Off to go see a Dead Boys reunion (minus the Dead Boy who actually died) show in a few. You guys behave while I'm gone. Or don't, I don't care.

Free Mojtaba Saminejad

This guy too. Same story, really, but a different blogger.

Sign the petition to keep Iranian blogger Omid Sheikhan out of prison

Right. So, while we all know how effective internet petitions are, they are at least a statement of principles.
As far as I can tell, this was basically a couple of Iranian bloggers getting arrested on ludicrous charges.
I am against this. Anyone else?

I feel a need to confess to a sick trait (warning: always take my confessions in a "You ain't confessin', brother, you is bragging" vein) that involves torturing myself with bad movies. So last night for the second time I watched that dreadful Robert Stigwood splongefest "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," featuring the seventies versions of Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.

But something struck me with this movie. I started recalling that sequence in "A Clockwork Orange" where they've got Malcolm McDowell under restraints and his eyes propped open and they're making him watch snuff films. I began to wonder what would happen to a hypothetical test subject if forced to watch "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The sounds of Malcolm screaming sort of echoed in my head at this point.

And bad as SPLHCB was, it can't hold a candle to the worstest of bad movies, Ken Russell's "Lisztomania." I may have a whole course of experiments to perform, for a series of bad movies I used to damage my sanity, once I can capture some unwilling test subjects and get the dentist's chair set up to strap them into.

So, I thought I might talk about Firefly again. Be warned though, if you haven't seen Serenity yet there will be some spoilers in this post, so go see it quick then come back and read this post.

Serenity SPOILERS be here:

So anyway I was reading this article about Joss Whedon, and it contained a pretty interesting quote by him:

"People keep calling the Alliance 'the evil empire', and I'm like, 'Actually, it's not an evil empire, it's the most enlightened society in the galaxy - but they're making the mistake any big power makes, which is to assume that their version of enlightenment should be spread everywhere, and that they can justly govern people who are beyond their reach, or living on their own terms, be they somewhat strange or archaic or even barbaric.

"And just dropping yourself into the middle of that and saying, 'OK, we're in charge of you now, be happy!' ain't gonna swing."

Now, there is some implication in the article that Whedon thinks this resembles the Iraq war, though that really isn't stated outright nor is the Iraq war mentioned (of course, in the case of Iraq we're at least trying to put the government into the hands of the Iraqi people, and really only took that control from an individual dictator who himself was trying to force his will on a nation of people who in most cases have very different ideas of how things should be than he does). However, I think it's great to see this point emphasized. It always amazes me when I read a Firefly board and they always have people debating whether the Alliance is fascist, or communist, or corporatist, or what form of totalitarianism they are. If you've ever watched the show Firefly, the Alliance is closer to the Federation in Star Trek than they are to the Empire in Star Wars.

Except for a flashback to a scene of the Galactic Civil War the first thing we see in the pilot episode of Firefly is the crew of Serenity performing an illegal salvage operation on an abandoned space vessel when they are spotted by an Alliance cruiser. In order to escape they shoot a coffee can into space that is rigged to set off a false distress beacon, and the Alliance decides that saving whoever was sending off that beacon is more important than catching scavengers, so Serenity is left alone. There are continual references throughout the series of this dynamic as well. There is constant mention of the Alliance bringing medicine to the poorer, border world planets, and in one case the Serenity crew is even hired to do a job stealing Alliance cargo, only later to discover that they've stolen medicine that was being delivered to a suffering group of people. We also see the Alliance doing legitimate police work throughout the series, and of course Alliance officers carry non-lethal weapons that fire some kind of stun-ray (kind of like Star Trek's phasers, which could famously be set to stun), whereas the Serenity crew are quite stocked up on the very lethal kind of guns that put all sorts of nasty holes in you, and don't have too many reservations about using them when deemed neccessary. In fact, the Alliance is even portrayed as being fairly progressive in their social views, with prostitution deemed an honorable profession (so long as you are registered and examined by the Alliance), even same sex prostitution, whereas Mal (the captain of Serenity) tends to exhibit more hang-ups about sex than most of the other characters on the show, excepting maybe some of the border world religious types.

I read on one board a Firefly fan proclaiming that the show was very anti-capitalist, which he believed to be part of the reason the evil, "right-wing" FOX Network cancelled it. The last time I heard such a conspiracy was on a Futurama board, which claimed that "right-wing" FOX cancelled that show because they made fun of Nixon and had Al Gore as a guest star. These juvennile conspiracies fall apart when you pay attention to the fact that FOX airs the openly and blatantly anti-Bush "Family Guy" and "Ameircan Dad", and was even planning on making an animated TV series out of the hardcore left-wing comic strip The Boondocks (they ended up passing on it). Hell, the last several Simpsons seasons have been blatantly left-wing, and constantly latch on to trendy, left-wing political causes du jour (a marked difference from earlier seasons, when both left and right political commentary on the show tended to be pretty nihilistic, non-preachy, and usually pretty original), and FOX keeps them on the air despite the fact that the majority of fans would like to see the show mercifully retired regardless of political persuasion. By contrast, while Firefly could maybe be considered anti-corporatism, it sure as hell didn't have an anti-capitalist message. In fact, it had the most pro-capitalist message of any TV show I have ever seen, which I talked about in this past post. Mal even mocks the Alliance due to what he preceives as a perception on their part of making a profit as being "uncivilized". In that post I just linked to I refer to Serenity's crew as being "guerilla capitalists", and I absolutely stick by that. They have far more in common with the moonshine runners during Prohibition than they do with with Che Guevara (in the movie I suppose they are a little bit more revolutionary than they are on the show, in fact a lot more, but even then their revolution is more of a libertarian one than anything).

Now, I'm about to get to those Serenity spoilers I mentioned, so if you're worried about that, then stop reading RIGHT NOW. Two members of the Serenity crew die in the movie. And let me tell you, as a fan of the show it hurts. I have honestly never felt my emotions tugged at by the loss of a fictional character as I did in this movie (okay, as a little kid I admit I was pretty distraught about the deaths of the moms in Bambi and the Land Before Time, and I think I had to even fight back tears, but that was almost two decades ago, I was a freaking kid, and it is quite rare that I feel a movie or TV show manipulate my emotions much at all). Now, contrast this with the destruction of Alderaan in the original Star Wars, or hell, even the scene in the movie Serenity where a town gets hit by Reavers. A whole town, city, or even planet can be destroyed in a movie, and it doesn't even tickle your conscience. Think about that. Now, I doubt someone who has never watched the Firefly TV series would be too terribly upset about the deaths of Wash and Shepherd. I mean, they were cool characters, but so was Obi Wan Kenobi, so was Master Yoda, so were plenty of other characters who have been killed of in movies and TV shows. But if you watched the show Firefly, you really become attached to the characters. They feel real to you, they feel like family members almost, they enter your Monkeysphere in a way that few TV shows or movies I've watched are able to achieve with their fictional characters. I speant the whole weekend after seeing Serenity distraught, because I realized I would never see anymore of Wash's crazy antics ever again. The characters become real to you in a way that "17 killed in bus accident", or "20 million killed in genocide", or "3 girls in Indonesia beheaded on way to school", or "entire population of Alderaan wiped out", or "jackass dies in mid air blow-jobbing mishap", or any other abstract concept like that can. We all try to be sympathetic about such things, because we think that makes us bad people if we don't feel much about them, but really it just makes us people. We really aren't psychologically capable of caring that much about people who we don't know enough to be real to us. I tend to feel more upset about the death of someone I know is jackass but who I sort of new personally than I do for the death of someone who I'm told was a great person but I didn't really know. If I had read in a newspaper that "Bush effigy collapses, kills 23 war protesters", you know what I would have done? I would have laughed! I would have laughed, and laughed, and smiled and laughed, and giggled, and laughed! You know what I would have done after that? I would have eaten some nachos, then I would have twirled my twirly-style mustache in a thoughtful manner, then I would have chased my cat around the sofa, as is my custom. That is, it wouldn't have affected my life one bit. Of course, I know several people with the same or similar political views to those 23 war protesters, for whom if one of them died I'd be personally devestated. Now, you may be wondering what the point of all this is, and well here it is: the way we devoted fans of the show feel about the ficitional characters is pretty close to the way they likely feel about each other, whereas the way we feel about the people of Alderaan is pretty much the same way the Alliance does. For the Serenity crew a 99% success in a mission or whatever pursuit is maybe that Jayne twists an ankle, or something minor that needs to be patched up. For the Alliance, 99% success in their governence of the galaxy may very well mean 1 million people dead, maybe a billion people dead, but at least they are efficiently and benevolently governing the rest of the galaxy. On that kind of scale, billions of deaths can be meaningless. Look at the flooding of New Orleans. If the death toll had only been about 6 or 7 we'd be lauding what a great job the government did in rescuing people, and the nation as a whole would feel pretty good about things, but at the same time the families of those 6 or 7 people would feel pretty distraught, moreso than any of us outsiders do over the hundreds of deaths that actually occurred (in fact, I think some people are downright ecstatic to have a political issue that they think they can hammer Bush on). My central point here is that this underscores an inherent superiority of individualism over collectivism. You can talk all you want about desiring to run things benevolently, and you can maybe work your little heart out and do the best damn job you can do, champ! But on the scale of a massive population, even that of a single city, a few people who die or suffer here and there do nothing to put a dent in what a majority consider the overall success of an endeavor. This is a large part of the reason small towns consistantly have dramatically lower crime rates than big cities, because anyone within close enough distance for you to violate is someone you can put a face to, someone who you know, someone who is real and human to you. It's the difference between the concept that right outside your home lives a "neighbor" versus right outside your home lives a "crowd" or a "mob". A lot of leftists accuse libertarians of being cold hearted for not believing in a social safety net. Of course, they're guilty of assuming that all libertarians are absolutist libertarians, which is certainly not the case, but then we're probably just as guilty of assuming that folks who think we should adopt certain socialist policies in this country all want full-on, balls-to-the-wall socialism (though it's sometimes hard to assume otherwise when you have politicians advocating a full revamping of our health care system without first attempting smaller, socialistic reforms). However, I would argue that we libertarians, absolutist or not, advocate the best system of welfare ever created, which is to say a system where the person distributing the care actually give two shits and a nickle either way whether you actually live on to the next day or die in a mysterious blow-jobbing mishap. I'm referring, of course, to friends, families, and people in your community. Handing someone a check and feeling good about ourselves is easy, especially in an obscenely rich country like ours, where people considered to be living below the poverty line have cable TV, and Playstation 2, and air conditioning, and usually even a car. But for someone with serious problems, someone with no learned appreciation of money, you could give them millions of dollars with no strings attached, and many of them will still find their way into debt they can't pay off. You may feel good about yourself that your money is going to a stranger who is less fortunate, but are you ever going to know if you did that person any good? No, and it won't stop you from sleeping at night that you don't. Now, suppose instead that you were to actually put your time and effort into, say, teaching an illiterate person to read. You would know good and sure that you helped that person for life, and a lot more than you ever could by handing over a week's paycheck to him/her, no strings attached. Of course, time and effort are a tad more difficult to sacrifice in our society than that meaningless, green piece of paper. I've done it myself. I let a homeless guy once guilt me into giving him my entire lunch. It is now several years later, I kind of feel like I did a good deed, but really that homeless man could be dead and lying in a gutter right now, and it won't even phase me for a second while I'm sitting in front of a sketchbook admiring my own genious, or thumbing through my aunt's Victoria's Secret catalogue to admire all the underwear ladies, or playing MegaMan 2 on the Nintendo, as is my custom. When you send off your check to a massive, complicated government social program (or even a big private charity for that matter), one for which you can't individually conceive its entire inner workings and methods of operation, are you really doing anything more than buying your own soul from purgatory? So, on what grounds do people claim genuine compassion on their own part, for something that amounts to nothing more than the alleviation of personal guilt? Especially when you take into account that cultural issues contribute more to poverty than luck of the draw (Let me know if your experiences differ, but while living in Cleveland I have seen many homeless men and women that were white, and many homeless men that were black, I have yet to see a single homeless black woman, not even dipicted in movies or television, nor have I seen homeless Asians of any race, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a homeless Jew. Now, trends may be different in different communities, and certainly so in different countries, the fact that we see trends like this at all, as opposed to a racial breakdown that more closely resembles the rest of the population tells me at least that it's not dumb luck that causes this problem. And it's not racism, unless it's Asian racism. Which it isn't. I don't think. I know this isn't an authoritative study, but I imagine everyone else's observations are pretty similar as well).

Now, some might point out, by supporting the Iraq war aren't I guilty of advocating the meddling of human lives in the abstract? And, how can I advocate such large scale government meddling and consider myself a libertarian? I think both are valid questions, and to a certain extent apt criticisms, but I do feel I can explain my own position. Now, yes, I know damn well I am guilty of a degree of abstract hopefulness in a better world for all people, including billions of people that I can't conceive of on a personal level. And, I do strongly believe that the removal of all dictatorships (not just that of Saddam, all of them) are important to any hope of a decent world. And I understand that a certain degree of government coercion is unavoidable, and even generally benevolent governments all innevitably resort to acts arbitrary brutality and totalitarianism, sometimes with frequency. However, society is capable of evolving under governments as exist in most Western and many far-Eastern societies, as is evidenced by our abolition of slavery, our civil rights movement, and all manner of reforms we've made where our society strayed from the spirit of our Constitution. I think our cultural diviersity leads to a better process of social evolution than in other countries, as we tend to also have a greater diversity of ideas, so that with every powerful bad idea we have one or more contrary ideas to push back against it, as opposed to, say, the more homogenized European cultures. Yes, bad ideas do win out at times, but every problem that we all have on an individual level we are guaranteed to have on a collective level, and every last one of us is prone to bad ideas from time to time (some more often than others). Totalitarian dictatorships, however, stunt social evolution, especially in some of the countries that most desperately need it. The arbitrary whims of one man, or one body, are law by decree, and that man or group's means of enforcing that law are regulated only by his/their own discretion. As such, there exist very few guarantees, and therefore no stability upon which to build a foundation for a better future. I think hope, even a little bit of hope, is the minimal neccessary ingredient for the human spirit to survive and be strong, and I believe that providing people, individuals, with that minimum shread of hope is enough to justify my betrayal of "pure" libertarianism* (though I've never really considered myself a "pure" libertarian anyway). And, I believe that even if a majority of Iraqis supported Saddam Hussein (which is far from the case), removing him is a worthy endeavor for the sake of the minority of individuals suffering under his rain, who at the very least need that abstract ray of hope I spoke of, and if we can give them more than that, that is terrific. So, yes, I do believe in abstract ideals myself, and I believe that those ideals can influence us for the better, even if they don't do anything of substance. By the same token, abstract ideas can justify horrible things. Look, here I am justifying war, man's single worst endeavor save government tyranny (which I consider to be a war where only one side is fighting). I am justifying things which I abhor, things like the mass killing and destruction of people on a level that I can not personally conceive, or even the arbitrary use of coercion at all, simply because I believe in the abstract idea that mathematically it's better to kill X number of innocent people if you can save the lives of X^2 number of innocent people from Saddam's rape rooms, and chipper shredder's, and inclinations to genocide (not to mention the lives saved by the ending of UN sanctions, which have killed many times over those that have died so far in the war, though to less fanfare), and I feel it is justified to do so at the expense of coercing the tax payers out of a great deal of tax money (something which I generally abhor as well) in order to fund it. That's because I see a better a world, and much like the Operative in Serenity the movie, I admit that I am willing to accept abstract losses that are in reality quite horrific, because they're outweighed by abstract gains. It made me feel great when I donated money to a charity that bought toys for US soldiers to give to Iraqi children, and it made me feel great when Iraqis flooded over the collapsed statue of Saddam expressing themselves in ways that they were never free to do so before, and it made me feel great when I saw Iraqis proudly holding up their purple-stained fingers after voting in a real election for the first time ever, and it makes me feel great that even the Iraqis who would have chosen obedience to Saddam of their own will now have freedoms that they will never choose to express and may very well be angry about, because on some level I think they will eventually catch on to how much more amazing it is to choose to do what you think is right than to do what you think is right because you can't really do anything else. At the same time, for all I know every last one of those Iraqis who participated in the Saddam statue riot could be dead by now, some of the children who received toys from the Marines could have been killed by a roadside bomb, and the insurgency could some day maybe gain enough of an upperhand for the United States to pull out and for them to establish an Islamic fascism as brutal as Saddam's Baath government, thus nullifying my aforementioned mathmetical formula for why the war was justified. And that would suck. And you know what I'd do afterwards? I'd eat some Cheeto's, then I'd play some Soul Reaver for PlayStation, then I'd go on the internet and look at pictures of hot Asian women, as is my custom. So, now I guess I'm admitting that in the non-abstract, I really don't care that much about the well-being of Iraqis. I like to think I do, just as you may like to think you care about "the poor" or "the worker" or "minorities", but we just aren't capable of conceiving of those concepts as they exist in the real world. And no, someone who is anti-war does not care about Iraqis anymore than I do. If you're a war opponent reading this, ask yourself honestly which you found more distressing, any given news report about civilian casualties in Iraq, or the news in November of 2004 that president George W. Bush had been reelected? Be honest. I know there have been news stories about lefties seeking therapy after Bush's reelection, and I've known lefties to confess to crying when Bush was announced the winner in the '04 election, but I've yet to know of a single American (or European, or even Mid Easterner) to cry or seek therapy over the death of an innocent Iraqi who they did not personally know. No, just like anybody else, you anti-war types read that kind of story, then you go on to listen to your Rage Against the Machine CDs, or play Final Fantasy on your PlayStation, or smoke a marijuana cigarrette, as is your custom.

My point here, I think, is that while I have here argued in favor of the Iraq war, I have done nothing to establish its inherent righteousness, nor do I intend to make any attempt to do so until the war is more or less over, the smoke has cleared, and a decent enough society in Iraq has been undeniably established for me to brag about it (or better yet, for the men and women of our armed forces who actually made a sacrifice and put in effort to establish that society to brag about it), and if that never materializes I suppose I will concede that I was wrong and become a Lew Rockwell isolationist libertarian from here on out. However, I do wish to make the point that you war opponents who advocate immediate withdrawal, if you still genuinely believe that you care a wit for the well-being of the Iraqi people to keep in mind the mass slaughter that immediately followed the American withdrawal from Vietnam (your big day of glory), and to not put your personal desire to see Bush humiliated and driven from office (and possibly killed in some freak blow-jobbing mishap) above your stated compassion for the people of Iraq, and do everything you can to support the potential liberalization of Iraq at this point, even if it does drive up your therapy bills. Of course, I can't say I expect any of you leftists to react much differently than you did to the post-Vietnam War slaughter, which is to say by wearing "subversive" T-shirts, and by reading Noam Chomsky books, and by pretending folk or rock songs equate to an expert treatise on geopolitical affairs, as is your custom. So, if I really haven't established the moral justification for the Iraq war, what have I established in this lenghty post? Well, I think I've done a decent job in pointing out a major part of the reason why individualism is inherently better than collectivism. At the same time, I admit that I accept, as do most people, that a certain amount of collectivism is necessary to defend individualism. Whether we were justified in defending the individualism of the Iraqi people, well I suppose in the end the historians will decide that, and whether they're accurate or revisionist, well there's not a whole lot any of us can do about that anyway, and there will probably be a fair share of both. However, no matter which way it is viewed in the abstract, there are certain to be Iraqis who on an individual level will disagree with whatever popular opinion decides, and such is the difference between the individual and the collective. Such is, I imagine, the point of Joss Whedon's statement, and the message of Firefly. Nothing can ever be perfect, and things will not always be able to improve, at least not significantly. In pursuit of something "better", we can often justify in our minds things that are wrong. And I think that is more often than not the case when we advocate the government, for which body every action is an act of coercion on some level or other, as our mechanism for improving the world. When is government action justified? Well, I suppose every individual will decide that for themselves reguardless of what I say. The only thing I really feel that I want people to get out of this is that real good, real improvement, is done at the individual level. It's easy to dream up hopeful and altruistic ideologies, and that often leads to justification of hatred for those who don't accept your benighted beliefs, and it's easy to look down on people for not seeing things your way, and to convince yourself of their moral or intellectual repugnance. It's almost funny to watch the way people who speak grandly of egalitarian or populist ideals condescend to those who don't share them, or look at the unwashed masses as a sea of sheep. The most complete picture we get of society, the most complete that we'll ever get, is in our personal interactions with others. For all the mocking of "family values" that sometimes goes on on this blog, the family is really the ultimate social welfare unit, and one that you can count on more than any social worker. It's the people who disconnect themselves from that who end up homeless. I think all people need to remind themselves not to disconnect themselves from that, from the people they know personally, the people who they have a well-formed, three-dimensional perspective of, when their mind wanders into the realm of the abstract. This is something we're all guilty of violating, all 6 billion of us, myself certainly included, and while I think we do need to strive for such a better and more complete understanding, I do believe it is impossible to achieve a total and complete understanding. And I think that is all part of being human.

Oh, and, um, I like Firefly.

*Though I do think it can be argued that getting rid of criminal dictatorships can be reguarded as being no less libertarian than using the police to defend individuals from anti-libertarian coercion by other individuals. When you consider that borders are artifical human concepts, any border establishing government authority is anti-libertarian. Thus, if it is acceptable for us to use military or police force to save Americans from oppression like Saddam's, aren't we being racist by not extending the same support to Iraqis? This question especially applies to leftists, since they're the ones always touting that "borders are meaningless, be a Global Citizen" type stuff.

I used to really go out of my way to shop at independent merchants, partially to apply my disposible income where it's most likely to employ someone in my own community, and partially because I had the notion that this would keep something different and interesting going. Lately, though, based on how things seem here in Austin, TX, I sometimes wonder why I bother. Because "independent merchant" seems to mean this here:

Grocery store: smaller selection of items, generally geared more to upscale tastes. More expensive. Bulletin board in the front with anti-Bush flyers and ads for yoga lessons.

Music store: CDs I pretty much can find at mainstream outlets. On almost every upper surface and end cap is some kind of anti-Bush merchandise, from dolls to toilet paper to gum to refrigerator magnets. Often some dweeb with a petition bothers you on the way in or out.

Video store: One item in 40 is some left-wing documentary. One in 50 is some kind of soft core gay porn. Does fairly well as far as independent stores go, since it may actually have enough interesting stuff to offset the mainstream stuff they refuse to carry. Nothing obnoxious here. The Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock wannabes taking up shelf space that rightfully belongs to Russ Meyers are more annoying than offensive.

Guitar store: Sometimes higher prices, not enough room to have a selection that competes meaningfully with Guitar Center. One bulletin board has some outdated flyer for some Cindy Sheehan event that already happened. The near-invisibility of the political crap renders it benign.

Bookstore: The worst of the lot. Staff recommendations for everything by Noam Chomsky. Politics section segregated out so that the evil right wing books don't touch the noble and enlightened left wing ones. Magazine rack dominated by pretentious left wing stuff, plus some interesting art stuff and too many yoga magazines, plus a section that seems to contain every plastic-bagged gay porn magazine in the universe. You can buy Che shirts in at least four colors here, plus Che backpacks and lunchboxes. All the stupid, annoying and trite bumper stickers you're tired of seeing are sold here. Not only is there a bulletin board covered with contact information for various left wing activist organizations, but there's also a shelf of free literature, about half being apartment and car buyer guides, the rest being like the stuff on the bulletin board.

Seems like "independent" merchants miss a lot of opportunities to really be independent. "Caters to those who conform through non-conformity" might describe better what I see these days.

On the other hand, here's a little Bastiattitude.

Aaron has a collection of news stories that have me kind of creeped out. Does anybody else feel like white Westerners are currently in the process of handing over everything we know and love as a sacrifice to radical Islam on a silver platter? Sometimes I feel like, thanks to the people who are supposed to be on our side, this fight is completely unwinnable.

Lovely, no?

"Mr Annan had pledged repeatedly through his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, that he would not change a word of the report by Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor. But computer tracking showed that the final edit began at about 11.38am on Thursday — a minute after Herr Mehlis began a meeting with Mr Annan to present his report. The names of Maher al-Assad, General Shawkat and the others were apparently removed at 11.55am, after the meeting ended."

The more I hear about the UN, the more corrupt and useless it seem. I have nothing against it really, as long as it's so ineffectual; but any calls that we turn over any hint of sovereignty to that body seem especially laughable when you actually look at the UN.

Nothing goes with posts about theory like more posts about theory, so for Monday afternoon's offering, I present The Law of Group Polarization, which states that, over time, a group of associated individuals with a mild consensus will develop a stronger one, and, possibly, veer into extremism. Sound familiar?

The principle cited here - the Law of Group Polarization - explains a lot for me: why some folks end up surrounding themselves with yes-men (we see this out in the blogosphere in enough places to dismiss a single-philosophy origin of the problem), why others become increasingly extreme with time, and - perhaps - the dangers of excluding ourselves completely from those who disagree with us. Sort of explains how most of my Democratic friends seem to be jumping their logical tracks since the 1990s.

It also brings to mind something Chesterson said in Heretics: In families and small towns, people learn to get along with folks who disagree with them because they did not pick their neighbors or relatives. In cities, people gravitate to peer groups of like-minded individuals and, therefore, come to the larger population centers not to expand their experience but to constrict it.

Howdy to the rest of the AfD regulars and thanks to MA for inviting me to post here - I thought I'd jump in on the topic of punk music and what's happened to it over time, since the mention of Stevo's death brings up not just the human tragedy involved there but the loss of the patriarchs of early punk in recent years - for instance, the death of three Ramones in a very short window.

A lot of folks discuss the decline of punk music. Some lament the mainstreaming of the genre, since an outsider credential suffers when large numbers of people respect a form. Others note trends like the changes in the late seventies when early punk began to morph after some of the early acts started acquiring more musical proficiency than minimalism seemed to acquire. And some - myself included - worry about the philosophical shift that pulled much of punk away from roots in nihilistic black humor to humorless and lifeless Chomskyism (the last three books about punk rock I picked up to consider buying and then put down in disgust contained introductions or essays by Noam Chomsky). And dreadful events like the death of one of the good guys don't help stem the wrong kind of change. But I think where punk has declined - outside of the domain still controlled by Handsome Dick Manitoba and performers of a similar greatness of soul - comes from a failure to understand The Three Trashmen Tests.

A surf band from Minnesota called the Trashmen recorded the cheesy surf classic "Surfin' Bird". One collection of their work contained an explanation of how to tell if a rock song was lame (if your English professor analyzes the song lyrics as serios literature, that was one sign to look out). The liner notes also offered some principles of how to do it right, based on the Trashmen's work, and the three central rules are what I call the Three Trashmen Tests. For a song to pass the tests, it must basically:

1. be stupid


2. annoy grown-ups and


3. be loud at any volume.

Which, in essence, explains why the Dictators have it all going over bands that write mirthless dirges about global warming and offshore banking business. And it's not even that writers need to avoid serious subjects. It's the point where the band takes itself too seriously that the rot sets in. Even "Imagine" could be salvaged with some cars, girls, or hockey sticks.

First the good news, it sounds like Murel Bailey will be joining the Alchemy for Dummies team. Expect many forthcoming super-intelligent posts that are way over your head and mine.

As for the sad news, well I doubt too many of you care as much about The Vandals as I do, but I just found out that the original singer from back in the early 80's, Steven Jensen (known as "Stevo") died of a prescription drug overdose back in August. While I consider the current Vandals line up to be my favorite band, I am also a huge fan of their original line-up, and while it sounds like Stevo was kind of an asshole towards the other members in the band (Joe Escalante, the only remaining member of the original line-up, confirmed this in an interview I read a while back), but if you're really into that old school 80's punk would probably be a fan of the masterpieces Peace thru Vandalism and When in Rome Do as the Vandals (great title, by the way), which have Stevo on vocals. Of course, if you're not already into punk and interested in checking out The Vandals, Hitler Bad, Vandals Good (current members) is a far more accessible album that is a good starter album for people new to the band. Wikipedia has a cool picture of the current band members playing a USO show for soldiers in Iraq. If you've been reading AfD for a while, you probably remember that because they played for our soldiers, they had their lives threatened and were almost assaulted by a giant mob of tolerant and compassionate leftists on their European tour.

Here's a post I did over at the Kallini Brothers blog.

UPDATE: Oh, and this should make you very happy (found over at the Kallini forum).

I'm sorry most of my posts lately have basically just been me saying I can't think of anything to post. Don't feel too bad, as I've been neglecting important school work and stuff like that too. Anyway, well, I don't have anything to post. I'm a little sad that I'm not getting ver many comments of late, but I really can't blame anyone but myself.

I would, however, be interested in recruiting a reader to the group blog. Fectin is busy most of the time, I'm busy at the current time, but I like to keep my blog regularly updated, at least once daily. If anyone of you readers would be interested in joining (Murel, I'm looking in your direction), I'd be honored to have you on board. If any of you have thought about blogging, but don't want the responsibility of keeping up a blog, this is definitely the place for you, as I really don't demand anything from you if you join up. Post or don't it's up to you, but I do think having another blogger or two would really help keep up our posting regularity, and if you choose not to post much or at all once you join up, well then we're no worse off.

Hope to hear from some of you on this. Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: Just so you know, I have no standards whatsoever that I will hold you to if you want to be a co-blogger. If you take positions I strongly disagree with, I'll argue them in the comments to your post. If you go all Lee on me, I'll probably make an Angry Stick-figure Man cartoon about you. If you're a leftist who reads this blog, I'm not going to change my right-wing random taglines for the blog, but even so if I make you co-blogger you're free to speak your piece. If you don't like politics, and prefer to type posts about how great it is they have all these versions of monopoly that incorporate a different license but are otherwise the same, more power to ya.

Now, that said, I have my regular commenters in mind as potential co-bloggers, and that is most likely who I would choose from.

UPDATE #2: I'm starting to think I may have been a tad overzealous with my last update. I am pretty open to people saying whatever the goddamn hell they want on this blog, especially if it helps to make AfD a unique experience, but on re-reading those words I'm starting to see serious potential for regretting them. The spirit of them stands, but I want to leave myself open to doing something I'll regret. I do trust the regular commenters on this blog, and past regulars as well, but I can foresee a scenario where every time I refresh my blog page there's something new on there I really don't want to read, and I don't want to see that happen. Also, people tend to take these type of open-ended invitations as an explicit opportunity to piss off or irritate the person who offered them. I want AfD to be a blog I don't hate, at the very minimum. And I don't want my readers driven away either. So, I guess instead of making definitive statements as I did in the update above, I should make my calls as the specifics present themselves.

Here we have a (short) article wherein the NRA laments that FEMA doesn't allow guns in what are essentially disaister refugee camps.
My personal feeling is that these are like private property: noone forces you to go there, and if you want their hospitality, you play by their rules. That takes it from a civil rights debate to a question of what set of rules maximises the utility of the camps, and if that's banning guns, guns should be banned.
Of course, I do only believe this for this specific sort of circumstance.
I'd like to hear some comments, agreeing or disagreeing. The article is short, maybe 3 minutes of reading, if you read all of it.

I don't really have anything worthwhile to post, but I did just read another great new essay by David Wong over at Pointless Waste of Time. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who ponders these really bizarre questions about life, the universe, and everything. Of course, I guess I recognized this after they made a hugely successful movie trilogy based around my speculation that we all could be nothing more than monkeys wired into a computer that feeds us all of our perceptions and stimulus. Except, in the movie the monkey was replaced with a taller monkey with less hair than I imagined, and he'd fight things.

Oh, and on from the Pointless Waste of Time Daily News Skim comes the following awesomeness,

Farrakhan Declares Victory in Civil Rights Movement

Thousands of minorities gathered for Louis Farrakhan's "Millions More" Rally in an effort to say "thank you" for ten years of spectacular civil rights progress.

Only 150,000 turned up for this years' rally, not even a fifth of the crowd that appeared for the original Million Man March in 1995. Farrakhan pointed out that this was proof that over 80% of blacks' complaints had been answered.

"My good people," said Farrakhan, "we came here ten years ago asking for our piece of the American 'pie.' And today I tell you, America has delivered with a plentiful pie fit for that great hero of American lore, Paul Bunyan. Now watch as I partake of this delicious pie. Crunch crunch crunch... Mmmmmm." Farrakhan mimicked eating the invisible pie for a full twenty minutes to illustrate his point.

"Bye, bye Miss American pie!" shouted a nearby Jesse Jackson. "Black America has driven her Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry!" Experts believe Jackson was referring to the New Orleans levee system, which was built by white people and has protected black neighborhoods for decades from dangerous flood waters.

Speakers at the rally also trumpeted successes such as Chris Rock hosting the Oscars and the success of LeBron James, a young basketball player who is also black. Farrakhan also lauded the administration for giving African-Americans a prominent role in the U.S. Military.

Farrakhan then welcomed George Bush to the stage, where he declared Bush an Honorary Black Man and invited the president to take an African-American name. Bush chose, "Will Smith."

"No, things are going pretty good," said one young man at the rally. "I mean, I really would prefer fewer reality shows. And does Ben Stiller have to be in every comedy? But I'm pretty happy with things otherwise."

So why come to the rally at all?

"A lot of us heard there was going to be a huge pie here."

Click the link to see the picture of him eating the invisible pie. God, I love David Wong.

I'm CERTAIN someone has already posted a link to this somewhere, and that I'm about amonth out of date. It hasn't been linked on AfD yet though, so here.

Goddamn, Lee is really an asshole. How did I not pick up on that back before he blew up on all his readers? Even then I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but only for so long. I mean, I know he always liked to talk a lot of shit, but I always thought it was really just his sense of humor. But every time I go there it just seems like a non-stop onslaught of bitterness lately. It almost seems like he's just whoring for Sully links these days (which, by the way, it's great to watch a bunch of guys who agree with each other blowing each other for how much they agree with each other about what mindless sheep everyone who doesn't agree with them is). I agree with Lee's political opinions probably over 95% of the time, but it just doesn't sit well with me thinking of him as being on "my side". I'd much rather stand beside a leftist who could treat those who disagree with them as thinking human beings than a rightist who feeds his own ego by tearing into and insulting others. And, hey, I'm not against the slinging of occasional ad hominem attacks, but don't be surprised and angry if your rants that are filled with as much insults as they are arguments don't exactly bring folks around to your point of view. Or, is that some crucial component of the "scientific process" that I wasn't aware of? One of the things I tend to trash my leftist friends for is for being mad at people for simply not accepting their inspired vision as having been handed down from on high. Well, gee, here we have right-wingers acting the same damn way! As if they're entitled to your prostration before their infallible brilliance! I guess no single group holds a monopoly on self-important idiocy. It ain't our fault you can't package and market your ideology in the arena of ideas. You're supposed to be a capitalist, for crap's sake! Sell them to us! There's a reason most successful companies don't advertise their products and services with "Why aren't you buying this shit, you ignorant fuck? Don't you understand how this will improve your shitty-ass, backwards lifestyle? Do you have any fucking clue how the scientific process works? Suck our multi-national, corporate cock conglomerate!"

Is it any surprise that I've been confessing lately to shying away from assertiveness and absolutism in my beliefs and philosophies? I mean, look what assholes these political ideologues can be. One of the reasons I prefer the right over the left is because I get so sick of the perpetual state of moral indignation. Apparently this is not the differentiating factor I thought it was (*sigh* I wish P.J. O'Rourke was Supreme Emperor of Earth). Shit like this makes me just want stick to non sequitor blog posts about cuss words. I don't know. I feel like I'm being constantly driven to a defiant apathy.

This is a neat little rant my dad's uncle forwarded to me. It was attributed to George Carlin, though I sincerely doubt that is an accurate attribution. It's pretty common for a lot of these rants in e-mail forwards to be falsely attributed to a celebrity. For example, there was a fairly popular anti-American/anti-Bush (and no, I am certainly not suggesting the two are one and the same, but rather that this particular essay included both) that was commonly and falsely attributed to John Cleese. I'm too lazy to do a brief search for the link at the moment, but if you go to Snopes.com and type "cleese" into their search bar I'm sure that entry will turn right up, which contains both a copy of the letter if you're interested, and a debunking of the attribution. Anyway, here's what the e-mail I got attributed to George Carlin:

Been sitting here with my ass in a wad, wanting to speak out about the bullshit going on in New Orleans. For the people of New Orleans... First we would like to say, Sorry for your loss. With that said, Let's go through a few hurricane rules: (Unlike an earthquake, we know it's coming)

#1. A mandatory evacuation means just that...Get the hell out. Don't blame the Government after they tell you to go. If they hadn't said anything, I can see the argument. They said get out... if you didn't, it's your fault, not theirs. (We don't want to hear it, even if you don't have a car, you can get out.)

#2. If there is an emergency, stock up on water and non-perishables. If you didn't do this, it's not the Government's fault you're starving.

#2a. If you run out of food and water, find a store that has some. (Remember, shoes, TV's, DVD's and CD's are not edible. Leave them alone.)

#2b. If the local store has been looted of food or water, leave your neighbor's TV and stereo alone. (See #2a) They worked hard to get their stuff. Just because they were smart enough to leave during a mandatory evacuation, doesn't give you the right to take their stuff... it's theirs, not yours.

#3. If someone comes in to help you, don't shoot at them and then complain no one is helping you. I'm not getting shot to help save some dumbass who didn't leave when told to do so.

#4. If you are in your house that is completely under water, your belongings are probably too far gone for anyone to want them. If someone does want them, let them have them and hopefully they'll die in the filth. Just leave! (It's New Orleans, find a voodoo warrior and put a curse on them.)

#5. My tax money should not pay to rebuild a 2 million dollar house, a sports stadium or a floating casino. Also, my tax money shouldn't go to rebuild a city that is under sea level. You wouldn't build your house on quicksand would you? You want to live below sea-level, do your country some good and join the Navy.

#6. Regardless of what the Poverty Pimps Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton want you to believe, The US Government didn't create the Hurricane as a way to eradicate the black people of New Orleans; (Neither did Russia as a way to destroy America). The US Government didn't cause global warming that caused the hurricane (We've been coming out of an ice age for over a million years).

#7. The government isn't responsible for giving you anything. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave, but you gotta work for what you want. McDonalds and Wal-Mart are always hiring, get a damn job and stop spooning off the people who are actually working for a living.

President Kennedy said it best... "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Thank you for allowing me to rant.

What do I do when I'm too lazy to find relevent things? Link to people who aren't!
And when I'm too lazy to find those people? Quote our comments as a new post!
He may stab me for it, but MA's response was spot on:

I, myself, haven't been "all over" any scandals, right or left, because I seriously don't fucking care anymore. I've taken to waiting until I see a trial and conviction. Even Michael fucking Jackson I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on, because I'm just so goddamn sick of all the trial-by-media, J'accuse! bullshit. If Delay is a criminal, and is thus convicted by a jury, let him rot. If he's a bisexual sado-masochist with a fetish for burly black men, I say let the old bloak 'ave a go at it, then. I'm so past the point of even caring. I'm just tired of all the absolute convictions of people with a personal political grudge, and nothing even resembling empirical evidence.

That about sums up my beliefs as well, for those who may have wondered.

As cool as it would be to have this claim to fame, Alchemy for Dummies has been able to lay claim to "laser-guided shit-bombs" for quite some time.

I think we have a right to be proud about that one.

A little bit of hilariousness for y'all tonight (make sure your speakers are on).

Over at Four Right-Wing Wackos and Insomnomaniac.

So here is a long article about stuff. The relevent bit is at the end:

On Tulane's campus for the first time since he escaped Katrina's flooding in an old motorboat and a hot-wired golf cart, university President Scott Cowen said only about 100 of the school's 13,000 students have said they don't plan to return. At Xavier, Barron said she's only heard from "perhaps 10" of the school's approximately 4,100 students who say they won't be returning.

That guy was the Dean of one of the colleges at Case before he went down to Tulane. How many of YOUR professors can hotwire a golfcart to escape danger?
And he was just business, think of what our engineers can do.
Boo-Yah.

And the democrats were Republicans. Then we could be all over this.
But we just don't care enough.

Oh man, did today suck. After about a week of not being needed at work, they need me to come in on the day I need more than any other to study. I work from 4:40am to 9am in the mornings, which means going to sleep early, so that time I could have speant studying since I didn't have much time the night before. I've had four goddamn tests this week, and most of them got short shrift on study time because of this math course I'm taking that is fucking killing me. Let me explain this shitty test, it's in two parts, the first part we get only has 2 problems that we're allowed to use our calculator for, then we turn it in to get the no calculator part of the test which is all the rest of the problems. Now, usually on a test I will do the problems I am more confident in how to answer first, then go back and take a shot at the rest of them. Of course, I didn't get the problems I know how to do until I turned in the ones I didn't, and it practicaly took me half of the goddamn class trying to work those out until I gave up. The class is from 10am to 10:50am, and I worked on it until almost 11:00am, I probably had a little over half of it done, and we need to leave so the next class can come in. The teacher said students who hadn't finished it (which I'm fairly certain was a majority of the class) could take their tests and come with her to finish it in another room, but of course I had another fucking test at 11am for my U.S. History course. I explained this to my teacher, and got an "oh, that's too bad" response. So, the test that I had studied for at the expense of all my other three tests this week I pretty much certainly bombed, because I didn't have near enough time to work all the way through it. I didn't even read all of the problems in it by the time the class ended. Thankfully my history test was something that could actually be conceivably completed within the alotted time frame, and I had a decent grasp of the information without studying. Unfortunately, it was the math class that I was actually worried about my grade in.

I've made Dean's list almost every semester of college so far. Over the summer I took a prerequisite algebra class to this one, and got my first C since I started going here, but I had somewhat written that off since the summer courses are shorter, and thus rushed, and I actually didn't do half bad considering I honestly didn't study for most of the tests in that class. I was certain that I could have pulled an easy B with just a slight bit more effort and memorization of a few formulas and when to apply them (I tend to usually do pretty well on tests, even without studying. Last year I got an effortless B in my Macroeconomics course without having read any of the textbook after the first week of class). I have no idea why I feel so fucked in my current algebra class. The only time I ever remember feeling so hopeless in any class was when I took a course in programming a previous semester, and had no fucking clue what I was doing for probably more than half the semester. Of course, it eventually clicked for me, and I was able to pull off a B by coming to the computer lab outside of class a lot at the end of the semester, and completing all of the programs I needed in a sort of Hail Mary to avoid the C. And, like I said, I didn't get a single grade lower than a B until my math class over this last summer. Now, I take full responsibility for that C in that algebra course, which could have been an easy B with a minimum of added effort. This current algebra course I'm actually seriously studying for (something I almost never do, and certainly never days in advance of a class) and I can not keep my shit together. I'm pretty much effortlessly juggling my other three classes (two history courses and a microeconomics course), but this one class is seriously fucking me up. After this summer I didn't plan on letting another class slip enough to get a C, but this math class I am already starting to worry about if I'm even going to pass it. I am honestly considering quitting my job (which has me going to bed too early to always get all of the work done for school that I want) so I can get a decent grade in this class. And this is the highest paying job I've had. And I have full fucking benefits at this job!

Anyway, I have a test in my World History class tomorrow, but I'm not too worried about that. Even if I don't get all of my reading for the course done, I think I'll do decent enough. It would have been nice not to have tests in all 4 classes in the same goddamn week but, well, what can ya do, right?

Fuckshitpissgoddamn.

Thanks to Aaron of Free Will for pointing out this insanity,Former South African President

Nelson Mandela has topped a BBC poll to find the person most people would like to lead a fantasy world government.

More than 15,000 people worldwide took part in the interactive Power Play game, in which players were invited to choose a team of 11 to run the world from a list of around 100 of the most powerful leaders, thinkers and other high-profile people on the planet.

The second choice was former US President Bill Clinton.

I think the list of the top 11 gives us a pretty decent insight into the BBC's audience

1 - Nelson Mandela
2 - Bill Clinton
3 - Dalai Lama
4 - Noam Chomsky
5 - Alan Greenspan
6 - Bill Gates
7 - Steve Jobs
8 - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
9 - Richard Branson
10 - George Soros
11 - Kofi Annan

It should be noted that Hillary Clinton made a respectable showing, 16th place, only one spot behind Michael Moore. And here's the really scary part...

More than half of votes came from users in the United States.

Okay, I think I'm about ready to join up with the Montana Militia now.

The last 5 posts on AfD have all been related to Firefly in some way. Come to think of it, so is this one. Going through my September posts, there's a bunch more on that topic. We're awesome at being relevant!

And that doesn't even take into account all the stuff I've posted about it elsewhere, particularly on the Kallini forum.

Anyway, if Rowdy is reading this, I think he'd be happy to know there is a JDatE sequel in the works:

HALLOWEEN UPDATE

Yeah, the above link doesn’t lead anywhere. The sequel to John Dies at the End, tentatively titled John Really Dies This Time, is in the works but won’t be ready in time for Halloween. The good news is that if you’re one of the people who show up here once a year for JDatE and haven’t visited since last October, I wrote an epilogue in the Spring that wraps up the story nicely.

No, JDatE still doesn’t have a publisher. I will break down and sell a copy on Cafe Press in the upcoming weeks.

*Note that there are some vague spoilers halfway through.*
As the Mad Alchemist said, I did enjoy Serenity immensely. I avaoided anything that would tell me what to expect, with the exception of one preview I saw through the boothe window while doing the frantic running around schtick at the beginning of a movie.
It was excellent. It was better knowing nothing at all about what to expect. I think anyone intelligent could go in tabula rossa, and would simplyu love this movie. It was that excellent. This is what movies should be, and few enough actually have been.
There are a couple points I disagree with MA on, but thast's to be expected. I thought, for example, that the crew finding a bigger cause was entirely believable. I like stories where people become something greater. This was sort of Cincinnatus all over again; someone doing what needs to be done at high personal cost, then returning to ordinary life. (That's one of the reasons why Washington was so great, incidentally.) It also makes a lot of sense that the crew are willing to follow Mal with little question; he's spent a long time determining what's important and they trust him. It did seem a bit wierd that Jayne agreed so readily, but he's sort of odd anyway.
Things I didn't like:
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -- George Orwell
The main antagonist has resinged himself to standing outside society as oneof those rough men. He fully acknowledges that he is evil, but believes that he serves a higher purpose. His opinions are more easily swayed than is believable. Also, it wasn't neccesary as deus ex machina, he could have taken the same course out of the belif that further action would serve no purpose (which, as he defined things, was true. The cat was already out of the bag.)
Also, I didn't like River being good at combat. That just seemed excessive. It was fun to watch, but it didn't fit well with established canon or atmosphere. Everyone's reactions to it were spot on though.
Also, god still hates AfD.
Last time, you may recall, went like this.
This time, we had the same sort of breakdown, but as I left, were blaming it on lack of coolant.
I think MA's car hates me.

There's been some discussion about Joss Whedon's politics on this blog, and we've all sort of wondered about how Firefly seemed to contain such an obvious libertarian theme where Whedon seemed to be more of a leftist himself (don't click that link unless you wan't to be seriously disillusioned with one great, beloved Firefly character, and two great Buffy characters). Well, the answer seems to be Firefly's second biggest creative influence, Tim Minear.

Some great news here, while Firefly may be done for good, depending on how well Serenity does at the box office, Minear is currently working on the film adaption of Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Here's a quote from him on the subject:

"The other thing is to make sure the powers that be in Hollywood don't force you to turn it into some Marxist screed on socialism, when Heinlein was a Libertarian and it's about free-market capitalism. You want to try and not make it about an evil corporation. That's the trick."

Definitely explains a lot, doesn't it? Of course, I also kind of expect that Firefly's writer/producer Ben Edlund (creator of my beloved The Tick) may be a right-winger as well, but that is pretty much just speculation on my part, based on a few vague hints and presumptions by me.

Also worth noting, Minear wrote the episode with the pro-capitalist remark that I always quote (Mal: Couldn't let us profit. Wouldn't be "civilized").

(hat tip)

Okay, taking the movie alone it was an excellent, fast-paced, intense sci-fi/action movie. In fact, it excels. However, from the perspective of someone who was completely in love with the characters and universe of the Firefly TV show, it's a bit devestating to my mental well-being. I have to commend Joss Whedon on being ballsy and taking risks with his story that almost nobody in Hollywood is willing to take, however I would appreciate it if he didn't take such risks with characters that have come to feel like family to me. If I went into this movie as a blank slate, with no familiarity of the Firefly universe, I'm sure I would have loved it. While the story may move a little too fast for a newbie to the universe, there's everything to love about this movie so long as you weren't too attached to the Firefly status quo.

The great dialogue and sense of humor of the show are very much pressent (though as the story continuously get darker and more morbid, the jokes tend to feel inappropriate, funny as they are). Still, I laughed out loud more than most comedy movies can ever get out of me. There's a ton of great unexpected twists, and two not-so-great unexpected twists. This is definitely an epic sci-fi movie, and certainly meets and surpasses most expectations, and throws a few expectations through the meat grinder. Also, the characters Jayne and Mal are as bad ass as ever, which is definitely cool. Plus, it had a really cool villain, who actually has motives that are deeper than "I'm evil, so I hate you!" Of course, it feels like he belongs in a Metal Gear game more than a Firefly movie, but still, you don't get too many villains this great. Even on the series they've had a few lackluster villains.

I think the movie does seem to miss the spirit of the show in a large number of respects, though it was probably necessary to do so to make a story big enough for a theatrical release. Most of the modifications to the ship Serenity are fairly small, yet I really think it would have been better if they kept the ship the way it was exactly. I didn't like the new look for the ship's bridge. It looked too much like a typical sci-fi spaceship's bridge. The bridge from the series was pretty much just a big, clumsy control console with an old chair from an office or something rolled in, and I thought subtleties like that really helped emphasize the uniqueness of the show. The spaceship simultaneously felt like a home and a utilitarian piece of machinery. And really, when you start to get a feel for the layout of the ship, I think it really starts to feel like a home to you as a viewer. I know I sound melodramatic here, but I really did get this attached to the show, and a lot of details like this took on major significance for me. Another small thing that bugged me, too much seems to have happened in the leap between the series finale and the movie. The series had a great continuity (except for the lack of injuries carrying over to other episodes), usually through references that were subtle enough to not distract for those who hadn't watched a past episode. In the final two episodes we were informed that Inara planned to leave the ship, and with the movie we pick up with her having been gone for a while, and Shepherd having left as well. Also, tensions between Mal (the captain) and Simon (the medic) are at an unprecedented high from the beginning of the movie. I'm not saying the smooth continuity of the show is necessary, in fact it was pretty unlikely given the length of time between the series finale and the movie, but it was just one of the joys of the show that was not present. Honestly, the cast of the show was so great, each and every character, and it really felt like they and their interactions are what defined the series. So, to me anyway, it seems particularly important to have the enitre crew intact, aboard Serenity, to really capture the dynamic of what made the show great. These aren't inherent weaknesses in the movie, just reasons why it fails to capture a lot of what I loved in the show. Also, a point I've mentioned in other discussions of the movie, the pacing and scope are way different from the show. This was quite possibly the fastest paced movie I've ever seen. It never really slows down at any point, it just sort of drags you along for an insane ride. Conversely, the series often would give you some nice, relaxed moments where the crew was really just hanging around on the ship. It really gave the impression that this show was more than just a bunch of sci-fi thrills, and created the image that what you were seeing was these character's whole world. That ship was their home, their livelihood, and their lives, really, and the series would let that kind of thing sink in. This spaceship didn't have any kind of mounted weapons (they added a cannon in the movie, but in the series in one episode a character has to actually put on a space suit and shoot one of his rifles from inside another suit so that it has oxygen surrounding it to combust, from the airlock in order to shoot at something in space), or warp/light speed engines, or any of the bells and whistles of your typical sci-fi ship, but it is still cooler than any other spaceship on any show or movie I have ever seen, because they really go to great lengths to make the ship more personal to the viewer. It's still pretty much the same ship in the movie, with a few tweaks, but the action moves too fast for you to ever pay that much attention to it. The series, while very ambitious, was also a lot more limited in it's scope. It was really about just surviving on the fringe of existence, and while I talk about the apparent libertarian philosophy of the show quite a bit, you could almost call it anti-ideology. Mal, the main character, is all about doing what needs to be done, even if the other crew members don't like it, and he doesn't try to put any kind of pretentions to what he does. When describing how the crew gets by to Simon, the medic, at the end of the pilot episode, Simon comments that "That doesn't sound like much", to which Mal responds, "It's enough." The Serenity crew in the series are portrayed as being nothing in the grand scheme of the universe, but everything to each other. In the movie they have a much grander task, that has them pitted against the entire alliance government to get a covered up truth out to the public. Their mission means everything, and they themselves mean nothing in the face of that, and by the end of the movie they are obviously willing and ready to sacrifice their lives for that. That may be the right thing to do from a moral perspective, but fans of the show know that the Serenity crew was certainly not about always doing what's right. That's what I loved about the show. The characters weren't the upright, archetypal self-sacrificing heroes, and were often outright bastards at times. This does definitely show up in the movie, especially early on, but I still hate the plot revolves around a higher calling for the crew in the end. I really felt like they should have paced the movie out more like the show, and that the story was big enough that they could have dragged it out into a sequel or two. I know a sequel was not guaranteed, so they didn't necessarily have that luxury, but I think it could have made a better movie. Of course, I like stories being told as a series, with revelations brought out little by little over a period of time, so I guess it's all an issue of taste. But this is especially the case since the story had them in more science fiction-y environments and special effects show cases, and less run down, backwater towns on the outer rim planets.

Anyway, in short, it's a great, really original movie, that made me despairingly miserable as a fan of the show. It's sort of a sci-fi/horror flick (kind of like what the Resident Evil movies would be like if they were any good, and in space) , whereas the show was more of a sci-fi/Western. Not that the Western elements weren't present, but they were played down quite a bit from the show. It's also one of the rare (if any) occasions where I've heard applause when a movie's credits came up, so yeah, it's definitely a thrill. My main gripe with it is that it just seems to burn so many bridges that I had hope the show would some day cross, if it was ever brought back. My feelings for the movie don't even approach my feelings for the TV series, but it's still the best new movie I've seen all year. Not that I go to very many movies, but that's because most of them suck and aren't worth the money. This one certainly does not suck. Just be aware, it's dark and brutal and almost sadistic at times.

Oh, and Fectin liked it a lot. I'll let him give his own review though, if he wants.

UPDATE: One more thing, if you plan to see it, then see it soon, or I guarantee some major spoiler will be revealed before you get a chance to.