The episode features the return of Faith, who quickly switches bodies with Buffy. The two meet up at the end of the episode after a trio of vampires take over a church, holding the parishoners hostage. The vampires were sent forth by Adam, a new kind of hybrid demon, and one is even referred to as Adam’s number one. The vampire thus becomes Cain, the originator of murder for killing Abel.

Cain is mocking the hostages, asking them where their God is to save them, while talking about how he had always feared churches due to the implied presence of God. Apparently God has no place in the churches of Sunnydale since the vamp group have no fear of being in the church and there’s no burning upon entering. That is, God doesn’t exist in the church until Buffy, Faith, and (to a lesser extant) Giles show up.

The trio represent the holy trinity. Buffy, who automatically gets lumped together with Jesus due to her death and subsequent resurrection (in order to save the world, no less) in the first season, is the representative of The Son. Because of her name, Faith, who also had a bit of a death and resurrection in the form of a nearly year long coma, represents the Holy Spirit. While Giles, who is an all-knowing figure that doesn’t do much but sends others out to do his bidding, represents God.

The most puzzling thing about the episode is what causes Faith to show up at the church. She’s well on her way to leaving Sunnydale forever when she sees the news about the situation. Given Faith’s past, it would seem as if she would have no qualms about leaving the parishoners to die, but she ends up coming back to help. Either she’s not as evil as she would let on in the last season (specifically Bad Girls) which is a divergent story path I was always expecting, or the overall goodness of Buffy’s body (in essence, her faith) caused Faith to come back and do the right thing.

Who Are You just hits home the fact that Faith is one of the more interesting characters on the show. It’s a damn shame she ends up leaving at the end of the episode.

Ziggy is loud, dumb and obnoxious. His one major fault is that he never knows when to shut his mouth, which is often what gets him into the worst trouble. Yet, despite this, I found him strangely endearing, and could sympathize with him. He’s one of the most tragic characters so far from the series, and, looking back, that’s no small feat to live up to. There’s Bubbles (who’s getting far too little air-time in S2), D’Angelo, Wallace, and, to an extent, McNulty.

Ziggy is low man on the totem pole in everything he does. He’s not very bright, or attractive, and even though his dad is the boss of the docks, he can’t even get regular shifts to make any kind of supportable income. Like the anti-Midas, everything he touches turns to shit. This extends to his illegal extra-curricular activities, which get him into quite a bit of trouble throughout the course of the season.

The main problem is that Ziggy wants to be an old-school gangster. Money is always secondary to him; respect is the important thing. The only thing. Without respect, the money doesn’t matter, and he’ll often throw money away in an attempt to prove that point. He tries hard once to build a foundation for himself, by buying a package and selling it himself. His soldiers start skimming from him, and he’s not able to make enough to pay back the gangster who sold him the drugs. He ends up getting bailed out by his cousin, Nick, with quite a bit of help from some higher-up gangsters.

When Ziggy and Nick steal a few cameras from the docks, Ziggy nearly blows the whole deal by running his mouth and annoying the hell out of the fence. The next time they have to make a business call, Nick leaves Ziggy behind and pays him off later. Ziggy, jilted by the slight, burns the money. He’s constantly on the lookout to get recognition or respect. It’s no surprise he’s constantly flashing people. It’s the one area where he’s *ahem* gifted.

Nick and Ziggy end up stealing some chemicals for the fence and are offered drugs as payment. Nick is unfamiliar with dealing, but accepts anyways. Ziggy sees this as his golden opportunity, since he has experience selling, but he’s quickly forced out by Nick. Nick does all the work and pays Ziggy off in the end. Ziggy throws the money away and looks for his own score. This time he’s stealing luxury cars.

For once, Ziggy’s plan actually works, and he’s able to deliver the cars as promised, when promised. When his fence changes the offer, Ziggy gets upset and starts trying to intimidate him. This doesn’t work, so Ziggy resorts to name calling, and promptly gets his ass handed to him. Ziggy takes the money and goes back to his car pissed as all hell. He returns minutes later and kills the fence. The deed done, Ziggy realizes he made the biggest mistake of his life, and breaks down instead of trying to get away.

Despite wanting all the respect and power that he feels he deserves, Ziggy doesn’t have the fortitude to do the things necessary to get that respect. Even after committing murder, he’s still a terribly tragic character, because he’s not truly a bad person, even though he wouldn’t mind being one.  It’s rare to see a murderer feeling full blown remorse for their deeds, rarer still to see one feeling remorse not just because they got caught.

Ziggy, who tries his hardest to walk the walk and talk the talk is excellently contrasted by Brother Mouzone, who shows up as muscle for the Barksdale gang. Seeing Mouzone, muscle is the last adjective you could think of to describe him. Looking like a version of what Steve Urkel could’ve grown up to become, Mouzone seems more at home behind a desk in a library than he does in the streets. After a little difficulty declaring himself to the rival gang, all Mouzone has to do is make himself be seen in order for the enemies of Barksdale’s gang stay far away.

Mouzone has everything that Ziggy wants. The difference is that with the power and respect Mouzone has, he decides against living the gangster lifestyle and instead would rather wear three piece suits with bow ties and spend his evenings reading Harper’s.

Ed Exley is often seen viewing others through a glass pane. He’s the only one on the police force who wears glasses and is often put down for doing so. He is also the only one who is uncorrupted. His view is different from everyone else’s, especially concerning his concept of justice.

Whenever Ed is asked to change his thoughts on whether or not he will do something that’s not quite on the up and up, he always replies that he won’t. Shortly afterward, he is told to stop wearing his pair of glasses, since no one else wears them. If he won’t willingly change his point of view, his superiors will force him to.

Near the beginning of the film, Ed is asked to observe the police commissioner attempt at getting Jack Vincennes to testify against a fellow officer. Ed is watching the proceedings through a two-way mirror. Even though Ed is reflected in the mirror, he is too busy watching his skewed version of justice being meted out.

Later, Ed and a couple other cops bring in three suspects in a murder case. The suspects are held in seperate interrogation rooms, all with two way mirrors. Again, Ed is watching the suspects through the mirror, imagining his own form of justice playing itself out. When Ed walks into the room, he is the one under scrutiny and the whole thing becomes a show, both to the criminals in order to catch them in a trap and to his superiors to prove his worth and garnish awards.

Ed finds that the boys had kidnapped and raped a woman who was still being held somewhere. He and a couple of the other officers go to find the woman. Ed is told to stay back while Bud White enters the area first. Bud murders the man holding the woman, and makes it look like a shootout occured where Bud killed the man in self defence. Ed, who is still wearing his glasses, sees the truth behind this and calls Bud on it.

Later, the three original suspects escape and Ed goes after them. This time a shoot out does occur, and Ed, who is now not wearing glasses, ends up gunning down the suspects, one of which he kills while they’re unarmed and running away. From that point on, he is corrupted and is viewed the same as all the other detectives.

Ed, still glassless, talks to the rape victim and discovers that the suspects he killed, while still rapists, were probably not the murderers he was looking after in the first place. From then on, Ed puts his glasses back on.

At the end of the film, after Ed and Bud have solved the case and realized just how corrupt their police department is, Ed changes his view on justice and shoots his nemesis in the back, killing him in cold blood. We then see him without glasses and in an interrogation room. This time, he is the one being observed and questioned as the suspect. While his superiors try to figure out whether true justice would be served, Ed finally pays attention to the mirror and sees himself for what he is. Only then does he figure out who he is. By doing so is able to see out through the glass and see clearly, for the first time how his own form of justice can be dealt while still appeasing his superiors and co-workers.

Rachel Getting Married falls into the specific genre of quirky dysfunctional family dramedy. If you’re not a fan of these types of films, and maybe even if you are, there’s really no reason to watch. The family itself isn’t quirky themselves, but the people they choose to surround themselves with are.  Rachel’s (the one getting married) fiance is a musician and most of his friends are musicians. The film, though not a musical, is filled with a variety of musical acts interspersed with various toasts for the happy couple.

Unfortunately, these seem to make up the bulk of the movie, leaving the dysfunctional family dynamic floundering behind. This would be more of a problem if the main story were actually interesting, which it’s not. Nor is it handled in a really compelling fashion.

The main drama of the movie revolve’s around Kym, who is just getting out of rehab as the film starts. During the course of the film we find out what caused Kym to enter rehab, then the wedding happens and Kym ends up going back to rehab. There’s no resolution to any of the conflicts, and none of the characters are even that likable.

The only moments that I really felt worked was seeing Kym in her AA meetings. Most of the time she sits listening, or quietly battling her own internal demons, and in the most compelling scene of the film talks about her past and how she is dealing with it at the moment.

Outside of the meetings, Kym just comes across as needy and self-absorbed. Rachel, who was often in the background as a child because of Kym comes across the same way. We spend the bulk of the movie with these characters and I had a hard time sympathizing for either one.

The film is shot in a hand-held documentary style, which is another big problem that I had with it. While it added to the really quiet scenes, any time there was any sort of movement, either from the characters or the camera, the whole thing became an erratic mess. I ended up getting frustrated from the camera work more than anything.

It’s not very often that I decide to stop a movie before making it through even a half an hour, but I wanted to with Rachel Getting Married.

The story concern’s Oz (played by Seth Green) and Willow (played by Alyson Hannigan). Oz, who is a werewolf and Willow, who is a witch, have been dating for a while, but lately Oz has found himself transfixed by a local singer, Veruca. For the last couple episodes it appeared that Oz was developing a crush on Veruca, much to Willow’s chagrin.

We discover that Veruca is also a werewolf and she and Oz are drawn together by their mutual lycan instincts. After meeting up in their transmogrified forms, the two spend a night (we can only assume) doing it wolfy style. When Oz wakes up naked, next to an equally naked Veruca, he is understandably bewildered (he doesn’t remember anything he does in wolf-state) and ashamed.

By the end of the episode, Willow finds out about their relationship and Oz’s betrayal, while Oz tries to get Veruca to become more domesticated, both for her safety and for the safety of others. Willow, the jilted lover, uses her wiccan training to put a hex on both Oz and Veruca, but is stopped at the last minute because, despite herself, she still loves Oz and can’t bear to cause him pain.

At that same moment, Veruca corners Willow. Veruca wants Willow out of the picture so that she can have Oz all to herself. Oz manages to save Wilow at the last instant and ends up killing Veruca. Unable to live with himself for what he did, Oz leaves Willow and Sunnydale behind.

It’s a damn shame that Green had to leave the show. According to popular rumor, , the Veruca/Oz storyline would’ve evolved over the rest of the season, which would’ve made for some damn intersting television.

We could’ve had Willow following through with her hex, marking the first turn down a potentially darker path. This could’ve turned Oz into a potential enemy, or if not an enemy, at least a constant source of tension for the group.

Even if Willow didn’t go through with her hex, Oz could’ve discovered that he could be happier on a primal level with Veruca. He could’ve tried to domesticate her, while she tried to de-domesticate him.

Better yet, and while still adhereing to Whedon’s ‘nobody can ever be truly happy’ theme, Willow could’ve gone through with her hex, still had Oz kill Veruca. This would’ve been my favorite option since it’s sooo dark. Oz would want to get back with Willow, because he still loves her, but she placed the hex on him making it impossible. Then he has to deal with the additional stress of having flat out killed someone, even if he did do it as a werewolf and not truly in his right mind. Then, on top of that, you’d have Willow wrestling with her own demons because she was the one who ruined any chance of them reconciling their relationship.

This would be on par with Buffy slaying Angel at the end of season 2 the moment that he turns back to good. As it stands, Wild at Heart is a great episode, but it’s a shame once you start thinking about what could have been.

I’ve discovered that I have a similar approach to writing exercises.

I recently stumble’d across webook’s 911 Writer’s Block, which offers a number of writing exercise ideas in different categories, such as: settings, characters, dramatic entrances, dialogue, endings, and a couple others. After having a good time pushing the various buttons, I started doing some writing from them. Or, rather, I tried to do some writing from them.

I discovered that I couldn’t actually writing anything based off of the exercises, but I did find new and unique ways to totally undermine the exercises. For my first bit of writing, I chose the settings option. Here is what I was given:

A wedding chapel in Las Vegas at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. An old man is asleep in the rear pew, a blood-soaked bandage on his left hand.

And here’s what I did with it:

The Owner of the chapel noticed the old man and approached him.

“Mister, you can’t sleep here. I’ve got a business to run,” the owner said, slightly shaking the old man. The old man started, then looked up at the owner. He smiled.

Gil Reznik was awakened by a nearby explosion. He tried shaking away the sleep by taking stock of his surroundings. He was still in the bunker and still had his platoon with him. He stood up and looked out into the blackness of the battlefield. Two hundred yards away, a twisted mass of steel jutted out of the soft ground. The damn Zaxnars where bombing again and sending out reconnaissance mines. He looked down at his protonics rifle, and made sure that it was fully charged. The swarm would be coming soon. He thought briefly about the dream he had just had. “What was that about?” he wondered aloud. No use making a big deal about it, though, he would forget about the whole thing soon enough.

You see what I did there? At the time I started seriously to question the validity of 911 writer’s block as a useful tool. What’s the point of using these writing exercises if I arrive at such a contrived and trite plot?

Despite my misgivings, I gave it another shot. I decided to go with dramatic entrances next.

An art opening at a lavish downtown gallery. A car crashes through the plate glass window. The driver’s door opens, and an eight-year-old girl steps out.

Here’s what I came up with.

The girl dazedly looked around at the destruction she had just caused. She opened her mouth-

Vic Slater turned off the T.V. This show was stupid, and besides, it was time to go to work.

“C’mon, man, we need to personify ourselves.” Vic threw his partner a tattered black suit coat.

“You got your claymore?” Andre asked, putting on the coat. Vic opened up his own black suit coat showing off his 9mm, the handgun of champions. They went out to the car, where some long-forgotten 70’s funk song blasted from the radio.

“Hey, man. Who’s hotter, Mary Jane or Gwen Stacy? Andre asked.

“Mary Jane, fo sho.”

“Whaaaa”

“Redheads, man, redheads are hot.” Vic licked his lips.

“You buggin’ out, man. You ever read the original comics? Mary Jane was all beatniky and shit. She was annoying as hell to have around. Gwen Stacy was a college girl, who was smart but not too smart.”

“Whatever, man. Anyways, we’re here. Let’s go in there and kill these guys, then we can go get some breakfast and talk about Gunsmoke or some shit and how it relates to our current lifestyle predicament.”

That one was even worse than the first. “We need to personify ourselves” Who the fuck talks like that? And hit men? How 1996.  Again, my attempt at writing a story based off of a concept from the website had utterly failed. This wasn’t going well.

I decided to put writing on hold for a day, and give it one more chance. I tried dramatic entrances again.

An attic room. A man sits at his desk, staring at a blank sheet of
paper. A red patent-leather stiletto flies through the open window and
lands on the floor with a thud.

Here’s what I came up with.

The man gets up from the desk and walks towards the stiletto. He stares down at it a moment before picking it up, a small smile slowly spreading across his face. He walks to the window and looks down. The dress was red, and way too short. It revealed long legs, and an occasional gust of wind would reveal even more. The lipstick matched the dress. A cross between the color of a rip tomato and a firetruck. The hair was long and blond and blew playfully in the wind. The hair matched a thick handlebar mustache. She was by far, the prettiest cross dresser the man had ever seen.

A gruff voice rang out from the crossdresser who was now minus a shoe, “Do you mind if I come up, or are you coming down?”

The man took one last long look at the cross dresser before she and the whole scene shimmered and vanished, replaced by grey walls.

“Captain! Captain!” an ensign rushed into the holodeck. “A Klingon ship is approaching and hailing us.”

Picard sighed, putting aside the memory of the cross dresser in red. “C’mon, Ricky. Let’s go fuck up some Klingons,” he said putting his arm around the ensign and walking out of the room.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and I was thinking it too. Star Trek? Transvestites? I had hit pay dirt, baby!

From now on, I”m using 911 writers block all the time.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday outlined a shift in the enforcement of federal drug laws, saying the administration would effectively end the Bush administration’s frequent raids on distributors of medical marijuana.

Speaking with reporters, Mr. Holder provided few specifics but said the Justice Department’s enforcement policy would now be restricted to traffickers who falsely masqueraded as medical dispensaries and “use medical marijuana laws as a shield.”

In the Bush administration, federal agents raided medical marijuana distributors that violated federal statutes even if the dispensaries appeared to be complying with state laws. The raids produced a flood of complaints, particularly in California, which in 1996 became the first state to legalize marijuana sales to people with doctors’ prescriptions.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Proving that you don’t need Google’s billions or the BBC weather centre’s resources, the four Spanish students managed to send a camera-operated weather balloon into the stratosphere.

Taking atmospheric readings and photographs 20 miles above the ground, the Meteotek team of IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia completed their incredible experiment at the end of February this year.

Created by the four students under the guidance of teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol, the budding scientists, all aged 18-19, followed the progress of their balloon using high tech sensors communicating with Google

Building the electronic sensor components from scratch, Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta­ Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort managed to send their heavy duty £43 latex balloon to the edge of space and take readings of its ascent.

You can read the rest of the article here and view the groups flickr account here.

I’ve already gone out looking for the sequel in our local used book store (I really can’t justify paying full price for it if there’s a used copy out there) but to no avail. There’s another shop I still have to look through.

The story concerns a young boy sent off by his country to discover himself. Along the way he finds out that he is actually a wizard. Like I said, cliche’d to the core, but I’m hopeful for the series since it takes place in the same universe, but over a huge span of time. The sequel, as far as I know, doesn’t have anything to do with the first book, except for the setting.

This is both a good and bad thing, since it’ll be nice to see the world from a different angle, but I’m worried that with only a hundred pages left to read, The Magic of Recluce might wrap things up too quickly, with no hope of an immediate resolution or continuation.

I don’t have to worry about that for a while since I always try to mix up my reading habits. So instead of diving right into the sequel, I’m going to postpone it while I read a couple books from some different genres. I’ve got a beautiful hardcover version of Wicked staring at me. It was a gift from my wife, and I can’t wait to crack it open, but since it’s hardcover, it’s rather heavy and I’m a little worried about transporting it to and from work every day.

There’s also Asimov’s Foundation sitting on the bookshelf upstairs. I read it once when I was in Jr. High and am eagerly anticipating reading it again. There were some elements I think that were lost on me at the time, which I’m sure (read: hopeful) I can pick up on now. If I still want sci-fi, I also found a copy of Clarke’s Rendezvouz with Rama. Aside from some sort of obvious rendezvouz, I’m completely in the dark on what it’s about, whihc might just bump it ahead of Foundation in terms of readability.

Then there’s Down and Dirty Pictures, which is about the rise of independant cinema. It’s hardcover, which is again a downside, but the blurbs on the back and inside jacket make it look fascinating. The author’s previous book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is almost universally praised, so that’s a good sign.

Finally, I’ve got a shelf full of Tom Clancy books. I like Clancy because it’s a change of pace from what I usually read, and he’s so damn popular that you can pick up used copies of his books for super cheap. The only downside is that he’s rather verbose and his books are a tad too long. Especially when I look to them as more ‘in-between’ literature.