After three years of countless hours of music creation, pointless video gaming, bloggin’, and all the other good stuff, my beloved computer has shit the bed. So that means I have to fight Jenni for the laptop… and work’s been unusually busy, hence the drop in blogging lately. Hopefully going to get back into it tomorrow.
Well, it’s official: I am pretty much useless on Mondays. I’ve come to this conclusion after observing my behavior of the last few Mondays, whether it be housecleaning, homework, blogging, whatever. I don’t seem to get shit done. No point in fighting it, I guess. So for your enjoyment, a small Monday linkdump.
Odum over at Green Mountain Daily has a good piece on Instant Runoff Voting, as well as some of the alternatives.
David Sirota has some interesting musings on the huge disconnect between the DC punditry and the rest of the nation, here.
And finally, if you have the time (it’s a bit long), check out this excellent debate between Sam Harris and Dennis Prager, called, ‘Why Are Atheists So Angry?’. Great stuff.
It’s been pretty much well established that the role of national lands in the eyes of the far-right (most of which rather they didn’t exist at all) is that they are something to be exploited for profit, and by profit, we’re not talking about the American people, it’s the big corporations.. The latest outrage is what’s called ‘commercial bioprospecting’, that is, the mining of the lands for genetic and biological information to be used for commercial purposes. Geov Parrish, over at Working for Change, has this:
The National Park Service (NPS) is quietly taking public comment through December 15 on a proposal to allow private companies to “bioprospect” in our national parks: to commercially mine, not the mineral riches of a park, but the genetic resources of plants, animals, and microorganisms in territories specifically set aside for stewardship in the public trust.The proposal is contained in a September 15, 2006 court-ordered Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), an outgrowth of a lawsuit over a similar 1997 proposal at Yellowstone National Park during the Clinton administration. Steady privatization has been underway at the Park Service for more than 20 years, but the requirement that the NPS actually study the effects of bioprospecting seemed to shelve this particular bad idea.
And then, magically, seven years later, the EIS appears, laying out three options that would cover not just Yellowstone but all parks. The document, subtly entitled “Benefits-Sharing,” reads less like an environmental study and more like a sales pitch for its preferred choice, “option B,” to allow commercial bioprospecting but require “benefits-sharing” agreements and potentially some degree of public disclosure of those agreements. (Or, potentially, not.) The other two choices the public is to comment on are option A, to do nothing — thus allowing bioprospecting without so-called benefit-sharing; and option C, which is to only allow this genetic mining for “noncommercial or public interest research.” Not exploiting our parks’ genetic treasures at all is not even listed as an option in the document.
I’m mostly opposed to this on principle, nore than anything else, namely because since the Repubs came to power in ’94, there has been an ever-increasing movement to privatize and commercialize our national parks and forests. This is just the latest in a series of many, and stopping it would send a message that this needs to change direction. Some places need to be sacred, for Chrissake. There’s some more info from ‘Parks Not For Sale’ here. And you can send your comments to the forest service, which they are taking until December 16th form there, too. There’s a good talking points sheet there as well. Check it out and drop ‘em a line, won’t you?
Here’s a few more pics form the North Cascades trip last summer, more specifically our horseback excursion…
This is Jenni and the guide. I think it’s Mt.Darcy in the background, but I can’t remember the name for certain:
And the horse I rode in on…
Final destination, Coon Lake…
And we saw a bear known as the ‘cinnamon bear’ checking us out on the way back…
Came across this article in the WaPo about how polygamists are stepping up the battle for legal and societal acceptance….
Valerie and others among the estimated 40,000 men, women and children in polygamous communities are part of a new movement to decriminalize bigamy. Consciously taking tactics from the gay-rights movement, polygamists have reframed their struggle, choosing in interviews to de-emphasize their religious beliefs and focus on their desire to live “in freedom,” according to Anne Wilde, director of community relations for Principle Voices, a pro-polygamy group based in Salt Lake.
I’ve got mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the libertarian in me is saying, ‘Whatever.’ The unrepentant male in me is saying, ‘Wow, that could be a lot of fun, or a headache of a cosmic magnitude,’ and there’s another part of me wondering what kind of woman would even want to be in that scenario, as well as wondering what kind of effect it has on children.
It’s got me wondering, too, how the Christianists will react to this. One popular argument you hear from their side in the gay marriage debate is something that goes along the lines of, ‘First, it will be gay marriage, then polygamy. Then incest, then bestiality.’, or something similar. Of course, in Vermont during the whole civil unions fiasco, they were carrying on like Vermont was going to turn into one big Provincetown and drag queens were going to steal our children in dark of night and eat them. I haven’t heard any reports yet as to that happening, but hey, it’s only been 5 years, so there’s still time, I guess.
I really don’t see it turning into a big cultural/political battle a la gay marriage, simply because it seems to be mostly concentrated in Utah and last time I checked, there were a lot more gay people than polygamists. Utah is home to lots of Mormons and Senator Orrin Hatch, so it’s hardly representative of the rest of the country. It’ s not like there’s some national polygamist movement that has people marching in the streets or anything. It’ll be interesting to see if this gets any legs. I doubt it.
Stupidity…not uniquely American, by any means, but we do seem to have a nasty epidemic of it…
Try this one on for size: ‘Town Makes it Illegal to Fly a Foreign Flag’:
Pahrump resident Michael Miraglia proposed the ban because, he said, he got upset when he saw immigrant activists marching through U.S. cities last spring, waving Mexican flags.
And here’s the kicker:
Mr. Miraglia told USA Today that he was especially miffed that “we had Mexican restaurants closed that day.”
I’ve often felt that same rage when pulling up to the only decent taco joint in Central Vermont, El Sol, and finding it closed. I usually go on a midnight rampage and take down the flags at the local Canadian club.
Bonus idiot, ‘cuz I like you all (and you’re gonna give me 4,000 hits before FBC’s Dec. 19th birthday, right?)’ : LA Times: ‘Bomb Iran’. Well, the author is from the American Enterprise Institute, so we shouldn’t be surprised. What’s this? He also gets the coveted ‘douchenozzle of the week ‘ award due to the fact that the CIA is saying, according to Hersh in the New Yorker, that:
The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Ok, spaghetti western time. This time it’s Sergio Martino’s ‘Mannaja: A Man Called Blade’ (1977). As of 1977, due to decreasing popularity and quality, the Italian western genre was breathing its last gaps. This is one of the last ones.
Italian cop-movie star Maurizio Merli stars as the fur coat -wearing stranger named Blade, who has an affinity for throwing axes at people. Merli almost looks a bit like a young, blonde Tom Selleck, and has the whitest teeth of anyone I’ve ever seen outside of those tooth whitening ads, almost to the point where it’s distracting. Blade comes to some town run by the typical western mob boss, some wheelchair-bound dude named McGowan, who runs the silver mines. Blade gets things off on the wrong foot in a card game with McGowan’s henchman, Voller, played by John Steiner. He also slaps his Great Danes silly, which was kinda funny. Steiner kind o
f has that creepy Steve Buscemi thing going on, although taller and with slightly better teeth. So, eventually, a big plot evolves with Voller kidnapping McGowan’s daughter as a way to scam the old guy out of his silver fortune, and there’s a subplot abut this traveling can-can all-girl revue that comes to town.
Eventually, the shit hits the fan, and Voller buries Blade in the sand and pins his eyes open so the sun wil
l burn out his eyes. It’s a good example of that aspect of the genre; all of a sudden, amidst all the camp, some senseless act of brutality appears. A blinded Blade is rescued by the criminal he apprehended in the beginning of the film, learns to shoot and use his trusty axes while blind, a big shootout occurs, end of movie.
So, with the synopsis outa the way, what did I think? It was another ok-B-movie spag western. As usual, lots of derivative stuff. The harmonica theme we hear every now and then and the evil wheelchair-bound baron are right out of Leone’s ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’. Another word about the music.. the recurring theme is this strange mellow song that sounds like it’s sung by the Frankenstein monster…’You’re…..alone…a sol-itar-y man..’, in a strong monotonous slightly-out-of-tune baritone with a thick accent, noteworthy just for its strangeness, but also somewhat annoying. There’s also the strange song that tells what’s going on on the screen (like the one in Four of the Apocalypse)… ‘you deserve a nasty ending….something’s gonna happen really soon.. just wait and see…’ Weird.
The sets look like a movie set, almost like a western theme park. And there’s lots of the dry-ice fog everywhere, when you can clearly see blue skies in the background. An interview with the director on the extras says that this was because that particular studio was on its last legs, so they used the fog to cover up the fact that the sets were falling apart. This is another release form Blue Underground, and they did a great job restoring the sound and video. It looks great.
The director, Sergio Martino, is kind of a hack, noted for directing other cinematic masterpieces such as ‘Mountain of the Cannibal God’, one he says that he is really proud of. I’m starting to wonder if, in order to direct an Italian western, a certain percentage must be directed by men named Sergio…Leone, Corbucci, now this guy. I watched the English version, and really dug the bartender with the modern-day Brooklyn accent. Even stranger, the guy who overdubbed Voller seemed to be a German guy doing a cowboy accent…‘Ve vill work hahrder or ve vill shoot you…’ It just adds to the camp factor, which, as I explore this genre further, is something that one must have a tolerance for to fully appreciate the genre. So overall, like the last few I’ve written about here, typical B-movie, watchable, but not much in the way of artistry. And as always, if you’re getting into the genre, watch the Sergio Leone movies first.
If you like this, please click below and visit my spaghetti western site, where you’ll find more reviews and other great stuff.
Been a busy blogging week, so I’m gonna be lazy today…as usual, Fredo is just too lazy to care about what Krusty’s lookin’ at… or maybe he was thinking ‘Hoyer or Murtha? Hoyer or Murtha?’ Nah…
I’m noticing lately that the some of the spacing in between the lines here is screwed up, especially with blockquotes. It’s a problem with Blogger beta, I’m trying to work around it. Sorry if it’s a pain to read.
