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Showing posts from 2016

HB2, solution in search of a problem

Just days ago (mid-2016), there were radical Muslim terrorist attacks at two different LGBT locations. One resulted in 50 deaths and 53 casualties; the other was thwarted before execution at a public parade in America's second-largest city. It's been difficult to absorb the finger-pointing and name-calling that followed. This has been called an attack on America, an abuse of unregulated gun availability, and other things that escape the primary issue. A religious extremist chose a building full of gay people and tried to kill them all. I happen to live in the city that prompted the North Carolina HB2 legislation, and the aftermath of that fiasco has helped me crystallize a few of my opinions. First, it grieves me to lump all Muslims in the same basket. I've had Muslim acquaintances who were nice folks and good neighbors. They came to America to escape this exact fanaticism at home. The one feature of this modern Islamic extremism that separates it from all other spiritu

Batman vs Superman

I finally saw Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice today. I'm a lifelong comic books fan. I was a collector, then an occasional reader, and now basically a nostalgic with internet access. I have volumes to say about DC and Marvel and their respective cinematic universes. It's ironically probably the thing I've written the most draft copies about lately, the reason this blog's getting new posts. I wanted to love this movie. I really did. I questioned the selections of Zack Snyder and practically every cast member, until I resigned myself to judge the finished product instead of every berry and nut in the recipe. In one nighttime scene in a burned-out vintage stone building in Gotham, there was colored lens flare. There were dream sequences, some of past memories, but some future-telling in great detail with no explanation of how. There were several 300-style slow motion passes for no reason whatsoever. Even the soundtrack invoked tones from 300's battle scenes. Ea