Best Job I Ever Had

Conditions: Unstable

The Enemy of My Enemy

Anonymous, that den of soulless hackers and anarchists, this week actually seemed to have used their powers for good when they took on the KKK, who were busy trying to intimidate anyone in Ferguson from protesting over the ongoing scandal about the killing of Michael Brown. Seems the KKK were a little lax with their passwords allowing a crack Anonymous unit to break in and blow the roof off the joint.

Twitter, Facebook and Google + accounts are being deleted right and left today, as Anonymous Operation #HoodsOff continues in response to a letter from the Klan threatening Ferguson protesters. Guess they don't understand that everything's already been screen-grabbed! (That's Imperial Wizard Frank Ancona in the video.)

They also hacked into the national Klan's twitter account and used it to out several St. Louis cops as Klan members so far. They're asking the public to help them identify the rest:

- crooksandliars.com

It’s easy to revel in the schadenfreude here, but we all need to be careful. Anonymous can use their powers for good, but they usually don’t. They’re not under any control or oversight, and can strike anywhere. So while it’s interesting to see the cockroaches scuttle, don’t laugh too hard, or get too close.



Film Review: Fury

Being in a tank during war is my idea of hell. Well that or being stuck in a freeform jazz concert. Anyway, since tanks seem like an awfully easy way to get blown to pieces it wasn’t difficult to imagine how violent and gritty a WW2 movie set in a tank would be. And it turns out I was right. Fury is a vicious and violent film set during the final stages of the second world war. Brad Pitt plays the tank captain, a hard bitten veteran who has brought his crew intact into Germany all the way from Egypt. Well, mostly. One of his team recently got splattered so he needs a replacement. And he gets a fresh faced kid who’s basically a stand in for the audience, who has to be taught all the ins and outs of tank warfare.

And the rest of the crew doing the teaching are the classic dysfunctional gang of mad men. For me the standout among them is Shia Leboueff, who is electric as the “religious guy” of the group, so wound up tight I think you can actually see the cracks. They all clash amongst themselves like a pack of wolves, led roughly by Pitt. The plot is fairly straight forward, they are sent off to clear a town, they get ambushed but survive, they clear the town, then get sent to another town, which is where things finally go wrong. And it all turns into a desperate last stand.

Notwithstanding some small issues with how the plot works out (hey let’s have a last stand. No that’s stupid. Well i will. Well so will we!!), I do have some larger issues with the film. I get that it’s all hard and tough and cruel and vicious, that’s fine, I understand that. But, and there’s probably a better way to say this, but I bought a ticket to see a movie, not a documentary. While it’s true there’s something of a character study here it really feels more like this is a WW2-tank-based version of Gravity. You know, the sort of movie where this happens, then that, then the other, and so on and so on until it all finally stops. I get that the point is for the audience to look at all this and say “what’s the point”. But really, what’s the point? Two exploded heads out of five.



- Peace out