The Humid Press of Days

[vovat]

It's been so hot and muggy as of late. I guess I wouldn't have the humidity problem if I lived in New Mexico, like my dad does.

Anyway, last night, bethje and I watched two movies on demand: Bowling for Columbine and Wendigo.

Bowling for Columbine was pretty good, but I liked Fahrenheit 9/11 better. Bowling made some good points and explored some interesting issues, but I thought it wasn't organized that well. Fahrenheit had a better flow. There were definitely some common themes in both films. They both emphasized the current of fear in the United States, as well as racism. I thought the comparison of the killer bee scare to racism was clever, even if it wasn't strictly relevant. I also thought the Marilyn Manson interview was particularly good. (I vaguely recall hearing that the shooters in Columbine weren't really even Manson fans, but I could certainly be wrong about that.) There was also a part explaining how stupid "zero tolerance" policies are, and I couldn't agree more. Not only do some of the rules make no sense, but insisting that one set of rules should apply to all situations is quite absolutist. I also didn't know that the day of the Columbine massacre was also the heaviest day so far of the American bombing of Kosovo.

I did find it a little mathematically sloppy that Michael Moore gave raw numbers instead of percentages when talking about gun deaths in various countries. I don't necessarily think this was intentionally misleading, just not the best way to present the data. Speaking of statistics in the documentary, I find it kind of hard to believe that only 18% of Canada is non-white, especially when you consider that the majority of the people in the nothern parts of Canada are probably non-white. I guess there aren't very many people there, though. Of course, if the true figure is higher, that would actually prove Moore's point BETTER, since he was trying to debunk the myth of Canada being racially homogeneous (not that I ever believed that anyway).

I guess my own view on guns is similar to my view on drugs. I think they're both bad, but a total ban probably isn't the best solution in either case. It's largely a cultural thing, I suppose. I do think it shouldn't be so easy to get guns, though. I mean, just look at how easy it is to get one at a gun show, for instance.

By the way, the film played "Take The Skinheads Bowling" during the opening credits, which was pretty cool. It was a cover by Teenage Fanclub, rather than the Camper Van Beethoven original, though.

The other movie we watched, Wendigo, was, to put it bluntly, boring. It kind of struck me as being an overly long (and it was only ninety minutes, so that's saying something) amateur student film. It was packed with symbolism, with images of Indians and deer popping up everywhere. There was also a lot of use of sped-up and slowed-down footage. I think that footage was supposed to be what was going on in the kid's mind, but it reeked of cheap, easy special effects. By the way, the kid was played by the boy who plays Dewey on Malcolm in the Middle. I thought it looked like him, but I figured I was just seeing a resemblance where there wasn't one. I thought the same thing about Hal Sparks in Spider-Man 2, though.

I had a dream last night where Beth and I wanted to get notebooks with Game Boy Advances built into them. I really DO want a Game Boy Advance, but I'm thinking maybe I should wait until the DS comes out. And I might want an iPod even more. I'm not sure.

Did anyone else get a notice from PayPal about the class action suit that's being filed against them? Did anyone actually understand it?

So pressing the Enter key after typing in the title posts the entry? Who knew?

Comments

[slfcllednowhere.livejournal.com]

Did anyone else get a notice from PayPal about the class action suit that's being filed against them?

Yes.

Did anyone actually understand it?

Um.. .sort of?

[revme.livejournal.com]

I got one of those, too. It's sort of annoying, because the letter makes it sound that if you just had a Paypal account during that time, you get Free Money, but if you go there, it turns out that they had to have disabled your account in that time or in some other way screwed you out of money. Which, well, I suppose is better, since, y'know, that way you don't have people like me getting free money and it only goes to the people who were wronged, but, dammit, I want free money.