I wonder if Ron Paul realizes how much he sounds like Halor. For that matter, I wonder if anti-regulation free market capitalists in general realize, given the realities of history, how on crack they sound.

There's a bit in that video where he basically says that it's ok that poor people get a bad education. That's fairly impressive.

Not that I need to be beating on Ron Paul of all people, since he's running neck and neck with Dennis Kucinich for ignorance of reality. But seriously. There's some special kinds of crazy going on that video.

On the other hand, this particular Google video features Barack Obama, who seems to have, if not totally, at least gone a long ways towards dispelling most of my (few) doubts about him as a presidential candidate.

Not that I get to care until November, given that I'm an Independent registered voter. We'll see how it looks then.

Also, since I'm generally praising the awesomeness of the whole Talks At Google series again tonight, let me just note that xkcd? Just as awesome at Google. Maybe even more.

I'm going to ramble a lot in here, but bear with me. There IS a unified theme here, and his name is Neal Stephenson, whose book Snow Crash is both the prompter of this post and the destroyer of a day or so of my time. In a good way. In a way that tells you to, honestly, stop reading now, and just go read the book, because it's awesome. The fact that it discusses what it does in 1991 is, as my Dad points out, pretty amazing.

Without going into too many plot details, because that would reveal too much, and would be, you know, telling, apparently the future is a dystopia, wherein corporations have replaced national governments, and the internet is now the Metaverse, which is sort of like what Second Life would be if only it looked like the Matrix crossed with the Wired from Serial Experiments: Lain.

We've seen all that before, but I find it fascinating that Neal Stephenson can write about, say, a gigantic boat city full of poor, murderous refugees moored to an aircraft carrier, and make me say "Oh, cool, I want to go there!" as opposed to, say, the reality of the Matrix, where I would just as soon stay in the Matrix, thanks, or of Ghost In the Shell, where the government is Really Damn Creepy, and while the stuff is cool (Sarah, I'd REALLY like a Tachikoma for next Christmas, pleasepleaseplease?), I'd just as soon not live there.

In general, this holds true for all of Stephenson's writing, from Snow Crash to Cryptonomicon to the Baroque Cycle. If Guy Gavriel Kay can make me yearn for the legendary tapeworm kingdoms of yore, Neal Stephenson's gift is to make me want the actual tapeworm, meanwhile describing to me the exact functioning of every part of the tapeworm, while the tapeworm is doing something incredibly cool, like having a sword fight on a motorcycle.

For example:

- The main character is named Hiro Protagonist. Which by itself should make you laugh. He is also, among other things, a half black, half-Korean-by-way-of-Japan samurai of a sort, a hacker (in the oldschool talented programmer sense), and a pizza delivery guy for the Mafia. Trust me when I say that pizza delivery has never been this awesome before, and never will be again.
- And yes, he gets in a sword fight on a motorcycle.
- He also discusses linguistics and Sumerian history on a different motorcycle, among other exotic locales. This is by far and away much niftier than you might suspect.
- In addition to the motorcycle fighting thing, there is also a gatling gun duel between a man and an aircraft carrier. This is also cool. You may notice a trend.
- There is a character, name given solely as "Y.T.'s mother" who gets multiple chapters to herself, but no name, which strikes me as bleak yet amusing.

Also a few quotes, which should sum up much of what I like about the book:

- "Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord ride his motorcycle into Chinatown."

- "He is holding a one-meter-long piece of heavy rebar with tape wrapped around one end to make a handle.  The rebar approximates a katana, but it is very much heavier.  He calls it redneck katana."

- "What is this, a quadrillion dollars?"  "One-and-a-half quadrillion.  Inflation, you know."

Among others, of course.

I won't actually discuss any of the underlying themes, except to say that, while I like them, and they serve to build a good book around, I don't actually believe any of them. Especially the linguistics thing, which gets...strange. But that's really ok. The rest is worth it, trust me.

As something of a side note, doing random internet reading on Snow Crash led me to another Stephenson writing, from 1999, entitled In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, which was further commented on here. A useful Wikipedia summary is here.

While I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it, and I think Garrett Birkel's commentary is by and large spot on, I will note two things:

- Over the course of the essay, Stephenson reveals himself to be a technological elitist of sorts, of a form recognizable to anyone who's hung around Linux people too long, and likes cool things for the sake of cool things, which is something recognizable to anybody who's hung around Apple people too long. On the one hand, this reveals interesting things about the book I just read, such as why Snow Crash's burbclaves are what they are. On the other hand...

- Stephenson's basic argument seems to be that we should all go back to using the command line, because GUIs are needless seperation from our relationship with the computer. He proceeds to wax philosophical about the greatness of hand editing text files in Linux. Which, in my mind, reveals him to essentially be on crack, even considering that the main competition to Linux at the time was Windows 98.

While command lines and hand editing text files to make hardware work can be fun things to know, and make you cool in a way, and yes I've got a certain amount of street cred here, Birkel makes the very good point that sometimes people want to, say, get some damn work done, as opposed to, say, learning the entire set of Unix/Linux commands, which, bizzare discussions about the utility of ls versus dir aside, are pretty much incomprehensible, and pointless for most people when you can click an icon and get the same result, and faster because you're not trying to remember what all the command switches are.

(and yes, I know there are *nix GUIs. So does Stephenson. Not his point.)

Too, you know how many more people are getting things done better and faster with GUI interfaces than command line? It's a lot. Bizzare arguments about icon design aside (there's a great one over the Windows control panel icon), it turns out that the GUI is generally more intuitive and easier to learn than command line, which means that, yes, more people get things done faster.

There's also a fun little argument about feature bloat in there, which I am not unsympathetic with, but Stephenson chooses to use as his example word processing programs, saying that you waste more time worrying about font and formatting than actually writing. Three things about that:

- If you're messing with fonts instead of writing, chances are you weren't writing anything good in the first place;

- You know what? I used a variety of command line text editors too, from vi to old versions of Appleworks and Word Perfect. And you know what? They were all clunky and hard to use, never mind being hard to read, which leads me to my next point, which is that

- Have you ever tried to read a whole page of old fixed width font stuff with minimal formatting on page or on screen? A little tough? Find yourself longing for some good 12 point Times New Roman? Me too.

Of course, Stephenson then goes on to destroy his whole feature bloat argument by praising VBScript in MS Office, which, well...yeah. About that.

Many other fun things abound, such as:

- Complaints about losing documents on floppies from 1985 ten years later, or having them render badly in MS Word of the time. While we have to acknowledge Microsoft's less than perfect track record there (though I've never had a problem), it's inconcievable to me that somebody who hand edits text files in Linux and who learned computers in the age of the teletype doesn't know about failure rates on floppy disks.

- Complaints about losing files in bizzare hard drive failures. While I, being the sort of person who has such a high drive failure rate that I no longer consider a system properly initiated until a drive dies, am pretty sympathetic to that, I also note that, again, the idea of backing one's work up wasn't invented 5 minutes ago.

- Birkel had some fun links, including one about a Windows machine being infected 20 seconds after internet connection by a virus, which are fun, but even in 2004 when those comments were made, it was pretty common knowledge to, you know, use an anti-virus program and some form of firewall. Just saying. Of course, the whole thing was a partisan pro-Mac thing in the first place, but hey.

Anyway. It's an interesting read, and probably not nearly as bad as I make it out to be. Just puzzling in spots. Though I sometimes feel like the only person in the world who actually LIKES my Windows XP box.

And you may go to YouTube and search on "Powerthirst" if that title makes no sense to you.

So, as the beginning to a particularly excellent Smashing Pumpkins album says, you know I'm not dead. Nor was I living in my head. Instead, I was having one of those idyllic vacations, filled with wine, women, and song, only with root beer in place of the wine, as I particularly dislike it. Perhaps more fir trees than palm trees, not so good on the island part of it, and the rain was, I assure you, not in the least tropical, but as vacations go, it's been right up there. And as it still has a further 4 days remaining, it can only go up up up.

That aside, I feel compelled to talk a little bit about my own and my family's media whoredom. Games aside, Christmas and post-Christmas purchases netted us on order of 77 DVDs, ranging from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies (a gag stocking stuffer), to Neon Genesis Evangelion (thanks Sarah!), and the collectors' edition of Fight Club. Of the total, 49 of them belong to me. This dominance is pathetic compared to my crushing dominance of the bookshelves, but we shall discuss my continued obsession with Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series at a later time. What concerns us now is discussing a few of the DVDs I watched over the course of this break, along with the 2 movies I saw in theaters. Because I know you all care.

The Bourne Identity/Supremecy/Ultimatum:

Clearly, I have seen the first two Bourne movies several times in the past, but I want to mention them as a series because I have things to say about them.

Firstly, Ultimatum was, for the most part, an excellent movie, that delivered everything I wanted it to deliver, save for the "I didn't read the Evil Overlord List" speech near the end. We also have sequel setup, which I approve of, as I've had more fun with Jason Bourne than any other action movie hero in ages.

Also, let me just note that the chase scenes are awesome, particularly the Tangiers one. Not that they ever aren't awesome in this series, just that these were quite unique, which was nice.

That aside, I still maintain that the first movie is still the best of them, as the setup is still fresh, and the whole "I have no idea how I know to do this" thing is unique and interesting. The fill in the blanks aspect of the two later movies is still interesting, but not quite as much fun.

I also remembered being bored a lot more during Supremacy than was actually the case. I quite enjoyed it this time around, though I am unsure as to why, since I couldn't detect any real failings on the movie's part that would have led me to dislike it the first time. That having been said, trying to fit its ending shot into the third movie was giving me a headache until they actually did, and then it was cool.

Lastly, a discussion on Universal DVDs, as I was annoyed by several things about them:

1. Those side catch things are extremely dumb. I know this is a minor thing, but.

2. Also, there are methods of case design that allow for secure storage plus, you know, being able to get the DVD out without having to use a Sawzall. Just saying here.

3. While I understand that this whole Blu-Ray vs HD DVD fight is enormously important for you, and I can almost understand putting unskippable commercials on the start of my DVD for the HD format, I suggest that you would do much better if these commercials, showcasing as they do a newer, supposedly better-looking format, would use the whole of my TV screen without large black borders. While I would appreciate just not having the added wasted time, if you're going to waste my time, do it in a technically pleasing manner, kthxbai.

4. On that same note, I actually enjoy previews before movies, and so I'm not really all THAT mad about unskippable previews before my movies, I would appreciate it if somebody with a modicum of common sense had gone over the previews for Bourne Ultimatum prior to adding them to the disc. It is my hypothesis that a PG-13 rated spy/action thriller is probably not the appropriate place to stick a preview about some animated kids' movie (debatable), and a movie about a cheerleading competition of all things, which may appeal to 12 year old girls. In that Venn diagram of 12 year old female fans, the circle for the Bourne Ultimatum fans probably has a fairly low crossover rate with the circle for the cheerleading movie fans. Assuming we're not taking the whole PG-13 thing seriously, which is another matter entirely.

5. Actual liner notes instead of more HD advertising would be sort of nice. Not really nice, mind you, just less of that We Are Evil Mercenary Corporations Who Want Only Your Money feeling. I realize who I'm talking about, here, but they COULD try.

Charlie Wilson's War:

Sarah and I saw this at Valley River's Regal Cinemas, which was actually a better theater experience than I had been led to believe, and at $5.50 a hit, if I still lived here, I would go to the movies a whole lot more. Alas.

Anyway. The story of how one booze-drinking, girl-chasing congressman from Texas won the Cold War is an hour and a half of pure good entertainment fun. It's smart, it's funny, and it's an engaging look at Washington politics and the CIA, not to mention a few Afghans who we'll meet 12 years in the future.

It is inconcievable to me that anyone would not enjoy Charlie Wilson's War. Go see it, or at least pick it up on DVD.

The Good Shepherd:

Wildly interesting CIA rebuttals of the central facts of the movie aside, I rather liked this movie. While it purports to be historical, we all know this is false - the only movies to accurate portray history in any way at all are made by Ken Burns. While this is a particularly sad state of affairs that I should likely discuss at length later, being a history major as I am, the truth is that movies should be enjoyed as entertainment first, then you should go pick up a history book.

But I ignore the movie. If you're a fan of spies and intrigue, doublecrosses and backstabbing, not to mention the Cold War, this movie is for you. Want a hero who's a paranoid spymaster? Matt Damon does excellently in the role (and by the by he keeps surprising me by being a, you know, good actor). It's a slow, intrigue-filled look at the (false) aftermath of the Bay of Pigs and subsequent events that I rather enjoyed.

The Kingdom:

I am unsure precisely what I expected from this movie, and having seen it, I'm not entirely sure what I want to think about it. It's a good enough mystery/action thriller (though the action is all in the last half hour, but it's a doozy), but if I was expecting a serious look into Saudi Arabia, this was not that movie. There were plenty of moments where one would suspect that maybe it might, you know, become one, but then I realized it was about a bunch of Americans versus terrorists with a couple of token Saudis, shrugged, and gave up.

There's also probably a discussion in here somewhere about whether this sort of movie is a good idea or not, but I'm cynical enough to know that I lost that battle a long time ago.

I Am Legend:

Samson writes a better review of this than I can. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed it quite a bit, and so did my mother, who nevertheless spent large portions of the movie leaping from her seat, which raises a question: How did this movie avoid an R rating? Because seriously, if it creeped the hell out of me at 27, it definitely would've freaked me out at 13. I say this not as a complaint against the movie, which is excellent and will likely find its way to my DVD shelf, but against the rating system.

Though I'm not sure why I try. I never actually paid attention to it anyway, even when it did apply to me.

The Last Samurai:

Which I have obviously seen previously, and talked about previously in the entry fukoku kyohei, but watched again anyway, as Sarah had not seen it, and we've only been talking about making her see it for, what, 3 years now? So we did.

The verdict is thusly:

- The history is bad, which pretty much goes without saying;
- The CGI is actually really bad, which I sort of shrugged at in 2003, but here in 2008 we're, you know, BETTER than that;
- But the fight coreography is awesome, except the part where people are taking multiple 50 caliber gunshot wounds and still going, which is really, really hard;
- Sarah also rather disliked most of the characters and thought the romance was pretty Hollywood, which I disagree with to some extent while pondering that fuedal Japan may just Not Be Her Thing, which makes my Shogun miniseries very very sad.

Live Free Or Die Hard:

You may have guessed, as essentially all of these movies belong to the family collection, that my mother is a fan of spy thrillers and big action movies. This is fine with me - it is a mark of parental coolness when your mother will sit and watch both Terminator movies with you, never mind Commando.

This is why Jason and I were the ones watching Live Free Or Die Hard, which has pretty much single-handedly restored any lost faith I may have had in big loud action movies. You know that whole trend where action movie heroes spout politics or philosophy or whatever? The sidekick tries this. John McClane tells him to, and I quote, "Shut the fuck up." Not long after, a helicopter is blown up with a car. It's a ridiculous sort of stunt, but it somehow works, and its, you know, fun. Here we have a movie with loud explosions, over the top stunts, awesome one-liners, and homegrown American terrorist ass kicking. It's fantastic.

Roots:

It may surprise some of you to know that I've never actually seen an entire episode of this in my entire life, except for part of the first one in 5th grade. This despite having read the book somewhere in the realm of 30 or 40 times (which is about equal with its co-read, Shogun). I love the story from the book, and so I'm bound to love the story from the miniseries, but let me just note something:

...TV acting in the 1970s sure did suck a lot, didn't it? We're not just talking "Man, he kind of phoned that in" type acting, we're talking unashamedly awful, in a form that's so bad, it's actually funny. This is bad enough in normal, supposedly dramatic scenes, but it's downright hilarious in the action scenes - people do summersaults when killed, complete with comedic sound effects, we get ridiculous poses and grimaces, and the evil slaver in the first episode keeps a ridiculous grin his entire stay on screen, including his final fight. It's really, really, really bad, and the less we talk about the music, the happier we'll all be. It makes the first season of Highlander look awesome by comparison, and that takes some doing.

And yet I kind of like it. I can see why people in the 1970s thought it was great. It's just that we're, you know, so much BETTER at this stuff now.

U2: Popmart Live In Mexico City:

The first of two U2 concerts I watched with Sarah, who, like me, has been known to listen to their music from time to time.

I missed out on the Popmart tour, though it played Eugene about the time I first got into U2, back when you couldn't turn on a radio without hearing Discotheque, and Pop was one of the first CDs I owned. In reterospect, I'm kind of glad I missed it, because I've heard the bootleg of it, and it kind of sucked. This Mexico City concert, however, is about as perfect as you can get from U2, and they're a band known for good live shows.

I won't bore you with the track by track, but there's not much if anything wrong with the individual songs. There's some amazing music in there, and if my favorite versions of many songs aren't included, this DVD comes close all too often.

Visually, it's a mixed bag. Picture quality is quite stunning and clear, astonishing for as bad a camera environment as a concert must be. This is offset, however, by the sheer and utter ridiculousness of the stage and the band's getup. Our cries of "Bono! No! What are you wearing!? Take it off!" were frequent, and if it weren't for the fact that I'm a diehard fan, I may have just listened to it. Fortunately they've passed that phase of their lives, is all I can say.

But the music is great.

U2: ZooTV Live In Sidney:

I have a suspicion that those of us U2 fans who didn't show up to a Zoo TV concert in 1992-1993 (I was too young) will forever be regretful of that fact, and there's a reason for that - namely that, while in my opinion the latest Vertigo tour came close, Zoo TV was the best tour U2 ever did, and I'm extremely happy now that I've got a DVD I can use to experience it. The whole thing is so perfect in all ways that an actual review is superfluous. I can only say that the version of Mysterious Ways with the belly dancer is probably the most perfect thing U2's ever put on screen, except for perhaps the parody of it with Bono's daughter from the Slane DVD. If you are even the slightest bit a U2 fan, you should own this. Enough said.