Time your kills

What is good advice to the Amerigo's Army player also tends to be good for the aspiring psychopathic serial killer too. After all, the two tend to be the same kind of person living in different worlds.

Sadly, this is on a different topic. The great Caleb Carr, author of two books on early american psychopaths, the people who inspired criminal psychology to its current state ("analyze this", "analyze that", and one thing and another), decided to write about something more modern, and therefore suitable to the current crop of airport hoppers, and came up with Killing Time, a post-apocalyptic post-dystopian postmodern post-everything-else novel. It's enough to inspire you to go postal.

Normally, you tend to associate old Hawksley with the India caricatures, but reading this one impresses upon you (with a pneumatic hammer) how accurate Hawksley actually was. The Great Indo-Pak Nuclear Conflict tends to be an old favourite of post-* writers, with Carr providing an abject lesson on how to mess up. His deceased president "Rajiv Karamchand", for example - a name probably made up after skimming wikipedia PHD-class research (ignore for now the fact that if someone actually has a genetic history of both Rajiv and Karamchand, (s)he has to just not drool when making public appearances to be perpetually elected.)

We're probably better off not dissecting the story, beyond mentioning that it is a complicated pile of horrendous coincidences mingled with gratuitous insults to the readers intelligence interspersed with leaps of faith over steaming pollution-filled seas. Actually, no: it's just 'Atlas Shrugged' meets 'Timeline', updated with an even more disgustingly superhuman (assuming such a thing to be possible) cast.

My favourite line in the book is where they say that they've hoaxed religion, and so now need to hoax science, to keep things approximately even.

In other news, taking off ye olde spectacles[2], closing one eye and squinting with the other might make Eva Green look rather like la Bellucci might have in her younger days, which is a good thing. The rest of that movie defies comment, though. The Iron Flamingo must be regretting franchising his hero.

[2] Dangling reference. Where's [1]?

Wild Strawberries eaten in The Silence lead to Cries and Whispers

...due to food poisoning. We'll ignore any effects that mingling with alternatively qualified multiculturally uplifted self-expressive individuals may cause. (Today is political correctness day.)

Bergmania is a pandemic disease that can affect even the die-hard Mithunda fan[1]. SIR model apart, the usual cure for this is identical to any vaccination: a small (or, as in this case, large) dose of the organism causing the disease in the first place. It appears that the pensioners hellhole is now safe from this disease, if the diminishing crowds at the screenings were any indication. (At least, until the next crop of new-age cellphone abusers cinema fans is spawned by the machines.)

Without more background noise, let's do a blinkered breakup and breakdown of a set of truly great movies:

1. Smultronstället (1957) aka Wild Strawberries
   
   An escapee from the deadly Borg, Professor Borg is finally honoured for his desperate deeds and dashing bravery in support of the enterprise by some sort of medal, and so is on his way to an unfortunately named Swedish university. A few dreams, hitchhikers and accidents later, he discovers the meaning of life. Unfortunately, we are not the recipients of such information.
   




2. Tystnaden (1963) aka The Silence
   
   A great entertainer, this one - not least, because it was punctuated rather effectively by an operatic rendition of "The Two Rings".
   
   IMDB notes parenthetically that this movie was the Lady Chatterley of Swedish cinema, which is perhaps appropriate. Like that book, it is long, rather boring and at best, pointless. And given what it opened the floodgates for, you wonder if it might have been better if it was banned.
   
   



3. Viskningar och rop (1972) aka Cries and Whispers
   
   This movie is in colour, which seems somewhat appropriate, as the director had discovered a new special effect when working in such an unfamiliar medium: the fade. A lot of fades to and from Red (black is so mainstream) intersperse the tired old cinderella story of the sick and wealthy heiress, her grasping sisters, the devoted slave and the rabid prince. Well, maybe not the last one.
   
   

All in all, movies you should not miss. Use high-CEP weapons, though.


[1] 80's action heroes, personally. Bruiser Willis, Steven "Eric"
Seagal und die Gubernator, vhere are you when you're needed?

Randomness

The random article feature on Wikipeida is quite interesting. Found this random article on The Oxford University Invariant Society.

No wonder then that the co-author of this blog calls himself the Alternate Moebyus. Though never seen him wearing the six colors of the Rubiks cube at the same time.