Moral-Flexibility.Net

Ya know every time I drive along the 401 I pass under the Changeable Message Signs. While some consider these an innovation, I’ve typically found these signs to be next to useless and the information either inaccurate or obvious. The irony of sitting at a dead stop directly under a sign flashing a warning that traffic is about to slow down ahead of me has not been lost on me time and time again.

Today I made the all familiar trek up the Allen Road to the 401, then West to Kitchener-Waterloo to drop Jillian off with her Grandparents. I brought the digital camera along as I had a sneaking suspicion that even at 0720hrs I’d be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic (I’m rarely on the road at this time), and wanted a picture of exactly this.

Now I recognize that these signs can serve a useful purpose, I just don’t see them doing it in this case.

So yesterday we once again dragged Jillian to the doctors for another series of shots (the province happily supplies these for infants, bless their hearts) and a check-up. A clean bill of health for our little girl, and the news that she is officially 15 pounds 7 ounces at this point (in typical Canadian Metric/Imperial muddle).

She has not really started to crawl, only just recently having discovered how to turn herself over while lying on her back. The jolly-jumper is a current favorite however, and she seems to enjoy spending about half an hour at a time hopping away to her hearts content.

Thankfully she seems to have kicked the cold, and her temperment has returned to its previous sunny disposition, with only the occasional angry outburst when we fail to comprehend her verbal instructions. We also have a routine (such as it is) these days, with her sleeping a good 10-11 hours a night (with only occasional interuptions), and a fairly set series of naps during the day.

Now that we’ve established this schedule, I am fully expecting it to change.

We’ve also danced through several government hoops getting her “papers”. Her Provincial health card was the first to arrive (2 weeks after her birth), followed by the “certificate of registration of birth” (not to be confused with a birth certificate, which must be applied for seperately) three months later, and the final hurdles were crossed with respect to her temporary passport.

We are now waiting on her “actual” birth certificate, and then we can apply for her real passport (don’t even get me started on the headaches of renewing MY passport).

You may have noticed a slight change in the appearance of the blog….

My old blog lacked any fixed width values, and the formatting problems were irritating me to no end. I had cludged together a solution using HTML tables (not so elegant I admit), but coinciding with this effort I upgraded to Wordpress Ver 1.5.

The upgrade (as is to be expected) solved a few problems I’d been having, and introduced a few new ones. In the end I gave up trying to modify the old format, removed the table hack, canibalized an existing theme and hoped for the best.

I’m hoping this format suffices for a while, as it’s been more work than I was prepared to commit.

In unrelated news Mike is back up and running after a series of technical failures on the part of the hosting service (yep, same host as me) a few months back, glad to see he finally found the time to muck around with his site again.

Welcome back Mike!

Hell of the Living Dead (1980) directed by Bruno Mattei.
(MF Title: “Putting the Special back in Special Weapons and Tactics”)
Starring Margit Newton, Franco Garofalo and Jose Gras.
Zombie Film Rating:

Overview: Experimental project “Operation: Sweet Death” (who knew that would go horribly wrong?) at the Hope Research Facility in New Guinea experiences a slight technical glitch and as a result the staff are turned into zombies. When communication is lost with the facility a special Interpol SWAT team (fresh from killing a group of terrorists barricaded inside the American embassy) is immediately dispatched to determine exactly what has gone wrong.

The SWAT team find themselves dropped at an abandoned airport, unable to reach their base by radio, and eventually they proceed to their objective in a stolen Jeep Willys (with what appears to be AfricaKorps markings). On the way they discover a journalist and her cameraman under attack by a small group of the undead, and after the rescue they join forces and proceed together to the “Hope Center”, fortunately the journalist is an expert at exhibitionism and the local tribes, and so can act as a guide for the SWAT team.

What will they find when they arrive?

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Fanatics frighten me.

A recent rally at the University of New Hampshire was dedicated to “smashing the patriarchy”. The rally was organized by the “Feminist Action League” and, according to the article, was intended to give women a chance to empower themselves, and share experiences of their oppression at the hands of men in a safe enviroment.

Sounds fairly harmless so far, no? Here are some highlights from the article (quoted in its entirety at the end of this post).

..”Hello, my name is Mary Man-Hating-Is-Fun,” one participant said. “I am 23 years old, and I am what a feminist looks like. Ever since I learned to embrace my feminist nature, I found great joy in threatening men’s lives, flicking off frat brothers and plotting the patriarchy’s death. I hate men because they are men, because I see them for what they are: misogynistic, sexist, oppressive and absurdly pathetic beings who only serve to pollute and contaminate this world with war, abuse, oppression and rape.”..

It’s nice to see she’s maintained an open mind, and hasn’t fallen victim to the same sort of prejudice and stereotyping that brought her to the rally, isn’t it?

“Women who use porn are being complicit in the oppression of women,” one woman said. “They are legitimizing an industry that enslaves women and they are traitors to their gender.”

“Gender Traitors” - Catchy phrase, why does it invoke images of cattle cars and jackboots…..

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My last entry was about our little household returning to an illness free state, and I was proven almost immediately wrong. Poor Jillian still seems to be suffering some stomach trouble, and I’ve suffered a minor relapse myself. Serves me right for assuming the long weekend would be hassle free.

None the less, I spent my (biweekly) shift guarding the hospital toiling away trying to improve on the format of the zombie reviews, and it looks like I’ll be rewriting a number of them to try and bring them up to speed.

A new batch of films is expected in over the next few weeks (Yay!) and I’ve still got a couple from the last batch sitting here on my desk patiently waiting for reviews and images to be thrown online. The moment I get some energy mustered I’ll get cracking.

Hang in there folks… it ain’t terribly exciting over here.

Please accept my apologies for my absence of late, the cold and flu season descended on our household and stalked Lisa, Jillian and I like victims in an Agatha Christie novel. Jillian was the first to fall, then me and finally Lisa.

It’s made for late nights, short tempers, and deficit spending in the sleep department that can only be rivalled by the seasoned veterans of our nations government (the spending part, not the absence of sleep mind you).

We’ve weathered the worst of it at this point. Jillian has recovered, I retain a nasty cough, and Lisa is still fighting the good fight.

“Redneck Zombies” (1987) Directed by Pericles Lewnes.
Starring: Lisa M. DeHaven, Tyrone Taylor, Bucky Santini, Martin J. Wolfman and James H. Housely.
(MF Title: “Kentucky, we have a problem….”)
Zombie Film Rating:

Overview: This film is an epic zombie masterpiece, combining insightful social comentary about the decline of rural life with a witty upbeat style that makes the subject matter palatable by fans of any genre. I feel certain that in years to come students of film will, without reservation, turn time and again to this undertaking as the pinnacle of b-movie film making, trying to capture a hint of the imaginative genious represented here.

Um, yeah….but seriously.

This film is is about the loss, by the army, of a barrel of toxic waste and the subsequent use of this barrel by hillbillies in making moonshine. Naturally the local population become “redneck zombies” and an unfortunate group of campers make themselves conveniently available as zombie fodder. Despite the campers best efforts they are consumed one by one in their attempts to escape the backwoods undead.

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“Versus” (2000) Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura.
Starring: Tak Sakaguchi, Hideo Sakaki, Chieko Misaka, Kenji Matsuda, Kazuhito Ohba and Minoru Matsumoto.
(MF Title: “Zombies, firearms and fight scenes…oh my!”)
Zombie Film Rating:

Overview: Two escaped inmates meet with the local yakuza to evade the authorities. They find themselves double crossed, and after a brief fight with the yakuza, in which one gangster is killed and moments later rises as a zombie to attack his former companions, the surviving prisoner and a kidnapped girl run off into the forest.

The prisoner and the girl find themselves in a forbidding forest, fleeing both the gangsters and the undead. They soon discover there is more to this forest, and their presence there, than was originally thought and reluctantly join forces to not only survive, but to discover the truth.

The Yakuza thugs have plans of their own, taking this opportunity to eliminate their boss and take over the gang, the only question that remains is….just who, or what, is their boss?

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