Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Your little hopes and dreams."
¤ Usage: "Poor fellow, his little hopes and dreams have all be smashed."
¤ Origin: Quipped by a whore, or pre-op transgender man, or a sociopath, or some other lowlife who was engaged in a vicious verbal battle with another lowlife guest on the Jerry Springer show
¤ Notes: While the Jerry Springer show is generally pretty lacking in opportunities for intellectual improvement, you do tend to hear some funny jokes, of the personal insult type.  This was one of the best.  One loser was arguing with another loser, and when one said something about how she'd loved her husband, whom the other lowlife had stolen away, lowlife #1 replied, "Bitch, I don't care about your little hopes and dreams!"

You'll find it applicable to almost every situation in life.  It's the "little" that really makes it work, since that just so perfectly and cruelly diminishes whatever claim to importance the other person might previously have had. -- February 20, 2004

he record heatwave continues to bake the Bay Area, with daytime highs soaring into the upper 70s even the low 80s in inland areas.  Experts are advising that you drink some water from time to time, and maybe try to wear a hat, so long as it goes with the rest of your outfit.

Honestly, it's hot, but it's hot for early March.  It's not exactly life threatening, though you'd never know it from the way the local weather and news are carrying on.  Slow news week, I suppose.  We happened to see a moment of the local news tonight, while the tape with Survivor and Kingdom Hospital was rewinding, and over their local temperate map they had a little animated graphic of a thermometer with the red mercury spurting out the top as it exploded from the heat.  Rather a low temperature range on that measuring device, eh? It's been like 80 here the past week, when the usual highs this time of year are in the 60s, so while technically it's a heat wave, it's not such a bad one.

I'd certainly prefer it to be 80 instead of 60 rather than 100 instead of 80, as it'll probably be at some point in July or August or September.  Basically, if you dislike hot temperatures as much as I do, pray for your heat waves in the winter or early spring, when they are practically impotent.

I did notice the heat yesterday evening when I was out on my cross country jog, and it being 75 rather than 60 definitely made me a little bit thirstier.  Such torture!

I didn't spend any time writing new blog stuff today, and I'm trying to feel sleepy so I can go to bed before dawn since I need to get up early (well, earlier) to drive up to Davis, so we can there and back (about 70 miles each way) before the traffic gets shitty.  Which will require me to roll out of bed by oh, noonish. While that will be the earliest I've gotten up in a while, I'm still tired all the time since I hardly ever get to sleep before 7 or 8am.  So I'm getting up at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, but only spending 5 or 6 hours in bed, and even that's somewhat broken sleep, what with the daylight, noises outside, Malaya coming home from work and heading off to the gym, the cats running around, etc.

I'm not complaining about things, since this is the schedule I like best and work best on, but I do look forward to our future mansion with a huge bedroom, a huge bed, total light proofing when the blinds are closed, and a separate entrance to the bathroom and closets, so I can go in and out without disturbing the sleeping Malaya, and she can do the same.  And I suppose we'll need a cat door too, the way Dusty sits in the hallway and whines.

Anyway, as I said, I didn't write any new blog stuff today.  But since I already had the Red Dragon review/comparison written, and had some other news-esque stuff I put together earlier this week, no worries. I am also nearly done with the February mailbag, which is chock full of good mails I never quoted on the site, even though there are only 7 days of them, due to the mail client catastrophe that struck late last month and vanished about 8 months of largely-unsorted reader mail.  Plus I've got about two blogs worth of random photos with captions, random observations on the human condition and digestive system, and much more. Basically, I wrote a ton of blog stuff last weekend and am parceling it out over time, like the occasionally-lazy son of a bitch I am.

For some other new stuff that's actually online, there's another addition to the My First Time page, sent in by 6227. Who is, as he says, just a number.

And here's some news stuff.

¤ I posted about the Spanish terror attacks and subsequent election on Tuesday, with a quote from a Spaniard who had her own thoughts about the issue.  Here's a good email from another Spanish guy, that was posted on Tom Tomorrow's blog. It's more of the same message, that the ruling party lied to everyone, tried to blame the ETA for the terror, tried to cover up that it was Al Quida-related groups, and paid the price when independent news media brought out the real story and a far greater voter turn out than usual propelled a left-center party into power.  His on-the-scene report of the actual bombing aftermath is emotional, and damn near inspiring as well.

The behavior of the people was of utter heroism. I must say it, I didn't expect it and I'm very proud of my people now. When the victims in the trains started shouting "neighbours, neighbours, please help us!" to the surrounding buildings, hundreds of every age and sex rushed downstairs to help, even understanding that there were bombs and could be more. Commuter drivers in nearby roads stopped their cars and took the horribly mutilated and burnt woundeds to area hospitals even before the first ambulances arrived. Even some people who were inside the trains stayed to help others instead of fleeing!

Now it's entirely possible that this is all lies and the Spanish are just ashamed to admit that they were running scared before terrorism and they're trying to save face now.  But you'll have to make that judgment yourself. 

¤ This was the most forwarded Yahoo news item as of late Tuesday night, and I suppose I'm obligated to post it, since after all, it's about me.

Even after five years, Christy Pugh has no trouble sticking to her vegetarian regimen.

The secret to her success? Eating meat.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm a bad vegetarian, that I'm not strict enough or good enough," the 28-year-old bookkeeper from Concord said recently. "I really like vegetarian food but I'm just not 100 percent committed."

Pugh is one of a growing number of part-time vegetarians whose loose adherence to the meat-free diet is transforming a decades-old movement and the industry that feeds it.

These so-called "flexitarians" — a term voted most useful word of 2003 by the American Dialect Society — are motivated less by animal rights than by a growing body of medical data that suggests health benefits from eating more vegetarian foods.

Read the whole article for facts and figures and more info. And yes, I suppose I'm a "flexitarian" though I'd be more likely to vote that the dumbest word of the year, rather than the most useful.

The "mostly vegetables with occasional meat" is pretty much my diet, and the reasons listed in the article are pretty much my reasons for it; health benefits, or at least avoiding health problems due to the amazingly unhealthy way livestock are raised in the US agribusiness industry. I've been doing it for more than 10 years, with vary degrees of strictness, and though I've backslid somewhat since coming to live with Malaya, and chicken and dairy have increased a lot in my diet (and are quite likely contributing factors to me being sick more in the past 6 months than I was in the previous 6 years) at least I've still stayed away from pig and cow.

But news item and matching diet and new word or not, I am not going to start calling myself a "flexitarian."

¤ This is just ridiculous. At a campaign stop recently, John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, made a remark that he'd heard from various foreign leaders who hoped he would become the next president, defeating George Bush in the next election. Now to anyone with common sense, this is sort of a throw away remark.  Everyone knows that about 97% of the countries on earth view Dubya as a dangerous, cowboy maniac, bent on stirring up trouble around the world via American military might. There's a reason that practically every country on earth supported the US immediately after 9/11 and into Afghanistan, and then by the Iraq Attack had all turned against us.  And it was only partially due to the "We just know Saddam has WMDs!" policy that turned out to be all lies. Dubya is probably the least popular man on earth right now, and whenever there's a survey in some foreign country about who is the greatest threat to world peace, he's at the top of the list.  Secular Europe can't stand the way he uses his faith as a political tool either.

So common sense tells us that many, if not most other countries on earth would prefer anyone but Dubya for the US president. It's just a matter of fact, and common sense, as I see it. Whether or not you agree with Bush, or support the Iraq war, or anything else is irrelevant in this instance.  You could be the biggest Bush supporter on earth, but if you have any knowledge of world events, and any personal integrity or objectivity, you must admit that Bush is hugely unpopular world wide, and that most people on earth would be overjoyed to see him voted out of office later this year, and that that no doubt includes many of the leaders of those foreign countries.  You can use that as a rallying point for your "The whole world is against us!" opinion, or ignore it, but it's foolish and dishonest to pretend it doesn't exist.

Yet that's just what the Bush Administration is doing, by ignoring the larger picture, and trying to change the subject to "name their names!" or you're a liar! And that's just what the Bushies are doing, as they seize upon Kerry's remark and gnaw upon it like a "We never actually said 'imminent threat' when talking about how Iraq could kill us all at any moment." bone.  And it's just embarrassing.

Kerry should identify the leaders who purportedly hope he beats President Bush in November, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Either he is straightforward and states who they are, or the only conclusion one can draw is that he is making it up to attack the president," the spokesman said.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Americans deserved to know what Kerry was telling the unidentified foreign leaders to purportedly attract their support.

I like the one by McClellan.  The "only conclusion" indeed.  Let's see, Kerry says who they are, or it's a lie.  There's no possible other explanation.  It's not as if they could have told him off the record, or privately.  Or that they don't mean it as an official recommendation, since they know it would be inappropriate to openly push for one candidate or another in a foreign election? (Although, given the way the US has been actively trying to unseat the president of Venezuela, and the way we held up enough foreign aid to do just that in Haiti, it's understandable that no, a Bush spokesman wouldn't understand that.)

As for Cheney, he's insane, the Administration attack dog that tells all the lies Bush doesn't want to voice himself, (I believe Cheney is still going around claiming there are WMDs in Iraq, or that we found them, or that we'll find them any minute now.) we all know that, but does he want to open that door so widely? Isn't it pretty obvious that foreign leaders hate the jingoistic and internationally-ignorant Bush, fear the war war war direction he's dragging the rest of the free world, and want someone less likely to think that invading is the only option for foreign policy, in this nuclear age?

The whole "who said they supported you!?" issue is just ridiculous, since obviously Kerry's not going to say, and obviously no foreign leader, at least not one that has to deal with the US government on a regular basis, is going to go on the record opposing a sitting PotUS.  Especially not Dubya, who is the head of the most venal, revenging, take-it-personally Administration in memory.  I almost wonder if the Bushies would like to hear the names more to put that leader and his nation on their shit list, than to try to make political hay out of it against Kerry.

While they're not replying to the "who were they" issue very well, Kerry's people continue to be on the ball for all possible counter attack angles, and they jumped on a tangent to this one immediately.

McClellan's pointed reaction illustrated his changing role at the White House. For months, the press secretary has deflected almost all political questions to Bush's re-election campaign, part of an effort to portray the White House as above the campaign fray. But administration officials say McClellan is becoming a more forceful voice in the exchanges with the Kerry camp.

The shift did not go unnoticed at Kerry campaign headquarters.

"If the president wants his White House press secretary to be the press secretary for the re-election campaign, he ought to get him off the taxpayers' payroll and stop using the White House for political purposes," Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said. "This is part of a pattern of the failure of this White House to distinguish between politics and governing."

The real irony is that I wrote the above on Sunday night, but didn't have room to post it with so much other content on Monday and Tuesday. And then Tuesday night I'm reading some news, and see a link to this breaking news on the sleazy Drudge Report. Turns out the reporter who first said Kerry had said world leaders had contacted him to offer support made an error and mis-transcribed his audio tape from the campaign bus, and that Kerry never said it at all.

Given the growing attention to Senator Kerry's remark at the Fla. fundraiser about foreign leaders wanting him to beat Bush, and Kerry's subsequent statements that he'd merely "heard from" leaders, I went back to my recording of the event to re-confirm his remarks and put them in context. I wanted to provide that for all of you as well as CORRECT the record on a key word that I mistranscribed.

When Kerry concluded his stump to the Florida fundraisers and donors, Milton Ferrell, Kerry's Florida finance chair, piped up:

MILTON FERRELL: "This is more than just the 50 states. You travel around outside the states, the people are still [inaudible] Europeans and elsewhere, they're counting on the American people. They hate Bush, but they know we're going to get rid of him. They're counting on us. [inaudible] It's a lot more than just [inaudible]-"

KERRY: "I've been hearing it, I'll tell ya. The news, the coverage in other countries, the news in other places. I've met more leaders who can't go out and say it all publicly, but boy they look at you and say, you gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that. So there is enormous energy out there. Tell them, whereever they can find an American abroad, they can contribute," a reference to donations, prompting laughter from the crowd.

Transcribing on the bus in Florida, and again on the plane ride to Tampa, I heard "foreign leaders" rather than "more leaders." Listening to the audio recorder now, in the quiet of my house, I hear "more leaders" and I am certian that "more leaders" is what Senator Kerry said. I am very sorry for this screw-up, and please feel free to hold me accountable to your editors and higher-ups.

This isn't real different; I mean it's "more leaders" vs. "world leaders" which could mean exactly the same thing, depending on how you look at it. But at least it doesn't conjure up images of Tony Blair or Vladimir Putin calling Kerry's cell to wish him luck beating Dubya's ass.  Of course now the Administration will ignore this, or else start demanding a list of those "leaders" Kerry is talking about.  Which at least keeps the first half of this post somewhat relevant.

The following discusses Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, and includes extensive spoilers of Red Dragon, both the book and movie. Unavoidable spoilers, since I'm comparing the book to the film, but you have been warned. If you've never seen/read Red Dragon, and you want to keep your mind virginal, be advised. I'll focus more on Hannibal, and how the book and movie differ (quite a bit) in tomorrow's blog.

Red Dragon, published in 1981, introduced Hannibal Lecter.  It was somewhat popular, and spawned Manhunter, a movie that no one saw or remembers at this point.  However as you probably know, Thomas Harris' next novel was Silence of the Lambs, and it was a bit more successful. In that book Clarice Starling was introduced, and Hannibal took a much larger role than he had in Red Dragon.  The movie made of Silence is one of the best horror/suspense films ever, and won best film and director, as well as actor for Jodie Foster and actor for Anthony Hopkins.  Hannibal followed up as the third book in the sort of trilogy, and was made into a film as well, but one that most fans of Silence were less than thrilled by.

I've long been a fan of the Silence movie, but hadn't read the novel until a couple of years ago, before Hannibal became a film. I purposely avoided reading that novel until after the movie, since I didn't want any spoilers. I heard how different the movie was from the book, since they considered a literal interpretation of the book to be unfilmable. Too gory, too sprawling, and with an ending that no fan of Silence could stomach.

I didn't find Silence the book to be much different than the movie.  A few minor bits, but the plot was essentially identical, though somewhat condensed, as all movies are, screenplays being considerably shorter than novels.  I was surprised at the dialogue though, since it seemed like at least 90% of it was taken word for word from the book.  It worked better in the movie, with Hopkins' and Foster's delivery, but hey, they didn't get those academy awards for nothing.

I wrote about it almost exactly two years ago, after I first read Silence the novel, so I'm not going to go into that discussion again now.  Especially since it's been over two years since I read the novel, and my memories of the differences aren't that fresh.  Here's a quick self quote.

Silence of the Lambs, the movie, was remarkably faithful to the book.  Dozens of lines of dialogue were directly lifted from the book; many of the best ones, in fact.  The screenplay was also expertly adapted, since virtually every change in the movie was an improvement on what was in the book, and things that were glossed over in the movie were things that the book described in more detail than we really needed to know.  The description of Hannibal's room in the asylum was dumb in the book, with bars and some sort of nylon screen keeping him back from it.  I couldn't visualize it; I imagined like a giant pantyhose sort of material blocking him off.  The Shamo pool plexiglass in the movie was much more effective and logical.

I also discussed Red Dragon the movie, in a past blog, last November 3rd.  Scroll down past the other movie reviews; it's the last thing on the page. To summarize quickly, I said that Red Dragon was a pretty mediocre movie, with a rather conventional serial killer/cop hunt plot, that all of the killings and weird stuff take place off screen, before the movie begins, and that it never really felt suspenseful or tense, since I never had any doubt that the good guys would win.  That was long before I read the novel, and now that I have, I can't help but compare and contrast the Red Dragon novel to the movie. My favorite is the book, but I wasn't real impressed with either work.

The main character in Red Dragon is the FBI serial killer expert, Will Graham. I'll call him Graham here, though he's more often called "Will" in the book. I found this distracting on a number of occasions, since every time a sentence began with "Will thought over his next action..." or something like that, I'd take "Will" as the capitalized version of "will," the verb, and start to try to make sense of the sentence that way, before realizing it was the guy's name, not a verb. It did teach me something though -- to never make a main character's name a common word in the English language.

The movie plot is pretty much identical to the book, with some minor changes.  They increased Hannibal's presence greatly, (apparently the original movie of the book, Manhunter, was more faithful since Hannibal Lecter wasn't famous and such a great character due to Hopkins' performance in Silence yet.) and made the FBI guy a lot less competent or interesting.  The serial killer was virtually identical, though the movie had far fewer flashbacks to his horrible "training a future serial killer" childhood, so you had less idea of why he was the way he was.  This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, since his childhood abuse and psychological torture at the hands of gramma were quite horrible, but very cliche and stereotypical to my modern, jaded ears.  It's entirely possible that 23 years ago, when the novel was published, it was shocking and original, but after two decades of serial killer movies, books, gruesome Internet sites, molestation and torture constantly in the news, and sex abuse horror TV shows like Law and Order:SUV, there's virtually nothing new or shocking in childhood abuse stories.  We've heard it all, we know it turns them into monsters and mentally ill adults, and there are serial killers all over now.

It wasn't a bad story or a boring story, it just felt predictable, and the childhood abuse and subsequent psychosis was very text book and not especially original.  It think it would have worked better if we'd gotten less detail about it.  Instead of detailing practically everything awful that granny ever did to the little Tooth Fairy, we could have just had some hints and whispers and then when we saw what he'd become as an adult, we could have used our imaginations.  I liked that we didn't get so much of the childhood of Jamie Gumm/Buffalo Bill in Silence, and just got a bit of the horrible things baby Lecter endured in Hannibal.  More of a personal preference than a strong criticism.

On the other hand, I thought we needed more info about the crimes and the motivations of the mad man in Red Dragon.  There was no first hand summary of them ever, even though the Tooth Fairy had them on video to watch later (and once did while the blind girlfriend was sucking him off, in a scene that was written in very restrained style, when I thought he should have really gone for it and wallowed in the freakisness). We just heard about the bodies from police reports, from Graham's thoughts, and some of Hannibal's suppositions about why the killer might be doing what he was doing, and what joys he might get out of it.

The biggest change from book to movie, in Red Dragon, was how they showed Hannibal.  He's hardly in the book at all, and only actually on screen once, when Graham pays him one quick and unpleasant visit in the mental hospital. After that he's only referred to at a distance, when they find the note from the Tooth Fairy rolled up in his TP. He also sends Graham a couple of letters, mostly to taunt him and fuck with him.  In the movie they bumped up Hannibal's presence greatly, basically making it much more like Silence of the Lambs, where Clarice visits Hannibal several times and gets advice from that allows her to stumble into the murderer just in time.

In Red Dragon the book, Graham does it almost entirely on his own, and Hannibal is irrelevant, or even an obstacle and a dangerous enemy, rather than a guiding mentor. This didn't really work for me in the movie, since I couldn't see why Hannibal was being such a dick.  It seemed to go against his basic "civil is as civil does" character, since Graham was always polite to him. However in the book Graham is much ruder and shorter with Hannibal, basically telling Lecter to fuck off and rot in his cell when Lecter tries to bargain.  The power is with Graham, rather than with Lecter (as it is in Silence when Clarice has to ask him for help), and Graham is rude, and we all know how Lecter feels about rudeness.  So his trying to get Graham killed by feeding the Tooth Fairy info about Graham's home address makes perfect sense, especially since Graham is setting himself up as a target for the Tooth Fairy, to try and draw him out before he picks another family and murders at the next full moon.

I'm not going to spend much time on the plot, but basically the Tooth Fairy is a serial killer who has cleaned out two families, mom, dad, kids, and pets, and then performed some sort of ritual with the bodies; dragging them around their homes before putting them back into bed.  He also molests and mutilates the adult females, breaks every mirror in their homes and places glass shards where they'll reflect in the victim's dead eye sockets, wears weird prosthetic teeth, and more. Neither family killing is described in the book; just the aftermath, and part of Graham's genius is that he can re-enact them in his head and figure out just what happened and why and how. 

Graham's special talent is extreme empathy; he can put himself entirely in the place of a serial killer, enabling him to get inside their sick brains better than anyone else.  Graham is basically a sociopath, since he doesn't really feel emotions or guilt or a conscience.  He's just somehow channeled that into doing good work and catching evil men, rather than being one himself.  He doesn't feel guilt or disgust at being able to completely understand and emphasize with the murderers, though he is aware that he should feel bad about it. He's aware of his emotionless condition in the book, and worries about it a lot.

He might be like that in the movie, but there's never anything that makes that at all clear or obvious, and overall he's much less intellectually competent in the movie than in the book.  However, he's more physically strong and durable in the movie, and wins a fight that he loses in the book, when it's his wife who saves the day in a much less satisfying conclusion.

In the movie the capture of Hannibal is stupid; Graham already knows him, and is working with him to get advice and assistance on criminal profiling in the hunt for the serial killer. He only begins to suspect Hannibal when some new info comes out that he thinks Hannibal should have deciphered already, and then sees a cook book on the Doctor's desk with a recipe for sweetbreads noted.  Those are thymus glands, though not usually human, and the last murder victim to turn up had those cut out.  They struggle, Hannibal cuts him up but Graham shoots him several times, though obviously Hannibal survived those wounds to be tried for murders and institutionalized for life since he's insane.

In the book Graham is much more active and intelligent in his discovery that Hannibal is the killer, and does it more through sleuth work.  He's not working with Hannibal prior to that, he's never met him before he interviews him as a doctor who once treated one of the recent victims.  He also hardly interacts with him in the book; visiting him just once, and a rather acrimonious meeting it is.  They argue, Graham is not civil, and that kicks Hannibal into action to try and get Graham killed.  That much is identical in the movie, since Hannibal gets a letter from the Tooth Fairy, and starts a brief secret correspondence with him, placing classified ads with letter keys to pass a secret message.  And he passes him Graham's home address, which Hannibal obtained with some very clever social engineering.

Reading the book let me know why the Hannibal conversation was so much less snappy in the Red Dragon movie than it was in the Silence of the Lambs movie. Harris got better at writing it, and he only wrote one short scenes of it in Red Dragon.  The second encounter, when Hannibal is walking around in a gym, was entirely created for the film, and as such isn't true canon Hannibal Lecter.

Other than the much-boosted role for Hannibal in the Red Dragon film, the rest of the movie is much the same. After seeing the films, I thought that some of the ridiculous plot twists and especially the blind girlfriend were things the screen writers added on.  But no, she's there in the book also, and no, she doesn't seem at all believable then either. She's way too convenient; it's like Harris wanted some way to give the serial killer a love interest.  Someone to humanize him and give him some hope of overcoming his madness, someone to have some weird sex with, someone the Tooth Fairy won't be freaked out by since he's convinced everyone is staring at his cleft palate scar.  Someone the reader can worry for as she unknowingly steps into peril, someone who can be in his house and not see how weird it is, or how weird his enormous back tattoo is, and who will believe a dead body is him, just because it's got a messy face from a shotgun blast.

There's nothing illogical or cheating about her, but she seems way too convenient.  A walking, talking, pecan pie-cutting, cock-sucking deus ex machina that I never bought for one minute.

There was also a change in the ending, but only in the means, not the end. Graham is a lot less tough and ready in the book, and he gets jumped by the Tooth Fairy after the fake death portion, and instantly put down by a stab wound and being stomped.  The Tooth Fairy then chases after the son and wife, and the wife blows him away coolly and calmly when he breaks down the front door of their house. And that's that, no last crazy fight, no dramatic speech between killer and cop, nothing satisfying like that. The movie ending was every horror movie cliche "the monster will get back up and attack again any minute now" ending rolled into one, but at least it had a nice final showdown and a satisfying resolution. The book just sort of ended. Awkwardly.

So in conclusion, Red Dragon the movie isn't really worth seeing, even if you loved Hopkins in Hannibal and Silence of the Lambs.  Red Dragon the book isn't worth buying new, but it's not a bad read, though there's nothing in it that feels original at this point.  Honestly, I enjoy both of them a lot more having seen/read both of them.  The compare and contrast is the most interesting part for me, as I debate what worked better in the book or the movie, and why they made the changes that they did. I guess my recommendation is that if you've already seen the movie or read the book, but not both, you should go ahead and read/watch the other part, just to complete the couplet. And if you've neither seen nor read either form of Red Dragon, either don't start, or plan on going all the way.

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