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“Minority Report”, the movie or the book, is a science fiction in which psychics look for future crimes and send the police forward in time to prevent them before they happen. At a glance, it seems far fetched, but if you consider it for a mere second you realize that this already happens on a large scale. It’s only silly that they would through the trouble of finding psychics and mastering time travel to do it.

Governments are constantly looking for subversive forces and are somewhat successful at weeding them out. They look at things like race, religion and political affiliations, but these are really just funny ways of seeing if you have ideals. If you have them that’s an automatic red flag because someone’s going to get hurt. The next thing they want to know is if your ideals are consistent with those of the government. If not, you’re automatically on every conceivable watch list, and rightly so. You are a threat. At any given time, when there isn’t much on TV and your friends are too busy to hangout, you’ll stand up and say, “I’m going to do something about something!” Powerful words. The world quakes in fear.

Still, minority reporting needn’t deal with political activism. It’s more commonly put to use in advertising. To find out if people will buy your product all you need to know is if they do what they’re told. For instance, there are shows like “American Idol” that aren’t entertaining and nobody would watch unless they were told or pressured to do so. If you advertise during the show then people will buy your product for want of free will.

Perhaps, there are other things you want to know. Does a person access internet pornography? Find out with this two part questionaire: Do you have access to the internet? Are you a man?

Want to find out if a person is a pyromaniac? Ask to see their childhood home. In short, seeing the future isn’t a super power and even with trace amounts of observational skills you can do some minority reporting of your own.

Scene#1

I’m playing in the park with my 8 year old son.

“Daddy, push me higher.”

“I’m not your real father!”

Scene#2

In an anonymous fast food restraunt, I walk in and place an order with the fresh-faced, teenage boy cashier.

“Hello, welcome to…What can I get for you today?”

“Yes, I would like the quarter pounder combo.”

“What would you like to drink with that?”

“Coke.”

“Is Pepsi ok?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Would you like bacon added to your burger for an additional .50 cents?”

“I would like it, but not .50 cents worth. So, I guess that’s a no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

Contact Lenses
Hair Plugs
Rabid Gorillas

Incubus is a good film or, more appropriately, Incubus estas bona filmo, as they say in Esperanto. This classic sci-fi movie comes with so many peculiarities that the quality of the film hardly seems to matter. The lead actor is a pre-Star Trek William Shatner. The Incubus was played by Milos Milos who did a murder/suicide shortly after the film’s release. Then after the film had done its tour of theaters it was lost for 30 years. To top it off, the film is performed entirely in the constructed language of Esperanto.

The plot is tame in comparison to the extenuating circumstances, but here’s how it runs. A succubus is tired of seducing men into their eternal damnation, when the men were probably destined for hell with or without her intervention. The succubus desires a pure soul, so that naturally leads to William Shatner. He lives with his sister under peculiar circumstances, but the two abstain from incestuous relations for the sake of the camera. The blonde succubus arrives on the scene and sensing her spiritual void, Shatner instantly falls in love. The succubus offers to nude sunbathe on sand dunes with him, thus securing his fate. He refuses, as he prefers sex, so long as they claim to be in love while performing the vile act. She refuses and summons the incubus to rape his sister in retaliation. Shatner’s cool with that, so he and the succubus run off to do it in a church and then a meadow. After which, the succubus is attacked by the devil in the form of a goat. Fino!

For Shatner, Incubus seems like a good lead in to his days as Captain James T Kirk. There are few actors with more experience in intimate scenes involving non-human life forms than he. The film does tackle an age old, moral dilemma. Should you be honest about your pure physical interest in your lover or do you pretend to love the person you’re sodomizing? Also, why does the devil always choose to be a goat? Wouldn’t a puma or a rhinoceros be more fearsome? These are questions posed to the viewer and, like all good films, it doesn’t offer any easy answers.

Rating at a glance: 372 words

Wikipedia entry on Esperanto

It draws attention away from the work itself and towards the world around it by composing the work entirely of negative space. The viewer’s focus will be drawn away from the work and realize how beautiful the world is in comparison.

It’s called “Cows Eating Grass.” The ravenous cows ate all the grass and left the painting to have the artist’s brain for afters. What!? You like the non-painting? Well sweetie, I guess you’ve had a visit from the ravenous, brain-eating cows, too.

It’s called “Good Intentions.” After buying a canvas and a brush, the artist was so poor they couldn’t afford the feces to paint with.

It forces the viewer to consider the plight of an artist in a worst case scenario. That being, what kind of bulls@*t story you had to feed people to get your blank, store-bought canvas hung in a gallery.