I had seen the movie Zeitgeist mentioned by several of my friends on Facebook over the last year, so when I saw a link to one of the parts of the movie I thought I could sit down and watch that part. It was all about my hated enemies money and corporate greed, after all. I guess I skipped parts one and two and cursory research says they’re about Religion and the attacks on the World Trade Center, so I don’t feel like I missed much.

For the most part, the film holds up as an interesting string of connections and theories. I don’t know how much of it is accurate, and really how could I research these facts myself? Google? I’d end up with more facts of the same nebulous value. The film’s position as a subversive documentary bringing shocking facts to daylight works against it for me. I can’t help but think they’d be willing to state something as a certainty when, in fact it is still only a theory, just to get their point across.

That said, I’m still on their side. I believe that the greedy people want to keep their wealth and will do bastardly things to do so. I could definitely see someone wanting to create an ongoing war as a means of keeping profits rolling in. And the government allowing schools to slip in value to keep people dumb and distracted? Yeah, I buy that.

Just a few comments:

I’m willing to accept the idea that maybe, just maybe, a shadowy organization that controls things allowed an opening for an attack on America, but to say they specifically caused the attacks on the World Trade Center does kinda write off the actual complaints of angry and desperate Muslim people as meaningless. There are very real issues that allow people in other countries to hate the “Civilized World” such as poverty and our perceived indifference. If we were to all work together helping get the rest of the world up to our own standards of living and education, it wouldn’t be as easy for the manipulators to find guys willing to blow themselves up to prove a point.

Also, the film touches upon the idea of a One World Government just briefly and acts as if it would be a horrible thing. Yes, I don’t want the world to be ruled by one government that is made up of puppets working for corporations, but I think the idea of just one governing body (one that serves the people, rather than rules them) would be a very great thing. Borders are good for locating your geological position, but apart from that, they just serve to separate people.

Right now, the States is going through some pretty rough financial times. It will be interesting to see what the government will be allowed to get away with to get them out of them. If the film is correct, this would be the controllers tightening their grip on the populace to make them accept any way out, no matter how evil.

And that’s it for now.

The good news is that, according to Dictionary.com the word “Fuck” when translated into Estonian, becomes “Jamama” which is awesome. The bad news is that it only does so when used in the sense of “To fuck with some one’s mind” or “I’m gonna fuck with those guys over there so they think dogs are made of ham” or whatever, but not as a simple curse. Which is a shame, because the idea of some guy dropping a hammer on his toe and yelling “Jamama!” really did have an appeal to me.

I would like the Wikipedia to make a list of real-life supervillains. That, I think, would be a useful category. Any criminal with a bizarre deformity could make the list. As could any who use code-names like the Zodiac Killer or the Unabomber. Most dictators would also be on the list. That would be a great list. Get working on that, Wikipedia guys.

So I bought Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People. Quite good. Quite good. I had played the first Sam and Max game made by the same company, but not the others, but this I went and ordered a season pass for. I truly miss adventure gaming. The days of Sierra’s various Quest games passed far too soon.

While I was ordering from the Telltale Games site I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to also order a shirt with Max, of Sam and Max on it. Unfortunately, instead of ordering a Men’s XL, I ordered a small girl’s shirt. Between this and my recent overly-shiny Ghostbusters shirt, what the chunks is my Internet Shirt Ordering Subconscious trying to tell me?

Now don’t get me wrong, I find the Internet Movie Database extremely useful, as any Internet user is likely to. I mean sure, the comments on any given page are forty-five percent idiotic whining and forty-five percent shallow nitpicking, but I’m able to ignore all that and use it to learn about movies and stuff.

The reason I’m currently calling it an idiot is I’ve started to notice the “Plot Keywords” section. It’s probably always been there, but I only noticed it within the last couple months. At first glance it makes sense to have keywords that sum up significant things in the movie so someone who is looking for say, Viet Nam films is gonna be able to sift through them.

But look at some of the things that turn up in the Keywords! I’ll go to the Dark Knight page to get examples. There’s the ones that make sense, of course: “Vigilante”, “Dark Hero” and “Superhero” are all well and good. But then there’s the truly mundane: “Funeral”, “Gun”, “Bruise”, “Butler”, “Billiards” and “Applause” are all in there.. And we also have the truly inane: “Altered Version Of Studio Logo”, “Heavy Rubber”, “Number In Character’s Name”, “Title Spoken By Character ” and “Punched In The Face” leave me questioning the point altogether.

My main concern here is that these things rarely fit my definition of PLOT keywords. Seriously, if there is anyone who likes “Billiards” enough that they’re looking up movies about it, they’re going to be disappointed by the Dark Knight.

Also, there was a character with a number in his name?