet at del.icio.us rather than posting about them here, but today I’ll do both. This is a wonderful article about CocoRosie, who make fey, strange, compelling music (and seem, based on the article, to be fey, strange, compelling people).