entropy garden

fucking god

this is the goddamn president of the united states saying this:

On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we're to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country.

nobody has yet explained to me what these serious consequences are or people that they affect.

wrong side of history, indeed.

oh, but he's a moderate, and he'd still allow some form of civil unions in the states. well, those don't have to be recognized by other states, and that's not exactly the language of the amendment proposals that i've seen. codify your bigotry into law. it's so beautiful.

i sure hope those conservative christian votes are worth it, george. i really, really do.

but it's not like he's got much else to run on. jobs, war in iraq, afghanistan, the economy. not so hot.

i beat the music makers!

i finally got my cd pricing trust lawsuit check in the mail today. you might remember that whole deal, where the major music companies were colluding to keep prices high.

and how much did i receive? a whopping $13.86. it would be hard to find a regular priced major label cd for that much at most music stores. i estimate that i buy around 300 cds a year (yes, it's a sickness), so that's really great for my pocketbook.

from the letter i received from the attorney general of texas, greg abbott:

it is a pleasure to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion and to return value to consumers who purchased CDs while the challenged pricing policies were in effect.

yeah, a satisfactory conclusion, indeed. cd prices sure came down all over the place. maybe i'll go download something and get sued by the riaa to complete this glorious consumer victory.

zell miller, social critic

it's not like i like going to his homepage. but every now and then it's kinda fun to see what ole wacky things zell has been saying from time to time. his latest posted floor statement is about the 'deficit of decency' in america. it's full of moral outrage at popular culture. i was personally offended that he didn't include a transcript of his remarks; rather, he had for download a 60mb realmedia video file so you could watch him get all pissy. dude, man, save the bandwidth for the children.

so i hopped on over to thomas.loc.gov and searched the congressional record for 'deficit of decency.' thanks, zell. i'm not watching your damn video.

Does any responsible adult ever listen to the words of this rap-crap? I would quote you some of it, but the Sergeant at Arms would throw me out of this Chamber, as well he should.

Then there was that prancing, dancing, strutting, rutting guy, evidently suffering from jock itch because he kept yelling and grabbing his crotch. But, then, maybe there is a culture of crotch grabbing in this country I don't know about. But as bad as all that was, the thing that yanked my chain the hardest was seeing this ignoramus with his pointed head stuck up through a hole he had cut in the flag of the United States of America, screaming about having ``a bottle of scotch and watching lots of crotch.''

rap and bad cockrock are killing america. it's like 1989 all over again, when hair metal and, well, rap were destroying our culture. seems we made it through okay. i'm not a fan of kid rock, but he obviously knows his audience, and zell miller is definitely not one of them. after all, his chain is yanked, and he's not going to have any of that filfthy innuendo in the public arena.

Think about that. This is the same flag to which we pledge allegiance. This is the same flag that is draped over coffins of dead young uniformed warriors, killed while protecting Kid Crock's boney butt. He should be tarred and feathered and ridden out of this country on a rail. You talk about a good reality show? That would be one.

don't like what he's singing about? kick him out of the country. it's obvious that zell miller doesn't have any reasonable critiques of the music itself, and maybe that would be a better place to start than zany stage antics and how he uses the flag (that evil kid rock, who has performed at u.s.o. shows, indeed, who must hate those dead soldiers). i will, however, give him bonus points for calling justin timberlake that 'rutting guy.' i don't think i've heard anybody called that in a long time. thank god no all-american baseball players aren't a part of that nasty crotch-grabbing culture.

I am pleased to be a cosponsor of S.J. Res. 26, along with Senator Allard and others, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage; and S. 1558, the Liberties Restoration Act, which declares religious liberty rights in several ways, including the Pledge of Allegiance and the display of the Ten Commandments.

and, of course, the solution: amending the constitution to limit the rights of others! yeehaw. because it's not just the musicians -- it's also gays destroying our families, too. or it's families destroy themselves from within and then blame everybody else when it all goes to hell, but details aren't really important when you have the opportunity to stand up on your soapbox and pass tough laws.

Today, I join Senator Shelby and others with the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 that limits the jurisdiction of Federal courts in certain ways.

In doing so, I stand shoulder to shoulder, not only with my Senate cosponsors and Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama, but more importantly with our Founding Fathers in the conception of religious liberty and the terribly wrong direction our modern judiciary has taken us.

and, in an gratuitous nod to mainstream america, zell miller supports roy moore, the man who defied the important american principle of the RULE OF LAW to display his ten commandments monument illegally. and, while we're at it, we'll take a snipe at those left-wing bastard activist judges, since all the good judges are conservative, strict constructionists who would can read texts literally and discern intent without any interpretation whatsoever. and they'd never, say, go on a hunting trip with the vice president when a case he is involved in is on the books in the near future.

of course not. so maybe yesterday i was wrong. maybe our culture is going to be the end of us. i thought 'rock your body' was a harmless pop song with a good beat. perhaps that slide to oblivion really is occuring, and zell miller is right.

there's just one little problem. it's hard to shake your ass to 'just as i am.' i've tried, and it makes me look even dorkier than when i try to get down to dance music. it's not pretty.

watch out. the schoolmarm's got a bomb!

i'm all for jokes. but jeez, making a comparison like this isn't really funny when you're the head of the education department:

Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige yesterday told the nation's governors that the largest teachers union in the United States is a "terrorist organization" -- a remark that prompted a torrent of criticism and an apology by the end of the day.

Paige made the comment about the 2.7 million-member National Education Association in a private meeting at the White House with the National Governors Association, less than a week after he announced the administration was relaxing testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind law. The landmark education law has come under mounting opposition, and the NEA has been among its strongest detractors.

yes, he later apologized and said that he supported individual teachers, who are the 'real soldiers of democracy.' unlike, of course, that multiheaded hydra known as the national education association, who are basically mass murderers.
not a part of the union? you're a stalwart citizen. join, though, and you might as well stamp 'osama bin laden gives me backrubs in the classroom while i brainwash my children' on your forehead.

i mentioned to some friends a couple of weeks ago that the rhetoric levels of the right were getting a bit extreme, and here's a good example. and if it was a throwaway example, that would be one thing. but it's just another in a string of incidents where people that the right disagrees with on policy issues are equated as unamerican. and it's starting to get a bit disturbing in its repetition.

it's bad enough when you're denounced as being in bed with the enemy when you're against the war, but to do so over education policy? it's simply ludicrious. not everything is a part of the war on terror, even if that's the way this administration would like it to be.

my republican roommate

okay, so he's not really a republican. but somebody thinks he is, because he got a postcard from someone in our neighborhood urging him to vote in the march 9th republican primaries. if he didn't, well, the world would end.

hi, fellow republican, neighbor and voter in precinct 246,

assaults on morality as exhibited at super bowl half-time entertainment, call for grassroots action. folks, we're the grassroots. as citizens of a nation, founded 'under god,' we will elect candidates who will provide for our safety, enforce obedience to laws, promote life and family values, and enact laws in accordance with the constitution of the united states.

it seems like some folks just can't get over a wardrobe malfunction. i'm still unsure why janet jackson's breast being exposed at a football game is a bad thing while cheerleaders prancing around small tops equals wholesome family entertainment. lots of cleavage is okay as long as a nipple doesn't get shown.

this is, naturally, old news, and i wouldn't even be talking about this if this postcard hadn't arrived. but i guess when this is yet another sign of the culture war, you have to do an action mailout. i don't really remember football being talked about in the book of revelations, but maybe it was hidden somewhere in the bible code or something.

1. learn about each candidate. what does he or she stand for?

2. VOTE in the REPUBLICAN PRIMARY ELECTION, March 9th.

3. ATTEND the PRECINCT CONVENTION immediately after the polls close at 7:00pm on Election Day to counter the slide to oblivion.

historically, no nation survived when the citizenry and leaders dissipated into lawlessness and immorality. WE can help change that. GO VOTE!

flee! the destruction of america is at hand! if this had been sent out a couple of days later, i'm sure it would have listed those evil fag marriages in san francisco that are just one step away from legalizing paedophilia and beastiality.

i guess that the grassroots conservatives are always more concerned about public talk and displays of sex rather than other problems in the world, but there's just one problem. you can't legislate culture. it's not going to work, and it never will. you either adapt to it or ignore it.

breasts on tv won't destroy our country. janet jackson still being able to get a prime-time gig while doing songs off of rhythm nation is, however, something to be very, very afraid about.

returner (2002)

director: takashi yamazaki
starring: takeshi kaneshiro, anne suzuki, goro kishitani, kirin kiki

in the future, earth isn't exactly a pretty place. there's a war going on between humans and aliens, and the aliens have giant robots that can transform from jets into giant robots. humanity isn't doing so hot, but in their spare time, they've developed a time machine, and one girl goes back to the past to try and prevent the war from ever beginning.

once milly (anne suzuki) gets back into the past via jumping into a large wormhole, she lands on a boat where miyamoto (takeshi kaneshiro), a gunslinger of sorts, is fighting it out with a bunch of triad child smugglers. he accidentally shoots her in the process of trying to kill the triad ringleader, takes her back to his apartment, and she tells him her story. an alien is going to crash in two days on a mountain, and if she can kill it, the war will be prevented. miyamoto doesn't exactly believe her, but after she plants a minature bomb on his neck, he agrees to help.

miyamoto's sole purpose in life is to hunt down mizoguchi (goro kishitani), the triad badboy who did something to him earlier in his life, and he's not too happy that he has to go trapsing around japan with a crazy girl and explosives on his head. luckily for him, mizoguchi is also interested in the crashed spaceship, thanks to triad spies at the government space sciences installation, and he wants the alien and its ship for the weapons, so their paths are destined to cross.

this film feels like somebody had a hat with a bunch of sci-fi movie plots, pulled them out at random, and then wrote the script to incorporate them all. it's pastiche filmmaking on an almost absurd level, where nothing is really new at all, but since everything works together within the movie framework, it's not too jarring, especially since returner doesn't pretend to be anything other than a popcorn blockbuster.

everything from terminator 2 and back to the future to e.t. and the matrix is referenced at some point in the movie. when the characters are discussing the uncertainty of the future if they suceed while the camera is pointed at the moving stripes of a highway, the line between homage and rip-off is very, very fine. the movie stays above most of this by keeping the pace at a decent clip, making most of these references very throwaway instead of using them as major plot points.

most folks in america know takeshi kaneshiro as the brokenhearted, canned pineapple eating cop in wong kar wai's chungking express. i doubt this film will produce many new converts, but he does an alright job with what little he has to work with. he looks more like a fashion model than a hardened killer for hire, but when your hair stays perfect after jumping through the air and shooting five people while flipping around, that's to be expected.

the chemistry between kaneshiro and anne suzuki is hardly there, and since they don't really like each other at all at the beginning, it's no surprise when they fall for each other later on, although it's your standard, 'hey, we just met, and we're the only two people who know this secret, so naturally we're made for each other' plot device. when they sit around and relate their personal histories, it's so contrived that you want to yell at the director to get on with blowing stuff up.

the scene stealer here is goro kishitani, who plays mizoguchi so over the top that he actually breathes a little bit of life into the film. he has the oddest cackling laugh for a villan i've ever heard in a long time, and when he does that, you think that he's so crazy that the rest of the film must make sense.

but it doesn't, really. time travel movies are usually bad to begin with, and one like this which is only using time travel because it sounded like a neat idea isn't exactly wearing its plot concerns out in the open. the action isn't anything that we haven't seen before in a dozen other films, and the cgi, while passable, doesn't warrant a viewing for purely techical reasons. if you're looking for some eyecandy to waste a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse than this, but it's not a movie i'll be returning to anytime soon.

rating: 4/10

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dvd (region 1)
columbia tri-star
anamorphic widescreen
japanese/english/french 5.1 language tracks
english/french/portuguese/spanish subtitles
production featurettes
trailers (returner, so close, cowboy bebop: the movie, robot 009)

more features than most of the recent columbia tri-star releases, but with a movie like this, who really wants to watch them?

the return

hi there.

it's been awhile, i know. i wasn't expecting my absence to be this long, either, but my schedule for the past two months has been pretty much nonstop at work, and there was even a three work period where i was working everyday. needless to say, when i came home every night, i wanted to veg. and veg i did.

but i've actually had the last couple of weekends off (even though i did end up working from 2pm on friday to 8am on saturday), and things seem to be about as normal as they're going to get for a while, so i assume that now's as good of a time as any to restart this sucker. besides, if i don't do it now, it's not going to happen.

i'd like to say thanks to those folks who sent emails of support while we were away. we'll try to make sure that this doesn't happen again. see, the nagging 'where are you' messages really do work. heh.

anyway, expect more of the same, and in a little while, it'll be like we never went anywhere. i'm not going to pretend that this is a one-stop clearinghouse for information, but i hope that we'll be able to point you to things you might have missed otherwise. and, now that i've got a region-free dvd player on the way and a giant stack of korean movies, expect a bunch of reviews of that stuff as well.