I watched two of the old movies I recently got: Insomnia and The Big White. Insomnia is about an FBI agent sent to investigate a murder in Alaska and whose judgment was messed up because of insomnia. The Big White is about an travel agency owner who hatched an insurance fraud scheme with the help of a frozen corpse he found in a garbage bin. And what do you know? By chance, I ended up with two movies set in Alaska and having Robin Williams! That was pretty amusing! :))
The Interesting World of Financial Markets
My investment management professor shared to class of this interesting thing called pollution futures. It turns out that in some places, there’s a limit on the amount of pollution you can spew into the air, water, and land. Companies can buy rights to certain amounts, but some may need to pollute more than projected and some may need more. What they do is to buy rights from those who don’t need it. In effect the right to pollute becomes a commodity which can be traded and speculated on. If that can be done with pollution, it can be done with just about anything. It’s almost like gambling where you can bet on anything, and in some ways it probably is. Aren’t financial markets great? :)
Movies Galore
Just got some interesting old movies:
- A Clockwork Orange
- City of God
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Insomnia
- Nightmare Before Christmas – will probably save this for watching before Christmas :))
- Requiem for a Dream
- The Big White
I’ll be watching them in the next few days, schedule permitting! :D
Range Day
Just came back from the range. Bishop, Spook, Dervish, and I went to this shop and range owned by Bishop’s friend. It was a totally nondescript taho factory but once the guard let us through the gate we were greeted with the sight of a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII(?), a Toyota Supra, a Porsche, an Escalade, and some others sitting in a [also] nondescript garage. Bishop’s friend still wasn’t there so we waited for a bit. After a while he drove in on a Mercedes-Benz. The guy sure has the right interests :)
After some introductions he led us up some stairs and through some corridors and then into the shop which was cluttered with shorts and longs in various stages of assembly or disassembly. The right interests? Hell yeah! After a lengthy chit-chat, we proceeded to the indoor range where we all got to try an extremely shortened M16 (Infant), a full-length M16 with RAS, a suppressed M-16 also with RAS, a Benelli M3 Super 90 with a folding stock, an HK MP5A5, a suppressed Beretta 21 Bobcat, a suppressed Walther P22, and a Glock 19.
It was fun but I’ve realized all this trying out all sorts of shorts and longs won’t do me any good and I need to practice and hone my skills with a short of choice. Spook said we might be able to schedule a visit to a club next week, become a member, and practice more systematically. Finally! :)
Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Drive is one long drive full of twist and turns that become more and more bizarre as the movie hits the second part. The first part is actually pretty interesting. A woman escaped assassination because of a car accident. But in the process, she also lost her memory. Now it is up to her and her newly-made friend, an aspiring actress, to find out who she really is. It has shades of L.A. Confidential: something’s afoot in tinseltown. But there are also shades of Donnie Darko: strange scenes hinting that things are not as they seem, perhaps a dream or something. However, thing’s got really messy and confusing in the second part. It became a mescaline trip reminiscent of a much milder second half of 2001: A Space Odyssey (now that is one mescaline trip). At least in Donnie Darko, things gets tied together at the end, here it just gets an ending of sorts. I’d rate it two stars, but I’ll add an extra star for the scenes of the women leads making out :P
Rating: 3/5