I know, just what the world needs, another internet pundit talking about the latest installment of the LOTR trilogy.

Like that's gonna stop me. :-)

And really, does it even matter? Did the world need even one review of this movie? Is this string of phrases I'm about to wrote any less useless than the one that appeared in the NYT?

Is there anyone that saw the first two that's not gonna see the final installment, unless they were so unfortunate as to have shuffled off this mortal coil between the TT and ROTK?

By the way, those of you that do find yourself in that sad predicament, could you please contact me, if your wraithly self can cipher up a method to do so?

An anonymous comment to this entry would be fine, and should be relatively easy on the scale of things. All you have to do is transmorgrify a few electrons.

That seems to be less of a challenge that having to twist space and time and the ether and learn to manipulate matter down on a quantum level. Who wants to learn string theory and all that other shit that gives every living human other than Stephen Hawking a migraine? Along with whatever else Nature demands before you can re-incorporate as a living being, and talk to me over a beer like any decent, self-respecting deadhead would do if he could. :-)

(Reminds me of a joke - a skeleton walks into a bar and says, "Bartender, get me a beer and a mop."

Bartender pours the beer and says "Why the mop?"

Skeleton says "I can't hold my liquor.")

Coz, O Dearly Departed, I got a few questions for you.

First, how does missing the third installment rank on the list of inconveniences of your recently departed state? I imagine that it had to rankle some.

Second, can you give Osama a swift kick for me? (Oh, and don't worry - in case you haven't been keeping up with current events, Saddam'll be along presently)

Finally, just what the fuck was Gandalf talking about in that scene during the attack on Minas Tirith, when it looked like he and Pippin were about to turn into Nazgul Chow, and he turns to Pippin and starts blathering about the veil lifting and the place where everything is green and beeyootiful, and we'll all be happy, once we just get through this irritating part here where that big fucking dragon that RingWraith is ridin' bites us in half?

I couldn't really hear it all that well, what with the piercing ultrasonics of the dragon screams, men dying wholesale fifteen feet away, condo-sized boulders smacking down skyscaper-high castle walls, and a few other minor sonic distractions...

but...

It sounded like the biggest crock I've heard since ol' Slick Willie said he didn't have sex with that woman. I mean, it looked like Gandalf was having a hard time keeping a straight face while he fed Pippin that load.

So, is it true, or was Gandalf just trying to ensure that he didn't meet his doom with the additional indignity of enduring the aroma when Pippin pooped his pants?

Ok, enough of the questioning of the newly expired.

I liked the movie. Didn't seem like it was well over three hours, and that alone is a pretty good indication of its entertainment value. Had everything you have come to expect from the first two movies, incredible imagery and scale, yatta-yatta.

There was one thing lacking, though - the sense of surprise - the Holy Shit! moments.

In Fellowship, I was floored by getting to see the characters and Middle Earth for the first time, Tolkien's words come to life.

In the Towers, we saw the first epic battles, at Helm's Deep and Saruman's Tower. Plenty of Holy Shit! moments there.

But in ROTK, while we saw even larger battles, and new critters like the Mumakil, there were not, for me, any surprises. Bigger and better helpings of the Good Stuff, to be sure, but, essentially, just more of the same.

So, I lost a bit of the sense of wonder that I got from the first films. I don't offer that as a criticism, but just an observation.

Final point - I've seen some discussion in the blogosphere as to whether the trilogy is the story of Frodo, or Sam, or Aragorn, etc.

Seems obvious to me - it's the story of Gandalf. He's the mover and shaker that makes everything work, from the creation of the Fellowship, to his morphation from Gandalf the Gray to the White, his fights in all the major battles, and his political machinations to unite the peoples of Middle Earth.

Aragorn may end up as King, but Gandalf was the KingMaker.

On a compleatly unrelated note, you'll find this amusing.

Gollum Gangsta Rap. :-) Hat Tip: emdot

... Link (7 comments) ... Comment

... when you're kvetching about your political opponents.

I don't normally just post stuff I get in my inbox, but I laughed when I read this email. I does put a bit of perspective on how long things like nationbuilding, and "winning the peace" can, and should take.

I feel obliged to point out that it took years to quell the last remnants of Nazi resistance after the end of WWII, it was almost two years before the Marshall Plan was even passed by Congress, and the rebuilding of Europe took decades.

I guess that Truman just didn't have a plan. :-)

Anyway, on to the mail...

Some folks are complaining on how long the war is taking but consider this:

It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.

It took less time to find Saddam's sons in Iraq than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Teddy Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sunk at Chappaquiddick.

It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida.

And I'll add a prediction: It'll take longer to try Saddam than it took to run him down.

... Link (2 comments) ... Comment

There is now in the international community at least a moderate level of controversy as to the proper way to deal with Saddam.

Funny, isn't it, that the very same folks that have been clamoring for the US to immediately turn the governing of Iraq over to the Iraqis seem to think that the Iraqis are not yet competent to try Saddam themselves.

Chief among their objections to trying him there is the fact that he will almost certainly get the death penalty after he is found guilty of the crimes he committed against the Iraqi people.

Funnily enough, I can almost agree, if for nothing more than an inability on my part to imagine a method to kill him that is within even a few orders of magnitude as long and painful as he deserves.

The Romans had a interesting way to deal with defeated foes. At the end of a successful military campaign, the Senate would pass a resolution allowing the victorious Roman general a triumph, - that is, a celebratory victory parade through the streets of Rome. It was the direct ancestor of our custom of the ticker-tape parade.

The parade would typically consist of selected units of the legions that took part in the fighting, (the only time that armed legioins were allowed in the city proper) with the triumphal general himself along for the ride in a chariot, with his face painted red. (The face painting, and the clothing the generals wore made them resemble a very old and now lost ceramic statue of the Capitoline Jupiter, which had been fired from a reddish clay)

Included in the procession would be wagons (think parade floats) full of the treasure and arms captured from the enemy, prisoners in chains, and the defeated ruler(s) of the enemy, often accompanied by their wives, children and inner circle. Other miscellaneous items included in the parade would be scale models and paintings of the cities or forts captured in the war, wild beasts from the regions involved, and various musicians and dancers.

After the parade ended, the general would sacrifice some animals to Jupiter, the most prominent of the enemy leaders would be executed, while the rest of the prisoners would be "pardoned," to allow them to be sold into slavery, and they'd then commence to throw a bigass party throughout the entire city, with the tab for the free food and drink being picked up by the general being honored, who typically paid for the festivities with some of the loot from the war.

Seems the Romans were not afraid to gloat.

While such a display may seem barbarous to modern sensibilities, a triumph was the ancient equivalent of a multi-media display of the sort that we take for granted today - in the days before global means of communication, it was the only chance for the common man of Rome to see the enemy they had spent blood and treasure to defeat, to learn of the major battles of the campaign, and to witness the aftermath of the Roman victory. In that light, it seems more understandable.

Are we so far removed from them, after all? I think not. I imagine the prospect of a parade through New York, past the gaping hole where the Twin Towers stood, with spit-shined companies of the 82nd and the Fourth Infantry marching through the streets, followed by burnt-out hulks of Iraqi armor on trailers pulled by Abrams tanks, ranks of shuffling Feyadeen Saddam shackled together, mobs of newly freed Iraqis dancing and shouting with glee, followed by Saddam walking in chains behind a Bradley IFV driven by the CentCom commander, might draw a sizeable crowd. :-)

It might even be instructive to run that parade through other cities, too - cities like Damascus, Tehran, Paris, Cairo, and just maybe even Mecca. :-) That would let the Arab street see the stuff that Al-Jezeerah doesn't want to broadcast.

After that, keep him in a cage, with a webcam on him 24/7. Humiliate him in every way we can imagine. Put him on display like a carnival freak. Sell lottery tickets for the chance to pelt him with rotten fruit; let the relatives of his many victims smack him in the snoot with their Reeboks. All the while telling anyone that'll listen that we'll put him down like a rabid dog just as soon as he begs us to. Let him every day demonstrate to the world again that he'd rather live on his knees in cowardly shame than die on his feet with some measure of grudging respect, the very same choice he made last Saturday.

Yeah, I know that'll never happen, and I don't, truly, even think that it should. Still, it appeals to the unenlightened reptile part of my brain, to heap further degradation and disappointment on the Arabs that looked on this cowardly bully as the next Saladin, and forgave his murdering ways all for the sake of the rotten dream of PanArabia.

So, what do we do with him?

As useful as he could be alive, I think he needs to be tried and executed as quickly as possible.

For one simple reason - he's a security risk.

Imagine some of his followers taking a elementary school full of kids here hostage, and demanding that we release him, or they start killing kids. You wanna be the President that makes the call on how to deal with that?

How about a message that says there's a Wahhabist nuke hidden in a major US city that'll blow unless he's freed?

Wring him dry of any useful info he has, particularly about those European countries that were complicit in illegally selling him arms and equipment in defiance of the UN sanctions, and if you think I'm talking about France and Germany, you are correct, then let the Iraqis send him to hell in whatever manner they like the best.

ASAP.

... Link (1 comment) ... Comment