jstraszheim

It's been a long and eventful year--and the end of an epochal decade. We aren't quite to the New Years yet but Christmas is the penultimate holiday and we're about to head up to our folks to eat. I wish everyone a joyful Christmas and an incredible New Years!

-Marco

Avatar is a spectacular piece of film-making in its approach. It looks like nothing else because, well, it's new. It takes CGI to a whole new level and CGI characters to the place where they really seem to be, well, real.

The plot's a different matter. Some people found it downright insulting--even while everyone I've read thinks you've just gotta see it. What this post is about, however, is how it gets analyzed from the left and the right perspectives. Since that involves spoilers it's after the cut.

( Avatar: Dissected. )
-Marco

You would think we wouldn't need one at this point. You would think that a review that runs more than half the run-time of the movie would be, well, redundant. This is neither. Brilliant is an overused word and nothing else fits.



-Marco

In the age of Facebook one never needs to forget a birthday--I returned from my morning workout (wherein my personal trainer gave me the first physical card of the day) to find numerous (welcome) messages from Facebook. Of course my perpetually renewing BlueMountain e-card account had jumped the gun and sent me a birthday card last night.

There is an e-Industry in reminders. Everything from The Forgetful Gentleman (which specializes in 'sophisticated' correspondence and electronic reminders) to Remember The Milk for more mundane tasks. I suspect, however, that due to convergence all of these things have a short shelf-life. Eventually GoogleBrain will hook us all up and the only thing we'll have to remember is to add people to our mental friend's list after which Google will make sure that all pertinent accounts are auto-added to our reminders.

-Marco

I watched it.

( How was it? )
-Marco

I review the G-Force DVD/Blu Ray.

( How was it? )
-Marco

Do you want to date my avatar?


( Cameron's Avatar NOT the Lastestest Air Benderness ... or whatever )
-Marco

So I'm in Toys R Us looking for a toy for my five year old nephew. I'm with Kenton.

Me: "I want to get him a robot ... I mean, what he really wants is a toy car or something--but I want to get him a robot because it would be cool."

Kenton: :: LOOKS AT ME IN DISBELIEF :: "You know ... you don't have to /choose/."

Me: ...

Me: "Shit. You're right. What if I got him a car that turns into a robot. That should blow his freakin' little mind!"

So I got him a Transformer that's really cool.

-Marco

I watched The Hangover DVD.

( How was it? )
-Marco

With Lieberman using his all-important 60th vote to get the public option (government funded heath insurance) out of the healthcare reform bill, a lot of progressive voices (such as The Daily Kos) are calling for the current bill to be ditched. In short, it's the progressives teaming up with the Republicans because the current bill doesn't go far enough.

The argument, of course, is (well, one of the arguments, anyway) that the current bill is a windfall for insurance companies since it requires insurance yet does not provide a government option. On the other hand, it has stuff like preventing the pre-existing condition clause and, it would seem, prevents insurance from dropping you because you didn't declare some pre-existing condition somewhere at some time.

These are good things and, I don't think, insubstantial.

The problem, I don't think--at least for the hard-core left--isn't the bill per se. It's the whole Obama-as-a-Moderate 'betrayal.' The theory goes that "Barack 'W' Obama' was supposed to be a super-left Manchurian candidate who would instantly close Gitmo (he's, as of yesterday, required a facility in Illinois to be upgraded to hold Gitmo inmates), get us out of Afghanistan (instead of sending 30k more troops), and instantly overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell.

As he hasn't done any of these things, progressive commenters (in the more restrained general blogopsphere) have decided that there's no party and no candidate for them! That they'll have to go their own way in 2010--because that'll show the Democrats who their base really is.

Unfortunately for them this is not true: they do have a party and a candidate. In fact, he's one that's already shown up the Democrats!

They can vote for Ralph Nader.

That'll learn 'em.

-Marco