awkwardly

Phantom on The Darjeeling Limited

2009-11-08T21:16:00.002-05:00

Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas star as three brothers on a spiritual journey that goes off the rails...into horror! A Hammer Film Production by Wes Anderson. *Opening Night Selection, Loomis County Bedsheet Projector Fest 1978*

Audio is from the official theatrical trailer for The Darjeeling Limited (2007).
Clips are taken from:
Horror Express (1972)
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
The Steel Claw (1961)
The Big Trees (1952)
Casablanca Express (1989)
Battle of the Eagles (Partizanska eskadrila) (1979)
... all in the public domain or apparently orphaned works (except Darjeeling Ltd).

Kirk Douglas can be glimpsed for just a few seconds rolling around on the riverside fighting some other guy, and embracing a woman on a caboose near the end of the clip.

"Phantom on The Darjeeling Limited" was not made or endorsed by Wes Anderson or Hammer Film Productions. This non-coincidence is intended to be satire, so hopefully that gets me off the hook.

The Formula won't work on Wuthering Heights

2009-11-08T10:32:00.002-05:00

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim
The Undead World of Oz
Don of the Dead: A Zombie Novel

The publisher of Pride and Prej and Zombies had already considered public domain titles like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and Wuthering Heights before starting down that path. I notice they haven't gotten around to any of those yet, and in the case of Wuthering Heights, I don't think they will. Or I should say, if anyone does, it won't come out as well. I haven't read any of these, just like the idea, but the magical part of it is the tension between highbrow women's literature versus lowbrow gore and monsters. It wouldn't be funny or tense if you took Bram Stoker's Dracula and added mummies, or took the text of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and added sections about werewolves. You'd have a nice episode of Abbot and Costello, or a nice cross-over monster movie, but it wouldn't have that zing of "You got your postmodern archetype in my classic literature!"

Another level of text mashup that they haven't done would be much harder: instead of taking one classic and adding new material, take the text from two classics and mix them together. Mary Shelly's Pygmalion would put a new spin on both those stories, for example. With music, you can blend bits together quickly without worrying too much about what comes next, but it's difficult to keep a narrative when blending different sources, without adding some new transitions to smooth things over. Aren't people supposed to be more creative when constrained?

Anyway, the reason Wuthering Heights won't work in that original formula is that it already talks about ghosts and monsters. You might magnify the horror that's already in it, and that could be fun, but it won't have the shock value of prim ladies suddenly discussing zombies. You'll have ladies who already saw ghosts and discussed goblins, ghouls and vampires, starting to encounter a few more monsters.

From Chapter XXXIV:

"Oh, Mr. Lockwood, I cannot express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view! Those deep black eyes! That smile, and ghastly paleness! It appeared to me, not Mr. Heathcliff, but a goblin ...."

"'Is he a ghoul or a vampire?' I mused. I had read of such hideous incarnate demons."

... "Mr. Heathcliff was there--laid on his back. His eyes met mine so keen and fierce, I started; and then he seemed to smile. I could not think him dead; but his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill; no blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more: he was dead and stark!

"I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes: to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, lifelike gaze of exultation before anyone else beheld it. They would not shut: they seemed to sneer at my attempts; and his parted lips and sharp white teeth sneered too!"

... "We buried him, to the scandal of the whole neighbourhood, as he wished. ... But the country folks, if you ask them, would swear on the Bible that he walks: there are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house. Idle tales, you'll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on 'em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night since his death ...."

Fort Hood and Fred Phelps

2009-11-07T07:02:00.003-05:00

Some witnesses at Fort Hood heard the shooter say "Allahu ackbar" (God is great, or God is greater?) before or during the shooting. Thinking of Fred Phelps might put that into perspective. I imagine when he parades around with "God hates fags" signs and protests at funerals with the few members of his family who still tolerate him, Phelps occasionally recites lines from the Bible as if they support his bullshit. Not that he's exactly equivalent to Nidal Hasan, but it's another example of a hateful ass using religious texts to rationalize their feelings and actions. It doesn't necessarily generalize across the whole religion or congregation.

What I like about Hostel

2009-11-05T14:47:00.003-05:00

*** Lots of spoilers ***.

1. I like how Hostel explores where the torture hobbyists draw the line between people they treat as subhuman victims and other people they treat as equals. Do they bring their hobbies home and kill or torture in their neighborhood? If the guy in the locker room got angry or aroused while getting suited up for the dungeon, would he torture a fellow hobbyist right there in the locker room instead, or a guard? In Hostel 2, the less excited buddy tries to back out of getting the tattoo. How far would the eager guy need to be pushed before he'd torture or kill his reluctant pal?

2. Porn, prostitution and torture porn. Critics threw around the phrase "torture porn" when talking about Hostel, as if viewers get off on it. Meanwhile it's a story exploring the morality of paying to screw or torture or kill somebody. It's about people who pay prostitutes (good guys who pay prostitutes? or do they deserve the torture later because they fornicated with prostitutes?) and bad guys who pay to torture and who definitely get off on it. In case you manage to forget the link between those ideas for a moment, there's even a guard watching porn in the dungeon hallway. At the start of the movie, one kid backs out of seeing a hooker that his buddy already paid for. In the dungeon there's a callback, one guy who seems on the verge of backing out of torture. Is it a lack of courage, or wavering morality? Does the torturer need to feel his victim is subhuman before he can go through with it? Does the john need to forget that his hooker is human before he can go through with that?

While we're watching this movie about people doing torture, and it may or may not make us sick, other people are watching the phenomenon of torture movies getting made and viewed by us, and *that* makes them sick. I was kind of leaping to the conclusion that everyone who enjoys this must get off on torture, but it's just plain old horror. Most people who enjoy scary movies don't seem to be sadists or masochists. I suppose this debate has been circulating since long before my dad told me to turn the channel when "The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism" aired on a Saturday afternoon, circa 1983.

3. Traumatized victim becomes a traumatizer. At the start, you may wonder how people can stand to torture and kill anyone. Why do they do it? After it happens to our heroes and one of them is getting away, I kept yelling for him to kill the torturers, the guards, anyone at all involved. It transforms the hero and the viewer, if they started off thinking that you wouldn't want to kill anyone.

4. Very economical body count. Although we can assume lots of others are killed throughout the dungeon, we only follow three people from start to the end of the movie, spread out over 90 minutes, yet it doesn't drag. Plenty of slasher movies kill more than three just for an appetizer.

5. You know how "Deliverance" is supposed to be sort of a random attack, but it ends up seeming like a warning that hicks are gay rapists who hate city slickers? The Hostel movies have a subtext that Slovaks are creepy, kidnapping human traffickers who hate Americans and rich tourists. But it's Americans and other rich Euro tourists paying for it and making it possible.

6. Callbacks to Tarantino.
...A. Pulp Fiction is playing in the Hostel lobby.
...B. A guy standing up torturing a guy strapped to a chair reminds you of Reservoir Dogs. The ball-gag reminds you of Pulp Fiction.
...C. Victim escaping in car sees his enemies in front of him and runs them over.

Weaknesses
1. Hard to believe the escaping hero coincidentally runs across (then over) three people who led him to get tortured, and then the wannabe-surgeon torturer, and has the opportunity to kill them all.
2. How many American can disappear from the same Hostel before it gets conspicuous?
3. If you pay some secret society to kill someone they captured, in their dungeon, how can you be confident they won't take video or keep other evidence and blackmail you? They don't mind kidnapping, human trafficking, abetting murder and torture, but they're too honorable to blackmail you? I guess they figure repeat customers are worth more than what they'd get from blackmail.

Druggist ads from 1897

2009-11-05T12:38:00.008-05:00

Some products advertised in 1897 issues of American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record.

Liquid Bread
Stearns' Electric Rat and Roach Paste
Wine of Cod Liver Oil
Witch Hazel Jelly
Dunkley's Genuine Kalamazoo Celery Compound
Glass Urethra and Ear Syringe

"Liquid Bread" is a malt extract that's supposed to provide ultimate nutrition for sick people, probably intended to be like "Ensure". I'm guessing Electric Paste is metaphorical, or else they ran some electricity through it and think that makes it more poisonous? Strap a magnet to the roach's wrist, that'll fix it.

And I can see where the same design of glass syringe might have useful applications for ear problems as well as urethral problems. I just don't want to imagine the same syringe used for one and then the other.

Arnold's Bromo=Celery. Effervescent! Cannot be surpassed as an active antidote for the after-effects of Alcohol, Opium, Chloral and Tobacco. Can be safely used by the most delicate lady or child.

Check out Lush's Celery Sarsaparilla Compound below:

(No, I don't work for Google Books. Our company happens to be scanning these same issues. I'm sure there will be some kind of value-added functionality in our version to make it superior to Google's.)

Troubletown, good one.

2009-10-30T11:46:00.003-05:00

I don't usually like Troubletown, either because the art is amateurish or because the jokes aren't good enough to make up for it, but this one hits the nail on the head.
http://troubletown.com/uploaded_images/ttown980.jpg

Can't get enough Bromo-Potash

2009-10-27T08:38:00.003-05:00

So I'm leafing through issues from an 1891 volume of Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery. (Gone are the days when I was required to leaf through Playboy to prep it for microfilming.) Among the snake oils and tinctures advertised to cure epilepsy and syphilis, I see some product repeated on several covers: "Bromo Potash". And I'm helpless to stop myself from trying to fit it into the jingle that Sugar Bear used to sing for Super Golden Crisp.

"Can't get enough Bromo-Potash,
it's a tincture well worth its weight in currency."

Damn, I've got to keep working on it.

Some other ads I want to look up after we've scanned it:
* Dec 1891 issue. "Old Jug Lager, brewed only by the Moerlien-Geist Brewing Co., Nashville, Tennessee. Recommended as a Nutritive Tonic for Convalescents, Nursing Mothers, and Diseases of the Stomach, especially in cases where there is Faulty Assimiliation. Physicians of Davidson co. Ten. will be furnished a sample case, free of charge, upon application."
* Jul 1891 issue has an ad for Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium.
* Field, Turf, Farm, 1860s. Awesome ads for pistols, livestock, news of horse racing inside.

Tabletop RPG Dozens

2009-10-18T08:48:00.002-05:00

Your mother is so dumb, when the cops knocked, she told the dungeon master to flush her Bag of Holding.
Your mother is so confused by Tolkien, she thought Arwen was Eowyn and Saruman was Sauron.
Your mother is so dumb, she blocked Cthulhu's number on her cell so he can't Call.
Your mother tried to slash the eye-stalks off the attorney general of the United States because she thought his name was Eric Beholder.
Your mother is so crazy, she tried to milk Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with the Thousand Young.
Your mother is so crazy, her SAN was reduced to zero.
Your mother is so dumb, she thinks Chimera is Russell Simmons' ex-wife.
Your mother is so dumb, when she rolled D12, Eminem lost half his posse.
Your mother is so dumb, she thinks a d20 is a dodecahedron.
Your mother is so old, she paints Napoleonic war miniatures with the exact uniform colors and details she saw them in.
Your mother is so fat, her intestinal parasite is a purple worm.
~~Your mother is so nasty, she uses green slime to exfoliate~~.
Your mother is so fat and hungry, the green slime that's eating her can't catch up.
Your mother smokes so much weed, and that's why they call it White Plume Mountain.
Your mother is so forgetful, that's why they're called the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
Your mother is so ugly, I lost 2d4 SAN the first time I saw her.
Your mother is so ugly, she'd make a basilisk wince.
Your mother is so nasty, her picture and stat block were withheld from the First Edition Fiend Folio in favor of something more pleasant (see Penanggalan).
Your mother is so ugly, Erol Otus doesn't have the stomach to draw her.
Your mother is so dumb, she's the one who suggested using THAC0 in Second Edition.*
Your mother is so dumb, she made characters named Edward and Bella for a Twilight 2000 campaign.
Your mother's marketing skills are so weak that GLEEMAX!!
Your mother is so dumb, she invested in Palladium cause she heard Rifts was being developed for N-Gage.

[Switching to tv and movie geekery below...]
Your mother is so dumb, she makes movies where people throw their swords like spears.
Your mother is so dumb, she thinks the tv show Firefly was based on the novel by Piers Anthony.
Your mother is such a Trekkie, Neelix.
Your mother is so ignorant, she thinks "T'Pau" is the onomatopoetic name of the last cleaning product hawked by Billy Mays.
Your mother is so dumb, she thought "Seven of Nine" was a cute kid assimilated by the Borg who was brought in to perk up Married with Children after it jumped the shark.
Your mother is so dumb, she thinks Doctor Who's on First.

Bonus joke attempts:
Q: What do you call Firefly fans who are also Nazis?
A: Brownshirt Browncoats.

Q: What would you call a sidekick of Captain Kangaroo if he were a Nazi and a fan of Firefly?
A: Mr. Brownshirt Browncoat Green Jeans.

* Note that I never played Second Edition and have no personal opinion of THAC0, but heard so many complaints about it, it seems almost as big a pet peeve to D&D fans as people throwing swords in movies.

Today in Texas History

2009-10-13T07:48:00.000-05:00

October 13, 1845. Texas voters overwhelmingly approve annexation to the United States, a state constitution and the annexation ordinance.

Half million Russian soldiers couldn't contain Afghan resistance

2009-10-06T10:06:00.004-05:00

Rethink Afghanistan, a feature length movie by Robert Greenwald and friends, creators of polemics like Iraq for Sale, Outfoxed and Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices. Also Xanadu and the Burning Bed! See http://rethinkafghanistan.com for more info and to watch the full movie for free.

Heil Levi's!

2009-09-28T08:42:00.004-05:00

I noticed a fleeting image in a Levi's jeans commercial which may cause controversy, or maybe the blogosphere won't notice. You can see it on http://goforth.levi.com/downloads. It's the "film" titled "O' Pioneer." A recitation of some corny, ancient sounding poem or essay, I guess, over top of young men and women in jeans running around the great out-of-doors, a few images of deer antlers while the narrator mentions taking up axes, startled girls in close-ups for no other purpose than to see how pretty they are. It's trying to touch on old American propaganda like "Go West, young man" and Twentieth Century Soviet propaganda. About half-way through the one minute commercial, the camera moves past a girl standing with one arm raised in salute. After viewing it a second time, I noticed that she's standing in front of a statue that's also giving the salute. (Click on the image below to see larger versions.)

Now you and I, being the erudite, sophisticated chuckleheads that we are, recognize that holding up one hand in salute did not originate with Hitler or the Nazis, any more than the swastika originated with them. Seems like it might have been a Roman salute, as in the Roman Empire. Or maybe that's the thing where they smack their forearms across their chests? Last time I saw anyone do that was in The Phantom Empire or Lost City or Flash Gordon or one of those old sci-fi serials.

I know I've seen stills and moving images of American kids reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with their hands held out like this, before they switched to holding hands over hearts. In fact, the statue behind that woman could be in America, possibly pre-dating the Nazis. (I was right! It appears to be a statue of Sacajawea created in 1905, now displayed in Portland, Oregon.) When I first saw this on tv, I didn't notice the statue, but the image it brought to mind was Chinese Communist propaganda posters. "Young Workers Make the Most Glorious Backyard Steel!" or something like that.

That salute has become so strongly associated with Nazis, I'm wondering how long before blogospherists start raising a hubbub about it. Not that I think there's anything offensive intended by the ad, but if they freak out over the political significance of Rachel Ray wearing a checked handkerchief in a Dunkin Donuts ad, then they'll have a minor field day with this salute. Right? Left?

So anyway, if it becomes a controversy at all, beyond the comments section of the video on Youtube, you read it here first, 10:23 AM EST, 28 SEP 2009. Or you could have read it here first.

Unexpected honor-bound violence

2009-09-03T13:53:00.003-05:00

I can't put my finger on it, but there was something odd in common between a couple of movies I watched yesterday.

*SPOILERS coming up*.

At one point in the 1959 Western "Escort West," Rex Ingram plays an injured/dying man who tries to convince his friend Victor Mature to carry on without him, since they're being pursued by "rogue" Indian bandits. The man will almost certainly die if they leave him, so Mature is reluctant to do it. Ingram aims a gun at Mature, then puts it to his own chin as a threat to Mature not to come closer, to move along and save the rest of the party. It seemed like a gritty thing to show in a Fifties Western, a guy threatening suicide to make a point. Come to think of it, this movie was somewhat racially progressive too. Rex Ingram is the only black man I can remember in a Western, other than Blazing Saddles. And they made a point of saying that the local tribe of Indians respected their treaties, but the villains were a handful of rogues or bandits.

Later I watched "The Great Waldo Pepper" (1975) starring Robert Redford as a barnstorming, wing-walking biplane stunt pilot in the 1920s. At one point after a stunt goes wrong, a friend of his crashes. The man is still alive when Redford runs up to try pulling him from the wreckage, but foolish bystanders gather around with their cigarettes, and the leaking fuel catches fire. Redford tries to pull him from the burning plane but he's trapped. Since they had talked earlier about how some pilots in those days would jump out without a parachute rather than burn up on the ground, Redford grabs a piece of wreckage and clubs his friend over the head, either knocking him out or caving his skull in so he wouldn't be conscious while he burned to death.

Maybe they had nothing special in common, just odd behaviors to watch good guys engage in.

I spy astroturf

2009-08-31T11:19:00.003-05:00

This is not to say that libraries closing is a good thing. But see what you make of this memo. The name of the company has been redacted to prevent me from being dooced.

"Dear [Company that markets to libraries] Michigan Employees:

"As you may have seen in the news, Michigan library funding is at significant risk. Governor Granholm issued an Executive Order Monday, July 13 calling for the elimination of the Department of History, Arts and Libraries (HAL). At particular risk are the MeLibrary, MeLCat and MeL Tests and Tutorials � all resources used for research, educational purposes, job seeking and job preparation... [And some of those resources include our products, which we'd stop profiting from if they were closed.]

"[Company that markets to libraries] is sponsoring buses to take up to 200 employees to the State Capital on September 10 for a rally that kicks off at 9:30 a.m. Our buses will proudly proclaim "[Company that markets to libraries] for Michigan Libraries." Subject to manager approval, the first 200 employees to sign up to attend the rally will board the buses on September 10! ... Rally participants are asked to wear red and [Company that markets to libraries] will provide signs to help express our commitment to libraries."

Phishing spam via KidRock.com

2009-08-27T10:52:00.002-05:00

I received this phishing spam from a surprising source:

emenike_joseph has sent you a message on Kid Rock Official Community

Your Payment Has sent been to you.

Attn:Fund Beneficialy,

My working partner has helped me to send your first payment $5,000.00 to you and here is the information;MTCN:0630981788. SENDER NAME:Katharine Lopez,Amount:--USD $5,000.(www.westernunion.com) I told him to keep sending you $5,000.00 daily until the payment of $1,500,000.00 USD Million is completed and again forwardthem your Telephone number,Full Name, Your Country and adress so that they will be sure.

Please,contact:Daniel James. to the below E-mail(western_uniondpt@live.fr) and Phone.+22993432094.Contact person:Daniel James
Best Regards,
Miss Fati Ali Ahmed.

To control which emails you receive on Kid Rock Official Community, go to:
[redacted]

Worst Radio Theme Music

2009-08-24T16:05:00.002-05:00

On The Media from NPR, written by bassist/composer Ben Allison. I listen to the podcast every week. That "music" sounds like something to scare birds and animals away, including humans.

Frodo's Run: Logan warns the Hobbits

2009-08-22T12:46:00.001-05:00

With these characters, use of magic or proximity to it seems to come at a cost to their spirit or some resource. Gandalf casts spells and is some kind of immortal non-human. The immortal elves have magic in them. Frodo seems drained of his "youthful spirit" just from carrying The Ring for so long. A little like the system in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game where using spells or magic-items gradually depletes your sanity.

The bit where young Frodo departs Middle Earth to Valinor, the "land beyond the sea", has always bugged the piss out of me. Let's get clear whether this is analogous with Heaven.

1. They're going away and they can never come back.
2. People who live there are immortal.
3. Gandalf says that some of them have to go because they're so old.
4. If I remember correctly, they use the expression "passing on" to the West more than once in the original canonical material.
5. Consider the existing watery afterlife symbols of other traditions: Greeks crossed the River Styx to the afterlife. In ancient Egyptian and other mythologies, East represents birth because that's where the sun comes up, and West represents death because that's where the sun goes down.

So it's not a heavily veiled metaphor.

I realize Frodo and his crew are not exactly committing suicide. They're being rewarded with an early flight to paradise for services rendered, similar to the way Elijah and other Bible characters are supposed to have ascended to the afterlife without dying.

But if it's wrong to commit suicide, is it less wrong to request cutting in line to Heaven this way? If some creator intended humans to live and die on Earth according to some intelligent design, as a test or punishment or learning process or whatever, wouldn't it be wicked for Frodo to avoid the tests and suffering and learning that everyone else has to do? He even tries to convince the other young Hobbits, at least in this clip, that they shouldn't want to leave Middle Earth because they have great things to look forward to in their remaining years -- wives, families, smoking. Nice images, except they aren't enough to persuade Frodo himself that living a mundane life and eventual mundane death would be worthwhile.

I guess if you have a regular trauma in your life that's difficult to deal with, then you're immoral to end your life and cut short the daily remembered suffering. If you have a magical, fantastical trauma in your life, like carrying the burden of an evil ring and sacrificing a finger to save the world, then ending your daily remembered suffering by escaping from the mundane world is not only moral, it's your reward.

Maybe I'm just being selective in my suspension of disbelief. I can suspend disbelief when it comes to dragons and rings of invisibility, but I don't believe we have a magical afterlife in reality, so why should they get one in fantasy stories? Even better than the early trip to paradise, why not fantasize about characters who magically feel less traumatized and have magically adequate coping mechanisms to live out their lives on Earth?

I still enjoy life, even though I know there's bound to be more suffering in it. To me, it's a sad ending that they banish themselves instead of recovering from their traumas and living normally in the mundane world, then dying normally in the mundane world.

Why Ford? Why Bud Dry?

2009-08-21T06:54:00.002-05:00

My friends ask me, Mike, why Ford? Why now?

I'm paraphrasing that commercial because I'm too lazy to look up the actual words. Dude is walking through a Ford showroom as if he's the most laidback salesman on staff, or a customer who loves Ford so much that you don't have to pay him to be a spokesman. His delivery has a little bit of Shatner in it, pausing in odd places.

His response to his friends who ask "Why Ford, why now?" is that you can get a rebate in the government subsidized Cash for Clunkers program. But the program isn't unique to Ford. You can get that at any car company now, for a few more minutes. That answers why now, but not why Ford.

After the explanation, he repeats as if in summary, "Why Ford? Why now? [Answer:] Why not?"

It reminds me of the pointless but more poetic marketing catchphrase: "Why ask why? Try Bud Dry." Each word is one syllable, with an ABA, ACA rhyme scheme (if you count each word for its rhyming potential instead of the word at the end of each line).

They can't give a solid reason, because there is hardly anything substantial to distinguish one toxic drink brand from another. You should try it because we thought of a clever rhyme. Try it because people who ask "why" are people who think too much.

Ford isn't very poetic in their case, but they've nailed the pointlessness. Who is going to be convinced by "Why not?" The other weird thing is that after the spokesman finishes speaking, they flash to a screen showing the tagline repeated. This time it's spelled out "Why Ford. Why Now." Without the question marks, it seems like a title, as if they have explained at length why you should buy Ford now. They didn't even try. Maybe it's supposed to be forceful or manly to have a lot of "hard stops" in the middle of your tagline, similar to the Shatner-tastic way he talks. It looks more like a grammatical error.

Here's another rant about the commercials from a columnist at Edmunds.com: 'Perhaps its just me who drew this conclusion, but do you really want the guy from "Dirty Jobs" [Mike Rowe] next job to be representing your product? To me, it says, "We couldn't get anyone else and he was literally the only person willing to do such an apparently terrible task." Now, Mike Rowe is likeable and a believable spokesperson -- certainly better than Howie Long -- I'm just not sure about the potential subliminal message it says.'

I wouldn't say being a spokesman for Ford in general is a horrible task. They haven't gone bankrupt lately or accepted massive bailouts like some others. And this columnist praises Ford in the rest of his article, making a much better case for why you should buy Ford than just "why not?" The reason it's a dirty job no one else would want to do is that the ad copy sucks so bad.

Health care spin phrases endorsed by Deidzoeb

2009-08-14T16:24:00.006-05:00

Here are a few expressions I've heard lately that put a better spin on health care "reform". You've certainly heard "Death Panel", which is the idea of government bureaucrats who might determine that some procedures are too expensive to try on people who are too old or unlikely to live, as if we don't have a kind of health care rationing right now. (Read Peter Singer's Why We Must Ration Health Care, not only for solid reasons why, but for a reality check pointing out that rationing is done now, why it will always be necessary in a pre-Singularity universe of humans with limited time and resources.)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart joked about the "death panel" idea, but coined another expression to put it into perspective. "Private death panel" is the idea of bureaucrats who work for companies, deciding how to ration health care, which people will live or die. That's not a fantasy scenario about what might happen if politicians screw up health care policies. That's the current system we are all in now, one with private death panels. At least with government "death panels" and rationing, the bureaucrats would be distantly accountable to voters, instead of being accountable to corporate shareholders.

Ralph Nader called the status quo a "pay-or-die system that has plagued this country for decades, a system that takes 20,000 lives a year, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences." (From his appearance today on Democracy Now.)

Please use those slanted, in my opinion accurate, shorthand terms when you're stuck talking with people who think the status quo is awesome, or tolerable, or preferable to single-payer universal health care.

PS - A few more.

* Just the headline in this one (taken from a demonstrator's sign) should get people thinking: Who Would Jesus Insure?

* "Kindergarten Insurance" mentioned by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now back in February.

"I mean, why do we need to have health insurance? Do we have kindergarten insurance? Do we have police insurance? Do we have road insurance? . . .

". . . Our competitors, the Canadians, the Europeans, the Japanese, the Australians, etc., in all other modern countries, the costs of healthcare are on the books of society, and you don�t insure for that, because this isn�t a risk you�re insuring for; it�s a cost. You know what it will be every year from the size and age of the population. . . .

"And they don�t have doctors devoting hours and hours to cost accounting. We don�t make kindergarten teachers do cost accounting, or police officers or prosecutors. Why do we have doctors doing cost accounting? Because a narrow band of people have become fabulously, unbelievably fabulously wealthy off of this enormously inefficient system we have in America, which doesn�t fit with the principles of capitalism."

Also think about fire departments. You might have insurance to cover the cost of your home or car or valuables if they're destroyed in a fire, but the local police department doesn't ask for your insurance info before fighting the fire, or bill your insurance for it. Why is one of these widely accepted by the US public as a necessary service that the government should regulate and pay for, but the other has to be kept out of government hands because they'd screw it up? If they screw up health care so badly, shouldn't we take the fire department, police and military out of government control and let private companies do it? I don't want to reductio ad absurdam, but at least reduce it to a consistent policy.

Crochet hats by Deidzoeb for sale now

2009-08-08T10:04:00.008-05:00

These hats are for sale if you act fast at http://deidzoeb.etsy.com or just look up "deidzoeb" on Etsy.com. It's too late to hire Billy Mays to yell-sell these things, but there are several hundred sensitive, mental health activist, Oprah-tastic subscribers to Melinda's youtube channel who have been clamoring for my crochet products for weeks already. (Is it "crocheted" or just "crochet"? I keep seeing it without -ed.) I even have a waitlist for projects I'm making for them. I made a video announcing to them that my hats are for sale, so the floodgates are open. Don't miss out.

The d20 hat is made of twenty gray triangles. Looked cooler in my imagination, but it's probably appropriate that something this geeky doesn't quite turn out as cool in practice. Oh well. Don't let me talk you out of it. Your gaming group will crap themselves and start a bidding war when you take off your hat and make the Transformers sound as you turn it inside and unfurl the flap that turns it into a complete isocahedron. Go now, quickly, and buy!

I've also made some "market bags". More coming soon. Click on any of the photos below to see larger, grainier images. Anyway, I really made these and I'm actually proud. If it makes you less fearful for the loss of my masculinity, I crocheted these while watching zombie movies and the original Taking of Pelham 123 and things like that. Let me know in comments or at deidzoebcrafts@gmail.com if you like the looks of any of these and I'll make one to your specs. Hit me back and we'll talk colors, material, price and timeline.

Certificate of Live Birth for G. Roberto Deidzoeb

2009-08-07T09:49:00.002-05:00

kenyanbirthcertificategenerator.com/

Backburner update

2009-08-03T09:05:00.005-05:00

These projects are all jockeying for status on the front burner, some more than others.
1. Crocheting. I'm on row 15 out of 48 (give or take) of a market bag for one of Melinda's youtube subscribers. One more person on the waitlist after that. Then I have to make Melinda a crocheted cardigan.
2. Post 5 crochet hats on my Etsy shop. (Coming soon. You'll hear about it!)
3. Music. Still need to record "Lonesome Valley (of Pterodactyls)" and post it on youtube. I need to practice the bass part, or decide to do it without instruments.
4. Brazen Hearts. A. Polish and record "The Franco-Sadie Wars." B. Write chapters 13-18, assemble and submit to publishers as a novel.
5. Rafter shelves. Nail the old "laths" from our busted out kitchen ceiling across sections of the basement rafters to make shelves for storing books. Should be low enough that Melinda can reach it.

Over the weekend, my crocheting was enhanced by watching some cool sci-fi shows that I can only see free on-demand.

Being Human. I might have ignored this if it was just about vampires and werewolves, but this show is about a vamp, a werewolf and a ghost trying to make a go of it as roommates. It sounded like an interesting combination. I'm glad I gave it a try. They're listing it in the free on-demand section even if you don't subscribe to BBC America.

I knew Torchwood: Children of Earth was spunoff from some other BBC series, but luckily I tried and enjoyed two or three episodes before they mentioned "The Doctor", or before someone said it Welshlessly enough for me to understand it. (I was watching Season 3, Eps 1-3? "Children of Earth".) There were some silly bits where a temp in a high politician's office is given access to a top secret email account where she discovers the govt plot to kill our heroes, then takes it upon herself to contact and warn them. This happens in her first day on the job, no less. Otherwise, it's pretty good and thoughtful and makes me reconsider whether the newer Doctor Who series might be worth watching too.

SPOILER: Among all the govt conspiracy and aliens and sci-fi and investigation at the end of an episode, two co-workers in a tense situation share a passionate kiss. The tense situation is that one of them had a bomb implanted in his stomach while he was unconscious, excuse me, while he was dead. And that's two guys.

I laughed my ass off, but felt proud that sci-fi sorta broke another barrier. If I remember correctly, the first major motion picture inter-racial kiss was between Charlton Heston and Rosalind Cash(?) in The Omega Man. The first inter-racial kiss on tv was between Shatner and Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek. (Correction: Sammy Davis Jr. kissed Nancy Sinatra on a tv special before the Shatner-Nichols kiss. I assume it wasn't as passionate as the one on Star Trek. Also Shatner kissed a Vietnamese actress in an earlier episode, though she was in alien drag, I mean space alien. Island in the Sun might have set the earlier precedent for big movies in 1957. Darn. My pop culture civil rights history turns out to be myth.)

I'm sure there have been boy-on-boy kisses on regular tv before. This seemed to break a weird threshold because it's not a show about relationships (like thirtysomething, first US tv show where two men were shown in bed together IIRC), or a show where one character's gayness is built into the premise of the show, ala Will & Grace or The L Word. It's not a comedy where the kiss was played for laughs like SNL. It's a sci-fi show, and lots of sci-fi stuff was happening, and then in the course of developing the characters, the two that fall in love or lust happen to be men.

I was thinking more along the lines of Sci-Fi Civil Rights pride, not Gay Pride, but take it however you want.

Finally Warehouse 13 is good enough to keep me watching. It would seem a little more realistic if there wasn't some famous person who had invented or messed with every artifact they come across. It occurred to me that there are two broad interpretations of the show. Either the artifacts they collect have powers that can't be explained by known science at this time, or magic is real in a way that can never be explained by science.

Ceased in name only

2009-07-30T11:37:00.003-05:00

Wall Street Journal headline from March 2009:
Ann Arbor News to Cease Publication.
Detroit Free Press:
Ann Arbor News folds; Web transition begins.
Chicago Trib: "Closed for Business"
AP: "The Ann Arbor News hits the streets for last time."

So I bought a copy of the final edition out of a paperbox for 50 cents.

A few days later, I see a new paperbox next to it selling copies of "annarbor.com". Fifty cents for Thursdays and $1.25 on Sundays.

I realize it's a big deal, it's sad, it's historic. But some of the same staff founded and works on this new publication annarbor.com, with a larger web presence and two print issues each week.

It could be viewed as a newspaper that "ceased", but to me it's more realistic to call it a name change and a reduced publishing frequency. It would still be worth discussing as an old paper that has stopped printing daily, transitioning to digital. I don't think it would have been discussed as much or lamented as loudly if the News staff or maybe those who reported on it hadn't put it in misleading terms of the paper "ceasing".

Blue Cross, Ramen Shield

2009-07-27T09:40:00.002-05:00

A couple of great lines from Bill Maher's New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit.

'Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.'

'If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.'

How many taboos would you break to vanquish a baby ghost?

2009-07-23T08:54:00.006-05:00

Disclaimer: this is full of spoilers, but there's more value in discussing the plot of this movie abstractly than actually watching it.

Rise of the Dead misleadingly follows the title pattern of zombie movies (ending with "-of the Dead"). And it starts out looking like a really lame bunch of zombies in a very slow take-over of a town. The attackers also make low moaning sounds like you've seen in every zombie movie, so it's not unreasonable to come away with that impression. Before long, you figure out that the shambling attackers are actually just live people possessed by the ghost of a baby. That secret is revealed after maybe the first third of the movie, so I'm not giving much away.

Then we move on to the mystery required in recent ghost movies, not just escaping from the ghost but finding out why it's attacking and how it can be satisfied. Here's major spoiler #1: in this case, the ghost infant is possessing people in order to systematically kill his adoptive parents, foster parents, and to be with his birth mother again.

Our heroine, the birth mother who gave him up for adoption, resolves the problem in a unique and fascinating way, but it seems like maybe the filmmakers didn't notice a pretty major taboo they were breaking, to my mind more disgusting than some of the sickest gore. Ready for spoiler #2?

In the climax, the young mother is attacked by her boyfriend who is possessed by the ghost of her son. She stops him from advancing by calling her son's name (the name given to him by his adoptive parents) and talking to the ghost, not talking to him as the boyfriend. She hugs him and consoles him while the possessed boyfriend moans in a high voice, I guess to show that an infant ghost is controlling him. Then she lies him on his back and pulls his pants off. Has he messed himself? Is he haunting her because he died with his diaper needing to be changed?

Then she pulls her pants down. Then she climbs on top of him. I'm not sure if their movements and moaning were too ambiguous or if I just couldn't believe what I was seeing for a few seconds, but she's clearly having sex with her boyfriend. Who is possessed by the ghost of her son.

Boyfriend keeps up his high moaning, not a very sexual sound. Thankfully it's not a marathon session. Mother slumps over and boyfriend's moaning changes from high to low before he says, "What happened?"

"He's back with his mother now," she announces.

Next scene is a few months later and she asks boyfriend to feel her belly because the baby is kicking. Eerie music plays. The End.

So on the one hand, it's interesting to think of a ghost that wants to be born through his own mother again. Is he displacing the soul that should have gone there and taking the body that should have gone to his sibling? Slightly silly to think that conception begins at the exact moment of ejaculation, but still a fresh idea.

Except that her boyfriend is spiritually absent from the situation. The consciousness that experiences having sex with her is her infant son.

What is the moral of the story?
1. Christians can create curses even more devastating than Gypsies.
2. You shouldn't give a kid up for adoption, but you can make up for it later by having pedophilic, necrophilic and incestuous sex with the ghost of your son. Then you can live happily ever after with the child who killed its grandmother, its adoptive parents, its foster parents, lots of bystanders, and attempted to murder you. Knit some booties and roll credits.

Trend of the Living Dead

2009-07-15T14:00:00.002-05:00

Funny convergence. I'm looking at an issue of The Guardian Weekly (UK), the July 10-16, 2009 issue, page 35. Headline: Lively time for the movie undead. "Zombies, stomping over our screens, are the official recession monsters, writes Anne Billson." (About two-three years after everybody else pointed it out.)

The next periodical I happen to glance through is the San Francisco Bay Guardian, July 8-14, 2009, on page 34 of which I find the article We walk with a zombie: Nights and days of the dead economy and culture. Both articles in both Guardians talk about "zombie banks". Both conclude that zombies seem more popular during hard times.

At least the SFBG story gives a playlist of recommended music to eat flesh by, like the Misfits and Death and the Zombies, plus a sidebar of "fine reading and viewing for the discriminating zombie lover."