After a slight error in entering a URL, I found a different, less noble quiz at the Founding Fathers site. I duly punched in the answers as they came to me, and I came up with the answer to the question of which Revolutionary War er, hole I most resemble:

Which Revolutionary War [REDACTED] Are You?

Hee hee. Having watched Disney's The Swamp Fox as a kid, I'm generally acquainted with Colonel Banastre Tarleton, but General John Burgoyne will do. Americans ought to like him since he surrendered his army to Major General Horatio Gates after the Saratoga campaign, on 17 October 1777.

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Early on, I had intended to provide a topical coverage of Wesley K. Clark's run for the White House, but the impetus for that has lessened since I gave up drifting through Generally Speaking. One can only take so much, and I think I reached my fill of nutso Democratic fawning and/or bravo sierra pretty quickly.

Luckily, there are some brave and dedicated souls out there on the Internet who're fulfilling my intent with far better ability than I would provide, and since I found one of them, it's time to mention them:

Wesley Watch professes to keep track of the good (or not-so-good) General, and it seems that they know what they're doing. The permanent link is over there on the right.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 05:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Country Pundit enjoys celebrity personality tests on the Internet. They're fun, meaningless, and involve precious little in the way of resources. They're also a way to boost one's ego if the results come out right.

To wit: This quiz asks which Founding Father you are. I took the test back in November of 2002 and took it again today. The results, rather shockingly, were the same:

Which Founding Father Are You?

Back then, I took the thing again and got the following:

I can see where me clicks with this variant of John Adams. I think I've said before that I'm not particularly interested in being liked but would rather be the one that people ask "What's the answer?" That being said, I also liked John Adams in a stage performance of 1776, so Adams isn't too far away from a facet of my personality. ("Cool Considerate Men" is arguably my favorite song---y'think?---followed closely by Richard Henry Lee's song-and-dance routine. Absolute-Lee.)

This one's actually too bloody close for comfort. I'm told (by suitably enlightened people!) I've got a great sense of humor and it usually works, but when it doesn't, hoo boy. I'm also reportedly pretty amusing to hear on a live rant. At any rate, I'm working on the mover and shaker part. "Wait'll they get a load of me..." From what I gather out of a French Revolution Time Machine book, Paine collected the death sentence on twelve star systems from Robespierre's government, and that's a bad thing. He did, however, escape, due to the fact (I think) that Messrs. Robespierre et al got marched to Mme. Defarge's salon before Mr. Paine did.¹

In the final analysis, it is good to know that I am like one of the most famous Virginians. The fact that we both have sideburns determines that we will both be President, muahahaha. You know, Internet quizzes being so reliable in predicting anything other than that people will waste time at them.

1. Ed Burke was right and that revolution was bad. The more I think about it, one of the last things that the French did right was to help us out in 1789; after that, it was all downhill. Sigh. You'd think the land of Jeanne d'Arc, Laetitia Casta (broadly), and the TGV might be able to come up with something other than knee-jerk opposition to America. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

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I went and did my part last night for the war economy by buying the following things at Best Buy:
X-Men 1.5
The Very Best of Sheryl Crow
Afterglow by Sarah McLachlan

OK, so having finished the DVD, I'm left wondering how the thing went by so fast. (Answer: It's a short movie, stupid.) Blah blah prejudice and fear, blah blah all the subtexts about Ian McKellen making this a movie about hating homosexuals or the like. The other side of the coin (i.e. the public policy question about how one keeps the good people of the United States (be they mutant or be they homo sapiens) safe while constraining the bad people and all under the Constitution is never really addressed. Admittedly, this isn't the action point of the movie, but I still would have appreciated something other than the fumbling attempt at tying Senator Joseph McCarthy to Senator Robert Kelly. (Never mind that history as culled from the archives of various Soviet agencies seems to have born McCarthy out in large part.) On the other hand, kudos to the director for not labeling Bruce Davison's character outright as a Republican, a swipe that most Hollywood types probably wouldn't have avoided.

Anyways. Captain Picard faces off against Richard of Gloucester and the results are worth watching. Patrick Stewart's one of these guys you pretty much can count on for a solid performance no matter the material, so he pretty much owned the role of Professor Charles Xavier. I just wish he'd said 'Engage!' at least once. Magneto seems like a man with a competing ideal, not merely the 'BWAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHA! DEATH TO ALL! MUAHAHAHAHA!' type of villain that I usually don't go for. McKellen's portrayal is effortless and thoroughly ruthless; Magneto seems completely at home with a fearsome level of control over electromagnetic forces. It's impressive to see McKellen own the screen in Richard III, The Lord of the Rings, and then here.

On to my favorite X-Man (er, woman): Famke Janssen's Jean Grey. I dunno why I'm particularly interested in that character, but she caught my eye back on the old Fox cartoon in the mid-1990s, right about the time of the Dark Phoenix thing, or somewhere shortly before. Anyways. I enjoyed watching her on-screen and was as usual pleased by Miss Janssen's performance. This makes the third or fourth flick I've seen her in (starting with, what else, Goldeneye) and I've yet to be disappointed. I hear the Phoenix angle starts to come out in the second movie, so I'll be picking that up on DVD soon. I'd almost want to get into the whole Phoenix comic saga, but I have this vague notion that I'd be spending a lot of money, and I'm not up for that.

Two short notes: The much bemoaned "what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?" quote makes sense in a comics context. Think about how you'd have it in a mag, and the line becomes more credible. Box 1: Storm comes up the elevator shaft and Toad looks back. (Uh oh...) She asks, "Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?" as we see her come up the elevator shaft, electricity brewing around her. Box 2: THE SAME THING THAT HAPPENS TO EVERYTHING ELSE! as a text box as a massive bolt of lightning drills the Toad through a wall or something out into space, or has him writhing around like Luke Skywalker on the second Death Star as Emperor Palpatine tries to fry him. Alternatively, use some sort of "voice over" from the narrator of the comic to say the punchline, because I'm not sure that a character can deliver it right. In any event, I'm not sure it belonged in the movie.

UPDATE: I've gone back and watched this sequence a couple of times (best part being Wolverine's single-finger salute to Cyclops as they enter the museum) and I think the line works. In a way, Halle Berry's laid-back delivery of that punchline's the thing that makes it. I'd rather see 'laid-back' than 'all-out' in the delivery, and I suppose that's the reason I'm favorable to it. We now return you to your original blog material.

Now I'll have to lay out more money for the second X-flick when it's out on DVD and then catch the next one in theaters, especially since it's reportedly supposed to center more around Famke Janssen. Woo hoo.

Moving right along, it's been a while since I've willingly listened to Sheryl Crow. I got somewhat irate with her over the buildup to war with Iraq, and had in effect banned her from personal listening. I wasn't sure if it would be permanent or not, but I was definitely going to do something. Er, right. I'm sure she cares. It just seemed to be awfully convenient that she was all gung-ho for Kosovo and kept her mouth shut during Operation DESERT FOX, but the minute Bill Clinton wasn't calling the tune for war, she decided she didn't like the military. Nice. I had already dismissed C'mon, C'mon as a banal attempt to somehow catch the current market in music (namely the bad parts thereof) in a way that I didn't like, and thus shelved the thing after a single listen. Yep, I thought it was that bad.

So anyways, I approached the decision to buy The Very Best of Sheryl Crow with some trepidation. I had to basically be convinced by a buddy of mine who's big into Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash, so this was a somewhat surreal experience. The disc has seventeen tracks, so it's not short, and the version I paid extra for had a DVD with 13 of her videos. It's not bad for $22.99 plus Virginia tax. (Woo hoo, 4.5%, suck it Tennessee!) I'm still listening to it, and I'll get back to the readership with a review later. Meanwhile, there's a de rigeur essay in the liner notes, along with a bunch of photos of Miss Crow over the years. The American Spectator once named her "the thinking man's sex symbol", and hey, who am I to argue with the guys at TAS? Warping Laura Ingraham's formulation, shaddup and look good or sing, Sheryl. We're not particularly interested in your latter-day Streisandian political "thought". Suffice it to say, however, that she still passes the Butt-head test. Huh huh huh...uh...huh huh huh...

I haven't listened to any of Afterglow yet, but if/when I do, I'll get around to posting some sort of a half-wit review. Then I've got to get my hands on Dido Armstrong's latest, which ought to be good. Yikes, it's like my college days all over again---now if only law school were as easy as my undergraduate years.

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This full disclosure statement should come as no surprise, but there's probably some unwritten rule out there that demands that I say it:

The Country Pundit, and by extension, his blog, supports the re-election of President George W. Bush to serve as President from 20 January 2005 until 20 January 2009. Therefore, I've posted the graphic button link to Blogs for Bush, and will sooner or later work up the courage to send in my site.

Groovy. Smashing. Re-elect the President.

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Den Beste complained about having to watch what he read for a while due to the likelihood of spoilers from The Matrix: Revolutions being broad blog topics. For what it's worth, Mr. Den Beste, this topic meets your expectation.

The following article is chock-full of spoilers and unvarnished opinion about The Matrix: Revolutions. Do not click "Continue Reading" if you don't want to have the movie spoiled. To steal a theme from Reloaded, the choice is yours. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Readers of this site will, hopefully, note several new entries in the link columns. Briefly summarized:

ADDITIONS
The Edge of England's Sword - Billed as 'Voices from the Anglosphere', this particular blog piqued my interest by trying to cover an 'Anglospheric' perspective. Inasmuch as I'm favorably inclined towards the idea of such an entity, I'll read that one. If you're wondering just what the heck an 'Anglosphere' is, see An Anglosphere Primer for more information. I, being an American who thinks a fair amount of Teddy Roosevelt, am somewhat suspicious of a call for America to downgrade "hemispherist" ambitions.*

Dixie Flatline - The author of this blog claims to be a Berkeley Law graduate and he takes a fighting rightist tone to various issues. I haven't figured out how to delve into his archive, but on the merits of what I saw yesterday and today, I'll give the guy a link.

USS Clueless - Steven Den Beste's blog seems to be one of those ubiquitous blogs that everyone links to. Well, there's probably a reason. He's another one of these chaps who can expound at length on a variety of things, and he seems to be an intelligent fellow. His piece on George Catlett Marshall, Thomas E. Dewey, and the politicization of intelligence essentially made the decision for me. If you get the chance, read what left me almost awed at the personal sacrifice Governor Dewey made in order to further America's fortunes at war. That's bipartisanship, ladies and gentlemen.**

DELETIONS
Generally Speaking - I like lots of information and a variety of viewpoints. It's helpful in making the best decision. However, some of the recent content at the Wesley Clark blog has either gone into the sophomoric adoration that is typical of any good candidacy, or into the mania that exists somewhere on the level of "Bush eats children". It's stultifying, and the signal-to-noise ratio there is too much to bear. As a result, the Clark blog is cut.

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Normally when someone mentions "Crusaders", I think of the Vought F-8 used by the Navy and the Marine Corps.*

However, the term 'Crusader' apparently maintains a more ancient meaning to the people of the Middle East who consider themselves to be followers of the prophet Mohammed. They of course think of the Knights Templar and others like them, because the Crusades are the Big Example of the evil foreigner Western devils kicking the Islamic door in and laying the smack down. Of course, they kinda sorta got even by taking over much of Spain and so forth, but lay that aside.

Cold Fury has an letter posted in the Pakistan Christian Post by a chap who basically calls Osama bin Laden out for single combat. The man, who signs himself "Chevalier James R. Reese, Grand Prior of the United States", seems to come across as serious. If I were to evaluate this on the level of playground machismo, it does the job. Chevalier Reese goes way beyond the level of remarks made by Lieutenant General W.G. Boykin in framing the war in religious terms, but with far more uh, fervor, or something. He certainly considers himself to be in a line with the men who rode east with Richard the Lion-Hearted---notice the phrase "When we faced Saladin".

I was under the impression that, in the intervening eight hundred years or so, none of the major groups of knights who went on the Crusades had survived. I'm pretty sure that a couple of them ran afoul of various pseudo-Catholic monarchies and were gobbled up for their real estate holdings and their bank accounts. Needless to say, I'll be digging about to see what I can find out in regards to the modern day knights. I ran a few terms through Google and it seems that maybe this guy's a Mason or something. That's a kettle I won't be plunging into, because I'm not eager to muck about in the fetid swamps of conspiracists et al, but this guy seems vaguely interesting so I'll keep at it.

I'd pay good money to see this guy put a whipping on Osama, courtesy of Christendom. And yes, I'd accept the chivalric granting of mercy if requested, but I'd be more interested in seeing OBL hacked to bits.

As Drudge might say, this is a developing story and further information will be related in this space. more...

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According to an entry at the Internet Movie Database's Studio Brief (reproduced in its entirety at the link ending this entry), the National Broadcasting Company has decided to suspend its broadcasts of the American version of Coupling. This version is after a British comedy of the same name which apparently does well on the BBC.

Who cares, you ask? Well, I don't care all that much. I hadn't watched a new series on NBC since they canned Dark Skies, and the only thing before that was ER along with Law & Order back in 1991-1992. The reason I care now is because of what Coupling was supposed to be. The IMDB blurb stated that the series "resolve[d] to push back the boundaries of sexual expression on television". That's right. In an era where we've got a cable network dubbed 'Skinemax' and an Internet whose underlying architecture is probably nothing more than a massive porn delivery network, NBC felt the need to push back the dreaded censorial hand of decency.

This isn't some great victory in the culture war, I suppose. We'll still be stuck with images of that repulsive relic Madonna sucking face with the trailer-trash Britney Spears, but at least the annoyingly repetitive in-your-face sex crowd's been pushed back for a little while.

I hope NBC lost a pile of money on this. If I wanted sexual content, I'd fire up my modem and check my inbox. I don't need it on broadcast television. But no matter---I haven't been big on watching a regular series or anything since The Lone Gunmen got taken off the air. more...

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I was browsing threads in alt.fan.don-imus yesterday, when I happened upon the following entry by Ron Hardin, a prolific and regular poster to the newsgroup. In that post, Mr. Hardin suggests that President Clinton would have met the crew of the EP-3E Aries II SIGINT platform intercepted and forced down by the People's Republic of China when that crew arrived in Hawaii. Mr. Hardin also says President Bush would not have done this, noting that a Presidential reception in Hawaii "makes the service about [the President]".

I suppose I'm curious as to why that would be the case. There might be a solid argument for a Rose Garden reception within a week of their return for maximum ruffles and flourishes. You know, the majesty and dignity of the White House, et cetera. However, from a visual and symbolic standpoint, I also tend to think that it would send a powerful and unadorned (in a good way) message to have the men (and women?) of the aircraft greeted by no less than the President as they return to freedom. Let them disembark from their flight to a red-carpet reception party with the President waiting at the foot of the stairs in front one of those portable podiums with the Secretary of the Navy and an appropriate uniformed officer to shake their hands, exchange salutes, and then have a brief statement or so from the proper parties. That's a run-on sentence, but it conveys how I thought such things should be "ideally" greeted.

I suppose the best analog for this would be the reception given to our POWs as they were liberated from the clutches of the North Vietnamese. President Nixon was not at the arrival ceremonies, and I could see him going for the dignfied majestic concept ("The President must be presidential. See to it, Haldeman" -- RN) very readily.

After some reflection, I suppose it's more a commentary upon the political culture than anything else. For whatever reason, when a political figure is in attendance at a serious event, the motivations are analyzed as less of "the 'decent' motives of the man" and more of the "present for photographic opportunity purposes" stripe. When Mayor Giuliani attended a slew of funerals for the fire, police, and Port Authority personnel killed in the Islamist attacks against New York City, there wasn't any hubbub about him grandstanding that I recall. That may be explained by simply stating "that was different" and forcibly moving on to the next example for consideration.

Admittedly, all this stems from an article penned by Maureen Dowd at the New York Times over a closing of Dover AFB for pictures when caskets of servicemen are returned, so it's probably a waste of electrons. Cori Dauber looked at the issue here, but I'm not sure I agree with Dauber's take on it.

I don't know that Robert E. Lee attended the funerals of soldiers from the Army of Northern Virginia who were KIA against the Army of the Potomac, or indeed if any major leader does things like that. I do, however, disagree that it would somehow be inappropriate. Indeed, if my (speculative) offspring were killed in battle in some faraway land, I would appreciate the presence of the President at the funeral to tell me that my son died fighting for American ideals and so forth. It would be meaningful to me to receive the flag on behalf of a grateful nation from the one individual who can be most said to represent America at any one point.

This is probably all academic anyways, so I'd probably have to defer to the judgments of Richard Nixon or George Patton. Reader input is appreciated on this subject.

Fin.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I admit it: I find the Matrix movie trilogy interesting. I've not managed to plunge into the mind-bending exercises of convoluted interpretation that many apparently have regarding the movies and their content, but I do enjoy watching the work of the Wachowski brothers, even if they do have it in for Republicans.*

Nevertheless, I've got four things to run past the readership whose interests run towards Wachowskian cinema:

1. Inside the matrix proper, Mr. Anderson works for a company named 'Metacortex', a software house that ostensibly writes software for business applications. A site has sprung up on our Internet which uses the 'Metacortex' name as its name in business and says that it makes, among other things, virtual reality software. Cute.

It's also coded entirely in black and green. Even the pictures have a green filter over them. If you go to the employee directory (see the bottom of the little Flash thing), select 'Redland' as your city, and enter AndersonThomas as the query, you get the response:

***TRANSFERRED***

No forwarding information available.

Someone's having a splendid time mimicking the world in which the Matrix series takes place, and I appreciate the effort. If you're interested in perusing the site itself, point your browser to http://www.metacortechs.com/ and go from there. I've investigated this a little, and it appears that the site is part of some vast role-playing game effort, centered around unfiction.com, an "alternate reality gaming" site. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the Revolutions promotional effort. This "alternate reality gaming" thing seems to be just another evolution of the whole live-action role play thing that the White Wolf people popularized in the last decade or so. Ho hum. Back to one's boring daily life as a coppertop, I suppose.

2. This is old news, but it's just too good to pass up. The people of somethingawful.com have a section on their website devoted to altered screenshots around a Matrix theme. Some of the shots are crummy, but some of them can't be seen somewhere that would not allow you to respond, whether it be a snicker or an out-loud laugh. Er, like class. Anyways, check out the site by clicking here and have some fun. You'll have to be pretty familiar with various elements of pop culture, or some of them won't make any sense. My personal favorite's got to be the poster for Matrix Dogs which doesn't appear here, but might if I can figure out a way around any potential restrictions on use by the SA people.

3. 05 November 2003 is the release date for The Matrix: Revolutions. Go see it, and knock those cursed Disney computer-animated monstrosities off their respective shelves for box office receipts!

4. Despite having knocked Messrs. Wachowski in a footnote to the introduction, (Here's a question that'll really bake your noodle: Did I bash them before this fourth point, or after it?) I'll give credit where credit's due and salute their writing and cinematography meshed with Hugo Weaving's portrayal of Smith. The movie's interesting and all if you're into philosophical tangents that are essentially unprovable at this point (unless Laurence Fishburne starts handing out pills...) but all movies need an engaging antagonist. Enter Agent Smith. I won't say anything else in this overly long posting, but if asked my favorite character, the answer is constant: "Smith will suffice."

Enjoy.

* In The Matrix, the protagonists are betrayed by a man referred to as "Mr. Reagan" who doesn't want to "remember nothing" and wants to be "an actor". If we are to credit Messrs. Wachowski with the kind of deliberate symbolism that so many do, the linkage of these three facts can not be considered coincidental. Indeed, they play off a popular theme among cultural liberals, namely that President Reagan was an actor who remembered nothing at the time of the Iran-contra hearings. It is somewhat irritating to see them repeat this theme and then connect President Reagan to a traitorous individual.

In The Matrix: Reloaded, we see Thomas A. "Neo" Anderson conversing with a malevolent machine intelligence dubbed "The Architect". This entity is responsible for creating the matrix in which all humanity lies trapped to serve as a power source. The conversation between Mr. Anderson and the Architect takes place in front of a bank of monitors, upon which various images flash at differing times. At least three distinct individuals are broadcast upon those monitors in relatively short sequence: President George H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush, and Führer und Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler.

Gee, thanks Andy and Larry. They have chosen, for whatever reason, to put forward the two Bush presidents and the third- or fourth-most successful mass murderer in human history, presumably to hammer guilt by association. This isn't a new line; various stories about connections between the Bush family and the German National Socialists have floated about for years, but with questionable veracity. The 'George W. Bush as Hitler' thing is, of course, recent. It's juvenile and cheapens the sense of revulsion that any human being should feel at the actions of Nazi Germany. Shame on the Wachowskis for buying into left-wing nuttery.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Some people get taken to see the Oracle. Others have to make do with visiting the Gender Genie. I'm one of the latter. I took all of the entries below this one that are currently displayed on the page, and entered them.

Lo and behold, the software was able to confirm (broadly) what I could have told anyone after a quick check of various attributes and so forth: The Country Pundit is a man. Under Gender Genie (heh heh heh) analysis, the score is 'male' by more than 2:1, on results of a "male score" of 16209 versus a "female score" of 7726.

Of course, this thing also called Virginia Postrel a man, so I'm not entirely sure that it works all that well. However, VP does point out that the thing's underlying theorems are supposed to work on fiction as opposed to non-fiction, so it's going to be a little out of whack on non-fiction.

I've got an irreverent question at this point: Has a Turing test been given at some level? If the Turing test requires Human A to be incapable of distinguishing between the responses given by Human B or Computer C in a blind test, then perhaps the Gender Genie has failed an ersatz Turing test. I had a theoretical construct of how this was minutely significant somehow in the development of computer intelligence, but the heat of the room in which I'm composing it caused me to forget or otherwise bungle the theory. My law school's too bloody cheap to turn off the heating when the temperatures creep above 70 in the city. Their excuse is something about coolant and so forth, and all this may be true and objectively problematic. That doesn't change the fact that I'm subjectively sweltering in here.

Ende.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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