Seeing as we have all these new follk swinging by. If you like the new stuff, you may like the old:
Conversations with Tyrone (yep, we now get requests):
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
#436: I Love Lucy -- Issue Zero! The Origin Issue!
Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factor (Koufax Finalist)
Lunch Discussions #213: Canaries and Meth
Lunch Discussions #349: And Sometimes The're Non-Starters
Comics and Movie Geekery:
How to Save the Movie Theater Industry
America at 24fps
Blue Beetle Q&A #1
Blue Beetle Q&A #2
Fandamentalism
The famous "Geek Hierarchy" Chart
Moral Advantage: Gamer
Comics: Year of the Bummer
Comics: Womb Crazy!
Wold Newton Universe
Zombie News/ ZOMBIE TALES
Comics: Sweet Four-Color Vengeance
SPOILERS -- the Interview with God
Zombie Tales #1 - Everybody Digs Zombies!
New Media Writing (Rage against the Studio Machines, Baby):
4th Generation Media
Video Ipod: 4GM Baby Steps
Where Anime Gets it Right
4GM: Perception Wars
Writing:
Writing Life
Writing: Beginning
Writing: Whose Viewpoint?
Eternity Has Residuals
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.1)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 2)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 3)
TV: Corner Gas
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.4)
Writing: Software
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 5)
Writing: Plot and Story
Writing: How Small a World?
Writing: Q&A #1
Writing: Q&A #1 Followup
Writing: You Don't Need Pg. 11
Writing: Agents & Managers
Writing: The Pitch
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Background
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Prep
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - The Room
Writing: Screenwriting The Sequence Approach - Book Review
Writing: Action Sequences
Writing: Characters and Race
Writing: The Freelance Episode #1
Our attempt at screenwriting academia:
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt.1)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 2)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 3)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 4)
Global Frequency
It's a "Global" Frequency Now
Miranda is ... annoyed
One Last GF Question
GF wow
GF Reviews and E-mails
GF Update #1
The True Geek Conversations(tm)
#3892: Batman vs. Punisher
#651: Catwoman Edition
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
#436: I Love Lucy -- Issue Zero! The Origin Issue!
Politics:
The Latest Rants:
"Wait, Aren't You Scared?"
Bar Talk: A Bartending Story
Lions led by Donkeys (the most viewed post here, I believe)
Flunking Out of the Electoral College
Electoral College #2: I Hate That Goddam Map
Electoral College #3
FISA in One Syllable Words
Colbert Commentary: Why Tell the Jokes?
Pull-Out in 2007
Defense Against Celebrity Marriage Amendment
Lunch Discussions #145: The Crazification Factor
One Angry Feingold
Rule of Law? Over There, Behind My Socks
Al-Quaker
The George Who Cried Wolf
Oversight
New Year's Resolution
The Half-Assed President
The "Liberal Hollywood, Not Quite" Series:
I WISH Hollywood Was That Organized
Just. Stay. Down.
The Rest:
Who's Your Daddy, Broward County?
I Miss Republicans (nominated for a Koufax, spiffy!)
Spongiform Sexuality
Win Kamchatka, Win the World
Oh. Oh, Canada.
Gay Marriage
Activist Judges
Will of the People - (the inter-racial marriage/gay marriage polling stats)
I will Punch Florida in the Goddam Neck
SPOILERS! -- the Interview with God
Swearingen for Senate
You Can Know Jesus ...
Learn to Say Ain't
Senate Quicksand
Learn to Say Ain't - Feedback & Criticism
That Ironic Smell
"Toxic Spiritual Nature" ...
The Groom Grinds a 360!
The President and Intelligent Design
Hybrids and Hypotheses
Iraq and Roll
Booming Babies Still Want Bidey
57% of Americans are Traitors
I'm All Out of Reasonable
'ellllooooo Clinton!
Somehow We Have Grown Too Small for our Britches
Commander in Chief
"You are on the Global Photoshop"
Bernard McGuirk is a BIG MAN
Fundraising
Army Emergency Fund - Total
Katrina Relief - Total
Pakistan earthquake Relief - Total
The semi-famous LOST: You Uncurious Motherf*ckers
... and, just because it was always my favorite:
Top 10 John Wayne Titles That Could Also Be Porn Titles.
Thanks for visiting. And leave with the assurance that anything you find interesting or amusing -- that was an accident.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Friday, August 11, 2006
Fisher House Wrap-up
We're getting heavy linkage, so it seems a good time for a final push. Please use the Paypal button to the right to donate to this month's KFM charity, the Fisher House, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers during their treatment, so families can stay together. I match all donations -- so if you like my writing donate; if you HATE me, then donate MORE, and bankrupt me with your hate!
I Should Be Used To It By Now
I wrote the previous post at about 1 am, without having seen any mass-media follow-up coverage. All my info on this stuff tends to come from security-oriented websites I frequent, coupled with some e-mail friends In the Business, as it were.
And yet literally, literally, the first words I hear on CNN as I come out of my shower this morning?
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
*sigh*
EDIT: Juan Cole has a quick summary post, with links for more info on the very impressive, apparently year-long investigation, here.
And yet literally, literally, the first words I hear on CNN as I come out of my shower this morning?
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
*sigh*
EDIT: Juan Cole has a quick summary post, with links for more info on the very impressive, apparently year-long investigation, here.
"Wait, Aren't You Scared?"
Errr, no. And if you are, you frankly should be a little goddam embarrassed.
No false bravado and it's not that I don't take terrorism seriously. I do, which I why I voted for the guy who believed in securing our ports and fighting terrorism with criminal investigation methods -- which is, if we may remind everybody, how this particular plot was busted.
I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terror-ized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they're just coming the long way around.
Osama Bin Laden got everything on his Christmas list after 9/11 -- US out of Saudi Arabia; the greatest military in the world over-extended, pinned down and distracted; the greatest proponent of democracy suddenly alienated from its allies; a US culture verily eager to destroy freedoms that little scumfuck could never even dream to touch himself -- I would like to deny him the last little check on the clipboard, i.e. constant terror. I panic, they win. To coin a phrase, Osama Bin Laden can suck my insouciance.
I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations -- "Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don't have the stones to face that fact head-on!" -- who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!
I may have shared too much there.
To be honest, it's not like I'm a brave man. I'm not. At all. It just, well, it doesn't take that much strength of will not to be scared. Who the hell am I supposed to be scared of? Joseph Padilla, dirty bomber who didn't actually know how to build a bomb, had no allies or supplies, and against whom the government case is so weak they're now shuffling him from court to court to avoid the public embarassment of a trial? The fuckwits who were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Richard Reid, the Zeppo of suicide bombers? The great Canadian plot that had organized over the internet, was penetrated by the Mounties on day one, and we were told had a TRUCK FULL OF EXPLOSIVES ... which they had bought from the Mounties in a sting operation but hey let's skip right over that. Or how about the "compound" of Christian cultists in Florida who were planning on blowing up the Sears Tower with ... kung fu?
And now these guys. As the initial "OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!" hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
-- was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.
This is terrorism's A-game? Sack up, people.
Again, this is not to do anything less than marvel as cool, well-trained, ruthless law-enforcement professionals -- who spent decades honing their craft chasing my IRA cousins -- execute their job magnificently. Should we take this seriously? DAMN STRAIGHT we take this seriously. Left unchecked, these terror-fanboy bastards would have gone down in history. These cretins' intent was monstrous; they should, and will, all go to jail for a very long time. This is the part where we all breathe a sigh of relief that there are some actual professionals working the job in some countries.
But God gave me a brain, and a modicum of spine. Taking something seriously, and panicking over it are two different things. I do not assign all dangers and risks equal value. Tight little freelance squads with leak-proof operational discipline, like the 7/7 guys, -- those I worry about. A nuke coming in through one of ridiculously open ports -- I am concerned. Not bio-terror so much, because it's a shitty delivery mechanism. That the Muslim population of England seems to be becoming radicalized enough to sprout up these plots, that's not a good thing to consider. al-Queda involvement -- good if true because this means their recruiting is shitty: bad if true because this means they're back in business: bad if false because it means al-Queda has indeed become a "brand": but good if false because it reinforces the idea that they're operationally crippled (and if Zwahari is involved, I personally would like a word with whatever idiot nation took their eyes of the ball and let him escape ...)
... You get the point. There are a million factors in this New World of Terror. You weigh 'em, you process, and then you move on.
You move on, building a better international society so that luddite fundamentalist criminal gangs/cults of personality are further and further marginalized.
Or, if you don't understand 4th Generation Warfare at all, you move on, bombing the shit out of nation-states and handing your opponents massive PR victories. Either way, you move the fuck on.
Maybe it's just, I cast my eyes back on the last century ...
FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.
This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes.
It's now part of our life. Let's try not to hop like the trained monkeys every time it happens.
I'm just pleased that for once, nobody --
"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances."
-- ahhhh. Never mind
(NOTE: This is getting heavy linkage, so I'll poke the new readers and linkers to donate to this month's charity, the Fisher House, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers during their treatment, so families can stay together. I match all donations -- so if you like my writing donate; if you HATE me, then donate MORE, and bankrupt me with your hate!)
(NOTE: the Second. With all the traffic coming in, threw up a new INDEX PAGE up top. You like the new stuff, you may like the old. Take a look)
*(bottle of 18-year old Scotch to whoever can meaningfully define THAT strategic goal, by the way)
No false bravado and it's not that I don't take terrorism seriously. I do, which I why I voted for the guy who believed in securing our ports and fighting terrorism with criminal investigation methods -- which is, if we may remind everybody, how this particular plot was busted.
I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terror-ized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they're just coming the long way around.
Osama Bin Laden got everything on his Christmas list after 9/11 -- US out of Saudi Arabia; the greatest military in the world over-extended, pinned down and distracted; the greatest proponent of democracy suddenly alienated from its allies; a US culture verily eager to destroy freedoms that little scumfuck could never even dream to touch himself -- I would like to deny him the last little check on the clipboard, i.e. constant terror. I panic, they win. To coin a phrase, Osama Bin Laden can suck my insouciance.
I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations -- "Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don't have the stones to face that fact head-on!" -- who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!
I may have shared too much there.
To be honest, it's not like I'm a brave man. I'm not. At all. It just, well, it doesn't take that much strength of will not to be scared. Who the hell am I supposed to be scared of? Joseph Padilla, dirty bomber who didn't actually know how to build a bomb, had no allies or supplies, and against whom the government case is so weak they're now shuffling him from court to court to avoid the public embarassment of a trial? The fuckwits who were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Richard Reid, the Zeppo of suicide bombers? The great Canadian plot that had organized over the internet, was penetrated by the Mounties on day one, and we were told had a TRUCK FULL OF EXPLOSIVES ... which they had bought from the Mounties in a sting operation but hey let's skip right over that. Or how about the "compound" of Christian cultists in Florida who were planning on blowing up the Sears Tower with ... kung fu?
And now these guys. As the initial "OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!" hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:
"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"
-- was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.
This is terrorism's A-game? Sack up, people.
Again, this is not to do anything less than marvel as cool, well-trained, ruthless law-enforcement professionals -- who spent decades honing their craft chasing my IRA cousins -- execute their job magnificently. Should we take this seriously? DAMN STRAIGHT we take this seriously. Left unchecked, these terror-fanboy bastards would have gone down in history. These cretins' intent was monstrous; they should, and will, all go to jail for a very long time. This is the part where we all breathe a sigh of relief that there are some actual professionals working the job in some countries.
But God gave me a brain, and a modicum of spine. Taking something seriously, and panicking over it are two different things. I do not assign all dangers and risks equal value. Tight little freelance squads with leak-proof operational discipline, like the 7/7 guys, -- those I worry about. A nuke coming in through one of ridiculously open ports -- I am concerned. Not bio-terror so much, because it's a shitty delivery mechanism. That the Muslim population of England seems to be becoming radicalized enough to sprout up these plots, that's not a good thing to consider. al-Queda involvement -- good if true because this means their recruiting is shitty: bad if true because this means they're back in business: bad if false because it means al-Queda has indeed become a "brand": but good if false because it reinforces the idea that they're operationally crippled (and if Zwahari is involved, I personally would like a word with whatever idiot nation took their eyes of the ball and let him escape ...)
... You get the point. There are a million factors in this New World of Terror. You weigh 'em, you process, and then you move on.
You move on, building a better international society so that luddite fundamentalist criminal gangs/cults of personality are further and further marginalized.
Or, if you don't understand 4th Generation Warfare at all, you move on, bombing the shit out of nation-states and handing your opponents massive PR victories. Either way, you move the fuck on.
Maybe it's just, I cast my eyes back on the last century ...
FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.
This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes.
It's now part of our life. Let's try not to hop like the trained monkeys every time it happens.
I'm just pleased that for once, nobody --
"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances."
-- ahhhh. Never mind
(NOTE: This is getting heavy linkage, so I'll poke the new readers and linkers to donate to this month's charity, the Fisher House, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers during their treatment, so families can stay together. I match all donations -- so if you like my writing donate; if you HATE me, then donate MORE, and bankrupt me with your hate!)
(NOTE: the Second. With all the traffic coming in, threw up a new INDEX PAGE up top. You like the new stuff, you may like the old. Take a look)
*(bottle of 18-year old Scotch to whoever can meaningfully define THAT strategic goal, by the way)
Monday, August 07, 2006
Two-Movie Weekend
So rare. The weekend where you catch two movies, and they're both pretty damn good -- hell one ties Thank You for Smoking for my favorite of the year.
The Descent: I am mildly claustrophobic. There were times in this lean, nasty little horror film that I genuinely felt like puking from anxiety. And that was before the ... bad things happen. Women kicking ass, not being victims. Very recommended.
Little Miss Sunshine: If you'd told me five years ago that I would revel in the sheer joy of seeing Greg Kinnear and Steve Carrell act together, I'd have taken away your bong. This may be one of those movies that there's less to than I initially think because of the warm feelings it generates, cut with a helluva lot of sheer shot-craft and acting, but damn. A wonderful example of what you can do at this price range. And their DP and Location Manager should get a big wet kiss on the mouth. Highly recommended.
As recommendations without context are useless, a quick look at my top picks for 2006 so far. In no particular order:
-- Thank You for Smoking
-- An Inconvenient Truth
-- Brick
-- Little Miss Sunshine
-- The Descent
-- Slither (fuck you. I say SLITHER!)
-- Kid's Category: Monster House
I hold reserve on Superman Returns until the end of the year for personal reasons, and a few others I didn't catch on the big screen. Jesus, no wonder I'm in this weird "I want to do smaller movies" phase of my career. Either my tastes have shifted, or the movies have shifted my tastes for me ...
The Descent: I am mildly claustrophobic. There were times in this lean, nasty little horror film that I genuinely felt like puking from anxiety. And that was before the ... bad things happen. Women kicking ass, not being victims. Very recommended.
Little Miss Sunshine: If you'd told me five years ago that I would revel in the sheer joy of seeing Greg Kinnear and Steve Carrell act together, I'd have taken away your bong. This may be one of those movies that there's less to than I initially think because of the warm feelings it generates, cut with a helluva lot of sheer shot-craft and acting, but damn. A wonderful example of what you can do at this price range. And their DP and Location Manager should get a big wet kiss on the mouth. Highly recommended.
As recommendations without context are useless, a quick look at my top picks for 2006 so far. In no particular order:
-- Thank You for Smoking
-- An Inconvenient Truth
-- Brick
-- Little Miss Sunshine
-- The Descent
-- Slither (fuck you. I say SLITHER!)
-- Kid's Category: Monster House
I hold reserve on Superman Returns until the end of the year for personal reasons, and a few others I didn't catch on the big screen. Jesus, no wonder I'm in this weird "I want to do smaller movies" phase of my career. Either my tastes have shifted, or the movies have shifted my tastes for me ...
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