Mar 23

Movie Review: The Hunger Games

I haven’t read The Hunger Games, and haven’t really paid attention to the book series. I had the barest concept of the story from The Baby, who liked the first book, was cool to the second, and hated the third. So I had pretty much no expectations going in. I only went because the girls wanted to go to the midnight showing, and I had Friday off work.

The movie was amazing.

The concept is that in a dystopian indeterminate future, there was an uprising that was quashed by the world government. Every year since, 74 years running, they select two teens–one male, one female–from each of the empire’s 12 districts to compete to the death until a single winner is crowned.

Parental Info:

  • Sex: nonexistent.
  • Language: I counted three swear words.
  • Violence: realistic, unglamorized, but not gratuitous

Go see it.

 

Spoilers follow:

 

You might wonder how they can tell a story aimed at teens and tweens about teens killing each other (apart from the Tri-Wizard Tournament in Harry Potter) and keep it from glorifying killing. Really well, actually. The movie has a good share of violence, but it’s not what you expect from a typical Hollywood movie about people forced to kill one another for sport. The violence is ugly. There are no witty rejoinders or bad puns or catchphrases uttered as your opponent dies. Ugly things happen.

The movies avoids so many clichés. The lead character is Katniss Everdeen, a late teen girl who uses a bow to hunt game to feed her impoverished family. With so many other movies, having a female lead means she is either, as my daughters succinctly pointed out,  1) an independent woman who doesn’t need a man or 2) really needy, or 3) an independent woman who doesn’t need a man–until she gets one–and then she is needy. Also, she should be ridiculously hot.

Katniss, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is attractive, but she doesn’t look like a supermodel. She just looks very real. Her character is strong, smart, tough, caring, and a little socially awkward. She acts very real.

There is a romantic relationship in the movie–kind of. There were so many clichés that they could have fallen into with the relationship, but chose not to. Even though the couple seem close, things are a little ambiguous, and there are hints that some other things are irreparably altered because of the relationship.

The entire movie was excellent. The camerawork, the music, the production design, the acting. I was really surprised to enjoy it, and enjoy it so much.

However, because it avoids so many common pitfalls that could have really turned this into every other action and romance flick, I wonder how well it will do at the box office.

Here’s hoping it does.

Mar 21

Alabama: 40 Hour Week

The other day I was listening to Alabama’s 40 Hour Week, a song I had heard countless times. But one lyric stood out to me that I hadn’t noticed before:

“But the fruits of their labor are worth more than their pay
And it’s time a few of them were recognized.”

I’m not sure if that is supposed to be merely an observation, a complaint, or a line designed to appeal to those who don’t understand the concept of employment.

Would you employ someone whose labor was worth less than their pay?

Mar 20

Donkeys, horses, asses, and mules: part 2

I do some occasional computer work for an older lady outside of town. On her desk she has a framed picture of two mules, almost kind of a portrait. Finally one day I asked her about it. It turned out that the two mules in the picture were hers back in the 1950s.

“People think mules are stubborn, but they are actually just smart. If a horse gets its hoof caught in some barbed wire, it will keep trying to get free until it ruins its leg. A mule will wait there patiently until you come get it free.”

“One day I was trying to go into town. It was winter, and I got the car stuck. My husband got the truck to pull me out, and it got stuck as well. Then he got the tractor, and now all three were stuck. Finally he got the mules, and they pulled all of the them out.”

see part 1

Mar 17

Gaels

“For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.”

–G.K. Chesterton, from The Ballad of the White Horse

Mar 15

Disable stupid Lion feature

I used my first Mac in 1984 and absolutely loved it, and I’ve been using a Mac daily since 1997. At work I have the privilege of running a 24″ iMac, along with my standard Windows boxes running XP and Win 7. I recently installed Apple’s newest OS, Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). It doesn’t offer any huge advantages that I can see over 10.6 (Snow Leopard), though it does finally support DFS, so now I can actually save files out to our group folder on the network.

Lion does come with one irritating ‘feature,’ though: the ability to have an application re-open the last document(s) that you had open when you quit the program. It is so annoying. You go to open a document, and now you have the new document and every document that you had open three days ago when you quit the program.

Anyway, here is a tip from OSXDaily for how to turn it off.

Mar 14

Donkeys, horses, asses, and mules: part 1

For those of you confused about the difference between donkeys, asses, and mules (I assume you can identify horses), this is for you. I hope I get all the terminology right, because each creature gets it own word based on gender, species, parentage, and whether or not it (in the case of males) has been gelded (I guess this is why they don’t use the generic dog and cat term ‘fixed,’ as ‘fixing’ a horse would be quite different than ‘breaking’ it). Female horses are called mares, and male horses that are still able to reproduce are called stallions, and those that have been gelded are called geldings (gelding is a very euphemistic term, in my opinion).

A donkey is the same thing as an ass (Equus asinus, from which we get our word asinine). A male donkey is called a jack. Therefore, a jackass is not just a donkey, but a male donkey. Females are called jennies.

A mule is the offspring of a jackass and a mare. A hinny is the offspring of a jenny and a stallion. Mules may be either gender (males are called johns, females are called mollies), but they are almost always sterile (johns are always sterile, mollies are almost always sterile). Technically a john refers to a gelded mule, but as male mules are always sterile, they are always supposed to be gelded.

Mar 14

March Madness…

I am looking out my window and I have cabin fever really bad! The grass is turning green, the birds are singing and the sun is shining. It is hard to believe that it is the middle of March. This time last year I’m pretty sure we had snow, or at least drizzle, in the forecast. For me March Madness has a different meaning this year (although I am anticipating some really good basketball). My madness is stemming from the fact that I am stuck inside all day while the weather beckons me to come and play.

Mar 03

Wind beneath my wings

One time Kaleb and I went to work on a printer. While we were there, a young female doctor was in the room. The three of us bantered back and forth for a while until the printer was finally fixed and it began to spit out backed up print jobs.

Doctor: “You guys are the wind beneath my wings.”

Me: “Wouldn’t that be in the armpits?”

Doctor: “Smell it up, boys!”

Feb 29

Poker Advice #1

“If a new player is a financial liability, the good player gets him out of the game. The simplest way to eliminate an undesirable player is not to invite him to the next game. If this is not possible, the good player forces him out by –

  • encouraging unpleasant and unfriendly incidents toward him
  • irritating him and hurting his feelings
  • refusing him credit
  • telling him not to play again.”

This sage advice comes from Frank R. Wallace’s The Advance Concepts of Poker, a book from 1968 that promises you a guaranteed income for life by using said concepts.

Feb 26

“Yay! You have provided magic!”

This is what one of my customers told me this morning when I fixed her problem without actually doing anything.