So I Saw The Preview For "Kick Ass 2" Today

And was all "Hooray!"  Then I saw Jim Carrey and was all "Uhhhh..."
Carrey is one of those actors who has played the same manic character over and over again his whole career, and it never really jibed with me.  He can be good at it, but sometimes for the wrong reason.  The Cable Guy really terrified me; Carrey can be unsettling with his crazy.

I thought about it more and remembered that Carrey has some experience in comic book movies and felt a little better about it, then realized that the good thing about The Mask was Cameron Diaz and the good thing about Batman Forever was Tommy Lee Jones.  On the other hand, Kick Ass was the superhero movie Nicolas Cage should have been making all along, so fingers crossed.

For Reals?

Although it's a retail giant, the company I work for operates on the smaller scale like the others of it's type which took the place of the old five and dime stores: the Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Family Dollar, $-Mart, Walgreen's, etc.  Because they have so much in common, what affects one will happen to the others quickly. One can thus imagine my rapt attention when I read that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was suing Dollar General for..  wait for it...

Conducting criminal background checks.  Yeah, can't check to see if that guy or gal you leave alone with a safe full of money or easily transported merchandise has a criminal background because that might be...  wait for it...

Racist.  Now no one, not even the administration says that Dollar General is using the background checks as an excuse to exclude people because of race.  They maintain that such checks have a disproportionate impact on the African-American community, therefore shouldn't be done.  Just when you thought there could be no more madness.  Some random thoughts:

• African-Americans aren't going to get that job anyway.  I imagine Dollar General would like the abolishment of any sort of border control or check of immigration status.  The cost of labor sticks in the craw of these companies and they would all dearly love to see a flood of cheap workers all willing to drive wages down.  That itself is nonsensical, because if your own workers can't buy your stuff (which is being manufactured as cheaply as possible) who can?  It's Dollar General.  It serves a certain socioeconomic level.  Come on.
• On the other hand, if you want the government to do something for you, better be prepared to give his  ne'er-do-well constituency something in return.
• Even if the lawsuit fails, and it very well could, it's still a huge waste of time and money for all involved.    Stop wasting money!
• You know, I don't think this administration really understands what money is.  Even those who funded it made their billions on paper, so they think it can be conjured out of the digital aether. The Chicago machine is funded by shaking down companies and that cash never seems to run out.  It's just a lowly clerk.  A few hundred a night won't hurt anything.
• God help us if the EEOC wins.  Imagine if it were illegal to check the record of a teacher, or a nurse, or the lady cleaning your house.  Whoever hired them would still be responsible for their actions though.  Just the price of doing business.  You've got unlimited funds to share.  The government says so.

From Those Who Brought You Smart Diplomacy

We present Smart Spying.

Every secret we possess seems to waltz out the security equivalent of a wide open screen door with a hole in it.  The only saving grace is that the Russians and Chinese must think we are playing them for fools.  Or are we?  A high school dropout abandons his $200,000 job, life in Hawaii, and super hot stripper girlfriend to seek asylum in...  Hong Kong?  I have no idea what to think.  Authoritarian governments probably don't either.

Some Late Nite Shat

I guess by this time everyone has seen the Spocklore rich Audi ad with Nimoy and Quinto.  I guess that the viewership of "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" has also been steadily ticking upwards on YouTube. I think I first heard it on the Doctor Demento show back in '87 or thereabouts, and it's a nice novelty song.  I've checked out the rest of Nimoy's discography and my reaction is a kind of "blech".  Not horrible, but not great either.

Now if one talks about how Nimoy's ego led him astray, you are almost obligated to then discuss the many songs of William Shatner and wonder what on earth the man was thinking.  Not I.  I actually like a lot of his musical work, including "Mr Tambourine Man".  I have a suspicion that 1968's The Transformed Man will be what future generations remember about William Shatner (if they remember him at all) and they will wonder why he wasn't appreciated in his own time.  Ok,  that may be a bit of a stretch, but he is worth listening to with an open mind.

It must be good, because "spoken word" usually means "pretentious crap" as far as I'm concerned.

Ray Harryhausen

So Ray Harryhausen has passed at the respectable age of 92.  For a long time, he was special effects.  I know that even today special effects is still a tedious time consuming process, but old timey stop motion animation takes a very special kind of person.

To be honest, I always thought his work looked a little jerky and flat, even if I admired the effort put into it.  I think Harryhausen tended to be a little ambitious; living statues, skeletons and things that you imagined as moving stiffly from articulated joints looked well, but he had to overdo it and constantly animated birds and flying reptiles.  Not good.

Credit also had to be given to the actors who mastered the almost impossible task of crossing swords with something that wasn't there and making it look like they were fighting for their lives.  I know you may have starved yourself down to 80 pounds or earned your quadruple blackbelt with sash and tassel for your art, but that doesn't make it good acting.

The movies themselves were also good.  Old fashioned escapist fiction set in exotic locales.  You couldn't make a Sinbad film like that today without some heavy handed moralizing about Arab and Islamic virtues, probably made to the uncouth and ignorant Sir Bubba d'Rednec.

Who Wants To Be My Speedy?

When I was in kindergarten about 1975 or thereabouts, I remember the teacher spending a day with us talking about surgery.  I don't know if this happened to anyone else, but the gist was that Science has discovered  that we have some useless organs that do nothing but cause trouble, so I'm going to discuss what it's like when your tonsils are removed. I thought it was pretty cool because I would get the whole week off from school and eat ice cream every day.  I wasn't as keen on the appendectomy lecture, but what bugged me the most was when she brought up the what ifs of dialysis and diabetes.  I've never liked needles, so the idea of giving myself injections seemed just as horrible as losing a leg.

So guess what?  Doctor has determined that I need to move to the next level of treatment and start injecting medication.  Didn't like the idea, but the knowledge that they would be in pen form made me think that it was something I could handle.  Then they arrived.  I was thinking about the size of a fat fountain pen, right?  Wrong!  You know when you stop at Stuckey's and you get that giant pencil with a map of New Mexico on it?  Yeah, about that size.  Then the nurse calls and says "The starter dose is four."    Then I warm up four of them and because my courage has faltered I go out to the local clinic to ask them to help and they reply "We don't do that medication, it's alien to us."  And I say "It's subcutaneous, it's not like I'm asking you to jab my pineal gland."  And they say "Take it to the doctor who prescribed it to you."  And I say "They are all out of the office today.  I wanted to do it now because I have tomorrow off so I can recuperate if I have a bad reaction.  I exposed myself to ridicule by putting my white chicken legs in shorts to come out here! Fine, I'll do it myself."  So with a little help from the instruction booklet and YouTube, I did.

Two thoughts popped into my head afterwards.  First, being angry really cuts fear and pain.  Second, in a post apocalyptic world, I'm the one pushing a propane fridge around in a wheelbarrow.  

The only silver lining is that my company has really good health insurance.  The market price of my medication is $6500, but I'm paying $95 a box.  Given my schedule, that's about a dollar a day.  Not too bad.  The reality though, is that my company can offer really good insurance and retirement because they are retail, and don't expect anyone to actually buy it.

Because Everything's Better With Pirates!

I never really watched much anime, or Japanimation as it was called back in the day.  I watched G-Force after school but wasn't impressed, and much later watched some Dragonball Z after inquiring what a young co-worker kept blathering on about.  I tried to follow it for a while, but determined that each episode consisted of about five minutes' worth of actual plot progression while the rest was take up by static views of the heroes powering up with much gritting of teeth, sweating and turning blonde.  I was able to mostly make it through Gundam Wing but swore never to do so again, because it took so much concentration; lose focus for a few minutes and the whole story was lost.

I've given anime a second look though, because I've needed something in 22 minute segments with standalone episodes yet an overreaching plot line that comes to a properly planned end.  Luckily, I stumbled into two excellent series, one of them being Samurai Champloo.

I've read that Japanese reserve makes acting difficult, therefore they put all their emotions into animation.  It seems true in this case; young Mugen here shows some complex but common human emotions.  If he's the offender, he has a "Suck it up, that's life" attitude, but if he's the one who has been wronged, only revenge will do.

Um, he's the only one who knew where the pirate treasure is.  I'd want to die too.