To the New Year

As 2011 gasps its last breaths, it is either a time to review the year that has been or look forward to the year that will be. Given the year that was for me, I am choosing the latter. So the assignment I have given myself is to think about things to look forward to.

While 2011 had some good movies to go to and I actually attended more than I usually do, 2012 is shaping up to be a very interesting time at the theater. The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, and Prometheus all look entertaining if not excellent. But the one really making me eager to see is the first of The Hobbit movies. Aggravating that is the trailer that was released this month:

Looks fantastic, doesn’t it? The final moments of the trailer raised goosebumps for me. It is hard to believe it is ten years from when Fellowship of the Ring came out.

Come to think of it, watching the Blu-rays of the Extended Editions is another thing to look forward to. My sister and her husband have given us a 40” 1080P 120 MHz LED LCD HDTV for Christmas. This unexpected addition to the living room has prompted me to raid the money I was saving for a new PC monitor and get a decent Blu-ray player for the set.  Just one catch and that is getting it to Minnesota from Indiana.

At least by the time it gets shipped home all the needed cables and gear should have arrived in time. New gear means new cables. At least I will still be able to hook up my region free Yamaha DVD player to the new set. Time to rebuild the media center PC too and add an older HD compatible video card I have to it.

I just hope I do not break anything setting it up. A gift to my step nephew lasted only a couple of minutes after giving it to him. Warning him not to overstretch the toy resulted in one broken toy thirty seconds later. Maybe I should not have warned him…

It appears I have inadvertently created a couple of Bleach fans with the step nephew and niece. They especially like Rukia after seeing several episodes, so they show some good taste there.

The big news is that my sister is pregnant. Irony runs strong in the family, so it is no surprise that this happened unexpectedly after many previous travails trying to conceive.  Welcome news, indeed.

While trying to maintain a positive attitude about next year, I cannot say I am looking forward to the political and economic aspects. The only description I can muster for it without sounding apocalyptic is the word “meatgrinder.” If that is one word, that is.

One thing I will not be doing is a New Year’s resolution. I am too busy trying to do everything I can to improve my health to add something on top of it. Also, last year’s one of finding a gal was a total fiasco, so avoiding the irritation of failing to keep a new one is a bonus. All hope has been lost on that anyway.

Here is to hoping something can be done about our transportation problems.

RIP Subaru Outback

In the face of the ridiculous costs of bodywork, the still running Subaru has been totaled by the car insurance company. Sadly, there is no way we can afford to replace it with a vehicle that has even a fraction of its capabilities and things are an absolute mess on the transportation side of life.

The Subaru was the best car we ever had and ever will have. It could handle any weather, slippery hills, and long distance travel with excellent handling and comfort. A trip to New Foundland proved what a wonderful traveling car it was and i have fond memories of driving it through Canada.

Deer were cruel to it and there were other minor accidents, so it was an unlucky vehicle over the years. The first day we had it in December of 2004, I hit ice pulling into a business and put the car through a garage door. I should have known then something bad would happen to it in the end just from that unfortunate beginning.

Now we are faced with a serious problem of no wheels and not being able to afford what we really need living out in the sticks. The ever treacherous driveway makes ascending it very tricky on anything other than a 4WD or AWD during the winter.

This did not help with my improving on feeling the Christmas spirit. I am set on getting a 12 gauge by next deer season.

Merry Christmas!

It is going to be a quiet one here, but I hope others have a lively one with their families. With nothing profound to say this year, I can only suggest that you remember to forgive one another and fill your hearts with love. This is what it is supposed to be about and why the Savior was born.

To those who do not believe, I advise the same nonetheless. Forgiveness and love make life much better in my experience. I think you will find the same if you practice it.

So a merry Christmas to all on this quiet eve!

Mr. Krueger’s Christmas: 25th Anniversary DVD

A simple 25 minute film featuring Jimmy Stewart as a lonely old man on Christmas Eve became something of a classic amongst Latter-day Saints after its 1980 release. While marking a shift in outreach to the public from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its importance is more than that. It is the simple message at the end that says it all about the holiday.

I had originally planned to review something completely different for Christmas, but was hit by a moment of inspiration. Having had difficulty getting into the feeling of the season, I realized it had been a few years since I last watched this. So along with purchasing Christmas with the Rat Pack from Amazon’s MP3 service, it was time to make an active effort. By the way, I’m listening to that superb compilation while writing this review.

Mr. Krueger’s Christmas begins with the title character working as a custodian of an apartment building. It being Christmas Eve, he sets out for a tree to put up in his basement apartment. Attempts to interact with people on the street are ignored or barely acknowledged. It is cold outside in more ways than one.

Along the way, he looks at a suit in a shop window, much like a child looking at toys would. In no time he is lost in a fantasy of being fitted with a new suit and being treated like a man of status. It is only the beginning of fantasies which Willie Krueger succumbs to out of loneliness.

Land Rights Battle in Houston County Gets National Attention

It was something of a surprise to get an email from a friend linking a post on Glenn Beck’s site, The Blaze and asking if this was the local issue a mutual friend was involved in. Sure enough, it is all about the land rights fight here in Houston County.

The money quote from Bjerke in the article is no surprise. Beyond his left wing politics, this is business as usual for the county commissioners regardless of political affiliation. Dictatorial is a common adjective thrown at them in this area and is the norm in most rural counties.

But now some comments on the issue at hand. In a nutshell, Houston County doesn’t want residences increasing in land areas zoned for agriculture. The theory is city folk will come in and destroy the area if they are allowed to build homes here. So to restrict building, only one house per 40 acres is allowed.

That is very restrictive, especially for families that want to keep farms in the family and have the next generation build their own house on the family homestead. A neighboring county, Fillmore, is worse from what I have been told. There are areas zoned where it is something like 120 acres that the same kind of ordinance is applied to.

Something that needs pointing out is Houston County’s population has been declining for years. All this talk of bringing in manufacturing companies is moot if there isn’t a population to supply the labor force. You also need the population to make up for lost tax revenues given out as tax breaks to said companies. So limiting population growth in any way is foolish.

Having been approached years ago to possibly be the spokesman for the group that was forming to fight this, I declined. While sympathetic and thinking they are in the right, I had some issues with using the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of the “pursuit of happiness” as a basis for fighting the zoning law. Land rights is one place the founding fathers botched things. With no explicit land rights expressed in the document or its amendments, it left things wide open for abuse. This is curious due to the amount of writings about those rights before the Constitution was created.

In the end, I believe an amendment to the state constitution is needed and then a push for an amendment on the national level. Nothing less will solve this problem completely and safeguard our rights to land ownership and stewardship.

What goes unmentioned in the post on The Blaze is that there is an element of religious intolerance, if not persecution, involved in this dispute. The original case was fought by a family belonging to a tiny Christian sect called the Marinathas. Outside of mainstream Christianity to some degree, they have been the objects of rumor mongering and ridicule by outsiders.

The rumors that were spread by supporters of the commissioners went something like this: they want to build a cult compound like Jamestown so they can gather people together and take over the area. Needless to say, this did not help the atmosphere. From my dealings with members of the sect, I have found them to be very good, God fearing, and patriotic people. Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I can sympathize about being misunderstood.

I will admit that the family involved in the case were far too hot headed in the way they initially handled things. While they thought they had been given a verbal agreement, you have to have something written when dealing with government. Otherwise misunderstandings can and will arise like it did in this case.

But the fight rapidly grew to include many people outside the Marinathas and there is quite a cross section of concerned citiziens in Concerned Landowners. It has become quite the brouhaha and the commissioners are finding themselves in contested elections now. It will be interesting to see how the national attention affects things in this small rural county.

As for the media censorship of letters to the editor, this is normal and there is no such thing as an impartial newspaper. I do think Heather Gray went overboard on banning all letters on the subject, but The Spring Grove Herald is a DFL aligned newspaper so do not expect an even break there. Instead, mourn the fact that no conservative has been willing to throw money away at a dying medium to counter liberal papers. Actually, the biggest issue is that Gray was mayor and editor at the same time. That was a big conflict of interest that reminded me of Charles Foster Kane’s desires to control everything, albeit on a microscopic scale.

I hope that the battle for property rights gets some results, but I am not holding my breath. Once entrenched, laws are nearly impossible to repeal.

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995) Review

Updating a rather ridiculous giant monster series that featured a flying and fire breathing turtle does not sound like a recipe for success. But this surprisingly entertaining film almost convinces you that a turtle could fly. While a mixed bag, it shows the potential that the trilogy eventually grows into. Time for giant monster destruction as Tokyo gets hammered yet again! UPDATED for extras coverage.

The popular Gamera series of giant turtle kids movies from the 1960’s and 70’s did not get an auspicious start with Gamera the Invincible. It was an obvious attempt to cash in on Toho Studios successful Godzilla franchise on an even lower budget. It had none of the gravitas or coherency of the contemporary Godzilla films, much less that of Gojira which started the whole thing. The movies got weirder and more juvenile as the years went on.

So when a director named Shusuke Kaneko was given the green light to restart the defunct property, there was not a huge amount of excitement from what I remember. It did not help that his resume was filled with cheap exploitation flicks filled with the late night cable fare of sex and violence. The idea he could update a kiddie movie and make a hit out of it was far fetched. Even more far fetched would be for it to be critically acclaimed.

Why I Despise Deer

In my previous post, I mentioned my father hit a deer yesterday -- after we finally go the brakes repaired on the car. Talking to him, he did not even get a chance to brake, which is just like the deer in 2007. There are too many of the hooved vermin in the area and the DNR has allowed things to get out of control. A couple of years of year round open season might be enough to manage the population, but I think it will require government culling. That will never happen here in Minnesota thanks to Bambi lovers in the cities.

As you can see, the front driver’s side took the hit this time. The license plate holder/protector I got to defend against kamikaze pheasant attacks did its job and only the top rim remains.

There is deer hair everywhere. At least the radiator appears undamaged; the 2007 hit destroyed it. The headlight is a complete loss.

The door had to be completely replaced when a buck ran into it in 2008. Now the new one is banged up. Looking at the car from the side shows how violent the collision was. Yet it is not enough to set off the airbags to my amazement.

As bad as it looks, the collision in 2007 was worse:

Not a good way to go into Christmas.