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.