I have to laugh.

My site meter counter has doubled this last week! I am so excited. It means my most frequent visitor is like a mouse in a cage. The only outlet being the running wheel (internet). I do not know why, but my counter keeps counting me. Well, look at it this way, at least I have one ardent follower! So do we all! And no, I do not keep going back to read the beautiful prose on my site. I am not even sure I LIKE the author, let alone his work. I visit for the links. I used to have them in my browser’s favorites, along with many more. Since the crash, I have not bothered to put them back since I am still unsure about this machine.

My dreams must be interesting, but I do not remember. My arms are sore, one of my biceps feels like one huge knot which, if I am not gentle with, will coil and cramp. It has several times already, as I tried to ignore it or show it who was boss. The other arm is only slightly better. My forearms are pretty rough. At least only one leg is slightly sore. I am really tired, and it has been like this for the last three mornings. I suspect I am missing out on some serious dreamage though. Then again, you know what? I am not sure I want to know. I wish I could take a peep, and if it was fun, just jump in.

I watched “No Country for Old Men” last night. I must admit, it was not great. In my estimation, it was not even good. The sociopath had too much self awareness, acted evil. I just do not believe most sociopaths have any clue. It is like the guy who cannot smell anything. He smells horrible and yet has not a clue. I do not even think they sense it enough to react to the reaction in others. A sociopath, in my worldview, is like a wolf or a snake or a bear. He will do terrible things, but to him it is no more evil than changing a light bulb. I have some suspicion that the reason Hollywood ALWAYS misses this is it is so full of them it does not wish to offend. It chooses them, then breeds them, inculcates them, protects them, and finally tries to make their way the new American way, whether via socialism, communism, feminism, or whatever typical populist mechanism is available to it. What happens in Hollywood, stays in Hollywood, even if it gets buried around Vegas. Oooohhhhhh, says Drothy, Glinda would never do that… Dorothy, you knew better from your momma, quit acting. And, when they paid your dog better than the troop of midgets, you could not have been sleeping. Beside that, what exactly did you do to get the part, probably with your mother’s full knowledge, perhaps under her advisement.

Ok, rant over, back to the movie. It was not memorable. It was not superb in any way. I had hoped the real lead would come through in quietude, I thought he might save the day with a counter position to the psychotic, such as he was. Either they had ruined the part of the sociopath too grievously for this to work, or they just butchered this counter part as badly as they did the killer’s part. I saw nothing but a dim blur of difference and an old man who thought he might give up or not. There was nothing built in, nothing to bite into, nothing to separate, and the horror was lame. I see an attempt at bluntness of delivery and simple art. In my estimation, it failed miserably. The artistry attempted ending up being more horrible than the killings or the killer. I did like some of the weapons. Well, one of them. A silenced shotgun? Sss a weat! That is it for positives.

The only movie I found truly superior all around was Apocalypto. The parts I really liked about AVP where here, plus many all it's own, on top of everything else being top notch, professional, beautiful, and artistic. As the movie follows lives in that initial lead into the movie, I was shown the simple humor, the simple life, the nature of things, as if I was there. All not only well done but beyond believable and into natural. The acting, my word, if that was actual acting, Hollywood should watch. I do not think it remembers, for the most part, how to act. It was as if anthropologists had hidden extremely good cameras and voice recording devices in the area and picked up truly native scenes. I have, of course, never been exposed to “virgin societies”. Of course, it is not possible. Even if they exist, being introduced would end that societies blindness. Yet, I have been a party to some rather tribal settings (of several types). It is not exactly my first choice, but compared to some modern company, it can be preferred. At least the unlearned and unwashed are often humble enough to understand that not only do they not know, they understand they probably cannot know. Only so-called intellectuals seem to miss this point. (think about that one) In that manner, they are refreshing. In any case, I believe the movie captured the potential naiveté of the people quite well. It is not just the peoples who become subjugated, even the conquerors are simple by today’s standards. At least, at our upper levels of decision making. There are far more inputs and the complexity of those inputs is astronomical, there are ethical, legal, and moral implications, and a chain of command exists which might be larger than the whole South American population of that day. Simple, simple lives, simple choices, the conclusions were never in doubt.

In the end, the beautiful thing of about the movie is that it captured the beauty, or at least the nature of, of the killer being killed by the killer being killed by the… Ok, you get the point. There are no underdogs worth supporting. One could say, what about the villagers? And I would say, sure, possibly. But there are a few provisos. What would this tribe have done to a group who encroached and did not move on through, honestly? What would it do if it’s number swelled beyond it’s boundaries capacity to support it’s population? As well, the story has to start somewhere, we could go back to Adam stomping on the first ameba to kick off man’s sins, but we did not, the movie did not, and so there we are in a simple village. After the conquerors road rough-shod over an ever expanding area, for centuries at least, the bully meets a bigger bully. And, the bigger bully did precisely what bullies do, and they should have seen that coming. As a fact, hehe, they did. Still, the Spaniards were relatively decent in comparison. Not one mass blood sacrifice ritual was performed for God. The dead were killed in war, though true too, many died as slaves working hard dangerous work. But do you think these people were not slaves before the Spaniards, for the most part? Do not be foolish. The only thing the Spaniards did was eliminate the one percentile native non-slave class and the massive blood rituals. I really hate it when communist revisionist historians lie. Yes, we have them in the church, too.

Do not even start with… Oh, but these people here were living separate indigenous lives… Yes, but only because whatever major collective tribe existing at the time did not yet get there, had culled the area already (if outside of the local memory) but recently enough that they were letting it repopulate, etc. Why more of the Native Americans, North and South, were not combined is probably a simple matter of food production. With enough, if not absolutely conclusive, evidences of feast, feminine, and famine to the point of cannibalism, food production just was not mature enough on this continent. And there was no off-continent or intra-continental trade to marginalize drought, disease, war, or other typical issues. Europe, Asia, perhaps parts of Africa, had each made attempts at agriculture. It seems the more prolific the trader, the better the population they represented. Right or wrong, weak people are destroyed or used, underfoot as they are while, and especially while bringing no real value to a pagan or godless world. In modern parlance, if people own thousands of farm acres but neither farm nor build on them, our government or some private entity, or even a group of those, might very well find a way to strip the land away from whoever owns it and then use it for crops, housing plots, or whatever will benefit most those who have undertaken the theft. More so under liberal governance, have now doubt. (look at the judges who voted in favor of the government land grab which turned that land over to contractors with the logic that the government would get more tax revenue and the contractors would come out ahead too, evil today or centuries ago, but not unknown).

Again, it was an excellent movie. It’s portrayal of the native people was amazing. It’s look at the way things very well might have been is as accurate as could be produced. With the art and touches in the film, I doubt if any pure science could do better. As well, I think the science used was top notch. If it does not fit with common conventions, more likely than not, it is common convention which is incorrect. I would have no problems letting my children, say age 8, maybe a little older, watch it. I do not have kids though, so… take my advice for what it is worth. My kids will not be pussified… that is all I am saying.

Oh, and I tried to stay on course with the reviews. I just could not get it done. There are NO SPANIARD attacks in the movie, it's all Indians. I went way off track.

Oh, yeah. Day two of no tobacco. I am still grumpy. But, it is sort of a sneaky grumpiness. Rather than just bellowing like a bull and charging, this crankiness sets people up, then WHAM! So, be NICE or I may bite. *bite!* Hey, I can see it, and I can and do try to mitigate, but I am glad I am not someone bringing me bad news or disagreeing with me today. Wow… hehe Excuse me while I go chew on an iron bar.