Just letting you know that Part Episode II of Focus Group Voyeurism is coming, and I'll probably post it tomorrow morning. This is just an appetite whetter, and a note to those who haven't read Part I that they should do it now. :-)

This thread on Slashdot, regarding Yoda's linguistics (which, fair warning, I partook in) really cracks me up.

So it's been raining in Berkeley for two days. [that's bad.]

But I like the rain! [that's good!]

But there's a leak in my bathroom ceiling. [that's bad.]

But it's right above the toilet bowl! [that's good!]

So now I have to use an umbrella when I go #2. [that's ... odd.]

Those who can't write, link.

Today on inpassing there's a great thread about readers' most embarassing injuries, started off in dedicated fashion when the site's author, Eve, broken her ankle on a trampoline this weekend.

This is a great site (for those of you who haven't visited before) and a particularly good thread. Be sure to add your own injuries to the pile. Not only did I write about my two accidents (breaking a rib in a theater and voluntarily forcing myself unconscious on a dare) but so did two friends who I, in the incidents mentioned, took to the emergency room!

Wow. The Case for the Empire is a really well thought out article on Star Wars Imperial politics, how wars are rarely battles between good and evil, even if the 'good' try to make it look that way, and how possible it is that Vader's Empire existed for the true greater good.

I have a few contradictions that I'd add into the mix (hopefully they'll be resolved in Episode III), but this article inspires me to write an analysis of 'the story so far' instead of just the movie.

Could it be that Lucas is actually on a 30 year journey into making us question our whole moral compass? After Episode III, will we watch the original trilogy through eyes so different that we're cheering for the other guy?

So I saw it again (already) and I was able to focus on some of the details.

This film is so interesting because it's so deep and shallow at the same time. I'm still not ready to write my full review, I want a little more distance, but I do want to express astoundment at exactly how rich the environments are in Clones, and how stunning it is that the foreground action is so stilted.

For someone who styles himself as a storyteller above all, George Lucas simply doesn't create a compelling story. As I said before, talking about Phantom Menace, there's no anchor. There's no character you cling to and identify with, and hope good things for. This is a movie about other people, and it's really hard to care about them.

That said, the movie's a real tour-de-force visually. That and there are a couple commercials for C3PO and R2-D2, and one for Jar-jar thrown in.

Slight spoiler kvetch

I've got a long list of kvetches, but I'll sit on them for a while...

On second thought, do you even care? I'm starting to realize that everyone and their dog writing reviews about Star Wars movies is a little like telling everyone exactly what you were doing when an earthquake hit. If we've all been there, how interested are we in everyone else's gripes? Well, I'm interested in yours, so have at you.

(It's probably best to assume that the comments thread for this post will have spoilers, so you've been warned...)

Follow my train of thought for this evening:

1. California may force schools to drop Indian mascots - The move, promoted by Native American tribesmen, is intended to protect the dignity of the American Indian heritage, by forbiding schools to promote it. Braves, Chiefs, Apaches, and Comanches are all among the 'offensive' labels that would be forbidden.
2. I went to Gaspar de Portola Middle School. No, my old school wouldn't be affected by the ban, because our mascots weren't any for of Indians. Our mascot was the Conquistador.
3. Portola-the-school has a strict mandate of nondiscrimination.
4. Gaspar de Portola, as the Spanish Governor of the Californias, in the 1760s, "was responsible for expelling the Jesuits from Baja California, where they had established 14 missions in 72 years."
5. The conquistadores proper, Spanish explorers turned gold-hunting entrepenuers, braving the New World, were acknowledged bringers of torture and genocide, killing literally hundreds of thousands of Native Americans in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

But apparently naming a school's mascot after a Native American tribe is more offensive than naming one after the group of people that committed mass genocide against them.

Just so long as we all have our priorities firmly in place.

Lastly, I leave you with a stunning example of irony. At least somebody has the right perspective.

Not as bad as The Phantom Menace. Depending on my interpretation of one variable, it was possibly better than Jedi. I'll have a better opinion after I see it again, which will be in a whopping 9 hours (work is going to a matinee)...

So in preparation for seeing Attack of the Clones tonight at midnight (Van Ness, analog, for reasons I may explain later), I unwrapped my Christmas copy of The Phantom Menace DVD and watched it on Sunday.

When I saw that Star Wars, three years ago, again at a midnight premiere, I realized it had to be great to be able to live up to the Star Wars saga, and that it fell short of the Star Wars standard.

What didn't hit me until I saw it on Sunday (for the first time in nearly three years) is that The Phantom Menace wasn't a bad Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace was a bad movie. Period.

The fact that it was a Star Wars movie was the only thing saving it, and the only reason it garnered $400M on US screens. Of course, we all remember that Jar-jar was out of place, but the underlying racial caricatures, both exemplified by Jar-jar's Jamacian bumbling and the 'Trade Federation' leaders bad Chinese Chop-Fooey dubbed accents, are particularly offensive.

Anakin's first 'Yippee!' should have got him shot. His second should have got the guns trained on the editors. New Star Wars truism: Where there's a rampart, a Jedi's gonna die.

The film was stupid, and insulted our intelligence. A 'planetary blockade' consists of about 20 ships in close proxiity, without any explnation of how they would prevent a ship that chose to leave through the planet's back door? A robot army of thousands that still have humanoid shapes and limitations, use human weapons, talk to each other out loud yet are all apparently thin clients, shut down when a single 'droid command ship' is destroyed?

Why did the trade federation want to take over the backwater planet of Naboo anyhow? If it's a set-up for II and III, fine, but unless the other characters are in on the secret, they shouldn't go around like it makes perfect sense.

Village Voice reviewer Michael Atkinson put my frustrations into cogent prose best when he wrote:

There is an odd cognitive dissonance at work between the obvious ingenuity dedicated to the film's visual details -- alien anatomies, industrial machinery, technological minutiae -- and the retarded intelligence quotient evident in its content.

The only problem is that this was from Atkinson's review of Episode II. Arg.

Okay, venting done. If Episode I was just setting up dominos, then II should be good if for no other reason than to excuse some of the stupidity of I.

Now that so much of Star Wars takes place in the political realm, Lucas should really bring on Sorkin as a co-writer.

Check it out: You too can get a preview of what it takes to be at Carnegie Mellon in this nifty flash game!

Lots of things that are almost ready to post, so you might want to check back later...