Kennedy Tapes

Some long-secret recordings have surfaced in the past 48 hours, interview tapes made by Jackie Kennedy (and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr) a few months after her husband's assassination. In them, she (allegedly) accused LBJ and a group of Texas businessmen of ordering the hit on JFK.

The tapes (supposedly) also include her talking about some affairs she had to get back at JFK for his affairs. So, naturally, the story is being picked up by various right-wing outlets that want to tarnish the image/memory of JFK to solidify their own political goals. At the same time, it notably isn't getting coverage in left-leaning media sources that don't want to point out Democrats would necessarily have been involved in such a conspiracy.  Lots of muck-raking on one side, and an unfortunate silence from the other. The top four links spit up by a search engine were all pretty disgustingly slanted.

Not that it'd be any better if it were slanted the other way. It's just the conspiracy theorist inside me is very saddened that every article names one or more of her lovers, but none of them name any of the rich Texan businessmen that allegedly pulled the trigger. Get your priorities straight, people!

The best link I've found is the Daily Mail over in the UK: The article is still pretty trashy, but it's a lot better than anything else I've found on the net.

In a sad but predictable turn of events, ABC (currently in possession of the tapes) has this to say about them:

"The tabloid reports about the content of the tapes are totally erroneous. ABC News isn't releasing any content from those tapes until mid-September at which point it will be clear how off base these reports are. The actual content of the tapes provide unique and important insight into our recent past from one of the most fascinating and influential First Ladies in American history."

I stomached right-wing propaganda sites for that? Man, do I feel foolish/abused...

To Insure POOR Service

• To start with, don't make a reservation for your group of 9, and don't check the restaurant in advance to see if they even have a table large enough for 9 gamer-sized individuals.
• Trickle in by singles and twos across a 20+ minute window.
• Don't tell the wait staff how large your group is, and make sure you neglect to mention to them when the last of your party has finally arrived. 
• While half the party still hasn't arrived, have one person walk over to the take-out counter and order there, instead of at the table. Don't mention to the rest of the group that you've done so. This way the wait-staff thinks you'll all eventually do the same, and your group of friends won't realize there's any confusion or reason for the delay.
• When you get handed a menu, loudly make jokes about the part where it says the restaurant practices Halal (Islamic Dietary Law), and especially mock where it says "all the meats on our pizzas are slaughtered by hand by Muslims, unlike our inferior competitors who use cheap prepackaged ingredients." 
• Repeat such jokes frequently, especially any time the waiter is standing right behind you. 
• Sit silently and spinelessly when you know you should instead be telling your friend to shut up. 

Goodbye Cruel Internets

The FCC's new "net neutrality" rules are pretty much giving corporations the right to piss away, chop up, compartmentalize, and overcharge for the internet we all know and love.

FCC approves controversial ‘Net Neutrality’ regulations

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/fcc-controversial-net-neutrality-rules/
...
Supporters of "Net Neutrality" have been disappointed by the proposed rules, saying they heavily favor the industry they are supposed to regulate.

I'd be all angry about it, except pretty much every company I do business with on the net has engaged in the big corporatist war against wikileaks. Amazon, Comcast and Paypal I expected to do the devil's dirty work, but Apple? Man, that sucks. I don't want to have to return my Mac and iPod in protest.

Apple attacks WikiLeaks, yanks iPhone app from app store

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/apple-attacks-wikileaks-yanks-iphone-app-app-store/

Only a few days after its release, the unofficial WikiLeaks iPhone application has been removed from Apple's App Store.

At this rate, I'll have personally boycotted every business and site on the net long before my ISP can take advantage of the new net non-neutrality rules to hose my internet access.

Tax Cuts

CNN shed little diamond-encrusted platinum tears today on behalf of those supposedly unfairly disadvantaged, the US citizens who make about $250,000 a year. Boo-hoo, it's so hard to be them, especially now that the Bush tax cut package is expiring.

These are individuals whose household income might bring them into the top tax bracket of $250,000 a year but who, with two parents working, might still find themselves struggling to stay in the stability of the upper-middle class in the expensive urban areas where they often work.
Much of the anger about the scheduled sunset of the Bush tax cuts for the increase in top-bracket taxes comes from this productive group of Americans.

Sounds awful, doesn't it? I almost felt sympathy, because not only is it expensive to live in suburbia, it's also just generally boring and tacky there.

Then I popped over to the Washington Post, and looked at this chart comparing the expiring tax cuts and the ones Obama is trying to replace them with:

The Bush tax plan vs. the Obama tax plan in one chart

In case that's too small to read, the $200,000 to $500,000 yearly income line sees a change in tax burden of $409 a year. Those "poor" "disadvantaged" working Americans making 250,000 a year are going to be paying extra taxes of about one tenth of a percentage point of their yearly wages. The equivalent, if you were making say $50,000 a year, would be having to pay an extra $81 in taxes. Don't get me wrong, I too would prefer to have an extra $80, but even if were going to be out by $400 at my families current income level, it wouldn't be enough of a hardship on me or mine to justify column inches at CNN. Whatever little sympathy I might have had for those who make several hundred thousand a year melted away when I saw that chart. As it melted and flowed, it took my respect for CNN with it.

That Washington Post chart is awesome by the way. It makes it very clear who the Bush tax plan helped, with it's clear delineation that once you hit millionaire, your tax cut jumps to 6 times it's previous size. "Thanks for joining the Club, here's your $85,000 door prize..."

Jack Bauer is running for Senate?

Okay, I have to give this guy high marks for making a very clever political spot that's far more entertaining than most campaign ads I've seen...

...even if I disagree with his message and platform. "Vote for me because I can shoot a rifle while I fix my roof" is just a bit odd. I can't help but wonder how exactly it is that mowing lawns and throwing grenades prepares one for being a Senator. I don't suppose it'd go over well if you tried doing any of those on Capitol Hill. I was likewise amused by his flippant remarks about Miranda rights and due process, and by his choosing to compare himself to a fictional character that tortures people on an hourly basis. Seems like maybe, just maybe, he just might have a little trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality.



There's also something a little amusing about this not terribly manly-looking guy trying to real hard play up his manliness in these ads. He focuses on his military service, but tells stories about ducking for cover, not heroics. That's realistic, and refreshingly honest, but kind of sends a conflicting message. Even his military photos made him look like a scrawny goofball in uniform. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I used to hang with some Airforce SP's who'd play D&D while on night patrol. They were good guys, but eager to prove themselves, and he seems cut from the same cloth. In that light, he'd just be drawing the connections to Jack Bauer to let us know how manly he is, because it's always in question when you're the runt of the platoon litter. The message he's declaring so emphatically is that the only way you'll see him anywhere near a log cabin is if he's fixing the roof of it.

And then I think of the 24 references again, and I realize he might also use the log cabin as a place to hold foreigners he intends to torture.

Maybe in a few years he'll show us how he prepared to run for President by blowing up the Death Star and kissing his sister. I think that would play to a wider audience.

I'm starting to (re-)warm up to this guy

I voted for him, and then spent the first year of his term watching him backpedal and fail. It was frustrating.

Then he and his team got some health care reform passed, and while the concessions and loopholes in it really alarmed me, at least he got something done. I was thankful, even if kinda worried.

Then he set a Mars schedule for NASA, and it made me smile. I think getting off this rock is an important goal for our species. At the same time, though, I can't say that NASA plans really figured into any of progressive campaign promises that made me vote for him. Plus, I couldn't rule out that a 2030 goal might just be lip service and PR. So while it made me a little happy, it wasn't likely to have a lasting impact on my opinion of him.

That's when he went out of his way to remind me that he really was worth voting for after all. Obama orders hospitals to extend visitation and legal decision rights to gay and lesbian partners. Kick ass! There's a liberal, progressive, socially conscious, forward minded, humane thing he enacted by way of Presidential power. Something you can be absolutely certain would not have been done under a Republican administration. Well done, Mr President.

Clash of the Plot Holes

If Peter Jackson had attention-deficit disorder, and was doing a lot of meth while making the Lord of the Rings films, we now know what the results would have been like. They would have been just like the new remake of Clash of the Titans.

It's kinda pretty at times, but that's the most I can say for it. It's not so much exciting as it is spastic. Within this film, things happen for arbitrary and senseless reasons, and they do so as quickly as possible. Most of the fight scenes are the action-movie equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting. It may be pretty, and it sure has a lot going on - but what looks from a distance to be detail, on closer examination turns out to just be random splatters without meaning.

"Let's put Treebeard in the desert! Then we'll have him ride around on the back of one of those giant elephants. When he gets off the elephant, he'll do some kung-fu, then we'll wrap a giant snake around him, and then he'll explode!" It's like that, except the giant elephant has been replaced by a Scorpion of variable size, and Treebeard is wearing Iron Man's neon-blue heart implant. Don't ask me why, none of it made any sense. I still can't figure out why the freaking Ents were even in Clash of the Titans. They're not in the 1980's version, and they're not in Greek myth either, and their inclusion is completely random - but the same thing can be said about almost every element of this movie.

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The film is really shallow, too, and it features characters we neither care about, nor believe in. At no point during the film did I want Perseus to succeed at his stated goal, but neither did I particularly want him to fail. Most of the time, I just didn't care. It's not like he was fighting against a villain. The film pointedly has no villains. I mean, there's Calibos, he seems pretty bad, but when you think about it, he's just angry because Zeus raped his wife and Hades took advantage of him. His actions are deplorable, but his motivations are basically the same as the Hero - he's rebelling against that bastard Zeus. But Zeus isn't the bad guy either, as the film ham-handedly reminds us during its hard-to-swallow happy ending. So that must mean Hades is the villain, except the film points out to us again and again that Hades is only so bitter and manipulative because Zeus tricked and betrayed him.

I'm a big fan of "shades of gray"-style moral ambiguity in a film, but in the Clash remake, this is done really sloppily and never fully explored. We're never torn over what is the right thing to do, and neither are any of the characters. Instead, we're just given mixed messages about who really is the monster, and then quickly distracted from contemplating any of it by yet another incomprehensible action sequence. Hey look - a harpy! WTF?

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In this film, the main character, Perseus, has 3 fathers:

• There's the mortal fisherman who raised him as his own. Shortly before he dies, he tells Perseus that what he really wants his son to do is to stand against the Gods, and change the world so that mankind will no longer be enslaved by Olympus. Perseus starts off to fulfill his father's last wish, and then kind of abandons that goal without ever saying why.
• There's Zeus, king of the Gods, who raped Perseus's mother, and then abandoned the resulting child. But he's not the bad guy, we are told again and again. After 20 years of being a dead-beat dad, he's now trying to make up for it. His wish is for Perseus to take his rightful place in Olympus, but Perseus declines that opportunity both times it's offered to him.
• His third father is the asshole who killed his mother and tried drowning him as a child. Later, he turns into a real (as opposed to just figurative) monster, and tries to slay the adult Perseus. Obviously, that won't do, so he's killed by his step-son Perseus. His dying wish is, strangely enough, for Perseus to not become a God, and stay away from Olympus. It's delivered very oddly, practically "I know I've been trying to kill you, but it's for your own good. Please don't become a God, because that'd be really bad for you, and I'm worried about your future and the fate of humanity." It's a really lame attempt at a Darth Vader redemption, made all the weaker by the fact that the director doesn't feel compelled to give it more than 3 seconds of screen time.
  

So, of course, the mutated, mother-killing, trailer-trash monster of a father gets his dying wish fulfilled by Perseus. The film tries hard not to draw attention to this fact, though, and instead just sweeps it under the rug. It's like they're playing thesis-statement roulette, with a new winner every five minutes.

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The worst part of the film, however, is the hackneyed attempt at foreshadowing that then gets abandoned and forgotten at the end, ret-conning itself into a red herring. I'm talking about the warning of the Stygian Witches. They go to see the witches, these three inhuman blind seers of great wisdom and insight. On the way there, Io (Perseus's shallow and unbelievable love interest) spends several minutes ominously warning Perseus not to ask any more questions of the witches beyond the obvious "how to kill the Kraken" question. She says he won't like the answer he gets, and it's really played up as a big deal, like there's something nasty in his destiny.

Sure enough, the witches drop a doozy on him. They prophecy that he's going to die while fighting the Kraken. The music swells dramatically, and Io says something like "Oh, Perseus! I told you not to ask them anything else! This is so tragic!"

Then the end of the movie rolls around, and he doesn't die. In fact, he's never even wounded, and you don't feel he's actually in a lot of peril. Apparently, the all-knowing magically gifted witches were just screwin' with him, not actually foretelling the future. Despite the prophesy scene having be played up like it was a really important plot point, there's no mention of it at the end of the film, it too is just swept under the rug.

Now, it's possible that the film is just being unexpectedly subtle at the end. I doubt it, because everything has been in-your-face and beat-over-your-head before that point, but there's a remote chance it was actually a clever ending that was just so subtle it failed. Because, frankly, the last 5 minutes of the film would make a lot more sense if it were actually a far-subtler version of the end of Brazil (or the recent movie Repo-Men). Here's what I mean:

Maybe, just maybe, the Kraken actually kills Perseus. At the very end, he dives into the water in a harbor to save some girl that's almost certainly dead. After expressing her willingness to be a human sacrifice, she's fallen hundreds of feet into the water, and 80 tons of rock is falling on her. The harbor is between two steep cliffs, with a city built into them. The scenery and location were a prominent part of the scene.

He and the girl are next seen on a flat and featureless beach, and rescue ships are on the horizon coming to take the girl home. Maybe Perseus rescued her, swam several miles away to some nearby island, and somehow signaled the survivors in the devastated city that they needed a rescue. That seems to be what the film is saying. But I suppose it's also possible that he and the girl both died, and the featureless beach is Elysium / Heaven / etc. If that's what the movie was trying to convey, it did a piss poor job of saying it, but I can't completely rule it out. At least it would have made a lot more sense than the happy ending they seem to be trying to shove down our throats.

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I could go on like this for a few pages more, there's just so much wrong with film. Io's supposed backstory didn't match her on-screen powers. Hades' make-up was inconsistent and laughable. The CGI critters kept changing size relative to humans. The Kraken came from Cloverfield. Etc.

I suppose maybe I should have put some spoiler warnings at the top of this post... but I think if I just "ruined" the movie for you, I was probably doing you a favor.

How To Tell An Inglourious War Story (updated and expanded)

When I posted this the other day, it had been three little paragraphs. I don't think that did the film justice, nor was it terribly helpful to someone trying to decide if they should see the movie. So, here's a much longer version...


It has been a long time since a film has made me so uncomfortable, and yet simultaneously so awe-struck and impressed... in fact the only thing comparable was the first time I saw Eraserhead. Unlike Tarantino's other work, Basterds is not a "fun" movie - or not as fun, anyway - and it makes Kill Bill look family-friendly. I squirmed, I felt ill, I laughed at things I really shouldn't have, and I'm almost ashamed to admit I enjoyed it. At the same time, it was genius. I'm glad he had the courage to make it, and I'm glad I saw it in the theatre without anyone spoiling it. Well worth watching, provided you like it when films challenge you. This one will.

It's not, as Lt Raines claims it is, his masterpiece. IMHO, it may even be his weakest work, the only film of his that I don't feel the need to own. Then again, liking his films more with every viewing is par for the course - and it's not the first Tarantino film that seemed shocking on first viewing, either. It's also a film that's guaranteed to be viewed entirely differently on second watching.

Comparing it to work by other artists... I didn't really care for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, but I love Going After Cacciato , so perhaps it makes sense that I'm so conflicted over this.

Like Cacciato, (and Cacciato's sister-short-story, How To Tell A True War Story), you know this tale is fictional, fantastically so, yet it really catches a truthful and accurate feel of the special kind of hell that is war. Depictions of the reality of war are rare in cinema - war's ugly, not heroic, and films avoid that reality. Even films that attempt to do justice to that concept (Saving Private Ryan, for example), tend to fall prey to overblown notions of heroism and morality, both of which are frequently absent in a war zone. In Basterds, you see good men doing very bad things, and sometimes you even see very bad men doing good things. You also see crazy coincidences that are completely unbelievable, yet are exactly like the type of crazy coincidences that actually happen in the real world, especially in the haze of combat. The events in this film didn't happen, but could have. In this way it's unlike most war movies, which didn't happen, and are far too sanitary to have ever happened, either.

Like Good/Bad/Ugly, the film has plenty of slow artful simmer, juxtaposed close-ups and long shots, and strong musical choices. Basterds really is a Sergio Leone Western in WWII clothing - it uses the same tropes, but with Nazis instead of cowboy bandits. As in Leone's "man with no name" trilogy, there's extremely few characters you can actually like. They're basterds, every one of them.

Watching this film was delicious agony. Any Tarantino film is going to have a few things that make you uncomfortable. His films are packed with violence and tasteless racial epithets. It's only logical that's going to get more pronounced in a film with Nazis - they are genocidal racists, after all, an army of repugnant butchers, the ultimate villains.

In Reservoir Dogs, a man is tortured. But he's at least tortured by a "bad guy". You feel disgust and outrage, even while you're bopping along to Stuck In The Middle With You. You enjoy the scene, but despise the character at the heart of it. That was hard to swallow the first time I saw it. Inglourious Basterds is like that scene, blown up into a whole movie, and then it goes a step further...

Here, the "heroes" are torturers. Nazis are the ultimate villains, and it always feels good to see them get their comeuppance, or at least it always has in the past. Here they die in some ugly, brutal ways, at the hands of the heroes. If this film had come out 10 years ago, when torture was an abstract fantasy element that only happens in movies, I don't think I'd feel so conflicted. Post Abu Ghraib, it's just not acceptable to me for the hero to torture anyone - not even Nazis.

At the same time, this is a much healthier and more honest way of examining WWII than, say, what happens in an Indiana Jones film. In a Jones movie, the Nazis are bad just because of the uniform. We never really see the rank and file being villains, and the death of each human being in that uniform has no emotional weight. We can cheer as they die, without ever stopping to consider that a _human_ just died. In Basterds, on the other hand, the Nazis do really evil things. While the madness and villainy of their leadership is center stage, the complicity of the common man is starkly depicted as well. We can't deny they deserve what happens to them. They really got it coming, and we want them to be punished. At the same time, we get to see that they are most definitely human - they have lives beyond their uniforms, and some at least have a few redeeming qualities. Which demands the question - do we really want to see them get their comeuppance in such a brutal and ferociously honest way? The conclusion I came to by film's end was not just "yes", but "Hell, Yes!" - and that unsettles me.

And, if anything, recent history has shown us that, given official sanction to do so, otherwise good men will turn into monsters for their countries. So, distasteful as those elements of Basterds are, they are completely believable. As honest and truthful as they are gratuitous.

Lastly, it's worth mentioning that Inglourious Basterds has some classic Tarantino fun as well - references to various films, campy moments, post-modern flourishes, on-screen chapter titles, etc. - but to a slightly lesser degree than in Kill Bill. Time is also handled far more linearly in Basterds than in any other Tarantino-directed film. All of this may, possibly, be a contributing factor in my not liking it as much. In Kill Bill, the flourishes were more numerous, and emphasized the theme of the film. In Pulp Fiction, they were more subtle. In Basterds, they seemed less organic than either of those, and stand in contrast to the primary theme. If he'd just stuck to Western and War Movie iconography, and down-played the post-modern campiness, it _may_ have been a more cohesive film.

Even with these caveats and complaints, I'd still give Inglourious Basterds 4 out of 5 stars. It was less comfortable than his other work, but no less artistic. He took big risks in this artwork, most of which really paid off, and a few that didn't. I am impressed by the effort and intent.

Well That About Wraps It Up For God

I just finished reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I must say, it was really good, and I now agree with nearly everything he had to say.

In the past, I've been turned off by Dawkins' appearances in videos I've seen, because of his sometimes self-righteous condescension and hyperbole. In those videos and interviews, he's made sweeping (and seemingly insulting) statements that came off as if he was claiming every person of faith is crazy, and I've often felt like he's presenting a strawman version of mainstream faith, with no data to back it up.

In the book, however, not only does his smugness seem toned down, but he actually presents the factual case that mainstream faith includes a great deal of craziness - and, more dangerously, aids and abets the more radical craziness that technically isn't part of mainstream religion, but hides amongst it's ranks. He also took the time to lay out what he really means by the "imaginary friend" line that is so often thrown around - which I'd previously assumed to be just a joke or insult - and makes an interesting case for it. Being not so pressed for time, he's able in print to elaborate on this positions, and present a lot more evidence for them. I was impressed, and swayed, as I've never been by those videos.

Perhaps it's just his accent. Here in the former colonies, we generally assume that any man with that accent is either a snobby upper-class elitist, or about to be strangled by Darth Vader. I think this works against Dawkins.

Indecent -quel

So you don't think I've completely turned into a gushing fanboy without the ability to discern good from drek, I'll mention that I also recently rented the Underworld Prequel, and found it to be painfully boring.

I liked the first Underworld. It had some plot holes, but it was fun and edgy. It was a triumph of style over substance, even if it was all stolen from Nancy Collins and White Wolf.

The sequel, Underworld Evolution, wasn't as good, and magnified the issues with the already muddied timeline and metaphysics of the original film. But it was still fun, even if it didn't make any sense.

The prequel, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans was was gratuitous, and not in the good way. Gratuitous in the sense of "not called for by the circumstances." There was no point to making this film. No story worth telling. Just a lame excuse to grab a few bucks. About the only thing good I can say about Rise of the Lycans is that it had no Midichlorians. Honestly, though, the Phantom Menace was more dramatic, and at least presented us with a few surprises.

Rise of the Lycans had nothing we haven't already seen in the previous movies. They just reshot the flashbacks from the first two films, then expanded them with an hour and ten minutes of tensionless drivel, and one mildly amusing sex scene. You already knew the story, and the characters, and but unlike the new Star Trek film, you didn't even get to see a new angle on them. There was no "So that's how Vader turned evil", because no character in the Underworld setting has a development arc. Viktor's always been a jerk who manipulates his daughter-figures. The forbidden romance had been going on off-camera for some unspecified time before the narrative starts, and seems contrived and artificial. We know who (and how) it ends badly for, and who survives. There's no drama, no tension, no energy, no excitement. As I said, boring. So boring the damn blue filter ceased being artsy and turned into self-parody.

The only surprise in the entire film is in the last five minutes when they bizarrely show us that the Werewolves killed all but two Vampires, both of whom flee to the new world. Considering that Werewolves propagate faster than Vampires, and that there's literally hundreds of werewolves alive when all but 2 vamps get wiped out, it seems unlikely that they'd be able to reverse this situation in time for the original movie. I'm sure that's set up for a fourth film that bridges the gap, but why the heck would I want to give these hacks any more of my time or money?

Decent -quels

I recently saw the new Star Trek Prequel and the new Terminator Sequel.

They both have some minor deconstructionist elements that make you a little nervous while you're watching it. It'd be very easy for either of these films to go horribly awry. Thankfully, they didn't. Both are quite enjoyable.

They are both the sort of film that is enhanced by seeing them on the big screen with the big speakers, so that you can be immersed in the sights and sounds. If you haven't already, I'd say go catch them in the theatres.

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The new Star Trek film thrives off judicious application of the Rule of Cool. It has some flaws, but the majority is so enjoyable, you ignore them till the movie is over. Strangely enough, you do spend a lot of time noting things that seem broken, which later turn out to have rational explanations and thus were not worth worrying about.

Early in the film, you feel like they're breaking cannon and totally screwing up continuity. Don't worry about it. If you just sit back and relax, it'll all be explained. Not fretting over the details will make a for a more rewarding experience. Eventually, after the film is done, you'll realize a different plothole, but it's pretty much invisible while the film is going on, and it is not the illusory/imagined/explained-away plothole that you're likely to worry about while the film is rolling. So just chill. It's hard - I'd been told it resolves itself in the end, and I still worried. Maybe that fear is part of it's magic and appeal, maybe it detracted from the experience a little. Can't say for certain till I watch it a second time (now sans fear), which I eventually will.

On the topic of breaks with cannon, I'm going to discuss the spiffy upgrades that come from advances in movie special effects.

• Personally, I like the improved heads-up displays and control panels in the Enterprise bridge, and the cavernous feel of Engineering. It feels like Roddenberry would have included such things if the technology to do so had been there. The parts of the design they changed for this film are things that were dictated by budget and technology in the 60s.
• In contrast to that, I hated the change of phasers going from a continuous beam weapon to a particle / projectile attack. Star Trek already has Torpedoes, Phasers are an intentionally different from them. The original writers chose to have both a beam/ray weapon, and a missile/projectile weapon, as different tools in the starship's arsenal. While I feel some lattitude for updating the imagery should be allowed, I can't help but conclude that the change of a Phaser from beam to pulse is an alteration of the physics and technology of the setting. It's the only part of the film that didn't feel like a respectful reinterpretation of the classic - as though JJ Abrams (and company) just didn't "get" this one part of Trek, which is a shame considering how nostalgic the rest of the film is. It's a minor quibble, to be sure, but it made the combat feel less like Trek combat to me, and that annoyed me a lot more than the one small plothole they didn't resolve.

The film is, first and foremost, a buddy picture. It hides itself in the trappings of sci-fi violence and pseudo-science, but the film is all about the characters and their friendships. On that level, it's great. You already loved the characters, and clearly so do the actors, screenwriter, and director. Karl Urban's channeling of Bones McCoy is pure magic, and the rest of the cast's portrayal of iconic characters range from passable to intriguing to spot on.

Will you like this movie? That depends:

• If you're interest is just for an action-packed sci-fi film, you'll probably enjoy it.
• If you're watching partly because you enjoyed the Kirk-Spock-Bones dynamic in the good ol' days before they all got fat and wrinkly, then this lovable film will make you laugh and weap alternately and at just the right moments.
• If you thought the little exchanges between those characters at the end of every episode was the lamest part of Classic Trek, you're going to detest the latest incarnation.

Me, I loved it.

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Terminator Salvation, on the other hand, is not about feel-good moments with nostalgic characters. Instead, it's a serious and hard-hitting look at the ramifications of the Terminator setting. It's also the ultimate in time-travel self-consistency. Again, all through the film I was worried the plot was going to implode messily, and instead it tied up all the loose ends. Time Travel films are always fun until you get to the ending, when they almost always fall apart. This one not only holds it all together, it also goes a long ways towards buttressing the earlier films.

I realize I just gushed on and on about Star Trek, but I gotta say the new Terminator impressed me even more.

T1 and T2 have always formed a paradox when you consider them together. One says resoundingly that you can't fight fate. The other says there is no fate but what you make, and seems to alter the previously predestined plotline. This latest film clearly (yet subtly) picks one of those two paradigms to be true and then shows you that the other film actually reinforced it as well. It's masterfully done. As a big fan of time travel, I really appreciated the sophisticated and understated way they dealt with that.

The best part of that melding, however, is what they did with T3, the red-headed stepchild of the series. T3 has all kinds of flaws, but to some it's cannon and retcon's are rarely welcomed. This film largely ignores T3, but doesn't actively contradict it. They don't dwell on when Judgement Day happened. The HKs have similarities to those prototypes in T3, but clearly aren't the same models and owe just as much of their design to the sequence in T2. The film does show John with a red-haired spouse, but avoids saying her name prominently or commenting on how or when they met. You can decide for yourself if she's the woman from T3, and if the events of T3 ever happened. Choosing one way or the other won't really impact this film. That was a very clever dodge of a potentially lethal bullet.

As T3 demonstrated, one problem the Terminator scripts have always faced is technology. You're doing a big action film, so you want to use the showiest effects. It's a sci-fi film, so you want to include cutting edge science and tech. It's a sequel, so there's a perception that you have to bring some new twist or outperform the previous films. However, the plot involves time-travel, so you can't really justify introducing new tech without it trickling back to the previous movies. Balancing that paradox is hard. T2 pulled it off fairly well, by implying the liquid metal prototype was sent through time just seconds before humanity captures the time machine. Then T3 forgot that, pumped up the tech level again, and didn't stop to consider the ramifications of being able to remote-control any machine via nanites. So sad.

Luckily, T4 doesn't have that problem. Instead, it feels like a corps of engineers and gamers sat down to brainstorm all the logical implications of what we've seen of enemy technology in the first two films. There's a dozen new Terminator and Hunter-Killer models in this film, and they've clearly been in operation for at least a couple years when the movie starts. They're believable, they're consistent, and they make sense. There's a hierarchy as well, you can eyeball roughly which machines were from which generation of design. Not a single plothole or logic flaw. Yes, there's still the need to outdo the previous films, but you understand why Arnold and the Silver Goo get sent back in time instead of any of the new machines we see later. There's a lot of subtlety, plent of details that click together thinking about it after the film. Genius work.

My only complaint is that Christian Bale doesn't let you in. He's charismatic, but aloof. He's cold and hard, even though his character obviously cares about the human condition. Very intense and barely contained, and yet the camera captures little empathy for him. For John Connor, considering his disturbing past and knowledge of his disturbing future, that makes perfect sense. Yes, John should be embittered and defiant and resigned all at once, and utterly unlike the people around him. My complaint then isn't so much with Bale's performance in this movie, it's with the fact that Bale's performance is so similar in some of his other films. Like he was typecast because of Batman. Just the same, it's better than the weak-willed self-hating John Connor of T3, so perhaps I should quit my bellyaching.

With Star Trek, I wasn't sure if the uncertainty of whether they'd resolve the plotholes and cannonical breaks was a bonus or detriment. With T4, that worry clearly detracted from the experience, yet it was still awesome. Watching it again later, knowing that it all makes sense, will be more enjoyable. At the moment, I'm trying to decide whether it's the best or second best film in the Terminator franchise. Guess I'm gonna have to buy the DVD so I can watch them in sequence and compare. Which is okay - this setting left me wanting to GM in it, so I'll need the DVD for campaign reference.

---

Which to watch? If you've got a one-ticket budget, and are trying to decide between the two films, I have some advice.

If you're looking for internally-consistent, tactically-sound, visually impressive sci-fi action, watch Terminator Salvation. It's got the tighter script, and a grittier feel.

If you're looking for a warm film with nostalgia and a touch of humor, go to Star Trek. It's got a couple minor plotholes, but it's fun and has enjoyable characters.

When Good Movies End Badly

You know, when Return Of The King had that janky over-long ending, I forgave it. Clearly, Peter Jackson loved the subject matter, and was just having a hard saying good bye to the characters. And, honestly, at the end of 10-hour epic, it was kind of appropriate.

When the Academy decided to give Return of the King 11 Oscars, I figured that was just a way of them acknowledging that they should have given more to the far better films (Fellowship and Towers) that went before it.

Little did I realize it's because Hollywood doesn't have a fuzzy clue how a movie should end. Seems that ever since then, movies have just been trying to emulate the multiple false ending motif of RotK.

(Spoilers in white text, so you have to highlight, or copy and paste, to have the movie ruined. Aren't I nice?)

• This week we watched Shooter. It's a smart, tight action film. To it's credit, they clearly did their research, on sniping and on conspiracy theories. Even more impressive is that the heroes are both likable and believable, which isn't common in action films these days. But then they screw it up with this weird anti-climactic ending on a mountain top, followed by a weird anti-climactic ending in the attorney general's office, followed by a weird anti-climactic ending in a log cabin, followed by a completely unnecessary "driving into the sunset" shot that seems to serve no other purpose than to illustrate that Marky Mark is the kind of jerk who parks a wheel in each lane as he speeds recklessly down the highway. Then again, that scene is probably in Montana, so maybe his poor road manners are forgivable.
• A couple months ago I saw Hancock. It's a fairly clever twist on the Superhero genre, with some good laughs and a fairly satisfying ending, followed by a cheesy bad ending, followed by another cheesy bad ending, then the credits roll for 15 seconds, only to be interrupted by yet another cheesy bad ending. I felt like that poor beached whale, dehydrated and miserable and knowing the only way out was to be thrown end-over-end at a sailboat.
• Even when they manage to make a movie end just once, they still end it wrong - Another almost-great film we recently viewed was The Jacket. Artsy, intelligent, thought provoking, I was hooked 3 seconds after the opening credits were done. It was at times a tiny bit predictable, but only in the right ways: it used that predictability well, setting up "ooh!, are they gonna do that? I sure hope they do!" moments. I kept thinking that this was one of the best films I'd seen in a really long time. Right up until the last minute and a half of the film, then it completely blew it's own premise and self-consistency by making a dumbass amateur mistake. If you're gonna deal with Time Travel, you gotta do it right. What they really needed was a "Twelve Monkeys" ending - that movie stayed true to it's own causality logic, yet was just vague enough that stupid American audiences could lie to themselves (or just not get it) and think it had a happy ending. Something like that would have been much better. The director knew it, too, as evidenced by the four alternate endings on the DVD, all of which amount to single shots attempting to undo the 90 seconds that went before them.

Stupid. The state of cinema in this country really saddens me. And that's coming from a guy who's made Pizza Face Death, A View To A Clone, and CameraMan, so you know my standards aren't very high.

Of Jumpers and Men

A buddy of mine in Chicago has written several of these really clever double-reviews, where he discusses / compares two movies at once - typically films you wouldn't expect to see paired in a discussion. It's a neat device for analysis, and something I never would have thought to do without his pioneering the concept.

Here's links to his double-reviews:
Dr. No meets 27 Dresses
She's the Man meets Seven Samurai
Boondock Saints meets A Night at the Opera

I'm going to borrow the format now, though since it's me, chances are I'll lack the elegant brevity exhibited at The Digital Sextant. Also, it would be improper of me to not also share credit with my wife, who helped brainstorm some of the following analysis...

Of Jumpers and Men

It never would have occurred to me that the largely-forgettable action / Sci Fi pic Jumper would have anything in common with Steinbeck's classic character study (set against the backdrop of the first Great Depression), had I not seen them both on the same day.

The version of Of Mice and Men that I watched was the 1992 remake, starring Gary Sinise and Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich. Aside from the big stars, there were lots of other familiar faces, including Uncle Martin the Martian, Audrey Horne of Twin Peaks, and a young(er) Dr Christian Shepherd from Lost. It's capacity to make me think so often of other films when characters were introduced was the first of many parallels, as I couldn't help but think of Star Wars prequels whenever Sam L Jackson and Hayden Christensen shared a screen.

SPOILER ALERT:

• Both films shared a central theme of prejudice. Of Mice and Men focuses on the real-world ugliness of racism and the mistreatment of people with developmental disorders, whereas Jumper had a more fanciful "secret Paladins hunt Teleporters for religious reasons" motif.


• On that topic, both films featured exactly one African-American character, and made a point of having a slew of other characters verbally remind us of his heritage 5 or 6 times during the film. OMaM tended to drop the N-Bomb, whereas Jumper just kept drawing our attention to "the black guy with the white hair".


• The second shared theme of the films was responsibility, and a third was compulsive behavior. Lenny Small tries (and fails) to overcome his addiction to touching pretty or soft things, and David Rice can't seem to overcome his addiction to reckless teleportation and bank robbing.


• George feels responsibility for Lenny, and tries to protect him, but eventually concludes he has to kill him.
  This theme is paralleled in two relationships in Jumper. Mary Rice feels responsibility to protect her son David, but at the end of the film she says she'll give him a short headstart before she hunts and kills him. David Rice befriends Griffin, a fellow Jumper, but shortly before the end of the film, Griffin's irresponsible behavior causes David to leave him for dead. Neither Jumper plot has the power of Steinbeck's work, largely due to no sense of past between the characters. David barely knows Griffin or Mary, whereas Lenny and George have lots of history.


• "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." That's a line from Steinbeck, issued by a completely different character about a completely different situation, but clearly explaining why George keeps Lenny around despite all the hassles.
  In Jumper it gets translated into a Marvel Team-Up reference/analogy, and David never directly acknowledges the subtext that he's desperately lonely and needs a fellow Jumper to talk to. This is the one and only way in which Jumper is more subtle than Of Mice and Men.


• Lenny and George constantly talk about Aunt Clara, who we never see. They also talk lovingly of a dream of a future homestead that never comes to be. There's a sense that both topics are ethereal, and may in fact be just lies people tell to keep hope alive during the bleak Depression Era.
  David Rice likewise constantly talks about his mother who abandoned him. She does appear in the film, but briefly and so artificially that she doesn't seem like a real character, either.


• OMaM opens with George and Lenny on the run because of an incident involving a woman in a red dress. To escape pursuit, they hide underwater.
  Jumper begins with an incident with a girl in a red jacket, which prompts Rice to disappear beneath the water and run away from home.


• Much later, Lenny gets into trouble over a woman again, unable to keep his distance as he's been warned to do by friendly George and evil curly.
  Likewise, David Rice gets into trouble over the same girl in a red coat many years later, despite having been warned off by his mother who says the girl is already dead, and will only get David killed if he doesn't abandon her.


• Around the mid-point of OMaM, Lenny is attacked by Curly, the mean ol' son of the boss. At first Lenny holds back, not using his abnormal strength, but eventually he snaps, and his over-reaction has consequences later in the film (as it makes hot-headed Curly harbor that much extra violent resentment towards Lenny).
  Around the midpoint of Jumper, David gets into a fight with the bully he used to go to school with. David holds back at first, not using his superhuman powers, but eventually he snaps and teleports the bully to a locked bank vault. This momentary over-reaction has dire consequences later, as the bully is subsequently interrogated by the bad guys, giving them leads they'd never have access to otherwise.


• Both films also make a showcase of physical deformity. In OMaM, it's a very common character theme. Lenny is oversized and awkward. Candy has a crippled hand. Curly wears a single glove (a social deformity, more than physical). Crooks has a bad back from being kicked by a horse.
  Jumper, being a product of the modern era and Hollywood's pretty-face machine, takes all it's deformity and puts it in just one shocking basket - Sam Jackson's hair.

From the above, you'd no doubt conclude (unsurprisingly) that I rather preferred Of Mice and Men to Jumper. I won't deny that. The Steinbeck tale (with it's grippingly personal narrative and wholly realized character studies) makes for a better film in all ways and categories except for Special Effects and Cinematography, both of which are the pinnacles of Jumper's achievements.

But it's perhaps not fair to snidely label the later as all style and no substance. Jumper was fun, and had more hits than misses, even if it wasn't terribly deep. The gamer in me typically screams "that's not what I'd do!" in plot-hole-laden sci-fi films, but Jumper provoked that reaction far less often than most films of it's ilk. Both movies had above-average verisimilitude. Perhaps, Jumper is signs that the Hollywood Action Mill is finally starting to realize "genre" doesn't have to mean "unbelievable".

Then again, Sam L's hair was pretty unbelievable.

Lucy In The Pac Sci Center With Ethiopians

This was posted by Pharyngula, and brought to my attention today by a friend:

Seattle! Get off your butts!

Lucy's skeleton is on tour, and is currently on display at the Pacific Science Center — a lovely and interesting place even when the most famous australopithecine in the world isn't holding court. Here's the surprising news: Pacific northwesterners are not flocking to the museum. The science center is losing big buckets of money on the exhibit, and other museums around the country are hesitating about booking it — it may close after its Seattle run, and I won't get to see it!

I can't believe this. You have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a wonderful relic of our ancient history, and you're staying home?

You still have time. It closes on 8 March. Go!

I hope "business" picks up for Lucy.

I went to see Lucy about a month ago, the same day we saw The Day The Earth Stood Still. At the time, it didn't occur to me to write a review of a science museum exhibit, but talking about a major motion picture came naturally. I guess that comments on my relative lack of culture.

Here's the scoop on Lucy: It's really two exhibits in one. The first two-thirds is an exhibit on the culture and history of Ethiopia, which just happens to be the country where Lucy's remains were found. And that's the problem - it's advertised as Lucy, you go there wanting to see Lucy, and instead you spend several hours in Ethiopia first.

The Ethiopia exhibit is actually really cool. I learned tons about their history, cultures, religions, and art. There's some really cool stuff about the religious customs and church designs I plan to use the next time I run a serious D&D campaign. I even learned things about Bob Marley and Rastafarianism, which I didn't expect from an Ethiopian exhibit. (Shows what little I knew.) There's some awesome exhibit items on display, like musical instruments I'd never heard of, several-thousand-year-old pottery, hand-written bibles, ancient coins, exotic spices, and the royal sword of Ethiopia. It's a great exhibit covering a wide range of topics connected to Ethiopia from biblical times to the modern day. The gift shop was selling spices and cookbooks for Ethiopian cuisine, and we're still experimenting with new flavors.

But what we'd been expecting and waiting for was Lucy. She was at the very end of the exhibit, after you'd been standing and reading for hours and fatigue was setting in. There was an interesting display of skulls of our various proto-human ancestors, but it was spread out on a inclined ramp leading up to Lucy. I found I was reading less about those skulls than I would have had they been placed an hour and a half earlier into the exhibit, and less than I would have had they not been on a ramp to Lucy. Instead of feeling like a focal point, the skulls were just something to distract you while you waited in line to enter Lucy's room. (And wait in line we did - the museum was packed at the end of December, though I understand it's rather quiet now.)

Lucy's room was small, and fairly quick to go through. There was a lot to read, but not much to look at - you felt like you could have learned it all from a book or a few wikipedia articles. Having those thoughts at the end of your visit was not a good idea. I don't know whether the flaw here was exhibit layout or advertising. If Lucy had been at the front of the exhibit, I think I would have been more impressed by her, and still been happy to explore Ethiopia afterwords. People just there to see Lucy could breeze through the remainder of the exhibit, and those (like myself) just hungry to learn could take our time. Instead, I think some folks felt compelled to rush through trying to get to Lucy before fatigue set in, and then couldn't gain reentry to the stuff they'd sped past. If the advertising had made it a little more clear that she was just one small facet of the exhibit, I think I wouldn't have been so surprised or impatient with the way it played out.

My wife and I really enjoyed the exhibit, and it was well worth our $20 a piece, but my wife liked the last third far more than the first part. She compared it to being invited to go see Star Wars, and not finding out till after you arrived that it's a double feature with The Thin Red Line playing before the sci-fi classic. The Thin Red Line is a quality film, and there's a tangential connection (war, or Ethiopia, as the case may be) between them, but stylistically it's a vastly different experience. You weren't expecting it, and probably won't appreciate it fully due to having it sprung on you unexpectedly, and that's a shame.

The exhibit has an additional hurdle to jump, related to the advertising: religion. A huge amount of the exhibit is devoted to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Learning about their religious customs and church architecture could be really appealing to someone who's really interested in the roots and breadth of Christianity. However, a sizable portion of that potential audience is going to be turned off by the notion of going to see a show about Evolution - and since that's how it's been marketed, they'll never learn what they're missing. On the flip side, there's a subset of so-called "militant atheists" who'll be bored to tears at the early Christianity stuff, and then feel let down that the Paleontology section is only a third of the exhibit.

It totally sucks that flaws in marketing and layout are keeping such an informative exhibit from succeeding. I think they could have done it as two exhibits - a short Lucy exhibit for $15, and a long Ethiopia exhibit for $10. If they'd offered $5 off if you attend both, it would have made the same money on folks like me, but allowed for the local Discovery Institute crowd to learn about the first Christian nation without scaring them off via the E-word, and impatient paleontology fans to get just the Lucy face-time they desired. With a bit of suggestive selling "for only $5 more you can see our very impressive Ethiopia exhibit" I think the Pacific Science Center would have come out ahead. Visitors would have been able to stop at the café and sit down for a couple minutes between exhibits - so more money there, too. Win-win all around.

P.S.: There's some cool things in the gift shop, too. The Ethiopian spice packs will really add some zing to meals. I like spicy food, so Berberé is my favorite - the package accurately reads "Deliciously Hot, Like the Ethiopian Sun" - but Mekelesha Kemem and Manteria Kemem are both pretty good as well. The gift shop is also selling Evolution for Everyone by David Sloane Wilson - it's a good book that I ought to review here sometime.

Re: Blasphemy

Trying to pick a fight :), a friend recently posted this "Blasphemy" elsewhere. Because it might be fun, I decided I'd take the bait...

Batman is a boring superhero. He does nothing for me.

Lord of the Rings is generic, redundant, and gratuitous.

Star Wars Episodes I - III weren't that bad.

Matrix Reloaded was the best movie of the trilogy.

Heresy! Blasphemy! My dander is up! I feel the need to respond! Listen to me roar:

I agree with you on 2.8 out of your 4 points.

Oh, I guess that wasn't as much of a roar as I was expecting. I'll proceed point-by-point, and see if I can get motivated to argue about anything. No promises, though...

I'm probably not saying anything that wasn't said before by someone else, when I say:

• While Batman doesn't bore me, I do find that he appeals less to me than many other superheroes. I think it's because at his core, he's just a spoiled rich guy. I've never had much sympathy for the rich.
  He's also more vigilante than superhero, the attempts of the last few decades to make him darker and edgier have just turned me off to the character - but, admittedly, I'm still a film behind (and yes, I've cued it on netflix to remedy that).
  My biggest complaint about Bats is that he doesn't quite fit in to his own setting - all the villains are over-the-top goofyballs with superpowers, but he's just a bitter guy with expensive weapons. Would Wonder Woman still be cool without her lariat and invisiplane - hells yeah, 'cause she's super-strong, is descended from Gods, and she fought the Nazis. Would Aquaman still be cool without his... um... what's he got? A fishbowl? Without it, he'd still be good at... at... at bobbing for apples! Okay, so Bats is grudgingly cooler than Aquaman...
  I think the point I should be making is that I can appreciate several other superheroes more than I appreciate Batman, because I may one day be bitten by a radioactive spider - but we all know I ain't never gonna be rich.
  
  
• Star Wars Episodes II & III weren't that bad. Ewan McGregor channels Alec Guiness well, and it's awesome wish-fullfillment to see the Jedi battles, especially Yoda. Mace "My lightsaber's the one that says 'Bad Motherfucker' on it" Windu was icing on my cake.
  Episode I wasn't that bad, either, except for the fart joke... and the other parts with Jar Jar... and the Midichlorians... and most of Anakin's scenes... and Darth Maul may have looked cool, but he failed as a villain because he didn't do anything that was actually villainous until 3 seconds before he died. Okay, so it's clear that the things that most geeks loved about Eps 4-6 are not the same elements that Lucas loved about Hope to Jedi.
  That said, I agree that Eps 2 & 3 weren't that bad, and maybe 2 or 3 scenes of Ep 1 weren't bad, either. Could have been worse, too - he could have put Ewoks on every planet, or made Ep 3 revolve around "Darth Binks".
  
  
• Matrix Reloaded was indeed the best film of the trilogy, even with the 45-minute chase scene.
  Every time I watch the original Matrix, I can't shake the feeling like the first draft of the script ended with Trinity being The One. It must have just tested poorly with male audiences so they went with the boring and predictable Keanu-worshiping ending. Felt like they missed an opportunity to really make the script stand out. Reloaded works a little better for me as a result.
  Revolutions, on the other hand, sucked tactically-inept mech-ass. It may deserve a post of it's own for that rant.
  
  
• And now, Lord of the Rings... Here comes the part where I express my outrage. Generic, Redundant, and Gratuitous, huh?
  It ain't generic. The story may seem generic, but that's only because every fantasy novel, film, and RPG to have released since Tolkien has stolen from him. When it was first written, there was nothing generic about it. It's like calling the Wright Brother's first plane generic and unimpressive because every plane since then has had wings.
  Consider Dwarves in any other fantasy property - they're just short bearded people. Maybe they don't like elves. That's straight out of Tolkien, and Jackson knew how cliched it had become. So he built them a visual culture, based partly on passages from the book, but mostly just his own crew's imagination. We learn about Dwarves not just from Gimli's whiney monologues, but also from the knotwork on his axe and helmet, from the grandiose architecture, and from his peoples desire to hide in their mountains instead of martial an army against Sauron. Just one Dwarf on screen, but you could write a book about their culture as evidenced in the films. The same goes for the two enclaves of Elves, the many differing cultures of man, the hobbits - heck, even the Orcs get four different identifiable cultures! Four cultures of orc! The films are visually and culturally loaded - and thus as far from "generic" as any fantasy can be. The only way it could possibly be less generic would have been to take a lot more liberties with the story - and then our complaints would be rather different. I'm sorry friend, but you're smoking pipeweed when you call LOTR generic.
  Redundant and Gratuitous... well, if you're talking about Return of the King, I can't argue against your point. False ending after false ending after false ending after false ending. It fades to black while Sam and Frodo are on the rocks - it could have ended there. Fade back in, and an Eagle comes to save them - it should have ended there. Fade in again, and Frodo's recovering in bed, and all is well - I could have lived with it ending then. After that point, there's another 40 minutes of teary-eyes, royal processionals, consolation gifts from the elves, Frodo and Sam sharing secret smiles, long heartfelt goodbye hugs for all the Nazgul, Palpatine's statue being torn down on Coruscant, etc. It just never ends.
  It's hard for me to swallow "we didn't have time for The Scouring Of The Shire" when I'm waiting for an hour of epilogue to finish before I can go to the bathroom. I mean, come on, cut the sappy "we're going to miss these movies" crap and let me watch returning Hobbit adventurers kickin' the asses of Wormy and the Sackville Baginses. That would have been worth the kidney stones to sit through.
  Other than that last hour, though, the first 2.7 films of the trilogy were amazing and flawless, and you, my friend, are a heathen for insinuating otherwise.
  

You happy now? :) Sorry I wasted your time.

Youtube with Onions

So sad. So true. Especially the crap I've uploaded.

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A 'Good' Video

No longer Plurking

To Clarify: The following is not meant to criticize or insult Pink Porcupine, JediRN, Neagle, SarahB, or anyone else on Plurk that I might have ever met in the real world, and thus consider to be a friend. Instead, it's meant to insult the system/software of Plurk itself, and the ridiculous social dynamics it creates.

Several months back, I promised a follow up post to share whether or not I found Plurk to be worth it, and my conclusion is it's not. But that's not really why I posted what follows. It's not really because the signal to noise ratio just wasn't acceptable, either, though that's my biggest beef with the system.

I posted this because of people who randomly logged on to my plurk stream and told me "dissenters should go fuck themselves". I posted this because of plurkers who asked my wife if she needed a good groping. I posted this because I'd been annoyed, even bordering on offended, on Plurk numerous times, and had no recourse that wouldn't have cost me the all-precious Karma points I needed to use the higher features. It's like social blackmail, and I'm not willing to put up with it any more.

None of those things were done (to me or Sarah) by anyone I've ever met in the real world.


Also, to those who think I intended "lesbian", "housewife", and "knitter" to be derogatory terms (which, I know, sounds a might silly, but it's something that I was told). Nope, not at all. But things were poorly phrased, and I see why you thought that was my intent. What you're not understanding is context: I'm a housewife. Well, househusband. I see nothing wrong with that, and clearly don't mean it to be derogatory. My wife crochets - which from my layman's POV is pretty much the same thing as knitting. Again, obviously, that's not meant as derogatory, either. So, please, trust me when I say that "lesbian" wasn't meant as derogatory. Your sexual orientation (and gender) is irrelevant, what matters is whether or not you were hitting on my wife. Had it been a bunch of horny hetero guys hitting on my wife, I would have been just as angry.

All that said, here's the original post, with only a couple minor edits for clarity, including a recent addition of the word "never" that got erroneously omitted in my earlier post.

Not that anyone who reads this blog ever used Plurk to contact me [apparently, that assumption wasn't accurate], but I'm now telling you not to do so.

That system is lame. So lame, neither I nor my wife are using it any more.

Plurk is sort of a social networking site. Really, it's more like an instant messenger. Now, I don't have much use for MySpace, and IMing for anything other than work has only gotten me into trouble. So that's 2 strikes against Plurk in the first place. Worse, Plurk doesn't IM as well as a real IM, and you just get innundated with garbage messages from horny lesbian knitters* that are friends of a friend of yours.

It's also a little like blogging and email. Except you only have like 100 letters per post, so saying anything meaningful is hard. There's little reason to Plurk if you already Blog, which, you might have noticed, I do.

And it's nothing but junk. Someone will post "good morning" and "good night" every day, and it will get responded to by 36 people, but because there's a chance (unlikely, but possible) that there might be substance in there somewhere (you know how people go off topic), you feel obligated to scroll through it and double check. Every time. Every day. Twice a day. From two different posters. Dumb. Till you get sick of that, and start ignoring those posts. But as soon as you do that, someone will wander off topic, and use yesterday's "good morning" thread to invite you to tonight's party, and you miss it because you weren't thorough enough. Dumb. It's like opting in to random junk mail 10 times a day. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

About the only good thing I have to say about Plurk is that it seems devoid of flamewars. It's a very polite community.

Probably, that politeness is because of the Karma system. You start plurk with next to no permissions or options, and have to "earn" them via plurking. That's really just a popularity contest - the more people who follow or respond to you, the more Karma you get. That unlocks emoticons and lets you change your "Plurk buddy" from the headless ham-dog to something more cthulhoid, modronesque, or perhaps the 23-eyed walleye. Actually, that last bit is almost cool.

Unfortunately, you not only lose Karma if you're "unfriended", you also lose Karma any day that you don't post and any day that no one responds to you. So, if you get sick, go out of town for the weekend, or, say, take a couple weeks off to write a novel, your Plurk Karma all goes away, and you're left feeling unloved and unnecessarily restricted.

If I skip out on this place for 24 hours, at least blogger and google don't feel the need to penalize me. There's something unsporting and egocentric about the way Plurk works.

Sure you can get Karma back, but at a much slower rate than you lost it - and the best solution seems to be spam-plurking everyone you know to provoke spam responses. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Let's face it, Plurk just sucks.

The only reason I was even using it past the first day or two was because my wife was** on Plurk. I could reach her via it rather than calling her office. Using that messaging tool meant huge amounts of wasted time wading through the plurkstream. It had stopped being fun months ago.

She said "I think I'm done with Plurk" and my response was "Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oh, have I ever been waiting for you to say that!"


*: About the horny lesbians - cause I know you're going to ask - they're just not as exciting as horny lesbians sound in theory. Many are Dr Who fans, which is cool, but most are also housewives (wouldn't have guessed there were so many lesbian housewives out there) and knitters. While they get a little flirtatiously playful which each other, they mostly talk about yarn. I've been told everyone at ravelry is also on plurk. So while Plurk offers nothing that MySpace, Facebook, Blogs, IMs, Forums, or eMail doesn't already give you, apparently it does offer something Ravelry doesn't. What that is, I don't know. I've NEVER been on Ravelry - but I'm guessing it lacks any micro-blogging / IM features.

**: Since she no longer shares an office with her boss, and even teleworks twice a week, the need for Plurk has gone down... pretty much gone away. She got sick of it because she felt that people had used her - asked her to "friend" them so their Karma would go up, and then never, ever, responded to a single thing she wrote. But she couldn't 'retaliate' by unfriending them, because then they'd unfriend her and she'd lose Karma too. Yeah, plurk sucks. Did I mention that?

May he die of old age in a world made better by his efforts

I was reading this CNN article that just made me shake my head. I'm hope the author just wasn't thinking of the message he was accidentally sending...

Can Lincoln's playbook help Obama in the years ahead?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The similarities are eerily similar.

Okay, "The similarities are eerily similar".
First: that's a dumb sentence, and more than a little redundant redundant.
Second: Eerily, huh? This had better be good. I'm getting heart palpitations just psyching myself up for this. I'm chewing my nails. It's halloween all over again. Lay the eerily similar similarities on me, baby...

Both Abraham Lincoln and President-elect Barack Obama were not from Illinois but became two of the state's top politicians.

They were both criticized for being too inexperienced to become president of the United States.

Both were raised by women other than their mothers (Lincoln by his stepmother and Obama by his grandmother) and later visited the women before their respective inaugurations. Both women died before the respective inauguration days.

Lincoln, a Republican, and Obama, a Democrat, will be noted as relatively young presidents: Lincoln was 51 when he took office. Obama will be 47.

The two tall and lanky politicians also wrote best-selling books before becoming president.

Historians and political pundits have pointed out that both Lincoln and Obama share the gift of eloquence, speechwriting and oration.

It's unintentionally tasteless. The similarities are rather mundane. They'd only be appropriately described as "eerily" if there's something... well, eerie... about it. But it's completely germain, and too be expected. Pick any two people in the public eye, and you'll find they have something in common. There's certainly nothing eerie about two people both having strong women in their lives, being around 50 years old, and running for President.

Let's ask my old friend Mirriam Webster about the word:

1chiefly Scottish : affected with fright : scared
2: so mysterious, strange, or unexpected as to send a chill up the spine eerie howl> eerie> ; also : seemingly not of earthly origin eerie glow>

Or maybe it's intentionally tasteless. There's nothing creepy about minor similarities. The description of "eerily" only fits, if say, they were both assassinated, or something. I mean, come on, the last time I read one of those lists, it ended with "Both were shot in the head on a Friday while sitting next to their wives, Lincoln in the Ford Theatre, and Kennedy in a Ford Lincoln limousine." It's like CNN is baiting some would-be lone nut. I think I need to write the dumbasses a nasty-gram.

While I'm on the subject of stupidity in the news, I'll throw in another coincidence. Lincoln, Kennedy, and Obama were all repeatedly and erroneously labeled "most liberal member of the Senate" by Fox News.

Jay Winik's hard-on for Slavelords

I just read the first 100 pages of "April 1865: The Month That Saved America". I'm thinking a better title would have been "April 1865: Jay Winik performs sexual favors for Confederate Icons".

I picked up the book because I'm curious as to why some wars (the American Revolution, the Civil War, and WW2) end cleanly and everyone makes nice afterwords, whereas other wars (various conflicts throughout the middle east, south america, various parts of asia, africa, the balkan states, revolution in mexico, etc) just drag on forever. My pet theory is the CIA. I think our government actively destabilizes other governments. But there's a good chance there's more innocent explanations, and I wanted to read up on how successful peace is formed. The back of this book suggested it would:

"One month in 1865 witnessed the frenzied fall of Richmond, a daring last-ditch Southern plan for guerrila warfare, Lee's harrowing retreat, and then, Appomattox. It saw Lincoln's assassination just five days later and a near-successful plot to decapitate the Union government, followed by chaos and coup fears in the North, collapsed negotiations and continued bloodshed in the South, and finally, the start of national reconcilliation.
In the end, April 1865 emerged as not just the tale of the war's denouement, but the story of the making of our nation."
bla bla bla

I have a general policy with books. At around the 50th page, I stop and evaluate whether or not I want to continue reading. There's just too many good books out there to make it worth reading the bad ones. In one lifetime you'll never read all the truly wonderful books you should, so why waste time and brain cells reading even one that sucks? Typically, by around the 50th page, you can tell whether this one's going to be worth continued investment.

At page 50, it seemed Winik's April 1865 was just barely getting past the preamble. He'd spent numerous pages on a sloppy but colorful hand-job of Thomas Jefferson. (Jefferson, in case anyone doesn't know, was an intellectual pioneer and a total fucking hypocrit. As a statesman and author he spoke and worked for liberty, while at the same time owning a large stable of enslaved human beings.) Understanding the constitutional dillema of slavery is pivotal to understanding the basis of the civil war, and while he mostly stroked Jefferson, Winik also pointed out the man's foibles and contradictions, so it was more than tolerable.

Winik's writing style was mostly enjoyable, and a google search for reviews spits back many instances of the words "shining" and "masterful". The chapter entitled "March 1865" had just started around the 40th page, so I knew I hadn't even hit the heart of the matter by the time I did my usual analysis at page 50 and decided to keep reading.

What an awful mistake on my part. Thereafter began an at least 50-page (I'm on 107 and it hasn't ended yet) literary blowjob and prostate-massage for Robert E. Lee. Admittedly, General Lee is an interesting figure. He was a pre-war abolitionist, and publicly stood against succession prior to the war, but, when offered command of the Union Army to invade the state his family lived in, he resigned his commission. If Lee had then abstained from war, he would be unimpeachably noble and heroic, but unlike Gandhi, Smedley Butler, or the Dalai Lama, he chose to take up arms. (Some causes are certainly worth fighting for, and even Gandhi said if you're afraid to protest peacefully you should take up arms. Just the same, for a supposedly pro-abolition, anti-succession individual to lead the Confederate army is downright kinky.)

I can certainly see why any history of the civil war needs to devote significant page count to Lee, his conundrum, and his skill. Winik's book, however, just heaps never-ending adoration upon the Confederate commander. Winik absolves Lee of all guilt*. He paints a picture of messiah figure, a Lee who can do no wrong. Even his "sensuous" correspondence with women other than his wife is praised - and he assures us that none of those romances were ever consummated (which could be true for all I know). The many hardships he faced and injuries he endured are enumerated, and in this stoic portrait "he never allowed any of it to slow him down". His part in the death of thousands is colored as a thing he did with great reluctance because Grant forced him in to it*. We are reminded again and again of his heroic and noble character.

Which, I suppose, wouldn't be so bad if he were just doing this for the one guy. Hero-worship is a fairly human trait. I've got several Heroes of my own up on pedestals. Winik, it would seem, has a few hundred thousand personal heroes, and most of them wore confederate grey. As we round page 100 we are told several times that Union losses were at record highs, while again and again rebel losses were half that or less. But then, astoundingly, on page 101 he characterizes Union troops as "murderous" - wouldn't murderous be more aptly applied to both sides, or perhaps the side that was killing twice as many? Instead, two paragraphs later, he reminds us that the rebel lines are made of "old men and shoeless boys" whom we should have sympathy for. It goes on like this, constantly painting the rebels as heroes and the federalists as sociopaths. He lines up the entire Confederate army to metaphorically fellate them in succession.

On page 105 he compares the city of Richmond to Christ. Jefferson Davis's flight from the city, we are told without any sense of irony, is similar in import to Christ's crucifixion.

On 107 he laments the poor aristocrat who's forced to release "$50,000 worth of property in the street and let them go". The slave owner, by the way, gets away on the retreat train. He can't take his slaves with because the whites on the train don't want to make room for blacks. Winik very carefully avoids any moral judgment against the slave-owner, or any one on the train. He almost seems to be implying that the soldier who insists there's no room for slaves on the train is some sort of hero. Like there's some nobility in freeing slaves who are going to be freed by the enemy in less than an hour anyway.

At that point I threw the book down in disgust. Luckily, it was $1.99 at the thrift store, so I'm not wasting much if I decide to dump it. I would like to know how this country managed to piece itself together in 1865. I'd love to understand why some wars drag on in violence and others are followed by extended peace. Must I read such blatant propaganda to learn the secret? I dread what his depiction of John Wilkes Booth must be like - 'dashing actor turned vigilante', 'doomed hero of a doomed cause', or some such pandering drivel.

Faced with the tyranny of the Bush-Cheney administration, I must admit a certain admiration for a generation of people willing to battle against oppressors (real or imagined), but I haven't forgotten that the "noble rebels" were predominantly racists, hypocrits, and oppressors themselves. Jay Winik seems bizarrely willing to overlook that.



*: Specifically, Winik tells us repeatedly how Grant alone was responsible for all those Union deaths. This was popular opinion in newspapers of the era, but that doesn't make it true. Grant was a bastard and a butcher, to be sure, but one man does not wage a war. Those deaths are equally to blame on Lincoln, Davis, Lee, the cabinets and congresses of both factions, the proxy system that let senators and financial barons buy their sons out of the draft, and everyone involved in the slave trade. To single out a few would be overly simplistic. To hold only one side culpable is to miss the lessons of history in their entirety.
Winik tells a story of how, at the battle of Cold Harbor, neither side was willing to call a cease-fire to clear the wounded off the battlefield. He blames Grant's (and certainly not Lee's) stubbornness for this, and neatly sidesteps the fact that since Grant had been charging a fortified position, the bodies in no-man's land were almost entirely Union bodies. Both men were complicit in this game of egos, and Lee stood to gain advantage by dragging the process out till the wounded had died. The Northern press hated Grant for his part in this, that is true. But to absolve Lee of all guilt in this action is deeply dishonest, and/or naive. The Cold Harbor negotiation failure was actually a great (and bloody) success by Lee on the psychological/propaganda front. That much should be obvious to a man with Winik's credentials, writing a book that claims "fresh iconoclastic scholarship" on the cover.

Extra! Extra! Denver Nuked By Boulder!

WTF? Watch this STUPID ad encouraging America to invade Iran:


I'm sorry, but "imagine Boulder shooting missiles at Denver" just isn't a good analogy. It'd be more like if Boulder sold missiles to radicals living within the Clement's Addition Historic District, who then used them on the rest of Denver. So, there's a chance that Boulder might develop an A-bomb... given that scenario, should Denver drop it's A-bomb on Boulder? Of course not, since an A-bomb in either city means radioactive fallout on the other.

To explore the analogy further, we'd have to add in another city - a city that sold Boulder the missiles in the first place, all through the 80's, and helped Boulder develop the technology to build it's own missiles. We'll call that city (just picking a city name at random, I swear...) Washington DC. So, Washington DC sells missiles and technology to Boulder, Boulder sells missiles to some jerks in the Clement's Addition Historic District, and those bastards in Clement's launch those missiles into Cherry Creek. Later, Boulder tries to build an A-bomb. Washington DC and Denver already have A-bombs. In the name of preserving Cherry Creek, should Washington DC drop it's A-bomb on Boulder?

Sorry, that cluttered the analogy too much... After all, Washington DC is in the same country as Denver and Boulder, and we all know the government would never target its own people *cough* *cough* *9/11 was an inside job* *cough* ... so let's clear up the analogy by using a different city... everyone always tells me that they hate the French. I don't, but it's been a long time since I caved to peer pressure, so I'm about due...

(Poor French - I love you, fryguys!)

So, let's say Paris traded missiles to Boulder in the 80s in exchange for hostages in an illegal violation of whatever the French equivalent of the Logan Act is so that some guy name duReagan could get elected mayor of Paris. (You still following my subtle metaphor? Good.) Mayor duReagan traded those missiles knowing full well that some number of them would end up in the hands of Clement's Addition Historic District extremists who would use them to attack Cherry Creek. He did all this despite the fact that Denver was a sister-city of Paris. What can I say? Mayor duReagan is one of those "let them eat cake" sorta guys.

20 years later, should Paris nuke Boulder? No - Boulder hasn't done anything that Paris wasn't knowingly complicit in. Paris should nuke no one! (or maybe just nuke itself)

You can't save Denver by nuking Boulder. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a sick hypocritical fuck named duBush.

You can't save Denver by invading Boulder, either - that'll just get a bunch of Parisians killed on top of all the dead Denverites. Even if Denver does the invading, it's doomed to fail - if they can't keep the peace in Clement's, they can't expect to do any better down the road in Boulder. The only reasonable solution is for Denver to get the hell out of the Clement's Addition Historic District and let that damn neighborhood run itself.

While they're at it, Denver ought to pay for some lovely neighborhood restoration and renovation projects as they leave. Maybe the folks in Clement's will be more inclined to overlook the fact that Cherry Creek pushed them around for the last couple decades if you build them a park, a shopping center, and a football stadium.