rhesuspieces00's Xanga

one possible write-in.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:30:38 GMT

From my other favorite web comic. Click it for more.

Traitor

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:24:44 GMT

Obama voted in favor of the telecom immunity bill. I'll be voting for a write-in again this year.

800 meters

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:38:27 GMT

On Monday, I hung out with Betty, a friend from church. She wanted to check out the Olympic Trials festival-thing over at Autzen stadium. I was ambivalent about the trials, but the weather was nice so I was happy to go. While there, we watched the men's 800 meter final on the jumb-tron thingy, set up just outside the stadium. (We didn't have tickets to actually go inside the stadium, but there was a lot going on outside.) Since the 2nd place guy was from the University of Oregon, here in Eugene, and the 1st and 3rd place guys were from the Oregon Track Club, people were pretty excited. Considering the trials are like 2 weeks long or something, we seemingly picked the correct 30 minutes to be there.

WALL-E

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:08:12 GMT

Last night, I went to the midnight showing of Pixar's latest, Wall-e. (Yes, I'm a Pixar fanboy.) I don't want to say too much about the specifics of it, as I think it detracts from the experience of seeing a movie if you have a lot of preconceived notions about it, but I'll say a few things. I won't drop any spoilers, but still, maybe you should go see the movie tonight and read my blog post another day.

The problem with talking about a Pixar film is that the standard for comparison is other Pixar films, which really isn't fair. The Incredibles was, without much argument, the best animated film ever made. Prior to the Incredibles, a lot of people felt the same way about Finding Nemo. So anything that Pixar makes that isn't the best animated film ever made, seems like sort of a let-down. Wall-e isn't as good as The Incredibles, and maybe not as good as Finding Nemo or Ratatoullie (it's arguable), but I think its better than any animated film not made by Pixar. Despite that, in this post I'm mostly going to pick at the movies failures. There will be plenty of other people singing its praises.

First though: its success. The first half hour or so of Wall-e is the best half hour of animation ever made. It is capitalized Perfection, and it alone would be worth the price of admission. After that, there are problems. Basically, two of them; one of which was avoidable and one that wasn't.

The Unavoidable: kids

The movie has an artificially happy ending. It detracts from the characters' pain and sacrifice during the movie when you know that no matter what happens in the meantime, at the end of 90 minutes, everybody lives happily ever after. But thats a limitation of making a movie with a G rating. Parents don't take their 6 year olds to see tragedies.

The Avoidable: humans

Prior to seeing it, what was most exciting to me about Wall-e was that it was the first instance I could think of where the main characters of a mainstream movie were not human. The characters in Toy Story, or A Bugs Life, or Finding Nemo, or any of thousands of other animated films may not appear human, but they are basically human characters living in human society but with the body of an action figure, a bug, a fish, or whatever. There is nothing wrong with that, but i think there are a lot of exciting, unexplored options for film making if you let go of the movie producer's belief that no one will go see a movie without human characters.

<rant>
Science Fiction, in particular, has suffered greatly from this limitation. I've wanted an Aliens vs. Predator movie since I was a kid, and now there have been two, and I haven't bothered to even watch them because they're terrible. (Okay, I did see most of the first one, but only because I was somewhere where someone had it and was already watching it.) The reason they are terrible is that they are about humans. The comic books created this elaborate mythos about the predators and their history with the aliens, but the movies threw that all away to have a human as the protagonist. Thats like trying to make Saving Private Ryan, as told from the perspective of the canned tuna the soldiers eat when they get hungry. To say that it misses the point is an understatement of ungodly proportions.
</rant>

For the first half hour of Wall-e, the little trash compactor and his new-found iPod-esque friend Eve live happily on a planet devoid of, and destroyed by, humans. And we don't miss them. In fact, we're glad they're gone. They're responsible for the mess, so they don't deserve to witness the beauty that arises from their destruction. But the little robots are more altruistic than myself, and they go into space, in search of the now slug-like humans to tell them they can come back and rebuild society on the planet they destroyed. From that point on, the story of the robots, which was the source of the magic of the first part of the movie, plays second string to the story of the slugs' unwarranted redemption. Which isn't a bad story, but its the transition that makes a good movie out of the superlative.

----

SPOILER ALERT: Okay, I said I wouldn't do this, but I remembered there is one moment in the film I wanted to mention, because I think it demonstrates why Pixar is Pixar and everyone else are dull, lifeless imitators. There is a little sanitation-robot traitor who at one point is smacked through a window and hurled toward the big swimming pool. You see him flying toward the diving board and expect the standard Warner Brothers gag where he bounces off of it into a trash dumpster or some such. But he doesn't bounce off the diving board, he hits the concrete 8 inches to the right of it and is smashed to a thousand tiny bits. The movie immediately goes back to the story and the little treacherous robot is forgotten. The whole scene spans barely a second, but was a perfect Pixar moment.

Crazy-ass Dreams

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:36:41 GMT

(no, not crazy ass-dreams.)

Dreams are generally odd, but its usually due to their randomness and that they make no sense. A couple weeks ago I had my strangest dream in recent memory, but its weirdness arises from the fact that it had such a clear and consistent narrative arc. Interpretation is welcomed, but mostly I'm sharing it because I think its hilarious.

Necessary background information:

When you look back at elementary school, you realize some people had an advantage. You aren't aware of it at the time, but when you're older and see a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds you realize some of them are A LOT smarter than others. Besides that, though, some of them have older siblings. This group learns early how to defend themselves from attack (verbal and physical) by someone bigger, smarter, and stronger than they are, so their wit tends to develop sooner for them than those of us who had known nothing but the coddling affection of our parents.

From kindergarten through 6th grade, I went to school with a girl names Lisa Peck. She was, in retrospect, among the smarter kids in the class, she had older siblings, and at the time, she was the meanest person I had ever met. She clearly derived her own sense of worth and happiness through the torment of others.

We hated each other.

The dream:

I was living in community at Church of the Servant King, as I do now, except that the church was huge. I'm not sure if the church had lots of houses, or if it was just one huge labyrinthine complex, but there were hundreds of people, maybe thousands. It seemed like everyone I had ever known was there, including my grandmother who died 6 years ago, as well as lots of people I had never met. And it was extremely busy. Weddings, births, and funerals, among various church activities, seemed to be going on at all hours. Anyway, Lisa was the newest member and we had just been "introduced." She, apparently, was now a Christian and was going to be living in the community, so we should be friends. Now, on the one hand, I wasn't angry or bothered by anything she'd said or done when we were kids. I did plenty of things when I was younger I regret now, so I didn't hold it against her. But on the other hand, the ONLY thing I knew about her was that she was a total bitch as a kid, and all she knew about me was that I hated her back then... so it was pretty awkward trying to make small talk. Anyway, she was getting married the next day to some guy I didn't know. Like I said: busy.

Anyway, space was at a premium and there was no place to put all the visitors for the wedding. I was asked to share my bedroom, and more specifically, my bed--with Lisa. I was not amused by this prospect, but sometimes in dreams it doesn't occur to you to say things like, "Maybe I'll just sleep on the floor." I had a king-sized bed. We'd each have our own side. It would just be for one night. Everything would be fine.

Lisa fell asleep instantly, and as soon as I laid down, she rolled over and started spooning me. And not just laying against me, but with both arms and legs wrapped around me as though she was hanging on for dear life. It wasn't quite to the point that I couldn't breath, but tight enough that I could feel her muscles tighten slightly with each heart beat. There was no way I could get out without waking her up and all I could think was, "If I wake her, this will be the most awkward moment of our entire lives." Then she started talking in her sleep, most of which I couldn't make out as anything comprehensible, but it gave me the impression she didn't have a very good relationship with her fiancé. There was not much chance I was going to get any sleep, but I was afraid that if I actually did fall sleep, someone would come in early the next morning to wake her up to get ready for her wedding... and see us. "Oh My God, its her first day in the church and they're going to think that she cheated on her fiancé the night before her wedding. This is going to ruin this poor girl's life."

So I woke her up, or maybe she just woke up, but she was strangely unperturbed by the whole situation, as though nothing had happened. But I was still pretty wierded out and was like, "Okay! All I know about you is that when I was a little kid, you were an evil bitch. If I'm gonna get through this, I need to know something about the last twenty years of your life. Who ARE you?" She ignored my question and got up and walked around the room for a minute or two, looking at things. Then she turned and glared at me suspiciously, with eyes squinted.

"What do you know about the airline industry?" she demanded.

My mom was a flight attendant, and I read about the economy, consumer issues, TSA, and privacy issues a lot, so I probably know quite a bit more about the industry than most other people who aren't actually involved in it, but it wasn't a topic I really wanted to talk about at this particular juncture, so...

"Not too much," I answered.

"Bah, then I don't want to talk to you."

So, at that point I was like, "Double-you tee eff?" But unfortunately, my alarm clock went off and woke me up, so I didn't get to see where things went from there. Sorry.

What makes it all the more odd is I don't think about individual people from my elementary school days very often. I can remember lots of faces, but there are probably only a handful whose names I can remember-just those I either played with or were there the whole time, from kindergarten all the way through 6th grade, when I moved. I don't think Lisa had even flitted across my mind for weeks prior to the dream, so I don't know how the thought of her got seeded into it. The overall theme seems to be socially awkward situations, but I'm not sure what brought that up either, or how its linked to her.

Anyway, I thought it was all quite amusing.

FISA

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:08:53 GMT

If Obama votes for a bill granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms (or abstains), I will not vote for him.

Follow up

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:51:39 GMT

dankster312 posed the following question in response to my last post. Upon drafting a reply, I decided that it brought up enough topics I'd been meaning to say something about anyway that it warrants its own post.

Do you believe that people should be elected on their ideas alone, or should their ability to actually implement their ideas be a factor? As far as I know, Kucinich's accomplishments consist of not privatizing Cleveland's utilities and marrying a girl 31 years younger than himself. As far as I can tell, he's never held onto any job other than elected public office and never accomplished much of anything within the elected office. Is this impression incorrect, and does it matter?

I'm not really satisfied with the dichotomy you're presenting me. I would say that if democracy worked properly, it really wouldn't matter who we elected. With an informed and politically active population, the actions of an elected official should be relatively deterministic. You do what you're constituents tell you to do, or you get replaced. But we have a population with little desire to be informed or politically active, so we compromise by trying to elect people we think will look out for our interests, and so their "ideas" become a factor in the decision making process.

Historians like to judge political figures by their accomplishments, but I reject that model. Andrew Jackson was a supremely accomplished politician, and probably the only president I dislike more than the current Bush. No amount of passed legislation makes up for distributing smallpox infected blankets to indian villages, even if it will get your face on a 20. But as presidents go, I think Lincoln was pretty good, and he was relatively unsuccessful as a politician prior to his election in 1860.

Your question seems to imply a lack of competence on Kucinich's part, which sort of surprises me. After you're time working in public education, you know as well as anyone the consequences of taking a moral or ethical stand against a self-serving bureaucracy. Its certainly not conducive to passing legislation.

Obama has proven that he is willing, at least sometimes, to take a moral stand where his colleagues aren't. He has the charisma such that he can often get away with it, or even turn it to a political advantage where others probably wouldn't. But he isn't above keeping quiet when doing otherwise would make enemies. Voting against a general who considers torture a legitimate activity for the US government seems like a no-brainer to me, but Obama is conspicuously absent from the vote record for Mukasey's confirmation. To be fair, so are Clinton (no suprise) and McCain---who was fucking tortured in Vietnam. But those are not good standards for comparison.

I won't recount Kucinich's voting record here, but suffice it to say, I think its more impressive than Obama's. And you neglected to mention that he prevented privatizing the electric utility despite the Cleveland mafia having a hit out for him. The articles of impeachment put him squarely at odds with Pelosi, currently the most powerful democrat in the house. Perhaps he has made serious ethical compromises I don't know about, but seemingly he is willing to sacrifice both life and career for the sake of keeping to his principals.

As for his wife...I generally frown upon a person marrying someone young enough to be their offspring, but I don't think she is a trophy wife, if thats what you're implying. From the clips I've seen of her, she seems quite astute, politically and intellectually. And I think she spent time working with Mother Theresa in India, among other things. I like her. Though I wouldn't place bets on the duration of a relationship between idealists with their age disparity, it seems plausible to me that they actually do love each other

What you're asking, at least as I am choosing to interpret it, is whether its better to vote for someone who takes a moral stand selectively, on battles they can win by way of their charisma (e.g. JFK, Obama) or someone who avoids ethical compromise at all cost, even if it means their political careers are little more than a speed bump in our march toward self destruction (e.g. Carter, Kucinich). I'll take the latter.

My reasoning, aside from the simple ethical principle of it, is this: Democracy should not require a charismatic leader to function properly. Moreover, I reject the idea that the presidency should even be seen as a position of leadership. The purpose of the president is not to unify the people in a common cause (unity is not a goal of democracy, and is arguably detrimental to it), to inspire them (i.e. sell them on a idea), or to give them hope in anything. Those are tasks for kings and dictators. The purpose of the president is to carry out the will of the people. Nothing more. One of our problems as a nation, among many, is that we don't want a presidency or a democracy. We want a benevolent dictatorship, or rather, a salvific dictatorship. We want to believe that if we can just elect the right person, our political responsibility ends and he or she will do whatever it takes to fix our problems for us. We wanted someone to protect us from terrorists, so despite everyones better judgement, we reelected Bush. But it turns out expensive wars and high gas prices are worse than occasional terrorist threats, so we look for a different savior. We might eventually learn our lesson, but unfortunately, every once in a while someone comes along and gives us what we're after. FDR wins a war and gets the economy moving and we'd have crowned him king had he not died in office. He fixed the immediate problems, but the long term fallout is a trust and dependence on a paternalistic government. I'll vote for Obama if it will prevent a war with Iran, but his election is going to reinforce the myth of the "great president" and its going to be one more nail in the coffin of american democracy.

To answer your last question: I do think you're impression is incorrect. I think Kucinich's vote record is quite a commendable accomplishment, and I think it matters. When I can, I'll vote for him or others like him, because until someone like Kucinich can win a presidential election, our democracy is broken. Not voting for him on the grounds that he can't win, or that if he did, he couldn't achieve anything, is simply perpetuation of the dysfunction.

Nancy Pelosi can suck it.

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:19:03 GMT

From Slashdot:

"Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) spent 4 hours reading into the Congressional Record 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Interestingly, those articles include not just complaints about signing statements and the war in Iraq, but also charges that the President "Sp[ied] on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment,' 'Direct[ed] Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens,' and 'Tamper[ed] with Free and Fair Elections.'"

Thanks, Dennis. Better late than never, I suppose. Too bad we lack the sense to elect you.

valdez pics

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:10:41 GMT

I got the first round of pics up. There are still a lot of (better) pics that other people took with the promise of sending me, but I don't have yet. I'll narrate the week in a future post, but for now you can see what I snapped. Also, I updated all the location data in Picasa, so browse the album in Google Earth!

Valdez - April 2008

valdez

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:51:03 GMT

i leave tomorrow for alaska, to go heli-boarding. so, if a really long time passes and you don't hear from me, it might be because I died in an avalanche.

CHEERS!