Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

What I Watched -- Avatar

Again, I ask: what was all the fuss about? The movie world was all a-twitter (literally and figuratively) with buzz about the wonders of this movie.

I will start out with the best thing: the CGI is amazing. Even on my little, old school TV, the picture was crisp incredibly detailed. Really, more detailed than it should have been, actually; it seemed a little overdone. But a visual field trip, nonetheless.

Now the worst thing: the story was totally unoriginal. Seems sort of odd to say that, considering that the movie is about 8-foot-tall blue creatures called the Na'vi who live on a planet called Pandora. But it seemed to me that there were some very obvious copycat moves taken from other movies that are similar somehow:

- Apocalypse Now: Jake Sully, Avatar's main character, keeps track of his interactions with the Na'vi via a video diary. His narration is terribly reminiscent of Captain Willard's voice-over recounting of his travels up the Nung River. Same style of speech, same meter, same forlorn attitude.

- Lord of the Rings Trilogy: practically identical stories. In LOTR, Sauron is the evil lord who is trying to get the one ring and control the world. There are a number of clans -- humans (the two main crews are from Rohan and Gondor), elves (from Rivendell and the woodland realm), hobbits, dwarves, wizards, and any number of wild creatures. In the end, they all come together to defeat Sauron in an effort save their collective cultures.

In Avatar, the humans are the bad guys who are trying to mine for the valuable and appropriately named mineral Unobtanium, the biggest deposit of which is under the (also appropriately named) Hometree. The whole thing devolves into an "I will destroy your society" campaign. So the Na'vi do exactly what the characters in LOTR did: they seek out other clans like them to join in the fight against the humans. (One of these clans is the "Horse People." Rohirrim, anyone?) And they all fight together to try to save themselves.

Oh, and the Na'vi ride wild animals. And there are flying, bird/pterodactyl-like creatures.

The Na'vi in Avatar are very similar to the elves in LOTR. And also, in some ways, to Native Americans. They live as one with nature; they hear the trees talk; the land is precious to them for what it is, not what it's worth.

And let's not forget the man/machine-emerging-from-a-flaming-vehicle nod to Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

At least I have to give James Cameron credit for pirating from good movies. He could have picked Dude, Where's My Car? instead, but he restrained himself. (Thanks, James.) On the whole, aside from a few misplaced political references which were so blatantly trying to make a point that they really broke up the flow of the movie, it was enjoyable to watch. But I'm sure glad he lost Best Picture to Kathryn Bigelow; her movie was much, much better.

But will you read it?

A lady came into my bookstore the other night, to buy The Procrastinator's Handbook: Mastering the Art of Doing It Now.

Don't get me wrong; I admire her for trying to correct her flaws. But this particular flaw begs the following questions: if her problem is really so bad that she needs to buy a book to tell her how to fix it, will she actually read the book? And even if she does, will she implement its suggestions?

And only tangentially, I wonder how long she was thinking about buying a book about procrastination before she actually did it.

Does anyone know where Montcoal, West Virginia, is?

PC Warning: parts of this post may seem insensitive. I mean no disrespect; I'm just trying to put some things in perspective.

Yesterday, Mom sent me a link to this article: Relatives Fear the Dead Oil Rig Workers Are Forgotten. 11 rig workers were killed in the wellhead blowout on the Deep Water Horizon.

I can see how, after enormous media-saturated events like 9/11, the Sago Mine Disaster in 2006, and the countless recitations of the number of dead and injured soldiers being sent home from the Middle East, the families would expect to receive a little bit more attention due to the death of their relatives.

However, there are two things I am left to wonder about:

First, at a time like this, do you really want media attention? Wouldn't you want to spend this time with your family, unmolested by outsiders sticking a camera in your face?

And second, 29 miners were killed at the Upper Big Branch Mining Disaster in West Virginia, which occurred only 15 days prior to the rig explosion. What about their families? Don't you think they feel forgotten? At least people are still talking about the oil spill. I've heard nothing about the miners and their families lately; the only mention I've heard of Massey Energy (the mine owner) lately is in the same sentence with BP and TransOcean, by way of a reference to poor workplace safety standards.

What I'm Reading Now -- In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

As best as I can tell, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, the "debut novel" of Deniyal Mueenuddin, is not actually a novel. It seems to be more a collection of short stories with some overlapping characters, a la Olive Kitteridge.

This is another of the books I heard about on NPR which sounded interesting enough for me to give it a try. The author is Pakistani by birth, but attended school in the US. He got his law degree and lived here for some time, as I understand it. He returned to Pakistan to address some issues his family was having with their land. Those encounters provide inspiration for many of the stories (again, as I understand it).

I hope I can finish it in the 2 weeks allowed by the library....

Words Women Use

I have thus far refrained from posting random e-mail forwards that I get. And for the most part, I will continue to do so (refrain, that is). This one, with a few minor edits of my own, seemed so on-point/useful/instructive/helpful, that I thought I would share. I'm doing it for the greater good.

(1) Fine
This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes
If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing
This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead
This is a dare, not permission. Don't do it!

(5) Loud Sigh
This is not actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3.)

(6) That's Okay
This is one of the most dangerous statements a woman can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks
A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. Unless she says "thanks a lot," which is sarcasm; she is not thanking you at all. Do not say "you're welcome," because it will bring on #8).

(8) Whatever
This is a woman's way of saying F--- You! (The verbal counterpart to #5.)

(9) Don't worry about it, I got it
Another dangerous statement, meaning there is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to #3. And #1.

I hope you all have found this post instructive, and have learned something from it. If not, please refer to #8.

What I Watched -- Empire Records

Ahh. There's nothing like a classic mid-90s teenage angst movie. As those movies go, this one is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I watched it a hundred times in the mid-90s.

Seeing it again this weekend was interesting, both because it now seems much more teenager-y than it did when I was actually a teenager (as with most things designed for that age group), but also because the version I saw included a number of scenes that had been cut from the original DVD release. Many they had been wise to do without all those years ago. Other scenes, especially the ones about Lucas and Joe, actually add something of minor substance to the movie.

Joe is a has-been drummer who now manages a record store (a la High Fidelity) and a crew of rowdy employees, Lucas among them. Lucas (ever the Zen philosopher) is closing the store one night, realizes Joe is in negotiations to turn the store into a franchise of a major chain store due to money problems, and takes all the cash in the safe to Atlantic City -- where he promptly loses it. The rest of the movie is the falling apart and coming together of the employees, their friends, and the kid who tries to rob the place, in an attempt to save Empire Records ("open 'til midnight") from becoming a Music Town.

In watching it, look for early Liv Tyler, Ethan Embry, Robin Tunney, and Renee Zellweger (who didn't look quite so strange then). Also stars Anthony LaPaglia as Joe, Maxwell Caulfield (of Grease 2 fame) as the autograph-signing and terribly vain Rex Manning, and the even-then-strange-looking Debi Mazar.

We are dumber than a colony of ants

Yesterday I was listening to an archived episode of Radiolab. It's a really neat show on WNYC (podcast downloadable via iTunes) about all sorts of curiosities in life. For example, I listened to one a while back about the War of the Worlds phenomenon. Did you know that the Orson Welles radio broadcast was not the only one to cause mass hysteria? Basically to find out if they could recreate the situation, radio stations in Santiago, Quito, and Buffalo gave it a shot. And they all succeeded! And we're not in the 1930s anymore, Toto.

But I digress. That is just one example. The show I was listening to yesterday was about emergence, or the idea that order can come out of totally unplanned and uncoordinated actions. And even though it totally does not contribute to my ultimate question, I will tell you about this, because it's interesting. Did you know that there are fireflies in Thailand who, without any guidance from any sort of leader, will all start blinking in sequence? It's true!

Similarly, though, and relating to my question, are ants. As individuals, they are stupid. The scientist they interview said she would watch ants fighting over a twig, because ant A wanted to go one direction, and ant B wanted to go the other direction. So they both went nowhere, and just played tug-of-war with the twig. So, they were stupid. The whole group of ants, on the other hand, was amazing. They appeared totally organized and set up a colony. (Think of each individual ant like a neuron in your brain. No single neuron contains the blueprint for an entire thought, but somehow all the neurons come together, and there is your brilliant idea. As with ants, no single ant creates the blueprint for the entire colony, but somehow all the individual ants come together, and a colony is born.)

The same is true for bees. Even though there is a queen, she's not like the Queen of Hearts, giving orders and shouting at subjects and throwing people out of Wonderland. No, the queen bee's job is basically just to make baby bees. And the job for the male drones is to be flying sperm missiles. They mate mid-air with the queen and then fall out of the sky, dead. But the point is, there is no one directing traffic, telling the queen when to fly or telling the drones which one is the queen, or telling them how to do their business. They just each do their own thing, and then - BAM! - they have a colony. Totally on their own.

Then there's the adage "a person is smart, people are dumb." Except that sometimes the exact opposite is true. Like the college class which was asked to guess the number of jellybeans in a bowl. No one, not even the smartest student, was terribly close to the actual number. But the average of everyone's guesses? Pretty darn close. The same is true when people were asked to guess the weight of an ox. No one was terribly close. But the group average: 1987 pounds. Actual weight: 1988 pounds. Not bad. So what have we learned from this? An individual may be way out there, but a lot of way-out-there individuals might actually be pretty close to right.

And this, folks, is the genius of Google. (Yes, I just linked to Google. Again.) The Google guys harness the power of the totally random, stupid, out-there website inquiries made by individuals. Every time you do a Google search and then click on a link to a web page, that page gets a vote. It moves higher in the list. Pages that have a lot of votes have, in turn, increased voting power for their outbound links. That is to say, an outbound link to Website X from the highly-rated Website A is better for Website X (counts as more votes) than an identical outbound link to Website X from the poorly-rated Website Z.

But this is where we differ from ants. And where my question FINALLY shows up! People learned how Google works, and started to manipulate it -- we are cheats and spoilers. Individuals wanting to improve their own ranking will "advertise" by posting a link to their own page in the comments section on a highly-rated website (news websites, popular blogs, etc.). People are only out for themselves, and don't really care that they are mucking up the collective wisdom of the group, mucking up Google's ability to return accurate results to our search inquiries, and mucking up our ability to mine the Internet for information.

But what's worse, is that sometimes people don't even have the motivation to benefit themselves (e.g. for advertising). Sometimes, people just do this to make a statement or to mess up everyone else, with no greater goal in mind.

Ants don't do that. Even though sometimes they do stupid things like fighting over a twig and going nowhere, they don't do destructive things that totally muck up the works just for the sake of doing destructive things.

I propose this: let's collectively, all of us, try to be ants.

Happy Birthday, E!

Hooray for bowling! What time should we meet?

Happy Birthday, L!

Can't wait to see you for dinner!