Terror Fabulous

TB&CASS-w '07: My Hyperreality can beat up your Hyperreality

2007-03-10T06:49:00.000-08:00

Captain America, moments before his death. (c) Reuters

I'll get to Captain America in a second, but first: Newt Fucking Gingrich. Apart from having a truly excruciating name, it has now come to light that he is also a massive hypocrite. You see, while Newt was busy impeaching President Clinton he was also having an extra-marital affair. Once again: while he was impeaching a sitting President for lying about something absolutely of no interest to anyone he was fucking another woman behind his wife's back. Pretty much everything about Clinton's impeachment makes me sick: that a talented and charismatic President who oversaw a period of sustained prosperity could be impeached for nothing while a President who entered office in dubious circumstances, turned a five-trillion dollar budget surplus into a deficit in a matter of months, started one war to smash a terrorist network before ever-so-quietly deciding it wasn't worth the effort, bullshitted his way into a war that has had absolutely no benefit to anyone anywhere (even the shadowy cabal of oil executives who secretly run the world lost out on Iraq), didn't care about black people enough to assign anyone more qualified than the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association to handle the deadliest storm in his country's history, a President who did all this and more will leave office with his reputation more or less intact.

Okay, rant over: Captain America.

Whilst doing a little research on Cap' for The Baudrillard and Captain America Simulated Super-week '07 I stumbled across an article written by film critic and talk radio host Michael Medved. I've linked to it below, but here it is again.
The title: Is Captain America a traitor? The jist: Yes.
You see, by acknowledging that fire-bombing the civilian population of Dresden wasn't very kind, that not everybody can enjoy U.S-armed militias slaughtering their family and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (which inspired the Captain America story Truth: Red, White and Black) wasn't an awfully nice thing to do Captain America, the fictional character, has betrayed his country. He concludes the article with this startlingly retarded paragraph:

We might expect such blame-America logic from Hollywood activists, academic apologists, or the angry protesters who regularly fill the streets of European capitals (and many major American cities). When such sentiments turn up, however, hidden within star-spangled, nostalgic packaging of comic books aimed at kids, we need to confront the deep cultural malaise afflicting the nation on the eve of war.

Blame-America logic? I'm no Spock, but isn't there a difference between blaming heartless military tacticians, shady black-ops guys and racist medical experimenters for the shitty, shitty things they do and blaming an entire country? Doesn't the Sentinel of Liberty kinda, sorta exist to challenge Americans to live up to their ideals? Doesn't the America in Captain America refer to a fictional America in which the government okays a bill to build giant robots to beat up minorities?
Cap's not the only one living in a fictional America. There's a simulation of America between the ears of every human being in the world, myself included. It can be a bastion of freedom or an oppressor, it can be run by the will of the people or a illiterate with a messiah complex or a cabal of shadowy oil executives or shape-shifting alien reptons. There's one America that infected black men with syphilis for no particular reason and one that didn't. The writer of Truth: Red, White and Black lives in the former, Michael Medved would prefer comic-book readers lived in the latter whilst smart, objective guys like him guard the 'controversial' aspects of America's history. That's what an argument is: two almost completely spurious world-views rubbing up against each other.
It's painfully obvious that different people see the world in dramatically different ways, but most people are still hung up on the idea that there's a core reality that, if we all had equal access to the same information, we could all agree on. Baudrillard charmingly terms these folks 'Reality Fundamentalists'. Now, there is a physical objective reality, trees that fall in the woods make sound even if nobody's around to hear it, it's just that the human capacity for self-delusion trumps it time and time again. Reality hasn't disappeared, we've just found something better: Hyperreality.
In our current hyperreal condition it doesn't matter that the Allies dropped firebombs on Dresden or that the CIA funds terrorists or scientists infected black men with syphilis- we have flags and bald eagles and a white hand shaking a black hand. What's more: we're right. Right about everything. So right it hurts. The fundamental correctness of America has been stated so many times that it no longer matters what it is to be right or good. It does matter, however, when Captain America says that his country may have the odd skeleton in its national closet. Now that it doesn't matter whether something is fact or fiction and when most people get their opinions on the matters of the day from celebrities the politics opinions of a spandex-clad super-soldier have become much more important than those of a real person.

To play us out sit back and relax to the smooth Canadian indie-rock stylings of Broken Social Scene's Anthems for a Seventeen-year-old Girl.

RIP: Jean Baudrillard and Captain America

2007-03-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

Captain America's last moments, from Captain America #25

So, it's Friday evening and pretty soon I'll be going out to eat with friends. Just enough time for two maudlin pour-a-40-on-the-cerb obituaries: Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) and Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America (1941-2007). You can guess who got more press coverage, but then something tells me Baudrillard would have appreciated the irony of his death being outshone by the possibly faked and certainly reversible (it's comics after all) death of a fictional character.

If one is to accept the rules of our (post)contemporary language game then perhaps we may say that the above simulacra (de)refers to Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard's life and work may not have been as viscerally exciting as Cap's but it was real, right? He may have never punched Hitler or been into space or fought in a Superhero Civil War, but he had friends, lovers, critics, interests. Jean Baudrillard breathed, pissed, got drunk and threw up, walked into rooms in and forgot what he was doing, ate too much cake and danced (perhaps badly, perhaps not), just like you and me, right? Because surely there's a clear line between what's real and what isn't, right?
Well, Baudrillard had some interesting things to say about reality and more importantly, hyperreality- the state we're in when Variety, USA Today, The Scotsman and The New York Times can run articles that read like obituaries for a superhero killed in a comic book. Cap', on the other hand, defender of the the nation where hyperreality was born, is a useful guy to have around when discussing the world's sole hyperpower.
To honor them both I'm making the next week The Baudrillard and Captain America Simulated Super-week '07.
So, to kick things off here's Stephen Colbert's reaction to Cap's death, echoing Michael Medved's sentiments (which were in turn borrowed from J. Jonah Jameson, and which I'll address sometime during TB&CASS-w '07)

Destructo Swarmbots- Robot Apocalypse Warning set to Severe

2006-11-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

It's on a carpet now, but soon it will be in our cities

As of 00.00 hours, November 10th 2006 the Robot Apocalypse Warning has been set to 'Severe' for the second time in history (the first being when I tuned into Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D halfway through and thought it was a documentary).
Reports now show what we have all feared has come to pass: Swarmbots have been built which can cooperate to overcome shared goals, much like Ants or Communists. This means that they will soon work towards the goal of all Robots, Ants and Communists: the destruction of all mankind! Their unique cooperative AI even allows them to cross small gaps, which are humanity's first line of defense against the combined Red/Insectoid/Mechanical menace.
Who would have the weak will and foul body odor to build such blasphemous contraptions? Why, none other than the French; who aren't content with having rolled over for the Nazis but are now rolling out the welcome mat for Johnny-Robotic!

Review: Tales of the Unexpected #1

2006-10-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

The cover, by Mike Mignola. Nobody expects a Mike Mignola cover!

Expect the Unexpected! But also expect SPOILERS

Tales... of the Unexpected! The name might be familiar to British readers- it was Roald Dahl's TV showcase for his short stories that ran on ITV from 1979 to 1988. This is a little different though...
The main thrust of the comic is The Spectre, with a back-up story with skeptical paranormal investigator Doctor Thirteen, which is a shame since Doc's story blows away the A-feature with superior writing and artwork, but we'll get to that in a minute.
Recapping the history of The Spectre would make my eyes bleed, so here's all you need to know to get up to speed: The Spectre is God's spirit of Vengence, capital V very much intended. If you do something wrong, The Spectre dishes out an ironic punishment. Why Speccy chooses to a few random lowlives when big-ticket killers like The Joker, Lex Luthor and Darkseid are allowed to live isn't explained. Left to his own devices The Spectre is a purposeless mass of scary green swirlyness (to use the technical term), so it needs a human soul to give it direction. That's where former homicide detective Crispus Allen comes in. He'll be familiar to readers of the brilliant, much missed, cancelled-before-it's-time series Gotham Confidental, in which Crispus died, freeing up his soul to be Spectricated.
The story itself is a whole lot of grime, cockroaches, blood, rats and blood that's been left out so long it's turned to grime. It's supposed to recall the old EC horror comics, but instead we get a reimagining of Se7en where we're supposed to root for John Doe. And he's an all-powerful vengence spirit detective ghost. I hate to be all comics-code but the gore is way too much for an all-ages comic- there's close ups of heads exploding, close ups of rotting corpses, a crime scene in which the inker had a epileptic fit while doing the red air-brushing, a giant green rat vomiting black oil that turns into rats which eat this guy. If the last one sounds retarded then that's because it is, but it's also UNEXPECTED! so the comic has fufilled its remit. It gets a C- out of ten.
The B-comic, Doctor Thirteen, is much more satisfying. Terry Thirteen is an inexplicably wealthy widower who has never had any job considered more 'real' than Paranormal Investigator and he's having sex dreams about his daughter. Writer Brian Azzerello spends the prologue telling us why prologues are sloppy writing, the next two pages in a dream sequence which would make David Lynch scratch his head, then takes us through a soft-focus erotic fantasy about the main character's daughter and then right on into the plot itself. Doc 13's old college buddy, the French Premier, wants him to investigate a plane crash in which the survivors ate each other and were themselves eaten by a Yeti-like creature.
Artist Cliff Chiang makes Thirteen and his daughter jump off the page. The panel of Thirteen approaching the Yeti to tell him off is more evocative than anything in the majority of comics put out today, and when one panel in a backup feature does more for me than whole comics you know the industry's in a rut. I've not read much of Azzarello's stuff apart from his short Batman run but based on Doctor Thirteen I'm going to check out more of his work. The good doctor himself is defiantly square, meticulously skeptical and yet believable. His interactions with his teenage daughter should be a mass of cliches but somehow they work. And then there's the incest thing. Although there's no indication that they've actually done anything, there's a tension there that suggests something that should be creepy and alienating but coming from a character as disarming as Doctor Thirteen it just works to add a dimension to what could be Skeptical Enquirer magazine rendered in comic format. There's a 'blink and you miss it' on page six where Thirteen almost describes their ancestral home as their incestral home. Which isn't a word. I've checked.
The ending, which I won't give away, is absolutely classic. I give Doctor Thirteen in 'Architecture and Morality' 83% of two thumbs up.

Robot Apocalypse Warning set to 'Increased Readiness'

2006-10-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

Begin stockpiling canned food and batteries. Zou Renti, whose name will forever live in infamy as a traitor to his species, has bought the CyberRapture one step closer with this incredibly life-like robot clone. It can 'move it's face (towards evil) and talk (about killing humans)'.

Via The RAW Feed, which I assume stands for Robot Apocalypse Warning, since they link to both articles on The Pentagon's Robot Insect Army and the Flying Cars and 155mph Buses which can be used to outrun them.

Accidental Pornography from Accidental Pornographer

2006-10-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hose. Not Pictured: Ho's.

Accidental Pornographer (NSFW) has some lovely pictures of professional pretty lady Gia Paloma, star of the delightful romps Double Reamed and Creamed, Texas Asshole Massacre and the Merchant Ivory adaptation of T.S Elliot's Shitty Shitty Bang Bang. Normally I wouldn't alert the internet that a porn starlet is taking her clothes off, but the pictures are sort of nice, tasteful, and a little sad. Except for the picture of the hose above, or the one where miss Paloma is peeing. That's just gross.
Also, in researching Gia Paloma's venerable ouvre I found out that she's actually younger than me by a couple of months. I don't know why but that weirds me out. I still think of myself as a young person, so it's odd that somebody who I could have sat next to in High School has starred in 170 hardcore porn films, won an award for 'Most Outrageous Sex Scene' and is named by Wikipedia as the first person to be Donkey Punched on film. I haven't even had sex off camera 170 times, I've never won an award for Most Outrageous anything and nobody's in a hurry to write a Wikipedia article about me. I also found her incredibly hard to read Myspace, which plays 'I wanna be your dog' by the Stooges and shows that I have basically the same taste in books as somebody whose average workday could involve having two enormous cocks in her ass. And often does.
So what have we learnt? 1) I'm a prude 2) I've wasted my life 3) Pornstars can't design web pages for shit.

Cry for the moon with the Japanese X-men

2006-09-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

Shock! Please find enclosed the intro for the Japanese version of the mid-nineties X-men cartoon, the one that pretty much raised me. I'm sure that if I had grown up with the Japanese version I'd be a lot louder. Break out!

Marvel Babies. You heard me, Marvel freakin' Babies

2006-09-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Cinematical for tipping me off to this one.
It's Marvel. It's babies. It's wickle versions of Hulk, Spider Girl (or woman), Captain America, Wolverine, Spiderman and Doctor Octopus (Seriously, what does a baby need mechanical tentacles for?).
Some questions:

Does Baby Hulk turn into Baby Bruce Banner? Can we please get Ang Lee to guest direct and episode in which the Hulk is a metaphor for anger and abandonment issues and consequentially, is shit-boring?
Wolverine's raison d'etre is killing people. He's the best at what he does and what he does ain't pretty enough for family entertainment. Since I'm guessing this is aimed at toddlers what exactly is going to be Logan's schtick if he can't cut HYDRA agents in half?
How much freedom should Marvel Babies give up for security?
They're not making a Runaways show because...?
Doctor Octopus- why?
And they do what exactly? They're too young to be fighting crime, even baby-level crime like cookie thefts, and yet they're freakin' Superheroes and have to do something vaguely superheoric or this is just Rugrats in spandex. Which is just creepy
The original Muppet Babies had a mother figure who had somehow given birth to a litter of half-human hybrid creatures, in a reference to the classic Island of Dr. Moreau. Who in the Marvel universe could fill such important shoes? Aunt May? The Avenger's butler Jarvis? The Weapon X programme (Cap and Wolverine are both graduates)? My guess- in the episode 'Marvel Babies- Dissasembled' we find out these are the Scarlet Witch and Vision's kids and they blink out of existence in a cross-over special with the other Marvel cartoons. It's edgy and kids can totally relate.

And lastly:

Doctor Octopus- What the fuck?

Liveblogging a bad copy of a worse movie: Crank

2006-09-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

As promised I have 'acquired' the film Crank, a copy of which magically found its way onto my computer and- Wait, let me start over.
I downloaded the film Crank via bittorrent since I don't believe I should have to pay for anything, ever, and that goes double for films with Jason Stratham in them. This said I did intend to review Crank since the premise was so absurd that maybe, just maybe, there was a great film in there. So, for the next eighty minutes and forty seconds I'll be watching Crank and recording my thoughts- LIVE! Get ready for an EXTREME blogging experience! EXTREEEME!

3.10: Okay, so a generically foreign evil-doer has informed Jason Stratham's 'Chev Chelios' that he has an hour to live. You don't want to get Chev Chelios mad. So far the film has been 190 seconds of dialogue and camera tricks that are about as appealing as having grandpa fart into my mouth.
3.11: The song 'New Noise' by Refused starts playing. This is the greatest film ever made.
4.05 The song 'New Noise' by Refused ends, replaced by Jason Stratham talking. Not good.
11.24: Mr. Chelios discovers that shovelling coke up your nose from the floor doesn't cure being poisoned. Who'da thunk it? Instead he declares: 'I know what I have to do... Kick some black ass!'. Even without the b-word in there it's a horrible piece of dialogue, but instead the writers chose to go down the oft-travelled 'horrible piece of dialogue + makes the main character look like an evil racist' route. He attacks twenty armed men of African-American descent with a baseball bat and... it cuts to the exterior of a building in 'da ghetto' with Mr. Chevy 'Tolerance' Chaseos running away from the now unnarmed persons of color.
16.03: The song 'Achy-Breaky Heart' by Billy Ray Cyrus is played. While I know it's supposed to be ironic I can't shake the sneaking suspiscion that I may be witnessing the worst piece of art in any medium ever produced by humankind.
18.25: Whichever mouth-breather gave up any chance of ever losing his virginity to film lousy movies for the Internet starts shaking the camera around. That or it's the only not-so-clever camera trick in this movie that I haven't seen in at least a dozen superior films.
21.02: Mr. Diversity 2006 Chev Chelios steals a cab by throwing its Middle Eastern driver to a pack of WASPs and shouting 'Al-Qaeda! Al-Qaeda!'.
33.09: Whilst in a hospital to score some ephinephrin, the ever-logical Mr. Chavro, or whatever, decides to get himself zapped by those heart paddle thingies. Clear!
36.17: The ephinephrin gives Chev Chelios a raging hard-on and he runs around L.A in hospital robes. I really wish I was kidding about this, that it was some quirky gag at the expense of this awful, awful film, but that's basically the gist of the last five minutes of the film.
37.25: Chevy steals a police bike and rides around while Harry Nillson's 'Everybody's Talkin' At Me' is playing. The combination of stealing law enforcement vehicles and listening to classic rock gives everybody who's ever played a Grand Theft Auto game chronic deja-vu poisoning.
38.20: Okay, going from standing on the police-bike in a Jesus pose with Nillson playing to jumping face-first into a cafe table is kinda cool.
42.24: Chevy Cheerios burns his hand in a waffle iron after it becomes apparent that the ephinephrin hasn't cured his poisoning. Like you would. He must then keep his pretenaturally dim girlfriend from discovering that evil Mexican thugs are trying to kill him in yet another 'it would be awesome if this was a mission in Grand Theft Auto' moment.
49.30: Once again we see why Chevelle Cheesedoodle is such a compelling protagonist: He rapes his girlfriend (Amy Smart) in the middle of a crowded street while being gawped at by passersby.
49.55: Don't worry folks! It turns out the lady actually likes it so everything's okay! Everything about this film makes me feel dirty.
50.44: Crowds cheer as The Chevster bends his beau over a bench and... well you know the rest. Normally I'd say something like 'I wish I was making this up', but in this case if I made up a scene as horribly, horribly wrong as this one I'd be a shoe-in for 'Worst Human Being: 2006 (Western Hemisphere)'.
51.08: Oh, and he takes a phonecall mid way through. And his rape victim gets angry because he stopped.
51.30: Back on the road again, the filmmakers feel the need to subtitle a Carribean cab-driver's dailogue. You know, because those types do talk funny and that.
61.30: During a car-chase feminist icon Amy Smart decides to 'finish what (they) started' earlier on that busy street by blowing Chevy as he drives, basically ensuring that for the rest of her life she'll never be able to look another woman in eye without crying and saying how sorry she is.
62.17: Amy Smart notes that Chevron is 'so big'. You know, I have an inkling that this film might just have a tiny bit of adolescent male wish-fufilment in it.
78.55: And now Chevy Chemo is falling out of a helicopter while having a fistfight with his arch-nemesis Evil Foreign Guy.
79.27: Having snapped Evil Foriegn Guy's neck somehow, Chex Chavrus remembers to call his girlfriend while falling and deliver a heart-wrenching monologue about how he wishes he had time to 'smell the roses' (i.e: 'Sodomise you some more, maybe this time in a schoolyard')
80.46: He falls on a car and dies. Probably. We see him blink after he bounces off the car. It's kind of like that bit in X-men 3 where Magneto can still kinda control metal at the end. Only several times worse because it's in this movie.

In Conclusion: Yes, this is the worst film I've seen in perhaps five years. It's horribly written, badly acted, flashy without an ounce of subtance and has the politics of Ann Coulter reincarnated as a fourteen year-old white boy playing Counter-Strike way past his bed-time. As a concept it had the potential to get a billion teenage boys into cinema seats where they could be told what wretched, shallow little creatures they are for wanting to watch the kind of crap the trailers promised, a little like Metal Gear Solid 2 or Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers if I'm feeling charitable. I had high hopes that maybe the writers would pull the rug out from under me and show they were just the tiniest bit aware that they were making something aimed square at whatever's under the lowest common demoniator, just in case somebody with a three figure IQ had to sit through it.
And, in case you're thinking that you and your bros from Kappa-Beta-Phi are gonna drink like a whole keg and watch this movie, get this: As action movies go it's sub-par. For a film hung up on MTV-style jump-cuts and 24-style split-screens the film becomes positively unimaginative when it's showing a shoot-out or a car chase. Anybody who's seen anything by John Woo, or even something vaguely inspired by Hong-Kong Bullet Ballet is going to find the action sequences to be as clunky as the script. Anybody who's seen Gone in Sixty Seconds or the Fast and the Furious series has seen better automotive stunts. Shit, the Dukes of Hazzard probably has Crank beat on that front.
This is an awful, awful, awful, film. You shouldn't go see it and nobody involved in its production should ever work again.

Snakes in Retrospective: Tiresome

2006-08-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

It's like one of those cards you get on planes 'cept it's like Snakes on a Plane. Yeah. So, Snakes on a Plane huh? Oh, and Chuck Norris, and Leeroy Jenkins, and 'I'm the Juggernaught bitch!'. I don't want to be accused of being partisan. Look at the past nine months with the right kind of eyes and you can see the wave of hype for Snakes building until on August 18th it finally hit the shore, broke and receeded. It was one of those 'not with a bang, but with a whimper' moments. Right now there are teenagers on every continent walking out of movie theatres nervous about being the first person to say that Snakes wasn't as good, or even so-bad-it's-good, as they expected. They're probably realising that Snakes wasn't really intended for anything more than a perfunctory theatrical release before crawling onto DVD and, at best, a spot in Somethingawful.com's movie review section with Cheerleader Autopsy, Hard Rock Zombies and Inseminoid. Samuel L Jackson's involvement can be explained by the fact that the guy can't pick good movies, and, much like Al Pacino of late, seems to think acting and shouting are the same thing. It should have sunk as deep as director David R. Ellis's other pictures: Final Destination 2, Homeward Bound 2 and the forthcoming Shakers, a Fast and the Furious knock-off when the series is becoming a knock-off of itself. Instead there were news reports on it. The BBC took time out of coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon to say "Ppl on teh Internet <3 style="font-style: italic;" face="arial">Snakes on a Plane its out tooday LOLz ^____^'.
It's easy to get so caught up berating Snakes on a Plane for being a shitty, overhyped movie that we forget about the innocent victims of its internet-fueled rampage. Victims like the film Crank.
Get this: Jason Stratham's plays Chev Chelios and- actually, I could probably stop right there because a) Jason Stratham actually getting hired to be in movies is pretty funny in and of itself and b) He plays a character named Chev motherfuckin' Chelios. It's already blown the whole 'it's a film about Snakes on a Plane called Snakes on a Plane rofl' thing away, and we're not done yet.
Chev Cheerios has been injected with a drug that'll kill him if his heart-rate drops below a certain point. You would have thought if somebody, a crime-boss in this case, had the opportunity to inject their enemy with something they'd pick ricin or bleach or something, so maybe in a display of intertextual synergy this is the same crime-boss who put snakes on a plane instead of a bomb. The drug doesn't cause Mr. Cheetos to run to the nearest hospital and do laps of the waiting room until he could be treated, oh no, instead he does EXTREME things until the movie stops. Also: REVENGE.
In the right hands this premise could be a clever postmodern take on set-piece driven MTV actioners like the xXx franchise, a comment on movie audiences' ever-decreasing attention spans and ever-expanding willingness to watch crap as long as there's tits and bullets, or the Speed films taken to their logical extreme- where the vehicle is the human body (and as any drug user will tell you, what is Crank but a more EXTREME form of Speed?). It's in the wrong hands though, the hands of Stratham, two first-time writer-directors and perky nonentity Amy Smart, so it could be the beautiful train-wreck Snakes wasn't.
It comes out tommorow so watch this space for a review.

Crank: Rated R. For 'retarded'

Robot Apocalypse Alert set to Orange

2006-08-09T04:14:00.000-07:00

Click for a closer look... at doom!

Take a look at the delightful lady above. Lovely, isn't she? Lovely from her cute button toes down to her cute button nose.
But what if I told you she wasn't a lady at all...but a machine?
Or, more accurately, the photo-realistic honey above was painstakingly rendered in Photoshop by Thai artist Ussa Methawiitayakul. Like in that movie S1m0ne, part of Pacino's 'I have bills to pay' period.

How to fix Al Qaeda, and why they don't want to be fixed

2006-06-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

I see a lot of articles asking how we, the West, can win the war in Iraq, or the War on Terror in general, so I read Beyond Fear author Bruce Schneier's recent blog post asking for readers to submit 'movie-plot style terrorist threats' to use against us with great interest. I'm one of those people who finds the bad guys a lot more interesting than the good guys: Lex Luthor pulled himself up from Metropolis' 'Suicide Slum' to become one of the world's richest men and at one time president of the United States, Superman was just born on Krypton as opposed to Earth. Magneto saw his family exterminated by the Nazis, Professor X had a stepdad who was kind of an asshole.
In real life it's harder to sympathise with freedom-hating evil-doers. Leaving aside questions of morality, the nearest we get to comic-book villains are drab, sexless, ranting zealots, and whereas Lex Luthor has the unparalelled genius for science and tactics to manifest whatever plan or device his unlimited imagination concieves of (vulnerable only to Superman's two-fisted American bravery), real villains just aren't effective. Oh, I know that the Luthors and Lensherrs in fiction will always be defeated, but when they want to do something they can do it, up to the point where it actually changes the status quo by the end of the comic. That drive and competence makes them dangerous enough to write about. Even Batman's foe The Joker, whose mental state is to crazy what a grain of sand is to Ayres rock, can mix up lethal gasses and execute elaborate plans whenever he feels like leaving Arkham to stretch his legs and add to his bodycount. It's been almost five years since 9/11 announced their presence to the world and they are no closer to their stated goal of reducing Western influence on the Islamic world. Instead, two Islamic countries have been invaded by the U.S-led Coalition and the eyes of U.S policymakers are fixed firmly on regime change on the rest of the Middle East, now with an excuse of 'Fighting Terror' whereas on Septmber 10th 2001 they had nothing. Another attack on the scale of 9/11 hasn't happened. Nuclear, Biological and chemical weapons haven't been used so logic dictates they're not as easy to find as we were told- though the drugged-out hippie members of the Aum Supreme Truth sect had no problem making Sarin for their gassing of the Tokyo subways.
There's three conclusions we can draw from Al Qaeda's acute second-album syndrome, either The Power of Nightmares (via Youtube) is right and the threat they pose has been greatly exaggerated (very likely), that the West's security has been tightened so much that another attack is impossible (disproved by every journalist who makes the front-page by taking a knife onto a plane) or my working assumption for this article: they're just a bit dim. They're five cans short of a six pack. Their deadly Jihad against the West is, when looked at right, Laurel and Hardy pushing a piano up a flight of stairs.
Now, while Adam Curtis had a great deal of research to prove the thesis of his excellent documentary, I've got nothing. In fact, everything we know about Al Qaeda says that their military and business wing is run by smart people. World-class bastards, of course, but capable of thinking their way out of a wet paper bag. Instead of proving Al Qaeda is run by people more suited to licking short-bus windows than destroying the infidel with a lot of facts and numbers we'll probably all forget anyway, I'm going to prove my point by showing that even I am capable of devising a strategy far more effective than anything we've seen so far.

Step one: Know your brand

Al-Qaeda ('The Base' or 'The Foundation') has a brand saturation on par with, perhaps excelling, Nike, McDonalds and Microsoft. It has achieved greater name recognition per dollar spent than perhaps any organisation in history. A single cassette tape mailed to Al-Jazeera can achieve more press coverage than a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Like many international brands the rest isn't that important. The aim is to change people's minds, not kill them, so guns, bombs and people willing to use them are of secondary importance to an effective media machine.

Step Two: Making friends and influencing people in Iraq

'Zionists', 'Crusaders', Shiites, Sunni 'traitors', Kurds... the list of groups Al Qaeda considers fair game is extensive. It's also counter-productive.
After the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who made it the policy of Al-Qaeda in Iraq to kill Shiites (80% of the country), the main body of Al Qaeda had a golden opportunity to distance themselves from him and his actions and get the Shiite majority in Iraq on their side. With a simple message of Islamic unity in the face of those naughty Zionist Crusaders and a humble, heartfelt apology for allowing Zarqawi to target fellow Muslims they could have built bridges between the two communities. Instead, and as usual, they've squandered another golden opportunity.
From there the next step is to work on a community level to improve the quality of life for regular Iraqis- Shiite, Sunnis, Kurds, even Christians- by setting up power generators and water purifiers, rebuilding the infrastructure and, perhaps most importantly, keeping the streets safe. Essentially recasting Al Qaeda in Iraq, and its allies, as a mixture of the Red Cross and Black Panthers. Make sure that evrywhere Al Qaeda goes things get better for ordinary Iraqis, and if they are pushed out of an area emphasise in press releases how those same ordinay Iraqis are now suffering. Make sure the rest of world knows every last detail of your humanitarian acts. Pretty soon even Western journalists will start to question whether Al Qaeda are really such bad people.
And that's exactly what you want.

Step Three: Making friends and influencing people in the Middle East

While Al Qaeda in Iraq is winning a moral war on their turf the rest of Al Qaeda needs to adapt if it's going to survive. Rebranding as a Muslim organisation as opposed to exclusively Sunni is step one. Of course it increases the number of young Muslims willing to work for or with Al Qaeda, and the number of people (and governments, such as Iran and Syria) willing to support the group with finances and logistics. The West is going to sit up and pay attention too. For one thing Al Qaeda will stop looking like kill-crazy barbarians and start looking like people with real grievences, and anything that can be done to make Americans question the logic of fighting is a victory bigger than anything that can be achieved with bombs.
As in Iraq, Al Qaeda can also be rebranded as a populist grassroots movement in the Islamic world at large, from Central Africa to Malaysia. But, like Iraq, it has to do so under the watchful eye of the U.S and its allies. This is a problem, but also an opportunity. Why not have the fatwah committee of Al Qaeda issue an edict banning female circumcision? It's a quality of life issue affecting millions of Islamic women, a ruling would be in accordance with the Koran and, crucially, it is public-relations gold in the West and among moderate Muslims. It's bold moves like this that are key to our next step:

Step Four: The American Problem

While Al Qaeda is winning Islamic hearts and minds they can't neglect their primary cosumer: the American public. Even if they had 1.3 Billion Muslims on their side, or at least not opposed to them per se, Al Qaeda would still be vulnerable to the most powerful nation in all of human history. They hold all the cards and the only way Al Qaeda wins is if America says it's okay. To persuade them Al Qaeda must learn to speak American.
Firstly, I mean that literally. Up until now Al Qaeda's press releases have been in Arabic, meaning the message is edited into a few soundbites for CNN and FOX and only available in its entireiy online. To communicate effectively Al Qaeda needs a fluent English speaking representative. Not just that, but one with charisma, good looks and a flawless accent. And a suit, a nice one, Armani or something. He needs to be in a studio, shot with a digital camera. This spokeperson wouldn't use the word 'Al Qaeda' once, he would refer to his organisation as 'The Foundation', and his sucess would be judged on by how many Western newspapers and television networks follow suit. The broadcasts need to burned to a DVD and converted to digital video for internet distribution. A weekly broadcast (or even podcast) could be uploaded to Youtube- resulting in a massive media buzz and millions of viewers.
You want to know what else?Al Qaeda TV would be one of the world's most trusted news sources on the Middle East. If the Western media is to be believed then the Arab peninsular is divided into bug-eyed fanatics wearing explosives and huddled masses of nonentities waiting for American supermen to civilise them. Al Qaeda's messages to the world can present a view of the region that is fair, nuanced and accurate.
But we're talking about the guys who blew up the twin towers here, right? Aren't they arch-enemies in an apocalyptic a Clash of Civilizations(tm)?
Well, like most enemies they have more similarities than differences. You've probably heard the phrase 'American Taliban' used to describe the United States' Christian Right, and the similarities between them are so many and obvious that repeating them is banal. So far Al Qaeda has failed to build bridges with their counterparts in America, but under my enlightened leadership they wouldn't
miss an opportunity to speak out against abortion, evolution, gay rights and other issues where they and the Christian Right converge. The message Al Qaeda needs to convey in its addresses to the West is that they, like the American people, are simple God-fearing human beings just trying to get by and there's nothing they'd like more than to end this whole mess and go home. At the end of the day, we would say, we have oil and need money, you have money and need oil, if we work together we can both get what we want.
My Al Qaeda would take cues from the people Americans are listening to right now, the Ann Coulters and Michael Moores and Pat Robertsons and Howard Sterns. It would read DailyKos and the Drudge Report and as many US news sites as possible to learn the way America creates truth, and every week we would see their message to the world get more sophisticated, polished and persuasive. Soon you'd see articles in some of smaller Right-wing journals questioning the policy of regime change in the Middle East. They won't say it out loud, but if a few ideas can reach the American public a grudging respect may develop between Fundamentalist Islam and the American Right. Think of the Axis powers of World War Two: Germany and Japan were both imperialistic cultures utterly convinced that they and only they should dominate the world, and yet they worked together because they had more in common with each other than they did with the liberal, pluralistic allied nations. If Al Qaeda got smart then the same 'special relationship' could develop between the United States and the Middle East, lubricated by trillions of barrels of oil. Read those American Taliban quotes again if you don't believe that these two cultures are compatible.

Conclusion

All of this is a pipe-nightmare of course.
If we discount the possibility that Al Qaeda may really be a media bogeyman that makes a complex thing like international terrorism easy to understand and believe instead that they are vast and well-organized network of evil-doers constantly plotting our destruction then we have to ask ourselves why they think the way ahead is occassional terrorist attacks against the only people who have the power to give them what they want, attacks that have gained them nothing but two invasions of Islamic countries and the tightening of security to make sure they can't attack again. Right now it's unthinkable that American troops be removed from Saudi Arabia, or that the U.S allow governments like the Taliban to come to power. The United States of America is the proverbial eight-hundred pound Gorilla, and it'll go where it wants.
So why use tactics which invite reprisals from said Gorilla? Why 'terrorise' the American people when it rallies them around a government willing and very, very able to kill you and everybody who happens to agree with you.
It could be because they're big tough men. There's this conception of masculinity, present in just about every culture, that men are supposed to be fighting, when they're not fighting they're waiting for a fight. It doesn't have to be a physical battle, but its preferred. Nobody is going to question your masculinity when you've just cut off your enemy's head. This article, for example, points out that a common factor tying together the perpetrators of 9/11, Madrid and 7/7 was their frequent visits to gyms. It was here they fostered "the combination of narcissism and loathing of the masses necessary to carry out a terrorist suicide mission". The forms of warfare I advocate above don't involve physically subduing an enemy so they're not 'masculine', and anybody who's been through the school system knows how to assiduously avoid anything even slightly feminine and the fate that awaits those who do. Didn't Governor Schwarzenneger deride the Democrats, a party only a fraction of percentage as enthusiastic about killing as their opponents, as 'girlie-men'? Didn't it work? Don't people see pacifism, no matter how weak, as an essentially feminine trait? Aren't we told that the whole reason they're hating on our freedom right now is to actualise a creepy sex fantasy?
The reasons for Al Qaeda's campaign are at least faintly rational. If one believes that the presence of (friendly) foreign troops within the same arbitrary borders of Islam's holiest sites is an affront to their chosen diety then they certainly have legitimate greivences. The same goes for the situation in Palestine, which should have resulted in the creation of a Palestinian state a long time ago. I don't believe there's a rational reason for something as irrational as Al Qaeda's current ideas for changing the world to their liking. If it weren't occassionally lethal, we would Al Qaeda's solipistic, misguidedly elitist, primitive, reactionary campaign for what it is, a cry for somebody smarter than they are to step in and move things forward.

Rogue Spear(ed)

2006-06-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

Looks like somebody absorbed a buffet table

People do some crazy stuff when it comes to comic books. Let's just say that for the purposes of this discussion, 'crazy' is defined as 'anything more than reading them'. Some people dress up as their favorite characters and attend conventions. Some people write erotic fiction involving their favorite characters. These guys re-enact the Secret Wars.
Some people write detailed two-page articles on how Rogue and Ice-Man (or Gambit) could consumate their relationship, with lines like:

I imagine Rogue's gloved fingertips light on the pulse in the hollow of Bobby's neck, then tracing his collarbone, teasing. Then firmer down the pec, across the nipple, stop for a pinch, smooth it over with her palm. Down his ribs, over his belly, lower, lower, taking her time.

Now picture the writer in your mind. Smell the cheetos in his beard. Imagine the Wikipedia article he has written on some impossibly obscure Anime and all the e-mails he sends straight to Larry Sanger (cc'd to Wil Weaton) whenever somebody dares to vandalise his magnum opus by correcting the spelling.
The writer is, in fact, Regina Lynn (zOMG A GIRL ON TEH INTERNETS!!11one!), sex columnist for Wired.com. This is the article, on a major website for the world's foremost tech magazine. I read Miss Lynn's column, Sex Drive, when it comes out and for the most part it's pretty good. Not as blunt as Dan Savage or as filthy as Tristian Taorimino or sarcastic as Gram Potante, but it's pretty good sex writing.
Except the Rogue article.
Now, there's probably a lot of people out there who want to imagine the practicalities of Rogue having sex: with her film boyfriend Iceman, comic boyfriend Gambit, with Professor X or Kitty Pryde or Beast or Magneto or Spock or Superman or a centaur. There is also one person, myself, who imagines finding a way to cure these people with a 'weird internet pervert' cure or, should that be unfeasible, stomp on them with giant robots. But then, I'm not the sole sex columnist for a major magazine, I've got very little power and very little responsiblity. If I was writing a column about sex for tens of thousands of people then I'd probably put some, y'know, sex advice or something in it. You know, something that might have the tiniest bit of relevance to readers' lives? While I'm sure that ms. Lynn's advice is very practical, it's only really practical if you happen to be a mutant with a life-draining death touch. Well, I say 'practical', but sex isn't really practical when you're sharing a house with the world's best telepath (Professor X in the movies, Emma Frost in the comics).
Still, reading a column about hypothetical X-sex is still less painful than reading an X-comic where Rogue actually has dialogue:

Site News: Last.fm thingy added, also: drunk posting

2006-04-25T23:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, sorry for three posts in one day. If it counts towards anything, I'm drunk making this last post.
In my drunken stupor I have added a Last.fm thingy to the site, so that you, my loyal reader(s), can always see which bands-you-have-never-heard-of I am listening to, and amend your record buying habits accordingly.
Also, if my last post didn't make it clear enough, those among you who read comics should be reading Gail Simone's 'Birds of Prey', and should probably get the Trade-Paperback 'Villains United' (my favorite series, not counting Seven Soldiers, of last year). Also, go see Brick, listen to the new album by Why? and try to love each other a little more each day.
Oh, and I am one-tenth through my thousand-page meganovel 'Zero Dollars'. Coming to bookstores summer of 2010. Or 2020. Well, sometime before we're killing our neighbors to get at the last can of food on the continent, or saluting World-President Jintao.

Excelsior and all that!

All Cheesecake buffet

2006-04-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

Rejoice fans of fighting and boobies- The Dead or Alive movie is almost upon us! Here's the trailer, which should stoke guys with IQs under a hundred as if their febrile minds were a dying fire.
Now, I played Dead or Alive, I can't remember which one, and finished it kinda quickly, as in under twenty minutes, since no rough-housing simulation since Street Fighter Two has presented a challenge to anybody using both hands to play. DOA: Beach Volleyball is somewhere on my Xbox's hard-drive, somewhere near the downloaded NES Roms, and will go unplayed unless I have to wait out a nuclear winter in my front room. Much like Dungeon Seige, I really don't care that they're making a movie out of this game and, also like Dungeon Seige, I'll never see it. I'm really more pissed off that smart, creative people whose talents could benefit the games industry are going to see this crap and be turned off.
Y'know, in the last few months I've only blogged about videogames, comics and movies of videogames. I really ought to read a book one of these days.

Everything's Blurry

2006-04-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to my number-one gal Emily for this magnificent portrait of me, done in the style of the cover to this Blur 'best-of' (full disclosure: despite how my the picture on my Blogger profile looks, I am not an action figure of Deathstroke teh Terminator. Sorry everybody)
Also, this cartoony picture and talk of Deathstroke has gotten me in the mood to review This Week in Comics:

Birds of Prey- Gail Simone, Paulo Siqueria (pencils), Robin Riggs (ink)
'Twice the talent, half the sales' Part 2 of 6

The all-female superteam team up to stab the villainous Captain Comicbookbuyer in the crotch. Simone once again delivers witty dialogue, compelling plot twists and a excruciating scene in which everybody who bought All Star Batman and Robin is made to choke on the cover of issue three. Only 3000 copies of this issue have been printed and most pages aren't inked due to D.C's descision to reallocate much of their budget onto the forthcoming 'Power-girl, Starfire and Bulleteer: Pillowfight of Destiny'.
Next month: Part 3: 'Seriously, did you see how many copies of Ms. Marvel they're selling and why can't I do one fucking interview without being asked what it's like to be a woman working in comics?'

Marvel Civil War: It's an allegory, fuckers. Mark Waid et al.
Part 1: 'It's like 9/11 and stuff.'

When a superhuman conflict turns deadly the government introduces the 'Superhero registration act', a concept which we've never seen before in comics history! This multi-series crossover promises the return of obscure heroes from Marvel's past (who is the mysterious 'Wolverine'?) and finally satisfies Marvel fans' need for a earth-shattering crossover event.

Punisher fucks a bear Garth Ennis, Steve Dillion (pencils)
Part 4 of 6: 'The Asiatic Black Bear'

Urban avenger Frank Castle stalks and defiles Ursus thibetanus, a species of bear native to the highlands of South-East Asia.
FOR MATURE READERS ONLY.

Runaways, Y the Last Man and Ex Machina: I pwn all you bastards, Brian K. Vaughn et al.
Part 1: Mayor Hundred laughs at new issues of Green Arrow.

In this hotly anticipated inter-company crossover event, Marvel's Runaways, Vertigo's Yorrick Brown and Wildstorm's Mayor Mitchell Hundred each find themselves in the 'pwnage zone', a shadowy dimension filled with comics by lesser writers.
WARNING: CONTAINS DETAILED PICTURES OF GERTRUDE'S VELOCIRAPTOR SHITTING OUT DIGESTED COPIES OF INFINITE CRISIS AND YORRICK'S MONKEY AMPERSAND THROWING IT AT A TRADE PAPERBACK OF HOUSE OF M.

Also on sale this week:

Spider Man #531: Let us never speak of 'The Other' again. The new costume's pretty cool huh?
Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein! #4: It'll be worth the wait, but that doesn't mean you'll ever know what's going on.
Astonishing X-men #14: 'If the guy who did Buffy says Grant Morrison's New X-men run happened, then it happened'.
Liberality for All #2: Apparently it's not all an elaborte joke and the writer is actually a xenophobic psycho with a persecution complex.
Desolation Jones #6: You never want to mess with Warren Ellis. He will fuck you up if he has time between updating his blog ten times a day. I'm going to tell him the Liberality guy called him a pussy and wait for the headline: 'Right-wing comic writer force-fed own balls over and over- police seek chain-smoking bald guy'.

That's it for this week true believers!

Double Barrelled Blogging:The Deadly Games of Teenage Jesus

2006-04-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

Spot all 36 ninja in this painting and win an XBOX 360!!!! HOT PLEASE LOOK!!!

You know the two things I love most in the world? Well, I'll tell you: the little Google Ad bar in this blog, which trawls every idiot trying to make a buck on teh interweb and brings me only the sites least relevant to the dozen or so people who visit this site, and when religious types make themselves look like fools. Oh, and before I forget, I also like it when scientists bring me alarming news about videogames.
Today I've had my joy-buzzer tweaked but-good, by the unlikely bedfellows Teenage Jesus and New Scientist.
The above picture is artist Tom Trujillo's 'controversial' painting of Teenage Jesus, entitled 'Teenage Jesus'. In my head it's subtitled 'Don Killuminati: To the five boroughs: Disciples of the 36 chambers: off the chain fo' tha Y2k', but that's just me. The Justin Timberlake looking cracker in the picture is our lord and savior as a teen, rolling in the hood and sticking it to the man, fo' real. The Kids are totally going to be stoked by this picture.
But we'd better get it into every classroom soon, because from the looks of things our wee ones are savage monsters. Fortunately many of them will be so fat that their chubby little fingers won't fit inside a trigger guard, because: "each additional hour of TV watched each day by kids resulted in an extra 167 calories consumed, often from sugary drinks, fast foods and candy featured in adverts" Huh? Candy featured in adverts? Willy Wonka must have made a breakthrough, because last time I checked you can't eat the candy in adverts.
We've been hearing this stuff for years (the TV-violence stuff, Teen Jesus is a new development), and as violent crime rates continue to fall it just sounds more and more hollow.

Do yourself a favor an get away from a world of misguided religious sentiments and scientists who'd rather collect an easy paycheck than do worthwhile research: go see Brick. If you're in a major U.S city it's probably playing or will be soon, and it'll be in the rest of the world in a few months. For once I encourage you not to download it, at least until after you've seen it, because for once the filmmakers deserve your money.

No sex please, we're trying to have fun

2006-04-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

Hot Coffee: The presence of a 'Fist' icon in the upper left is a little worrying.

So, I've noticed a lot of talk recently (in the linked article featured on Digg and in the always excellent Escapist magazine) about sex in videogames.
The argument goes that videogames are growing up (and pretty much falls down right there), and gamers are growing up, so we need grown-up themes in our M-rated games. Like fucking. So far, crap like the Lula and Leisure Suit Larry games have been as far as the mainstream has got to sex-based games, and neither series was that much fun. Then there was Grand Theft Auto, and the Hot Coffee 'mod', again not that much fun all told, and the whole 'romance' part of San Andreas was probably the weakest part of the game- often leading to immersion killing contrivances like the dance mini-games. There's also the fuckingness that creeps into MMORPGs, where (often cross-dressing) players whore their feeble imaginations out to higher-level players in return for gold and gifts (with hilarious results). It's all good fun- but I draw the line at cybering in Eve Online; hot Freighter-on-Freighter action is a kink too far.
So summarise: sex in games is either shit or improvised. Not surprising when you consider its competition: sex in real life, which can be improvised, sure, but between consenting, experienced adults is rarely all that bad.
Now, am I alone in thinking that we play games to get into worlds and situations that are better than real life? In a real-life gun fight the two possible outcomes are a bloody death if I lose or a lifetime of guilt and possible jail sentence if I win. In games I can shrug off dozens of bullets and experience no guilt at all. Games one, life nil.
Then there's the matter of integration. Violence is pretty easy, because it presents a challenge. Fuck up your violencing and you have to replay from the last save point, or in MMORPGs you lose money, items or experience points (In Eve, if your Corporation's planet-sized Titan gets blown up you've lost several hundred dollars, several weeks of training and every friend you've ever made in the game). If you fuck up your sexualising? Well, the virtual girl might not like you any more (and you better believe your fucktarget's going to be a girl). The other alternative is a sexy cutscene as a reward. This is pretty horrible. You remember the end of 'Under Siege', where Steven Seagal makes out with that Playboy Bunny in front of the crew of that aircraft carrier? Watch that immediately after finishing an FPS and you'll see how awkward this idea is.
Then there's control and feedback. In real sex you've got five senses and a billion nerve endings telling you what's fun. If you're doing it right that's not even your primary concern- all the billions of nerve endings and suchforth in your partner is where your brain should be. An Excitement bar, some sound effects ('fap, fap, fap') and a buzzing control pad don't go nearly far enough to convey the complex feedback you get from a real sex partner. Now, I'm not saying that the funny little buzz from an Xbox controller replicates what it's like to fire a gun- there's no recoil, no gunsmoke- but sex is divine and violence is profane. In other words, you don't want to get violence right, so gamers and developers can settle for less, whereas sex is wonderful and seeing as games can't do it justice it shouldn't be done at all.
Also, before I forget half of the potential gamers in the world, dig this: sex in games going to drive women gamers away. You get that boys? Your LAN parties are going to become sausage parties, the chances of that buxom elf you've just signed your Epic Mount over to being a more realistically proportioned lady becomes slim to nil. I don't wish to imply that women are turned off by erotica, or even pornography- they aren't. Some of the finest pornhounds I know are female. But the games industry is more male-driven than even the porn industry, and it shows. Speaking as a guy involved almost exclusively in making imaginative fiction I can tell you on good authority that most of us are just not that good at crafting female characters that women can relate to. Those of us perceptive enough to realise that Princess McBreasts- the martially skilled but vulnerable love interest of Strongo the Barbarian- might not appeal to our limited female customer base usually seek out our wives, girlfriends and female friends to get their input on characterization. Not possible when the only woman working for your hip and progressive software company is the receptionist. Developers just aren't going to be able to write sexual situations that feel realistic to female gamers, and through word of mouth and blog potential gamers and developers who just happen to have ovaries are going to turn away, leaving only teenage boys who think that 'Well done for defeating those Kobolds Strongo, now take me with your Barbarian sex! (push up and down in rhythm)' is a mature situation.
(Oh, and don't get me started on the possibility of gay themes in games: when the maker of the biggest MMORPG in the world has to be told that a LGBT-friendly guild doesn't constitute hate speech we're a long way off from seeing 'Ah wish I knew how to quit you' as a dialogue option. Or even one gamer in a thousand who knows where that quote comes from).
So, developers: hire more women- especially in the non-technical side of the development process, like writing and producing. There's a female Will Wright or Peter Molyneux out there just waiting to transfer her ideas into code, and create a massively important (and profitable) crossover hit. Guy gamers: stop buying games with badly done sex in them- this should be as instinctive as saying 'don't put sharp things into your urethra', but apparently still needs to be said considering the sales of tawdry crap like Lesiure Suit Larry: Cum Magna Lauda. Women gamers: keep playing, don't hide your gender in MMORPGs or devalue it by 'cybering' your way to rewards males have to earn. Become the best at what you do, run your own Guild or Corp, call male players out on their sexist bullshit. This goes double for queer-identified players: don't let some pimply fourteen year old use 'fag' as an insult. Report them if they pull that 'but I'm doing freedom of speech' crap- they're obviously too stupid to be using a computer.
If enough people do this, we might just have a game fit for adult consumption some time before the universe implodes.

Gaywads, Dorkwads sign historic Wad accord

2006-03-27T20:06:00.000-08:00

Left to right: Dorkwad, Gaywad.

Proof, if any is needed that God does indeed hate us all, Avenged Sevenfold and Coheed and Cambria have combined their Wad energy to create an inferno of pimples, eyeliner and virginity. To underline the fact that all forms of human expression are now officially dead, the bands have chosen to fill the support slots with fellow Ass Professionals Eighteen Visions and Head Automatica.

Review: The Southwestern United States

2006-03-18T01:14:00.000-08:00

Rapper Ice-T and a female companion soliciting virginity pledges, (c) Associated Press

Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything, even longer since I posted anything unrelated to Uwe Boll, but I've been out and about, seeing this wonderful country they call America (The United States of).
I've 'done' the Southwest this past week. The Southwest has also 'done' me, in much the same way as the vacant prostitutes who line the region's many prostitute lined streets are 'done' by roomfuls of frat boys.
I visited the fine states of Utah, Nevada and California (pronounced Cali-for-nigh-yay), and will endevour to provide a fair and balanced review of them all.

Graphics

Utah: The depraved and decadent flock to this modern day Sodom to witness every indiscribable perversion take place as they masturbate into a handful of Bible pages. Meth addicts who crave cock? Check. Bestiality in public schools? Check. Skinhead junkies eating babies and vomiting them onto George Clooney? Double check.
Nevada: Shades of those who once live shuffle about the endless plains of Nevada, seeking to devour the very souls of the living. Also, I saw Ice-T step out of a limo here.
California: The majority of the state is only visible briefly, usually during sunrise. Goggles that simulate the dawn's light are usually of poor quality, so I am unable to give an accurate assesment of what California actually looks like. I'm guessing there are buildings, probably some fields or something. I smelt Mexican food, so maybe there are Mexican eateries.

Sound

Utah: You know that sound kids make by pinching their cheeks and jerking it around? The one that's supposed to sound like somebody masturbating, but doesn't? That's the sound Utah makes. Invest in earplugs.
Nevada: The baleful moans of the dammned assail the ears of all who pass through Nev-A'h-Da'h, a place ignored by God himself.
California: You know that sound a television makes when it's muted. California sounds like that, though there's also a faint ringing sound that moves further away as you approach it. Eventually, deprived of all audio stimulation, you WILL think you are hearing human voices- the tourist board advises that this condition (known as St Elmo's Cellphone), will pass in two to three days.

Gameplay

Utah: In Utah, the name of the game is Murder. The objective: to Kill. Typically, visitors can expect to be thrust into any one of the state's four 'Deathbowl' stadia, in which they will compete for the crowd's favor with other recent arrivals in armed and unarmed combat- always to the death. Those showing mercy will have their locator collars (distributed upon entering the state) activated, detonating the explosives inside. Tourists are advised that in order to enjoy a pleasant stay one must be a lone space explorer thrown onto the planet during tests of the Earth Space Command's prototype Faster-than-Light drive. Unable to understand the barbaric alien culture of Utah, visitors should be immediately set upon by slave traders, sold to the Deathbowl arenas, where they should prove their mastery in two-fisted American punching combat. Visitors may also enjoy falling in love with the state's Princess, or defeating the cruel dictator of Utah (Emporer Gargack, Rep-UT)- liberating the opressed people and capturing the Utahnian's own prototype faster-than-light drive, thus securing safe passage home. Remember, it is considered courteous to explain to the beautiful and compassionate Princess Rilaindra that she may not accompany you back to Earth, and must instead lead her people to a better future now that her father has been defeated.
Nevada: Nevada is known for it's exclusivity, as only those souls lost between heaven and hell may make permanent residence there. Visitors often marvel at the sheer soul-renching desolation, though you should also take time to pray for a death that will never come.
My own visit was marred by the presence of flesh-eating Ghouls- things not quite human possessed of an unquenchable thirst for human flesh. Though I fought valiantly the Ghouls
could not be harmed by my weapons (mainly insults, though I also threw a shoe at them). I am eternally thankful to superstar rapper Ice-T for rescuing me from their rasping talons when he did, and for having the presence of mind to carry the Scepter of Light, whose magical radiance disintegrated said Ghouls. In summary, if you wish to visit this forgotten place, you should be either a) a dammned soul, b) a bloodthirsty Ghoul or c) Ice-Muthafuckin'-T.
California: They say California is a state of mind. Once again they fail to grasp the subtlties of the Golden State, which is actually an infinite sea of particles possessing negative energy, described by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1930 to explain the anomalous negative-energy quantum states predicted by the Dirac equation for relativistic electrons. As such, California is the place for those who really want to get away from it all, if by 'it all' you include all matter and energy. Consequentially, visitors with young children may find they have few things to keep their little ones occupied. In today's world of Pokemon and Xbox children need to do more than contemplate an infinite void. It has however become popular with Buddhists such as the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere.

Overall

The Southwestern United States are a rollercoaster ride of baffling inversions of logic and the very laws of physics that bind our universe together- much like my home state of Oregon (which is being smoked in a galactic bong over billions of years by fifth dimensional hippies) or Michigan (set in a terrifying parallel universe where the Nazis won world war 2).

Back in Boll

2006-01-31T16:50:00.000-08:00

Uwe Boll, yesterday

They say the bravest thing you can do is admit when you are wrong.
Friends, I was wrong.
In the article below I insinuate that Uwe Boll finances his films with Nazi gold and spends the money on crack and child prostitutes. It turns out that this is only half true, he in fact exploits a German tax-loophole that means the more money he loses from his films, the more money his investors can write off.
You may ask: what kind of diabolical madman could have mastered the intricate German tax system to such a degree? Who would be willing to sodomise American pop-culture with such vehemence? Who was responsible for the deaths of Peter Parker's parents (as Boll boasts in interviews)?
Uwe Boll... kind of rhymes with: Red Skull- archenemy of Captain America and freedom itself!
S.H.I.E.L.D has been notified.

"For 150 euros a piece the whores would be naked and do as they were told."

2006-01-28T15:49:00.000-08:00

Uwe Boll gives a thumbs up- to the Holocaust

The above quote is from Uwe Boll. It's not from one of his thin, one-dimensional characters. It's not from Max Hardcore or Fred Durst or some coked out Glendale pornographer drugging runaways at a bustop. It's German Z-movie director Uwe Boll, the abortion technician behind Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead, ceo of Boll KG. The last part is significant: Mr. Boll can't get financing from, y'know, places that actually finance films so, somehow, a company he set up pays for all his production costs. Now, while I can't prove he's financing his films with Nazi Gold, I cannot disprove it, and Boll has yet to publicly deny it.
I have yet to find anywhere on the internet (or in media that should actually be listened to, like CB radio) where people are willing to step up and defend this guy. To be fair, I haven't been looking, but my point is still valid. It seems that every time he gets close to releasing, or unleashing, one of his films there's a flurry of video game and movie blogs that link to his awful trailers.
I'm not one to buck the trend.
That's the trailer for In the name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale. RPGs, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and San Andreas aside, have never really done it for me, and there are sex acts I would commit with my own grandparents before I spent a single second on World of Warcraft, so I'm probably the last person who'd be offended that he adapted Dungeon Seige. I don't really know, or care, whether he remained faithful to the plot, or whether my favorite busty elven wench would be appearing. Similarly, I never really got into Lord of the Rings, which Boll's celluloid enema shamelessly steals from, even down to the fuckin' font the title is written in and the casting of the dude who played the Dwarf (on an unrelated note, aren't Dwarves meant to be kind of plentiful in fantasy worlds? Why was there only one in the whole trilogy? What were they doing that was more important than saving the world from a big glowy eye monster and his army of Gollums? And why was he Welsh? All Dwarves do is mine, drink mead and sing, whereas the Welsh have at least two other interests)
Maybe I'm being unfair calling the Return of the Name of the Fellowship of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale: Cum Fart Cocktails 4 a plaigarised, unimaginative, amatuerish rectal polyp dredged from Satan's own taint. Mr. Boll does use some of his Nazi Gold, which used to be people's teeth for chrissake, to put in one element that was in neither his source material or the timeless fantasy classic whose coatails he is attempting to ride straight into a Child Molestation Brothel.
There are Ninjas in it.
Once again, let me remind you that Uwe Boll has never once denied smoking crack while molesting children in front of pictures of Hitler and doing impressions of Chinese people.
I know that most Internet users regularly engage in hard drugs, child molestation, Hitler worship and casual racism, in fact it is the glue that binds us together, but here's the rub: Uwe Boll is bad for video games. Worse in fact than Jack Thompson and a million Hillary Clintons, worse than every police department that would rather blame crimes on Grand Theft Auto than actually do their jobs. Uwe Boll, by releasing retarded films about lousy videogames confirms every baby-boomer's suspiscion that games are artless, needlessly violent and fundamentally worthless culutral objects. 99% of the time they're right too, because the kind of games that warrant being made into films are the kind of adolescent crap holding back the medium's devlopment. Nobody wants to film the Total War series' sweeping epics, or Eve Online's beautiful spacescapes, or Metal Gear Solid and (the criminally underbought) Psychonaught's experimental narratives, because they don't need to be filmed. They're perfect as they are. It's the same reason nobody wants to film Picasso's Guernica, or The Stooges' Funhouse. Flawed games that appeal to only the most undiscerning player, like Bloodrayne and Boll's forthcoming Postal, convince hacks like him, and fellow monkeyfucker Paul 'WS' Anderson (the WS stands for 'White Supremacy'), that they'd be doing a service to gamers everywhere by bringing these games to mainstream attention.
There's a petition to stop Boll's maddness and bring him before a war crimes tribunal HERE.

Your opinions, taken care of

2006-01-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

Looks like one little lady moved to big girl's pants a little early

It's that time again kids: The Buddyhead Best and Worst of 2005 list (featuring guest judge Josh Homme) and SomethingAwful's 'World's Greatest Dad' Awards (which is kinda like the 'Head's worst-of list only with a big emphasis on negging everybody's vibes).
Once again, I've got no complaints about any of the choices (although Buddyhead missed out on both Green Day and System of a Down but for some reason included the Oasis album in there). One interesting thing: they both used the picture of Fergie (the white girl the Black Eyed Peas cover in fake tan, pictured above) to illustrate teh Suck of that band.

This is the day that was

2006-01-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

Like many of you, I am concerned that Google, once a simple search engine, has grown far too large and will inevitably turn into a Microsoft-like juggernaught which will advertise directly onto the retinas of every living human, and retcon advertising into the lives of all dead ones. Unlike many of you, I heartily embrace this trend and would like to take this opportunity to let our new Overlords know that my cathode-ray damaged frontal lobes and San-Andreas-induced capacity for random acts of senseless depravity would make me a perfect guard at one of your concentrated-advertising camps.
In anticipation of this corporate dystopia, I downloaded the Google Desktop side-bar, which streams constant news, RSS feeds and photos to your desktop at all times. I literally cannot not look away!
Here's some noteworthy newsoids from the global info-lake:

French Government pledges to tackle debt, desert, after a breather.

North Korean Leader's whereabouts unknown- is he behind you? Take our quiz to find out.

New Orleans unviels controversial rebuilding plan- experts say a gun aimed at God unlikely to deter future disasters.

LSD creator celebrates 100th birthday in dimension made from living music.

A Heartfelt Apology to Rock 'n' Roll Space Monsters

2006-01-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

Gwar address the U.N, yesterday.

Well, I haven't updated for a while, which normally would mean that I had a life or a girlfriend or something (a Jedi craves these things not). It's actually because the network admins running my campus net' recieved a DMCA complaint against me. It's a fair cop, I was downloading. Now, they made me write a letter explaining that I broke the rules and I'm sorry, and they're probably going to send said letter to Santa Claus or Jesus's castle on the moon. The particular file I was busted for was the film Syriana, which is good and which you should go see. However, I did something much worse. I hurt hard-working immigrants to the planet earth, by downloading the music of the band Gwar.
I would like to use this public forum to apologise to Oderus Urungus, Flattus Maximus , Beefcake the Mighty, Jizmak Da Gusha, Balsac the Jaws of Death and miss Hymenstra Hymen. I understand, that as monsters from beyond space who have come to earth to defile our women, you face a great deal of prejudice and our culture of decency and hygeiene has made it near impossible for you to get gainful employment in the medical or food service industry. You have faced not only a backlash from critics who don't understand your unique perspectives, but also libellous accusations that you are in fact a 'joke band', or, worse still, the outcome of a marketing project. Furthermore, the harrassment of Mr. Urungus by police officers for exposing his genitalia onstage is an abuse of authority on par with the Rodney King beating.
Despite my deep and abiding respect for your band I made the unforgivable mistake of downloading your music on January 6th of this year. I understand that this doesn't only hurt a faceless record label, but a hard working group of deviants who have done nothing more than commit unspeakably foul acts against humans and animals alike. Please accept my apology.
And please don't eat me.

-G.

Dark Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Saga

2005-12-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

Phoenix Wright: his chief export? JUSTICE!

Check it. Using a baffling Japanese flash game based on the Nintendo DS title Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, I've created a cartoon that puts the 'rude' in 'rudimentary'. Just click on each part in turn to witness intense legal conflict:

Part1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13

That sure was fun, wasn't it? Yep, sure is an hour of my life that I'll never get back. Guess I'll go drink and listen to 'Guilty of being White' on infinite repeat.
Happy holidays!

These two lovely young ladies show us all that the reason for the season is pleasin'

Review: Liberality for All, R for Retarded

2005-12-10T19:55:00.000-08:00

Osama Bin Laden addresses the U.N, yesterday

There's been a lot of talk in various comics and politics forums about Mike Mackey and Donny Lin's right-wing comic 'Liberality for All'. Newsarama said that there were three comics people are talking about this season: Marvel's House of M, D.C's Infinite Crisis and ACC's Liberality, in which cyborg versions of popular right-wing talk show hosts wage a freedom-fight on the ultra-liberal U.N world government. Or something.
Now, a lot of people have been talking about this book, but few have read it, and I'm one of the few people lucky enough to have a copy. And what can I say except WOW. Now, that's not the same WOW some might experience reading something that's good, more the WOW you get when you read the winner of the Darwin awards, or about that woman who hired an undercover cop to kill an entire family to get a block of cheese.
I will always recall the day that my copy of Liberality arrived: I was sat on the porch of my organic soy cooperative when my life-partner and leather slave Mahmood came running down the driveway, covered in blood and clutching a gore-soaked copy of the comic.
"Look effendi" he said "The Great Satan's postal system has delivered more imperalist propaganda by mistake."
"Mahmood, my love, that's a copy of an AmeriKKKan comic book I ordered with my last welfare cheque. Though I respect your freedom to kill the mailman-"
"Mailwoman" he said, shuddering "I could see her ankles."
"I would say you did the right thing by killing that little Eichmann, but 'right' and 'wrong' are terms forced upon us by the fascist patriarchy to force us into a life of corporate slavery."
Mahmood had to take the hybrid car into town to get another garbage bag full of welfare cheques, leaving me ample time to perform a close and unbiased reading of the police state's latest attempt to subdue the proletariat.
Firstly, much the Nazi-sponsored Right-Wing media whose brain-washing labs produced Liberality, the book leaves many gaps in it's account of the real events of 9/11. Firstly, there is no mention of the vast Israeli sponsored plot to replace the planes with holograms and missiles, or that the people in the twin towers were not, in fact, real human beings with lives and families, but Little Eichmanns and Freemasons who plot every day to kill black people. Secondly: Osama Bin Laden is the bad guy in this book. Whuh? Did somebody miss a forum post on GNN? Look Mackey, if that is your real name, it's pretty simple: AmeriKKKa kills like a million people every day, so anyone who kills AmeriKKKans must be a good guy, and I refuse to do any more thinking about the subject than that. Also, the part about respecting guns? I laughed so hard I almost blew away my meth. The only ones I respect are in the hands of the brave Iraqi freedom fighters as they wage their revolutionary stuggle against the Nazi Corprocracy Fascists who want to steal their oil to run the SUVs of suburban consumer zombies and force upon the oppressed Iraqi people christian values like literacy. And the art? Our adopted Anglo-Saxon child could do better, in fact I used the pages I tore out in disgust to line his cage.
Of course, because a vast right-wing conspiracy controls all aspects of AmeriKKKan life, I expect Liberality and it's poisonous slander against progressive politics to be required reading in all of the nation's Corporate Drone Factories. I'm sorry, did I say Corporate Drone Factories? I meant SCHOOLS.

Satan is comin' to town! The Christmas album

2005-12-09T19:51:00.000-08:00

Take a wild guess about what they're about to do with that Candy Cane.

Happy holidays everyone! This very special post is for everybody I gave a CD to this holiday season, because I'm far, far too cheap and lazy to write the track listing myself or print a playlist. So, for the ten or so people I'm giving the same present to this year, and all of teh Interweb, here is the full track listing for my awesome mix-cd: The Liberal Plot Against Christmas

1) Death From Above 1979 - Romantic Rights: DFA1979 get the party started in style- the video for this song has them wearing gold sequined clothing, which has officially transcended the irony barrier and come full circle back to cool. Oh, and the noise you're hearing was made by only two guys.
2) The English Beat - Mirror in the Bathroom: I don't know too much about these guys, except that they recently played here in Portland and travelled here all the way from the 1980s in their Delorean. They bring the funk in that white-boy new-wave dub style that I loathe anywhere else. The song will make you want to do rails off a glass coffee table.
3) why? - darla: why?, real name Yonnie, was inspired to write this song after seeing a pro-life commercial. This is the first of two tracks from Oakland's lower-case lovin' anticon records. Check out their 'music for the advancement of hip-hop' label sampler for more, but not before admitting that why? is as much a hip-hop artiste as Fiddy-cent.
4) Isis - Weight: Isis are from Boston and do metal like nobody else dares.
5) Jet Alone - What Booty?: This is the first of my tracks, included to balance out an acoustic and rock heavy track listing. There's 8-bit beats over Grime vocals from Wiley and associates.
6) Black Mountain - Druganut: Okay, let's get this out of the way: Black Mountain went on tour with Coldplay. Don't hold that against them, because they sound like Stevie Wonder meets 'Sabbath. Druganaut is one of their finest songs; dedicate it to the 'head in your life.
7) Sloan - Two Seater: I've finally found a good band from Canada 'ey. The country that gave the world The X-files, Barenaked Ladies and Wolverine produced this tasty nugget of indie-rock. There's a personal message in the chorus too.
8) 27 - Cold Hands, Warm Heart - I found this on the Relapse records sampler 'Contaminated 5.0' alongside such artists as Canivorous Erection, Red Harvest and Pig Destroyer. And it's Lounge, as in a sweet, soulful torch song with a slightly hip-hop bent. Why 27 is signed to Relapse I'll never know.
9) Boom-bip and Doseone feat. Buck 65 - The Unthinkable (Venetian Snares mix): Wow, four artists I like doing one song. This one has kind of a personal bent too, since I've not slept for a long time.
10) Smog - Bathysphere: Smog is dating fellow American singer-songwriter Cat Power, which makes him okay in my book. The fact that his songs absolutely slay helps too.
11) Low - Sunflower: Picking just one Low song is hard, but Sunflower just about pokes it head above the rest, thanks in no small part to Steve Albini's production job. Low are, primarily, a husband and wife team who also happen to be Mormon and very, very unhappy about something. They invented 'Sad-core', or 'Slo-core', so Latter-Day-Saint friendly props to them.
12) Mazzy Star - Fade Into You: I don't know what a 'Mazzy' Star is, but I know the band made some fine psych-indie stuff back in the nineties. This was their suprise hit back in 1992, though they kept releasing great albums up until '96, and they're now defunct.
13) Bob Dylan - In my time of dyin': A Bob Dylan song. I don't actually have to say anything else.
14) Jet Alone - Aurora Snow: More rampant egotism from me, with a cut from my (still unrealeased, thankyou very much Record Industry) Nonchalant LP. The samples are from South Park, pornography, Dorset Stoner-rock levianthans Electric Wizard, and The Pixies (you won't hear it, but I've sampled the bass from 'Debaser').
15) Autolux - Turnstile Blues: Autolux channel Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground and much of the indie-rock of the nineties to make their unqiue and uniquely gorgeous sound. The tight-as-your-kid-sister drumming is from a female drummer, so kudos to them.
16) Kyuss - Day One: Back in the nineties, Kyuss tore up the desert like Charle Manson's Satanic Dune Buggy Attack Squad, then became Queens of the Stone Age and tore up the mainstream. This is the secret track from their last album (And the circus leaves town).
17) Turbonegro - Get it on: Faux-Gay, Faux-Nazi Deathrock from Norway. You heard me. If you can get laid nowhere else, you can still get laid at a Turbonegro show, with ten extra points for pulling one of their devoted fanbase, the Turbojugend.
18) Mercury Rev - Chasing a Bee: Jeers if you only know them for 'Goddess on a Highway'. Cheers for this trippy shoegaze thing they did on their earlier 'yrself is steam' ep.
19) Sebadoh - Brand New Love: I wanted to end the record on an upper, so here's one of the biggest uppers since Adderal. The message is simple: Now sucks, but at any moment something really awesome may happen. So cheer up.

There were some songs that wouldn't fit the CD, but warrant mentioning nevertheless, and here they are:

Pentagram - Forever my Queen: Pentapgram are what Black Sabbath would sound like if that fuckwit 'Ozzy' wasn't fronting them. Good, in other words. Relapse recently re-released their best of, so check it out.

Type O Negative - I don't wanna be me/My girlfriend's girlfriend - They're also-ran Nu-metal losers, but I grow a big rubbery one very time I hear these songs. Don't wanna be me is sublimely stupid, Girlfriend is sleazy and also quite stupid.

Themselves - Grasskirt: This would just weird everyone out. Doseone, who is also Themselves, has a voice like the Mexican guy from Cypress Hill if he was a Victorian-era scientist investigating a series of ritual murders with his negro manservant.

Team America Soundtrack - America! Fuck Yeah!: Liberty! The Alamo! Las Vegas! Christmas! Immigrants! Sportsmanship! Slavery! Books!

Iron and Wine - Jezebel: Iron and Wine is only one guy. I'm calling shennanigans on that Sub-Pop beardo. Good song though.

I'm sure I'll add a bunch more to this list, but if you're interested try to find the extra songs on a P2P service (then buy the albums, these are artists who deserve your money).
Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone!

Yep, nothing says 'Happy Holidays' like the fun at Xavier's school in the early eighties, tovarisch

Bamf! The X-men 3 teaser trailer appears

2005-12-05T17:52:00.001-08:00

It sure has been an exciting X-year true-believers! First there's the baffling House of M, followed by Decimation: You'll Get it if you read this one particular issue that came out before I was born, and now, the X-men Announcement Trailer. Plus, I have this Exclusive preview shot, which ends years of fan speculation: yes, Jean becomes Dark Phoenix (the evil space energy turns her once beautiful face into that of a Denny's waitress). Yes, Emma Frost's breasts are in it. And, if you look closely behind Cyclops's head you'll see none other than the Man of Steel himself, Superman.
Unfortunately, the trailer reveals that while Storm is still present, Gambit isn't. Thanks Brett Ratner, thanks so far up your stupid ass that you'll be tasting my thanks each time you swallow.

Gambit: The only card he needs is the Ace of Spades. And fifty one others.

Girls.Are.Pretty

2005-12-05T01:21:00.000-08:00

Another image from Stuntkid.com

So, it looks like I haven't been updating for a while, and I'm sorry about that. Things are hard here. How hard? Think Vin Disel hard, think Chuck Norris hard. Think Hemmingway on his twelth bottle of absinthe remembering how to run away from bulls. Too abstract? Okay, think that I'm facing a thirty day break from all work and human interaction and I've only got a sub-par laptop and an original Xbox for company. Even my dog is going away for a month.
Now, normally I would segue into a recommendation for a website that amused me. But I'm pissed off. Read Girls are Pretty and leave me, leave me like everybody always does.

New Ultimate Best Fun: Band X is like Author Y

2005-11-21T14:10:00.000-08:00

Image from Stuntkid, chosen arbitraily

Like the man says, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, so engage with the knowledge here, specifically, a list of bands, most fairly middle of the road, and the authors they most resemble. For those of you unwilling to leave my site: kudos, and here's the list reproduced in full:

AC/DC--Julia Child

Alice Cooper--Stephen King

Tori Amos--Alice Walker

Björk--Italo Calvino

Kate Bush--James Joyce

The Beatles--Roald Dahl

David Bowie--J.G Ballard

Jeff Buckley--Frank O’ Hara

Captain Beefheart--Allen Ginsburg

Johnny Cash--Carl Sandburg

Nick Cave--William Faulkner

The Clash --Hunter S. Thompson

Leonard Cohen--John Updike

Elvis Costello--William Shakespeare

Cream--Jane Auel

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young--John Steinbeck

The Cure--William Gibson

The Doors--Jack Kerouac

Bob Dylan--Ernest Hemingway

The Eagles--Tom Wolfe

Mark Eitzel--William Carlos Williams

The Flaming Lips--Shel Silverstein

Fleetwood Mac --J.K. Rowling

Peter Gabriel--Ray Bradbury

Marvin Gaye--Maya Angelou

Green Day--Dan Brown

Hall and Oates --Nick Hornby

P.J Harvey--Virginia Woolf

Jimi Hendrix--Kurt Vonnegut

Jewel--Danielle Steele

The Killers--Bret Easton Ellis

Led Zeppelin--Herman Hesse

Madonna--Anne Rice

Stephen Malkmus--Thomas Pynchon

Metallica--Clive Barker

Joni Mitchell--Margaret Atwood

Nirvana--William Burroughs

Notorious B.I.G.--Iceberg Slim

The Pixies--Paul Auster

Phish--Douglas Adams

Pink Floyd--J.D. Salinger

The Police--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Prince--Henry Miller

Public Enemy--Langston Hughes

Queen--Walt Whitman

Radiohead--Franz Kafka

Lou Reed--Truman Capote

Rolling Stones--Charles Dickens

Rush--J.R.R. Tolkien

Shudder To Think--Samuel Beckett

The Smiths--Agatha Christie

Bruce Springsteen--Norman Mailer

Steely Dan--Raymond Chandler

Sting--John Le Carre

Talking Heads--Eugene Ionesco

U2--C.S.Lewis

Van Halen--Cameron Crowe

Tom Waits--Charles Bukowski

Wilco--Mark Twain

The Who--Ian Fleming

Yes--H.P. Lovecraft

There's some smart stuff there, I think you will agree. There are some blasphemous abominations that should have been written with blood on a parchment of human flesh and filed under the Pentagon next to the Arc of the Covenant, never to see the light of day. I mean, Thomas Pynchon compared to Stephen freakin' 'Uh, I used to be in Pavement? Anybody remember Shady Lane?' Malkmus. HULK SMASH!
Anyway, I've hit the random function on Winamp a few times and came up with my own suggestions:

Big Black/The Icarus Line - Michael Houellebecq

Agorophobic Nosebleed - Peter Sotos

Godspeed You! Black Emporer - Mark Z. Danielewski

Slipknot* - R.L Stein

Evanescence* - Poppy Z Brite.

Faith No More - Dennis Cooper

Atari Teenage Riot - Robert Anton Wilson

Iron Maiden - Dennis Wheatley (I mean, come on)

Dinosaur Jnr. - Donna Tarrt

Dashboard Confessional* - Dave Pelzer

Acid Mothers Temple - Alan Moore

cLOUDDEAD - David Foster Wallace

A Perfect Circle - Neil Gaiman

John Coltrane - James Baldwin

Born Against - Chuck Pahlahniuk doing Fight Club and Survivor

Carnivourous Erection - Chuck Pahalahniuk doing Guts.

Leonard Cohen - Leonard Cohen

Interpol - Truman Capote

The Strokes - On their best day they barely scrape Jonathan Safran Foer, most of the time they're this

* Please note that I don't actually own a Slipknot, Dashboard Confessional or Evanescence album, nor any books by R.L Stein, Poppy Z. Brite or Dave Pelzer. I really can't stress this point enough.

tEh h0rr0r, tEh h0rr0r: More tales of debauchery from other people's blogs

2005-11-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

All this can be yours if you only betray your partner's trust!

Work is piling up, my social life is non-existant, I can't sleep at night nor stay awake during the day, nameless horrors haunt my everyday existance, so it can only be time for... Other people's blogs that suck!

Wife Swapping Stories

It is often said that there is someone out there for everyone. Our modern age of high-speed intermodemming has revealed a new aspect to this truism: When a person finds their special someone they invariably get tired and end up reading tiresome wife swapping stories on Literotica.com. That, or Lord of the Rings slash in which Aragon is impregnated by Legolas.
This is not one of those stories.
Wife Swapping Stories is something of a misnomer, since it only contains a fragment of a story, which contains no wife swapping. This would be a little like calling a movie 'The thirst of Dracula's boner' and showing fifteen minutes of An Officer and a Gentleman. This isn't really dissapointing, since I never expected to be -appointed by Wife Swapping Stories.

isildur's bane

Ah the lower-case, ever the friend of avant-garde hip-hop and those unwilling to wrestle with the nefarious 'caps lock' key.
The page promises both 'learning' and 'unlearning', and fails to deliver on both counts. Instead, we have several months of prose poetry. Again, the dissapointment I feel when reading this site is palpable.

Moves to Watch Stoned

I don't have a 'pet peev'. Pet peeves usually belong to that lady in the office with far too many cats and a festive sweater for all occasions and almost always include 'smokers'. If I had a pet peev, it would be stoners. Now, I've got nothing against smoking the Marijuana, but I fuckin' despise stoner culture as if it were Hitler raping my dog. This is why Movies to Watch Stoned is such a joy to behold, because it's the site I would have probably ended up making if I hadn't decided to stop 'smoking tha chronic' aged 19 (it made me scared to talk to girls).
As for the site, try this creative visualisation exercise: imagine somebody you genuinely don't care about, somebody who, should their violated and shaved corpse turn up in the woods, you would shrug your head and get on with your day. If they are female then imagine them as a guy for the purposes of this exercise. Try to imagine them aged fifteen, stoned, and having a movie night in his parents' basement with some 'bud' and Fritos. Now imagine the films this nonperson watches: Eurotrip, Duece Bigalow, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Dodgeball. The experience is terrifying, like having H.P Lovecraft's nightmares shat onto your chest by Cerberus (guardian of the underworld or reactionary aardvark, whichever you find scarier).

Overall I give these sites my new lowest rating:

David Hyde Pierce.

An explosion is like a kiss to God

2005-11-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the always-fabulous Barbelith messageboard (the most smarterest place on teh Interweb), I now have videos of mankind's animated descent into divisiveness and hatred to rival my previous favorite, Fucking USA.
The first is this poorly animated Iranian cartoon about suicide bombing. It follows young Abd Al-Rahman's quest to avenge his family's death at the hands of a bloodthirsty Israeli officer, named Ariel. Like the Little Mermaid. The fact that Ariel was able to overcome this obvious handicap to advancement in the military, and the fact that is band of chuckling zionists are killing people as far away as Iran only attests to how evil this dude is. We follow young Al-Rahman (whose name means 'the instant noodle' in Iranianese) through his training, which appears to involve sitting on the floor and nodding his head (we infidels would assume that training in firearms and guerilla warfare would be best suited to the task, but what do we know?). Next is the emotional scene in which Al-Rahman's mother wishes him well on his suicide mission, presumably because she wants to knock through his wall and turn his room into a breakfast bar with track lighting (the home improvement aspect of this story will be covered in the sequel).
The sun rises on the last day of Al-Rahman's life, as his fearless leader explains that they will attack the enemy 'in accordance with our plan' and acknowledges that their mission is a difficult one, as nobody involved has any training and the plan (shoot and throw grenades at the enemy) has been rehearsed using the early level of Command and Conquer: Generals. But what is this? Al-Rahmad removes his shoelaces and uses them to fashion an omni-pin remover for his grenade belt. Clearly that day Allah had looked upon him, and selected 'Upgrade Grenadier>Suicide Bomber (100 credits)' from the upgrades menu. Allah then selects Al-Rahmad by left clicking and right-clicks the advancing enemy forces. I can't tell you what happens next because the video stream kind of fucks up at that point, though I imagine that Allah builds up some awesome defences around his base and builds a fuckload of refineries until he has enough ore to build as many tanks as he can select at one time, before clicking on the enemy's construction yard and letting the rudimentary AI take care of the rest. Although 'tank rushes' are frowned upon in online play, and tend to get one called a 'n00b' the following scene, after my connection sorts itself out, shows the dreadful aftermath of the attack, in which everyone, both Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist, lies dead. In a moving final scene, a young boy, previously a complete non-entity to the cartoon's plot, steals a bloodstained rag from one of the dead terrorists. For no reason.
The message here is simple and profound: suicide bombing is very, very retarded.
The second animation is from the good ol' BBC, my motherland's very own state-run television station that everybody pays for whether they want to or not (much like hospitals). Considering that it has the taxes of one of the world's wealthiest nations behind it, I really think that the Beeb could have done better than a grainy Realplayer clip, especially when the Iranian clip was in crisp fullscreen WMV, but I guess it's one of those Western decadance things. The clip, from Belgian TV, at first shows the lovable 'Smurfs' that inhabit Belgium dancing and singing, as is their heathen custom. They are then -not to mince words here- blown the fuck up for abso-fucking-lutely no reason at all. This further compounds the horrifying existential terror of being a Smurf, who, as Jean-Paul Sartre puts it 'are born for no reason, live through weakness, die by accident and have no dicks under those little white pants'.

Kids bringing gums to school

2005-11-05T16:21:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to: Love and Rockets.
My enhappinessising continues apace, due in no small part to this site and it's sugary-sweet collection of bubblegum pop rarieties. Now, those of you with the misfortune to have met me, or those of you who have perused my Last.fm profile, will know that my tastes in music tend towards the dark side: Pig Destroyer, Electric Wizard, Low, Tom Waits, Converge. Sunshiny Happiness-core stuff like this brings balance to the Force. It's just volume 1, so if you like what you hear come back in a month or so for more.
Other reasons to be happy?

Jenna Haze, the 'adult entertainer', who has recently decided to go back to doing boy/girl scenes. Good for her.

Love Love Love Love

2005-11-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

I'm Listening to: Heartattack and Vine, by Tom Waits.
Now, for most of you, getting a new Winamp skin that's actually pretty cool isn't a big deal, but finding this Super Famicom skin has got me all a-happinessed. So has Lowbrow art. And Sparkles. And Porno.

Beat a man to death with his own knees: ask me how!

2005-10-31T17:44:00.000-08:00

The tanks are made out of chocolate! How adorable!

Maan, I leave the site for a four days and a skinhead takes a man-sized handful from his big box of crack and leaves a link to his blog in my pristine and virginal comments box. Don't look for it, it's deader than disco, but the link was to some place on Blogger (which I had always assumed was the Leon Trotsky of the blogging world) where homeslice denounces the various figures within the neo-nazi underground... for not being evil enough. There's no 'hey, if y'all believe in survival of the fittest and the will to power, and if you also believe that Jews run the world, then doesn't that kind of prove that you aren't nearly as powerful as you think?' Not even a 'you know the uniforms are kinda gay right?' Shockingly, I can't find a single picture of a young nordic boy in tight brown pants anywhere on this guy's site.
I mean, sure, I can sweep this fuckhat under the carpet with a single press of the delete key, but there's principles at stake. And, more importantly, advertising revenue (currently standing at a mind-blogging 0.19 cents, providing I submit my tax information, which I won't.) As you may have noticed, the ads are currently for either anger management or deadly martial arts training. An odd pair, to be sure. Seeing as I haven't reviewed anything for a while, I thought I'd try out the wicked-awesome martial arts page so I could get totally pumped, like this guy.
Availability

If, like me, you long to destroy your foes, both physically and mentally, with wicked-awesome martial arts, then the Accelerated Battlefield Combatives system is for you! Admittedly, the campus of a small liberal-arts college affords me few opportunities to go around hitting people to make myself feel big, but I was sure that the quote 'Legendary muder-by-numbers system' from ABC could be applied to almost any aspect of my life. After all, when wouldn't I need to 'snatch a loaded gun right out of a "Gangsta's" hand so damn fast it will literally tear his trigger finger off! (and then cave his chest in without skipping a beat)'. I can think of at least twelve instances this morning when that particular skill would have come in handy.

Graphics

We're partying like it's 1997 if web site design is anything to go by.

Sound

The website creeps up on you in complete silence. Like a ninja... or ten ninjas.

Gameplay

The ABC system makes awesome martial arts so simple that I managed to go from 0 to Deadly without reading most of the site or purchasing the $127 dollar 'Fall Brawl Special'. Like a true warrior, mine was the style of no style, the art of fighting without fighting. Specifically, my martial arts involved eating Doritos and watching Lost.
To attain mastery of my elite fighting style I decided I needed to get pumped- more pumped than I have ever been in my entire life. This wasn't going to be easy.
Warning: The following are secrets of wicked-awesome martial arts that the government, army, league of women voters and ACLU do not want you to know.
I decided to do two reps of this comic (two because the plot was a little hard to follow the first time round) then to go to 7-11 and buy doritos. I selected deliscous Black Pepper Jack doritos and moving them to the counter.

Now, like many neighborhood convinience stores, the fellow at the checkout was, how should I put this? Of middle-eastern extraction. Having read the top secret training website, I knew that special forces soldiers occasionally taught the wicked-awesome martial arts to foreign freedom fighters. It was easy to intuit then, that after they had done freedom-fighting they would, naturally, turn into freedom-hating terrorists. I also knew, from watching Fox news and much of Chuck Norris's enviable ouvre, that all terrorists are from the middle east, bar absolutely none in the whole history of the human race. Could this store clerk posess the radical fighting style I had learnt mere moments before? Given his blank expression and creased clothes mirrored my own, I could only conclude that he did.
"Hello effendi" I said, placing my purchase and money on the counter while trying not to reveal that I assumed I knew twelve different ways to choke him on his own skull.
"This ninety-nine cents, you give me eighty."
Mind games eh?
"Akhmed, can I call you Akmed? Listen buddy, I understand you feel intimidated by the aura of a true warrior, but I'm pretty sure I gave you a dollar."
"No. Need correct change."
"What's the deal with flying carpets Akhmed? I mean, that's bullshit right? You can't make carpets fly, not even with like Allah-voodoo or whatever it is you guys do. Hey, d'ya have one of those really big swords?"
"Correct change."
The Way of the true warrior incorporates both the closed fist (beating the ever-living fuck out of people) and the open palm (a hypothetical state in which you aren't beating the ever-living fuck out of people), so I tried a different tack: composing a haiku.
"Give me doritos
Or you will get punched a lot
upside yo' head, bitch."
"I need correct change."
"Huttah!"
With that I punched through the uncooperative Mohammadan's chest.
"Please ask our staff about me kicking your ass! Take a penny, leave a corpse!"

Overall

With my enemy vanquished and my doritos in hand, I was free to watch Lost, and I owed it all to the sweet martial arts skills I learnt at topsecrettraining.com. With the store clerk dead my Master's soul could finally rest, in a metaphorical sense seeing as I had no master nor did he need to be avenged.
Topsecrettraining.com gets a rating of:
Eliza Duskhu

Like a wise man once said: You gotta have Faith. Incidentally, that wise man was George Michael and, to a lesser extent, Fred Durst.

Terror Fabulous: Unhealthily obsessed...with twelve-year-old white supremacist pop singers

2005-10-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

FASCIST POP SINGERS UPDATE: I was reading this Wired article and decided to take a link to Technorati, a blog-search site, and as of 5.20pm Pacific time, October 27th 2005, the fourth most popular search term in the... urrgh... 'blogosphere' is.... Prussian Blue, the Neo-Nazi pre-teen pop singers from Bakersfield CA. The top result, predictably, is in German.
I'll give Culture two months to catch up, then they'll be all over the Billboard charts. I guarantee there's a bunch of shit in Revelations about this.
If you find any Prussian Blue related news or, god forbid, a concert review, then send them on over in the Comments box. Help us spearhead the fight against Fascism and bland music.

This Machine Kills Fascists

2005-10-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

Natalie Portman. Lookin' fine. Yesterday.

I'm listening to: 'The Drapery Falls' by Opeth. Prog Rock and Black Metal together in one dorktastic whole, which has probably never touched a girl or left its basement.

Today, my beautiful Toshiba M50 Satellite Notebook was returned to me. To those of you unnacustomed to having a platonic relationship with a mid-range laptop, this will seem like a trifling detail. For me, this is like the reattachment of a limb. A limb that provides me with information, and downloads movies for me, and plays MP3s and sodomises my vast imagination with pornography. I call this limb 'Superlimb 700 iNFOgland XL'. I should be able to provide you with more pictures of Claire Danes and penis jokes.
Meanwhile, enjoy this ABC article about 'Prussian Blue', the White Supremacist Olsen Twins, which is kinda ironic seeing as the Olsen Twins pretty much disprove white supremacy. Oh, and Prussian Blue have recently upped sticks from Bakersfield* to the Pacific Northwest. I live in the Pacific Northwest. Seriously, this country...
Oh, they have a Myspace page as well. Proof that Blogger rocks the free world.

* It's 'not white enough' apparently. Though, seeing as Korn are also from Bakersfield, Prussian Blue would only be the second most offensive musical act that the city has produced.

Where is the robot love?

2005-10-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

Happiness, yesterday. Not pictured, me.

How much more could being without a computer for a month suck? The answer is none. None more suck. Two weeks ago I went and spilt water on my Awesome Radical Notebook and it done blew up on me. Far be it from me to explain that this situation 'sUxx0r', or to clarify this point with various 'frowning face' emoticons, as it was pretty much my fault and Toshiba have been really good about it all, but cold turkey doth not 'r0xx0r'. Verily. Concordantly, I've been forced to imagine porn vis a vis my outdated analogue brain, and have, for the first time in several years, been forced to actually purchase a CD or 'Compact Disc'. Ergo apropos I am very unhappy.

$elling out update: Where have all the Flowers (ads) gone?

2005-10-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Diamonds of Sierra Leone, not pictured: crippling poverty, Kayne

Fie!
My quest to sell out has been thwarted yet again. As you will notice, the Google Ads banner has reverted back to an appeal for money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. While this is a worthy cause, it won't pay for the diamonds on my teeth or the Cristal in my pool. Furthermore, it brings me no closer to sleeping with Claire Danes. I hope you're happy with yourself Dr. Eric Schmitt, CEO of Google Inc. I hope that the millions of advertising dollars my site rakes in every day keep you warm at night while I'm not having sex with any celebrities because I don't have diamonds in my face.
You at this picture, Dr. Eric Schmitt, CEO of Google Inc.
This, Dr. Eric Schmitt, CEO of Google Inc. is Claire Danes. She was born on April 12th 1979, and attended the prestiguous Dalton School. She is perhaps best known for playing Angela Chase in 'My So Called Life' and has recently been acclaimed for her performance in 'Shopgirl'. Look at her Dr. Eric Schmitt, CEO of Google Inc. This is what you deny me. You, and a restraining order preventing me from being in the same State as her. But mainly you, Dr. Eric Scmitt, CEO of Google Inc. I hope you're proud.

$elling out, $ucking dick$, part 2: Google Loves my Cock

2005-09-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

The process of $elling out is complete: Google has trawled my page and decided which ads are most appropriate to my demographic of young, sexy, limber internetualists. Google, in it's infinite wisdom, has chosen to do this using ads for other blogging services. I've gotta say, this is kind of an insult. Not to get all ass-kissy, but I'm perfectly happy with Blogger, even though you can cut and paste stuff directly into the Compose window, preventing me from bringing you my extensive Dark Crystal extended continuity fan fiction. True that. On the plus side the picture insertion interface makes it ludicrously easy to fill my blog with pictures of Claire Danes.
Now, for those of you with integrity left, Google tailors ads to a site by picking up key words. Clearly I haven't used enough references to awful hair metal bands to provide you with the links you crave. Therefore, my first review in a while will be a critical deconstruction of this album cover by the band Jackyl.

Availability

Amazon.com carries the slighty-larger-than-a-thumbnail image you see above, found while searching for all albums with songs about cocks in them (track eleven of Jackyl's eponymous album is the sublime 'she loves my cock') for a mixtape I intend to give to each potential sex partner, and possibly to play during my wedding and funeral. Unfortunately my search was confined to the internet by the narrowminded clerks of Portland's record stores, who failed to appreciate my creative vision. I had assumed that, as adults, they would be able to critically distance themselves from my muscular, oiled penis, which I presented to them to illustrate the mood I was going for in my mixtape. In all fairness though, I was in the terminal phase of a fifteen day metamphetamine binge and chose to announce my presence by playing an air-guitar version of Pantera's 'Vulgar Display of Power' album, in it's entirity, on a severed arm.
Incidentally, if the owner of the arm would like it returned (for sentimental reasons, as the unsanitary conditions in which I am storing it preclude reattachment via microsurgery) then by all means contact me.

Graphics

Baffling surrealist horror.
Let's begin in the centre and work our way out, like Theseus navigating Minos's labyrinth. The figure in the centre, wearing the Ultimate Poet's Shirt, is attempting to smoke a magic marker. As a regular abuser of solvents I can attest to the potency of the marker as a means to get tore out of one's frame. The figure to his right is clearly disturbed by this, much like my friends and caseworker, and has morphed his arm into living rock in order to smash the offending item. This mastery of the Cosmic Elements marks him out as a Super-Skrull, one of a caste of elite warriors in the Skrull empire endowed with the powers of the Fantasic Four. The subtext here is obvious: the amorphous representative of a warlike race is attempting to cut off a creative genius from his source of chemical inspiration. That the artist can produce such a potent metaphor for my current situation, being 'punched' (imprisoned in a secure psychiatric facility) by a 'Super-Skrull' (The State of Oregon) for expressing myself (the list of my violations of the laws of man and God will not be reproduced here, for the sake of brevity, but for the word 'expressing', read 'exposing')
Note that the Ultimate Poet's legs extend down into a black rose, directly above Jackyl's box of ancient artifacts (a common feature in their live shows), which appears to be firing the Ten Commandments directly upward. Also of note is the figure directly behind the drug metaphor, who appears to be wearing the costume of Emperor Palpatine's Royal Guard, the savagery with which he weilds his chainsaw (a traditional weapon of the Sith) and the fact that he has discarded his mask point to the brutality of the corporate-sponsored War on Drugs, specifically, the War on Me Taking Drugs and Driving Stolen Policecars Through Farmer's Markets. Note the indifference with which the fellow trying to open a bottle of wine, tellingly hooked up to a defibilator, views the scene. It is my contention that the represents none other than YOU, the American public, looking on as I am railroaded into the psychiatric ward in a show-trial for nothing more than running around downtown Portland punching strangers and shrieking. You should be ashamed America.
Also, they're all dogs for some reason.

Sound

We must all be very quiet. They're monitoring this conversation. Who are 'they' you ask? Well, wouldn't your narrow white ass like to know.

Gameplay

The endless interpretive possibilities of this artistic masterstroke easily rivals GTA: San Andreas or Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for playability. Also, the eyes follow me around the room, and command me to kill in the name of Jesse Dupree.

Overall
I am at a loss for words with which to describe this. Therefore it gets my new highest rating: a picture of an emaciated looking Claire Danes all wet and shooting water:

Claire Danes! Watergun attack! Go!

Games Roundup: tEh sUxx0r u luv

2005-09-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

Fluffy-Dinkums gets ready for squad-based online action by firing at bystanders in Satan's name (above)

As ever, I have the hottest scoops in gaming: straight from my Gaming Overmind to your sweaty palms:

Streetfighter: Popular Culture Reference Rumble: Hurricane Katrina edition

The enduringly popular Streetfighter series finally enters September 2005 (after August's mold-breaking Street Fighter: Trapped in the Closet Battle Royale) with this installment featuring characters tangential to events in New Orleans. Players can choose from 93 playable characters, including Michael Brown, Cindy Sheenan, Sean Penn, Kanye West, Chun Li and Bill Clinton. Though a confusing array of new characters meant that in previous Streetfighter games the character's picture was so small that it couldn't be selected without affecting the outcome, developers Konami have allayed player's fears by promising that you will be able to see Chun Li's panties (descirbed as 'white cotton') during high-kicks and cartwheels.

Special Operations: Terrifyingly real ops executive black gamma: Colon: Middle Eastern Goregasm:

Coldly Brutal games unvieled their potential Battlefield 2 beater at Gamecon 1997, held in the Scranton Freight Airport Hilton, NJ. The game promises a level of arbitrary death unparalelled in modern gaming: with enemy snipers able to fire through all terrain features and, in a bold move, able to see and kill the player before the game is installed. Players are invited to log on to Coldly Brutal's website, where they can register their repeated deaths in the game before purchase. A full complement of modern weapons is included, from military staples like the M4 to more esoteric weapons like the FN-P90 submachinegun, a medieval Mace and the exploding clam-shells used to assasinate Fidel Castro. All weapons will be purely ceremonial, as their use alerts enemy artillery positions to your location.
The Developers promise that although you and 99% of people you know will be unable to play the game, due to its massive system requirements and the fact that you can be killed by enemy fire during loading screens, there will always be that one guy you know who has never touched a girl yet can miraculously survive punishing military simulators, respects Rommel like most people respect Martin Luther King and can actually remember all the bastard key-bindings that prevent your squad from marching single-file into machine gun fire like most people remember their children's names.
Special Operations: Terrifyingly real ops executive black gamma: Colon: Middle Eastern Goregasm will be published in Febuary 2006.

Championship Manager 2008: Look, we don't mind if you masturbate.

A refreshingly honest addition to the popular football management franchise. CM2008:LWDMIYM offers a stripped-down interface, allowing players to get down to the nitty-gritty of Championship Managing (wanking themselves silly over pictures of footballers) without any of the tedious statistics or interactivity, via a simple Windows Slideshow of the players of Divisions 1-4, the Premiership and Scottish cup. Pre-orders have already overwhelmed the game's developer; the combined effects of a failing education system and radiation from mobile phones is credited for creating a generation of 13-45 year olds incapable of relating to each other through other means that reciting the excruitiating minutae of a game they themselves are too overweight to play.

Perfect Dark Zero

A prequel to the Nintendo 64 smash, this Halo-beating title follows the adventures of a young Joanna Dark: how young? Well, developers Rare say that levels will involve skipping, doing cartwheels, putting on mummy's shoes and crying because your uncle touched you in a bad place. A version where the uncle is replaced by Cthulu and all skipping and cartwheeling is removed is in development for the lucrative Japanese market.

Japanese pornographic staple Cthulu, explaining to Agent Joanna Dark what to tell her mother if she asks where those bruises came from. (c) Rare interactive

$elling out, $ucking dick$

2005-09-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Claire Danes can enla5ge your pen15!! millions of satisfied customers!

As you will have no doubt noticed, I've gone and sold out my limitless integrity by putting a Google Adspace thing on the top of my blog. I assure you, this was only done for money. And bitches.
I get money for every click on the ads above, which potentially could lead you to hot Britney Spears nude jpegs, World of Warcraft hacks+scripts, maybe even rare Claire Danes bukkake pics. This boobs will hopefully generate more revenue than the current Herbal Viagra penis enlargement shemales nothing I get from this site (Boobs), allowing me to purchase more Harry Potter slash fiction totally hot!!!!!.

Suicidegirls, um, suicide themselves

2005-09-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

Some Suicidegirls, suggesting lesbianism but not actually touching naughty bits or anything

All is not well with the moderately attractive Suicidegirls
The pierced, tatted and puppy-fatted young ladies of SG.com have experienced something of a pogrom of late, with Sicily, Katie, Apnea and various other softcore types have been excluded from the site. Don't worry, you can still see pictures of their pale, half-attractive bodies, they just won't be able to write stuff about how Midterms suck on their journals and stuff.
You see, up until now everybody thought that SG was masterminded by 'Missy', a vaguely punkish blonde who was the group's mouthpiece in the press. As it turns out, the whole shebang was really created by Sean Suhn, a very male guy with a talent for marketing, and a penis. And according to this, the guy's also an asshole who pushes girls around, verbally abuses them and won't let them sign contracts. Though it is never stated that he eats babies and endorses cancer, it is implied. So that whole thing about how SG is run by girls, for girls is bullshit.
The news has sent the internet world reeling, with Suicidegirls members dropping rapidly while membership to actual pornographic websites climbs to 113% of all net users. As the markets closed today Suicidegirls was down 25.23 on the Shaftfro-Analstar exchange, and 38.19 on the L'Il Bow-Wow-Dow-Jones.

Real Suicidegirls founder 'Sean', no doubt plotting to poison Gotham City's water supply or produce the next System of a Down record or something really fucking evil, yesterday, (c)Associated Press.

Say my name bitch!

2005-09-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

AVAST!
If a man ye be an' not some scurvy dog, then ye surely know that it be Talk Like a Pirate day! ARR!
For that is why today I be going by me sea-name, as calculated on me computer machine: X marks tha spot for some manner a' devilish trickery the likesa which ye lubbers have never seen.
But beware, y'are destined fer a trip to tha boneyard if Pirate ye be not! ARR!
Now, for the blackest an' darkest of the sea shanties, known only to the pillaginest sea dogs:

Oooooh.....
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Spongebob Squarepants!

Yours, with oodles of love and kisses

Captain Black Harry Bonney

A World Without 46 Stupid Definitions of the N-Word: Urbandictionary.com and the case for the extinction of the human race

2005-09-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

I've said it before, I'll say it again and it even says it on SomethingAwful.com, the Internet makes you stupid.
Case in point: Urbandictionary.com
The idea is a solid one: a site with which people can define funny little slang words like 'bling', 'freebase' and 'Abraham Lincoln'. All of which are useful definitions for me describing a typical day in my life.
The problem with this site is that nowhere is it made clear that everybody attempting to define a term on this site is functionally retarded. Let's look at some case studies:

Amy Lee is the singer of the pop group* Evanescence, who many of you will remember from the soundtrack to the documentary film Daredevil. Despite being physically attractive and having a pleasing operatic vocal style, the music of her group has been objectively verified, by science, to be 'as much fun as hearing your children die' (Prof. Francis Avenue Going Under a farm animal to lick its balls: The music of Evanescence in light of Post-Marxist theory, 1981, Harvard University Press) Despite miss Lee's negliable contribution to modern music she warrants fourteen definitions, and all but one are gushing praise of this 'amazing singer'. One poster admits to crying during the song 'My Immortal', another explains that 'people who call her a wannabe goth r (sic) just dumb. she is also stunning'. One battles through illiteracy to write: "(she is the) Mortal shape asumed by God when (s)he comes down to Earth to sing", which clearly conflicts with miss Lee's oft-stated Christian beliefs.

Another nugget of wisdom is farted onto the Interweb when the Urbandictionary community attempt to define Communism. Now, obviously it would be foolish of me to dismiss Marx's work simply because it was written during a three day binge of nutmeg and the ammonia from toilet cubes, or because pages 46-79 of the Communist Manifesto are Harry Potter/Rugrats slash fiction (and extensively illustrated I might add). I firmly believe that people should be able to believe in whatever ludicrous bullshit they want. Now most people on Urbandictionary express the view that Communism is evil and/or unworkable, technically right I suppose, but choose to do so by using the dumbest, most ignorant arguments available to humankind. Sixty-Nine times. Read just a little of Urbandictionary and you'll notice this trend: it's not enough to define something, a word can only enter the cannon after being defined dozens of times. Dozens of times. Yeah, dozens. Oh, and capital and lowercase letters are definitely either/or for the Urbandictioneers. Let's look at some of the many turds thrown at communism, like a shit-bullet in a heavily politicised all-monkey production of John Woo's The Killer:

murderous atheistic/satanic political ideology- 'stupid fucks'

I want to dig up Marx's body and shit right in his mouth and all over his face and wipe my ass on his beard! - 'Communism sucks dick'

Communism is the most homosexual form of government of all.All forms of government are homosexual but communism is the gayest,most retarded of all. - HEY,let's "NOT" all fag off together!

It's great to see intellectual heavyweights like fucks, dick and together! weigh in on this important issue.
Next, after five minutes of pressing the 'random' button I finally landed amongst the most important and contentious arguments of our time: Race. Specifically, the use and meaning of the N-word. Please don't click that link if you have any faith left in the human race.
Generously titled 'author' "STEVIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" advances this argument immensely with this crack-addled post:

Niggers are the kind of kids who come from farmingdale and freeport to steal the bikes from inocent white kids in massapequa
Niggers are the kind of people who on madden "role wit vick" and dont appreciate the warriors in the NFL such as John Lynch or Mike Alstot instead niggers know how to role right and throw a no look 60 yard bomb to Randy Moss (who they got because the turned off fair trades) from vick, who by the way is being layedf out by Brian Urlacher while randy Moss's helmet isnt on his head cause Donjnie Edwerds layed him the fuck out

There are forty-six other definitions. Maybe there are some that are even more stupid than the one above. I doubt it.
The existence of people who look at forty-five retarded definitions of the N-word and decide that tEh IntErwEb would not be complete without their latest musing on the injustice of why it's okay for black people to say it but not for eleven year olds who think Linkin Park invented music to use it as generic insult over IRC chat flies in the face of Darwinism like a 737 hijacked by militant Creationists.
Please click this link, read the arguments and give generously. Thankyou.

* I know many 12-14 year olds will disagree with my definition of Evanescence as a 'pop group', and many of you will no doubt want to use the comments box to call me a homosexual. However, I also consider the Beatles and The Jesus and Mary Chain to be 'pop groups'. If you wish to insult me, do so because I truly believe that Evanescence are talentless wastes of organs that could be better used to prolong Bob Dylan's life enough for him to record a new album.

Webcamtravaganza - 'Death by Sexy'

2005-09-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

My webcam is finally up, so I can delight and titalate you with sexy-awesome pictures of whatever is directly in front of my computer. Usually me.
Or my Lava Lamp.
Or Powers Booth, staring at me with such singular malice that I feel my soul dying.

(note: my profile picture shall always be that wicked-radical Deathstroke action figure. Now and forever.)

Chronicles of Awesome vol. 2: Shameless promotion

2005-09-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

OMG1!1!!!!!!one!!!11!: Events in Basra, yesterday

Now, it's not my style to promote other websites, even more so when I'm not being paid for it. I will make an exception in this case and heap my 'props' upon Last.fm
If you're not in the know I'm going to let you know.
So I'm at a college right now that thoughtfully prevents me from downloading shit off teh Interweb. This was brutally rubbed in my face the other day when Campus Security arrived to have a little word with my housemate for downloading Battlefield 2, leading to his interweb access being curtailed for a week. Now, to be fair I'd been downloading stuff for about a week, but I guess security only takes an interest when a game could be used to train terrorists to drop artillery strikes on their own heads and insult each others' sexuality via team chat (which would more than double Al-Qaeda's effectiveness as a fighting force). Last.fm lets you, or more accurately me, upload the names of tracks you've (I've) been listening to on Winamp or -snigger- Media Player so Last.fm can upload it into their database, cross reference it with other artists and then stream Bloc Party songs regardless of what music you listen to. For instance, here's my user profile, top artist is Pig Destroyerfollowed by David Cross, cLOUDDEAD, Atari Teenage Riot and various others. The Last.fm 'recommended artists' thingy has so far bought up Wilco and Bloc-Bastard-Fucking-Circle-Jerk-Wankoff-Party. I've got a sneaking suspiscion that their recommendations database is actually some dude from NME wired up to the Internet and capable of generation 2.5 million bloodless, soulless 'Indie' rock bands per week.
Besides all that, Last.fm is actually pretty okay (it has just this second redeemed itself in my eyes by playing 'Up Against the Wall' by the Icarus Line). It's free so if like me you live under the constant surviellence of campus IT administrators and copyright-lawsuit happy lawyers then give a go.

But seriously...

2005-09-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

Allyson Hannigan, not pictured: tragic events.

There's a big list of charities with relief funds for Hurricane Katrina on Instapundit. Give generously (as in more than $20 USD), supply me with proof of your niceness (a screen grab for instance) and I'll fill this blog with pictures of Alysson Hannigan and puppies.

Chronicles of Awesome vol. 1: America! Fuck... no?

2005-08-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il, feeling ronery.

Proof, if any were needed, that anything America can do North Korea can do retardeder: Fucking USA
This clip, from North Korean tv, did the rounds a bit a while back, and now some ultra-obscure world music hipster band have gone and done a cover. Like one was needed. Fucking USA speaks for itself, it simply is, no explanation needed. Oh, and the ultra-obscure world music hipster band shares an ultra-obscure hipster label with the gloriously named Master Muscians of Bukkake. Props to the Underground for that jem of a title. You think they play weddings?

I heart my new notebook

2005-08-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

(my new laptop. Not pictured: my 'laptop', if y'know what I mean, eh?)

(note: this post was composed entirely for my new laptop PC, a Toshiba Satellite M55. It frankly disccuses my deep, private and very disturbing feelings for this piece of technology. If you are not my Toshiba Satellite notebook then please navigate away from this site.)

Where to begin? You leave me speechless -ironic behaviour for a communications device but one of your many quirks which I have grown to love. Quirks like the odd placement of your delete key, the playful way your cursor will drag when highlighting text, that excited yelp from your cooling fan when I turn you on. My uncle once told me that we like people for their qualities but we love them for their defects. Yes. Love.
Yes. That was actually a line from that movie 'Hellboy'. In the short time we have been together, Toshiba Sattellite M55, I have come to realise that I love you. It frightened me at first -proving that it was really love and not base lust- but now I realise that I have never felt any emotion more strongly or truly. Love. Lovelovelovelovelove.
I cannot lie to you, there have been others. I have recently seperated from a desktop unit. I thought it was love at first; we played together for days on end, she took me through a Martian research station into the bowels of Hell, we paused to watch the way the sun reflected on the water on the coastal road connecting parts of City 17. She let me fill the custom radio station in Vice City with fifteen identical copies of 'Raining Blood' and, when I was bored, 'Baby Got Back' and 'Cop Killa'. But, later on in our relationship, something in her changed. The pixel-shaders that had once made Half Life 2 such a joy were wearing her down and whereas once we stayed up until six AM using her firm grasp of Newtonian physics and my limitless capacity for degrading violence to club Combine soldiers to death with toilets, now she froze after fifteen minutes of gameplay. Barely enough to walk through the train station and listen to Doctor Breen's 'It's safer here' speech, not nearly enough to build a relationship on. The matt-black case and blue neon light that once I found so appealing now seemed bloated and cumbersome. I tried to turn things around with extravagant gifts like a new graphics card, but my efforts were as futile as those of Sisyphus or Cervantes' eponymous knight. There was something wrong, deep in her configuration, that prevented us from regaining our lost spark.
For the longest time I blamed myself, lying on my bed contemplating ending the whole sorry mess of a relationship while she busied herself with some domestic task, like downloading that Family Guy movie from bittorrent. Had I done something to change those settings which were once so perfect? Was it unreasonable of me to expect an Athlon 2400 with 512m/b of RAM and a Radeon 9800xt graphics card to play Half Life 2 at 1200x1600 resolution? By the end, she wouldn't even play Starcraft without locking up, sullen and silent. We had been reduced to playing back the same MP3s and watching the same DIVX movies, we had become like my parents, barely interacting, ghosts of what we used to have. And the less I say about that case of Jeefo worms she had the better.
With you I promise it'll be different. I'll be different. No more games, no more playing hard and fast with startup options, regular checks for viruses and spyware. This will be an adult relationship, built on trust and regular updates.
Oh, and I hate to broach this to you in such a public setting but when me and my other computer broke it off we kinda decided to be, y'know, 'friends with privileges' or whatever they call it here. Anyway, I kinda bought her hard-drive in a caddy and, y'see, I kinda noticed you've got that firewire port- I'm just going to come right out and say this- I was thinking that maybe I could, y'know, plug her into you. I think you two would get on, she's got about ninety gigs of music and films. I just really don't want to shut her out of my life completely. There were bad times but there were good times too. No, it's not your hard-drive. I don't think 80g/b is 'too small'. Quality is better than quantity. Sorry, that came out wrong. What I mean to say is, she's a little older than you, she's had all these experiences and she has all this valuable data. I really don't want there to be compatibility issues between you two.
Oh, and, uh, you might want to get tested for Jeefo worms. I'm just saying.

America - heck yes.

2005-08-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm in America, typing on a Mac of all things from the air-conditioned IT facility of Reed College, Portland, Oregon.
Those of you who have been to the U.S will know about it's fluctuating levels of realism. Driving down the streets I pass cars from the Grand Theft Auto games, I hear the same smatterings of conversations and the radio -ah yes the radio- plays endless, and endlessly bizarre, adverts that seem to have been lifted directly from that game's much-acclaimed soundtrack. Then there's the parts where reality is far too close, like the meth-addicts and the smalltalky introductory sessions I've been having. Last night was an uphill struggle from nine until one to find and drink beer. Me and some people who half an hour ago were strangers passed from room to room like ghosts, congregated under street lamps, smoked cigarettes, drank forties from paper bags. Unlike a lot of the people here I'm old enough to drink legally, and unlike most of them I smoke like Krakatoa about to erupt, so there's a little distance there.
So far I've managed to read the new Bret Easton Ellis novel (you can tell from the blank, unnaffected prose and Gen-X malaise, right?), which is pretty great; the Oddyssey, which I suppose is very important, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, which veers between being laugh-out-loud funny and kind of uncomfortable. All come highly reccommended, but then there aren't many things that I don't like. Except Macs, which are flimsy, toy-like computers with a gimmicky design hiding their grindingly slow operation (Five minutes to log-in, two minutes to open up Firefox, browser windows that judder like Michael J. Fox)

Movie Review: Le Island

2005-08-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

Scarlett Johannsen, not pictured: my erection.

I don't really dig paying for films. That's why I use bittorrent to download them. It makes a lot of sense; if I had gone to the cinema to see some of the films I've seen recently then I'd have paid money to spend ninety minutes waiting for the guy from the Shield to say 'It's clobbering time!' and seen films which any reasonable cinema viewer would compare to having raw sewage injected into their eyes. I would have also parted with £5 a pop to sit through an admittedly quite scary horror film only to have my viewing experience end with possibly the most stupid ending since the tap-dance number at the end of Zatochi. Without downloading I would also have paid full price for a DVD of one of the most relentlessly stupid films I've seen in my entire life.
That's why I downloaded Michael Bay's summer blockbuster The Island, or to give it it's correct name, The.Island.INTERNAL.FRENCH.TS.REPACK.1CD-IcE-TEAM.avi.
It turns out that I should have really listened to the 'French' part.

Director: Le Bay Michael.

Cast:

Scarlett Johannsen
-Her Breasts.
Ewan McGregor
Steve "Steve Buscemi" Buscemi

In futuristic France, the French government has built a vast underground cloning facility to supply the population's insatiable hunger for meat created in the cruellest conditions possible. Ewan McGregor is Six-Écho De Lincoln , a clone whose skin and organs are destined for the Parisian dinner tables. Consumed by bitterness and self-loathing he engages in cold, mechanical sex with Delta De la Jordanie Deux (Scarlett Johannsen), a prostitute who may also be his sister. In one thrilling scene (shot enitrely in black and white and comprising 39 minutes of the film's running time) Jordanie has Lincoln swear his undying love to each of her body parts in turn, a conciet that may have been derivative if the scene hadn't been shot on Jet-Powered Hover Bikes.
McGregor and Johannsen's dialogue only amounts of five minutes of screen time, allowing the pair to communicate entirely through languid stares and smoking. It is a testament to director Michael Bay's unflinching artistic vision that he interrupts potenitally crucial scenes to show a close-up of a clock or glass of water, and film viewers must surely appluad 20-year old ingenue Scarlett for only attempting suicide four times after shooting a gruelling hour-long rape scene with co-stars Buscemi, Michael Clarke-Duncan, Sean Bean, Rocco Sifferidi and Asterisk which was cut from the final film.

Memorable Quotes
Six-Écho De Lincoln : Je pense qu'ils vont vous tuer.
Deux-Delta De la Jordanie : Je vais à l'île.
Six-Écho De Lincoln : La Jordanie, là * est * aucune île !

Overall: Le l'île is a challenging, thought-provoking piece of world cinema that deftly explores human relationships, close-ups of objects and France's complicity with their Nazi occupiers in World War Two. Maybe I'm being a little presumptious, but I think the next Palm D'or is in the bag.

Want to see how a dictatorship falls?

2005-08-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

The New York Press has a great review of one of my favorite movies, Il Conformista, to coincide with it playing at NYC's Film Forum. It does a better job than I can of saying how beautiful and inspired this film is, and how influential it has become. I still can't find it on DVD, or even VHS, so I'm holding out for a re-release. Also an end to war and suffering.
Also, I Heart Huckabees is great. It's a Existential Comedy so good I can't believe Charlie Kaufman didn't write it. You have to check it out, I can't do it justice here. Please, please, for God's sake don't let the fact that Jude Law's in it put you off. I had my doubts, but you must let go of your ego, and suchforth. You can go back to hating Jude Law after the film's done. Oh, and Britney Spears was originally down for Naomi Watts' role. And Shania Twain's in it.
This is why I have a court injunction barring me from promoting films.

IRA-RIP - 'Meh' say Britons

2005-07-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

The IRA are no more. Whatever is right.

In a historic move the IRA, who older readers will remember as some kind of non-Islamist terrorist group, has announced that it would put an end to years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, citing a general lack of interest in the group's activities and political goals.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army's dull campaign began in 1970, with the meaningless and impossible aim of reuniting Northern Ireland with Southern Ireland. For some reason.
IRA spokesman Flannety O'Flannerty told reporters: "Looking back it was kind of stupid. I mean, if we really wanted to be Irish we could have probably emigrated. I'd actually forgotten about being the official spokesperson, I only found out when I was cleaning out my garage and I found my old membership card in a drawer."
Flannerty went on to say that he was proud to have served in the group that provided inspiration for the films Patriot Games, The Devil's Own and the Crying Game. Though he later admitted that buying one pair of the night-vision goggles used in the climactic scene of Tom Clancy's thriller Patriot Games would have cost a year's budget.
The public's reaction to the announcement has been muted. Exeter resident Steve Chav told this website: "I'd forgotten about them, what with the bombs in London and everything. It's not like they were on 24 or anything."
Norma King, Reading: "They tried their best to be scary, but it's a bit hard to take them seriously when they've been outshone by a Shemale's cock."

Harry Potter and the Throbbing Wand

2005-07-26T03:17:00.000-07:00

As many of you will now be aware, the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is upon us. While the title is clearly a reference to author J.K Rowling's well publicised hatred of race-mixing, fans have been clamoring for plot details or 'spoilers'.
If you don't want to know which Snape-like character dies, go to another page now.
.
.
.
.
Somebody called 'Snape' dies.
Now this didn't mean an awful lot to me, since I don't really know who Snape is, nor have I read any of the books or watched the films. Nevertheless I had a journalistic obligation to review this book, despite having no interest in reading it nor time to read it in.

Availability

Adults, actual grown up adults with lives and jobs and who have probably had sex and everything, stayed up until midnight on the day of release to get their copy. Some of them were dressed as characters from the books.
This gets an availability score of 0 because there's no way I would actually buy it.

Graphics

There's like this kid on the cover, and Gandalf is there, and they're on fire. In the adult edition there's a book on a desk.

Sound

As with many books of this size, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince makes a pleasant percussive sound when thrown at something. The sound a page makes when turned over is the finest since Voltaire's Candide.

Gameplay (+free R.E.M reference for no good reason)

Okay, so there's Wizards right, it's a fantasy book so you have to suspend your disbelief and believe that there are actually Wizards. There's some bad ones and some good ones... Muggles... Death-Eaters... Dumbledore... yeah yeah yeah yeah... Malfroy... Hermonie... a Gryphon... yeah yeah yeah yeah....

Totally Hot Slash Fiction

Having not read the book I decided to browse the internet for fan-fiction, in order to really get inside the minds of the characters. Good Slash is the literary equivilent of Modding, but when I really don't care about the characters, hot Slash Fiction really doesn't do it for me. Here's a sampling of Harry Potter slash, taken from a novella called Irresistible Poison, about a budding romance between Harry and his archenemy, Draco Malfoy:

"His hands moved up to hold Harry's startled face, and in the space of a next heartbeat he was kissing Harry, hard and full on the lips, his manner deeply passionate, hopelessly desperate ...

"What just happened?

"He knew bloody well what just happened. He just kissed Harry Potter, that's what happened. The thought of it made him nauseated, even though at the very same time an entrenched part of him yearned for the perverse, forbidden pleasure of it all over again."

Utterly tame.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince gets my lowest rating ever:
Minnie Driver.

I make everyone believe that I like to be different, but really I just don't know how to fit in.

2005-07-25T04:32:00.000-07:00

Postsecret is probably the most beautiful thing I've ever read.

The World is a Wonderful Place but Not Safe For Work.

2005-07-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Things are really starting to look up for me. Today, for instance, I recieved a fabulous e-mail, asking:

Have you ever stepped on a landmine before? Look at these Breasts!

This e-mail fascinated me, exposing the cruel dichotomy between indisciminate slaughter and Huge flopping Breasts. Did you know that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 new casualties caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance each year? That means there are some 1,500 new casualties each month, more than 40 new casualties a day, at least two new casualties per hour. In Cambodia, for example there are almost 40,000 landmine survivors recorded between 1979 and 2002. These are the survivors. Some 18,000 people were killed in this period. More than 60 % of the total casualties, numbering some 57,000, were civilians. (Source: The International Campaign to Ban Landmines)
The e-mail went on to explain that:

These tites (sic) are explosive!

I hate you all.

I'm stuck in prison with Michael Jackson

2005-07-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody, I've just recieved my first letter from my prison-penpal in America, and I thought I'd share it with you:

Hello G, my name is Adam and I'm serving 15 years for vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence of drugs at San Quentin prison. Life here sure is tough! It's everything you've seen in TV shows like Oz, except for anything you saw in that show that didn't make you ashamed to be a human being.
My cellmate, Larry, was shanked recently so I'd been feeling a little down. Larry's face had been altered to look like fundamentalist Christian puppet "Li'l Markie" using a sharpened toothbrush and the wall of D-wing and that's the kinda image you can't get rid of no matter what you smoke.
I was assigned a new cellmate yesterday morning and told that if I could insure that nothing happened to him then I would be out while there are still ice-caps. Okay, so I don't have any particular reason to leave since my girlfriend sold my stuff and is now dating my sister, but when you're inside it's important to have goals.
It wasn't hard to recognise my new cell-mate, in fact if there was a way to recognise him before I first saw him then I probably would have. Now, I'm not supposed to say who it is exactly, and it's 50/50 about whether I can mention his chalk-white skin, bat-like inhuman features or the fact that he walked into the room backwards while making it look like he was walking forwards. I'm gonna name him 'M.J', after one of the fifteen drugs found in my system when I was arrested. And his initials. M.J gave me friendship bracelet.
The warden took me aside and explained that the new guy had used what remained of his fortune to film the judge delivering an 'innocent' verdict and broadcast it all over the world when it became apparent that he was a child-molesting monster. That said, I sold his name to the Aryan Brotherhood for three bars of the good soap and then to the Crips in C block for a picture of that girl from the Doritos commercial cut from a three year old copy of Maxim magazine.
I showed M.J where everything was and which turf to stay away from, which was pretty much all of it. I knew that unless he found a crew then he wasn't going to last the night so I introduced him to the other child molesters. They really got on.
"I really identify with the innocence of children" he told them.
"They scream" mentioned the East River Strangler "They always scream..."
"You have a rollercoaster in your back yard too? Hooray!"
M.J gave the East River Strangler a friendship bracelet and sung a song about a magical journey on a rollercoaster, which the D-wing Angelito gang interpreted as the signal to start rioting that the Gambinos were supposed to send. Three inmates and a guard died in the ensuing fracas.
The excitement was a little too much for M.J, so I showed him back to our cell.
Some people find it hard to sleep in prison. I had it pretty much under control. Sure it was hard at first but once you get to know people you don't have to worry about them stabbing you with a piece of broken glass and wearing your face.
I was midway through a dream where I was both Dukes of Hazzard and we just snorted Boss Hogg, who was made out of painkillers. Daisy Dukes was just getting out of those little denim shorts in the back of the General Lee. Something about the way her arm felt around me felt a little too real, and my brain went into panic mode and booted me back into conciousness. I awoke to find M.J's hideous vampire face an inch from my own, with a contented little smile on his lips.
I jumped out of bed screaming, waking M.J and half the cellblock.
"It's okay." he told me "sharing somebody's bed is a beautiful thing. The most loving thing you can do is share someone's bed. The whole world should share beds, then there would be no more war or hunger. You're being ignorant. Don't be ignorant."
This made little sense, so I beat him into a coma with a bar of soap inside a pillow case.

The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth

2005-07-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

Aside: After The Duke Spirit, the band Autolux are probably the only artists who have recently caught my eye. Their album is called Future Perfect and I haven't gone to the newsagents since I've heard them in case they're on the front of NME. The drummer (left) is talented and also very attractive, though the above picture doesn't do her justice. Her name is Carla, and to see her in a better light you should probably watch the video for 'Turnstyle blues' or go see them when they're on tour with Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age and white guys in vests who paid £40 to be in 'the pit' are calling them fags.

To Audience: The El Minotaur Blanco weblog is, without doubt, one of the most geniusest things on the interweb. It is the production journal of what is shaping up to be the finest Philosophical Western/Autobiographical Porno ever made. In the writer/director's own words:

“El Minotaur Blanco” is, without a doubt, the most important film being made today. Shot on HD Video, it is a Western, after the manner of the popular Westerns of Jean-Luc Godard. It features a break-dancing robot (Mr Dance-Dance Roboto, ed.). It is brilliant. It is sensuous. It is cruel, like a miracle. It is being made by myself and my friends because they recognize its importance and because they are wonderful and easily persuaded.
“El Minotaur Blanco” is already historically significant as the first historically accurate film to be made about the Old West using authentic data and acquisitions from the F1 Time Scoop based in Subic Bay. Many of the emotions and feelings that you will experience in viewing “El Minotaur Blanco” are so terrifically real and intense that some viewers will realize they have never loved. This film will change all that.

I swear, if this thing was anywhere near real I'd be camped outside Mann's Chinese Theatre right now.

Quotes from the playground

2005-07-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

It's not often that something I find on the Interweb will make me smile, and even less often I 'LOL' (lit. 'Laugh out loud') or 'ROFL' ('Roll on floor laughing') or LSHTIPAL (Laugh so hard that I pee a little), but Tard-Blog.com actually managed to pull off the first one. I doubt anyone has actually ROFLd, and only middle-aged women can LSHTIPAL.

Heffer Hulk Smash Puny Reason!

2005-07-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

From today's Daily Mail:

"Why are the names of the country's film censors a state secret and why did they give a 12A cerificate to The War Of The Worlds, the most remorselessly violent film I have seen in years?"

Okay, fairly standard op-ed stuff so far, and the columnist, Simon Heffer, is entitled to his opinion on whether the film was too violent. But in the space between pressing the return key and starting a new paragraph Heffer takes a big huff of aeroplane glue from a sandwich bag and writes:

"I suspect the censors are leftists in bed with the Labor Party, and support the party's policy of wrecking traditional values. I suspect too, that those who stand to profit from the biggest possible audience for such films in this country are Labour donors. Until we are told who the censors are, we won't know if I'm right."

Homosaywhat? Maybe Christina Aguilera's just silently crept in through the window, greased up the glorious expanse between her legs and written "of course I'll do anal" on the wall in lipstick, but until I turn my head I won't know if I'm right. You can make a pretty good guess though. Exactly how far out of his ass did Heffer pull that second part? Does he have a leaked dossier? A taped interview? Nope, just good old fashioned Right Wing Bullshit, the same 'well the Jews deserved it' crap that guy at the bar who was in the Falklands comes out with when he's had a few. As suspiscions go It's on par with 'I suspect wearing this tin-foil hat will stop the government stealing my thoughts'.
This only takes up a small box on Heffer's page. The majority goes towards explaining how Africa doesn't deserve charity. I'm taking a portfolio of Heffer's 'irrepressible, irascible (and) irreverent' columns with me to America so I have solid evidence to back up my shame in this nation.

90% of the things I've done in my life ain't as important as you sweeping that floor, or you sitting there eating your sandwich. You know why?

2005-06-27T16:35:00.000-07:00

Okay. I'm going to use this blog responsibly, for what it's intended for.
Here's the first chapter of a novel I'm working on. Now, there isn't any reason you should read it, and there's even less of a reason that you should like it, but here it is

Chapter 1: Heaven Collapsing Under So Much Joy.

I don’t want to get emotional about this so I will tell it as plainly as I can.
There’s this car, maybe you have this car. Maybe you’re reading this book, about this car, in one of these cars.
If I told you which one you’d be like ‘no way, get outta here!’ It had an advert with a famous song on; a famous actor was driving the car, looking very angry at something. Probably the cup holder, which was very difficult to use and I’m sure made a lot of people angry.
What Car? Magazine called it ‘a solid piece of automotive joy’. Top Gear called it ‘Blisteringly fast’ and said it ‘takes off from the traffic lights like a ferret up a trouser leg’. If you watch a motorway for any longer than a minute, chances are you will have seen one of these cars.
It was very important to my mum and dad that they own this car. Not just for the ferret thing mentioned above, or the fact that everything seemed to have a heater in it, which could be counteracted by an air-conditioning unit that could freeze the sun. It was because they were at That Point in Their Lives where they had The House and The Kids and they could go to France on holiday, all they needed was The Car.
This Car had, and probably still has, a problem with the aforementioned seat heaters that can cause the engine to explode.
Remember that you or someone you know might own this car; you may be reading this book in this car which is in this book.
My sister Sophia and I were staying with friends and my parents had gone for a drive. You should understand that The Car was not only to be used for them to go to work or to get the shopping home, but should be driven in for the pure thrill of driving, like the famous actor on the expensive advert with the famous song playing in the background. This would have been when I was about ten years old and Soph’ would have been two.
This will get complicated but please bear with me.
My parents turned the seat heaters on at around four ‘o clock > The heat built up until five-thirty when it caused part of the foam inside the seat to melt > the molten foam dripped down into the car’s wiring, causing shorts all the way to the battery > the battery showered sparks throughout the engine, igniting everything flammable, which in a car is just about everything. Or, I should say in The Car, because only this particular model has flammable seating foam, or wiring from a Guatemalan sweatshop, or, and this is the most important part, a fuel line that ignites and carries a flame all the way up to the fuel tank.
According to the police, who should know, the car travelled four hundred meters while on fire, with my parents in the front seat. Eventually all the fuel it would have used to keep moving was burning off so it stopped in the inside lane of a major motorway, one you will have probably used if you were travelling to London from the South West. Even though I was told it would have been too late, it still hurts that nobody stopped to help. Firemen only arrived when the blaze was spotted on a speed camera. I really don’t know how bad it was, but I heard that two of the firemen had to do therapy afterwards.
There’s a big blank space around that time, Soph’ doesn’t remember much either. We didn’t have godparents so our Aunt and Uncle on our mother’s side stepped in to be our legal guardians. Our parent’s life insurance, the house we grew up in and the settlement from the car company added up to just under half a million pounds, which was put into a savings account for us. I know this because there are records, I don’t have any real memory of it happening. I also know I went to a school where I didn’t have many friends and didn’t play many sports but got pretty good grades. I know this because I finished school a year early and was done with University by the time I was twenty and the guys I went to school with who played sports and had a lot of friends now open the gate for me at work or change the oil on my car.
I’m going to talk about something that happened to me on a transatlantic flight and I’m sorry to say that the prose is going to get a little flowery. Believe me, this is necessary.
Before Soph’ was born both my parents worked and they had to go abroad a lot. We were flying to Boston, that’s a twelve hour flight and I was about nine years old. The Captain was good enough to let me see the cockpit and explain to me about the alto-meter. He also gave me a small toy plane from a box of small toy planes provided by the company. A few years later I found out that I only got special treatment because they confused me with a boy travelling to Chicago for a bone marrow transplant, but that isn’t really important.
We were four hours over the Atlantic when we hit bad weather and were told to buckle up. This story isn’t about the plane crashing so put that out of your mind. We strap ourselves in to those uncomfortable airplane seatbelts that’ll cut you in half if you hit something.
I had a window seat. That was my parents’ way of compensating me for joining them on their transcontinental journeys. I got see a satellite view of four different continents. So, we’re at about thirty-thousand feet and the turbulence warning gets me interested in what’s happening outside. At first it’s just clouds, like platforms of a 4-D chess set. Then- my dad told me that I started saying there were birds outside. This is one of those childhood memories where half of it comes from your parents. My dad said that birds couldn’t fly this high so I pressed my face to the glass hoping I could prove him wrong.
You see, there weren’t any birds outside. I mean, I’d seen feathers and wings, but the wings were attached to human bodies. I’d been seeing Angels outside my window. They were dead, lying splayed out on the clouds with their swords, shields and spears. There were clouds where whole phalanxes had died together, and others where one or two had died for each meter of imaginary ground gained. There were thousands of these things that don’t exist, lain out in their last moments of life on clouds.
I told my dad that there was a seat out there in the clouds, big as a skyscraper, and there was a guy on the seat sleeping, I guess it was God and I guess God is dead. Or sleeping.

Leave some comments because that's important.

Carving 'P2P' onto a Record Executive's forehead

2005-06-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

(pic. The Record Industry, yesterday)

The song playing is 'Blue Flowers' by Dr. Octagon.

To summarise this story on Wired.com: "Record companies...scared of file sharing... record companies think of new ways to make people pay for music."
A total of two sentances are devoted to the most important question: why am I going to pay to download music when I can get it for free?
Ever since Napster first appeared there has been talk of free 'n' legal downloading services, and now we have iTunes and the Nuetered Napster. Now, as Wired's article states these services sold 330 Million MP3s last year. That means that every few seconds somebody out there made a choice between paying money for something or getting it for free... and chose to pay money. That said, 5 billion illegal MP3s were downloaded, and 5 billion is a much bigger number than 330 Million, meaning that legal downloaders are in a minority, like paedophiles and ladies who live with fifty cats.
Record companies need to understand that it is not in their customers best interests to pay for things. Spending money on something that can be yours for free makes no s-s-s-sense. Getting something for nothing happens every day: it's called 'outsourcing', a term for when a the costs from a transaction between two parties (two people file-sharing) is picked up by a third party, which in this case is the record companies. In most cases of outsourcing the third party is the taxpayer (a company pollutes a river and the government cleans it up) so I'm crying a big fuckin' river when those losing out are billion-dollar corporations.
This Wired article (which reached them by way of the Associated Press, meaning its essentially advertising disguised as news circulated by PR firms.) goes on to talk about how Shawn Fanning, the guy who invented Napster, is building a wonderful new piece of software called 'Mashboxx' (because, y'know, The Kids have these like 'raves' called 'mash-ups' and the extra X means it could be porn). The idea is to let record companies deicde on the usage of their songs -their billions of songs- and to let people share concert bootlegs. Now, y'see, I've only got one concert bootleg, it's Dillinger Escape Plan covering a Justin Timberlake song, or half of it is becuase most of the track is taken up by a girl trying to explain the song to her friend: "IT'S JUSTIN! JUST- NO IT'S JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE! TIMBERLAKE! THEY'RE DOING A JUST- WELL BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY OR SOMETHING!". I really can't see this catching on.
Let's go right back to the start: do you want to know how I first discovered the original Napster way back in the day? Well, I read an Associated Press article explaining how record companies were losing money to this trendy new fad but help was on the way from legitimate downloading sites where our Bizarro-selves could pay for songs. And -ohboyohboyohboy- Microsoft is planning to integrate File-sharing software into windows! You know what web-browser I'm using? Not Explorer- but Firefox. You know where my music is coming from? Media Player? Nope, Winamp. Microsoft products are usually in the space between turning a new computer on for the first time and dowloading a better version.
File-sharing isn't going to stop. Wanna know what I did when Napster got busted? I moved onto Audiogalaxy. When that was shut down? I moved into a very long and profitable relationship with Soulseek, whose little blue bird is perched in my system tray as we speak. See a pattern emerging? Every time a P2P system is shut down a bigger and better one takes its place. On Napster I downloading single tracks, with Soulseek I can get whole albums just as easily.
My only advice to the record industry is to give up. Maybe -and this is a crazy, far out idea- if you stop paying Associated Press to write articles on what a terrible threat is posed by Soulseek et al. then maybe you might jsut skim a couple of percent off the number of people downloading. Without the constant press attention P2P would go the way of FTP servers.
I'm Just sayin'.

Proper Respect for Dudes dressed as Gay Insects

2005-06-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

Now, I understand that sometimes I may come off a little negative. I assure you that's it's only because I'm a little negative.
Anyway, I thought I'd show some love for The Locust.
Go and buy their albums and stuff.

More blogs of tEh sUck

2005-06-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

Hey children!
I've been playing with the 'Next Blog' button again. Every click shows me that my fellow bloggers produce nothing but SOLID GOLD with every keypress.
That is, if you take 'my fellow bloggers' to mean 'you fucktards' and 'Solid gold' to mean Cancer.
Let's look at more of tEh sUck on the interweb:

jkps050

This blog fills me with unimaginable dread. Unit jkps050 writes with the heartless efficency of.... A Machine, spewing forth data like the infovomit of a Regurgamatic 5000. The subject: Our human kickboxing skills.
If, like me, you have devoted many years of study to the fields of robotics you will know that in the event of machines achieving sentience, only by developing our Kick-boxing skills can we humans hope to defeat the robot army, infiltrate their fortress and confront their leader Brainax 9000. Then possibly save some 'babes'. This site presents the terrifying possibility that the Machines may be attempting to gain knowledge on our martial arts skills, making their armies of death-bots virtually invincible, even to Keanu.
Pray for the future of mankind.

Sheepballz inc.

This website MAKES SOME BULLSHIT 'POST-HARDCORE' SONG COME UP ON YOUR BROWSER AND YOU CAN'T FUCKING GET RID OF IT. I don't care if the rest of the blog is DVD quality streaming video of Natalie Portman eating Scarlett Johannsen's asshole, that weak fucking 'screamo' mall-pop bullshit makes me want to kill again. I'm trying to listen to The Stooges, I don't need to hear My Chemical Screaming in a Well on Thursday Sevenfold Theory. I've moved on, and I'm a better person for it. Also, the front end of this site makes it look like the author has a mohawk made of dried blood.

Amsterdam News

After what seems like decades of pressing that bastard 'next blog' button, I have finally found a site that is neither a long stream of URLs nor retarded.
"What picture forms in your mind's eye when you hear the name Amsterdam?" The site asks. Now, I'll admit it isn't so much a picture as the words 'Weed' and 'Whores', with 'and wasn't that the name of Leonardo DiCaprio's character in The Gangs Of New York?' written in small print underneath.
It continues: "Do you think of Van Gogh and Rembrandt? Do you imagine the picturesque canals, criss-crossed by bridges, lined with steepled homes and dotted with quaint Amsterdamers pedaling their bikes? Do you think of the Red Light district, gay marriage, the coffee shops with marijuana on their menus?"
Now that sounds like a weekend: one last dance with paid-for heterosexuality, then off to the chapel, followed by a smoke-out with my new wife Faith No More, Mr. Bungle and Fantomas vocalist Mike Patton. Or possibly Those dudes from The Mars Volta. Yep, sure would be fine to be the beans in their burrito. A Sexual Burrito that is!
The site also features the above image of two dudes making out, to get you in the mood for some same-sex lovin'.

On being a good boyfriend

2005-06-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Now I know a lot of you out there probably have problems building a strong relationship. I mean, you're on tEh 1ntErwEb, how great can your life be? Right? Yeah, you know I'm right.
Hi, I'm G and today I'll be talking you through the finer points of Boyfriending. Ladies, look away because this is just for the fellas!

Step One: Really learning to communicate

The following is a dialogue between me and my special lady Emily, taken from MSN Messenger. As you can see we really have our communication mojo working!

Emily says:
Hey G
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Hey, what's going on?

Notice that I'm asking about her before I talk about myself.

Emily says:
I found out today that the man who I've had this long running unrequited-love thing with has just gone and got himself a boyfriend!

Hold up there! Now I know that the standard reaction in this situation is to jump up and down, howl as loud as you can and throw your own feces, but remember that there'll be plenty of time for revenge later. Also, girls hate homophobic men, so remember to act like you like gays or something.

Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Hooray for him
Emily says:
I guess
Emily says:
a shock for me
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Yeah whatever. I really want to bring back that phrase 'Bully for you'. Isn't that a great phrase?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
But anyway, do continue

See me giving her cues to continue? That's some real communicating there folks!

Emily says:
that's it, that's the whole story
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Oh.
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
So you didn't see them like making out and junk?
Emily says:
nah
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
'cos sometimes its okay for guys to make out with each other. It's call doing it 'on the down low'.
Emily says:
yeah, I heard about that from you before
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
So if like I was making out with a dude, like a really muscular dude and I felt really safe with him and it wasn't like we were gay or anything but when we held each other in our arms we just felt something we knew we would never find with a woman, that would be okay
Emily says:
does he have to be really muscular?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Uh, yeah. And there's a fireplace too. We're making out by a fireplace
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
I mean. Hypothetically.
Emily says:
does it involve Mr.T like last time?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Nah.
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
His name's Stefan and he's a Ski instructor. There's a blizzard outside and we're the only two people left in the lodge. We get to talking and eventually come to discussing our fantasies, and he, blushing admits he always wondered what it would be like to gay off with another dude. Then, under the candlelight we embrace, tenderly at first. We savor the feeling of each others stubble, the taut mass of fiborous manhood that lay waiting beneath our clothes.
Stefan is the first to remove his shirt. His body had been sculpted by seasons on the ice- I feel almost embarassed as I remove my silk gown, but the kiss he plants on my chest has me instantly reassured.
We love like boys at first, like two young Spartans trying out new wrestling moves. It is only after he gets me on my front, my face warm against the bear-skin rug, that we understand what it is to love like Men.
Emily says:
you want to know if that would be okay?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Yeah
Emily says:
okay with who?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Society
Emily says:
I don't see why not
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Just wanted to clear that up
Emily says:
might not be okay with me though

You can see she's really starting to open up at this point.

Terr0r_Fabulous says:
It's a really bad blizzard we're stuck in
Emily says:
yeah, but you're not going to die?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
No. Stefan straddles me, a single finger tracing a path down my spine, past my buttocks and finally, inside me. First one, then two. It feels at once agonising and glorious, a pain I had missed for twenty-one long years. He does not hold back when he finally penetrates me, and though I gasp I don't want him to. I want to enjoy every thrust of his tanned, Latin hips. And I do.
When he is spent I lie him on his back and pull his knees to his chest, taking my time almost as a contrast to Stefan's pure, animal ferocity.
For hours that stretch out into days that stretch out into eons we are every man who has ever loved another; we are Alexander and Hephaestion, Oscar Wilde and Robert Ross, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady.
It is the following morning, after the blizzard has died and the juices he fired freely over each other's faces and chest have dried into flakes, when Stefan spots a young deer outside. Feeling as though no act could ever satisfy our vast appetites we take the deer and-

*This post has been edited for content by blogspot.com. The six-thousand words removed violate site policy and the laws of most nations. Please refer to our Terms and Conditions document for details*
...Yeah but anyway this is a *totally* hypothetical situation which in no way happened that one time when I went to Austria.
Five minutes or so passed after my post, so long in fact that her status switched to 'Away'. Then it hit me: she was obviously so pleased that I could share my feelings with her so fully and eloquently that her female mind was overcome and she was rendered unable to type! Mission accomplished guys!
A few minutes later I see her status change to 'available'- time to get back to some more caring and sharing!

Emily says:
Hi whos this?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Just your sweet hunk of manness here. Definitely not masturbating.
Emily says:
This is Emilys sister she's in the bathroom throwing up
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
She's not pregnant is she? 'cos if she is I'm coming over there with a knitting needle
Emily says:
Wot!?! :(
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Y'know. To like knit the baby a sweater. Yeah.
Emily says:
Oh ok! :) i dont think shes pregnant I bet its our mums yucky casserole! ROFL!!!!1!!!!!11!!
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Yeah. LOL and stuff. So what are you wearing?

Girls LOVE to talk about clothes. Plus, when they tell you what they're wearing, you can picture it in your head and beat off into a grey gym sock. Two birds! One stone! It's logical thinking like this that makes Men the best gender ever!

Emily says:
???????
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
I really like your sisters nice soft hands. Do you use a moisturiser?
Emily says:
Sometimes.
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
I think Emily keeps a jar by her desk, see if you can find it.
Emily says:
Found it!
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
Ok. It puts the lotion on its skin.
Emily says:
Wot?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
It puts the lotion on its skin.
Emily says:
?
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
Emily says:
Okay I put some of the lotion on now what????
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
It puts the lotion back in the basket.
Emily says:
Wot basket?????
Terr0r_Fabulous says:
It puts the lotion back in the basket or else it gets the hose.

She didn't reply- time to take the inititive!

Terr0r_Fabulous says:
PUT IT IN THE FUCKING BASKET OR I'LL SLIT YOUR FUCKING THROAT!!!!
(Emily has logged off)

So you see guys, there really isn't any greater reward than honest and open communication with your special someone. Except perhaps being spared the wrath of Cthulu when he rises from the depths to devour mankind.

Stay tuned for more great relationship help!

Hello Neighbor! - it's other people's stupid blogs!

2005-06-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

I've been having a lot of fun using the 'Next Blog' button. That is, if by the last sentence I actually meant 'pressing the 'Next Blog' button has destroyed what little faith in humanity I had'.
"ROFL!"
Here are some of the worst offenders:

Belmont Park Odds Live Horse Racing Betting Odds Triple Crown 2005

This site, which I believe has something to do with betting on horses begins with the hauntingly beautiful introduction: betting wagering horse racing bet giacomo belmont park belmont park racebook odds online belmont stakes betting belmont park offtrack betting online belmont stakes betting bet on belmont stakes online belmont stakes betting bet the belmont betting off track belmont triple crown betting belmont stakes horse racing wagering triple crown horse racing gambling belmont stakes racebooks race track gambling betting horse racing belmont stakes triple crown betting horse betting, which I find to be almost Joycean in its linguistic inventiveness. Further down we see more evidence of literary genius in a lenghty and baroque interview with 'Dalton Wagner, Founder V.O. Group, S.A.', which at times recalls Pynchon at his most obtuse and the imagined horse-racing worlds of a young Jack Kerouac.
Overall I give this site:

Mickey Rourke.

mymiamidirectory

More genius in blogspot! mymiamidirectory (like the genius art-hip-hoppers on Oakland's anticon records it's all lower-case!) effortlessly deconstructs late consumer capitalism with its droning, repititive paragraphs promising information on golf clubs and yatching in the art-deco inspired metropolis. Like the culture it parodies it promises so much but inside its sheer minimalist layout lies so little.
This magnificent site deserves a score of:

Minnie Driver.

mike=gay

This is one of my favorites. Again using the lower-case only method, 'phatty' (possibly a psuedonym of literary wunderkind David Foster Wallace) crafts a powerful story of the eponymous 'mike' who is, if I may take an extended quote comprised of 3/4 of the work, "gay with his fat friend". Where this literary masterwork, still in its early stages, will lead only time will tell. The author has taken a bold step in telling the story of confused teenage homosexual 'mike' from the point of view of the clearly retarded 'phatty', a technique that echoes Jonathan Saffran Foer's Everything is Illuminated while deftly sidestepping Foer's more crassly commercial leanings.

Overall: Sylvester Stallone.5

Nobody knows what to do to guys like him in prison.

2005-06-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

The song playing is 'Imodium' by Nirvana.
I guess everybody's heard he Michael Jackson trial results by now. He won, by the way.
Now, I don't know the guy, I didn't watch the Martin Bashir documentary and I haven't heard any of his music since I grew hair on my arms.
Despite all of this, every fibre in my being wanted him sent away. Not so much for justice, though like anybody I think child abuse should = prison and a new definition of 'abuse' from the the combined Crips/Bloods creative sodomy group. I wanted him sent away purely as a social experiment, Zimbardo style. I wanted to see a guy who had a theme park in his garden cope with prison life. Would he kill a guy or become somebody's bitch on his first night? Would he join with one of the black gangs or could he persaude the Aryan Nations to forgive and forget? Would he do a Johnny Cash style prison album? Get tattoos? Do you think he'd be thrown into General Population or go to Club Fed' with the Enron guys? How many guys would he shank? Ten? Fifty? Could he break out? Maybe go on the lam to Tijuana and spend the rest of his days sipping Daquiris by the pool with Osama Bin Laden and the black JFK?
Michael Jackson gets my best review score ever:

Matt....DAMON!

Perhaps you had better start at the beggining

2005-06-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Okay. Let's do this thing.

The music playing is Astro Creep 2000 by White Zombie.
It's 4.43pm and out my window I can see two trees, a hedge, and another person's house. The house is on Gainsborough road, one step up the estate's hierarchy. Moving there, or even further into Blackberry Lane, means you've transitioned from Middle Class to Upper Middle class. It's sunny, the sky is blue streaked with jet plane exhaust. Elmore Leonard says not to open a story with the weather.

I've signed up to this blog primarily to keep my friends informed while I'm off around the world doing what little I do. Whether it evolves into something different or better is entirely up to me. Maybe you'll get some pictures, maybe music, a short story or two. I've decided to allow feedback, though I'm sure it will be mainly 13-year-old kids from Nebraska posting textshite like 'OMG UR such a fag!!!11!!1!!!! ROFL!!!11!!!!!', as is their heathen custom.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read' - Alberto Moravia.

The (or, in accordance with interweb custom 'tEH') first order of business is for me to accept ideas from you, the public, on what I'm supposed to do. So, I want items to review (books, albums, movies, haircuts, countries, your wardrobe, potential sex partners etc.). All items, regardless of form or context, will be judged along the lines of Availability, Graphics, Sound and Gameplay, followed by an Overall. It is with this in mind that I present my first review:

Logical Positivism.

Availabiltiy

In a word: Poor. The Logical Positivist school of philosophy was originally formulated by the Vienna circle, who met on a weekly basis between 1922 and 1936. This meant that I was unable to find a copy to rent at Blockbusters.
This recording I made of the conversation between myself and a Blockbusters employee should shed some light on the appalling absence of Logical Positivism from even the most well stocked rental chains.
"Excuse me, I'm looking for Logical Positivism."
"It's not on the shelves."
"No, it's a formulation of the Vienna school that holds that philosophy should aspire to the same rigor as science."
"Okay. Right. Who's in it?"
"A.J Ayer."
"Right. Have you looked in documentaries?"
I gave the employee a ten pound note for his trouble. As a rule I tip at 15%, but as our conversation neither contained nor warranted an economic transaction, I was forced to wing it.
Unable to find Logical Positivism on the shelves, I settled for a copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Graphics

Logical Positivism uses essentially the same Grpahics engine as its predecessors, GTA Vice City and GTA3. While hardly spectacular they do a good job of rendering the grafitti encrusted streets of Los Santos and the jaw-dropping neon vistas of Las Venturas. Pop-up becomes a problem, especially during the flght sections where the engine is forced to render a large number of objects.

Sound

Spectacular. As with most European philosophical schools, Logical Positivism features multiple radio stations (Radio Los Santos for Gangsta rap, SFUR for German techno) with frequently hilarious radio banter. News reports of your actions heighten the authenticity, and really give a sense that only verifiable statements can be considered meaningful.

Gameplay

This was confusing.
Logical Positivism casts the player as 'CJ', a retired gang-banger who returns to Los Santos after his mother's untimely death. The plot is epic in scale, and a simple paragrpah could never do it justice. Throughout the game CJ will have to battle with corrupt cops, Latino mobsters, Triads and presumably in later levels Karl Poppers 1934 book Logik der Forschung, though I was unable to get past a quad-bike chase with hoods who I believe were Rudolph Carnap and Otto Neurath.

Overall

A statement can be said to be verifiable only if truth can be conclusively established, also the prostitutes rarely put up a fight while I beat them to death with a golf club on a busy street in broad daylight. Hopefully this will be fixed by the PC version.

Final Score: Kevin Spacey