$tate of the Union 2006: It's Christmas in January!

As usual, I will not be watching this year's State of the Union address tonight. I will either be watching a new movie that came in via Netflix, or one of the last episodes from the Lost DVD set that we haven't seen yet. If I'm even interested, I'll read it later.

Or if I do choose to hear it live, I'll do so with my back turned to the television, refusing to set eyes on the screen while Bush talks. Stripped of whatever visual appeal, you instead actually listen to what he's REALLY saying. And just going by my doing that during the past few State of the Unions, I'm not expecting any substance in tonight's either.

We know what's going to happen: he's going to make some empty rhetoric. And then he's going to start telling us how many billions of our dollars he wants to spend on social programs, No Child Left Behind(tm), foreign aid, etc. This is why ever since Clinton my nickname for the State of the Union speech has been "Christmas in January". The State of the Union speech has nothing to do with the actual state of the union, and it's not even a real "union" anymore either, is it? There is now one government that's grown too large, merely divided into 50 localized departments. It's not even legislated that the President has to do this every January either: the Constitution just calls for the President to make reports to Congress about the condition of the country "from time to time". That could be tonight or two years from now, or six months even. It doesn't even have to be a televised speech... but tell any politician that he shouldn't grab the opportunity for free airtime.

That's all tonight's speech really is going to be, sadly: an hour or so of television time that Bush gets to pitch whatever scheme he's got that's going to further put us in debt or deteriorate our Constitution, only because it's expected of him to do so. Dear God, has this country really sunk so low that we so readily allow an installed politician to tickle our ears?

(Yeah, he was installed. So is just about every politician in Washington. What, you think any normal Americans are going to be allowed to walk the halls of Congress?)

Anyone want my advice? Find something better to watch tonight, if you have to watch something. In all probability whatever you find will be a lot more sincere and edifying.

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Most underwhelming Oscars nominations ever

Read the complete list here. It's probably the least satisfying Academy Awards nominees list that I've ever seen. I just can't believe what didn't get nominated though. Walk The Line got snubbed for Best Picture. In a perfect world King Kong and Batman Begins would be up for consideration too. Horribly absent is Ian McDiarmid for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. In fact Sith only got one nomination - for Achievement in Makeup - and was totally dissed for Achievement in Visual Effects (but War of the Worlds got that, what the...?!). Heck, John Williams's score for Sith should have been nominated too. This list may appeal to some in the liberal-and-proud-of-it arts & croissants crowd, but not me. Just plain blah. My prediction: way too many politically-charged speeches - that no one who has a life will really care for - during this year's awards ceremony.

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U.S. government is borrowing $188 billion

An all-time record.

Funny... I remember the retroactive taxes introduced by the Budget Act of 1993, and a lot of us called our representatives in D.C. to not only ask them if this was even legal under the Constitution at all, but to pose the question to them about there ever being any country in history that taxed and borrowed itself into prosperity. Don't think I'll ever forget the hemming and hawing I got from Congressman Steve Neal's mouthpiece (and how come the actual reps and senators never talk to us on the phone like that?).

(I also called to tell him to support Penny-Kasich, if that one rings a bell with any longtime politicial aficianados.)

A little over a year later the party that was doing all the taxing and borrowing and spending was kicked out of power... and now the party that replaced them is doing the exact same thing, but to a far worse degree.

Debt - be it personal or public - is destroying this nation. Just wanted to say that in case anyone says later that nobody warned about it.

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Amazon recommended WHAT?!?

Lately I've been on Amazon.com a lot, either for casual browsing or placing some orders. Last month I used it to get the King Kong DVD and a really good book, also about King Kong. The Batman Begins 2-disc DVD that Lisa got me for Christmas also came in that order. She's looked on Amazon for materials to use in the music classes that she teaches, and in the past few days I had them ship some books to a friend going through a difficult situation right now. All things considered, we haven't used Amazon to look for anything really... unusual.

So tonight I go back to the Amazon homepage and was startled - before starting laughing - to see that it had this DVD "Recommended for you":

David Lynch's 1977 movie Eraserhead. I heard about this years ago (back when I was a fan of Lynch's Twin Peaks show) but have never seen it. Or done anything remotely near looking for it. I've no idea why the heck Amazon though this is something that would satisfy some dire need or burning curiosity of mine. Here's the plot synopsis that Amazon gives for it:

"Is it a nightmare or an actual view of a post-apocalyptic world? Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry's child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix."

HOW does Amazon think I wanna see this after only looking for some classic music CDs and a couple of Star Wars books?!

But I like Lynch's style (based on what I've seen of his anyway) and have a thing for black and white movies, and that DVD cover looks pretty darned whacked not to at least look into it sometime, maybe on Netflix. Maybe I will sooner or later. Anyway, I just thought it was pretty funny that Amazon would recommend something like that, considering we haven't done anything (that I know of) that would trigger that kind of connection from Eraserhead to what we usually look for on their site.

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Challenger: Twenty years ago today...

It was twenty years ago today, about this very moment, that I was sitting at the end of a long table at my old school. Two of my sixth-grade classmates joined me for lunch. And that's when Ashton told me...

"Hey Chris, the space shuttle blew up."

I thought he was kidding. Only thing I knew to reply with was "No it didn't." The only thing was, Ashton didn't really look like he was kidding at all. I don't know why I didn't take him at his word right then.

Now Shane spoke up: "Chris, yes it did! The space shuttle Challenger exploded after it launched!" And I was still in denial about it. This was all a joke... had to be. Maybe they wanted to see how I'd react to something like that. I remember silently thinking to myself "yeah sure", just sort of going along with them.

And then I happened to catch the table two rows away from where we were sitting, where the seventh graders were having lunch, and whatever the hell it was they were talking about they sure seemed pretty damned shaken up and upset about it. That's when I caught the words "shuttle" and "challenger" and "all dead".

Our teacher happened to walk past where we were sitting. "Miss Martin, I'm hearing that the shuttle blew up. Is that true?" She nodded and said "Yes".

Well, what else can I tell you about that day: the whole class was in shock after we got back from lunch and she confirmed everything to us. That's all we were talking about the rest of the day, there was no more real class. She was a pretty lousy teacher but I gotta give her credit for not trying to focus our attention on lessons when there was a helluva lot more on our minds. I remember a lot of people asking me questions about what I thought about it, me being sorta the resident "space geek" at our school, but I didn't mind being that. Not that I had much to tell them: so far all I knew was what our teacher had told us. Mom picked my sister and I up a little after 3 that afternoon and she told us more about it, said that she'd been watching it on TV all afternoon and that it was "terrible". The car's radio was tuned into a Christian station and one of the announcers was asking everyone to "keep the people at NASA and our astronauts in prayer". We had to pick up something in town for Dad, and it was a little before 4 when we got back home. The very first thing I saw when I came thorugh the front door was a picture of Christa McAuliffe - the "teacher in space" - being shown on television. Then Dan Rather. And a few minutes later CBS ran what was for me the very first time I saw what happened a few hours earlier that morning...

I think I actually said "Dear God in Heaven" after seeing that.

Dad came in a little later from the barn (he was still a dairy farmer at this point) and we all watched some of the coverage together: as he often said about things like this, "this is what you'll be reading about in the history books years from now." CBS played the footage of the disaster maybe a half-dozen more times, before later that afternoon President Reagan spoke live from the White House. I remember that very well: listening to what has since been considered to be the greatest speech of his presidential career. You can read it here if you like, but if you ever get the chance to someday you really owe it to yourself to listen to a recording of it, or watch a video of him doing this. That may have been the last time we had a President who made a speech that sounded seriously presidential. When I went to D.C. a year and a half ago to pay my respects to Reagan as his casket lay in state at the Capitol, it was his Challenger speech that I most kept thinking about.

That's what dominated the rest of the night, and the next day, and the next few weeks after that. At 11 years old I'd already heard that people old enough remembered exactly where they were when they heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, or that JFK had been shot. Now it was my generation's turn to have something forever burned so indelibly into our minds. Everyone who was old enough on January 28th, 1986 will be able to tell you where they were and who they were with, and everything else that happened right after that, when they heard about the Challenger. This has been my own tale to tell.

I don't know what else to say with this post. There's plenty enough information on the Internet about STS-51L, the final Challenger mission, for anyone who's interested. Anything more that I could do here would just be reiterating ground already well-covered. But I couldn't let this day go by without doing what I could to take off my hat in respect to the seven who died that day, and acknowledge that day for the impact it had in not just my life, but that of just about everyone who was around back then.

I don't really know how to close this out: nothing I could write would ever do justice to the memory of the Challenger Seven. So I'll just let the following images speak for themselves...

Challenger launches on mission STS 51-L, January 28 1986

The crew of Challenger
FRONT ROW L-R: pilot Mike Smith, commander Dick Scobee, mission specialist Ron McNair
BACK ROW L-R: mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, mission specialist Judith Resnik

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Most bizarre video I've seen in awhile

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno sings Aretha Franklin's "Respect".

Somebody get this lady an Xbox and Karaoke Revolution, STAT!

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Greatest electronic games according to Vox Day

Vox Day has posted a list of what he considers the best "electronic games" of all time (but curiously they're all videogames: not a Simon or Electronic Stratego to be found in the bunch). I think it's a great list... for the most part. But I would have ranked TIE Fighter much higher. And did Vox ever play Pitfall II: Lost Caverns? That was easily the best game ever produced for the Atari 2600: it still holds up even today (and if you have a Gameboy Advance it's part of the Activision Anthology that was released a year or so ago for that system).

Vox also puts Wing Commander on the top ten list: if there's ever a videogame series that deserves a return, that one is it. I just wish I'd been able to play Wing Commander III when it came out... ahh well maybe someday :-)

So what do you think of his list? There's some good comments being left there. I may have to do my own "top ten best videogames" sometime.

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57% of those polled want to attack Iran

So says a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. Which according to the story it's 57% of all Americans who want to go to war with Iran, when it was really only that percentage of those who happened to be polled.

Let me say this from the getgo: the guys running Iran are bad people. That does not mean that the Iranian people are bad. The population by and large must not be punished for whatever their whacko leadership is doing.

I do wonder if we are justified at all in trying to beat the wardrums for attacking Iran now though, three years after getting bogged down in the quagmire that is Iraq.

Yeah, there's no other word for what it is happening in Iraq right now. The moment we pull out our own soldiers, that place is going to collapse like a house of cards. Over two thousand of our best men and women are dead... and all that we've got to show for it is a rising Islamic fundamentalist government. Like we used to say on the basketball court: "Smooth move Ex-Lax".

So we're committed - oh yes, we are definitely committed now, with no easy way of leaving - to Iraq. And now those people from the "neo-conservative" mindset - the ones who believe that it is a virtue for government leaders to lie to their people - are gearing up the people of this country to want to go to war with Iran. A war that could only realistically be fought by large-scale strategic bombing, since our conventional forces are stretched so thin. Some here in America are even suggesting the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Like, isn't this the very same thing we're claiming now that we are trying to prevent Iran from doing?

How is it that the United States is now doing the very same thing that the Soviet Union did: invading countries and setting up puppet governments?

Is this really our problem to deal with at all? Is America now and forevermore going to be the policeman over the rest of the world? Were we even right to assert that role to begin with?

George Washington was right: we should have avoided "foreign entanglements" completely. Over two hundred years later another George thinks he knows better, and mucks us into whatever strikes his fancy.

And the damned thing of it is, there will be lots of politicians and pundits and preachers and the like faithfully falling into line right behind the President as they tell us that yes, we must go to war, because our government knows what's best for us.

Well damn them. Damn them all.

Until Iran presents a legitimate threat to the United States, we should butt out. Let Israel handle this... it seems to be their fight they want anyway.

We should have stayed out of Iraq, and let the people of that land hash things out on their own.

Fortunately, I doubt that 57% of Americans really want to go to war with Iran. I really hope so anyway. Because if that many do want it, it will definitely damper my belief that the American people are still capable for the most part of thinking for themselves.

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Disturbed minds can rationalize anything

President Bush is defending warrantless snooping again:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush again defended his program of warrantless surveillance Thursday, saying "there's no doubt in my mind it is legal." He suggested that he might resist congressional efforts to change or expressly endorse it...

Yeah, but there wasn't any doubt in Charlie Manson's mind that what he was doing was okay either. Hitler was fond of noting that his activities were "legal" too. Didn't that lady who bothered David Letterman for years honestly believe that she was married to him? Wasn't John Hinkley totally convinced that he was impressing Jodie Foster when he shot Reagan?

Ya see, these kinds of disturbed individuals do believe something, beyond any self-questioning or doubt. Nothing can or ever could deviate them from that, or else their entire fragile little worlds would be at risk of coming crashing down on them. To one degree or another they did some pretty bad things and it never entered into their minds that what they were doing could in any way be bad. This is narcissism in its purest form...

...and that's not a good state of mind to have when one is anything, much less President of the United States.

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7 myths about what happened to Challenger

Tomorrow will be the twentieth anniversary of the first real event that burned itself permanently into the minds of my generation: the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Highly respected space historian James Oberg has a very good article at MSNBC about what really happened that day. Oberg brings up seven "myths" that have become rarely reconsidered in the two decades since. Among other things he discusses how the Challenger didn't "explode" in the actual sense, how long the crew survived after the event and the fact that very few people were even watching it happen live. It's a good article, and in my opinion addresses the most major misconceptions that I've seen come up over the past twenty years.

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Awright Brownshirts, you want more Firefly?

The Firefly Season 2 Project. The plan is to produce another season of the show and make it available for purchase. Here's the intro from the website...

The Firefly Season 2 Project:
Captain Mal and the crew of Serenity need your help to stay flying.

We are looking to push the envelope of episodic television by offering Season Two of Firefly in a groundbreaking new format. Each episode (or the entire season) would be made available for purchase in Standard or Hi-Definition.

It's possible that subscribers may choose one of three playback options; monthly DVD deliveries, TV On-Demand using your cable or satellite provider, or computer viewing via Streaming Download.

It's also possible that a box set of DVD's would be available at the end of the season.

In order for our plan to be successful, we need to take stock of the browncoat recruits that support our cause. It will only take a minute, is strictly confidential, and each profile will take us one step closer to victory!

What an awesome idea! Could it be that the Firefly fans are pioneering the future of entertainment with this? I wish them all the best with this project. And though I never got to see Firefly during its run I know enough good about the show that I gladly filled out a profile on their site... do that if you want more Firefly people!

Now, if only somebody would try and do this with a third season of Carnivale...

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Smallville owned everyone's sweet patootie tonight

Holy #&@* what an episode!!

This one had everything. And somebody does die, just as it was advertised... and they ain't coming back! No it's not some secondary character either. Somebody in the opening credits buys the farm in tonight's episode, and its permanent. The last shot we see is the casket going into the ground.

Wish I had a DVR, 'cuz this one merits some watching again.

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Rockingham County is going to Hollywood baby!

The place where I grew up is being represented by not one but two singers who got the nod from Simon, Randy and Paula to come to Hollywood for the next round of American Idol:To the best of my knowledge, Amy Ferrell is a student at my old high school too. I hope she and Halicia Thompson get to go far.

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Study says: Democrats and Republicans are equally ignorant

Here's scientific proof of something that I've known for a few years now: Republicans and Democrats both are largely incapable of thinking for themselves. Here's the story from LiveScience:

Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds
By LiveScience Staff

posted: 24 January 2006
10:03 am ET

Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to their point of view.

Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects' brains were monitored while they pondered.

The results were announced today.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones..."

More at the link above.

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I hope and pray...

...that this lady they keep showing as they go to commercial on American Idol tonight isn't from Reidsville.

This is one of the most bizarre installments of Idol that I've ever seen.

EDIT 9:53 PM EST:She wasn't from Reidsville (thank goodness), but Ronetta sure didn't do Charlotte any favors. That was genuinely painful to watch, but only because this was a symptom of one of the worst things about American character: our unhealthy obsession with the cult of the celebrity. People believe too much that they have to be famous before they have a real identity of their own. Contrast Ronetta's attitude with that of those that have gone far on American Idol: none of them come to mind that didn't have some degree of humbleness and proper perspective.

EDIT 10:11 PM EST: These posts at Free Republic probably say it best:

To: retrokitten

To all NC freepers....we'll pretend this never happened....

2,358 posted on 01/24/2006 6:59:56 PM PST by mystery-ak

---

To: mystery-ak

What happens in NC stays in NC. :)

2,363 posted on 01/24/2006 7:00:36 PM PST by beandog (Poor, poor Pinkos. Beat at your own little game)

EDIT 10:20 PM EST: May have had some serious differences with the operators of this site before, but the live thread for American Idol at Free Republic has been a hilarious commentary to read alongside these auditions. Well worth checking out.

EDIT 10:34 PM EST: Enter "Kellie Pickler" into Google and right now only 79 returns come up. But already she's got fan websites popping up (Kellie Pickler Fans and Kellie Pickler Online came up immediately). She had one of those bio videos too... meaning she's probably made it into the semifinalists round.

EDIT 10:44 PM EST: The girl from Eden who got through to Hollywood is named Halicia Thompson. And she sang really well. Hope she goes far.

EDIT 10:47 PM EST: Can't recall the guy's name off the top of my head, but the dude from Salter Path (it's a village on the Outer Banks near Morehead City) did very good.

EDIT 10:51 PM EST: Fox 8 WGHP is running footage they shot during the auditions, stuff they've been saving for now. Simon Cowell got to celebrate his birthday here in Greensboro (complete with a cake decorated with the Idol logo). One clip has Ryan Seacrest going into the Stamey's barbecue restaurant on High Point Road, across the street from the Coliseum. Turns out that Simon was eager to eat some real southern fried chicken and beans.

The sound I'm hearing outside my window is that of thousands of my fellow Greensborians running out to get sedatives. Randy said at one point tonight that this was the "weirdest show" they'd ever done. I remember last year's auditions in New Orleans and that was pretty nutty, but I'm hard-pressed to disagree with Randy's assessment. There were times tonight that me and Lisa's mouths was literally hanging wide-open in stunned disbelief... we were like "this can't be our town... can it?"

But all in all, I think tonight was a lot of fun to watch, and maybe poke some fun at ourselves in this neck of the woods. And there were some low points, but there was also some really brilliant talent that is representing us in this competition, and I'm going to really enjoy seeing how far they go.

And, THAT is all I think I'm going to post about tonight's edition of American Idol featuring auditions here in Greensboro. 'Twas great that this lil' burg was the most-watched town in the country, if only for two hours. Lord help us if this show ever rolls into town again though :-P

EDIT 11:18 PM EST: The guy from Salter Path, NC is named Jeffrey "Ryan" Baysden. And he had a really curious accent. He sounds almost English/Australian. But very strong singing voice.

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Steve Jobs now the most powerful man in the Mouse House

Disney is buying Pixar. Steve Jobs is now the majority shareholder of the Walt Disney Company.

In the negative column, this really does seem to be the death-knell for traditional animation at Disney, which had eliminated that division already. I was really hoping that they might "go back to their roots". But on the plus side of things, I trust someone like Steve Jobs to put Disney back on track after the two decades of micro-management hell that Michael Eisner ran the company through.

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Fanboys back on track

I first heard about Fanboys before Christmas in '98 (in fact, here's the original story at Ain't It Cool News). Ever since then I've wanted to see this movie. It's about four friends who undertake a quest in the fall of 1998 to break into Skywalker Ranch so that they can watch whatever print of The Phantom Menace exists, because one of them is terminally ill and won't live to see the movie premiere the following May. The last I heard anything about it, Fanboys was in production a few months after the initial report, but then word about it pretty much dried up... until now.

Yesterday Ain't It Cool News announced to the world that Fanboys was back! The guys behind this all those years ago never gave up on their dream, and now they're finally getting to see it come to fruition. Pretty inspiring that is, doncha think? Here's wishing them all the best as they work to bring this story to the screen. I just hope they still use the tagline (and that very cool 1979 Ford van) that they had in '99...

They've been waiting for fifteen years.
They're through waiting.

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