I thought Republicans were supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility

President Bush has borrowed MORE money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined!!

I hope all of you who voted for this damaged little man are happy now: thanks to you, your children and your grandchildren - and probably THEIR grandchildren - will be in hoc to overseas governments and banks until the new moon turns to gold.

See, it's times like this that the evil little "id" part of me thinks that the grown-ups in America should denounce as subhuman all the "elites": the hard-line Democrats and Republicans, everyone who's gotten us into this mess. Then there should be a signal given like in that movie Hotel Rwanda: "Squash the cockroaches! Cut the tall trees!" Upon which we kill every single one of them to a man (and when necessary to a woman). There's no rehabilitation possible for them. Exterminate them all. Let the streets flow red with the blood of politicians and sycophants.

You tell me if that idea doesn't at least have some merit.

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Once again, I am a teacher

Well, THIS is ironic, considering that a day and a half ago I wrote about being a student again. Earlier today I accepted a teaching position. I'll be doing that in addition to the freelance work I've been doing for the past year or so. I taught computers and Internet skills to middle-school students at a private school about three years ago and really enjoyed it. I'm really looking forward to getting back into the classroom as an instructor.

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Just finished watching National Treasure

The latest to come in from Netflix. I really liked this movie. Enough that I may have to spring for the DVD to add to my personal collection. For a history buff like me, National Treasure is like hardcore porno. Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicholas Cage) has spent his entire life pursuing the family obsession: a treasure stash beyond imagination, hidden away by George Washington and the other Founding Fathers. It's an insane romp to just about every major location of colonial America, with everything from the Freemasons to a treasure map hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence thrown into the mix. It also stars Sean Bean and Harvey Keitel. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't already.

EDIT: I should make note of something that I happened to notice about National Treasure. There is not one word of profanity to be found anywhere in this film. Nor were there any situations showing or even hinting at lewdness. Other than Star Wars Episode III this is about the most wholesome blockbuster movie that I can think of that's come out recently. If you want some solid entertainment that's suitable for the entire family, without having to worry about what the kiddies see or hear, you can't go wrong with National Treasure.

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Would rather it be the energy sword or fuel-rod cannon

New Scientist has a story about a new weapon the U.S. military has developed: a "non-lethal" laser based device called PHASR. I think it looks too much like many of the Covenant weapons in the Halo games, particularly the carbine from Halo 2:

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Once again, I am a student

Tonight marked the first time I've been a student in a classroom in over six years. I started taking a class on creative writing that I'm hoping will help me tap into my creative impulse more. See, people have told me for years that I'm a good writer, and I like to think that I am... at non-fiction stuff. It's fiction that I've never been able to really master. Whatever you want to call it: writer's block, thoughts scattered all over the place, even a bit of fear... I've gotten it. I really want to be able to cross genres with my writing: nonfiction, fiction, screenwriting, heck maybe even a little poetry or songwriting.

So, for really the first time in my life, I'm examining what it really means to cultivate my creativity, and in the very first class tonight I learned a lot of things that are probably going to help me. One thing I'm gonna try sometime - even though this is gonna absolutely drive me crazy news junkie that I am - is spend a week in media deprivation: no television, books, or Internet. Will report on how that goes if/when I undertake that.

I'm quite impressed with the instructor we've got: on her website there's a picture of her wielding a rapier. She's only the second teacher I've had in my life who apparently possesses a personal arsenal of swords :-)

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Weird medicine: "Bio-printing"

I'm still trying to figure out how this works exactly. Here, read it for yourself and see if it makes sense to you. Sounds hella cool though.

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Pat Buchanan: How empires end

Pat Buchanan - who I've always thought of as one of America's most fascinating thinkers - has published a fascinating essay at Human Events Online. In "Paris Burning: How Empires End", he makes an analogy of what is happening right now in France and the gradual fall of the Roman Empire to barbarian tribes. A somewhat unnerving read, but well worth it.

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Why no more Star Wars movies is a good thing...

The Ultimate Star Trek Collection: a 212 DVD monstrosity, collecting EVERYTHING done with Star Trek in either television or film (except for the Star Trek animated series which hasn't hit DVD yet). Yours for only $2,499.99 (with Amazon.com savings from the list price of $3908.99).

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Neil Armstrong on last night's 60 Minutes

In case you missed it, Neil Armstrong gave a very rare interview with Ed Bradley on last night's edition of 60 Minutes. It came soon after the release of a new biographical book out about Armstrong. It was a pretty good interview, covering his life from growing up in Ohio to getting his pilot's license at age 16, to flying in Korea and then into a career at NASA, where at age 38 he was named mission commander for Apollo 11. It's been fairly well known for years that Armstrong has shyed away from much publicity: I've heard that he's VERY reluctant to give out autographs. And now I think I know why: he came across in the interview as being a very humble guy, who didn't want his one step on the lunar surface to overshadow the fact that he was just one of about 400,000 people who worked for eight years to make that happen. Armstrong is 75 now, looking really good and toward the end of the segment it had how he gets his flying kicks now: soaring in gliders. One of the highlights of the segment was a reunion between Armstrong and former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, who if nothing else will always be remembered for his commentary during the early years of NASA's space exploration. Anyway, it was a pretty good story and well worth catching if/when 60 Minutes ever broadcasts it again.

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FINALLY, a LIGHTSABER of my VERY OWN!!

Last year I gave Chad and Melody - the two leads in Forcery - real lightsaber effects. But I never did that for myself, even though I've had a Jedi costume for two years now. So this past week I put on the costume and did some antics in front of the video camera. I "premiered" this tonight to my two little cousins who are visiting from Florida, and they thought it was pretty funny. So here it is, Chris "Jedi" Knight cuttin' loose with his lightsaber...

8.3 MB Quicktime Video

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They don't do television like this anymore

Yesterday Lisa was flicking across stations on the TV and came across the Hallmark Channel, which all day yesterday up 'til 11 PM was showing the entire miniseries The Thorn Birds. I'd heard about it but until now have never seen it before. Well, it came as big a surprise to me as it probably will anyone else that I started watching it with her and found myself thoroughly captivated by this series. Guess it's because I'm a big fan of the multi-generational genre (hence my love of the Star Wars saga). The Thorn Birds covers about 60 years history of a family in Australia. The story centers on this lady who falls in love with a priest, who obviously is forbidden from returning her love. The priest is played by Richard Chamberlain, who back in the day was in just about every miniseries being made.

It's a powerful, moving story. And it made me think about how it is that for the most part, there is no more television of this caliber being made anymore. I'm talking about the mini-series, which actually should have been called "mega-series" because most of them racked up running times of 8 to 10 hours... or more. I think The Winds of War was 12 hours, and its sequel War and Remembrance something like 24 hours. Two decades ago this kind of television was considered a high art form. Now, the most recent one that really springs to mind is Lonesome Dove, and that was all the way back in 1989.

I have to wonder if today's television programmers would have the patience to allow for something so sweeping and grandiose. Could something like Shogun, or The Winds of War, or The Blue and the Gray or even Lonesome Dove be broadcast nowadays? Unless it's on a specialty channel like Hallmark, or perhaps HBO, I don't think so. Today's television is like most everything else: it caters to fleeting attention spans. Modern entertainment allows for the convenience of not having to be patient, and that's a real shame because for those who do have the patience, these way-long movies provide a great deal of entertainment and enlightenment. Today it's get-it-shown then get-it-done: fercryingoutloud CBS not long ago took Helter Skelter (which thirty years later is still THE most shocking true-life crime story ever done for television) and boiled it down into a two-hour remake that was... well, mediocre to put it mildly. What would they do with The Thorn Birds, or The Winds of War: probably show about two minutes of the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor out of two-hours running time tops.

Anyway, I enjoyed The Thorn Birds, or what I was able to see of it (prior engagements made us miss quite a bit of it). Enough that I'll probably find a DVD of it sometime soon and watch the entire thing at my leisure. Wonder if I could fill out the bookshelf with any more good movies like that...

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Blog keeps the dream of Carolina Circle alive

One of the best stories (and they're all great) in Neil Gaiman's epic The Sandman comic series is the one taking place in ancient Baghdad, the most glorious city in the world. The city's ruler knows that such beauty will not last forever. He makes a deal with Morpheus, the series' protagonist: he will give Morpheus the city of Baghdad, if Morpheus will forever preserve the city in dreams. Thus, the Baghdad that once was will always exist despite whatever ruin might (and would) come to it.

That story came to mind when I found a blog this morning, run by a young man who's also dedicated to keeping alive a place that once was and now is not. About three months ago I posted a lil' essay about the Carolina Circle Mall here in Greensboro. At the time demolition was well underway but you could still see where most of the stores used to be. We drove past the site yesterday and there's now nothing but an empty lot with just a little debris left, and piles of material that are going to be used to build the new Wal-Mart Supercenter there. It was a great mall in its heyday though. Well, a 15-year old blogger named Billy has set up Carolina Circle City, an online chronicle of Carolina Circle Mall's life and times. It's a pretty neat place to check out if you're someone (like me) who has fond memories of the place, or if you're just interested in things like urban design and architecture. Billy has plenty of pictures of the site both pre-destruction and afterward, and he documents a lot of the stories associated with the place.

Nice work Billy: thanks to you, there will always be a Carolina Circle Mall, if only in our dreams...

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Paris riots a harbinger of what might happen here

What's happening in France right now has its roots in something that's already taking place here in America: a MASSIVE, uncontrolled influx of immigrants from outside the country, who are put on the government dole but for all intents and purposes are told they do not have to assimilate to the culture.

Doesn't that sound like our own situation with wild out-of-control illegal immigration that sees millions of people streaming across the border each year?

Listen to the rhetoric coming out of groups like La Raza: they sound pretty much like what's coming out of the Muslim rioters in and around Paris right now. They just haven't had the right spark to light their fuse yet is all. But it's coming, someday.

And when it does you can thank people like your President George W. Bush and members of both parties in Congress and insane "multicultural" proponents and too many of corporate America's leadership for not only letting this happen, but eagerly promoting it. Take a good look at Paris right now, folks: we're being led down that same road too.

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Lisa's review of Children of Eden

Last night we caught Greensboro Day School's production of Children of Eden. If you've missed it so far you can still see it tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow afternoon at 2. Anyway, I was going to write a review of it but Lisa wanted to do the honors, since she now has a blog all her very own now. Read her review of Children of Eden here. 'Twas a REALLY good show by the way :-)

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"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November..."

Today our Brittish brethren (props to whoever recognizes the origin of that misspelling) are celebrating the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes' "Gunpowder Plot". It was on this day in 1605 that Fawkes and some other conspirators were caught trying to blow up Parliament - killing the king and everybody else - by placing dozens of kegs of gunpowder beneath the building. If they'd gotten away with it they would have perpetrated one of the most legendary acts of terrorism ever. But they didn't, so Fawkes is now burned in effigy and fireworks go off all over the English countryside every year on this day. Happy Guy Fawkes Day all y'all on the other side of the pond. Now, if we could only have the release of the Wachowski Brothers' V for Vendetta to coincide with today's celebrations, that would have been perfect. But it's been pushed back to March! Ahh well...

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The latest on Honey, the hero cocker spaniel pup

Two days ago I posted about Honey, a cocker spaniel puppy who saved her owner's life when he was pinned inside a vehicle for several hours. Well there's an update to that story: Honey was reunited with Michael Bosch at the hospital yesterday. Here's the story from the Marin Independent Journal...

Hero, victim reunited
A Nicasio man and his cocker spaniel puppy were reunited yesterday in a hospital room at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael just days after she saved his life after a car crash.

After being placed on the bed, Honey licked Michael Bosch, 63, on the face and roamed around the bedding, satisfied to be the center of attention. Bosch, for his part, couldn't have been happier.

"All my pain went away," he said.

Bosch, a real-estate broker, was backing down his driveway off Nicasio Valley Road on Monday morning when his car slipped 50 feet down an 80-degree slope, pinning him in the overturned vehicle. Honey, whom Bosch had adopted only two weeks earlier, escaped the vehicle, climbed up the slope and alerted a neighbor to the crash when the neighbor arrived home that night.

After more than eight hours inside the car, Bosch was extricated by firefighters, who had to cut away part of the vehicle to get to him. He was flown via helicopter to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to be treated for five broken ribs and leg injuries he suffered in the accident before being transferred Wednesday to Kaiser.

Bosch has scratches on his arms and face and remains in bed due to swelling in his left leg, but otherwise he is happy to be alive. He suffered a heart attack just two months ago.

John Bennett, 27, who works with Bosch at Coldwell Banker, brought in Honey yesterday along with Godiva chocolates, some dog biscuits - and a stuffed toy superhero dog complete with an eye mask and cape for Honey to play with. Between the heart attack and amazing rescue, he said Bosch is the talk of the office.

"Everyone is shocked," he said. "No one could believe it."

Bosch said he'd been in touch with the Marin Humane Society for more than a year about adopting a dog before going there to look at a Labrador retriever rescued from Hurricane Katrina. The Lab was nice, but Honey had his heart from the moment he laid eyes on her.

Bosch admits Honey still needs potty training, but he couldn't resist the urge to gloat about how smart and beautiful his dog is.

"She was the most popular dog at the humane society," he said.

What can ya say: Every dog has his (or her) day :-)

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Review of the Revenge of the Sith DVD

I've had a few days to play around with the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD. Well, the REAL one anyway, not the unlabelled DVD that wound up arriving here back in June that turned out to contain Episode III, in surprisingly good quality too. It even had a crude menu system. That one is forever going to be a curious item in my collection: I've never had a bootleg copy of a movie before. It ain't the one that's going to be shown and shared with my children someday though. That honor belongs to the real DVD, which is now sitting nicely between Episodes II and IV of the complete collection on my shelf.

So, how is it? I'd give the Revenge of the Sith DVD a score of 8 out of 10, with a few things keeping it from being totally perfect in my opinion. The first has nothing to do with the DVD itself: it's where I purchased it from. Wal-Mart is packaging Episode III with a "bonus" disc, "The Story of Star Wars". What's NOT being said very much is that this isn't a freebie: the extra disc tacks on an extra four or five bucks to the cost of Episode III. I watched this disc and though it does a fairly good job of synopsizing the stories of Anakin and Luke Skywalker, I was rather disappointed in it. The details from the third prequel are prominently absent: Threepio mumbles something about not being allowed to talk about the REAL details of what made Anakin turn into Darth Vader. If you're a completist collector you'll probably want this disc, but in retrospect I would have been perfectly happy to buy Revenge of the Sith by itself from somewhere else like Target, which packages a nice collector's coin in with its DVD. "The Story of Star Wars" just wasn't worth the extra money, I have to say.

Disc 1 of the set contains the actual movie, and it's a beautiful and vivid transfer (easily two or three times that of the bootleg I received months ago). English Dolby 5.1 Surround and Dolby Surround 2.0 are available, as is the option to watch it with French and Spanish audio. You can select to watch Episode III with commentary by George Lucas and a few other Episode III production notables. Ever since The Phantom Menace came out on DVD there's been a pretty high bar set so far as the the quality of these discs go, and Episode III meets or exceeds that easily.

What I really like about Disc 1 though is its DVD-ROM capabilities. If you have a DVD drive in your computer, you can access a special section of the StarWars.com website that will display either the script as the movie plays, or various production notes and bits of lore from the movie. Ever since first doing this with the Attack of the Clones disc a few years ago, I've really liked this feature. If you ever wanted to know what kind of ship that Obi-Wan flees Utapau in or who that blue-skinned guy in the hat at the opera house is (it's George Lucas by the way) or who built what miniature set, this feature is for you.

Disc 2 contains the special features, including the much-anticipated deleted scenes. The one everyone wanted to see has got to be the stunning (albeit short) scene of Yoda arriving on Dagobah for his self-imposed exile. I can kinda understand why Lucas left this out of the final cut, because we do know where Yoda winds up later on in The Empire Strikes Back. What I can't understand being left on the cutting room floor are a couple of scenes that show some of the political backstory of Episode III, including one that has Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, Padme and a few others (including one of my favorite characters, Fang Zar) forming what would later become the Rebel Alliance. Establishing Mon Mothma here as the Rebellion's founder would have been a perfect set-up for when she reappears in Return of the Jedi. Why this was left out, I've no idea... but it's still nice to see it here.

The documentaries make up the bulk of Disc 2. My favorite was "Within A Minute": taking one minute from the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel on Mustafar and dissecting it apart to discover EVERYTHING that went into making that one minute of film possible, from the script stage to concept art, to stunt training and filming, and finally post-production putting it all together. What I especially like about "Within A Minute" is that it credits EVERYONE that worked to make this minute of action - and the rest of the film - come together. "The Chosen One" is a shorter work that delves into the mythos of Anakin's transformation into Vader and his ultimate redemption. "It's All For Real" focuses on the stuntwork of Episode III. The disc also includes all of the online video documentaries that had previously been made available during Episode III's production to members of the StarWars.com paid Hyperspace service. All of the movie's promotional trailers and TV spots are also collected here.

If you have an Xbox you can insert Disc 2 and play a demo for the new Star Wars Battlefront II game. It took several minutes for the disc to load up some info into the system, after which play could begin. I controlled a clonetrooper during a battle on Utapau. I never played the original Battlefront so I don't know how this compares to that, but I thought it was okay.

I found this to be a good 2-disc set, but there were some things lacking with this release of Revenge of the Sith, in my opinion. You've probably heard of the "dancing Yoda" easter egg already, but otherwise this DVD seems terribly bereft of any hidden features. The DVDS of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had hilarious outtake reels that you could watch, along with some of the visual gags that the ILM crew came up with during production (remember the 200 MPH sandcrawler on the Episode I disc?). There's none of that here that I've been able to find, and the REALLY upsetting thing about it is that I know that there were some hilarious gags that were done for Episode III: the DVD-ROM content makes mention of several, and I've seen a few myself, like the clonetrooper holding Jar Jar's severed head. Unless you happened to catch that at Star Wars Celebration III, you might never get to laugh at seeing that. Things like that would have been perfect on the Revenge of the Sith DVD, but they're not there, apparently. Maybe someday Lucasfilm will release a DVD containing ALL the crazy things that have happened during the production of the Star Wars movies, and those jokes will get their day in the sun. I'd sure be the first one with cash in hand at the local Best Buy to get that.

All in all though, I'm pretty happy with the DVD release of Revenge of the Sith. It's wonderful to have all six films lined up in sequential order, to be enjoyed with family and friends for years to come. There was no better way to have ended the run of Star Wars movies that we've had for going on thirty years now than how George Lucas did it here, and apart from some minor qualms this was a good way to finish the DVD collection.

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