Epic fail

I'm a devoted fan of fiction author Ken Follett. Something that's distinctive about Follett's writing is that his villains are very well drawn, their perspective is clearly outlined, and Follett does a good job of establishing what motivates them. So after setting up the villain as a terrible person over a period of years in the story, this perspective often helps to create a moment of great enjoyment at the end of the book, when the villain receives exactly the punishment that he fears the most, and sees all of his plans fail in the most catastrophic way possible.

I was reminded of the "epic failure" moment for a Ken Follett villain as I watched this video.



As I see it, the character of "George W. Bush" is driven by a desire to be respected and feared. We in the reality-based community have been dismissed for years as irrelevant, because while we pay attention to things like "facts," team Bush has believed themselves to be above such mundanities. They believed that the actions they took would fundamentally change the way the world works. They ridiculed the idea that we should care how the rest of the world perceives us, because they will be judged in the light of history as having made brilliant steps towards saving mankind.

The conga line of humiliation shown in the video, I think, is a neat summary of where this has gotten us. The other leaders aren't acting angry, or scared of George Bush. They're just... not interested in him. He's a lame duck in every sense of the word. They're waiting to deal with Barack Obama, to see if he's capable of dragging America out of the mess that he got us into.

Yeah, history will judge us all right... let the first few paragraphs be written now.

Song of Ice and Fire TV series proceeding

w00t! w00t! w00t!!

Excellent book series is about to become an excellent TV miniseries. This one has been in the works for a long time, of course, but this is the first confirmation that they're actually filming it now.

RIP Michael Crichton

Best-selling author Michael Crichton dies

U.S. best-selling author Michael Crichton, who wrote such novels as "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park," and created the popular TV drama "ER," has died at 66, his family said Wednesday.

Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, died "unexpectedly" Tuesday in Los Angeles after a private battle with cancer, his family said.

I was saddened by what I saw as a slow descent into hackdom in later years, but I went through a pretty substantial Crichton phase and enjoyed the hell out of many of his books. Here are the ones I've read, with the ones I really liked marked with a star:

• A Case of Need (*)
  
• The Terminal Man
• Jurassic Park (*)
  
• Rising Sun (*)
  
• Disclosure (*)
  
• The Lost World
• Airframe
• Timeline (*)
  
• Prey (have to admit that I was put off by the awkward shift from a promising sci-fi theme to a straight-up zombie story)
  
• State of Fear (first CD of an audio set, which I stopped listening to out of boredom, long before I noticed the political message)

A successful career and a sad loss. As in the case of Orson Scott Card, I wouldn't let some weird political beliefs overshadow the many excellent works he has done.

I take full credit

Last night at 8:46, a good friend instant messaged me, saying simply, "This is almost better than sex."

Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours logging into my.barackobama.com and making about 50 phone banked calls from home to undecided voters in Florida and Minnesota. (I've encountered another brief patch of unemployment, but I'm interviewing like crazy so don't worry too much.) Obama won big in Florida and Minnesota. You're welcome. I also persuaded a friend to do the same for New Hampshire. Obama won big in New Hampshire. You're welcome again.

I am still suffering from severe cognitive dissonance at this point... I'm simply not used to presidential election nights being FUN. Right now I should be sweating, recovering from a near all-nighter, and obsessively clicking for more news about Ohio or Florida. Reaching further back in memory, even in the Clinton elections, my enjoyment was a bit marred by being surrounded by a bunch of complaining Republicans in my college residences. Last night, instead, I was hanging out with my sister and a good friend, gleefully running back and forth between the Daily Show / Colbert electionstravaganza, and my upstairs computer (my laptop chose last night to stop responding to wireless, although it's better now) to check on messages, emails, and live updating interactive maps. Getting or making calls several times an hour.

Just a few tiny clouds in the midst of all this silver lining: Republicans still hold enough seats in Congress to effectively filibuster legislation, and you bet they will. Al Franken, who was running the most important Senate race for me personally, is a bit behind at this time, and I have no faith in recounts delivering good news. And my friends in California are mourning the passing of gay marriage. For this year, anyway.

But even in the midst of all this... what a night! What a classy concession speech! What a killer acceptance speech! God Bless Jon and Stephen, every one!

It's too bad I don't smoke.

Vote?

I already reposted something long about voting on the Atheist Experience blog, so I'll keep this one to the point.

Have you voted yet?

No?

THEN WHY ARE YOU SITTING AROUND READING BLOGS? Go vote!

Dragging some more meaning out of "Dr. Horrible"

I have the Dr. Horrible soundtrack on my iPod now, and as I listened to the music again after all these months, I realized that the story had and continues to have a meaning that really resonates with the things that have happened in my life. As I've not written on my personal blog in a few weeks (but I'm still active on atheistexperience.blogspot.com, so keep an eye on that too!) it's time to indulge my inner geek with another look back at this wacky little web movie.

This post WILL contain spoilers, but really the movie has been available for months -- what's taken you so long? Go watch it, I'll be here when you get back.


(spoiler space)











Dr. Horrible is a story about change and transition, and it is relevant to me because it was released at almost the precise moment in my own life when a period of major transition started to happen. It's still happening, and if anything the changes are accelerating. My friends will understand what life experiences I'm talking about, and I don't feel like I need to get very detailed. I'm just talking about the movie.

For a while after watching the ending, I just hated it. It made me mad, because Joss Whedon "pulled a Joss Whedon" and killed a major character as usual. In the last scene, Billy appears on camera for about three seconds looking completely lost and forlorn. And I concluded: "He's going to be miserable for the rest of his life, he'll never get over that loss."

But as I've gone and revisited it, the meaning has changed in my mind. Let's not forget that Billy's loss is Dr. Horrible's gain. The Doctor WON. He really did. He achieved his lifelong dream, acquiring fame and respect, no longer being a joke or a dork or a failure.

Just compare the very first moment of the movie - where Billy gives this pathetic and unconvincing giggle as his signature laugh - to the scene where Dr. Horrible freezes Captain Hammer and lets out a full throated villainous cackle. That was a great moment: the scared little joke of a kid has been overtaken by his inner darkness. It's darkness that he was striving to achieve, and he did it.

Far be it from me to say that it's admirable to achieve your lifelong dream of committing crimes on a vast scale and making people fear and run from you. That's totally against what I believe in, duh. But this is the Whedonverse, where values and priorities are sometimes mixed up and turned upside down, and you just have to accept them in context. Captain Hammer was a braggart and a bully, and Billy was an abused underdog who just wanted to make something of himself. That's the way it goes in this story, evil is the new good. Swallow your disbelief and move on.

Let's face it, Penny was a sweet girl -- and I would GLADLY groom Felicia Day any day of the week -- but she was absolutely wrong as a potential partner for Dr. Horrible. Not only was she sweet and caring, which are decidedly Non-Evil character traits, but she also revealed herself to be utterly shallow with her last line, when she still couldn't see through Captain Hammer's persona of coolness and realize that he was a huge dick. Sure, she looked uncomfortable during her scenes with him, but she had plenty of chances to drop the Hammer, and she still chose him in the end.

So Billy looks fleetingly unhappy in the end, and he's got some pain. So what? "Billy" is not the character he wanted to be at all. Billy wanted to be Dr. Horrible right from the start... and he got it. He won.

And is Dr. Horrible destined always to be unhappy and in pain from his inner Billy? I think not! He'll meet other girls. EVIL girls. If power could be an aphrodisiac for a gargoyle like Henry Kissinger, it's gonna work wonders for the doc, who looked totally in his element when he donned the new and improved Evil Suit. Just look at how quickly Captain Hammer's fickle groupies dumped the guy and switched to holding up a picture of Dr. H during the last song. This is not an ending that shows a guy emotionally ruined; this is the triumph of evil -- which in the upside down universe, is good.

I can't help it, I like the ending now. And "Slipping" is a great song that signifies that victory, a victory not quite complete yet, but about to become reality. It's really all about Billy's new winning attitude.

Furthermore, I suspect that my new perspective on the movie IS exactly what Joss and the other writers had in mind. After all, they were going through a major life-changing experience too. They had been poorly treated by the studios, and had taken a very risky stand which involved losing their income for several months. That's a scary thing to do, but it was done with the understanding that it was an investment to ensure that they, and those who came after them, would be better off in the long term because of the writer's strike. Change always means loss, and loss is scary, but it is hopefully a localized loss that will lead to a net gain.




In unrelated (?) news -- wish me luck on my job search. I'm a little scared myself after an impersonal layoff that I couldn't do anything about. Yet I do believe that I'm going to come out ahead, better for the experience, and it won't take very long.

Biden-Palin debate at the Alamo Drafthouse

Keryn and I watched the debate last night at the Alamo Drafthouse, an Austin movie theater chain that serves food and beer. Since, as I expected, the theater was mostly full of cheering and heckling Democrats, the evening was a fun one. There were a few scattered Republicans, and we happened to be sitting near some of the loudest -- a young couple, looked about college age, the girl was wearing a Palin shirt which my sister noticed immediately. Keryn apologized in advance for the expected rowdiness, and they said "No problem, you get used to it as a Republican in Austin." They acknowledged that everyone can yell as loud as they want without anyone's feelings being hurt.

I had pizza, Shiner Bock, and pecan pie a la mode. We also got a large bowl of popcorn, which we would have liked to throw, but there were too many people in the theater of course (it was sold out). We also received free bingo cards when we came in, with randomized spaces saying things like "Ahmadinejad," "Promise not to raise taxes," "Fannie and Freddy," "Hand chopping other hand gesture," and "Palin cries." I didn't expect that Biden would be the only one to cry, but he was.

The screen was tuned to CNN, so we got the little graph showing instant feedback about how undecided voters said they were feeling. I found it kind of mesmerizing on the giant screen, like one of those screen savers you can't stop watching. Biden got very positive results.

Anyway, there was lots of shouting and applause -- when Biden said something good most of the theater erupted, and when Palin said something quasi-Reaganesque there was a little smattering of claps. People audibly groaned every time Palin said "Nukular" or "Maverick," so there was an awful lot of groaning. At one point when global warming came up, the Republicans were shouting at Biden "That's not true! Read a science book!" and I said "There's scientific consensus that he's right in all the peer reviewed journals!" I think that was the closest I came to a brawl. The Democrat on my left started picking up on the way that Palin says "also" all the time, and starting repeating the word in the same accent every time it was said.

I managed to finish the Bingo game pretty near the end, with the square "Biden tries to tell a joke but fails badly." I didn't actually think he had done that, but Palin SAID -- I'm quoting from the transcript -- "In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it. Of course we know what a vice president does." I thought that was good enough to count for the bingo.

My assessment: Palin did not fall down or visibly injure herself. She parroted a lot of lines that Republicans love, including numerous ripoffs from Ronald Reagan. By virtue of this, Palin did better than expected. You can't judge how well she did based on my biased audience, but the voters being graphed on screen also seemed to favor Biden by a lot.

At the end, obviously the little reaction machines got turned off, because the line dropped all the way to the bottom of the negative scale. At least that's what it probably meant, but I also like to pretend that the audience just really hated it when Wolf Blitzer started talking.

In a few years, this woman could be president

Sarah Palin enlightens us about the financial crisis.



Ow. Ow. My ears are bleeding. Make it stop. I'm sure John Stewart is going to do a much better job with this than I am, but let me take a few stabs at it right now.

0:30:

Sarah Palin: "(Some completely nonsensical platitudes about how everything's fine.)"
Katie Couric: "(Factual information that entirely contradicts the above statement.)"
Sarah: Long pause... "Again, my understanding is that, uh, uh, (Repeats platitude with no indication that she just heard what was said)"

2:04:

Sarah: "Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do about this. They are not waiting to see what Barack Obama will do. Because everybody knows John McCain has the track record and the leadership."
Katie (dumbfounded): "Yeah, but polls show that Obama has gotten a boost from this news, because more Americans trust him to handle this correctly."
Sarah: "Ya know, I'm not lookin' at poll numbers. I just think Americans think like me."

Yeah! We mavericks don't think about silly things like "polls!" We just SAY what the American people think, and we're always right!

Christ. It's one thing to pretend that you don't care what popular opinion says. Quite another thing to actually say that popular opinion is lying about what they really think.

5:00:

Katie: "You've said John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business, but in 20 years he's almost always sided with people who want LESS regulation, not more."
Sarah: (gears grinding) "He's also known as 'THE maverick,' though, takin' shots from his own party. "
Katie: "I'm sorry, answer the damn question, can you give me one example of him pushing for more regulation EVER?"
Sarah: "I'll try ta find some and I'll bring 'em to ya!"

That is one tasty electoral map

This makes me happy.


In particular, Obama is winning the electoral vote handily while losing both Ohio AND Florida. (Ohio is currently neutral, but Obama wins even if it turns red.)

In 2004 I looked over the early electoral maps and concluded that Kerry could win if and only if he could carry either Ohio OR Florida. Kerry lost both, and sure enough, he lost the race. Either state flipping would have won it.

It's too early to say that things won't change, but right now, unless McCain has another ace up his sleeve, he looks pretty screwed to me.

John McCain makes Adam go "sproing"

As far as I know, not very many people are readers of Adam Cadre's regular articles.  His site is not really a proper blog, and I only know of him originally through his great work writing offbeat interactive fiction.  I am a big fan of Adam's writing.  He's blunt, atheist, liberal, and has great taste in entertainment styles, ranging from comics to games to movies to food.

So I want to wave a hand in the general direction of Adam's latest article about the presidential race.  I'll qualify this endorsement with apologies to my friends who live in red states and love them.  Hell, I love Austin, but only because it's not part of the "real" Texas, and I've long ago learned to abandon all hope when it comes to my vote personally influencing a national race.  However, quite a few things Adam says ring true for me.

Every election in my adult lifetime has played out the same way: Republicans argue that Red America is better than Blue America, and Democrats cry that, no, we're not so different! Republican political ads spew insults — or at least epithets thatRepublicans think are insults — while Democrats hold out their hands and coo that"There is no them — there is only us." I am so sick of this. There's a reason the guy who said that moved to New York after his presidency instead of back to Arkansas: New York is better than Arkansas. Massachusetts is better than Texas. Chicago is better than Wasilla, Alaska. Saying so might mean losing votes in Arkansas and Texas and Alaska, but those states are lost causes (in more ways than one); Republicans certainly show no compunction about slamming San Francisco and Boston and Vermont, and they're the ones winning elections.

...
Democrats can avoid saying that the red states are inferior to the blue ones as much as they like. But the red staters will continue to hear it. They'll hear it because the voices inside their heads are saying it. And those voices are correct. This makes them angry, and they lash out. Ten years ago, I was floored when a direly unfunny SNL alum named Adam Sandler suddenly scored a massive hit with a movie called The Waterboy, in which he played a mouth-breathing loser who becomes a star linebacker, fueled by uncontrollable rage at the thought of people making fun of him. At the time I couldn't understand why anyone would watch that, but now I get it. It spoke to people. After all, it's what vast numbers of American voters do at the ballot box.

...
What kind of people do places like Wasilla grow? Well, for one thing, it's hard to get off to a good start in life when your drunken stepfather is tasing you, bro. Child abuse happens everywhere, but some cultures foster it more than others. When parents exert total hegemony over the household without any kind of societal check, it opens up the potential for a real horror show — as the Palin family has demonstrated. Barack Obama tried to provide that societal check in Illinois with a program to teach schoolchildren how to avoid sexual abuse — and a McCain/Palin ad this week actually slams him for it. But given that an Anchorage judge ruled in 2005 that Sarah Palin herself was guilty of child abuse, I suppose it's not so surprising that she and her ilk are so afraid of daylight: it makes it that much harder for "our small towns" to keep their ugly little secrets.

Much more... please read.

Google makes yet another bid to run your life

So Google is now competing with Explorer and Firefox with their newest application, Chrome.  And I said, "Sure, just go ahead and take control of more of my online information and habits."  I mean, besides being my search engine, they already own this blog, my email, and a lot of my documents; keep track of my feed reading habits and my addresses, and maintain some of the code I've written; as well as being providing a desktop search application and a fun geographical visualization toy.  Did I leave anything out?

I can't say I'm not worried about them either turning evil or just disappearing someday.  But damn it, I can't help myself... I really LIKE having all the stuff I need online where I can access it from home, work, and any other computer in the world.  I suppose if Google does become an evil power, this is probably what it will look like.  It wouldn't be the first time that "The Onion" printed something that turned out to predict reality.

In the meantime... yes, I'm typing this from Google Chrome.  I am weak.  It doesn't even support any plugins, and yet for the moment I'm willing to use it even without themes, mouse gestures, ad blockers, or even getting my bookmarks updated automatically by del.icio.us.

A few points in Chrome's favor so far:

1. It starts up VERY FAST compared to the other browsers... although this might have something to do with the lack of plugins.
2. It has a very compact interface, and does a lot of creative things to keep the screen space clean, like sticking the "search page" bar in one place.
3. As you're typing an address, it automatically searches for likely completions and shows you the name of the page where you'd wind up.  (To be fair, Firefox 3 also appears to do something like this.)
4. Searches and URLs are entered in the same box.  Usually it makes the correct choice, but you can pick from a menu to clarify what you want.
5. When you open a tab, it shows you your favorite web destinations, along with thumbnail images of what they look like right now.
6. You can drag tabs outside the window to create a new window, or drag a tab from one window to another.

All pretty cool.  Firefox (my primary browser) might imitate some of the new hotness, but for now I'm keeping Chrome Beta as my default browser, and I'll look forward to seeing what they release in the next few patches.

More on Sarah Palin

I got a bewildering comment from a Republican, on the last post about Sarah Palin. First thing he said was: "Well layed out. Even more Hillary supporters will go for McCain now."

The reason it's bewildering is because, while he's entitled to his opinion, it has no apparent bearing to what I actually said in the post. So the question is, was Sarah Palin a good pick to woo former Clintonites?

Probably not...

Among Democratic women — including those who may be disappointed that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination — 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.

Republicans pray for rain... and get it

Mmmm... I love the smell of irony in the morning.



Two weeks ago, some smug, smirking representative of Focus on the Family smarmily asked in a YouTube video, "Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain? Not just rain, abundant rain, torrential rain" -- in order to ruin Barack Obama's speech at Mile High Stadium last Friday. Just to give the world a demonstration about how mad God is about gay marriage, you see.

Careful what you wish for.

It ALMOST makes me wish I believed in their God. :P

Stupid 9/11 truthers again...

I regularly download The Rachel Maddow Show on my iPod. For the last few months, the hostess has been a regular panelist on "Race for the White House" on MSNBC, and so the first 40 minutes of Rachel's Show show are a simulcast of the audio portion of "Race."

Anyway, I tried to listen to the episode from yesterday, which was broadcast live from the convention, but I found myself was unable to hear the discussion. Some guy with a bullhorn had parked himself next to their table and was screaming "9/11 was an inside job! 9/11 was an inside job!" repeatedly throughout the entire show.

Holy geez, you people are assholes. Even if I didn't believe self-described "truthers" were complete nutjobs, what do they even think they're accomplishing by making public annoyances of themselves? Do they actually think there are some people in America who aren't already familiar with their claims? Or do they think the skeptics will be convinced if only they could hear some mindless phrase chanted over and over again at a higher volume?

I mean, seriously, it's not much more effective than hearing an infinite loop of Spongebob Squarepants laughing that stupid laugh of his for 30 minutes.

Barack Obama's convention speech

Last night I went with a friend to join the Great Hills Democrats at Baby Acapulco's watching Barack Obama's speech. There was a fajita buffet, and four TVs facing outward from the center of the room.

The speech was absolutely sublime, that's all I can say. I already know Obama is a good speaker, but I was very impressed even with my high expectations. He hit most of the right notes, didn't pull any punches on McCain, and had a lot of well received jokes. Watching Obama work the crowd, I was very much reminded of seeing Bill Clinton live at UCSD at my graduation. I continue to be impressed by his qualities as a speaker, and desperately wish to again have a president who can string coherent thoughts together.

Because Bush sucks so much at public speaking, Republicans make the mistake of dismissing this ability as "He's good at reading a teleprompter." Nonsense. Certainly being a good speaker doesn't automatically make one a good leader; the skill of demagoguery can be used for either good or evil. But as someone who enjoys public speaking, I am adamant that the ability to read is a necessary but not sufficient skill. You have to really grasp what you're saying in order to emphasize the right stuff at the right time. Anyone who thinks otherwise is making a claim similar to believing that you can be a great comedian by going out and reciting someone else's jokes.

Like comedy, it's all about timing, and timing is one thing Obama has in spades. For instance, there's the way he worked the applause. When he first came on, the crowd kept cheering for several minutes. Obama acted sort of exasperated, pretending to speak and then looking like he couldn't get them to shut up. But he was clearly in complete control, it was all showmanship. When he really wanted to talk, they shut up. And I loves me some good theater.

The crowd of about 30 people watching the speech with me was mostly older; in fact at one point I wondered if my friend and I were the only attendees under forty. But they were full of energy, cheering, laughing, and shouting regularly.

After the speech, we somehow wound up getting in a discussion with with three marginally drunk, marginally right wing, off-duty Austin cops. The topics ranged from the situation of the homeless in Austin to property taxes to the war (even Republican cops are against it now, it seems). I don't feel like any of them will switch up their vote to Obama, but I may have perhaps depressed one or two of them enough to keep them home on election day. >:D That's a useful accomplishment, although in Texas it probably doesn't amount to much. Although drunk, they were all friendly, thought we made some good points, and said they enjoyed the discussion. And I got out without getting punched -- so hey, an evening well spent.

Since you asked: my take on Sarah Palin

Hank the Tank says:

Waiting with baited breath for your take on John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin for VP. I've already put mine up on my blog.

You know, the guy has actually won back my vote. Hey Russell, you've got quite the brainpower, come on over to the Good Side of the Force (pardon the Star Wars jingo).
Cost you less to fill up your tank as well.

So fine, here's what I think...

Eh. She's not terrible. I never heard of her but that doesn't necessarily matter. Picking a woman was a good move. It may pick up a little of the disaffected Hillary vote, but probably not as much as you think, since Hillary has been so effective in throwing her support behind Obama. Her speech and Bill's at the convention were both pretty impressive.

On the other hand, this choice signals that he's pretty much abandoning the line of attack that Obama is weak because he's "inexperienced." In Palin, you have a one term governor of one of the smallest states (population-wise). Daily Kos is humorously referring to her as "Sarah Quayle Palin." Plus, she's a creationist, and you know how much I love THAT. ;)

Nevertheless, I think countering McCain's "old white guy" persona with a young woman is a good call, and it kind of takes some of the "historic moment" exclusivity out of Barack Obama's hands, by providing Republicans a chance to vote for the first woman veep. And considering some of the much worse choices I HOPED he might make, this seems to be dodging a bullet. I was picturing Giuliani (one of the most universally hated political figures of our time) or perhaps Lieberman (Hey, let's alienate both Democrats AND Republicans!!). So all in all, this was probably one of the least bad choices he could have made.

But I will say this: I am dying to see the VP debate between Biden and Palin. That's going to be way fun.

Joe Lieberman, then and now

Then:

"I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man [Ned Lamont] and his supporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that."
07/06/06, Connecticut Primary Debate

Now:

Lieberman will deliver a speech when Republicans gather in St. Paul, Minn., to nominate McCain for president, a party official told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The official requested anonymity because a formal announcement had yet to be made.

Whew! As a Democrat, I thank my lucky stars that we dodged the bullet of getting Ned Lamont elected to the senate, and frustrating our hopes of electing a Democratic president. Good thing we have Joe-mentum working for us.

Deaths are sad

How's that for a headline?

Within the last few months, a couple of people whom I cared about died. One was the edgy comedian George Carlin. The other was my grandmother, Miriam Hoffman Wain, whom I knew for most of my life as "Greemie." While the two deaths seem unrelated, in a funny coincidence, I own one George Carlin book (Braindroppings) and I got it by liberating it from my grandmother's bookshelf. I don't know if she ever read it; she certainly didn't seem like a likely Carlin fan, but she saw me reading it and said I should take it.

A week after Carlin died, fellow comedian Jerry Seinfeld wrote a tribute in the New York Times, claiming that "George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George." Seinfeld told a story that I found very funny and even a little bit meaningful.

THE honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about. I know this because I was on the phone with George Carlin nine days ago and we were making some death jokes. We were talking about Tim Russert and Bo Diddley and George said: “I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

See, that's funny. Carlin himself would have greatly appreciate the irony. An atheist like me, George Carlin almost certainly didn't BELIEVE the superstitious nonsense that he was saying to Jerry Seinfeld on the subject of death. And sure enough, right after he said it... he died. Much comedy is built out of irony, and this is exactly the sort of dark humor that I love.

If I had to analyze this as a joke, I would say that part of the reason it's funny is because, in reality, nobody knows when they'll die. Making a prediction about how "safe" you are based on unrelated events is just ridiculous, and almost nobody really has a chance to prepare for it.

Almost nobody. Greemie knew.

She had been sick for many years, undergoing chemotherapy. She was also much older than George Carlin, and it was obvious near the end that she was a little tired of being alive. I would call her occasionally, to cheer her up and update her on my life, and after only a few minutes it would be obvious she was trying to politely get off the phone.

I didn't take that as a slight against me. She had trouble hearing, and forgot things, and it seemed like she was embarrassed about people hearing her like that. Greemie took care of her own mother, Bess Hoffman, until she died at the age of 103. She'd had personal experience with how frustrating it can be to communicate with someone in her own condition.

She was my last living grandparent, and I'm afraid I wouldn't be truthful if I said that she was my favorite. I always felt that she was very cranky and hard to get along with, even when I was young. On the other hand, she was a financial wizardess, and often unbelievably generous when she was alive. Apart from occasional gifts, toward the end of her life she started flying the entire extended family to California, at her own expense, every year, so we could all be together for a catered Thanksgiving dinner. She was still a bit standoffish and uncomfortable even when we were all there for her, but it was obvious how happy it made her to see everyone else enjoying each other's company.

The last time I was there, I had a feeling that it would probably be the last time we could make it. So I said how much I loved her, and she accepted my hug but told me to stop being silly, or so concerned.

Her memorial service, which I attended two weeks ago, was almost like having one last Thanksgiving bash. Keryn and I stayed at her house, along with two cousins, and we were treated to dinners by our aunt Nancy (now manager of the estate), and there was one heck of a party after the service at her favorite temple. (For certain definitions of "heck of a party." If you like lots of family with catered items like smoked salmon, it was very enjoyable.)

At the service, my aunt Robbie told a very funny story and I learned something new. I'm a lifelong atheist, but I've always assumed that my grandmother was a devout Jew. I never really asked her much about her religious beliefs, and had no idea if she thought about an afterlife.

Robbie's story went something like this: Robbie asked where Greemie thought she would go when she died. Greemie said: "The Hills of Eternity." This sounds like an unusual but reasonable answer for a religious person -- until you learn that "Hills of Eternity" is actually the name of a local cemetery. So Robbie pressed further: "Yes, but I mean after that." Greemie thought a bit more, and said: "An urn." Finally, exasperated, Robbie said: "No no, I mean what do you believe in after you die?" And Greemie said "Oh, this is a serious question... Tinkerbell!"

That's her answer. It doesn't mean anything; but it was good for a laugh among all the gathered family. I guess that means that Greemie didn't know if she believed in an afterlife, but she sure believed in family, and she believed in making others happy. So that's pretty good to know.

As it happens, she had family all around her when she died. My mother tells me that she and her two sisters were at the hospital for the final few days, and that they had been singing her their favorite songs from childhood as she was lying there dying. I don't think that I would describe anything as a good way to die; but if I had to rank the possibilities, that would probably be pretty high up on the list.

One last thing I can say is that she was a huge technology buff, just like me. I neither understood nor appreciated this fully while she was alive. She was one of those people who would always forward every urban legend and "business opportunity" that she received by email, along with added information about how this seems really valuable and/or insightful. To be honest, it drove me crazy, and I even corrected some of the things she said from time to time.

But when you think about it, it's pretty unusual for someone her age to have caught on to computers and taken advantage of them so effectively. I introduced her to computer-based card games, and at the end of her life I found that her computer was stuffed with little games of her own. Not the kind of games I would play, obviously, but lots of goofy simple solitaire-type games that she downloaded from the internet or paid for.

I also remember arguing with her about CD-ROM drives when they came out -- she thought there was no important program that wouldn't fit on a floppy disk. And also, when Windows 3.1 was popular she asked me why her computer was running slowly even though she kept adding memory. So I looked, and told her it was because she had about eleventy billion windows open at the same time, and she should close some. She said she WANTED all those windows open at once, and wouldn't listen to me when I said she should just run one or two programs open at a time.

Actually, she was ahead of her time. I'm looking at my task bar right now... I have well over 30 windows open myself, including 4 folders, 8 documents, several emails, and a few dozen web sites. She just wanted to do stuff that computers weren't ready to do yet. She also, as I said, was a financial wizardess, and most of her money came from carefully managing her stock portfolio and rental properties. Online. She got it about the internet revolution. And she may not have understood spam, but she forwarded those junk emails because it was one small way to keep in touch with her family, without having to expose her vulnerability on the phone all the time.

So, that's the end of a life. I don't believe that there's anything left of Greemie except for an urn, and the memories of her that are held by me and others. But I don't know everything. Maybe she's off somewhere, enjoying herself now... at Tinkerbell. Wherever the heck that might be. And if she's not, then I'll still clap my hands a couple of times for her, and enjoy the good memories she left me with.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog afterthoughts (spoilers!)

So yeah... typical Joss Whedon conclusion. I can't really decide whether Joss is a bigger bastard than George R. R. Martin in the area of gratuitously killing off his main characters, but I was definitely annoyed by the ending on first viewing. I had high hopes for the character of Penny. I was BSing with coworkers on Friday about our expectations for Act 3, and we came up with some of the following ideas:

• Penny is instrumental in defeating Captain Hammer.
• Penny turns into a supervillainess in the end. Complete with white leather.
• It turns out Penny was really "Bad Horse" all along.
• Dr. Horrible inadvertently rescues Captain Hammer from something.
• Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer fall in love and wind up together. (Okay, this is over the top. But Neil Patrick Harris IS gay.)

As it is, I mostly agree with this post, which states that Joss failed to live up to his usual standards of offering strong feminist role models. Penny was in the end a pretty low-dimension character, existing only to serve as a foil for Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible to fight over in the typical triangle arrangement. It's extremely disappointing to me that, after strongly telegraphing her disillusionment with Captain Hammer throughout act 3, Penny's last words were "Captain Hammer will save us."

My comment on the actual ending: the death of Penny was the catalyst that Billy needed to stop being a villain wannabe and become an actual villain. Meanwhile, the "real" Billy -- my friend Shelley refers to him as the superego component -- gets pushed down and lost forever. Is it poignant and heart-wrenching? Sure. But I don't think I was in the mood for poignant. I was watching a comedy. I wanted a comedy ending.

Having said that... the music and comedy components were both excellent, right up through the end. Joss continued his fine tradition from the Buffy Musical, of delivering up hilarious and catchy tunes over and over again. I'm still planning to buy the DVD, and possibly the soundtrack too. If for no other reason, I think the project was a good idea, and I'd like to encourage the strategy that Joss is trying.

Quick recap of my favorite moments:

• The cowboy chorus. I can't repeat enough how awesome the cowboy chorus was.
• Nathan Fillion's first entrance. Hell, every scene with Nathan mugging, smirking, and chewing up the scenery. Again, Nathan is the real villain and a damn good one.
• "And sometimes there's a third, even deeper level, which is exactly the same as the top level."
• "Wow, what a crazy random happenstance!"
• "...The hammer is my penis."
  
• The last song of Act 2, starting with Neil's demented smile. Also: "I'll hand her the keys to a shiny new Australia." Also also: Giant Neil.
• Groupies! "This is his hair!"
• "I hate the homeless. ...ness problem that plagues our city."
  
• "Everyone's a hero in their own way. You, and you, and... mostly me! and you."
• I must report that Ben just loved seeing Captain Hammer crying and sniveling.

Finally, a few words about the many geeks who populate this project. Felicia Day, who played Penny, graduated with honors from UT (Hook 'em!) with a degree in mathematics, loves World of Warcraft, and stars in a videocast about video games. What's not to like? The actress sounds a hundred times more interesting than the character.

Maurissa Tancharoen plays one of the groupies, is married to Joss Whedon's half brother, and the two of them were apparently deeply involved with the writing and production.

Thoughts on the business model: This is going to be a raging success, probably, but I'm not sure it will prove that the business model is as game-changing as everyone hopes it would be. I mean, yeah, you can make money from releasing a movie and merchandise on the internet... IF your name is Joss Whedon, you have your own money and a huge cult following, and well-known actors who love you enough to temporarily work for free. For everyone else, maybe not so much.

Dr. Horrible, act 2

I've seen act 2 now. Loved it. Can't wait for act 3.

Yesterday I attempted to show episode 1 to several people, and the result is decidedly mixed reactions. I thought it was fantastic, and so did many other fellow Whedon fans; but I heard a lot of negative reactions too. These range from "I don't get it" to "Does this get better soon?" to "Huh, it's weird. Maybe I'll watch it later."

This is obviously not to everyone's taste, which leaves me trying to sort out the question of whose taste it is for. Mine, obviously; I thought it was brilliant. Then I remembered: I love melodrama. That's what this show is, of course. It's a mid-budget, named-actor, melodrama.

My family and I used to go to a melodrama performance every year in Colorado, where there was a dedicated troupe there that kept putting on new productions. They pulled out all the stops. There were heroes with cleft chins, villains with handlebar mustaches, a piano player to set the mood... and then in some performances, you were allowed to throw popcorn, as well as being encouraged to cheer and boo at the appropriate times.

That's why I love this bizarre little movie, because it's a melodrama in reverse. The hero is the villain, the villain is the hero. And while Neil Patrick Harris is, of course, hilarious, Nathan Fillion has totally stolen the show. Because while ostensibly he plays "the good guy," anyone can see that he's a total bastard. In his smirky poses, you can almost see him twirling his mustache. The villain is the best part of ANY show, and Nathan is just damn good in this role.

Addendum: My alert coworker Newell points out that Dr. Horrible wears white, while Captain Hammer wears black. Classic melodramatic color coding.

My fondest hope for the finale is that the sweet, innocent girl will appear in very last scene dressed as a villainess. Perhaps in white leather.