Friday 29th October 2004
I should write a daily What's New this month.
There's been a lot going on, of course; that it's been nearly six weeks since I updated this should serve as a hint: things do tend to happen either way. But, I've been busy with things; then, when I'm not busy, I'm rarely in a hurry to go write a What's New, for some reason. And, in those rare cases when I'm in the right mood, no one lets me do it anyway. Someone calls or speaks or whatever it takes to interrupt my whole thought process. That never used to be a problem; but now, for some reason, it derails my train of thought.
And then Hunter, who keeps forgetting what the fucking typing sound might mean, said something. So, whatever I was about to type has been lost. See how that goes?
So, let's move on.
Since the last update, a few things have happened. In no particular order. Although the latest thing is of some interest, so I'll start with that.
The cops were just here.
Well, a cop was just here. Because I called him. Or them. Here's the story....
I woke up. Which is arguably my fault. Having done nothing but played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas since I got home from EBGames on Tuesday until I wound up with the sort of headache I get after playing a videogame for forty-eight hours, I passed out and woke up today to find my front door standing open. More or less.
Given all the bullshit of this zipcode, Hunter's become paranoid enough to use every lock in the house. So it was just a matter of course to ask her whether she'd forgotten to lock the deadbolts and even to shut the door before chaining it and going to sleep. She hadn't.
Meaning that, sometime in the last eight hours or so, someone had managed to unlock both deadbolts from the outside, without leaving evidence of tampering, failed to unlock the security chain, failed to get in [unless they were thinner than I am, which I doubt], and failed to pull the damned door shut after the fact.
That someone, while a known felon, remains momentarily nameless. Although the cops suggested maybe calling the landlord, who has a key, who is prohibited by law from using the key, notwithstanding emergencies, in which case I'd have some evidence that they'd tried to break in. Instead, some felon tried to break in and left without calling me, leaving a note, providing advanced notice by forty-eight hours, et cetera.
And what landlord would be stupid enough to do all that?
The cops suspect mine.
In case these criminals weren't stupid enough already, it turns out that WorstPacific, among others known to the cops, have this funny habit—on record—of attempting to break into places like mine without any notice or defensible reason. So that's thrilling news.
Of course, that's the extent of the news, to date. On the advise of the cops, I tried calling the landlord; she, for a change, wasn't in the office. So, officially speaking, the landlord remains at large, pending apprehension.
I'm using the term 'landlord' loosely. Partly because there is no landlord; there's a slumlord. Also because the felon in question may have been the slumlord, or one of her cronies, or someone else working under the umbrella of WorstPacific. Which is immaterial, to me; what counts, as far as I, my lawyers, and the law are concerned, is that any given agent of WorstPacific equates to WorstPacific itself. A quick note to CEOs out there: if you hire a felon, you are the felon; and it's too late to vote on that.
So: somewhere out there, an unknown known felon remains at large. If and when I ascertain its identity, you'll be the first to know.
Okay, you'll be the third to know. The felon likely already knows; then, I'll be the second to know. Unless the cops know first. Then I'll be the third. And you'll be the fourth. Possibly the fifth, if I tell my lawyers first. Oh, and Hunter might know before you do. But, you'll know eventually. If anyone ever knows. Look, just let it go for now; we'll do lunch.
Incidentally, Zombi didn't escape through the open door, which was my primary concern. Obviously, nothing was really taken, since the chain kept the door closed enough that my skull wouldn't fit through the opening. My arm would, though; so, if I ever got locked out by the chain [and this has happened; that's how paranoid Hunter is about this], I'd be able to reach around the corner and steal a soda from myself, since that's about all I, with metre-long arms, can reach from outside with the chain on the door.
There's no evidence that any soda is missing from the doorway.
And, as mentioned, Zombi either made no attempt to flee, or did flee but came back in before I woke up. In any case, she's here now. And the door is shut again. So that's all over with.
Once we pretty well proved that someone with a key had broken into my house, and that the someone in question was an unknown known felon, the cop and I rapped about a few other things—some relevant to this issue and some relevant more to things like novels. The latter were largely irrelevant to this What's New, so I won't bother with them. Of the relevant things, though....
Colorado Law, which is nearly a nonsequitur, has some fun provisions for things like this. Including the coined Make My Day Law, which allows you to kill people who break into your house. Since that changes every week, this information might not be good for long. But, if you happen to live in or near Denver, here's how you can kill people and get away with it.
If someone gets into your house, you can kill them. Actually, you can do that anyway. But, in case you want to get away with it, here's what the cop suggested.
The mere act of breaking into a house, while a felony, fails to justify defensive homicide. The important factor is threat of bodily harm. Which, being subjective, is pretty simple.
If someone has a weapon and has come into your house without [provable] permission, you can kill them. In certain cases.
If someone breaks in downstairs, and you shoot them from upstairs, you're in trouble. Don't do that.
If you go downstairs to shoot them, you're okay. If: the felon has a weapon. Like, say, a knife from your kitchen. Or, to be really safe about this, a lethal weapon the felon could have picked up within your house in a room he'd entered. Which is to say that, if the felon never went into the kitchen, forensics are going to wonder how he got the knife out of your drawer. So you'll want to bear that in mind when, ah, discovering the lethal weapon in the felon's hand before killing him. Which is to say that, someone evil enough to set the scene up after the fact would want to position the lethal weapon in the felon's hand postmortem. Not that anyone would ever do anything that evil; the bible says so. Probably.
Other factors can come into play. A 300lb felon rushing toward a 100lb chick with or without a weapon can be construed as a threat of bodily harm. But it's less solid than a 100lb felon with a lethal weapon. So bear that in mind.
Things you can't do [this week] with the Make My Day Law include blowing the heads off zombies with shotguns. Which is an accidental typo for blowing the heads off Jehovah's Witlesses who are standing on your front porch. First, they've got to get inside, and get hold of a kitchen knife or something.
So that might come as news to some people.
Before you move to Denver to start killing HomeInvading, KinfeWielding Jehovah's Witlesses, you'll want to first be warned that, on Tuesday, there's another vote on Amendment35, which proposes to raise the state cigarette tax by 320%. Since, at the moment, Colorado has the lowest state tax in the country. Unfortunately, Colorado hasn't got the highest average IQ in the country, so it'll probably pass. Cigarettes will probably go up by $8.40 a carton, which will, history suggests, lead to more stress among current smokers, who are demographically more likely to be poor than rich, who will buy more cigarettes to calm down in reaction to the stress caused by the inflated taxation without representation, and will therefore have less money than ever to introduce into the economy in ways approved by antismoking nazis, who, being morons, have been promising that raising the taxes on cigarettes will cause poor people to quit smoking and spend both their nickels on things to help improve the economy.
In a related story, the antismokers were actually stupid enough to release a list of restaurants and other businesses affected by smoking bans. Apparently, they thought that publishing this darwinian list would be helpful somehow. Like, telling people in Colorado that smoking bans in New York led to the extinction of a massive percentage of restaurants would somehow indicate to local restaurateurs that banning smoking around here would do them lots of good. After all: the odds are good that any given competitor will go out of business overnight; and that's just what you want to hear when you're running a business.
In other legal news, I just got done downloading some neat abandonware: the LaserDisc copies of the StarWars films. Someone with way too much free time looked it up, and, by the letter of the latest copyright laws, the content of media not produced in the last twenty years becomes public domain. Since the LaserDisc, which went extinct twenty years ago, was the exclusive source of the unfuckedwith widescreened versions of the films [VHS was, to my knowledge, limited to Pan&Suck until the Special Editions were released in 1997], it stands to reason that any commercially-available widescreened copies of Greedo shooting first are, at this point, public domain.
I'm sure that LucasFilm's lawyers would argue a counterpoint to that, but, for now, I'm considering my ported DVDs to be opensource.
In related news, archive.org seem to be confident enough to have made available a DVD of 1968's Night of the Living Dead; if you're in the position to download four and a half gigs but somehow unable to afford the $5.99 at Suncoast to buy a preprinted copy, it seems that you can do that now.
The explanation for that is that, having filmed Night of the FleshEaters, Romero, et al, discovered that a film already existed by that title. In a rush, Romero changed the title to Night of the Living Dead, but, in the rush, forgot to add the Copyright © 1968 bit underneath. At the time, the copyright notice was more required than it is today. Which is to say that, today, it's not required at all; at the time, it was highly recommended, because copyright law was murkier; since the little fuckup, Romero, et al, have had nothing but trouble from people remaking NotLD scene by scene, and even selling copies without permission. Meanwhile, no one involved in the original really made any money from it. Which kinda sucks, in the same way that it kinda sucks that most Great Artists died penniless in history.
Of course, Romero has since made two and a half sequels, which did get him a bit of cash. And Savini, in remaking NotLD in 1990, made an effort to repay Romero for the script.
About the final sequel: Land of the Dead appears, for the moment, once again, to have been greenlit. I have no idea what the authorised budget turned out to be. Probably not enough. Which upsets me a lot. Having read the original filmscript for 1985's Day of the Dead, before its budget got halved, I really wish people would start giving Romero the $15million or so he requires to make these films. Especially granting the shit people are making these days for ten times that much.
Maybe things will begin to change, now that 28 Days Later, Remake of the Dead, and Shaun of the Dead have proved able to make their respective budgets back in the first week of release. Granted, those three films earned that kind of return; but all three seriously relied on Romero's concept to work. So LotD could prove to be a wise investment, I'd think. I'd personally invest in it, if I had any idea how to do that. I'm thinking that one dollar will get you a hundred within a couple years after the DV release of the Unrated Version. But what do I know....
Incidentally, I did pick up Remake of the Dead when I got GTA:SA. I haven't technically watched it yet, since my HDTV was a bit occupied by the game. I did get a copy from the UK a few months ago though. It had the deleted scenes crammed back into the film, which turned out to be a really good thing. But I didn't get the real extras—the full versions of the opening montage and the closing videocassette. Once I upload this, I'll probably go watch them, if I can somehow dissuade Hunter from watching whatever in hell...I think she's watching reruns of Law&Order with the twin towers in the background. Maybe I can time this just right, since it's now exactly two in the afternoon, and they're switching episodes again. Also, I'm bigger than she is. And I live here. So I'm allowed to grab a knife from the kitchen, see....
More later....
--Gremlin