movies

the woodsman this was a somewhat disturbing movie. i enjoyed it, though. i like kevin bacon and he's aging interestingly. managing to maintain that little boy look, but with lines and a taughtness. his wife, kyra, displays a lot of flesh in this, probably to show off how good she still looks. the subject of sexual attraction to children hits rather close to home. this movie almost glamorized it. it showed a man who is attracted to girls of between ten and twelve, showed some sort of hang-over from childhood involving his sister, but never went into depth about it. nor about what he actually *did* to the girls that he molested. at one point, he says, "i never hurt them", at another point states that any young boy that goes for a ride with a stranger "wants to go for a ride". there's somewhat of a balance to it with him not molesting a girl he's attracted to because, it turns out, her father already is. i was left with a bad taste in my mouth, though. wondering how the girl would then have felt to be rejected because of being already soiled, or something. it's a dark movie and, although i enjoyed it, i don't think, overall, it handled the subject well. the woman loves the man even though he molested children, even though she was molested as a child by her brothers, even though he tells her the chances are he'll reoffend. too much glamour and romance attached to a subject that is NOT glamorous or romantic. he does beat shit out of a man hunting small boys, though. it's redeeming feature, i guess. the movie was good, the way it handled the subject was not.

crash i watched this twice. excellent movie. covers the subject of racism, post 9/11, vividly, starkly, bluntly, and in full ugly colour. excellent cast, excellent acting, and a very circular format that leaves you not knowing how it's all going to tie in at the end. excellent. 5 gold stars.

the painted veil edward norton and naomi watts made and acted in this long slow epic about collera and love and committment. it was worth wading through the slowness and length, though. the scenery is beautiful as it's set in china, in the mountains. i enjoyed it but wouldn't watch it again. there's an incomprehendable aspect to it. it shows how the religious beliefs insisted corpses be buried by the water. corpses filled with disease, rotting in partially open graves, on the waters edge. the water they bathe and drink in. i defies common sense. even if one knew nothing about how contagions travel and spread, surely just plain sense would tell you not to leave corpses rotting down into the water you drink. surely our instincts should tell us to take corpses away from the water supply. it's hard for me, a privelidged westerner, to understand how it might be for chinese villagers back in the 20s. i can grasp a place having little water and the people having to drink dirty contaminated water because there is nothing else, but for people to deliberately place diseased corpses right at the river's edge, right where they bathe and drink, that just is incredible. how can instincts be so warped? (that said, we *are* polluting the entire fucking planet.... where are our instincts?) anyway, good movie, very slow, but worth it.

the illusionist another ed norton movie. and an excellent one. nothing really deep or dark to it, just good entertainment. great cast, good story, well shot, nice twists and turns. a good way to spend a couple of hours on a cold rainy day.

i have a netflix membership. we have no tv here, so movies are what we watch. any movie recommendations for me?

my profile, in-depth

(i will be giving more depth to my profile by doing posts for each thing i wrote there. i will then link from my profile to each post.)

anti-civilisation anarchist

anti: against

civilisation: from the root, "civil", meaning of cities. basically, when people start living in numbers too large to be supported by their immediate landbase, they are forced to import resources. importing resources, basically, means stealing from elsewhere. most commonly this means stealing from those who do not have the ability to withstand the force and domination used by the thieves. importation of resources cannot ever be sustainable. eventually the resources run out, meaning they have to be imported from further and further afield, until eventually, all of them are gone. civilisations have throughout known history collapsed for this very reason. the importation of resources can only happen under domination and oppression, which leads to...

anarchist: an = no. arch = ruler. simplified, anarchism means no rulers. no domination, no oppression. a system of self-governance. any system based on an external governance is a system based on inequalities and oppression. a "ruler", or person appointed by said ruler, has the "right" to dictate to others how they can and cannot live. what they can and cannot do. quite simply, this isn't fair. nor is it right. no person is above any other. superiority is a concept enforced by brutality, and only by brutality. in a system with rulers, personal autonomy doesn't exist. if you don't do as you're told, you are forced to. the rules are dictated by those in power to maintain their positions of power.

a couple of links that explain these concepts better than i can:

http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/1-Premises.htm

http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/3-Civilization.htm

http://www.greenanarchy.info/anarchy.php

http://www.greenanarchy.info/civ.php

i label myself an anti-civilisation anarchist because it simplifies some of my most core beliefs: that we must live sustainably on our immediate landbases; we must live harmoniously and without superiority with all other forms of life on this planet, our only home; civilisation destroys bio-diversity, the destruction of which is leading to the current mass extinction of far too many forms of life for the planet to continue to thrive. a non-thriving planet means we die, too; all life on the planet is equal. it all has the same right to life and freedom. no being is superior to any other.

many people argue that we (humans) can develop technology that can save us. i dispute that. any technology that we develop is based on some form of oppression. "green technology" still requires the use of precious resources; metals, woods, oils, ores, minerals, etc. the extraction of these requires mining, drilling, digging, etc. this is not sustainable and requires huge amounts of oppression; of the land, of the people doing the extraction (the "owners" don't go down in the mine, only the oppressed go down in the mine, and how did they get to be owners in the first place - by forcing the concept through brutality), of the air and water polluted by the extraction, of the people (human and non-human) who rely on that air and water to survive, etc etc. for every form of technology invented to "save" us from the mess we've created, we dig ourselves into a deeper hole. guns cannot save you from violence, they can only increase the violence. such is it with all forms of (especially industrial) technology.

my profile, in-depth

(i will be giving more depth to my profile by doing posts for each thing i wrote there. i will then link from my profile to each post.)

broken

**my brother, kevin, died on the 13th of february 1998. he was 21. his story in depth is here: http://www.plea4justice.homestead.com/facts.html basically, he got into a roadside fight on his way home from ybor city, tampa, florida. he was beaten and pushed in front of a semi. florida highway patrol covered up his murder, and still to this day, despite volumes of overwhelming evidence, deny any acts of wrong-doing on the part of the people he was with or their officers. 911 calls that night place him in the road, the extremely busy 4-lane interstate 275, spanning twelve minutes. imagine standing in the middle of four lanes of speeding traffic for twelve minutes. my parents have had to investigate his death, including looking at all the evidence, which included detailed photographs of him dead, his brains all over the road. this cover-up goes all the way up through florida highway patrol, the florida department of law enforcement, the state attorney's office, and the governors office, including jeb bush and charlie crist. there is a petition at the website, please sign it. if nothing else, it gives my parents hope that someone somewhere remembers and believes in truth and justice.

**my husband, logan, died in the early hours of the 20th of february 2005. despite his bleeding out twice, ambulance workers managed to "bring him back", so that he could lie awaiting death in the hospital until i had life support turned off on the 23rd of february 2005. he was 24.

**millions of (non-human) animals daily are subjected to torture so that (mostly rich white) human animals can perpetuate a way of life that is destroying the planet.

**millions of (mostly brown) humans suffer starvation and disease because (mostly rich white) other humans have mansions, cars, hot running water on demand, golf courses, tvs, etc etc etc etc

**a system based on oppression and cruelty means that children the world over suffer rape and beatings and degradation routinely. many of them die after years of abuse.

**millions of migratory animals arrive after journeys of thousands of miles to find their breeding grounds gone, turned into super wal-marts or fossil fuel extraction sites, or housing developments for yet more humans. these animals, exhausted, then die because they have nowhere else to go

**millions of species are dying because their habitat is being swallowed up by development and human-caused climate change

**85% of the worlds forests are gone

and on and on and on. it doesn't stop. the list is endless. i'm aware, i'm awake. i feel the pain of the planet. i am broken. and some things broke just can't be fixed.