Taking some time off for a redesign...

I finally have some time to get those goddamn youtube videos to disply properly, and soem random graphical tidbits, here and there.

Re-launching July 5th!

Green hornet looks weird, maybe good...

Michel Gondry directs Seth Rogen in a superhero movie? Well, this is the trailer. I don't know what to think of it...

Kids today...

Because it seems to be the only thing on MTV in the weekends, I often end up watching My Sweet Sixteen and despairing. But I'm not sure of it really is a sign of the times that these kids have a Texas-sized sense of entitlement. It seems a lot more likely that these are just original flavour spoiled brats. It's a classic story that there's supposedly something wrong with whichever generation is following you, but no one ever takes into account that a lot of what's wrong with them is the fact that they're teenagers and you're an adult. Data suggests that every new generation is always going to do at least a little better, because they have the work of previous generations to build on, so they'll be fine, as long as you don't screw up.

Just unbelievable...

Well, Katy Perry sure did show Lady Gaga how to make a non-blasphemous video, it makes me think there might not even be a god at all. I've joked about things being sweet enough to give me diabetes, but this is the first time that's not hyperbole. I genuinely had a physical reaction to this song, hunger, nausea, salivation and disgust at the painful sexual metaphors, even less subtle than in the song. The whipped cream scene at the end is probably as close to pornography as is possible in a music video. If the food-porn axis didn't inherently turn me off, I might have found it titillating. But then, there's the emphasis on childishness and the abuse of well-loved children's game CandyLand. This is of course, another disturbing trend, where adult women pretend to be little girls to provoke some sort of sexual reaction in men, but it's been around forever. The terrible thing in this case is that Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry have somehow been convinced that some winking and irony is enough to make it palatable

Politics 6: Democracy is only the lesser of two evils.

When democracy was a relatively new idea in the 1700's, there were a number of arguments against it. The only one I believe that makes any sense is the most despised one. Giving people what they want is not the same as giving them what they need. Ordinary people were unfit to make decisions of life and death. Old-fashioned elitists were worried that democracy would eventually turn into an absurd popularity contest while no one actually governed, i.e., precisely what's happened. Unfortunately, elitism went hand in hand with racism, sexism and class consciousness in those days, but it isn't the same thing. In fact, there's nothing wrong with an elite based on merit. Anyone can become a member of this group by merely achieving something, thereby proving their fitness to have a greater say in things than ordinary people. That's not the general view, though. 'Elitists' is a swear word these days. It's associated with unearned privileges and contempt for ordinary people. How did that happen? The main reason is the way voters have literally switched sides. When universal suffrage was introduced in the early 20th century, socialist politicians suddenly had more power than at any other point in history. They set about securing more rights for the ordinary people than ever before, despite a financial crisis and a world war, setting the stage for the immense economic growth of the 50's and 60's. Despite their concerns for the common man, these politicians were often hardly common themselves. They fought for social justice on behalf of ordinary people. They succeeded admirably, essentially making themselves obsolete. Their way out of social irrelevancy was broadening their scope. All kinds of other groups needed help as well, and there were plenty of other social ills besides economic ones. These new ideas didn't appeal to their old voters, but attracted new ones, educated upper and middle class voters. On the right, traditional right wing parties seized the advantage and decided to appeal to the working classes. This is now the default setup for many western democracies. Two groups voting for parties that enact policies that disadvantage them, both run by members of the elite, who don't want to be seen as elitist and claim to give people what they ask for, rather than what they need, and actually give them what they want for themselves. Both sides lie and manipulate to maintain their positions, and the public is distracted with fluff and nonsense. The only group with a genuine representation of their opinions in politics, is business.

Politics 5: The shadow of big business

The general level of paranoia in the general public has constantly risen since Nixon. A constant flurry of lurid exposés of authority figures is part of our culture's normal background noise, as are absurd conspiracy theories. Business is a main component in both factually reported misdeeds and the insane fever dreams of the theorists. The collusion between business and politics is very real, however, and about as old as government itself. Governments and politicians need large amounts of money and businesses are willing to provide, for legislation that benefits them and the contracts to do things for the government. Basically businesses spend money to make money. The only difference in recent years is how much more powerful businesses have become. Multinationals have always been able to lord it over poor countries, often with the backing of their home countries, but now there are companies big and influential enough to take on western democracies. Since the 1980's there's been a definite effort to give businesses as much freedom as possible, with detrimental results for the individual. If you adjust for inflation, the average real wage has taken a drastic drop throughout the west, and taxes have gone up only slightly. Governments have also privatised so much of their own businesses they barely have an idea how they operate in the real world anymore. Their tasks haven't really changed though, except now it's up to private contractors to do it, for a fee. The government gets less money from you, has lost a great deal of power and competence, handed it to business, who are now bigger and richer and get more of your money. They're only getting more powerful and both the individual and the government suffer.

Politics 4: Watching the news is harmful to your inteligence.

This is what's wrong with the news. It's a formulaic narrative run by a commercial enterprise, which is why it's frequently scary, nonsensical and obsessed with sensationalist topics which have nothing to do with the facts. The facts are the only thing that ought to be important, but nobody wants to read that, that's what Wikipedia is for. But they keep changing these facts, and it's hard to keep track of them. But not that hard. The news makes perfect sense if you know some of the backstory, i.e. everything that's ever happened. It's like a daily list of changes, so it's almost in it's nature not to provide a lot of context and to ignore things that don't fit the stories that already exist. That's why the only important story about the civil war in Sudan for the majority of the conflict was the fact that no one seemed to do anything about it or care very much. This happens to a lot of important things. The news is so ephemeral there's genuinely no telling what's going to happen, or what has actually happened without getting your information from other sources, but less and less people do that. The news, seriously defective as it is, is the main source of current information. It is a playground for the smart manipulative assholes that politicians employ to communicate with the public. The only thing standing in the way of constant 24-hour propaganda from politicians, business and third parties is the people who make the news. But they're under-informed, underfunded and under constant pressure to keep you interested. Is it any wonder you alternate between being bored, frustrated, angry and scared every time you watch it? There's no way to fix it either.

Politics 3: Open letter to my friends, the hippies and the fascists

I'm always ending up defending right wing viewpoints to my many socialist friends and acquaintances, not because I enjoy it, but because they often have absurd views. The opposite happens when I'm with my right wing friends and family members. Whereas I'm a socialist black sheep with them, everyone I know from college tends to put me squarely on the privileged rich bastard side. Actually, I believe in neither. The older I get, the less use I have for defining myself or others as left or right wing. Conservative vs. progressive is a workable dichotomy, it's an axis you can stake a place along, for every subject even. But left vs. right? Les extremes se touchent. The amount of times a conversation about politics has lead me to argue against a friend or family member with an absurd point beggars belief.

As a shorthand: You can't fix the economy by privatising everything, or nationalising everything. Freedom of speech applies especially to people you don't agree with, also to people who don't agree with freedom of speech. Immigration only adds more different people to your country, this is a totally neutral process, they should adapt enough to function and eventually (a century or so) will be indistinguishable from other inhabitants, i.e. will probably be anti-immigration themselves. It's not even remotely feasible for everyone to have all their basic needs taken care of, without a dynamic capitalist economy to pay for that, and even then some injustice is inevitable, unless we build an economy not based on money, like on star trek. It's stupid to start wars, but when you have, it's your responsibility to fix the country you invaded. Saving the environment is so difficult, we should make it the driving force behind fixing the economy. Governments should govern, businesses should do business, when they work together just as many good things happen as bad, but they are both entirely ineffective without individuals, who should have as much say in anything they do together as reasonably possible. Most of the people on the planet do not live in the U.S. or Europe, it's completely fair that they should have a bigger say in the stake of the planet then we do. Since the vast majority of the problems we have to tackle in the next hundred years are completely global in nature, it's our responsibility to use the advantage we have to get a result we can all live with.

I guess that makes me a romantic.

Politics 2: The great unwashed...

That's the swing voter, but also the general public at large. Most people are so confused and bewilderd by the modern world, they let themselves be influenced by whatever random concept of order politicians suggest, but never promise. Some people vote for the same party their entire lives, or large chunks of it, without ever reading a party program or a newspaper or watching the news. These people's polutical opinions are formed entirely from visual cues, conversations with equally ignorant people and vague ideas about where a party is on the spectrum vis-a-vis their own uninformed opinions. Scared out of their minds and bored and frustrated with the long and complex stories you have to follow to make sense of the world, they're easy prey for manipulative pricks that put on some bullshit persona to win the right to boss them around: I give you the general public.

Politics 1: Sociopathy is a political asset.

If only it were this painful for them, too. For me at least, politics are hell to follow and discuss with anyone. What I hate most is the staggering ignorance and stupidity on the side of the politicians, the general public and most so-called intelligent people. Last week's Dutch elections were quite interesting, but the discourse around it was just absurd, as per usual. Hence, a theme week:

Politicians are constantly involved in the pursuit of power, things like principles, ideals and even money are secondary concerns, if at all. The fact that so many of them drop out at some point prior to retirement should be a dead giveaway. What happens to these people after their political careers? Often they end up in powerful positions in public or private life, quite often considerably more powerful than they were. Politics isn't exactly an end goal. It's what you do before you become really powerful. Take this into account and their cynical behaviour becomes remarkably clear. There are some gormless idealists that end up in this industry, but they either don't get very far, or don't last very long. They are just so much grist for the mill of someone else's ambition.

Germany musically relevant outside of death metal

I really like this song, so it's a huge surprise it won Eurovision, and it's German as well! When I heard this song I was convinced it was by one of those mockney songstresses the British Music industry flooded the mainland with 2004-2008, but no. As you can imagine, this didn't sound so good live, but as a pop single it's infectiously fun. The exquisitely mannered way it's sung is perfect for the choppy production, and who cares if it's clearly sung by someone who thinks they're a much better singer than they are, that happens to be utterly charming in this case. I'm almost sorry I didn't watch Eurovision, but who wants to sit through 4 hours of 80% shit if you have something better to do? Germany is delighted of course, and is responsible for the gaga-esque view count on the video. For extra fun, check out the comments where sore loser Slavic peoples are loudly calling for bombing raids on each others' countries.

Alejandro video controversial!

Well, there it is. The only connection to the Spanish title is the juxtaposition of fascist and catholic elements, both of which aren't really spectacularly well done in this case. The only interesting element of the general choreography are the 'monks' and their gay/sm dancing. Gaga's outfits are considerably less interesting. That latex nun outfit makes me think of a sex in the 90's kind of documentary less than anything groundbreaking. Gaga's eyebrows are gone again, but what it signifies this time? I just know I don't like it. In general, I found this video to be sort of boring compared to the last few. Oh, and Katy Perry apparently thinks it's sacrilegious, unlike her video for California girls which doesn't exist, but judging by a song where she tries to sound like Miley Cyrus, is probably going to be a derivative, dayglo nadir of banality featuring Snoop Dogg:

Dutch elections most exciting in years, to no avail.

Surprisingly low turnouts for the 6th election in ten years, the same bizarre swings as protest votes went form the left to new viable options on the right. Controversial politician Geert Wilders has tripled the number of seats and is now the country's third largest, getting most of the votes of the heavily wounded christian democrats, proving that Jesus hates Muslims too, even though they're fellow Semites. There may be a right wing coalition, where it not for the fact that none of the parties in that coalition really want to work together, or have all that much in common. The left has most of the other half of parliament, but is divided into four relative large, and another 5 small parties. Absurd rainbow coalitions aside, some kind of right-left combination is most likely and indeed, most desirable. On the off chance that the right wing coalition does work, we'll be treated to hilarious scandal after scandal, then we'll just have to have another election in six months or so, at which point a left wing government will probably be formed, which might just finish it's fucking term. If some parties don't start fusing together, we'll need a fucking military dictatorship to run the country.

What's with all the quirky female singers

I missed this one, because it's from Germany. But anyway, what's her deal? That's not how I remembered 1994, and also kind of weird to hear someone in pop admit to having been a teenager when the current crop of teenagers were born.



Or this one? Denmark.

There just seems to be a new standard pattern for all female artists and it's this. Quirky videos with weird outfits, regardless of your music. I'm not saying I'm against it, it's just creeping me out that there's this concerted effort going on to standardise uniqueness. Don't they realise there's no such thing as middle of the road weird? You have to take the chance to genuinely alienate your audience and even then they might just shrug. This creepy puppet video has the right idea:

Avengers movie third in line...

Marvel is planning something weird and wonderful, if you hadn't heard. Spiderman, the x-men and the fantastic four are all stuck with other studios, so they have to use their other super team. Unfortunately, this team is made up of individual super heroes that all sort of deserve their own movie. But Marvel is trying to create a consistent 'movie version' of their comic universe, evidenced by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in all projects (except the 'regular' comic universe, where he's still white) since the Hulk 2. Now that Jon Favreau has shown exactly how to make a cool, efficient and structurally solid comic book movie, that template can be used again and again. Iron Man 2 is a great example of what Thor and Captain America will be like. Nothing spectacular, just solid, straightforward action. The big problem is that they won't have Robert Downey Jr., who had as much to do with the success of those movies as Favreau. Instead, we're going have to watch some generic attractive men do it, and less than perfect directors. Kenneth Branagh for Thor, because of the Shakespearean dialogue and Joe Johnston for Captain America, presumably because the movie will be about his 1940's origin. Johnston directed the excellent the Rocketeer, but also Jumanji, which would bode ill. Both Films have to recoup 100 million plus budgets and lead in to a probably even more expensive Avengers team up film, but just imagine if it works. DC has been much more cautious with properties that aren't Batman or Superman, but they are making a green lantern film with Van Wilder as the titular hero. They'd just have to reboot Superman, or save costs and use Brian Singer's gay version - the sensible choice if Batman has to be Christian Bale, and maybe make a wonder woman movie to get just about every character for a Justice league movie. Don't fuck this up, Hollywood...

Will.i.am blands it up a notch

Jesus Christ, how bland can one song be? Will.i.am isn't exactly a favorite of mine, it always sounds like he steals 2 or 3 good bits from a good artist, then proceeds to surround it with pure shit. This is one is worse than most, though. There's some lackluster singing over a way too long intro, then a generic poppy ballad verse backing track backs the chorus, then it's back to the intro. I could have made this with Ableton, and I have no musical talent whatsoever. Why the hell would Micheal Jackson have been working with this guy? I genuinely liked Cheryl Cole's last song, because it had a brilliant base line, underneath the requisite diabetic coma of a love song. That video also had something going for it, weird outfits like some low-rent gaga and visual effects that weren't just as boring and confusing as maritime law. The split screens come together, it was all the same space all along? Just buy a fucking computer already, and do something interesting.

I have been watching...

You have been watching is an excellent show, tossing Charlie Brooker's astute and funny, but slightly grating television criticism together with a classic panel show format. One of the absolute best things, however, is that runs for an hour with commercials, so there's plenty of time for these sort of experiments, which there really ought to be more of. It's like a lemon meringue, an acidic host, dedicated to snarky commentary on pop culture, slashing through panel show fluffy egg white, with plenty of air whipped in. It makes both more palatable.

Congress is important...

Shockingly, Elmo is the only non-human ever to have given testimony to congress. I imagined there must have been some dogs and horses called before the HUAC in the fifties, but no, it's just Elmo. It baffles me that there's no video for this. But that picture says it all, anyway. Most of my google searches for video led to articles complaining about the marginalised role that congress apparently plays in the governing of the U.S., but none of that seemed particularly shocking, though. The executive branch is pretty much the legislative branch as well? Doesn't that always happen? Whether you form your government based on a majority in the parliament or just elect a leader, there still the issue of some kind of support from the legislature. And most shocking, according to the academic papers, congress issues stupid laws that don't work in the real world, but sound good and then shoot down the executive branch for executing them in a cynical way? Have these guys even heard of politicians before?

List 2

Well, six months on, and here's what I'm watching/reading/listening to these days...

- More horrible pop
-'exotica' and easy listening jazz
- Anything with Charlie Brooker in it
- The thick of it
- Gore Vidal books
- Finaly read David Foster Wallace's Infinite jest
- Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice
- Covers and lots of them...
- Robert Kirkman's Invincible
- Wonky Pop
- The Big Bang Theory
(It's not great, but it's so fucking nerdy...)

Sad resolution to childhood mystery...

For years I had nightmares about certain scenes in this show, without remembering it was a cartoon I actually saw. It's crap and not scary at all of course, but pretty gruesome for something ostensibly for children. what's annoying me is that it could have been a great mystery, one of those weird memories that you're never really sure about. the last time I flicked through as many 80's cartoon intros as I could find I was looking for this, almost frantically. When I didn't find it, there was a sense of genuine spookiness. It felt a bit like having seen something unique, unrecoverable, something from somewhere else. I knew it had to be a real cartoon, my own memories are never traditionally cell-animated, but maybe, just maybe it wouldn't be what I thought it was. But of course it wasn't. I came across it and there it is, just an 80's cartoon with a bit more gore than average.

Kesha's career is following a pattern

In fantastically bad taste, this video finally gets the Kesha train back on track. The song is showing that whatever zeitgeisty producing duo is behind this, they now know how to perfectly match up their production to the vocodered valley girl inflections for maximum frontal lobe damage. As a culture, we've all won. But more importantly, two or three more singles, the inevitable Christmas album, the lackluster second album, lots of weird collaborations and then the 'back to basics' album (you know, acoustic guitars) and then years in the making comeback. The only question that remains is will the ridiculous 'bad girl' image last that long? It's endearing, but I don't think anyone is buying it.

Originality is about concealing sources...

Christ... It's getting harder and harder to see popular videos. Fuck VEVO and everything it stands for. Anyway, Christina Aguilera is back to recapture the 'outrageous blonde popstar' position from Lady Gaga. Unfortunately, ripping of the same basic source, Madonna, makes it look like she's ripping of Gaga. Every shot, every idea in this video is from a Madonna video. The song's title, and the blatant way in which it's copied is a definite message, but not the one I think they were after. I'm thinking this was meant as a kind of retort, i.e. 'I've been ripping off Madonna since the 90's'. Clever, but it's kind of missing the point. Gaga isn't wholly original, but she is going for the exact same feeling, not the whole thing again. Mostly, this video is a boring, desperate grab for our attention from someone who's just realised that she's become totally irrelevant in the last two years or so. But if that isn't following in Madonna's footsteps, what is? Expect a graphic sexual photography coffee table book by Christmas!

inbox

It feels weird and wonderful to have this much odd spam in my inbox. I must have used my old hotmail address for something cheap and stupid. But these pieces of randomised sex-poetry are so much better than the awful credit rating, internet universities and sleep medicine lists i was on. Good times.

I'm taking a break...

This week, holiday!

Even more Giant Robots...

It might as well have been giant robot theme week, but once you get into it... Grendizer is perhaps better know as Goldorak by French audiences, these two lovely videos pay testimony to it's enduring popularity:



If my spotty French is anything to go by: "Goldorak is dead, and my dad killed him."



Noted French Goldorak fans Metallica there, weighing in. Aside from these little gems, Grendizer was also the premier anime in the Arabic world, and Italian fans are now making the feature length remake themselves:

More Giant Robots!

After that giant Gundam Statue, another beloved Japanese giant Robot franchise gets it's life-size recreation. Considering japan's existing lead in Creepy robot technology, the hour draws nearer when they'll just attack China, and their crippling national debt be damned. If fake giant robots become ubiquitous, as they are now poised to, how long before real giant robots do? Sure, there's no point, but when has that ever been a problem?

Giant Robots Go!

In a typical 20 minute interval from work I looked up a cartoon I watched as a kid, because that's what you do with those intervals. I remembered this because of it's annoying/awesome theme song and bizarre Japanese dream logic storytelling, barely compensated by an English Dub.



It just looks a little weird, especially compared to the show, which just wasn't as filled with cool for 1985 flip-wipes, and seizure inducing colour effects. This is of course, because the Japanese opening is different and much weirder. Observe:



People who watched this show in America apparently had footage of this show, interspersed with footage of another Japanese giant Robot show, and some unconvincing 'alternate universe' explanation for these two different shows pasted together. Japanese stuff is difficult to make palatable to Western audiences, but there's no doubt in my mind which of these intros I would have preferred as a kid.

British politics more or less resolved for indeterminate period

Well, there we are. Conservatives get to fix the economy in the most cynical way they can come up with, but the Liberal Democrats get their reforms. The only question now is how bad they'll allow it to get before bailing. Lack of experience with coalitions, the general malaise and the little or no hope of ideological change in the government mean this might not last until the end of the year, if it wasn't for the horrible state of the Labour party. There won't be a competent opposition, maybe not for years. But there is some hope that the old Labour will come back, the social democratic party so thoroughly destroyed by Tony Blair. That would make a difference, and if this coalition holds, it may mean a brighter future where one of the richest countries in Europe isn't also the most in Debt, or has the highest teen pregnancy rate, etc.

The future of fashion is the past.

This is way less ridiculous than you might think. Just look at the guy's outfit at the end and realise that every webmaster you know looks like this, except all the gadgets are smaller. That's how the thirties envisioned the neckbeard they knew was coming, instinctively. Women in shiny, metalic dresses? The same outfit throughout the day? These guys knew exactly what was up. There's way to much pointing out of the obvious failures. We forget that the reason we don't have rocket cars isn't because we don't want them, it's because they're too expensive, ridiculous and unsafe. So many of these things are more cyclical than we'd like to admit. Imagine sitting in the sixties movie version of H.G. Wells' time machine and looking only at beard fashions from circa 1880-2010: Seeing unkempt muttonchops degrade to pencil thin mustaches, to clean shaven, to hippie hair, degrading into sideburns, back to mullets and 'taches, on to gelled tops and goatees, to resurgent neckbeards and permastubble.

British Political analysts struggling with concept of coalition...

There's no cute video for this. Anyway, British political commentators are struggling to explain to the public their own weird historical mutant of election law, where everything is an ad hoc gentleman's agreement. Aside from the fact that the Prime minister has to decide when he calls for an election, there's the case of the hung parliament where the sitting government actually gets to decide who to talk to first. But the Liberal Democrats have decided not to do that, not in the least because they wouldn't have a majority, even with Labour, but they would, with the Conservatives. But then, the conservatives aren't going to offer the Lib Dems Proportional representation, Which is what they need if they're ever going to be a viable contender in the future. Britain has one the most heavily gerrymandered district systems in the world, which is why the Liberal Democrats have 8% of the seats, when they have 23% of the popular vote. If the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government doesn't make it, then there is little to no hope of a majority government, unless there's a truly bizarre rainbow coalition in the works. If there's anything this election's proved, it's that the Liberal Democrats are right, Britain needs a major election reform so it can have the governments it needs, not this shit. And all the ranting and raving about how coalition governments are rife with 'horse trading' are just so much nonsense. Contra-moral sellouts labeled as compromise are the very soul of politics, and whether you dither and argue with coalition partners or extremists and lunatics within your own party is completely irrelevant.

Mid week video round up

Iyaz, the frontman for my proposed racially diverse boyband, the sugar thugs, gets in to the summer vibe with his new cool island video for a groan worthy pun song. It's got all the hallmarks, except for the 'tropical' lyrics. He might well be from the dominican republic or something like that (no, not going to the wikipedia page.), but some astute record executive should have realised that the video made this a coll island song to warm our hearts, and should have (1) pina colada or fruit reference...



The youtube comments for this are grumpy about this song sounding somewhat like Ace of Base's 'Don't Turn Around' as if Ace of Base is a paragon of originality, no one's commented on ABBA's Fernando, which is name checked. But what I really want to know, what's the video going to be like? Subject matter, etc. seems to point to a bolero jacket made from garbage bags and Gaga in a bloddy bullfighting match. Can't wait!

Porn reaches new heights...

Excellent news for nerds. The porn industry is finally beginning to realise where the money comes from and hopefully, this is the first of many beloved nerd properties to be artfully rendered filth. But seriously, this looks surprisingly good. The costumes are pretty close, the actors not half bad. You'd think the internet would have killed lush, competent productions like these, but apparently people are getting sated with the "point the camera at some naked meth addicts' artistic paradigm that's been an industry standard since '01. Decadently lavish porn parodies may just be the wave of the future now that customers are demanding non-linear value from their smut. In all fairness, there was nowhere to go in the whole extreme category, eventually you end up with snuff, which is just an absurd idea for a business actually trying to make money, the only way is up, storylines, believable acting and production values are the next throatgagging, and the world is once again a better place.

Every reality show ever...

Well if that doesn't stop you flattering yourself about the idiots you keep watching, I don't know what will. That's the sad tragedy of the ironic viewer, you're really watching it because you like it, even though you won't admit it. I think celebrity news should just be part of the whole main event anyway. Knowing that there's a weird twitter-based argument between two people you haven't thought about since '98 going on at this very moment is usually pretty uplifting, coming after the natural disasters, financial doom, political instability and random acts of senseless violence that make up the bulk of it. It's even a great all-purpose palate cleanser. Try this after a hard day's work and encroaching misery: Type [celebrity name] fight into google to end up somewhere fun. Who knew Nicole Kidman's bodyguard punched some guy?

Sugar thugs

Or Chris Brown, Sean Kingston, Jay Sean, Jason Derulo or even Lil' Wayne who is getting in on the act. There's a distinct effort to sell old fashioned R 'n B love songs to teenagers with some fresh, poppy production and bright colourful videos. Non-threatening, sensitive leading men are the bread and butter of such an effort, so Brown and currently incarcerated Lil' Wayne are struggling to be believable. There's no reason they can't graduate to lyrics about sex and drugs for a more adult market later. It's really a genius idea, marrying current production techniques and styles more often used for female artists to syrupy sweet content primed for teenage girls and gay men. Next, a racially diverse boyband with easily identifiable stock chararcters on the range between sweet kid and bad boy. It's the wave of the future.

French music is back, for now...

This excellent piece of popular music, burrowing into your brain and setting up shop instantly, is Belgian, so it's probably not as carefree as it sounds. The video and what I'm able to pick up from the lyrics seem to suggest a deep world-weariness not in keeping with the happy occasion. You see, this is the first time in years that something French was a hit in the rest of the European continent. France sort of started to trail off in the sixties, when it bypassed Rock and Roll entirely, and aside from a few pieces in the eighties and nineties, all French chart topping music has been in English. It takes just this kind of production, pitched right between annoying and unforgettable to make it, let's hope this means we'll have to learn French again. I actually welcome that thought.

Gordon Brown reveals human side...

Classic stuff. This looks more like the kind of thing that would happen on Yes Minister or The thick of it, than in real life. If you haven't been following the British elections, you probably don't care, but it might be genuinely interesting this time, seeing as the Liberal Democrats, who have been the second party in the country for years, until recent tory resurgence, might be needed to get a majority, which paves the way for a possible reform of the two-party system and the end of almost 30 years of right to center right domination in British politics. Gordon Brown's unending string of mistakes, of which this is just the most recent, are damaging, but mostly make both him and the Tories look bad for some reason. David Cameron is just a bit to eager and falls over these mistakes a bit too soon each time, but he's also just as stiff and useless as Brown is in reality. Not that the Liberal Democrats are a fount of Charisma, but they manage to look human most of the time. A hot summer of elections and coalition negotiations up ahead..

Gaga's reliably mad videos

I knew Lady Gaga wouldn't disappoint. We've been hearing this song for a while, but now we get to see this piece of inspired madness. Here's the uncensored 9 minute version, which wouldn't embed, thanks to Vevo. There's also six hundred thousand people singing it themselves to wade through before you can get it, but that's becoming par for the course for any video these days. There's so much garbage, where you have to sit through 10 second ads as well, there's hardly a point anymore watching anything that has corporate sponsorship attached. Oh, by the way, this video is entertaining and all, but it's not nearly as dense and interesting as the last couple or so. There's some Madonna, kill bill, poisoned mayonaise sandwiches, Natural born killers and Thelma and Louise references, but there all quite obvious. Jonas Akerlund, longtime Madonna collaborator is fine, but Gaga should really get Michel Gondry to do her one.

Heffner spends a cool Million on Symbolism...

Weird that it was Hugh Heffner that saved the Hollywood sign, though you would expect him to save the signal that lures many of his models to his doorstep, like a flat, white faced siren. I erroneously assumed that it was already a public landmark, etc. But turns out they had to buy it, and the surrounding countryside. It's bizarre, but typically American to have your most recognisable landmarks privately owned and operated. If they could afford it, someone would probably buy the statue of Liberty and build a housing development there as well. The inevitable decay of a landmark is one of the most interesting things about it. I love those Urban redevelopment plans where an old factory or something is rebuilt into something new and interesting. It's a tragedy that this probably won't happen to a lot of the buildings built today, we just don't know how to build beautiful ruins anymore.

That'll put an eye out..

Finally, a good use for your old box of legos...

Want to see new iron man...

I loved the first Iron Man movie. It really managed to capture the fun of a comic and deal with a semi-complex origin story in an appropriate number of minutes. Robert Downey Jr. was great, and so were the supporting players. It was also short, straightforward and to the point. Being the sequel, this is probably going to be somewhat less awesome, but Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell and Don Cheadle? Couldn't be better. Also note the appearance of Samuel L. Jackson, part of the concentrated effort to tie actors to specific roles in all films set in the Marvel Universe. If this movie does what it's supposed to, I think you can safely hand the Avengers movie to Jon Favreau and leave it at that.

Behaving like animals...

It's world week for animals in laboratories this week, but it's been suspiciously quiet. This is usually the week when animal liberation becomes temporarily violent, instead of mostly annoying. There is an obvious fault-line running through animal rights arguments, that the video is pointing out succinctly. The hypocrisy of treating humans as scum to save the chickens or others is completely lost on them. The motivation for saving animals seems to be based in self-loathing and guilt. This is probably why so many movie stars are members of Peta, that seems like a group ripe for all kinds of manipulative arguments.

I was right...

A while ago, I mused that Currently popular recording artist Kesha was going the same route as Katy Perry before her, lackluster follow-up singles, a dearth of performance chops when not supported by lavishly over-produced songs and the inevitable cheesiness of casual celebrity murdering the artistic impulse. This SNL performance with nonsensical alien interlude is the definitive proof. Insecure looks to stage right, where there must be some kind of person in charge of this looking on. It's almost like she was just released from the record company kennel and tossed in front of the studio lights for the first time ever. It's a shame really, for a moment I was beginning to believe the manufactured 'I don't give a shit' attitude she was peddling.

Superhero fashion critique!

Wow. You may know who this guy is, if you ever change channels and hang around on one of those fashion shows until you hear a bitchy comment and get all sassed up for the day. Which is why it's weird to see him turn up here, but even weirder is the term 'semiotics' popping up and the general high tone of the discussion. Who knew the gems you could get out of having some fashion professionals look at this stuff? This could be a feature length documentary and wouldn't get tired of it. This should be standard practice when designing a superhero costume. Get a fashion designer to look at it and give you an opinion, first. Just think of the awful costumes that could have been avoided, the great costumes that would have been left alone. This video comes by way of toplessrobot.com, which you probably should read

Sit back, relax, really experience the painting...

There's something to be said for getting around the museum virtually and a bit faster. You miss all the detail, the arrangement of the space, but you mostly waste time taking a longer look at paintings that don't deserve it, anyhow. If you don't get it quickly, then what, spend every day looking at the painting as a sort of transcendental meditation? You can do that with literally anything. That's kind of the point of the meditation.. What I mean is, I rarely walk through a museum and am suddenly hit by new revelations about a painting while looking at it. I know that's what's supposed to happen, but honestly, who has the time? there ought to be a fast way to just get the gist of it. Even the descriptions are weirdly long and involving stories usually..

Rappers need more Movie scores

I usually don't write about rap because most of it doesn't do anything for me. But since there's a full-on rap assault on mainstream pop going on, there's been some cool pop songs coming out and you find yourself looking up some songs. But this guy isn't really in that group, on the same label though. There's subtle auto-tuning for once and I like the way the rap is missing the beat until the syncopation sets in. But what I love is the orchestra sample, giving the whole thing a wonderful patina of early sixties movie cocktail parties. So many rappers are content to loop an abstract beat pattern and a minimalist sample and try to put all the expressive content in the lyrics, which stretches a lot of these guys' singing abilities past the breaking point. Auto-tune is a decent fix for this problem, but a richer, more layered sample gets the point across much better.

Better pranks on Chatroulette!

Chatroulette has already evolved from a pretty random concept to a great place for messing with strangers, but nobody buys the girls taking their tops fake videos anymore, and honestly who wants to see a bunch of guys jerking off anyway? It's the priceless reactions when your fake video cuts out and you get an embarrased guy stumbling for the computer with his pants around his ankles. This guy really makes the most of the it, just reaction shots all of the time. His antics are fine, but the reactions are just great. I love the fact that so many people seem genuinely happy to see an unconvincing tranny dancing to Lady Gaga.

Obama raping the country, angry Jon Voight exclaims...

Christ, this just goes to show some people shouldn't be reading about politics. You can see why Angelina Jolie has issues with the dude. The alinski method is apparently a socio-dynamic technique that liberals are taught to make it possible for them to talk you out of stupid things. Maybe there should be a 'real america' where everyone on Fox news could go live and just slowly die because no one remembers what western Medicine is. This kind of stuff is just so out there, where's it all going to end? When is political debate going to go back to normal? The problems just seem to be mounting up, but no one seems to be doing anything about them. It's necessary for there to be conservatives and progressives on all issues, but why do the conservatives have to be so crazy? And what the hell do they have to say before people acknowledge that they're insane?

The Cult of Originality

That video was pretty original, wouldn't you say? But it's still self-consciously aping another type of show, even parodying it, and it's certainly not the first to do that. This is the problem with originality, truly totally original works are completely impossible to understand or relate to, there really is no appreciable difference between it and a complete non-sequitur. When talking about originality, you're really taking as a given that's still recognisable as being part of a genre, or an established body of work. We live in more reflective times than in the last century, there seems to be more nostalgia, more influence, more references than ever before. Unfortunately forthose enamoured with the new, this is what it's usually like. The last century saw some entirely new media coming to dominate, and because of that, originality was the in plentiful supply. Those days are over now, we've returned to the status quo of reference in art. But the sustained burst of originality has left us a little different. Reference, homage, parody, when recognised as such, is now less, not more. We're more like late-renaissance artists, in that there is a large past of original geniuses behind us, but we have superior tools and knowledge. In their case it was Christianity that made them superior to the heathens, in our case it's freely available knowledge and technology. But they were relatively humble, seeking to emulate, adding only Christian moral philosophy and emulating in every other aspect, we are still chasing that elusive phantom, the completely original work that everyone regognises as a masterpiece.

After the apology, the redemption commercial...

The Tiger Woods scandal is about as boring as gets, millionaire sportsman cheats on his model wife? She hits him with a golf club? Snoozefest. But there's comedy gold in the ham-fisted way various image makers are trying to spin it. After the trite and insincere apology to the public, now there's a creepy admonishment from beyond the grave, while a luxuriant black and white shot of a blank, expressionless face fails to react in any way.
Most amusing: these results from a survey about what people felt after seeing this commercial. Mostly confusion, skepticism, disturbance, sadness. All things we will now associate with Tiger Woods. The one thing I would focus on, is his crazy wife. Why hasn't she been on Larry King or something?

Superhero mystique...

Since I avoid MTV like the plague these days, I didn't see this video until recently, and I'm glad because it spoiled the song for me. The heroes font queues the generic superhero plot, and then an ugly explosion of purple cgi, followed by questionable outfits, hair and makeup. This video really proves what makes superheroes in media other than comics so hard to do, it really is quite ridiculous if you don't get the tone right. Spandex doesn't look good on anyone really, and neither does a loose tank top. The song expertly mines a lot of pathos out of layering electric organ tones that would sound ridiculous on their own, achieving exactly what the video doesn't.

Evolution as art...

They're already pretty cool, but the most interesting thing about these things is the design process they go through. The artist is trying to simulate genuine animals by selecting successful traits and passing them along to the next generation. If he manages to build some kind of replication function in, this means we might be looking at a genuine plague of pvc sculptures on Dutch beaches. What if he has to build a predator to thin the herd? The possibilities are legion.

Comedians/writers know more about economics than Bankers

Observe:




It's shocking that you hear so little about these two basic truths expressed in these videos, that there's nothing wrong with the economy an sich, it's only a speculation bubble that collapsed, as they will, and that consumption is not the most important or useful index in gauging the size of the economy. Isn't it weird that Bankers and other financial professionals are the only ones who keep believing in getting something for nothing? Every financial disaster can be traced back to idiots believing in easy money. And they're right to believe in it, governments will pick up the bill if you mess up, then hardly complain when you use the money to give yourself a raise. The often touted argument that you need to pay well to get the talent required is false, there is no need whatsoever for clever, new ideas in banking. The more boring and reliable the banker, the better.

Are your kids old enough to learn about Cthulhu?

This just about takes the cake. H.P. Lovecraft's fantastic stories, though usually racist and unwieldy, almost always feature people going mad with the knowledge of older, as he would say eldritch, horrible creatures, to whom human beings are food. There's an endless parade of these creatures, but Cthulu is the famous one, even popping up in stories by Robert Howard and Clark Ashton, contemporary pulp-writers. This video blends the nauseating trend of 'baby' versions of known characters with it in a fantastic way. Hitting all the high points of the Ctulhu mythos and referencing the rest of Lovecraft's diverse collection of supernatural beings. The only one missing I'd still like to see is my favourite Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. Anyway, this would make an awesomely subversive Saturday morning cartoon, kids need to know this stuff if they're ever going to summon a being from the beyond.

Food inspiration

I was all set to make a breakfast burrito tomorrow, but the recipes just didn't appeal to me, consisting mostly of too many burrito staples, or too bland breakfast fare. Potatoes, onions and bell peppers sausage and scrambled eggs just aren't enough. Until I intuited what I really wanted, I was lost...
But Lo and Behold:
The English Breakfast Burrito!
-Baked Beans
-Scrambled Eggs
-Sausages
-Bacon
-Onion
-Mushrooms
-Hash Browns
-Toast

Prepare all simultaneously, throw in Burrito, dollop of sour cream, salt, pepper and
finish with brown sauce or ketchup.

I'm going to cook this tomorrow, and then you'll have photographic evidence.

April fool's day is now approved by major corporations

I've seen no pranks whatsoever by real people today, but hundreds of youtube video's, etc. by those brave defenders of comedy, the marketeers. Welcome to the new age of boring wackiness, with tons of bland comedy and lack of interest. Not that relying on the organised wackiness of your friends and family wasn't often gut-wrenchingly awful, but at least there was the possibility of someone spectacularly missing the point or doing something awful and inappropriate. Another monocultural milestone crumbles...

Brand diversification...

I used to love the National Geographic magazine, perfect for all the information you needed for any kind of school project and full of interesting pictures and diagrams to contrast the long, boring articles. When I became a bit older, the articles were actually okay, even if they were mostly written in that awful arch magazine style that makes so many publications utterly exhausting to read. But the National Geographic channel is mostly awful. Somehow it always manages to be less informative and a lot more pointlessly stupid than Discovery. There's a hell of a lot more 'America's blankest blank' á la Fox, and a lot less things you actually want to know. This is beyond the pale though. Who in their right minds would buy National geographic endorsed scents? What's next? The Economist sponsored global capitalism meal at McDonald's? Did the latest round of re- or deconglomeration turn these two into strange bedfellows? And what marketing dickhead engineered this?

I finally know my place...

In this Nerdy diagram about Nerds, dorks, dweebs and geeks, you can finally properly locate yourself as one of the archetypes. I was sure I was Nerd, but considering my disappointing levels of obsession, I'm probably a dweeb. Let's have a little poll. Results on Friday. Or just look at them now...

What are you?

Dweeb geek Dork nerd

View Results

Web Poll from Free Website Polls

Comics briefly relevant...

If you haven't been following Captain America, which I hadn't since the Civil War crossover killed him, you wouldn't know the latest issue was controversial for it's portrayal of tea party protesters, i.e. right-wing nut jobs who have a lot of unfocused anger about there being a black democrat in the white house, etc. and are using imagery from the American Revolution as a symbol to rally behind, presumably unaware of the sexual connotations of 'teabags' these days. The joke wasn't lost on the writer, artist and letterer of the comic, who decided to make a mild meta joke. This infuriated those morons who managed to wrangle an apology out of Joe Quesada, Marvel's awful and widely despised Editor-in-Chief, who also denied responsibility and threw the letterer under the bus. No one seems to care that this is exactly what the Captain America comic should be doing. The 70's and 80's were full of cynical storylines about the Dark Underbelly of The American Dream. The recent Disney takeover of Marvel might have something to do with it, Disney is great at being inoffensive and knows all about being litigious.

Rare Saturday post...

One more Music gripe. Two summers ago I was genuinely addicted to that Katy Perry song about her boring Lesbian adventure. Awful idea, singing, but awesome production. Then her second single went to much more boring and predictable places and I haven't cared since. The same thing is probably happening with Keisha, or however you're supposed to spell it. Compare if you will the rising tide of mediocrity:

Interesting, just the right kind of annoying first single:





Lackluster sophmore entries..:

Musical hairsplitting makes your life easier..

Thanks to the genius of music writers, I can now identify the two musical trends I love and loathe by easy labels. Kindercore is a label name but feels like it should be the name of the twee 'movement'. Owl City fits the definition but it also includes Belle and Sebastian and weirdly the Smiths, which I like. I can assume that's a bit of absurd bombardment of influences to forerunners, since for me at least, the whole point of the Smiths is the palatable lack of sincerity. Unfortunately for the label, which has a quite a few acts that I don't mind I'll never be able to identify them with anything else but this shit:



On the positive side is stuff like new young pony club, alphabeat, etc. Now collected under the name 'Wonky Pop'. Terrible name, but at least I can use it as a search term. Even if I've never heard of the band, it's become a reliable way of identifying what I like. Most of the DJ's doing the remixes are people left standing after 'electroclash' failed to become the next rock 'n roll. I couldn't think of a better recommendation.



If you want to make a sweet song, at least make it fast and danceable.

I can't stop watching the Venture Bros.

This little scene just about encapsulates what I love about this show. The total failure of almost all of it's characters at almost everything. The violence, obscure Nerdy references and dead baby comedy would be enough to keep me entertained, but there's very little replay value in it. I just can't get enough of the failure, though, it's just incredibly endearing. I found out recently that the show has a rabid fanbase, and that doesn't surprise me. Everything about it is pitched to the kind of people who care passionately about something weird and it just fills the void perfectly. It's pretty much the same gimmick X-men used, finding the right one-size-fits-all metaphor for a whole generation of people. This show is perfect for the disillusioned nerd of today. Combining Nostalgia and existential dread with snarky pop-culture humour, it catches the flavour of the times better than anything else at the moment.

The second golden age...

Further rustling through my comics collection turned up the gems I became more interested in in the home stretch towards college, when beer money eclipsed comics for a few years. Vertigo was a weird mix of more adult-oriented material. When Alan Moore and Frank Miller revolutionised comics in 1986, Marvel did nothing, but DC decided to recruit some more Brits from 2000AD and it's competitors. The British comics scene took much more advantage of the total lack of interest from serious critics to move towards more underground and weirder stuff. Not being taken seriously meant doing whatever you felt like. Consequently the comics were tackling big issues, lacked meaningful censorship and attracted better writers. Vertigo imported these guys wholesale and set up the comics version of HBO, a well-funded mainstream home for non-mainstream material with a high emphasis on quality over quantity. Around '97 or '98 I was bored with the x-men and decided on a whim to subscribe to the four hottest vertigo/dc titles of the moment. I followed Hellblazer, Preacher, Hitman and The Invisibles. Consequently I got sucked into a mind-expanding world of shocking violence and evil occult shit. I specifically picked up the Invisibles because of a wizard magazine list of the weirdest things in the comic. If I hadn't done that I never would have gotten out of the x-ghetto, and would probably have lost all interest in comics forever.

Cheap effects

I inadvertently flicked through the space battle at the beginning of Star Wars episode 3 recently and instantly reconnected with my boredom the first time I saw it. J.G. Ballard, apocalyptic fiction writer extraordinaire, famously wrote an essay pointing out why Star Wars' visual aesthetic was so convincing and philosophically interesting. It was a future filled with technology that was dirty and malfunctioning, i.e. the often overlooked downside to advancement. Most sci-fi tries to make the most of the future, all cars are new, everything is shiny, etc. Just ask yourself from 1990 what they thought 2010 would be like. Whereas the old Star Wars had handmade cardboard and plastic models, covered in grit, scratches and fingerprints, this one cgi's the shit out of that space battle, leaving us with a day-glo plastic version of a battle with graphics that you'll be able to make with an iphone app in a year or so.

celebrity news is becoming too mundane.

It was always banal, but the recent crop of celebrity news stories is just terrible. That 24-hour news cycle is wreaking havoc on the bland little dramas playing out on the airbrushed canvases that are supposedly real lives. How are we supposed to get excited about the same old stuff when you hear bout it every five minutes? Every time the cheryl cole song comes on the radio there's a joke about her failing marriage. I've heard so many jokes, it feels like I'm divorcing here. It's almost like they've caught on. Only reality stars surprised by the burgeoning popularity of their show are still caught out. There's a whole industry of publicists and other random media jockeys defusing, editing and just crushing the life out of every scandal before it even breaks. A friend of mine gets press-releases about impending 'spontaneous' flash mobs regularly. I never really bought all that stuff about the media being controlled, but then I've never been this bored by the low-rent shenanigans on T.V. Cheating, divorce, Micheal Jackson's death still mysterious? I'm beginning to think these people don't matter at all.

Katamari Fever...

I've been having constant Katamari cravings. It really is my favorite Weird Japanese thing. I mean, I like sushi and all, but Katamari is so much better. What could be more thrilling than rolling up everything in the world to make a giant ball? I don't have an X-box or and old playstation, so I'm relegated to waiting to see if friends want to play, but I'm this close to buying one for the purpose of Katamari alone. In the mean time, there are plenty of online games to waste my time with. I liked Canabalt, but this gives me the window dressing I really wanted for that game. Robot Unicorn attack from adult swim games, who thought that would be a place to check?

They eventually rocked a body

I've hated every other Black Eyed Peas song. I don't know what about them exactly annoyed me so much, but they're songs always felt derivative and trite. Their songs alwys manage to capture something of the zeitgeist and sound suspiciously like something that was briefly popular last week. Compare 'I got a feeling' to Iglu and Hartley "in this city". This one has many of the same qualities, but somehow gets it right for the first time. When I heard it on the radio I thought it was the new Major Lazer, until I realised that wouldn't be on the radio in drive time. Maybe it's because they vocodered Fergie's voice into Oblivion. It definitely has nothing to do with the video.

Fond Nerdy Memories

After recently re-acquainting myself with my vast horde of comics, assembled in my misspent youth, I began obsessively re-ordering, re-bagging and re-boarding all of it. I'm not even halfway done, but already my questionable taste in comics is becoming an embarrassment. My bookshelves now hold some slim volumes of TPB's of cool alternative stuff by hip authors and such, but the vast majority of my actual comics is a vast swathe of x-men comics encompassing most of Chris Claremont's run, and all of the terrible Nicieza-Lobdell-Seagall conga-line of failure that followed it. There were some great storylines, sure but this was also the era where everyone was suddenly inexplicably related and the amount of titles to follow numbered in the dozens a week. The Claremont era, though equally convoluted and filled with purple prose, was a hell of a lot better. I started reading the x-men because of a whole year's worth of dutch reprints bundled together by the publisher which was staring me in the face back in '93. Uncanny x-men 258-270. I was immediately fascinated by how complex it was. Every issue seemed to be about a bunch of different people, all of whom were part of a superhero team at some point, but I'd missed that. Just because I wanted to know how exactly all these random weird events had happened, I spent most of the next couple of years tracking down every issue I could find and buying all the new ones. And I'm this close to starting again. I already have the list of the six issues I'm missing memorised.

Church claims pedophilia is everywhere..

Computer problems over, so back to a regular schedule. Ridiculous attempts at relativity from Rome today. Pedophilia is so rife in the outside world, people shouldn't be surprised that there are so many cases of it in an international organisation like the church. I'd never seen it that way, cardinal in charge of PR. It's almost as if they're doing this on purpose now. What the hell is wrong with an apology? Or massive show trials? Everyone knows it's been going on for years. It's also the most obvious end result of denying people relationships with adults and then putting them in charge of kids. Would you hire a recovering drug addict to be the night watchman in your heroin factory? Who knew billions of years old sex drives would trump a set of contradictory and useless rules? Why can't they just turn over the pedophiles? Society outside the church does harbor less of them, because hen they're caught, they're severely punished. And how could the church possibly be against that?

Acces denied!

Since this film, computers can do whatever the plot requires in a Hollywood movie, no matter how insane. Wait, scratch that, Weird Science had two guys make an entire human being with a 286. And I forgot war games. Sometimes, I just wish that some of the software I have to work with is as clever as those machines in the movies. I spent most of yesterday convincing some crappy graphics program to just let me figure out the CSS of a menu and just give me the pictures. I just ended up with lines and lines of ridiculously inefficient computer-generated code. According to Gödel, Escher, Bach that's one of the prime indicators of intelligence, finding another way to do a job that isn't an endless repetition of simple tasks. Computers aren't stupid, but they'll never let their mind wander.

Is your job your defining characteristic?

I had an absurd conversation like this not too long ago. A woman who expected an enormous amount of praise for her job as a social worker. I just don't get why she thought everyone would fall over her because of this. I guess it's tough, but if the job really brings you to the brink of despair several times a day, maybe it's just that you're not cut out for it. If you're going to spend 40 hours a week on it, it better be something you like. I had an another altercation with a professional marine, once. The general thrust of his story was that he didn't want to die, and that it was all the fault of politicians. I countered that if, for instance, the military were in charge of the government, he'd probably still be expected to die. I believe it's inherent to the job. If you want to live, you can increase your chances by not picking jobs were dying is part of the description.

computer problems...

This just to say I was offline today and there's nothing forthcoming.. Better days tomorrow..

In a Paralell Universe, Meryl Streep wins...

I ignored the blind side until after Sandra Bullock's oscar win last night. I genuinely thought that it would be one of those competently made, but annoying if you think for a minute, message-movies the academy loves so much, like crash, also with Bullock. But it's so much worse... The whole point of the movie is that being adopted by rich white people will turn black kids into a success via the arts of montage, trite metaphors and incredibly obvious life lessons. I'm usually not that sensitive to random race issues, but the whole atmosphere of the movie was slightly sickening. It's almost as if the main thing keeping black people from success in America is their lack of structure, homespun wisdom and connections to college football teams. What's next? A Barack Obama biopic where he gets taught to dream of the presidency by a kindly old Richard Nixon? A young Nelson Mandela travels back in time and learns about the injustice of slavery from Abe Lincoln? Snoop dogg dropping out of high school because the ghost of Billy the kid tells him so?