CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

If you read much of this site you may pick up on the fact that I am not pro-smoking (he understated). I was born in 1961, and in 1964 my mother quit smoking because I would not sit with her or let her hold me if she had a cigarette going. My father smoked for many more years, and finally quit by going through a program that consisted of making the rounds of a lung cancer hospice with the attending physicians, and attending the autopsies of the folks who died while you were there. He told me about a particular emaciated living skeleton of a man who sucked smoke through his tracheotomy tube. My dad attended his autopsy and said the man’s lungs looked like a couple of deflated black balloons stuffed with marbles. Too late though, as my dad died young from cancer anyway.

All my life, through my late teens, I was surrounded by people who smoked. My entire extended family had about 70% smokers, and family gatherings were a fog-shrouded stank-fest. Slowly but surely my relatives either quit or died, until now there are no smokers left. Also, starting in my teens I started refusing to socialize with people who smoked, due to the combination of the noxious fumes and the gut-wrenching pity I felt when I realized they were powerlessly trapped by their addiction and wished to quit, but could not. When I was a child, television commercials told me to smoke, and touted the various positive benefits of the different brands. Doctors and stars (like John Wayne) shilled for the tobacco companies.

Everything I Needed To Know About Smoking I Learned BEFORE Kindergarten

But even as a three year old I knew that tobacco was a disgusting and unhealthy habit, and must admit that to this day I think that *anybody* who tried to rationalize their smoking by saying they “didn’t know how bad it was” is full of baloney, as the human body tells you everything you need to know from puff one. But through a combination of mercenary marketing and peer pressure, successive generations each had a non-trivial percentage of its members enticed into the darkness of smoking. And, in the interest of full disclosure, if I am brutally honest with myself (and you), I find smoking to be a character flaw, not only then but particularly now.

Fortunately, I think we can all look around and see that it’s all over for smoking in America, except for the shouting. The places where it is acceptable to smoke in public are quickly shrinking, and we are now down to the last stand. Smokers have been forced into a strategic retreat until now the only places they can smoke are outdoors, in bars and clubs, and in the few remaining restaurant smoking sections. But that is not enough. Smoking is a scourge, a plague, and 50 years from now our descendents will scarcely believe our stupidity.

Even the tobacco companies know that it’s over, at least in the US, and are following strategies of attempting to increase consumption in third-world nations and/or to diversify their interests. A prime example is Phillip Morris, who bought Kraft Foods (yes, the cheese people) and then tried to change their name to “Altria” to hide the fact that they are death mongers who are trying to look legit. I actually cannot believe that anyone continues to work at tobacco companies, given what we know in this day and age. I sincerely hope that the tobacco companies are crushed out of existence before they can diversify enough to survive without tobacco, and if there is any justice in the world the executives who continue to promote cigarettes today will be subject to their own version of Nuremberg.

Stop the Insanity

I also think it is time for the US government to do the right thing and begin to legislate tobacco out of existence. Right now, the government seems content to simply try to tax it out of existence, but I find that strategy to be hypocritical and somewhat diabolical. The government needs to draw a firm line in the sand that says tobacco is evil and unecessary, harmful and exploitative, and set a timeline to completely eliminate smoking in America.

And I think that the first step along that path should be the outlawing of all public smoking. Indoors, outdoors, anywhere accessible by the general public or anywhere that is a workplace…no smoking. Adults should also be prohibited from smoking in enclosed spaces where children are present, including in their own homes and cars, and should be charged with child abuse if they do so. Many, many municipalities in the US have already banned public smoking, and even some countries have done so (Scotland, Bhutan, Cuba…CUBA!!!).

The reasons for an all-out ban are plentiful. First and foremost, tobacco smoke is disgusting and unhealthy and should not be inflicted on innocent non-smokers who are simply trying to live. Also, smoking tobacco introduces no benefit to society that could counterbalance its downsides. For example, many industrial plants emit noxious and unhealthy fumes, as do automobiles. But factories and cars introduce tremendous benefits to society. Could we as a society do a better job of cleaning them up? Sure we could. But it would be calamitous to shut them down until they could be made cleaner. Elimating public tobacco smoking (and dipping, which has to be the most disgusting habit allowed in public), however, causes no detriment to society whatsoever.

Also, allowing public smoking implies tacit approval of the behavior. Every pathetic huddled mass of smokers that an adolescent has to stumble through reinforces to their impressionable minds that adults smoke everywhere all the time, from their perspective. Outside the mall, outside the school, outside their parent’s workplace, restaurant smoking sections (which, you may have noticed, are almost always where the restrooms are located…that’s because the owners hope the stench of human excrement will cover the stench of smoking, or vice versa…in any case it lets them use the same air cleaners to remove the sh*tty smell from the area), bowling alleys, golf courses, the beach, the park, the softball field, the local pool, etc, etc, etc. Everywhere. All the time. That sends an indelible message to kids, who, like everyone else, are much more likely to follow the examples they see than to heed any warnings they hear.

Kill the Weed by Pulling Up the Roots

Also important is the need to put the tobacco companies on notice that it’s all over for them. Currently big tobacco is beating a strategic retreat, paying for placements of images of casual smoking in public media (movies, magazines, etc), while at the same time paying lip service to trying to stop kids from smoking. Talk about getting smoke blown up one’s skirt. They know that cigarettes will never be as ubiquitous in the US as they once were, but I’m sure they hold out hope of maintaining a core market. It is time for them to be disabused of that notion. And a ban on all public smoking will certainly send that unequivocal message.

Another reason to ban all public smoking is to give restaurant and bar owners the clout they need to enforce no-smoking policies without the need to enforce martial law over their patrons. Today, if one wishes to have a completely non-smoking restaurant or bar, one has several problems. First and foremost is that people who are addicted to nicotine are much more likely to also be compulsive drinkers, so if one attempted to enforce a no-smoking ban in an area where one’s competitors did not, ones best customers (addictive compulsives) would just head down the road where they could smoke AND drink.

Also, if a bar attempted to enforce a no-smoking policy, or even just a no-smoking night, this introduces severe logistical issues. The first is that no matter how much you promote it, the majority of your patrons are not going to know about the smoking ban. This means they will come to your establishment expecting to be able to smoke, if they are so inclined. Many may choose not to patronize your establishment, but others will be with groups or have other reasons to stay. Many, many of these will then attempt to sneak cigarettes, either by cupping it or smoking in the restroom. This means that you will have to have your staff enforce the no-smoking policy. Having been in the restaurant business myself, I can tell you that there are few people less reasonable than a drunken nicotine addict who is being denied his or her fix. These events often quickly escalate into shouting, pushing, and shoving matches, with bouncers needing to be involved resulting in disturbance for most of the patrons as well as bruised egos for the pathetic, drunken nicotine addicts.

However, if there is an all-out ban on smoking, the bar can simply call the cops and/or throw you out as if you were an underage drinker or if you were trying to snort lines of coke off the back of the toilet. There would be absolutely no way for you to claim ignorance, and the club can rightfully protest that their hands are tied. Also, they can do this freely and easily while knowing that you won’t simply take your business down the road, because the place down the road has to follow the same laws that they do.

The Greater Good

And now we come to the reason that causes the most debate. Public smoking should be outlawed for the good of the individual smokers. I can hear the howls now, about how it’s none of the government’s business what you do..blah..blah..blah. However, it is the business of government to do exactly that. It is the business of government to serve the greater good. The government tells us what to do and what not to do every day. I’ll give you a hypothetical situation. Picture the outdoor patio of an upscale restaurant. Now picture a man climbing up on his table, squatting down, releasing a trap-door in the back of his pants, and taking a dump in the middle of his table. The trap-door is engineered so that he is not exposing himself during this act. Once finished he cleans up, closes the trap-door, then sits back down the enjoy the rest of his meal. Meanwhile the stench of his excrement is wafting across the patio, turning the stomachs of those around him, and disgusting most people in the general area.

Smokers, you are no better than Mr. Trap Door. In fact, in my opinion, you are worse, because at least excrement is something natural and normal. Now, it’s ingrained in our race memory that we don’t sh*t where we eat, and for good reason, because it’s not healthy. Well, neither is your incinerated weed that you so callously blow my way on that same patio. Or movie line. Or park. Or parking lot. Or covered mall entryway. Or beach. Or golf course. Or jogging trail (yes, there’s a regular CIGAR SMOKER that infests our local running trail). Or skyscraper entrance. Or airport sidewalk.

The list goes on and on, even in this current age where I hear you smokers constantly whining about how you can’t smoke anywhere any more. From my perspective, you smoke EVERYWHERE. That’s right…EVERYWHERE I go I have to brace myself to wade through the stench of your foul, pathetic habit. As does my wife. As does my daughter. It is not right.

And it’s beyond the point of compromise or manners, as the smoking community has proven that they refuse to admit that their habit is disgusting and so have refused to voluntarily curtail it in public. So the time has come for governments and municipalities to step in and do the right thing.

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Last time I checked, the words flustrated, acrosst, and nucular were not included in Webster’s English Dictionary… but perhaps I am mistaken. I’m not saying I’ve never made up a word, or used a word in the wrong context, but I certainly don’t converse using a pseudo-dictionary. The only person who can get away scotch free with that is George W. Bush. I do believe his version of the Declaration of Independence has the phrase ‘uninalienable rights’. Irregardless to what he may say, uninalienable is not a word.

Still, it amazes me to no end how politicians and other public figures can butcher the language so terribly. Didn’t they go to school? Um, hello? We covered basic grammar skills back in elementary school. Sorry to say, but if you haven’t yet grasped the basics of this whole grammar thing, an Ivy League school might not be the place for you, my friend. And when I say my friend, I mean George Bush.

I’m sure we just come off to be a bunch of unedumacated hillbillies to foreigners. If the President of the United States uses non-words during public speeches, we are headed for trouble.

Contrary to popular belief, Saddam is not Bush’s biggest foe… that would be grammar. Subject/verb agreement is right up there with Weapons of Mass Production (Quote: Washington D.C., November 27, 2002). But as Bush says, “Education belongs to everybody. High standards belongs to everybody.”

But enough with the Bushisms for now. Lets talk about adults. Well, not so much adults, but just society on the whole. Who in this country is responsible for proofreading billboards and other advertisements? Whoever it is… they deserve to be pink slipped. Anyone who lets a billboard for Ikea advertise with “Come check out our stool samples!” should consider a new vocation. Or, my personal favorite, the warnings that say “Sharp, keep out of children.” Not that I don’t condone the keeping out of children part… although it is humerous to think of. But certainly, yes, keep sharp objects both out of their reach… and out of them, for everyone’s sake.

Personally, I find it embarassing and humerous all at the same time. I mean yes, it is disappointing that our President had to pay his way through college… but he does say some of the darndest things. Apparently to him, we just live in a processed world. Now, in my head, that registers as though we have all been pushed through a giant food processer, and are now all tiny slivers of our former selves… but I think he was aiming for some deeper meaning… but who knows with all of his malapropisms.

All I can say is that I feel pretty dern smart in this world. There is just no excuse for some of the things people in this world say and do. And, for once, I completely agree with George Dubya… “One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end,”… well, something to that effect.

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You Are Worthless Alec Baldwin

Words and music by (presumably) Trey Parker and Matt Stone:

I was sent from planet Xiron to conquer the earth
I had a terrific plan — I thought it would work
Tried to get the Earthlings all to kill each other you see
But it all went wrong and now I must decree…

You are worthless Alec Baldwin, you are worthless Alec Baldwin
You failed in every way and now my stock in you has fallen
Your career is stallin’ and you’re worthless Alec Baldwin
That’s why I blew your head off and your children are all bawlin’

Planet Xiron is inhabited with Xipods like me
But also with Balmacs who are giant bees
The Xipods and Balmacs are at constant war
So we wanted a new home and that’s what Earth was for

But you are worthless Alec Baldwin, you are worthless Alec Baldwin
You fucked up my whole plan and now Xiron is smeared with Balmac pollen
Your garbage needs some haulin’ and you’re worthless Alec Baldwin
Now I must return home a failure — I’m afraid the pit of Kryrok is callin’…

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When I was 12 or 13 years old, I woke up one night in my bed, fully awake, fully aware of everything, clearly not asleep, and absolutely unable to move a muscle, other than my eyes. Even my breathing was involuntary, because I eventually wanted to yell or scream, but could not. It felt as if someone had encased me in Lucite, or poured clear concrete over me (while still allowing me to breathe). I felt that there was a malevolent presence in the room. I had no sense of up or down and felt like I was slowly falling and spinning. The two windows beyond the foot of my bed were backlit by ambient moonlight, and took on, to me, the appearance of evil glowing eyes floating at the foot of my bed. I was terrified beyond explanation, even now at 43, when I have a much richer vocabulary. My entire body sweated in terror, even though it was a cool evening. I was so terrified and the feeling of an evil presence was so unequivocal that I assumed that I had either died or was about to die, and not in any good way, with no warm comforting light at the end of the tunnel with loving relatives waiting for me. No, I was going to die, and die horribly. I knew it.

Eventually my repeated attempts to scream started to generate small movements in my throat. Through countless repeated attempts I was finally able to squawk out a tiny sound…this was the beginning of the end of the paralysis, and with each new breath I was able to make louder and louder sounds until I was screaming with all my might (or so I thought). I slowly regained the ability to move my limbs, and eventually sat up, waiting for one or more of my family members to come and see why I had been shrieking my head off. But they didn’t. It was then that I realized that what I perceived as screaming had actually been muffled squeaks, but they had been enough to snap me out of it. I didn’t wake my family up, because I didn’t know what I would tell them. When I laid back down the feeling started to come back, so I spent the rest of the night awake and alert (to say the least).

This event lasted for what seemed like hours, but I really don’t know how long it lasted. I had trouble sleeping for several years after this episode, because I would feel it starting to happen again and would force myself to stay awake.

Over the years I have only told a few people about this event, as it just seemed so strange, and since it occurred in the fringes of sleep, could easily be explained away (by someone who hasn’t experienced it) as “just a bad dream”. I knew it wasn’t a dream, but other than that I had no understanding of what had occurred to me.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago, when Peter Jennings hosted an ABC special called “UFO: Seeing Is Believing” in prime time. Being an aficionado, but not a “believer”, in UFOs and aliens I TiVo’d it and watched it. As the show progressed, somewhere in the latter third, they interviewed alien abduction survivors, many of whom talked about being abducted from their beds in the middle of night, stricken by a strange paralysis and fear.

ABC, in the spirit of exploring all sides of the issue, also interviewed sleep specialists, who said that what these people were actually experiencing was something called “sleep paralysis”. The symptoms are the inability to move, the feeling of a malevolent presence, a skewed perception of the passage of time, and tremendous feelings of fear and/or impending death. It turns out that the phenomenon of sleep paralysis is fairly well known, and occurs when the body is partially awakened from REM sleep. According to what I have read, during REM sleep the body immobilizes the skeletal muscles to prevent the dreamer from “acting out” their dreams.

What happens during sleep paralysis is that the dreamer actually wakens from a consciousness point of view, but the skeletal muscles remained in their self-paralyzed state, rendering the person awake and immobile. Since the person is hovering between sleep and wakefulness, the mind is also open to suggestions (where the fear and feeling of malevolence comes from), and has a skewed sense of the passage of time.

As I heard this explanation my jaw literally hung open. Here, after 30 years, was the completely plausible explanation for what had happened to me all those years ago! It was quite an epiphany, and a relief, and the banality of the whole thing greatly appealed to my logical nature.

This was something I had lived with for 30 years, and I had always questioned myself about it. What had happened? Why had it happened? Did it actually happen? Was I sublimating some other horrific memory and putting this one in its place? For 30 years I had these questions. They didn’t haunt me, or anything, but they certainly hung there as a great, big, fat, direct personal experience for which I could concoct no logical explanation. It was my one truly great “paranormal” experience. And come to find out, it was just “normal”.

I can easily see how “UFO abductees” sought therapists and hypnotists to help them “unlock” what happened during their episodes, and given the suggestible state I was in, I can easily see where someone could “remember” an alien abduction during the episode, whether or not it happened. I’m not saying that UFO abductees are or aren’t being abducted, just that I’m pretty sure now that some of them are experiencing sleep paralysis, and then through hypnosis and/or false memory implantation are remembering things that never really occurred.

I’m writing this article in the hopes that others may read this and experience the same relief that I do now. Particularly young people (like I was when it happened to me) who may be living in fear of a malevolent presence stalking them in their dreams. Take a look around the web and you’ll find that sleep paralysis, while certainly not something fun to experience, is simply a strange state of your body and mind that has no evil intent.

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Beyond the Gates of Splendor tells an incredible, nearly unbelievable true story that spans 50 years in the lives of five families and a violent and isolated Ecuadorian tribe. If you think you might see it but don’t know the whole story, I urge you to stop reading and go, then come back here.

Really, I mean it. This is the kind of movie that is best experienced with no prior knowledge. I know, I know, you’re wondering how you’ll know it’s your kind of movie if you don’t what the hell it’s about. I’ll have to ask you to trust me here and just go. Go on, go.

Last warning, the next paragraph tells the tale, and as interesting as the story is to tell I sincerely hope you get to experience it on the big screen. Final warning. Here we go.

The Story

Back in the mid-50’s a group of five young, newly married, husband-and-wife couples moved to the jungles of Ecuador to do missionary work. Now, I personally have a problem with missionaries who go to other cultures with the express purpose of telling them that their belief system is wrong and the missionary’s is right, and the natives need to change to be “saved”. I find the implied cultural superiority to be distasteful, presumptuous, and disrespectful.

However, I do have a grudging respect for people who are so sincere in their beliefs that they will uproot their families and travel to remote, unsafe parts of the world and live spartan lives in order to do (what they think is) good. Also, even though their primary motivation is soul-saving, missionaries do *actual* good by bringing things like medical care, nutritional education, etc, that does bring real benefits.

Parking my high horse.

Now, these five families were spread out among different stations in the remote jungles of Ecuador, connected to each other by the radio and airplane. They talked frequently, got together when they could, and had a sense of community with each other. Several of the couples married while in Ecuador, and several of the couples either brought their children, or had children while there.

The Ecuadorians they dealt with on a daily basis told tales of the fierce Waodani tribe that lived in the deepest, darkest parts of the surrounding jungle, and killed with murderous efficiency at the slightest perceived affront. The Waodani had fought the burgeoning oil company presence to a standstill with their vicious “spearing raids”, where they would swoop into oil company stations and slaughter everyone there. With their crude wooden spears and a few pilfered machetes, the fierce and fearsome Waodani halted, however temporarily, the march of “civilized” progress in the Ecuadorian jungle.

The Waodani were not just a fearsome foe to outsiders, but were also prone to settling their interpersonal conflicts with spearings and machete murders. Anthropologists who later studied the tribe were able to trace back five generations of the Waodani, and determined that 60% of all adult deaths over that time were caused by homicide perpetrated by other members of the tribe.

The filmmakers are able to communicate the brutal nature of the Waodani existence because surviving tribe members agreed to be interviewed. They tell mesmerizing tales of a seemingly endless string of spearings, and each tale is punctuated by specific descriptions of how many times the deceased was speared, where the spears entered and/or exited, if entrails were exposed, how long the spear-ee lived after the spearing, and most stories end with the natives gesturing and saying (in their own unique language) that “it happened right over there under that tree”…or “they speared my father in his hammock while I was sleeping on his chest”…or “so-and-so was acting crazy, so we had to kill him and when he was dead we were happy”. These killings are related with what seems like about the same amount of angst a typical American would have when relating the story of a non-fatal car accident…shaken, but not stirred.

The five missionary men hatch a plan to try to establish peaceful contact with the Waodani. The pilot of the group figures out that if he hangs a bucket from a rope from the plane, then circles the plan tightly, he can use the harmonics of the twirling rope to gently lower the bucket down and have it stay mostly in one spot for a while. The men use this method to give gifts to the Waodani. After a few sessions, the Waodani begin putting their own gifts back into the bucket.

After a few sessions of this the men then head out and land the plane on a sandbar near the Waodani village, and bring as a gift a small scale model of the plane. Frankly, I was awed by the simple ingeniousness of this method of building trust with the Waodani. A delegation of Waodani, a man and two women, approach them and over the course of several days a rapport is established. The missionaries nickname the Waodani man “George”, and even go so far as to take him for a plane ride over his village. George shows no apparent fear, and even shouts down to his tribesman “hey, it’s me up here!” (or words to that effect).

But, through a series of unfortunate events, the tribe comes to see these five missionaries as a threat, and a spearing party heads down to the river and kills all of them.

In Hollywood, this would be the end of an interesting, but often told, tale. But in this case, the reality is that these killings were just the beginning of the story.

After the killings, the wives decide to stay in Ecuador to continue their missionary work. Then, some time later a group of Waodani women emerge from the jungle, saying that they have fled the tribe out of fear for their lives. One of the surviving tribeswomen relates the harrowing tale of fleeing the jungle and heading for the area of the foreigners, and having them raise their rifles as she approached, but she simply shut her eyes and ran at them even though she thought they would kill her. When they didn’t shoot her she signaled for the other, younger women to come out.

The missionary widows hear about these tribeswomen and end up meeting and befriending them, and beginning to learn about the language and culture (and horrors) of tribal life. It turns out that several years earlier another Waodani tribeswoman had done the same thing, and was now living the life of an Ecuadorian peasant rather than a jungle tribeswoman. The widows and the expat tribeswomen bond, and soon another delegation, made up of men and women, exit the jungle and approach the missionaries. They express remorse for the killings, as they found they were triggered by stories that they later learned were untrue. They invite the widows to come and visit them, and one of them does, taking along her five year old daughter.

Incredibly, they end up living with the Waodani for years, and they are also joined by some of the other missionary widows. Through their interactions with the Waodani, they express the horror with which most of the rest of the world views murders, and actually begin to convince the tribe that the vendettas and revenge murders have to stop, or it will spell the end of the Waodani. Astonishingly, village by village, the Waodani agree to stop the killings.

The anthropologists who later studied the Waodani express that this was an amazing cultural transformation. The Waodani way of life was unchanged except for this facet, no new tools were introduced, no technology, no farming techniques, none of the hallmarks of cultural dilution. Just the stopping of the killings, with the transformation going from the first village to the last in the course of a few months. And the change has been permanent, at least to date.

One of the women ended up living out her life with the Waodani, leaving only for cancer treatments, but returning to the tribe to die when she learned she was terminal. The five year old daughter lived there for years, and later returned when she was baptized because she wanted to be baptized in the river by the village, and she wanted her adopted Waodani family there. In an astonishing case of irony or joyfulness, the two Waodani who held her arms and leaned her back for her baptism were two of the men from the party that killed her father.

As a grown man, the son of one of the murdered missionaries returned to the Waodani with his two sons, and lived with them for years, as well. When his son returned to the States and was graduating from high school, he asked that one of the Waodani elders come to his graduation. He called this Waodani “grandfather” in the Waodani language. In another ironic/joyful instance, this man he called grandfather had also been in the party that killed his grandfather.

The Film

The film is mesmerizing from the beginning to the end. The film starts by telling a bit about the Waodani and their ways, but then immediately jumps to modern-day interviews with the surviving widows and children. The widows begin by telling how they met their husbands, what they were like, how they ended up in Ecuador, what life was like as a missionary, what it was like to raise kids in the environment, etc. All of this is very quaint and might even be boring except for the fact that you can’t help but notice they aren’t talking to any of the husbands, plus for some reason you’ve been told about a tribe of murderous Ecuadorian tribespeople, and your mind starts making connections.

As the story progresses, you don’t have to imagine much, because there are photographs and films of their missionary life. Some of these films and photos are so clear and relevant that you begin to suspect that perhaps they were “dramatic recreations”, but as they switch from the widows today back to the films of yesterday, they are unmistakably the same women at a younger age.

There are even films and photos taken by the husbands at Palm Beach, which was their name for the strip of riverbank where they landed their plane to visit the Waodani. We see film of George and the two women, photos of the men and George, film of one of the Waodani women performing a detailed inspection of the plane.

We also see film and photos of the search parties that searched for and found the men. We see non-gory photos of their bodies.

The current-day interviews are also riveting. They interview one of the other missionary pilots, who led the expedition to find his friends. His breakdown on camera while relating the tale is heart-wrenching. The wives also alternate from glowing happiness when relating the good times, to soul-anguishing tears when relating the dark times. The interviews with the kids and grandkids are less painful, because as children they didn’t quite experience the full horror of what happened, and they also were instrumental in the peaceful reconciliation with the Waodani.

There is also a funny and heartwarming denouement, where the Waodani grandfather comes to the United States for the grandchild’s graduation. They show Grandfather going through grocery stores, riding the walkways of airports, and doggedly attempting to understand the myriad of different faucet configurations in American bathrooms.

This footage is interspersed with an interview with his wife back in the Ecuadorian jungles, where she expresses her disbelief in his description of airport walkways (“they stand on the trail, and the trail moves”), and his assertion that they have no gardens, but instead get food from giant “food houses” (grocery stores). She laments how fat he was upon his return. He sticks by his assertion that the way food is taken from the food house is by getting the attention of the check out girl and getting her to smile at him (after first being ignored). The narrator tries to explain that he had to give her something (his credit card), but the slyly logical old Waodani says, “yes, but you didn’t fool me because she gave it right back to you!”.

In an amazing footnote to the story, it seems that initially the Waodani refused to participate in the documentary, ostensibly because of their shame over their prior way of life and the murders of the missionaries. However, during their travels in the US and interactions with missionary family members, the Waodani became aware of the Columbine school shootings. The shootings struck a chord with the tribe, and they hoped that by telling their story they could help others learn by their example of turning away from violence.

So, the story is amazing. The film is amazing. Do yourself a favor and go find this film. Here in Houston it was showing on one screen of one google-plex theater, not at the art houses, and I fear it will not be long in release.

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Oscar 2006 Fashion Report!

Click here for the 2006 report!

Oscar 2005 Fashion Report Archive

Well, at least there was some color this year! There weren’t too many standouts – my favorite was probably Helen Mirren. She just looked utterly drop-dead gorgeous, no kidding – fun and elegant but unfussy. A close second was Catalina Sandino Moreno, who was the perfect mixture of classy and sexy with a white Roberto Cavalli and a long, sleek ponytail.

Likes:

• Beyoncé, for the two seconds she was wearing her “on the red carpet” dress looked great in black velvet — almost a disturbingly hourglass figure, but she looked very elegant — simple dress, big earrings, not-too-fussy hairstyle. I was sick of her by the end of the Oscar telecast, however – they should’ve gotten some other people to sing some of those songs.
• 
• Helen Mirren looked fabulous — sexy, eclectic, elegant, put-together, and utterly beautiful. Bravo.
• Virginia Madsen looked very elegant in navy blue Versace — the dress wasn’t a knockout but her overall look with hair, makeup, and earrings was just breathtaking.

Great First Timers:

• Catalina Sandino Moreno, nominated for Maria Full of Grace. She looked flawless in a white Roberto Cavalli body-hugging gown with jewel-encrusted straps.
• Malaak Rock in a gorgeous Pamela Dennis dress in beige with black eyelash lace (although I’m hoping that the collar wasn’t fur).
• Emmy Rossum, who could easily be the new Julia Roberts, looked classicly gorgeous in a red satin Ralph Lauren with some beautiful Harry Winston rubies.(Although hopefully Emmy and Sandra Oh didn’t stand next to each other at any of the after parties, as Emmy’s and Sandra’s Michael Kors dresses looked nearly identical):

Undecideds or so-so’s:

• Loved the color of Kate Winslet’s almost-sapphire dress, but the cut and decoration weren’t my faves. Overall she’s gorgeous, though.
• Scarlett Johansenn’s fuzzy blond, bejeweled hair and oddly gathered black dress.

Not a Big Fan:

• Laura Linney’s dress was ordinary and bland, but she did outstand in one area: her hairstyle was spectacularly unflattering.
• Cate Blanchett’s too-pale yellow silk chiffon with a wow-this-does-not-match burgundy belt. She’s so beautiful, I wish she’d choose brighter colors, like the deep crimson satin at last year’s Oscars.
• Similarly, Penelope Cruz’s too-pale Oscar de la Renta yellow-with-an-ugly-1987-prom-dress butt bow and train.
• Hilary Swank’s navy blue Guy LaRoche dress — the backless part was okay but the swathed front left a little too little to the imagination for my tastes.
• Clive Owen’s velvet tie.

Yucks:

• Like I even have to say it — Johnny Depp’s freaky blue tuxedo jacket. (Editor’s note, 3/6/2005: I saw in People magazine that the collar pin, not very distinguishable on TV, was actually a Hunter S. Thompson gonzo pin worn in memoriam. Okay, that was kinda classy.)
• Rene Zellweger’s emaciated Mrs. Claus outfit.
• Mario and Melvin van Peebles’ bowler hats.

The Red Carpet Coverage:

Ugh. First off — they kept saying it was commercial free and it was FULL of commercials, at least the first hour. Kathy Griffin and Star Jones start out the coverage by ask each other who they’re wearing. Kathy Griffin is pretty engaging but they didn’t use her at all! I guess maybe she said some things that were too shocking at the Golden Globes or Grammys? She’s funny but she was just stuck up in “The Tower” and was relegated to just making comments and not being able to actually interact with anyone.

So that left Star Jones Reynolds, who is somewhat beyond irritating. Oh, and Star Jones I SWEAR TO GOD wore Payless shoes with her Richard Tyler dress (because, of course, she is a paid spokesperson for Payless with her own line of shoes). Y’know what, lady? Who cares. Pimpy stunts like that just make you look tacky. I can understand why you got so much grief about all the sponsorship for your wedding.

More Kathy!! Bring her out more and I won’t even miss Melissa and Joan!

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Tony Jaa is the next great martial arts star. That fact is very clear after seeing Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior. He has the charisma of Bruce Lee, the charm of Jackie Chan, and the grace and menace of the bastard love child of Jet Li and Mikhail Baryshnikov. In this film he does all his own stunts, a la Jackie Chan, and they are wild, eye-popping moves. And just in case you miss them, the director films them from several angles, and plays them back repeatedly, sometimes in super-slo-mo, so you can see that it was all done with physics, not with wires, pixels, or mirrors. At first this replay action took me out of the flow of the film, but after a couple of times I got used to it and grew to expect it because some of the moves were so unbelievable they just have to be re-experienced immediately in order to grok the fullness.

Just to give you an idea of where I’m coming from, I’m no fanboy of martial arts films. I’ve never seen a Bruce Lee film all the way through, just bits and pieces, and my favorite part of Jackie Chan’s films is always the outtakes at the end. But I have seen enough of these kinds of films to get the basic storyline, where the reluctantly violent hero tries in vain to achieve his task with a minimal of bloodshed, but his vile opposition won’t let him hang up his guns.

That same storyline applies here. Tony Jaa plays Ting, a young and naive country boy who goes to the big city to retrieve a macguffin that has deep sacred meaning to his village. Along the way he runs into a former village-mate, now a bottom-rung hustler in the big city, who reluctantly (and comedically) “helps” our hero. Pretty standard stuff, really.

But what sets this movie apart is the fighting and stunt work. Mind boggling is the only way to describe it. This movie is worth seeing just for these facets. However, the script is actually engaging and the story is intriguing, and they (thankfully) subtitle the movie instead of overdub the voices, so the true personality of the characters comes through.

So, even if you’re not a fan of martial arts movies, I think this one is worth a look. And try not to groan and yowl out loud with the action on the screen, I dare you. I also dare you to try and get the tune “Mmm-bop” out of your head once you replace “Mmm-bop” with “Ong-bak”. Go on, I double dare you.

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Police, Synchronicity

Eagles, Greatest Hits Volume I

Garbage, 2.0

Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine

Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life

Prince, Purple Rain

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Don’t Stop the Music

I am a listen-to-music-at-work kinda person. Ever since I’ve had a job with enough autonomy and desktime to allow it, I listen to music via headphones while I work. And since I don’t like to have any extraneous apps running on my workstation (much less keep music on a corporate machine), I like to have my music on a device that is disconnected from my actual PC, so I always have something to play my music with. Also, as a former runner, I used to take stuff with me on the hoof. So, I’ve had a few MP3-playing devices in my day.

My most recent device was an iRiver — most specifically, an iRiver 400-series CD player that will play MP3s burned onto CD. (I also have some familiarity with the iRiver solid state MP3 players, having bought the G-I-R-L one for running). The iRiver has a somewhat daunting and extremely tiny interface, but it’s highly customizable once you figure it out. The CD player has limitations, though — a CD can only fit about 200 or so MP3s on it, and after having that same CD at work for a few weeks you get pretty tired of that same mix. Plus, if you buy a new CD and rip those songs into MP3s, you have to re-burn a new MP3 mix CD just to add the 1 or 2 new songs you want to add into the mix. It can be a drag.

Before that I had (and actually, prior to the iPod, still used for exercising) an ancient RCA Lyra device and it’s really unusable — MP3s have to be custom-encoded with specific software in order to get transferred onto the Flash memory through a parallel-port flash reader that’s REALLY SLOW. It’s literally a 30-minute process. You can imagine how often the songs get changed on THAT device… not much incentive to do a 30 minute session on the elliptical when you’ve got the same 15 songs you had 6 months ago waiting for you and your workout.

Under My Thumb

At Christmas, the G-I-R-L (whose Indiana parents use a Mac) came down to visit with an Apple iPod in tow. Although we often had to pry the earbuds out of her ears to get her to actually join family events, I eventually asked her for some details on the little machine and (despite myself) got intrigued. I mean… 20 GB of music right there in such a tiny package is pretty enticing. Plus, we have an auxiliary jack in our Honda Element and the iPod hooks right up to it to put tunes into the car. (The iRiver CD player can do the same thing but it’s much more cumbersome to try and stuff the CD player into the glove box and hook up a power cord, etc).

And I gotta give it to Apple, the clickwheel is a really innovative interface. It feels a bit like an Etch-a-Sketch at first, but it’s a GREAT way to turn the volume up and down, to just be able to run your thumb in a little circle. Plus, when you’ve got 20GB of songs (or even 1/4 of that), you need a FAST way to scroll up and down — something where you’d be clicking or even paging down would get very old very quickly. The fast scrolling action that you can get with the wheel is very nice.

People Are Strange

But, c’mon… it’s an Apple. I wasn’t really going to seriously consider buying consumer electronics from… uh… Apple, right? Apple people are generally a different breed and, well, buying any device with the intention of using it on its non-native platform is generally a risky move. And there are several choices for large-drive MP3 players out there. However, iPod was clearly the market leader. It’s fine to be quirky and iconoclastic in fashion or other things, but in matters of things automotive or electronic, I believe in buying where the market goes and looks to be reasonably supported. That way you’re not stuck with something really random with no accessories later. Remember DIVX? (If you don’t that just proves my point).

Plus, the Apple Bastards won me over with the truly powerful weapon, the one that was actually guaranteed to get me as a consumer — the iTunes Music Store. If I can legally buy one song for $1 and put it on my iPod or burn it to CD, and they have the industry support to have a decently broad range of music I might want to buy, then I’m sold. Because I love instant gratification, and Engineerboy and I have a million songs that we love that are onsie-twosies from this artist or that. I still buy CDs and rip the whole thing, but there are just tons of songs that we want to have. And if we can buy them as one-offs then that’s exactly what we want.

It’s Your Thing

The iPods can even come engraved, which I thought was tremendously cool. The Apple store online was offering engraving for free along with free shipping. How could I resist? I was in love!

Simply Irresistible

So, I hemmed, hawed, waffled on price, hemmed some more, decided I had to have one, and bought one. I bought an orange iPod sock on eBay (I was too cheap to buy the whole pack of socks from Apple). I even talked my dad into an iPod Shuffle before I’d even bought my own iPod! I eagerly awaited the arrival of my blessed purchase! I envisioned the ability to listen at work all day without having to plug it into the charger, the ability to have our entire family music library with us wherever we drove, and the ability to [angels singing] buy a song legally here or there from the iTunes Music Store. All of this and it would run on the PC as well as the Mac!

Tainted Love

So, all the Mac-heads I’ve ever talked to have always waxed poetic about how easy it is to set up anything Mac-related. It all just works! You just turn it on! You just don’t have to worry about a thing! Well, I wasn’t expecting anything quite that wondrous — as I said, this was using the iPod on its non-native platform, so I was prepared for a little more work during the install or even a few hiccups.

Try headaches. First off, the iPod has to be formatted for either the Mac or the PC. It ships (of course) formatted for the Mac, so if you install on a PC, you have to re-format it. There’s no indication in the documentation or on the install screen itself of how long this process should take, so I didn’t really think anything of it when it took a few minutes. I got a bit curious when that stretched into 30 minutes. I was really concerned when it stretched into two hours. The Apple support site had no information on how long the PC install process or reformatting process should take (at least none that I could find with my search terms) and so Engineerboy ended up finding use-at-your-own-risk advice from someone on a newsgroup about how to shut down the hung re-format process and continue with the re-install and then go back and reformat the device. Seriously irritating — I wasted hours waiting on that stupid install.

Finally the install completed and I went about the process of loading iTunes and synching my iPod for the first time. It still didn’t go smoothly after that — at first it wouldn’t let me undock the iPod if iTunes had any songs that were on a network drive (a reboot solved that problem, as it isn’t a system issue with the iPod, so that must’ve been first install hiccups). I had to shut down my PC entirely before the iPod would even let itself be detached from the PC. The next day my iPod quit responding to any click input at all and had to be reset (that’s where you have to plug it into the wall charger and hold down two buttons at once for six seconds and all your customized settings are then lost).

After working out the network drive issue and loading up the iPod with the entire library of our music collection (and adding quite a few new ones from the iTunes Store), I proceeded to use the heck out of the iPod… in the car every morning on the way to and from work (via the auxiliary jack) and at my desk for headset motivation while working. I loved it! I had so much music at my desk — all of the songs I could possibly want! And in the car we could have any song that Scott or I could possibly want to hear — it was great! One pesky problem kept cropping up, though — the iPod would repeatedly pause in the middle of a song when we were in the car. Over. And over. And over.

We were actually in the car with the entire shipping box packed up to take back to the Apple store when we realized that the pause behavior was actually standard behavior for the when the headphones (or auxiliary cable) is removed from the device — or when it thinks it has been. Apparently the new, longer aux cable we’d bought wasn’t as snug a fit as the shorter one we already had. So the new cable’s imperceptible (to us) jiggling was triggering the iPod’s auto-pause feature when the output line is removed. The auto-pause is a nice feature in some contexts (I guess) but man I wish I could turn that off in a configuration setting. Speaking of…

Cry Me a River

The list of usability and configurability gripes on the iPod device itself is tremendously long, especially for someone coming from the ultra-customizable iRiver.

• Picture this scenario: You’re listening to your entire library of songs on random play and a song comes up by a group you like but it’s not your favorite song by that group. It reminds you of your favorite song by that band, though. You navigate out to the menu and pick the song you want to hear. You play it. And now your iPod picks the next song to play… by the same artist you just heard. The following song is ALSO by the same artist. It’s shuffling, but no longer across all songs, it’s stuck just on that one artist. That’s because you chose to navigate to the song of your choosing via the Artist name (like, duh, that’s the easiest way for me to find the song I wanted). By choosing the song I wanted that way, I inadvertantly (to me), switched to only shuffling across songs by that artist. If I had wanted to stay in shuffle mode across ALL songs on the iPod, I would need to have navigated to Ad Hoc Song of My Choosing by the list of SONGS — a much more cumbersome way to go to the song I want, in my opinion.
• Also in the above process, when I’m reminded of that other song by the band currently playing and I hit the Menu button, it doesn’t bring up the list of that artist’s songs (i.e., the Menu button isn’t context-sensitive to the song that’s playing). The Menu button simply brings up whatever place in the Menu I last was. I’d rather it take me to the list of Artist’s songs that’s currently playing so I can pick another song by that artist, or the list of songs as it was currently sorted. This was so easy to do on the iRiver (once you learned the interface) and I MISS IT on the iPod. If I’m listening to a Prince song and I hit the Menu button, I want to be taken to the list of Prince songs. Or at least let me configure the thing to have that be my choice. Now that I’ve used the iPod for a while, I sometimes like that the Menu button can take me back where it was, but often that behavior is mostly pointless. Overall, I’d prefer that it be context sensitive.
• Songs are sorted by Album underneath Artist, and you cannot change this in a configuration setting. This means when you navigate through the list of songs via Artist and drill down through the list of Artists on the device to pick a song, you are then presented with a list of “All” and then the various album titles that your MP3 files may or may not be correctly tagged under (or, if you’ve bought the songs off iTunes, whatever random album the long was listed under when you bought it). This is incredibly irritating to me. I don’t generally know or give a sh*t what album a song came off of, and it drives me crazy that the device puts one extra click menu between me and selecting the song I want.
• You can’t configure it to have crossfade between songs. If you’re going to connect your iPod to an external set of speakers and have it act as a DJ for a party, this sure would be groovy, especially given how much control they give you with Playlists. Jeez, you can do crossfade on iTunes, why can’t you do it on the iPod? I realize this is a large feat of engineering, but THIS IS A BIG ONE. I mean, this is the PERFECT device for aerobics instructors and the like. As a matter of fact, last week at my Nia class the instructor had a whole wonderful song list for us to dance to, and it was GREAT except for the 10 seconds of downtime where we were all standing there with no music to dance to, staring at ourselves in the mirror.
• There’s a neat ability to add a song to the “On The Go” playlist just by holding down the select button for a few seconds. Only you’re supposed to do this when the song is selected in the list of songs, rather than when the song is playing. Gee, when do you think you’re more likely to be reminded that the song is great and you’d want it on your On The Go playlist? I mean, adding it from the list of songs is good, but I should be able to add it when I’m listening to it, too.
• Hitting “shuffle songs” when I’m already listening to a song immediately switches me off the song I’m listening to. I hate that… some car CD players do that, too. As far as I’m concerned, “shuffle” should be a ‘mode’, not an ‘action’.
• There’s no quick key for backlighting. You can configure a setting that says at all times a button press initiates backlighting for 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, etc, but you can’t click and hold down some hot key to randomly bring up backlighting on demand should you need it. This sure would be nice… having the backlighting setting on all the time wastes battery during your brightly lit office time, but if you turn it off all the time then you don’t have the backlighting when you need it in the darkened car.

Give Me One Reason

Okay, enough bitching. It does have some pretty cool features:

• Once you go through the work of tagging all your files (and learn how it needs them to be tagged), the Playlists are pretty groovy. They’re primitive — you can’t use any OR’s in your selection logic, so my files have tortured grouping names like “BothMarie” or “BothScottMarie” to make sure that it will appear on the both a playlist that’s acceptable to both Engineerboy and me, and a playlist that’s just for me to listen to at work. But when you’ve got them grouped and star’ed appropriately (including the new stuff that you buy) you then have an auto-updating list that you barely have to manage at all (I check the limit length every couple days to make sure that it only includes files of a high rating, expanding the limit whenever we’ve added more songs to the library).
• It truly is cool to have iTunes to buy their songs whenever you feel like it. It’s an expensive habit, even at $.99 a song, but boy is it awesome! Random songs from your college days, stuff you hear on the radio that you like, classic Funk that you love but never bothered to buy the CD, all of that you can add to your iPod if you feel like it and it’s available on iTunes. Engineerboy even got a wild hair to download the entire new Joe Cocker album and *bam* we had it within 10 minutes for our next car ride. Too cool!
• It is really fast to update. One of the things I hated most about my iRiver was being stuck listening to the same 200 MP3s for weeks on end because I was too lazy to burn a new CD of songs. And even if I got one new MP3 from a CD I bought or something, I had to rip the MP3 and then burn a new mix CD of MP3s. Total pain. Updating the iPod is relatively pain-free and very fast (not as fast for me since I keep my files on a network drive and use Super G wireless, but still pretty snappy).
• It’s very easy to rate a song while you’re listening to it, which is convenient if you haven’t rated all your songs through the iTunes UI. (I wish it would show you the rating on the iPod UI without you having to push another button first, but oh well).

Well Well Well

Overall, I like it. I’m glad I bought it and I listen to it every day at work and every time we’re in the car. It’s not a perfect experience. The install was painful and it still needs to be reset every so often, which is kind of a drag because my prefs get lost (the annoying click is turned back on, my backlighting preference is lost, etc). I do wish it were more configurable. Maybe it’s my UNIX bias, but I find the Apple “our-design-team-will-decide-how-your-interface-should-work” design paradigm frustrating. But overall it’s great and I love having it and it helps me work, having all the music I love right at my fingertips.

And it’s even let Engineerboy (not near the music-head I am) enjoy music more, since all of his music is now with us in the car — he drives the iPod when we’re in the car, playing Funk DJ. We even hear Weird Al not too infrequently. I still like the iPod.

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So, last year, my friend Libby met me for pedicures one Saturday morning and said that she’d just come from Nia class. I gave her a blank (and probably confused/skeptical) stare. “Hunh??” She, in turn, had that expression of one searching to explain a complex concept in only a few words. “It’s an exercise class, kinda like dance and martial arts.” I filed the word ‘Nia’ away under ‘martial arts’ in my head (only the last concept she’d said really stuck) and didn’t think any more about it — we proceeded on with our rare morning visit of pedicures and a girly kibbitz brunch.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Engineerboy and I are taking our normal drive to work, and I notice in a strip shopping center just off I-45 and Houston street, in bold red letters above one of the businesses:

Nia – Pilates – Yoga

NiaMoves.com

Hunh.

Eventually, after enough weeks of driving by this place, I think, ‘hunh’ again. I check out their website and realize that Nia seems to be a lot of dance and movement, and that this studio seems to have their act together (I love a well put-together website). I connect these facts in my brain with my orthopedic doctor telling me I have to do something 4-5 times a week to strengthen the core muscles in my spine and abdomen and think, well, maybe I should go check out this place.

Well, I love it! I’ve basically gone for two weeks now (I know, I should go more before writing a review, but the place and the exercise concept is really cool). I’ve gone to several Nia classes as well as a YoNia class, which combines Yoga and Nia. The classes are done barefoot on an immaculate wood floor, and the classes really place an emphasis on how you move your foot when you exercise — rolling your foot as you step and being very mindful of your movement. (Quick disclaimer here: I’m just giving you what I’ve learned from the classes as a student, so don’t assume my thoughts here can teach you about Nia as a concept or anything. I encourage you to go to an official Nia site to make sure I’m not misinterpreting anything.) In general they’re very low-impact, which is good for and my spine, but many of the movements are done in “levels”, so that they can be kept low for those who need to stay at a low impact or low workout level (me, most of the time) or ratcheted up for those who like to kick higher

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