Technology Marches On

Good: a neighbor underwent surgery to repair a hernia. Afterwards they gave her (yes, her. No, I didn't know women could get hernias either) a bag of novacaine to wear. It's plugged into an IV that goes right to the site of all the trauma. I imagine the idea is that by stopping the pain at the source, you don't need to take as much oral pain medication, which would affect your whole body.

Bad: Elliot drives his Honda over the top of Portland's West Hills. It's downhill so he decides to coast. He puts the transmission in neutral. That works for a while, but eventually the hill flattens out and he needs the engine again, so being a little spacey (it's been a hard day / week / life), he forgets about being in neutral and simply presses the resume button on the cruise control. The engine immediately goes to 9,000 RPM. Only Elliot's panicked response saves the motor from self-destructing. Come on Honda Motor Company, your car is loaded with sensors. Why does your computer not check to see whether the transmission is in gear before flooring the accelerator?

Bad: I called a local pizza franchise last night to order a pizza and they've got a new Robo-Cop automatic phone menu system. "Press one to order..." so I do and I am connected to a guy who tells me he is at this pizza joint downtown. Downtown? I don't think the shop I am trying to get a hold of is downtown, so I ask for clarification. Well, he tells me, we have two downtown shops, one in Edmonton and one in Calgary... Yeah, okay, I think somebody got their wires crossed when they installed Mr. Robo-Cop. Edmonton and Calgary are in Alberta, Canada and are over 500 miles away.

Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth

Very clever: five people playing on one guitar, and it's not a bad little tune either, though I wonder if maybe I am following a dark path here, given the tone to last few tunes I've posted. Maybe I'll lighten up when I get over this cold, presuming that ever happens. I'm getting pretty tired of being miserable. Oh yes, you might be wondering which phrase is the name of the band, and which is the name of the tune. The tune is Somebody That I Used to Know and Walk off the Earth is the name of the band.

Mostly False

I quibble with Politifact:

The Politifact story in this mornings paper rates Huntsman's statement as mostly false. Problem with this is that they are just comparing what someone said about what someone else said. That is a waste of time. Instead, compare what Huntsman said about Romney with what Romney did, then you might have something worth printing.

Whoever Huntsman is.

Blitz with Jason Statham

Psycho Killer Blitz

On one hand there's nothing special about this movie. It has all the typical things that a movie about cops looking for a crazed serial killer have. On the other hand the detail was excellent. Jason is appropriately menacing, the snitch is really sleazy, and the killer is a real whack job, kind of reminds me of Scorpio from Dirty Harry.

The cops (or the writer) made a couple of errors. The first one is when the whack job is apprehended with a bag full of money that the newspaper had just paid to the snitch, which whack job took after he killed the snitch. Cops couldn't hold him (they never can, the first time), but they didn't snap to the bag of money. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. On the other hand, the movie makers went to a lot of trouble to show us the bag of money, before, during and after. Were they going to use it for a different plot twist, in case they changed their minds?

The other error was in searching whack jobs apartment. They turn the place upside down and find nothing. Minutes later whack job shows up and pulls his bag full of incriminating evidence out of some storage space. That's what happens when you put someone like Jason in charge of the search.

There were a bunch of really good characters here. Paddy Considine as the new, queer (can I say queer, or do I have to say gay?), head of the cop shop. Jason, reprising Clint Eastwood's view in Magnum Force, doesn't give a shit. Zawe Ashton as a cop who used to work in narcotics where she was a "cop playing a junkie", but now she is a "junkie playing a cop". Ned Dennehy as the really sleazy snitch. He's so good at being bad that you are afraid that you will get something on you just by watching him.

Naturally we have the scene where our hero has to be restrained from beating the tar out of whack job when the arrest him. It really pissed me off, I really wanted Jason to knock the stuffing out of him, but oh, no, we can't have that, have to follow the rules you know. But we get our satisfaction in the end when our two heroes, queer and macho, serve justice a shortcut. Just have to remember that you can't use these methods on every nitwit bumbler who crosses your path.

Fine Young Cannibals - She Drives Me Crazy

This just appeared in my mind. I liked it so much when it came out I went out and bought a copy, something I hardly ever do. The name of the album was The Raw & The Cooked, which I thought was entirely apropos given the name of the band.

Turbo Encabulator

This is an old one, but sometimes history lessons are worth repeating. This one came up in discussion at Thursday lunch, so now I feel an obligation to share it with my little corner of the world.

Gasolina

Saw this in a news magazine in the doctor's office. Time or Newsweek or some such. Over six months old, but I don't think that matters very much.

Marc told me about a diesel spill in the harbor when he was in Venezuela. As I recall, there was about six inches of diesel floating on top of the water, but nobody could be bothered to scoop it up because the price of diesel was so low. I am sure I have some part of this story wrong, it sounds unbelievable, but if the price of diesel is only six cents a gallon, why bother? I mean, who bothers to pick up pennies any more?

Seems a fishing boat captain was supplementing his income by buying fuel at the subsidized price and then ferrying it offshore where he would sell it other boats for fifty-cent-a-gallon premium. Customs agents showed up to bust him and his solution was to dump the cargo overboard to get rid of the evidence.

Of course there is the whole fire hazard aspect, but maybe that's why prayer is still so popular in Latin America.

Note that the ratio of the price in Cairo to the price in Caracas is 18 to 1, while the ratio of the price in Istanbul to the price in Cairo is nine to one.