Worthless and Weak

Do you know what the most fun alignment to play in DnD is? The answer: lawful good; especially if you treat lawful good as being "better than everybody else;" extra especially if you have another member of your party who is chaotic neutral/neutral evil.

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

If Buddhists were to have an eight day long holiday where they give gifts to one another, I think a good name for this holiday would be "Nirvanukkah"

Labels: fake holidays, This tag probably isn't gonna get much use

The most unusual complement I've received recently...

A friend of mine told me that she thinks I would make a very good community organizer.

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

My new years resolution was that I would start running, once the weather got nice. Well, today it was nice, so I decided to force myself to run.

I only ran about 14 blocks, but afterwards, I felt like I was going to throw up for about a half hour.

Labels: yes; I am out of shape

So I went and saw Watchmen (the movie) today, and here is my review:

Watchmen, based on the Graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is the story of a group of superheros in an alternate history 1985. It opens as one of them, the Comedian, is murdered in his New York apartment. Another superhero, Rorschach, investigates, leading him to believe that somebody is trying to kill all superheros.

I'm not going to try to explain and summarize the whole plot, as others have done that much better than I could, and the plot is both really really complicated and not that important. What is much more important is the portrayal of the characters, and of the world itself.

On this front, the movie succeeds. Even though each hero is obviously not both athletically fit to the point of being superhuman (any one of them could easily be and an Olympic level athlete), but quite intelligent as well, they all have giant flaws. Nite Owl is an impotent retiree who, not being a superhero anymore, doesn't seem to have much meaning in his life. The Silk Spectre was pushed into the superhero life, never wanted it for herself, her boyfriend, Dr. Manhattan, is the only one with actual superpowers, (he has the ability to bend matter to his will), but he is barely human anymore, just going through the motions. Rorschach is borderline insane, and the Comedian was a misanthropic killer, viewing the whole world as one giant joke.

Everything I've said so far could be written about the book. The movie keeps incredibly close to the source material, where, for the first 10 minutes or so, I recognized almost every line. This didn't work, many of the lines that worked in the book weren't the best fit for the movie.

The opening sequence was done especially well, managing to reduce a giant back-story to five minutes of photos, which I think would give a newcomer to the story a good idea of what was going on.

What really didn't work about the movie is that it stayed so true to the book, that it just wasn't necessary. Some of the fight scenes were pretty good, but really, those were just about the only thing that you got from the movie but not from the book.

That being said, it was enjoyable, and didn't seem like 2 hours, 40 minutes. Worthwhile to see, but read the book first.

Labels: comics, Movie reviews

I think the worst kind of rejection is the "lets just be friends." If they didn't like you because of whatever reason, or you didn't get along, well then, thats one thing. there's an issue. But if they "want to be friends," well, then, they think you're a good enough person to hang around with, there's nothing really objectionable about you, there's just a standard, and you don't quite meet it.

Labels: fall, what this blog is really about

So I decided, that I would actually use this blog for something, and the first thing that came to mind was movie reviews, as I see a few reviews. So I'm gonna try to start now! (it is entirely possible that I may have already somewhere on this blog tried to do this, but whatever).

Our first movie is Satyricon, directed by famed Italian directed Federico Fellini, based on the Novel of the same name by Petronius.

To summarize the plot would be nearly impossible, perhaps the best one can do is say that a Roman commoner travels around and has adventures, frequently involving sex. As the film more or less follows the book, and as whole chunks of the book are missing, the movie tends to jump around a lot.

If there was one overarching story, or development, or growth of a character, than I missed it; the strength of the film was how the individual scenes were incredibly powerful in their depictions.

The best of these was the dinner party at Trimalchio. In it, Trimalchio (an incredibly rich former slave) entertains dozens (perhaps a hundred) people with extravagant food and exotic dances. It's obvious that the host has no actual human relationships, and that throwing parties where sycophantic guests praise him merely to get some small piece of his wealth, is the closest he can get to real human contact. The party ends with a mock funeral for Trimalchio, which is perhaps the most striking in the film. Trimalchio pretends to die, and then all of his guests pretend to mourn for him, and he rewards some of them with gold. This is what Trimalchio had to do to feel good about himself, pretend to die in order to hear how much people would miss him. Pathetic.

This is contrasted by a pair of last wills from a poet named Eumolpus. The first is when he thinks he is going to die, and leaves to his friend Encolpius (who despite not having been mentioned yet, is in fact the main character). The poet has nothing, so he leaves Encolpius with the stars, and the sky, and the sea, and the earth.

The movie ends with Eumolpus' actual death, after attaining great riches. In this will, he leaves his fortune to a group of men, provided that they devour his flesh, just as they sent his soul to hell. The film's final shot is this group of people cannibalizing their "friend" in order to receive their inheritance. While it is not said, clearly the first inheritance, which was nothing (the stars, the sky, etc), was worth much more than horrible second one.

Perhaps the rest of the movie is as good as those scenes, its entirely possible (likely) that I'm missing a lot, however, having watched it once, the movie has left me with no desire to watch it again. If the movie had a more coherent narrative to draw the viewer in, or some reason other than sheer determination for the viewer to continue, it would be much easier for one to catch all the good stuff. But I suppose that if the movie had a more coherent narrative, it would have been a different movie.

Labels: Movie reviews

You should totally take the Robot Quiz

I got 16 out of 25. Which is like a 64. But if you take the square root of it, its an 80!

Labels: fall, robots, vacation

This is perhaps the greatest thing I have ever seen.

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

7 Things I dislike about Watchmen:

First off all, this list contains spoilers, so if you haven't read Watchmen, you just shouldn't read this list. Even if you're not planning to read it, just don't read this list...

1: The comic-within-the-comic was, in my opinion, better than the comic itself.

2: Both heroines mentioned in the original minutemen, the Silk Spectre, and the Silhouette, both have names beginning with the letters "Sil" making them very easily confused.

3: The (implied) reverse gambler's fallacy discussion between Dr. Manhattan and Laurie on Mars regrading miracles so obviously inconsistent with Dr. Manhattan's worldview (he could just as easily be mystified in regarding the position of each individual atom in a grain of sand as in observing the whole of humanity. In short, he rejected humanity, and we're led to believe that he came to accept it again due to a belief that humanity was special in a quantum/thermodynamic sense. While I don't actually reject this, the actual argument made in the book was, in my opinion, flat out wrong.

4: We never find out what really happened to hooded justice. Or really, anything about him, even though he's in some ways the most pivotal character in the book.

5: The book does not give an adequate conclusion to the story - the liberal utopia created at the end of the story is neither given a satisfactory label (good/bad) by the author, nor is it presented in enough detail for the reader to make his own conclusions. It merely implies that the cold war is over, and that horrible social structure of the world at large seems to improve. (From Nostalgia to Millennium). (FOR REAL, SPOILER ALERT: DON'T READ THIS NEXT SENTENCE). In a sentence, the question that it tries to pose is "is the murder of several million people offset by the creation of the new liberal society?" yet it does not give enough detail about the new society to examine said question.

6: It is an inherently political book; yet does not give an appropriate perspective to view itself. In doing so, it fails to give the reader any ability to determine if (parts of) the book is a parody and satire of liberal though, or is a genuine example of a perverted liberal thought process. (I suppose that I need to explain what I'm talking about here. The book favorably compares Kennedy to Nixon, (fair enough), and Nixon is presented as somewhat of a dictator in the book, serving what I think is his fourth of fifth term. However, Nixon isn't presented as particularly evil, almost as if it is implied that Nixon is evil simply for being Nixon, (in fact, in the DefCon 2 scene, Nixon is the most levelheaded and rational of his staff). Meanwhile, Kennedy is portrayed as he is, well, pretty much everywhere, "what would the world be like if this young man wasn't killed before he could save the world." Again, you can disagree with these things, but nothing too controversial with it. The kicker is at the end of the book, after the cold war is over, when the world is now in what I've been calling the "Liberal Utopia" it is revealed that Robert Redford is running for President. Now, while I've got nothing against Robert Redford, well, he really has no qualifications to be president, he was just the prettiest face in 1986. This is aesthetics as morality, the belief that, one day, when everything is right, our country will be run by the best looking person. This can easily be transposed onto Kennedy, is he adored merely because of his aesthetic appeal? What's missing is the point, is Watchmen intentionally ironic in doing this?) Some of course, would argue that this is the point.

7: (Again, with the morality, I know, I know.) At one point, the book mentioned that, after America won the Vietnam war, the pro-American forces went on to massacre the anti-American population. In doing so, it implicitly equated communism with capitalism. That is, it states the fact that the worst consequence of the loss of the Vietnam war (the boat people, re-education camps, etc) would have happened either way. In doing so, the book takes the stand that the cold war was a war over nothing- merely what color the flags in southeast Asia are. It treats morality as merely a matter of aesthetics. (to give it credit, its not being weaselly about it this time).

Of course, all that being said, its a great book, you should read it.

Labels: book reviews, comics