Love it or leave it

Tonight, before probably my 25th viewing of “The Matrix” with Gerene and Becky (my 25th, their first), we were talking about the scary state of the country. I said that the more I thought about it, the more I thought I might one day move to Canada. Online friends like Maurice (who has conferred upon me honorary citizenship) and Haidi have shown me a small glimpse of what seems to be a little bit saner world.

But, Becky said, how would you feel about giving up your American citizenship? I was a little taken aback by the question at first, since I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. After about 10 seconds mulling it over, I realized somewhat to my own surprise that I wouldn’t have much of a problem with it.

I guess to those who now run this country, and those who slavishly follow them, that means I hate this country and might as well leave tomorrow. But to me, it’s just a reflection on how truly scary things have gotten.

“America – Love It or Leave It.” Who knows – I might do both.

Today a potential client, filling out my consultation request form, said one of my sites was “the best I have seen on the web” for its type. Go me!

So the White House admits that the Iraq-Niger nuclear connection was “wrong” and “incorrect.” Woo hoo! It doesn’t take a nucular scientist to realize that if you know something is “wrong” and “incorrect” and you say it anyway, it’s a “lie.” Ask any 6-year-old.

The. President. lied.

Not that anyone really cares, but it makes me feel better. As Steve Burgess said in a Salon piece about why the U.S. should invade Canada:

“The Bush administration’s labored justifications for the Iraq invasion, served up as convincingly as a chocolate-smeared 6-year-old’s explanation of where the cookies went, proved to be utterly irrelevant. Most Americans, it turned out, were only too happy to kick some non-American ass and didn’t really require an explanation.”

“Oh, you?re one of the sodomites,” Savage said. “You should only get AIDS and die, you pig.”

I’m pleased, of course, that MSNBC fired Michael (Weiner) Savage over his incredible hatemongering. But my question is, what took them so long? I can only imagine the kind of stuff he’s already spouted over the last four months.

Good riddance.

Project Greenlight

I don’t know all that much about “Project Greenlight.” I don’t have HBO, and I have been meaning to rent the first series on DVD (and the movie), but haven’t gotten around to it.

Now there’s already a new season of PG, and my friends Dave and Susan have offered to tape the episodes and watch them with me. I just watched the first episode on tape, since they’re coming over tonight to watch #2 and #3 with me.

My initial question for people more knowledgeable about this series is, wasn’t last year’s movie a touching coming-of-age story too? Shouldn’t they be afraid of repeating themselves? The other three finalist scripts seemed a lot more interesting. It also seems to me like they picked the exact wrong directors for this story.

I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

I’ve been taking a look at Howard Dean TV, billed as a broadband TV station all about Dean. It’s really just a collection of Dean video clips with a browser interface, but interesting nonetheless.

As if I needed another reason to like Dean, here’s what he said about vouchers at a California Teachers Association meeting in June:

“What vouchers are, more than anything else, is an attempt to destroy the public school system. And the public school system is the last place on earth where everybody has to get to know everybody else…We’ve got to get the public back into the public schools, if we’re going to defend the public school system.”

He and I are apparently psychically linked, because that sounded amazingly like what I said about schools in my 4th of July post. And it needs to be said.

Go Dean.

Spellbound

This movie is a beautiful experience. I’ve seen it three times now, each with different people, and enjoyed it more each time. On the one hand, for me it brings up all the anxiety of being in junior high school, being smart and using big words – not the best strategy for social acceptance.

But on the other hand, it celebrates how smart kids can find their own ways of fitting in, their own social structures where they are accepted and even celebrated.

Each of the eight protagonists profiled in the movie gives us a different little slice of junior high geekdom, with some social commentary snuck in around the edges. My favorites were the hyperactive Harry (who exemplified the winning word, “logorrhea”) and the soulful Angela, who made her own crossword puzzles and turned a spelling contest into an American triumph for her Mexican immigrant parents.

As a veteran of a few spelling bees myself back in the day (big shocker, huh?), I can say the movie perfectly captures the mixture of excitement and dread caused by stepping up to the microphone to hear your next word.

Simply put, this movie made me feel good.

Highly recommended.

I haven’t read Ann Coulter’s new book, “Treason,” and I don’t intend to. But I am 100% certain it is full of lies.

In Salon’s review of Coulter’s book, they write that she has used it as a platform to praise Joe McCarthy. In a conversation with Chris Matthews, she called the Democratic Party “functionally treasonable,” although she refused to call specific Democratic presidents like JFK and Truman traitors.

My naive questions are 1) Why doesn’t this get a reaction out of people? and 2) Does she really believe this bile, or is she just saying it for effect?

Word of the day: repetiteur (courtesy of “Spellbound,” which I’ll get around to reviewing soon)

I usually link the ‘word of the day’ to its definition on dictionary.com. Amazingly, there’s no entry on that site for this word, which was used in the 1999 National Spelling Bee chronicled in “Spellbound.” Anyone who knows the meaning of the word, without using reference books, Google searches and etc. will earn my sincere admiration.

For all those misanthropes out there like me who enjoy watching fireworks but hate all the traffic and, let’s be honest, other people, here are some beautiful Flash fireworks, courtesy of a MetaFilter poster. Enjoy, and remember: it’s not called “Blind Obedience Day.”