SUICIDERS

One of G.W. Bush's supposed selling points as a Presidential candidate was that he "spoke like the common man." Actually, the so-called "common man," a voter whom Republicans hold in vein-chilling contempt, is unable to understand Bush's unique brand of malapropisms, bungled metaphors, subject-verb disagreements, misquotes, incorrect usages of tenses, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, and failure to distinguish among them. Contrary to what Bush's handlers think, being TRULY "plain-spoken" simply means to speak without flourish or floridity; it does not mean raping the English language in an effort to occasionally throw in the big word while simultaneously trying to sound "common," only to come off as uncommonly winceworthy.

The fact that Bush is such a stranger to the English language has even caused him to insert words into his speeches that do not exist in that language. One of these words - one that he has been using with increasing frequency - is "suiciders." Ostensibly, Bush means, by "suiciders," "suicide bombers," (or people who have killed themselves or want to kill themselves), but for some reason, he either cannot articulate the phrase "suicide bombers," or genuinely thinks that "suiciders" is a real word.

Examples of how Bush has used the word suicider include:


"Now, in terms of youngsters who are looking for -- you know, who are searching for a future, if there's a hopeless future there may be an opportunity to convert them into potential suiciders.". (May 14, 2002)
"These people don't have tanks. They don't have ships. They hide in caves. They send suiciders out." (Nov. 1, 2002)
"This is a different kind of war. In the old days you used to say, well, you destroyed so many tanks or airplanes -- we're making progress. That's not the way this war is conducted. They don't have tanks. They've got caves and they've got suiciders." (Nov. 2, 2002)
"That's not to say that a suicider could slip through, and it's possible, but we will not allow the evil designs of a few to stop the process that can provide such hope for a lot of people." (May 29, 2003)
"I expressed our nation's condolences at the needless murder of innocent people, by the latest suicider." (Oct. 6, 2003)
"This is a country which recently was attacked by a suicider that killed innocent children and women." (Oct. 7, 2003)
"It is dangerous in Iraq because there are some who believe that we're soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken by suiciders -- and suiciders who are willing to drive up to a Red Cross center, a center of international help and aid and comfort, and just kill." (Oct. 28, 2003)
"I believe he wants peace for his people -- truly do. I mean, you know, look. I mean, he's a man who has presided over suiciders, where he has to go to the funerals of women and children because some cold-blooded killer is trying to destroy the hopes of all the people in the region." (Nov. 16, 2003) (Bush is referring to Ariel Sharon).
"We've discovered mass graves with over 300,000 people there, rape rooms and torture rooms. He is paying suiciders to go kill innocent Israelis." (Nov. 17, 2003)
"Because we acted, a source of money to suiciders in the Middle East has been ended." (Mar. 25, 2004)
"And we can't let people blow up a process. But that's what happened, as you might recall. And there's been suiciders and killers and -- you know -- and it's essential that we work together to stop that kind of terror." (Apr. 12, 2004)
"Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States." (Apr. 13, 2004)
"I can't remember how many times they said it, but they said, disarm. See, you're a threat. Disarm. There's a reason why a lot of people made the conclusion. It was not only based upon intelligence, it was based upon the fact that he hated America, that he's willing to pay suiciders to go kill people in Israel, that he actually used weapons of mass destruction on his own people." (Apr. 19, 2004) (Bush inadvertently revealed the fact that Saddam's hatred for America is why we attacked him).
"The threat we saw was based upon not only the intelligence, but based upon the prior behavior of Mr. Saddam Hussein, a person who clearly hated America. He's a person that had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and against people in his neighborhood. He's a person that had terrorist ties. After all, he's the person that paid suiciders money to blow up innocent lives in the Middle East." (May 4, 2004) (How did the fact that Saddam used WMDs in Mr. Rogers-like fashion, and the fact that he conspired to "blow up" lives in the Middle East (while wearing a tie that said "Terrorist") mean that he hated America?)
"Freedom will prevail, so long as the United States and allies don't give the people of Iraq mixed signals, so long as we don't cower in the face of suiciders, or do what many Iraqis still suspect might happen, and that is cut and run early, like what happened in '91." (May 10, 2004)
"I was worried about Saddam Hussein. After all, he had attacked countries in his neighborhood, he had terrorist ties. Zarqawi, who's now running loose in Iraq, was in Baghdad prior to our arrival. He had funded terrorist activities. He paid suiciders to kill -- the families of suiciders who killed innocent Israelis." (Jun. 1, 2004) (Huh?)
"And the other thing that's happened is foreign fighters are in Iraq, who are convincing suiciders to kill innocent Iraqis. And it's tough, it's hard work." (Jun. 4, 2004)
"Saddam Hussein also had ties to terrorist organizations, as well. In other words, he was affiliated with terrorism -- Abu Nidal, the paying of families of suiciders to go kill innocent people." (Jun. 15, 2004)
"We can expect more attacks in the coming few weeks, more car bombs, more suiciders, more attempts on the lives of Iraqi officials." (Jun. 16, 2004)
"Iraqi police and Civil Defense Corps have captured several wanted terrorists, including Umar Boziani. He was a key lieutenant of this killer named Zarqawi who's ordering the suiciders inside of Iraq." (Jun. 18, 2004) ("I'll have a Big Mac and a side order of suiciders to go.")
"Zarqawi has been a threat to lot of people... He recruits suiciders, orders suiciders, and has them attack on a regular basis. (Jun. 26, 2004) "
"Zarqawi is the guy who beheads people on TV. (But not in real life). He's the person that orders suiciders to kill women and children." (Jun. 28, 2004)
"This guy Zarqawi got hospital aid there in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein was in power. He was the guy running a poisons factory in northeast Iraq. He's still in Iraq. He's the guy killing a lot of innocent people, ordering suiciders, bragging about it, cutting people's heads off." (Jul. 9, 2004)
"I don't think you order suiciders to kill innocent men, women, and children if you're a religious person." (Jul. 14, 2004)
"That's the ultimate terrorist act, isn't it, to go kill innocent people as a suicider, and he [Saddam Hussein] was willing to subsidize their families." (Aug. 13, 2004)
Before September the 11th (note the gratuitous Sept. 11th reference), the ruler of Iraq was a sworn enemy of America. He was defying the world and firing weapons at American pilots who were enforcing the world's sanctions. He had used weapons of mass destruction. He harbored terrorists, he invaded his neighbors, he subsidized the families of suiciders." (Aug. 26, 2004)
Remember Abu Nidal? He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer because he was Jewish? (Question mark? Are you asking or telling?) He found safe haven in Iraq (Who? Nidal or Klinghoffer?) . In other words, terrorist groups were in this guy's country. He paid the families -- he subsidized the families of suiciders who may go blow somebody up, generally (as opposed to specifically?), an American or a Jewish person, Israeli (Americans and non-Israelis can't be Jew? The suiciders paid the people they blew up?. He'd pay them." (Aug. 28, 2004)
"These are historic times we're living in. The free societies in Afghanistan and Iraq are going to affect the neighborhood that's desperate for freedom. Think about the example they're going to set. Women will say, look at the free women of Iraq. Why can't we be free? Young boys are going to say, look, there's a free society in our neighborhood, and why do I want to strap bombs on as a suicider?" (Sep. 7, 2004)
"We will adjust strategies on the ground, depending upon the tactics of the enemy, but we're not going to allow the suiciders to drive us out of Iraq." (Sep. 23, 2004)
"They have caused certain nations to withdraw from coalitions as a result of their action, such action reinforcing the ability for suiciders, for example, to effect free societies." (Sep. 23, 2004)
"I was impressed by the people of Iraq, who, in the face of car bombings and suiciders, said, we're going to defy these folks (car bombings are "folks"?)because we want to be free." (Mar. 30, 2005)
"I was overwhelmed by the courage of the over 8 million Iraqis who defied the suiciders and car bombers and assassins to cast their vote in the country's first free and democratic election in decades." (May 17, 2005)
"I'm sure you were amazed, as was much of the world, at the 8.5 million people who defied the car bombers and the killers and the suiciders to say as loud as they possibly can, you will not prevent us from voting and exercising our rights as free citizens. What a spectacular moment in history. And now we're standing with the government as they struggle against these suiciders." (Jun. 2, 2005)
"And the second way to defeat the terrorists is to spread freedom. You see, the best way to defeat a society that is -- doesn't have hope, a society where people become so angry they're willing to become suiciders, is to spread freedom, is to spread democracy." (Jun. 8, 2005)
"We expect Syria to do everything in her power to shut down the transshipment of suiciders and killers into Iraq. (Oct. 12, 2005)."
"It's hard for me to believe that there is such brutality in the world where people going to a funeral to mourn the dead, and a suicider shows up and kills people." (Jan. 11, 2006)
"I changed our foreign policy that said, that attitude of kind of accepting the things the way they are is going to lead to the conditions that will allow the enemy to continue to breed hatred and find suiciders and soldiers in their attempt to do harm." (Jan. 11, 2006)
"You'd read about these suiciders knocking people off that were trying to stand these recruiting stations, and so the question is, are you able to get recruits? If it's dangerous to sign up, are you able to sign people up? And the answer is, absolutely. People wanted to serve the Iraqi military. This is a good sign about whether or not we're succeeding in our mission in training folks to defend their freedom. And if they're willing to sign up in the face of suiciders, it says something about their desire to protect their country." (Feb. 1, 2006)
"You know, one of the interesting measurements early on was when the enemy started bombing recruiting stations. I don't know if you remember that, but they'd drive by with a suicider or an IED and destroy people standing in line trying to serve their nation." (Feb. 17, 2006)
"The leaders of Iraq rejected this notion that a suicider and a thug and a terrorist can create civil war." (Feb. 27, 2006)
"If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives -- I think it will -- I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing. In other words, it's very difficult -- you can have the most powerful army of the world -- ask the Israelis what it's like to try to stop suiciders. ...That's the -- but that's one of the main -- that's the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider. ...Trying to stop suiciders -- which we're doing a pretty good job of on occasion -- is difficult to do. And what the Iraqis are going to have to eventually do is convince those who are conducting suiciders who are not inspired by al Qaeda, for example, to realize there's a peaceful tomorrow." (May 23, 2006)
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And this man wants other people to learn how to speak English? Charity begins at home.

ON WINGS OF SHOCK AND AWE

X Men 3: The Last Stand, which I saw last night, will never be confused (not be me, anyway) with being a great movie. Yes, great movies - generally speaking - are more fun to watch than bad ones, if for no other reason than that time is valuable (when I say great movies are more fun to watch than bad ones, I am not pointing out the obvious, by the way).

Fun can be derived from the cinema in other ways. One can walk into a movie that the reviews universally indicated is "OK," that the first ten minutes or so of which seem to confirm the reviewers' assessment - but - a scene can come along - once in a rare while - that is so damn good that it can sweep you off your feet - no matter how numb they may have become.

X3 (which I'd rate at about a B-) contains such a scene. What is almost as great as discovering such a diamond in the rough is to discover that a distinguished blowhard - and "tough" critic - has made the same discovery. Stephanie Zacharek of salon. com writes of an opening scene in X3, a scene that perhaps would have made E.M. Forster, who penned the line, "Only connect!" as the prologue to his nove Howards End, proud:

Very early in "X-Men: The Last Stand," a fair-haired, preteen mutant -- we don't yet know his name -- stands in front of his bathroom mirror in tears, struggling to complete some barbaric grooming ritual that we can't quite see. His father bangs on the bathroom door, knowing, as we do, that the boy is trying to hide something -- but what?

The camera (DRL: as the father's voice begins to reach a fever pitch, as the knocks grow louder, and as the music reaches a frenetic crescendo) gives us a few quick clues: First, a few household implements (DRL: we cannot discern quite what these implements are, although the camera lingers over them) streaked with blood, which the boy has thrown to the floor, frustrated by their uselessness; then a scatter of white feathers on the pristine tiles (the scene takes place in a well-appointed house or apartment).

But the frustration (DRL: it's worse than frustration. The child's face reveals a mixture of anguish, nerves, tears and shame that practically leaps off the screen) on the kid's tear-stained face is even more distressing than the suggestion of his self-mutilation. So we're not particularly surprised or shocked when the camera shows us (seconds after the father forces the door opens, after the boy has repeatedly screamed, "Just another minute!" as he tried to conceal and destroy all evidence of what he was doing), not directly but reflected in the bathroom mirror, the bony, bloody bumps on this kid's back: He's been trying to hack the feathered wings that sprout from both sides of his bony spine -- to literally clip the very wings that set him apart from everyone else he knows. (The father's - last name Worthington - only words to his son in this scene are, "Not you, too," spoken in a hushed tone of WASP resignation that says, "Well, I might as well resign myself to the fact that you've disgusted and shamed me. The only question now is, how can I shame and make life miserable for you?).

The brutal beauty of the image is a mini-encapsulation of the appeal of the "X-Men" comics, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby more than 40 years ago: For lots of kids, these stories of mutants who band together to fight evil have been a metaphorical salve for the way our bodies turns against us in adolescence -- or maybe more specifically for the way, during adolescence and even beyond, our sexual impulses sometimes seem to be fighting against us. But what's most surprising about this small, lovely sequence in "X-Men: The Last Stand" is that it's been given to us by perhaps the last director we'd think would be capable of such bluntly effective poetry: Brett Ratner.

****************************************************************************
No, I didn't choose to cut off Ms. Zacharek's review where I did because of the blurb about Ratner - I chose to cut it off where I did because it was only by the time she mentioned his name that she had fully described what made this scene so great. Yes, of course, Ratner deserves credit for making this scene turn out so well. The scene makes you stand up and take notice. Any scene that causes intolerant people to be shown unpleasant images which they must suffer having to view (and except for the truly rude intolerants, having to view without commentary) makes you stand up and take notice. The direction of the rest of the film was uninspired, and what happens to the father and son (and the relationship between the two) later on in the film made me want to shit on the screen.

But to point these latter things out - and knowing that they exist on the ledger - does not diminish the greatness of the earlier scene. Remember the terrific scene in "The Empire Strikes Back" where Leia says to Han, "You have your moments......"? Finding greatness in the mundane (especially when we take Sturgeon's Law - named after and invented by the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon - "99 % of everything is crap" as a given) is what makes life tolerable.

"COLD STONES" CREAMERY

"The Sopranos," now in its sixth season on HBO, does not display the titles of its episodes onscreen, but each episode does have a title and one can find the titles on HBO's website. This past Sunday's episode, which I finally saw tonight, was entitled "Cold Stones." The title is susceptible of multiple meanings, I suppose.

I've never had the opportunity (or desire) to say the following cheap phrase in a post before, but here goes: SPOILER ALERT: Read no further if you have been living under a rock for the last three months and are a Sopranos fan and yet know absolulely no details about any of the sixth season's episodes (apparently quite a few people live under such rocks, if only to avoid paying for HBO, as they wait a year or more to purchase a whole season's worth of episodes on DVD. I don't know what they're missing).

"Cold Stones" seemingly brought to a head, and resolved, several plot threads that had stitched themselves across the Season 6 landscape. Tony and Carmela's walking lump of shit of a son, AJ, appears to have finally been forced into accepting reality, courtesy of his father "getting" him a job that, to be trite, AJ was told by his father he couldn't really refuse (he wouldn't be killed if he refused; just thrown out on the street; for this useless wasteoid and human money vacuum, however, being thrown out on the street pretty much is a fate worse than death).

The other Soprano child, Meadow (who completes the serpent's tooth, so to speak, except that both of the parents' teeth are sharper than sharper than a serpent's tooth), has decided to go to California to live with Cro-Magnon boyfriend Finn. What she sees in him - once she gets past wretching at the sight of him - I do not know. What he sees in her - after he gets over the image of her father's fat, engorged fist in his face - is also a mystery. Have no fear, Finn. Should you marry Meadow and ever get on Tony's bad side, and should he then beat you to a pulp, your face will not change much. You already look like you have been beaten to the point of being unrecognizable, and all of the ugly sticks from all of the redwoods in California, if applied in unison to your body, could not make you any more frightening looking.

But lately, much of the show - and this year's love it or hate it plotline - has centered around one formerly fringe character - Vito Spatafore. Vito - who lost over 100 pounds and who still looked like a giant walking clogged toilet, was previously known for having committed the great achievement of whacking Jackie April, Jr. Last season (over two years ago), Finn, working the same "construction" job AJ now will be consumed with, inadvetently caught Vito fellating another man in a port-a-potty. (Talk about getting your shit together!)

He told Meadow about this. Meadow couldn't believe it. "Vito is a married man," she bleated. Yeah, and Catholic priests aren't perverts. Vito, the next time he saw Finn, presented Finn with a ticket to a Yankees game, with an implied threat that if Finn did not meet him at the game, Finn would regret it. Finn told Meadow about the threat and instead of going, announced his intention to marry Meadow, feeling that engagement would bring him safety.

This season started off with Tony in a coma (he was shot by his uncle in a seeming fit of dementia). Vito and various other thugs paid Tony a visit as he was unconscious; Meadow and Finn did as well. Finn ran in to Vito again. Vito stared him down, but did not get the chance to do anything. Later in the season, two mobsters went to shake down a leather bar and found Vito in S&M gear lustily dancing with another man. They pass this knowledge along the grapevine. Tony and his crew eventually hear it; Meadow eventually hears it; she blurts something out to Carmela about what Finn told her; Finn is summoned to an interrogation, conducted by Tony, about what he saw in the port-a-potty, and the dark truth about Vito is revealed: he is gay.

By the time the revelation is made, Vito has fled to New Hampshire, where he is out of reach. Meanwhile, the macho straight mobsters who now know that Vito has been making frequent pit stops along the "Hershey Highway" all affect an attitude of disgust toward the fact that Vito is gay (these were the same guys, that for a whole episode, could do nothing other than talk about the possibility of whether he was gay, interrogate other people as to whether he was gay, speculate as to whether there were any "clues" Vito left behind that would suggest he was gay, etc.) Gayness, these proud Catholic Italians who cheated and beated their spouses said, was a sin, blah, blah blah, Vito should be shot, he has brought shame to me even though I am not related to him, and I will avenge myself upon him because he forced himself upon someone else so that I can prove I am a man because naturally, when someone else is discovered to be gay, my masculinity is tainted so I must do something manly.

The one character who gets his knickers up - to the point of hysterical obsesssio - about Vito's being gay - is the boss of the New York crime family, the reptilian whiner with a giant gob of gel-terrorized hair, Phil Leotardo. You see, Phil's cousin is Vito's wife (Vito has a wife and two children). Vito broke the sacrament, Phil says, by being gay, so Vito must be killed as a result so that Phil's cousin's honor is protected (never mind what she actually thinks; Phil's childishly myopic patriarchal attitude is the same type of hypocrisy that the Anthony Hopkins character displayed in Howards End, and illustrates, as did that film, that people with different backgrounds - especially when one of them hates because he beleives his religion tells him be must - never really can communicate with each other).

Vito, while in New Hampshire, meets a man, and falls in love. But, boredom sets in, and he returns to New Jersey for a piece of the action. He makes an overture to Tony, asking to be let back in. Tony initially is receptive to the idea. But Phil simply will have none of it. You know, his cousin was betrayed and all. One of Phil's goons runs into Vito, and in short order, Phil's goons promptly beat Vito to death with pool cues. When the police arrive, they find a pool cue rammed up Vito's rectum (remember, though, these guys despise homosexuals). Phil is there during the attack, and literally comes out of a closet, watching the attack with what can charitably described as great interest. Of course, mobsters in general display a great amount of interest in how their fellows dress, what their fellows eat, and how their fellows are killed, robbed, stabbed, and beaten to death. They are always touching and kissing and hugging each other, and going on about how much they love each other, and so on.

But, of course, no one dare say any of this behavior is gay. I am not saying it is. But this behavior is not any more or any less outwardly gay than Vito's behavior was. And Vito's fellow bleaters' smutty curiosity in the details of his sex life - the constant jokes about his cock and his rectum, and the speculation about what organ is pounded into one, and by another, is, if not gay, well, pretty sick. But no one is allowed to say this either. Why? Because people with power and popularity in life define what is repulsive, while exempting themselves from the definition, that's why. Hypocrisy is the fuel on which life runs.

Of course, when Vito is killed, his wife (who does not know who did it), says, basically, "Nothing - not being gay (she does not say "not EVEN being gay") justifies what was done to him." Phil goes on about how what Vito did was a sin, blah, blah, but the wife, naturally, can only think about how a fellow human being is now gone, and how she had the misfortune to realize that he was a person, not an X-mark. "Vengeance is mine," God said in the Bible. Of course, no one reads that part. People claim to believe in God, but those who quote the bible selectively not only quote only the denunciatory parts, but take it upon themselves to do the denunciation that God clearly indicates is his dominion.

And what does Tony think of all of this? A member of his "family" - a made man - was killed. He is upset - the anger is compounded by the fact that Tony has already grudgingly admitted that gays "have the right" to do what they want in the privacy of their own homes, and by the fact that he simply does not believe someone should be put to death because he is gay. Tony tries to comfort himself by saying that Phil had Vito killed not because Vito was gay, but to merely send Tony a message that Phil could kill one of Tony's men without repercussion. Tony also rationalizes the death by saying, "If Vito had only stayed wherever the fuck he was, this never would have happened! (Vito never would had to have gone there in the first place if not for his associates' peculiar way of thinking, though)." People spend more time trying to rationalize nonsense than they ever do thinking. Sure, the latter is harder for them - but that's because they've made it so by cluttering up their minds with religious bunk, hypocritical codswallop, doubletalk, and hatred.

A mind is a terrile thing to....use.

"COLD STONES" CREAMERY

"The Sopranos," now in its sixth season on HBO, does not display the titles of its episodes onscreen, but each episode does have a title and one can find the titles on HBO's website. This past Sunday's episode, which I finally saw tonight, was entitled "Cold Stones." The title is susceptible of multiple meanings, I suppose.

I've never had the opportunity (or desire) to say the following cheap phrase in a post before, but here goes: SPOILER ALERT: Read no further if you have been living under a rock for the last three months and are a Sopranos fan and yet know absolulely no details about any of the sixth season's episodes (apparently quite a few people live under such rocks, if only to avoid paying for HBO, as they wait a year or more to purchase a whole season's worth of episodes on DVD. I don't know what they're missing).

"Cold Stones" seemingly brought to a head, and resolved, several plot threads that had stitched themselves across the Season 6 landscape. Tony and Carmela's walking lump of shit of a son, AJ, appears to have finally been forced into accepting reality, courtesy of his father "getting" him a job that, to be trite, AJ was told by his father he couldn't really refuse (he wouldn't be killed if he refused; just thrown out on the street; for this useless wasteoid and human money vacuum, however, being thrown out on the street pretty much is a fate worse than death).

The other Soprano child, Meadow (who completes the serpent's tooth, so to speak, except that both of the parents' teeth are sharper than sharper than a serpent's tooth), has decided to go to California to live with Cro-Magnon boyfriend Finn. What she sees in him - once she gets past wretching at the sight of him - I do not know. What he sees in her - after he gets over the image of her father's fat, engorged fist in his face - is also a mystery. Have no fear, Finn. Should you marry Meadow and ever get on Tony's bad side, and should he then beat you to a pulp, your face will not change much. You already look like you have been beaten to the point of being unrecognizable, and all of the ugly sticks from all of the redwoods in California, if applied in unison to your body, could not make you any more frightening looking.

But lately, much of the show - and this year's love it or hate it plotline - has centered around one formerly fringe character - Vito Spatafore. Vito - who lost over 100 pounds and who still looked like a giant walking clogged toilet, was previously known for having committed the great achievement of whacking Jackie April, Jr. Last season (over two years ago), Finn, working the same "construction" job AJ now will be consumed with, inadvetently caught Vito fellating another man in a port-a-potty. (Talk about getting your shit together!)

He told Meadow about this. Meadow couldn't believe it. "Vito is a married man," she bleated. Yeah, and Catholic priests aren't perverts. Vito, the next time he saw Finn, presented Finn with a ticket to a Yankees game, with an implied threat that if Finn did not meet him at the game, Finn would regret it. Finn told Meadow about the threat and instead of going, announced his intention to marry Meadow, feeling that engagement would bring him safety.

This season started off with Tony in a coma (he was shot by his uncle in a seeming fit of dementia). Vito and various other thugs paid Tony a visit as he was unconscious; Meadow and Finn did as well. Finn ran in to Vito again. Vito stared him down, but did not get the chance to do anything. Later in the season, two mobsters went to shake down a leather bar and found Vito in S&M gear lustily dancing with another man. They pass this knowledge along the grapevine. Tony and his crew eventually hear it; Meadow eventually hears it; she blurts something out to Carmela about what Finn told her; Finn is summoned to an interrogation, conducted by Tony, about what he saw in the port-a-potty, and the dark truth about Vito is revealed: he is gay.

By the time the revelation is made, Vito has fled to New Hampshire, where he is out of reach. Meanwhile, the macho straight mobsters who now know that Vito has been making frequent pit stops along the "Hershey Highway" all affect an attitude of disgust toward the fact that Vito is gay (these were the same guys, that for a whole episode, could do nothing other than talk about the possibility of whether he was gay, interrogate other people as to whether he was gay, speculate as to whether there were any "clues" Vito left behind that would suggest he was gay, etc.) Gayness, these proud Catholic Italians who cheated and beated their spouses said, was a sin, blah, blah blah, Vito should be shot, he has brought shame to me even though I am not related to him, and I will avenge myself upon him because he forced himself upon someone else so that I can prove I am a man because naturally, when someone else is discovered to be gay, my masculinity is tainted so I must do something manly.

The one character who gets his knickers up - to the point of hysterical obsesssio - about Vito's being gay - is the boss of the New York crime family, the reptilian whiner with a giant gob of gel-terrorized hair, Phil Leotardo. You see, Phil's cousin is Vito's wife (Vito has a wife and two children). Vito broke the sacrament, Phil says, by being gay, so Vito must be killed as a result so that Phil's cousin's honor is protected (never mind what she actually thinks; Phil's childishly myopic patriarchal attitude is the same type of hypocrisy that the Anthony Hopkins character displayed in Howards End, and illustrates, as did that film, that people with different backgrounds - especially when one of them hates because he beleives his religion tells him be must - never really can communicate with each other).

Vito, while in New Hampshire, meets a man, and falls in love. But, boredom sets in, and he returns to New Jersey for a piece of the action. He makes an overture to Tony, asking to be let back in. Tony initially is receptive to the idea. But Phil simply will have none of it. You know, his cousin was betrayed and all. One of Phil's goons runs into Vito, and in short order, Phil's goons promptly beat Vito to death with pool cues. When the police arrive, they find a pool cue rammed up Vito's rectum (remember, though, these guys despise homosexuals). Phil is there during the attack, and literally comes out of a closet, watching the attack with what can charitably described as great interest. Of course, mobsters in general display a great amount of interest in how their fellows dress, what their fellows eat, and how their fellows are killed, robbed, stabbed, and beaten to death. They are always touching and kissing and hugging each other, and going on about how much they love each other, and so on.

But, of course, no one dare say any of this behavior is gay. I am not saying it is. But this behavior is not any more or any less outwardly gay than Vito's behavior was. And Vito's fellow bleaters' smutty curiosity in the details of his sex life - the constant jokes about his cock and his rectum, and the speculation about what organ is pounded into one, and by another, is, if not gay, well, pretty sick. But no one is allowed to say this either. Why? Because people with power and popularity in life define what is repulsive, while exempting themselves from the definition, that's why. Hypocrisy is the fuel on which life runs.

Of course, when Vito is killed, his wife (who does not know who did it), says, basically, "Nothing - not being gay (she does not say "not EVEN being gay") justifies what was done to him." Phil goes on about how what Vito did was a sin, blah, blah, but the wife, naturally, can only think about how a fellow human being is now gone, and how she had the misfortune to realize that he was a person, not an X-mark. "Vengeance is mine," God said in the Bible. Of course, no one reads that part. People claim to believe in God, but those who quote the bible selectively not only quote only the denunciatory parts, but take it upon themselves to do the denunciation that God clearly indicates is his dominion.

And what does Tony think of all of this? A member of his "family" - a made man - was killed. He is upset - the anger is compounded by the fact that Tony has already grudgingly admitted that gays "have the right" to do what they want in the privacy of their own homes, and by the fact that he simply does not believe someone should be put to death because he is gay. Tony tries to comfort himself by saying that Phil had Vito killed not because Vito was gay, but to merely send Tony a message that Phil could kill one of Tony's men without repercussion. Tony also rationalizes the death by saying, "If Vito had only stayed wherever the fuck he was, this never would have happened! (Vito never would had to have gone there in the first place if not for his associates' peculiar way of thinking, though)." People spend more time trying to rationalize nonsense than they ever do thinking. Sure, the latter is harder for them - but that's because they've made it so by cluttering up their minds with religious bunk, hypocritical codswallop, doubletalk, and hatred.

A mind is a terrile thing to....use.

A TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON

By the way, anyone who reads this blog and who can correctly guess the # of post titles that are the names of Star Trek episodes...... is my hero.

"A Taste of Armageddon" - is a classic episode from what is now known as "Classic Star Trek," or "The Original Series." This first season tale - which I first saw when I was about ten - was an exciting action/adventure yarn with some unmistakeable allegorical content - content that spoke so strongly and effectively - that it spoke to me (and not in a "I'm so bad I'm telling you to get out of the room! way) when I was about ten.

The plot is not terribly complicated (back in the day, storytellers realized that good allegories had to satisfy the threshold obligation of being minimally straightforward enough so as to allow the viewer to grasp the message).

The U.S.S. Enterprise is ordered to pick up Ambassador Robert Fox, who is headed to planet Eminiar VII on a diplomatic mission. Upon arriving at the planet, the ship is warned away. Naturally, Captain Kirk decides to beam down, precisely because the ship is warned to stay away.

Beaming to the surface with a landing party, Kirk and Spock are met by a young woman, Mea 3, who tells them that Eminiar VII has been at war with its neighboring planet, Vendikar, for over 500 years (notably, what the planets are, or were, fighting over, is never discussed in the episode; as far as the viewer knows, the Eminiams have no idea. Additionally, we never see a Vendikarian, and as the episode progresses, we get the sense that if we did, he or she could not provide details in this regard either. Curious).

Mea 3 takes them to the council chambers where they find banks of computers (what her incentive is to do this is not made clear).. Eminiar's head council leader, Anan 7, (played terrifically by David Otapashu - try saying THAT one ten times fast) informs Kirk and Spock them that the two planets have learned to avoid the complete devastation of war because computers are now used to fight the war. For how long they have been used, we do not know, but they have been used for quite some time, as is evidenced by the matter-of-fact description provided by Anan 7 of how the computerized "rules of engagement" work.

When a "hit" is scored by one of the planets (each planet's computers randomly pick an area of the other planet's population and designate the citizens of that area as "marked for destruction"), the people declared "dead" willingly walk into antimatter chambers and are vaporized. The Eminians are vaporized in their own planet's chambers; the Vendikarians in theirs. The planets jointly arrived at this arrangement and have never been anything less than satisfied with it; during its entire length of operation, no cries of "foul play" have accompanied a hit; no cries of "savagery!" have been made when one planet's computer decides that one day X, there shall be ten hits instead of five; no planet's population cries "unfair!" when a target area that is selected is composed primarily of, say, babies and toddlers. To cry foul, of course, would be to disrupt the system - and the reason why the system was created was because both sides became sick of the horrors that come from having waged a real war.

Anan 7 further tells Kirk that his ship and all the crew aboard her have been declared casualties (a targeted area automatically includes the atmosphere above that area and anything in orbit directly above that area; innocent passersby, of course, are given no notice of this) and will be sent to anti-matter chambers for vaporization. When Kirk flatly refuses, he and Spock are taken prisoners (it is never observed, by the way, whether the computerized system of warfare actually has produced any beneficial effects for either society. Has it lowered either society's crime rate? Enhanced either one's economy?)

The council members are unable to convince Scotty, temporarily in charge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, to lower shields without a direct order from Captain Kirk. Meanwhile, Ambassador Fox, a pompous blowhard, has beamed to Eminiar in the naive hopes that he can resolve the growing crisis, and is also taken prisoner, marked for death.

Kirk and Spock escape (they always do) and gain control of the council chambers where they destroy the computers. Kirk tells the council members that they have made this war too easy for themselves and that they will truly experience the horrors of war if they do not learn to make peace first. Ambassador Fox volunteers to stay behind and negotiate a peace between the neighboring planets.

William Shatner, as Kirk, gets to deliver, in his inimitable style, some classic speeches here - and the speeches have bite. Kirk tells Anan 7, as the disintegration chambers lay in ruins:

"Death...destruction, disease, horror...that's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless,you've had no reason to stop it."

And then, after the chambers are no longer:

ANAN: You realize what you have done?

KIRK: Yes, I do.I've given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikarians now assume that you've broken your agreementand you're preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They'll do the same,only the next attack they launchwill do more than count up numbers in a computer. They'll destroy cities, devastate your planet. You'll want to retaliate. If I were you, I'd start making bombs. Yes, Councilman, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons,or you might consider an alternative--Put an end to it.
Make peace.

ANAN: There can be no peace. Don't you see? We've admitted it to ourselves. We're a killer species. It's instinctive. It's the same with you... It's instinctive.

KIRK: The instinct can be fought. We're human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers,but we won't kill today. That's all it takes--knowing that we won't kill today. Contact Vendikar. I think you'll find that they're just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you are, that they'll do anything to avoid the alternative--peace or utter destruction. It's up to you.


And observe Anan's pitifully lame arguments in which he attempts to cast Kirk as the party who would be responsible for the slaughter of millions of people:

ANAN: Captain, surely you can see the position we are in. If your people do not report to our disintegration chambers,it is a violation of an agreementthat dates back 500 years.

KIRK: My people are not responsible for your agreements.

ANAN: You will be responsiblefor an escalation that will destroy everything. Millions of people horribly killed,complete destruction of our culture here and the culture on Vendikar, disaster, disease, starvation, horrible, lingering death, pain and anguish!

KIRK: That seems to frighten you.

ANAN: It would frighten any sane man.

KIRK: Yes. You're quite right.

ANAN: Don't you understand, Captain? We have done away with all that. Now you are threatening to bring it down on us again. [Is your crew] more important than the hundreds of millions of innocent peopleon Eminiar and Vendikar? What kind of monster are you?

KIRK: I'm a barbarian. You said it yourself.

ANAN: I had hoped I'd spoken only figuratively.

KIRK: Oh, no. You were quite accurate.

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Our government, in this "Iraq War," has gone to considerable lengths to indulge Anan 7's fantasy that a war can be fought with no consequences. While we are not barbaric enough (or perhaps we are too barbaric?) to fight a war Anan-7-style, and our current enemies are incapable of fighting one, our government has done its best to do what Anan 7's main purpose was anyway - that of anesthetizing war.

Flag draped coffins of soldiers cannot be seen by the American public - by law. The President has not attended the funeral of a single soldier killed in combat. Television conglomerates refuse to air programming that honors the dead by respectfully reading off their names. The media has been enthusiastically cowed (and has enthusiastically responded to such cowing) into not reporting atrocities committed by American soldiers - for fear that it might damage "the mission" - a mission we the people know nothing about, except as it is described in solemn, smarmy platitudes planted in supposedly free Iraqi newspapers, and "reported" in government-funded U.S. television stations. Barely a word is spoken of the thousands of soldiers whose limbs have been blown off, whose bodies have been disfigured, who have developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, treatment-resistant depression, and who have committed suicide. If these facts are mentioned at all, they are spoken of by the mentioner as if they were ever-so-slightly oddly morbid curiosities and knick-knacks. The President cannot even shore up morale at photo-oped events at which the audiences are required to applaud.

Delusional notions of patriotism, which marinate in brains that have been filleted to death by the rotten stove that is religion, require that citizens accept as reality this unreality that has been so lovingly created by our four estates. Our country demands that we sacrifice our hearts and minds for some noble and bleak cause it insists we never be allowed to see, but simultaneuosly demands that we shut these things off first, lest that which we are called upon to sacrifice become recognized, with the subsequent recognition of "the horror.... the horror."*

If we do not recognize the horror, we bring ourselves ever closer to "Armageddon."

* Final words of Apocalypse Now

A TIME TO STAND

No longer can it be said that Alberto Gonzales is a weaselly little man who cannot speak in complete sentences. As fhe following news story, for which the New York Times will likely be prosecuted, indicates, he is a man of deep principle:

WASHINGTON, May 26 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.
The potential showdown was averted Thursday when President Bush ordered the evidence to be sealed for 45 days to give Congress and the Justice Department a chance to work out a deal.

The evidence was seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents last Saturday night in a search of the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana. The search set off an uproar of protest by House leaders in both parties, who said the intrusion by an executive branch agency into a Congressional office violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine. They demanded that the Justice Department return the evidence.

The possibility of resignations underscored the gravity of the crisis that gripped the Justice Department as the administration grappled with how to balance the pressure from its own party on Capitol Hill against the principle that a criminal investigation, especially one involving a member of Congress, should be kept well clear of political considerations.

It is not clear precisely what message Mr. Gonzales delivered to Mr. Bush when they met Thursday morning at the White House, or whether he informed the president of the resignation talk. But hours later, the White House announced that the evidence would be sealed for 45 days in the custody of the solicitor general, the Justice Department official who represents the government before the Supreme Court. That arrangement ended the talk of resignations.

F.B.I. officials would not comment Friday on Mr. Mueller's thinking or on whether his views had been communicated to the president.

The White House said Mr. Bush devised the 45-day plan as a way to cool tempers in Congress and the Justice Department. "The president saw both sides becoming more entrenched," said Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush's counselor. "Emotions were running high; that's why the president felt he had to weigh in."
Tensions were especially high because officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. viewed the Congressional protest, led by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and House Republicans, as largely a proxy fight for battles likely to come over criminal investigations into other Republicans in Congress.

Separate investigations into the activities of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Randy Cunningham, the former congressman from California, have placed several other Republicans under scrutiny; in the Cunningham case, federal authorities have informally asked to interview nine former staff members of the House Appropriations and Intelligence Committees.

By Friday, the strong words and tense behind-the-scenes meetings of the previous few days had been replaced, in public at least, by conciliatory terms and images of accommodation. Mr. Gonzales traveled to Capitol Hill and met with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, as Republican leaders explored a formal procedure to cover any future searches.

"We've been working hard already, and we'll continue to do so pursuant to the president's order," Mr. Gonzales told reporters on his way to the meeting.

After the meeting, Mr. Frist said, "I want to know as leader exactly what would happen if there was a similar sort of case."

Senior lawmakers in the House and Senate said their intent was not to prohibit searches of Congressional offices if there was a legitimate reason. But they said the Jefferson case powerfully illustrated how Congress and the administration had no set guidelines for how such a search should be done, what notice was required and how law enforcement and House authorities would interact.

But within the Justice Department and the F.B.I., some officials complained that the 45-day cooling-off arrangement was a politically motivated intrusion into the investigative process. Others said the deal was preferable to what some called the potential "cataclysm" of possible resignations if the department had been ordered to give up the material, as one official briefed on the negotiations described it. This official and others at the department and the F.B.I. were granted anonymity to discuss a continuing criminal case.
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This is the anti-Saturday Night Massacre. In that dreadful affair, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox ordered Richard Nixon to turn over materials pertinent to the Watergate investigation. Nixon, instead of complying, ordered his Attorney General Elliott Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused to fire Cox and resigned. Nixon then ordered the Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckleshaus, to fire Cox. Ruckleshaus, too, refused, and resigned. Nixon then turned to Robert Bork, the Solicitor General - the man who argues cases in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of the United States - and ordered Bork to fire Cox. Bork cheerfully complied. The firing was susequently ruled illegal. (Bork was Borked WAY before 1987).

Richardson and Ruckleshaus, when push came to shove, resigned instead of aiding and abetting the rape of the Constitution. We now live in different times. Gonzales and that walking rat's nest hairdo Robert Mueller, would rather resign than be forced to clean up the leavings they have left on the Constitution from their rape thereof. What is most astonishing about these brave worthies' stand is that their casual arrogance and sense of entitlement - which one could sense as Gonzales talked about the search being necessary because Jefferson was too much of a "nuisance" (he wouldn't comply with a subpoena!) - belies the fact that, in the 219 years that this Republic has been in existence, the Executive Branch has not once - not ONCE - searched the premises of a member of commerce or seized evidence therefrom. The "but he wouldn't comply with a subpoena" rationale is not only a technical joke (there were other ways one could have attempted to obtain the information short of a raid), but merely illustrates the truism Justice Holmes uttered in 1905: "A page of history is worth a volume of logic." And here, the logic doesn't amount to a volume. It amounts to a mealymouthed, mumbly, greaseball, sleazebag girly stuffed shit Attorney General basically saying that because he couldn't get his cookie, he was going to steal someone's lunchbox.

I know - the Bush supporters are not worked up about this issue -after all, they don't know anything about what separation of powers REALLY means, and after all, it was only a black Democrat's office that was raided. But the supporters should be scared. Anyone who is a Republican should be (anyone who is not is presumed to think, at least somewhat, and therefore already is), because Bush, at his whim, can and does decide that he all of a sudden does not like certain members of Congress. Watch out, GOPers. That battering ram isn't just for the perps on COPS anymore, it's for you and your bent-over pages! Especially those of you - seemingly all of you - who all of a sudden have found out - quite vociferously that you NEVER MET JACK ABRAMOFF AND HAVE NO IDEA WHO HE IS!

And to the thinkers out there (Republicans, please go away) who think that this is a problem, but not a particularly big one, try looking at it from a role-reversal point of view. If the Executive can constitutionally search - without a warrant - the premises of a Congressman, and seize - without a warrant - evidence obtained on those premises - in plain sight or otherwise, then, of course, the Capitol Police, representing the Legislative Branch, can surely conduct a like search and seizure of a member of the Executive Branch, including the President. Any judge's premises can be searched and items therefrom can be seized, and a judge himself can search premises of Executive or Legislative Branch memers and seize items on the premises, or order which items can be seized (such an action directly conflicts with the ruling in Lo-Ji v. New York, but hey, who cares when you're just haggling over the price?)

Bush also, two days ago, delegated authority to Honduran death squad and National Intelligence czar John Negroponte the power to exempt any corporation Negroponte wants from having to comply with standard reporting requirements. The law specifies that a PRESIDENT can exempt corporations from reporting requirements in time of war, but does not allow for delegation. And wouldn't delegation cut against the whole "unitary executive" theory? No matter. Investors - even rich ones - base their decisions upon what corporations report. Now Bush has pissed off yet another element of his base - investors. But remember, 9/11 changed the way we view the world, and oceans no longer protect us, so reporting requirements are no longer needed, it has been decided - on the very same DAY, no less, that Kenny-Boy Lay and Jeffrey Shillinh were convicted for, among other thing, manipulating reports.

Freedom is on the march. We need to be fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. And, of course, Mexicans take all the jobs the rest of us don't want. That's why we raided the office of Congressman Jefferson and gave Ambassador Negroponte this power. That, and because of activist judges, the sanctity of marriage, and because no one anticipated the breach of the levees. And finally, because I'm the decider, and because suiciders are responsible for most U.S. Armed Forces deaths in Iraq.

ACID, ABORTION AND AMNESTY

In 1972, Richard Nixon's campaign goons summarized George McGovern's position on the issues by reference to the 3 A's: "acid, abortion and amnesty." The amnesty to which said goons referred was amnesty that they believed McGovern would give to draft-dodgers then residing in other nations who resided in other nations so as to avoid the draft. These Republicans, who did not serve in the war, hated the idea of Americans returning to America and being treated as Americans. (For the record, McGovern did support lliberalization of drug laws and liberalization of abortion laws; two months after his electoral defeat, the Supreme Court issued Roe v. Wade, and several months after his defeat, American participation in Vietnam ended. The Roe vote was 7-2 and thhe Vietnam withdrawal was long in the making, which meant that the idea of amnesty had gained considerable public acceptance circa Novemer 1972. But, elections don't wedge issue themselves, so even though McGovern ran an embarrassing campaign from a technical standpoint, and actually shut out a lot of moderate Democratic voices, the Republicans had to wedge-issue the election out of - I don't know what - nobless oblige?)

Today, "amnesty" is another big Republican word. It is a big word in the sense that most Republican catchphrases cannot consist of more than a few words, because a particularly long multi-word catchphrase might lead to attempts to thinking. It is also a big word because it attempts to describe a complicated issue in a thoroughly reductive manner: Republicans use the term disparagingy to describe any attempt made by a lawmaker to not forcibly remove an illegal immigrant fron this country - i.e., if we do not forcibly deport illegal immigrant X, we are granting him "amnesty." The term is hurled from the White House into Fox News' fax and phone lines, and from there slimed into right wing websites' homepages, and from there regurgitated into right wing airwaves. The echo chamber is thus created. In the process, those who bandy the term about do not gain the slightest appreciation or understanding of what it means - and thereby do not gain the slightest understanding of that which they are agitating over and demonizing.

To GRANT someone amnesty is to grant that person an act of clemency or pardon. The PERIOD of amnesty is the period during which offenders - lawbreakers - are exempt from punishment; amnesty is also knows AS a GRANT of a pardon from lawbreaking. The pardon is generally granted for political offenses, such as draft-dodging. Someone who is granted amnesty is not rewarded (other than by being pardoned); his offense is merely "waved away."

See how easy it is to avoid being suckered into acts of demonization simply by reading?

From the above definition, several observations obtain: 1) the government has the discretion, meaning that it can (DEFINITELY can) pardon an individual or group of individuals from breaking the law, and it need not specify its reasons for doing so. The only way the exercise of this discretion can be illegal is if another law (beyond the law broken) prohibits the exercise of this discretion (I do not see how such a law could exist, given the President's general pardon power for federal offenses), OR if the exercise of discretion works an equal protection violation. If Congress creates, and the President signs, a bill that makes legal status or activity that used to be illegal, that bill, to be unlawful, must constitute a violation of some other law(s), or must be an invalid exercise of Congressional and/or Presidential power.

In the case of the Senate bill that does not forcibly remove most illegal immigrants, Congress and the President, to the best of my knowledge, have acted lawfully and within the scope of their powers so as to make lawful that which previously was unlawful. Amnesty historically has been granted through means other than the pardon power; as long as it is granted via legislation or presidential prerogative that does not trammel upon other laws or upon the Constitution, a law providing for such amnesty is proper.

By the way - and here's the really important part about the bill - it's not really AMNESTY. AMNESTY involves the waving of a magic wand, the resetting of a clock - the restoring or rendering of someone to a position as if he had not broken the law, and nothing more. The Senate bill, while it does place someone in a position such that he has effectively never broken the law in that it allows someone who ONCE broke a law to stay here, actually DOES, at the same time, punish that someone for once breaking that law by making him pay fines, and by learning English, etc. In other words, the person can only stay here IF he pays - to some degree - for his lawbreaking. This arrangement, by definition, is NOT amnesty.

Naturallly, quite a few foamies (roughly 36 in the Senate and over 200 in the House) don't see it that way. They simply recite the foamy definition of "amnesty" noted above, and favor forcible deportation of 12 million people. Do they care who is to pay for this? How it is to be paid for? No. They simply know that they will not personally have to pay for it, nor will their xenophobic rich friends who live in the states that, miraculously, are the most terrified of "illegal immigrants" even though there are maybe 2 or three illegal immigrants in the entire borders of these states. If these Representatives were truly serious about forcible deportation, they should have insisted on not making all of those tax cuts permanent. Do we really need to borrow money from China again to deport Mexicans? How will China respond to a request that we need its money to deport an entire race of people? It wasn't that long ago when Asians were excluded from immigrating to the U.S., after all.

Oh - there are two other aspects to the House plan. One is granting immediate felon status to all illegal immigrants in the United States. Such a grant, however, is merely antecedent to the House Repulican desire for deportation. If the stated goal is to deport, why bother going to the trouble of classifying the group as felons? Just keep track of who was deported and when - that way, when you decide you won't want them ever coming back in - actually, you've already decided that - you'll know who it is you don't want coming back in.

The other aspect - one that the House Republicans claim requires immediate implementation - is a fence that covers virtually the entire U.S.-Mexican border. Of course, a fence, as these worthies have realized, is not good enough. The fence must be surrounded with motion sensors, tracking devices, and remote cameras, to aid our ever-vigilant Border Patrol in spotting attempts at border crossing. I once represented a gaggle of federal employees accused of "improper contracting practices" when they were working for GSA. Theey had procured, for Border Patrol, and under Border Patrol's direct orders, such a technology system. The government discovered that out in the Arizona, New Mexico and Texas deserts, sensor and infrared technology is prone to malfunction, especially when the government awards the contracts to provide such technology to its favorite military-industrial cronies instead of groups that can - ! - actually get the job done! The Border Patrol, as presently constituted - works AGAINST such technology, thereby making the techolongy a literal waste of funds. Oh, and what on Earth does the National Guard know about the technology? The BP knows nothing about it, so that means the National Guard knows less than nothing! And since the government cares more about paying these contractors for crappy work so as to give the appearance that something is being done than about actually achieving results, expect A LOT of waste of taxpayer funds to grace this latest project.

So, labels are harmful, and lead to harmful and stupid thinking. But thinking people know that already.

If you hadn't noticed, I haven't actually taken a stand on the "immigration issue" in this post. Sometimes, one's stand has already been drawn in the sand, to a large degree, by logic - or more specifically, by simply realizing the stupidity of other people's stands. Yes, there are too many people from Mexico coming to this country, and yes, something needs to be done about it. But neither the House Republicans nor the Senate nor the President really are committed to a solution. If they were, they wouldn't have waited until six months before the Congressional elections to tell us about a problem that has existed for decades. A solution to this problem - whatever that solution should consist of - requires reasoning, thinking, refraining from demonization and labeling, and a little common sense. God help us all.

MOUTH CONTROL

Another commencement speech uproar:
Curt Brown, Star Tribune
Last update: May 24, 2006 – 10:19 AM


A University of St. Thomas honors graduate who scolded his fellow seniors at Saturday's commencement ceremony for being "selfish" apologized Monday for offending people during his politically charged speech.
Ben Kessler, an academic All-America football player who plans to become a priest, chastised students for using birth control, criticized them for a recent food fight and upheld the St. Paul university's controversial policy against allowing unmarried faculty and staff members in romantic relationships to room together on school trips that involve students.

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Great. Another lecture - this time from a atudent (although note that as unctuous as the student was, he still was not as repulsive as John McCain thinks people my age are). Mr. Kessler, by the way, looks like he's had sex with half of the student body and forcibly raped the other. Maybe if he refrained from untrammeled copulation, he wouldn't have had to howl against birth control.

My test of a great graduation speech is this: well, actually, I'm not sure what it is, but here's one element that the speech definitely should not have: some reference to some recent or current event, made in isolation, without tying the comment to any theme, any larger point, or to reality, that instantly dates a substantive portion of the speech. You know, a comment that causes someone, when viewing the speech 5 years later, to say, "This person had the opportunity to speak in front of thousands of people, to deliver words whose meaning would last for eternity, and THIS is what he chose to talk about? A food fight?"

INSPIRATION LIGHTS THE BIGOT WITHIN

My thank-you note to Stephen Colbert for his White House Press Correspondets' performance:

Mr. Colbert,

"What a brilliant “repor[t]” you delivered on the President’s ineptitude, incompetence, arrogance, and plain old dumbfuckitude! And you were only only ten feet from his face! Which meant you had to look at him while insulting him! How did you do it? The fact that the mealy-mouthed cowards in the room may not have been laughing that much - these cowards that professionally fellate the President and have served as foot soldiers in his REAL war - the war on thinking - PROVES that your performance as host of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was brilliant! If they were laughing, it would have been because you had engaged in canned, stupid jokes making these nitwits feel good about themselves."

"I know that to have said a joke like this probably would have been in bad taste (mind you, not in half as bad the taste as when GWB looked under a table for “‘dem weapons of mass deshtructyon” and the press laughed its ass off), but to me, Bush’s personnel changes are akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Challenger - 73 seconds after they take place, something explodes! But seriously, the Hindenberg analogy was seriously one of the freshest and funniest jokes wrung from a stale bit of material I’ve ever heard. Bravo!"

" P.S. Please please please have a mouth-foaming bigot like Alan Keyes/Gary Bauer on your show, and have ready as a prop a piece of foam or sponge so that when they start foaming at the mouth, you can say, “Some people say you are foam-at-the-mouth-bigots. But I have nothing against foam. I love it. Why, here’s your very own piece of foam. Use it, abuse it, clean yourself up, and start foaming all over again!”

YOUR CONDUCTOR THIS EVENING IS....

John McCain. The train: The Doubletalk Express. As we all know, the trains don't always run on time, especially, in and around New York City, and we saw a forceful reminder of this axiom this past weekend when Senator McCaiin (R-Mealymouth) took his train in for a spin to Madison Square Garden, to deliver a speech to the graduates of The New School.

McCain is no stranger to the Garden. He spoke there, why, just short of two years ago, at that hatefest (oops, Republicans, I meant to say "lovefest") known as the Republican National Convention. I didn't watch a single minute of this convention ("empty your head of all violent thoughts," Captain Picard once told his crew, when trying to defeat an enemy that fed off of hate), but I read the text of McCain's speech.

He, as the self-proclaimed arbiter of which candidate or group campaigning on that candidate's behalf could say what during that election (note that he became this arbiter AFTER he wrote legislation that, to some degree, silenced the speech that people other than him could utter about candidates during an election), went on about how important winning the "war in Iraq" was, and - why this was done, I cannot say, took a swipe at Michael Moore - of all people - calling him "disingenuous." Well, at least we knew that McCain took the election seriously, just as he pretended to take the Senate as an institution seriously by erupting at Barack Obama when Obama dared to suggest that Democrats had the right to introduce their own "ethics legislation."

While the Doubletalk Express was stopped in MSG THIS time, however, the audience was not very friendly. New School, as McCain knew, has an active (and perhaps actively insufferable, to a degree) student body. McCain, however, was undeterred from giving the same stump speech to the New School crowd that he had just given to Jerry Falwell's Anti-Liberty University.

Politicians of McCain's ilk claim to wonder why people my age do not want to get involved in politics. McCain, as an initial matter, cannot view people my age with anything but contempt. 18-30 year-olds, after all, were the only group to vote for Kerry in the last election, and they did so by a comfortable margin.

But the following passage from his speech really does make one wonder just how much he hates that which is, after all, still a part of him:

“When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right. I loved to argue, and I could become understandably belligerent with people who lacked the grace and intelligence to agree with me. With my superior qualities so obvious, it was an intolerable hardship to have to suffer fools gladly. So I rarely did. All their resistance to my brilliantly conceived and cogently argued views proved was that they possessed an inferior intellect and a weaker character than God had blessed me with, and I felt it was my clear duty to so inform them. It’s a pity that there wasn’t a blogosphere then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium.”

This passage's deployment in the speech was such that McCain clearly intended to suggest that the graduating students acted just as he did when he was a young man.

Some say that people my age don't get involved in politics because politicians are "out of touch," are "corrupt," and so forth. I don't think people my age have a problem with being corrupt and out of touch. But some - perhaps enough to account for nationwide political detachment - DO have a problem with politicians who hate their guts. After all, we subconsciously, when thinking about whether to adopt a profession, project mentally what we would be like in that profession based upon what we think of those who are already in it. And, it seems, not too many people (even those who already are well on their way to becoming same) WANT to become hateful, bitter old politicians. Where's the money and power in that?

BETTER DEAD THAN WED

Nothing stops the moralizers. They just keep going and going and going......


Marry or get out, US town tells unwed parent
May 23 9:20 PM US/Eastern

A small American town is facing accusations of seeking to drive unmarried couples with children out of town on grounds they do not fit the local definition of a family.

The brewing controversy in Black Jack, a town of 6,800 in the central state of Missouri, began unfolding earlier this year when Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a four-bedroom house they had purchased.

Local officials told the couple that the fact they were not married and had three children, one from Shelltrack's previous relationship, did not fit the town's definition of "family".

A Black Jack ordinance prohibits more than three people from living together in a single family home unless they are related by "blood, marriage or adoption".

The couple were then left with the option of getting married, packing their bags and leaving town, or putting up a fight, which is what they decided to do.

"I think the city wants to send a clear message that they don't want children born out of wedlock," Shelltrack told AFP in a phone interview. "It has become a moral issue for them.

"They see family in a certain way and that's the only acceptable way."

Shelltrack, 31, said she and Loving, her partner of 13 years, never imagined when they moved to Black Jack from Minnesota in January that a legal nightmare awaited them.

"We though the occupancy permit was a housing code issue, that an inspector would come by and check the house," Shelltrack said. "But we figured something was wrong when they asked for the children's birth certificates and a marriage certificate."

She said the family has received a lot of support from neighbors and local residents, many of whom are baffled by what they consider an archaic law.

Sheldon Stock, the town's attorney, told AFP there were no plans to evict the couple after the City Council earlier this month rejected a measure that would have changed the definition of a family to include unmarried couples with two or more children.

Nonetheless, he said, Shelltrack and Loving would have to abide by the law or face fines and a court battle.
"The city intends to enforce its ordinances and we think under the current state of the law that we have every right to do so," he said.

Stock noted that numerous other cities in Missouri have similar occupancy codes, but he acknowledged that the majority don't enforce them.

"Everybody in their occupancy codes has a definition of family," he said. "Somewhere you draw a line and unfortunately in this case they (Shelltrack and Loving) don't fall on the right side of the line."

The couple have taken their case to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is considering filing a lawsuit against the city on their behalf.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development is also conducting an investigation.

Anthony Rothert, the legal director for the ACLU in eastern Missouri, told AFP that some 10 unmarried couples with children had been denied occupancy permits in recent years in Black Jack and were essentially driven out of town.

One unmarried couple that owns a house in the mainly Catholic town and that recently had a second child is facing the same fate, Rothert said.

"I find this ordinance very bizarre," he said, adding that the city's argument that the law, adopted in 1985, was aimed at preventing overcrowding did not hold up.

"If Olivia and Fondray were married and had 20 kids they could live in the house," he said. "I think this is all about the city trying to impose its moral values on its citizens."
*******************************************************************************
In Moore v. City of East Cleveland (1977), the Supreme Court struck down an ordinance under which it was a crime for a homeowner to have a grandchild living with her. The Court indicated that such an ordinance violated due process, and held that the city's claimed rationale for the ordinance, namely that the ordinance was needed to prevent "overcrowding," to minimize traffic, to avoid undue financial burden on the city's school system, and parking congestion, was insufficient reason to justify the ordinance in light of the liberty interests at stake. In 1977, there was no such concept, at the Supreme Court level, as the "rational basis test," but the Court was in effect saying all the same that the legitimate state interests of minimization of traffic and so on were not rationally related to the ordinance. When a governmental body states its interest at such a high level of generality that its alleged factual claim can really never be proven (or disproven), past, present or future, the Supreme Court is, all other things being equal, more likely to find that a statute fails the rational basis test than in a scenario when the body states its interest with a greater degree of concreteness - a concreteness that allows for some kind of empirical testing. "Limited use of government funds" was the rationale asserted in Romer v. Evans and in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center - two cases in which the legislation at issue also failed the rational basis test. The piece of legislation used by the Missouri town is rationalized by the city's desire to avoid "overcrowding." Moore pretty much held that this interest one that is stated at too high a level of generality.

The Court in Moore held that the "constitutional protection of the sanctity of the family" extended to family choice -i.e. the grandmother's desire to live with the grandchild; the Court further noted that this protection was not confined within an arbitrary boundary drawn at the limits of the "nuclear family," consisting of a couple and its dependent children.

Notice the word "couple." The Court did not say "husband and wife." The Missouri familly qualifies as a "nuclear family" - there is a couple and children who are dependent on it. The Court took for granted that such a living arrangement deserves constitutional protection. Therefore, it is hard to see Missouri getting past first base. Its most plausible, so to speak, argument, would be that the Court, without saying so, meant "couple" to mean "husband and wife." Yet, this argument does not help Missouri in light of what the state's alleged interest - prevention of "overcrowding" claims to be. Assuming the couple married and then a formal adoption ceremony was carried out, the arrangement would be fine. Requiring people to pay the expenses associated with doing these things implicates their equal protection rights, though. Specifically, the rights of non-adoptive parents (vs. adoptive parents) to raise children in a dwelling. The state must show what legitimate interest it has denying the equal protection of the laws to the former. "Overcrowding" doesn't cut it, especially given the "best interests of the child" standard, and the implicit right the Supreme Court found in Troxel v. Granville, of parents, to have a monopoly on child-rearing.

Missouri, go away and die. Lose. By the way, there's also a takings clause issue here. And last of all, now that Missouri is poised to make Christianity its official religion, it must ask itself: who would Jesus evict?

I KNEW....

It is the most memorable - and rightly so - line - ever uttered in a Presidential or Vice Presidential debate. (I say "rightly so" because the year in which the line was uttered was the year in which the party and ticket of the candidate who offered the line ran against a ticket that ran the nastiest campaign in modern Presidential history - possibly the nastiest campaign since 1828 - the Presidential campaign which is regarded as the nastiest of them all).

The year: 1988. The debate: the one and only Vice Presidential debate of 1988. The players: Lloyd Bentsen (yes, you now know the story and the line, but who doesn't thrill at hearing it?), Democratuc Vice Presidential candidate from Texas (who actually received one electoral vote that year, as he and Michael Dukakis lost 526-111) and Republican Senator J. Danforth Quayle.

I don't recall who asked the question - who was the moderator (it was not Bernard Shaw - he saved his colossally rude question about Kitty Dukakis being raped for later on in the debate cycle) - the evening of the Bentsen-Quayle debate, but at one point, the subject of "experience" came up - specifically, Senator Quayle's lack thereof. Although Quayle, as of 1988, had served in Congress for twelve years, he had been involved in the passage of virtually no legislation of note - even the kind of wedge-issue blather-go-nowhere legislation that conservatives love so much. G.H.W. Bush picked him because he was a young, constipated-looking, handsome for a Stepford-husband-looking conservative.

And so, Quayle was ready with a reply to the "experience" question. "I had the same amount of experience as a young Jack Kennedy did (i.e. Kennedy had served twelve years in Congress right before running for President - just as Quayle had done before running for VP) before he ran for President." The audience - and Bentsen were surprised to know that Quayle knew Kennedy on a first-name basis. The glib remark, delivered with characteristic smugness, was met with theatrical relish by Bentsen, then 69:

"Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy. Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. Senator, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy." Instantaneously, people started applauding. Some made catcalls - that clearly indicated they were mocking Quayle, not Bentsen. Very few, if any, utterances from the audience, suggested members of the audience found Bentsen's reply offensive. Bentsen took his time making the remark, and looked Quayle right in the face as he made it.

About five seconds later, Quayle, trying to muster that bullshit holier-than-thou moral righteousness -slime dressed as class - that Republicans are always trying to fool people with - his face beet-red, said, "that was uncalled for." AFTER Quayle made this statement, people were still cheering Bentsen's remark.

And why shouldn't they have been? This was a point in time AFTER Willie Horton ads had been ran to the point of saturation (GHW Bush, by the way, had sponsored a furlough program that resulted in the DEATHS of several people; Dukasis was simply continuing a furlough program of a Republican predecessor); AFTER ads blasting Dukakis for refusing to sign a bill mandating that children recite a pledge had saturated the airwaves (Dukakis didn't sign it because he was familiar with the Constitution and with West Virginia School Board v. Barnette - but fidelity to the Constitution makes one unpatriotic in Bushworld!), AFTER Bush claimed he was "an environmentalist," AFTER he attacked Dukakis for being responsible for "the sludge in Boston Harbor" (an accusation Dukakis answered, properly, by stating that if Reagan's EPA had done its job, Massachusetts would not have had to expend a huge chunk of its budget to clean up the harbor to restore it to the safe condition it was then presently at), and AFTER Bush attacked Dukakis as being "anti-religion" (Dukakis stated he was against prayer in public schools - because - shocker - the Supreme Court had ruled it unconstitutional!)

Bentsen's sublime retort stands out like a crown jewel in the 1988 campaign, a campaign so rendered so frivolous by one side's mudslinging that political experts have called it "Trivial Pursuit." Alas, Lloyd Bentsen died today, at age 86. He will always be remembered, if, for nothing else, as someone who injected a little bit of the pursuit of excellence in this thoroughly despicable Republican smear-job posing as a campaign.

MONSTERS ARE DUE....

On March 4, 1960, an episode of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone" named "Monsters on Maple Street" aired. The episode - one of the shows's most memorable (if not THE most memorable) is television's answer to "The Crucible," itself of course a riposte to the HUAC witch-hunts of the 1950's. The theme and moral of the episode is timeless. After reading the plot summary, you'll be shocked - or maybe you won't - at how far we haven't come:

The location is Maple Street, USA, in late summer (September). It is mid-evening and the street is full of playing children and adults talking. A shadow passes overhead and a loud roar is heard. Later, after it has gone dark, the residents of Maple Street find that the telephones no longer work, and there is no power or radio. They gather together in the street to discuss the matter.

Steve Brand decides to go into town and see what is happening, but his car will not start and he plans to walk instead. Tommy, a young boy from the neighborhood, pleads with him not to go. He is sure that the outages are part of an alien invasion—just as he has read in books and comics. Furthermore, he says, most of these invasions are preceded by the infiltration of aliens who look human. Naturally no one takes him seriously, but the first signs of doubt appear.

Meanwhile another resident, Les Goodman, tries and fails to start his car. He gets out of the car and begins to walk back towards the other residents when the car starts all by itself. The bizarre behavior of his car makes Les the object of immediate suspicion. The residents begin to discuss his late nights spent standing in the garden looking up at the sky. Les claims to be an insomniac. His problem becomes worse when the lights in his house come on, and the rest of the neighborhood remains in the dark. Suspicion then suddenly switches to Steve when he tries to calm the situation and prevent it becoming a witch-hunt. Charlie, one of the loudest and most aggressive residents, pressures Steve about his hobby building a radio that no one has ever seen.

During the discussion a man is seen walking along Maple Street through the dark and towards the gathered crowd. Panic begins to build and Charlie grabs a shotgun and kills him. When the crowd reaches the fallen man, they realize that it is Pete Van Horn, a local resident who had gone to the next block to find out the situation there.

Suddenly the lights in Charlie's house come on and he panics, realizing how it looks. He is now the subject of all the suspicion. He makes a run for his house while the other residents begin to chase him and throw stones. Terrified, Charlie attempts to deflect suspicion onto Tommy, the boy who originally brought up the idea of alien infiltration. Lights begin turn on and off in different houses, lawn mowers and cars start up for no apparent reason. A riot begins and the hysterical residents smash windows, fight and switch blame from one person to another with little justification.

The episode ends with two alien observers watching the rioting on Maple Street and discussing how easy it was to create paranoia and panic, and let the people of Earth destroy themselves—one place at a time.

"Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines...throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it's themselves."

Closing narration
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts... attitudes... prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own.... for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to..... The Twilight Zone."

"FANTASTICA, NOT EXLAXIA"

I am going to take a nap in about a minute, so I just wanted to begin this post so as to remind myself to finish it...

There's a new kid on the science-fiction television block of excellence (well, for me, anyway. Science fiction fans have known about this kid and the phenomenon it represents for two and one half years. I pride myself on the ability to be hip to popular culture by means of always making sure that I am at least two steps behind its latest developments)

The new kid is the Science Fiction Channel's updated version of the late '70's-early '80's schlockfest TV show, "Battlestar Galactica." Last night, I watched the 3-hour miniseries that opened the new "Galactica" in 2003. This new "Galactica" is not your father's "Galactica." (i.e. the new one is much better). Seriously. How do I know this? Because my father - who will watch ANY science fiction show, no matter HOW crappy it is, said the new show is LIGHT YEARS better than the old one, subtly implying that the old one (which he watched religiously) was crap. If such an admission could be obtained from this father, then any other father's like admission can be obtained as a matter of course.

To be continued....

ABRAMS "REPORT"

I know - those of you who read this blog (thanks, both of you!) are probably sick of the repetitiveness of the most recent entries - how they all focus on similar themes - i.e. "Hate," "Foam," "Bigot," Bush bashing, etc.

You know what? I don't give a shit!

Actually, I do :-)

I don't want to bore both of you - or none of you, as the case may be, not to mention myself (why bore oneself when the universe does it so well?)

So, on to a new topic... For now.

Several weeks ago, a friend asked me if I was planning on seeing "Mission Impossible 3," or whatever its pseudo-hieroglyphic title is. "You mean in a theater, which implies that I'd actually have to purchase a ticket?" "Yeah," the friend said. "No way." "I may SEE it, but I'm not paying for it." (Wink. Nod. Smile).

But a funny thing happened on the (non) way to the theater. It seems - in a rare display of ignorance in my part - that at the time of the conversation - that I did not know who was directing MI:3. About a week later, I happened to be reading an article about the film, which stated that J.J. Abrams (creator of and writer for Lost, Felicity and Alias) was directing the film and had co-written the screenplay. "Hmmm," I said to myself. "These are all good shows from what I've seen." "Joyride, a film that Abrams co-wrote, was good too. Sure, he also co-wrote Armageddon and Regarding Henry, but those came out before any of the other titles." For a second, I thought to myself, "Self, maybe I should actually see this movie." (Surely it need not be explained why I was not planning on seeing it up to that point. Hint: I had seen the first two Mission: Impossible movies, and thought they were decent-pretty good; had nothing against the franchise; am not a pauper; still enjoy seeing movies in movie theaters; and was not offended by the movie's plot, and was, indeed, impressed with the good reviews it had received to date. The two words that explained my refusal need not be spelled out).

A few seconds later, though, I thought to myself, "Self, come on. Get serious. You'll probably be laughing or groaning every time he's mugging on screen. And believe you, self, that's what he does - mug. He may be a hard-working - and hard-mouthing - actor, but he, as much as any actor alive, is a little too aware of the fact, during every second of filming, that a camera is pointed on him. And, self, remember: it's not the substance of his unseemly remarks that's offensive - everyone's entitled to an opinion (but not to his own facts), but how one chooses to deliver that opinion can be quite offensive, and this person is, simply put, offensive."

So, I concluded, "Self, you, me and I are staying home."

But then a strange thing happened on or about May 1. Plans for Star Trek XI (which had been left for dead just a week earlier) came screaming back to life, when on or about May 1, Variety reported that Paramount had greenlit the movie, and had signed J.J. Abrams to direct, write and produce the film, a "prequel" Starfleet Academy film focusing on the training days of Kirk and Spock.

Self was again conflicted. "Well, MI:3 is Abrams' first feature film, Self. Isn't it important, for Star Trek's sake, for you to see MI:3 to get an idea of how good a "fit" Abrams might be for the Star Trek franchise? To see if he has the ability to prevent XI from being an embarrassment? To see if he has the potential for making it great?"

Self, finally fed up with being addressed, and wanting very badly to go to sleep, said, "Fine. I'll do it. But the whole time. But I'll have to say to myself the whole time, "I know it's horrible, self. But just close your eyes and think of Star Trek.: (This is an old movie joke).

So, on Friday, May 12, I saw MI:3, heeding self's monologue and internalizing it as best I could, and guess what? The film was very good. A strong B+ and a strong 3 stars. The equivalent, in the Star Trek canon, of Star Trek VI, which I believed was the fourth best of the ten films thus far (there were only four that I would recommend to ANYONE without reservation, and Star Trek VI passed the "recommendation" test ever so slightly).

So, I am now psyched. Abrams can indeed, I think, make a Star Trek film to the extent that he has proven through MI:3 that he can balance action and drama with reasonably good editing, a reasonably not completely ludicrous script, and, GET THIS - to the extent that he has proven that he actually has a sense of FUN! (Something which most Star Trek directors have failed to demonstrate). The MI:3 script even included shards of occassional wit and intelligence amidst the carnage and explosions, and only became completely incoherent (within the rules the movie laid out for itself, that is; the entire thing was incoherent and implausible) in the last twenty minutes. Performances were pretty good, tech credits were excellent, and the thing never dragged.

As to whether Abrams "gets" Star Trek (whatever that means), who can say? He "got" Mission Impossible, from what I have seen of the TV show, better than either Brian DePalma or John Woo, so based on all of the above, 2008 (when Star Trek XI is scheduled to premiere) may indeed be the "Blue Skies" that the end of Star Trek X melodically (if not precipitously) promised.

As for he who must not be named, well.... self's advice and the shock helmet worked wonders (the latter even resulted in my getting a discounted ticket! Sometimes trauma is its own monetary reward!)