July 2007 Archives

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a libertarian at heart. I want the government to stay the hell out of my life, and yours too. That includes my wallet.

I grew up in the Reagan years, and was always a fan (as a centrist) of the "pendulum" mindset of modern politics... the Democrats dragged the pendulum to the left, the Republicans to the right, and my how swell it'd be to have an alternating of leadership to try and keep the pendulum close to the center as possible.

I had pretty much resigned myself to voting "blue" for the next several election cycles in an attempt to drag the pendulum back from the crazy place the Republicans dragged it to during King Bush II's reign. I looked at the GOP candidates and didn't see a single one that actually represented their core values of small government, etc., etc.

Which has been sad, because I'm not convinced that any of the Democrat front-runners are electable. Hillary carries all the baggage of being Hillary. Obama (right or wrong) carries the baggage of trying to be the first black President. And the only guy who really stands a snowball's chance in hell, Al Gore, is the guy in the corner who tried to ask the prom-queen to dance, got rejected, and is so hurt he can't stomach up enough courage to ask again.

But then, curiously, people mentioned Ron Paul to me.... I was dismissive at first. "He's a Republican... duh, we need to go the other direction now!" But, the people who were telling me about him kept reminding me of my libertarian leanings, and implored me to check him out.

Wow.... aside from his abysmal stand on abortion, his views on the issues are very libertarian-minded indeed. (And, I remind everyone out there, Reagan had the same stand, and that man was pretty much a god among men, and it didn't signal the end of the world...) Also, the Supreme Court really could use a nice centrist Justice to balance things out a bit more, which is extremely likely to happen... two swing votes instead of one would make the Supreme Court a lot more interesting.

I think I need to change my party affiliation so I can vote in the GOP primaries this year...

By now, you've almost certainly seen the mysterious trailer for the new, untitled, seemingly Top Secret, movie from J.J Abrams (Lost, Alias). If you didn't go see Transformers (I didn't), and you haven't seen one of the pirate copies on the way, Google for it and then come back. So far, the only versions online are pirated cell-phone videos, but occasionally some of those are pretty decent in clarity.

Seriously, this thing is marketing genius. The trailer gives you nothing to work with, other than "something really nasty happens in midtown Manhattan and, oh, also on Liberty Island," as the head of the Statue of Liberty comes careening down a New York City street.

What's the premise of the movie? Not a clue.

Theories, of course, abound. It's the upcoming Voltron project (which some sources say will take place in New York City)... it's a new Godzilla movie (again, which was also slated to come out in 2008)... it's a movie tie-in for Lost (maybe that button-pressing thing really does have consequences outside the island)... maybe it's something completely new and fresh and something we're not expecting.

The one thing we can be sure of is that a big chunk of the film-loving Internet populace is all abuzz wondering "what the heck it is", something that would never have happened if the trailer had followed the standard "show us the 90-second movie summary start to finish" formula we've grown accustomed to.

The man's a genius. He'll get way more marketing mileage out of this trailer than anything else he could have done.