Dead Processing

So, yeah, I watched Evil Dead 2 again. As a cinephile, what movies were coming to mind while going through my dead father's possessions in his home? Yes, of course I thought about The Seventh Seal and Tokyo Monogatari, two of the greatest, most contemplative movies about death. But neither of them really addresses the vicious mockery of death, the betrayal of one's own body. Evil Dead 2's no-holds-barred blend of comedy and horror captures something of the impression I get better than a more literal depiction of physical decline.

The fact that the film is about a man trapped alone in a house (in the first act) in which every object at any point might reveal itself to be a threat or a mockery makes it seem even more pertinent.

It seems like the movie's been on a lot of people's minds lately, judging from how many new videos are coming up about it on YouTube. Or maybe that's just the Evil Algorithm, possessing my reflection to drive me mad.

In the Air Again

The skies were remarkably clear for most of my flight back to San Diego yesterday, which was by far the shortest flight I've taken this year, lasting only about six hours. I was content just to watch the United States slowly scroll by beneath me. I never thought I'd be so happy to see desert again.

I think I'll have to bump the Knoxville airport up in my ranking. They had handy little laptop stations in the waiting areas by the gates, plenty of them so there were always at least four available. I got there plenty early so I actually sat down and played a little Skyrim.

Going though security was easier, too. They didn't even make me take my laptop out of my briefcase. They also let me hold onto my hat instead of putting it through the scanner. I noticed several people with cowboy hats and I bet in southern states there's been a lot of people raising ruckuses about putting their Stetsons through the contraption. A woman had to inspect my knapsack because it had a bag of my father's coin collection inside, which I expected, so I'd put the coins in a clear bag. She complimented me on the copy of Lord of the Rings I had in the bag, though my bags were not inspected due to the presence of books. This was a first--it turns out books generally look suspicious on a security scanner.

Let's see how long I can stay in one time zone now.

On a Mountain

To-day's my last day in Tennessee, I fly back to San Diego this afternoon. I don't know when I'll ever be back again so yesterday I had lunch at the Cracker Barrel because I never had and it seemed like an indelible part of the cultural identity of the U.S. south. I liked it. I love restaurants that have random knickknacks on the walls. And the food was good too, I had the fried catfish. I don't think I'd ever eaten catfish in my life before.

The pictures I'm posting are from the mountain where we, my father's best friend and I, took his and his girlfriend's ashes to be scattered at a campground that had been special to my father as a child. He had gone there frequently with his parents. My father's love for his parents was obvious in the many pictures and keepsakes he kept of them as well as in the song lyrics he'd written about them. He was a musician and had a rock band.

His friend told me how my father had told him about riding his bike downhill on this mountain, which is not a small mountain and it has many dangerous looking spots on its roads. I had an impression of a happy, carefree young life in the '60s in the forest with parents whose love he had absolute faith in. This mental image sits beside my imaginings of him dying alone in his bedroom, his piece of mind broken down by his failing health and declining physical mobility.

Certainly the creek in which his best friend deposited his ashes is a better place than that grim bedroom. He was a great fan of The Lord of the Rings so I read from a large red, leatherbound anniversary edition my mother had given him decades ago.

We didn't see anyone else at the campsite, which was closed off. Even before it'd been closed off, it had for some time no longer been a place frequented by campers.

Stache if you Moust

It's come to my attention that people, both in America and Japan, need to be better educated about facial hair.

I've had a handlebar moustache for almost two years now. I use pomade to make the ends go up. A few days ago, I went into a Subway sandwich here in Newport, Tennessee and a bearded young man said he wanted to grow a moustache like mine but when he tries to the ends grow down. I assumed he meant his moustache tended to look like Daniel Day-Lewis' in Gangs of New York.

It wasn't until later that I realised he believed many moustaches just naturally flip up on the sides. He also complained that hair tended to grow in the very centre, not realising many guys, like myself, shave a small spot just above the mouth.

In Japan, in order to manipulate some students against me, certain teachers induced students to ask me if I use wax or shave the centre of my moustache, in order to mock my vanity. There are many double standards, particularly for foreigners, so the common use of toupees and hair colouring by teachers is not generally mocked (though there were several prominent news stories from five or six years ago about students being punished for colouring their hair or wearing ponytails).

One teacher who didn't like me tried to convince students I modelled my moustache after Friedrich Nietzsche after I showed Nietzsche's picture in a powerpoint. Her implicit argument was that I would therefore eventually turn out to be a cruel and unforgiving teacher if I were allowed to remain at the school.

I think there's an impression among many that those who wear beards are wild men who don't bother shaving. This is not so. When you think of a beard, odds are you picture Commander Riker, so let's look at him.

See how he has a fairly sharp line at the bottom? That's because he shaves there. Allowing hair to grow there results in the notorious "neckbeard". But the grooming doesn't stop there. Moustaches must be cut or they will make it difficult to put food in your mouth, though some still prefer moustaches that overhang the lip, most famously Sam Elliot.

Many people, like myself, for greater ease at meal time, will shave a small area in the centre above the mouth. This also helps create the classic handlebar shape. Even if you don't shave that, many men must also shave the corners of their mouths or hair will point directly into the mouth every time they open it.

The handlebar moustache with the upturned tips became popular in the 15th century and remained so up until the first years of the 20th century.

Sonnet 1990

Antenna times convey the shape of doors.
A whiskered wraith remits a bolt of shroud.
The planet's swamps deploy a fog of spores.
A hunter's shape's revealed amidst the cloud.
A pattern's weak beside the cast of pods.
They cast a coat of tiny talking homes.
They close their doors against the threat of odds.
And fill the cracks that line the ceiling domes.
A painted hero holds a court of hue.
The browser crashed against the broccoli box.
Its Bowser's dash that makes your point of view.
His heavy car is filled with fallen rocks.
An engine pulls itself against a hood.
The maiden never shaves but thinks she should.

Wicker as a Renewable Resource

Did you have a good May Day? I observed it as I usually do by watching the original 1973 Wicker Man. How strange that it's become a comfort movie for me, that I find myself whistling melodies from its score about a month ahead of time in anticipation. One reason is that its among a few works of fiction that most accurately resemble my experience living in Japan.

The Wicker Man is essentially about a cult. Most likely influenced by the Manson Family, this post '60s film finds a conservative Christian cop visiting an island, Summerisle, where the inhabitants follow a New Age religion founded in the 19th century loosely based on the beliefs of the pre-Christianised inhabitants of the British isles. Among their beliefs is in the efficacy of human sacrifice.

Japan's problem with cults has been fairly well established though there is an apparent effort to downplay it in media. It wasn't long ago that former prime minister Abe Shinzo was assassinated by a man angry at how his mother was taken advantage of by a cult to which the prime minister belonged. In Japan's educational system, there's a war between forces eternally seeking to modernise the country and forces that value cultivated ignorance. So it didn't come as a surprise to me that a few years later a poll revealed that many students were unaware that Abe was dead. The reason so many Japanese people are vulnerable to cult indoctrination is that many aspects of mainstream education and morality resemble the qualities of a cult.

Like the inhabitants of Summerisle, many of the core aspects of modern Japanese culture are the result of social engineering. It's an ongoing effort but there were two primary waves, first in the 19th century and then in the aftermath of World War II. A key difference between Summerisle and modern Japan is the existence of the internet and the inhabitants' access to global media. There are many people in Japan who know how deranged the faux-traditionalist subculture is though many are understandably reticent to talk about it publicly. I wonder if Summerisle would survive the introduction of the internet.

What The Wicker Man captures so well is the attitude of the locals to the foreigner. Their shifting goal posts for Sergeant Howie to prove his arrogance in assuming the role of "King for a Day". They lure him in by fabricating a story of a missing child. It's not arrogance that prompts Howie to search for the girl but the inhabitants are so secure in their moral superiority to Howie's barbaric Christianity that the rationale continues to make sense to them. It's still a perfect justification for their efforts to humiliate him and, finally, murder him.

Getting to the Top

A woman's pursuit of adrenaline leads her into the clutches of a deranged cannibal in 2026's Apex. This latest iteration of "The Most Dangerous Game" is pretty good with capable direction by Baltasar Kormakur and uncompromising performances from Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton.

Eric Bana's briefly in the film as Theron's husband. The two are a couple who like seeking thrills around the world. We meet them climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. When a blizzard hits, Bana's character is killed and the film jumps ahead a few years to find Theron on a quest to kayak alone in the wilds of Australia. This gives her some interesting subtext (though one could say this is "fridging"). It's too bad Bana couldn't have stuck around, though. He's such a good actor but you hardly see him anymore.

The film is shot almost entirely from the point of view of Theron's character as she at first grimly paddles through rapids, the rush achieved under the shadow of unrelenting grief. Then, as she meets Egerton's character in the jungle after her pack is stolen, it becomes a story of her fight for survival.

Egerton's performance is impressively deranged and I loved the reveal of his especially abnormal predilections, though it verges on cheesy when it's revealed he wears dentures to conceal his sharpened teeth. I'm not saying he wouldn't sharpen his teeth, I just don't know why he'd conceal it when he's hunting a woman alone through the jungle.

Anyway, the suspense is good and never lets up. Apex is available on Netflix.