100 Posts!

Woo hoo! (Rum) Cake and (Spiked) punch for everyone! As long as you can find my house between the hours of 9 and 11 PM on a weekday and 9PM friday night until, we'll say, 4 AM on a saturday. but you have to be quiet or the roommate will kill me.

A couple quickies: the source of much of the indecision in my life has, apparently, been explained. Today's Dilbert Blog(yes, same Dilbert as the comic strip) talks about cognitive dissonance. I've heard the term before, but this is the first time I've seen it presented in a way that I can empathize with.

Also, photos from the trip will get up this weekend(probably) and I will post the link as soon as they're up.

Also, our president blows, the iranian president is demonstrably crazy, and i need it to be friday night right this instant.

Great to go, great to be back

As most of you probably know, I just returned yesterday from 11 days in the UK. It was very close to the same trip I made last year, but there were some changes. This time around, we (the 'we' in this case is actually my parents and me; after my trip last year they invited me to play tour guide, which I was more than happy to do) actually flew into a town called Inverness, the capital of the Highlands in northern Scotland. We spent a few days there, including a day trip out to the Isle of Skye, one of several islands along the Atlantic coast of Scotland. I have to say, that was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Given my fairly limited world travels, I have to put it up there in a tie with New Mexico, but they're very different places.
Aside from that, we did Edinburgh, and then down to London. I did get to Westminster Abbey (where Chaucer is buried) and St Paul's Cathedral (where the Duke of Wellington is buried) and both were very impressive, and got to a couple shows. We saw Mousetrap, and a comedy called Boeing Boeing; both were excellent, and i'll be happy to tell anyone who cares more about them.

So that's pretty much it; got back yesterday, had today off work to re-adjust to the time zone, and tomorrow it's back to the grind without a day off until New Years (excepting weekends, of course).

In happier news, come Jan 1 I'll have my extra week of vacation. The way the dollar is shaping up, I might head to South America or Asia next year and have some more fun.

Out.

Stating the obvious

I know i'm frequently far behind my peers in reaching conclusions, but blogging has me at the point where I'll post stuff anyway because dammit, I'm excited be it, and screw everyone else.

I've noticed as I've grown into adulthood how much modern cinema (and tv too, but i'm talking about film here) is influenced by current events... for example, Robert Ludlum wrote the original Bourne series in the 80's as a cold-war thriller. Turning around in the late 90's to make a movie, it didn't make much sense to set it in the cold war because they didn't want to do a period piece. It wasn't historically accurate, so it was actually helpful to update the background for modern audience.

I'm only now realizing how far back this goes. I just finished watching "Chan in London," a disturbingly non-PC movie about Charlie Chan, a Chinese detective played by a westerner in heavy make-up for a series of movies in the 30's. This particular movie was set in pre WWII London, and I realized about half-way through how much of an effect this had. The people making this movie were 15 years removed from WWI, and had no idea that another, more horrific, campaign was coming. I've seen several British series either made during or set against the active periods of one of the WW's, and they have a whole different flavor from that of movies made in the aftermath, which might realize the atrocities that could happen but don't believe they could ever happen again.

Good lord, I think i'm turning into a neocon. I should walk out into the street and shoot myself in the head right now.

Raging for the man

Apparently I'm on a rage in favor of the man. Earlier today I was defending ATM fees (which I don't enjoy at all, but can still justify from a market perspective) and now, I have a justification for the MPAA's apparently bizarre rating system rules. It's been well documented that sex will earn a much harder rating than violence, and this is something I've heard railed against on the grounds that it would be better for kids to see sex than violence, because sex is something they will experience in their life, but hopefully they can be protected from and then avoid the kind of violence found in R-rated movies.

It just hit me that that is the entire point: when it comes to movies, sex is real but violence is not. As gruesome as the alien leaping out of a man's chest or eating his head might be, or as bloody as Jason murdering a house full of kids with his chain saw, that just doesn't happen. Sure, it should be Restricted so that impressionable youngsters aren't freaked out by it, but as long as daddy is sitting there to reassure Susie that Jason won't climb in her window and dismember her while she sleeps, no real harm done. The more violence in a movie, no matter how graphic, the more fantastic and unbelievable the movie seems.

Sex, on the other hand, is different. The more sex a movie has, the more real it becomes. Two people meeting at a bar and going back to an apartment for a weekend of passionate, inventive loving is believable. Which makes it much more uncomfortable for parents. And in the end, as horrible and misguided and misconstrued as it might be, the current rating system is entirely for parents. They know that if they take their kid to that R rated movie, the kid might see lots of violently produced blood, and the kid might see lots of boobs, but the kid will not see anything other than face to face sex, with no indication that anything "kinky" is happening.

Because that would be awkward.