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Saturday, March 02, 2002
Shakespeare was a fraud, or so say the Marlovians. I whole-heartedly believe it. But we all know I'll believe anything that differs from the official version.
When I was a senior in high school, I made a deal with my English teacher that I'd read Shakespeare if she read Naked Lunch. The cool thing about her is that she did read Naked Lunch; the uncool thing about me is that I didn't read much Shakespeare.
.: posted by andy 3/2/2002
Friday, March 01, 2002
About the puppy thing, my immediate reaction is similar to Andy's. More cynically, I think that a poster of an unwanted puppy being eaten by a snake would make a good pet promotion, with a caption of either "Spay or neuter your pet" or "Support your local animal shelter." The puppies were going to be put to death anyway, and that's acceptable to the community, as long as they don't have to watch it.
"I hate to see any life wasted, er at least any meat."
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 3/1/2002
In principle, I can't find any difference between feeding puppies or rats to snakes. But in reality (very different from principle), I like dogs a lot and am very uncomfortable with the idea of feeding one to a boa constrictor. It makes me feel sick to imagine watching some enormous abomination of an animal unhinging its jaw to swallow Charlie.
I guess this is pretty similar to the debate over whether Americans should be allowed to eat or export horsemeat. I'm all in favor of killing and eating horses. I really hate horses.
.: posted by andy 3/1/2002
Thursday, February 28, 2002
Oh, and I saw Rollerball this evening. Fair to middling for a fast paced action flick with no plot or character development or anything else really. The movie runs like this:
Act I
Open on fast paced renegade urban luge race. Man in race gets in trouble and joins Best Friend in Rollerball, a blood sport played in Kazakhstan or some such place. Face paced Rollerball action where teammate gets seriously injured, and it looks like a setup. Car chase scene. Street riot. Fast paced Rollerball game where teammate hits boobytrapped wall and gets killed by audience. Fast paced Rollerball game where Man's Love Interest almost gets killed by trap, and Best Friend saves her, injuring himself instead.
Act II
Sneaking out of hospital scene. Man and Best Friend run for Russian border, entire sequence filmed in 'night goggle vision'. Car fight scene. Motorcycle chase scene. Off road airplane scene (maybe the best line in the movie; "I told you this was an off road bike!" "Well guess what, they got an offroad airplane!"). Best Friend shot by sniper feet from Russian border. Man makes deal to save Love Interest.
Act III
Final Rollerball game, where all rules are suspended and opposing team has several hired killers added. Man takes beating and kills all enemies, then breaks through wall and kills Evil Mastermind, then Evil Toadie. Everyone loves him and thinks he's a hero, and Love Interest invites Man to her bed (Before they always had sex in the shower at the Rollerball Arena).
A strange thing about this movie is how it handled nudity. There was no real nudity, but lots of implied. Dressing room scenes where everyone appears to be nude, but all women are conveniently facing the other way; the strip club hangout where again everyone has their back to the camera. One scene with a very obvious full frontal shot, only blurred. So it's ok to have a shot of a guy getting his head crushed by a steel ball, then shown on replay again and again, then watched and analyzed by characters repeatedly, and people getting their necks broken etc; but no nudity.
Rollerball was extremely fast paced, and had huge amounts of action. Don't expect any more and you won't be disappointed.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/28/2002
Listening to BBC tonight, twice I caught the end of a blurb that ran something like this: "... schools requiring virginity test. Five girls have threatened suicide over the matter." Finally I looked it up on bbc.co.uk. Seems the Turkish gov't has rescinded a law allowing school-aged girls suspected of premarital sex to be forced to undergo virginity tests. The tests were common until five girls attempted suicide by eating rat poison rather than submit to tests. The blurb and the news didn't quite match...
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/28/2002
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
An interesting pdf showing total energy consumption in the US for 1999. Ninety-seven quadrillion BTUs. The 'Rejected' block especially demonstrates the inefficiencies of the power grid and automobiles.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/26/2002
Unsurprisingly, Muslims do not view the United State favorably. Also unsurprisingly, they view President Bush even more unfavorably than they do his country. The thing that did surprise me was that the majority of Muslims don't believe an Arab group committed the Sept. 11 attacks. I guess they feel that the attacks were either a frame-up or else were committed by some other terrorist group. To me, there's a conflict between that statistic and the statistic that says the majority of Muslims feel the Sept. 11 attacks were morally justified. The only way I can make sense of it is if the data saying Muslims don't believe an Arab group is behind the attacks is the result of a poorly worded survey question. Maybe Muslims read the question as, "Do you think Arabs are responsible, or do you think it's a different ethnic group, such as Yemenis, Pashtuns, Uzbekis, etc.?" But I really don't think that's what happened.
.: posted by andy 2/26/2002
Monday, February 25, 2002
I always heard that Green Berets were dropped in the middle of the Everglades and told to survive for a month for their final exam. I guess moving through "civilized" areas as part of their training makes a lot of practical sense, since a lot of what they do is stealth reconnaissance. Still, I'd think they'd have better sense than to try to assemble an M4 rifle in front of an armed police officer, whether or not he was part of the exercise.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/25/2002
Sunday, February 24, 2002
I just saw on the news that Attorney General John Ashcroft was singing Gospel songs in Charlotte, and that the FBI is hiring. The future's looking up (he said, sarcastically)!
.: posted by andy 2/24/2002
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