While some people have emailed about the Animated Musical (specifically, how long the As-Yet-Unannounced thing'll go on), more than a few have pointed out that a string of bad-to-middlin-but-with-a-couple-of-classic film references is an unlikely/inauspicious beginning for a great movie. One kind reader suggested I should "write what [I] know, rather than cut and paste a bunch of other peoples ideas."
I have angsted a bit over describing the script indirectly like this, but I'm gonna stick with it for a while, at least until I'm satisfied with it creatively and I have some more substantial business/development/legal traction for the project. But then I read an excerpt of a letter from Abraham Lincoln in John Perry Barlow's recently circulated Pox Americana. My script is based on the catalogs of movies I referenced in the same way South Park: The Movie was based on Abraham Lincoln's letter.
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'
Read Sen. Robert Byrd's Oct. 3 speech, which included this excerpt. Listen to it on MP3.
Other highly relevant research/source material, Bruce Schneier's canonical Applied Cryptography. Last month in The Atlantic, Charles Mann wrote an interesting, disturbing article on Homeland Security, starring Schneier.
