Adrift in an uncaring universe.

The stereotype of an unpleasant holiday is being forced into close quarters with extended family members that you don't even pretend to tolerate anymore. For me, this past holiday was in many ways the opposite: I adore my extended family, I quite enjoy having a number of people in the same place – enclosed or otherwise – and, instead of bringing the worst member of my family very close, this holiday season took one of the best as far away from us as she could go. My cousin Heather, who would have turned 23 just 5 days ago, was killed by a(n alleged) drunk driver on the 17^th of December.

Heather was the middle child of three girls; all of them driven, all of them successful. Her first words, according to my aunt, were “me too”. She once biked from Thunder Bay to near Kingston carrying only two shirts and a hammock with her. She could write beautifully. I could go on, but it would be... a list, but not an account. I hadn't seen Heather in probably two or three years. I hadn't been counting, of course; I'm not prescient, I didn't know the number would have such grim significance. I would have seen her this summer, but she couldn't get time off work to come to the family reunion.

Slings and Arrows puts it best: when we are bereaved, we are not mourning the departed, so much as the part of ourselves that died with them. This will sound callous: Heather was not a large figure in my life. I shall explain: growing up, she was always sufficiently older than I was that I can't imagine we could have related much, and so we didn't tend to hang out when the family gathered together. The saddest part of the experience for me was watching the people who had lost large parts of themselves. People who will have to live every day of their lives with her death clawing at the back of their minds, a constant reminder of loss. My aunt and uncle, Heather's sisters, her friends from school and elsewhere, her boyfriend, the hundreds of people who came to pay their respects at the visitation and funeral. 

 

This post, or the idea of this post, I have been drafting since I got back to Ottawa from my Aunt and Uncle's place. I wanted to write something, but every time I made the same mistake: I started off with my cousin's death, and used it as a segway into one of so many related topics: death, life, drunk drivers, the law... and it never really worked. I can write about any of these some other time, but if I am going to write about my cousin's death, I am not going to use that as the starting point to philosophical or political discourse. I am going to write about her.

It may seem, at this point, like this post is entirely a downer. My cousin died, and the incredible number of people whom she touched in her lifetime have all lost a piece of themselves. I have saved for the last the message that everyone who spoke at the funeral was advancing, in one way or another: Heather was an exceptional human being. She loved life, she loved people, she loved nature, and nothing was impossible for her if she did not want it to be. You cynics may retreat behind your bitter shields, and imagine that this is the sort of thing people are wont to say at funerals because it is impolite to speak ill of the dead. I may not have known Heather as well as others, but I do not doubt for a second that everyone believed what they were saying, that it was – minus the tears of course – probably the sort of thing they told people when they talked about her when she was alive. Their message, then, was that we should all strive to be a little more like her than we are, that we should throw ourselves into life with all the vigour and abandon that she did. Heather once gave away her tent – the very tent that she was sleeping in on a particular trip, essentially her home – to some homeless people whose need she thought was greater than her own. How many of us can say the same? I understand that you, the reader, did not in all likelihood know my cousin, and that the idea that you should follow the example of someone you never knew might seem a little odd. I would respond that in our celebrity culture, there are millions if not billions of people whose desire is to emulate those whom they have never met. My cousin was not famous, but she was a far better role model than most of the people who are.

I apologize if the spacing is weird...I hate .txt non-formatting!

Oddly, it's a Text Editor, not a Text Adventure...

To minimize the effects of that great distraction which we call 'Firefox', I have decided to compose this post in the no-frills word processor "dark room", and then post process it in my usual Openoffice.org. Should this yield faster composition times than usual, I think it's safe to say that I will make the use of "dark room" a habit. Of course, all the focus in the world is useless if I've nothing to say. Fortunate, then, that I am never at a loss for words...

...but what if they aren't the right words?

Something terribly ironic happened just a few days ago. I held something of an early birthday party, in order to celebrate with as many of those people soon-to-be-leaving as possible (my real birthday is coming in mere days now, when they have all left). A fair number of guests - possibly half - left without saying goodbye. The other half (especially the Windsor-bound Daydream Believer) did bid me farewell, but it left me thinking about how it's just something people do. There are tearful goodbyes, but movies and TV have for years made our best efforts at putting into words the myriad moments of elation and sorrow that we have shared with one and other feel empty, undramatic, and inadequate. I wish that I could bring myself to say in person the sort of things I write here when in a whimsical mood. Were that my tongue posessed of such poetry, I would not feel so intimidated by the prospect of inventing long-term, if not permanent, goodbyes to those departing whom I have come to love over the course of years. Reality, however, has no designs to so imbue me with that power, and as such my restraints remain in place. Until such time as I learn to compose and edit with the necessary alacrity to speak in a refined fashion, I propose a stopgap solution of sorts:

A toast. To those people who have made every minute of my live worth living Take a pic of yourself raising a glass of whatever you can spare, whatever you like to drink (silly expressions are cool, too) and post it somewhere. If you blackmail me into getting facebook

so I can make a group of this, the answer is "maybe". For now, post and link works fine for me. I'll start us off...

For those interested, these are quickly made pics from my Logitech QuickCam, with a single

fluorescent lightbulb providing illumination (bouncing off an orange wall, mind you). The cup is

a plastic pink goblet, and I'm drinking President's choice "Orange Frizzante", aka. Orangina-knockoff.

Sköl!

In gaming news, the Bioshock demo delivers enough of the game to make you know you want it, but not enough for me to tell you how well it scares throughout the game. This is, of course, to be expected. If I have any complaint thus far, it is that after a memorable cinematic in which your character - "Jack", if memory serves - acquires his first genetic upgrade, new plasmids are simply picked up from the ground (or elsewhere, one supposes). I think that the game should at LEAST show the main character injecting each plasmid, and include a period of disorientation after it has been administered, to drive home the magnitude of the biological changes which are occuring. Shooting fire isn't just another pickup like health and ammo, dammit! I think I will buy Bioshock, as much for the gorgeous art design as for the game. I like a good, lived-in, well-constructed gameworld, and Bioshock, like Half-Life 2 and the first 5 minutes of Doom 3 before it turns into a monster-closet crawl... well, it simply delivers those goods and then some.

If Bioshock 2 is indeed coming (and I think that it's reasonably established), it's my present opinion (which may change after I play the full game 1) that it should star a pre-collapse citizen of Rapture. Whether doomed to succumb to the plasmid-induced madness of the splicers, or to remain one of the few sane humans in the city, the character would be more or less doomed from the beginning, shadowing a utopian game introduction with that horrible, horrible feeling of impending doom. I think that this is narratively intriguing, and I think that it would reveal a great deal about Rapture as an intact, functioning city. Finally, I've been inspired by a friend's soon-to-occur spending spree to get a job, and immediately start dropping cash on a new computer. My challenge to myself is to build something equal and opposite in as many ways as possible, because building a copycat rig has little appeal, and also because I like to make simple tasks into complicated ones for my own pleasure.

Progress reports and pictures of the construction process will undoubtedly appear in this space

LOUD and distinct in a crowd!

Centennial

Curse These Romantic Sensibilities!

Some months ago now, it occured to me that the pathetic amount of yearbook space allotted to each graduating High School student for their grad write-up was woefully inadequate. Come to think of it, I'm sure it was more than a few months ago when I became aware of this , but it was only recently that I was forced to come to terms with the practical realities of the situation. My solution was to write up my shortlist of acknowledgements, and to supply at the very end the address for this very blog, where I promised a full and complete grad write up, in lieu of the truncated, almost impolitely curt entry which I had provided for the yearbook itself. It was, in equal measures, both a promise not to leave my reflection upon four years of my life at a pathetic ~50 words, and a postponing of the inevitable time when I would have to force that reflection from the indeterminate medium of thought into concrete, written form. On the occasion of this, my One Hundredth Blog Post, it seems almost too appropriate that I provide the promised piece of post-prom prose.

My initial expectations of high school (Gloucester In-Joke, for those readers who are not fellow aumni) were... actually, I'm not sure that I remember them all that clearly. I do recall that I expected there to be more clubs, because the promotional material for Gloucester indicated that there were many. It may be true that there were, but if so they did a wonderful job of staying quiet about it. Fortunately, the one club which I did join in my early years was enough to occupy every lunch hour for the better part of two years: the Reach for the Top Team. I believe that it was the winter of Grade 9 which drove us to practice daily in Grade 9, and the habit simply carried over into Grade 10. Those were a magnificent two years, so much so that despite an entirely shoddy practice season in the following two years, our team made it to provincials twice, and in this year finished in the National Semi-Finals. At this point, I would like to mention that in this last respect, we did what we could only dream of doing in Grade 9: we outdid both Colonel By and Lisgar. Of itself, this proves nothing, and I am aware of that. However, I have witnessed the low point of both my school, and of one of the above (which shall remain nameless), and I know extremely high achievers from each. Taken together, I think that Gloucester has been unfairly represented in public opinion. Our best are capable of competition with those of schools with more favourable reputations, and for this we deserve as much credit. Our worst is no better or worse than either of theirs.

But back to Reach itself. I wasn't the strongest player, but I made myself a keystone of the team (our coach, Mr. Jeacle has said essentially the following himself) by virtue of my knowedge of some obscure facts. I lived for moments such as the time I correctly answered the question "Who wrote the book '5001 Nights at the Movies'" ("Pauline Kael" is the answer, by the way), a feat immediately met with exclamations of "Whaaat?" and "How the hell do you know that?". It is perhaps a victory on an empty field, giving an answer where no other would likely know it as well, but obscure knowledge over speed was my path to victory, for better or for worse. Incidentally, the only reason I knew the answer to that question was because the book has sat in a bookshelf in my living room since I can remember, and every time I sat in a particular armchair, I ended up looking at it. You never know what might help you, eh?

Friends-wise, my Gloucester experience followed an established pattern: I arrived knowing very few people, friend and foe were defined quickly and with great distinction, and at the very last found the company of those with whom I was at home. The great tragedy of this experience was that by and large, I have to say that I was not fond of the gifted classes which entered the school from its traditional feeders. I can't say that they were overly fond of me, and so as a mutual arrangement, it worked perfectly after the great post-junior-years-dispersal. In the middle years of Grades 10 and 11, I actually had something of a social circle at Gloucester. We would enjoy weekend movies, baked goods, and making fun of one of our compatriots' OBSCENELY spotless house (we're talking remote controls kept in plastic bags, here). Whether we were watching Pirates for the umpteenth time, or sucking variously (well, there were those who dominated fiercely) at DDR, or celebrating a birthday, a good time was always had by all. It came to a crashing halt eventually, although I cannot remember how fast it was in real-time. To my mind now, it seems as though it evaporated overnight. A disagreement here, a broken friendship there, a poorly-orchestrated halloween party, and this merry bunch was torn asunder faster than you can say "internal strife". I can't say it was unwarranted, nor can I say that I regret this turn of events, because I believe the failure of our ersatz-family (a very long story) provided the catalyst for the beginning of something vastly superior...

...But that story must first be prefaced with the following. Now many a week ago, I was on a bicycle ride, and I was downtown. Driving past a particular building, the opening words of a blog post began to write themselves into my memory, for later use. They went something like this "I biked past Lisgar today, as I have maybe once or twice this summer. I really shouldn't do it often, because it is for me a reminder of a life I didn't have, and of those lives which have gone on without me nigh every day for six long years...". It was in Grade 11, after the dissolution of the aforementionned fellowship, that I re-established contact with old friends, whom I had by then spent more time away from than with. I love them all, old and new though the faces in their crowd may be, but every moment I spend with them is exquisitely bittersweet. We do not want for understanding, but I want so desperately for that experience of knowing someone day-by-day, which was torn from me six years ago by a transfer to a school which all others had forsaken. That split sent me to meet new people, and maintain a friendship with Gold - something I will never regret in all my years - as well as allowing me to meet Pinky (Achtung Harry Potter 7 Spoilers!), Sphinx, and their...animated lot. It even led to my meeting Star, and numerous though our times of trouble have been, it's another thing I wouldn't want to have missed. Thus, I cannot say that I wish things had gone the other way, and I had remained with them...but equally I am left to wonder for the rest of my life it it wouldn't have been better if I had. In the end, I wish that I could live that life as well, I wish that I could have my own sliding-doors-style replay of my life had it proceeded down another path, because all that this doubt and uncertainty brings me is anguish.

What's worst is that the vast majority of those people which I have only just settled in with again are leaving after the summer, and what little chance I have of seeing them again is imagined by my forever-romantic imagination. No amount of MSN contact, nor Blogging, nor even Facebook, Twitter, or a million social networking sites will ever be enough to keep us from loosing touch. It will happen - perchance slowly, should we resist - and we won't feel bad, not every minute, not every day. We will all grow apart, and lead separate, blissful lives. Yet, at least for me it has been verified that there are none other who can take your places as my friends. Given six Billion people in this world, that statement may prove false, but I still feel nothing but despair at the prospect of a life in which I am unlikely to match the caliber of company which I now enjoy.

I conclude this, my complete Grad Write-Up by saying "If what they say is true, and High School will be the best four years of my life when I look back, please kill me now".

I'm taking a break now (I've been writing this on and off for some hours), but I will hopefully return later in the day. LOUD over&out.

Buy Now, and Receive a Lifetime Supply of Whipped Topping!

Keep Product Placement at Bay

Some hours ago, I read the Citizen review of the new Transformers movie, and I have since read the Wired magazine feature on the very same. Both waste no time in discussing the role of product placement in the movie and the Transformers canon as a whole, and rightly so. The franchise began as a series of toys with a promotional cartoon show, rather than as a tie-in to an existing fiction. In securing the merchandising rights to Star Wars for himself, George Lucas instigated the age of the tie-in, where Transformers and its ilk introduced it’s mirror-universe counterpart. In a feat of what I can only describe as meta-marketing, the new movie not only contains product placement (ie. The Camaro), but it will have its own tie-ins (the franchise has come full-circle in this regard, notes Wired). Finally, the portrayal of the United States military in the film lead not only the Citizen reviewer, but director Michael Bay himself to believe that the film also serves as something of a recruitment ad (well, technically Bay was referring to the entire set of US Army policies towards films for which they have supplied equipment. Transformers just happens to be one such film, so I don’t think my assertion is that much of a leap).

Having not seen the movie myself – it’s on my to do list, but not at the very top – I will reserve my judgment on the prominence of product placement and pro-militarism in Transformers itself until after I have attended a screening. I will, however, address the issue of product placement/commercialization and “art” (quotation marks necessitated due to the use of Transformers as an example), as well as broader themes of capitalism, greed, and happiness. Terribly tired, terminally tepid topics? To tell the truth, ‘tis a trail well-treaded to talk of them. Still, the inspiration for what will form the body of this post has been bouncing off the inside walls of my skull for some time now, and I feel that whether or not it is novel, I should commit it to the blog. Here follow my mercantile musings:


Are We Using the Wrong Bait?

Everyone knows the old saying, in which it is postulated that Happiness is an ichthyoid which eludes capture. In the context of capitalism and consumerism, I find this saying to be entirely false, but more on that later.

If given the chance to comment on the aforementioned saying, there are those who would assert that we are indeed simply using the wrong bait to catch this fish we call “Happiness”. The Beatles boasted that they “didn’t care too much for money, money [couldn’t buy them] love”; Prince screeched that you “don’t have to be rich, to be my Girl”, and so on. Of course, that’s easy to say when one is rolling in it, so to speak. Still, there are those less ‘loaded’ who still maintain that the road to true happiness is not paved with toaster ovens and Gucci handbags. The argument, such as I understand it, is that the pressure created by markets has an adverse effect upon our mental health. This makes a lot of sense to me, by way of the following rationale: In order for a market economy such as our own to exist for any sustained period, money must flow. Money flows when it is exchanged for a good or service. If people are happy with a product or service that they have, then they will be less likely to buy another. If people are dissatisfied, the opposite is true. Therefore, it is in the interests of those who profit from the existence of the market to ensure that consumers are dissatisfied with those products and services which they have as much as is possible. Dissatisfaction is a form of unhappiness, which is indeed harmful to an individual’s overall mental health. An offshoot of this viewpoint is the adbusters position, namely that the advertising used to create dissatisfaction (aka. Manufactured desires) is harmful and invasive. If you believe I have misunderstood in any way, please correct me, but this is my perception of this line of arguments.

Whenever I reflect upon this argument, I become more than a little unnerved; I am - after all - a consumer, raised by society to be a cog in the great economic machine. On account of being relatively poor, there are a great many desires which I have (which would be considered manufactured) which go unfulfilled. Still, I devote time to comparing prices, looking for sales, browsing Ebay, etc. I read reviews in magazines and on the internet, I take great care in envisioning the purchases which I would make if my financial situation provided. These activities, sadly enough, DO make me happy. The actual act of making the odd purchase also makes me happy, and having that which was desired also adds to my happiness…but only for so long. After a time, the novelty wears thin, and I revert to the “desire” stage, only to repeat the cycle. Reflecting upon the argument which tells me that such behaviour should not make me happy is disturbing in two aspects: 1) that consumerism DOES make me happy, and 2) Without consumerism, what on Earth would I do with the time I currently devote to the pursuit thereof?

I can understand that the need to spend time with friends and family should be held higher than the need to brag about your new gadget to them, but even removing that factor, consider what friends and families do: Play games (ones purchased as often as those invented), discuss various products from the Average to the Zany, and consume in groups, whether it be television, music, movies, video games…there is simply no escaping commercialism, unless one is willing to live in a world where “red rover” and “capture the flag” are as sophisticated as games get. Come to think of it, that sounds far more pleasant than I would have imagined….yet it would be an unlikely result of a drastic shift in our way of life. To eliminate the rat race and all the trappings thereof, one would have to shun civilization as we know it. If food production remained such as it is, currency would linger as a means for non-producers to acquire food. To earn this money, they would have to work or create, and in order to earn more money they would have to promote their works, and before you know it, you have a functioning market economy. To truly escape, one would have to embrace either self-sufficiency farming for every family, or a hunter-gatherer society. While it’s true that most urban land is, in fact, prime agricultural land, I question the ability of a total maximum of 6 Billion people to live in such a fashion while leaving room enough for the countless other inhabitants of this blue speck we call home.

Speaking of the wrong bait, our present system may or may not be guilty of using it, depending upon one’s point of view. The way I see it, there is no better way to motivate than direct personal reward, and I doubt that there are many who will challenge this. The real question is whether the quality of life benefits which have been brought to us due to this system are worth the moral injustices committed by those who have taken the search for the benefits thereof too far. Given the immensity of each, I can’t say that anyone is, nor should be entitled to make that decision. This does not prevent me from having an opinion, but for the moment, I cannot arrive at one. On the one hand, so many of us owe our lives to progress, and indeed I owe my ability to share these very ideas with you to it. But the closer I lean to a “yes” verdict, the more I realize what horrors I would be condoning by making that choice.

Sorry about the Road-Raging Pirate Trivia Team Attack...I Blame it on Chernobyl!

Apologies to My Readership

...If you still exist, somewhere out there...

It has been roughly a month since my last post, and although this is not the first time I have gone so long without posting here, this time stands out for one simple reason: things happened. A LOT of things happened, and I haven't been able to eke out enough time to do any of them justice, at least not until now. I should be able to have nigh-on-daily posts, depending upon how I divide up the information to be presented. I apologize if these narratives end up a little disjointed: the passage of time, and the desire to type at the speed of thought can have such an effect upon my writing. I think that's all, so HERE WE GO!

Civic Pride

Heh, that's actually a clever title, because it has a dual-meaning for me right now. First, I did indeed promise to write up a little something about the flak directed at Ottawa (now VERY old news, sadly), and Second, I am indeed very proud of the Civic which I presently drive. I'll write about 'em in that order...

I should hope that by now most of the Ottawans reading this are aware that our city was not so long ago lambasted for sqandering its greatest assets, and other conduct not fitting of a “world-class capital”. Readers of the Citizen will have noticed the great number of pundits both attacking and defending decisions, people, and organizations which have shaped our home for better and for worse. It has just occured to me that the whole fiasco has provided a number of people with a soapbox from which they can push their own “city improvement” plan, from light rail redux to community gardens. The bottom line is that this city is, on average, average. It sounds inane, but if you look at the best of anything in Ottawa (ie. Comfy seats on the O-train), and then pit it against the downside (ie. Nowhere to go on the O-train), the result is decidedly average. The issue shouldn't be “is merely average OK?”, but instead “do we care if we remain so?”. Personally, I've been known to accept mediocrity, however I'm not one who enjoys it greatly. Ottawans, I ask you: is the effort of changing a greater burden than the tolerance of averageness? If not, then we do indeed have our work cut out for us.

One of the first things that ought to be done – in my opinion – if we are to raise ourseves steadily and triumphantly from the mire of the mundane is to undo the bone-headed decisions of Ottawa past. There is a former railway station in THE MIDDLE OF DOWNTOWN, and yet it is now a conference centre. Thankfully, a recent proposal did indeed include the re-instatement of that building as a transit hub. Sadly, the proposal is alleged (by a Citizen columnist, if I recall correctly) to be a shoddy affair indeed; a vaguely-budgeted mish-mash of self-service by the committee members. I'm not even sure how to address this, because it does not stand to reason that the capital city of such a proud country would allow itself to be abused by its own government. It might not be so bad if the complainers were fully competent, but the columnist who so savaged the poor proposal defended instead the North-South rail line. Points for “we could be building one now”, but remind me again why we ought to do such a thing if the urban spread in Ottawa is predominantly EAST-WEST!?! It can be called “rapid” if it is fast, but to affix the name “transit” to an end product, someone has to ride it!

I've read snippets here and there about transit in Ottawa: stories about our high downtown parking fees, opinion pieces about how great or terrible it was that the rail line got cancelled, letters arguing either side... I think it's safe to say that this city can't and won't make up its mind about what will best serve our needs. This would be fine, if we were an ordinary city of ~1 million. It wouldn't matter in the slightest that we couldn't get around: it would be our own fault, and that would be that. One problem is that we aren't just any city. Another is that we cannot swallow our pride and admit that we are wanting as a city. We defend tooth-and-nail our “good”, our “solid”, our “quite decent”, for no other reason than it belongs to us (see: the “Montreal Food Snob Incident”). I doubt I'll stay to find out if that pride can be swallowed; even if public opinion could be changed, I imagine the entrenched bureaucracy would not be unseated by anything short of a full-scale revolution. Hmmm, maybe I'm on to something with that...?

Commentors, I'd like to know what you think would be effective as a solution to Ottawa's transit issues. Personally, I think that the top 3 steps would be (least important is 3, most is 1):

3) PLAN AHEAD, and PLAN SMART. The trains(?) SHOULD NOT be waking people up at unholy hours, etc.

2) Don't use track because it is there, use it if and when it makes sense. Duh.

1) Build the city UP or DOWN, instead of OUT!

Ok, this is just one little bit, more is on the way!

-LOUD!

Ok, time for the first (of many, with any luck) updates to this post. It's rather unfortunate that it has taken me so long to get around to this, because much of what I will end up writing would have been current and topical if it had been posted when the words were fresh in my head. Instead, I'm left typing up thoughts which have long passed their "best before" dates. Eh, those things are just for planned obsolescence, anyhow.

I saw Pirates of The Carribean 3: At World's End at Silvercity's advance screening, the Thursday night before I left for the Reach for the Top national championships (which get a write-up later, fear not). Somewhere, I have the beginnings of a review, which I started writing on the flight to Calgary, but since it isn't getting later any slower, I'll have to rely on memory.

I'm going to assume that anyone who would care enough to read a review of PotC 3 has already seen it by now, and I shouldn't have to tell you just how epic it is. To be on the safe side, however, I will give those readers who have not seen the movie yet something of an idea:

PoTC 3 is PRETTY DAMNED EPIC

Are we good? OK!

Most everything which is good about the film is more or less related to the above: PotC 3 starts by pulling out a few stops here and there, and then proceeds to pull just about every single one you can imagine (and some you can't) before it ends. And Cap'n Jack wonders why the Rum is all gone? Come to think of it, PotC has come full-circle: the first was a movie inspired by a theme park ride, and now the (hopefully) final installment is a film rather evocative of a thrill-ride experience.

You might be wondering why I hope that PotC 3 is the final movie in the series, when it is so good? The most compelling reason is that the ending of this particular volume needs no extension; the stories that we, the audience, need to see...we have seen. Leave the remainder of their lives' exploits to imagination, and resist the temptation to ruin the franchise by allowing it to become more of a cash cow than it already is. Of course, this is Disney I am talking about, the same people who brought you Cinderella 3: A twist in HOLY FUCK WHO GAVE THESE DIPSHITS THE IDEA THAT TIME TRAVEL AND A WATERED DOWN VERSION OF A BROTHERS GRIMM STORY WOULD MIX WELL?!?! I may not have seen Cinderella 3 - as this would validate its existence, and I cannot bring myself to do that - but it has all the hallmarks of a cash cow.

I should attempt to remain on-topic, for fear of this post devolving into the sort of stream-of-consciousness ranting which so characterizes my "conversational" speech (some would argue and substitute "monologue" for conversation). Back to what is good about Pirates 3. I enjoy how plot threads are tied up, and yet the ending is left open. While it does leave room for the sequel I so dread, it is such a good ending, because the characters you've grown to love don't end: they continue on forever through good and evil, with the imagination left to decide in what proportions. This being said, I think that the mark was sorely missed on a few counts in the movie. Nothing which detracts from the viewing experience, but as I reflected upon the movie in writing my initial (lost) review, careful thought brought these minor flaws to light.

The first of these is that for a movie about Pirates, there is very little piracy. There IS plenty of betrayal - the likes of which would make Judas cringe - which allows the filmmakers to continually raise the stakes by having alliances shift on the fly. With a running length such as it has, the movie desperately needs these shifts to keep the audience from settling in too much. It remains a mark of shame upon the series, still, that there has been only one scene in which a pirate crew loots, pillages, and burns (all the way back in Pirates 1) for the acquisition of booty. Even then, their true cause was to retrieve Elizabeth's piece of cursed Aztec Gold, with the Piracy thrown in for good measure. It would be excusable if Pirates 3 focused solely on the established characters, who are generally preoccupied with supernatural matters more than financial gain...but Pirates 3 goes so far as to introduce NINE Pirate LORDS, a keeper of the code (Keith Richards FTW!), AND a Pirate KING! Their bickering and general narcissism goes a long way towards creating a piratey atmosphere, but it's something of a letdown that they are never seen pillaging. I suppose I shouldn't complain, given that such scenes are unnecessary in such a long movie, but [HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILER] the fact that they're not even heavily involved in the final epic battle [/SPOILER] is just TRAGIC!

The second minor flaw in the movie was that it required perhaps one too many suspensions of disbelief, and yes, I mean past the obvious ones, such as the existence of supernatural creatures, etc. I mean Jack Sparrow's impeccable use of the laws of physics to move, fight, and do Important Heroic Things in the movie. The writers redeem themselves a bit by poking fun at his apparent ability to escape any conundrum in spectacular fashion ("Do you think he has it all planned out, or does he just make it up as he goes along?", I think the line goes), but it's placed just a little too early, long before some of the good Cap'n's most outlandish moves are seen. All these stunts work when you're watching the movie, but they don't really hold up afterwards.

My overall recommendation is that you see Pirates 3, because it's far better than 2, and because you will just be blown out of the water (Harr Harr) by it.

And now, if I may be partisan, it would be nice if Science Fiction could get a few epic film treatments, now that the fantasy genre has seen more than its fair share of the action (LOTR, Pirates, Narnia, Golden Compass). And no, I don't think the new 'Transformers' movie is going to herald anything big on this front. A proper (read: NON Sci-Fi channel) treatment of Philip Jose Farmer's 'Riverworld' series would be a good place to start, for many reasons. The basic premise is that in the far future, unknown Aliens have sculpted a planet into one single flowing river (it coils from one pole to the other, I believe)...and proceeded to re-create every single human being who ever lived to over the age of 5 (with their memories at their time of death) in a permanently 25-year-old body. It's a FANTASTIC concept, and the books (I have read 1 and 2. I should eventually read the third and fourth, but the former hasn't "caught" yet) do it more than justice. While I don't suppose the books are too well-known, I think the premise could be mass-market-friendly; as Farmer wrote in an aside, everyone reading the books is SOMEWHERE in the cannon, just waiting to discover their own story. While it would be impossible to deliver on that promise in film, the potential for cameos is impressive, to say the least.

Speaking of novels with titles starting with "Ri" and ending in "world", Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' would also make a pretty kickass movie. Kzin for the Win!

I'd like to be excited about Star Trek XI, which will eventually "beam down" to theatres, but..ehhh. Nemesis was hyped up, and most people found it generally disappointing. To be honest, I didn't hate it; I was young enough to enjoy it when I saw it. I may...ok, who am I kidding, I will go see it when it comes out, but it's just not weighing heavily on my mind at the moment.

Children of Men was a spectacular movie (I'll post a review in an upcoming post, or tack it on to this one in an edit), which I urge people to see. If you want me to decide which is better between CoM and PotC 3, I'd give you the "apples to oranges" speech, and then tell you that either will give you goosebumps-a-plenty. In the end, I have to recommend CoM, though. The after-pirates experience is by no means bereft of conversational topics, but the intellectual landscape of the discussion is a salt flat to CoM's Himalayas. I'll save detailed praise for the review, so suffice it to say that CoM is a masterwork.

PS. Points to CoM for featuring the impeccable Chiwetel Ejiofor

Looking ahead at the next few weeks, there is also "Sunshine", which could have been good...but a while back I read a New Scientist opinion piece on how poorly the science in that movie had been treated. I think I'm turned off of this one, although I might end up seeing it anyways.

Who in the hell thinks that even a nuke the size of Manhattan would have the slightest hope of re-igniting the fucking SUN!?!? I think that film schools should start mandating that students take some basic science courses!

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A Moment of Silence (scroll down slowly for full effect)

Get The Fuck Off That Soapbox!

The gunsmoke has barely settled at Virginia Tech, and already the din of furious fusillades can be heard in the media. At first it isn't so bad, just the arrow-like whoosh as entire nations collectively whisper “Columbine”, or “Dawson College”. Then come the go-to pundits, shooting off their mouths like crude blunderbusses loaded with speculation (awful simile). All that remains is for the rank-and-file of the advocacy groups to march into battle, bayonnets fixed, fire in their eyes. The coming days will see these golden fields drenched in more blood than was ever spilled by a psychopath in any school. The generals on both sides urge their troops forward, in a no-holds-barred race to gain the moral high ground.

There are many vultures overhead.

Not a dove in sight

Yes, the VT killings are another oportunity to hold the attention of the North American population for a period greater than 15 seconds. Yes, they are an excellent reason to debate current gun-control laws, policies regarding potentially unstable individuals, perhaps even student privacy. No, we should not be doing it so soon. Want proof? America's response to Terrorism was laid out within hours of the attacks themselves. Still think we should be discussing those topics listed above? I think it would be fair to have a moratorium on all speculation on issues such as this until the Police have compiled some kind of preminary report, until there is some information available to the public. Infringement upon Free Speech, you say? I'd consider it more akin to anti-defamation laws. Even if the perpetrator is dead, pointless speculation is little nore than slandering the deceased, at least before there is INFORMATION to be had!

Get off the fucking soapboxes, and take a while to think about what has happened, and what the victims' families are feeling. There will always be a day, week, or month for bloodshed. This one has already seen enough