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2 Jan 2010

What fresh hell is this?

A couple of years ago, I was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'd seen or heard of any possible perversion the internet could produce. I was of course, wrong. I hadn't even scratched the surface. But this link at least covers hundreds of things I'm just not creative enough for. I think I can safely say I'd never considered romantic/sexual pairings between continents and elements from the periodic table. Or this:
"Summary: Neptune comforts Pluto when he is rejected as a planet. NeptunexPluto. Mild planet!slash.
Warnings: Personification of planets, planet!kissing, etc. Just...really, really out there."

I aim to proven wrong again this year...

31 Dec 2009

End of the year lists

Since it's the season for it, I'll put my own list out there. Shorter and to the point though. I saw almost none of the must see films, certainly listened to no must-listen albums, or played any of the video games I ought to have played this year, but I watched a lot of TV, bad and good, and there are programs that tell me what I've missed.
A short list of things I enjoyed too much this year, though they might be far older:

-Venture Bros.
-The Mabinoginion
-Mad Men
-30 Rock
-All Star Superman
-That Mitchell and Webb Look
-Plants vs. Zombies
-The Walking Dead
-Community
-Lady Gaga
-Nouvelle Vague
-2666, by Roberto Bolano
-Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
-Listening to terrible pop music while driving
-Writing more and reading less
-Procrastinating

Favorite Issues nr. 1: Animal Man #5



This is probably my favourite single issue ever. I don't even own it, except as a trade paperback. It's some of Grant Morrison's first work in the U.S., a revival of an incredibly lame 1960's character. This was the first issue after the originally planned 4 issue miniseries proved successful. It's a bizzare retelling of the Prometheus myth with Wile E. Coyote as a protagonist, hoping to end the abstract violence cartoons inflict on each other and being cursed with real world suffering as a penance, and as his antagonist a gay trucker creating an elaborate deathtrap to catch him after his life spirals out of control. The titular hero only shows up at the end but is unable to read the scripture he's handed as the trucker, dying because of his own elaborate trap, kills the coyote at a crossroads, where he dies metaphorically. Animal man learns nothing and cartoon violence continues. This issue is weird, smart, funny and exciting and pretty much a statement of purpose for the rest of the series. Animals kill each other, human beings kill animals, the hero doesn't understand it, nor does he learn anything, the world is cruel and unjust because whoever runs it cares more about entertaining the audience than the happiness of those who have to live there.

30 Dec 2009

Gas-guzzling death traps



The thing that annoys me about SUVs isn't that they guzzle gas or are unsafe, per se, but the conflation of causes that made it the most popular car model of the last 20 years. They just didn't deserve to be. American car companies were out of ideas, so they lobbied for what was essentially a truck, i.e. something to haul freight with and built a salon on top of it, to be legally recognised as a passenger vehicle. The public, compliant as ever thought that it was safe and roomy. But just because you're high up doesn't mean you win. It handles worse than an average American car, which already feels like toboganing down a hill on a sack of wet cement, mostly because it wasn't designed to go faster than 90 kilometers an hour or so. An overpowered engine that wastes an absurd amount of fuel to move considerably less weight than it could. It is also not an off-road vehicle, regardless of what the brand says, if you go off-road you might need suspension or a good differential, a manual gearbox. It's a horrible useless machine that just doesn't do any of the things people thought it could do. There is no reason to lament the downfall of the American car industry, they haven't done anything useful since the sixties, this is it's tomb.

28 Dec 2009

Wardrobe eats children



I skipped the chronicles of Narnia first time around. There was a BBC dramatisation I could've seen when I was twelve, but for some reason it just didn't appeal to me. I felt no compunction whatsoever to see the Disney flick of a couple of years ago. Thank god for Christmas, I finally got to see it and was thoroughly annoyed. I don't know what it is about British Child Actors, but they raise my hackles. I always used to laugh at the stereotypical British villains in American films, but I get the point now. There's something deeply sinister about the accent, if not used in historical context, funny or ironic. I had an honest to god nightmare after seeing this film, about British Children wanting 'ever so much' to play with me. And this is all before taking the fact that that Lion is supposed to be Jesus into account.

27 Dec 2009

Christmas song 2



A creepy song made worse by time..