Aborted Logic

I’ve been doing a lot of ranting and raving about healthcare reform, a somewhat controversial subject. So instead, to clear the tension a little, I’m going to talk about abortion.

I’m just kidding. (Note: kidding about abortion is always a good idea. Activists on both sides of the argument are well known for their senses of humor.) Not about discussing abortion, but about giving the healthcare discussion a rest. I’m going to talk about both abortion and healthcare reform. Because, like Willy Loman, I am committed to being well-liked.

Opponents of abortion claim that their motivation is compassion and concern for the zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses that never get a chance to grow up and do the things other kids get to do, like play baseball and develop a central nervous system. These “pro-lifers” are eager to tell pregnant women that aborting those fetuses is murder. They will protest and plead with them not to terminate their pregnancies. Some of them will assassinate doctors and plant explosives in clinics, blowing anyone in the vicinity into sinful little smithereens in the interest of spreading their message that life is sacred.

This is in stark contrast to their utter lack of concern for those embryos and fetuses that might not ever get a chance to grow up and play ball, not because their mothers want to abort them, but because their mothers are dirt poor. The pro-lifers are perfectly content to let all those fetuses die. [1]

The U.S. has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world. We rank 33rd with a rate of 6.3 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. We come in just ahead of impoverished and war torn Croatia (6.4) but are not doing as well as New Caledonia (6.1). I didn’t even know that was a country, and I’m not sure what was wrong with the old Caledonia, but in any event, they apparently provide better healthcare than the U.S. does.

Most pro-lifers do not understand statistics very well. Most of them are religious fundamentalists, and religious fundamentalism, by its nature, does not play nicely with scientific and mathematical rigor. Math requires intelligence and blind faith does not. Blind faith does, in fact, attract stupid people like flies to dog shit. This doesn’t mean all religious fundamentalists are idiots, but, statistically, the better you are at math, the more likely it is that you will find literal belief in religious dogma to be rather silly. I am open to anyone presenting contrary evidence, but that contrary evidence must itself use statistics and not citation of the preserved superstitions of ancient desert nomads.

When you mention infant mortality statistics to these people, they immediately say something like “well that ain’t even accurate, cuz it don’t count abortions.” This doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but it’s amazing how they all say this as if it does. So for the sake of clarification, here’s what the infant mortality rate means:

Take all the women who are pregnant and do not want to have an abortion. You don’t need to convince them by screaming “murder!” or intimidate their doctors with your compassionate death threats and explosives. You have already won them over. These women want to carry their babies to term and have them grow up and play ball, etc. They are aglow with hope.

Some of these babies die soon after birth due to a variety of maladies. The babies are dead. The women are devastated. It’s tragic.

The infant mortality rate is the number of babies who die for every 1,000 live births. Your position on abortion is irrelevant to this statistic. The number of abortions performed in the country is irrelevant to this statistic.[2] Lower infant mortality rate = fewer dead infants. If you are opposed to dead infants, you want this number to be as low as possible.

If you oppose abortion, but are not concerned with a high infant mortality rate, what that means is that you don’t care if babies die, as long as their mothers wanted them. As long as their mothers want them, you don’t give a damn what happens.

Infant mortality is high in the US, primarily because every other first world nation on the planet has a public health system that actually works. When pregnant women in those countries need pre-natal care, they get it. When their infants get sick, their mothers can bring them to a doctor and they will get professional medical care, even if they don’t have any money.[3]

Paradoxically, many abortion opponents seem to have no concern whatsoever for these babies. Here is a dramatization:

Abortion opponent: Don’t abort your baby! If you do, you’re a murderer! Life is sacred! Don’t abort your baby!!!!!!!!

Pregnant woman: I don’t want to! I want a baby more than anything in the world! But I’m poor and I can’t afford pre-natal care and now I’m having complications. [sobbing]

Abortion opponent: Oh. Well in that case, screw you! I don’t care about you and your baby!

Pregnant woman: Please! I just want to have a healthy baby! Please! Maybe we can fund a public program for women like me—

Abortion opponent: Never, you socialist! You and your commie baby can both die!!!!! Die!!!! [starts chanting and waving "pro-life" sign] Life is sacred!!! Life is sacred!!!

This entire piece is obviously a gross generalization. There are many opponents of abortion who strongly denounce violence, and who also favor healthcare for the poor and other genuine expressions of compassion. I’ve met some of them. Most of them are nice people. And while their philosophies may differ from mine, I can at least respect the fact that they are not just glaringly inconsistent.

I’ve met other people who have little compassion for others, and don’t pretend they do. They are against healthcare reform because they don’t care if poor people die and they are honest about it. These people are opposed to government imposing its will upon individuals either in the form of taxes on the rich (i.e. them) to pay for healthcare for the poor, or telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. I don’t agree with much of what they say either, but their opposition to government and their own lack of compassion is at least relatively consistent. [4]

Opponents of both abortion and healthcare reform, on the other hand, have obviously never allowed their basic sense of logic to make it past the first trimester. Their opposition to abortion is not based on compassion, as they demonstrate time and again that they have none. They instinctively label concern for those less fortunate than themselves as “bleeding-heart liberalism” or, more chic these days, “socialism.” This particular brand of abortion opponent is against it, not because they care about babies—they are happy to let them die all around the world and in their own backyard—but because they like to tell other people what to do. On the way back from their abortion protest, as they bemoan Roe v Wade and long for the day abortion will once again be illegal and women driven to back-alleys with clothes hangers, they will listen to right-wing radio denouncing “big government” interfering in the private lives of citizens.

Along the way, they will pass a homeless orphan. They will spit on him.

Notes:

[1] This is not true of all pro-lifers. Some of them extend their alleged compassion for fetuses to actual human beings as well. Some of them. Not the ones you usually hear from, though. The loudest ones are inevitably the biggest hypocrites.

[2] In case the one pro-lifer who actually understands statistics happens to be reading: there is the potential for some limited statistical correlation, primarily with the perinatal mortality rate, not the infant mortality rate: If a woman is told that there is something seriously wrong with her pregnancy, she might opt to abort. In a country where this is illegal or discouraged, she would be more likely to have a miscarriage instead of an abortion. This would drive the perinatal mortality rate (slightly) up in countries that have strict limits on abortion. The pro-lifers complain that it is too easy to get an abortion here in the U.S. but that would correlate with a low perinatal mortality rate, not a high one.

This is of limited relevance, however. Lack of medical care among poor U.S. women is a far more statistically significant factor to our perinatal and infant mortality rates than aborting fetuses that would otherwise have been miscarried or would have died soon after birth due to predictable birth defects. I also fail to see how it’s a victory for the fetus if it gets miscarried instead of aborted. If anyone wants to discuss this further, I’d be happy to do so, and I will be polite and civil and I will listen and give your points due consideration, but again: you have to actually read a statistics textbook and be prepared to discuss the issue using the proper mathematical language and don’t just rant meaninglessly as if you understand math when you don’t.

[3] For more information on why our infant mortality rate is so appalling in the USA, please see: FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE INFANT MORTALITY RANKING OF THE UNITED STATES http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=6219&type=0

[4] Relatively. I’ll point out some inconsistencies in another rant some day.

Supreme Folly

A lot of us are reeling from the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unrestricted influence on our political elections. Reeling not from surprise, but from our single-malt coping mechanisms. We’re really not that surprised. Corporations already run things. Those of us blessed with intelligence and cursed with shreds of conscience have seen this, and bemoaned this, and have, as a result, been putting generous doses of scotch in our morning coffee for years. But to paraphrase Lilly Tomlin, no matter how cynical I become, I just can’t keep up.

Conspiracy theorists are always worried about those men in the smoke-filled rooms, behind the curtains, pulling the strings. They aren’t even bothering with a curtain anymore. They’ve put a webcam in the smoke-filled room. And they’ve got one of those nifty air-filters for the smoke, so that everyone can see exactly what is going on.

The recent decision is appalling, but appalling Supreme Court decisions are hardly without precedent. Take, for example, Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). Schenck was the General Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, which opposed American involvement in the First World War. More specifically, it opposed the government fighting that war through conscription. Schenck printed and distributed thousands of leaflets encouraging draftees to refuse to serve on the grounds that involuntary servitude was prohibited by the 13th Amendment. The general consensus following the Civil War was that slavery was a bad thing. It’s the sort of thing that people say “there oughta be a law” against, so they made a law against it.

Schenck’s position was that the government was breaking its own law. And not just any old law, but a part of the Constitution, the highest law in the land. If you ask me, he had a good point, but whether he had a good point is not the point. The First Amendment is supposed to protect our right to speak, even if we have nothing intelligent to say. A cursory perusal of pretty much any media anywhere in this country will illustrate that constitutionally protected inane chatter is alive, well, and evidently well supplied with amphetamines.

Schenck was arrested for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Pardon the ignorance of me, my dictionary, and the general usage of 99% of the English speaking world, but I always thought espionage was, by its very nature, something done in secret, not by distributing thousands of pamphlets. I always thought it involved giving information to your enemies, not your opinions to your fellow citizens.

In denying his right to free speech, the Supreme Court said, essentially, that you can say anything you want, as long as it isn’t something the government doesn’t want you to say. This is the gist of it, and I could be accused of bias in phrasing it this way. So I’ll just let Oliver Wendell Holmes speak for himself:

"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

(i.e. you can say whatever you want, unless the government doesn’t want you to say it.)

Mr. Schenck spent 6 months in prison and, soon after his release, died of an apparent drug overdose. It's impossible to say whether this was actually the government exercising the ultimate denial of free speech or whether he just felt the need to numb himself into a stupor to avoid thinking too hard about the travesty of injustice regularly foisted upon his nation by a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy. I can relate. (see paragraph one)

Schenck’s been dead now for almost a century. What happened to him was a grave miscarriage of justice, and I’m appalled that he hasn't been honored as a folk hero, a poster boy for the First Amendment. It doesn’t really matter whether fighting WWI was the right thing to do or not. He wasn’t distributing false information. He wasn’t giving away national secrets. He was expressing an opinion, and it’s astounding that a nation that prides itself on being the “land of the free” locked him up for doing that.

And now the Supreme Court has decided that massive multi-national corporations—whose very existence is defined by the maximization of profit to the exclusion of any and all other concerns—can say pretty much whatever they want to influence our political elections. This is based on a supremely obscene decision in 1886 (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394) that corporations enjoy the same rights as people. Huge, incredibly rich, totally immoral people.

If there is any hope for our democracy at all, we need to overturn this decision. But until we establish legally the self-evident fact that corporations are not people, we may as well apply the same standards to these “people” that we did to Charles Schenck. They imprisoned him for distributing a few thousand pamphlets opposing the draft. Corporations will spend billions broadcasting to millions to influence the government to act to their own benefit, regardless of the negative impact on the nation and all its citizens. If that is not a clear and present danger, I don’t know what is.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some drinking to do.

Feed the Poor; Eat the Rich

This is an experiment in collaborative fiction. I'm going to post the first chapter of what could (stranger things have, very rarely, happened) eventually become a novel. It's about poor and hungry people around the world rising up and eating the rich. I may or may not support this. I'm willing to listen to arguments for and against. At this point, the primary argument against it is: the rich are high in cholesterol.

If anyone wants to contribute, please feel free to chime in with suggestions or even to pick up where I leave off. I reserve the right to edit, however.


Here is chapter one:
................................................


On a brisk September day, a perfectly unspectacular, disheveled young Caucasian man placed a plastic milk crate upside down on the corner of Wall Street and Broad St, stood on top of it, and brought a large bullhorn to his lips.

This is what he said:

“Live it up, oh fattened privileged swine! Your time has come! No more will the working men and women of the world be trodden underneath your bloated heel! No more will the blood and sweat and dreams of the laboring masses fuel the fires of your own excesses! The time has come for a new order! A new beginning! But change will not come peacefully, and the ruling class will not step down from power while it can still draw breath!

“I call upon the poor! I call upon the disadvantaged! I call on those upon whose backs the wealthy have ridden without a care! I call upon those whose lives have been consumed by the great beast of capitalism! I call upon the many who suffer a continual nightmare, that the indifferent few may live their ‘American Dream’. . .

“Brothers and sisters it is time that the rich of the world were dragged kicking and screaming from their homes, dismembered, and eaten!”

It was not long before he himself was dragged off. Kicking and screaming, as it turned out. He was not dismembered and eaten, however. He was roughed up a little bit by the cops, who also stole his megaphone. He spent one day in jail.

A lot of people had seen him on the corner, howling like a madman. In point of fact it was generally agreed that he was a madman. He had begun to draw a crowd before he was silenced and tucked away. While it could hardly be said that it was the talk of the town the following day—for it was a very big town, with much to talk about—it was at least the talk of the corner.

The man's name was Ryan Matthews. He was a radical. When not metaphorically ascending soap boxes (which were, literally, not soap boxes at all. They were milk crates), he was the most polite and gracious individual you could ever hope to meet. He had never actually eaten anybody. He did not even eat animals. A confirmed vegetarian for years, he was. A voluntary herbivore.

Ryan appeared again on the corner exactly one week later. He had no megaphone this time, though he did have another milk crate, an item considerably easier to acquire in any urban environment. He ascended his crate and began his oratory:

“You who have groveled! You who have slaved! Where is the rage of the working class? Where is the resentment deserved of injustice? Where is the resolve to tear down tyrants? To topple the titans who so malevolently misuse us?!

“Rise up laboring masses! Rise up hungry men and women and join me at the feasting table, for the time has come for us to Eat the Rich!”

He jumped up and down and chanted “Eat the Rich!” a few more times. People were mildly interested and intrigued, but certainly not amazed by this. He was not the only ranting madman most of them would see that day. Some of them watched Fox News. And it was Manhattan, after all. Vociferous lunatics were hardly an aberration. Some of the passers-by stopped passing by, long enough to stare and cock their head curiously to one side. Some laughed. A few joined him, but it was more in mocking than in solidarity. Eventually the police arrived and carried him away that he might stop amusing everyone and thus present a danger to society.

He was let out again. He went to a local produce market, bought a squash, brought it home, cooked it and ate it. It was not a wealthy squash.

One week later he appeared on the corner again. He had purchased a new megaphone. He had once again brought with him a milk crate for the height advantage it would afford him for the few minutes that would elapse before the arrival of the officers of the peace.

“The time for compromise has passed! Gradual change is doomed forever to the corruption of bureaucracy! It is no longer about the ballot or the bullet, but about the gullet! Women, men, children! Brothers and Sisters! Do you not, like me, hunger for justice?! Do you not starve for an end of oppression?!?!

“Satiate that hunger, sisters and brothers! Never go hungry again! Nourishment is at hand. We need no longer feel pangs of emptiness from deep within our viscera. Your dinner wears a three-piece suit and carries a briefcase. Join me now and justice will be served – on a bed of rice!”

And again the police showed up and dragged him away, still kicking and screaming as enthusiastically as before.

But when they brought him to the station again, a lawyer was waiting there to represent him pro-bono. She was sent by a local magazine. Not an especially radical publication, it did pride itself on being “off-beat,” which was at least something.

The magazine had gotten wind of the story of the soap-box cannibalism advocate, and thought it quirky, which, it was. They thought there was an interesting civil-rights violation angle, which, again, there was.

They thought they could sell enough magazines with a story about a crazy guy screaming “Eat the rich” on a corner to more than cover Jessica K. Maxter’s legal fees, which they certainly did, eventually. In spades.

“Mr. Matthews? I’m Jessie Maxter. I’m an attorney and on behalf of No Moss Magazine, I’d like to offer my legal services. It is our belief that your 1st .amendment rights have been violated, and we intend to ensure that they are not in the future. Would you like to accept our offer?’

“Sure,” Ryan said, shrugging those shoulders on which he regularly bore the weight of the world.

And so they went to court. Ironically, Maxter’s defense of his right to free speech was founded upon the grounds that he was a nut to whom nobody would listen. It was the question of clear and present danger to society. Did a right to free speech extend to one’s right to shout “Fire,” in a crowded movie-house? In a famous decision almost a hundred years ago, the Supreme Court had affirmed that, no, in fact it did not. Contrary to a misconception that is not exactly popular, but does have some cachet amongst the moderately ignorant, the case was not actually about shouting fire in a crowded movie house, but rather distributing pamphlets opposing the government’s conscription of men into the military.

(The truly ignorant have never heard of the case at all. They are the majority.)

The case secured the right of the government to deny first amendment rights to a citizen if and only if a) it felt there was a good chance that people might actually listen and b) the government didn’t like what he was saying.

Maxter paraphrased Oliver Wendell Holmes in her own argument, suggesting that while shouting “fire” in a crowded movie house might present a clear and present danger to society, shouting “Escaped dinosaur” would not. It was amusing, perhaps, but not dangerous.

And so the following Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. on the corner of Wall and Broad streets, in the presence of a few news cameras, as well as journalists from No Moss and other outlets, Ryan again ascended a soapbox, armed with a shiny new bull-horn. A more expensive, high tech bullhorn, purchased and given to him by No Moss. It was capable of producing more righteous decibels than he had ever been able to produce before.

His oratory was uninterrupted and he continued for a good solid 45 minutes before his vocal chords could take no more. The speech concerned poverty, injustice, class struggle, justice, and of course, eating the rich. A moderate crowd applauded.

The press ate it up, so to speak. No Moss did a story on defending the right to free speech for a raving maniac. It was the sort of thing the magazine was known for. That was its whole shtick.

Then a quirky news show began taping Ryan’s weekly high volume sermons. They became the closing feature for its “Realnews!” broadcasts. The most popular part of the show, keeping people sitting through that last barrage of commercials so they could catch the entertaining and hungry madman.

Ryan became a star, though he’d never asked for stardom. He’d only asked for revolution. After his TV spot became a regular feature, he also asked viewers for recipes.

Unnatural Disasters

There is nothing unnatural about natural disasters, and, specifically, there is nothing supernatural about them. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and other catastrophic manifestations of nature have always been with us. Since long before idiots came up with asinine religious explanations for them. Religious fundamentalism is, geologically speaking, a very recent catastrophe.

An enormous asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago —was this the wrath of an angry god, outraged at rampant sin among the dinosaurs? Were the triceratops buggering the stegosaurs? Were the tyrannosaurs holding black masses and worshipping Satan? No. Those nifty black robes would never fit them. The dinosaurs angered no gods. They were done in by the random impact of a piece of rock that happened to intersect the orbit of our planet, long before people ever walked the Earth, and long before anyone conceived of gods or devils or even the concept of right, wrong, good, or evil.

It was tens of millions of years later that human beings finally evolved and began to develop the necessary intelligence to even wonder why the Earth would sometimes shake, or why mountains would occasionally explode and spew deadly molten rock, or why the rains would abate and leave them starving as crops withered and died. Or, alternately, pelt down torrentially and flood their lands, along with bolts of electric fire. And who can fault our hirsute forbears for coming up with what was, in their primitive minds, a good theory to explain the unexplainable natural phenomena, which was that the erupting volcanoes and lightning bolts and earthquakes were the actions of angry gods? At least they put forth a postulate.

To the Greeks and Norse, lightning was the direct result of Zeus and Thor, respectively, hurling down their thunderbolts in righteous divine indignation. Most modern people who aren’t idiots now believe it’s the result of the buildup of static electricity in the Earth’s atmosphere. Angry gods really don’t have anything to do with it. For example, watch this: Thor is a pathetic little girly man! Notice the conspicuous absence of my incineration.

Volcanoes, we now know, are ruptures in the Earth’s crust, through which molten magma beneath the surface can sometimes violently seep forth. There is an entire field of science behind it. It’s called vulcanology, named, of course, after the Roman god Vulcan, but I think it’s safe to say that not a single vulcanologist believes that Vulcan is even a tertiary causative factor. Some ancient people even sacrificed virgins to the volcanoes, hoping to appease the volcano god. It didn’t work, and not just because giving any guy a virgin is a bad strategy if you want to prevent him from having an explosive effluence, but simply because volcanoes are manifestations of ruptures in the Earth’s crust, and have nothing to do with the libidos of deities.

We (and by “we” I mean, intelligent human beings, and there are millions of us, though there are billions who just don’t qualify) have come a long way since then. We’ve developed sciences such as geology and meteorology to explain natural phenomena. Sadly, some people still blame angry gods.

When the devastating tsunami smashed into Indonesia in 2004, religious explanations abounded, and in an extraordinary example of pretzel logic, advocates of disparate religions all saw it as vindication of their own faith by their god. Christians saw it as clear evidence that their god was smiting the Muslims for being Muslim. Muslims saw it as him smiting them for not being Muslim enough.

You have to wonder if an omnipotent being couldn’t smite with a little more precision. It always seems to slam entire regions, based, allegedly, on the actions of some of the people. The righteous, the sinners, and little babies who haven’t had a chance to make up their little minds all get zapped at once. Even the United States’ “smart bombs” and “surgical strikes,” while they do occasionally take out wedding parties, schools, and hospitals, are just a little bit better at killing the bad guys without so much collateral damage.

Which brings us to last week’s horrifying catastrophe in Haiti and the comments of that champion of caveman-era causality, Pat Robertson. Robertson stated that the Earthquake was the result of a deal with the devil that Haitian slaves made to throw off the yoke of the French. Which raises the question of why his god waited several centuries to show his displeasure, and why, when he does shake the Earth, it’s nearly always in places where tectonic plates adjoin, and seldom in the middle of them, regardless of the density of sinners therein.

Robertson doubtless takes literally the theory that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by his god in response to the rampant vice in those cities, with all the men Gomorrizing one another and whatnot. Modern scientists believe that, if the story is not a complete fiction and that the two cities were cataclysmically destroyed, seismic activity probably had more to do with it than the sexual orientation of its inhabitants. Fundamentalist Christians are obsessed with homosexuality, and often attribute natural disasters to it in some way.

I already mentioned the asteroid strike 65 million years ago, but the Permian–Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago was even more catastrophic, causing an extinction of the vast majority of life on the planet, including 96 % of all marine species. Most of these were hermaphroditic invertebrates, and, one assumes Robertson’s god found this close enough to homosexuality to smite the lot of them.

Hermaphrodites can, occasionally, go ahead and fuck themselves.

Pat Robertson can do the same.

Film Reviews: 01/05/10

2001: A Space Odyssey 10 Stars

One of my favorite films of all time and one of my favorite books of all time too. People who haven’t read the book often find the movie to be a confusing pile of crap that doesn’t make any sense, but I suspect they are just saying that because they know it will piss me off. You should see this and read the book too, and then everything will make sense. Everything.
While inarguably visionary, Kubrick and Clarke’s vision of the future in 1969 has not come to pass. Computers have not yet achieved sentience, and they do not manipulate human beings like pawns to achieve their own objectives. We still have people doing that. Computers just make it a lot easier.


W 7 ½ Stars

I was afraid to watch this, because sometimes I can be a little bit emotional. Some things set me off, and none more so than THAT PIECE OF SHIT GEORGE W BUSH AND ALL THE TREASONOUS MURDEROUS DECEITFUL—

Sorry. The Bush administration put an emotional toll on me, the compound interest on which I am still paying off to this day. Those are eight years I’d rather forget, so it was with considerable apprehension that I popped this into the old DVD player, to relive the horror. My fears were unwarranted. It produced quite the opposite effect than that which I had dreaded. Instead of re-igniting the rage and ire and confusion I felt, it instead made me feel for the first time that I was not insane. And while what Bush did was tragic—he blatantly lied to the American public about why we were going to war, thereby causing the loss of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and every shred of US respectability in the international community—for the first time I could see past that tragedy to the comedy underneath. Finally, I could laugh at the evil clown.


Mystery Men 5 ½ Stars

With the recent explosion of super-hero movies in the last decade or so, it’s only natural that someone would do a hilarious parody. And that hilarious parody is Frisky Dingo. You should put that at the top of your queue. Mystery Men is the mildly-amusing spoof that you should watch, eventually, but there’s no rush.


Dirty Pretty Things. 7 ½ Stars

I put this in the queue mainly because of Audrey Tautou, who is very pretty. The title suggested she might also be dirty in it. No such luck. But a good film, nevertheless. Suspenseful crime drama / romance. Not to give too much away, but the plot revolves around the sordid industry of illegal organ procurement. The organs in question are primarily kidneys. Remember: in spite of the name, it’s not dirty.


Bruno 8 ½ Stars

Sacha Baron Cohen flawlessly channels the spirit of the flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista he has created, and everyone around him falls for it. Not to get too deep, since this is just a one-paragraph film review and not a college paper for which I will be receiving any credit, but the essence of humor is the juxtaposition of different frames of reference, which is what Cohen’s oeuvre is all about. We are privy to both interpretations of his character’s behavior, while the people around him see only one, setting up a specific cognitive dissonance we interpret as humor. It’s the simultaneous awareness of both mutually exclusive interpretations of observable phenomena that makes something funny. Seriously: humor scientists have figured all this stuff out. They have equations and everything. I don’t know whether Cohen is aware of all this deep theoretical analysis of humor, but if not, he obviously understands it intuitively. And yes, there is some social value here, commentary on homophobia and intolerance, etc. But mostly it’s just hilarious.


Hedvig and the Angry Inch 8 ½ Stars

This is outrageously entertaining, as I imagine everything associated with a botched sex-change operation is. The music is surprisingly good. The characters are irresistibly flawed, especially Hedvig, who has good reason for being the ill-tempered and insufferable bitch he/she is. Fun for the whole family, if your family is comfortable discussing penises. Otherwise, fun for you and your reprobate friends when your more sheltered and wholesome relatives aren’t around.


The Craft 3 Stars

It’s about four very attractive young women able to wreak havoc with magical powers. So I had to watch it. It’s not like I had a choice. How could I pass up that? Powerful, beautiful women with supernatural abilities, that’s cinematic gold as far as I’m concerned. Besides I’m working on a novel right now about a woman with a dark and demonic heritage, so watching this was research. Yeah. Research. Putting hot babes who kick ass into a movie is a good way to ensure that I’ll watch it, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that I’ll like it. I didn’t like it. There’s your proof, right there.


Crowley 4 Stars

Another film I watched as “research,” which is to say: an excuse to procrastinate and not work on my novel, much like, for example, writing this review is. The titular character is, of course, Aleister Crowley, the early 20th century’s most notorious occultist and boogie-man. His portrayal is actually quite good, and, I have to admit, as far as research is concerned, watching this was genuinely fruitful and stimulated some useful ideas. I could not in good conscience recommend this as an entertaining film for anyone who is not trying to get into the mind of a diabolical and evil character. But I’m pretty much done with trying to maintain a good conscience. Screw everyone else. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. The research is coming along nicely.


Hancock 6 Stars

Another super-hero movie, but instead of focusing on one you already know about, like Spider-Man or Elektra (nerds know about her, ok?), this one concerns a brand new super-hero. Or, rather, a super anti-hero. I thought the premise was interesting, and I like Will Smith. My biggest problem with it . . . oh my god. I was just about to describe my complaint about the realistic functionality of specific super powers, like a total goddamn nerd who never, ever came close to getting laid in his entire life. Well let me tell you, I’ve been laid, ok? Lots of times! I just like super heroes and sometimes I’m a stickler for details. I’m going to keep my complaints to myself. If you can suspend disbelief in super-powers in the first place, inconsistencies in their manifestation shouldn’t be a problem, and shouldn’t stand in the way of enjoying a fun little flick. Those who can’t do that can write to me directly and we’ll discuss it in obsessive nerdy detail. And while we’re at it, I have a few thoughts on the feasibility of the Starship Enterprise’s alleged “warp” drive. Yeah.


Lars and the Real Girl 5 Stars

While I am not a licensed psychiatrist, that never stopped me from prescribing powerful medication for myself. And it won’t stop me from pronouncing the premise of this film to be flawed in its entirety. It concerns what is meant to be an amusing instance of a delusional personality, but I’m pretty sure the shrinks out there will agree that it doesn’t work this way. Which would have been fine if they went totally over the top and made an absurd farce of it, but they didn’t. My feeling is: you can’t have it both ways. Either do your homework and find out exactly how mental illness actually works, or make it into a slapstick comedy. I would have preferred the latter. The jokes would have written themselves. It was about a blow-up sex doll, after all. How hard could it be? See: there was a joke right there.

Film reviews. November 9

It's come to my attention that not a lot of people care what I think. This is, of course, a severe blow to someone as opinionated and narcissistic as I. And since the House passed the health care bill this Saturday, I'm taking a break from ranting about something I actually care passionately about--ensuring that poor sick people don't die--and returning to something that is, let's face it, just a little bit more fun: reviewing the silly movies I've seen via netflix in the last month or so.




Prime 6 Stars

After recovering from my initial disappointment in learning that this has nothing to do with math, I was able to relax and enjoy it. It’s a cute romantic comedy. It would probably have made for a good date movie, back when it was in the theatres, but if you are seeing it now, it’s most likely going to be at home, watching the DVD from the comfort of your couch, so you are probably past the dating stage by now, or if not: tonight’s the night, you lucky dog. Don’t forget the condoms.


The Namesake 7.5 Stars

Netflix created a category for me, based on my choices and preferences: father/son bonding movies. Apparently, I watch a lot of these. This is definitely one of the better ones. Touching. Funny. Sad. All that stuff. Moving, but not heartbreaking. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t cry. But I grinned and got a little misty, ok?


Afropunk 6 Stars

An interesting documentary about African-American punk rockers. Most punk rockers are upper-middle class suburban white kids who lead cushy lives of comfort and privilege, and shove safety pins through their faces to illustrate just how angry they are about this intolerable state of affairs. Quite a lot of African American kids live in cities, and a significant percentage of them have very real things to worry or be angry about, like drugs, gangs, violence, crime, etc., so it’s little wonder that few of them are drawn to a culture that is rebelling against mommy and daddy and all their money. Pretty much all of them are interviewed here. They all sound exactly like upper middle class suburban white kids, though slightly more alienated and with a little bit more substance to their angst. The take home message for me: Bad brains is a damn good punk band.


The Taking of Pelham 123 4 Stars

No, not the new one with Denzel Washington and John Travolta. The original, with Walter Matheau and Robert Shaw. Netflix suggested it after I got Charley Varrick, reasoning, in its Netflixy way, that I have an obsession with 70’s action flicks starring Walter Matheau. I assure you: I do not. But if you want to try one out, definitely go with Charley Varrick. It’s so much better than this. The villains here are two-dimensional. Their motivations unrealistic and contrived. The plot is absurd. One can only assume the only reason they remade this is that the filmmakers figured they could probably do a better job the second time around, which would have been as easy as 1, 2, 3.


The Spy Who Came in from the Cold 2 Stars

I have heard that some MI-6, CIA, and NSA agents spend their time piecing through bits of shredded documents they find in garbage. Spy movies usually tend to romanticize the world of international espionage and present it as slightly more exciting than that. This took the opposite approach and managed to make it even more boring. It stars off with a scene at Checkpoint Charlie, where I visited last year, so that was exciting for me, but it just goes downhill from there. I was hoping for some action, suspense, intrigue and, if at all possible, just a little bit of actual espionage. Maybe they get to some of that stuff an hour or so into the film, but I never made it that far. He was still out in the cold when I turned this snoozer off.


Before Sunrise 6.5 Stars

A cute romantic film, which you’ll enjoy even more if you’ve ever been in Europe or fallen ever so briefly in love with someone you met on a train. It was recommended to me, but only as a set up for the sequel, Before Sunset. I’ll get back to you after I’ve seen that.


I Know What You Did Last Summer 4 Stars

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Homicidal killer attempts, mostly successfully, to skewer a series of attractive young people. In the end, at least one of them escapes and temporarily thwarts his sociopathic ambitions, just long enough for her to recruit new friends to get butchered in the sequel. Can’t the new friends see what’s coming? Hot girl. All her friends brutally murdered. A year has passed. Now she wants to be your friend. Run away. Has experience taught you nothing? This is a pretty generic slasher movie. Nothing too inventive or surprising. I’m going to watch the sequel anyway. I don’t learn from experience either.


The Lives of Others 8 Stars

Why, my beautiful German-speaking girlfriend asked, is every German film either about Nazis or the oppressive secret police of the DDR during the Cold War? Because, I answered, Germans are far more entertaining when they are evil, and they do it so well. Ooooh! Clocks! Green technology! Bratwurst! Yes, that’s right: good Germans are boring. Bring on the scowling, scheming commandants! In spite of the dark subject matter, this film gives us a few laughs, and some hope. Hope that an individual can stand up to an evil system and make a difference. I’m not giving anything away, I trust, by telling you that the wall comes down at the end (1). In the sequel, of course, I expect our hero is no longer the subject of a secret evil government surveillance project, and his major obstacle to happiness will be when he has to wait for a bus that runs a full 45 seconds late. This is considered tragic in modern Germany. Sigh. Don’t you miss the bad old days?


(1) Note: It was twenty years ago today!

Heavenly Creatures 3 Stars

Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame directed this, and that’s why I rented it. I was disappointed. And not just because there were no hobbits, though that certainly didn’t help matters. It’s based on a compelling true crime story, but the characters were caricatures, lacking substance but compensating by overacting. Jackson went on to have me believe in elves and trolls, but I didn’t believe in these two giggling, psychotic girls. It just seemed unreal and fantastic, which is, again, pretty surprising when I completely and without reservation accepted that the fate of the world rested on the destruction of an evil piece of jewelry by a pair of midgets.


The Yes Men 6 Stars

I love the idea of the Yes Men, but to make a really great, hilarious film, they should have gotten more footage and mercilessly edited it down to its comic quintessence. I certainly recommend it to anyone curious about what’s wrong with the world or just looking for something on which to focus ambient rage and angst. As far as making the world a better place, the Yes Men are on the vanguard. But the film just isn’t as funny as I thought it would be. I think this is because they are attempting to embarrass the evil men who run our world and who, on a regular basis, do horrible, despicable things. The fact that the evil ones don’t seem to notice that they are being satirized just makes it all the more tragic.


The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 6 Stars

I heard that this would be a life-changing cinematic experience, and it turned out to be just a pretty good movie. Such is life. Life, by the way, is what this is about. Setting aside eastern mysticism for a moment, we only get one of these, and that, I think, is the point. The very best part of the film is an earnest reflection on this very idea. Here you are. Barring tragic inconvenience, you’ve got a few decades to kill. Make the most of them.


Discworld: The Wyrd Sisters. 3 Stars

I simply adore Terry Pratchett’s novels. They are Fantastic. Brilliant. Comic genius. In movie form, though, the magic is gone. Like Discworld itself, wherein almost all of his hilarious stories are set, they fall flat, or this one did, anyway. Don’t bother putting this in your queue. Get one of his books. Any one of his books. Choose randomly in some entertaining fashion. Leave it to the gods of chance. They will not steer you wrong. Picked one? Good. Um, now read it. Turn off your DVD player and read the book. Pretty good, eh? There’s a few dozen more where that came from. Who needs a stupid movie?


Gonzo 9 Stars

A good film will make me laugh. A better one will make me cry. A superb one will do both. And a truly great one will force me to get raging drunk in a fit of depression. Hunter S Thompson is, I think, one of the most wildly misunderstood artists ever. His zany antics, his ostentatious persona, always larger than life and twice as high, eclipsed the fact that he was an astoundingly good writer, and a passionate voice for justice. This side of Hunter is brought front and center in this excellent documentary, without for a moment ignoring the undeniably true, but non-character defining fact that he was a drug crazed maniac as well. It renewed my own calling to use my writing to speak truth to power, and, occasionally, to reality. But first, as mentioned, it inspired me to get wasted. I’m not sure which is a more earnest tribute to the late great Dr. Thompson.


The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio 8 Stars

I love everything Julianne Moore is in. Even if it’s a crappy movie, I just like watching her. Fortunately, this was easy to love. Regular readers of my reviews may note that I have a thing for the hot-babes-who-kick-ass genre of films, and I think this qualifies, although in contrast to shooting, punching, and slicing up evil men, as typified by many of my other favorites, she kicks ass with her pen. She’s a brilliant writer, trapped in an oppressive male-dominated society, stifled by her asshole husband, saddled with fulfilling her duty as housewife and mother. Nonetheless: she kicks ass. Angelina Jolie, eat your heart out.



28 Days Later 2 Stars

This is a zombie movie with a twist. It sucks! Bet you didn’t see that coming! I certainly didn’t, what with all the buzz and acclaim surrounding it. Looking on Netflix, I see that close to half the people who reviewed it gave it five out of five stars, which I find utterly astounding. Although I did not enjoy it, and would not recommend it, nor, for example, wish it upon my worst enemy, I suppose I could imagine, hypothetically, under the right circumstances, on the right drugs, finding it somewhat entertaining. But I could not even conceive of ranking it among the best films that I’d ever seen, even if my tastes were not so intimidatingly refined and even if I actually liked shitty movies, which, of course, I don’t. I got this around Halloween to get into the holiday spirit. But it’s not scary. It’s just stupid. Right-wing nutjobs, notwithstanding, stupidity just isn’t scary.

You say you want a Revolution? Seriously, I totally can't hear you when you mumble like that.

On September 12th, this year, our nation witnessed the largest gathering of misspelled protest signs ever assembled in one place. I’m talking about the tea-baggers, who only recently figured out what that term means. (Ha! Ha! Stupid teabaggers!) They gathered en masse, chanted insane bullshit, said unbelievably stupid things very loudly, and got international attention in the process, thus further firing up their base: the politically key clueless stupid asshole voting bloc.

I went to an event yesterday organized by their opponents, the people who are trying to get healthcare reform passed. They were the opposite in every possible way. The tea-baggers are stupid, mean, totally misinformed, and loud. These folks were intelligent, compassionate, factually accurate, and quiet to the point of being soporific. They could be behind you right now and you wouldn’t know it! Watch out! They might sneak up on you and give you healthcare!

H.R. 3200, which is how the healthcare bill is known to its really close friends, is 1017 pages long, and has been scientifically proven to be the most boring document in existence. Imagine Beowolf with all the good parts taken out and replaced with what was left of your organic chemistry textbook after you cut the good parts out of that. This would still be more exciting than our good friend, H.R. 3200, bless its well meaning but painfully dull soul.

The idea behind this event was that we were going to read it. Yup, read the entire thing, all 1017 pages, all day long. Sound pretty boring? But wait! It’s not even as exciting as that! Because not only were people taking turns reading the most uninteresting and tedious document you could imagine in all your mildest dreams, they were doing so without amplification.

There was a bullhorn provided, but nobody was using it. I pedaled up on my bike about fifteen minutes before my own appointed reading slot, and mistook the person doing the reading, who sat unobtrusively behind a desk and appeared to mumbling under her breath, for the person with whom I was supposed to sign in.

“Hey there! I’m here for the . . .”

She looks up from the mammoth document from which she is reading “aloud.”

“”Oh, sorry,” I say and find the proper person to sign in with.

After her, another gentleman went up to read. I was sitting ten feet away and could not hear a word. People on the street passed by without comment or interest. He was about five minutes into it when two alleged "journalists" came up to ask him . . . about the Phillies. I am not kidding. He was in the middle of speaking at a political event and they interrupted him, during his “speech” to ask him about the Phillies.

When my turn came, I picked up the bullhorn. I tried to spice it up. I shouted and inflected my words as if there were passionate oratory behind them.

What I was actually reading was:

"Paragraph (74) of section
1902(a) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 1396a(a)), as added
by section 1631(b)(1), is amended—
(A) by inserting ‘‘or subsection (b) of such
section (relating to disclosure requirements)’’
before ‘‘, and that the State’’; and!!
(B) by inserting before the period the following: ‘‘and apply any enhanced safeguards,
with respect to a provider or supplier described!"

Bitches!

(I did not add ‘bitches!’)

Still: I shouted and gestured and pretended I was in a frothy lather. But then when I was done, the next person read quietly, to herself, as if trying to ensure that she did not bother anyone. As if that were not the entire point.

Zzzzzzz . . . . oh, what was that? A revolution? Wake me up for that when it comes arounnnnn zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.