I was driving down to one of my numerous doctors appointments last week (thats pretty much all I do; dont I make you cry? (like, shut the fuck up and get over it all maybe, I know)). I was listening to the radio and they were having a discussion about the ethics of torture! Seriously! I was like, Am I fucking dreaming? This cant possibly be real! Didnt matter what I thought; it was real. There were folks arguing con-torture and folks arguing pro-torture. I mean, they werent even trying to use more palatable words. So it was like Neal Conan announcing - torture: should we use it or shouldnt we, and if we do, how far should we go?
Back in the late 80s (you know back when I was fucking alive!) I used to sit around with my skinhead friends and they would talk about how fascism was going to come back just like in Germany in the 20s and 30s and I was like, No way, the situation was totally different. Germany had just been humiliated in the Great War, there was hyper-inflation, etc. People were hungry and poor and in a much worse state than America today. Things may get bad, but Nazi Germany will never recur.
Im not entirely sure what the deal is. The Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on 09/11/2001 were, IMHO, in the grand scheme of misery and death that occurs on this planet from day to day, while tragic, not really of any particular mention other than the World Trade Center is to my knowledge the tallest building that has ever been toppled by an act of war. People are killed in large numbers all the time. I dont see any reason to make special note because this particular group of corpses are American corpses. Live Americans seem to manage to make lots more non-American corpses on a regular basis. They have excelled in such especially since 09/11/2001. Nevertheless, regardless of how little sense it makes to me, the fact that on this one particular occasion it happened to be American corpses, a fundamental shift has occurred in the attitude of Americans, and Americans are so fucking loud and obnoxious that this of course affects the entire world, and the entire world must take a side. What affects a few fat and lazy Americans must necessarily affect the entire world, and an eye-for-an-eye just wont do vengeance must be visited 10 to 1.
So now Talk of the Nation on NPR discusses the pros and cons of torture like theyre talking about a legitimate means to gather intelligence.
Later that night I saw The Polar Express in 3D at the brand new IMAX theater here in Cincinnati. Now, the Museum Center here has had an IMAX for a long time, but they only show National Geographic type movies. I wanted to see Fantasia 2000 in the IMAX back in, well, 2000, I guess, but the closest place it was showing was Louisville, KY, which is about 2 hrs. or so from Cincinnati, which would make it 3 or so from here where I live. I got the Fantasia Anthology DVD boxed set, which is cool, but I wouldve still like to have see the IMAX deal. Now, yall folks on the coasts and maybe yall in Chicago may have heerd of this here new-fangled 3D IMAX bfore, but us river folk here in Ohio taint never heerd a no such thing. Seriously, though, Ive seen 3D movies before, like the re-release of The House of Wax, which I thought was really cool, but the 3D effect was totally lost on me. The red and blue paper glasses did nothing for me. I guess that says a lot for The House of Wax, since it was still a really good movie even though it was all blurry the whole way through. Maybe its the fact that I wear glasses, but the red and blue paper deals work for other people with glasses, so I dont know. Anyway, this new 3D IMAX had these fancy, polarized things that were more like really nice safety glasses.
And they worked. The 3D effect was awesome. At first, it was kinda off-putting for me because that kid was really way inside my personal space. Maybe my personal space is a lot larger than most peoples, but I got used to it after a while anyway. Then I just started relaxing and really enjoying the movie. The story was nothing exceptional kid goes to the North Pole and resolves his doubts concerning the existence of Santa Claus. I am the punk rock Christmas guy, and despite the fact that I am having a bad year, I can still make an objective assessment that this was no exceptional Christmas story. But that didnt really matter. There was kindness and caring and warmth and magic in the story, which was really refreshing after an afternoon of people having a civilized discussion about torture. Besides that, the film was simply beautiful the lights and the colors and the shapes and the shadows were emotionally moving. The art direction in this film deserves praise. I dont hold much for Oscars, but this film deserves a few.
The effect it had on me was this I find it jarring that in this world in which we live there are still people capable of creating such beauty. Its not going to do much for some Iraqi kid in Baghdad with a belly full of Washington bullets, but there are some people in this world who are pretty fucking miserable, like myself, whether we have a right to be or not, that the beauty of such things does reach. For at least some length of time, the pain is made bearable.
Back in the late 80s (you know back when I was fucking alive!) I used to sit around with my skinhead friends and they would talk about how fascism was going to come back just like in Germany in the 20s and 30s and I was like, No way, the situation was totally different. Germany had just been humiliated in the Great War, there was hyper-inflation, etc. People were hungry and poor and in a much worse state than America today. Things may get bad, but Nazi Germany will never recur.
Im not entirely sure what the deal is. The Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on 09/11/2001 were, IMHO, in the grand scheme of misery and death that occurs on this planet from day to day, while tragic, not really of any particular mention other than the World Trade Center is to my knowledge the tallest building that has ever been toppled by an act of war. People are killed in large numbers all the time. I dont see any reason to make special note because this particular group of corpses are American corpses. Live Americans seem to manage to make lots more non-American corpses on a regular basis. They have excelled in such especially since 09/11/2001. Nevertheless, regardless of how little sense it makes to me, the fact that on this one particular occasion it happened to be American corpses, a fundamental shift has occurred in the attitude of Americans, and Americans are so fucking loud and obnoxious that this of course affects the entire world, and the entire world must take a side. What affects a few fat and lazy Americans must necessarily affect the entire world, and an eye-for-an-eye just wont do vengeance must be visited 10 to 1.
So now Talk of the Nation on NPR discusses the pros and cons of torture like theyre talking about a legitimate means to gather intelligence.
Later that night I saw The Polar Express in 3D at the brand new IMAX theater here in Cincinnati. Now, the Museum Center here has had an IMAX for a long time, but they only show National Geographic type movies. I wanted to see Fantasia 2000 in the IMAX back in, well, 2000, I guess, but the closest place it was showing was Louisville, KY, which is about 2 hrs. or so from Cincinnati, which would make it 3 or so from here where I live. I got the Fantasia Anthology DVD boxed set, which is cool, but I wouldve still like to have see the IMAX deal. Now, yall folks on the coasts and maybe yall in Chicago may have heerd of this here new-fangled 3D IMAX bfore, but us river folk here in Ohio taint never heerd a no such thing. Seriously, though, Ive seen 3D movies before, like the re-release of The House of Wax, which I thought was really cool, but the 3D effect was totally lost on me. The red and blue paper glasses did nothing for me. I guess that says a lot for The House of Wax, since it was still a really good movie even though it was all blurry the whole way through. Maybe its the fact that I wear glasses, but the red and blue paper deals work for other people with glasses, so I dont know. Anyway, this new 3D IMAX had these fancy, polarized things that were more like really nice safety glasses.
And they worked. The 3D effect was awesome. At first, it was kinda off-putting for me because that kid was really way inside my personal space. Maybe my personal space is a lot larger than most peoples, but I got used to it after a while anyway. Then I just started relaxing and really enjoying the movie. The story was nothing exceptional kid goes to the North Pole and resolves his doubts concerning the existence of Santa Claus. I am the punk rock Christmas guy, and despite the fact that I am having a bad year, I can still make an objective assessment that this was no exceptional Christmas story. But that didnt really matter. There was kindness and caring and warmth and magic in the story, which was really refreshing after an afternoon of people having a civilized discussion about torture. Besides that, the film was simply beautiful the lights and the colors and the shapes and the shadows were emotionally moving. The art direction in this film deserves praise. I dont hold much for Oscars, but this film deserves a few.
The effect it had on me was this I find it jarring that in this world in which we live there are still people capable of creating such beauty. Its not going to do much for some Iraqi kid in Baghdad with a belly full of Washington bullets, but there are some people in this world who are pretty fucking miserable, like myself, whether we have a right to be or not, that the beauty of such things does reach. For at least some length of time, the pain is made bearable.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
lorelei:
are you my mysterious cd gifter??? please confirm so i may shower you with gratitude! 
lorelei:
hahah! you are so fuckin awesome. that was a wonderful surprise, no one's ever gotten me anything from my wishlist before. it's really funny that you chose 2 stones albums too because the past couple months i have been listening to the stones a LOT for some reason. no i didn't have Some Girls, but i like a lot of the songs off there already. well thank you SO much!!! oh and i will do as you requested, i'll try and do that tonight or tomorrow. i'll send you an email. best wishes to you for the new year michael. 