Pun Salad

… you worry me to death:

• Here's a pretty good idea for all you readers who give money to your alma mater: instead, give half to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). I especially like this bit:

  Participate in our campaign and FIRE will send a letter to the school of your choice alerting administrators to the fact that they have lost half of your financial support--and that FIRE can help them reform their speech codes so they can regain that support.

  If your school (like the University Near Here) has a red-light speech code rating, you might even consider giving more than half to FIRE.

• If you're feeling a bit too optimistic about the USA's fiscal future, check out Peter Suderman's article, reprinted from the June issue of Reason. It discusses Congressman Paul Ryan, and his "Roadmap for America's Future".

  You can read the Roadmap here, but here are the main observations from Suderman: (a) it's the only serious current proposal on the table for balancing the budget without permanently bloating government; (b) even so, it won't balance the budget until 2063; (c) and, according to Suderman, it "will never, ever pass."

• Chuckle du Jour: Elena Kagan no longer thinks Supreme Court nominees should have to answer direct questions.

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Travis McGee in The Deep Blue Goodbye? And directed by Oliver Stone?

  As a longtime McGee fan, that would not have been my obvious choice. Then again, I think I said the same thing about Christian Bale as Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. So it could work out, because I'm an idiot.

As I type, Inglourious [sic] Basterds [sic] is #71 on IMDB's top 250 movies of all time. I don't know about that, but it's pretty good.

It's set in World War II France. The opening act shows SS Colonel Hans Landa visiting a remote dairy farm, on the hunt for hidden Jews. He finds the Dreyfus family huddled under the floorboards, and orders them machine-gunned. Only the older daughter, Shosanna, escapes.

We then jump to three years later: Brad Pitt leads a small gang of guerrilla soldiers, tasked with terrorizing the occupying Nazis and flouting most of the Geneva Conventions. But he's assigned a new mission: many of the German High Command will be attending the premiere of Joseph Goebbels' latest propaganda flick. Wouldn't it be great if they could spoil that little party?

And, just coincidentally, the premiere's venue is a small Parisian cinema owned and operated by Shosanna Dreyfus, under a new identity. And she has plans of her own.

It's directed by Quentin Tarantino; he uses a lot of his trademark gimmicks. Movie references out the wazoo; Mexican standoffs; great actors dug out of retirement, … But other than that, it's a straightforward story, told well. It was nominated for eight Oscars; the guy playing Col. Landa won for Best Supporting Actor.

And I did not see that ending coming.