Baracky

So this is why nobody seriously tries to build a time machine. It's not because of causality paradoxes or the lack of traversable wormholes. No, it's because why would anyone bother when stuff like this clearly proves that everything before Al Gore invented the Intertubes sucked balls:

Catching Up

So it's been a very hectic last couple of weeks...

• My sister Renee came out to stay with Jeannine and I. We tried (and failed) to see the Olympic torch run (I might post with pics later), took her to the usual tourist haunts (Coit Tower, Golden Gate, etc.), ate vomit-flavored candy and drank absurdly strong blueberry lager during factory tours of the Budweiser and Jelly Belly plants in Fairfield, and ate a lot of very good (and quite expensive) food. She also had us watch WWE wrestling, something I haven't done in years. The matches are just as boring as I remember, although the womens' coverage has gotten remarkably sleazier.
• Didn't pick up comics while Renee was here, which is why I haven't done a Weekly Pull.
• Ran Trail of Cthulhu for my monthly gaming group in San Francisco. We all had fun, but we also all agreed that the system sucks. This makes me very sad, as I really want the game to be successful, but it's just so mechanical.
• Played Combat Commander tonight. Tons o' fun. It is a continual shock to my friends that I don't play war games and only played my first one a couple of years ago.

Barry O'Bomber

So Obama did an interview on HBO's Real Sports, discussing his love of basketball, and said:

No, but I do think you can tell something about people from how they play basketball. For example, people who keep on shooting even though they have no jump shot. You can tell that there's a certain self-delusional aspect to their game. Right? That says something about who they are.

Another reason why Obama is my horse in this race: not only does he come off as human and likeable, but he also finds the most subtle ways to get in digs at his opponents.

Jim Butcher Book Signing

So, on Friday, Jeannine and I went into San Francisco to attend Jim Butcher's book signing for Small Favor. Jeannine has been a big fan of his Dresden Files series ever since watching the now-cancelled television show based on those books. I enjoyed the series too, but I can't say I'm really a fan. I've only ever been to one other book signing, that one with George R.R. Martin. Whereas Martin seemed tired and perfunctory, Butcher was lively and conversed candidly with the fans. There were a surprising number of questions about upcoming The Dresden Files role-playing game, and I was a little shocked to hear that it won't be coming out until sometime next year. This is odd as I'll be playing in an alpha-stage playtest later this month, so I thought it'd be closer to release. I wanted to know how close the game would hew to other Evit Hat games like Spirit of the Century, but didn't ask figuring I'd find out in a couple weeks time anyways. A recent post from Fred Hicks' livejournal implies that it'll be Fate-based, so the SotC Aspects and Stunts system may see play in Dresden as well.

Jeannine seemed to have a great time, which means that I had a good time. I'll be reading the Dresden Files books before I run the game, so maybe I'll then find out for myself if he's a good writer and the books are worthwhile. If the books are anything like the author himself, they should be very geeky and very fun.

For Want of a Nail... and a Brain Cell

So Ed "We don't vote for blacks here" Rendell decides to play Utau (if the Watcher was a whiny white male) and gives us an issue of What-If... Obama Was the Poor Loser:

"Just flip it for a second," Mr. Rendell said. "Let’s say Senator Clinton was ahead by about 110 delegates and ahead by less than 1 percent of the vote cast, and she and her supporters started to call on Senator Obama to get out. Just picture what the media would be saying. They’d be saying you’re being racist, you’re being everything in the world. It’s nuts! It’s nuts!"

Forget the fact that the mainstream media, in all their racial sensitivity, has been using the Wright controversy to hammer Obama as a dangerous black man come to roost his chickens because whitey gave us all the AIDs. That alone makes me suspect they'd be less likely to call an Obama a consumate survivor and scared to declare his chances over, even if the math makes it so - which has been the MSM line on Clinton even in this late hour.

No, the most salient point here is that the right course for alt-Obama is the same one for the Clinton in our timeline: quit. Alt-Obama would be in the same position, whose only hope is that alt-Clinton stumbles into a scandal big enough to wreck their inevitable victory. And, presuming that alt-Michelle Obama doesn't engage in gender-baiting after their upset loss in South Carolina and alt-Samantha Power doesn't spew bigotry about how the only way alt-Clinton got her position was because she was a woman, alt-Obama would actually be in an even better position than actual-Clinton, because he'd still have enough goodwill to negotiate a vice-presidency.

Clinton is quickly waning as a threat to Obama, so whether she stays in or quits really only hurts her at this point. And it is hurting her - dirty politics has manuevered her out of the vice-president position on Obama's ticket (unless he seriously swallows his pride and offers it to shore up the base); she is quickly destroying her goodwill in Congress through hard-selling the superdelegates, which creates enemies that block her chances of eventually becoming Senate Majority Leader; and if Obama does go on to lose in November, she will be painted as the Democratic Nader, whose political ambition caused her to tear the party apart, so that she has no chance of coming back to win it in 2012. She might still salvage her career by going after the governorship in New York, but does a state that has now had one governor fall and another one tarnished by sex scandals really want to invite Slick Willie to Albany?

Deathwatch

So I've been on a real tear through Weird War Tales style movies as of late, the last being Deathwatch, a British horror flick set during the First World War. This follows R-Point, a K-Horror movie about Korean Marines in the Vietnam War, and Outpost, another British effort about modern-day PMC's in some unnamed Eastern European shit-hole. All three films share the same basic structure: isolated soldiers come upon some creepy place, are forced by orders to remain as the creepiness slowly turns into malevolent nastiness, and things end badly as a stark metaphor for the inhumanity of war and its warriors. Deathwatch, suprisingly, comes out as the least of the three.

Outpost has a really solid group of actors headlined by Ray Stevenson (Pullo from Rome) and Julian Wadham, neither of whom allow the silliness of the material (Nazi experiments in Einstein's Unified Field Theory create extradimensional zombie stormtroopers) to undermine their earnest performances, which bring a sense of gravitas to the B-movie proceedings. And Richard Brake adds the fun with his understated Southern psycho role, delivering the greatest quote of the film: "Fuck, we killed just about everyone else. I figured it's about time we touched gloves with some Nazis." Still the film never really escapes its inherent shlock, particularly once the main baddie starts vamping around in his SS uniform.

The actors of R-Point deliver lesser performances than those of Outpost, but the Korean film holds out its horror longer through its more subtle psychological terrors. The story is simple but well-executed: ROK Marines are dispatched to recon an area avoided by the Viet Cong in search of a missing patrol which was believed to be wiped out, and the Marines end up trapped there in a supernatural purgatory. Although the setting of Vietnam is not unique and the filmmakers' approach lifts brazenly from Apocalypse Now, using Korean characters instead of the usual American G.I. stereotypes makes it all seem more like a charming homage rather than a hackneyed rip-off. Of the three flicks, R-Point tries the hardest at making a statement about how war can make monsters of human beings, and while it never succeeds at making high art, the fact that it is trying to be more than the average Sci-Fi Pictures Original Film ultimately raises its stock from B-movie status to more of an A-minus.

Deathwatch is not a bad movie, but it lacks the strong acting of Outpost and the tight story of R-Point, and suffers in comparison. Here we see a bunch of WWI-era British soldiers go over the top during a harrowing nightime attack, which immediately cuts to them stumbling upon a near-deserted German trench in the midst of a thick daytime fog. The soldiers almost immediately start going nuts in response to a few (really too few) unnatural shocks, particularly one very religious type who abruptly goes from quoting Scripture to making crazed exposition that pretty much reveals the nature of the "horror" halfway into the movie. And once that secret is revealed, the threats (where in one case of an attack by barbed wire is quite frightening) take on much less terror. The acting is okay, but suffers from the fact that a lot of performers look alike and the characters have few differences in personality. The single exception is a blood-crazed nutjob hammed up by Andy Serkis, but all his scenery-chewing does less to inspire the tired cast than to exemplify how lackluster the whole proceedings are. Deathwatch is passable for those seeking a ghost story amid the madness of war, but if you haven't seen Outpost or R-Point, do catch either of those flicks first for a more satisfying experience.

Mythbusting Clinton

So Politico, and at least one Clinton staffer, is admitting what anyone not sticking their head in the sand has realized since the Potomac primaries: "Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning." It has long been improbable that Clinton could make up her deficit in the popular vote with Obama (which would have illegitimate even if she had, considering that the caucuses, mostly won by Obama, don't calculate well for an honest popular tally), but with the failure of Michigan and Florida to create a re-vote those odds go from improbable to impossible. Barring video footage of Obama cooking a baby while fellating Osama bin Laden, he's going to win the popular vote, the delegates, and maybe, with his own set of political miracles, reach the magic number of 2025 before the August convention.

The only narrative for victory left for Clinton is that she will have momentum in the last rounds of this fight, that Obama is too flawed to win November and that the people who would have supported him now have buyers' remorse. The problem with this fantasy is, firstly, that the national polls show recent decline for Obama but nothing apocalyptic; so, barring another Wright-style scandal, Obama is still in control and his momentum will continue. Secondly, and more importantly, Pennsylvannia is going to be followed directly by Indiana and North Carolina on May 6th, states that Obama is still likely to carry. And if Obama does carry those major states in the same overwhelming manner he did before the Texas and Ohio votes, Clinton will not simply be done but will be crushed in a humiliating manner. West Virginia on May 13 will probably be a repeat of Pennsylvannia, but the real contests will be in Kentucky and Oregon on the 20th, a match-up that will, at worst, be a tie between them. Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota end the primary season, and while Clinton can pick up a lot of delegates in Puerto Rico, it won't be enough to give her the lead (or probably even narrow the margins). Looking at these contests, even the most optimistic Clintonite has to admit that April and May will be, at best, see-saw battles, and certainly not the landscape by which Clinton will be able to claim signs of momentum in her favor.

All that she can hope for is that Obama will implode through some monkey business, but even there she is setting herself up for failure. The kitchen-sink attacks and negative campaigning by the Clintons, continued today by Bill's not-so-sly disparagement of Obama's patriotism, is putting HRC in the position, not of saviour of the Democratic Party, but as the lesser of two evils, unlikely to mobilize the base and quite possibly setting November as a massive failure when the African-American and youth vote simply stay home on Election Day. While I agree with Politico that Clinton has no chance to win this thing, rather than wanting to see her drop out of the race, I'd rather see her run a clean campaign that focuses on the issues, respects her Democratic opponents, and builds momentum by taking McCain, not Obama, to the woodshed. If she did that, then if the heavens part and her chances are saved by an Obamaplosion, she will be in the proper position to take advantage of it.

On a seperate matter, Richardson's endorsement of Obama has lead into some discussion on the blogosphere as to when John Edwards will finally endorse, one way or the other. Looking at the primary schedule, my gut is telling me that Edwards will endorse Obama after Pennsylvannia but before North Carolina. That's his home state, where he can have the most effect. And perhaps more importantly, I think both he and Obama realize that his endorsement is unlikely to change the outcome in Pennsylvannia, and don't want to repeat the media chattering that the Kennedy and Kerry endorsement failed because Clinton won in Massachusetts, ignoring the enormous deficit that Obama shrank, giving him significant delegates even when he didn't win - which was the real story of the Super Tuesday primaries.