The Blog with No Name

So, I’m in California right now on a spur of the moment trip to see my whole family, my grandparents, and my aunt, uncle, and cousins from the D.C. area. I’ll be back home and posting again on Thursday. I should have quite a few pictures.

Yesterday my friend Greg was in town visiting his family over the Memorial Day weekend, and I was able to convince him to go to Revenge of the Sith with me. I don’t have too much to add to the general consensus about the film: best of of the prequels but that’s not saying much. All right let’s get this over with.

I couldn’t help but feel, and Greg agreed with me on this, that none of the actors/actresses were really trying. The lone exception would be Ian McDiarmid who plays Senator/Chancellor/Supreme Evil Dude Palpatine/Darth Sidious (who ever knew that being the most evil guy in the galaxy required one to wear so many hats!). He was quite good I thought and very believable. Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan made a good effort too I suppose. However, all the other A-list actors including Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, Jimmy Smits, and Hayden Christensen gave off the impression that they just gave up with trying to make their lines seem real, and I don’t really blame them. They were given really clunky lines, and they all knew the movie was going to be phenomenally successful whether they tried or not. Hayden Christensen varied from passably good to just incompetent. I think he was given some of the best lines in the movie, but it seemed every time he was given a real meaty line he just let it fall flat. Towards the end of the movie, when he really started embracing the Dark Side, he got better, and, I gotta admit, he’s got a real good evil glower. Overall, my impression of him improved since this time around he wasn’t the whiney little prick that he was in Episode II. Yoda played a prominent roll this time around, and you get to see him fighting a lot, which is always amusing. My only problem with Yoda was that his Yoda-talk seemed very forced. He delivered some otherwise good lines that were essentially destroyed by that incessant subject/predicate reversal.

The plot was good and moved briskly. Lucas doesn’t waste time catching everybody up with the story line. This time he didn’t engage in the schizophrenic jumping between different story threads like he did in Episode II. Instead he seemed more interested in using neato iMovie wipes between scenes. The opening battle scene was pretty sweet to see on the big screen. I really like epic sci-fi space battles, and Lucas delivered this time. The ground battles on the planets were fun to watch too. The lightsaber battles were the fiercest and most vicious of them all. Also a record number of limbs were severed this time around. The last battle between Obi-wan and Anakin was essentially just a blur of lightsabers in dark corridors. Very dramatic and very cool.

The final lesson of Revenge of the Sith is that women make men do stupid things and thus should be avoided for the sake of the galaxy. Seriously, if it hadn’t been for this Padme chick there would have been no Death Star, no Emperor Palpatine, no Empire, no Ewoks dying, no Han frozen in carbonite, no slaughter of the Jawas, and no Death Star II.

Pros: It’s Star Wars, Greedo doesn’t shoot first, entertaining sci-fi, R2-D2 flys, Jar Jar doesn’t have a single line, the end of the prequels.
Cons:No Han Solo, acting is half-hearted, clunky dialogue, Anakin falls to the Dark Side for lame reasons, battle droids have cute voices.

Today I woke up bright and early after sleeping a good solid 8 hours. It’s nice to feel fresh and rested. I resolved to get out of the house today and enjoy a little bit of the sun, so I came to downtown Salem. Now instead of sitting at home in the dark, I’m sitting in a coffeeshop in the dark. There’s just no good outdoor seating in town. At least I have an iced Rusty Bucket to sip on while kooky world music plays over the stereo. Besides, in here I have access to free wifi, which is A Good Thing. I’m thinking about spending some more time in the dark by catching a matinee of Revenge of the Sith. I’d say I’m committing a high crime in the geek world by delaying the watching of it so long. I saw all the other ones, including the special edition versions of the original trilogies, on opening day. I just don’t like the idea of going to the movies alone.

Last night I had the brilliant idea of ordering 3 pizzas from Dominos. You know they have that 3 medium one-topping pizzas for $5 a pop. I ate all of one last night, and I’m going to save the other 2 for the rest of the week. Pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Bachelor life is good. Why would any sane man give it up?

Looks like the French are going to say non to the EU constitution, which essentially dooms the ratification of the constitution this time around because every member country has to ratify the constitution. Though the vote hasn’t been held yet, it seems most of the oui-leaders have resigned themselves to defeat:

The mood of pessimism that descended on the French Government after ten successive polls showing the “no” camp leading was echoed by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French President, who drafted the constitution. He blamed the failures of the “yes” campaign on the half-heartedness of France’s leaders.

“Our current leaders are of course believers in the idea of Europe but in their heart of hearts they are not men and women who are inspired by a European feeling,” he told a French newspaper.

President Chirac will go on television tonight to deliver a last-ditch appeal to his country to resist the temptation to vote “no” and trigger a crisis for the whole European Union.

But the President, who called the referendum in July last year but has done little campaigning, was reported to be pessimistic and telling visitors to the Elysée Palace that he expected a “no”.

I’m not too familiar with EU constitution, but I haven’t heard anything good about it. I know if I was in Europe I wouldn’t want to be giving up my country’s sovereignty to some faceless bureaucrat.

Here’s WFB’s poignant, pity response to the question. I wish I could write and speak like he can.

I knew what to do with gorgeous days in Seattle. I could go downtown, walk along the waterfront, or I could hang out in Queen Anne. Here in Salem I have no idea what to do with it. There’s no place to really walk to except maybe to the “downtown” area and get a iced drink or something. Not exactly fun, but it would put me out in the sun. It’s also lame that I have these beautiful days and nobody to do stuff with. It’d be nice if I had one good friend down here.

A couple of things bug me about this town. First, there’s no place for me to read outside. I’m a little particular about where I do my reading, and I tell you there are no places around here to do it. I can’t do it in my neighborhood becuase there are too many loud kids, yelling mothers, dogs barking, trains careening down the tracks, and power tools. Most of the public parks around Salem either don’t have good places to sit or just don’t appeal to me. Downtown Salem would be pretty good, but there’s next to no seating on the sidewalks. And most of the seating on the sidewalk is on the shady side of the street! The other thing that bugs me, and I’m not sure why it does, is the flatness of Salem. I do miss the hills and mountains I’ve lived around for the past 8 years or so, but this goes beyond more than just missing them. I’m thinking both “I miss the mountains” and “Why don’t you have some freakin’ hills, you stupid town?”. It annoys me, and this annoyance is separate from the missing. So, since it’s annoying to just see the flatness of the town it’s a mental impediment to me just going out and walking around like I sometimes did in Seattle. I do go out and walk around, but it’s not nearly as enjoyable as it was in Seattle.

Well, I still have this gorgeous day here. I better figure out something to do with it!

So, Time thought it would be cool to list the top 100 best movies. I’d consider myself somewhat of a novice film buff (though I’ll be the first to admit my specialty is B-movies, cheesy sci-fi, bad horror, and ’80’s action flicks), but I’ve only seen 24 of these movies! Heck, about a third of them I’ve never even heard of! So my conclusion is that this list was put together by film snobs who wanted to show the world how cool they were by listing a bunch of obscure films. I do notice that Star Wars made the list . . . but so did Pulp Fiction which is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. They got one of those new fangled podcasts explaining how the list was put together, but I’m not that interested in learning how they invented the new criteria for a good movie that they obviously needed for such a decidedly lacking list.

Ever feel like this?

A couple of French dudes surveyed the rest of Europe, asking them for 5 words to describe the French. Unsurprisingly, it apppears the rest of Europe hate the French. Money quote:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as “chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless”. However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.

For the Germans, the French are “pretentious, offhand and frivolous”. The Dutch describe them as “agitated, talkative and shallow.” The Spanish see them as “cold, distant, vain and impolite” and the Portuguese as “preaching”. In Italy they comes across as “snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed” and the Greeks find them “not very with it, egocentric bons vivants”.

[My favorite] Interestingly, the Swedes consider them “disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty”.

I feel a bit better about my rather intense dislike of all things French (except for French bread, French toast, French fries, and shaved French women) since I now have proof it’s not an outgrowth of my ultra-right-wing, pro-America-damn-the-world, theocratic idealogy. If the Europeans hate the French, then it must be because the French have some truly detestable quality about them.

If I were to describe the French in 5 words it would be: prissy, haughty, ungrateful, shallow, and untrustworthy. Share your own if you want. I think this also calls for a new poll.

UPDATE: I posted a rather large comment explaining this post and responding to comments.

(via The Corner)

Sen. Frist just announced the cloture vote will be on Tuesday. AUGH! And I’ve had CSPAN2 droning on and on for the good part of 2 days. Senatorial debate is not the most exciting thing ever. I’m not sure where the Senate got the title of “The Greatest Deliberative Body in the World,” but it makes me sad to think that this might be true. I guess it got a little exciting when Ted Kennedy started getting red in the face and yelling. Fire and brimstone! I love it! Of course, this is a filibuster, so most senators are shooting to fill up the time not the history books. I swear I heard the same speech from 10 different senators. The only comforting thing about it was that some times it sounded like they were basically reading right off of the paper I wrote. I’m not sure if that means I wrote a good paper or a really bad one.

National Review has added some nuance to its position on filibusters. Back in December they adopted the position that instituting rule changes to end the Democrat’s filibustering would be a “mistake.” Now , the editors opine, “For Republicans to leave the filibusters in place now after months of demanding a change would be ignominious.”

National Review’s own Jonah Goldberg calls this a reversal, but I’d say this is a mischaracterization. Ponnuru has already responded, ” . . . what’s inconsistent about suggesting that it may have been wrong to go down a particular road but that now that we have, we ought to go forward?” This is how I’d interpret it too. Though I disagree with NR that changing the rules is a “mistake,” I do agree with them that for the GOP to suddenly give up this fight would be politically disastrous. It means they would have had their teeth kicked in by a party that’s completely in the minority. They may have picked a bad fight, but they better end it or they’ll be getting more bruises later.

NR might have some inconsistency in their position, but at least they aren’t blatantly inconsistent as the New York Times.

My good buddy Chris sent in this story on one of Hawaii’s worst air polluter: Kilauea volcano. Money quote:

Since it began erupting on Jan. 3, 1983, the volcano has been sending an average of 1,000 metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each day, according to the Hawaii chapter of the American Lung Association.

This is 6,000 times the amount emitted by a major industrial polluter on the mainland, making Kilauea the nation’s top producer of sulfur dioxide.

The sulfur dioxide from Kilauea reacts with other chemicals in the air to form a hazy, naturally occurring pollution known locally as “vog,” or volcanic smog. When the lava enters the ocean, concentrations of hydrochloric acid are also formed.

To be fair, it should be noted that this pollution isn’t nearly as bad as steel towns in Pennslyvania and areas with high traffic congestion on the mainland.

I’ve blogged about icky polluting volcanoes before.

“Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit.” — Judge Janice Rogers Brown

One of the things I can do now that I have nothing to do is I can watch the Senate debates on judicial nominations. CSPAN2 is streamed over the net for free and happens to be the only form of television to which I have ready access. So, instead of running off to see Return of the Sith 4 times in a row, I’m sitting at home watching CSPAN2. Such is life in Salem, Oregon. Anyway, during the debates, Democrats like to throw this quote up by Judge Brown as an example of her shockingly out-of-the-mainstream mentality. I dunno, I kinda like it. It may be a little overstated, but I’d agree with the general idea behind it.

As is probably pretty obvious by the dearth of postings, I’ve been a little out of it the past couple of weeks. With the end of school, I entered a kind of a funk. I wasn’t depressed or anything, I just didn’t want to talk to people or try to keep up with the world. My unread items at Bloglines was pretty high, and after a brief skimming through most of it this morning, I’ve decided I didn’t miss out on much (and I doubt the world missed much of me either, so it’s all fair). I’ve also been trying to correct a completely abnormal sleep schedule that was leaving me pretty much exhausted all the time. I think I finally got it beat though. I hope this week to get back into the regular swing of things. I need to find a new book to read, get some writing done, and find a new place to live. The next couple of months of my life are going to see a lot of changes. It’ll be good to face it all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

It’s mornings like these I really miss those lazy Saturday mornings I’d spend reading at the top of Queen Anne hill in Seattle. It was so relaxing to sit in the sun, sip an iced drink, read a good book, and watch the people go by, while working on my farmer’s tan. This morning I went to the local 24 hour Mexican joint and got a breakfast burrito with ham and an extra helping of grease (to give my arteries a challenge). Then I walked to the local Circle K and got an all too small V8. There I learned Elvis was still alive and will be running for President in ‘08. Talk about a dark horse candidate! Such is life in Salem, Oregon.

2 days until it hits theaters, and Revenge of the Sith has a comfortable 83% freshness rating! It boggles the mind, but there it is.