The next adventure of the fedora-wearing archeologist will be titled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hmm, I don’t know what I think about that. It doesn’t have the zazz of Raiders of the Lost Ark; it has the feel of a title that was written by committee. Let’s hope the script for the movie itself isn’t quite as awkward.
The city of San Francisco is now getting into the act of providing health care to the uninsured. The new program, Healthy San Francisco, provides a decent set of benefits, including coverage for preventative care, hospitalizations, and prescription drugs. It’s a novel approach, but I doubt it could be easily replicated in other cities. San Francisco has a strong tax base, a wealth of medical providers, and a population that already has a high degree of health care coverage. Places like Oklahoma City and Biloxi don’t have the same resources available to them. But it’s another example of states and municipalities implementing creative stopgap measures to the health care dilemma while waiting for a paralyzed Congress to come up with a more lasting solution.
If anybody is interested in buying a used computer, I’m going to be selling mine in the next few weeks as I prepare to build a new system. The specs:
I’ll even do a clean install of Windows XP and I’ll clean the dust out of it. It’s a solid computer that will serve just fine for most everyday tasks. I’m asking for $200, but make me an offer.
I’m in the midst of backing up data to my new external drive, but I’ve posted some light reading over on the BBC. It is guaranteed to give you the warm fuzzies. Enjoy.
Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and many other books, died last week. Wrinkle was one of my first tastes of science fiction and I remember being seriously creeped out by the Man with the Red Eyes. The book had that funky late-Sixties psychedelic vibe that you just can’t find in Harry Potter. I have the urge to go to the library, find the book, and shove it into the hands of the first awkward preadolescent I see.
When Al Franken first decided to get into the Senate race, one concern that many living room pundits (including myself) expressed was that he might have difficulty connecting with the good folks of this state. While I think those concerns still have validity, the latest Rasmussen poll shows that Franken has substantially closed the gap with our incumbent senator. Coleman’s numbers are under fifty percent against both Franken and Mike Ciresi, an attorney with deep pockets, which clearly marks him as endangered. With the election still over a year away, Coleman has to be thinking that his best shot of winning is to tack left of Bush. He’s already backing away from the president’s “war now, war forever” strategy. Before the year is over, he’ll probably make some carefully modulated noises about health care reform. But Coleman lacks something that his DFL opponent, whether it’s Franken or Ciresi will have in ample supply: conviction.
Tomorrow, I respond to the gentleman who e-mailed me requesting that I prove that I’m not, in fact, a rogue artificial intelligence living inside his computer.
3:10 to Yuma wastes no time in reminding the viewer that the Old American West was not a pleasant place. And for the next two hours, the movie treads even further into the bleak places of the landscape and the human heart. Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a struggling Arizona rancher and wounded Civil War vet who decides to earn some much-needed cash by joining an ad hoc posse to escort notorious bad guy Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to a train that will take him to Yuma to face trial and certain execution. Wade is a charming sociopath who’s fond of quoting Scripture and sketching the women he beds and he wastes no time in plotting various ways to escape his captors. Both Crowe and Bale do a fine job here, giving nuance and depth to the stereotypical archetypes of the Western hero and villain.
The ending is something of a foregone conclusion, especially if you’re familiar with the conventions of the modern western. But it’s difficult to resist the movie’s gritty take on the genre’s familiar trappings. Stagecoach robberies. Cold-hearted bounty hunters. Gunfights in desolate little towns. None of these carry the odor of been-there-done-that. In fact, I’m willing to bet that this movie will spark a revival of the big-screen western, but any successors will be hard-pressed to match this film’s pitch-perfect mixture of plot and performance.
A few of my conservative friends (okay, one) are rejoicing at Fred Thompson’s official entry into the presidential campaign. Many conservatives are hoping that he can channel Reagan’s ghost and bring salvation to a foundering political party. I’ll say this right now: if Thompson gets the Republican nomination, I’ll eat my die-cast model of the starship Enterprise. Reagan’s success had as much to do with post-Carter malaise and a swing in the political mood of the country as with the man’s own considerable political skills. Thompson may know how to mimic Reagan’s stage presence and bonhomie, but the illusion is shattered as soon as he opens his mouth. Get this: he claims that Iraqi Sunnis are turning against Al-Qaeda because Al-Qaeda won’t let them smoke. Come again?
Thompson is the candidate for those voters who think that the policies of the last six years have worked out just fine. For Republicans who are leery of the current front-runners and who are searching for someone to lead into the final skirmishes of the culture wars, Thompson is probably their man. Unfortunately for Thompson, those voters are a dwindling minority.
“Finally,” I thought as I read about the release of the massively endowed and oh-so-very shiny iPod Classic. “Something that can hold my complete collection of Eastern European post-electro-neo-punk/emo bootlegs, which will serve as a nice soundtrack while I employ said iPod’s Coverflow function to browse through my extensive photographic library of scorching hot granny porn. I might even have room for a couple episodes of Battlestar Galactica. You know, just in case I get bored.”