Chinatown: The Horror Movie

Matt M. pokes a stick at the movie Chinatown and uncovers the horror movie that lies within.

Not only is Cross a crook who manipulates civic policy, potentially endangering hundreds with flood; not only does he order murders as casually as you might step on an ant. He steals life from others to prolong his own. When he says that he wants The Future, he’s not just talking about the future of water in the city or his personal fortunes. He is talking capital T, capital F The Future. “How many years have I got? She’s mine, too,” he tells his daughter, Evelyn of his granddaughter Katherine.

But Katherine Mulwray isn’t just his granddaughter. She’s his daughter, too. Evelyn Cross Mulwray isn’t only Katherine’s mother, but she’s her sister. Is this adding up? Cross slept with his daughter to give birth to another daughter that is more than half of himself (assuming that you can call your child half your own). And his plan is to sire another child who is more than three quarters himself. Cross commits monstrous, perverse acts in order to extend his power and his grasp of the future. Not only will he live through his daughter, but his granddaughter and even his great granddaughter, who are more and more him with every generation.

Cross is a vampire in the literal sense of the word, but worse than that, he’s a vampire that preys upon his own children, sundering taboos and any consideration but his own survival as he does so.

And in order for evil to survive, good has to be quietly vanquished. Cross extinguishes hope with every footstep. He is impervious to the law, even when Gittes finds out the truth. What’s more, Cross acts with impunity, all but kidnapping the only innocent being in the story right under the noses of the police and a powerless Gittes. What’s more, Gittes has to take it. He has to swim in that water, and in order to do so, it’s easier to let evil triumph. The Bad Guys win, and not in a “zombies swarm all over the wreckage” kind of way. It’s a very personal, intimate kind of devastation that Cross wreaks. He is able to take the fight out of Gittes (whose been shown to be more than capable of manipulating any situation) with seemingly no effort.

Happy Halloween Los Angeles!

Happy birthday to me

Dear Apple Customer,

Apple is pleased to report that a shipment for the following order is on its way to you.

The following products shipped on 10/30/2006.

MBPRO 15/2.33 CTO

With the following configuration:
Processor 065-6642 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo.
Memory 065-6619 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-2x1GB
Hard Drive 065-6624 160GB Serial ATA Drive@5400rpm
Optical Drive 065-6625 SuperDrive 6X
Display 065-6631 15" Widescreen Display
Modem 065-6645 None
Apple Software Solutions 065-6200 None
Keyboard/Mac OS Language 065-6627 BkLit Keyboard/Mac OS
Country Kit/AEX 065-6628 Country Kit

MacBookPro shipping

*Loads FedEx tracking page. Obsessively hits “reload.” Repeats*

A selection of recent headlines

Make up your own “Author X meets Cultural Critic Y” combinations here, because things are just too strange…

These “Warning Signs for Tomorrow” might be a little more urgent and key now:

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LA Times in public eyesore TKO!

It used to be that the A#1 most-cringe-inducing eyesore that confronted me on my morning commute were the Rachael Ray billboards. I still hate them and Ray, but I can’t remember the last time I saw something that induced an out-loud “EEEWWW!” reaction out of me until I saw this abomination:

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(picture cropped to roughly what the top fold looks like)

Uhhh, what the hell were they thinking? Sure, the LA Times has been having problems lately, but it’s not like their graphic design and layout staff abdicated all at once. Or did they? That ginormous serif font in column two and three screams pure “I’m typography for an Anaheim Hills McMansion community newsletter” and clobbers the poor subheading and chart below with the elegance of a drunken Hummer driver on a cell phone.

I have no idea where to start on columns four and five. Column four is a mine field with four different styles in succession. I’m guessing that the designers couldn’t come to a consensus on which style to use, and decided to just go with all of them. I still can’t avert my eyes from that sans headline though – I’m reminded of the font that the U.S. Air Force uses, plastering it on planes in a point size almost as large as the plane’s own fuselage.

Apparently the Times referred to the redesign and re-architecture of the paper’s format as “The Manhattan Project.” Not altogether unfitting for something done in secrecy with no outside input at all.

By way of contrast here’s today’s NY Times top fold:

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Regardless of what your opinion of the NYT is, I can’t think of a better way to draw attention, display headlines, and then get out of the way once you dig into an article.

How would I redesign the LAT? Send Edward Tufte into 202 W. 1st with a gun.

Turn yourself in

Are you reading this blog? Are you one of every eight who’s addicted to the Internet? If so, turn yourself in to Homeland Security right now because you are a terrorist and a threat…

Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

“They can train themselves over the internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”

…

To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.

By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers.

See you all in jail or hell, whichever comes first.

Morlocks vs. Eloi

Way back in the BOFH-era of IT culture and nerd vernacular, “Eloi” and “Morlocks” were used as the shorthand reference to clueless Eloi end users and the unappreciated network sysadmin Morlocks who keep the whole works going. H.G. Wells placed the Eloi and Morlocks in the year 802,701. Guess what?

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said – before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.

Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.

Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.

Physically, they would start to appear more juvenile. Chins would recede, as a result of having to chew less on processed food.

There could also be health problems caused by reliance on medicine, resulting in weak immune systems. Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer.

Further into the future, sexual selection – being choosy about one’s partner – was likely to create more and more genetic inequality, said Dr Curry.

The logical outcome would be two sub-species, “gracile” and “robust” humans similar to the Eloi and Morlocks foretold by HG Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine.

“While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is a possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other, said Dr Curry.

Time to fish out the Dougal Dixon books again. At least the unplagiarized one.