A Dirty Shame - Been There, Done That

my rating:

I have a magnet on my refrigerator that reads "It's only kinky the first time". It's supposed to be a come-on, a line to coax somebody into doing something they think is too weird for them. But my boyfriend Andy read it differently, as a lament: yeah, "it" will be kinky the first time you do it, but from then on, it'll just be sex. Which is fine and wonderful... but nothing special.

A Dirty Shame is a story about (among other things) sex messiah Ray Ray and his apostles, who are trying to discover a new sex act that no one has ever done. Yeah, they have exuberant and abnormal sex lives, but it's all been done... and for those who get their thrills from kinkiness (i.e. novelty), that's not enough.

Unfortunately, the movie also depends on novelty to shock the audience... and at least in my case, it failed. There were parts of the movie where - perhaps satirising educational movies - they stopped to introduce characters, tell us what their sexual fetish was, and explain what that meant. "Hi, we're bears. That means we're big and hairy and homosexual. This is our younger friend; he's a cub. An otter is someone who..." This isn't a direct quote (it wasn't quite that staged and talky), but it's pretty close.

OK, so the idea of "bears" might be new to some people, but to me it's about as eye-opening as the idea of "stock brokers" (people who buy and sell shares of companies for a living). Even the few fetishes I hadn't heard of before weren't exactly shocking; OK, so there are people who like to leave unflushed turds behind in public restrooms. {shrug} Waters swears that everything in the movie is an actual erotic fetish. Um, sure. Why not? Do people really doubt the existence of, say, autoerotic asphyxiation? I'm pretty sure I've seen that on ER or NYPD Blue. And movies like American Pie and the whole modern gross-out genre have raised the bar for offensiveness.

The same kind of been-there-done-that feeling starts cropping up the fourth or fifth time someone gets hit on the head and is transformed from a prude into a pervert or back again, or the fourth or fifth time that one of the designated prudes stops to rail against some perversion, or the fourth or fifth time that Ray Ray shouts "Let's go sexin'!" like some kind of freak from Reefer Madness... but without the humorous irony of the filmmaker actually taking it seriously.

Some reviewers are saying that the only reason you might not love this movie is if you're easily offended. The other possible reason is that you're not easily offended... because then you might be amused from time to time, but still disappointed. Back in the "golden (shower) age" of John Waters' movie-making back in the 1970's, he filmed things that no one had ever filmed before, and it gaves his films a real edge. To be fair, there are probably a few never-been-filmed (outside of porn) things here as well, especially around the, er, climax (and just maybe the "new sex act" they came up with really is never-been-done). It's still somewhat fun - even the same old Tuesday night missionary position sex can be entertaining - but overall, A Dirty Shame just... isn't kinky any more.

Why Isn't Bush Getting a Landslide?

Republicans have been crowing about how well George W. Bush is doing in voter polls, but even if you ignore the question of bias in certain polls... no, he really isn't doing all that well. Certainly not as well as he should be.

Think about it: We're in the middle of a war, and there's am understandable reluctance to change leaders in the middle of one. He scores high on the "likeability" scale, with lots of people saying they'd like to sit down at a bar or backyard barbeque with him. He exudes confidence and certainty, which people also find appealing, especially in times of crisis. But he's way behind his peers. Look at the last few war-time presidents and see how well they did in their re-election bids:

• Richard Nixon (1972, Vietnam) 60% popular vote, 520 electoral votes
  
• Lyndon Johnson (1964, Vietnam) 61% popular vote, 486 electoral votes
  
• Dwight Eisenhower (1952, Korea) 55% popular vote, 442 electoral votes
  
• Franklin Roosevelt (1944, WW2) 53% popular vote, 432 electoral votes

By contrast, the highest Bush has gotten in the electoral-college projections I've been following has been 331 electoral votes, he spent much of the summer in the low 200's, and as of today he's at only 311. Sure, that's more than he got last time, but if he's supposed to be the Commander in Chief that Americans either trust or are afraid to replace during war time... why is he still fighting to get above 50% in the popularity polls, and scrapping over half a dozen medium-large electoral states?

I'd like to think that it's because Americans don't really trust him, and see his illegal invasion of Iraq and the mess it's created as evidence of his duplicity and/or incompetence. But I think Clinton's 1992 campaign manager probably got a better handle on it: "It's the economy, stupid." I don't believe it makes much sense to give the president blame/credit for what happens to the economy during his tenure, but that's how people vote. It's why Michigan has been pretty safely in the Kerry column all summer: we're losing jobs here... lots of them. Other parts of the country don't have it as bad, but it isn't exactly "morning in America" anywhere else either. To compare GWB's score on the job-making tally with that of the past ten presidents, see this graph, which puts him dead last, behind his father and Jerry Ford. Despite its other ills, war is supposed to be good for the economy, but apparently not the way GWB fights it.

He might squeak by with a more decisive margin in the electoral vote and a slim popular majority, but that's not a victory or a mandate; for a war-time president, it's a slap in the face.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Tonight will be longer than today.

For some people the equinoxes are a time for religious rites, but as fond as I am of neopagans, I'm not spiritual enough to join them. I wish you all a happy Sabbat of Mabon, but I'll pass on the invitation to the bonfire.

Astronomers say that the equinoxes signal the beginning of autumn and spring, but that really doesn't make sense, because different parts of the world have identifiable seasons of different lengths. The equinoxes and solstices are arbitrary points on a continuum; you could just as easily say that autumn starts on September 15, winter starts December 15, and so forth. In the U.S. in general, autumn begins the Tuesday after Labor Day, and I'm more inclined to cite the first day of classes for the Fall semester as the first day of the season.

But I still feel obliged to mark the equinoxes.

Mostly it's because I like to sit out on the front porch in the evenings, and the earlier and earlier setting of the sun encroaches on that. Fortunately I live in the far west of my time zone, so sunset is still a belated 7:30pm. I can eat supper or read a book or draw for a while after work before the light fails. For now. But in the coming weeks I'm going to lose that, and around equinox is when I start to really notice just how quickly the light is fading.

I've also been noticing that sun has fallen behind my wake-up time. I'm lucky that my relatively late starting time at work and my short commute allow me to sleep until 7:00am, but I've been finding that harder to wake up for already. The sky is starting to lighten by the time the clock radio starts playing NPR's Morning Edition, but the sun isn't up yet. So I'm up for the sunrise, and I'm up for the sunset. From now until about six months from now, "daytime" will be just a subset of "my day".

I'm also a borderline SAD sufferer. Seasonal Affect Disorder is what sends people into depression in the dark months (even without help from the winter holidays), and I've noticed that sunlight (or the lack thereof) definitely affects my mood. The autumnal equinox is kind of an early warning that tougher times are ahead. It's largely symbolic and arbitrary. But since we're talking psychology, the impact of it is signficant.

But at least the weather is still fairly warm and usually sunny, and my less-than-full-time job allows me to get out of the building and experience some of the afternoon daylight that remains. I've replaced a bunch of the old light bulbs in my house with somewhat brighters, more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs, so I'll be able to keep my living space light for less money. So maybe the main thing to depress me this winter will be the holidays themselves.

Cat Stevens: Terrorist?

Anyone questioning whether the U.S. government has lost its collective mind on the topic of "homeland security" has one less reason to doubt it. It turns out the feds consider Cat Stevens a likely terrorist. A plane he was riding in from London to Washington was diverted to land in Maine "on national security grounds" when they discovered he was on it. The plane sat there for three hours before it was allowed to proceed without him.

After all, despite recording a bunch of feel-good pop tunes in bygone days, and currently running Small Kindness, a charity that provides humanitarian aid to widows and orphans of war (primarily in the Balkans), he's... well... he's a Muslim, and goes by the name Yusuf Islam now. Plus, that trim little beard he used to wear back in the hippy days is now long and looks a little bit like Osama's.

Even if the U.S. government considers him unwelcome here, grounding the plane in Bangor is an hysterical overreaction. Just let the plane land where it was supposed to, then have some jackbooted thugs board it when it reaches the gate to escort him into custody, and let the other passengers go on with their business in D.C. Or did they seriously think there was a chance that he and his daughter (who was allowed into the country without him) were going to hijack the plane and fly it into the White House? If so, they need to get back on their meds, pronto.

In somewhat related news, the Transportation Security Administration has demanded that airlines turn over a bunch of information about passengers on their planes in the month of June. Among the information they'll be turning over will be people's credit card numbers and their meal preferences (which could be handy in identifying Muslims who don't eat pork). As it happens, my first airplane ride in quite a while was in June. I guess they noticed.

Protecting Students from Voters

The Grand Rapids Public Schools have announced that they'll be closing school on Election Day, both to make the buildings (where most polling places are located) more accessible to voters, and to keep students safer. I guess opening the schools to so many people poses a security problem, and sending the kids home for the day will protect them from the voters.

I only wish they could protect the students from the voters whenever there's a school millage renewal on the ballot. The "I don't have kids in the public schools" crowd, combined with the "no such thing as a bad tax cut" clan, are a clear and present danger to our school budgets... and society's kids.

The Web Makes for Strange Bedfellows

From time to time I like to go through my server logs and see who's linking to my site. After all, if a site is linking here, it's probably a site I'd want to look at myself.

Or not.

Last year there was the example of a fundamentalist Christian nutcase who accused me of being Michael Newdow (the atheist who sued over "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance), when it's pretty obvious that I'm not the parent of a school-age girl.

This month I found quite a few referrer entries in my logs from a couple of sites that... give me pause. Neither of them was linking to articles on my site; they were just leaching images from my server. So I'm reassured that they don't consider me a "friend". But I'm not sure I like even being associated with them by proxy.

One was a thread on a message board run by and for punks in large U.S. city. (I'm not going to be more specific, because I don't want to promote the site.) The main topic of debate seemed to be whether 9/11 was funny or was it a fraud. Both of which was so absurd, that it's obvious that they're just trying really, really hard to offend somebody... anybody. Pathetic. One of the participants had included an image link to the file on my site showing the infamous Vietnam-War photo by Eddie Adams of a man shooting a prisoner in the head. This was the punk in question's attempt to add more "funny" images to laugh at.

When I find people leaching files from my server like this, I usually rename the file, and substitute something else, as punishment. (If you want to use files from my site, at least copy them to your own site, so I don't have to upload them for all of your freakin visitors.) In its place I gave them something that might actually give these boneheads something to think about, my recent graph showing civilian deaths in the War on Terror.

The other was a little more disturbing. They too were simply leaching one of my image files, this one the logo for Buy Nothing Day. It was a site in Italian, so it wasn't immediately clear just what the site was about. As I scrolled through it, I could see it was a kind of opinionated-news site, but I couldn't tell what its agenda was. But the graphics started giving me an almost... fascist vibe. I ran the main page through Babelfish, and sure enough: it's part of an international network of white racist news sites. And the article using my "Buy Nothing Day" image file... was promoting the idea. {shudder} Babelfish's translation was rather inscrutible, so I couldn't make out exactly what their goal for the day was, but the notion that I'm on the same side as a bunch of racists makes me a little queasy.

For that image, I did the same rename-and-substitute trick. This time I replaced the file they were using with an image that said (in Babelfish-generated Italian) "racist men are like little girls" with a picture of a little girl crying. I would have liked to have said something more clever and politically correct, but given the hazards of mechanised translation, I figured it was best to stick with a simple taunt that they'd understand.

There Goes the Neighborhood

There are many reasons I like my apartment, including the tree-shaded front porch, the skylighted studio space, the businesses within walking distance (e.g. locally-owned pizza, hot dog, sandwich, booze, and ice cream shops), its proximity to my job, etc. But I'd be lying if I denied that one of the unexpected bonuses of moving here is that - being a couple blocks from one of the colleges in town - a fair number of attractive college-age guys live around me.

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I'm some perverted stalker or sicko peeping tom who spies on his neighbors with binoculars. For one thing, quite a few of them live close enough that I can see them just fine without binoculars. {grin} The house I live in and the one next door each have a few apartments, and share a driveway and parking area in back, so I see the neighbors without even trying. They're an everyday part of the scenery.

But the bad news about college boys is that they never stick around. And I discovered today that two especially hot guys next door are moving. They were clearing out the garage and the basement (and the apartment itself, it seemed), putting the junk at the curb for people to take if they wanted, and the furniture and such to sell on the lawn. And doing it - as they often are in warm weather - shirtless.

{sigh}

Being the pathologically shy person that I am, I never got to know them beyond exchanging greetings on the way into or out of the house. And besides, even if they were gay (and other than their body-building and -showing, I never got any hint of that) I can't see any reason they'd be socially (or sexually) interested in me, someone nearly their parents' age. I've just been the Gay Man Next Door to them, and they've been the Hot Dudes Next Door to me. I suspect I'll miss them more than they'll miss me. (Hence the snapshots I've just taken to remember them by.)

Meanwhile, another set of roommates have moved into another apartment on the lot. I'm even more sure they're not gay, because they're a mixed couple; the white one's a guy, and the black one's a girl. They're cute in a different way: I'm pretty sure they're just setting up housekeeping together, for the first time. The way he introduced himself when I bumped into him on moving day, explaining that he was moving in to the apartment with his girlfriend instead of just saying "we", was my first clue. They've got new plastic lawn furniture and new tiki torches that they've set up on the little patch of grass by their door, and they've been "eating out" there and inviting friends over for drinks, and so on.

I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous, because I never got to do that; I shared a house with a friend after college, but that was purely platonic, and my one attempt at cohabitating with a boyfriend lacked any of that charm or romance, in part because I was already in my 30's when I finally did it. But it's nice to see them making a go of it. They may not added as much to the "scenery", but at least the neighborhood isn't going to heck in a handbasket.

Sky Captain and Yesterday's World of Tomorrow

my rating: Nathan's rating:

Nathan got the two of us into an advance screening of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. (Actually Nathan kept referring to it as an "Angelina Jolie movie", and I had to point out to him that she had only a supporting role.) It was pretty much what I expected, which is to say that it was pretty good.

The film is a tidy bundle of influences and contradictions... and it wears them on its sleeve. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it aims to recapture the spirit of a bygone era of moviemaking, specifically adventure serials circa 1940. Sky Captain adds a heavy dose of pulp science fiction and comic book heroics, taking advantage of the ability of modern cinema to actually deliver the "special effects" that only prose and illustrations could achieve 65 years ago. Giant robots, ray guns, amphibious fighter craft, and other staples of wide-eyed SF come to life.

The greatest irony of the film is that it uses digital rendering to create the imagery of a pre-computer era. The actors were filmed (or should we start saying "recorded"?) on a blank soundstage, with all of the environments created and added digitally. Since about the only thing that digital imaging can't animate convincingly is human actors, they get the best of both worlds that way. Filmmaker Kerry Conran wanted to produce this in black and white, but apparently the studio talked him into a subdued, almost sepia-toned look, which works pretty effectively.

Once upon a time this film would have knocked the audience on its collective ass, with its action sequences and cinematography. But it failed to bowl me over, because... yeah, I know you can render anything on a computer, so I'm really not that impressed that you can render _____. And the acting was just a little too authentic to the genre and period it was evoking, with two-dimensional lead characters like the rogue hero and the meddlesome heroine, and supporting characters like the resourceful assistant, the old colleague/flame, and the old friend/native guide. Indiana Jones, by contrast, was a more rounded, more interesting character.

It's no summer blockbuster, but summer's over, and in terms of fun entertainment, it beats the pants off any movie released in the last month.

NYPD Blues

I've been watching old episodes of NYPD Blue lately... stuff my TiVo recorded for me, thinking I might want to watch it. I wasn't watching the show back when these were first on, about 5 years ago, so I've been watching some of them. There's some fairly good melodrama in them, a nice escape from thinking about the real world. Except for one thing.

At least once per episode (in the opening credits, and usually occurring randomly during the story) there's a poke in the eyes. A fast-cut shaky-cam shot of an everyday sight on the streets of Manhattan: the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Three years ago, those towers - and the people inside them - became martyrs in the minds of many Americans. They became a symbol of national mourning and outrage. "We will never forget," became not just a condolence to the victims' friends and families, but a battle cry, like "Remember the Alamo."

And we haven't forgotten. I don't think anyone (American or not) who saw what happened that sunny Tuesday ever could forget those horrific images. And that video snippet in the NYPD Blue credits, between snippets of Ricky Schroder and Nicholas Turturro, brings it all back. But what I feel now isn't outrage. It isn't fear. It's a momentary reflex of pain, and a lingering sadness. It's a sadness about what we lost that day.

America lost more than just three thousand spouses and parents and siblings and friends. It lost more than economic momentum. Some would say we lost our innocence, but I don't think that's it. It's more like we lost our bearings.

An American president who had campaigned with the message that America needed to act with more humility on the world stage turned around and snubbed several of our strongest allies, insisting that we had a right to wage "pre-emptive" war. An American public who had responded very positively to that message of humility... followed. It became acceptable in America to exhibit the kind of nationalist/ethnic bigotry against France and the French, that was given to Germans and Japanese during World War 2... and France hadn't even done anything to America. An America that once stood as an example to the world for the rights of the accused to a fair and speedy trial, came to condone or justify secret arrests, imprisonment without trial, and even torture.

This loss of an America capable of moral leadership in the world affects the whole world, I think. I know it sounds arrogant, but I've heard from people in other countries who appreciated an America that might shame their own government into doing the right thing, or might stand by their government when it did so on its own initiative. They've lost that.

But more personally, I feel I've lost my ability to declare myself an American without losing respect from those who are not. I've always been a bit reticent about my country's position as an often-unpopular super-power, but even when spending time in Europe during the Reagan administration, I could shrug with a smile and say that I didn't vote for him, and I felt that my opinion on world affairs would usually get a fair hearing. I'm not sure I could count on that anymore.

I don't know if electing a different president will fix any of this or not. I do fear that re-electing the same one will mean either that America's truly lost its way, or will simply go further astray with bad leadership.

And I can't even watch a damn TV show without nagging reminders of all this.

War on Terror Body Counts

The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq has passed 1000, which is a tragedy. And of course there were the roughly 2800 killed in the World Trade Center attack, which was an even greater tragedy. But they're not the only casualties of this conflict, and that got me to thinking.

Since the president wants to link Iraq with 9/11 as all part of some comprehensive "War on Terror", let's do a comparison: U.S. civilians killed, and Iraqi civilians killed. Guess which country's suffering more? I'm thinking maybe it's the one on the right. (And if you were to present it in terms of percentage of the population killed, you couldn't even put them on the same scale.)

But what about those 1000+ soldiers, marines, etc? How do they stack up? Well, if you figure a standard 23" high pine box for each of them, and stacked them next to, say the Washington Monument, it'd look something like this:

Randall Dice: Menace to Public Safety

The buzz was all over the school today, about a robbery at Herkner Jewelers, right here in downtown Grand Rapids. That's just a block away, and there were gunshots and everything. Not an everyday thing, and alarming, to say the least. Then I heard a more complete version of the story: the shots were fired by the store owner, at the fleeing robber, out on the street. Now I'm really scared.

This is an excellent example of why - to hell with the Second Amendment - guns need to be regulated, for public safety. And this Randall Dice - owner of the store - should not be allowed to have one. Anyone irrational enough to fire a weapon at an unarmed, fleeing thief, down a downtown street at lunch time with people walking by and traffic on the street, cannot be trusted with one. This gun-wielding lunatic hit a minivan with a man driving it, and shot out the rear window of a woman's SUV, also with her in it.

This wasn't self-defence; the thief was fleeing. It wasn't to protect anyone; the thief was unarmed. And you can't argue that Dice was simply trying to wound the man; someone of such obviously marginal marksmanship can't be that precise. He was shooting to kill, and doing so with reckless disregard for any innocent victims. If any of his shots had killed someone, it would be murder (if it was the guy he was aiming at) or manslaughter (if it was one of the bystanders). The fact that he missed shouldn't let him off the hook.

I'm not forgetting that there's a thief and his getaway driver, who are guilty of larceny and being an accomplice to it. I hope they're located and convicted accordingly. And of course we should take into consideration that Dice's volley of gunshots was a crime of passion. I can certainly understand the owner of a store reacting emotionally to a robbery. (Hell, I can even understand him firing the gun; that's why I have the good sense not to own one.) But how much weight to give that should be for the jury to decide. If this guy isn't charged, and if he's allowed to keep that gun, then a menace to public safety will be left, unchecked on the streets.

Happy May Day

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy May Day.

Yes, I know that's supposed to be on the 1st of May, but this is the United States of America, and we do things differently here. Ironically, the rest of the world (excepting Canada, South Africa, and those that simply don't have any such holiday) celebrates labor on a date inspired by events in the U.S. We, however, do not.

The event was the Haymarket riot in Chicago, which grew out of a strike on 1 May 1886. The workers were protesting peacefully for an 8-hour workday, when someone (probably an anarchist) threw a bomb and killed a police officer, and a riot ensued. Several labor organisers were blamed and executed, which sparked outrage in the international labor movement. May Day, also known as International Labour Day, was born.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the previous few years the Knights of Labor had been staging a parade honoring labor in early September. The domestic outrage over the Haymarket executions was leading to the creation of an American holiday honoring labor. But president Grover Cleveland (among others in goverment) didn't want the American labor movement getting associated (in their minds or anyone else's) with the international socialist movement. So he picked the date of the Knights' event for the official holiday.

Apparently it worked, because today organised labor in the U.S. certainly don't identify themselves with socialism. Heck, the typical union member would punch your lights out if you implied that he was a socialist. (Of course the anti-communist propaganda of the Cold War had a lot to do with that.) May Day is mostly unknown, and if it is, it's usually thought of as a Soviet holiday. And Labor Day now has little to do with organised labor. It's just one of the two summer bookend holidays and a three-day weekend. It's as much a holiday for management as it is for labor.

In fact, I'm getting gently screwed over by it. My job is only 32 hours/week, which sounds like just the sort of thing the Haymarket protesters were trying to make possible. But in reality, it's a ploy by my employer to justify not providing me with standard benefits, such as insurance, paid vacations... or paid holidays. But my work place is closed today, which means that if I want a full week's pay, I need to put in extra hours the other four days this week. So I "get" the day off, but I have to make up the hours. It's a lock-out, not a holiday. Granted, it isn't a major hardship, but it is a nuisance. And definitely not what the Haymarket boys had in mind.

Paparazzi: Hollywood Propaganda

my rating: Nathan's rating:

Paparazzi is a fascinating psychological study... of a psychosis peculiar to Hollywood and other bastions of "celebrity". It is a peek inside the delusional mind of Tinseltown, where tabloid photographers are not merely bottom-feeders catering to an audience that loves to tear down actors as quickly as it adores them. (Which, for the record, is my opinion of them.)

No, in this version of reality, paparazzi are first-class slimeballs who take joy in causing pain and suffering. No dirty trick is too low or too devious. They deliberately provoke assaults from wholesome celebrities, in order to file lucractive suits against them... and still go after their prey relentlessly, despite their winnings. They don't care who gets hurt by their actions (not even the wholesome leading man's loving wife and young son) as long as it provides them with good photos. You want to know how evil they are? One of them got barred from being a lawyer.

My gods, this film was horrible. I've seen Cold-War-era propaganda movies whose Commies were more sympathetic and believable than these Bad Guys. And while the Good Guy of the film strays over the line when he fights back, in the grand Hollywood tradition of vigilante heroes that's more like a pat on the back for him, showing just how far an ordinary, unpretentious, salt-of-the-earth movie star will go when his family is harmed. This is Death Wish gone Hollywood, an obvious piece of propaganda from folks in the movie industry who want us to feel sorry for them.

On some level I do feel sorry for actors or anyone else who has to put up with the tabloid media. I think that whole industry is disgusting, and I don't participate in it. But it's a monster that Hollywood created, and continues to feed, so my sympathy is for their poor judgment, not for their supposed innocent victimisation.

But the bottom line isn't whether I agree with the point of view of the producers. Blatant propaganda makes for poor entertainment, and that's what this is.

(The writer has no previous credits, and the director is producer Mel Gibson's former hair stylist. Gibson has a cameo in it, and the lead character feels like it's based on him and a role he would've played himself if he were young enough. So I'm going to file this turd as one of Gibson's.)

A Year

I started this little experiment in online writing/publishing a year ago today. Compared to the total time I've been self-publishing on the Web (my first site, featuring reviews of comicbooks, debuted in 1995 and ran at the time on Windows 3.1) that's not much time, and compared to the time I've been writing off and on for low-circulation print publication (I was editor of a college issues journal in the mid-80's, published at first using WordStar on a CP/M system), it's no time at all. But it's still a milestone.

It's been 200-something entries, and not quite as many comments posted (not counting obvious spam, promptly deleted). I haven't set the world on fire, but I've attracted some attention from the world beyond the Hermitage (my home and webhosting facility). Interestingly, the kind of articles most often getting comments have been when I talked about local news items (the parents of sextuplets, a guy who died saving his boyfriend, and a victim of our occupation of Iraq). By far the most perennially popular article (in terms of hits, nearly all coming from search engines) is one entitled "Kiddie Porn, Snuff Films, Hate Crimes...". Go figure. (A recent article about the death of "kitty porn" writer Kate Worley has received an unusually high hit rate.) A more recent addition which has been nearly as popular lately as the porn/snuff article is "Al Gore Invented the Internet... or not". The leading movie review is "Sympathy for the Monster" about Charlize Theron's stellar Monster.

I wondered at first whether I'd keep up with the blog. After all, it was inspired in part by the boredom of being unemployed. But it's survived the time competition of full-time employment (for half of the year in question), and (currently) near-full-time employment combined with a mini-flood of freelance/consulting work. Maybe if I had someone in my life that I could actually talk to about... stuff, the blog would wither away from neglect. But I don't. {shrug}

So I'll keep at it. Talk at ya later.

What Republicans See in Bush

I had an opportunity tonight to listen in on a conversation between two Republicans about Bush and Kerry. I was having dinner with a friend from college and one of his friends, and the topic turned - mercifully briefly - to the president's speech at the convention.

Neither of these people is a hardcore rabid Republican, but they're both going to vote for him... again. They liked his speech, largely because it wasn't a calculated political speech; it was just him talking. (My take: the guy can't do speeches, so having Bush ramble was a calculated political attempt to play to his strength.) They also agreed with each other that Bush clearly believes what he's saying, and isn't swayed by public opinion polls. (My take: he's made up his mind, isn't interested in other's opinions, and is largely incapable of correcting himself when he's wrong.)

The common theme here is that they see strength in things I consider weaknesses. That's not to say that I would call a sticks-to-his-principles liberal a bad leader, but if I approved of him it would be in spite of his single-mindedness, not because of it. Likewise with a folksy Democrat: his ability to sit and shoot the shit would be admirable only if I could count on him to stand at a podium and demonstrate mastery of his job responsibilities.

So maybe the election really is about "values". On one side you have people who value Bush's made-up mind and folksiness, and on the other you have people who value Kerry's ability to change his mind and to articulate ideas. I think I'll stick with the latter side.

Enlarge Your Penis

I have discovered a great way to enlarge your penis. It is very safe, and will (in most cases) add inches to your length, increase your circumference, improve rigidity, and heighten your sensitivity. Best of all, it requires no prescriptions and no special mail-order equipment. The only down-side is that there is a slight risk of skin irritation with prolonged use of this method. And it may not be as effective with older men. But it works great for me! And it's really quite simple:

Play with it.

Scotty's Star

I wrote recently about Scotty's comments in Star Trek IV about transparent aluminum, being vindicated by current research. Now I've just read the bittersweet news that James Doohan has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame... and has made what is probably his last public appearance. He's suffering from a list of degenerative conditions, including diabetes, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's.

Spock was always my favorite character from the original series, but Scotty was my favorite human on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Not only did he have the cool accent, but his character had an appealing spirit. I think I learned some of my "can do" attitude from his frequent remarks to the effect, "That's impossible, but you really need it, so I'll make it happen somehow."

Sure, he's really Canadian, and he's an actor, not an engineer, but he's still been an inspiration. You can't swing a cat in a university engineering department without hitting several faculty and/or students who got into the field specifically because of Scotty. I got a kick out of spending time at the University of Aberdeen, pretending that I walked the streets that Montgomery Scott would one day stroll. (Years of listening to his faux Scots accent also made it easier for me to understand the locals.)

Doohan is also a veteran of D-Day, losing a finger helping to liberate Normandy from the Nazis. (The TV series staged shots around it, and he used a "hand double" for close-ups of the transporter console.) He went on to serve as a spotter plane pilot. So he's a hero in the more traditional sense, not just as a celebrity.

Based on the interviews I've read and every account I've heard of his frequent appearances at Trek conventions, he's even more genial and down-to-earth than he appeared on screen. He appreciates how much he's received from his fans, and has tried to give back to them, such as the suicidal fan whom he coaxed to come meet with him at a convention, then another, then another, quite likely saving the man's life. He's a good person. Full stop.

Like most public figures with Alzheimer's, Jimmy Doohan is going to disappear from the public eye now, and someday we'll hear that he's died. I do hope that it's soon. These are horrible illnesses to live with, both for the patient and his caregivers. Even in the advanced stages, when the patient is too far gone to understand his situation, he still suffers from it.

So, Jimmy: May your dilithium crystals be fully charged, your matter/anti-matter reaction balanced, your wee bairns well cared for, and I wish you a safe and painless transport to your final shore leave.

Energise.