Skins and Manchurian Candidate

Skins win. On to the playoffs where hopefully Brunell will be healthy- it seemed like his knee was holding him back today. Tough game to watch- I don't think it should have been as close as it was, but a W is still a W. Next stop, retribution against the Bucs.

No news or great thought to ponder otherwise. Watching the original Manchurian Candidate right now- haven't seen it in awhile and it will be interesting to compare it to the Denzel Washington remake. I enjoy these movies- like most Gen Xer's, I was raised with the Cold War providing a keen backdrop to everything- these movies capture that pervasive paranoia of the zeitgeist. Of course, this was somewhat ironically muted for me from growing up in West Berlin when it was isolated in East Germany and then Moscow, USSR. Another favorite: Dr. Strangelove. I'd forgotten all of the references to the Red Scare in this movie- a few months ago, I was reading about some creative revisionist history on McCarthy and how he wasn't a drunken moron, but in fact had discovered the tip of the iceberg of pernicious Soviet influence in our country. The premise is based on recently declassified NSA files (VENONA) that supposedly matches some of the accused. Feel free to draw your own conclusion; I can't help but feel certain parallels with current politics when reading this topic- less to do with a clear, tangible evil (unless you count Al Qaeda), but more of the accepted fashion of destroying your opponent.

Updated Empath-- usually I prefer not to publish something until I feel it's done, but those ideas were kicking around in my head when I wrote it, and have just come to fruition.