Some days you just want to veg out

After a long night with less sleep than I would really have preferred, followed by a long day of uncooperative and disappointing clients being deposed, getting soaked in a sudden thunderstorm, and pummelled by oppressive heat, I just want to goof off when I get home. Fortunately, the grass is heavy and wet from the squall line that ran through the area earlier, so I have a good excuse not to mow the grass (and the front lawn's in good shape anyway). Also fortunately, The Wife just wanted to goof off too; she has been puttering around a little bit upstairs but also wanted to get a quick dinner out and watch TV for a while. So I played a silly video game on the computer while she watched a TV show about buying a house or redecorating a house or something like that, and we cleaned up a bit to get the house in shape for my mom staying over tomorrow night before her flight back to Connecticut. I owe the blog a book review of Eragon, but I'm just not motivated to do it right now. Later. Saturday, probably. Anyway, it's time to shut down the shop for the evening.

Ten Thousand Spoons When All You Need is a Knife

Justice David Souter wrote the majority opinion in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, a very disturbing recent case about which I have blogged recently. The case is disturbing to me and many others because it justifies the taking of private property under the Fifth Amendment for no better reason than that a local government thinks that redevelopment of a particular area might be good for the economy, and that shouldn't be a good enough reason to take someone's home from them without their consent and generally without paying them what the property is really worth, and give that property to another private person (who is likely to be politically well-connected).

Justice O'Connor began her dissent by quoting Calder v. Bull, a case from 1798, but did not include quite enough of the language. I would have quoted Justice Samuel Chase's opinion more fully than she:

I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a State Legislature, or that it is absolute and without control; although its authority should not be expressly restrained by the Constitution, or fundamental law, of the State. The people of the United States erected their Constitutions, or forms of government, to establish justice, to promote the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty; and to protect their persons and property from violence. The purposes for which men enter into society will determine the nature and terms of the social compact; and as they are the foundation of the legislative power, they will decide what are the proper objects of it: The nature, and ends of legislative power will limit the exercise of it. This fundamental principle flows from the very nature of our free Republican governments, that no man should be compelled to do what the laws do not require; nor to refrain from acts which the laws permit. There are acts which the Federal, or State, Legislature cannot do, without exceeding their authority. There are certain vital principles in our free Republican governments, which will determine and over-rule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power; as to authorize manifest injustice by positive law; or to take away that security for personal liberty, or private property, for the protection whereof of the government was established. An ACT of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority. The obligation of a law in governments established on express compact, and on republican principles, must be determined by the nature of the power, on which it is founded.

A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean. A law that punished a citizen for an innocent action, or, in other words, for an act, which, when done, was in violation of no existing law; a law that destroys, or impairs, the lawful private contracts of citizens; a law that makes a man a Judge in his own cause; or a law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with SUCH powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. The genius, the nature, and the spirit, of our State Governments, amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation; and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The Legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes; and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right, and prohibit what is wrong; but they cannot change innocence into guilt; or punish innocence as a crime; or violate the right of an antecedent lawful private contract; or the right of private property.

3 Dall. (3 U.S.) 386, 387-8 (emphases added). This, sadly, no longer seems to be the law of the land, thanks to what is widely believed to be a switched vote by Justice Souter. So it's supremely ironic that Justice Souter's own home may be subject to condemnation for economic redevelopment purposes. Granted, the proposal seems to be mean-spiritedly motivated by someone as upset as I about the Kelo decision, but it amply illustrates the reasons why this new opinion represents a departure from our traditional notions of justice and property rights.

I'm going to take back some of the things I said about Canada

Seriously, though, if only our political leaders were as enlightened as their Canadian counterparts. I predict that this new law will have a negligible impact on the social, political, economic, or religious makeup of our neighbor to the north.

Fall of the Roman Empire

The Wife is reading one of my favorite books, Rvbicon, about one of my favorite subjects. It's tremendously exciting to see her so interested in something that I am so passionate about and have spent so much time studying and contemplating. I hope she wants to talk about it some more tonight when we turn in.

I'm also excited to be able to treat her to some nice things tomorrow for her birthday. I took her shopping tonight, which she liked, and hopefully tomorrow she will like the things I have prepared for her.

Target

Why is it that a trip to Target, or for that matter Wally World, always seems to set us back at least a C-note?

The Ten Commandments as Law

Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down two cases regarding the posting of the Ten Commandments on government property. However, one of my intellectual heroes suggested more than two years ago that we bear in mind that very few of the Commandments are enforceable laws at all.

Looking for a second vehicle

The time has come to acquire a second vehicle. The Wife and I have been getting by with just one for some time now and while that is not a huge burden, it is inconvenient. So I'm looking around. The big question is what kind of a vehicle do we want? A small, fuel-efficient car? Good on gas, but when you live out in the sticks, like we do, you need to haul stuff around. A pickup truck? Perhaps a good choice, but a smaller SUV might be a better option than that. Nothing extravagant either way, as we will certainly want to get it paid off quickly. But we also want something safe. I want something that will be low-maintenance since it drives me apeshit when things don't work right. What will be best from an insurance perspective? Oh, so many issues.

Philosophical question

Is man created in God's image, or is God created in man's image?

After much contemplation and deep thought on the subject, I find that I am not a believer in God. In that, I know that I am very much in the minority. Still, I find myself incapable of the act of faith necessary to maintain a belief in a deity. I need proof, and proof is the anthithesis of faith.

Still, even if you do believe in God, then you must realize that the only way that God is ever presented, discussed, evaluated, contemplated, or proselytized is in anthropomorphic terms. Most theists concede that such a vision of the divine is inadequate and maintain that God transcends human thought, that we mortals can at best only get a shadowy, imperfect glimpse of what truly exists. If so, then any attempt to describe God in human language, or to relate to God through human thought, is necessarily bound to fail because it is necessarily limited to human experience. So the only God that can have meaning for humans is not the reality of what God is (assuming God exists in the first place, which I do not). So then is not every human vision of God imperfect, or indeed, false?

Movie Review: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

There's a place in this world for goofy, dippy, mindless comedies. There's also a place for silly satires of other movies or even making fun of TV shows. And there's even a place for Saturday Night Live skits to grow and become funny movies (although generally SNL skits are based on one joke, and therefore turn into bad movies.) Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is none of these. Sadly, it is also not very funny. My following review contains heavy plot and joke spoilers, so if you do intend on wasting your time with this dreck, you may want to stop reading now to preserve such humorous moments as the movie will offer you.

Will Ferrell plays San Diego's top-rated anchorman in the mid-1970's. His "Action News Team" consists of sports reporter David Koechner, investigative reporter Paul Rudd, and barely-intelligent-enough-to-stand-erect weatherman Steve Carell. Everything is right with Ferrell's world -- he is popular, a big hit with the ladies, and no one around him dares to burst his bubble or otherwise puncture his ego. That is, until news producer Fred Willard rocks Ferrell's world by announcing that they will be joined on the air by (*gasp*) a woman reporter, played by the lovely Christina Applegate, trying her hardest to channel the spirit of Mary Tyler Moore. She doesn't pull it off, though, and part of the problem with her efforts is that, unlike other elder stateswomen of comedy, Mary Tyler Moore isn't dead yet. A few halting attempts at B-plots are inserted but largely forgotten. A series of generally dumb visual gags and unfunny jokes unfurl as Ferrell's companions sexually harass Appelgate, Ferrell successfully dates her, then they break up, then they snipe andfight at one another, and of course, eventually reconcile.

The funniest scenes could have been expanded upon. For instance, there is a scene at the end of the news broadcast, when the microphones are cut off but the camera remains on the two anchors, who appear to be sitting next to each other discussing the news -- they are actually insulting and threatening each other in increasingly vulgar ways, while the camera cuts back and forth between the serious-looking end credits of the news and what is actually happening in the studio. This is funny. Appelgate's ultimate act of sabotage against Ferrell is also quite funny. Sadly, there is not enough of this sort of thing in the movie.

Instead, we get boner jokes, bizarre phrases ("By Odin's Raven!") and unfunny running gags. I think we're supposed to think that the mens' mustaches are funny in a mock-the-seventies sort of way, but we've seen so many funny mock-the-seventies movies already that writers ought to know that they'll need to dig deeper than that for a laugh. In particular, it is not funny to see Steve Carrell divorce himself from his smarmy Daily Show persona to play such a complete idiot.

What happened here, I think, is that a bunch of comedy writers got together to write a movie and started working out jokes amongst themselves. After a while, they delve into situational humor, (comedy-writer-ese for "we thought it was funny when we were talking about it" or "it made us laugh and we don't care if the audience is too dumb to think it's funny.") and from there it turned into metacomedy. Metacomedy is the opposite of funny since it is a story about something that is supposed to be funny. But if you deconstruct comedy or any other intense emotion enough, it loses its intensity and therefore stops being funny. There are even references in the script made by the title character to this kind of excessive deconstruction (which critical language theorists would spell as "deconstruction," if expressing negativity about the act of deconstruction were not fundamentally contradictory to their world view) sapping whatever humor out of a joke there might have been in the first place. So you see, this sort of stuff just isn't funny.

The outtakes during the end credits were much funnier than the movie itself. Not worth the price of a rental, though, and not even worth putting up with the rest of the movie.

Battery acid

The new lawn mower battery works like a charm -- the mower started up and ran as soon as I got the new battery in it.

As it turns out, battery acid eats right through cotton, given enough time. There's a big ol' hole in my T-shirt that started to unravel and tore all on its own. So far, my skin is not reacting to the battery acid any more than a light itch, easily ignored. But these shirts are rags now.

More fireflies

By the time I finished mowing the lawn tonight, the fireflies were coming out of wherever it is they rest during the day, to flash and look for mates. They seem to synch up with each other after a while, so suddenly it'll be like a hundred flash bulbs going off in a stadium at the same time. It's really quite spectacular.

A New Shirt

At lunch today, I went out to replace the old, dead lawn mower battery. That was relatively painless since I know of a small motors parts dealership near downtown. The problem was that carrying the battery back to the car, I spilled battery acid all over my chest. It wasn't strong enough to burn me (although my skin does itch a little where the spill happened, I think it's a psychosomatic reaction), but it was strong enough to leave a really ugly stain all over my shirt and the T-shirt underneath. The golf shirt that bore the brunt of the acid spill is wrecked and I'm going to have to throw it away.

The shirt was not one that I was particularly in love with, and I'm pretty confident that The Wife won't mind a bit that it's been ruined. More annoying was the fact that I had to buy a replacement shirt and there's pretty much no shopping anywhere near downtown where I could get a cheap golf shirt. The nearest place I could find was Rocky Top Books near the university, where the only golf shirt there was $55.00. That came out to just over sixty bucks after taxes. They had lots of crew-neck T-shirts, but that's a little too casual for office wear, even with my new policy of casual dress when there are no clients to be seen or lawyers to meet. But given the time (I had been out of the office for over an hour looking for a replacement shirt), it was that or come back to the office with a shirt dissolving before everyone's eyes from spilled battery acid.

Note, however, that I am not an alum of UT and do not claim to be affiliated or connected to UT in any way. Maybe The Wife will go there, but until then, I'm just a local who roots for the sports teams when they happen to be on -- and now, spending too much money on the clothing.

Fire in the hole!

Saturday The Wife and I went with friends Pam and Andrew to Dollywood. It was Pam's birthday and that was what she said she wanted to do. It turned out to be a very good choice.

Dollywood compares very favorably to Knott's Berry Farm, in terms of its size, ambition, and enjoyability. I remember when I was younger, Knott's was a good place to go because it was easier to get into and a little bit cheaper than Disneyland, and at that time had not yet been overrun with street gangs so it was still a family-friendly place to be. At least on the day we went, the park was not terribly crowded, except for the area where the tamer kiddie-rides were located (which unfortunately was the first area we visited).

The pièce de résistance had to have been the Blazing Fury. Dollywood's "answer" to Space Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean, this indoor roller coaster was themed around a fire in a mining town. The super-cheesey animatronics and tepid coasts were nothing compared to the theme -- "Fire in the hole!" -- repeated endlessly throughout the ride.

I think the best ride was the Mountain Slidewinder. The four of us got loaded up on a flat rubber raft and put in a twisty tube with water sliding down it. The effect was much like a bobsled or a luge. We also got very wet, on that ride as well as several others. We enjoyed the eagle exhibit, and the food was reasonably priced (by theme park standards).

I would go back to Dollywood, but not soon; it's the sort of thing you do occasionally. You can read more about The Wife's description of the event here, and Pamela's here, hopefully Andrew will add his report soon, too.

Inactive Blog? Or Inactive Lawn Mower?

The Wife complained last night that I hadn't blogged in a while. I've been quite busy going with friends for their birthday celebration, getting in trouble, entertaining my mother who is visiting in town, cleaning up dog shit from the front yard, making The Wife her favorite breakfast, and trying to fix the goddamned lawn mower. Again.

This time the battery gave out on me. I spent two and a half hours taking it apart to check two fuses to make sure that they hadn't blown. I was unsuccessful. One fuse is relatively easy to check by removing the side panel, but the other one is embedded, upside-down, inside the tractor's housing and cannot be accessed from any angle. Minimal charge is getting to the starter, however, so I strongly suspect that the fuses are not the problem. The advantage is that I was able to ignore the "DO NOT REMOVE" hazards all over the battery and remove the battery from the tractor itself, so this afternoon I can go take it to have it charged.

Fresh fruit

Summertime is great for all the fresh fruit. I was insensitive to fresh fruit in California since it was available year-round. Here, though, really good fruit is seasonal. Right now there's a lot of it -- apples and pears abound, and melons are coming in. Best of all, we have wild blackberries and strawberries growing out on the grounds of The Estate At Louisville, and soon The Wife and I will go out and harvest some of the blackberries, and probably eat them right there in the field until our fingers and lips are stained purple.

Right now I'm eating a Pink Lady apple and a Bosc pear, cut up and soaked in lemon water, enjoyed with a glass of Chianti. Traditionally, I like the red pears better than the Boscs, but these Boscs are really sweet and have exactly the right kind of crumbly-sugar texture that I love in a precisely-ripened pear. The Wife doesn't like pears; she says it's because when she was a kid she was too impatient to wait for the pear to soften so she ate them when they were still crunchy.

I also normally prefer the Fuji or the Gala to other kinds of apples. But these Pink Lady apples are really good, too. I also like the Granny Smith and Pippins a lot. I guess these are all the more tart of the apple varieties; I like the Rome, Red Delicious, and Yellow varieties less since they are sweeter, larger, and less firm.

The sweet fruit goes well with the dry wine; I know traditionally one should have a white wine with fruit but rule #1 of wine drinking is to have what you enjoy, and rule #2 is to have it with food you enjoy. Rule #3 is to share it with people you enjoy, but The Wife is upstairs attending her online class, so I'll have to forego that rule for a while.

Jack Knows Music

When I was in Los Angeles and San Diego recently, I was treated to a new radio station, "Jack-FM." The slogan is "We play what we want." That turns out to be a mix of some "classic" rock from the late 60's and 70's, some disco, a lot of 80's and 90's pop and rock, some more recent stuff, and a few oddball songs, including some hip-hop and some real oldies from early 60's thrown in for variety. There is no DJ and the station identification bumpers are short and have a cynical attitude. "We're going to play some commercials now. Because we like money."

I heard a profile of "Jack FM" on NPR a couple weeks ago, and it's not quite as advertised -- but it is a dramatically expanded playlist, aimed directly at the demographic group of which I am a member. About the closest thing to it that I can get here in Knoxville is the "Party Music" station on the cable TV. I wish there were "Jack FM" here. The music mix is really good, which is the real reason to listen.

Fireflies

I really like all the fireflies out and about this time of year. I took the dogs outside to play fetch just now and there are fireflies all over the place.

Movie Review: Bowfinger

If you know anything about Hollywood, you will really enjoy this smart, snarky, well-paced comedy from 1999 directed by the almost-always enjoyable Frank Oz. My review contains some plot spoilers, but relatively few joke spoilers, and the jokes are the real reason to see the movie.

Steve Martin plays a ne'er-do-well wanna-be movie producer who has perfected the art of the hustle but has yet to actually make a movie. His hangers-on includes the brilliant Christine Baranski, playing an over-the-top dramatic act-tor (who is considering leaving Hollywood for a bit part in a production of Cats in Edmonton since she hasn't found any work in so long), his friend, confidante, and cameraman Jamie Kennedy, a part-time receptionist/accountant, a guy who washes executives' cars at a studio, and an adorable and under-used collie. His accountant writes what sounds like the worst science fiction movie ever and he decides to sink his every last dollar and pull every last trick in the book to make it into a movie. To get the project started, he has to convince a cynical studio executive played by Robert Downey, Jr. and the world's biggest movie star, played by Eddie Murphy, (cast alongside a very funny and exapserated-looking Barry Newman) to participate. He fails miserably, but by then has picked up the wide-eyed Heather Graham and hired a crew (of sorts) so he can't stop now -- and he decides to go ahead and make the movie anyway. According to IMDB, the movie was "Based on a real incident in 1927. A Russian filmmaker covertly shot footage of the vacationing Mary Pickford, and fashioned an entire film around the footage, creating the illusion that Pickford was actually starring in this Russian film." So that tells you how they get around the big movie star turning down the role and it sets up one of the running gags in the movie.

The movie is funny on at least three levels. First, the direct jokes are all quite enjoyable and sometimes riotously funny. Eddie Murphy's crossing the freeway, Steve Martin's lunch at the Ivy with Robert Downey, Jr., and several of the scenes where the movie was actually filmed all have good visual jokes presented deadpan with impeccable timing. Perhaps the most glib of all personalities in Hollywood, only Steve Martin could have pulled off this role with such credibility. Second, there are jokes about how the entertainment industry works, why so many movies are as bad as they are. Frank Oz and Steve Martin are both ideally suited for taking these kinds of shots at Hollywood from within it. The casting call scenes, the way in which the script is revised as the filming goes forward, and the way that the crew is assembled are all played for laughs -- but you're left with a sneaking suspicion that the humor is based more in truth than you would like to imagine. And wow, does the movie-within-the-movie looks really, really bad. Finally, there are the Hollywood in-jokes, which may be the most funny part of the movie. On this level, Heather Graham's character is based on Steve Martin's old girlfriend Anne Heche, and it's evident that Martin has a wicked sense of humor about that chapter of his life. The transparent and scathing references to the Church of Scientology are hilarious (as is the apparent analogy of Eddie Murphy's role to a prominent Scientologist).

I have nothing bad to say about this movie. It's packed with references to other movies and the celebrity gossip that no one seems able to avoid. The comedy is well-written by Martin, well-timed by Oz, and well-played by the cast. It is consistently funny throughout; an uneven pace or an uneven spread of jokes is a big danger with a movie this ambitious. But Bowfinger really pulls it off. It's very, very funny.

Dollywood

Tomorrow, The Wife and I are planning on going to Dollywood with some friends. I've never been, and I'm expecting things to be good and cheesy.

Pop Up Ads

I run both Ad Aware and Spybot periodically. However, I can't stop pop-up ads from spontaneously appearing. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can take more aggressive action here?