Veterinarian Sign

I guess this local vet's sign is equally good advice for over excited puppies or older men suffering from prostate issues. In either event, though, I don't want to be the one tasked with clean up.

Movie Reviews: Death Wish (2018), Midnighters

Death Wish
directed by Eli Roth

This is a remake of the iconic 1974 Charles Bronson movie. Some people who share some of my political affinities often sneer at vigilante films, thinking them by definition fascist, racist, authoritarian, gun-crazed, misogynist, sexist, and any sort of other "bad thought" insult they can hurl. I don't see things that way. I think that everyone has the natural right to defend themselves by any means necessary. As we saw with the attack on Rosa Parks there are many folks out there who will hurt anyone. I think that we all must build a world in which fewer people think that crime pays. I also know that we only have one life. We don't owe anyone that life. We need not apologize in defending ourselves from criminals no matter their race, ethnicity or nationality. 

So I have no particular brief against vigilante films. I think that most people can differentiate between entertainment and reality. Unfortunately, this film didn't touch the same nerve endings the original movie did. Crime in 2018 is not as high as it was in 1974. The original film was more explicit in the horrors visited upon the Kersey women. That's, perhaps thankfully, missing here. So there's not really the same visceral fist pumping reaction when the Kersey patriarch starts shooting down bad guys.

Racist Fireman Attacks Black Child

Racism is a moral sickness. But I feel no pity for those who suffer from it. They are too busy trying to make my life and the lives of those who look like me, hell. I believe that you have the right to think or believe whatever you want. But when those thoughts or beliefs become insults or physical assaults then I also believe that it's incumbent on everyone else to teach you or as some would say "learn you" a sharp lesson of the type Tywin Lannister might impart.

A White firefighter from Kansas recently decided that it was the correct thing to do to shout racial slurs at a lost Black toddler and spit at him.
I think actions like this show that racism isn't going away with the younger generation. It's not based on "economic anxiety". It's based on pure hatred. 

OVERLAND PARK, KS (KCTV) -
Police say a racial slur was hurled at a child at a Hooters off Metcalf Avenue.
KCTV5 News spoke to a witness who was at the restaurant and he said he was dumbfounded by a statement the firefighter made to police. “He basically said get that little ‘blank’ up off the floor,” the witness recounted. “The n-word started to get thrown around.”

The comment left the witness speechless. He said he was about 5 feet away from the altercation inside Hooters on Monday around 8:15 p.m. He said he saw a child wander away from his family and, when the family member came to retrieve the preschool-aged kid, is when another customer used a racial slur and spat at the child. He thought a physical altercation would follow, but instead police were called to the restaurant.

Book Reviews: 11/22/63

11/22/63
by Stephen King

This 2011 novel by Stephen King is a very long book. 11/22/63 is just short of 1100 pages. The novel wasn't exactly a chore to read, King is simply too good of a writer for that, but it was a serious investment of time. 11/22/63 isn't a horror novel; it's not full of creepy crawlies or things that go bump in the night. It is speculative fiction. King, as he is prone to do, leaves all sorts of Easter egg hints to his other works throughout 11/22/63. The referenced King novels which were obvious to me were Christine, The Dead Zone, Insomnia, and IT though I'm sure I missed others.  

John Fogerty wrote the lyrics in his song Proud Mary "And I never lost one minute of sleeping/Worrying about the way things might have been".  In Candide, Voltaire created a pompous philosopher Pangloss who dismissed complaints by saying "This is the best of all possible worlds". In The Silmarillion J.R.R. Tolkien's God stand-in tells the Satan analogue that there is nothing that Satan can ever do that God hasn't already anticipated and will use to bring some greater good which Satan never could have conceived of bringing about. Omar Khayam wrote that "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy years wash out a word of it." 

Many self-help gurus and life coaches urge us to look forward, not backwards. How many people enjoy spending time, romantic or otherwise, with someone who's always complaining about the people who did him/her wrong back in sixth grade or how they didn't get this job 15 years ago and thus all the bad fortune they've had since is not their fault. It's annoying, no? Despite what some physics and some religions may claim, humans only experience time in one direction. We can't stop it. We can't rewind it.  We can't transmit information back in time to ourselves. And we can't even be certain events in our life impacted us the way that we think they did. So we have no choice but to look forward.

Movie Reviews: Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Roman J. Israel, Esq
directed by Dan Gilroy

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36

Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a poignant slice of life legal drama overseen by the Nightcrawler director. The title character (Denzel Washington) is the secondary partner/employee in a two person law firm. Israel is either extremely socially inept or a high functioning autistic. Israel's knowledge of and passion for the law and justice is inversely related to his ability to interact with people. Israel processes information and stimuli differently than most people do. So Israel is not a deal maker or outgoing trial attorney. As he ruefully admits, "Public speaking is usually something I'm encouraged to avoid." Israel has a very strong, even rigid, belief in right and wrong. 

Israel hasn't become wealthy or even moderately well off in his chosen field. But material wealth isn't important to Israel. As long as Israel can eat his peanut butter sandwiches, fight the power in occasionally quixotic fashion, listen to old school jazz and soul music, and stay out of the limelight he's a content man, if one without a car.

Many people have some inconsistencies between their ideals and reality. Even the most outspoken prideful employee might not curse out his boss if the worker has children in an expensive private school. A writer might sell her novel to a film studio for an adaptation and silently fume as the film producer and director change the race of the main characters to attract more viewers. A musician could believe that people should hear and appreciate his music solely on its merits before realizing that payola and sex appeal are often necessary compromises for success. And so on.

Movie Reviews: Black Panther

Black Panther
directed by Ryan Coogler

I didn't know if this film would be good or not before deciding to see it. I was interested in seeing it in part because black heroes in mainstream movies are rare. It's also rare for a studio to take a financial risk on a big budget movie with a predominantly black cast. The writer, musicologist, musician, civil rights activist, and photographer Julius Lester recently passed away. Lester moved around the political and religious spectrum quite a bit in his life, from Christian integrationist to black nationalist to Judaism convert and later vociferous Zionist. That's neither here nor there. As a child I remember reading a story in one of Lester's collection of Black folk tales. I can't remember the exact story name, but at the end of the story a newly freed Black man (can't remember if he bought his freedom, physically defeated his previous slave owner or heard about the end of the Civil War) decided to leave the plantation and walk down the road to seek his fortune as a free man. His previous master, mistress and their children watched in seething impotent rage. Unable to hinder his progress they started yelling to the black man to remember that no matter what, he was still a n*****. I mention all of that because that's what a lot of the initial conservative response to this movie's concept felt like. Many conservatives racists were offended by the very idea of Black excellence or Black people being happy. That's some really sick s***. The movie could be good or bad but being upset that black people are excited to see heroes and heroines who look like them shows just how invested some people are not just in hating black people but demanding that black people hate themselves. Twisted.

Fortunately I can say that the movie was good. Not great but very good indeed. It also had a very strong Lord of Rings/Hobbit vibe not just because of the inclusion of two key actors from that franchise and similar framing of battles but because like those movies Black Panther engages the question of whether using the enemy's methods to defeat the enemy is possible or for that matter, morally desirable. Can you take up Sauron's ring?

Black Children Threatened at Michigan School

Parents complain that authorities aren't doing enough to find the sender of a racist, threatening email to six black students at the Washtenaw International Middle Academy in Ypsilanti that included the words "Go Trump."

The recent message also has the n-word and ends with seven skulls and crossbones.

Students interviewed tell Andrea Isom of WXYZ that they're scared.
"They did inform us that the email did come from the school, around 3:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 29. The student whose name is in the email, has been back into the school community,” says parent Ronald Ellerson, who feels authorities aren't responding properly. The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department tells the station it takes this matter seriously. Spokesperson Derrick Jackson issues this statement: 

I want to ensure all involved that we take incidents such as this very seriously and that deputies have been working to identify who the sender of this email was. Several students have been questioned as part of the investigation and deputies will continue to gather the facts. Once the investigation has concluded we will then forward our report to the prosecutor.

One would hope that the recent events in Parkland, Florida would serve as a horrible reminder of the cost of silence and inaction. One would hope that school administrators and legal authorities would be doing their best to determine who sent the threatening email. It's important to know if this email, as seems likely, was actually created by someone inside of the school. This is of course the same school which recently saw a bomb threat made. Students should not be going to a school where they have good reason to feel unsafe.