Sith stuff

I just saw "Revenge of the Sith" for the second time tonight.

It really is a very good movie, even when you separate it out from the whole "Star Wars" thing.

My wife only fell asleep for about 10 minutes, it was that good.

While the flick has generally gotten pretty good reviews, some commentators have aimed verbal kicks at Lucas's 'nads for lines seen as being modern political commentary.

Lines like, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Or, "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes."

There's also been some discussion of how the movie portrays the Jedi in somewhat of a bad light, while baddie Palpatine comes off as a sympathetic avuncular type.

They know they are wiser than everyone else, and act like it.

They have their heads stuck way up in the lofty clouds of Force theory, blinding them to the very human needs of people like Anakin Skywalker.

When Anakin is troubled by his dreams about losing Padme, he confers with Yoda in a sterile meditation chamber. Yoda's advice? "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

Meanwhile, Palpatine is the one who offers Anakin hope, who puts a hand on his shoulder, who kneels by him and touches his brow when he is laying maimed and shattered.

So Lucas is making the case for moral relativism, right? Good and evil are just different ways of viewing the same thing, right? It's understandable that Anakin would do all those horrible things, right? I mean, just look at the way the Jedi treated him.

Not so fast.

The moral framework of the "Star Wars" universe is predicated on good and evil being separate, identifiable entities.

There is a light and dark side to the Force. Episodes IV-VI show us quite clearly that the Jedi really are on the side of good while Darth Vader and the Emperor are are in the service of real evil.

While "Revenge of the Sith" does help us understand Anakin's motivations for turning to the dark side, it does nothing to absolve him of his sins. In fact, it goes out of its way to rebuke the moral relativism that aided his descent into darkness.

In the final duel, there's this telling exchange:

OBI-WAN: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil.

ANAKIN: From the Jedi point of view! From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.

OBI-WAN: Well, then you are lost!

At this point, Obi-Wan realizes that further argument is futile. Anakin's mind has been so twisted that to him, good and evil is just a matter of opinion. As a true Jedi master, Obi-Wan knows that this is false, that it does matter whose side you are on, and that a galaxy ruled by Sith is a very different place from one guided by Jedi.

Although Obi-Wan does utter the line about absolutes being only the provenance of the Sith, it is really those dark side disciples who make such pernicious use of moral relativism and he said/she said approaches to the Force.

PALPATINE: Anakin, if one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must embrace a larger view of the Force. Be careful of the Jedi, Anakin. They fear you. In time they will destroy you. Let me train you.

And if there's any doubt remaining about who are the good and bad guys, you just have to reflect on the original trilogy for two seconds.

In those, the split between good/evil, Jedi/Empire, Luke/Vader is stark and, yes, absolute. Luke, Leia and Yoda are the uncontested heroes while Vader and the Emperor represent total evil.

Vader's ultimate redemption comes from killing the man he so eagerly defended to Obi-Wan decades earlier on the slopes of the erupting volcano.

Of course Anakin was wrong, despite the slights he suffered, despite his crummy childhood.

Of course the Jedi are right, despite their secretive ways and their suspicious attitudes.

Of course there are such things as good and evil.

(Thanks to someone named SuperShadow for posting a full script of the movie here)

Gulag

Amnesty International has issued its annual report, which calls Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time".

That's right, a prison set up to hold hundreds of terrorists captured in combat against United States troops is the same as Soviet camps that housed millions of political dissidents.

A prison where inmates are given three squares a day that comply with Muslim practices is the same as Soviet camps that fed inmates meager rations that were one-third that of a healthy diet.

A prison where the death of inmates is virtually unheard of (sifting through four pages of Google results for "Guantanamo deaths" yielded one account by a released prisoner saying he witnessed the death of two people there) is the same as an extensive camp system that killed more than one million people.

The AP gives us one paragraph of background on the old Soviet gulags:

The use of the term gulag refers to the extensive system of prison camps in the former Soviet Union, many in remote regions of Siberia and specifically designed to hold political prisoners. The Soviets took over the system from the czarist government and expanded it after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Untold thousands of prisoners of the so-called gulags died from hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork. (emphasis mine)

Hmmm. I could've sworn the gulags killed more than "untold thousands".

Oh wait, here's the Wikipedia entry on gulags:

The total documentable deaths in the corrective-labour system from 1934 to 1953 amount to 1,054,000, including political and common prisoners; note that this does not include nearly 800,000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries", as they were generally conducted outside the camp system.

It's really the outrageous hyperbole that bugs me. If Guantanamo Bay is a gulag, then what does Amnesty call, you know, an actual gulag?

The AP says Amnesty "accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections." Aparently, one camp housing 500 terrorists is the sole standard by which American human rights protection is to be judged.

Although Sudan and Haiti are given a passing mention in paragraph five of the AP story, it's not until paragraph 21 that we get any details of what happened there. Namely, 180,000 dead in Sudan's Darfur region. Including the early passing reference, Sudan gets three paragraphs.

Bulletin

I had coffee. Details to follow.

Oh yeah

I forgot to mention that Lime Coke ain't all that. Definitely takes a back seat to its lemon and vanilla cousins.

Amazon ads

Interesting. Amazon is now displaying sponsored links -- i.e., advertisements -- in its pages about specific books.

Case in point is the page open on another browser window right now. The books is Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic.

Below the editorial reviews, product details and "Inside This Book" features, there is a segment titled "Customers interested in this title may also be interested in". Below that in a tiny font it says "sponsored links".

In this instance, there are three links for game design schools.

Here's Amazon's explanation:

Sponsored Links are advertisements that Amazon.com provides to you. We receive Sponsored Links from Google's AdWords service. When you click on a Sponsored Link, we get revenue. The selection of Sponsored Links that are displayed is based on keywords. For example, if you search for "Bruce Springsteen" or view pages about Bruce Springsteen, the Sponsored Links may point to sites that sell tickets to his concerts or provide information about him. Sponsored Links are always clearly labeled.

Generating additional revenue from Sponsored Links allows us to offer lower prices to you--something we are dedicated to doing every way we can.

I'm of a mixed mind about this.

On the one hand, it is their business to sell me books, music, movies and other things, not to sell me outside services that I'm perfectly capable of finding on my own. I don't want Yellow Pages clippings pasted all over the shelves at Barnes & Noble when I go there, either. The Amazon pages are already so crammed full of information it's kind of annoying to have ads thrown in there as well.

On the other hand, the links are about as unintrusive as you can get. There are only a few, and they are simple text links, with no distracting Flash animations or distracting pop-ups. And Amazon does have a pretty good track record of improving things for the consumer, so if this does really help them lower prices I'll probably be able to live with it.

Montana Hold Em

About 50 miles east of Missoula, Montana lies a small town called Hamilton. Ringed by snow-capped mountains, the town is nestled in the Bitterroot Valley. It's where my mother grew up, and her relatives are among the 6,000 people who now live there.

The last time I was in the Bitterroot was 15 years ago, visiting my uncle, aunt and their four kids. In the few acres surrounding their house, built in 1900, we'd shoot pellet guns, play tag and spray paint grasshoppers (don't ask). I'd also hear colorful stories about country life, from my eldest cousin's apiary to rowdy guys shooting marshmallows from slingshots out of moving cars. Apparently it really stung to get hit with one of those.

And they'd tell us about the Seed family. I don't know from whence the seeds came, but hints gleaned from conversation indicated they were hippies. Their eccentricities were most evident in their children. Not the kids themselves, but their names. There were five kids, each one named after a plant. There was Cotton Seed, Caraway Seed, Leaf Seed and Huckleberry Seed. I can't recall the fifth one.

On this trip, my cousins told us how Huck Seed would come over to play board games at their house. Thing was, if the game involved any kind of psychological or bluffing aspect, Huck would sit there and study people's faces, expressions, and body language. And he'd always clean up.

Huck apparently was a pretty sharp kid, and he ended up going to Cal Tech. It was there that he started getting into poker. Eventually he got so good he was winning big pots in Vegas. Really big pots. Huck took home $1 million at the world championships in 1996. He was 27 years old. My cousins showed me the 2000 Guiness Book, where Huck appears as the winner of the biggest pot ever -- $2.7 million. (It might have been $2.9 million, and in any event it has since been surpassed). Apparently he's not at Cal Tech anymore.

Huck is listed here as one of 10 hot young players to watch. He's number nine on this list.

Montana

Well, we made it to Hamilton, Montana.

We discovered, to our never-ending delight, that the Best Western has wireless Internet access.

Actually, our delight ended some 15 minutes after checking in, when the wireless went out. But it's back up now.

Our placemats at breakfast this morning had advertizements for "Antler Creations", described as "the 'horniest' store in all Montana!".

It is also amazing how small the houses and yards are here, given the massive amounts of land in the area. I bet most of these places are about 800 square feet.

My mom pointed out the house where the "rich people" lived when she was growing up, and it couldn't have been more than 1,200 square feet.

Everyone is incredibly friendly, though. Kids have just come up to us on the sidewalk and started talking. Everyone says hello. Everyone waves.

I'll let you all know if we make out of town alive.

Big Sky or Bust

I'm off to Montana tomorrow for four days.

Posting may be rather light since I'm not even sure if they have electricity out in Big Sky country yet, much less access to this newfangled Internet thing.

Hey, Dave is from Montana. Maybe I'll swing by the ice cave where they thawed him out.

Ouch

Went to the doctor and had blood drawn and a tetanus shot.

Then I went to the dentist and had not one, not two, but three fillings.

I am experiencing a certain degree of discomfort at the moment.

The weird thing is, my anus hurts, too.

The dentist said that was just a side effect of the nitrous.

I thought it was kind of weird that he used nitrous just for fillings, but who am I to question a certified Doctor of Dentistry?

Especially when he was so distinguished in his studies that the university honored him by writing out his degree in crayon.

Specimen

Some random notes:

--I can confirm the existence of both Black Pepper Jack Doritos and Lime Coca-Cola. In fact, I managed to acquire a sample of the former on a recent foray to the grocery store snack aisle. The guac ones are still my favorite but these are damn good. Damn good, I say.

--It has rained all but two of the last eight days. At least the sun peeks out in between cloudbursts so we get some respite.

--The Mariner's still suck this year. I went to a game last night and the unknown Yankees pitcher managed to pitch the full nine innings, holding the M's to just three runs and zero hits. He did this in about 130 pitches. Pretty amazing performance, but not from the home team.

Oh yeah, the latest Coffee Monday is up at Chin Music Press.

This week's installment features rubbery lips, Elmer's Glue, and a chimp in diapers.

Enjoy.

Dumpster vs. dumpster

J-Dogg has been wondering why I capitalize the word "Dumpster".

It was capitalized throughout the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on scavengers that I linked to the other day, and I figured that indicated it was a trademarked term, like "Kleenex" or "Xerox". An entry on Wikipedia confirmed this is in fact the case:

The word dumpster came from the Dempster-Dumpster system of mechanically loading the contents of standardised containers onto garbage trucks, which was patented by the Dempster Brothers Incorporated in the 1930s. The containers were called Dumpsters, a portmanteau of the company's name with the word dump. However it took the Dempster Dumpmaster, the first successful front loading garbage truck (and which used this system), to popularize the word. The word is a trademark of the Krug International Corporation, but today it is often used as a generic word.

Pizza

Some of the best pizza in Seattle isn't even in Seattle. In the northern suburb of Lynnwood, there is a place called The Rock.

We had two pies last night.

Here's the description of the "Sheer Heart Attack":

We start with fresh garlic, a rich cream sauce, oven-baked peppered bacon, red onions, crushed red peppers, sundried tomatoes and finish with bleu cheese and mozzarella.

And here's the "Bad to the Bone":

A white cream sauce pie with mozzarella and Romano cheeses, pepperoni, peppered bacon, ham and red onions topped with a peppercorn ranch dressing.

In keeping with these themes, I suggest the "Artery Assault":

A thick bed of freshly churned butter covered with pork rines and deep fat-fried duck skin, then basted with coconut oil and drizzled with liquid lard.

Who wouldn't want that?

Cake

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me...

Darth Cheetos

J-Dogg asked in a comment what is wrong with Darth Vader Cheetos. Nothing, I guess. Even Sith lords need their snack foods.

But another "Star Wars" tie-in definitely went too far. It showed a kid sitting at Burger King struggling to open his ketchup packet.

A Jedi knight walks in, and uses the Force to levitate the packet in the air.

Then he whips out his light saber and slices the packet open.

Man, how many things are wrong with that scene?

First, what candy-ass kid can't open a freaking ketchup packet?

And don't Jedi have better things to do than to run around ensuring easy access to condiments? How many rebel fighters were taken out by imperial stormtroopers while this Jedi was goofing around in Burger King?

That'd be like a Marine pausing during the assault on Fallujah to use his M-249 to blast open a can of beans.

Choices

Is this a great country or what? I assert that, yes, this is a great country?

On what evidence do I base this assertion?

Exhibit A: Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.

Exhibit B: Guacamole Doritos.

Did the world need Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper? No.

Is the world a better place for having Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper? Yes!

Any country capable of producing so many snack choices is doing something right in my book.

And as for the Doritos, man, these things rock.

I remember when Nacho Cheese Doritos came out. I was in middle school and would buy a bag at lunch every day for 25 cents.

It was this conceptual breakthrough in the manufacture of corn chips.

I think the Nacho Cheese Doritos came out shortly after the introduction of Sour Cream & Onion Lay's potato chips.

I think the pressure was on for the corn chip industry to step up and innovate. They were desperate to head off an exodus to the flashy, sexy new world of flavored potato crisps.

But it didn't stop there. Cool Ranch Doritos weren't far behind. Zesty Salsa Doritos also made their debut.

Then things seemed to hit a wall. We got Nacho Cheesier chips, then Cooler Ranch chips. "More is better!" seemed to be the mantra at Doritos headquarters.

Seemed like they had swiped a page from the playbooks of razor manufacturers, who kept throwing more blades on their products, desperately hoping that would mask the mundane fact that they're just selling razors.

But the Guac has proved that innovation isn't dead. The frontier has been pushed back. The bar has been raised. What is next? Pico de galla? Jalepeno? Mole? The possibilities are endless.

Dumpsters

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an article about a guy who scrounges in Dumpsters for food and other items.

The guy's not homeless. In fact, he is a printer who makes $1,400 a month. He just tries to supplement his income with a little scavenging.

And he doesn't go for half-eaten burgers and the like, he salvages packaged food that has been chucked by grocery stores or restaurants. Like if there's a six-pack of juice boxes that has one damaged box, a store may toss out the whole thing.

But this bit caught my eye:

Technically, that garbage is off-limits. It's against the law to "steal" from Dumpsters. Even those who are paid to collect the garbage aren't allowed to nab a good find.

"Once it's in the garbage, it's city property," said Stav.

That's right. If you want to salvage something that someone else didn't want, well, tough. The City of Seattle jealously guards the right to its trash!

God forbid that someone might actually be able to use garbage. City-owned junk belongs only in once place -- a city junkyard, definitely not in the hands of private citizens who would actually use it.

The other interesting bit is that some Dumpster-hunters trade tips and arrange meetings -- over the Internet:

An Internet-based "meet-up" group advertises monthly get-togethers for Dumpster diving in Seattle. The group, founded two years ago, has more than two dozen members, including a university student looking for sources for his senior thesis on Dumpster diving.

The Web abounds with sites that offer advice -- on what to wear when you go diving (black hat, steel-toed boots), what to say if you get caught ("I'm looking for boxes"), helpful tools of the trade.

An online Dumpster-diving adviser known as the Dumpster Lady, for example, endorses the Unger Nifty Nabber grabber stick. "I can pick up a quarter off the bottom of an otherwise empty Dumpster with my Unger," she writes in her Frequently Asked Questions section.

Even our bag ladies are online.

Near the end, there's this unremarked passage:

At one promising site, he hops out and quickly sorts through the top layer: children's toy scissors, still in the pack; an unopened bottle of fabric softener; more steak sauce.

He runs across a plastic American flag under a pile of refuse.

"How come this happens?" he shakes his head and secures the flag on the Dumpster so the Stars and Stripes can flutter free.

I mean, here's a guy who, under today's social code of exalted victimhood, should have every reason to bitch about how his country has failed him. He's been reduced to scrounging in Dumpsters, for crying out loud.

The P-I says the story is

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's ongoing series "Hard work, hard times: The plight of Puget Sound's working poor" examines the lives of those who live in poverty even though at least one family member works full time. Today we focus on one man's survival strategy: scouring Dumpsters for discarded treasures.

It appears to be one of those series that has the unspoken undercurrent of "something must be done".

Yet there is nothing in this article that suggests that those interviewed are bitter, or angry, or disaffected. They have jobs. They have homes. They have cars. They have Internet access.

While it does jar one's sensibilities to read about people who have to dig through trash bins to make ends meet, it sort of seems like a win-win situation.

The Dark Side

I know lots of product tie-ins can be expected for blockbuster action movies.

And I know that "Star Wars" is the ultimate tie-in franchise.

But am I alone in thinking that the "Star Wars"-themed Cheetos are just a little over the top?

Chester Cheetah in a Darth Vader mask? I mean, really.

Camera

I just scored a new digital camera yesterday, the Panasonic Lumix FZ20.

A pickpocket snatched my previous camera, a 2-year-old 3-megapixel Olympus Camedia, right out of the bag a couple months ago without me or my wife noticing. Bastard. A nimble-fingered bastard, but a bastard nonetheless.

Of course I was inclined to view the theft as an opportunity to upgrade to a better camera.

The Panasonic is 5 megapixels and has a sweet Leica lens with 12x optical zoom. The awesome thing about this lens is that the f-stop is 2.8 all the way out to 12x, meaning it can shoot in low-light situations.

Another camera I had considered was a Konica Minolta with similar specs (5 megapixels, 12x zoom) but the f-stop slipped to 4.8 by the time you had it at full zoom.

I was pretty sure I wanted the Panasonic, but it was hard to track down. None of the big electronics chains -- Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Depot -- carried it, and I ended up going to a speciality camera store to get one.

I was sold when I asked the clerk for his impressions of the Panasonic and he said it was the best camera you could get without stepping up to an actual SLR.

We asked him about the Nikons and he said they had similar quality, but were at least $200 more expensive.

I haven't had time to really try it out, but in reading the instruction manual it seems there are some really sweet little features, ones that I can actually envision using fairly regularly.

Here

We made it. The kid was so hyped he stayed up until 8:00 p.m. That was after getting a total of three hours of sleep out of the last 24.

I went to Circuit City and as I was leaving a total dirtball of a man comes through the door -- Fred Durst-style baggy shorts, greasy and messed-up hair, ungroomed handlebar mustache, beer belly hanging out of a faded and hole-riddled Led Zeppelin t-shirt, sneakers compressed into grungy wafers from his immense bulk.

And I knew I was home.

En route

Hey I'm blogging from the Vancouver airport. How cool is that?

If I can get the laptop set up quickly in Seattle, I can blog from three countries in three days.

Alas, have to run. The kid got 90 minutes of sleep on a 10-1/2 hour flight that started at 4:20 p.m.

The trick will be to keep him up for another, oh, 7-8 hours.

Wish me luck.222

Rock-ku

Michele at A Small Victory is soliciting entries for haiku about rock bands. Here was my contribution.

Whole lotta Page and
Plant leaves me dazed and confused
All hail mighty Zep

Note to any haiku brownshirts lurking out there *cough*David*cough*: I am sticking to the 5/7/5 structure that served me so well in 6th grade.

Off the wagon

As my loyal readers are well aware, I quit all forms of caffeine about two months ago. Cold turkey, baby, no regrets.

Well, actually I have a ton of regrets. Like how about regretting not having my precious cup of joe every damn morning.

But I have a plan. A plan to fall of the wagon in a spectacular way.

We fly to Seattle tomorrow for nearly three weeks of holiday. What does Seattle have in abundance?

No, not rain, that's only from October to April. I remember from fall of 2000 to spring of 2001 it rained for 180 consecutive days. But the summers are nice. Anyway, I digress.

What does Seattle have a lot of?

I mean, aside from grungy chicks with unshaven armpits, Subaru Forester station wagons, and depressed John Kerry voters.

Yeah, that's right. Coffee. And I'm not talking Starbucks, although there is of course one of those on every corner.

Starbucks is to Seattle coffee what Red Hook is to local microbrews. They're the ones that kicked off their respective crazes, but they're also what you drink only when you can't get the really good stuff.

I'm talking about Last Exit near the University District, about B&O Espresso off Broadway, about Still Life in Fremont (Holy crap Robert tells me the Still Life is gone. This is a tragedy. A moment of silence, please).

In these places, coffee doesn't come in cups, it comes in bowls. Espresso isn't made, it's crafted. When scones on offer at these places are to regular scones as lembas is to Wonder Bread.

One place that regularly gets voted as having the best espresso in town is called Vivace, and it isn't even a proper coffee shop. It's more of a semi-permanent kiosk on the aforementioned Broadway, a hip strip of street reknowned for its quirky population of gays, punks and assorted freakazoids.

Check out Vivace's Web site. Note how they drizzle the espresso over the foam to make cool trees and stuff. That rocks.

So here's my plan.

1. Wake up.

2. Purify body by bathing in the Ganges River.

3. Sanctify soul with incense blessed in the Vatican.

4. Wearing only loincloth and carrying a crude walking stick, hike barefoot the 12 miles to Vivace.

5. Once there, stand at Vivace entrance. Kneel, lie prone, stand, advance one step. Repeat until site has been circumnavigated three times.

6. Order a double tall mocha. Or maybe something with caramel. Mmmm, caramel.

7. Hold beverage close to lips. Wipe tear from eye.

8. Consume beverage.

9. Wait for head to explode.

Coffee?

Hey David, where's my goddamn Coffee Monday column?

Don't tell me another of my letter bombs got through.

You're better than that now, and anyway the last one you missed only took off a couple fingers.

So what gives?

Kid pictures

We've all had the experience of coming across pictures of ourselves as kids and saying out loud, "What the hell were my parents thinking?"

A man named Jason Mulgrew apparently had this experience a lot because he's posted 20 childhood pictures with commentary illustrating how each one set the tone for something going horribly wrong in his life.

Here's the first entry:

Here it is – the picture that started it all. If I had to choose a defining moment in my life from which point on everything was indeed wrong with me, this is it. That’s me, at about two years old, dressed up like the bastard son of the sailor from The Village People – and he was the REALLY gay one. I mean, fuck.

The whole thing is worth clicking through, and the other parts of his site are pretty funny, too.

(Thanks to Screenhead for the link)

UPDATE: I, uh, added the actual link.

Sister Alice

Space opera often relies on the use of vast stretches of distance or time to imbue a sense of vastness into a story.

In fact, a lot of the time "space opera" is just sci-fi jargon for "epic".

But that depends somewhat on how epic you like your epics.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series encompassed large chunks of the entire galaxy, with events stretching out for centuries.

Frank Herbert's Dune series took place over tens of thousands of years.

But John C. Wright's The Golden Age unfolded "only" in our solar system, with one other star system getting involved, over the course of several weeks.

Then there is Robert Reed's Sister Alice, which manages to cram in half the galaxy and hundreds of thousands of years in 358 pages, without lapsing into the cheesiness that afflicts this sub-genre.

In this compact epic, millennia pass with the flip of a page, whole worlds are shattered in a few short paragraphs, and years of near-light-speed space travel are conveyed as a meandering stroll down an icy beach.

Beginning his tale about 10 million years in the future, Reed takes wholeheartedly to Arthur C. Clarke's famous observation that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

The main characters are members of an elite group of one thousand Familes that alone are allowed to possess mankind's most advanced -- and dangerous -- technologies. They command awesome powers capable of transforming cold, dead worlds into ones rich with life. They can create artificial structures the size of many solar systems.

These abilities are referred to as "talents" and are usually some complicated piece of machinery crafted out of dark matter, the theoretical stuff that some scientists think accounts for the 90 percent of the universe we can't see but should be there. Talents are not only for mega-scale engineering projects. There are ones that target psychology and neuroscience, or use advanced logic bombs called "eschers" to assault computer systems.

The story focuses on Ord, who at about 140 years old (if I remember correctly) is the baby of the Chamberlains, who terraforming skills have made them the most beloved and respected of the thousand Families. Alice, one of Ord's most ancient and talented sisters, has committed an error that threatens the entire galaxy. It falls to Ord to try to put things right while avoiding two childhood friends from rival Families who have been outfitted with the most advanced psychological and military talents to try to stop him.

The writing is nothing short of excellent. Reed's terse, stark prose is well-suited to the light-years of hard vaccuum and cold mental isolation of the characters. In terms of writing and sheer inventiveness, I would put Reed up there on my shelves with Richard Paul Russo's amazing Carlucci series and John C. Wright's The Golden Age trilogy.

Highly recommended.

Troubles

Yeah, I had Internet troubles again, now fixed.

As I mentioned, I've had this past week off, then go in to work on Monday before leaving for Seattle on Tuesday for three weeks.

Yup, I work but one day for the entire month of May.

The Wizard

One of my favorite Black Sabbath songs is "The Wizard".

One thing about it always cracked me up, though.

Exactly two minutes and 11 seconds into the song, a cowbell is struck exactly once.

There is no cowbell for the rest of the song.

I just wonder, who listened to the song and went, "Fellas, it was sounding great, but I could've used a little more cowbell!"?

Movies

Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool News is the Schroedinger's Cat of movie Web sites: it either completely rocks or it totally blows, and you have no idea which one it will be until you open the box and see if the single atom of coolidium has decayed or not.

On the plus side of the ledger, AICN gets tons of reviews of upcoming blockbusters written by fans invited to screenings. Open source movie reviews. If you're a "Star Wars" fanboy, you can read what other of your ilk are saying about "Revenge of the Sith".

The downside is the puerile nature of many of the reviews, not least from Harry himself, who revels -- no, wallows -- in his slovenly, geek-outed movie nerd persona.

But one consistently good feature that I check out regularly is Harry's picks for DVDs coming out that month.

The lists are breathtakingly comprehensive, and I've never heard of half to two-thirds of the titles listed. Knowles seems to have already seen 99 percent of all movies being released, and he gives each item a detailed blurb saying why it is worth watching.

For instance, here's an entry about "McQ", a John Wayne flick I'd never heard of:

I fucking love McQ! Wayne didn’t wield nearly enough automatic weapons dammit! Cuz here he is pretty damn awesome with one. This came out as a reaction to DIRTY HARRY – and while it certainly isn’t at that level – John Sturges was definitely no hack director. Wayne made two of these types of films, and I prefer the utter badass of this flick, but I have to admit to loving BRANNIGAN which he made the year after, which has Wayne kicking Brit ass!

Those first couple of sentences make me want to see this film.

Here's his comments on Christian Slater's "Alone in the Dark":

Quint says you ain’t got the balls to weather this shit. This is the masochistic turd blossom of the month. If nailing your penis to a two by four has stopped hurting, give this a try. Quint says it is “It Is All Clear.

Well, that doesn't really make me want to see this move, and my penis is still stinging, anyway.

Lost

I lost my wallet the other day.

I thought I had left it in the office, but when I got in the next day it wasn't there.

Then I thought maybe I left it at home, but when I got back it wasn't there either.

I couldn't really think of how I would have lost it, so I gave it one more day to turn up.

But it didn't.

I finally cancelled the three credit cards that were in there.

A few hours later, I found the wallet in a pair of shorts I had folded and put away.

Bob or Al?

Are you Bob or Al?

A friend popped this question on me the other day when we were discussing movies.

Bob is Robert De Niro and Al, if you couldn't guess, is Al Pacino.

My friend's question goes beyond just whom you like watching more. In a half-serious manner, he thinks it can reflect on what kind of person you are.

He bases this on how Al and Bob, or more accurately, the characters they play on the screen, behave. Or more particularly, how they go off.

Al is the one who goes off like a bomb. It's spectucular to watch him blow ("Scent of a Woman", and you definitely don't want to be anywhere near him ("Scarface") because he will just as likely take out innocent bystanders as the one he is really targeting ("Heat").

On the other hand, Bob is more methodical and meticulous in his madness ("The Score"). Oh, he's perfectly capable of going psycho on you ("Taxi Driver"), but when he does, it's cold and calculated and he controls everything about the situation ("Cape Fear").

My friend said he was more of an Al guy and I thought I was more of a Bob guy.

Then I thought about it a little more and now I think that I actually have more Al in me, but wish I could be more like Bob. I find the kick-ass-ness that is more rational and calculating to be more appealing, but I think I am probably too emotional and short-sighted to pull that off.

So which one are you?

Technical difficulties

My Internet connection has been out for two days and just got restored this morning.

Insightful blogging will resume shortly.

The Demonic Ape

Certain monkey-fearing types might be interested, or more probably alarmed at this BBC documentary from early last year: "The Demonic Ape".

It's the horrifying tale of how one of Jane Goodall's chimps -- a chimp named Frodo for heaven's sake -- grew more and more violent and finally killed a human child.

Don't miss the links at the bottom, which promise that you can:

"Find out more about chimpanzee violence and why it's always the males."

David on Dandelions

A lot of my readers (and by "a lot" I mean like "half", and by "half" I mean "one") have been fans of comment stalker David.

Although David doesn't seem to have the time, inclination or mental faculty to start his own blog, he does write the weekly "Coffee Monday" column over at Chin Music Press. Now he's giving us more.

A couple days ago CMP put up an essay of David's, Dandelions, that is well worth the time of anyone who appreciates his demented rantings.

It has the two crucial components necessary for every successful essay: violence involving gardening tools, and female masturbation.

Lucas

Wired has an interview with George Lucas.

I didn't really find it all that interesting, given that he makes silly statements like "None of the films I've done was designed for a mass audience."

Riiiight.

But there was an interesting tidbit at the very end, where Lucas talks about the timelessness of certain stories:

If you've raised children, you know you have to explain things to them, and if you don't, they end up learning the hard way. In the end, somebody's got to say, "Don't touch that hot skillet." So the old stories have to be reiterated again in a form that's acceptable to each new generation. I don't think I'm ever going to go much beyond the old stories, because I think they still need to be told.

That made me think of certain critics -- movies, books, music, games, whatever -- who sniff at anything that is not totally, 100 percent original.

I've always thought that wa a crock, not because I -- like some other critics of a different school -- think that nothing is truly original anymore. But just because I often take a lot of pleasure in a skillful reinterpretation or retelling of a classic story or theme.

Lucas framed his argument in terms of generations -- retelling stories in new ways to reach younger people for whom the previous telling may not mean much. I think it works for adults, too. For one thing, such retellings reinforce messages we may have already absorbed but don't think about consciously. They may also help up look at something in a new way.

Me, I love watching favorite movies over and over. I can watch "The Matrix" or "The Incredibles" a jillion times. But I also love blues music, which isn't so much about crazy-ass innovation as it is putting fresh interpretations on traditional themes, melodies and rythms.

I also love to reread favorite books, savoring each line of dialogue and each page of blood-pumping action. Some people don't do that. They see something once or read something once and that's it, they are on to other things. So I wonder if there's some link to personality as well.

UPDATE: Interviewer Steve Silberman was kind enough to leave a note in the comments saying that the more interesting stuff is in an expanded piece he did for Wired called "Life After Darth". I'm reading it right now and it's quite good.

Work

I pretty much have the entire month of May off.

The first week of May is a "golden week" national holiday, and we go to skeleton staffing for the duration.

Then I come back for one day of work next Monday, and leave on Tuesday for three weeks in Seattle.

For this first week, I won't be able to read any of my favorite Blogspot-hosted blogs.

I still love you guys, honest.

UPDATE: I put in a couple more links that I forgot about in my giddy enthusiasm to post this.

Rolling eye

This is sweet.

The hi-tech division of Remington Arms is selling this set of video cameras embedded in small spheres that can be dropped, lowered, raised or rolled into an area needing surveillance.

It'd be cool to roll a couple of these babies into the girls' locker room at my old high school.

Did I just write that?

Star Wars

Right now, every American male who saw the original "Star Wars" as a kid is hoping, no praying that "Revenge of the Sith" does not suck Wookiee dingleberries.

I have really hoping against hope, knowing deep down inside that I will be bitterly disappointed, thrusting me dangerously close to the Dark Side.

Until now.

Director Kevin Smith ("Clerks", "Dogma") claims to have been to a screening. He says that what he saw totally rocked.

Be warned, there are many spoilers, especially the last half of the review, in which Smith basically details exactly how the film ends.

But try to read this and not be tempted to camp out at the local cinema to score tickets to the opening show.

(Thanks to Ain't It Cool News for the heads up)