Month: August 2004

Speaking of delusions, the BBC reports that “President Niyazov of Turkmenistan has ordered the construction of a palace made of ice in the heart of his desert country, one of the hottest on earth.” Although this sounds crazy, it’s nothing new for the regime of Niyazov, as “extravagant buildings are a hallmark of his idiosyncratic regime.”

Niyazov also sparked controversy when in 2002 he “announced his intention to officially rename all 12 months of the year in commemoration of the country’s heroes and most potent national symbols.” He also proposed that the “seven days of the week [be] renamed, with uplifting phrases such as Young Day for Tuesday and Spirituality Day for Saturday,” sparking one Turkmeni man to protest that “this is a joke, the entire civilized world lives by the same calendar but Niyazov decides to set us apart once again.”

I’m very surprised that this totalitarian regime does not receive more critical media coverage, because it’s clear that the impoverished nation is languishing as a result of his extravagant indifference…

A while ago I made a post decrying George Lucas’ decision to not release the original versions of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD, instead choosing to only release his “enhanced” versions of the 1997 Special Editions. I am dumbfounded that Lucas doesn’t realize the hypocrisy and irony of this decision considering that he “testified with Steven Spielberg before Congress in the 1980s against colorization and other forms of alteration,” specifically with respect to colorizing black and white classics such as The Three Stooges (an upcoming DVD release contains both the original black and white and newly colorized versions). He recently reiterated his thoughts on the issue:

Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore? Maybe just the fact that they’re in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated. But by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was. But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it’s hard for young people to understand. Because you’re then thinking you’re comparing apples to apples, when you’re not. You’re comparing apples to oranges. I’m saying it’s not fair to the artist.

These statements make me realize that Lucas is even more deluded than I thought, since he obviously is blind to the fact that his own actions contradict his stated position. Fans of the Star Wars films want the original versions included so that they can experience them as they were released. The updated special effects and scenes Lucas added may expand on his original vision, but in his own statements he contends that altering classic films for a contemporary audience can bring unfair comparison to newer films. That’s an issue I hadn’t even considered in my previous diatribe against this decision, but the fact that Lucas himself makes it, and then selectively excludes himself from the implications of it, just boggles my mind.

Many people (myself included) feel that if he wants to release his “enhanced” versions, then more power to him. However, with the advent of DVDs, it is a trivial matter to include the original versions along with the enhanced versions, just as Steven Spielberg did with the DVD release of E.T.. But Lucas has proven time and time again that the fans’ wishes are secondary to his tremendous ego, so I don’t expect that he’ll change his mind. And that sucks…

The Onion reports that “after more than 30 years spent hiding in the Los Angeles underground as wanted criminals, the members of the crack commando unit Alpha Team, commonly known as the A-Team, were cleared of all charges brought against them by the U.S. military.” Unfortunately, “joy over the announcement was tempered only by regret that their de-facto leader, Col. John "Hannibal” Smith, was not alive to see their names cleared,“ as he was "gunned down in front of a Las Vegas casino in 1994.” The picture at right shows W bestowing a long-overdue Medal Of Honor to Sgt. Bosco “B.A.” Baracus, who showed admirable self-restraint in not pummelling W mercilessly.

Operation Thunderbolt is a pretty fun, albeit arcade-like, game that has you pilot an Australian Air Force F/A-18. Worth a look…

Rock Wisdom is a huge compendium (“book”) of over 12,000 song quotes divided into different categories (“chapters”). The categories range from deep to amusing, inspirational to insulting; I definitely can’t do them justice. There’s a lot to browse through here, and there’s even a way to load a random quote, although I had to reload several times before it worked. Still, it’s a pretty cool site…

I didn’t intend for this post to turn into a political screed, but I guess there’s no way to avoid it. Esquire magazine’s upcoming issue features a piece written by Ron Reagan entitled The Case Against George W. Bush. Rarely have I seen anyone so eloquently raise so many salient points about W in one article. You should definitely read this piece for yourself, but several passages struck me enough to quote them here:

Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so. And to come to the same conclusion does not make you guilty of swallowing some liberal critique of the Bush presidency, because that’s not what this is. This is the critique of a person who thinks that lying at the top levels of his government is abhorrent. Call it the honest guy’s critique of George W. Bush.

…

This Möbius reality finds its domestic analogue in the perversely cynical “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forests” sloganeering at Bush’s EPA and in the administration’s irresponsible tax cutting and other fiscal shenanigans. But the Bush administration has always worn strangely tinted shades, and you wonder to what extent Mr. Bush himself lives in a world of his own imagining.

…

For him, forty-three million people without health insurance may be no more than a politically inconvenient abstraction. When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush’s economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You’re the help. When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you’ll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet.

…

Owning up to the 9/11 warnings would have entailed more than simple embarrassment. But done forthrightly and immediately, an honest reckoning would have earned the Bush team some respect once the dust settled. Instead, by needlessly tap-dancing, Bush’s White House squandered vital credibility, turning even relatively minor gaffes into telling examples of its tendency to distort and evade the truth.

…

Bush apologists can smilingly excuse his malopropisms and vagueness as the plainspokenness of a man of action, but watching Bush flounder when attempting to communicate extemporaneously, one is left with the impression that he is ineloquent not because he can’t speak but because he doesn’t bother to think.

…

If ever there was a time for uniting and not dividing, this is it. Instead, Mr. Bush governs as if by divine right, seeming to actually believe that a wise God wants him in the White House and that by constantly evoking the horrible memory of September 11, 2001, he can keep public anxiety stirred up enough to carry him to another term.

…

Fortunately, we still live in a democratic republic. The Bush team cannot expect a cabal of right-wing justices to once again deliver the White House. Come November 2, we will have a choice: We can embrace a lie, or we can restore a measure of integrity to our government. We can choose, as a bumper sticker I spotted in Seattle put it, SOMEONE ELSE FOR PRESIDENT.

I realize that Ron Reagan is by no means an objective, non-partisan bystander, but he makes many good points, any one of which should make one doubt the efficacy, competency, and perhaps most importantly, the integrity of this administration. If you need some further evidence to add to the mix, check out a site I posted about some time ago: McSweeney’s Daily Reasons To Dispatch Bush, at Day 93 and counting. It’s definitely time for a change…

Check out Will Ferrell playing W in White House West, a hilarious QuickTime/Windows Media video.

Check out The Stairway Suite, which includes MP3 sound clips of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven as it might sound if written by Schubert, Holzt, Glenn Miller, Mahler, Bizet, and Beethoven:

The Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven” is a rock classic for some critics. Whether or not you agree, its notoriety is assured by the thousands of would-be guitarists who can play the first dozen bars badly: it is to the guitar what “Chopsticks” is to the piano. But what if Jimmy Page & Robert Plant hadn’t written it? What if it had been written for orchestra in the 19th or 20th centuries? For a publicity stunt, “The Stairway Suite” was commissioned by the University of New South Wales Orchestra and written by Joe Wolfe.

Some of the interpretations are more, um, interesting than others…

Most people think that Chornobyl (popularly spelled Chernobyl), Ukraine is “off-limits, closed to the outside world behind a rigidly patrolled exclusion zone since reactor No. 4 went into catastrophic meltdown April 26, 1986.” Surprisingly, though, “hundreds of journalists, diplomats and tourists have been here in the past six years since the place was opened up to paying visitors, once safe areas away from the isolated and still highly radioactive ‘hot’ zones were identified.” Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that most of the previously inhabited areas are now abandoned, post-apocalyptic ghost towns, apparently ideal backdrops for a movie. Yes, a movie. According to CNN, some of the movie Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis is being filmed near Chornobyl. As the article points out, visiting the area is “an unsettling experience that should translate into a chilling opening sequence, perfect for a movie titled ‘Necropolis.’” It’s hard to disagree with that point, but something about filming anything but a documentary there just doesn’t seem right to me…

As most of you know, plans to extend the Hubble Space Telescope’s (HST) life past 2006 were initially rebuffed by NASA, which was going to allow the telescope to make a controlled reentry into the atmosphere some time after that. Thankfully, the agency has come to its senses, as “NASA engineers got the thumbs up on Monday to start planning a robotic mission to rescue the Hubble Space Telescope.” According to the story, at least a year of planning will go into the mission, which would not launch for at least three years. I’m very happy to hear that the HST may have an extended lease on life, as its unparalleled discoveries have only just begun.