PSA: I told you so.

Finally, the mainstream (or, heck, any) media says what I figured was true eight years ago: depression can be good for the soul, ultimately. There's a lot to learn from it, and you're generally better off when you come out of the stupor of self-immolation than you were when you went in.

Now if only we could see the economy that way, we'd probably all be fine.

PSA: Five ways to make your website instantly more tacky

1. Add clip art.

2. Add a .midi file that plays too loud "in the background"

3. Add an animation (i.e., "dancing Jesus")

4. Use colors and fonts that would have been popular in the 80's, without irony

5. Add one of those animations of actual people who "interact" with the "visitor" as though they were "really there"

Local Trivia: My new awesome coat

This is my new awesome coat from the Goodwill. It was made by "Town and Country Clothes" in West Hartford, CT, and it goes down to my knees and is made of wool.
(I can tell because it's itchy on my neck.)

Long live my new coat.

PSA: Horror Movie Recommendations

The Order -- That's right. The Order, with Heath Ledger and that guy from the TV show Sliders. It's creepy and has explicit theological underpinnings based in the idea of the "sin eater," an idea that's scary enough without an evil pope and asking dying hanged men for the secrets of the universe. Luckily, The Order has all of those things plus Shannyn Sossamon.

Battle Royale (Japanese) -- This is the only movie I've ever shut off when I was alone...twice. The uncanny first seven minutes or so creep me out as much as anything I've seen, but then give way to a kind of melodrama that nonetheless causes you to wonder what you would care about if you were about to die. While "wow, those Japanese are really weird and worried about population control issues" is a valid interpretation, there is more to get out of it than just that, if you can get past the uncanny beginning and soap-operatic follow-up.

Gremlins -- Cute fuzzy things will eat you from the toilet (Gremlins 2, but you get the point), and one gets microwaved. Enough said.

House of Sand and Fog -- This is one of those movies that most people think isn't horror, but that I think might be more horrific than most slasher flicks. Jennifer Connolly is good, but of course Ben Kingsley is better.

Psycho -- If you don't know the twist at the end, it's excellent; if you do know the twist, it's still excellent. For a Hitchcock runner-up starring Jimmy Stewart and featuring a much more philosophical take on murder that withstands multiple, multiple viewings, try Rope.

American Psycho -- Full of sex and gore, the real chill in this movie comes at the end. This recommendation is my concession to slasher-flick lovers, though again, it's got a philosophical flair. Whatever you do, do not watch the sequel.

Grindhouse (Planet Terror, Deathproof) -- Both of these movies are very, very well done, and should be seen by anyone who appreciates other Quentin Tarantino films (Kill Bill, for instance). They should also be seen by anyone who likes zombies or car chases.


That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure I'll remember others. Leave your recommendations in the comments, too.

Movie Review: V-day double feature -- House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Lazarus Project

Well, the Valentine's Day horror movie marathon this year was only half a disaster, and that half was (disappointingly) the 1999 remake of the Vincent Price classic "House on Haunted Hill."

Instead of remaking the narratively complex original version, wherein the characters all turn out to be linked in unexpected ways, and human agency is responsible for all the "haunting" going on -- and in which a vat of acid figures prominently -- the makers of HoHH '99 seemed to feel that those 1950's writers had simply used storyline as a crutch because they hadn't had the advantages of the kinds of special effects that we have nowadays.

To correct the drama-heavy character-development of the past, the writers of HoHH '99 (or producers or what-have-you; everyone involved) squished in all the special effects available to them in 1999, thus realizing what they must feel was the original dream for the movie. "If they'd had CGI, they could have gotten rid of all this extraneous plot!" they must have been thinking.

Instead of human machinations leading to death and destruction, it was now the insane-asylum house itself that was getting revenge on the descendants of some other people who had died there. Instead of Vincent Price and his on-screen wife engaging in witty banter that only danced on the line between "sarcastic and sharp" and "going too far," the billionaire and his wife engage in a hate-fest that only cuts through the lack of plot thanks to the purity of its vitriol. Instead of doubles and who-done-its, we got actual ghosts. Instead of acid, we got a meaningless tank of blook that hurt no one, but was somehow meant to be creepy.

There were a few moments of good fun, but they're all tangential, and most happen in the first ten minutes. Lisa Loeb has a cameo, as does the guy who played "Spike" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a stroke of genius in casting; Taye Diggs does a decent job at a terrible role, as does Ali Larter (Nicki/Jessica from Heroes), and Geoffrey Rush is brilliant as ever, but the inclusion of Peter Gallagher could only have been justified by an attempt at self-referential humor -- one that the movie did not make.

The movie is a failure, but many horror movies are. The difference with this one was the name-branding and the high expectations it created. I'm left now with more than the simple disdain I hold for "Gravedancers" or the strangely ambitious failings of "Unspeakable": I'm left with contempt for a movie that's probably ruined the chances of viewers going back in time to see the original, far superior, "House on Haunted Hill."

Our second feature, "The Lazarus Project," was a much more successfully done horror film. It, like HoHH '99, also features a prolonged stay at an insane asylum, but that is where the similarities end. It's in the vein of "Life of David Gale," though I know that movie doesn't read immediately as horror, and that makes "The Lazarus Project" unique in my experience: it is essentially a horror film for liberals.

The main character is basically innocent of all crimes, which is important to mention, and is convicted of assisting in three homocides in Texas, which is also important -- Texas being the state most likely to kill you. The main thrust of the movie's argument (I told you it was for liberals) is that we shouldn't get to manipulate people's lives, even if we're saving them. It's an interesting movie, even if the anti-death-penalty plot has been done better in "David Gale" and the crazy-guy-who's-not-really-crazy has been done better in a dozen other places (including a TNG episode).

At any rate, it was a fun night, started off with an episode of Criminal Minds, from season 1, which is always a good starter. As a celebratory drink, we had what you see above, which is not champagne -- it's actually Green Tea Pomegranate soda, which P.C. and I have taken to calling "fixins soda" because it tastes like all the extra ingredients on a fast-food hamburger -- and drunk from the plastic champagne glasses from my brother's wedding.

PSA: Arizona, in effort to be logically consistent, to abolish all speed limits

This morning on NPR, it was revealed that a certain portion of Arizona highway outside Phoenix has had speeding cameras installed for at least a year.

People are furious about this, probably because the tickets are something like $180, and up until then, they'd been getting away with driving as fast as they wanted with only the cops to worry about. Fortunately, 2/3 of drivers who have received camera-tickets have found a solution to the problem in not paying the fines. One driver, aware that the requirement for ticketing is to have a view of the individual driver's face, has been wearing a monkey mask and eluding possibly 37 tickets. (I say "possibly" because who knows how many people are actually under that monkey mask driving around in that same car every day?)

The new (Republican) governor of Arizona has lambasted the former (Democratic) governor of Arizona for starting the program, which she says was "only" to earn money for the state. She makes the choice to install cameras sound preposterous and malicious. (The government is trying to steal your money.)

Maybe she's been ticketed, too.

There's no other explanation for maligning a practice that has likely contributed to the 25% decrease in traffic fatalities, leading to less time state troopers spend driving from accident to accident (a savings, I would imagine, in time spent on that task and overtime pay) and, heck, fewer people dead: 81 fewer people, to be exact.

Unless she's against the idea of speed limits at all, even though they appear to keep us safe from maniac drivers who think they're capable of controlling their cars at 90 mph -- and who as often as not end up crashing into our cars, leaving us stranded, paying higher insurance rates, and possibly maimed or killed.

Besides, people who hated being pulled over before should be rejoicing. At least they don't have to slow down and pull over now. At least they don't have to feel that shock of adrenaline when they realize that was an unmarked police car they just passed, and wonder if they're going to get snagged.

I'm not trying to go all Big Brother here -- it is scary that the govt. (or rather the private enterprise that handles these cameras and ticketing, which is based in Arizona) can look into our cars via cameras. But heck, a cop that pulls us over can see at least as much just from outside the car. And we all pretty much agree to speed limits, right? Which is a "violation" of our "rights" to drive as fast as we freaking want to begin with, right?

If we're going to complain about cameras reinforcing the law, then we should probably -- just for the sake of consistency -- be complaining about the speed limit laws, not the fact that they're now being enforced.

The way I see it, the only problem with speed limits (and I'm a speeder most of the time myself), is that sporadic reinforcement, and the subsequent stupid driving practices of people who think they can jimmy an extra 5 mph out of the system. With the cameras? Problem solved.

Past local trivia: Jenny found the quote wall

From Jenny, in the comments:

"So, during the snow days this week I was doing some cleaning and guess what I found! A few samples:


"I had to prostitute my kids to support my habit." - Carl, on spearmint Altoids

"It's like the eye of Sauron... but in a good way." - Jenny D"

And *I'm* the one who watches 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.'" - Christopher

"Something had to be pretty, and the world wasn't changing." - Alicia, on why she changed into a skirt

"Please come date us!" - Debbie, suggesting a possible ad for the Writing Center

"It's really bright in here. I feel like the Lord is coming." - Meredith

Ben: I'm more selfless than ever before.
Maria: Way to go, Ben! "


Everyone please excuse me while I laugh hilariously at (and with) our former selves. Ah. We were awesome then.

Quantifiable Living: Story-within-a-story/Paul Auster scale

Item: Story within a story (oral or written)


Unit of measure: Paul Austers (PA)


How It Works: This scale measures the levels of storytelling going on in any given storytelling experience. Each Paul Auster is equal to two stories, with one embedded in the other. If a person tells you a total of four stories within the aegis of one main storytelling experience -- that is, before they have reached the final purpose of the initial storytelling -- with each embedded in the last, for instance, that would be 2 PA.

This scale is especially useful when dealing with older people like Grandpa Simpson (or real-life equivalent), or younger people who tend to ramble, but it should not be applied too liberally. The stories that qualify for the "Story-within-a-story/Paul Auster scale" should be relatively high-quality; should have an identifiable beginning, middle and end, even if they're not as fully developed as they could be; should give the listener a sense both of the interconnectedness of life and the ultimate inability to articulate one's "real truth" or "real self"; should cause one to question whether the story has any ultimate or practical meaning; should leave one with a haunting sense that one has missed something essential in listening, something that could prove the key to the whole story if only the listener had caught it.

These criteria may be met by the quality and content of the story itself (stories themselves), or by the listener's respectful and listening attitude toward the stories, such that the listener's attitude adds gravitas and reflection to stories that may not demand it. Where there is no respect, however, there cannot be a PA correlation, as all stories tend to blend together and create a different experience related more to sheer length of talking rather than story embeddedness.


Examples:

Someone tells you a story about going to the store and finding a penny on the way, diverging into a parallel story about how he used to collect coins when he was young and trusted the government: 1 PA

The same storyteller augments the penny-finding and collecting story with scenes from his stint in Vietnam, adding the perspective of a young Vietnamese girl who causes him to ultimately question the government's motives and reason for being there: 2 PA

You hear a story about a woman who met her husband when he came from the fire department to rescue her cat from a tree, and you hear how she came to get the cat, the story of the previous owner of the cat's mother who had hung herself from a tree for unrequited love, and also the content of the short story she was writing at the time, which had a flashback in it: 3 PA


Limits: A story followed by another story does not meet the criteria for the story-within-a-story/Paul Auster scale. That would be a story cycle, or a series of stories, which can be measured by normal means: i.e., "one story," "two stories," "fifteen stories in a row," etc.


Elaborations: The borderline exception to this provision is if, at the end of the series of stories, the listener realizes that all the stories were actually interconnected in ways that became clear only through listening. In this case, either the usual method of story-counting (i.e. "five stories in a row") with an addendum of explanation (i.e. "and it turned out that all the people met each other at a party in the end") may be used, or the PA unit of measure may be applied, though carefully.

For instance, in the case of a series of five stories, all of which end up being the background of five people who show up at the same party, the PA measure is only 1, since the five stories are all embedded in the same overarching storyline, rather than being embedded in each other. Thus, the situation warrants the description "6 stories, 1 PA," indicating that there are six storylines (including the story of the party), with one of those being the frame and the other five being independent of all but the frame/overarching storyline.

More sophisticated methods of determining the relation between embedded stories and serial stories are in development.

PSA: Romance is undead.

P.C. and I are going to continue what will now have become "an annual tradition" for Valentine's Day tonight: a horror movie marathon.

I'm hoping to get into the remake of "House on Haunted Hill," as the Vincent Price version is probably one of my fave horror flicks -- and perhaps "Dead Silence" for melodramatic-macabre, or "Hellboy" for grotesque-heroic, or old videos of Sarah Palin interviews for realistic-terror-inducing (Bazinga!).

There are always the Grindhouse movies, which are pretty awesome. And "Subject 2," which is a quietly horrifying low-budget feature, not least because it's set in an unrelentingly snowy, isolated location. I left "Dawn of the Dead," "Bug," "Killing Zoe," "Talk Radio," and "Unspeakable" (a horror in acting, directing and especially writing) in MA...but I think we'll have enough to keep us amused and unpalatable to the usual Valentine's Day audience.

Speaking of which, before I can get to that, I'll have to go see "Valentine's Day" for work.

I anticipate it will be more horrifying than anything I watch later tonight.

New Modern Deity: Kindermal

Kindermal is the Ur-god of punishing rotten kids, known in other cultures as Black Peter; the chupacabra; the boogeyman; evil Santa; Mrs. Trunchbull; various trolls hiding under various bridges, and several residents of the Black Forest. These lesser manifestations may be considered "messengers" or minions under Kindermal's jurisdiction.

Kindermal's main concern is making unruly kids more rule-y. One of Kindermal's most effective and insidious tactics is getting kids to police each other. Thus, Kindermal is something of a patron deity to the safety patrol, hall monitors, and honors students in general (non-reformed), when they themselves are not acting up -- which explains also why they so rarely do.

Kindermal can often also provide parents with creative inspiration when punishing their wayward children. (The most extreme versions of these punishments can be seen in Cinderella's excessive cleaning of the home, and in punishment closets such as The Chokey.)

Kindermal is not without deity enemies, as deities are often also unruly. Though some deities consider themselves neutral, Kindermal, in an effort to organize the world according to a system of rules, lists each as either "good" or "bad": this may be the genesis of the myth of Santa Claus's lists of the "naughty" and the "nice." It also makes for awkward meetings in Olympia, WA (where the gods meet for semi-annual conferences), but since Kindermal only retains jurisdiction over human children and is not by any stretch the most powerful of the modern deities, he remains mainly an annoyance to other gods and a scourge only to little kids who run around in stores, hit their siblings (except to enforce rules), or forget their homework.

Local Trivia: CO.M.G.

Last week I came home to an apartment with the distant sound of a four-beep alarm coming from the vents. I had no idea what it meant -- four beeps, then five seconds off (I timed it), then four beeps again -- so after a short investigation to figure out if it was coming from the other apartment on the second floor, or below me, I let it go.

It turns out that it was the carbon monoxide detector my landlords had installed. I found this out after several hours in the house, at which point the landlady came home and shut it off, figuring it was malfunctioning.

Which was pretty scary to me since, you know, you can't detect CO otherwise. But then we didn't die, so I figured things were fine.

Thanks to a weird smell coming up from the vents on Friday night, I slept with the windows open and my electric blanket, Weirdo Brown, on. I'd probably been primed by the CO detector experience, but this weird smell also tied my stomach in knots and gave me a headache, and I figured better safe than accidentally dead.

I thought all my smelly and non-smelly gas woes were apartment-bound -- but last night, here at work and only a half hour after I'd gone to sleep, the CO detector started going off around 1 a.m.

This was more panic-inducing than it had been at my apartment, since now I knew what it was and was responsible not only for myself, but for the girl I work with. What if she died of CO poisoning? Should I call the manager on call at 1 a.m.? Should I call the fire department? Should I open the windows and turn on a space heater?

I took it out of the plug, which turned out not to be the answer, since that caused it to sound continuously. Eventually, after covering it in blankets for awhile, I plugged it back in, pushed the "test/reset" button, which made it stop alarming, and went back to bed.

Then I got up, just to check on whether the girl was alive. She was.

I went back to bed.

And got up again to look at the alarm, which seemed all green lights and still-silenced alarms, so I went back to bed.

At 1:16 I got up again and looked up the alarm manual online. This is incredibly difficult to do without pulling up horror story after horror story of families who barely escaped death when their homes filled with carbon monoxide -- which was scary, but also annoying enough to make me more apathetic about possible death. ("How bad can it be compared to this?")

At 1:37, I solved the mystery. Apparently, if the alarm sounds, the thing to do is press the test/reset button. If the alarm goes off again within 6 minutes, you have a problem. Otherwise, you can go back to sleep.

So I did. But if one more CO detector does this to me, I might just go live in a tent in the woods.

You all are invited to visit.

PSA: The best actress

I've decided that Myrna Loy is my favorite actress, and I might even watch movies with her in them where she'd been digitally inserted into new-tyme plots.

Hint, hint, directors of the future.

Local Trivia: The funniest tutor evaluation comment I received

"She brainwashed me before I started a new paper."