Let's have a mind and raise flowers.

Movie Analysis: Super 8 (and how it could have been better)

Ryan McGivern — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:16:13 +0000

I did not like JJ Abram’s film “Super 8″ which surprised me because I enjoy his “Star Trek” film so much.
Where did “Super 8″ go wrong?
I feel it was because the story was fundamentally poor in its plot, themes, and characterization.

There also was the failure of the runtime which was plumped up by scenes that were unnecessary
and a lack of momentum or driving impetus.

THE STORY
But let’s start with the story structure:
It starts off with not one but three “scenes of transition.”
We see Joe (a pubescent young teen–transition!) morose at the wake of his tragically killed mother…
and then right into the Last Day of School Before Summer Break!
These kinds of scenes are pretty common movie starters. They are intended to give us a sense of ‘people at a time of change’ and can give the story its “challenges the characters must face and triumph over.”
Not bad all said but having these two scenes put together led to dragging down the story–not to mention the brief scene that actually comes before these two in the factory where we see the “Days Without an Injury” sign being changed over.
This all led to a slooooow feeling. Couldn’t some of this be filled in later as backstory? Yes, it could have.

JJ Abrams included a number of scenes that did not add to the story including:
1. Deputy Lamb telling his son Joe that he was going to send him away to a baseball camp over the summer.
2. The dropping off/picking up of the film at the camera store. These ‘set up’ that the clerk character…why? Necessary? No.
3. The “dogs have left the county!” scenes. Did we ever even see Joe’s dog? Did we ever see it come back? Ugh.
4. The “concerned citizens townhall meeting.” This was for what? For Deputy Lamb to find out about the Air Force’s radio frequencies from an old HAM radio user…oh.
5. The Sheriff learns about Walkmen Tape Players (how retro!) before being attacked.

There are others to be sure but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Let’s turn to how the ‘facts/events/motivations’ of the story are inherently confused:
The Science Teacher from Lillian follows the train carrying the Alien all over the United States then decides to “free the Alien” by waiting until the train comes through Lillian and drives his truck onto the tracks to crash the train.
I see.
Coincidences of the train’s passage through the town of a traitorous Scientist Who Sympathizes With The Alien aside, we are expected to believe that when a truck is hit by a train the train will fly apart, derail, burst into flames, send entire train cars hurtling through the air…and the driver of the truck will live.

We are to accept that the Air Force arrives at the train wreck immediately (were they on the train?) but cannot figure out how to stop a car driving away (“Anyone get a license plate!?”).
They find Kodak brand film boxes at the site of the crash and then don’t think twice when they see teenagers filming in town.
We are told that the guy who feels guilty about Joe’s mom dying the day that she fills in for him at the factory is angry about Joe hanging out with his daughter. Huh? Why? I can understand Deputy Lamb having a grudge or bitterness, but having Alice’s dad give us this “Romeo and Juliet” vibe just doesn’t jibe with me.

We are told that the Alien ‘just wants to go home’ and we are meant to feel sorry for it I guess?
But the Alien seems to be attacking and kidnapping people to save for late-night snacks. Are we now just to shrug this off as a “oh well, everybody’s got to eat” kind of thing? E.T. liked Reese’s Pieces.
When the Alien attacks the bus that Joe and his friends are in with the Air Force guys, I totally saw it coming. As they were on the bus, I thought: “Alice has mentally connected with the Alien and told it that Joe and her friends are cool and will help it.”
So when the Alien attacked I wasn’t surprised because I thought that it was trying to help the kids but it turned out that the Alien just was kinda randomly eating people. Gobble gobble! Uhhhh, what?

So the theme of the film is….Grief can be overcome. Right?
We start the film off at a wake, and Joe’s locket with the picture of he and his mother is a reappearing plot device.
When Joe has his ‘climatic moment’ he tells the Homesick Alien “Bad things happen. I know, bad things happen.”
And then when the Alien’s Homemade Spaceship is drawing all the metal in the city towards it like the X-Men’s Magneto is pissed off, Joe looks one last time at the locket and let’s it go. Ahhhh. Catharsis.
But JJ Abrams wasn’t satisfied with just that. He needed to really kick it up a notch! How?
By actually showing character growth and change in Joe? By establishing the relationship between Joe and his Mom?
No, by doing some pretty weird choices like…
1. Having Joe descend into the Alien’s Lair through the graveyard, conveniently discovered by Joe as he lounged on his mom’s grave marker.
2. Alice’s mother also be gone–her vacancy is spoken of by Alice’s dad.
3. Alice watches home movies of Joe as a baby with his Mom that are silent and show the mom with her hair blowing around like she’s in a shampoo commercial.

As an aside, can I just complain for a moment about the “Save The Princess” trope that
happens here and in virtually every movie with a young male hero?
a. Woman is introduced
b. Sexual tension
c. Woman is kidnapped or stolen away by mafioso or dragons
d. Male hero saves her, making out ensues
Booooo. Aside from “Die Hard” this ol’ cliche is one of my least faves.

But enough of the ranting about the story line,
let’s move onto…

THE CHARACTERS
There isn’t much in the way of well-rounded characterization in the film.
We know that our hero Joe must overcome his grief (and of course, ‘get the girl’…see ‘save the princess’ rant above)
but that’s about it.
He’s able to have a bit of a confrontation with his father about him seeing Alice and we’re given the lines from Joe:
“She’s kind! She’s nice to me!”
Did kids ever say “kind”? I grew up in the early 80′s and that word had left the vocabulary of youth by then I guess.

The character who I liked the best was actually Charles, the young film director.
His attention was spurned by Alice, he was an ambitious and talented film buff, he was able to confront Joe in a realistic way, and is able to interact with his family in more interesting ways than the other youth.

Well, that’s not saying much. The troupe of youngsters is too big for the purposes of the story and we are left with a “firebug with braces”, a “cowardly kid”, another “forgettable kid who gets injured”, and of course Alice and Joe who are pretty uninspired and flat characters.

HOW SUPER 8 COULD HAVE BEEN A BETTER MOVIE….

1. Just jump us off with the school letting out for summer scene and give us then the set-up of Joe suffering from his mother’s untimely death and perhaps even that he won’t be able to shoot the movie because his Dad is sending him away to baseball camp. “Well, then let’s shoot the movie this weekend!” Give a ‘time crunch/race’ element to kick off the kids’ movie project.
2. Focus on the perspective of the youth. There are way too many scenes without them. Why do we have the scene of the Air-Force guys with the injured Science Teacher? Or the scenes in the Police Station? Give us the feeling of children locked in a crisis that the adults are not able to handle. This creates its own tension: just like adults were powerless to save Joe’s mom, they are now powerless on a large scale.
3. Cut out the “Scooby Doo” scene of the kids breaking into the school and sitting around reading manila folders and reviewing movies like The Bloodhound Gang meets the Warren Commission.
4. Drop the ‘Alien is just a weird looking E.T./Shelob thing that wants to go home!’ thing and create the Alien as a mysterious Creature whose intentions, origin, and purpose are more difficult to grasp and understand–like the grief that Joe is experiencing.
5. Give Joe a reaction of anger when he finally learns that Alice has been keeping the truth about her father’s absence at work indirectly leading to his Mother’s death. This will give a tension that must be overcome between the two, a “lover’s quarrel” in a sense. This will lead to…
6. Joe being the captive in the Alien’s Lair and it is Alice aided by Charles who come to save him. Grief can be helped with the support of loved ones (Alas, it never is fully defeated–it only is coped with) and Joe’s Dark Night of The Soul with the Grief Alien could be triumphed over with the aid of Alice and Charles. By the way, why did JJ Abrams decide to have the Fireworks kid come with him into the Lair? We don’t care about him or their relationship! Ugh.
7. The Alien escapes or disappears in the end. Not vanquished, just dealt with. Joe is reconciled with Alice, Charles gains new respect from his family and finishes his (awesome) movie, and roll end credits.

AND THE BIGGEST LET DOWN WAS….

Speaking of the end credits!!
At the end of the movie I was very disappointed. I thought that the story line was so hackneyed and sloppy that there
must be some kind of explanation!
And that explanation could be: That all of the movie was created in the mind of Joe. That’s right. At the train station while they film Alice’s big ‘goodbye scene’ maybe Joe’s imagination takes over and the rest of the movie was intended by JJ Abrams as a look inside the mind of an adolescent boy.
As the end credits rolled and they played the ‘super 8′ movie created by the youngsters, I thought for sure that we would not see any evidence of the tragic events actually included in the film. I thought that JJ Abrams would be smart enough to show us the movie without any sign that the train actually crashed or the Air Force came to Lillian or anything like that so we could imagine that the filming was mundane and the movie we just watched was the fantasy of Joe as a way to cope with his mother’s death. Nope.
Ugh.
That’s it. Just an ugh.

Poem: Un Chien Andalou

Ryan McGivern — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:06:10 +0000

Un Chien Andalou
I.
Our hands writhe! Both snake and charmer.
Craning palms in pulsing prostration bowing fingers upon callused
Cheshire r o a d m a p s.
Our shoulders wail!
Singing 18-wheeler songs of Topeka, gandy dancer stomping and rocking
Fever dreams raze our bleak night’s revelry and pitch a morning
the razor strap of sunrise boldens me ‘burn the moon!’
Damned now is (that bitable) gold and forgotten the gods.
Our eyes had seen the glory
we plucked it and ate, left it wrungout and then became the glory.
What passions struck, what hesitations shored!
The unlocking sweet sense of Scripture you wrote me:
‘shine, sing, kadosh, kadosh et cetera et cetera’
Cradled in kitchenettes, castoff dressings of sickbeds.
The memories caressed from dresses
Come with me to the beachhead the strand that will be
built, silt upon this heart tidied/atoned…
Blinding angels descending your ladder safe in the cold
our heads on stones our youth lights on high beams
We’ve books of blessings written in love-code
Corporal lines from hands to earth
To hew out tales of your balsam light lilac lined heart.
[Moss birth oh andohmygawd yeah…vernal]

II.
Stranger unashamed
closer/more tender than Sultan ‘n’ Turk (aaaaoooowww!)
our unassuming toddling from Eden
*a joie de vivre comme Emile*
mosaics illumined in unhushed
tantras, mudras, white fire magic
floating undead bog hot heat
sutured mothball sweet
in the cracked chambers of a nautilus’ g u t.
My fingerprints corduroy relics and rim empty glasses of g a l l
served cold on shell-shocked streets.
Choir loft quiet I walk
brandishing teeth at knuckles and waves
Norse sounds aural harbor a timorous kite.
Gavels silent, Bethel dawn gone now the sounds
[fuzzy hum]
before the blameless tideless shore
Siddhartha leaving the raft there | | ||
Sloughing, sighing sweet
(sideline the gaddam shrift in satyrs trove!)

III.
Your forehead presses to my shoulder like a shotgun stock
I remain shaking in my body/ hold to every pleasure like jaws of life
gnoshing through a Subaru.
I come collapsing into every uneasy moment like an unstable star [unbound breath teetering]
while palimpsest lines between us are traced in a tattooists curdled batch of ink.
We fling over the riffs of hot-sake-split dry wood. I see your eyes’ aged lines
carrying my bones to you Sisyphean and lovely-sordid
plywood chaste—(Oh!) an eager Presbyterian.
Fountainous birth we bellow gilt linens
atoss and mangly
mossed and cardamom
we dint upon celebrant tightropes
Epiphanies slowly rolling down our arched backs
preaching to creation: Nineveh’s cattle et al
to return to respite in vineyards examining the masonry
of ribcages in rest (oh and turn of lung tug’s there too. And how!)
Distill my day, your day, our lives entwined
pleat rooted to grow
weightless-unwrenched a glint of synesthesia
(our touch speaks tongues!)

Paleolithic Through The Iron Age: A History of What Was Before The Internet

Ryan McGivern — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:35:39 +0000

Paleolithic Age
When: before 14,000 BCE (before common era)
What: Pre-cave dwelling
Why: Ugg and Ock waiting for cave prices to drop, getting by in a month-to-month field.

Mesolithic Age
14,000-10,000 BCE
Cave culture flourishing.
The ‘middle brother’ of prehistoric times, between the Paleo and Neo. Feels overlooked, despite cool primitive stone work.

Neolithic Age
10,000-4,200 BCE
Viva la Revolucion!
This revolutionary period began with the agricultural revolution (next time you eat brussels sprouts you can either
thank or curse the Neolithics) and ended with the development of metal working.
Crops and domesticated animals created a more stable, situated, and sedentary lifestyle leading many of the Early Copper Age to look in the mirror and say: “Boy, the Neolithic Age was hard on my waistline!”
Joke Of The Age: “Where’s Ukuk?…In his crude yurt ‘polishing his tool’! Hahahaha!”
Factoid of The Age: Polishing of tools in crude yurts.

Early Copper-Stone Age or Chalcolithic Age
4,200-3,300 BCE
Copper working slowly replacing stone tools.
A time of healthy exploration where many identified as ‘Bronze curious.’
Before you scoff at this age take note: horses domesticated and rocks wheeled–nuff said.

Early Bronze Age
3,300-2,000 BCE
“Civilization” arises, tea drunk with pinkies out.
Sumerians create cuneiform writing, Egyptians straight up make those fools look like punks with hieroglyphics.
The urbanization of Palestine [anachronism] occurs, old [anachronistic] Palestinians remember fondly: “There used to be an olive tree orchard there.”

Middle Bronze Age
2,000-1,550 BCE
The Egyptian Middle Kingdom
Arguments about who’ll be portrayed by Bella Lugosi.

Late Bronze Age
1,550-1,200 BCE
Hittite Empire
As empires go, “meh.”

First Iron Age
1,200-930 BCE
Assyrians come for dinner, stay to watch “American Idol” and then end up hanging out until like 11 o clock. What’s up with that?
Meanwhile folks in the Ganges River Valley are like: “Dude, we’ve been making iron for hundreds of years. Get over it.”
Dorians invade Greece, leading to Greek Dark Ages.
The Fall of Troy! (Approximately 1250 BCE actually) caused a migration of peoples from Greece and Mycenaean cities and traveled south. These folks were known collectively as “Sea Peoples” and one group were the ‘Peleset’ or Philistines–the name Palestine is derived from this.

Second Iron Age
930-539 BCE
The fall of Israel in 722 to Assyrian king Sargon. Wailing, rending of sackcloth.
The fall of Judah in 586 to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Wailing, psalming, beating of chest.

Third Iron Age
539-332 BCE
Persian Empire. As empires go, “not too shabby.”

True Minnesota Tales n Yarns: Don’t Make ‘em Quite Like We Did

Ryan McGivern — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:21:05 +0000

Back when we was young in Minnesota, life was was in every which way bigger. To the west, North and South Dakota was just One Goddamned Dakota and Canada had several orbital moons. There wasn’t a size long-john any less than an XXL and they came pre-stained with the blood of mammoths. We drank milk from rain gutters since our cows stood at ‘low cloud height’ and sure enough we was all giants and when we was bad we hadda go pull a Tappin’ Tree for our mommas to beat us with. Shucks, the beatin’ wasn’t all that bad really. But pickin’ your Tappin’ Tree was awful. I of course always tried to pick the skinniest tree and it wasn’t until I was older that I figured out that a skinny tree only hurts all the more. I went through lotsa birch to learn that. When we’d plucked all the trees outta the land our elders took to using Beatin’ Lakes where they’d make us pick a lake and they’d scoop it up and slap the water across our bare bellies. Nowadays our kids might be a little bit smaller but they ain’t one whit better behaved and the like might be said about those two Dakotas.

True Minnesota Tales n Yarns: We Was Poor, Sure.

Ryan McGivern — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:17:52 +0000

When we was younger we didn’t have no fancy spoons. That stuff was for rich folk. We had to use our hands mostly. Course, since we didn’t have forks either we had to handle all our hot BBQ and we mostly had burnt up hands all the time. Sometimes if somebody got enough BBQ sauce on their hands we’d all just pass their hands around the table and eat ‘em up to the wrists ‘til either we or them caught on that we were splintering ulna and radius between our not-so-pearly-whites. Having no spoons of course when we made soup we’d pour it from mouth to mouth, the cook to the oldest kid and them to the next oldest all the way down to me, the youngest of our litter. Course, my older brothers were hungry something awful all the time and they’d have ate up all that soup long before it every got to me and all I’d get was a mouthful of acid reflux, gingivitis, and belched air. Yeah, we was poor and there wasn’t no shame in it because we was pretty stupid to boot. We just figured everybody burned their outhouse gleanings for warmth and showered in the nearby bakery’s air exchange fan. We weren’t the warmest or cleanest kids on the street but on the good side we smelled heavily of rye bread–and what kid doesn’t love the smell of rye bread? Course on the bad side, we’d all get giant cysts on our faces and legs that burst forth yeast and frosting. We was poor! And we’d all look for extra work to help out the family. Even as young kids we’d be doing our share. That’s the way it was back then–everybody lending a helping hand. If you couldn’t or wouldn’t get a job or steal your fair share we’d tap your arm in your sleep and sell your blood to the Satanist church. A pint could get ‘ya four dollars! That sounds like good money but most of it would go straight into the monthly costs of exorcisms and crucifix tattoos. We was poor alright. I once got hired on by our neighbors the Bjornson’s to dig a hole to bury their horse in. Being poor of course I didn’t have a shovel but I had always been raised to believe that a little elbow grease and a lot of sebum will get any job done and so I said to myself this here hole will be dug come hell or high water! As it turned out, that was the summer of the Great Moose Flood, when a fast moving moose rammed into the dam above town. But sure enough as soon as that water was drank up by the Jorgensenson family dairy cows and the ground came back I got to that hole. To get to the Bjornson’s place, it was a fifty odd mile trek up Shit Creek and of course I hadn’t got no paddle so it took me near until breakfast to get there each morning which is why I would leave at sundown two days early but that wasn’t all too often I had to do that because for the most part I just slept there in a deer bed I found in a stand of pine trees. Anaway with no shovel to my name I just ate my way into that hole but of course as you can imagine by the time I got the hole finished my soil-bloated body filled the hole completely. When winter came around the Bjornsons poured tar over me and sealed me in pitch and all-weather wood sealant. This kept me warm for the most part though I had to put up with animals stumbling into my tar pits and then the wolves coming in and getting stuck when they’d come checkin’ on all death screams of dairy cows going on. When spring came along and then the next couple years’ worth of freezing and thawing I got loose enough to get dug up with a skid loader. By the time I’d wriggled loose that ol’ horse had been given to the elementary school’s Stew Night Fund Raiser and I never did see any money as a payment for my troubles but that was the best job I ever did have. Like they say, its all about the people you work with and I find my company well suitable to my liking. I haven’t got much work since then save the few times I’ve been hired on as a fishing guide. In the winter I’ll drive ‘em out to a flat field where I’ve got a retrofitted outhouse I tell ‘em is an ice fishing shed and tell ‘em they’re on Eagle Lake and I leave ‘em there for a weekend. I don’t get much money to speak of since I work for tips and the bottom of my tip jar’s rusted out and most my clients are too frostbit to reach for change but heck I don’t mind being poor ‘cuz as a Minnesotan I was raised to value the simple things in life: perennial drunkenness and the ability to equally distrust and envy the middle class.

True Minnesota Tales n Yarns: Yup, We Got Some Lakes

Ryan McGivern — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:10:07 +0000

Yeah, some folk do call Minnesota the Land O Ten Thousand Lakes. You know who those people are? Wisconsiners and the Jealous, though that is a bit redundant. We got on hand more than ten million lakes and including the water of our sweaty palmed hands, we got well nigh into the billions. We’re natural born swimmers we are. Most of us are born directly into a lake or at least into the live bait box. Don’t know how many siblings I lost to being mistaken for minnows. We got lakes such that if you’re dry for more than a few minutes, anxiety kicks in and you’d better take a step to the right or left and get yourself into Perch Lake or Lake Arrowhead. I once just about drowned after drinking a few Hamm’s and falling off a fishing dock. I fell like a stone to the bottom of that there lake and when I did what’d I find there but four Mer-people sitting around a lower fishing hole catching tin cans. Nice folks, them. Ended up spending the weekend with ‘em before making a casserole of ‘em.

Mer-People Casserole

Debone and de-trident Mer-people.
Make offering to Neptune (unless serving during Lent or Dionysian Feast)
Crumble Funyuns into casserole dish
Use crock pot
If Minnesotan, you know the rest. (If Wisconsiner, get bent)

Open Letter to Future Generations: This is What Gender Panic Sounded Like

Ryan McGivern — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:39:51 +0000

Artists I Like: Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante and Keith Kenniff

J.J. — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:11:01 +0000

A beautiful short film about life:

Wanderlust: Brazil

J.J. — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:07:40 +0000

A few months ago my partner and I flew to Rio. We were traveling in September, which is near the end of Brazil’s southern hemisphered winter, so it was kind of chilly and overcast for most of the trip. An interesting southern hemisphere knowledge morsel: toilets flow the opposite direction, which is caused by what is known as the the Coriolis force, the internet tells me.

Rio is perhaps the prettiest city in the world, nestled between beaches and hills. It is incredibly expensive, as the government is experimenting with the currency to prepare for the next Olympics and World Cup. There are also plenty of investors paying for infrastructure to cater to the promised influx of wealthy tourists. Thus, there is a plethora of income disparity with rich folks flying around town safely and efficiently in personal helicopters, and poor folks that live their lives squatting in shacks on the hillside on dollars a day. These hillside squatter shack neighborhoods are known as favellas, and have to be among the most aesthetically appealing ghettos anywhere. Many are hyper-dangerous to outsiders, as evidenced by the heavily armed police at the entrances keeping misguided tourists out. They are also known for their rawness and their strong sense of community. Recently, sadly, many are getting displaced because of the Olympic/World Cup gentrification and many of the favellas’ appealing proximity to downtown.

For our first few nights in Rio we rented an apartment right off Copacabana beach. OMG, this is an urban beaches worth singing about, breathtakingly beautiful, golden, sunsets to die for, miles and miles of action packed urban paradise! There are folks wandering the beach selling everything liquid, with canisters of putrid tasting coffee served in tiny plastic cups, fresh coconuts opened with hatchets, lots of sugar cane liquor, fresh fruit and beer. The beer situation is odd — the quality of beer doesn’t seem to matter, just the temperature. They serve it in small cups so the beer doesn’t have time to warm, and then they slide the bottle in a fitted beer cooler. The colder the better, so you can’t taste how crappy it is. Fresh juice is HUGE, and around every corner of Brazil is a juice bar. You can get any kind of tropical juice by just pointing at which fruit you’d like, from passion fruit to kiwi to strawberry. They’ll squeeze it for you in front of you. We saw a fellow wander in and order an orange juice. He then proceeded to pour a pyramid of sugar on top, stirred it in and slammed it. Those Brazilians love their sugar.

There is a huge Japanese influence in Brazil, which shows its face with fast food sushi, served in a cone. Apparently, Brazilians love things served in cones, such as pizza. Very strange. All of our meals were too salty, even at fine dining restaurants. There is nothing you can do about it. Even if you ask for no salt, they’ll likely look with their beautiful eyes and then oversalt your food anyway. Our most incredible meal was at a Brazilian Steak House. They had three servers with bow ties who wander around with lamb, pork, chicken or 12 cuts of steak. There are also salad and sushi bars (Japanese influence), and it is all one price. Totally worth it. Never eaten better or more meat in my life. Bonnie doesn’t typically eat much meat, but she ate her weight at this place. Quite the experience and now we know the difference in taste between a cow’s rump and hump! It took more than three hours, allowing time for digestion so we could eat more.

We wandered Rio and experienced an absurd nightclub scene that makes Ybor City look like a Mennonite village. Rio-ites stay up all night, partying in the streets and in clubs with bass bouncing around every corner. Both men and women dance, and Brazilians seem to have laser pin-point precise control over their butt cheeks. Public displays of affection are commonplace, I’m told, which is in contrast to the US. People are deeply making out wherever we went with no regard for our Puritan social norms. Another aspect of this is with some young adult men who wander around with semi-hard ons. You’ll see them periodically flick themselves to keep them semi. Apparently this is attractive in some circles.

Perhaps my favorite moment was one morning, I got up early and watched a purple sunrise over the beach and then went body surfing with a small boogie board for several hours. Then my partner met me on the beach with a fresh coconut. I did so much swimming and relaxing at beaches during this trip. At one point we went to an island where the beach has 15 feet waves. I went into my ankles, which was probably too much. It still felt like I could be pulled out to see at any moment.

Christianity is HUGE, both Catholic and Fundamentalism. We wandered near several churches that seemed like the kind Sarah Palin’s family would attend, with preachers yelling into microphones, people graveling, folks packed in their like sardine cans. Because of this religious leaning, abortion is illegal and the government doesn’t support family planning/birth control. Interestingly enough, there is still a decreasing birthrate. This has been attributed to the soap operas, which are prime time events. Everyone watches them, including men and children. They are in smaller series, lasting only a few months at a time. Recent series over the past years have featured childless women in their 30s, and this influence has spread into the masses. Also, a series had a young girl with lukemia, and that month blood marrow donations increased 50 fold.

Other highlights: we ended up taking an rickety bus ride to a remote hippie beach village called Trinidade where we were treated to golden beaches, enough patchouli to make smoke signals visible from the moon, and some of what must be the finest muqueca (coconut milk stew) on the planet. We also went to an island village with no cars and plenty of monkeys to interact with. Apparently, Brazilians are fascinated with squirrels like we are fascinated with monkeys.

Timeline of Lies And Fabrications Before the Iraq War

Ryan McGivern — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:20:14 +0000

Here’s a great timeline found at Mother Jones detailing the failures of the Clinton and Bush administrations’ policies:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline

A few of the highlights you’ll find in there:
Condi Rice lying about aluminum tubes
The main Iraqi informant “Curveball” was widely suspected to be feeding the US crap
Five hours after 9/11 attacks Rumsfeld was seeking to begin military action against Saddam Hussein
Bush administration’s approval of torture (and subsequent torture of innocent civilians)
Fabricated tales of WMD by Condi Rice, Cheney, et al

All in all, the pattern of falsified intelligence and the marketing of an unwarranted war by the Bush administration is
nothing short of criminal.
Happy Holidays everyone!

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline