Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Deja Vuyaaaaaarg!!

I do recall some 2-3 entries ago how I mentioned (and I quote): I'd like to be able to apologize and say that in future posts I won't make myself look so idiotic...but the odds are I'd screw up that fount of idealism before the end of the week. Well, as it just so happens, it hasn't yet been a week, and there goes the fount.

My Dad & I headed off to the local Farmer's Market to nab some choice meat cuts that wouldn't cost us $20 at a grocery store. Now the first thing to bear in mind as you read this is that 90% of all Ontario drivers are insane and should never have been allowed in a car, let alone driving one. As a side note, happily my Dad is not one of said people, but he does scare me at times with his best Days of Thunder impression.

Now then, back to 90% of all drivers going into the Farmer's Market being ill-equipped to drive. Consider the parking lot, and that estimate goes from 90% to 97%. For some inexplicable reason, the size of the parking lot is inversely proportional to the brainpower drivers use when inside it. And given how large the St. Jacob's Farmer's Market is (as a point of reference: it's bloody huge), you have a large grouping of idiots in very small, very crowded laneways.

From the woman who turns left just in front of the red, blatantly large "DO NOT TURN LEFT" sign, to the couple who seem to think that stopping their car in the middle of a major thru-way (and frigging up the already slow-moving traffic) is the best means of scanning other lanes to see if there are vacant spots (hint: why not actually drive down the lane to see if there are any vacancies, like everyone else?), this parking lot was not making me feel any better about the fate of humanity.

"But wait," you ask, "if this rant is about you making an idiot of yourself, why are you whining about all those other idiots around you?" Well the answer is simple. If I showcase the other ones first, you may not laugh so hard at my shining cloud of stupidity.

*shrug!* Hey, it's worth a shot.

Anyhoo, my Dad manages to find a spot, which at this point is like finding an oasis in the Sahara, and pulls in. This is hampered by the fact that the persons on our left and right conspired together and both parked on the yellow lines of our stall. Needless to say, I'm very happy that I am so thoroughly well-trimmed at the waist, or else I would have never been able to fit through that foot-wide opening between our car door and the rest of the car.

The shopping goes well enough. It's the return to the car that proved vexing...and painful. Very painful. You see, me being the considerate person I was, I didn't feel right throwing open my car door and scratching the paintjob on the "hey, let's line up our tires on that cute yellow line!" car next to my side. So I squeeze back into my foot-wide opening and go through the motions that everyone does: lower head, get into sitting position, yank car door closed as you slip inside.

This in theory would have worked flawlessly for me here. However...I had forgotten that instead of the usual 2-3 feet of space, I had merely 1 foot of clearance. So before I have the chance to lower my head beneath the roof canopy of the car...I slammed the door into my neck.

Yes, yes, laugh at my pain. I wish I had some snappy comeback...but that's not the end of my humiliation, so I'll just shut up right now.

You see, I whacked the right side of my neck just beneath the back of the jawbone. So in effect, I delivered a serious blow to the base of my skull, somehow miraculously missing the spinal column. This was a good thing. The intertia from this blow then sending the midsection of the left side of my neck crashing into the rooftop of the car, however, definitely falls into the "bad things" category. I would argue it may even fall into the dreaded, "bad dog no biscuit" category.

All this happens in roughly a few seconds. My head is turned into a pingpong ball, and my neck suffers to grievous indignities to either side. By the time I've figured out what's happened to me (blinding, unexpected pain does kind of take one by surprise, after all), I'm sitting in the car going to myself: "Head down, then close door! Head down, then close door!"

We escaped the parking lot without further incident, but I fear I shall forever bear the emotional scars that trip has left upon me. The pain I suffer at being so chagrined far outweighs the stinging of my neck. Why must I always suffer for being right....

Today's lesson: Head down, then close door. Or alternately, parking lots are hazardous to your health.


posted by Phillip at 6:11 PM

 
Reloaded.

Well, I managed to see The Matrix Reloaded last night, and all I can say is that critics be damned, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I spent a bit of time last night after the movie contemplating why most people didn't seem altogether thrilled with this sequel, and I think I've been able to discern the two basic reasons:

1. "It had no real plot."
2. "It was too heavy-handed with all that fate/free-will talk."

To the first criticism of there being no real plot, I would argue that people take a moment to look at what the Watchowski brothers are aiming for with the two sequels. They wrote and filmed the two all at once, and are releasing them as close as back-to-back as possible. I believe Reloaded has plot, perhaps not as deeper as the original had (how can you, when all you can do is expand on that which you created?), but certainly deeper than most people are giving it credit for.

I liken the crafting the Matrix's story to the original Star Wars trilogy. Yes, there are places where this analogy will break down, but humour me. The first Star Wars movie was meant pretty much as a stand-alone, though a greater story following it had already developed in George Lucas' head. Now look at The Empire Strikes Back for a moment, and tell me how much plot it has. Not plot twists, but plot. Admit it: there's not a whole hell of a lot of it. "Empire chases rebels, Luke trains to be a Jedi." That's the story. Most of Empire is about the heroes being chased by the villains. How is that so different from Reloaded?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not deriding Empire at all; it remains my favourite of the original trilogy. Yet the overall story is not really advanced by Empire's presence--not until you take the finale, Return of the Jedi into account. All the new characters, all the loose threads that were seemingly left unravelled in Empire get tied back together. The chasing only makes sense when you see the final part of the story. Jedi is the end of Empire; it is the conclusion, where the story is completed. Ask any Star Wars fan, and they look at one movie in the trilogy only by putting it into context with the other two.

I'd argue that the same perspective should be used with the Matrix trilogy. Reloaded and Revolutions are in all likelihood a single, 4-5 hour long movie that was cut in half. Of course it's not going to seem perfectly neat and tidy; that's because what's started in Reloaded has not yet been finished. The answers that were deliberately set up with the second movie are with any luck going to be answered in the third. Reloaded is at its heart a chase movie, and primarily because it's raising the stakes by broadening the world of the Matrix.

I'm willing to bet money that if there was only Agent Smith as the primary antagonist for Reloaded, people would get bored. "Ho-hum, nothing new from the first one. Give us something new!" they would say. Well, they have been given just that (and now they're complaining about that, if I might be acerbic for a moment). Look at what the Matrix has to contend with now: rogue sentient programs (the Merovingian, the Twins); a rogue agent program (Agents Smith); rogue humans (Neo & co); obedient-to-a-fault Agents; and the core programs that keep the Matrix intact (the Keymaker, the Architect). Everybody's fighting with everyone else for control. It's natural that there's going to be a lot of fights and chases going on.

All I ask for is patience. Is there a deeper plot to Reloaded? I'll answer that when I see Revolutions, and have a better context for understanding the story. If it really is sorry and shallow, I'll be the first to publichly mourn so. In the meantime, ask yourselves: well, if you didn't like what you saw, then just what were you expecting to see? And in details? Specific details? Sometimes the viewer is the one who lets the movie down, not the movie that lets the movie down.

Now then, onto the second criticism: "It was too heavy-handed with all that fate/free-will talk." I'll state my opinion first by saying I thought Reloaded did an excellent job of looking at the paradox between having a free will, or being governed by fate. It all comes down to a matter of who controls your choice to do...well, anything. I will admit there were times where the characters seemed to just reiterate what had been eloquently spoken of earlier in the movie, but overall the Watchowski's tried to give people an overview of the conflict between having a free will, and having fate choose for you (even if you are unawares).

In a watered-down religious context, the question comes down to: if a God or Divine Being/Force is "totally omniscient", and that is to say this God knows what will happen (not what might happen, but what will definitively happen), then do we have our own free will? People like saying they have free will; they like being able to choose what they do and make of their own lives. Yet many of these same people are also the ones who, if they believe in a God, tend to also believe that God knows the future. If God knows what you're going to do, if what you choose has already been foreseen (and in effect, decided), then where's that freedom to choose? Has it not just been nullified?

Translate this question in a Matrix world, and you get: if the computer sentience behind the Matrix (God, in this sense) has already pre-programmed you (Neo) to jump through a series of hoops to accomplish a pre-planned result, are you (Neo) still doing whatever you want to do because you have that freedom to choose, or because it has been subconsciously decided for you already, and you just go through the motions, thinking you personally chose to do that?

Of all the people I've talked with thought this about Reloaded, they seem to fall into two camps. Either they don't believe in any sort of God or Divine Being/Force (which tends to render the free will/fate debate irrelevant, since any sort of "fate" has been removed from it), or alternately they do believe in a God...and have spent very little time thinking about whatever faith or religion revolves around their concept of that God. It's a sad thing to say, but the ones who fall into the latter camp irritate me a whole lot more than any in the former.

Faith is proactive, not reactive. It's meant to be felt, thought through and experienced before you simply leap into an argument and make an ass of yourself. I often find that the ones who are the first to jump into any sort of religious fray (verbal or otherwise) tend to be the ones who have spent near 0 hours sitting down and examining just what it is they believe in, good points and bad. As such, they are so subconsciously insecure about their faith that they fear they may be proven wrong, and so have to misguidedly jump down the throats of anyone who may even remotely disagree with whatever they were raised to believe. And so ends your daily sermonette.

Anyhoo, "Free Will vs. Fate/Destiny/Predestination" is a trickier subject than many give it credit for. Believe me, I spent 3-4 years trying to wrap my brain around it. Only now do I have what I think might (not is, but might) be a working answer to that with regards to my own faith. And even then there are other aspects I haven't answered, will never be able to answer, and in all odds be shown to have been wrong sooner or later. It's not necessary to go into all that here, as that's a whole other long and tricky rant, but the point is that I've taken the time to look at it hard. All I can say is that I have a working idea, and it's one I've considered for a while, and it's one I'm willing to change if someone comes along with a better version of it.

So there you have it: my long-winded, much-too-philosophical, overly-analytical, just-how-much-bloody-time-do-you-have-on-your-hands-anyways argument supporting The Matrix Reloaded. Feel free to disagree. Just ask yourself if you're disagreeing with me because you have the freedom to disagree, or if it was predestined/fated that you are to disagree with me.

Something to think about, at any rate.


Today's Lesson: lofty, personal expectations of a movie should never be allowed into the theatre. It takes all the fun out of watching the movie.


posted by Phillip at 8:34 AM

 
Once More, With Screaming

After reading about the TV show Law & Order celebrating it's landmark 300th episode, I tried to recall its catchy opening theme. Somehow the synapses in my brain either misfired or took a wrong turn somewhere along the cerebellum, because instead of Law & Order's theme music, I wound up with the opening theme music to Doogie Howser, M.D. instead.

It's still stuck in my head. Doogie won't release me from his villainous musical clutches.

I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I repent! I vigorously repent of it!

Today's Lesson: God must indeed have an uncanny sense of humour, if he's using television theme music to make me atone for my latest offences against Him. Can't knock Him for it, but I can't exactly say I'm thrilled to be at Doogie's mercy. The pain!
posted by Phillip at 8:05 AM

 
No Need To Call David Boreanez After All

In retrospect, perhaps it's not the best thing when planning to surprise everyone at a convention with the unexpected appearance of your fiancee, to go and announce your fiancee's impending arrival at an online public place. Like say, oh, A Little Bit of Nowhere. Yes indeed, hindsight is 20/20, and my hindside's looking a little sore thanks to me kicking it repeatedly for being so blatantly an idiot. I've forgotten just how many notable friends and family read this.

I'd like to be able to apologize and say that in future posts I won't make myself look so idiotic...but the odds are I'd screw up that fount of idealism before the end of the week.

Yet Anime North 2003 was fantastic. When you either have seen or own whatever's being shown in the viewing rooms, it frees up a lot of time to just wander around the Dealer's Room (I said "No" to a $100 Lain artbook...but the artbook wouldn't take that for an answer), spend time with Melissa, hang out with friends and visit the swimming pool repeatedly. Aside from that pesky little bout of "The chlorine burns! It burns!", all was quite well. Just how much chlorine they felt was necessary in the water boggles me, since I could feel the skin cells being ripped apart with each stroke I made.

I suppose I really didn't need that layer of epidermis anyways.

That aside, things are returning back to their usual state of "whaaaa?" I've returned to my room, my Shih-tzu puppy, my laptop and its wonky screen, and an Email Inbox filled with roughly 150 spams. At least those were the spams that were able to get in before my Inbox got too loaded and didn't allow anything else to be stored. Did I mention how much I hate spam?

Today's Lesson: Chlorine burns! It burns!

posted by Phillip at 6:43 PM