Well, at least at my house anyway. After over a week of the internet being down at the house, we finally got our provider to come out and find the problem in the line. Hopefully this takes care of the issue, since my fantasy football draft is fast approaching. This also means I can return to my regular, semi-monthly posting.

I've also had a bit of a blogger epiphany. One of the reasons I haven't posted much is that Milbarge (and Fitz previously) set such a high standard. His posts are detailed, his subjects well researched, and his conclusions insightful. My ideas for posts usually consist of thoughts that pop into my head that rarely get meticulously thought out. Where as Milbarge can construct a post which cover a variety of angles, I usually require discussion/argumentation with others to jog my brain and think of the points and counter-points.

But I have decided I'm not going to stress about it, and I'm going to stop worrying about trying to match Milbarge's quality. From now on when I have what I consider to be an interesting thought (a subjective measure, to be sure), I'm going to write it up be it 4 lines or 40.

Acceptance is the key to happiness.

I got a call a couple of weeks ago to participate in a radio ratings survey. The caller asked some demographic questions and then asked which radio stations I listen to, and how much. I wish she would call back, because my answer has changed.

The radio station I listen to at work is undergoing some changes. The format is shifting a little, and some of the things I listen for are either being moved around or eliminated altogether. I was upset enough about it that I wrote an email to the station manager, but I'm not expecting that move will have any effect. The big problem is that my options are pretty slim: this is a mediocre radio town.

So I'm very seriously considering making the move to satellite radio. Longtime readers know I am tech-stupid, so I need your help. I'm leaning towards going with XM over Sirius because of the available content. What I want is a radio I can listen to at work and also play in the car, if that's possible. I see that they have combination radios/mp3 players, but I'm not so keen on those. This might be a dumb question, but if I'm listening at work, do I still need another radio, or headphones or speakers or something? The car-adaptable radios seem to run through the car's stereo; does the desk-top model work the same way? Any advice on models or subscription packages? Anything I need to watch out for? Thanks much.

Lord of War. This is the story of a very successful, largely amoral arms dealer. Yuri Orlov (Nic Cage) emigrates from the Ukraine, and goes on to live the American dream. (It reminds me of a line about fireworks from "The Simpsons": "Celebrate America by blowing up a small part of it!") Although he starts off small, Orlov eventually comes into large stores of arms languishing after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He moves on to selling arms to African countries for their wars and genocides. It's a talky movie, in the manner of Goodfellas, and while it's not as masterful as Scorsese's mob picture, it's presented in a similar way. Lord of War is a depressing and realistic look into the world of illicit arms dealing. Cage's character is apparently a composite of some real gun runners, and I think that makes him seem like some sort of super-smuggler, but none of his accomplishments seem completely impossible. It gets a little manipulative and maudlin near the end, but while Orlov is always charming, he's never truly likable, and I was glad the filmmakers stayed pretty much true to his character. Overall, I enjoyed it.

A History of Violence. Oh, another violent one. Director David Cronenberg says he's not trying to glorify violence, but to show how violence changes everyone it impacts for the worse. Still, it's a movie, and we're violent Americans, and violent human beings, and it's hard not to cheer when the hero commits some violent acts. This way, Cronenberg makes us complicit. The basic plot is that Viggo Mortensen is a small-town family man who foils a robbery attempt at his diner. This event raises some questions about Mortensen's mysterious past, and brings to town some bad guys who want to explore that mystery. I won't give away where it leads, although you'll see it coming, more or less; the real power of the film is watching how the family deals with this intrusion in their lives. Maria Bello does an admirable job with a pretty small part as Mortensen's wife, and the movie may be worth watching just for their two very hot -- and very different -- sex scenes. It's also interesting to view those scenes with an eye toward the intersection of sex, innocence, and violence.

The Squid and the Whale. I enjoyed this one too. It's about a family going through a divorce. The dad is played by Jeff Daniels in probably his best work since starring in Fitz-Hume's favorite movie. The mom is the wonderful Laura Linney. They do a great job making their characters believably ambiguous -- you can see both sides of the divorce, but neither one is completely sympathetic. Daniels is a professor and writer now on the downslope of his career; Linney is coming into her own as a writer and eclipsing her husband. I'm not sure if his ego is hurt more by her writing success or her affairs, but there's plenty of his ego to go around. Their two sons pick sides, change loyalties, and vent their confusions and frustrations in interesting ways. The supporting cast is good, too: Anna Paquin as a student of Daniels' who mesmerizes both the dad and the older son, and Billy Baldwin as a ridiculously vapid tennis pro. Funny, bittersweet, occasionally cringe-inducing, smart, well-written and -acted, good soundtrack. There were some New York City-specific references that I didn't always get, but overall, very enjoyable.

Me and You and Everyone We Know. Maybe my favorite of this group. This may sound weird, but watching it, I felt like it was the inverse of Todd Solondz's Happiness. Both are stories of inter-related characters searching for love and happiness and fulfillment, even if what they're seeking isn't exactly "normal." In Happiness, no one really finds it; here, they kind of do. But it's not the kind of formulaic, "I knew they'd end up together" pairings we see in most romantic comedies. It's hard and confusing and not perfect, but worth trying. Miranda July wrote, directed, and stars in the film, and she has a lot of insight into trying to make those connections in a very disconnected time. A word of warning for the sensitive: there is some sexual content involving children who aren't yet eighteen, but it's not gratuitous, and not as disturbing as the content in Happiness, for example. All in all, a sweet, satisfying movie. I'd definitely watch it again.

Cache. I saved this one for last because I might have to include some SPOILERS. I don't know the html to get the little accent mark over the "e" in "Cache" to show it's French (for "Hidden"), but I disliked this movie too much to make the effort. The basics: A married couple, Georges and Anne, start receiving videotapes and drawings. The content is them -- their comings and goings, their house, their son Pierrot. It's clear that someone is watching them, and they get increasingly unnerved as the content gets increasingly personal -- things no one could know. Georges is forced to confront some long-buried secrets from his past, and the events create a simmering tension in the family.

First, a brief aside because Cache reminded me in some ways of another French film, Louis Malle's Au Revoir, les Enfants. SPOILERS. Enfants is based on an event in Malle's childhood, when his Catholic school hid a few Jewish students from the Nazis. At the end of the movie, Nazis come to the school and take the Jewish kids away and arrest the priest in charge; of course, there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. As heart-rending as that is, it's even worse for the young Malle character. In a very tense scene, when a Nazi is pacing the classroom looking for Jews, the young Malle shoots a panicked glance at his Jewish classmate. It's not entirely clear that this look gives the boy away (at least as I recall the last time I saw it), but Malle clearly carried the guilt for the rest of his life. Here's the thing: I missed the glance the first time I saw the movie, and still loved it. It works even without it, although seeing the look adds an additional layer to the film, making it doubly wrenching.

So, back to Cache, and now I'm going to give away the whole thing. We come to find out that when Georges was a boy, on a rural farm, his parents employed an Algerian couple. They had a son, Majid. The parents died, and Georges's parents contemplated adopting the boy. Georges is jealous and doesn't like Majid, so he lies to his parents that Majid threatened him with an axe, and Majid is sent away. Georges has essentially suppressed this memory until he sees images of the event sent by the anonymous stalker. So Georges tracks down Majid, although he hides a lot of this from Anne, who may be hiding her own affair from Georges. (By the way, the lovely and talented Juliette Binoche is criminally wasted in her role as Anne, and while we're apparently supposed to think she has a bunch of secrets, too, I think she was just a poorly developed character.) Majid is old and broken-down and not as successful as Georges, but he doesn't seem to harbor enough anger to be terrorizing the family. He has a son, though, and he confronts Georges at his office. Also, a new video arrives that was shot from inside Majid's flat, so Georges is convinced that Majid or his son is responsible. Majid asks Georges to visit again, and when Georges shows up, Majid slits his own throat in front of Georges. It's not clear whether that's to give Georges more guilt, or out of his own guilt over his or his son's possible actions.

We get to the very end of the film, and it's still not clear who was sending the tapes. Then, as the credits roll, we see Georges's son and Majid's son talking as though they know each other, although we can't hear what they're saying. We're left in utter confusion: we don't know who sent the tapes, we don't know if the boys are working together or if one is using the other, we don't know what their goals were, we don't really know the point of the whole thing. I found this film completely pointless. I suppose the theme is "secrets are bad," but I'm not sure anyone really deserved what they got. And what's worse is that I totally missed the conversation during the credits because it's a long shot of a crowd and the boys are off to one side (duh...hidden). I only found out about it by doing some internet research. As disappointing as the film was, even knowing about the conversation, it's maddeningly worthless if you miss the two talking. I guess I'm doing okay if I liked four out of these five movies, but I really wish Cache had stayed hidden.

I think this heat wave is cooking my brain. At the very least, I think I have a brain cloud.

Home remedies appreciated.

Ken at CrimLaw notes the convictions of several members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. News reports here and here. A few dozen gang members, including very high-ranking Brotherhood leaders, were charged with murder, conspiracy, and racketeering; several of the prosecutions could lead to the death penalty. Ken also points to this item wherein some experts on prison gang culture express pessimism that these prosecutions will have any major impact on the Aryans as a whole. As one says, the gang is "like a hydra -- you cut off a limb and it's going to grow back."

The news also prompted a couple of comments at TNR's Plank here and here. One of those leads to this wonderful New Yorker article from a couple of years ago. The article discusses the history and scope of the Aryan Brotherhood, and discusses the early days of the prosecution that just scored its first convictions this week. I highly recommend it.

On the bigger picture, I'm not so pessimistic. I agree that the current prosecutions, even if they result in death penalties, won't kill off the Aryan Brotherhood right away. But Joe Valachi and the French Connection and other early successes combating the Mafia didn't shut down that entity either. It took laws like RICO and dedicated cops and prosecutors years and years to have a significant impact. Prison is such a different culture, with completely different incentives, that we'll probably never be able to wipe out gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood. But the pessimists make it sound like it's useless to even try. I'm not saying it should be Team USA's Number 1 goal, but these convictions show that some gains are possible.

Over time, if they keep up the heat with these prosecutions, more and more members will flip, in an effort to see the sunshine some day. One major victory in the current prosecutions was to ensure that the Brotherhood leaders will face at least life sentences -- some of them were going to be eligible for parole at some point. Reasonable minds can differ on the efficacy of the death penalty as a general deterrent, but it may be the only meaningful punishment for lifers who kill other inmates. I assume most of these now-federal inmates will end up in super-duper-max prisons, to limit their contact with other gang members.

Ultimately, I wonder if the best tactic for the government is to expand its aim beyond the prison walls. Drugs and money don't occur naturally in prison: someone has to bring them in. These hardass gang members may not care about tacking another life term on their rap sheets; in fact, they may well be proud of it. But my guess is they'll feel differently about their wives and girlfriends and mothers getting convicted for helping them. Obviously, some of the smuggling and message-passing happens through lawyers or gang associates, and they should be prosecuted too. And I believe that the "girlfriend problem" is a real and troubling side-effect of the modern drug war. But that term refers to (mostly) innocent girlfriends who get caught in the net because they don't have valuable information to hand the government. It's a different story if the wives are knowingly transporting the means and currency for murders and other gang activity into prisons (or on the outside to pay for inside activity, as the New Yorker piece relates). Prosecutors should of course also go after guards who turn a blind eye, or actively help. But if gang members don't care about their own fate, maybe they'll care more about what happens to the Aryan Ladies' Auxiliary.