d i z t o p i a

Your Eyes Are Full of Hate, Forty-One

Check out these bizarro AP photos from Iraq. (Click on any for a larger popup.) This was the from the "First Annual 'Ben-Hur' Memorial Chariot Race" outside Fallujah, according to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines who took part. The festivities were held this past weekend as the marines psyched themselves up for the assault on Fallujah. And what better way to do so then by engaging in some awesome Russell-Crowe-style gladiation? Any Islamic fundamentalists observing from the city might not have been pleased by the re-enactment of a movie whose heroes are Jews (and which features a passion of the Christ that appears almost relaxing in comparison to the Mel Gibson version). 

But no matter. Bring out the horsies! Ramming speed! No climactic wrecks as in the film version (and did you know that the whole thing about the stuntman getting killed is a myth? Damn your cold omniscient logic, Snopes.com!). These chariot races were held in timed heats, with horses confiscated from looters and leftovers from the recent Viggo Mortensen flop Hidalgo. The winning chariot plowed through the finish line, scattering onlooking marines, and smacked into a sand berm (though the article notes that the horse was unharmed). Hail Caesar!

As the article linked above notes, none of the horses died, but few looked to be in good shape. This nag in particular actually turned on its charioteers and tried to bite them. Allah Akbar! But the beast was quickly subdued with a trident, which I didn't even realize was standard military issue these days. Guess it's hard to improve on a classic. Still, now that these crazy centurions or out there in the shit, hope they have better luck with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi than the Romans ultimately did with their own insurgent problem in Ben-Hur. As Sextus -- a proud member of the reality-based community -- says in the movie, "You can break a man's skull. You can arrest him. You can throw him into a dungeon. But how do you fight an idea?" By cultivating your base, that's how. Once you get to 52%, friends and countrymen, you got yourself a mandate.

Primer Facie

When the redoubtable s.h. visited NYC this past weekend, we (as well as comment lurkers LB and wander woman, plus compatriot FPP) took the opportunity to catch indie-movie sensation Primer at the Angelika. I'd wanted to see the flick since it started generating all the geek-buzz, but waited for the visitor since it's not likely this movie would ever make it back to his home metropolis of Birmingham. Though s.h. tells me that the 'Ham did find the space to show Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die (best title EVAR), the idiotic anti-Fahrenheit 9/11 movie -- and at least one theater there is still showing Celsius as of this writing. Rockin'.

But on to Primer:  Good movie! I felt compelled to see it not just because of the sci-fi nerd factor and not only because of its indie-cred legend ($7,000 budget leads to two Sundance prizes blah blah blah). More than anything, I felt I must rise to the challenge that reviews offered by saying that most people were confused by the intricate concept and plot, and it really requires multiple viewings, etc. That's the kind of thing often said about movies like The Usual Suspects or Memento or Being John Malkovich, all of which I found quite easily digestible, understandable, and enjoyable after one viewing, though of course additional viewings are their own pleasure. So you gonna try an' confuse me, Primer? Less see watchoo got, eh?

To sum up the plot, if you ain't aware: A couple of engineers accidentally invent a time machine. They use it to travel backward a few hours to pick winning stocks and make fortunes. They are very careful about avoiding contact with their past selves or affecting the time-stream adversely. At least, they are at first. Soon they can't resist the temptation to meddle just a little bit. Then it comes to light that each may be hiding something, going back on "unauthorized" trips, creating extra time-travel doubles, faking their way through repeated events, and well, let's just say that things get real wacky, real quick.

Good movie! And yes, I was and remain a bit confused. But in a good way. (If you've seen the movie, be sure to check the forums to have your mind blown just a wee bit more, though beware of plentiful spoilers.) The movie is minimalist but extremely deliberate, and it's assembled with such care and precision that even if you don't understand every nuance, you know that the filmmakers do. Even though I may not know exactly which time-travel double was from which time-frame, or who was really deceiving who, it ultimately doesn't detract. The overall effect is one of escalating desperation and extremity, twinned with the physical and psychological costs as the time-travelers resist or give in to the temptations of their near-limitless power to alter time. That focus, rather than whiz-bang special-effects crap, makes it work like a charm. Highly recommended, and creator Shane Carruth is a dude to watch.

What Would Hammurabi Do?

Mah homie Karl Rove says that George W. Bush will be working hard to pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Rove, fresh from a gentle Fox fellating on November 5 from Jim Angle, returned for more of the same on November 8. This time it was Chris Wallace's turn in the barrel on Fox News Sunday. During the Sunday interview, when asked about the amendment push, Rove said, "We cannot allow activist local elected officials to thumb their nose at 5,000 years of human history and determine that marriage is something else." This "5,000 years" number is a quite popular in conservative homophobia-philia, and most certainly refers to the Code of Hammurabi. These are Babylonian statutes dating to 1780 BCE, and they contain what are generally acknowledged as the oldest documented marriage laws. Hammurabi! It's fun to say, isn't it? Go ahead, you know you want to! Hammurabi! Hammurabi! Hammurabi does the job-ee!

Ahem. The Code begins with "When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi ..." etc. etc. etc. Quite a bit more impressive than "We the people ..." I must admit. But even so, the great thing about the Code's 282 laws is that almost everything ends with someone being put to death. Tends to cut down on appeals. There's also a lot of jumping into rivers to prove stuff other than buoyancy, and buoyancy itself was not necessarily a good thing.

But still, 5,000 years! That's got to count for something. I see no reason why we can't institute Marduk's will in its entirety. Divorce lawyers take note:

142. If a woman quarrel with her husband, and say: "You are not congenial to me," the reasons for her prejudice must be presented. If she is guiltless, and there is no fault on her part, but he leaves and neglects her, then no guilt attaches to this woman, she shall take her dowry and go back to her father's house.

143. If she is not innocent, but leaves her husband, and ruins her house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be cast into the water.

Well, maybe the bottom of that ol' river will be more congenial to you, sweetie. But what about that common modern marriage problem of a wife wanting to give her husband someone else to have sex with, and then the wife's all, well, maybe I should just sell that sex-toy to someone else? Normally, sure, no problem right? But what if the sex-toy gets pregnant? A real stumper! Well, just ask Hammurabi:

146. If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid-servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants.

147. If she have not borne him children, then her mistress may sell her for money.

Nice! So, child-producing maid-servants can be promoted to "equality with the wife" ... which amounts to the same as slaves apparently. Why would any wife "give" her husband such a potential rival? Sell them ho's if you smart. For money.

There's quite a bit of mind-numbing detail about who can sell what and which son inherits who and what can be deducted from the dowry if the a man's wife sells his garden to a maid-servant's unmarried zzzzzzz snore. But then you start getting into a little corporal punishment:

192. If a son of a paramour or a prostitute say to his adoptive father or mother: "You are not my father, or my mother," his tongue shall be cut off.

I can only imagine what they cut off if you sob out, "I didn't ask to be born!" But that's just the start of a section on The Laws of Two Wrongs Making a Right:

193. If the son of a paramour or a prostitute desire his father's house, and desert his adoptive father and adoptive mother, and goes to his father's house, then shall his eye be put out.

194. If a man give his child to a nurse and the child die in her hands, but the nurse unbeknown to the father and mother nurse another child, then they shall convict her of having nursed another child without the knowledge of the father and mother and her breasts shall be cut off.

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

etc. etc. etc.

Hands did not fare well in this era. Physicians in particular seemed to do OK with the shekels, though of course you got more for curing rich people than slaves. Unfortunately, malpractice penalties were a bit more serious:

218. If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off.

"Barbers," who I guess did actual barbering but also were responsible for marking or branding people as slaves, had a lot at stake as well:

226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut the sign of a slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this barber shall be cut off.

And speaking of slaves -- after a lot of crap about various services worth varying amounts of "ka of corn" etc. -- the Code reveals a certain sensitivity to germinating principles of customer service:

278. If any one buy a male or female slave, and before a month has elapsed the benu-disease be developed, he shall return the slave to the seller, and receive the money which he had paid.

That's a relief. On a final melancholy note, the last law of the Code is:

282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.

Why the slaves lose an ear, versus the disloyal adopted child losing the tongue in rule 192, I have no idea. I'm sure Hammurabi had some ideas about the relationships between the crimes and amputations, but in the end, I guess there's only so much stuff to chop off. But our modern options are not so limited. "If a man commit securities fraud in excess of 100,000,000 ka of corn, he shall have his anterior cruciate ligament severed." etc.

Genius really! And it's obvious that we also need to defend the institution of slavery. Sure, sure, I'm aware that an activist, elected Union government interfered with slavery 139 years ago, but c'mon. What's that compared to 5,000 years of glorious history? Just because we've cured benu-disease doesn't mean we have to throw out the slave-baby with the bathwater.

Bush, Kerry Flattened in Cartoonish Steamroller Accident

Taking tomorrow off to cavort and play the fiddle as the city burns to the ground in a spasm of liberal anguish. I'm a liberal too, of course, but I like me some fiddle-playin'. I'll have some more substantive and/or caustic thoughts about The Next Four Years sometime Next Week. In the meantime, have some early linkity-linky-link dumps.

Since I'm stealing so many links from Screenhead, I'm just going to mash them together into a Weekly Best o' Screenhead lump from now on. To wit: yet another installment of Leave It to Bush!, though this time without Gary Busey or ferrets, though it does have the Coz and coke; a site all about the joys of flyin' up in the air tied to a buncha balloons (be sure to check out the intro for amazing photos); a nice compilation of the harm that befalls stick figures; a fun Shockwave game about choppin' off yer fingers; a gallery of sleepy Japanese salaryfolk; the extremely useful Jail Rape Calculator; an infinitely morphed pudgy Asian kid; who took my frog? I'll find my frog; and Allow To Infuse, a site with intricate comics and animations that come across like Chris Ware trapped in corporate drone hell.

WSL? WTF? "Robert Ahbleza," founder of the World Space League, recently spammed me with a link to his site, such as it is. What do the symbols mean? "Man is like 2 dogs fighting over a bone, even though the Big Fat Cow is right next to them they'll fight to the death over that bone." Yes! So true. For entertainment purposes only, as it says, but that's an objective the League has yet to achieve.

James Lileks finally came out with his new book, Interior Desecrations. I spurn the man's conservative ways, but sadly, he remains too funny to resist. Enjoy his supplementary materials as an appetizer.

As someone who was once knocked to the ground and nearly brained by a small goat, I was excited to learn of the Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation, which bills itself as "an informal support group for problems that were the result of traumatic experiences at petting zoos as children." Unfortunately I was attacked when in my early twenties (and by what the foundation calls a "roaming urban goat" no less), so I'm not sure if I can join. (via)

Next Halloween, I'll definitely be making my way to the Warriors Party, where guests are encouraged to come dressed as near-identical members of a themed gang, as in the eponymous film. (via)

And for those thinking of fleeing the country, Harper's runs down the options, including the practicalities involved in fleeing to or founding a micronation. Don't miss the Principality of Sealand, which has already repelled a German-sponsored invasion of rampaging Dutchmen.

Hello, I Must Not Be Going

Well, we're in some pretty shit now ain't we!

I started to rewrite Pat Buchanan's infamous speech from the 1992 Republican convention with some switched proper nouns and updated verbiage, but the joke sort of played itself out. Though it was hard to resist, given that Buchanan refers to that year's Democratic convention in Madison Square Garden, which could be easily imported to trash the 2004 Republican convention in the same venue.

But here's the nut graf anyway. Remember when Republicans were so crazy they were almost cute?

My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.

Ah yes. Well, Pat is pretty much right, damn him, except for the part about who I'm standing with of course. Nowadays Pat almost seems like a centrist. Many of my friends and colleagues made the standard threat about leaving the country if Bush was re-elected. Some are more serious about it than others. But you know what?

I'm not fucking going anywhere.

That's right, I'm not leaving. I don't care if I'm the last card carrying liberal staying home from church on Sunday and making mojitos with free government heroin and aborted baby blood. I'm going to run around shouting about the WTO and consent to a global test on whether I wipe my ass just as I present those very unprotected hindquarters to any terrorist who comes along and blows up fine young Americans, and I will immediately give in to any terrorist demands presented to me in order of appearance. I'm going to pump up the government to its maximum bloated size and raise taxes to 150,000% and mandate that corporations cannot be larger than five union employees and I will lobby to make heterosexual marriage punishable by death. And when you do die, the death tax will be retroactively applied to all your ancestors such that all your possessions and all your children unto the 13th generation will become the property of the Internal Revenue Service. And I will always defend rich trial lawyers and frivolous lawsuits and special interests and the teachers' associations and welfare queens and Willie Hortons and I will throw taxpayer money at any problem just to make it go away. I'll open up the jails and send death-row inmates to staff daycares and public schools even as I replace district attorneys with UN delegates from Libya. Cops won't carry guns but criminals will by force of law, and special detachments of gang members will enforce mandatory gun ownership on other criminals, since the cops will be forced to stay inside their own jail cells reading up on all the statutes that protect the rights of criminals. Because when all rights are outlawed, only outlaws will have rights. You dig it?

But you know what, I might just say all these things one day and then do something else, because I change my mind all the time and don't really believe in anything. Except that this is my America you motherfuckers, and you can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Eat the Vote

Off work today, so I'm free from the usual workplace-boredom motivation to post. But, since I'm footloose and fancy and a little bit free, I thought I'd at least throw something up to commemorate this wondrous day. I'll be scarfing pizza and guzzling beer tonight as the returns come in of course, but I did take time out of my busy non-schedule to go vote. Not a whole lot of partisan commotion here in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I was really looking forward to getting challenged, but no poll challengers could be seen. So I challenged myself, and after a thorough self-criticism session and a little slapping around, I decided I was a legitimate voter. I do feel that I possibly intimidated myself though.

The New York voting booths are decidedly old-school -- boxy metal tanks with dozens of little switches and a giant orange lever to "ka-chung!" your vote right up the butt of the election. Very physical and satisfying. My polling station was PS 9 on 84th Street, an institution which had the diabolical plan of hosting an all-day bake sale contemporaneous with voting. I spotted these "Vote" "Kerry" cupcakes right by the door to the voting-booth room. I pointed out to the bake sale lady that this could be considered electioneering in the polling place, but I offered to "take care of it." Let's just say that a little donation changed hands, and the evidence disappeared. Informal exit polling indicates strong lead for cupcakes. Nap and TV-watching are close behind though.

Go vote.

Tongue-Kiss of Death

Ah yes, an excellent Halloween, largely spent at the Frying Pan, a permanently moored lightship docked just north of Chelsea Piers. The party, hosted by Black Kat, covered the dock and all three decks of the derelict boat, and it was appropriately spooky and moderately dangerous. Costumed revelers were crawling around everywhere, popping unexpectedly out of hatches and clambering along the rails. The main hold of the ship, complete with rusty ductwork, hulking boilers, and industrial DJ, would have been perfect for a David Fincher film. As it was, the evening was jolly and serial-killer free. That I Know Of.

But what of the costumes? The Girlfriend Attorney was The World's Most Docile Hippie, largely due to fatigue and her Christ-like tolerance of our collective knavery. Comment lurker Enrique Baña regurgitated a classic outfit -- some kind of GNR amalgam rockstar, which suits him well. I was the Death Chef, an admittedly flawed but visually striking concept piece. But FPP took the prize as "Cavity Sam," the unfortunate patient from the "Operation" game. As the evening progressed, FPP gradually lost all his surgical attachments, his red nose, his tongs, and finally his hair, rendering him just a guy in a flesh-colored body suit and sneakers. By the end, his proud shout of game slogan "It Takes a Steady Hand!"® had degenerated to a drunkenly slurred "I useta be Operation ..."

Anyway, of course there are photos.