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!

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?

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?

Don't go in there!

For my second theme week: Most annoying movie character behaviors. Everyone hates the idiots in horror movies that randomly end up killed or raped after ignoring a barrage of obvious signs that they probably shouldn't. It's the worst kind of cliché, but the plot demands everyone behave like a complete idiot. This also extends to nobody believing in the killer except for one person, the incompetent police force and the almost archetypical way everyone that has sex is instantly murdered. Of course it's been spoofed extensively, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from clinging to it, as the standard horror format. Even the classier version, driven insane by knowledge of a conspiracy/underlying secret of the universe/family drama is becoming kind of grating. The last horror movie I saw, Drag me to Hell, was a great return to the kind of plot we deserve, horror morality tales. It still has random disbelief and naivité, but at least there's a great, realistic motivation.

If you have fans, they probably want you to have a gay love affair

Yes, there are an enormous amount of stories about Kirk and Spock's gay relationship, and there have been for years. Everything that gets sufficiently popular gets it's own cabinet of horrors where horrible writers try to mangle maxims and end up indulging whatever perverse desire they have. It's only because of the internet that everyone can see it. Also surprising is how much of it isn't terrible, a handful for each franchise, but still. That's pretty amazing if you consider that the only requisite is a medium command of a language and a familiarity with the franchise. There is one profoundly weird thing in all this, aside from the wildly varying levels of quality, most fanfiction writers are women. The theories range from higher female interest in motivations, doubts, etc. to men's more visual thought processes, leading to fanvideos, etc. But I think it's because women are just much more perverse, and that's what it takes to make it.

I'm not angry, I'm disappointed 6: Legitimate complaints and right wing activism

The left is the center and the right is the new revolution. This is the last point in the documentary, which is full of interesting snippets, but this is the meat. This guy is pretty awesome anyway, but he's also one of the few academics you see popping in lots and lots of political debates, the other obvious one being Dawkins, who's just a shade too zealous to be taken seriously by his opponents. But this point, and the elaboration on Berlusconi are essentially the reason behind the weird right wing revolution that's been growing since the late 70's. The people, individual freedoms, revolution. All these themes are right wing now. Reagan and Thatcher began this thing in the west, the ayatollah in the Iran. The resolute reclamation of rhetoric and narrative from the left. Now, the status quo is heavily under attack again. But the status quo is now the liberal left, and the future is bleak.

Bitter and betrayed: The Cynthia Adler story

Compelling stuff. I always wondered where that slew of awful movies where women face terrible, unbelievable choices to reveal a secret that will tear their families apart, came from. It's a whole channel, with lovely entries like 'Why I wore lipstick to my mastectomy' 'Crimes of Passion: She woke Pregnant' and 'Cyber seduction: His secret life'. It also conveniently explains what happens to actresses that seem to disappear after their TV shows are canceled, they can't all be doing broad way. The film I watched a ten minuet segment of yesterday featured a women finding it difficult convincing her teenage daughter not to have sex with her boyfriend as she was pregnant with the child of a married man while delivering stupid anti-youth culture lectures drenched in hypocrisy her teenage daughter didn't detect! Hollywood magic, people.

The images in the media are killing girls!

Those cheeky advertising boys, always playing to women's insecurities. And constantly having to see attractive women, and pornography of course. What I find most annoying though is the constant denial of the most important factor: other women and their constant transparent mind games. It sometimes seems like every woman I know has a coterie of five or six 'friends' hanging around whose only purpose is to damn everything you do with faint praise. Pointing this out won't make you popular, but fuck it, it has to be said. My mother cleans her house before the cleaning lady comes, so she won't see the mess. Yeah, of course her house is clean, in fact she's so good at cleaning you hired her. The only thing you can apparently hope for is if one of their kids is on drugs, or their boyfriend is gay so you can chuckle about it in private, even though you'd rather laugh in their face...
Luckily, you can always watch oprah, which is the same thing, but as a TV show.

Yogurt

We've been living under the horrifying spectre of random health products for so long we can't even recognize a laxative anymore. Just to reiterate what every reasonable person ought to think when they see this: A yogurt company has created a patented, trademarked new bacteria that somehow finds it's way unscathed to your lower intestines, where it performs all the oddjobs your native intestinal flora is just to damn lazy for, which you notice because of the improved regularity of your bowel movements? Where can I get it? If they can do this, why am I still waiting for tar-scrubbing nanobots in my cigarettes?

G-spot Gone!

Terrible news, it's like hearing they bulldozed Disneyland. I was so sure I'd been there, but it was all in my dreams, apparently. There is some hope, though. The research only proved that there is no physical difference between women who claim to have it, and those that don't. It could still be psychological. It like to try a little reality hacking here, you've all read or seen peter pan, right? If we just believe in it, we could make it real. Everyone around the world clap your hands if you believe in the G-spot, don't let it die!

Jupiler is apparently the extreme sports beer

I like Jupiler less now. I get the distinct impression that this campaign is the end result of an orgy of high fives after a 'let's work things out' rockclimbing session with executives from Jupiler and the add agency. Glistening sweat, subtle homo-erotic tension, one of the Jupiler guys, out of shape, slips, the rope tightens, saved by the ad agency. While eating sandwiches at the top, the agreement is made. This is why you have to see this. Thanks, male bonding.