Star Wars

I don't think it will win any Oscars for screenwriting, but it was a really good movie.

People complain quite a bit about George Lucas' writing and directing, and with reason - reportedly, the majority of his direction to the actors consists of "Again, but faster and with more energy." When he has to write dialogue, it is direct and necessarily drives the plot - little attention is paid to naturalism. Love scenes consist of "I love you so much." "I love you more." "I'm frustrated that we can't tell anyone that we love each other." [Actors make pouty faces.] Very good actors, under Lucas' direction, are stilted and unnatural, and mediocre actors can be painful to watch. The only dialogue that doesn't necessarily drive the plot is the "comic" relief of the droids, but if Lucas wrote the script, the comic can stay in quotes. I think both Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor had some real triumphs of acting in this movie when they managed to break the barrier of direction and really emote sympatheticly. Ian McDiarmid (who played the emperor) was also really effective in the first half of the movie, but the charicature in the second half was mixed.

There. Now I've gotten the requisite "I'm grounded in reality critique" out of the way, and I can say what's really important.

The movie was great! Yes, the talking scenes were as annoying as they were necessary to understand what was going on, and Lucas himself seemed to say toward the end, "Now that the movie's wrapping up, forget the dialogue - they'll figure it out from the vignettes!" The digital characters are really improved - they look almost completely natural in their movements now. I found myself forgetting that Yoda, in particular, was only pixels, especially toward the end of the movie. The space battle in the beginning was incredibly complex; like Return of the Jedi, I got the impression the digital artists were just showing off. The action was great - the lightsaber duels were probably the best since Darth Maul (probably better, but Darth Maul was such a surprise).

I don't want to go too much further, because I may spoil something for someone who hasn't seen it yet, but I would say that Revenge of the Sith is in a close run for my second favorite of the dual trilogy, right up there with Return of the Jedi (The Empire Strikes Back, of course, remains unmoved in the number 1 spot). Seeing it in the theater a third time should probably cement its place, if I do get a chance to see it a third time.

Weekend activities

Kim and I have not been proceeding with the redecorating quite as quickly as we hoped, but we're still doing quite a bit. There's a lot to do when you have a house! Of course, we (I) had to take some time off to watch Star Wars (twice), and then we spent most of Saturday shopping, originally for a filing cabinet, but that spun off in a search for a new keyboard, mouse, and monitor (for which I feel guilty, since that was the last of our moving-in money to buy new things with, but Kim gave me the thumbs up.

While we were at Fry's picking out monitors, I picked up a spool of Cat5e (network cable) and a bag of clips. Our livingroom downstairs, along with the front and back porch, are the deadest zone for the wireless network, and, since that's where we use it the most, that needed changing. Along with mowing the lawn, I spent most of Sunday crawling under the house, through the attic, along the eaves, etc. in order to find the best route to run the cable. So, now I have an 80ft line running through a hole in the wall, inside an eave and down along a vent pipe into storage room in the garage, next to a cold water pipe through the cobweb-strewn gap under the stairs, through a narrow gap around the copper pipe through the brick in the waterline, staple up under the crawlspace beneath three rooms, and up through a hole near the molding in the living room behind the TV. We picked up a second wireless router at Fry's as well, and now not only can we surf consistantly, but the Xbox and Tivo have connections, too!

Movie Roundup

We've been watching a whole bunch of movies on DVD via Blockbuster Online, which has turned out to be a very good deal for us. This week, we saw Hellboy, which was not as good as in the theater, but not as good as seeing it in the theater. It seemed a bit slower this time, and the wit as a little less witty. We saw The Bourne Supremacy, which was better than in the theater, since the shaky camera wasn't as disorienting with a frame of reference around it. The action was still a let-down over the first, since you really couldn't tell what was going on most of the time. Also, we saw Sinbad, and the Legend of the Seven Seas. It was great - one of the better animated movies I've seen in a long time. So often it seems like the animated films I see are real gems. I wonder if the act of drawing each cell, painting each background, and leaving nothing to chance is such an overwhelming amount of work that it weeds out those interested in making loads of money, and leaves only those who'd rather make a good movie. If that were true, Pokemon should be a better TV show. Perhaps the lack of major stars' egos (after all, they just fly in, read a few lines, and fly out) gives the movie makers opportunity to make a better movie. If that were true, more independent films would be good.

On Sunday, I went to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The first review I read made the movie out to be awful. More recent reviews were mixed, and cautiously favorable. I thought the movie was disappointing. The humor was there, but it was muted - mixed in with regular conversation. It's the kind of humor that's much funnier in the retelling than in the watching, a fact proven by the lack of even a chortle from the audience during the movie, and the outright laughs at work when I was telling them about it. The movie was fairly funny in retrospect. In places. What was really disappointing about the movie was the change in the theme. I remember the Hitchhikers trilogy ultimately having no real point, except that life is trivial and capricious, shit happens, and the best we can do is get by and laugh at it. What's the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything? 42. God was real - he made the world, then popped out of existence after painting himself into a logical corner. In the movie, Arthur Dent, the last remaining piece of the supercomputer built to determine the ultimate question to "42", does patter by "How many roads must a man walk down?", but ultimately settles on love as both the ultimate quetion and answer. What a copout, especially for the Hitchhiker.

Weekend animalia and gardening

Kim and I bought more gardening tools, and did a bit of work in the yard. Among other things, I got a pickaxe. Yup, a pickaxe. Let images from hundreds of horror movies flit through your mind and pass - the weedwhacker is much more dangerous.

We have several rotting stumps in the backyard, and since I was frustrated with life on Sunday, I started whacking into them. I found a handful of these. They were about an inch and a half long and half an inch wide. Big suckers! Do a google image search on ""grubs", and you'll see a bunch of pictures of people eating them. I don't think I'm ready to go that far yet, at least not until I have a good recipe.

On Saturday, Kim and I saw a green anole. He was sitting on the deck railing and was bright green, and bouncing up and down on his front legs. Every so often he blew out his dewlap and looking rather impressive. I went outside to see how skittish he was, and saw the female he was showing off for. I left him to his good intentions.

To those who saw the pictures of the big, flowering peonies in the front yard, I'm sorry. They're pulled up now. The flowers had gotten so big that the stocks couldn't support them, and they were sagging into the ground. The whole front box was looking rather ragged, so we started on the eventual leveling and yardening. We also pulled down that crazy trellis thing, erstwhile perch of the frog, and moved the birdbath to the backyard.

Our neighbor across the street, who we believe to be the wife of a preacher, drove out of her garage while we were picking up afterward. She said that they had been wondering what we would do with the front yard, which was getting wild and out of control over the last few years. When she saw us out in the front yard, she let on, she said "Thank you, Jesus!" Hee hee.

Philosophy: Ethics are unnatural

I watched a woodpecker on a suet feeder, happy and unbothered. A catbird perched on a seed feeder a few feet away, but then decided that he'd rather not have company. He hopped over to the suet and threatened the woodpecker, splaying his beak and beating his wings. The woodpecker, outsized and out aggressived, flew away, and the catbird went back to his feeder and ate in peace.

Animals, insects, and plants, are not moral or ethical. They are selfish and capricious. Anyone who things otherwise should provide an example. Some higher mammals are capable of friendship, but that's not quite the same.

Morals, altruism, Truth, honor, and the like are supernatural. I suspect they're all formalizations of love.

When you see people who are selfish, thoughtless, or predatory, they are natural, not evil. They're animals. You needn't hate them - only pity them for their lack of advancement.

Philosophy: When I die

When I die, I'd like to be cremated, then scattered or lost or left behind or misplaced. I don't want a tombstone or marker, no shrine to the dead, no preservation of my body. I don't want any impedance to reincarnation.

I hope I'm remembered fondly, but only by the people who knew me, and only as a part of the past - the past which instructs and comforts, but does not control. If I'm remembered outside of my circle of family and friends, I hope it's as the author of a thought or story that is more important than my name.

Let any kindness shown to my memory be shown to the next generation, for that is where I am. I am immortal, but my consciousness is not. I make my future better by making the world better for my next incarnation.

We are not alone...

Two of the three cats took the long, harrowing trip from San Diego to Marietta. Eyeore and Buddha are here and exploring.

(I just had to take a pause because Buddha's remembering me now, and he wanted to sit in my lap).

Eyeore is coping by hiding in the cable mass behind the entertainment center. We're trying to teach her other ways.

Heddy wasn't healthy enough to get the certificate allowing him to travel. We're going to have to wait until someone flies out who wants to bring a senior citizen can out with them.

We're really excited to have Buddha and Eyeore, though. We'll have pictures of them exploring.

Another day of mowing, another day of critters

Weekend now means both time to play and time to work. Houses come with a stack of chores, so after spending some Mother's day time with my mom, I pulled out the lawn mower and took another pass at the the wild jungle of a lawn. (Okay, it's not that wild.) When you cut it down really low, lopping off all the dandelions and cabbage-esque weeds and what not, it almost looks like a real lawn!

While I was mowing by that infamous box, I saw my first real critter of the day: a huge spider. This wasn't a huge spider like last week, where it was actually just a tiny body and long spindly legs, this gal was moving in on tarantula turf. She was somewhere between 1-1/2 and 2 inches long, and that was just her body. She had stubby legs, wasn't hairy like a tarantulay, and was a dark reddish-brown to black color. I tried to look her up online, but the purse-web spider is the closest thing I found. It doesn't look quite right, and it seems too small. I tried to get a picture of her, but when I came back with the camera, she was gone. I'm pretty sure I mowed her up in the end - with the blade as low as it was, there wasn't any place for her to hide in the grass.

After I finished mowing, I started rooting up our rock garden, beginning with the "stepping stones" scattered around among the smaller pebbles. Taking good advice from my mom, I wore gloves. There were about 3 score stones to turn over, and about a quarter of them hid ant colonies. As quick as the leaf-filtered light hit them, they'd go scurrying off deeper among the pebbles, carrying their children. One of the colonies had a few big warrior ants (and by big I mean 3/4 inch long) that stuck around to threaten the stick I poked at them with. Half of the remaining stones had salbug colonies under them. I never realized salbugs rolled in crews like that, but each colony probably had 200 salbugs or so. There were a bunch of beetles and spiders and centipedes and whatnot as well, but they were far too fast for me to come back with a camera.

Lastly, I saw a blue-tailed skink! Man, was he fast, and spooked out about being caught out in the open. He tried to make a mad dash up the garage door, but the surface was too slick and he kept sliding back down. Finally he ran off and disappeared into a crack.

Update: I fixed the link to the skink picture.