Ralph Nader: It is up for the Lawyers to Rally for the Laws of the Republic


Lawyers are "officers of the court" and have a duty to uphold the constitution and the laws of this country.

June-July 2008

New Movies Watched:
King of California
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
10
Sex and the City
Strange Wilderness (DNF)
The Bucket List
King of Kong
Truth Rising
Carlin: Class Clown
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes
Be Kind Rewind

Movies Rewatched:
Super High Me
The Hunt for the Red October
The Sum of all Fears
Clear and Present Danger
Patriot Games
Carlin: You are all Diseased
Carlin: Complaints and Grievances
The Bucket List
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King

Welcome to this over-deadline edition of the cinematic spree. As usual, I watched too many movies and then waited until the last minute to write this column, beating the grace period built into the deadline (15th) by only one day (19th). This month I watched all of the Tom Clancy movies and all of the Lord of the Rings movies. So it's basically a non-stop discussion of American foreign policy from the heavy metaphors to the light ones. Throw in a few comedies, some hip new releases, and the usual blather and you've got... the cinematic spree. Now on with the spree!

spoiler alert--- I might reveal the endings to movies, if it's necessary to properly discuss what the film is really about. Sometimes I might not, but to be safe, only read reviews for films you've seen or films you don't mind reading a spoiler about. Spoiler: in LOTR they destroy the ring. Oh that was ice cold, the old spoiler in the spoiler alert gag. Classic.

The Politics of 'Predator'

[via asylum]

Grand Theft Auto IV style Movie Re-Enactments

american history x, fight club, godfather, goodfellas, reservoir dogs

Don't know why, but their shitty embed seems to only play the intro. If you want to watch the actual video, go here.

June 2007

Books Bought:

The Revolution: A Manifesto - Ron Paul
Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street (33 1/3) - Bill Janovitz
Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World - Michael Pollan
Vegan Freak: Being Vegan in a Non-Vegan World - Bob Torres
Little Brother - Cory Doctorow

Books Read:

Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World - Michael Pollan
U2's Achtung Baby (33 1/3) - Stephen Catanzarite
Confessions of a Baseball Purist - Jon Miller
Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (33 1/3) - Chris Ott


Welcome to today's rather brief edition of the polysyllabic spree. Today we'll be talking about Joy Division and their bizarre recording practices. We'll be checking in with U2 and getting a full dose of religious fundamentalism instead. And finally we'll go home with San Francisco Giants Broadcaster Jon Miller and remember Baseball's Golden Era (the Steroids Era). Today on the we celebrate the one year anniversary of the spree. But we celebrate it in stride, moving forward with more words and a rededication to read more books and buy less books. The eternal struggle. Man against library. Today's total padded by 33 1/3 books. Delivered to you ad free and without commercial interruption, the literary equivalent of a light lunch, behold the spree!

Reagan began a CIA Operation to sway the media, the congress and the American Public

“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.

“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.

However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra fallout but thrived. [link]

Phillip K. Dick at the London Review of Books

Both political and psychoanalytic paranoia, for Dick, induce ontological vertigo. If you accept the Official Version, you will never know what’s really going on; once you step outside it, you will never know either, since nothing can falsify the hypothesis that everything is fake.

[...]

‘Phil Dick is on the side of the crazy people, which makes him, indeed, a writer for our times.’ ‘Ubik is true,’ Dick told Williams, ‘and we’re in a sort of cave, like Plato said, and they’re showing us endless funky films.’ The funky parts of modern life – films, pills, joints, urban confusion, free love, SF itself – which promised to reveal a better reality instead turned out to be part of the veil. [link]