Jimmy

I’m not a big fan of Mondays. I’m not even a little fan of Mondays. In fact, if Mondays were a rock star I’d be one of those people who badmouths them for not being moral enough. Mondays and I have a strained relationship at best, which is perhaps why my subconscious made me turn off my alarm clock this morning and then roll over and go right back to sleep. This made me miss one of my favorite classes (Data Structures) which is a big FAIL, but I ended up getting 4 more hours of sleep that I wasn’t expecting to get this morning which can only be marked down in the WIN column.

Chemistry class in the afternoon was a small Fail because it has somehow become the worst class of my semester even as a find the subject mildly interesting; while despite the 3-hour length of the class period 3D Animation I in the evening is a WIN because my robot model is coming out very well and ahead of schedule. Finding out that a homework assignment I thought was due at 9am is actually due at 5pm tomorrow is a WIN because it means I don’t have to complete (or do any of?) it tonight, leaving me more time to watch 24 or even go to bed in time to get a decent amount of sleep.

The short week this week is a total and complete WIN for obvious reasons.

Only 13 more class periods plus 3 final exams plus one “final exam” period without a final exam (no exams in Animation class but we’re required to meet at that time so we’ll probably just look over everyone’s projects from the semester) makes only 17 more times walking into classrooms this semester which is a WIN beyond belief.

Not being incredibly stressed about my grades like I normally am at this time of the semester? WIN.

So there you go. Today is 80% Made of Win.

(Spoilers for Quantum of Solace below.)

How do you define passion? I was thinking about this and I was thinking that maybe it’s close to being “highly energetic.” But then I realized that, despite my firm belief in the power of energy, energy is like a backyard pond to passion’s Pacific Ocean.

Wikipedia, that great giver of information that I passionately love, tells us that passion is, among other things, “an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire,” Wikipedia almost informs us that the word passion comes “from the Latin patior, meaning to suffer or to endure.”

I bring this up because the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, seems to me to have the most passion of any Bond film I’ve seen, and certainly of any of the last 10-15 years. If you recall, at the end of Casino Royale Bond finds out that someone he trusts and loves is actually a double agent just before she dies to save him. It’s all very tragic and sad, but it leaves Bond with a dark passion for most of Quantum of Solace that gives the movie a feeling that no other Bond film has matched: Bond seems more human than ever before as we see him writhing in his passion (perhaps “writhing” is the wrong word as the passion is mostly crackling just below the surface and never really shows itself directly) for revenge mixed with his passion for his lost love and passionate hatred of her for betraying him. The man is conflicted and moody and more deadly than ever before.

This is no classic Bond movie. Much of the sexism of the past is gone as James is paired with a women (the “Bond girl,” Camille) similarly seeking revenge for the murder of her family and the two of them are involved in an incredible action scene in which they both “get their man” at the same time in the same place. This pairing, for the first time, puts the “Bond girl” on an equal level with Bond (and the fact that they never sleep together helps this, as well) and I think this adds an interesting symmetry between the two characters that helps to highlight what each of them is going through by pointing out the similarities and differences between their two situations.

Further, I think this is Bond for the 21st Century, and I’m not talking about the technology (although the most cutting edge stuff is on display throughout the entire film even as Q never makes any appearances), but more about the style and culture and whole tone. In the past Bond set out to find one villain, kill said villain and than return home after having sex with whatever “Bond girl” he’s picked up along the way. It was a formula that they tried to mix up as much as possible, but it always pretty much was always the same. Quantum, however, acknowledges that the world we live in today is far more complex than that. It probably always has been, but in the past we’ve been less honest with ourselves about it in our movies, preferring to show a simple story that could have resolution in the end rather than a more complex story that can’t be solved in 90 minutes, but in Quantum that’s all gone: while there’s a very present plot with a beginning, middle and end the end of the movie does not tie up all the loose ends, but it also doesn’t even make you wish it had. Throughout the entire movie the tone, perhaps not so overtly as much as very subtly, is that the world is fucked up and we’re just doing all we can to keep it from going to pot in the next 24 hours. In the beginning of the film Bond and M find out that there’s a huge criminal organization that they didn’t even know about operating right under their noses and in the end of the movie Bond has only dealt with one mid-level member of that organization. No going to the head of the sneak and chopping it off, in part because the organization has as members several high-ranking government officials in the British government. This is the type of complexity that faces any intelligence service in the world on a daily basis these days and it’s nice to see Bond reflecting that: it’s not so easy to fight evil when it signs your paycheck.

To return to passion, I think that the second quote from Wikipedia above pretty much says it all: passion comes from a Latin word meaning “to suffer or to endure.” That is what Bond and Camille are doing throughout this entire movie: they are suffering and enduring this world and all its problems, fucked up people and screwy governments, all without the people they loved by their sides because those people have been ripped from this world by people Bond and Camille have yet to find. In a lot of ways this is one of the darkest Bond films, although that does not detract from it one bit.

5 out of 5. If you even moderately enjoy action, see this movie.

Cheers.

-j

In two sentences Michael Moore sums up the entire problem with most major American companies (not just General Motors):

Well, what really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was we’ll build it and you buy it. We’ll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.

Eventually, the consumer got smart and said, ‘You know what, I’d like a car that gets a little better gas mileage. I’d like a car that’s safer on the road,’ so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn’t change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them.

-j

I love the way Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco name their songs. What does The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage have to do with the lyrics of this Panic! at the Disco song exactly? Nothing! But it’s wonderful anyway. That’s part of the reason I like Fall Out Boy and Panic!: I love listening to songs with titles like Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued (Fall Out Boy).

I mean, really, who wouldn’t?

Cheers.

-j

“Policy Over Process” is Jonathan Singer’s nice way of saying that Obama screwed us when it comes to Joe Lieberman keeping his gavel over the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The guy’s not even in the White House and he’s already making amateur mistakes.

Sigh.

-j

Huffington Post is reporting that in their meeting yesterday president-elect Obama offered Sen. Clinton the job of Secretary of State in his administration and that she’s “considering” it.

I just have one thing to say: take it, Hillary! Take it, for f’s sake!

That is all.

Cheers.

-j

Not being a cable TV watcher, I didn’t really know a lot about the politics of the (non-FOX News) cable news channels, but if Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow (video below) are representative of the entire network, it would seem they’re pretty liberal (or as liberal as you can get on cable news TV…). Anyway, here’s Rachel Maddow on Joe Lieberman, I agree with her 100%:

I have class in 5 minutes! Agh!

Cheers!

-j

If you’re any kind of political junkie you have may have already heard the rumors flying over the last 18 hours or so about the latest news/leak from the Obama Transition Team: that Hillary Clinton could be the next Secretary of State. It’s the top story on CNN.com right now, the most commented-on post on MyDD.com over the last couple of days, getting coverage overseas and is being e-mailed around.

So, when I first read about this on MyDD.com last night (the aforementioned post) I thought “hey, that’d be awesome, but it’s not exactly a done deal, is it?”

Well, it’s still not a done deal of course, but it’s seeming more likely to me. Here’s why:

• It’s not one, but two sources within Obama’s team that are reporting this possibility. Now it’s possible that both of them are getting their information from the same incorrect source, but two sources always lend more weight to a story than one does.
• The CNN.com story has a quote from Hillary today at a transit policy press conference that I read some things into: “I’m very happy there is so much press attention and interest in transit, in the off chance that you’re not here for this important issue and are here for some other reason, let me just say that I’m not going to speculate or address anything about the president-elect’s incoming administration. I’m going to respect his process and any inquiries should be directed to his transition team.” First, notice what’s missing: whereas some of her team last night were saying she was happy as a senator, now she’s not saying she’s going to stay in the senate. She mentions that she’s not going to “speculate“, implying that she doesn’t know anything, which could very well be the case but it could also be the case that she’s not going to “speculate” because she knows exactly what’s going on and doesn’t need to guess about it! Also, the last line caught me: “I’m going to respect his process”. Again, that could be code for “I don’t know what’s going on and I wish you’d all stop bugging me about it…or it could be code for “he’s the president-elect and when he wants to announce me as his new secretary of state he’ll do that and I’m not going to say a word about it.”

Putting aside for a moment the issue of if it would happen and thinking about if it would be a good idea, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a strong supporter of her I would love to see her get a spot in the new administration, but somehow the secretary of state role doesn’t totally seem like a good fit for her. I don’t know, maybe I’m not giving her enough credit for being more than a “one-issue” politician, but I would still rather see her working with domestic health care rather than foreign policy since I think her skills would be better suited for that.
On the other hand, I think it would be amazing to replace the second female secretary of state (Condi Rice) with another female secretary and I do think Hillary has what it takes to do the job amazingly well.

Anyway. I should really go do some homework now.

Cheers.

-j

Hey look, planets in other solar systems. It’s actually pretty cool, isn’t it?

Also, the Democrat running in the Alaska senate race has pulled slightly ahead as more votes are counted. I have no idea how many votes are still to be counted, but this race is still all up in the air, just like MN-Sen.

Cheers.

-j

I normally don’t pay a lot of attention to the issue of gay marriage (being a Christian liberal heterosexual I actually don’t 100% know where I stand on the issue and I’ve never sat down to really figure it out because I have other issues that I feel more pull to act on), but it’s hard to miss the uproar over proposition 8 passing by a narrow margin in California last Tuesday (for those who don’t know, proposition 8 amends the state constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one women). I still didn’t much care about the whole issue until I saw the video of the “special comment” that Keith Olbermann had on his show the other day and I feel that I have to share the video because it presents what I see as a very persuasive argument for the cause of allowing gay marriage, take a look:

Cheers.

-j