Mind Eraser

I made a most disquieting discovery earlier today.  I appear to have destroyed my dreams.

Like many people these days, as I go through my life I create so many thoughts and feelings and memories—all the time, in fact!—and soon find that I have nowhere at all to put them.  I can't hold them all in just my head; I quickly forget them.  So, as many other people have elected to do, I long ago decided to store much of my mind on an external brain.   As time has gone on, I had gotten in the habit of trying to organize my thoughts, and so I had bought many different external brains, and tried to sort out the different thoughts and feelings and memories into different exobrains and then transfer them back and forth until they would be orderly enough to find and recall easily.  And of course there was an enjoyment to the organizing of the exobrains as well because it allowed me to revisit the various thoughts and memories I had stored away as I recalled them into my main brain. 

A while back I was moving around a particular part of my mind, my fantasies: all the things I have imagined, wished for, or just made up for fun: the subjunctive section of my mind.  This was probably the most disorganized portion of my mind as it was, because the pieces of it that I was making the most use of, adapting and altering and adding further to, kept on getting brought to the surface and moved into new files, and the older fantasies just got stuck into small folders that sat anonymously among many others. 

As this is the part of my mind that I treasured the most, I tended to have it duplicated on a whole number of exobrains.  Or at least I thought I did.  I can't remember exactly how it happened now, but for some reason while sorting through a collection my fantasies on one of my exobrains, wanting to consolidate the location of all my oldest memories, I took the file containing all of my old fantasies, fantasies that I hadn't taken out and visited in a long time, and deleted it.  You see, I thought that those fantasies were at that moment safely stored on another exobrain, the newer, more spacious one that I was trying to turn into a kind of master copy of my mind.  I assumed all those old fantastical thoughts had been moved to the new master brain back when I purchased it.  No sooner had I deleted these old treasured parts of my mind than an eerie premonition rose over me that perhaps I had acted rashly. 

I booted up my master brain and was consternated to learn that in fact, those old fantasies were not on the master brain at all! 

Suddenly I remembered that when I first bought the supposed master brain, I had only bothered to paste in my most recent, in use memories, and not the ones that were buried down deep in a thicket with other files.  At the time however, I was not much worried.  I had long ago had a clunky, old-fashioned cyber brain, the kind you had to wear at all times and could not take off in order to remember anything that was on it, and I thought, at the time, that all those old fantasies were still on there, largely unchanged, waiting for me to reclaim them, for it was while wearing the cyber brain that most of those fantasies had first been set aside, in fact in which many had first been conceived of!  So they were not lost.  I just have to lug out that old cyberbrain and transfer it's memories to one of the newer exobrain models, and from there I could plug them into my mind anytime I wanted to revisit and remember them.

Well, today I finally, after months and months, after years since this had happened, went into the closet and hauled out the old cyberbrain and booted it up, exobrain at the ready, and found....nothing.  There was only one, measly half finished fantasy on there, one that I have since then drawn out and flowered into something much more complete and coherent. 

Where were all my other fantasies?  My dreams, my desires?  My changes to mistakes, my stories I told myself for false comfort, my wishes for better luck next time, my supposition of the fortunate outcome of future events? 

Gone. 

Gone gone gone. 

Throughly confused, I did the only logical thing, and checked my other memory files.  I scoured through them, and what did I come up with? 

Well, it turns out that when I originally bought my first nice new exobrain, and before I bought my second to last mental processing unit, I had been so frustrated with all the fantasies in my head I had moved all of them to that first exobrain, and left on my cyberbrain only that one fantasy that I had wanted to work on at the time.  I had hoped that my clearing out all the other fantasies, I would be able to finally focus only on this new fantasy, and maybe, perhaps, in this state of focus and concentration, fulfill it. 

I didn't, of course.  That didn't happen until much later, after I had bought my external processing unit (the one before the one I use now, I think) to amp up my intelligence. 

The fantasies upon that first exobrain had been the were the only versions in existence, and I had destroyed them ages ago.  They were never to be returned again.  All the fantasies I had ever had, from birth until just a few days ago, gone!  A whole aspect of myself was gone, had been gone. 

But then, I hadn't missed them, had I?  I had only been trying to retrieve them out of possessiveness, out of yearning.  I had looked around earlier today and realized that the fantasies I have had recently, well, they have been quite few, haven't they?  I haven't been dreaming like I used to, it was true.  I had hoped to have those older fantasies again, to possess them, if not to dream them again, at least to know that they were mine. 

But they are not mine any more, they have flown away, into wherever one's mind goes after it minds itself no more.  That part of me was, in a sense, dead.  I am partly dead. 

But is that really so bad?  After all, I have gone all this time without dreaming those dreams, fantasizing those fantasies.  Maybe they weren't really a part of my anyways, at least not a part of the me that is still here.  Why hold on to an old self, let it bog you down, hold you down to your failures and wishes?   No, better to start over, become a new person. 

A part of you is gone.  A part of me is gone.  Now I can become someone different.  Mind erasure is not so bad, I think.  It just gives you a new place to start from. 

Futurism, Part 5: Technology

The problem with forecasting in where technology where go is that you just never know where the scientific breakthrough of the future will be, or how they will change the game. Marx's theory of history, it seems to me, has been completely demolished because he could not account for the effects that electricity would have upon society, the creation of computer technology. Gibson managed to include a whole lot of possible future tech in Neuromancer, and even guessed correctly that computers would get smaller, but completely missed the boat on the concept with cell phones (whose existence would create a number of plot holes in the opening sequence). And it's possible, depending on what scientific breakthroughs come, on them radically restructuring society.

What are some areas of scientific interest? Well, the three areas of actual scientific concern are biology, chemistry, and physics, three fields that overlap in various ways. These result in various technological fields, like medicine, telecommunications, information technology, agriculture, robotics (nanotechnology?), genetics, energy production.... Biology and chemistry seem to be mostly applicable to medicine, genetic and agriculture. But physics branches out into a number of fields and possibilities.

Hmm. What are some fields of interest at the moment? Well, there is much investigation into the workings of the mind. Drugs for regulating behavior. There is robotics, our increasingly refined attempts at creating self-sufficient machines. Transportation.

It seems to me, as I outlined earlier, that communication and information devices seem to be centralizing with the help of the internet. We will probably see continuedcross-over between devices until the major difference between phones, laptops and televisions are what purpose they are mainly meant for (idle observance, active continuous physical engagement, audio engagement and casual physical engagement). Probably by midcentury we will see all such devices be completely interchangable in terms of ability, in possession of massive amounts of storage space (laptops with numerous terabytes) , capable of nearly instantaneous response to all commands, and with crystal-clear image quality (streaming video on your laptop with have the detail of shrunken-down 70mm film). Oh, broadband will be free and everywhere.

So take that as a given. Now, honestly, I can't see what unexpected advancements we could come up with in this area. Perhaps new forms of interface. gloves that allow you to manipulate screens. Holographic projections, both as screens and as interfaces (fake keyboards, volume knobs. Goggles/glasses that allow you access to information akin like you are a terminator or something. Tiny earpieces. Beyond that, you are talking implants: man/machine interfaces.

Medicine. Well, you have stem cell research. Gene therapy, for genetic diseases, birth defects, reversing cellular deterioration (slowing/halting aging). Organ cloning (including skin; better for burn victims). Cures for cancer. Better, safer vaccines? Genetic treatments seems to be where it will really be at, although keeping up with viruses will probably be an endless struggle.

Robotics. Man, there could be some freaky shit done with robots. But robots have always seemed like a kind of dead end to me. I mean, either we build robots that can perform a variety of complicated tasks, basically androids, or we don't bother, and just have machines that do things. I just wonder if there is any actually need for android robots. Why have one when you can get a human to do it? What's the economic incentive?

Energy production. Seems like it's the things lying around, right now. Solor panels, wind panels, and so on. Maybe a bit of nuclear power. It's just a question of getting the engineering down so the tools are more effective. Or we actually come up with cold fusion, or some completely different source of power.

Of course there's things like man/machine interface, AI, teleportation, time travel: things that are in science, fiction, but might not actually be possible (well, a lot of those other things might not be possible either).

I suppose you could base a science fiction story set in such a projected future world around the next scientific breakthrough that comes out of nowhere. Use that Clerk Maxwell line to Queen Victoria about how someday you will be able to tax it as the epitaph.

Futurism, Part 4: Economics

Here's an idea.

Assume we have widespread, nigh-universal unionization, and companies are still run by executives. But executives still have a tendency to fuck up. So what happens if a company goes under? Or, what happens if a company violently violates the terms of it's labor contracts?

Suppose a bill is passed where in this case, the government takes control of the company, wipes out the shareholders, and takes the company into receivership. It becomes an adjunct of the government. At this point, the government gives the union the option of buying back the company at some fair price (actual price of assets, cost of wiping out shareholders, I don't know) with the offering of a loan to facilitate the transaction. If the union declines, the company simply continues on nationalized, and then the government either runs the business, breaks it up and sells parts or sells it whole as it sees fit. This creates a heavy impetus for the union to buy back the company.

If the union agrees to buy it back, the corporation is reorganized as a cooperative. Instead of a board made up of chief shareholders or whatever, they are elected by the unions to termed periods (probably without term limits) . The CEO, or president, or what have you is either selected by the board as an employee or is also an elected official. This figure makes all other hiring decisions on down. Or the board does. I don't know quite how they do it up there.

Within this system, every employee down to mail clerk is assigned a certain share or number of shares of the company, which is the degree to which their position grants them ownership of the company. The employees own the company, and the are sole owners. After this point, compensation will probably differ from cooperative to cooperative, but likely each employee with be assigned a base salary adjustable in terms of the relative worth of their work (some jobs are more important than others), or seniority, or other concerns, then a "bonus," which is their share of profits, determined by the percentage their shares constitute within the company. Shares may be added with seniority or importance of position, but they are not allowed to be traded for capital. Different companies will probably come to their own decision about how much of profits will go into bonuses, or advertising or expansion, or if they will even bother with a base salary or just pay everyone from some percentage of income. Different companies and union cultures will dictate different things.

The existence of these cooperatives will lead to the encouragement for the creation of outside cooperatives, where workers or even people creating a start-up, albeit people loyal to socialist principles, will make their new ventures nascent cooperatives. Government loans in starting up new ventures will be more generous to such institutions.

Also, after the next financial crisis, or whichever one comes after Single Payer, we'll just nationalize all the major financial institutions, and run them like cooperatives, as an effective part of the national government. Thus will credit flow without need for a profit margin. It will be like the postal service.

Now, how to account for and continue innovation? One, we will boost funding for public universities, making them capable of shouldering a larger portion of the innovation pool. Systems will be set up to make sure that individuals are rewarded for their contributions to various fields, though with the government, instead of corporations, controlling the patents, it will be easier for useful drugs to inexpensively aid those in need. There will also be a large variety of grants offered to private individuals to encourage the pursuit of possibly idiosyncratic topics not directly covered by the larger university systems.

There will be a full time welfare unemployment wage, set at what is determined as subsistence level. That is, you can eat and afford somewhere to sleep on it, but not much more, so you should probably get a job if you want to live comfortably. And of course to do so would be frowned upon, though many burgeoning artists begin their careers is such a state, arting all day in hovels with the bare essential devices of their trades.

You will still have to get car insurance in order to buy a car, and you will still have to pay for it out of pocket. It's your toy.

By the way, this will all occur in the U.S., where power will, obviously, reside more and more with the Federal government, though decentralized across it's various webs of agencies. Europe will stay quite decentralized, akin to America under the Articles of Confederation. The various countries will either stay much as they are now or undergo widespread nationalization and hence rationing. Or maybe that's just in the eastern bloc. I don't really know the nature of Europe well enough to really think where they will go. A part of we suspects many of them will stay in the social democracies they have now, seeing no need to change, while ironically America will have become more socialistic, while still being more individualistic (personally I don't see these values as in conflict in any way). While Europe focuses on something like redistribution, the system America arrives at will be based on making sure individuals received just compensation for the actual value of their work. America might even have a flat tax, at least for the range of incomes possible within government or cooperative work, based on such reasoning (or it might be better to say, because the system is accurate). Collectivism vs. individual equality. Or something.

The American Cooperative Act will be passed sometime in the last quarter of the twenty-first century.

Futurism, Part 3

Where was I? So, I was rambling on and on about societal changes, and which way I thought they would go, specifically, the question of whether what seem from the modern perspective to be categorical cases of wrongdoing could be, through future changes in societal assumptions, be considered acceptable, or part of a new civil rights struggle. I kind of want to sidestep that question at the moment and focus on some other issues. I think that any possibility of such changes would have to be predicated on long-term societal shifts. there would probably be, in the near future, some kind of Golden Age, or calm period, where the basic reforms in civil rights and sexual equality are codified before any such issues become the topic of actual societal interest (as opposed to sources of prurient sensationalism).

God, I feel like I am disappearing up my own asshole. It this really the way I talk?

...Anyways, I think I lot of other events unrelated fields will happen before society might reach the point of legalizing pedophilia, so it's probably best to figure out what else might be going on in the meantime. That might determine whether or not we actually get at a point where such things are considered. (Although perhaps it should be assumed that during this cooling-off period there are clandestine pedophile and polygamous subcultures growing up in secret? Maybe that's your point of contention in a story set in the "good" future: that there is no final frontier. Also, I forgot about nudists.) I think we can pin about 2050 to the beginning of such a period, probably at the latest, and such a period will last at least until around 2100, and probably beyond that.

So, let's turn back to economics. I see two planes to this issue; there's national economics and there's global economics. On the global front, I think you are going to see a gradual rise in the standard of living as the local cultures adopt technological and organizational concepts first developed by the West. This will go on onto these countries reach some type of internal equilibrium and are able to start feeding back into the system (contributing scientists, art, academic institutions, technological breakthrough, etc.).

On the local front, like I said earlier, I think that there will come increased unionization, which will lead to higher wages, and in turn a higher level of civic engagement. Health Care will become socialized. These things seem certain, on some level, to me.

But the question is, what comes next?

More Futurism

So one thing i have been thinking about is how no science fiction stories imagine a pleasant future. Well, I have really been giving that much thought, since the reason for that is obvious—pleasant futures don't really lend themselves well to conflict—as to what such a pleasant future might entail. What would be a conceivable future world that we could look forward to living in? That wouldn't just be a sci-fi setting, but that could be an accurate projection of the future, to some degree? Assuming the world will actually get better, which I kind of do, and that there is an actual direction to history, what kind of future society are we looking at? What would be a conceivable endpoint, or at least goal, in terms of a future society.

I don't mean far future either. One of my feelings is that any possible future that could be arrived at, that is, any society, would have encoded in it mechanism to ensure scientific and artistic advancement. We will not get an End of History scenario, where we settle down to one, stable, form of society, and then we never budge from that, ever again. (It's funny, how when you think about it, how conservative Marx's vision really is.) However, it seems to me that there is a certain trajectory in terms of terms of economic and societal reforms, that something like the the "Liberal Agenda" will come about in the end, it's just that the Liberal Agenda keeps mutating, so it's hard to keep track of what it actually might be. Of course, any possible future, in order to be realistic along these lines, would need to be believably based upon a foreseeable trajectory from the present (otherwise you are dealing in Fantasy).

I mean, let's start out with some simple things shall we? I assume that eventually we are just going to have to have some kind single payer healthcare. Medical cost will just be so expensive, that some attempt will be made to eliminate the cost, and cutting out the profit margin seems a good way to do that. And of course, there will be increased, nearly universal unionization, leading to higher wages for all (at least in America). This, in turn, will cut into the profit margin. (God, I wish I knew more about economics.) Kind of hard to figure out what the step it after that.

Then there is social issues. The problem I have is that I feel like you can always fail to take something into account. Part of me thinks that We have almost reached the endpoint in terms of civil rights causes. Just where is there to go from here? But I bet the Romans thought the same thing, right. But if there is still some social just causes unturned, which ones? Who is there really left out there being oppressed? What additional dimensions of human experience have not been noticed? There's race, gender, religion, and sexual proclivities, right? Race, or nationalism, will probably be a continuing source of discord until everyone is brown, but I think in many countries it will soon fade to non-importance in day to day interaction. The President of the United States is a black guy. Talking about post-racialism is bullshit, but that doesn't mean our conception of our relationship with the concept of race isn't going to go under an overhaul over the next 4-8 years. Religion, who fucking cares. sexual proclivities? I just doubt that furies are going to be the next GLBT. Fetishes in general be become kind of humdrum and not important. Lot of taboos and peoples' interest in caring about or stigmatizing certain taboos will just go away. Once gay relationships are normalized, that shit will open like floodgates, and no one will care about fetishes, whether we're talking Furries or S&M. It will be like caring about a person's favorite ice cream flavor (mine is vanilla, natch). By 2050, no one gives a fuck what you do in bed. Probably the only sexual habits I see keeping a stigmatization are things like pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy. Basically anything that could be read as an imposition onasnother conciousness that is unable to give valid consent. Though I wonder how long such things could hold on, especially if concepts such as gender start to fall apart and sex comes to be less loaded with meaning or value. Bestiality will always be a somewhat nasty violation of animals, but polgamy? Just a way to ratify polyamorous relationships, the way we are now ratifying same-sex ones. Pedophilia is a bit more fucked up, but, the ancient Greeks did it, right? Could we concievably return to a state so sexually lax that it became acceptable. Is NAMBLA the next gay rights movement? Allen Ginsburg seemed to think so. On the other hand, that might actually be a moral aberration that has actually been corrected for by Western Individual Liberty, not something harmless that has been supressed by intolerant mores. Still, if Socrates fucked Plato... (did he? could people confirm that, or am I just imagining that shit from stuff I read and heard? Man the Greeks sure were odd.)

More later.

bits

Been doing lots of random writing today. Working on bits and parts of stories, mostly in outline form, trying to summarize and rework old legends. Has been slow going, as I haven't wanted to put steps down unless they fit, so lots of pacing about and circling around and typing when the spirit moves me. Also much reading of the sources and sublimating that information.

Also been doing laundry and reading The Left Hand of Darkness. It's much better than I remember it. Not really slow like I felt it was before. I think maybe I was just still miffed about the Doctorow kerfluffle, and the rhetorical device she begins with (the narrator explains why they are writing the story), still a pet peeve of mine, is less obnoxious then I remember it being. It's funny, the book is most often sighted for it's treatment of gender, but the wintry setting and alien and pangalactic cultures seem to play a much larger role in my impression of the book than the biology of the "aliens." Also, Le Guin really does seem to have a thing for making her characters not white. Not bad, of course, but quite uncommon.

Living Robot

Apropos this post, this is fucking awesome.

Seek and ye shall find.

Futurism

So one thing I was thinking about lately was electronic devices and the effect they would have on society, and really what approach we as humans would have to information, what tools we would use to access information.

It seems to me like there are maybe three sets of devices that aren't going way. There is the large of screen, such as your television or a really large computer monitor or set of monitors. Perhaps large projection mechanisms such as movie screens. We are always going to want screens to view certain bits of information in a very large format, because sometimes we will just want that type of immersion experience. So that's not going anywhere. Then there are laptop devices, basically small portable screens with access to a variety of functions. And then the small handheld device, which is increasing taking on a whole plethora of functions, from phones to music storage to accessing the Internet. In ways it's more functional than a laptop, just be virtue of being smaller, and it can provide for most of the functions of a laptop. But pressing small buttons on a tiny screen would get maddening for any long-term, serious work. I can't imagine someone writing a novel or short story or computer code or term paper for hours on end on a tiny handheld device, or even watching certain types of videos with any degree of comfort. A laptop device with always be a necessity for a certain type of professional, although I can actually see certain classes opting to go without them for only the iphone device. And of course there might be some type of desire for a midsized device, like a kindle, something for the reading of long-format works, but that might just be a stop-gap device until people get over their cultural attachment to the codex form, and I can't see anyone opting for such a size when the other options allow for a greater variety of function and ease, especially if the mid-size device, like the kindle, remains confined to only a narrow range of uses. (Computers could be turned into cellphones as easily as cellphones have been turned into computers.)

So I think that those devices will remain around for quite some time. What I am curious about, though, it what the further advances will be made in terms of information access. I saw some video somewhere about some kind of wearable device that would give access to a whole array of information through the use of a camera around the neck. And what would happen if we finally developed technology that would allow a direct electronic chip, brain interface, like the kind of technology we see Neuromancer or the Matrix? Would we be able to download information, surf the Internet, write documents, answer phone calls, all inside our heads? How would this change our culture, the way we interact with information?

This would obviously require some form of surgery. So would our culture split between those who have access to external devices and those who have direct mental access to electronic processors, creating an additional class, capable of affording the elective surgery, creating a third class of technology users. William Gibson has said that the future is here, it just isn't spread out evenly. Right now there are those with access to electronic devices, and those too destitute to afford them. Then of course there are those that are that live without access to any form of electronic technology at all, your present day hunter-gatherers. I wonder how long they are for this world. I wonder, perhaps, if technology developed that allowed for such electronic/organic interfaces, if such technology is even possible (does the nature of human consciousness really allow for such a thing?) there might be some type of socio-political movement to make it widespread available, maybe to enforce government subsidization of the surgical process, so that it's existence doesn't lead the creation of an impermeable overclass, and not of political/economic movers and shakers, your Bush's, Clinton's, Senators, World Leaders and Businessmen, but an actual, leisure class in possession of advanced wealth and capabilities, more like Metropolis than any cyberpunk setting. I suppose it depends on how far along in social democratization we are. And I don't just mean in terms of the U.S., although it's possible we could have such split occur here too, especially if the technology occurs in a setting without Single Payer Healthcare or strong unionization, but in First World/Third World terms, too. I mean, I could see us having a West hardwired into the Internet at all times, completely against an East and South America that exists without such trappings, and thus getting continually outpaced in technology by leaps and bounds. What would such distance in wealth and information bring about? Is such a thing not already, happening? Would we see the widespread rejection of materialism, a move towards spiritual concerns? Contentment of being left out? Surely there would be those who would see the injustice of the situation, if not wanting to be hardwired, at least in terms of the material comfort such technologies, allowed (I can also see a rejection of such elective surgeries occurring among religious conservatives and animal rights activists, environmentalist, and the anti-corporate movement on the left*) and would respond with violence and terrorism, perhaps causing some kind of environmental, biological or nuclear catastrophe. That would set up your post-apocalyptic setting right there.

*I think Gibson actually portrayed such characters in "Johnny Mnemonic." And Neuromancer features evangelicals as terrorists.

Casting Couch: Neuromancer

So, they are making a Neuromancer movie. I don't know how I feel about it. Apparently the director is the guy behind the "Toxic" video and the movie Torque, which is bad, but he also did the video for "Knights of Cydonia", which was pretty awesome. My general opinion of most music video directors is that they are hungrey young things taking work to get work who dream of getting their personal dream project. Hey, maybe this will be Joseph Kahn's personal dream project.

Hayden as Case? Eh, I don't know. Christiensen seems more just incredibly uneven to me than necessarily bad, but I don't like his track record. Case is either an incredibly easy character to play—blank, empty brooder—or an incredibly difficult role to play—just what is going on under that blank exterior? Can it be conveyed while still being blank? (Oddly, despite much belly-aching from the io9 commenters, I actually think that (a younger) Keanu would have been just right for Case. I have always thought Keanu is less blank than stoic; there's things going on in his head, but it's hard for it to get across—exactly like with Case. And Case seems kind of gruff and short with people, and Keanu's gruff voice would seem to fit really well for that.) I am just not sure Christiensen can pull off the more complicated version of Case, and his tendency to come off as petulanet would work against Case's gruffness. But then, Case isn't exactly tough either. That's Molly. He's at least naturally pretty enough to buy that Molly would take an interest in him even though he's a half-dead drug addict. (Although I think one of the reasons that Molly became "interested" in him was as much a part strengthening their ties to each other compared to their ties to their controller. Molly was creating an insurance policy against a possible double-cross from Armitage).

Speaking of Molly, that's the casting decision that I see as crucial to the movie's success. cast the wrong pop starlet and the character will just not work. Change the character to fit the actress and the story on't work. Personally I my tentative pick would be Nora Zehetner, who was on Heroes for a while. Her character wasn't for the most part any like Molly, except in the flashbacks, where despite being petite she was able to convey coldness. I think she could do Molly's casual cruelty well, and the voice fits, all casual and low-pitched. Basically, she seems capable of conveying both Molly's maks as well as what is going on underneath (mostly occasional regret, not remorse). Also she has the correct, dancer's frame. Molly just doesn't work unless you cast someone who looks a bit like an acrobat. Someone like Hayden Peniatierre would just look wrong. Too tiny and stumpy.

Also, she has big eyes, would give the make-up department plenty of room to work with in coming up with permanent mirrorshades that don't restrict facial movement. More important than you would think.

For the rest of the cast? I would go with William Fichtner, (last seen getting perforated by the Joker) who does brooding military man intensity on the edge of snapping better than anyone. Thomas Haden Church would be an acceptable substitute. The Finn seems like a no-brainer Steve Buscemi role. Old Julie would be a fun Peter O'Toole cameo. Or maybe Michael Gambon? Maelcum? Um, Malcolm Jamal-Warner? He has dreadlocks. I think that Owen Wilson would be great as Riviera. Beautiful with a broken nose? Also, he once played a serial killer in something, (The Minus Man?) and I heard he was good. James Franco would also be good, (I still remeber that smile as he's eating pie in the mostly crappy Spiderman 3) as would Heath Ledger, if he wasn't dead. Actually, Franco would be fun as Lupus Yonderboy. They better have Lupus Yonderboy!

God, I hope they don't fuck this one up.

Robocop

I just got done watching Robocop for the first time. Good movie. Fun movie. Slight movie. Actually, I was kind of amazed how insubstantial the plot was; the film only clocked in at 104 minutes, which compared to something like The Dark Knight, around 150, is pretty short for an action movie. I mean, the movie is basically about a guy who dies in the line of duty and then becomes and empty cyborg, get revenge on his killers and reclaims his identity, even though he has no real contact with it. There really isn't much plot, just a bunch of setting that subtly satirizes modern America. The kind of critiques that, unfortunately, are still very very valid, although probably a bit simplistic for our times. There is definately room for a sequal, which I think is written by Frank Miller, and I kind of want to see, since I saw it already, but years ago, and I remember liking it, although I think it didn't get the best reviews. It's just that the first movie doesn't really do much other than setup, though in an enjoyable way, and you leave it kind of wanting to see more of the concept.

Unrelated to anything, I got kind of a cyberpunk feel off of the issues raised in it, or at least in the issues that could have been raised by it, but were really just kind of hinted at. The whole mind-body kind of thing, and what is the self: could it be downloaded, or is there something more emepheral about it? What makes a person a person, and not just a robot? That kind of thing.

Shit. Now I need to start watching that Ghost in the Machine series.