Some would say that it's silly to question the logic of a slasher flick, but I figure that the $6.50 I spent on Jeepers Creepers 2 would be more fully recompensed if I nitpicked about its ending. (Spoilers ahead!)

If you haven't seen the trailers, the Creeper is strange flying battish/humanoid creature that gets to eat for 23 days every 23rd spring. The vengeful father in the film, who has lost his son to the Creeper, displays MacGyver-like acumen and mild good sense throughout the movie, by converting a post-driver into a wicked spear launcher with which he thwarts the Creeper. He doesn't actually kill the Creeper - rather, he prevents the Creeper from killing a few people by inconveniencing him with spears through the head until the Creeper's 23 days are up and he goes back into hibernation.

Now, despite living for thousands of years, the Creeper appears thoroughly organic throughout the movie - he is readily wounded by sharp objects, he has limbs blown off, etc., though he eventually heals those wounds by hunting down replacement parts from his victims. He also appears to be non-reproductive, (unlike, say, Indian meal moths). In short, the Creeper is not invulnerable.

This takes us to my problem with the film's conclusion, which is an obligatory sequel-setting scene. We flash forward 22 years and 362 days from the end of the film's feastivities and see that the father has decided to take the hibernating body of the Creeper and hang it up in his barn (charging visitors $5 to see "the bat from hell"). But since he is aware of the 23 year life cycle of the creeper, he guards the desiccated body with his trusty spear launcher and a shotgun, while rockin' away his rockin' chair (he's old now).

Where has the father's good sense and facility with farm implements gone? Why didn't he take the body and put it through a wood chipper, then put the chips in acid, then cast whatever remained in concrete, etc.? He had 22 years and 362 days. I think even the Creeper would have had a hard time awakening if he were in 10000 acid eaten parts encased in 10000 separate blocks of concrete strewn across several deep sea floors.

If you wanted to set up a sequel, why not have the Creeper mysteriously sink into the ground after being speared by the father, outside of the reaches of any vengeful humans? Sadly, given the radical discontinuity of most slasher sequels, we probably will not be given the pleasure of seeing the Creeper eat the old man at the beginning of Jeepers Creepers 3.

So why do I have a problem with the dad hanging the Creeper up in his barn, but not with the premise of a hibernating battish humanoid human eater with a thing for the #23? Because the former is a matter of internal inconsistency (i.e. including in the film both the premise that the dad is MacGyver-like and also that he is a dumbass) while the latter is simply an absurd horror movie premise. Money well spent.   ¶ 3:16 AM 0 comments

  I just finished eating two small steamed buns filled with red bean paste not unlike the kind one gets at dim sum, except that these were shaped like bunny rabbits with two little red dots for eyes. It struck me that the phenomena of making non-animal products look like animals (see Peeps, chocolate bunny rabbits, animal crackers) is strange, given that we generally try to make animal products look like they don't come from animals (by skinning, removing heads, etc.).  ¶ 12:20 AM 0 comments

  I defeated Jessup in our weekly tennis match for lunch today. Betting lunches on our matches hasn't detracted from their competitive integrity. If anything, it has improved on it - I was down 5-2 in the final set and I doubt I would have summoned the considerable energy to win if only my meagre pride were at stake. So one wonders why Pete Rose has been banned for life for betting on his own baseball team (clarification 8/30 - betting on his own team TO WIN - I've never seen him accused of betting against his team). The only direct harm people bring up is that Rose bet on particular games, not on his team winning the World Series, and he might have done things to compromise his team's long-term well being for short-term gain.

It seems to me that this harm is negligible; at least it's probably less harmful than things like incentive clauses in player's contracts for # of hits, stolen bases, innings pitched or all-star team selections, which can certainly make players do things that are not in their team's best interest. One is reminded of the time Jose Canseco bunted so that he would be in position to steal a base and join the 40-40 club - it was probably not in the A's interest to have Jose bunt there. (Clarification 8/30 - or imagine it's your final at-bat of the season, you have an incentive that would give you $50k if you hit one more home run. The game is tied, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and the count is 3-0. Should you swing away?) Of course, salary incentives are a legitimized institutional practice in baseball, which is important, but this little argument maybe should make one think that they should not be, or that betting on your on team should be legitimized as well.

The harm that could come from associating with underworld betting figures is often mentioned as another reason that betting is bad for baseball - e.g. Rose could be strongarmed into throwing games because of gambling debts. But this seems no more a reason to bar betting on baseball than any other sport.

I'm sure I'm overlooking some things, but it seems that Pete Rose probably doesn't deserve a lifetime ban from baseball. Rob Neyer, of whom I am generally I fan, suggests a five-year ban.

Pete Rose was a heckuva guy. From George Will:
Once when the Cincinnati Reds' plane hit severe turublence Pete Rose turned to a teammate and said, "We're going down. We're going down and I have a .300 lifetime average to take with me. Do you?"

That, as my friend David Hayes might say, manifests an unhealthy relationship to excellence. But it did get him 4256 hits. It's a pity, though, that his hanging around the extra years to break ty cobb's record didn't drop him below .300 (he finished at .302).

  ¶ 5:04 PM 0 comments

  Just came back from Rick Bell's inaugural fundraiser for his congressional campaign. Erstwhile philosopher and present-day computer programmer, Rick is one of my few Swat friends out here in LA. I wouldn't have guessed that he would be the first college classmate to run for public office, but that's part of the charm.

On the one hand, he looks like an impossible longshot - a 26 year-old with no experience in public office running against an incumbent with decades of experience (though she's only been in Congress for 1 full term).

On the other hand, the incumbent, Diane Watson, is a non-entity of a congresswoman. Her distinguishing project is outlawing mercury in dental fillings. Not the kinda stuff that gets Robert Caro to write a book about you. And apparently Rick will be the only candidate challenging Mrs. Watson in the primary in March.

So I'd say it's not metaphysically impossible for Rick to win the primary. His message is in the making - but I think there's alot there that could make him a more appealing candidate than Mrs. Watson, who doesn't have much going for her other than inertia. But inertia = $$$ and that's hard to beat.

Perhaps even harder to beat are the Indian meal moths that found their way into my cupboards a month ago. My crusade began casually, by throwing out a few boxes of affected cereals. After a few weeks, they were still here, and I realized they had found their way into two containers of sesame seeds (which were had closed flip-tops but were not airtight), a bag of rice, some random flakes of cereal laying in the deep dark recesses of a cupboard, and (most disturbingly) the crumb tray of my toaster. That's where I saw my first larvae, crawling on top of my toaster. I've since thrown out the toaster and every non-airtight bag of grain or seed in my house and hosed down my cupboards with Raid. Their numbers appear to be dwindling, and many of the moths I've spotted in the past two days have been of the writhing, dying sort on my floor.

Finally, lost in the news of tennis legend Jeff Tarango retiring this week, two of my favorite players, Pete Sampras and Michael Chang also called it quits at Flushing Meadows, also the site of my Little League Baseball exploits.  ¶ 1:15 AM 0 comments

  I realized this summer that I don't really have a grasp on the absurdity of human existence. I realized this while trying to teach my students about The Absurd, using Thomas Nagel's article, "The Absurd." The Absurd, I take it, is supposed to be faced by every human being, viz all human lives are absurd. But I don't think that, nor have I ever thought that. I've only ever thought that MOST human lives are absurd. Perhaps this is what distinguishes one as a misanthrope.

On a related note, 4 out of 5 Americans think the 10 Commandments monument should have stayed in the Alabama courthouse.   ¶ 1:01 AM 0 comments

  I watch the Little League World Series final every year, and every year I think to myself, "I would absolutely dominate those kids. They couldn't touch my fastball." Sure I'm twice their age and twice their size, but I can't help thinking it.

And every year, I root for the non-U.S. team, mostly because the U.S. fans and families usually bring together arrogance and whineyness - vices whose sum is more insipid than its parts. Strangely, the players on the U.S. team this year were disturbingly friendly, as when they low-fived the Japanese slugger while he rounded the bases after slamming a home run against them. Pat Riley would not have liked that.

I'm also always reminded of my own Little League experience during the game. One year during the All-Star game, I remember thinking that the coach didn't think much of me as a player because I was Asian, and so didn't give me the start. I can always count on being underestimated athletically. That's another reason I root for the foreign teams - they're usually Asian.

On the other hand, there's nothing quite like beating the crap (on the playing field, that is) of someone who thinks that they're better than you. Better yet is when they think your first victory was a fluke and come back, still cocky, for another beating. I've experienced this latter pleasure several times when I've teamed up with my slow, white, and deadly sharpshooting friend Jeremy playing two-on-two, mostly against callow youth who don't know how to defend the pick and roll. Strangely, this has happened even when my opponents have lost the first game 15-1 (most recently when I was playing with another friend, Wilson) - they come back, confident they'll whoop our ass now because they're gonna hustle this time, and then they lose 15-3.

I conjecture that the satisfaction of such victories does not derive from disdain for the loser, but rather from its benign revelatory effect: I am better than you, you were in gross error about that, and now you know better.


  ¶ 1:49 PM 0 comments

  I recently watched "Bowling for Columbine" on DVD. And yes, Michael Moore's unique brand of self-aggrandizement does get in the way of his confused message. This is nowhere more clear than in what should be his finest hour in the film, when K-mart decides to stop selling ammo. Moore is shocked - SHOCKED! - that K-mart would do such a thing in response to his pressure. But the reason he's so shocked is because he demanded no such thing from K-mart (as far as I can tell from the film). Instead, he strolled into K-mart corporate headquarters with two shooting victims (who had "K-mart bullets" still lodged inside of them) and sought to embarass whichever K-mart corporate lackeys he happened upon, as is his wont. Thanks for filling in Moore's agenda for him, K-mart!

Of course, it's a bit odd that Moore (lifelong NRA member) gets on K-mart's case at all given that he doesn't think (as far as I can tell from the film) that America needs more gun controls  ¶ 6:10 PM 0 comments

  I find blogging unseemly - probably because I fear mediocrity, and blogging allows us all greater access to mediocrity. Nevertheless, I've begun my own blog! Why? Because the Whale of Ignorance needs to be let out of his pool. And my friend just started a blog.

The Whale of Ignorance, like Rawls' veil of ignorance, is the product of a philosopher (of sorts). But it is not a fancy-schmancy scheme for determining the principles of justice, rather, it's what "veil of ignorance" sounds like when spoken by a man with a heavy Danish accent.

But the Whale of Ignorance also stands for so much less, viz what it feels like to be a philosophy graduate student. A ponderous mammal awash in the dark sea, waiting to be harpooned by contradiction and entangled in the strangling tuna nets of paradox. I will try not to bore you with the details of academe. Instead, I will bore you with accounts of my surfacings, wherein I breathe the increasingly alien odor of the world above water.  ¶ 7:13 PM 0 comments