Hate Thy Neighbor (1968)

Inventory

• George Eastman
• Horst Frank
• Robert Rice
• Nicoletta Machivelli
• Paolo Magalotti

Inventory

• A map
• A squeezebox
• A barrel of "WHISEY"
• Steel tiger claws
• Shields the size of an iPad Mini
• A pit of snakes
• A cage of rats
• Hair pulling
• Flying dynamite

Summary

Our story begins with Bill Dakota driving a wagon carrying his wife and young son into town, hell bent for leather. Moments later, after the warm and caring townspeople run for cover, Bill's son is an orphan, but not before Bill has been forced to hand over a map. At the cemetery, a handsome stranger rides up and admits to being Bill's brother, Ken.

Ken, of course, does the only honorable thing and has his girlfriend babysit the boy, so that justice can be administered. After roughing up the sheriff and a couple of deputies, Dakota enlists the help of a garrulous funeral director to head of the border to continue his crusade.

We then cut to Mexico to where Chris Malone, played by always brilliant Horst Frank, has a pair of minions fight it out, octagon style, with steel claws. Of course Malone is in cahoots with Gary Stevens, the new rightful owner of the map, which provides pre-Google directions to a gold mine. Malone directs Stevens to rob the local bank, which he (Malone) happens to own, to generate funds for the mining operation. Of course, Malone double crosses Stevens.

In the fine tradition of movie villains, Malone leaves Stevens in a deadly torture intended to inspire Stevens to tell where the other half of the map is hidden. Rather than wait for results, Malone departs with Stevens in the good hands of four incompetent yahoos, who are quickly dispatched by Dakota, allowing him to return Stevens to justice whereupon he is hung the next morning.

Okay, not really. He has the rope around his neck when Malone's men rescue him. A healthy mix of the usual double crosses ensue when Jose, the least Hispanic looking member of the cast, demonstrates the loyalty that can be generally expected from henchmen. Malone returns the favor as he demonstrates how he earned "Boss of the Year" honors from the local Chamber of Commerce for three years running.

The ending moves terrifically, until it collapses into a comical gunfight, a green-screen wagon chase, and an utterly unsatisfying conclusion.

The opening credits are displayed using the device of a newspaper. Strangely, while the some of the credits are in Italian, the title is in German: "Hasse Deinen Nächsten". There are a few English language credits mixed in, as well. This marks the first movie that I can recall in which the script girl got credited before the movie. I suspect that this may have been copied from a print originally dubbed and shown in Germany. It was then redubbed, which is a bit of a shame, as most of the actors were clearly speaking English and the dubbing has the reverb of a soundstage in many scenes.

Dialogue

"Order. Order in the court. Now let's make this fast. I intend to back on that stage ten minutes from now."

Story

You've seen it all before: murder, revenge, "They took the little boy." And, as I mentioned, so many double crossings that it looked like a Los Angeles street map. Still, credit must be given to a movie that can steal twists from so many other sources. At least you'll never lose track of the plot (assuming that you've seen a few dozen of these) and the number of gaping holes was kept to a minimum.

Music

Great incidental music, on occasion being played by one of the characters. Unfortunately, the overall effect is ruined by the opening and closing themes, which sound remarkably like the theme to "The Love Boat", with the exception of the references to revenge.

Acting

Horst Frank does a great job. He basically plays the role that Leonardo DiCaprio does in "Django Unchained", but with just a hint of Christoph Waltz mixed in. Frankly, it's as good a job as you'll see in one of these movies and you can understand why he was such a busy actor.

Roberto Risso played the undertaker with style. He was clearly a fine character actor and it's odd that this was his last film. In his early days, he was dashingly handsome and usually played the boyfriend role. Apparently, he moved into fashion design when he left acting.

None of the other actors added much, although George Eastman, whom we have met before under his birth name, Luigi Montefiori, in "The Unholy Four", spends a lot of time without his shirt.

Must Read Science Fiction Published Before 1985

And so it came to pass that a younger relative (of whom there are nearly boundless quantities) asked for suggestions for "older" science fiction. Since he's about thirty, I made the assumption that anything older than he is qualifies as older, so I used 1985 as the dividing line. Here is the list that I sent him, with my notes:

The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

The original trilogy was a series of novellas published in pulp magazines. They're a great read, but a bit uneven at times. Skip the other books in the series and read I, Robot and the R. Daneel Olivaw novels. You can go back to the later novels and see how they tie together with the Robot series.

A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter Miller

He only wrote one book, but it will blow your socks off. Post-apocalyptic, but about as far away from The Road Warrior as you can get.

 

The Past Through Tomorrow - Robert Heinlein

Twenty-one novellas creating his "Future History" series. I met Heinlein when I was in Antarctica. He was on a cruise ship with his wife. I spent an entire afternoon with the two of them. His novels are a mixed bag. The early ones are often written for teens (of the fifties) and the later ones are an attempt to be hip, sexy, and happening. The middle ones, from Stranger in a Strange Land to Time Enough for Love, are really good.

 

Childhood's End- Arthur Clarke

Genuinely creepy. Some people claim that Clarke was a 'technology' writer — that he didn't have big ideas or good characters. This novel proves them wrong.

 

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur Clarke

Just brilliant science fiction. The later books in the series, written with (by) Gentry Lee, are not unworthy, but they fall past 1985 and are unfortunately not in the same class as the original.

 

The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury

A collection of short stories. If you haven't read them, shame on you. If you have, go and read Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, The October People, and I Sing the Body Electric. Go ahead. I'll wait until you catch up. The first two are novels (although Dandelion Wine is more a series of vignettes). The other two are collections of short stories. You will not do yourself a better favor than to have these around to go back to when you're having a really crappy week. If Clarke is technology, Bradbury is all people and ideas.

 

Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner

The first is a dystopian novel that makes all the books like The Hunger Games read like children's stories. It's a hard read, but it will shake up your idea of what a novel can be. The second was the first cyberpunk novel. It's amazing how Brunner wrote a book in 1975 that could easily be written today, with only slight changes. I prefer it to Zanzibar, but I know that I'm hugely outnumbered on this.

 

The Stainless Steel Rat Series - Harry Harrison

Sci-Fi version of it takes a thief to catch a thief. Tongue very much in cheek. The books are like potato chips. Once you read one, you'll need to read the rest. Bill, the Galactic Hero is also fun. It's Harrison making fun of Heinlein. Read Starship Troopers first or you won't get the jokes.

 

The Riverworld Series - Phillip Jose Farmer

What if everyone who ever lived came back to life on a strange planet with an eternal river? I seem to recall that the series ground down near the end, but the first three were good.

 

Dune - Frank Herbert

It should go without saying. Whether or not to read the rest of the books is a good question. I'd read the other books listed here before I read any of the other Dune novels.

 

Roadmarks - Roger Zelazny

Imagine a road that runs through time, where, if you know how to use it, you can go forward and back as you wish. Now think about who would use it.

 

Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny

A personal favorite, but you need to know a bit about Hindu mythology to really follow the plot. Zelazny wrote without real regard to genre. His books use mythology extensively, particularly as a framework upon which the plot can hang. His characters, especially his protagonists, remind me of Brunner's, in that they are quietly, but preternaturally competent.

 

Ringworld - Larry Niven

So this gets tricky. Niven's stories are almost all set in "Known Space", which is sort of like Heinlein's "Future History". Read Ringworld, Protector, and the Tales of Known Space (short stories) in that order. After that, finish up the Ringworld books. I haven't read the ones written after Ringworld's Children, so I can't recommend them.

 

The Word for World is Forest - Ursula Le Guin

Le Guin is challenging reading, since she intentionally writes from a feminist perspective. Avatar owes a lot to Le Guin and this novel in particular.

 

Anything by Robert Scheckley

He wrote a ton of short stories. They're often funny, always cutting, and just a good read.

 

The Well World Series - Jack Chalker

A very complicated series of books filled with an amazing array of alien life and one interesting human. The Four Lords of the Diamond is an series involving the idea of planting the mind of agents into brain-dead bodies and sending them to kill the galaxy's worst crime lords. Not as interesting as the Well World, but still worth reading.

 

Empire Star - Samuel Delaney

Read it. Put it on your shelf. Read it again in five years. Repeat. Each time you'll get a little more out of it. It's really short, just an evening's read.

 

The Mote in God's Eye - Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven

I didn't much like this the first time I read it, but it was much better when I re-read it. I'll put it down to my mood at the time. I've met Pournelle as well. He's an insufferable twit. It's ironic that the two writers I have met are both right-wingnuts. Some of his other stuff with Niven is worth reading. I don't care for his own work.

 

Harlan Ellison

As a writer, Ellison is infuriating, offensive, annoying, and eight other negative adjectives. As a human being, he's all that, plus an asshole and a sociopath. He also wrote the "City on the Edge of Forever" episode of the original Star Trek series, the story that was stolen for The Terminator, many episodes of Babylon 5, as well as a whole bunch of other television. Read his short stories , especially "Deathbird", "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", "and "Repent, Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man". Just don't read Ellison when you're in a good mood.

 

Mockingbird - Walter Tevis

Another dystopian novel. If you suffer from depression, you probably should talk to your shrink before hitting this list of books too hard.

 

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

Gripping. It's both a novel and a short story. Try to find the novel version.

 

Terran Empire Series - Poul Anderson

Anderson wrote several series of good, old-fashioned space opera. The Dominic Flandry books, describing the career of an officer of the Terran Empire are a great example of the art form. If you're looking for new ideas and milieus, you've come to the wrong place. If, on the other hand, you thought that the original Star Wars trilogy was great, but it got bogged down with too much plot and not enough action, you've just found Nirvana. 

 

Gateway - Frederik Pohl

The first novel of the Heechee Saga. So what happens when we find an abandoned space station filled with spaceships? The remaining novels in the saga are worth reading, too, but were written after 1985.

 

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon - Spider Robinson

A collection of short stories about... well you can figure it out. He wrote several other collections as well. Light reading. 

I'm sure that I've forgotten a huge number of others that are absolutely critical reading, but I was working from my library, so what you are seeing are the books that I think are significant.

 

I specifically excluded Phillip K. Dick and Norman Spinrad, because frankly it's impossible to recommend them to anyone that you don't know really well. Actually, it's probably impossible to recommend them to anyone. If they're your thing, you'll eventually find one and read it. If not, you'll eventually find one and put it back onto the shelf.

Finally, I didn't recommend Kurt Vonnegut, because I'm not certain whether or not he wrote science fiction. It's probably easiest to say that what he wrote touched upon topics that are commonly thought of as SF, but that he did so in a rather unusual way. Here is a link to one of the great stories of the twentieth century: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

Movies That Didn't Need to Be Remade

Well, Aphrodite wanted to see the remake of Conan the Barbarian. She's seen the first one more times than I can count (having caught it every day for a couple of weeks at a dollar theater back in Austin when it first came out) and the leading man appeared to be sufficiently hunky to make it worthwhile. The Bug was in agreement on this latter component, so we decided to allow her to see her first 'R-Rated' movie.

Since a quick look at the box office returns made it clear that this would be the last weekend that we'd be able to catch it, we saw it at the over-priced theater in the mall. It was the only place that was showing the movie in 2D and none of us have any interest in wearing silly glasses. The one good thing about the mall 26-plex was that it was also showing Spy Kids 4, in 2D, at the same time, which allowed Little Buddy to catch a movie, too. Tragically, he got the better end of the deal.

To say that it was dreadful is unfair. It was worse than that. Not only was the original far better, but even Conan the Destroyer, which was a wretched piece of crap, was better. You've seen the plot before. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was pretty much the same plot, done better. The dialogue was written by someone with a tin ear. The heavies had bombastic lines, the good guys popped out with strangely disconnected bits, and the leads seem to have picked up scripts for different movies.

Most of the acting was genuinely dreadful. Stephen Lang did a nice job as the villain, at least until the very end, when the plot completely came apart, and the actor who played Conan as a child was a much better actor than the adult version, which may explain why he had so few lines. It certainly wouldn't have looked good if Conan had been articulate and charismatic as a boy, only to lapse into grunting sullenness as a man.

None of the characters were more than a cardboard cutout and the movie completely lacked the humor and joie de vivre that made the first movie worth watching. I managed to hold it together through the movie, but burst out into loud laughter during the credits, simply because of the pompousness of it all.

One bright point was that Rachel Nichols was definitely prettier than Sandahl Bergman and a better actress. The downside was that, as Aphrodite pointed out, she went from being a monk of a peaceful order to a killing machine with very few qualms and with remarkable efficiency.

Standing in the lobby before the movie, I noticed the posters for several additional movies that didn't need to be remade:

The Three Musketeers — IMDB lists twenty-four live-action movie versions, dating back as far as 1903 and coming from countries as diverse as Argentina and Iran. For anyone born in the latter half of the last century, the definitive version was done in 1973. The cast included Oliver Reed, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain, Raquel Welch, Michael York, Geraldine Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Spike Milligan, and (in the only role that I've ever liked him in) Charlton Heston. What does the new version have to offer? M'lady is Milla Jovovich, which is an inspired choice, although I don't see her as deliciously evil as Faye Dunaway. Buckingham, who is definitely not a lead, is played by Orlando Bloom, which should attract the sighing female audience. D'Artagan is the kid who played Percy Jackson, and is no Michael York, in any way. You've never heard of any of the actors playing Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The one casting that seems truly promising is Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu.

Fright Night — I never saw the original, but really, is there that much of a need to revisit yet another low-budget horror movie?

Footloose — The world survived for 3.87 billion years before the arrival of the first version of Footloose. Couldn't we have waited as long for the remake?

The Thing — There was a trailer for The Thing. This movie holds a special spot in my heart, as the John Carpenter/Kurt Russell version came out in 1982, which was the year that I spent in Antarctica. We had a copy of the movie down there and watched it repeatedly. It gets the feel of one of the small bases pretty well. Frankly, it's a decent flick and I don't see why it needs to be remade. Without putting too fine of a point on things, I would definitely have preferred to have spent the year with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, rather than with Kurt Russell, but that's just me.

A couple that we didn't see this time, but I've seen trailers or teasers for:

The Mechanic — The original movie was fine. Not art, but fine. The pacing was good, the plot was decent. Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent both did a nice job, and it featured a Questar telescope. What could be better?

Red Dawn — For those of you who might have been busy in 1984 (or not around for some reason), the original Red Dawn had a group of teenagers fighting a Soviet invasion of the United States. This invasion took place across Canada and into the Dakotas, because an invasion across thousands of miles of endless, empty steppes worked so well for Napoleon and Hitler. Uhhhh. When we saw it, back then, two rows in front of us were a cluster of idiots in camo gear. Someone must have seen them come in, because during the trailers, the lights came on and the manager demanded to see whether they were carrying guns. Which they were. Toy guns. The manager collected the hardware anyway and told them they could collect it after the movie. Needless to say, these guys got seriously into the movie, with one excitedly shouting, "This could really happen!" as the adults were rounded up. The new version has North Koreans invading. A million starving North Korean soldiers coming ashore in shipping containers would make for an interesting opening scene, but my suspicion is that they wouldn't last an hour in the Long Beach dock area before someone had mugged them and stolen all of their weapons.

I'll run through some of the past remakes in a later posting.

Stranded in Iowa

Stranded in Iowa
Stranded in Iowa
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I can't keep my thoughts out of sight
Better get the Breakdown squad out
Get me rolling on
'Cause I need to feel the stars slip by at night
I'm stranded all night, stranded all right
                                                                      — Manfred Mann

Nate Silver has a great posting on why the Ames Straw Poll and the Iowa caucuses matter. What's interesting is not that neither is a particularly good predictor of who will be the Republican nominee (nice double negative there), but exactly what purpose they really serve for the Republicans. While Iowa itself is a remarkably moderate state, being about as purple as they get, the Republican caucus attendees are amongst the most conservative voters in the country. As a result, the Iowa caucus tends to identify which candidate(s) have the blessing of the psychotic right. Depending upon the year, this may or may not be a good indicator of who will be selected as the nominee.

The weekend's poll landed in favor of Michelle Bachmann, with Ron Paul following closely behind. This makes a lot of sense, given Silver's hypothesis. On the other hand, Pawlenty had no traction whatsoever, which also indicates that there are few moderates who attend these things. I'm pleased to see that Gingrich and Santorum both polled badly. Santorum's campaign headquarters in Iowa is located two blocks from my office and I'm afraid that it will take years to for the stench to fade.

On the Democratic side, the Iowa caucus does a much better job at predicting the nominee. Last time around, I registered as a Democrat for the first time ever, just so that I could attend a caucus (after almost fifteen years in Iowa, I figured that it was time to see what all the fuss was about). Having watched and taken part in the process, I can say that the Democrats seem to have a much more pragmatic approach to the whole affair. While each candidate's representative got to make a brief appeal to the caucus, most of the discussion focused upon who was most likely to win in November. Beating out the differences between Edwards and Richardson was much less important than identifying who could win.

It's just about time to stop listening to the news again. The year before a presidential election is remarkably crazy in Iowa. You can't throw a brick without hitting a potential president. Our suburb of Des Moines had Rick Santorum marching in the Fourth of July parade, glad-handing everyone he could. I was about to shout that he had been a loser in Pennsylvania too, when The Boss fired her elbow into my side and diverted my attention to trying to remember how to breathe. The state fair has more candidates than cattle and the cattle at least display some signs of civility.

White Fang and the Hunter (1975)

Cast

• Robert Wood
• Pedro Sanchez
• Malisa Longo
• Massimo De Cecco
• Robert Hundar

Inventory

• Three dog teams
• An Indian woman
• A branding iron
• An HO-gauge railroad
• Incriminating papers
• A bucking broncho
• A suitcase full of neckties
• One wedding brawl

Summary

A grizzled backwoods coot takes a shot at a rabbit with a Henry rifle and causes an avalanche which buries a less grizzled, but even more mangy trapper. Fortunately, the trapper has a wolf (german shepard) that is clearly the brains of this outfit. The wolf makes like Lassie and brings the shooter back, where they dig out the trapper. The trio heads to town, only to find it a corrupt dump where everything is owned by someone named Ferguson.

When we meet Ferguson, he's doing a Snidely Whiplash act, pressuring a widow to sell her farm to him. When she objects, he points out that he's always been fond of her. For example, he had offered to marry her the day after her husband died. For some reason, she remains unmoved by the offer and even suggests that it might have been Ferguson would sped her ex-husband to his heavenly rewards.

After leaving town, our trio is set upon by a pack of wolves who leave the coot and the wolf, who we learn is named White Fang, wounded. Fortunately, they find their way to the aforementioned farm.

As expected, the trapper, who we learn is named Daniel, proves to be an expert shot, brawler, and horseman. The coot also turns out to be a horseman as well, for he is able to ride out on a tan horse and ride in on a white one. When Daniel pursues the coot, he learns from Ferguson that the farm's importance is that it's blocking the path of the railroad.

An eyeblink later, both Daniel and the coot are back at the farm, just in time for an army of Ferguson's men to assault. Fortunately, the hoodlums have the standard level of incompetence and are only able to shoot a puppy, while being all but massacred themselves.

This entire attack is conducted in a static-fiiled grey fog. I don't think it was actually filmed that way, but all of the contrast was bleached out of whatever was used to master the DVD. The daylight scenes, which take place in a winter wonderland, are almost the exact opposite, with nothing but contrast. In fact, virtually all of the movie's action takes place in murky gloom. The screenshot at the top was about the clearest shot in the movie and it required considerable work in Photoshop to render into something worth posting.

In the end, Ferguson is shot (indirectly) by White Fang. I know that this is a spoiler, but I don't think that I can truly capture the spirit of the movie without mentioning this little detail.

The closing credits do include the following, in English:

The producers thank for its collaboration

"THE CASA PRESENZANO"

Breeders of the Samoiedo Belonging to Isabella del Balzo

author of the book "The Samoiedo and other Nordic Races"

published by Ed. Olimpia

The General Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome

The Legion Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Como

and The Members of their Dog Training Units

All capitalization and punctuation is as found in the original.

Ignazio Spalla, who played the old coot, Dollar, spent most of his career acting under the name Pedro Sanchez, including this movie. Somehow, this doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

Dialogue

"Leave us alone. You too, although you are his mother. Johnny and I must talk. Talk as men do talk."

Story

It's almost impossible to tell how much of this was intended to be slapstick and how much was supposed to be a serious movie. The Jack London estate has a good case for a defamation suit.

Music

The main theme has a seventies feel about it. I can't decide whether it belongs to a cop drama or to a porn movie.

Acting

Malisa Longo is incredibly beautiful. She might even be able to act, although this movie doesn't give her much room to show it. Massimo De Cecco, who played Johnny, was not much of a child actor. Whoever dubbed his lines was even worse. Actually, all of the dubbing is really, really bad. As in, you could get a bunch of friends together and do a better job, even after having spent the evening getting drunk.

For what it's worth, the "wolf-dog", White Fang, was played by Habbash. He clearly was the best actor in the movie. The credits also note the "participation of Robert Hundar", who played Ferguson. Apparently, he did it just to be cooperative.

Spam

I, like most people these days, have multiple e-mail addresses. There is my work address, my public address, my private address, and a couple of odd accounts that I use for specific purposes (like my gmail account, which pretty much exists to make my Android equipment easier to use). There's a reason for this, of course. Mail to my private address tends to be from family and friends, while my public account is filled with receipts, ads, job offers, and the occasional Nigerian 411 scam.

The quality of spam filtering varies on these accounts. My work e-mail is protected by a psychotic series of filters that includes the best heuristics and black-listing that money can buy. My Yahoo account has Yahoo working to filter it and my private e-mail has something like SpamAssassin installed at my service provider. What makes this interesting are the occasional inappropriate messages that make it through.

At work, the few that make it through have two general characteristics: they are addressed to one of the large mailing lists and they are genuine, first-class spam. The content is either highly inappropriate or accompanied by an attachment that absolutely screams "I'm a virus!" The stuff that leaks through Yahoo is generally pretty boring. For the most part, they're someone who has figured out a way to camouflage Viagra and Cialis well enough to sneak past the Bayesean filters, or ads for financial companies.

My private e-mail's spam falls into a few key categories that are worth mentioning (in increasing order of offensiveness):

1) Offers for business seminars and management training. These make me think that one of my friends or family has been hacked at some point and his or her contact list has been sold.

2) Gonzo messages. These are the ones with random words or the occasional line from a book or movie. I've dissected these forensically and there is nothing contained within them that would make sending or receiving them useful to anyone.

3) Knock-off/Replica goods. These are offers to sell me knock-offs or replicas of Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brand names. They make no effort to pretend to sell the real stuff.

4) Romantic offers. These are the offers to hook me up with the girl or guy of my dreams. The ones that pretend to be from old flames are more offensive, primarily since the implication is that I have somehow forgotten a past dalliance that should now be renewed. Trust me, any romantic adventures that I've forgotten are best left that way.

5) Pharmaceutical offers. These come in spurts. (Boy, that line sounds a lot worse in retrospect.) For some reason, I'll receive a batch of offers for some or all of the drugs that are commonly offered this way, then months will go by before the next batch gets through.

6) Educational offers. The amount of spam dedicated to telling me that a college degree could improve my career opportunities is amazing. I wish that I had known how easy it is to get a degree before I spent all those years in classrooms.

7)  And, without a doubt, the least effective spam in the world (drum roll, please): The bottomless barrage of broadsides bemoaning my basic behavior in bed. The propaganda poking put-downs at the performance of my personal package. Yes, I'm referring to the "Male Enhancement" ads. Why and how these pour through the spam filter is a mystery to me, but boy howdy, do I get them. Herbal supplements that guarantee results that would make a stallion blush, sure-fire techniques for satisfying my mate (the gender non-specificity is a nice touch), and those promising to make me perform like a teenager (which I presume means stammering in front of women and having an acne breakout before each date).

What inspired this posting was an e-mail that slipped through the Yahoo filters this morning from the sender "Sacred Hair Growth". I had to open it to see what it could possibly be. The answer were the two words "Canadian pornstars". This is so transcendently gonzo that it's almost zen-like. It certainly inspired me to wonder if there were scenes of lumberjacks showing up to discover slumber parties going on.

This line of thinking caused me to remember back a few years to 2005. I had the same e-mail address for twelve years. Not only that, but it had been published in several computer books that I had co-authored and had certainly been scattered to the four winds on several newgroups and forums. As a result, I got spam like you wouldn't believe. Since my ISP made no effort to block it, I was getting 150-200 unwanted messages a day. This led me to set up my own filtering system, using SpamAssassin and a few other tools. The thing about rolling your own is that it requires constant maintenance to keep black- and white-lists updated, as well as the tuning of the Bayesean filters.

In practice, scanning through the logs let me discover the concept of the fetish of the month. For whatever reason, pornographic spam has a tendency to focus on different subjects, rotating on a fairly regular basis. I wondered, but never enough to try to find out, whether this was based upon looking for the most common key words in Google searches, or if it was more or less random. Nevertheless, I discovered a great deal about the rather interesting interests of my fellow netizens.

I watched as various ethnic groups and nationalities had their moment in the sun, only to fade when the next group came along. I saw ads aimed at those with an interest in latex, vinyl, leather, and rubber. There were an amazing number of ads for amateur wives, where amateur was misspelled in more ways than you would imagine possible. These inspired the question, "Are there professional wives?", but I digress. Various age groups were promoted, usually falling into the categories of teens, young, older, and mature. This naturally inspired subjects like "Mature Russian Amateur Teen Wives", which topped off the great Russian explosion of 2003.

Throughout all of this, I remained uncurious enough not to pursue any of the topics offered. At least until the great balloon fetish burst into my inbox. One week, almost like magic, much of the spam suddenly focused upon balloons. Not one or two e-mails,  but literally hundreds of messages, all purporting to deliver the finest in balloon erotica.

Now, I have never lived what I would call a sheltered life, but this was new to me. It boggled the mind to imagine what could possibly be a turn-on about balloons. As more and more of these messages poured in, the inevitable happened and I cracked. I Googled "balloon fetish" and opened a few of the sites.

So what is a balloon fetish, you might ask? I'll tell you. These sites consisted of pictures of women and balloons. The women tended to be young, late teens or early twenties. For the most part they were dressed, albeit sometimes in bikinis or nightwear. The balloons were the kind of party balloons that you've blown up before. And the women were playing with the balloons.

No, really. They were throwing the balloons into the air, or holding them in front of themselves. At times, the women would be popping the balloons, usually by sitting or stepping on them. That's it. Almost without exception, these sites wouldn't have warranted a PG-13 rating, let alone an adult-only.

In a strange way, I found this gratifying. Not the balloons, mind you; a typical shampoo commercial is more pornographic. No, the satisfying part was discovering that there are people out there (I presume mostly men) whose idea of a good time is watching someone pop balloons.

Come on, admit it. Doesn't knowing that make you feel a little bit more normal, too?