Can’t Think of a Title

After a barely functioning Saturday, today turned out better. Even the daily crossword puzzle was solved in just over 12 minutes. Still feeling puny but got out to church and to a birthday part for a child of friends. Scored leftovers, so it was a good day.

It probably helped I went to bed at 9:20 PM last night.

Today I learned something new. A person can hit the snooze button every ten minutes and still fall into a deep enough sleep to dream during each interval.

It is so humid my eyeballs fogged over. This is going to be a rough week with mid to high 90’s predicted and heat indexes well above 100 F. But the media it playing it up like it is some amazing heat wave when I remember stretches of true 100+ weather in previous decades.

I’ve figured out what movies I’ll review next and it will be nice getting back to a more traditionally vague format.  The Battle of Britain will be followed by Thirteen Days.

Speaking of movies, Netflix has changed their fees and I was looking at a 60% increase for the package I had subscribed to. With low bandwidth, I went to the two DVDs for $12 option instead. Not happy with this, but the streaming revolution isn’t really happening thanks to the movie studios. I’m beginning to wonder if it ever will.

At least I’m slowly catching up on popular movies I had no interest in seeing at the theater. So far, most have not impressed me.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was bad. It came off as a parody of the previous films and Harrison Ford is way too old for this kind of thing.

Quantum of Solace destroyed all the momentum from the reboot, Casino Royale. Not content to fumble things, it turned into a poorly written and edited left wing conspiracy fantasy. Ian Fleming must be rolling in his grave. It is just a very bad film on many levels, despite having a good cast. A true waste of talent.

Inception has cemented my being a fan of Chris Nolan. He is what we hoped M. Night Shyamalan would become as a director. I knew it would be heavy on special effects and that didn’t interest me. The idea of manipulating dreams did, however. What surprised me was how sentimental the film was. Well worth watching.

I’m bemused by how my evaluations of films and TV series confuse my friends. There is no question that I dance to a different drummer and employ criteria that aren’t the norm. But if I manage to annoy everyone at some point, I’ve done my job. Or just had fun annoying them. It’s a tossup.

Oh before I forget, I have an animated film out of Ireland to recommend. It is called The Secret of Kells and is a lovely piece of work. The animation style is unique and fits the minimalist story very well. In places it was absolutely haunting and I really liked the ending. Good for older children and up, younger children could be frightened by the violence.

Dueling Banjos

Sometimes it seems like politics is all about who shouts the loudest, but the reality is that the winner is often the one allowed to shout the longest. There is a limit to how effective such tactics can be and woe be onto the ones who try to base strategy on it. Here in Minnesota, Governor Dayton found out that lesson the hard way with a state shutdown calculated to catapult the DFL into retaking the state houses in 2012.

Instead of getting widespread support from the public, he got an earful from the proles in a tour the last week. It is no surprise even union members wanted a deal done and the budget passed now. Why?  Most union members are public employees these days, that’s why. They were the ones suffering the most. While a cutoff of beer to Minnesota may have been a factor, this is what most likely caused Dayton to blink.

Now there will be a passing of the last negotiated budget, which is still the largest increase in state history. A victory, but how much of one?

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to demagogue the debt ceiling and threaten the disabled, seniors, and military veterans with cutting off their August checks. Will he blink or is he bluffing? If he isn’t bluffing, the country will begin tearing apart very quickly. Take advantage of every crisis is the motto of this administration, but there is that pesky 2012 presidential election coming up. So who knows what will happen?

But I’d like somebody to ask the President if he’ll keep paying federal employees while he’s starving the elderly and disabled. Not very likely to be asked, is it?

I don’t think the disconnect between the ruling political class and the masses has ever been bigger. With the political class isolated from the day to day reality that the average citizen experience, they have no way of understanding what is at stake. A complicit and equally distant media aren’t helping when they should be bridging the gap. That’s a disaster.

Then there are Europe’s economic analysts, mad at the GOP because they want the debt limit raised in order for countries to buy more U.S. debt. They insist the issue of default be kicked down the road while acknowledging it is a problem. Why is that so important to them?  They want a safe haven for money to move to and apparently have no real faith in the European Union despite what they say publicly. In other words, the political class there wants someplace to stash money before the Euro collapses. Talk about a twisted mess!

It is little wonder that the people are losing faith in government and trust no one. That’s the biggest danger to maintaining order there is. The political class appears to be oblivious to this, especially on the Left. People compare Obama to Carter or Hoover, but perhaps we should be thinking about Nero.

Health 7-16-2011

Back problems have been affecting my sleep and now I’m dealing with a “tickle” in my chest that first showed up Thursday night. Had to suppress the need to cough and had problems breathing at times in the movie theater. Was coughing part of yesterday and the chest is tight. Not in the mood for another bout of bronchitis.

Crossword puzzle took an hour yesterday and a half hour today, well off my 15 minute average. Beginnings of a dull headache and high fatigue are keeping me away from Audiosurf for the moment.

Had to cancel going on the ward youth Temple Trip and am not happy about that since we were short handed to begin with. Not sure if I’ll be able to go into La Crosse for the weekly gaming session tonight too. Tomorrow is going to be a maximum effort day and I have to prioritize.

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 (2011)

The Harry Potter films come to an end with a movie filled with action, death, and 3D effects but curiously devoid of genuine emotion. Those disappointed with the previous film will find much to like and it stays fairly faithful to the book.

The movie starts out with the ending of Part 1, but this time processed into 3D. This means an even murkier and darker experience in the theater, but those who view it in 2D won’t  have much of a brighter experience. Most of it is set at night or indoors with reduced lighting with a bleached out palette.

Following the death of Dobby at the end of the last movie, Harry and company gather some more intel on what Bellatrix Lestrange was up to. Critical information comes into their hands thanks to a kidnapped goblin and so they decide to stage another infiltration of a highly guarded institution. I have to say Helena Bonham Carter did a great job of mimicking Emma Watson’s mannerisms while playing the polyjuiced Hermione masquerading as Bellatrix. Oddly enough, that was one of the highlights of the film for me.

The raid goes disastrously like all their plans do, which is actually mentioned by the characters later in the movie. But it does give us, the audience, some fun with a very well rendered dragon and I always give extra credit for well done dragons. From there things move to infiltrating Hogwarts, which has become something run like a concentration camp or gulag. This is where all the real action takes place and things morph into a war movie, but with magic instead of guns.

The preparations for combat and Voldemort’s assault on Hogwarts are quite well executed. Chaotic battles, heroic sacrifices, and deaths of characters we’ve gotten to know fill the second half. But the deaths failed to have emotional impact for me, unlike the book. I suspect that is due to them being rushed, despite splitting the book into two movies. Some key dramatic moments suffer from it, especially near the end.

With little character development in this half of the book, The Deathly Hallows Part 2 suffers the same problem. Aside from Snape (Alan Richter) and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), only Helena Ravenclaw (Kelly Macdonald) seemed to get anything meaty and she is a new character only briefly seen. Most of the supporting characters get what amounts to cameos despite their importance in the past. Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione get their expected moments, with Ron delivering comic relief.

While I was pleased with how Neville (Matthew Lewis) got his moments to shine, the last one was not handled well. It was played more for laughs than drama and it rang the wrong note. Likewise, Mrs. Weasely’s (Julie Walters) big moment was laughed at in the theater due to a lack of setup and once again being played for laughs. That was just criminal as it should have been something of great intensity. Those who have read the book will understand why I’m complaining.

The big duel was also disappointing and things kind of trail off after that. But the epilogue was nice and the CGI aging looked good. It seemed like a lot of the film was so geared at the 3D effects that they lost sight of effective pacing.

On the topic of the 3D experience, I thought it was a mixed bag. Anything involving spells and magic looked really good, especially the barrier put up around Hogwarts. But crowd scenes appeared jumpy, for a lack of a better word. Something wasn’t working effectively there and it was distracting. From that, I assume the 3D was done in post production rather than filmed with 3D cameras. Another film out this year that was done in post was Thor and it had a better feeling of depth, for comparison.

I didn’t go into seeing The Deathly Hallows Part 2 with any particular expectations or reservations. Though I could have used a reservation to get a better seat. Please forgive me, it is after 3 AM here as I’m writing this and things are getting stupidly amusing. Back on topic, the local small town theater got the movie for a midnight showing with little warning, so of course I had to take advantage of the opportunity to see the end of the Harry Potter film era.

So what is my final take on the flick? It was okay, but something of a disappointment. Most fans will like it better than the last, but I preferred the previous one. It had more heart and this one was strangely flat to me. The crowd at the theater applauded at the end, so that’s good enough. A big box office haul awaits it no matter what.

Speaking of the crowd, they skewed younger with teens predominating. All age groups were represented and I actually had to stand in line for tickets. Amazing for a midnight showing in a small town with a population of 1200 or so. Everyone was in a good mood and generally well behaved.

Harry Potter Midnight Showing in Spring Grove

Just a heads up in case anyone from my neck of the woods lands on the blog: the final Harry Potter film will have a midnight showing in 3D at the Spring Grove Cinema in Spring Grove, MN.

I was at the last one and plan to go to this one as well.

Health 7-13-2011

The temperatures are in the 70’s, the sun is shining, the humidity is down, and my daily test of playing Audiosurf went well so I went off for my first walk since the last one I posted about. It went better than the previous one, but still was disappointing in how hard it was. Ah well. Hopefully there will be more progress instead of bronchitis as the year continues.

Had a bad night, back pain was pretty impressive and a dull constant headache has been present since getting up. Sinuses aren’t great, but they’ve been much worse.

The weekend is going to be an extreme endurance run with a youth trip to the Temple on top of the usual. I will definitely stay low key on Friday.

Bad Moon Rising

There are those who actually believe we emerged out of the recession and are worried we are going into another. Well, we aren’t. We never got out of the first one and it isn’t a recession, but the early stages of another Great Depression. While we have more social safety nets in place, they aren’t going to last very long at this rate.

One myth on the Left is that Social Security is a “lockbox” and all the funds are safe there to pay it out. If that were true, how could President Obama threaten to not send checks out next month? Note that this is a threat in political speak and his verbal tones suggest he was eager to issue it.  While it is a despicable thing to do, it does unmask the fallacy of the lockbox.  Another Democrat President ended that isolation of Social Security funds from the general fund back in the 1960’s – Lyndon Baines Johnson. They are now controlled at the whim of our government and are not guaranteed.

But the most interesting thing about this is that there will be money to spend on Social Security and other needed things even if we can’t borrow money. It means drastic cuts elsewhere, but that is at the discretion of the Treasury. Which means it is at the discretion of the President. In other words, Obama is threatening to cut off benefits for political gain in the 2012 elections. Some servant of the people he is.

Being on Social Security Disability, this hits me directly. Loss of Social Security means no food, no shelter, no Internet, and the loss of everything I have.  I can’t say I’m surprised how cavalier the President is about the people who will be affected as he is part of the Chicago Machine which is all about thuggery. The willingness to hurt the elderly and disabled just to damage the Republicans shows the quality of Obama’s character.

Sadly, that is only the beginning of our problems. The debt ceiling will mean nothing in the near future because an economic catastrophe has already begun across the globe. Large things tend to be slow moving and people don’t notice the changes until they hit critical mass. And much like an avalanche, they can’t be avoided.

The jobs report for June in the United States is an unmitigated disaster. 18,000 jobs were purportedly created when we need 150,000 new jobs created each month just to match population growth. Notice I used the word “purportedly.” At The NY Post it is revealed that 131,000 jobs were estimated out of thin air to pad the number upwards. In the United Kingdom, their latest report on employment isn’t quite as grim, but it isn’t good.

Meanwhile, the PIIGS crisis in the European Union continues unabated. Ireland just got relegated to junk bond status and Greece continues to be a bottomless sink hole despite hundreds of billions of Euros dumped into it. I don’t even want to discuss the problems China is having with inflation and bad loans. Two ballyhooed stimulus packages have failed to do anything positive at all and now they are talking about another one, QE3. Throwing money that doesn’t exist at something caused by spending money that doesn’t exist is not a sign of intelligent or even sapient behavior.

What will the second Great Depression look like? That’s hard to tell, since there has been so much wealth generated worldwide since the end of World War II. As mentioned before, there are safety nets in place that weren’t previously in developed countries. But there has never been so much debt in place as we have today. It will hit slower than in the 1920’s and 30’s and it has already begun.

We have much more to lose, so the possibility of it being more dramatic and catastrophic increases due to the simple fact the masses aren’t acquainted with real hardship anymore. What happens when food supplies become permanently disrupted? What happens when fuel is too expensive to allow easy migration to better places? What happens when electricity becomes unreliable with rolling blackouts the norm? What happens when groups begin hoarding resources? Those are all questions the world is going to have to face very soon.

Here in the U.S., we have a cultural divide that is now unbridgeable. The Left have gone so far away from common ground with the middle and right that the political frictions we see now are going to look quaint by comparison when the real crisis hits fully.  Though the truth is the middle will do whatever the group in charge tells them to do, so really they don’t matter. It is a sad thing, but the result of apathy/fence sitting is the loss of any real say in things.

My prediction is greater division and rising violence, both of which have already begun. Frustrations will continue to grow and the political class will continue to play games as long as they are comfortable. By the time anything will be attempted seriously, it will be too late.

So where does that leave the little guy? Up a creek without a paddle in most cases.

All we can do is prepare ourselves for the worst outcome and pray for the best. Storing food for more than threes days of supplies is a beginning. Having the ability to protect yourself wherever you are means exercising your 2nd Amendment rights here in the States, no matter how you feel about firearms. Most of all, you need to be spiritually prepared.

In God you can trust, but not man. I wish people would remember that whenever the latest demagogue of any political persuasion shows up.