Not Quite Movie Reviews

Things I Learned from Hostel

1. When running a thrill-kill-for-profit organization that involves kidnapping tourists, it is best to nab just one or two members of a group at a time, allowing their friends to get suspicious and spend a day or two investigating (and potentially talking to and frightening away some of the other guest/victims at your Hostel of Doom), rather than just grab all of them at once. This is true even when there is a steady flow of paying customers coming through, requiring a constant supply of victims.
   
2. A sadist whose motivation is ostensibly his frustrated desire to be a surgeon nevertheless includes power tools as well as surgical tools in his torture repertoire. Nothing satisfies that urge to perform delicate surgery like ripping through someone's shoulder with a power drill.
   
3. A chainsaw which has been dropped to the floor will cut entirely through a man's thigh underneath it, even though all the weight of the chainsaw is at the back where the motor is, not in the blade, leaving a good few inches between the blade and the floor when the saw is at rest.
   
4. An enterprising sadist could actually make money by purchasing (non-American) victims through "Elite Hunting", harvesting all their transplantable organs, and re-selling them on the black market. According to this article, one kidney alone would fetch enough in Turkey to cover what this organization supposedly charges to let you kill a Russian. Anything you can get for his other organs is pure profit.
   
5. Despite this, if you operate a business like "Elite Hunting", you should just have your cleaning crew incinerate the bodies, valuable organs and all, rather than attempting to extract all possible profit in return for the enormous risks you're taking.
   
6. Eastern Europe is plagued by vicious gangs of small children, who will cheerfully beat several gun-wielding grown men to death in exchange for a sack full of chewing gum.
   
7. The optic nerve is actually a tube containing some sort of disgusting yellow pus, which will squirt out when it is cut.
   
8. In Slovakia, Asian women with half their face freshly burned off are apparently so common, they don't attract so much as a curious sideways glance from passers-by.
   

Things I Learned from Saw II

1. Serial killers whose M.O. involves elaborate deathtraps might, just might, have some elaborate deathtraps in place protecting their lair. The police in this film learned this particular lesson the hard way. Apparently it hadn't occurred to them before entering the building to be watching out for that sort of thing.
   
2. There exists a slow-acting nerve gas whose operation is so predictable, a timer can literally count down how much time remains to anyone breathing it. This gas also causes internal hemorrhaging, despite being clearly referred to as a nerve agent.
   
3. If I should ever find myself with one arm stuck in a box with razor-sharp blade flaps arranged in a one-way door configuration, I will simply hold the razor flaps open with my other hand and pull my arm out, rather than inextricably trapping myself by sticking my other arm into the other one-way razor door in the box. Especially if I have already spilled the life-saving nerve gas antidote that was inside the box.
   

Discworld Map

Just for fun: Although it has been years since I've done any RPG-ing, I do still maintain a copy of the latest version of Campaign Cartographer, just because I love maps. Using the tools/instructions from an installment of their "Cartographer's Annual", I threw together this map of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, in a style inspired by the 16th century maps of Gerard Mercator (click for full-size):

Note, if you're familiar with the official published Discworld Mapp, you'll see a few differences, based on the ostensible reason that the map was created by a cartographer in Ankh-Morpork. Therefore, Ankh-Morpork is near the top of the map (rather than toward the bottom, as in the official map), and the further away from Ankh-Morpork and the Circle Sea region you get, the less detailed and more inaccurate the map becomes. So most of the Circle Sea area is pretty close to "reality", other parts of the continent are fairly accurate (but not very detailed), the Counterweight Continent is pretty much right, but with a few errors, and the least-explored areas - XXXX and the Lost Continent of Ku - are wildly inaccurate.

Here's also a close-up of the Circle Sea region:

The Game Turn Indicator marker does not expend movement points, nor does it exert a Zone of Control.

Old-school wargaming has now disappeared up its own asshole: Decision Games has expanded & re-released "War in the Pacific". Seven maps. 9,000 counters. $420.00. And, and, their future games page indicates that Richard Berg is working on an updated re-release of "Campaign for North Africa", although it sounds like that one will be smaller, and much more affordable at $200.00.

BoardGame Geek

Just for fun, I've added a widget to the sidebar on here that will show you five random games from my collection, as tracked at BoardGameGeek. I've decided I want to start getting back into games - there are some really interesting ones coming out these days - and having them pop up there may help motivate me.

Told Ya!

Over at the Ludwig von Mises Institute's web site, Paul Cantor echoes my own brief comments about the film, in much more detail, in "Flying Solo: The Aviator and Libertarian Philosophy"

Zappa Plays Zappa

First of all: You know you're in for a treat when any band comes out and opens with "Echidna's Arf (Of You)". I read in a local free left-wing paper that last year's ZPZ tour focused more on the Overnight Sensation/Apostrophe' period, but that for this year, Dweezil wanted to play more of FZ's more "serious" (for lack of a better word) music, and the set list certainly reflected that. They did do some of the expected stuff from those albums, but there was no sign of "Dinah-Moe Humm" at all. Instead, we got to hear a trilogy of "Son of Suzy Creamcheese/Brown Shoes Don't Make It/America Drinks and Goes Home" from Absolutely Free, "Cheepnis" and "Pygmy Twylite", as well as the aforementioned Echidna, from Roxy & Elsewhere, "Carolina Hard-Core Ecstasy", "Advance Romance", and "Muffin Man" from Bongo Fury, and even "G-Spot Tornado" from Jazz From Hell.

There were several songs that used video footage of Frank playing guitar solos, while the band on stage played the rest of the parts. This was used particularly effectively during the encore, when Dweezil traded solos with his father, in which they were both playing the same guitar. And I have to say: Dweezil has grown up into a damn fine guitar player. His soloing style is clearly heavily influenced by Frank, although it is subtly different. Perhaps more conventional, although that's not really a good description for playing that is still so FZ-esque. Great stuff, anyway. And a fine, satisfying concert overall.

Housewarming Party

Brenda & I are planning to open up our new house to anyone who’s willing & able to come by, this Saturday from 1 to 5. There’s still some unpacking left to do, but it’s pretty much a home at this point. We’d love to see any of you who are able to make it.

Please let me know if you plan to be there, if you have any drink preferences, or if you need directions or anything.

Hope to see you there!

Wisconsin Lawmakers Have Too Much Free Time

And hate dogs, apparently (though perhaps not as much as Mitt Romney). From the WSJ, via Reason:

A Wisconsin legislator wants state law to govern how divorced couples handle custody disputes -- over their pets.
...
"I wonder what it was that made someone think that they need to have a special statute for this?" asked Madison divorce attorney Steven Bach, who said he'd had only a handful of pet-custody cases in his 33-year career.
...
Nicky Symons of McFarland thinks she knows what unleashed Albers' legislation.

The legislator is married to Symons' ex-husband, Steven Anders.

In 2003, Symons and Anders divorce was finalized. The divorce included wrangling over who would have to care for and pay for their dog Sammi, short for Samantha. The dispute arose, she said, because neither she nor Anders, who married Albers this year, wanted the aging dog, but their three children did.
...
Albers' bill would prohibit judges from ordering couples to share the placement of a pet -- the arrangement the judge ordered for Sammi -- unless both sides agree to that. If they can't agree on what to do with the pet, the bill allows a judge to give the pet to one spouse or order it sent to the Humane Society.

That seemed "awfully draconian" to Brian Bushaw, a Madison attorney who sits on the State Bar of Wisconsin's family law committee.

"It doesn't sound fair to the dog, frankly," said Bushaw, who doesn't speak for the Bar.

I'm Moved In

I'm officially Moved In, and holy crap, am I tired. We're not unpacked yet, of course – the house is chock full o' boxes – but we have a functioning refrigerator, bed, and TV, so at least we have everything we need to survive while we unpack everything else. And Brenda has a job interview on Monday, at a place literally just down the street from the house.

I'm sure a house warming party will happen at some point. Give us a couple of weeks to get most of the boxes out of the way, and the living room furniture delivered, and then we'll send out invitations.

I Always Suspected This

A 42-year-old dishwasher in Sweden has had his love of heavy metal music officially declared a mental disability (thus entitling him to government disability benefits).

Pictures here, though you won’t be able to read that article unless you understand Swedish.

Artemy Lebedev Is My New Favorite Person

In addition to the infamous "Optimus" computer keyboard – the $1,500 keyboard where each key is a programmable display screen (and yes, I want one) – he’s got other stuff for sale. Like this awesome clock. And these plush emoticons. And this cool eraser.

More House Pics

Here's a Flickr album with all the pictures I have of my new home. Note that I haven't moved in yet, so the furniture in the pics is not mine...

I'm Buying a House

I've accepted the seller's counteroffer on a beautiful 2-story house in Watertown. It looks like this on the outside:


It has this family room:


But that picture doesn't even show the gorgeous wood paneling on the wall in there. You can see a hint of that in this picture of the stairs down to the basement, but even that doesn't do it justice:


Four bedrooms, finished rec room in the basement, and a four-car garage. I'm going to be swimming in garage space.

My Kingdom for a Cable Modem!

Until I can find more permanent living arrangements, I'm staying with my parents while I work the new job. Which means I'm stuck using their dial-up internet connection (at least at home - the office does have a faster connection, obviously, but for the first three weeks, I'm spending all day in a training class, so I never have more than a few minutes to do anything).

This, of course, creates a great incentive for me to find somewhere to move to, and quickly. Fortunately, I have already gotten pre-approval for a home loan, and we have been looking at several quite nice houses in the Watertown area. Life should be improving soon.

Scary/Exciting: Wisconsin Bound

It's official: I have been offered and have accepted a job at AQS, in Hartland, Wisconsin, and I start Monday. Yep, I'm relocating back to the Land of Cheese.

Brenda and I had kind of started talking about "someday" relocating up there in order to be closer to my parents. They're both still in great health, but they are getting older, and eventually they may need someone a little closer at hand to help out occasionally, and my situation seemed to be more flexible to do that than either of my brothers. Plus, we've both wanted to get away from this building we own down here in Dayton so we can stop being landlords, and we really need a lot more space than we have here. This has ended up happening a lot quicker than we had thought, but they've offered me almost $20,000 more than I made last year, which would be tough to turn down even if we hadn't already been contemplating an eventual move up there.

So, since I have to start right away, I'm going up there this weekend and stay, temporarily, with my parents, until I can find something more permanent for Brenda and I to move in to. The eventual goal is to find something somewhere between Hartland and Madison - ideally, I'd like to be within 25-30 minutes of Hartland, but a little west so that I'd be close enough to zip into Madison on the weekends now and then. Hit the farmer's market, meet up with folks for the occasional pint, that sort of thing.

So, if anyone knows of (A) a decent but inexpensive home for sale, or rent, say somewhere around Watertown or the like, or (B) anyone in that general area looking to hire an accountant or payroll specialist (since Brenda still needs to find work up there), we'd love to hear about them...

Michael Bay: Cinematic Genius

As I have said before, even in this very forum: Judged by his full-length films, Michael Bay appears to be a talentless hack. However, I believe he is a master of the short-short film - i.e., the television commercial. His "Aaron Burr"/"Got Milk?" commercial is darn good (if somewhat one-dimensional), but his Levi's "Elevator Fantasy" is, in my honest opinion, one of the Greatest Films Ever Made (assuming a broad enough definition of "film"). Yes, I am entirely serious about this. Now that it's available online (it wasn't when I made that earlier post), you can judge for yourself, if you never saw it or don't remember it:



There's also a high-res version viewable at Bay's official website.

Austrian-School Idol

Every year, American Idol has a couple of predictable "controversies", which people somehow manage to be surprised by, even though the same ones happen, as I said, every year. One of them is the mid-season or so ouster of one of the expected favorites (e.g., Jennifer Hudson), which we haven't quite reached yet in the current season. Another is the relatively untalented contestant who ends up lasting much longer than he/she deserves. This season, that is the infamous Sanjaya Malakar.

It occurs to me that this predictable pattern illustrates an argument, first proposed by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, that socialism cannot work even in principle. The argument is known as the "calculation problem", and what it says is that in a socialist system, capital goods have no prices (since all transfers of such are simply internal transfers within the government-owned system of producers), and that in the absence of the information conveyed by price signals, it is impossible to rationally calculate the most efficient use of those capital goods. To oversimplify a bit: Without prices, one cannot know what goods really are the most in demand.

This is the problem with American Idol: Voting for contestants is virtually costless (there is only the negligible cost of time spent dialing the phone). It therefore conveys no real information about the preferences of consumers. If you really wanted to know which singer people preferred, what you should do is sell singles/mp3s of each contestant's performance every week, and kick off whoever sells the fewest copies of their song. Free votes are not (necessarily) going to translate into actual sales, once money enters the equation. Without a price, those votes tell us nothing about the actual demand for recordings of one singer versus another.

Extrapolating the implications of this line of reasoning as it applies to votes in a political democracy is left as an exercise for the reader. :-)

Apparently, I'm Climbing Everest Every Night

I went to the sleep clinic recently to get my sleep apnea (which I knew I had - it runs in the family) diagnosed and treated. The results: Apparently they consider anything over five episodes of breathing cessation per hour to be a diagnosis of "sleep apnea", and over 30 per hour is "severe". I averaged 130 per hour. That's one-hundred-and-thirty.

My O₂ saturation levels were below 90 for 70% of the time I was asleep, and dropped to a low of 53 at one point. It seems to be typically about 80 for people staying at the main Base Camp on Mt. Everest, for crying out loud. I don't know why I haven't just suffocated to death in my sleep before now.

No Blood For Peanut Oil!

Q: What Are We Fighting For? A: Peanut Storage.

As Reason's Hit & Run describes it, the "pork-encrusted Iraq emergency funding bill" includes $74 million for peanut storage in Georgia, $25 million for spinach growers, $120 million for the shrimp and menhaden fishing industries, and various other junk, totalling $20 billion of the $124 billion spending bill.

One assumes these things don't actually have anything to do with Iraq, if only because the alternative is even more terrifying: That our Iraq strategy is somehow dependent on an adequate supply of peanuts, spinach, and shrimp. Perhaps we've decided that all we need for a stable Iraq is to get them hooked on Thai food.

Reviewin' Fool

Tideland - Terry Gilliam's latest movie: The one that about 75% of critics thought was atrociously awful, and the other 25% thought was a work of genius. Yes, it's somewhat divisive. In the opening scene, the main character of the film, a 9-year-old girl, cooks up a hit of heroin for her junkie father, and then helps untie his arm after he shoots up, and puts his cigarette out for him so he doesn't burn the house down as he sinks into a stupor. By the end of the film, she will have spent time nestled in the loving arms of his decomposing corpse, made friends with a strange woman with an uncomfortable obsession with taxidermy, and played kissing games with a brain-damaged adult male. Gilliam has described the film as "Alice In Wonderland meets Psycho", which seems appropriate. The film depicts a group of people who seem about one or two steps away from becoming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre family.

One thing that amazes me is the number of critics who completely missed the point. This is amazing because, before the movie begins, Gilliam himself appears onscreen and speaks directly to the audience (warning them that "many of you will hate this movie"), and he explicitly states the point he was trying to make, which is that children are more resilient than most people nowadays give them credit for. "They're designed to survive," he says, "and when you drop them, they usually bounce." Where many of Gilliam's other films deal with the tension between fantasy and reality, sanity and insanity, this one is about the tension between childhood innocence and adulthood. As such, there are things in it that are horrifying when seen with an adult's perspective, that are... well, let's just say "less horrifying" when viewed by an innocent child.

Personally, I would rank it somewhere between awful and genius. It's not Gilliam's best film (that would be a toss-up between Brazil and Twelve Monkeys), but it's less disappointing than his previous movie, The Brothers Grimm, and I'm frankly mystified by the extreme level of animosity some critics seemed to have toward it.