Yes, I'm only halfway through the rants and reviews I promised. But along the way, I figured I should sell out a bit and ask: do you enjoy this blog? Yes, it's silly and stupid. But I'm in the middle of another review and don't have time for lengthier monologues. So it will have to do for now.

R. Robot penned a personal note of thanks for my mention of his fabulous wesite/blog. I won't copy his note verbatim here, as I know R. is a bit of a fanatic about personal privacy, but I can discuss it at least. Stricken with a similar illness to mine, he then blogged the following comments on his website about y.t. after I let him know of my liberal bias:

Fellowship of the libs

A leader not trying to take the war to Yasser Arafat would be clearly Chomsky-like in the extreme. Edward -- was there ever a public official of such hysterical treachery, such cunningly pro-Saddam witch hunting? But with President Bush you get the sense that this is one who will wander into greatness.

The pro-Wellstone eulogizers bias in the media is pervasive.

"What kind of a skeeza is Condoleeza?" says Edward. Grumble, grumble, grumble. The truth makes the funny little creatures who make up the hypocritical Fifth Column resort to outrageously emotional insults and cries of "unconstitutional!"

However, in the end the case for the proud prosperity is the strongest one. A leader not trying to take the war to the nuclear holy warriors would be outrageously puerile in the extreme.

Such is the mind of the Manhattan ilk.

It must be obvious to anyone who can think that the charges against the King of Calypso are true.

Before it's too late, we must create moral democracy. We owe it to our children. A leader not trying to take the war to Yasser Arafat would be clearly Chomsky-like in the extreme. Edward -- was there ever a public official of such hysterical treachery, such cunningly pro-Saddam witch hunting? But with President Bush you get the sense that this is one who will wander into greatness.

He's been glorified by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter. And he's still telling it like it is, Turing test be damned!

I figure I might as well steal the headline from the following pieces, all of whom are decrying the choice of John Snow to head the Treasury Department. In the end, both Snow and Lindsey replacement Freidman will both be little more than mouthpieces for already established policy, but even if they were supposed to be policy people, there's a mountain of evidence that they weren't good choices. Take Snow, for instance. In this Slate piece, he's dissected as being little more than a government lobbyist-turned-lousy business exec, relying upon his gladhanding to help him out from a lack of sensible business know-how. But as this American Prospect piece points out, the only good thing about either is their apathy towards supply side economics, which will be ignored in favor of them treading the party line. Any other reasons? Well, let's check out the latest CSX tax data from the past several years. Hmm. Seems like CSX isn't paying much in taxes for a corporation that makes millions of dollars in profit. Perhaps Snow can show us all the tricks of the trade, just like Kissinger over at the 9/11 commission? For now, Bush can't get rid of them because the only reason they were hired in the first place was to make a show that the economic team had been dumped in order to spur the economy. Way to go, guys. Now you reap what you sow.

So I go out for lunch, get stuck in a mountain of traffic at both cvs and mcdonalds, causing me to be late and overheat in this unseasonably warm weather. And while at the golden arches, I couldn't help but notice that they have 4 McNuggets for $1.00. I normally get at least 9, or split a 20 piece. But a 6 piece was $2.19. And a 9 piece was $2.99. Naturally, I ordered 2 4 pieces for $2.00. Feeling pleased with my financial acumen, I walked back to work, overheated again and went downstairs to cool off. While outside, I chanced to step on a piece of pavement which promptly tilted down, squeezing a bucket of muddy water into the air and onto my right pant leg and shoe. Despite being able to brush most of it off later, it put me in a foul mood, where I am right now.

I'm back on top of my game, and I've got about 5 rants and 1 review to work through, along with some Christmas shopping. So instead of focusing on Trent Lott or my latest book review or even the new Bush team picks, I'm just going to bow out for a few seconds. Then I'll be back with plenty of stuff. Because I'm feelng 100% good right now.

werkz advice: only for die hard fans.

I just finished reading ac copy of Choke that I'd given to my dad as a present some time ago. It's by Chuck Palahniuk, the writer of Fight Club, and like that novel, is a fast-paced, sometimes explicit look at a somewhat delusional protagonist. Overall, I found the book interesting, with a good twist nestled in, but not up to the level of Fight Club.

Palahniuk seems somewhat obsessed with the truth, or rather, the truth around us we are unaware of. The main character in Choke, for instance, is raised by a mother on short anecdotes which reveal the truth in society. He learns as a young child all the codewords for certain occurrences, so that if he's in a hospital, or a shopping mall, or an airport, and Mr. Jones is paged, or Nurse Annie is summoned, he knows what really is going on. It could be a fire, or a person needing sedation, or a terrorist, but the point is always the same: that most people have little idea of the world they are surrounded by. Only the main character, Vic, can understand it all.

Vic goes to sexual-disorder therapy sessions to pick up women. Vic fakes choking in restaurants to earn money to pay for his invalid mother's nursing home/hospital bills. Vic works part time at a colonial village in authentic eighteenth century garb surrounded by people as messed up as he is, also wearing costumes. It's twenty-first century theater of the absurd, limned on two-dimensional pieces of paper. Although partly shocking and partly vulgar, Vic's lifestyle begins to grow slightly annoying as the novel wears on. It's hard to have empathy for someone having sex in an airplane, a lavatory, basically anywhere, who then comes home to find his roommate piling rocks up all over the house. If this sounds strange: it is.

Eventually, the plotline involving Vic's dying mother begins to take precedence, which keeps the story fresh, but exposes one flaw: most of the characters, while unique, aren't all that interesting. Vic's mother is clearly the answer to all the secrets, to all the strange behavior, and Chuck manages to pull this feat off: the end of the book is quite good. Getting to that end can be a little weary or jarring, depending on your frame of mind, but with the right mindset and the right music, it's easy to crunch through the pages. Still, I know that I'm a fan of his style, and I think others might not cotton on to it quite so quickly. So I'm hesitant to give this a positive review. IF you're already a fan, buy it and sample. If not, I'd wait until the David Fincher movie comes out.

I've finally garnered a few minutes to write some thoughts down, now that the violent part of my sickness if over. I expect I'll be back at work tomorrow, which means I have to make the most of my time tonight. Before I got ill I managed to post a new review of the movie Treasure Planet. It was enjoyable overall, although I must confess my bias in these matters. I've always been a big fan of Stevenson, and of naval tales in general, whether they be fictions by Verne or quasi-historical works like Men Against the Sea or Carry On Mr. Bowditch. The latter was a big favorite of mine as a kid, but it wasn't until I read Mutiny on the Bounty, and then Men Against the Sea, that I realized what appealed so greatly to me about all of these novels.

In MATS, the story traces the path of Captain Bligh, fresh from the mutiny on his ship, set into a small boat with 18 loyal men, halfway around the world from England. The chance of survival is zero. Somehow, Bligh manages to get almost all of his crew back home, where he boards a ship to return to avenge those who overthrew him. It's a classic tale of man triumphing over nature by sheer will and determination. After reading it I thought to myself: if one man could do this, against all odds, imagine what could be done in sunnier circumstances. All stories of the sea are, at their heart, a conflct between man and nature. In works like Moby Dick, nature wins in the end, if only because of the fanaticism of man himself. Still, the idea of a voyage filled with danger, surmountable only through the use of one's intellect and willpower, is inherently appealing to me. Most stories set in the present lack the backdrop of the ocean of the past, of a merciless sea that cannot be tamed. Even movies like the perfect storm reflect a new kind of thinking: that nature is normally subservient and only rarely strikes back.

Sea stories are much preferable to the Jack London school of narratives, which glosses over men to show that nature, after all, is the most powerful of all. Yet no one cheers when a hurricane destroys houses, or a mudslide kills thousands. There is no courage displayed when el Nino wrecks crops, or a freak tornado kills livestock. His larger point, of course, is one of hubris: man should not assume he is superior to the elements around him, to nature herself. Yet it is for this reason that old tales of ships and sailors seem superior. In these, men know instinctively that the sea could at any minute swallow them, yet it is only through perseverance, and reliance upon stars or sextants, that they are able to reach distant lands. London's works also focus on man's reliance upon tools, upon technology as savior. Yet adrift on the sea, without aid of compass or technology, man has managed to survive countless times in situations where lesser creatures would have perished. If eighteen animals were left adrift on a boat with little food for weeks, you can be sure that few, if any, would survive. This is the failing of London, and others: a failure to sea that man's weakness is not his reliance upon tools, or his inability to exist in his environment without altering it. Man's weakness is his strength: his hubris enables him to ascend great heights but it also enables him to fight endless wars over meaningless pieces of land. Conviction is a double-edged sword, and when it is tied to survival becomes a religion.

Oh, well, I'm off to get some groceries now. Maybe I'll purchase some salted pork, or some biscuits, to get me out of this weird train of thought.

Well, if throwing up all night and being unable to eat any food is laziness, I'm really lazy. Otherwise, I'm now sick.

My ability to trick my body into somehow brushing off the festivities from Saturday night (including less than 4 hours of sleep) has suddenly run out. I feel like one of those giant inflated pool toys that has a slow leak. At first, it's hardly noticeable but as less air remains, it rapidly loses buoyancy until it's sitting at the bottom of the pool, a small deflated mess of plastic. It's all the more annoying because I had imagined a fairly lengthy rant coming on. I had the title, the topic and some of the choice phrases already placed in the oven ready to be removed once we got to that point. And now I'm having to take a quick break. Hopefully this feeling of sloth will pass and the demons of the lethargic will be exorcised.

werkz advice: go see it.

Somewhere at Disney studios, a familiar pattern is played out every so often. A creative type who loves classic adventure tales pitches an idea to management. It's your standard retread, but it involves "space" and is therefore cool and exciting. Management, in turn, approves the project because of the classic nature of Disney's past, but in order to ensure success, books some A-level stars into the film to guarantee an audience. The production takes longer than expected, and starts to rack up serious costs. Disney attempts to get a handle on the situation, but ends up shuffling around some release dates. In the end, the film comes in much later, much more expensive and much harder to sell. Against a number of high-flying films, the audience doesn't flock to the work, and the film is decried a failure by many. I end up liking both.

The first, of course, is the notorious film "The Black Hole" which almost sunk the studio, breaking into the black only years later through video sales. Featuring the first use of computer graphics animation (outside of representing computer screens in a movie!), the movie was a huge failure and comparisons to 20,000 Leagues under the Sea abounded.

The second is the latest animated movie from Disney, Treasure Planet, an adaptation of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Or, even, an adaptation of Disney's own Treasure Island. Unlike The Black Hole, Treasure Planet's stars actually do shine, with fairly good voice performances from Emma Thompson, David Hyde Pierce and Martin Short, among others. (Some may hear Patrick McGoohan getting about a minute of dialog in a cameo role.) The directors actually pitched the idea of Treasure Island in Space at the same time that they did The Little Mermaid although a decade later, the film was worth it. (Similarly, the ending are also tweaked slightly...) Treasure Planet manages to seamlessly integrate computer animation with ordinary animation, creating characters that are both visually interesting and appealing from a friendly perspective.

The plot follows the line of Treasure Island fairly well: Jim is aged somewhat, and there's no Black Spot seen, but overall, much of the transformation from ship to space, naval to astro, works well. The premise, of course, is absurd. Yet after the first ten opening minutes, I was already enthralled. Suspension of disbelief is hardly necessary, as viewing requires just a slight paradigm shift to think of space as a giant fluid rather than a cold empty vacuum. Once this is done though, even the tiniest nautical references become instantly translatable. Whether it's rope lifelines to prevent characters from being sucked into black holes, or scraping off space barnacles from the sides of the ship, the screenwriters have done an excellent job.

The characters themselves, from Silver to Jim, or even Captain Flint, have all been neatly moved into a new universe. The Disney animators have also had a fun time creating what can only be viewed as some sort of male-fantasy-amalgam character: Captain Amelia. She's clearly some sort of cat-based alien who speak with a british accent (voiced by Emma Thompson), is a stern disciplinarian, and wears very long boots. The verbal sparring between the cat-tain and David Hyde Pierce's self-deprecating dog-based character was quite witty, and included several references to other films, keeping the post-modern self-referential scores high. Martin Short's BEN character, while annoying, managed to be just as annoying as Ben Gunn in the live action version, which made me actually enjoy the castaway insanity. And, of course, John Silver is presented dynamically in keeping with the anti-hero status of the book. Although he's been Disneyfied, he's still one of the most complex characters to kick around the animated scene in quite some time.

Finally, to sum up, I'm presenting a simple list ripped from clanbob that expresses points in a numerical fashion, much to my agreement. Read it and then go see this flick!

1. Anything in which Glen Keane animates in is required viewing in Cowkitty's Temple.
2. It's a magnificent adaptation of the book without too many liberties taken.
3. Long John Silver is the first animated character in history to be 1/2 traditional animation, 1/2 CG. PERFECTLY done!
4. Furry fans, rejoice! The captain is a cat chick with the nicest Disney legs this side of Pocahontas.
5. EXCELLENT animation, perfectly matching the voices, mannerisms, and expressions of the actors.
6. EXCELLENT voice casting, including Emma Thompson (Kenneth Branagh's ex-wife =^_^=), David Hyde Pierce, and that kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun.
7. Beautiful designs, from the lunar cresent space port to the majestic old-style space ships
8. There are no "I'm all sorts of cool so I'm going to fly through an area filled with big ice thingy while "cool" rock music plays" scenes.
9. It's what Atlantis was trying to be
10. It's not by Don Bluth.