welcome committee

WELCOME COMMITTEE
Before we start today, I apologize if I gave any incorrect information yesterday. I was so focused on the cost aspect of water treatment I paid no attention to effectiveness and used the terms purification and filtered and treated too loosely. I trust all my minions are smart enough to question everything, even my divine utterances.
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I got this idea from watching my first Official Reviewed Doomsday movie last night. That movie review will follow today and from now on I'll post them on the weekend. Then, a week later I'll go back and delete it. You get it free, and I'll get to eventually sell it to you if you then desire. Plus, I won't be publishing it twice that way ( once in Chicken Little, once as a book ). A welcome committee at your retreat. Let's just say that your OpSec is effective. To those that didn't get that, it's operational security. The same kind of people that don't have to do mental arithmetic to figure out when 1700 hours is use this kind of jargon. I don't care for it but still find myself lapsing into its use now and again. You didn't blab about all your stockpiled goodies. No one really knows what you have. However, against all odds a straggler comes across your cabin and while he doesn't know what is there he figures even a poorly stocked cabin has more than what he does which is nothing. So he breaks in and decides this is as good a place to stay as any. Even if you have a concealed door to the root cellar or whatever, you still have a Goldilocks and the Three Bears situation going on. And Goldilocks is armed.
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And even if he can't get in because of your super paranoia, he can still ambush you as you arrive. I'm not saying it is going to happen, but this kind of thing is right up Murphy's alley. It could happen. Just dumb luck, not even poor planning on your part. Now I'm sure someone that's spend a million bucks for a super retreat has this one figured out. But since most of our ( poor people ) retreats are trailers on junk land or cabins too far away from work to be habitable, I think it is a concern bearing some thought. I'm not talking about leaving items for theft as much as I'm bringing up the concern someone will blunder into your dwelling after taking to the road in an emergency. Even during "normal" times, what is to say one of the increasing homeless population won't find your place and when you visit innocently you won't encounter problems?
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Each solution generates it's own problems. You shelter in place there is the mortgage and increased population to be concerned with. You bring everything you own including the dwelling to your land as needed, you might get gridlocked or face Federal travel restrictions or gas shortages. If you can't live there full time, what about a friend or relative? We all know slackers that don't work. What about paying for satellite TV to keep them entertained out there and visit once a month to take them grocery shopping with their Food Stamps and fix whatever they broke? Just a thought. Obviously you would need to trust them.
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Before you read the movie review below, buy my crap at http://www.bisonpress.com/
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TIME OF THE WOLF
Rated R, 2003, subtitled in English
Isabelle Huppert and lots of other French dudes.
The movie starts off after a disaster. One can’t be sure but it seems the basic theme throughout is lack of pure water and dying livestock so the disaster it most likely contamination of the water supply throughout the country. A family pulls up in their minivan to a vacation home. Gets out, starts unloading a few boxes of groceries. They get inside and there is some other guy with his family and he is armed. This is where the English subtitles come in pretty handy because the strange mother has a screaming kid with her. If I had been trying to listen to the conversation I wouldn’t have been able to hear much of anything. And they must have gotten the screaming baby soundtrack cheap because you hear it a friggin lot through the movie. Sure, sure, we all know as soon as people start toppling over dead from thirst things get all traumatic and kids seem to sense that everything will get lots better if they start bawling. But, this irritation doesn’t start until later. At first, you just think it’s as annoying as trying to read subtitles.
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Dad and Mom and two ten to fifteen year old kids are the owners of the cabin. The stranger inside with his wife is the one with the screaming kid. Keep this in mind for what happens next. Dad, blah, blah, why are you here? What do you want? Let the kids go outside. The kids are excused and Dad doesn’t get one more sentence out when, bam, the stranger shoots him. You’re thinking, okay, he’s a novice at stealing others supplies and was nervous so he fires the gun ( it isn’t explained how the civilian gets a gun in socialist France, since I have nothing against Frogs, their saving our butts from the British and all, but let’s face facts they didn’t learn a damn thing after the Nazi’s took over and won’t allow the public to arm themselves ). No, I think that damn kid screaming drove him over the edge and he went nuts. He tells the wife to take the kids and leave and Mom is a bit smarter than her rapidly cooling husband who tried to rationalize with the crazy armed guy while a baby was screaming and she hauls butt.
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Now, I hate say this, but that’s pretty much it for excitement in this film. It was decently budgeted, the acting was good, the story wasn’t full of holes until the end ( which I’ll get too shortly ), but I guess being European it just has to be different. They decided that different here was to go as slow as possible and say as little as possible. The movie lasts almost two hours and you wonder why. Were they paid by the minute? They could have easily wrapped in up in half the time. As I describe the rest of the film, just visualize it all taking place at a very slow pace. I Could Have Gone And Pissed And Missed Nothing slow. About as slow as this review. Mom and kids go walking down the road, knock on a few doors of people they know ( I cleverly deduced this by their names being called out ) and no one will answer. They go into a barn to sleep and Mom tells the kids to stay put as she visits another house where she finally gets a little help in the way of a few handfuls of food ( “don’t come back, my husband mustn’t know. We have seven mouths to feed. It’s because you’ve always been so nice, you see.” ). Finally, karmic payback. They chow down and go to sleep. The middle of the night daughter wakes up Mom in a panic, her brother has disappeared. They have no flashlight, so Mom the smoker uses her lighter to get a handful of hay lit. Keep a fire going, I’m looking for the brother, don’t let it go out so I can find you, I’m leaving now and coming back to the friggin barn on fire you silly little twat. They go to sleep and in the morning wake up and there’s the kid. With another kid, a stranger. The kid doesn’t say where he’s been. This kid, by the way, turns out to be a lot of work. Oh, boo hoo, daddies dead and your parakeet died and life so sucks for you just shut up already we all have issues. But of course you don’t really start hating this little punk until later. He looks innocent and doesn’t say much but he turns out to be pretty high maintenance. Okay, new kid is the girls age ( she’s the oldest ) and all glaring and full of attitude and right away we want to kick his ass. I don’t know why Mom invited him along unless it was so her daughter and this guy could act all terribly European teenaged angst and such.
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Walk along, look for breakfast but all the dead sheep are dead long enough to have maggots, swipe the clothes off the dead guy since it’s cold out ( the only sensible thing this delinquent does the whole film). And then they come to a train station and things really start slowing down. Young punk steal a pair of eyeglasses ( to start fires with ) and the train station group tries to stop him and he hides in the woods and the daughter goes out there to meet him once in awhile acting all hurt he’s ungrateful for the medicine or food but what did she expect since he’s a punk but she’s probably mooning for him and it’s all terrible French and sophisticated and stupendously boring. A group of traders come along on horses with water to trade, some foreigner ( Polish? ) in the group all weepy and screaming ( her screaming blending in with all the babies crying back at the train station, let’s not forget that ) her baby needs water. The train station group is always arguing about who’s in charge and how they need to work at blocking the track in case a supply train comes along ( it seems all areas are suffering from the trains not running and no supplies are getting through ) and other crap. Trying to show us how selfish and greedy and unorganized everyone will be but just giving me a headache with all the shouting. Shut up already, I’m trying to read the damn subtitles.
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It just goes on and on and some crap about “the Just”. In all the world there are only 36 and if one dies the world ends and I wonder if the professed train station leader is one? But I don’t think he acts like one of the Just. What the hell are they talking about. I guess it’s a French thing, I wouldn’t understand. Then another guy is talking about how people throw themselves into fires and burn up. Again, what is he talking about? But in the end, after a whole lot of nothing happens, old neighbors fighting ( they seriously don’t like Poles in France it seems ) and a search for a stolen goat ( by the punk of course ) and a bunch of other crap, the brother tries to throw himself into the nighttime bonfire ( they keep it going to alert that train that never comes ) but is stopped by the night time guard. There, there, you’ll feel better after you cry, rock in my arms, blah, blah. And the next scene is the view outside of a moving train but it never shows if this is the one picking up the group or if it is just someone remembering how the trains used to run and then the movie ends. Huh? That made no sense.
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Okay, a few great lessons here. Your retreat could have the bad guys already in there, so have a BOB buried nearby so you have a flashlight and don’t have to burn hay for light. Crying kids kill. Don’t trust funny talking foreigners. And, French movies are really weird.
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*Genre Rating- Excellent. All action happens after the collapse, no phony last minute rescue.
*Nudity Rating-Poor. Only one shot, and it was a corpse being prepared which has zero appeal.
*Overall Rating- Fair to good. A well done movie only suffering from slow pacing. The weirdness may have to do with the cultural differences.
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