Category: Personal

See the whole megillah.

Today was a bit of a milestone here at the BillSaysThis offices when, after nearly two years of monitoring, our visitor counter flipped over into the sixth digit. The management refused to issue an official statement although peeping toms in the parking lot remarked that they heard some distinctive “W00T W00T” shouting when the momentous event occured. Thanks to Google for all the traffic, without that massive server farm and its referrals, we don’t know where we’d be. Mom said, “Congratulations. So when will you hit a million?” Thanks Mom.

Just wow! Now Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner can really reach back for a new routine.

Writing an OpEd piece for USA Today, Sen. Santorum continues with the foot up his a-hole routine by claiming that marriage other than that between a man and a woman is wrong: “[I]t’s just common sense that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.” (Santorum’s original claim to fame was briefly mentioned here before.) However, it’s Santorum who’s wrong, trying to make an argument based on his religious beliefs without bringing religion explicitly in the argument.

As if that matters, that people can’t see right through his poorly formulated logic. The Pennsylvania Republican marshals his arguments completely on why society recognizes and gives special legal meaning to marriages, and none of those arguments seem particularly farfetched, but he leaves one weak assertion–a Jenga piece left hanging too far out–at the base of his rhetoric and once that piece is pulled out, the whole pile crumbles. Just how is it “common sense that marriage is the union of a man and a woman”?

True, for as long as there’s been recorded history marriage has been between a man and a woman. Except for certain groups, such as the Mormons, that practiced polygamy; I expect that if I searched enough I’d find examples of societies that practiced group marriage or multiple husband/single wife systems as well. Just because it’s been that way doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Otherwise we’d still have slavery and shtetls, not to mention laws against miscegenation.

Santorum further writes that “There is an ocean of empirical data showing that the union between a man and a woman has unique benefits for children and society.” He contrasts this to single parent families. But since there has never been single gender marriage, there are no studies with which to contrast the cited statistics. Not to mention that, while 1man/1woman marriage may not be the same, as regards the positives of raising a child, as same gender marriage, but neither is the latter the same as single parent and so his main argument fails as a false analogy.

The essay ends by railing against a decision made by “a non-elected group of justices,” which he hopes will be overturned by “elected leaders.” Is the Senator suggesting that the Supreme Court is not a vital branch of our federal government? I doubt that and instead suggest he is using situational rhetoric to further roil the emotions of his supporters. One hopes that he finds himself facing serious competition in his re-election campaign in 2006 and that the people of Pennsylvania understand how poorly he represents their interests. Asshat!

[Note: I submitted a slighlty edited form of this as a letter to the editor, aren’t you all surprised?]

Should Flangy go with Grumpus or So-and-So, or simplify the whole matter by shaving it all off?

Lots of grassroots activity on this new protocol/API/religion. Please note that the affectionate nickname I’m using, (n)Echo, is used simply because the members have yet to come up with the replacement name for Echo and I’m respecting the existing project of that name.

Tristan Louis, a fellow PHP acolyte, emailed to let me know about his implementation of an RSS->(n)Echo converter. Seems like a useful tool at this point, when few blogging engines provide the new format feed natively, and his site allows you to create the conversion as a service or, if one asks nicely, he’ll send you some code.

A new draft of the API spec has been posted.

Mark, one of the key members of the cabal, has been writing up and linking commentary, so go review his last week or two’s worth of posts.

Aaron Schwartz, the teen techno-politician, has created a (n)Echo news blog.

Personally, I’m waiting for Luke to add support in SharpReader before I worry about getting or sending feeds since every currently-available feed also publishes in RSS.

My big hope is that with this system in place and supported by Blogger, I’ll be able to get some really nice, not necessarily browser-based authoring tools for my blog. Which, due to slow movement by the home team, don’t exist just now.

Rogers is puzzled over Adam Curry’s reaction to (n)Echo but my response is quite different: HA HA HA you silly big hair man!

Unlike archrival network HBO, Showtime just doesn’t seem to have the executive talent necessary to make good series. Other than Jeremiah, I can’t really think of one series they’ve put on that has been worth watching every week. Still, I’m a sucker for punishment and so I tuned into their latest offering, Dead Like Me.

This show is populated by five regulars, people who’ve died but not yet passed on to the next plane of existence. Such people are given no choice but to work as Grim Reapers, this group based in Seattle, responsible for separating our souls from our bodies just at the time of death. The reapers do their job by touching a person. If they don’t perform their assigned tasks, which they get via a (so far) mysterious list dropped under the leader’s door each morning, the ‘client’ suffers a terrible consequence. After sufficient service, the reapers are allowed to ascend, though in their undead existence no knowledge of that place is permitted.

The show’s lead is Georgia ‘George’ Lass (Ellen Muth), an 18 year old girl who’s killed by a toilet fallen off a space shuttle. Her boss is Rube, no last name, is played by Mandy Patinkin and in the first three episodes we’ve not been given a clue about who he is. Rebecca Gayeheart, Jasmine Guy, and Callum Blue play the other undead, while George’s parents and younger sister show up each episode so far still dealing with her departure.

Unfortunately, I just don’t care about George and her struggle to accept the new rules of existence she’s been given. Patinkin is a really good actor, which is more than I can say for the rest of this crew, but he’s not being given anything to work with. And the series’ basic concept is just beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief. We have this whole complex structure of existence and some type of afterlife but the transition can’t be made without the soothing touch of a Reaper?

There’s more that’s wrong with Dead Like Me but it’s just not worth writing up. Give it a skip.

As for that one good show, Jeremiah was renewed for a second season but even though more than half a year has passed since the announcement, no air date has yet been set. Way to go, Showtime execs, way to keep what little audience you have in the loop. I mean, it’s been more than a year since the last episode has aired and you haven’t even unspooled a preparatory repeat run.

Not recommended

“No blood for RSS!” So sayeth the Whumpmeister. Lots of blah blah blah. Waiting for a resolution.

This one had been on the To See list for weeks now and we were glad to have an opportunity this afternoon to see it. Bend It Like Beckham is an English film about Jesminder, the daughter of a Sikh family who idolizes David Beckham and is actually a decent footballer herself and her fight to gain acceptance of her desires by her parents.

A major subplot is the impending marriage of Jesminder’s sister and this, along with the heavily Indian cast, made me compare Bend to Monsoon Wedding, which I didn’t care for at all. Fortunately, this film is much better and the actors’ accents much more easily understood.

Parminder Nagra plays Jesminder and easily carries the weight of the film, well supported by Keira Knightley as the girl who recruits her to the soccer team and becomes, briefly, a romantic rival. Interestingly, though they both play the equivalent of high school seniors, Nagra was 26 at the time of filming and Knightley only 18. Nagra will next be gracing America with her presence in the TV series ER when the new season opens while Knightley will be all over the multiplexes this week as Orlando Bloom’s love interest in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Since I’d never heard of writer/director Gurinder Chadha before, I chalked up a bunch of poor transitions and editing choices to this being a first effort, but looking him up on IMDB showed this isn’t the case. Oh well. Seems to have done a better job on the script than direction but still adequate, including the climactic action cutting between a soccer match and an extremely energetic dance at the sister’s wedding.

Coming of age tales are quite common in movies and novels but can still be done well, as this film demonstrates. On the other hand, Hollywood turns out dreck like next week’s How to Deal and last year’s Scooby-Doo. Good to know that gems in a class with, say, American Graffitti are still being made.

Highly recommended

Novelist Jane Smiley sent in a short but sweet letter to the editor at the NY Times today and, contrary to usual practice, I’ll reproduce it here:

Maybe once was a fluke — the 2000 presidential election — but now it’s beginning to look like a pattern. Representative Tom DeLay is trying to force Texas to gerrymander before the next House election, and the Republicans in the California Legislature are holding Gov. Gray Davis hostage to a recall (news article, July 2).

It looks as if the G.O.P. has decided not to abide by the duly registered wishes of the voters, but to attempt every means to overturn elections that go to Democrats. Are we living in the third world? Is the United Nations going to have to send in election watchers to make sure we have free and fair elections?

Wake up, America! Your government is being stolen right out from under your noses by the right wing. It not only can happen here, it is happening here.

The sentences emphasized with bold are to me one of the key questions about what’s going on these days. The speeches and actions coming out of the GWB posse are such a load of crap that I’m increasingly challenged to understand current poll results. What, I wonder, is so broken with the Democratic Party that they can’t take advantage of such blatant behavior?

You watch shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, NYPD Blue, and such, and realize that being a witness in a serious trial is not a task one takes on lightly. There’s a reason, beyond the certainty of avoiding a fickle jury, why television detectives go to the lengths of getting a confession–NYPD Blue demonstrated this clearly in an episode where the only useful eyewitness was one the squad’s little boys–and that’s because of the danger to witnesses. In fact, the NY Times has an excellent (though lengthy) article today on the killing of a witness named Bobby Gibson: Justice, Safety and the System. Certainly raises the question in my mind of what I would do if confronted with the situation.

In The Coming, Joe Haldeman posits a society in the year 2054 where politics has devolved to the point where even I would be looking at GWB as an excellent President. University of Florida astronomy professor Aurora Bell detects an anomalous reading in her monitoring of gamma rays which translate literally as the message “We’re coming” repeated over and over again. Checking with a colleague on the Moon, her determination that the message has been sent from the outer reaches of the Solar System, from a trip travelling barely below the speed of light is confirmed. The ship will arrive at Earth in three months, on New Year’s Day.

Aliens on the way? Haldeman leaves the answer to that question for the very end of the story, though since this only runs a thin 217 pages that isn’t too long to wait. He’s not writing about aliens here, anyway, but about how humans will prepare for the meeting. Though his societal evolution isn’t positive–The Coming was published in 2000, before our latest round of troubles truly began–it also isn’t that different from today except for homosexuality being outlawed (seems like he got that wrong) and urban traffic coming under control of automation.

Sadly, this book simply never develops the narrative energy I need although Haldeman is a good enough author that I kept reading, hoping for the best, and he does have a way with words. The story is just really slight, even though he tries to pump it up with a subplot involving the professor’s husband and a local mobster. Honestly, for the first 100 pages I was still expecting the ship to show up and have that be the main focus but no.

Haldeman posted a bit of the beginning as unformatted text to his personal website.

Not recommended

A new problem for the French Terrorist!

The comic strip has its own page now, woot!

What a blast! This was a fun, wink at the audience, trash ourselves kind of movie with plenty of sexy bodies of both genders to fill out the slack. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle has what it takes in a Summer movie, unlike, say Matrix: Reloaded or The Hulk: put the featured attractions on the screen and skip the rehash of Philosophy 201.

Sure most of the eye candy is barely-clothed women, especially the Angels and Bad Angel Demi Moore, but there are some hot guys; the script even uses Alex’s (Drew Barrymore) predilection for bad guys to pick out targets. Terrific soundtrack, with a nice mix of current and classic tunes, lots of dancing especially from Natalie (Cameron Diaz), and an explanation of how Bernie Mac and Bill Murray came to be brother Bosley’s. Eye twisting stunts but thankfully, except for some wire work, few special effects–there’ve been quite enough unnecessary impossible visions this Summer.

Best of all, writers John August and Cormac and Marianne Wibberly keep the plot simple and moving towards the climax. The few subplots, like Alex’s inadequecies and assassin’s target Max, are short and work to support the main story. Now don’t get me wrong, Full Throttle isn’t literary quality cinema, it’s a campy and fun, get out of the house and enjoy a couple of hours movie.

Recommended

Next time you’re in Manhattan, or at least the next time I’m there, diet or no, I’m going to visit Larry Forgione’s Signature Cafe at Lord & Taylor’s department store on Fifth Avenue to try a new kind of ice cream sandwich! First on the list: “Dense, nutty chocolate bread provides the wrapper for two sandwiches, one filled with chocolate ice cream, the other with peanut butter…”

The pumpkin returns to have fun with the French Terrorist!

Texas: Republicans try to steamroller an extra Congressional redistricting. This is the leadership’s second attempt after the Democrats foiled them a while back by fleeing to Oklahoma.

California: Republicans try to recall Gray Davis, less than a year after his re-election. though not all state Republicans are in favor. Darrell Issa, a Republican Congressman who made millions providing Americans with devices to evade the police, is putting up a huge amount of money (somewhere around $1,000,000) to fund the recall campaign; Issa, of course, has declared himself a candidate to replace Davis should the recall make the ballot.