3.5 out of 5

Okay, this is going to be my thing on this blog. It’s not tech or archi-[choose your own clever suffix]. This is my legitimate, ongoing account that God or the Matrix robots or the giant, galactic turtle that the elephants ride on, gave up, a long time ago, the effort to convince us that we do in fact live in a realistic, feasible, meatspace environment governed by logic and reason. That or it’s a witty rant blog. Or neither. So for my first entry, I pursue a fact-of-life/raison d’etre both cherished and embarassing for most of the people who waste their time here. I know most of us have e-mailed about it already, but its absence from this forum, while simultaneously being the most talkable-about recent event, could stand no further.

HOW BAD DOES THE CLONE WARS SUCK.

Did you watch the ebert and roeper review (no ebert for some while, and apparently never again)?

The pertinent quotes:
“I’ve seen lego reenactments of Return of the Jedi on youtube with more going for them”
“A failure to communicate any of the star wars magic to audiences”
“animation looks like woodcuts that failed to get animated is alarmingly mediocre”
“no investment in the new characters, and the familiar characters have never seemed so uninteresting”
“one big dull battle”
“no matter how much or little you know about the Star Wars mythology? No Good.”
“Other than the infamous musical special that ran once in the 70′s, this is one of the more mediocre entries in the Star Wars catalog”
“feels like the clone of a clone of the son of a clone”
“mouths moving, not matched to the dialogue”

in Yoda-speak:
“skip this movie you should”
“sucks this movie does”

“[Fly Me To the Moon] is one of the worst movies of the year in any genre. To have this come out with Clone Wars in the same summer is just cruelty to children everywhere.”

Trust me that that was pretty exhaustive, and watching the review is a little superfluous now.

Here’s another review on aint it cool. superharsh (more interesting than I’m willing to write (oh did I mention I haven’t seen it? Why would I?) and by all accounts dead on.

So the “broken universe” part of this is not that Lucas made another lifeless turd of a movie, it’s this: How is this not accepted, instantly, by every sentient being with the power of sight and/or hearing? It’s still out – I just checked, it’s showing at 4 theaters currently in Lexington alone. That means it will be showing at all of them for at least another week. There just seems to be a disconnect lately (okay, ever since I started paying attention) between basic, verifiable, factual knowledge and public opinion. I still cling to the delusion that we, The Monkeys That Won, have deductive powers that can outdo the pretty lights our plasma screens carpetbomb our brain stems with. But I have less and less evidence to support that delusion every day.

This is most relevant in the political forum – yeah, I’m bringing politics in. It’s my post, suck it. House speaker Nancy Pelosi has been on tour in support of her book, Something Or Other, about how to find your inner strength and don’t give in to pressure around you, to stand up for what you believe in and always make sure to get the scruffy-looking outsider to pitch for your rag-tag baseball team because he’ll turn out to be a good egg in the end and bring in the winning game. When challenged on her “impeachment is off the table” (a.k.a. Thanks For Electing Me, Now Piss Off) stance, her defense is “If somebody had a crime that the president had committed, that would be a different story.” Now, I really do want this to be a mildly amusing post and not bring us all down with political details, but, WHAT THE F***! S***! I mean, seriously, S************! She was elected to stand up to the most criminal administration (whether you believe it’s criminal or not, that’s what her electors believe) in recent memory, she immediately took her personal motivation and dubbed it That Glass of Grape Juice I Spilled On the Floor and Forgot to Mop Up, continued to reach new heights of mediocrity and squander what seemed boundless public willpower, then put out a book about standing up for what’s right and believing in your personal power to affect change. That’s what the book is about. The book she wrote. The book she has the elephants-with-elephantitis-sized balls to talk about in public. I’ve seen her talk about it. She says it without giggling nervously, or her head exploding, or anything.. …. ggggggg gggggg ……… tooo …. mmuuchhhh…… iiiroonnnnnnyyyyy.. cantttt…. pppppproocess….. [no, don't try to put a wallet in my mouth, that's a myth!]

Reboot. You just have to turn off. Seriously – it’s called double-think. We are approaching it so fast it’s ridiculous. Very prominent people are almost daily, and very reliably, discredited. And the knee-jerk reaction is to get someone else to make some VERY LOUD NOISES, someone who in most cases is absolutely transparently owned by Supreme Douche of the Universe Rupert Murdoch, who in turn absolutely transparently benefits from every piece of slathering praise they utter (“What’s that Mr. Murdoch? You say you’d like to own another 20% of the news media market? Well, as an FCC chairman who was put into power to prevent media consolidation, I gotta admit, it’s looking like Stalin was onto something with that state-run media!”) and who makes no sense but gives people a face, on a major station, that says, no, keep believing what you believed yesterday, today didn’t happen, watch some Nascar and go to bed, and it works just well enough to keep the Vast Minority just under critical mass. Discrediting has become discredited. Somehow we’ve reached a point where facts just plain do not matter – admit it, you see evidence of it everyday. You wake up and learn that Dick Cheney eats babies for breakfast, lunch, and depening on how taxing his day of redacting all copies of “My Pet Goat” has been, sometimes supper too, but by the end of the day you’ve received multiple, incontrovertible accounts of public opinion that show that baby-eating is widely accepted by more than half of the American population, and has, in fact, been a regular practice since started by Teddy Roosevelt. “Gosh, I’m glad I became more informed on the issue before my moral outrage from earlier today, which seems so disproportionate now, got the better of me.” That’s not the way it’s supposed to work! That is the g** d*** evil overlord robot masters pulling a degaussing magnet on your f****** immortal soul!

Please, help me fix the universe. Keep the brain stem at the bottom where it’s supposed to be and let’s give the higher functions a chance for a while.

-c