Monthly Archives: February 2014

Thoughts on hysterical arguments

I don’t mean arguments that intent or by accident become terribly humorous, but rather arguments that are expressed in terms of hysteria, usually by overt and terribly applied hyperbole.

I get a lot of political discussions with my friends and family. (Almost never with anyone else because it’s too volatile a subject to broach with people I don’t know well.) It doesn’t matter if it comes from the left or from the right, I am often treated to some wildly over the top hyperbole about the evils of the enemy.

Bush is a fascist.

Obama is a communist.

You know the drill. These arguments can really bug me because they show such an utter disregard for the truth and for the language. In the early 90’s Rush Limbaugh used to say quite a bit on his show that ‘words mean things.’ Oh that is something I can get behind very strongly. The first casualty  in any heated political argument seem to be the English language. (I assume it true for other languages, but as I speak and read no other, I’ll stick with English.)

Something else that has occurred to me recently is that the more hyperbole that is used, the more it strikes me that someone is panicking about their position. That this feels like the rearguard action of a collapsing front. It not only is unpersuasive it makes your argument feel weaker, no matter the truth that may lay under your position.

This little rant by myself won’t change a thing. No one I know uses the hyperbole as a conscious tactic, and as such they will continue to lob them like errant grenades, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there.

 

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The State of My Writing

Well even though I have ignored my blog way too much last year, things are looking up for 2014.

The great desert produced by my sudden lack of a day job became lush when I was employed again, and even working 50 hours or more a week I am producing a lot of words for my novel-in-progress.

The Latest version of this military SF adventure story is now north of 96 thousand words and it’s looking to land in the area of 115 to 120. Then there will be revision, edits, and the beta read. the last two books have not survived their beat readers, we will see about this one.

After that I plan two novels as self-publishing experiments.

First up will be Vulcan’s Forge, a science-fiction noir in the tradition of The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. It’s destined for self publishing because I expect it to be quite small as books go, around 50 to 60 thousand words. Unless you are an established star, publishers are generally not interested in such slim volumes.

Then will be my ‘screw you I writing it anyway book,’ currently titled The Illusion. It will be my foray into dystopic fiction. I looking at self-pub on this one because it will be, by far, my bleakest story. It would make an excellent French film from the 70s. It is unlikely to go to beat read as I am very sure that many of my usual beta readers would hate the book on political grounds. This will be a political book, but that doesn’t mean you should read too much of my personal views from the text. I can tell you this though it will never ever win a Prometheus award.

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Personal Moral Standard and Public Accommodation

With the furor in the new and on the net over Arizona’s SB 1062, ‘Turn away the gay’ bill, there has been a lot of talk, discussion, argument, and name calling over the issue of people who run businesses and want to have those business conform to their personal moral standards. So, here I am wading into the minefield with my own idiosyncratic ideas.

First off, let’s take as a given that forcing someone to act in a manner directly opposed to their deeply held moral map is a touchy proposition and one that should be handled with deft care and an eye to personal freedom.  Few among us would consent if the government forced up to kill a puppy to get out tax returns.

That said I do think there is a qualitative difference between your personal actions and the actions of a business, even if it is a business that you own. Your business is not you. A business does not have a deeply held moral map, it is an artificial construction not a person.

So how would I cleave this knot?

Let’s look at businesses and their owners in terms of how the assets are different in terms of protection.

Subject A as a private person decides to host a free carnival for the neighborhood. There is a spill of a slick oily mess, and though warned about it, Subject A does nothing. When a person slips, falls, and breaks their neck from this danger, Subject A is in danger from a civil suit, a civil suit that take everything Subject A owns, cash, stocks, their home, in restitution for the damages to the person with the broken neck. Subject A and their assets are fully at risk for their action and fully responsible for their actions.

Subject B form a business, an LLC or some other artificial construction for the purpose of throwing their neighborhood carnival. They too have a slippery oily mess, they too are warned, and they too do nothing. The person falls, breaks their necks and the business is at rick of lawsuit. The lawsuit can take everything the business owns as part of a damages award, but the business owner has their personal assets protected, but the shield that is the artificial construct the ‘business.’

Any lawyers among you will see that this is a gross simplification by a layman, but the concept is clear, Subject A was operating entirely from the personal sphere, while Subject B was operating from the public one. Subject B utilized laws passed to protect and shield business owners, putting distance between their business and their personal property.

In my opinion, and what I think should be legal opinion as well, any business that utilizes the public sphere, LLC laws, incorporation, and so on are ineligible to claim personal moral codes and restrictions. They are not their owners and by taking advantage of public laws in their benefits they surrender any claim for discriminatory practices.

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Sunday Night Movie: Robocop (1987)

Last night I took out the very first DVD I ever purchased as my Sunday Night Movie feature, Robocop. Clearly I am talking about the 1987 Paul Verhoeven R-rated extremely violent comic book movie. Yes, while there was no comic book that served as the course material Robocop (1987)59627_fthe producers, writers, and director all felt that this was a comic superhero film. (Hence the appeared of several issues of ROM space knight, a forgettable Marvel book from the 80’s.)

Of the Verhoeven film I have seen, I consider Robocop to be the best. (With Total Recall next up, after that we descend into garbage with the speed of a politician taking a donation.) It is the story of Alex Murphy, family man and cop who is slain and then reborn as the Robocop. It is a social satire with a biting left edge slant to it. (Note the killing of two us presidents for ironic effect on one of the short news breaks during the feature. It doesn’t take much to work out that the presidents are Reagan and Nixon.) However this film transcends its political nature, I know several conservatives who like the film, and it truly a powerful piece on the nature of identity and the importance of having self.

I was disappointed when I cued the DVD and found that it was not an anamorphic presentation. The frame was full frame, but not enhanced for the 16X9 televisions that are common today. I adjusted and on my 42: screen it wasn’t tiny, but it was noticeable.

Of course it bears mention that currently in theaters is the remake of this film. The rating has gone from R to PG-13, and the make-up effects look less convincing to me, or the producers did not want the horrific image of a man made into a machine.

Look at this first image from the film 27 years ago. A make-up effect designed and executed by the incredibly talented Rob Bottin. Even though we know it is a man in a suit RoboCop_1987with latex to make him look merged with the machine, the image is disturbing. We can emotionally feel Murphy’s loss of humanity. When he says he can feel his lost family but he can not remember them, it strikes home as true.

Now look at this image from the remake. This has none of the horror, none of the shock that exists in Rob Bottin’s design. It, to me, literally looks like a man IN a suit, not that the man has become robocop-2014-1the suit.

I have not seen the remake, though I may if I can find the time and for a bargain price, but I hold out very little hope that it is worth the time.

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A Very Pleasant Day

No politics, no film this posting but just my life and a generally decent day I have experienced.

After a couple of enjoyable D&D games on Friday and Saturday nights, I awoke on Sunday feeling down right good. As we had planned my sweetie-wife and I instead of our usual walk in Balboa Park or alone the shore, went to Morley Field and played a half round of disc golf.

For those of you not in the know, Disc Golf is like regular golf, but played with specialized throwing discs. The distance to the holes is measure in hundreds of feet not yard, but the basics are the same. Each hole has a par rating and the person with the lowest score, i.e. the fewest number of tossed to place their disc in the target basket, wins.

A couple of friends of mine had introduced me to the game years and years ago. We used to play on weekday afternoons, when the days were long and I could get to the field after work with a reasonable amount of time for play. When I started working in La Jolla until 5 in the afternoon, the games stopped. My bag of discs (because you have driver and putters, not the kind of disc you would play catch with at the beach) has sat in my closet for 5 or 6 years now.

Last weekend my sweetie-wife and I took  our Sunday walk near the Morley Field course and I noticed that Sunday mornings seemed to have a low turnout. That’s when we made the decision to come back this weekend and again play the field.

This morning was not as lightly attended as last Sunday, but I think if we had been just twenty minutes earlier it would have made a large difference in the speed of our play. That said, I had a fun time. My muscle memory seemed to return fairly quickly, and after 9 holes I was just 3 over par. (Though this is not truly fair. At the Morley Field Course it is not uncommon to have decent scores on the front nine utterly destroyed by the terror that is the back nine.)

Afterwards we went to lunch at our favorite lunch spot, Tioli’s Crazy Burger, and then window shopped a bit at the military surplus store. (I will admit to eyeing military trench-coats such as the ones worn by Cpt. Jack Harkness.

The rest fot he day was spent at home and feeling in general that life is good.

Tomorrow it is back to the day job, back to the novel, and back to little sleep, but until then I plan to watch a film (1987’s Robocop), enjoy a little popcorn, and let my relaxation continue.

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A documentary series I have really enjoyed

I am a nut for documentaries. Last year when I was home recovering from sudden surgery I watched a ton on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. A week ago i discovered one on Hulu that has simply blown my mind.

Warlords is a study of the mental games played by four of the leaders in the lead up to World War II. It delves into aspects that, for me, have previously been skipped over in the retelling.

For example, it’s well known that Stalin ignore the warnings that Hitler was going to invade the USSR. The intel was solid and it came at him again and again. It made no sense to me that Stalin, the murderous paranoid dictator, somehow had a blind spot when it came to Hitler and just couldn’t believe he would attack. This series shows that he did know Hitler wanted to destroy the USSR, he did know that Hitler could not be trusted, but also explains the reasoning going on in Stalin’s head as to why he thought the intel was part of an elaborate ruse, one he was determined not to fall for.

The second episode has dealt with Churchill and Roosevelt. Wow. Roosevelt does not come off looking good in this one and Churchill comes off a bit like a battered spouse willing to believe the lies just one more time.

I cant’ recommend this series enough.

 

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Sunday Night Movie: The Wicker Man : The Final Cut

This is the first time in my occasional series where I have revisited a film. With more than 300 movies in my collection and the vast choices available by way of my three streaming services this is not a choice forced upon me by a lack of options.

The Wicker Man first hit theaters in 1973, but before the first drive-in audience sleepy discovered this film on the bottom of a double bill, it had already been tossed by a storm of drama. Forced into production early, it is film about springtime on a Scot island, that was filmed during a chilly Scot autumn. A challenging film about a clash of cultures, and what Wickermandoes it mean to be devout, it found itself measured as product and summarily sentenced to butchering before release. Tossed out to die an ignoble and forgotten death then film slowly built a following. From the strange images, the non-cinematic score, and the brutal inescapable ending, the film became legend.  Interest grew, interested in perhaps the director’s original vision, not subject to an executive’s callous command to cut fifteen minutes and he didn’t care which. The birth of conspiracy, when it was discovered that all the original negatives had somehow inadvertently been used as landfill in building a highway. All of this merged into a strange and almost unbelievable history for a simple low budget horror film.

I refer to it as a musical/art-house/horror film and from the first time in 1979 when I watched it on the very young HBO it captivated me. Home video made it possible for me to watch the film again, and a duplicate of an early cut, transferred to 1” videotape, granted us a glimpse at what might have been. Then last year, after new owners acquired the rights and initiated a world-wide search, a print was found, a print with the missing footage.

So in 2013, the directors vision, restored and repaired, was released to theaters, and last month to the glorious quality of Blu-ray. I saw this version in the theater with myself and two friends as the only patrons, and two weeks ago purchased the Blu-ray, making this the only film that I have three versions of in my library.

The Blu-ray is gorgeous, though a bit light on special features. (One reason I have three version, its to have the most complete set of documentaries about this most unusual movie.) While the picture was lovingly restored, the soundtrack was not upgraded to multichannel sound. That said the stereo is good and accurate to the time when the film was produced. Watching it I was drawn into the beauty of the frame, the lush images, and the off-balance story. The plot is simple. Sergeant Howie of Scot West Highland police force, on an anonymous tip, flies to an isolated Scot island to investigate the report of a little now missing for many months. Howie, a good Christian copper is deeply offended  by the locals and smells conspiracy. What follows is a story that on one level is simple thriller, a good man facing an faceless and hidden enemy with lives in the balance, but under that plot lurks a fascinating study into belief, and what it means to truly believe.

This is a film I would recommend to anyone with slightly off-kilter tastes.

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Sunday Night Movie: Death Wish

There are films that are classics because of the artistry with which they are crafted, and there are films that are classics for having an outsized impact on our culture, but Death Wish is neither, it is a film that is important because it captures the mood of an age.

I have never watched the entire film. Not because of a stand to refuse to participate, but Death-Wish-1974-Hollywood-Movie-Watch-Online1simply it never was around in a form for me to watch at the time and place where I had an interest. I had seen scenes and I had even seen the closer couple of shoots, but never the entire film, and certainly never in one go from front to back. It is an interesting experience, particularly from a position 40 years after it was released, and after it had spawned a franchise of its own.

Death Wish is at heart a political film buried in the national psyche of the United States during the 70’s. For those not around during that time, it was dreary and depressing for America. Vietnam had fallen, the Arab oil embargo had shocked the economic system, Watergate had destroyed faith in the government, and the idea that things were bad and only going to get worse ruled the day. The Stark motto from the Games of Thrones would fit perfectly the mood, ‘Winter is Coming.’ In addition to out of control inflation, energy storages, government corruption, terrorism, crime began surging during the decade.

Spoilers Ahead Continue reading

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