theMediaman.com

I’m listening to My Chemical Romance right now, since Simone and I will be going to the show on Thursday night. We’ve been to Edge Electric Christmas performances before, and I hope they have the “all the extra promotional crap we still have at the end of the year” sale. Last time, I picked up a David Usher t-shirt, The Music, and a couple Zwan shirts. I’ve worn them regularly for two years and only the “The Music” shirt is showing significant wear. Not a bad deal since they were all $2-5 ea.

Well, we’re going to the polls in the latter half of January to vote for a new government. I’m still not entirely happy with the strategic voting I did during the last provincial election, which is why I voted without hesitation for The Green Party in the federal election. Me and 580,000 other Canadians. I’ll probably do the same this time.

Their whole push in the last election was 1) they have a candidate in every riding, and 2) they have a full platform… no longer just a “one-issue party”.

Canada uses a “first past the post” system, where the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins. The party with the majority of seats (or the most seats) makes up the government.

PEI, this week, followed British Columbia by rejecting the possibility of updating its electoral system to represent the popular vote on a whole. If the country used a system based wholly on popular vote, then the 4.3% that the Green Party received would have translated into about 13 seats. Normally, a majority portion is reserved for “first past the post”, but then some are represented by popular vote. For example, if PEI had decided to move to that system provincially, then 17 of the 27 seats would be “first past the post”, while the remaining 10 would be based on popularity.

I’m interested to see what the Green Party’s platform is this time. One benefit of the popular vote in the last election is that the Green Party qualified for federal funding, as representing a significant portion of Canadians (cut-off was 2% or 4%, I can’t remember). With that, their leader Jim Harris has been able to be a representative of the party full-time.

They don’t have my vote yet. But Jack Layton doesn’t represent my interests, Martin still hasn’t done enough for Health Care, and the Conservatives show no evolution from their OWN days of “culture of entitlement”.

What’s a responsible socialist to do?
 

Pete.

I watched Alone in the Dark… God Bless TMN onDemand. Didn’t have to pay for it, and when the bad acting bugged me, I could pause it.

Very, very, very low expectations from the guy who created House of the Dead (which didn’t really take place in a house). Surprisingly, the worst performance wasn’t by the director, but by Tara Reid… as low as your expectations would be of her thespianism, she was an absolute disaster to watch.

There’s an opening crawl to the movie, and it’s long… REALLY long… and with a voice over for those in the audience who are too stupid to read, that’s not even done by any of the lead actors. Apparently it was inserted because the test audiences were so confused by the lack of relevant information given during the film.

Christian Slater tries to do the grungy, ex-government operative thing, and winds up being a pale, emotionless Fox Mulder (think about that concept for a second).

The storytelling is horrible. There’s a part where they cut away from the main characters, to the strike team ‘defending the perimeter’. Spends WAY too long on them, since we’ve had no set up for their characters… imagine giving an ensign in a red shirt ten minutes of a Star Trek episode, and that’s the feeling you get at a point in the movie when they’re supposed to be building to the climax.

Stephen Dorff is making a career being in bad, ’scary’ films. Aside from this film, he was in the first Blade, FearDotCom, and Cold Creek Manor (which I’ve trashed on before). If that’s not enough, look at what his first film was. His performance was probably the least irritating of the bunch in this film, but still over-the-top delivery and cursed with bad writing.

It’s possible that my extraordinarily low expectations helped it, but it wasn’t as bad as House of the Dead. I’d say it wasn’t as bad as A Sound Of Thunder, but that would be a lie. Sound of Thunder suffered from being stuck in Post Production Hell when the production company went bankrupt. It had second-rate CG, and the editing was messy, but it’s impossible to blame anyone involved in production of this film for its failure.

Alone in the Dark doesn’t have that excuse. Additionally, the story was critically flawed and plagued with plot holes. The acting was unbelievable at best, and seemingly read right from the script at worst. The filming style seemed to change several times throughout the movie, but not for effect… perhaps because the director was coming up with experimental ideas, tried them, then never removed them.

Even the website sucks.
 

Establishing point before you read on: I am not a Creationist™, but I also will not discount any theory with 100% certainty as the human race (currently) does not comprehend the full condition of the Universe.

However, I find that the most vocal in the argument of Creationism™ vs. Evolution™ are usually the extremists. It’s like trying to find a middleground between a black, vegan, lesbian who pays her taxes and David Duke.

With that, I present the Sunday comic version of Why Evolution™ is Wrong.

This has been written with such a disdain for balanced opinion, it could be used for either side of the discussion. By the Creationists™ for the points it raises, or by the Evolutionists™ for the lack of a single intelligent counter-point (and the touch of Catholic-style fear-mongering at the end).

However, the main reason I posted it was to elicit an emotional reaction from Reg.

As for my standpoint, I’m someone who prefers to openly discuss all possibilities. I refuse to participate in a discussion that excludes the theory that the world is on the back of a turtle.

Two weekends ago we held the second annual Star Wars Fest. John, his friends, Keith and Daniel, and I all went up to Pefferlaw to Keith’s farm. He’s got a monster, big screen TV with incredible sound system, so we sat and watched all six movies in chronological order (to the Star Wars universe).

Total geek thing to do, I know. But how many of you have thought about doing the same?

Actually, this is the second time this year I’ve done something like this. The first was borrowing the projector from work to watch all Extended Editions of Lord of the Rings.

Gawd I’m a geek.

One of the most imposing scenes in film history is the first shot (historically) of Darth Vader. In the prestine, white Alderaanian cruiser at the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV, we see Darth Vader - a generation’s greatest villain - enter the scene.

For the first time, I saw that shot within ten minutes of seeing the tortured Anakin Skywalker first put on the outfit. My perspective has forever changed. For years we’ve known what “the real story” is, but to actually watch Anakin’s fall-from-grace completes the story so that we see the only TRUE evil person is Darth Sideous, and that Vader is little more than a pawn. Even his hunt for Luke in Empire Strikes Back takes on a new connotation, when you watch how he loses Padme.

There are other series I could watch like this; among them the Matrix trilogy, any host of television shows available by-season on DVD, or the full lineup of 10 Star Trek movies (which I’ve threatened to make Simone watch). However, I think it will be a while before there’s any event as monumental as watching the entire Star Wars saga beginning to end.

And to answer your question, we started at 11:30 am, and finished around 2:00 am.