Were there any good commercials?
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Dr. Kelly Hollowell: Unwitting pawn in a meaningless war?
After finding her remarkable credentials - which include Juris Doctorate and a Ph.D that she earned from her thesis on the genetics of cloning - I have to wonder: How can a woman so intelligent, and so gifted, and so sincere a Christian, and (if I dare say this being a married man) so beautiful, publish something that is sooooo tired and boring?
I refer to Dr. Kelly Hollowell, founder and head of Science Ministries and regular columnist for WorldNetDaily. She has a new piece today titled "The liberal elite's stranglehold on America" and... well, hate to say it but just the title was a setup for disappointment. She's written brilliant stuff before, but not today. And it needs to be said that on each of the three issues she brings up in this article, she and I do stand in agreement for the most part.
I believe that abortion is the gravest sin that our country has allowed to happen. I believe that God created the universe. I believe that the "gay rights" movement is totally wrong, because by definition it establishes the flesh as a person's identity as opposed to it deriving from the intangible soul: Hey, lots of guys including myself like having sex too, but you don't see us marching in the streets with it as an excuse for demanding money and stuff, do ya?
She could have taken any one of those and made a good argument for it. Instead Dr. Hollowell lumped them together as one en masse attack on "liberals". And you know what? She accomplishes nothing with it. Nothing will change in the slightest because of this article. There will be as many if not more "liberals" tomorrow as there were yesterday. The ranks of "conservatives" may grow but there will be no overwhelming groundswell. There will be "liberals" and "conservatives" and this conflict between them - that we are expected to believe really matters somehow - will just go on and on, war without end, hallelujah amen.
The problem is her obvious motivation in writing this: to attack "liberals". And that's all. To that end Dr. Hollowell in this piece sometimes has all the eloquence of a third-grade schoolyard bully. She's far from the only one though: it seems that when others try to destroy "the conservatives" or "the liberals", any semblance of politeness is an acceptable casualty of war.
I see no love and all too much hate coming from both sides. And neither one has any idea why it is that they should hate the other... but they've been fighting each other for so long that all they really DO know about the opposition is that they have to be destroyed. That's all they know about themselves, and to take that fight away from them is to destroy whatever identity they have established for themselves in the eyes of others. More inconceivable to them: it destroys their primary vehicle of power over others. Without a predominant struggle between "conservatism" and "liberalism" in this country, they have nothing to make them seem important. Strip that away, and Jerry Falwell and Jesse Jackson both stand naked as a bluejay.
You see, I don't think that trying to "counter liberalism" is what Dr. Hollowell intended to do with her article, not really. She may not even realize what it is she sought to accomplish with it. Because I believe that the major players on both sides - and legions of the minor ones for that matter - don't want their war to stop at all. They can't afford to NOT keep it going because it ensures that their names are always "out there" for other people to see... the people that are "too weak and stupid" to know how to exist without them, though that's never admitted aloud. The fire must be continually stoked, and all that Dr. Hollowell did was throw more wood into the stove.
Here's the part in her piece where Dr. Hollowell hits the self-destruct button:
They are the ilk of Hitler, Lenin and Jim Jones. They gain power over the nation by arousing it to emotions that overcome thought – all the while proclaiming themselves the gatekeepers of logic.That could very much be a description of George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson also. Haven't they played on people's emotions to gain a sense of power and superiority over them?
Dr. Hollowell is a scientist. Wouldn't the sound and proper thing to do as an observer be to remove herself from the system so as to study it without her presence being a bias factor that creates variance in the data? To put it in terms of a moral exercise: shouldn't she be observing herself and the things that she says and claims to believe in, with the same objective eye that she is bound to cast as a researcher on external phenomena?
I don't mean any of this as personal insult to Dr. Hollowell: have said before here that I admire her greatly (and I'd still be honored to have a great discussion over dinner with her some evening, along with our spouses). But she really should know better than to think she's meant to be a great warrior in this battle, when it has no real purpose except to distract the American people from the things that do matter while they are robbed of their freedoms and opportunities by the extremes of both sides. It's a shame that there is a dearth of those who would make them give it back
That's the only thing that impresses me, Dr. Hollowell. The only political philosophy that merits my respect: the value of the individual. Probably the most despised minority of all. People who insist on factionalism are shallow and tepid, and I'm no longer interested in anything they might present before me.
You can do better than this, Dr. Hollowell. You're letting your life and your work be used for something that has no eternal value at all. Let go of it. Let go of them. Step back and be the disattached observer. Cast that dissecting eye on yourself. God obviously intended for you to go on to better things than this. A new generation is coming of age in America, and it won't be shackled down by the tired rhetoric of this deceitful conflict.
You would be considered a guiding light of that generation, Dr. Hollowell, if you would really want it.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Prime cuts of meat get priced and tagged without "sell by" date
University of California is considering tagging human cadavers with supermarket-type barcodes to keep track of them. It's said to be a measure to combat the illegal sale of body parts.
Anyone else noticing how much the real world is starting to resemble what William Gibson depicted in his novel Neuromancer?
That's... scary.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
"Will you kindly explain to me why the Sartres are always born on the other side?"
That line, spoken by Col. Mathieu (played by Jean Martin) is the one bit of blatant humor that I can remember a half-hour after finally getting to watch The Battle of Algiers.
I haven't been this stunned by a movie since The Passion of the Christ came out last year.
No, I didn't watch the State of the Union address by President Bush: he's just going to waste more of our money that we don't really have to begin with. And when was the last time that "the state of the union" was REALLY addressed by one of these speeches? It's become a guaranteed spot of television time where whoever's the current occupant of the Oval Office can suggest something, say anything and spend everything, and he'll still hear nothing but applause from members of Congress. The President isn't even required to make a State of the Union speech at all anyway: the Constitution only mandates that the President "shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." That could mean a speech or a simple letter to Congress. And how long was this year's shopping spree anyway? I've no idea but I'm sure it had far less brevity than George Washington's first State of the Union address. No, tonight's event has become just like everything else about American politics: a farce. Why the Hell should I waste a moment watching this crap? I'm not even gonna touch how worthless the Democrat response was going to be.
So after spending an hour watching American Idol with the lovely Spousal Overunit, I went looking for something with more meat to it than a fake speech about fake realities by a fake president. It caught my eye while fast-scanning through the channel guide and I had to make sure it was really on: Lo and behold, the first moments of The Battle of Algiers were just starting on the Sundance Channel. This has been something I've been wanting to see for some months now, ever since hearing nothing but good about it following a theatrical release and coming out on DVD. No place around here had it for rental, so after getting permission from my dear wife (it's her TV too ya know) I kicked back to take it in. And I didn't dare move from the sofa for the next two hours.
Damn. Just... damn, man.
This is one of the most brutal movies I can recall ever being made. It's one of the most human films about war ever attempted. It also boasts some of the most convincing special effects - like explosions, and there's lots of 'em - done for a single movie, considering how many there are. It proudly notes that it contains "not a single frame of documentary or news footage".
And The Battle of Algiers (originally titled La Battaglia di Algeri) was first released in 1965.
But if there's any other movie that fits today's situations, I'm hard-pressed to think of what it might be. The Battle of Algiers is practically a two-hour crash course on both staging a violent revolution and then putting it down: U.S. military planners would rapidly wipe out resistance in Iraq if they studied the strategies of the French in this movie more closely (indeed, top brass watched it at the Pentagon in 2003). Likewise, the Iraqi insurgents would handily defeat the American forces if they emulated the tactics of the Algerian underground.
But I don't think that's really possible, because more important than emulating tactics is what kind of motivation is there to begin with. The Battle of Algiers made me realize that it's not a free Iraq that these guys are wanting at all: "Acts of violence don't win wars," the resistance leader tells Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag), "Neither wars nor revolutions. Terrorism is useful as a start. But then, the people themselves must act." In fact, the freedom fighters come across as acting on desperation, on the level of barbarians even, for using it so wantonly. Even if President Bush pulled all our troops out of Iraq tomorrow, terrorism would still go on in that country (and it might be even worse in our absence... darn this movie made me feel conflicted about some things!) because independence isn't the goal. What that goal is, I don't know, but I wonder if the Iraqi insurgents even understand what it is that they want exactly.
But if The Battle of Algiers condemns terrorism, it's equally unkind to military occupation. The torture of Algerian prisoners (many obviously innocent) by French paratroopers brings to mind far too much of the accounts and photographs of abuse done to Iraqi prisoners by members of our own military. It was enough to make me VERY uncomfortable: my jaw literally dropped throughout this one extended show of pain. But even here, there is some rationale offered that comes the closest I've ever heard about how such torture is not only allowable, but warranted by circumstance. Col. Mathieu tells the press that "The word 'torture' doesn't appear in our orders. We've always spoken of interrogation as the only valid method in a police operation directed against unknown enemies." But he promptly follows that up with this observation: that as a soldier, he cannot set policy, but can only follow the orders given him. Those orders must come from authorities outside of the military, and it is they who are ultimately responsible: "Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer 'yes,' then you must accept all the necessary consequences."
In other words, if a nation's armed forces are being used for the wrong reasons in another land, it falls to the people of the country that sent them to put a stop to it. Our soldiers and officers are only so free to act as what we've authorized them to do. And if they commit wrongdoing while under orders, we are the ones who must answer for it somehow.
It's almost impossible to find a movie about armed conflict that not only doesn't take sides, but goes out of its way to give a fair and honest portrayal of the ideals that are driving each faction. The Battle of Algiers doesn't make you root and cheer for either side in this revolution, not really. But it does make you weep for a lot of people, no matter where it is that they figure in this fight. No "good guys" or "bad guys" here: nothing but a muddle of gray that leaves you the viewer to think things through on your own.
Yeah, I'll call it a "must see" movie. It's got my recommendation bigtime.
(Oh yeah, watch the trailer for The Battle of Algiers in Quicktime format here.)
"It's dead, Jim."
Yeah, so I mentioned Star Trek: Enterprise getting canned in the last post.
But how often does a guy get to use that famous line and it actually mean something? :-)
Gettin' more medieval on "Left Behind"'s behind...
Some others are weighing in about what was discussed here yesterday. The Refuse blog lays some serious smack down on Left Behind:"FASTER!! MORE INTENSE!!"
Left Behind™ is a media empire. But, more than that, it seems that the success of Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins is what epitomizes the desired goal of every publishing house and record label in the Christian ghetto. It's a sign of the times in which we live, that cheap media to the masses in hopes of making a buck is competing with the command of John 21:17: "If you love me, feed my sheep."The cultural interrogation continues, courtesy of the good folks at the evangelical outpost:How else do you explain the lack of honesty in the number one hits of CCM? How else do you explain the poor quality fiction coming out of Christian publishing? Or the poor quality Christian movies? How else do you explain Christian t-shirts, bumper stickers, license plates outlines, and posters? How else could you possibly explain fifteen novels in one series?
But what do the millions of books and products represent? Does it reveal an interest in eschatology among non-believers or just a hunger for Tom Clancy-style thrillers with churchgoers? Is the dispensational theology inherent in the novels representative of evangelicalism or does it lead to misperceptions about our beliefs? Are the novels great popular art, good entertainment, or shoddy pulp being pawned off on a gullible public?Hate to say this - I mean, I really hate to say this, given how certain people are going to understand how big an insult this is (although I don't intend to insult LaHaye and Jenkins at all: I met them briefly some years ago and they're both nice fellas) but this has gotta be said...
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have become to Christian literature what Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are to the Star Trek franchise.
Except that Brannon and Braga seem to have actually learned from their mistakes and made Enterprise a better show for it.
(Oops. Looks like I spoke too soon: literally learned less than a minute ago that Enterprise has been cancelled! Maybe it's a good thing: Star Trek has gone on non-stop for too long. That field needs to get some more nutrients in it before it's sown again.)
But y'know, this whole Left Behind thing has made me understand something for the first time: it's only dawning on me now why it's a good thing that George Lucas is leaving the Star Wars saga at six movies, instead of the projected nine and twelve that he talked about twenty years ago. If he did it per the plan that Gary Kurtz revealed to TheForce.net some years ago (and that's the second link to my old stomping grounds I've made today!) it would have been torturously slow and painful to endure the complete epic.
Perhaps, if they were to ever meet him, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins might be given this timeless wisdom from The Plaid one that he has spoken many, many times over the years:
THE KNIGHT SHIFT Exclusive: Christopher Lee's VERY FIRST Horror Picture Appearance!
And it was way, WAY before he played this guy.
Or before he appeared as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man, either. Or as Fu Manchu or Scaramanga or the Mummy... and before The Lord of the Rings was anything but scribblings in Tolkien's notebook. Five years before George Lucas was born, his future Count Dooku made an appearance in one of the most unique - and gruesome - photographic records of the twentieth century.
This ain't quite "exclusive" to this blog, since I posted the same discovery two days ago on TheForce.net's Episode 3 Spoilers forum. But you have to be a registered member of the board and explicitly ask for access to that particular forum (it's TheForce.net's way of protecting Those Who Will Not Be Spoiled, along with HIGHLIGHT TO READ: the Amazing Inviso-Text!(tm)) so it's not available for just anyone to read. That's why I wanted to post about it... 'cuz this is a pretty cool historical find!
It might also explain the path that Christopher Lee's career took in the following decades...
Guillotining of Eugene Weidmann
The above photograph was taken moments before the execution of Eugene Weidmann early on the morning of June 17th, 1939 outside the Saint Pierre prison at rue Georges Clémenceau in Versailles, just outside of Paris. Weidmann had been convicted - after finally confessing to the crimes - of kidnapping and murdering six people, including a female American dancer. His taking responsibility for the murders spared the lives of his three accomplices but set Weidmann up for a date with Madame Guillotine.
If you look carefully you can see Weidmann already strapped to the bascule and that he's been tilted into position with the lunette closed around his neck. This was possibly less than 5 seconds before Jules-Henri Desfourneaux (just four months into the job of nation's chief executioner) released the déclic that sent a 90-pound steel razor blade slamming into Weidmann's neck with a half-ton of force before coming to rest after falling for 1/70th of a second. Debate still rages as to whether the victim is immediately rendered unconscious or if he/she has what might be up to 60 seconds of awareness after the head has been severed from the body before the brain finally runs out of whatever oxygen was in the head's blood at the moment it was removed.
Eugene Weidmann inadvertently became the last person publicly executed by guillotine in France. The crowd of witnesses got so rowdy (a few accounts have them dipping hankerchiefs in Weidmann's blood as "souvenirs" of the execution, not to mention throwing handfuls of blood and spinal fluid all over the place) that the French government never again allowed executions to be a public spectacle: they would be remanded to privacy behind the prison walls, with only a few prison officials and the lawyers of the condemned on hand to witness the act.
Somewhere in this photograph, amid the crowd of witnesses for what would be final public use of the guillotine, is a young English lad named Christopher Lee. The future acting legend was 17 years old when he saw Weidmann lose his noggin.
Lee was visiting a friend in Paris at the time when it was announced that Weidmann's appeals had been exhausted and that his execution was to take place immediately. Standard procedure before capital punishment ended in France in 1981 was that the prisoner was awakened in the early morning the day after any chances of clemency or acquital had dried up. He was informed that with no possibility of reprieve, that his execution was to be carried out immediately. By that time everyone else knew that he was gonna leave prison a little less taller than he was when he came in. The condemned was given time to pray with a priest, offered a last cigarette and then however many shots of rum he could stomach (heckuva cure for a hangover huh?). His hands were bound, then promptly escorted to the guillotine and secured into the apparatus. As soon as his neck was trapped in the lunette the blade fell, allowing scarce time for the victim to feel panic or anxiety about being killed in so bloody a fashion.
Lee and his friend heard that Weidmann's execution was going down, so they went to Versailles to see it happen. Somewhere in this photo you're looking at the future Count Dooku, and Saruman, and Dracula, and Rasputin, and Fu Manchu, and Lord Summerisle, and Frankenstein's Monster, and the Mummy, and Francisco Scaramanga, and Dr. Catheter, and that Nazi from 1941, etc. watching the last guillotine decapitation that they let Jean Q. Publique take a gander at. It's sorta like that photo of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession in New York City and if you look real carefully you can see six-and-a-half year-old Teddy Roosevelt watching it from a window above the street. I've no idea where exactly Lee and his friend are supposed to be at in this one though (and I only connected Lee to these photos after finding that he mentioned being at the execution during an interview) but ObiWan506 from the Jedi Council Forums at TheForce.net found this possible location:
And if that wasn't pretty wild (though way morbid) enough already: there is film footage of this execution! It's one of the only two motion pictures known to exist of actual guillotining. But it's... pretty harsh, trust me. I had to mention that though 'cuz technically it would qualify as Christopher Lee's first-ever appearance in a horror film if we could find him somewhere in it :-P
Anyway, I really wanted to put this out there and share with any other fans of Christopher Lee that might find it. He's always been one of my very favorite actors and the kind of life that he's lived (months after seeing Weidmann executed Lee and some friends snuck into Finland and offered their services against the Soviet invasion in the Winter War, then worked for British Intelligence in World War II) can only be called one to envy. That he's still going strong and doing the kind of work that he loves at age 83 is really inspiring. After doing a lot of looking I hadn't found where anyone else had put Lee and the photos of the Weidmann execution together, so if this really is an original contribution to Christopher Lee's mystique - in however small a way - it'll come as something that I'll be tremendously humbled and honored to have done.
So I had to publish because of that, and this: if you understand, based on whatever scant bits of info has come your way about Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, what's going on in this scene...
...then you're gonna appreciate the irony when it's released in a few months :-)
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Iraqi militants are nothing: thank God he wasn't captured by Destro or Dr. Colossus
Geez, I'm kicking myself hard about this. When this picture first broke on the 'net I looked at it and the first thought was "That doesn't look like a real person... it looks more like a doll." But that got dismissed fast. It seemed too silly, only 'cuz I knew that these terrorists, as evil as they are, surely couldn't be THAT dumb, right?
From My Way News:
Right?!?
From My Way News:
Web Site Claims GI Captured in IraqOkay, I guess they really ARE that stupid, after all:Feb 1, 3:03 PM (ET)
By ROBERT H. REIDBAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The U.S. military said it was investigating, but the claim's authenticity could not be immediately confirmed.
The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo's authenticity could not be confirmed.
A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and behind him on the wall is a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Marine Sgt. Salju K. Thomas, said he had no information on the claim but "we are currently looking into it..."
A statement posted with the picture suggested the group was holding other soldiers...
'Captured GI' A Real DollAt this hour President Bush is considering what few options are available toward rescuing Private First Class Cody, and reportedly is now discussing the situation with Steve Austin and the Bionic Bigfoot.BAGHDAD, Feb. 1, 2005
(AP) The U.S. military said Tuesday that no American soldiers have been reported missing in Iraq after a Web statement claimed that an American soldier had been taken hostage.
The posting, on a Web site that frequently carries militants' statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back.
But the authenticity of the statement and photo could not be verified, and Liam Cusack, of the toy manufacturer Dragon Models USA, Inc., said the image of the soldier portrayed in the photo bore a striking resemblance to the African-American version of its "Cody" military action figure.
"It is our doll ... to me it definitely looks like it is," Cusack said. "Everything the guy is wearing is exactly what comes with our figure."
He said the figures were ordered by the U.S. military in Kuwait for sale in their bases, "so they would have been in region."
In Baghdad, Staff Sgt. Nick Minecci of the U.S. military's press office in Baghdad said "no units have reported anyone missing."
The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless.
In the photo, a gun barrel was pointed at the head of the man's figure, and behind him on the wall was a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet..."
Back to the Tyndale House of "The Rising" Son
The Left Behind books have become a literary trainwreck for me: I know I shouldn't look because it's going to be awful, but since I've read all of them over the past six years anyway I feel compelled to turn and stare, just in case I've "missed" something that will make so much of the previous time in the series worth it. Book #8, The Mark was the last time there was a thrill here, and even with the Glorious Appearing of Jesus Himself coming into the fray of what was supposed to have been the final installment, it was a letdown. Part of it is that I think Jerry Jenkins wanted to be respectful toward the subject matter and play some things safe, but toward the end he began playing it too safe. In all brutal honesty, the entrance of Jesus Christ was about as exciting as a pro wrestling comeback by George "The Animal" Steele. Here it is from page 203 of the hardcover edition:
Heaven opened and there, on a white horse, sat Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God."ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz... it is? He where? What channel?"
Now imagine someone like, say, comic book artist Alex Ross (creator of DC Comics' Kingdom Come and Earth X for Marvel) handling this same situation:
Without warning, Armageddon paused.Now, THAT woulda been a heckuva style to read it in!Ray gazed across the plain toward the brunt of Carpathia's forces. No movement. It was as if the forces of the Antichrist had stopped... themselves?
He turned toward Jerusalem. The ancient city that loremasters taught had been born of neighbor's friendship had been wracked and mangled beyond all recognition. Not in all the centuries since the glory of Solomon had Jerusalem received so grievous a wound as was inflicted upon her in this one hour. But even there, now only silence.
A silence among his own forces, Ray now realized.
A silence over their enemy.
A silence in the heavens.
Without warning, it came. And to Ray it seemed as the very fabric of space and time had divided. The miracle of the Red Sea, on a scale of the power cosmic itself. The curtain of known physics buckled and surrendered to a force far beyond mortal ken.
Light poured through the rift, illumined the ruined metropolis. And then, at once the height of creation and the breadth of a man of Earth, came One that not even Carpathia, with all the legions of Hell at his command, dared to challenge.
A thousand angels, of every color that fevered dreams might conceive, came up behind Him.
And Ray, overwhelmed by the spectacle, staggered and fell to his knees.The end of Carpathia had... no! Not Carpathia. The end not of Carpathia, but of death, and entropy, and every vile thing that had troubled humanity in even the depths of his heart. All of this would pass away as the stuff of creation was repaired, reoriented, made new before his very eyes!
It wasn't everyday that you got to witness the destruction of your own universe, but Ray found that he'd still managed to crack a smile, here at the end of all things.
Anyway, I had no idea this was happening so soon until last night but they threatened to do it, and it looks like Jenkins and his collaborator Tim LaHaye did find a way to squeeze more mileage out of the Second Coming (as if it wasn't finality enough). March 1st is when Tyndale House publishes The Rising, a prequel set before the Rapture took place at the beginning of the main series. It's supposed to focus a lot of attention on Nicolae Carpathia: how he spent his youth and came to be an Antichrist-in-waiting. And to Jenkins' and LaHaye's credit, after reading the online excerpt from Chapter One it did pique my curiosity an awful lot about how they're handling the origins of these characters. But The Rising is going to be the first of a prequel trilogy, followed by the REAL final chapter taking place a thousand years after Glorious Appearing.
Fellas, Stephen King only needed seven volumes to tell his Dark Tower saga. That's the same number needed to see Harry Potter graduate from Hogwarts. Do you really have to make Left Behind be sixteen full-length novels that your fans will feel obligated to plow through after paying good money for? Couldn't this have been truncated down... say, to one novel for each year of the Tribulation, then one prequel and the post-millenial follow-up?
I'm not even gonna begin to touch the "kids' series" or the graphic novels. Or the board game, the rumored videogame, the whispers of plans to make action figures based on the series ("geez that's wonderful a Fortunato doll that drools real Slime(tm)")...
And maybe it's because I no longer fully subscribe to the belief in a pre-tribulation rapture, like most Christians around me do, that's dampered my enthusiasm for this series. That doesn't mean I entirely embrace any of the other notions of how the end times play out either: to be honest, I don't know how it will occur. But I'm not going to pretend comprehending its design either. There's only one thing I've come to be certain of: that when it happens, however it happens, it will be completely in agreement with everything that was foretold about it, in every possible way. At the same time, it will be like NOTHING that we have imagined or theorized that it would be. That's the way God works, the way He's always worked... and why would He change that formula with a few minutes left on the gameclock anyway?
But there's one other thing that caught my eye when I was at the Left Behind website last night. This promo graphic for The Rising seemed awfully, awfully familiar:
It's that kid, with his eyes and the way he's pointing that finger. What's he supposed to be anyway? And then it hit me... of COURSE, and it's pure genius. That kid in The Rising promo...
...is none other than Anthony Fremont from the classic "It's A Good Life" episode of The Twilight Zone! NOW things start to make sense about Left Behind. Obviously the Rapture happened when Anthony tried to make his dinosaur TV show appear like always but a weird fluke of nature temporarily dampened his powers and all the TV's channels inexplicably began showing Benny Hinn nonstop. It was more than little Anthony could take... so he wished away planet Earth's entire population of born-again Christians into the cornfield!! There's your "Pre-Trib Rapture", folks.
As for Benny Hinn himself, millions of his disciples suddenly found themselves numb-struck with horror as Hinn, just as he started to "lay hands" on one of his "crippled" staff members, was suddenly turned into a giant jack-in-the-box. "A jack-in-the-box with HINN'S ugly face!" little Anthony Fremont yelled aloud, as he wished the dinosaur show to come back on.
That's a real good thing you did, Anthony. It's fine and we're happy and we're all good. We're only thinking happy thoughts...
Monday, January 31, 2005
END OF AN ERA: After ten years of mayhem, WWWF Grudge Match is closing down
This is the endAnd in the end, not even Mister T was powerful enough to keep a good thing going forever.
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the endOf our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again...
Maybe this is the way it should be: "That is the way of things," the wise Yoda told us. I mean, life is good. But a life without end is meaningless. And having all the time in the universe won't make it any more rich. No, a measure of mortality is required, lest we be condemned to an eternity of pointless debate.
But still... man, this takes all the hot air out of a balloon that took a lot of us to situations we never thought possible, and even across the horizon for a glimpse of things yet to come. Coming to the end of the road like this is going to cause no end of emotional turmoil for some people. Including me.
After very nearly ten years of fighting the good fight on the World Wide Web - longer than most people have even been able to use the Internet at all - the WWWF Grudge Match is being retired. It started as a rumble in the 'hood between Gary Coleman and Emmanuel Lewis in the halcyon days of 1995, when Jar Jar Binks existed nowhere outside the mind of George Lucas and the Blair Witch was not yet an original idea to be ripped off by a jillion camcorder-armed amateurs . It ended with a "Hail to the king, baby!" for Ash Williams. It covered just about every conceivable genre and corner of pop-culture in the history of anything along the way.
And it's gotta be said that plenty of its matchups became not just classics to the site, but to the entire web. The infamous English Soccer Hooligans vs. the French Army battle from 1998, I've probably seen linked to from other sites at least a dozen times over the years. The same goes for the "wheelchair demolition derby" between Stephen Hawking, Larry Flynt and Doctor Strangelove. The proto-"Iron Chef" bake-off between Hannibal Lecter and Jeffrey Dahmer prompted some rallying on Usenet for Dahmer's dish, but even that paled in contrast to the threatening e-mail sent by terrorists at Georgia Tech calling themselves "The Braveheart Jihad (There Is No Jihad)" in response to William Wallace vs. Groundskeeper Willy. "The Moppet Show" of Harry Potter against Anakin Skywalker got more votes than any other fight in Grudge Match history, while John McLane's running amok inside the Death Star is considered by some to be the site's all-time funniest contest.
That Grudge Match lasted THIS long is testament enough to the hilarity of its premise, but it managed to make a few marks of its own on the cultural landscape during its run. For one thing, it's widely considered to have been the principle inspiration for MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch. The spring of '98 saw the publication of Grudge Match in bookstores everywhere. At one point there was discussion of even turning Grudge Match into a TV show of its very own: I can only imagine how hilarious THAT might have turned out to be!
But I'm going to remember Grudge Match because during its long run, I made a lot of good friends in one way or another because of it and though they might not know it, a lot of them offered some much-needed encouragement during a particularly rough period of my life: initially I was going to be a guest commentator for Darth Maul vs. ConnorMcLeod but when my grandmother died a week before my part was due... well, that tends to take the humor out of a guy. Steve(tm) and Brian(tm) bared with me though and let me do The Godfather vs. The Equalizer a few months later. There's also the lil' matter of "The Night the Lights Went Out", the idea for which was literally conceived and put online (including graphics) within a span of fifteen minutes, and it's always been a thrill knowing that one moment of madness will forever be part of Grudge Match lore. I wrote the accompanying spoof of "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" in about a half-hour... what the heck kind of cold medicine was I on that night?!
There's no telling how many websites I've visited over the years. The number that readily come to mind that were on my "must-see" list is probably less than ten. Grudge Match was one of them, but not just for the humor: it was a really unique place for camaraderie and friendship. It was a family. It was like Cheers where "everybody knows your name" and now it's closing time.
It's not going to be the same web for me anymore. Not without one of the very first websites I discovered no longer churning out new material (though the site and its archives will apparently be up and operating indefinitely). But to go on and on and on and on without end would keep Grudge Match from its destiny as a classic. It broke new ground as a web pioneer, and now it gets to enjoy a glorious ride into the sunset.
Thanks for all the hard work and good laughs over the years, fellas. It's been an honor to have been both a fan and have had a small role in this site. Come back in another ten years or so when the ground is fertile again: there should be plenty of crap-tacular culture to knock by then :-)
Sunday, January 30, 2005
It's been two days since finishing Halo 2...
Halo, the original, I bought at the Target down the street just before they closed for Christmas Eve. "Weird" Ed and me located an Xbox for Lisa (and prolly the LAST Xbox on sale to be found in the state of North Carolina before Christmas) and since Ed, and Josh, and Kyle, and everybody else on Earth that's got an Xbox has been raving about how good it was, I got Halo just to see what the hulabaloo was about. We were in Georgia a day or so later when I finally put the disc in and started playing.
This ain't a videogame. This is art. And I'm kicking myself HARD in the butt for putting it off as "just another first-person shooter" all this time. It's beautiful. It's VERY deep in plot. It's the first videogame that intelligently implements the concept of religion. It's funny, especially the stuff that the Grunts say (I coulda sworn that I heard one scream "Don't kill me I got a wife and kids!"). It feels like the real world with all its physics and geometry and nature. It's got mystery. It's got backstory.
This is the videogame I wish had been around when I was 12.
So I finished Halo one evening last week, and saw the ending that has Master Chief and Cortana alone in their shuttle heading back to Earth, and after the end credits you see the Guilty Spark AI zooming through space and you gotta wonde what he's up to. Lisa got me a Target gift card for Christmas so last Friday, with a winter storm coming in I used it to spring for Halo 2. And got to the ending of that on Friday.
In the name of all that's good and holy... WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!?
There'd better be a Halo 3 coming out and like yesterday, else someone oughtta go medieval Brute-style on Bungie Studios' butt. Nobody should be made to endure a cliffhanger that leaves not one or two, but maybe five plot threads dangling. For Lord only knows how long.
It seemed shorter than the original, but that may have only been because I was so used to how to play it by this point. It definitely improves on the first game though: more scenery to take in, a LOT more locales to play around, more weapons and bad guys and vehicles, the ability to now hold guns in both hands, and one other little twist that to the best of my knowledge I've never seen anywhere in a videogame before, but was done here (but saying anymore would entail serious spoilage).
But that's gotta be the most cruel way to end a story since the final episode of Blake's 7. At least then Terry Nation had the good sense to force his fans to watch all their favorite characters get killed off one by one. Bungie didn't even give us that much sense of closure.
Some thoughts on today's Iraq elections
Most places reporting that there's a 72-74% turnout of voters. If only we could see that kind of interest in our own elections here in America.
Am hearing that there's some dispute about the figures though: is that a percentage of ALL eligible Iraqis, or a percentage of those Iraqis that registered to vote? If it's the latter, some are suggesting it's only 7-10% of the eligible population that registered at all.
There's been a massive turnout at the polls from the Kurds. Gotta wonder if they'll get enough political pull to demand a separate homeland. They were easily the #1 domestic enemy that Saddam Hussein had when he was in power. And the ones with brass ones enough to FIGHT the guy on a regular basis. If any group has earned the right to vote in a free election, it's the Kurds. Said it before and will say it again: freedom cannot be granted, it must be earned. Whatever else is said about 'em, they proved they earned it.
It's the REST of the country that I'm wondering about. And history ain't exactly on their side. But, still hoping for a good outcome from a bad situation anyway.
This is too much like the "protection" the Soviets used to extend visitors
You know why I post stuff like this?
It's 'cuz when things get REALLY bad, I'll never have the guilt of knowing that I didn't do anything to stop it on my conscience. And however bad things might get, I can either live a long and happy life or die a slow and painful death knowing that I didn't capitulate and that I tried my damndest to get others to say "no" just one more time than these bastitches said "yes".
More proof that we're becoming a fascist state, courtesy of the Washington Post (free website registration required to read full article):
...I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"So if Bush and crew can't buy a journalist, they send goons to follow them around at events to make sure they aren't doing anything that they don't want them to be doing.Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.
I replied that I had been doing just fine without one, and walked over to a quiet corner of the hall to phone in some anecdotes to The Post's Style desk.
As I was dictating from my notes, something flashed across my face and neatly snatched my cell phone from of my hand. I looked up to confront a middle-aged woman, her face afire with rage. "You ignored the rules, and I'm throwing you out!" she barked, snapping my phone shut. "You told that girl you didn't need an escort. That's a lie! You're out of here!"
With the First Amendment on the line, my natural wit did not fail me. "Huh?" I answered.
Recovering quickly, I explained that I had been unaware of the escort policy. She was unbending and ordered a couple of security guards to hustle me out. I appealed to them, saying that I was more than happy to follow whatever ground rules had been laid down. They shrugged, and deposited me back in the media pen.
So now it's that "freedom of the press" thing that's getting bulldozed all over by this bunch. Some of us knew that already. Looks like they're getting more brazen about it now.
But he's "a good Christian Republican" so it doesn't matter...
Saturday, January 29, 2005
We were told there would be no draft. So why are these people calling for a draft?
"Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces", written to several members of Congress by Project for the New American Century.
Ooh-boy...
"The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume."
"The United States will not and should not become less engaged in the world in the years to come."
"...the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world require a larger military force than we have today."
"So we write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps."
"There is abundant evidence that the demands of the ongoing missions in the greater Middle East, along with our continuing defense and alliance commitments elsewhere in the world, are close to exhausting current U.S. ground forces."
"The only way to fulfill the military aspect of this commitment is by increasing the size of the force available to our civilian leadership."
"...we can afford both the necessary number of ground troops and what is needed for transformation of the military."
"We can afford the military we need."
"Reserves were meant to be reserves, not regulars."
"Our regulars and reserves are not only proving themselves as warriors, but as humanitarians and builders of emerging democracies."
"We can honor their sacrifices by giving them the manpower and the materiel they need."
"Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution places the power and the duty to raise and support the military forces of the United States in the hands of the Congress. That is why we, the undersigned, a bipartisan group with diverse policy views, have come together to call upon you to act."
"You will be serving your country well if you insist on providing the military manpower we need to meet America's obligations, and to help ensure success in carrying out our foreign policy objectives in a dangerous, but also hopeful, world."
It's signed by 34 individuals who figure bigtime in military, the defense industry, and what's come to be called "neo-conservative" policies. But curiously it's missing signatures from some people who did sign PNAC's Statement of Principles: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Gary Bauer, quite a few others...
The word "draft" itself doesn't figure anywhere in this letter. But really, what else can they be referring to? Maybe these guys are smarter than we give 'em credit for: I mean, it would raise eyebrows all over the place if the current Vice-President of the United States and Secretary of Defense put their names on a letter urging the draft be brought back, no doubt.
If it is, the response from American young people should be the same: don't go until we see Jenna and Barbara getting shipped off to Iraq with rifles in their hands.
Oh great, Bush can protect Iraq's borders with OUR Border Patrol agents...
...but when it comes to our own borders...
The man's a traitor. Plain and simple. Too bad he's protected by a Republican majority in the House and Senate... but that says a lot about a man's character that he needs that kind of seeming immunity from whatever evil he thinks he can get away with.
Anyone who posts a comment defending this in the slightest bit, or alludes that Bush is still a great President despite his VIOLATING THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION IN A MORE GROSS FASHION THAN BUBBA CLINTON EVER DID, is not just a traitor but a damned idiot.
A history professor in college once told us how a nation's leadership does deserve any punishment met out to it, if that leadership is so ignorant and uninterested in serving his own people. Especially if that ignorance results from the leader's desire for personal profit or comfort. Louis XVI was "a nice enough guy," he told us, "but he wanted to party too much. He was told all the things that were going wrong but he'd only answer 'oh okay, that's bad. Where's the party?' He may have been the nicest king France ever had but he more than deserved getting executed for that."
I'm finally beginning to understand what he meant by that.
Maybe it's genetic and the man can't help it though. I mean, now that it's come out that Bush is a descendant of the Irish king who sold out his own island and people to the English, along with a few other unsavory barbarians, seems like he's just following a family tradition of being disloyal to fellow countrymen. But we knew that a few generations ago with Prescott Bush and the Nazis anyway, right?
By the way, just as the edge of the snowstorm was approaching I went out and bought the new Star Wars novel (and direct prequel to Episode III) Labyrinth of Evil by James Luceno. I'm a little more than 100 pages into it and it's fast becoming one of my all-time favorite Star Wars stories. But Labyrinth of Evil is also a very strong attack/indictment against President Bush, no subtlety at all. In Luceno's hands, Palpatine is Bush. He even slams things like Homeland Security, the TSA and warantless searches. And Palpatine brushes off the criticism because "the Constitution is a living document": his exact words. And there's some alluding to the idea that the Republic's political factions are a way of distracting everyone from the REAL evil that the Sith have been working against everyone.
As a strict Constitutionalist, this book is a hoot to read. I've met Luceno before, a few times: genuinely nice and brilliant guy. Feel now like we're philosophical kindred as well.
Hey who knows: maybe when Episode III comes out in theaters enough people will REALLY start to wake up to what's going on in real life. I sure as Hell wouldn't mind being part of a Rebel Alliance ;-)
Finally saw the new Battlestar Galactica last night
Something I can't understand: if these are supposed to be humans from WAY out there in another part of the galaxy, who are descended from humans who colonized twelve worlds after long ago coming from Kobol, the original home planet of humanity, and who now faced with extinction their only hope is to find a mythical thirteenth colony: the planet that their legends call "Earth"...
HOW the heck are these humans, however much they ARE identical to us, using and speaking English, have the same style of clothes as North Americans, have the same religious customs etc., when there shoule be HUGE differences between us and them after thousands of years of "cultural drift" from the separation?
I don't get that. The only theory I can come up with is that humanity started off on Earth, then migrated to Kobol and then to the twelve colonies, and after awhile the real story got muddled-up in their history. So when Galactica does reach Earth, it's going to be the Earth of our distant future.
That's the only thing I can conceive of that makes sense.
But there's only one thing that can be said about this new Battlestar Galactica: this is an AWESOME show!!
I can forgive the previously mentioned incongruity, and will make it a huge thing to commit to watching this regularly, if they keep it this strong and fresh and bold. I've a lot of catch-up to do, but last night's episode started with a freak accident that killed dozens of people onboard the ship, especially their fighter pilots. Which is a HUGE loss given that there's not many people in the convoy anyway and fighter pilots are too desperately needed. But here's the thing: how many times do freak accidents like this happen in a TV show, much less a sci-fi show? Goes on all the time in real life, for no reason that makes sense at all. But to lose a bunch of people in a way that DOES NOT make sense and has no purpose at all... that's both an unattractive thing to base a show's episode on, much less make it captivating for the viewer.
Last night's Battlestar Galactica did that though. It made me realize that this is one of the very, very few TV shows - of any genre - that really does focus on the characters. It didn't seem like a sci-fi show at all, felt more like a reality show or a documentary film (my wife asked from the other room if this was a reality show even, not knowing what I was watching but she could hear it).
Oh yeah, they did some space fightin' in last night's episode. And whenever they showed outside the ships, in the blackness of space, there were no sounds at all. No guns firing, no loud explosions. Just silence with a very subdued ambient thing in the background. There shouldn't be sound at all, and the last time anyone was that accurate on this was Stanley Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey back in 1968. There was no sound in space during the fights... but that made it no less exciting to watch or accept. In fact, it made me buy into it even more that these were real people and a real ship, and they really were out there somewhere. I'm a science-minded type guy and was looking for anything like the "particle of the week" technobabble that Star Trek: The Next Generation became notorious for. If there was any, I couldn't find it here: the only thing that violates known physics is having a ship that big moving faster than light (and have read that there's even a strong basis for that in theoretical physics).
Man, this was so far off from what I was expecting. It's NOTHING like the original Battlestar Galactica, other than the names of most of the characters - Starbuck is a girl(?!) in this new take - and even the opening theme music has nothing to do with the original's beautiful score. Just going by last night's episode, I'm sorry that I've missed watching it all this time because the new Battlestar Galactica is television the way the medium should be.
