Bye Bye Blago

I was reading the Sun-Times today, mostly focusing on articles about the sentencing yesterday. For those not in the know, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison for all the crap he pulled on the people of Illinois. I wanted to put down my thoughts on this whole mess.

Let me start off by saying that I voted for Blagojevich. Back in the simple, innocent days of 2002, he seemed like a breath of fresh air. He was a good ol' Chicago boy. He went to Foreman High School, which is only a couple miles from my old neighborhood. He had a house in Ravenswood, the same area where my pediatrician practiced. I never met him, but I saw him a lot on television during his various campaigns. He seemed like a decent guy, and was willing to laugh at the voting public's inability to pronounce his name. He seemed like just the guy we needed to clean up after George Ryan, who's currently still in jail for his crimes during his term as governor.

Personally, I can't see how Ryan ever got elected in the first place. It was already known he was crooked when he was running, what with the CDL scandal from when he was Secretary of State for Illinois. His claim at the time was that he hadn't known the Secretary's office was corrupt. I quipped that he was the only man in Illinois who was unaware of that fact.

When he got arrested, I was far from surprised. When Blagojevich was arrested, I wasn't surprised, so much as profoundly disappointed. I had thought he was the guy to rid Illinois of the stain of corruption that's made us a laughingstock. Instead, he goes and makes everyone before him look small time.

I asked this when the whole thing started, and I'll ask again. What the hell is wrong with us? I saw a quote from someone yesterday that said "It's like Illinois is trying to win a record for most consecutive governors imprisoned." I laughed, but only to keep from weeping. It's ridiculous how corrupt this State is. It's like we're incapable of electing a governor who's not going to screw us over first chance he gets. It's like when the guy steps into his office in the governor's mansion, Satan is standing just inside the door, holding a pen in one hand, and a contract for the guy's soul in the other.

So far, Pat Quinn seems to be doing well as governor. I haven't heard much about him since he entered office, and in this State, no news is good news. I've read up on some of the stuff he's done in the last year or two. I don't agree with all of it, but as long as he keeps his nose clean, and actually does clean up this state, I'll gladly do my part to keep him in office. After all, the last guy set the bar so high that Quinn will have to start tying damsels to railroad tracks to beat him.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

A brief one

I haven't had much time for any kind of writing lately, too busy with school. But, just to show I'm still alive, I thought I'd throw out a little poem I wrote once.

He smiled at me
  or was he squinting in the sun?

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Mission Statement or Impenetrable Morass? You Decide!

It's funny how two things that have no relation to each other can converge because they occur at about the same time. I got a book on writing yesterday as a belated birthday present. The book is The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well, by Paula LaRocque. I've been reading the first section, which describes how to write sentences that are concise and to the point.

I am also taking some on-line classes right now. One of them is a Poli-sci course called "American National Politics." I'm working on a homework assignment for that class that I've been putting off for about a week now. The teacher asked us to go to one of several suggested sites dealing with either campaigns or voting, and then describe how it agrees or disagrees with the opinions in the textbook. I'm on the "About Us" page for one of those sites right now. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble working out what this group is about, because all I can do is marvel at how they're breaking just about every tip I read in that writing book.

Take this sentence as an example:

"Founded in 1999 in the middle of what turned out to be the final great policy debate to be conducted fully within an old, twentieth-century policy paradigm that centered on a limits-based approach to policy, the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) started out with a vision."

  

First off, the sentence begins with that the book described as a pointless lead-in. "Founded in 1999..." What was founded? I mean, I realize that since I'm on their website I know what they're called, but that's even less reason to hold it off until the end of the sentence. I mean, it's not like they're trying to ramp up suspense. This is a biography, not a thriller. And "what turned out to be" is word cruft. It serves no purpose. 

 

More needless words are highlighted in the next part of the sentence. "...the final great policy debate to be conducted fully within an old, twentieth-century policy paradigm that centered on a limits-based approach to policy..." The "to be" in that sentence only creates tense confusion. Are they talking about the past or the future? The context shows they're talking about the past, so "to be" is unnecessary. Also, it makes the sentence passive instead of active. "...old, twentieth-century..." As opposed to new twentieth-century? "Paradigm" is a buzz word, and has no semantic value in this context. But what's the easiest way to tell this whole section is clunky? I have no idea what any of it means. Maybe if I were a political analyst, I'd be nodding in agreement. But I'm not, I'm a layperson. And I don't think it's too much to ask that an "About Us" page be written for a layperson.

 

The rest of the paragraph is just as bad. However, the paragraph after it is much more concise. It's like it was written by a different person. Or perhaps by the same person after he closed his dictionary, took a deep breath, and said what he wanted to say. It makes me see everything I read today in a new light. And I'm determined to put the book's lessons to use.

 

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Breaking Gordon Freeman

Just a quick one here, folks. For the past couple days, whenever I go to IMDb, I keep seeing the picture below. And each time I see it, my first thought is "Whoa, are they making a Half-Life movie?"

On that note, I bet Bryan Cranston would do a good job as Gordon Freeman if they ever made a Half-Life movie.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Cowboys and Aliens

There's a site I go to a lot called The Editing Room, though I usually refer to it as the Abridged Scripts site. It's a site that spoofs movies by writing shortened, satirical versions of the movie in question. Lately, the guy who runs the site has been accepting submissions from other people. After hemming and hawing for a bit, I decided to write up a treatment of Cowboys and Aliens to send his way.
However, like an idiot, I spent three hours doing a write-up before noticing that he already has an abridged script for the movie listed under his "Coming Soon" section. So, I decided to post my version of it here.

As you might imagine, what you are about to read will be full of spoilers regarding the movie. So if you haven't seen Cowboys and Aliens yet, and you want to, don't read anything below this line!

Cowboys and Aliens
Cowboys and Aliens

 By E. Maxfield Moen

EXT. THE OLD WEST

DANIEL CRAIG lays on his back in the middle of the desert. He takes quick stock of himself, noting a slash on his stomach that might be a GUN SHOT WOUND but probably isn't. He also has a HUGE ALIEN BRACELET strapped to his wrist.

 AUDIENCE:
 When the hell is he gonna say something? I want to hear how ridiculous his fake American accent is.

Three ORNERY-LOOKING SORTS ride up on horseback. They have a dog, because this is a STEVEN SPIELBERG film.

 ORNERY-LOOKING SORTS:
 Well, what have we here? I think we have us an escaped prisoner. I'm basing this on the fact that he's injured, which can only possibly mean   he's been shot, and the fact that he's got something on his wrist that someone high on acid might confuse for a handcuff.

DANIEL CRAIG stares at the ORNERY-LOOKING SORTS in a way that's supposed to be stern and threatening, but in actuality looks like he's about to vomit.

 AUDIENCE:
 Dammit, say something! Half the reason I bought a ticket was to hear yet another British actor try to sound like an American.

 ORNERY-LOOKING SORTS:
 You're coming with us.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 No, I don't think I am.

 AUDIENCE:
 Damn, that was actually pretty good.

The ORNERY-LOOKING SORTS draw their weapons, but clearly don't point them at DANIEL CRAIG or do anything overtly threatening. DANIEL CRAIG responds by BEATING THE EVER-LOVING SHIT out of them, and shooting them.

 AUDIENCE:
 What the fuck? He's the hero of this movie? He just killed three people in cold blood!

 DIRECTOR JON FAVREAU:
 One of them shot at him, and from behind, the coward!

 AUDIENCE:
 Only after he killed the other two. It was pretty plain at that point it was kill or be killed. Hey, aren't you the guy who directed the Iron   Man movies? What is it with you and asshole heroes?

 DIRECTOR JON FAVREAU:
 Uh...hey, look! Daniel Craig's bringing the dog with him!

 AUDIENCE:
 What dog?

The AUDIENCE notices the dog for the first time.

 (cont.)
 Awwww...look at the puppy! Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?

 STEVEN SPIELBERG:
 Works every time.

CUT TO:

INT. OLD WEST GHOST TOWN CHURCH

DANIEL CRAIG, and more importantly, THE DOG, enter the church. CRAIG approaches a basin and starts cleaning his wound.

 CLANCY BROWN:
 (holding a rifle on DANIEL CRAIG)
 Just what do you think you're doing?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 What's with the gun? I shouted like three times before I came in. Why didn't you say anything then?

 CLANCY BROWN:
 That's not how things are done in Westerns, boy.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Hey, aren't you Sergeant Zim from the Starship Troopers movie?

 CLANCY BROWN:
 Yep. I was also the Kurgen in the original Highlander. I'm pretty well known for playing tough, aggressive characters. I'm playing a kind- hearted preacher in this movie because I heard that acting against type is real Oscar Bait.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Dude, you're in a comic book movie.

 CLANCY BROWN:
 Shit. So, who are you, anyway?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 I don't know.

 AUDIENCE:
 Is this supposed to be some sort of twist on the hackneyed "man with no name" western trope?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 It's not hackneyed! We're doing it as an homage, not a rip-off!

 CLANCY BROWN:
 You know, the audience is probably going to start getting antsy if we don't bring in the aliens that make up half this movie's title soon. We'd  better knock out as many western clichés as we can in the next 15 minutes.

 PAUL DANO:
 Did someone ask for a storm of clichés? How 'bout the spoiled rancher's son shooting up the town? YEE-HAW!

CUT TO:

EXT. OLD WEST GHOST TOWN

PAUL DANO fires his gun wildly and at random in an amusing way. DANIEL CRAIG steps out of the church and KNEES HIM IN THE GROIN in a slightly less amusing way. PAUL DANO, in his rage, fires randomly again. Somehow, this time he SHOOTS SOMEONE.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Wow, not only did you get completely emasculated in front of literally the entire town, but that guy you shot just happened to be a law officer  who was just standing around for no apparent reason.

 PAUL DANO:
 I'll get you for this.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Alright, an unjustified promise of revenge. We're rolling now! Now, there's only one place here where I can really start knocking out western  cli...er, homages.

CUT TO:

INT. OLD WEST SALOON

DANIEL CRAIG looks around, seeing MEN PLAYING POKER, SOILED DOVES flirting with the menfolk, and STOOP-SHOULDERED DRIFTERS at the bar. It is, in other words, EVERY OTHER OLD WEST SALOON YOU HAVE EVER SEEN.

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 Howdy, stranger. Folks 'round here call me Doc.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 So, what, you're a bartender and a doctor?

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 Doctor? Why would you think I'm a doctor?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Your nickname is "Doc."

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 ...So?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Is this town populated by escapees from an asylum? Why is it that the guy with amnesia is the only one who seems to have his head on straight?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Hello, Daniel. I'm one of two women living in this town, and the other one is married to Doc. Probably. The movie's a bit vague on that. So I'm  pretty much all you're getting for a love interest. It's a good thing I'm ridiculously hot.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 What the hell are you wearing? It looks like my grandmother's nightgown.

 KEITH CARRADINE:
 Daniel Craig, I found a wanted poster in my jail that bears a vague resemblance to you. You're under arrest.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Oh, really? Maybe this will help me to discover who I am. I should come quietly.

 KEITH CARRADINE:
 Uh, Daniel, this is a Western, remember?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Oh, right.

DANIEL CRAIG starts BEATING THE HOLY HELL out of KEITH CARRADINE and his DEPUTIES. Suddenly, he's stopped by OLIVIA WILDE, who knocks him out cold.

CUT TO:

EXT. OLD WEST GHOST TOWN

DANIEL CRAIG sits in a wagon with PAUL DANO.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Olivia, why did you stop me?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 I couldn't let you leave the town. You and I have some sort of connection that I'm strangely reticent to explain, so that probably means I know  all about the aliens.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 So your plan was to keep me in town? You do notice that I'm about to be dragged off in a wagon, right?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 ...

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Yeah, so, good plan there.

At that moment, HARRISON FORD rides into town with a POSSE

 HARRISON FORD:

 Sherriff, I can't let you leave. You got my boy in there, and by an amazing coincidence, your other prisoner robbed a stagecoach that had my  money in it.

KEITH CARRADINE and HARRISON FORD'S POSSE get in a good old-fashioned MEXICAN STANDOFF. Suddenly, THE ALIENS APPEAR!

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 What the fuck?

 HARRISON FORD:
 What the fuck?

 AUDIENCE:
 Yay!

The ALIEN SHIPS fly around, capturing townsfolk. On a related note, the town is suddenly far more populated than it had been moments before. They capture the townsfolk with chains that dangle from their ships, and not with, like people probably expected, tractor beams.

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 Those aliens took the woman who is on the balance of probability my wife!

 HARRISON FORD:
 Those demons took my boy!

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 Demons?

 HARRISON FORD:
 Well, if you think about it, it's logical that people of this time and place might draw that conclusion. I mean, Science Fiction as a genre was  barely in its infancy at the point in time in which this film is set, so we really wouldn't have any framework in which to fit the idea of  aliens from space. It makes sense that a bunch of hicks would assume that bizarre beings kidnapping their people would be demons.

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 That's surprisingly insightful for a popcorn-muncher Summer Blockbuster.

 HARRISON FORD:
 It is, isn't it? We better distract the audience before they start thinking too hard about this film.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Don't  worry, I got it covered.

DANIEL's wristband thing starts blooping and bleeping. Suddenly, in a manner nothing at all like another big budget film that came out this summer, it TRANSFORMS.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Well, ain't that some shit. I wonder that was all about? I'll just ponder that while I point it menacingly at this demon's ship...

A BEAM fires from the wristband. The beam hits the alien ship and BLOWS IT THE FUCK UP.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 IM'MA FIRIN' MAH LAZER!

CUT TO:

EXT. THE OLD WEST, THE NEXT DAY

DANIEL CRAIG, SAM ROCKWELL, HARRISON FORD, OLIVIA WILDE, and a bunch of other people ride out to hunt the aliens. More importantly, the dog comes with them. They find a RIVERBOAT in the middle of the desert.

 SAM ROCKWELL:
 What the hell is that thing doing in the middle of the desert?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Jon Favreau was watching Maverick the night before he started shooting, and wanted a riverboat in this film.

 HARRISON FORD:
 But that doesn't explain what a huge freaking riverboat is doing in the middle of the desert.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 No, but you just pointed out that that makes no sense, so the audience feels better that we're acknowledging the strangeness of the situation.

 HARRISON FORD:
 So, that's it? We're just going to handwave it with a line of dialogue about how it makes no sense?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Yep. Why don't we camp out there for the night?

 HARRISON FORD:
 Wait, why did we allow a woman to come with us? Isn't this still a time when women were generally considered to be weak and inferior?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 That one was handwaved a couple scenes back. Come on, let's go.

CUT TO:

INT. RIVERBOAT

The characters with lines who aren't DANIEL CRAIG or OLIVIA WILDE hunker down and get some serious CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT done. In true Western fashion, we learn that under HARRISON FORD's gruff exterior lies a heart of gold. We also get some brief COMIC RELIEF in the form of SAM ROCKWELL learning to shoot a gun.

 HARRISON FORD:
 Here, kid, take this knife. And to make sure you'll need to use it at some point, I'm going to unload a dumptruck's worth of exposition about  how I got it.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Well, it sure is quiet.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 A little...too quiet.

Suddenly, an ALIEN wanders into the riverboat and starts KILLING THE PEOPLE INSIDE. THE DOG chases after him. He disappears around a corner and YELPS. Then the ALIEN comes around to take the KID.

 AUDIENCE:
 NOOO! That cold-blooded bastard killed THE DOG!

The KID manages to squirm behind some cover that the ALIEN is too large to fit inside. OUT OF LEFT FIELD, the plating around the alien's chest splits open, revealing an extra pair of small arms, that apparently rest directly against his INTERNAL ORGANS.

 AUDIENCE:
 ARGH! How could they! I mean, it was bad enough that they killed and kidnapped my fellow human beings, but HOW COULD THEY HARM THE DOG!?

 KID:
 Um, guys? I'm currently being menaced by this alien, and I think I'm about to reveal a major weakness...

 AUDIENCE:
 (gnashing their teeth and rending their clothes)
 HOW COULD THEY? HOW COULD THEY? NOT THE DOOOOOOG!

 KID:
 Oh, fuck this.

The KID plunges the knife he just got from HARRISON FORD into the ALIEN'S chest, killing it instantly. Then THE DOG returns.

 AUDIENCE:
 Oh, thank God.

 KID:
 Yeah, that was pretty close...

 AUDIENCE:
 THE DOG LIVES!

 KID:
 ...You guys are assholes.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE OLD WEST, THE NEXT DAY

Something happens that reveals to the audience members that hadn't been paying attention that DANIEL CRAIG used to be a STAGECOACH ROBBER. He tries to regain control of his old band but fails, making the robbers an OBVIOUS SET-UP for later on in the film. DANIEL CRAIG and the others are leaving when AN ALIEN SHIP appears. It captures OLIVIA WILDE.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 I'm gonna jump onto the demon's ship and rescue you!

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Are you insane? Look how fast the thing is going! There's no way you could survive that!

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Hey, those kidnapped people got snatched away by these same ships travelling at high speed without their spines snapping. I can do it too.  Besides, I'm James Bond!

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 But aren't the James Bond films you're in supposed to be more realistic?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am!

DANIEL CRAIG jumps onto the ship. Some other stuff happens, then he and OLIVIA WILDE fall into a RIVER or ARROYO or some shit.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 I'm dying!

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 You can't be! You're my love interest! And there's still an hour to go in this film!

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Yeah, I've been meaning to ask about that. You've been getting flashbacks this whole movie of some woman you're obviously in love with.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Yeah, but I don't remember that.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Then who the hell is having those flashbacks? I'll admit I've had fantasies about being alone in the middle of nowhere with Daniel Craig, but  I'm usually in them.

DANIEL CRAIG brings OLIVIA WILDE back to the others. Unfortunately, she DIES. At that moment, SAVAGE INJUNS appear!

 SAVAGE INJUNS:
 A-whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo! We take-um squaw!

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Um, is this cool? I mean, I know it happened all the time in Westerns, but aren't we coming dangerously close to a lawsuit?

 SAVAGE INJUNS:
 We sell you for firewater! A-whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo!

CUT TO:
EXT. OLD WEST INJUN CAMP

The SAVAGE INJUNS round up the townsfolk and bring them to their camp, which apparently takes all day, because it's NIGHT when they get there. They unceremoniously dump OLIVIA WILDE'S CORPSE in the fire like yesterday's garbage.

 AUDIENCE:
 I'm a bit uncomfortable that I found their cavalier treatment of her body amusing.

Suddenly, OLIVIA WILDE is reborn in the fire like the PHOENIX

 EVERYBODY IN ANY WAY REMOTELY INVOLVED WITH THIS MOVIE:
 What the fuck?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Right, so, as probably even the dimmest audience member figured out by now, I'm an alien too. But I'm from a race of good aliens.

 HARRISON FORD:
 At this point, you could probably tell me that you're me from the future and I'd calmly accept it.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 So, is this where we're going to find out a lot of important information about what's going on?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Yes.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Like how I'm able to fire this thing on my wrist?

 HARRISON FORD:
 Or how you came back from the dead?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Or whether this is your natural form, or if you're a shapechanger, or you're inhabiting the body of some incredibly hot human woman?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Uh, no. We're not going to explain any of that.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Ok, then how about when the others of your race will be coming to help us?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 They're not. You're on your own.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Oh. Well, can you at least tell us why the demons are here?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 They want gold.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 What? That's the best you can come up with? They're here for gold? That doesn't make any sense. Gold has no intrinsic value. We humans only use  it for money because we like shiny things. There's absolutely no reason to assume that other beings would value it as much as humans do.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 It's just as rare where they come from as it is here.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Nuh-uh, sister, that ain't gonna fly. People thought it was ridiculous that the aliens from Battlefield Earth were here for gold, so they're  sure not gonna accept it a second time. And why are they capturing our people? For slave labor?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 No, their mining operations are 100% automated. Really, the aliens themselves don't have to be here. They captured your people to study their  weaknesses.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Weaknesses? They're like 1,000 years more advanced than us! I don't think we'd have anything but weaknesses compared to them.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Well, look, this is all a thinly disguised metaphor for when the White Man came and took over the New World. And when they did that, they  captured Indians.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 As slaves, which according to what you said before, these demons have no need for. We didn't even know they were here until they started  marauding. It seems like they're only kidnapping us to be pricks.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Look, will you shut up if I tell you how to get your memories back?

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Sure. What do I need to do?

 SAVAGE INJUNS:
 Smoke-um peace pipe!

DANIEL does. He has a FLASHBACK to when he was captured by the ALIENS.

CUT TO:

INT. OLD WEST ALIEN MOTHERSHIP

DANIEL CRAIG lies on an ALIEN BED while an ALIEN conducts experiments on other people.

 EVIL ALIEN:
 Dum-de-dum, don't mind me, just vivisecting your wife.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Alright, now I get to see by what daring feat of heroics I managed to escape with one of the alien's weapons!

 EVIL ALIEN:
 (moving over to DANIEL CRAIG)
 Doo-dee-doo, time to work on this human. Man, this arm cannon thingy is really chaffing. I'll just take it off and put it down within arm's  reach of this unrestrained, fully-conscious human.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 I'll just take that!

He does.

 EVIL ALIEN:
 Oh, shit! I'm too stupid to live!

DANIEL CRAIG FIRES at the alien's head, wounding him in a way which would definitely be fatal to a HUMAN.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Well, I'll be very surprised if I see him again.

He heads out of the ALIEN MOTHERSHIP, but blood loss or something causes him to pass out, in the exact spot we found him at the beginning of the film.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE OLD WEST, THE NEXT DAY

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Alright, now that I remember where the demon's mothership is, we can get our people back!

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 You and I will sneak in while everyone else here creates a distraction.

 HARRISON FORD:
 I'll get these Indians organized by yelling at them in a manner which is clearly insulting but strangely free of the type of racial slurs you'd  expect from a character like me.

 SAVAGE INJUNS:
 Respect-um other cultures, kimo-sabe.

CUT TO:

INT. OLD WEST ALIEN MOTHERSHIP

DANIEL and OLIVIA sneak inside while all the cool stuff is happening off-camera. They witness the UTTERLY BIZARRE AND NONSENSICAL way the ALIENS are mining gold, in a sequence designed to do nothing but burn through the film's FX BUDGET.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Ok, you need to take off the wrist gun so I can turn it into a bomb. For some reason this will require me to kiss you.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 I will voice no complaint as you strip me of our only effective weapon well before you actually need me to take it off.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Oh, no, don't worry. Regular weapons suddenly work on the aliens, unlike before when bullets just bounced off.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Is the movie even going to bother explaining that?

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Nope. Ok, now run! I need to take this thing to the engine core or whatever to blow the ship up.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 But you'll die too! Let me do the heroic sacrifice thing. My character was more or less built for it.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Except that you have absolutely no idea where to go or how to blow up the ship, and it would take me far too long to explain it to you.

 DANIEL CRAIG
 ...Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense. Later!

OLIVIA begins crawling through the organic-looking ductwork.

 OLIVIA WILDE:
 Man, is there a single piece of these aliens' technology that isn't completely disgusting?

OLIVIA continues to crawl through the ducts. An ALIEN chases after her, but despite the fact that he's moving about 4x faster than she is, he never gets close enough for her to even hear him, making this sequence BORING rather than TENSE.

CUT TO:

INT. SOME OTHER PART OF THE SHIP, PROBABLY

Meanwhile, DANIEL CRAIG runs to save the townsfolk. He finds them, staring blankly at an object emitting a pale blue glow. The AUDIENCE recoils as the SUBTLE REFERENCE TO TELEVISION buffets them about the head. DANIEL CRAIG rescues them, but not before the alien who was experimenting on him returns for a grudge match that everybody saw coming.

 HARRISON FORD:
 Don't worry, I'll help you!

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Well, I guess this is where you die nobly sacrificing yourself to save me and the townsfolk.

 HARRISON FORD:
 Nope, only Olivia gets a heroic sacrifice in this movie.

 DANIEL CRAIG:
 Somehow I feel like that should be a challenge to my masculinity.

CUT TO:

EXT. THE OLD WEST

DANIEL CRAIG and HARRISON FORD escape with the captives. The MOTHERSHIP blows up!

 AUDIENCE:
 All appears to be well. Except...

THE DOG appears, unscathed!

 AUDIENCE:
 Yay! Now it's a happy ending!

END

Everybody wears a hat

I've been watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine recently. When it was on the air, I didn't really watch it regularly until the 4th or 5th Season, and even then I only caught maybe 2 out of 3 episodes. The first few seasons I only caught sporadically, though I did manage to catch the ones that were relevant to the overall storyline.

It's been a while since I've really watched any Star Trek, aside from a movie here and there. I had kinda forgotten about a lot of the niggling things that always kinda bugged me about the franchise. Or to be more accurate, I discovered that while I thought I'd exaggerated them in my mind, I really hadn't.

The big thing that always annoyed me about Trek is the whole Planet Of Hats deal. Planet Of Hats is essentially when a world (or an entire race) can all be defined by one trait. All Klingons are warriors. All Cardassians are jingoistic patriots. All Vulcans are emotionally-repressed logicians. Hell, I remember a 7th Season episode of DS9 where a serial killer was tracked down and was found to be a Vulcan. He was clearly demented, but he still believed in logic above all else. The only problem was that his logic had become horribly warped.

I would find myself asking questions regarding the silliness of a notion of an entire race being drawn from a single template. If Klingons were all honor and glory all the time, then when did they invent indoor plumbing, let alone faster-than-light space travel? If Ferengi spend all their time worshipping at the altar of profit, who's taking care of their infrastructure?

And even if we get past that, and assume that there are Klingon carpenters, or Ferengi scientists (actually, there was one in an episode of The Next Generation, but he freely admitted he was an oddity among his people), that still doesn't explain why every race but Humanity has coalesced into a homogenous whole. Granted, Humans in the Trek universe seem to have one major culture, but they still at least have a sense of historical identity. Characters identify themselves as Irish (Miles O'Brien), or French (Jean-Luc Picard), or whatever. And yet every Ferengi follows the same Rules of Acquisition, and if they talk about home, it'll be their race's homeworld, not any country they come from.

I can kinda understand in the case of the Vulcans; the ones who didn't want to bury their emotions and embrace logic as a way of life left and became the Romulans. And they did it long enough ago that signs of diverging evolution is obvious among the two. Romulans have this kinda ridge thing in their foreheads that Vulcans don't have, even if the only other way to tell them apart is their hairstyles (and even that's marginal).

On the note of hairstyles, what exactly happened in the fashion world between then and now? Members of certain races always seem to wear nearly identical clothes. Klingons all wear black and grey armor. Romulans all wear big bulky tunic-like deals. Cardassians all seem to wear the same outfit, though since 99% of the Cardassians encountered on the show are military officers, that can be forgiven. Say what you will about Ferengi, at least they seem to have a sense of individual style. They might even show more than humans, who seem to mostly be walking around in loose-fitting pajamas.

In Star Trek, the Federation is touted as being beyond silly ideas like prejudice. Well, that sounds all well and good, but it rings a bit hollow when it turns out they don't have to be prejudiced; all the aliens on the show are living out the prejudices for them.

I imagine this got its start in fantasy races. All dwarves are fierce warriors and fiercer drinkers. All elves are wise and mystical. All orcs are savage barbarians. It's a logical extension, since when you get right down to it, the main difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy is that one usually claims to have a scientific basis behind the wild stuff going on (or at least pretends there is), and the other says "fuck it, it's all magic, you know?"

The trend seems to be waning recently. I know at least one case, in the first Mass Effect game, where an alien calls out a human character on this exact convention, stating sarcastically "Because humans are all different, but every krogan is exactly alike." I hope this trend continues, because I think it'd be more interesting to explore some truly heterogeneous aliens races, then just saying "What would it be like if everyone on a planet were like this?"

-Long Days And Pleasant Nights

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I just got back from seeing, as the title of this blog would indicate, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. I enjoyed it, got as much amusement from it as I did the other two, but the movie was not without its flaws. Some new, some old.

My first complaint is a niggling one, so I want to get it out of the way before I go on to anything else. There is no Dark Side of the Moon. I thought everyone knew this by now, so I was a little surprised to hear it continually referenced. What we used to call the Dark Side of the Moon is now called the Far Side, if it's called anything. The reason is simple, the Far Side of the Moon gets as much light as the rest of the Moon. It's known as the Far Side because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, which means the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. But that doesn't mean that sunlight doesn't reach it. When the half of the Moon we can see is in it's New Phase, i.e. covered in shadow, the other side is completely bathed in light.

Ok, now onto things that are more technical than simply Did Not Do The Research. My main problem with the movie was pacing. The movie kinda drifts along aimlessly for the first half hour or so as we learn what's new in the life of Sam Witwicky. I have no problem with character development, in fact I'm a big proponent of it, even in Summer Blockbusters, as long as it's done well. Spending a few minutes getting us acclimated with Sam's new girlfriend is fine, even if it turns "What happened to Megan Fox" into nothing more than a few lines of Handwaving exposition. I understand that for purposes of continuity, we can't just pretend that character didn't exist, and that a brief "Where'd she go?" "Oh, she's long gone" is all your gonna get from such a movie.

But then we go on to Sam's job hunt, which is aborted almost before it begins by Sam's parents being brought back. Ok, I found them amusing in the first movie, but by the second movie their antics were a bit exasperating. By the time they showed up in this movie, I was squirming in my seat and wondering when this crap would be over with.

As I was leaving for the movie, I was asked "Why do they have to be so annoying?" I said that it was probably so the teens watching the movie could say "Oh God, why do parents have to be sooooo embarrassing?"

Then we get on to the job hunt, which was a mildly amusing montage, then on to Sam's new job. In my opinion, all this took up way too much screentime. Especially since when it started getting to the real cool stuff, like Sam puzzling out the Decepticons latest scheme, they just blew right over it. I mean, I knew what was going on, and I was still baffled by what they were saying. If you're gonna have a scene like that, it should take up at least as much time as the character background you were doing before. If you're not willing to give such a detail the attention it deserves, just have a Mr. Exposition wander into the room, explain everything, and then bump into the wall on the way out. Don't tease me with what appears to be some interesting and engaging investigation work, and then have the whole thing over with in less time than you spent on how fruity Alan Tudyk's character is.

Now back to the afore-mentioned girlfriend. I would like to say that she seemed like a stand-in for Megan Fox's character, that they just gave her all the lines they were gonna give Megan Fox, but it's hard to tell. I mean, Fox's character can be described from beginning to end as "I'm a hot chick with a great body." There, I've pretty much exhausted all there is to say about her. And that's all there is to this character, as well. She's there to look good in tight-fitting dresses, get kidnapped, and give Sam motivation to continue on. In fact, the motivation she provides just makes her character even more worthless, because Sam didn't really need more. "Giant robots are planning on conquering the world for the third time, and you're the only Human who sees the whole picture" seems like plenty of motivation to me. And you can't even say "Well, this makes it personal." How is planning to either exterminate or enslave you not personal?

The screenwriter seemed to realize how two-dimensional this chick was, so he decided to shoehorn in one scene near the end where she actually does something plot-relevant. I'm not going to say what it is to avoid spoilers, but I will say that if she had not been in the movie at all, they could have had any other member of the cast (even one of the annoying parents) do the exact same thing without altering anything else in the movie. Ah, but if she wasn't in the movie, then the Boobies Quotient would have been dangerously low.

Another quick one: parts of the opening of the film take place during the Space Race of the 1960s, and to facilitate this, they make copious use of CG and voice acting to do things like have JFK in the movie (aside from actual stock footage in some places). The problem I had with that, it all looked terrible! The CG JFK in Forrest Gump looked better, and that movie came out 17 years before this one.

I've got some other problems with the movie, but a lot of those mostly involve the film's casual disregard for the laws of physics. And by this point, if you're surprised by such things in a Michael Bay movie, then this is probably the first Michael Bay movie you've ever seen.

On the positive side, the action scenes were as spectacular as ever. If you go to the movie expecting to see vehicles turn into robots, and then beat the everliving snot out of each other, you will not be disappointed.

Overall, the acting was a notch or two above the earlier films. Shia LaBeouf seems more mature and confident in this film than he did before. I guess saving the world twice will do that to a guy. I can't say I recall seeing any of his infamous stuttering rants in this film. So there's some actual character development there. John Turturro is as hammy as ever, and it is glorious. John Malkovic has a cameo, which he plays in his normal manner of appearing to be medicated to the gills. Turturro and Malkovic share one scene together, and I have to say I'm amazed there was any scenery left, at the rate they were chewing it. I commented to the friend I was watching it with that I was surprised the camera was able to handle that much ham all at once.

So, yeah. If you haven't seen it yet, and you liked the earlier installments, go check it out. It's a fun ride. Just keep in mind that it's a flawed movie, and in many ways, feels a bit like an unfinished project.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

How not to bum a ride.

Two in the morning is not a time I expect to get text messages. Not on weekdays, at least. And not from numbers I don't recognize. And especially when they read like this:

U want to make 7 bucks wen between 3 and 4. Need a ride from Harlem green line to sayre and diversy

That's a word for word, misspelling by misspelling copy of the text I got about 20 minutes ago.

For about a minute after I got it, I just stared at that first sentence. It took me that long to even get to the rest of the message. At first, I wondered why 7 bucks. Seems like a weird number to offer someone. The lack of a question mark threw me off too. Then I started wondering if I'd suddenly found myself in some kind of movie, cuz that's the only place I could think of where bizarre things like this actually happen.

At first I thought about ignoring it. Then I decided to respond, just in case it was a wrong number and it was some guy trying to get a ride from a friend. So I said "Who is this?" I get a reply that it's this new guy at work. So I realize that the message was indeed meant for me.

I gave him a polite brush-off, without saying what I was actually thinking: "Yeah, that's just what I wanna do. Pick up someone who's essentially a stranger from the train, and drive him to some strange neighborhood." Especially since this guy doesn't seem like an upright citizen. I could be wrong, but I don't want to find out the hard way.

Also, Harlem Ave. is a real hassle that time of day.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

The paragon of animals, or something

Sometimes people do things without even thinking about it. I don't mean like how you don't think about all the actions involved in picking up a cup of water and drinking from it. I mean things like running into a burning building to pull people out of it, things that run counter to instinct. If you think about it, selflessness is a pretty amazing thing, considering it goes against the simple preservation of self.

Years ago, there was this bar I went to for karaoke. I don't remember what it was called, only that it was a total dive. There was no shelf for booze, just a small fridge and some other stuff to stack drinks on. They didn't even have a credit card machine. It was, if you will pardon my language, a shithole.

One night, when I was there with some friends, a fight broke out. I was sitting at the bar, and about 10-15 feet away, I heard a crash, and turned to see that some guy had shoved some other guy into a table, knocking it and several chairs over. I was about five sheets to the wind at that point, not wasted, but pretty drunk. This wasn't the first or the last time I've seen a barroom brawl break out, but for some reason I reacted differently to this one. Maybe it was that the bar was relatively empty and there was no one between me and the fight. Maybe it was because the guy who had been knocked over was not fighting back, and it reminded me of the few times I've been involved in an altercation.

The guy who had been shoved was just lying there, and the other guy had jumped on him and was swinging away with impunity. I can't say what made me do it, because I don't remember having any conscious thoughts about it, but the next thing I knew I was standing over both of them. I grabbed the guy on top and yanked him off the other guy with one hand. I'm a pretty big guy, but so was he. I think the only reason I pulled him away with such ease was due to the element of surprise. And he'd probably had much more to drink than I had.

I held the guy behind me at arm's length while I helped the other guy up with my free hand. In hindsight, it was probably a pretty stupid thing to do, turning my back on an aggressive drunk, but as I said, I wasn't really thinking about anything I was doing, just reacting almost by instinct. Fortunately, the guy's friends had sufficiently recovered from their shock at the attack by that point to grab their friend and take him out of the equation. The man who had been attacked got up with my help and dusted himself off. By this point his own friends had gathered around him, and I asked if he was alright. I think he muttered a curt "Yeah," which was the only thing anyone said to me during the entire incident. I went back to my friends while the two guys were led out of the bar by their friends.

Now what made me do that? Both people involved in the fight were total strangers, I had no reason to get involved. It happened far enough away from me that I had been in no danger of being swept up into the melee. And as I mentioned before, wading into fights and breaking them up is not the sort of thing I normally do. So why did I do it that time? I don't know. I'd like to say something like "Somebody had to do something," or "I did what I thought was right," but I never gave any of it any thought at the time. It wasn't until after I'd gotten back to the bar that I started thinking about the whole thing, and wondering what had possessed me to get involved. I didn't have any answers then, and I still have none now. I'd like to think of myself as the kind of person who does such selfless things. Maybe if I find myself in similar circumstances again, and I react the same way, I'll be able to put it in more perspective. For the time being, it just makes me think about the vagaries of human nature, whatever that is.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Moar!

I was looking over an earlier blog on Alignment Chart Demotivators and noticed that I didn't post the Stargate SG-1 demotivator I made. So here it is. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

I made a recent discovery. I was aware that Conan the Barbarian had been a modest success, as a cult movie if nothing else. What I hadn't realized was how some producers went nuts over the idea and scrambled to make their own cheap low budget versions.

Among the stack of cheesy movies I got recently, was a movie I'd seen bits of before called Beastmaster. Watching it yesterday, I had to wonder how much of this movie influenced He Man. The main character even looked the same. It came out the same year as Conan, and it certainly has a rushed quality about it. Oh, and it's got Rip Torn in it.

The movie looked like it was filmed on the same stock Sergio Leone used for his Spaghetti Westerns, and the sound quality wasn't a whole lot better. On the bright side, the acting was just as bad. How that movie got made into two sequels and a TV show is beyond me.

Right now, I'm watching Ator, the Fighting Eagle. To my utter lack of surprise, it's the same as Beastmaster, except with maybe a slightly higher budget. In fact, if you ignored the visual elements and focused on the plot, the first 10 minutes of the movie are indistinguishable from Beastmaster. It also came out in 1982, which must have been a banner year for Sword and Sandal films.

For the last time, I will not sign your copy of Stay Hungry!

The hero of this movie, the eponymous Ator, made me laugh out loud when I first saw him. He looks like he should be singing in a Hair Metal band. Long flowing hair, high cheekbones, ridiculous clothes, he kinda looks like what Michael Bolton thinks he looks like.

Fun fact: Michael Bolton at one time was a Glam Rocker. It's true. He even toured with Ozzy Osbourne once. Google it up.

I have to wonder how many more of these movies I haven't watched yet will turn out to be Conan clones. Personally, I'd like to see more Sword and Sandal fantasy movies. I think the Tolkien Medieval Era movies are getting played out. If anyone in Hollywood is reading this (yeah right) and is looking for an idea, might I point you in the direction of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth? Sure, it's set in the far distant future instead of the misty past, but except for that, it's virtually identical to movies like Conan. It was also a major influence on the magic system found in Dungeons and Dragons, so that should bring in the nerd crowd.

Well, I see that the long-awaited remake of Conan is due to come out this year, with Jason Momoa of Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones fame, and Ron Perlman of Ron Perlman fame. If it does well, maybe it'll create a new influx of Sword and Sandal movies. Maybe even good ones this time.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

It's not what it sounds like

I've had an actor following me around the last couple weeks. As I have mentioned in the past, I enjoy watching bad/cheesy movies. I hit Demonoid (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) looking up anything I could think of, and doing some cross-referencing to find more. One of those was the Starship Troopers triology. I've only seen the first one as of yet, and I was a bit distracted by the sounds of Robert A. Heinlein turning over in his grave.

Along the way, I decided to look for some Rifftrax (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?). For those of you who don't know, Rifftrax is a project being run by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. As with MST3K, Rifftrax is all about poking fun at movies while you watch them. Only in this case, the movies are recent big budget films, and the Rifftrax themselves are MP3s you listen to while the movie plays.

But I digress. One of the Rifftrax I grabbed this time was for Highlander. So I'm watching the movie, and chuckling at the comments being made by Mr. Nelson and his fellow MST3K alumni Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, when I'm suddenly knocked for a loop. The bad guy, the Kurgen, shows up, and my first thought is "My God. It's Sergeant Zim from Starship Troopers. I totally forgot about that." I went onto IMDb (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) to verify, and it was indeed the same actor, Clancy Brown.

So, having had that amusing moment, I went on with my life. Then, two nights ago, I'm watching Gargoyles, and I suddenly realize that this one voice actor sounds real familiar. So, I look it up on IMDb. For some reason, the site doesn't have that particular character listed, so I poke around elsewhere, and find a listing which says that the character Wolf is voiced by...Clancy Brown. I figure it's just one of those things where you never notice something until it's pointed out to you, and then suddenly it's everywhere. Like how I never noticed the Pontiac Grand Prix until I bought one, and then every other car on the road is a Grand Prix (granted, it was a very popular model).

I forgot about it soon afterward, as people usually do. Then, just a few minutes ago, I popped in a copy of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, a movie I've been meaning to see since like High School. I was surprised while watching the credits to see that there's a stack of actors in it that I know. Though I think I already knew John Lithgow was in it. Then, tucked in there at a point calculated to be burned into my memory, I see...Clancy Brown.

I'm getting the feeling that when I go to work tomorrow, Clancy Brown is gonna be sitting on the hood of my car, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife and giving me a knowing grin.

-Long Days And Pleasant Nights

Oh, hai, Blogosphere!

There are times when you hear about a movie or a TV Show, and everyone goes on about how terrible it is. People continually make jokes about one scene, or one line of dialogue, and you feel like the only one on Earth who hasn't tasted the bitter dregs. So, you finally check it out, and it's not what you expected. Sure, it's bad, but you've seen plenty worse. Or it got so hyped that by the time you do see it, the actual product is a let-down.

I wish I could say this was the case with The Room, which I just checked out an hour ago. I was told it's a terrible film, and it is. And the line I kept hearing about, "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" is just as ridiculously over-the-top as people claim. Hell, Wiseau even milks the giant cow as he shouts it.

Lemme back track a bit for people who haven't heard of this film. It's a low-budget ($8 million, which is actually a bit impressive when you consider Wiseau funded it himself) movie directed by, produced by, and starring Tommy Wiseau, a name that is destined to go down in history next to  Ed Wood, Jr. It's a movie about a love triangle between a man, his finance, and his best friend. There's also numerous sub-plots, but there's no point going into them because none of them are ever resolved, and are often completely forgotten the scene after they're introduced.

Walking in, I knew very little about the movie, except that it was terrible, and someone named Lisa was tearing someone else apart (fun fact: as I suspected, the line is a Shout Out to Rebel Without A Cause). From the title, I had assumed the movie took place entirely in one room, perhaps during a party, or a group of people who found themselves trapped in a room together, something like that. Nope. I can't say why the movie is called The Room, except that most of the scenes do take place in one room (though I blame that on the budget more than anything else).

The only other thing I knew about the movie before watching it was that it was a melodrama black comedy. The strikeout is due to a bit of Soviet Revisionism that took place regarding the movie's genre. Wiseau made the movie as a serious, albeit dark, film, exploring concepts like lust, betrayal, and softcore porn. After a few viewings, it became pretty clear that the movie was so bad as to be downright hilarious, so Wiseau suddenly pulled a 180 and claimed that the movie was a black comedy. Take a look around, you won't be able to find anything official written about the movie without the words "black comedy" chucked in every sentence or so.

It's one of those films that's so bad, it's tough to pin down one thing that was exceptionally bad about it. It's more like "What wasn't exceptionally bad about that movie?" The acting ranged from mediocre to terrible, especially in the case of Wiseau. Large portions of the movie were clearly (and poorly) dubbed over. There were a lot of shots inserted that were absolutely unnecessary. For instance, there's a part in the end where a television is picked up and thrown during an angry rampage. The "action" stops for a moment to show a gratutitous shot containing nothing but the TV hitting the ground and smashing. As if Wiseau was worried that if he didn't include that shot, the audience would spend the rest of the film wondering if the TV got broken or not. Or Lisa ordering a pizza for delivery, complete with 555 phone number.

And speaking of unnecessary shots, there were times the movie felt like a Cinemax Porn, due to a rather ridiculous amount of sex scenes. I counted six total, but since two were coitus interruptus, they probably don't count. I was surprised when I got a sex scene within the first five minutes of the movie. Then I was more surprised to get two sex scenes within the first five minutes. By the time the 3rd showed up, I was bored, and by the 4th I was annoyed. The movie was bad enough without having to see the middle-aged star's naked ass flopping around while he moaned like a (female) porn star.

The Room is just one of many bad movies I've been watching lately. I felt I had to comment on this one though, as it was so much worse than the others. I wanted people reading this to know, it's not just hype, the movie really is as bad as everyone says it is.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Waiting for a sign

Right now I'm listening to The Scarecrow by Avantasia. And every time I listen to this album, I get flashbacks to the very first time I heard it. I get this thrill inside me, and not just because it's an excellent Power Metal album. I always flash back to my first impressions. Like, hearing the first song and thinking, "Oh, my God. Is that Roy Khan?" Then I hear the second song, and I'm like "Oh, my God. Is that Jorn Lande?" Then I hear the third song, and I'm like "Holy fucking shit. Is that Mike Kiske?" I mean, Christ. Helloween pretty much gave birth to Power Metal, and here is the original lead singer of the band, assisting in the birth of one of the genre's finest hours.  It's like if I published a book, and Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein got in a fist fight over which one of them was my biggest influence. Which would be real impressive, as they're all dead, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, no long-winded essay here. Just, if you're looking for something new to listen to, give Avantasia a try. And if you like it, take a look at all the people that collaborated on it, and give their albums a listen. You may just find a whole new vista of music to appreciate.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Align yourself

I've been seeing here and there demotivators based on the alignment chart from Dungeons and Dragons. In particular, ones showing all nine alignments, using characters from shows/comics/movies/etc to illustrate the various alignments. The first one I saw showed how Batman, depending on the writer, can fit into any of the nine alignments (though the one for Chaotic Evil was a bit of a stretch).

While sitting around at work yesterday, I started coming up with an alignment chart based on characters from Firefly. At first, I thought "Nine characters, nine alignments, perfect." Then it occurred to me that I'd have to really stretch character interpretations to make three of the guys on the show evil. So, I ended up going with three bad guys from the show (well, one was from the movie). I figured I'd get complaints from doing a Firefly chart and leaving out (insert name of whatever character I left out here), but I figured I'd get even more complaints if I made (insert character name here) evil for the sake of getting all nine on the chart.

Tonight, I found myself continuing the trend with Babylon 5 characters. I'm thinking I might do Stargate SG-1 next, or I might get bored with this and move on to something else.

I'm including the charts in this post. Before any of you get all uppity and shout "Hey, why wasn't X included?" I'd like to point out that Wash is not on the Firefly chart. If I can be OK with excluding one of my favorite characters, you guys can suck it up, too.

 

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

I was thinking about those letters you sometimes get from family members who live far away and/or travel a lot. I've noticed that it seems that it's always the wife who writes the actual letter, even when she's not be the one who's the blood relative. I tried to imagine what a letter from the husband might sound like.

Dear Phil and What's-Her-Name:

I'm just teasing, Janie. I remember your name. Well, we had quite a year! Jimmy came home for a week from Des Moines or Spokane or wherever the hell it is he lives now. He's got a good job up there, which is good because I worked my ass off for ten years to pay for that degree! We met him at the airport, and he bitched about my driving on the way back, like he always does. We sat around and shot the shit for a while. We had some of that new beer Budweiser makes that's made from wheat. Humperdorf or Humperdink or whatever down the street told me it's pretty good, and he oughta know, being German and all.

Here's us in front of some
mountains somewhere

In May we went on a trip to England. By the way, DON'T GO TO ENGLAND IN MAY! The weather sucked, though the food wasn't as bad as everyone says it is. We stayed at some nice chateaus were they make wine, or was that when we went to France last year? Well, now that I think about it, I don't remember anyone at the place speaking too good English, and I'm pretty sure "chateau" is a French word. So that was probably France. Beautiful women there. In France, I mean. England probably had some lookers as well, but it was raining all the damn time so I couldn't see. I wonder why they call those guys Frogs? Or is that the French again?

Anyway, after that, we visited Gretta, who's living in Zurich now. It was nice there, and I got to see my grandkids. I taught them "pull my finger." Great kids, though I could swear that one of them looks a lot like that Hispanic guy that used to live down the hall from her when she first moved out. Your mother thinks I'm insane, but I don't know. I don't remember anyone in our family ever having hair that dark. We were supposed to go on a tour of the city, but my knee was acting up from all that rain in England, so I stayed behind while your mother went on it. Did you know they get The Simpsons out there? You wouldn't believe how weird they all sound in German. Funny, and all this time I thought they spoke Swiss out there. I asked Gretta's husband, and he said there isn't any such language as Swiss. Can you imagine that? That's gotta be weird, living in a country without its own language. Well, besides America, that is.

Oh, your mother said that Zurich is lovely. She's got about four zillion pictures to show you if you ever stop by to see us (hint, hint).

And so we're home now, resting our bones before the fire and all that stuff old farts like us are supposed to do. I spend most evenings at the V.F.W. Hall, and God knows how your mother keeps busy. You should give her a call some time, she pines like crazy for you kids. It's funny, you spend years scrimping and saving for your kids, praying for the day they move out so you can get some peace and quiet. And then one day you look around, and realize they're gone, and you don't have a clue what to do with yourself anymore.

Well, I gotta run. Hal Johnstone died last week. You remember him, guy from the V.F.W. who always gave you that cinnamon candy you hated. We're having a memorial or some crap for him tonight, and I gotta press my good pants for it.Hope you're doing well.

Love,

Dad

P.S.
I remember now. The French are Frogs. The English are Limeys.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Explicit content ahead. Viewer discretion is advised.

Last week, I was on the Wikipedia page for fuck. It was not the random wandering it might sound like. I'd gotten there while looking up the etymology of the phrase "screw the pooch." You can imagine how. I was there to try to find out where the word comes from, and I guess unsurprisingly, no one's sure.

I'm in your wikipedia
defacing your pagez

Anyway, it looked like someone else had gotten there before me, and had decided to have a little fun. In the middle of the article, something like the 3rd or 4th sentence in the second paragraph, someone had written something like "ooooFUCKYOUfuckfuckfuckyouOOooOOoofuck!" After applauding him for his creativity, originality, and high-brow sense of humor, I went to edit the page to remove it. However, someone else had gotten to it before me.

I was informed by a friend that Wikipedia has bots that go through the site removing vulgarity. They work pretty quick, too, as the brilliant observation made by the gentleman quoted above was removed less than one minute after it had been added. When I was told that, I found myself wondering if the bots would be so quick to spot defacement that was more subtle, especially on a page that's full of vulgarity by necessity. So I hatched a scheme, one that if the guy who'd been on the page before me had seen it, may have responded in an awed "no way d00d, u r teh g31gh!"

I figured, what's the point of defacing Wikipedia if it's gonna be noticed and removed before you can even show it to your friends? I wanted something more insidious, something that'd make you go back and say "Hey, did I just read that right?" Not that I think that I'm some sort of evil mastermind for plotting to edit a webpage with malice aforethought, but I've been Trolling since the World Wide Web was getting slapped on its backside by its obstetrician, and I've never been satisfied with doing the same-old same-old, so I figured I had to do something to keep my hand in.

What I did was simple. At several points throughout the page, I inserted the adjective "fucking" into a sentence. For instance, "Non-English-speaking cultures tend to recognize the word's vulgarity, however, it is generally not censored as fucking frequently as in English-speaking cultures." You probably noticed it, as you had advanced warning it was coming. However, the bots that caught the other guy in under 60 seconds didn't spot it at all, and it was about an hour and a half before my "contribution" was noticed and removed.

Subtlety is the key. A friend of mine posted a comment to another page which is still there. I won't say what page, or what the comment was, because I want to see how long it'll be before someone notices it on their own. It's been there since sometime last year, and I find it hard to believe that no one's spotted it for what it is. I guess no one's paying attention. That's what I get for picking a page as high-profile as "fuck." Next time, I'll have to pick something like the page of Dame Edna. I bet it'd be years before someone spotted a fake comment lurking in there.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

A Timeless Lesson

Last night I went to a bar for a friend's birthday party. When they closed, those of us who were left (myself and two people I don't know) decided to go to another bar a few blocks down. The clearest memory I have of that second bar is me trying a clumsy, absolutely terrible come-on line with the bartender. I don't even know why I did it, I don't recall considering her all that attractive.

Anyway, that's not the point of this. The night wore on, and I decided to go home. Outside were a couple guys talking about going to yet another bar. All of them were complete strangers to me, but that didn't stop one of them from asking if I wanted to go too. I said I did, because it seemed like the fastest way to get past these guys and to my car.

One of them, I think the one who asked if I wanted to go, said "I'll go with you, then." Great. Now I've got this guy I don't know who wants me to drive him to a bar that I didn't even want to go to. So I decide to find a way to shake this guy.

I had parked around the corner on a side street, and as we rounded the corner I saw that my car was the only one still there. I pulled out my keys and was about to unlock the doors when I suddenly realized that this guy doesn't know me from Adam, and therefore has no idea what my car looks like. So I started looking around, swinging my head in an exaggerated manner and slurring "Where's my car?" I was too drunk to act well, but that didn't matter because he was too drunk to notice.

He started looking around too, for some reason. Then he realized what he was doing and asked me what my car looked like. I decided to play up the drunken angle and responded "I can't find my car." I even pulled out my keys and started pretending to hit the unlock button, like I was waiting for my headlights to go off. I remember thinking that was an incredibly clever move.

At about that point I discovered that I had a real problem: my house keys were gone. My car keys and my house keys are on one of those key rings that can be pulled apart and separated. I must have done so without realizing it at some point when I was holding my keys. So I turned around and started looking for my keys, and saying so repeatedly. The guy didn't seem to interested in my lost house keys, he was more concerned with when we were getting to the bar.

Somehow, I managed to break away from him while searching for my keys. There's this line of stunted, gnarled trees along the bar, and I ducked behind them to hide, standing in about two feet of snow while wearing clothing inadequate for the weather. This is the kind of thing that seems sensible only to children and drunkards. Or drunk children.

I started making my way towards the back of the bar. My intention was to slip into my car and get away, my lost keys forgotten for the nonce. As I shuffled through the snow, I discovered a planter behind the trees when I tripped over it, losing my glasses.

I don't remember saying anything when it happened, but I must have, because as I was picking myself up, I heard a voice from the other side of the trees say "Did you find your keys?" You've gotta be kidding me.

I informed the guy that now my glasses were missing as well, somewhere inside a snow drift. I stood there, shining my cell phone around to see if I can spot my glasses, knowing it was futile. The guy starts asking me again when we're leaving, completely unsympathetic to my plight. I resorted to responding to everything he said with "I can't find my keys" or "I can't drive without my glasses." The second statement was a flat out lie. I can drive just fine without my glasses, assuming I don't have to scrutinize any street signs while moving. The guy still wasn't getting the hint.

You may be wondering why I didn't just tell the guy to go away. I don't know either.

I was standing by a fence that separated the parking lot from another one at this point. The snow was so high that it came up to about my chest, and I could see people looking for their cars and stuff. I had decided to try a new tack in getting rid of this guy, so I leaned over the fence and started making noises like I was being sick. Again, I didn't do a very good job, but the other guy was so drunk I probably could have just stood there saying "I am throwing up" and he would have bought it.

I'm not sure if it was that, or the sight of a police officer talking to a couple people in the parking lot that did it, but the guy finally scrammed. So I decided to accept the loss of my keys and glasses, jumped in my car, and got away before the guy changed his mind and came looking for me again.

About ten minutes later, I realized I was lost. Well, "lost" isn't the right word. I knew exactly where I was, I just couldn't figure out how I got there. I must have turned at some point without thinking about it. The shock of suddenly finding myself about two miles in the wrong direction sobered me up a bit, and I decided to go back and try to find my keys and glasses.

I pulled back up next to the now deserted bar, and trudged through the snow back into the hedge or treeline or whatever, falling a couple times. I spent a good long time looking around the vicinity of the planter for my glasses, with no luck.

Then, as though hit with some divine inspiration, I plunged my hand into a seemingly random bit of the snowdrift, and my fingers closed around my glasses. Wiping the snow off them and putting them on, I felt like I had experienced a small miracle. I turned around and headed back to my car. When I stepped out into the street, I heard a clink of metal. Looking down, I saw that I had kicked my house keys. I stopped right there, looked straight up into the starry sky, and gave God and whoever is the patron saint of drunken fools my heartfelt thanks.

The moral of this story is: If a stranger asks if you're going to a bar, keep walking.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Get thee to a nunnery

A few years ago, I played around with a short story featuring two British characters. When I was done, I showed it to a guy I know who lives in England, and asked how I'd done with the dialect. He said that it was pretty accurate, except that they sounded Victorian. I puzzled over that for a while, I've watched quite a bit of British television and movies, and I thought I had made the idiom correct. Then it occurred to me: with the exception of Harry Potter, all of the English literature I've read was either Victorian, or set in that era. Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, et al.

It's been said often enough to become trite that "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." Alongside it is a quote I saw in an Orson Scott Card book (I don't know if it was his or if he borrowed it) that went "English-speakers are the only people who can't read Shakespeare in their native language." He was writing his works about 500 years ago, and that makes me wonder about the future evolution of our language. I haven't been able to decide if the explosion of world-wide communications in my lifetime has caused the rate of change in this language to speed up or slow down. That's probably something best left to linguistic experts, but I get the feeling that opinions on the matter are probably divided and will be for some time to come. I guess I'll wait till I'm 60, go back and watch stuff from when I was a kid, and see how archaic it sounds.

But going back to British-English versus American-English, I haven't had many chances to have a face-to-face conversation with anyone from across the pond, which is a bit of a shame. I can only think of one time when I had several conversations with anyone from England, and I can only think of one time when he said something that confused me. There's probably others, but I only remember the one. We were talking about something, I can't remember what, and he asked me if I was talking about "the Pakis." I asked for clarification, and he explained that he was talking about Pakistanis. From the way he had said it, I took the word for a racial slur, and found out later that it is. My knowledge of world relations is woefully small, I had no idea that there was enough emnity between England and Pakistan for there to be a nasty way to refer to them.

On a similar note, I have an on-line friend who lives in Norway, but learned English somewhere along the way. I have no idea how he sounds when he speaks English, but he writes rather well. I assume he must have learned English from British sources, as he uses words like "bloody" occasionally. There were a few times I decided to test how good his English was by engaging in Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness in an attempt to catch him up. Funnily enough, the one time I did get him to ask for clarification was unintended. We were discussing weight loss, and I told him about the time I dropped 15 pounds when I stopped drinking pop. There was a slight pause (if such can even be registered in IM format), followed by "pop?" Who knew that all I had to do to confuse the guy was slip into colloquialism?

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Addendum to the Previous

It got worse. Not long after the point in the book I was at when I was relating yesterday's blog, the readers hit on the idea that they should tell me when there's an ellipsis in a sentence. Meaning that when a sentence reads on paper "It would do...for now," what I hear is "It would do elipsis for now." They also do that for open and close paragraph, but for no other form of punctuation. I get the feeling that by the end of the book, they're going to be spelling out every word for me, and reading every single punctuation mark, and possibly ending every with something like "J-O-H-N space W-E-N-T space H-O-M-E period printed on recycled paper page 127."

If anyone out there has any justification for that, please give it to me.

From the "They Just Didn't Care" Department

I mentioned before that I like to listen to audiobooks while I'm driving. A while ago, I got downloaded a stack of Robert A. Heinlein audiobooks, and I've been going through the ones I hadn't listened to before. The quality of the recordings vary widely. A lot of them come from the Library of Congress, some initiative they had for books for the blind. I'm guessing they're in there because they're probably public domain.

Currently, I'm listening to Methuselah's Children, and I feel confident in saying that it is the worst audio recording I've ever listened to. Each track in the book appears to be read by a different person, and it seems clear that each one is reading the book for the first time. The reading is flat and emotionless, with all the warmth of someone reading a shopping list out loud. And it seems that everything was done on the first take, as you can hear the woman doing the reading stumble over words, and repeat parts that she messed up. In one particular case, the woman even sighed in exasperation before re-reading one line. They also read off each page number, which I don't understand at all. It's like on TV when you see a character pretending to be a bad actor, and their lines are delivered like "Well, I must be going. Exit stage left. Oh, sorry, I wasn't supposed to read that part."

In particular, it seems like the reader for Track 3 hadn't so much as glanced at her part before reading it to the recorder. There's awkward pauses at least once a sentence, more if the sentence contains words not normally used in English conversation. She even managed to mispronounce Heinlein's name at the beginning of the track. Normally I would wonder what the director was thinking when he or she was working on this book, but it's obvious that there was no such director, of if there was, they were fast asleep the entire recording. I can't say I blame the director, either. The readers managed to make daring death-defying escapes sound not only boring, but tedious. They read what the main character had for breakfast and a description of him taking down an armed cop with equal gusto, which is to say none at all.

What makes this especially annoying is that I've listened to some audio books that were done very well, with readers who brought a sense of pride and craft into what they were reading. A lot of them are accomplished voice actors, and give each character their own voice, from tone to timbre to accent. The people reading Methuselah's Children sound like they're doing it as a punishment.

I've heard other audiobooks done by multiple readers, but those were cases of giving narratives by different characters a distinct flavor. It adds to the sense that you're being told the story from different perspectives. In the case of this book, I find myself dreading if the next reader can possibly be any worse than the one before.

One good example of an audio book done right would be the Harry Potter audio books. I understand there's a couple different versions: the British audio books, read by Stephen Fry. Some may know Fry as the other half of Fry and Laurie, the latter of which is famous in America as Gregory House. I haven't listened to them, but I understand they're very good. The American audio books are done by Jim Dale, who, if you'll excuse the pun, is a veritable wizard of voice acting. He's so good at doing voices for the characters that you'd swear there's four or five other people in the room with him. One thing that really impressed me is that he can do convincing female voices. Most voice actors have trouble doing voices of the opposite sex. Women voiced by men sound shrill or like high-pitched men, while men voiced by women tend to sound like they have bad head colds or chew gravel daily.

It should come as no surprise that the women doing this audiobook don't even bother with voices. Hell, sometimes it's difficult to tell when they switch from dialogue to narration, as they don't even bother to pause between paragraphs. They even switch between different sections of the book without pausing, which a couple times had me wondering why one of the characters was suddenly the President of the United States. They do the same when stating page numbers (I still can't figure out why they're telling blind people what page they should be on), sometimes not even pausing when the page change occurs mid-sentence. So you'll get sentences like this. "We have to get out of page 42 here as soon as we can." Which is a very jarring experience, leading me to wonder why the person on the other end of that dialogue doesn't ask "Why did you just say 'page 42?'" At least, that's what I'd ask the reader if I could.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

To Hell with Money

A friend of mine has this phrase he'll use when he hears or sees something that pleases him, or he thinks it cool. In much the same way that Paris Hilton might say "That's hot," he'll say "That's money."

The phrase really bothers me. A large part of it is the implication inherent in the statement that money is not simply something that has worth, but that it is also worthy. In my opinion, taking something that has intrinsic value, and comparing it favorably to another thing that has no intrinsic value, cheapens that thing.

Of course, I know there are some people who would squawk at the idea that money has no intrinsic value. This world is full of people who bow to and worship at the altar of money, forgetting that money is not a thing in itself, but a shared hallucination. Money only has value if both parties involved agree it does by mutual consent. If I were to offer a dog a choice between a $10 steak and a $20 bill, which would he prefer? The $20 bill has no value to him, while the steak is a tasty meal. I couldn't explain to the dog that with the $20 bill, he could purchase 2 steaks. The $20 bill only has value because the butcher and I have both accepted the fiction that it does.

Some may argue that a dog and a person are not the same, and I shouldn't expect a dog to understand what a human does. So here's another example, which I'm paraphrasing from a book. If you were stuck on a desert island, would you rather have a sack full of cash, or a sack full of potatoes? A silly question, you might be saying, as the answer is so obvious. And yet you have to be pulled out of civilization to make the answer so obvious. The money is useless to you (no intrinsic value) on a desert island, while the potatoes can be eaten (intrinsic value), and with some luck, can be planted and cultivated into even more potatoes. While the merits of a potato-only diet are arguable, they certainly have more nutritional value than money, whether it's paper or coinage.

Traditionally, gold has had value to us because it's shiny and rare. That's pretty much been it for most of human history. Recently, some practical uses have been found for gold; it's conductivity makes it useful in electronics, for instance. But it would be absurd to claim that the ancient Babylonians were coining gold because they knew that in 6,000 years, we'd find a way to use the stuff.

Having said all this, I don't really have anything against money. I accept that it's a useful way to attain goods and services, and certainly more practical in an urban setting than keeping a bunch of livestock I can barter. Though if the Revolution comes tomorrow, I may find myself wishing I had a couple pigs to slaughter just in case. But it's not really something I can believe in, and certainly nothing I can ascribe higher values to and invoke its name to show my approval of something.

I was talking to a friend once, the same friend as I mentioned in the beginning, in fact. I told him that I don't believe in ghosts. He asked me why, and I said that I've never seen one. He countered with "do you believe in 1 million dollars?" His point, I'm sure, is that I've never seen 1 million dollars, either. And of course was the unspoken assumption that I absolutely must believe in 1 million dollars, or the fraud of money would be exposed for what it is. I gave it some serious thought, and I have to say, I don't believe in one million dollars. You may as well ask if I believe in a character in a novel. It's just an idea.

Hell, in this modern age of electronic banking, when a paycheck can pass from a corporation's account to the bank account of the employee via direct deposit, and from there to the grocery store's bank account via a debit card, without ever having become anything other than an electronic trail the entire time, can money really be said to exist? As I understand it, we don't even back our money on the gold standard, the silver standard, or any other hard currency. Our money is backed by credit. Money doesn't even have a physical existence anymore, except for those increasingly rare times we convert it from binary code into cash. No, I don't believe in 1 million dollars. But I do believe in steaks and potatoes.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights