Superman
So apparently this is a teaser for the new Superman movie.
I'm not entirely sure. I'm pretty sure that's actually a levi's commercial
But hey, can't be worse than Batman. I mean, shit. Christian Bale is the best Bruce Wayne... and yet the worst Batman. How can that even be?! Maybe it has to do with the part of any Batman movie where the Batman gets really mad and demands something in that god awful voice.
It's what you would call the Nathan Explosion voice.
Oh here's another Batman spoiler... Remember when Catwoman was all like, We will take back your money, Bruce! You will see! Viva La Revolucion! And then later the other lady who maybe was Harley Quinn or maybe someone else entirely, I don't know cause my memory is riddled with booze holes. But anyway, Catwoman suddenly grew some morals and ethics and was all like "This is not what I signed up for! This used to be a home!" and then her friend who was never defined was all like "This is what you wanted, get used to it as it's now everyone's home!"
Yeah.. the movie was utter shit. You see this prison... it's a tool of oppression.
*10,000 screaming maniacs with guns come running out*
I wonder if Zach Snyder will shit up Superman like Christopher Nolan did to Batman. Then again, no one can shit the man of steel up more than fucking lame ass Bryan Singer. Hope you dealt with your daddy issues, braw.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Child Star Republican Felt Used
Child Star Republican Felt Used
Hey remember that conservative child star Jonathan Krohn? well hes not a conservative anymore but hes still gross in all sorts of ways.
http://www.salon.com...ing_child_star/
You know, I also want a six-pack, a mansion in the Hamptons and a beautiful woman with cans the size of my head. It sounds like he's just a dumb 17 year old whose political views are slowly evolving and also.. you know, he's 17 years old, so... go figure.
I mean, I really wish I had gotten to be a political star and guaranteed a future in political punditry simply by virtue of being a white kid able to pretend he had an opinion about politics. Sure seems like a decent gig if you can get it.
It's odd cause now the opinion he wants attention for having is "NOT HAVING AN OPINION." Really seems pretty fucking odd. Sigh, if I'd been only that dumb at 17.
Then again, at 17 I was.. I dunno, mostly parroting whatever the daily show said and also thought South Park had good ideas. So I guess it can be said that I was a bit of moron myself.
I wonder why the republican party didn't come to me for commentary?
Hey remember that conservative child star Jonathan Krohn? well hes not a conservative anymore but hes still gross in all sorts of ways.
http://www.salon.com...ing_child_star/
Four years ago, at the age of 13, I gave a speech at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). To be honest, I had no idea how big a deal it was to make a two-minute appearance on a B-list panel. But the speech blew up, and I became the child star of the right wing — like the conservative Macauley Culkin, except I’ve never had a drug problem or dated Mila Kunis, unfortunately.
My involvement at such a young age happened for manifold reasons: I always enjoyed writing (I had gotten my first paid writing gig when I was 9), I enjoyed politics (or at least the theory of politics), and I grew up in Georgia, where conservative ideologues dominated the radio and the populace. Mix those things with the naïveté of a kid and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a fresh, right-wing pundit. My star role worked out well for a while. I didn’t have to question any of the talking points I’d made in my speech, and I got to drone on and on about them at numerous Tea Parties and other conservative gatherings. I felt justified in my beliefs if for no other reason than no one actually told me I was wrong. Instead, men like Bill Bennett and Newt Gingrich hailed me as the voice for my generation and a hope for America.
But then, earlier this week, Politico released an interview in which I announced I wasn’t a conservative anymore — and the proverbial crap hit the fan. Since then, I have been treated by the political right with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies. The Daily Caller, for instance, wrote three articles about my shift, topping it off with an opinion piece in which they stated that I deserved criticism because I wear “thick-rimmed glasses” and I like Ludwig Wittgenstein. Why don’t they just call me “four-eyes”? These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13.
I shouldn’t be too surprised. Political divisiveness in America today is a childish thing anyway. The never-ending war between the left and the right seems to me like a couple of drunken college boys fighting over which one of their fraternities is cooler. Think about it: Once you join a side, you have to obey the house rules, go to all the parties, and defend your status as a member of the greatest club on campus. And this is what drove me away from conservatism to my admittedly center-left position of independent mindedness (if that’s a thing).
I was tired of being a part of the ideological warfare this country is so caught up in. I was tired of the right using me as an example of how young people “get” what they’re talking about — when it’s obvious that I didn’t get what I talking about at all. I mean, come on, I was between 13 and 14 when I was regurgitating these talking points! What does a kid who has never paid a tax bring to the table in a conversation about the burden of taxes? What does a healthy child know about people who can’t afford healthcare because of preexisting conditions? No matter how intelligent a person might be, certain political issues require life experience; they’re much more complicated than the black and white frames imposed by partisan America. (And no, my mother and father didn’t write my material for me. You’d have to be as paranoid as the birthers to think someone’s parents would put them up to all that. Have a bit more faith in the human race, man!) I was just a 13-year-old kid spitting up the nonsense he’d learned. In the future, a good rule of thumb might be: If you’re not old enough to have consensual sex, you’re probably not old enough to make consequential political statements.
My past did me some good, though. If I hadn’t seen this childishness I might never have taken the time to let myself breathe, and read philosophy, and develop a new, better sense of humor, not to mention a more mature writing style. An open mind and critical thought are like a metaphorical AA after a long bender on ideological wine: I’m proud to say that this program has gotten me three years sober.
Now, I’m just another white, comic-book collecting, sci-fi watching, film-obsessing, satirizing, sorta stereotypical Jewish nerd who’s never been laid. And no, that’s not the reason I switched, either. Nor did I switch so that I could fit in at NYU in the fall. If you think that’s the case, you obviously don’t know how this stuff works. See, when someone posts a video on YouTube it’s out there in the global consciousness forever. How do you suppose I’ll fit in anywhere, much less in a school environment, with a clip of my nasal rantings about conservatism’s four “pillars” floating around the Web? Do you seriously think such an easily lambasted clip will disappear because I announced I changed my mind? Have you met the users of the Internet?
And no, I’m not a “publicity whore.” If I was just in it for the publicity, I could have called up any number of far-right groups and written any number of things for them. All I wanted was a chance to stand by my guns and show people that I’m no longer the immature kid the world once saw me as.
So this is what this story boils down to: A 17-year-old has different opinions than he did at 13. People may be disappointed by how underwhelming that is, but it’s how the world works. Some people move on with life, mature, and realize that they don’t know everything nor will they ever know everything. Then again, some don’t.
I would love it if a bunch of angry right-wingers stopped saying stupid things about me. I also want a six-pack, a mansion in the Hamptons and a beautiful woman with cans the size of my head. None of these things will happen, and I’m pretty comfortable with that. More accurately, I’m comfortable with who I am, which is all I can ever hope for anyway.
You know, I also want a six-pack, a mansion in the Hamptons and a beautiful woman with cans the size of my head. It sounds like he's just a dumb 17 year old whose political views are slowly evolving and also.. you know, he's 17 years old, so... go figure.
I mean, I really wish I had gotten to be a political star and guaranteed a future in political punditry simply by virtue of being a white kid able to pretend he had an opinion about politics. Sure seems like a decent gig if you can get it.
It's odd cause now the opinion he wants attention for having is "NOT HAVING AN OPINION." Really seems pretty fucking odd. Sigh, if I'd been only that dumb at 17.
Then again, at 17 I was.. I dunno, mostly parroting whatever the daily show said and also thought South Park had good ideas. So I guess it can be said that I was a bit of moron myself.
I wonder why the republican party didn't come to me for commentary?
Sunday, July 29, 2012
America - The Burger
America - The Burger
Let this be the one and only final warning you will have - You only have today and tomorrow to go to Slater's 50/50 and try the burger of the month. The only burger that the month of July could possibly have... THE 'MERICA!
Yes, that's right. g...ground... ba... bacon? You're probably wondering what it taste like - Well, I'm guessing bacony will be the right direction.
At some point you have to wonder though, why not skip the pretense and just include a .45 cal bullet to go with the burger. You're already half way there to killing yourself.
I can usually stomach the ridiculous "put bacon on everything" mentality, but this one on paper seemed like it was taking it too far. One toke over the line, if you will. Some would think that this is just flat out going into the world of gross out levels. But let me tell you, my friends, I have climbed that mountain and come back to live to tell the tale of it.
It is divine.
In any case, the description needs more romance to it. Why yes, we combined the subtle flavors of bacon with more bacon and then bacon and the cheese.
*Kisses fingers*
MAGNIFIQUE!
It's like, why did they put the bacon in the cheese? Was there someone who actually complained that it wasn't 'Merican enough?
BUT DON'T WORRY, SIR. THERE'S CHEESE IN THE BACON TOO, IT'S BACON CHEESE, OKAY SIR?!
Sir, please lower your voice. Your side of bacon will be here any moment now, I assure you sir, no, please put your jorts back on SIR. PLEASE, I MUST INSIST! Sir, your face is all red, are you okay? I need to call an ambu.... sir, SIR?! I think you should withdraw the bacon fro your mouth, Sir. I'm going to have to insist, sir. I can't understand a thing you are mumbling.
What next, Baconlube? Oh wait, that actually exist. You know, for you bacon lovers who just love bacon so much, you'd want to fuck with it. It's the world's first bacon-flavored personal lubricant and massage oil.
Cause nothing is better than a bacon massage...
I didn't make that up, by the way. It's a product that has probably made someone super duper rich. I was going to post a picture, but then I couldn't stand to give then any click traffic -- because really, if you order bacon lube, you deserve to die alone.
As for the 'Merican. It actually taste alright. Sodium enriched like hell. The outside is crispy and the inside taste sort of like spam or any of those other canned meat products.
What I'm saying is that you have two days left - go try it and die.
Let this be the one and only final warning you will have - You only have today and tomorrow to go to Slater's 50/50 and try the burger of the month. The only burger that the month of July could possibly have... THE 'MERICA!
Yes, that's right. g...ground... ba... bacon? You're probably wondering what it taste like - Well, I'm guessing bacony will be the right direction.
At some point you have to wonder though, why not skip the pretense and just include a .45 cal bullet to go with the burger. You're already half way there to killing yourself.
I can usually stomach the ridiculous "put bacon on everything" mentality, but this one on paper seemed like it was taking it too far. One toke over the line, if you will. Some would think that this is just flat out going into the world of gross out levels. But let me tell you, my friends, I have climbed that mountain and come back to live to tell the tale of it.
It is divine.
In any case, the description needs more romance to it. Why yes, we combined the subtle flavors of bacon with more bacon and then bacon and the cheese.
*Kisses fingers*
MAGNIFIQUE!
It's like, why did they put the bacon in the cheese? Was there someone who actually complained that it wasn't 'Merican enough?
BUT DON'T WORRY, SIR. THERE'S CHEESE IN THE BACON TOO, IT'S BACON CHEESE, OKAY SIR?!
Sir, please lower your voice. Your side of bacon will be here any moment now, I assure you sir, no, please put your jorts back on SIR. PLEASE, I MUST INSIST! Sir, your face is all red, are you okay? I need to call an ambu.... sir, SIR?! I think you should withdraw the bacon fro your mouth, Sir. I'm going to have to insist, sir. I can't understand a thing you are mumbling.
What next, Baconlube? Oh wait, that actually exist. You know, for you bacon lovers who just love bacon so much, you'd want to fuck with it. It's the world's first bacon-flavored personal lubricant and massage oil.
Cause nothing is better than a bacon massage...
I didn't make that up, by the way. It's a product that has probably made someone super duper rich. I was going to post a picture, but then I couldn't stand to give then any click traffic -- because really, if you order bacon lube, you deserve to die alone.
As for the 'Merican. It actually taste alright. Sodium enriched like hell. The outside is crispy and the inside taste sort of like spam or any of those other canned meat products.
What I'm saying is that you have two days left - go try it and die.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Homophobic-lite Chicken Sandwiches
Homophobic-lite Chicken Sandwiches
By now you're painfully aware that Chick-Fil-A is all too happy hating on gay marriage and making sure that the act of balls slapping ass will have no place in a world where they bread and cook chicken sandwiches. But just in the instance that you DO want to have something similar in terms of taste as that but without all the supporting an agenda of hate towards alternative lifestyles, here's a handy dandy recipe that you can make at home to replicate it;
What you'll need:
By now you're painfully aware that Chick-Fil-A is all too happy hating on gay marriage and making sure that the act of balls slapping ass will have no place in a world where they bread and cook chicken sandwiches. But just in the instance that you DO want to have something similar in terms of taste as that but without all the supporting an agenda of hate towards alternative lifestyles, here's a handy dandy recipe that you can make at home to replicate it;
What you'll need:
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/4 cup pickle juice (Hilah recommends sour dill)
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
Optional: up to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper for a spicy sandwich
Oil for frying (about a cup)
Now how do you bring it all together? Let's let the magic of video tell you!
All you have to do to make it a fully replicated Chick-Fil-A sandwich is to swear at those faggots ruining your straight marriage and you sir will have a 1:1 replica of the sandwich in your very own home!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Olympic Fever
Olympic Fever
Thank god I got my shot and I'm immune to this bulllllllshit, cause man, the Olympics are all sorts of lame. Am I right? I mean, what's the goal here? Are the Olympics gonna show people that England truly is the capital of democracy and a pillar of freedom?
Olympics are all about having a place for nationalism and dumb shit like that. Then there's always the allegded doping cases. Cause, you know, cheating owns. So instead of a gold tallies or medal score or anything like that, why not just cut to the chase and make a beat on which nation is going to have the most cheaters and dopers on the team during the whole goddamn mess?
Where do we even start? How about the uniforms. Namely America's...
Oh. my. god. Are those the actual uniforms?! That's utterly amazing. It's incredible. This country... fucking hilarious. The 2012 U.S. Olympic team: Directed by Wes Anderson. I mean, shit. They literally have the polo guy on the blazer.
Then the reality kicks in that those are indeed the official uniforms and the shocking thing isn't that they look goddamn crazy, but that they were made in China. Yes, apparently it's a huge deal now that they were made in China. I mean, what in America ISN'T made in China?! I dare you to tell me. And it's not like the Olympics are being held in America. I don't get this complaint. China makes shit cheap. It's capitalism at its finest.
What should shock you more is that Dow Chemical is sponsoring the Olympics. Which just makes you feel all... well, not warm and fuzzy inside. Not that at all. Much like how the Olympics are watching you..
Always watching.
I mean, if the Olympics are good for anything, it's that you're able to cheer for the teams that aren't from imperialist nations. Other than that, I say we should abolish the Olympics. Nothing good can come of it.
The place that host the Olympics never get any real benefit from it. The Olympics are essentially the biggest scam around. Your location has to compete very hard towards getting the honor of hosting the Olympics and that's a lot of cash to spend for not much benefit other than bragging rights to the whole thing.
The England Olympics is said to be 100% over budget on the Olympics so far and the fucker hasn't even started. Security and all that shit is costly and what do they get in exchange? More tourist? Yeah... you know people were going to England for vacation even without the fucking Olympics.
I guess it does give you the right to be complete pricks and fascist when it comes to the Olympic rights.
Side note: If you're going to watch the Olympic ceremony, remember that everything "inspiring" or "iconic" or "traditional" about it was invented by the Nazi's and we were too broke to change anything in 1948
In other words, fuck the Olympics. I'm out.
Thank god I got my shot and I'm immune to this bulllllllshit, cause man, the Olympics are all sorts of lame. Am I right? I mean, what's the goal here? Are the Olympics gonna show people that England truly is the capital of democracy and a pillar of freedom?
Olympics are all about having a place for nationalism and dumb shit like that. Then there's always the allegded doping cases. Cause, you know, cheating owns. So instead of a gold tallies or medal score or anything like that, why not just cut to the chase and make a beat on which nation is going to have the most cheaters and dopers on the team during the whole goddamn mess?
Where do we even start? How about the uniforms. Namely America's...
Oh. my. god. Are those the actual uniforms?! That's utterly amazing. It's incredible. This country... fucking hilarious. The 2012 U.S. Olympic team: Directed by Wes Anderson. I mean, shit. They literally have the polo guy on the blazer.
Then the reality kicks in that those are indeed the official uniforms and the shocking thing isn't that they look goddamn crazy, but that they were made in China. Yes, apparently it's a huge deal now that they were made in China. I mean, what in America ISN'T made in China?! I dare you to tell me. And it's not like the Olympics are being held in America. I don't get this complaint. China makes shit cheap. It's capitalism at its finest.
What should shock you more is that Dow Chemical is sponsoring the Olympics. Which just makes you feel all... well, not warm and fuzzy inside. Not that at all. Much like how the Olympics are watching you..
Always watching.
I mean, if the Olympics are good for anything, it's that you're able to cheer for the teams that aren't from imperialist nations. Other than that, I say we should abolish the Olympics. Nothing good can come of it.
The place that host the Olympics never get any real benefit from it. The Olympics are essentially the biggest scam around. Your location has to compete very hard towards getting the honor of hosting the Olympics and that's a lot of cash to spend for not much benefit other than bragging rights to the whole thing.
The England Olympics is said to be 100% over budget on the Olympics so far and the fucker hasn't even started. Security and all that shit is costly and what do they get in exchange? More tourist? Yeah... you know people were going to England for vacation even without the fucking Olympics.
I guess it does give you the right to be complete pricks and fascist when it comes to the Olympic rights.
Side note: If you're going to watch the Olympic ceremony, remember that everything "inspiring" or "iconic" or "traditional" about it was invented by the Nazi's and we were too broke to change anything in 1948
In other words, fuck the Olympics. I'm out.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Newsweek - Breaking News, it still makes me cringe
Newsweek - Breaking News, it still makes me cringe
And yet I still keep on watching it. Why? Because I can't stop writing about how god awful it is. Okay, that's not fair. The writing is god awful. The story, characters and everything else is interesting. It's just a shame that Aaron Sorkin is such a piece of shit writer.
Like, I think the following week's episode is called "No you need to... Here first you... oh for fuck's sake woman, I'll do it myself, christ you can't do anything right: Part 1" -- It'll go great along with S01E04: "No dear, there isn't a tiny man in the box reading the news"
Episode 5's title is just a short clip of Jeff Daniels sighing and turning Olivia Munn's book upright after she'd been reading it upside down. The episode will deal with the Cute One™ and Indian Guy™ talking about Getting The Girl™ and high fiving each other after.
Later in the season when Alison Pill finally dumps her emotionally abusive boyfriend for the charming salt vampire there will be a sweet "morning after" scene where he helps her get dressed as she has been trying to put on her shirt like a pair of pants. Made that much more difficult because her underwear is already covering her face.
WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS THAT THIS SHOW HATES WOMEN AND CONSIDERS THEM TO BE THE DUMBEST PIECE OF TRASH POSSIBLE.
Just imagine a series where all the women n the newsroom are literally zombies shambling around and bumping into things and trying to eat their smartphones while the rest of the show is exactly the same. That's how the show is viewed through the eyes of Aaron Sorkin.
But then again, the chest thumping has been really annoying. Like, my god, in this past episode of the newsroom it was just man-card oozing. Emily Mortimer was made fun of because she apparently can't do subtractions without using her hands to count and then the dudes in the producers meeting started describing the movie Rudy. You know, the movie that men are allowed to cry at.
Here I thought the movies men were allowed to cry at were Brian's Song and Iron Giant. Guess not. Men can't cry at Iron Giant cause it's a cartoon and only nerds are allowed to cry at that. Brian's Song, I guess it's okay to cry at, but man, Rudy is what you are always allowed to cry at.
Yes, that's actually something men believe. Like.. literally.
Truth be told, I've never actually seen Rudy. Guess I can't be a man!
Anyhow, the other aspect of the episode was about the Egyptian Revolution. It was really fucked up that they were showing, like, actual real footage that people shot and attributing it to character. Then the whole notion that you force a rebel/Egyptian citizen to take off his mask while his country is under a revolution is fucking retarded. But hey, I guess it's cause it came from the mouth of a woman -- the same woman who sent a mass e-mail to everyone in the company.. Cause, you know, Aaron Sorkin believes women are zombies.
And yet I still keep on watching it. Why? Because I can't stop writing about how god awful it is. Okay, that's not fair. The writing is god awful. The story, characters and everything else is interesting. It's just a shame that Aaron Sorkin is such a piece of shit writer.
Like, I think the following week's episode is called "No you need to... Here first you... oh for fuck's sake woman, I'll do it myself, christ you can't do anything right: Part 1" -- It'll go great along with S01E04: "No dear, there isn't a tiny man in the box reading the news"
Episode 5's title is just a short clip of Jeff Daniels sighing and turning Olivia Munn's book upright after she'd been reading it upside down. The episode will deal with the Cute One™ and Indian Guy™ talking about Getting The Girl™ and high fiving each other after.
Later in the season when Alison Pill finally dumps her emotionally abusive boyfriend for the charming salt vampire there will be a sweet "morning after" scene where he helps her get dressed as she has been trying to put on her shirt like a pair of pants. Made that much more difficult because her underwear is already covering her face.
WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS THAT THIS SHOW HATES WOMEN AND CONSIDERS THEM TO BE THE DUMBEST PIECE OF TRASH POSSIBLE.
Just imagine a series where all the women n the newsroom are literally zombies shambling around and bumping into things and trying to eat their smartphones while the rest of the show is exactly the same. That's how the show is viewed through the eyes of Aaron Sorkin.
But then again, the chest thumping has been really annoying. Like, my god, in this past episode of the newsroom it was just man-card oozing. Emily Mortimer was made fun of because she apparently can't do subtractions without using her hands to count and then the dudes in the producers meeting started describing the movie Rudy. You know, the movie that men are allowed to cry at.
Here I thought the movies men were allowed to cry at were Brian's Song and Iron Giant. Guess not. Men can't cry at Iron Giant cause it's a cartoon and only nerds are allowed to cry at that. Brian's Song, I guess it's okay to cry at, but man, Rudy is what you are always allowed to cry at.
Yes, that's actually something men believe. Like.. literally.
Truth be told, I've never actually seen Rudy. Guess I can't be a man!
Anyhow, the other aspect of the episode was about the Egyptian Revolution. It was really fucked up that they were showing, like, actual real footage that people shot and attributing it to character. Then the whole notion that you force a rebel/Egyptian citizen to take off his mask while his country is under a revolution is fucking retarded. But hey, I guess it's cause it came from the mouth of a woman -- the same woman who sent a mass e-mail to everyone in the company.. Cause, you know, Aaron Sorkin believes women are zombies.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Batman - Ends
Batman - Ends
I'm just saying... This is literally the ending of the new batman movie.
I mean, call me a fanboy but wow, that was some terribly contrived bullshit. Oh hey, bomb is about to go off in 2 minutes? Let me squeeze some emotional bullshit out of a final goodbye to the bomb ass chick in the catsuit. It's as if the 1940's comics had more reasonable plots.
One of the biggest problems is that there's just too much shit happening and a lot of it isn't really connected. You have a mixture of stories - No Man's Land, Knightfall, Bane, Death and the Maidens... and a few more other elements that are just way too much for this one film. Batman isn't on screen for like 20 minute chunks, Catwoman isn't on screen for 40 minute chunks and so forth. Basically the stakes never feel very high because you don't give a shit about any of the characters.
You have the whole notion that Bruce is a shutin crippled.. How exactly? It's not as if he's been Batman all this time. In fact, he hasn't been batman for 8 goddamn year. Which means that Batman Begins happens - the ending to that leads to The Dark Knight. Which then has an 8 year gap to The Dark Knight Rises. So for 8 years Batman hasn't done shit because he's been too mopey about the death of his friends to carry on.
Which makes me wonder why the fuck little kids in the orphanage even know about some crazy dude in a suit who had three adventures/news articles 8 god damn years ago.
I guess that's my problem with Nolan's Batman. He's straight up murdering multiple people, has guns on everything he owns. That motorcycle? Yeah... Then he abandons every single person he has any emotional connection to, and does all this with absolutely zero repercussions to his self. The trilogy manages to show exactly how awful the modern hero is, and does so completely unintentionally. The 60's film is genuinely more socially conscious than anything even marginally noted in Nolan's films.
I'm just saying... This is literally the ending of the new batman movie.
"some days you just can't get rid of a fusion reactor about to go nuclear" - christian bale, batman 2012.
I mean, call me a fanboy but wow, that was some terribly contrived bullshit. Oh hey, bomb is about to go off in 2 minutes? Let me squeeze some emotional bullshit out of a final goodbye to the bomb ass chick in the catsuit. It's as if the 1940's comics had more reasonable plots.
One of the biggest problems is that there's just too much shit happening and a lot of it isn't really connected. You have a mixture of stories - No Man's Land, Knightfall, Bane, Death and the Maidens... and a few more other elements that are just way too much for this one film. Batman isn't on screen for like 20 minute chunks, Catwoman isn't on screen for 40 minute chunks and so forth. Basically the stakes never feel very high because you don't give a shit about any of the characters.
You have the whole notion that Bruce is a shutin crippled.. How exactly? It's not as if he's been Batman all this time. In fact, he hasn't been batman for 8 goddamn year. Which means that Batman Begins happens - the ending to that leads to The Dark Knight. Which then has an 8 year gap to The Dark Knight Rises. So for 8 years Batman hasn't done shit because he's been too mopey about the death of his friends to carry on.
Which makes me wonder why the fuck little kids in the orphanage even know about some crazy dude in a suit who had three adventures/news articles 8 god damn years ago.
I guess that's my problem with Nolan's Batman. He's straight up murdering multiple people, has guns on everything he owns. That motorcycle? Yeah... Then he abandons every single person he has any emotional connection to, and does all this with absolutely zero repercussions to his self. The trilogy manages to show exactly how awful the modern hero is, and does so completely unintentionally. The 60's film is genuinely more socially conscious than anything even marginally noted in Nolan's films.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Taco Bell - Music To My Mouth
Taco Bell - Music To My Mouth
While I may never want to try a Taco Bell Doritos taco, I sure can depend on it making some pretty sweet sounding music...
Those made me crack up far more than they should have. Go figure.
While I may never want to try a Taco Bell Doritos taco, I sure can depend on it making some pretty sweet sounding music...
Those made me crack up far more than they should have. Go figure.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
How To Eat Cereal
How To Eat Cereal
Eating cereal is fun, healthy and yummy! but some of you may feel overwhelmed at not only the variety of choices of cereal in your local grocery store, but the act of actually eating cereal, too. For instance, how would one know how much milk to pour into a bowl of dry cereal?! This is a question that many strive to find the exact answer to, but usually fail. But with this guide you can learn things like that and stuff.
Anyway, lets get started:
choosing a cereal
-----------------------------
So there are lots of cereals in the store that you buy stuff at. Lets try to break them down into categories, for instance:
Kid's cereal - Now this is the best shit out there. I say "Kid's cereal" but it's really "Cereal Marketed towards Kids". Unless you are a gigantic faggot or some old dude with heart problems, you are going to want some Kid's cereal. This includes the delicious shit like Count Chocula (and all his delicious friends), Cocoa Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisps, Lucky Charms, Fruity Pebbles, etc.
Boring adult crap shit cereal - Cereal in this category mostly consists of some overly healthy crap like bran and flaxseed and oatz and crap, except that these things are pretty gross by themselves so the cereal people try to sweeten or flavor it up with some other crap so it just ends up tasting like chocolate covered poopoo. Actually there is one exception to this rule. I'm speaking of course of the glorious Honey Bunches of Oats.
Which cereal is right for you? This is the part you're going to have to experiment with. Everyone will have their own likes and dislikes. For instance, I personally hate those little fucking marshmallow bits that are in Lucky Charms, etc. I'm more of a cereal minimalist - give me some fucking PB Cap'n Crunch and I'm good. Choosing a cereal that's right for you is perhaps the hardest part of this whole ordeal (next to eating the cereal of course, which we will cover later).
choosing some milk
-----------------------------
I know what some of you must be saying right now - "Wtf man I know what milk I like plus there's really only whole milk skim milk blah blah right?" Yeah you're a faggot and also wrong. Here's other I've tried and there are probably more:
Cow's Milk: This is the shit you grew up with. Not much else to say about it, except that it's crap and you should stop drinking it.
Hemp Milk: I've only tried one kind of this, and it was crap as well. It was really gritty and this fucking residue got all over every dish I put it in. But hey if you're into that, wahtever.
Soy Milk: Good stuff but only if you buy Silk brand Soy Milk. I used to drink it a lot, but then I realized it gave me da mad fartz so I don't drink it as often. It's got a different color than regular milk, which might throw you off, but it's pretty tasty. (Warning: Soy may or may not have been proven to turn you into a ladyboy so drink with caution)
Rice Milk: Shit's pretty good. More watery than the others, I would probably compare the consistency to skim milk.
Almond Milk: FUCK YEA ALMOND MILK. This shit is the best. Best part? You can make it yourself for super easy and cheap. If you buy this, you're gonna wanna get this shit called Almond Breeze, it's probably the best FUCK YEA
Now all of these milks obviously come in different flavors, such as chocolate, vanilla, etc. Some of them even come in unsweetened versions, which I guess you should get if you fail at not being diabetic or something.
Anyway, the point is, try some different milks out with your cereal. Personally, I would highly recommend (starting with the best): Almond Milk, Soy Milk, Rice Milk.
eating the fucking cereal
-----------------------------
Once you've acquired your cereal and milk, you're going to need a bowl. See, the cereal goes into the bowl, and then the milk goes over the cereal and also in the bowl. if this is complicated you should probably kill yourself. oh you're also going to need a spoon (not for killing yourself but for eating the cereal)
1) Pour that delicious sweetened cereal into the bowl. probably filling up between 1/3 and 1/2 (you will need plenty of room for milk)
2) Pour whatever gay ass milk you decided to get over the cereal into the bowl. Now, this is a heavily debated topic, but IMHO you should pour the milk to just reach the top of the cereal. A little less or more depending on how much crunch you want, but the truth is most cereal manufacturers have gotten pretty good at making cereal stay crunchy in a lot of milk.
3) put it in your mouth. this should come naturally to you as im sure this is not the first time you've heard this request. what im trying to say is you probably suck a lot of dicks.
4) chew thoroughly and swallow. savor the fucking flavor (unless you're eating kix which incidentally has no flavor)
5) when you're done with your cereal, drink the milk. this is essential as a lot of the cereal's flavor becomes absorbed by the milk and makes a delicious concoction of win
experimental cereal theory
-----------------------------
Now beyond your basic plain milk with plain cereal, there is a realm of cereal eating which many of you may not know about: the experimental siiiiidddee of ceerreeaaalllll.
Now I bet you're like wtf bro what crazy shit you b on. well I will tell you what crazy shit i be on. Have you ever had Cocoa Puffs and PB Cap'n Crunch Mixed Together? What about taking all of the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms and mixing them in with rice crispies? have you ever eaten cereal using chocolate milk instead of plain? did i just blow your mind?
i dont know the answers to any of these questions except the last one (which is obviously yes yes you did blow my mind), but it's something to think about. play around with your cereal and milk combinations. shit, make a cereal milkshake or eat some cereal with a fork. you never know if you might make a brilliant breakthrough in cereal eating (which by the way, if you do, please post in this thread).
Eating cereal is fun, healthy and yummy! but some of you may feel overwhelmed at not only the variety of choices of cereal in your local grocery store, but the act of actually eating cereal, too. For instance, how would one know how much milk to pour into a bowl of dry cereal?! This is a question that many strive to find the exact answer to, but usually fail. But with this guide you can learn things like that and stuff.
Anyway, lets get started:
choosing a cereal
-----------------------------
So there are lots of cereals in the store that you buy stuff at. Lets try to break them down into categories, for instance:
Kid's cereal - Now this is the best shit out there. I say "Kid's cereal" but it's really "Cereal Marketed towards Kids". Unless you are a gigantic faggot or some old dude with heart problems, you are going to want some Kid's cereal. This includes the delicious shit like Count Chocula (and all his delicious friends), Cocoa Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisps, Lucky Charms, Fruity Pebbles, etc.
Boring adult crap shit cereal - Cereal in this category mostly consists of some overly healthy crap like bran and flaxseed and oatz and crap, except that these things are pretty gross by themselves so the cereal people try to sweeten or flavor it up with some other crap so it just ends up tasting like chocolate covered poopoo. Actually there is one exception to this rule. I'm speaking of course of the glorious Honey Bunches of Oats.
Which cereal is right for you? This is the part you're going to have to experiment with. Everyone will have their own likes and dislikes. For instance, I personally hate those little fucking marshmallow bits that are in Lucky Charms, etc. I'm more of a cereal minimalist - give me some fucking PB Cap'n Crunch and I'm good. Choosing a cereal that's right for you is perhaps the hardest part of this whole ordeal (next to eating the cereal of course, which we will cover later).
choosing some milk
-----------------------------
I know what some of you must be saying right now - "Wtf man I know what milk I like plus there's really only whole milk skim milk blah blah right?" Yeah you're a faggot and also wrong. Here's other I've tried and there are probably more:
Cow's Milk: This is the shit you grew up with. Not much else to say about it, except that it's crap and you should stop drinking it.
Hemp Milk: I've only tried one kind of this, and it was crap as well. It was really gritty and this fucking residue got all over every dish I put it in. But hey if you're into that, wahtever.
Soy Milk: Good stuff but only if you buy Silk brand Soy Milk. I used to drink it a lot, but then I realized it gave me da mad fartz so I don't drink it as often. It's got a different color than regular milk, which might throw you off, but it's pretty tasty. (Warning: Soy may or may not have been proven to turn you into a ladyboy so drink with caution)
Rice Milk: Shit's pretty good. More watery than the others, I would probably compare the consistency to skim milk.
Almond Milk: FUCK YEA ALMOND MILK. This shit is the best. Best part? You can make it yourself for super easy and cheap. If you buy this, you're gonna wanna get this shit called Almond Breeze, it's probably the best FUCK YEA
Now all of these milks obviously come in different flavors, such as chocolate, vanilla, etc. Some of them even come in unsweetened versions, which I guess you should get if you fail at not being diabetic or something.
Anyway, the point is, try some different milks out with your cereal. Personally, I would highly recommend (starting with the best): Almond Milk, Soy Milk, Rice Milk.
eating the fucking cereal
-----------------------------
Once you've acquired your cereal and milk, you're going to need a bowl. See, the cereal goes into the bowl, and then the milk goes over the cereal and also in the bowl. if this is complicated you should probably kill yourself. oh you're also going to need a spoon (not for killing yourself but for eating the cereal)
1) Pour that delicious sweetened cereal into the bowl. probably filling up between 1/3 and 1/2 (you will need plenty of room for milk)
2) Pour whatever gay ass milk you decided to get over the cereal into the bowl. Now, this is a heavily debated topic, but IMHO you should pour the milk to just reach the top of the cereal. A little less or more depending on how much crunch you want, but the truth is most cereal manufacturers have gotten pretty good at making cereal stay crunchy in a lot of milk.
3) put it in your mouth. this should come naturally to you as im sure this is not the first time you've heard this request. what im trying to say is you probably suck a lot of dicks.
4) chew thoroughly and swallow. savor the fucking flavor (unless you're eating kix which incidentally has no flavor)
5) when you're done with your cereal, drink the milk. this is essential as a lot of the cereal's flavor becomes absorbed by the milk and makes a delicious concoction of win
experimental cereal theory
-----------------------------
Now beyond your basic plain milk with plain cereal, there is a realm of cereal eating which many of you may not know about: the experimental siiiiidddee of ceerreeaaalllll.
Now I bet you're like wtf bro what crazy shit you b on. well I will tell you what crazy shit i be on. Have you ever had Cocoa Puffs and PB Cap'n Crunch Mixed Together? What about taking all of the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms and mixing them in with rice crispies? have you ever eaten cereal using chocolate milk instead of plain? did i just blow your mind?
i dont know the answers to any of these questions except the last one (which is obviously yes yes you did blow my mind), but it's something to think about. play around with your cereal and milk combinations. shit, make a cereal milkshake or eat some cereal with a fork. you never know if you might make a brilliant breakthrough in cereal eating (which by the way, if you do, please post in this thread).
I thank you all for listening.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Batman... Risen?
Batman.... Risen?
It's really tragic... Well, I'm not talking about how much I really don't care for Nolan's rendition of Batman. I mean, he treats us as smart viewers with films like Momento and for Batman he has to dumb it down, or at least make it so easy? Pfft!
No, I'm not talking about that, I'm referring to the fact that the midnight screening of the newest Batman movie in Denver, Colorado had violence involved with it as a gun man went crazy hurting dozen others.
Here's an eye witness account from reddit.
So last night at midnight, 14 people were just like you. Sitting comfortably waiting to see the last Batman in Nolan's rendition of the franchise and then suddenly they were gunned down.
Makes you wonder, don't it?
Now that we talked about that tragedy, can we move on to the next piece of tragedy -- Bane. I mean, let's be honest, would you look at that awful mouth piece.
Bane's mouth thingy looks like a mechanical goatse. Okay, more to the point it looks fucking stupid. I seriously don't have any idea what look they were going for with it. Maybe complicated orthodontia? I dunno. As the leader of the prole insurgency, Bane flaunts ill-cared-for teeth in the faces of the rich and powerful.
Yeah, I get that it's administering an anesthetic, then again, why would you need an anesthetic after watching a 3 hour Batman movie? I can't watch Begins without automatically falling asleep at some point. I'm still amazed that anyone needed Batman's origin to be explained yet again.
It's as if Nolan doesn't trust the intelligence of his audience. He has to over-explain a great many things in an unnatural manner.
Look, don't get me wrong, they're great films... but they're not Batman films. I really wish that a Batman film had more sequences of Batman actually, you know, being Batman. While this ties things up nicely, I'm going to be fine and actually look forward to seeing someone else's take on the franchise now that he's gone.
I mean, just look at the themes of the films and tell me if this sound about right?
Batman Begins: Gotham can be saved
The Dark Knight: The citizens will save the soul of Gotham.
The Dark Knight Rises: The only people who can save Gotham are the police and two people in costumes.
Then you get into Joseph Gordon-leviitt's character and it doesn't take a detective to figure out who he is in the "Realistic" Nolan Batman universe. The moment he started mentioning being in an orphanage, let alone busting out the Tim Drake-ism in knowing who Bruce was, it was just a matter of shaking my head at all of it.
It's really tragic... Well, I'm not talking about how much I really don't care for Nolan's rendition of Batman. I mean, he treats us as smart viewers with films like Momento and for Batman he has to dumb it down, or at least make it so easy? Pfft!
No, I'm not talking about that, I'm referring to the fact that the midnight screening of the newest Batman movie in Denver, Colorado had violence involved with it as a gun man went crazy hurting dozen others.
Police in Denver, Colorado, have confirmed that 14 people have been murdered in a shooting spree at the premiere of Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises.
Local reporter Justin Jones said the gunman was wearing body armour and a gas mask.
"The attacker shot a baby at point blank range," he said.
Another eyewitness, James Cameron, said the baby girl was shot in the back.
Aurora Police chief Dan Oates said one suspected gunman had been taken into custody - and police were not looking for a second suspect at this stage.
"One of our highest priorities will be dealing with the famlilies of the victims," he said.
"Ten people died in the theatre and four died in hosital as a result of their injuries."
Witness Hayden Miller told KUSA-TV that he was inside Theatre 16 in a suburb of Denver when he heard several shots.
"Like little explosions going on and shortly after that we heard people screaming," he told the station.
Hayden said at first he thought it was part of a louder movie next door. But then he saw "people hunched over leaving theatre".
Brenda Stuart, of 850 KOA Radio, said the victims were shot dead but there may have also been an explosion. It is reported that many of the victims are children.
She said police are looking for a second explosive device at the Centruy 16 movie theatre in Aurora Mall.
As many as 50 people are believed to have been injured in the attack.
Here's an eye witness account from reddit.
Boyfriend and I have evacuated safe and sound. The shooting began during a gunfight scene in the movie, and at first, we thought it was special effects when smoke rose up. When shots happened again and people began to run, we thought something was up. A guy ran in and shouted there was a gunman in the building, and the alarms to emergency evacuate started to go off.
I now know what tear gas feels like. I've never had to 'get down' with a police officer screaming at us. This is the most fucked up night of my short life. I need an army of kitten photos stat.
http://whotalking.com/Century+16
[Edit] Thank you for the well wishes everyone. Heart is still racing, especially reading up on it still. Apparently, not long after we evacuated the premises, an explosion went off, and the death toll has risen to 12, with 20 more injured: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/365147/20120720/aurora-dark-knight-rises-batman-colorado-shooting.htm
[Edit 2] This blew up really quickly. While this is not the way that I would have liked to make it to the front page, I'm happy that reddit has reacted in such a way to keep everyone, including myself, up to date. I'm trying to read all comments, so if I accidentally skip over yours, in advance, I apologize.
Makes you wonder, don't it?
Now that we talked about that tragedy, can we move on to the next piece of tragedy -- Bane. I mean, let's be honest, would you look at that awful mouth piece.
Bane's mouth thingy looks like a mechanical goatse. Okay, more to the point it looks fucking stupid. I seriously don't have any idea what look they were going for with it. Maybe complicated orthodontia? I dunno. As the leader of the prole insurgency, Bane flaunts ill-cared-for teeth in the faces of the rich and powerful.
Yeah, I get that it's administering an anesthetic, then again, why would you need an anesthetic after watching a 3 hour Batman movie? I can't watch Begins without automatically falling asleep at some point. I'm still amazed that anyone needed Batman's origin to be explained yet again.
It's as if Nolan doesn't trust the intelligence of his audience. He has to over-explain a great many things in an unnatural manner.
Look, don't get me wrong, they're great films... but they're not Batman films. I really wish that a Batman film had more sequences of Batman actually, you know, being Batman. While this ties things up nicely, I'm going to be fine and actually look forward to seeing someone else's take on the franchise now that he's gone.
I mean, just look at the themes of the films and tell me if this sound about right?
Batman Begins: Gotham can be saved
The Dark Knight: The citizens will save the soul of Gotham.
The Dark Knight Rises: The only people who can save Gotham are the police and two people in costumes.
Then you get into Joseph Gordon-leviitt's character and it doesn't take a detective to figure out who he is in the "Realistic" Nolan Batman universe. The moment he started mentioning being in an orphanage, let alone busting out the Tim Drake-ism in knowing who Bruce was, it was just a matter of shaking my head at all of it.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Gun Ownership
Gun Ownership
I'm going to assume that most of you are up to date on the fact that there is this case in Florida where a white boy shot a black boy on the notion that he was up to no good. Yes, if you know anything about the Treyvon Martin case, this conversation may be for you.
But if this sort of problem was limited only in isolated cases of a single wannabe vigilante, I wouldn't consider that alone to be enough to suggest what I am about to bring up, in that we should probably curtail our liberal gun laws. In fact, that wasn't an isolated case. If you go to just about any gun forum,you will see post after post from people who are fetishing the whole notion of "getting" to defend oneself. Hell, this whole concept of a zombie apocalypse situation is all about that. They have these fantasy of getting the chance to murder someone legally and I would go as far as to say that the people in their fantasy are often a person of color.
So it makes you wonder and put into question the liberal gun laws that do not limit guns to these so called responsible gun owners such as the man that killed Treyvon Martin, or this racist maniac, the post katrina racist death squads in new Orleans or any number of other persons who kills a "burglar." These guns are having serious consequences for people south of the border. You know, those who get in the crossfire of the Mexican drug cartels and the federallies in their daily gun battles. Oddly enough, private ownership of guns is completely illegal there, and yet that still is happening. The sheer number of the number that we allow up here eventually turn up in Mexico via smuggling, via gun show loopholes, or theft by gangs. Moreover far too often kids and people with severe depression get a hold of them and end their lives.
It's the conundrum of the whole tool. The sole purpose of a gun is to end a life. Gun nerds and hunters might not kill anybody, but the death that is caused by legally manufactured guns is not worth tolerating so that these guys can have a hobby or pretend to stock pile for a zombie outbreak. The rest of the developed world, in addition to having universal access to free health care considers our fixation on guns to be crazy.
So the question I bring to you is if we should even bother allowing private gun ownership. Then again, that could be a trick question. I would ask if we should even allow private ownership of anything. I mean, I am, after all, a socialist.
The only things I could think of to go against the logic behind all this is that rifles and shotguns have a lot of legit uses in life, a lot of people hunt to eat, especially in northern Canada. And if you were to ban guns, the only people you'd actually really hurt would be first nations hunters who do it as a way of life or a hobby. Criminals, without a doubt, will always find a way to get their hands on them.
Especially since firearms are easily producible via machine tools. I could probably build a working firearm from off-the-shelf piping and steel components with only a few hand-tools, much finer and faster work can be done with metal shapers or mills or even CNC machines. So smuggling sufficient quantities into their territories and you got yourself some crazy weapons.
So it's clear that you don't restrict gun ownership because they're hard to make, you do it because widespread availability has a massively detrimental effect on society. The "ah but people will still get a hold of guns" argument is nothing but a cop out on it all. America is too far gone at this point to even think of banning anything. Not sure how much you can do about that and restricting the ability of 14 year olds to buy machine guns at arms fairs would simply be the only start you could possibly have.
I do get a kick out of reading how those crazy conservatives write on blogs and twitter about how they honestly think their shitty gun would help them beat the US military if ever the need to rise up and against them happened. Guess what, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell. One person was even talking about how they are sure they could shoot down a drone before it got to them. HA!
Don't get me wrong. I actually LIKE guns. Hell, I often find myself in gun stores all the time. But I don't hide the fact that gun stores as a whole are god awful. There's some I've been to that don't even try to hide the fact that they're bastions of white nationalism. The only two available targets at one I was in were Osama Bin Laden and the one labeled "thug." Which was just a black guy in a hoodie. Yeah, that was pretty fucked up.
What they need to do is make a print out of a target that is a cop or a guy in a suit. Just imagine how quickly that would make it onto the news that night.
I guess my main problem is that regardless of what I think is right, it's about as easy to outlaw private ownership of firearms as it is to outlaw racism and probably just as effective.
I'm going to assume that most of you are up to date on the fact that there is this case in Florida where a white boy shot a black boy on the notion that he was up to no good. Yes, if you know anything about the Treyvon Martin case, this conversation may be for you.
But if this sort of problem was limited only in isolated cases of a single wannabe vigilante, I wouldn't consider that alone to be enough to suggest what I am about to bring up, in that we should probably curtail our liberal gun laws. In fact, that wasn't an isolated case. If you go to just about any gun forum,you will see post after post from people who are fetishing the whole notion of "getting" to defend oneself. Hell, this whole concept of a zombie apocalypse situation is all about that. They have these fantasy of getting the chance to murder someone legally and I would go as far as to say that the people in their fantasy are often a person of color.
So it makes you wonder and put into question the liberal gun laws that do not limit guns to these so called responsible gun owners such as the man that killed Treyvon Martin, or this racist maniac, the post katrina racist death squads in new Orleans or any number of other persons who kills a "burglar." These guns are having serious consequences for people south of the border. You know, those who get in the crossfire of the Mexican drug cartels and the federallies in their daily gun battles. Oddly enough, private ownership of guns is completely illegal there, and yet that still is happening. The sheer number of the number that we allow up here eventually turn up in Mexico via smuggling, via gun show loopholes, or theft by gangs. Moreover far too often kids and people with severe depression get a hold of them and end their lives.
It's the conundrum of the whole tool. The sole purpose of a gun is to end a life. Gun nerds and hunters might not kill anybody, but the death that is caused by legally manufactured guns is not worth tolerating so that these guys can have a hobby or pretend to stock pile for a zombie outbreak. The rest of the developed world, in addition to having universal access to free health care considers our fixation on guns to be crazy.
So the question I bring to you is if we should even bother allowing private gun ownership. Then again, that could be a trick question. I would ask if we should even allow private ownership of anything. I mean, I am, after all, a socialist.
The only things I could think of to go against the logic behind all this is that rifles and shotguns have a lot of legit uses in life, a lot of people hunt to eat, especially in northern Canada. And if you were to ban guns, the only people you'd actually really hurt would be first nations hunters who do it as a way of life or a hobby. Criminals, without a doubt, will always find a way to get their hands on them.
Especially since firearms are easily producible via machine tools. I could probably build a working firearm from off-the-shelf piping and steel components with only a few hand-tools, much finer and faster work can be done with metal shapers or mills or even CNC machines. So smuggling sufficient quantities into their territories and you got yourself some crazy weapons.
So it's clear that you don't restrict gun ownership because they're hard to make, you do it because widespread availability has a massively detrimental effect on society. The "ah but people will still get a hold of guns" argument is nothing but a cop out on it all. America is too far gone at this point to even think of banning anything. Not sure how much you can do about that and restricting the ability of 14 year olds to buy machine guns at arms fairs would simply be the only start you could possibly have.
I do get a kick out of reading how those crazy conservatives write on blogs and twitter about how they honestly think their shitty gun would help them beat the US military if ever the need to rise up and against them happened. Guess what, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell. One person was even talking about how they are sure they could shoot down a drone before it got to them. HA!
Don't get me wrong. I actually LIKE guns. Hell, I often find myself in gun stores all the time. But I don't hide the fact that gun stores as a whole are god awful. There's some I've been to that don't even try to hide the fact that they're bastions of white nationalism. The only two available targets at one I was in were Osama Bin Laden and the one labeled "thug." Which was just a black guy in a hoodie. Yeah, that was pretty fucked up.
What they need to do is make a print out of a target that is a cop or a guy in a suit. Just imagine how quickly that would make it onto the news that night.
I guess my main problem is that regardless of what I think is right, it's about as easy to outlaw private ownership of firearms as it is to outlaw racism and probably just as effective.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
You Know Nothing, Johnny Storm
You Know Nothing, Johnny Storm
Wait, how did I not post this while I was at comic con? This was suppose to be a filler posting while I was out not getting any sleep and doing all sorts of crazy nerd activities, while being way to busy being a geek with hundred thousand other geeks.
In any case, here's a filler post that blends nerdism of a wide variety with Game of Thrones love of house banners.
Wait, how did I not post this while I was at comic con? This was suppose to be a filler posting while I was out not getting any sleep and doing all sorts of crazy nerd activities, while being way to busy being a geek with hundred thousand other geeks.
In any case, here's a filler post that blends nerdism of a wide variety with Game of Thrones love of house banners.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
4'33
4'33
Do you have a few moments to listen to John Cage's 4'33? Well, tough shit. Youtube just went and pissed in your cereal bowl...
But hey, how about we listen to a remix version or a dubstep edition of it...
Wait, you're not getting the joke? Oh... well, you see experimental composer John Cage made a song called 4'33'' which is usually played on a piano. The piece contains no notes whatsoever for the entire song which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds long. The sounds of the song is instead the background noises of the place where it is played.
So in a sense, or in all the sense, youtube just blocked silence. But hey, it's copyrighted and people have been sued before for it.
Then again, the point of the original recording was to capture the increasingly uncomfortable and confused audience reaction to buying a ticket and getting dressed up nice to only be seated staring at a guy doing nothing at all at the piano for a whole 5 minutes.
So it's not so much silence as it is the intention to use the ritual of performance to try and take people to a new level of awareness of their surroundings - which is the point of art after all, right.
Still, it's rather silly to copyright silence.
Do you have a few moments to listen to John Cage's 4'33? Well, tough shit. Youtube just went and pissed in your cereal bowl...
But hey, how about we listen to a remix version or a dubstep edition of it...
Wait, you're not getting the joke? Oh... well, you see experimental composer John Cage made a song called 4'33'' which is usually played on a piano. The piece contains no notes whatsoever for the entire song which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds long. The sounds of the song is instead the background noises of the place where it is played.
So in a sense, or in all the sense, youtube just blocked silence. But hey, it's copyrighted and people have been sued before for it.
The internet is riddled through with music copyright infringement lawsuits, like a great big illegal swiss cheese. You’re probably pretty used to reading about people ripping off music and getting sued for it. This one might shock even the most lawsuit-jaded: in 2002 the composer Mike Batt made a six-figure, out-of-court settlement for infringing on John Cage’s 1952 work, 4’33″.Yeah, that 4’33″. The silent one.
It started when Batt and his band The Planets released a Crossover-Classical (Eugh. I hate that term) album called Classical Graffiti. Batt wanted to explicitly separate the tracks at the end from those at the beginning, because they were done in a different style. He thought it would be fun to do this with a track called “One Minute Silence (after Cage)”. This was credited to Batt/Cage.
Shortly after the album was released (and went to number one in the UK classical charts) Mike was contacted by Peters Edition, the publisher of Cage’s work, demanding one-quarter of the royalties from the sale of the song.
They argued over this for a while – interestingly provoking the kind of discussion which Cage had originally intended when he first performed the piece: does it truly qualify as a work? If not, why not? There was even a side-by-side concert performance of the two pieces in London, so that the, errr, differences could be illustrated.
Batt eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed six-figure sum. However, he pointed out that Peters had acknowledged they didn’t have much of a case, and that he was donating the money out of respect for John Cage — to the John Cage Trust.
I suppose the real issue wasn’t so much the copying of silence (otherwise there’d be a hell of a lot more lawsuits…) but the fact that Batt credited Cage as a writer.
Incidentally, Batt ended up re-registering the track using his pseudonym “Clint Cage”. Also incidentally, Batt was the guy who came up with the theme tune to the Wombles, as well as the music for the famous Art Garfunkel “Bright Eyes” track in Watership Down.
And then we get into the legal battles..
A bizarre legal battle over a minute's silence in a recorded song has ended with a six-figure out-of-court settlement.
British composer Mike Batt found himself the subject of a plagiarism action for including the song, "A One Minute Silence," on an album for his classical rock band The Planets.
He was accused of copying it from a work by the late American composer John Cage, whose 1952 composition "4'33"" was totally silent.
On Monday, Batt settled the matter out of court by paying an undisclosed six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust.
Batt, who is best known in the UK for his links with the children's television characters The Wombles, told the Press Association: "This has been, albeit a gentlemanly dispute, a most serious matter and I am pleased that Cage's publishers have finally been persuaded that their case was, to say the least, optimistic.
"We are, however, making this gesture of a payment to the John Cage Trust in recognition of my own personal respect for John Cage and in recognition of his brave and sometimes outrageous approach to artistic experimentation in music."
Batt credited "A One Minute Silence" to "Batt/Cage."
Before the start of the court case, Batt had said: "Has the world gone mad? I'm prepared to do time rather than pay out. We are talking as much as £100,000 in copyright.
"Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."
Batt gave a cheque to Nicholas Riddle, managing director of Cage's publishers Peters Edition, on the steps of the High Court, in London.
Riddle said: "We feel that honour has been settled.
"We had been prepared to make our point more strongly on behalf of Mr Cage's estate, because we do feel that the concept of a silent piece -- particularly as it was credited by Mr Batt as being co-written by "Cage" -- is a valuable artistic concept in which there is a copyright.
"We are nevertheless very pleased to have reached agreement with Mr Batt over this dispute, and we accept his donation in good spirit."
"A One Minute Silence" has now been released as part of a double A-side single.
copyright infringement over complete silence.
Then again, the point of the original recording was to capture the increasingly uncomfortable and confused audience reaction to buying a ticket and getting dressed up nice to only be seated staring at a guy doing nothing at all at the piano for a whole 5 minutes.
So it's not so much silence as it is the intention to use the ritual of performance to try and take people to a new level of awareness of their surroundings - which is the point of art after all, right.
Still, it's rather silly to copyright silence.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs
putting it simply - Dinosaurs rock! Well - did rock. Sadly they all died in a horrible accident that included one drunk asteroid driving itself into an Earth filled with Dinos. This all started MADD. Mammals Against Drunk Destruction.
But before it's tragic accident at the hands of a cosmic bottle Dino's rocked!
I love me some dino action. Here's my family getting lunch:
I used to have this awesome book full of illustrations of dinosaurs, but I can't find it anymore. It had a bunch of pictures in it. One was of this tricerotops mauling a T-rex's stomach with its horns. In reality, that wasn't very nice. I'd much rather have my dinos be more... laid back.
Nothing is better than a surfing Dino.. But maybe there is a way to top that.. How about TWO SURFING DINOS!
I sure did always love ankylosauruses. Ha ha ha, auto correct wanted to change that to tyrannosauruses. Touche, auto correct.
I have to admit, I was disappointed when I found out the dimetrodon wasn't really a dinosaur and all my childhood beliefs were sort of crushed.
It's cool though. Cause he eventually turned into us. Or something.
putting it simply - Dinosaurs rock! Well - did rock. Sadly they all died in a horrible accident that included one drunk asteroid driving itself into an Earth filled with Dinos. This all started MADD. Mammals Against Drunk Destruction.
But before it's tragic accident at the hands of a cosmic bottle Dino's rocked!
I love me some dino action. Here's my family getting lunch:
I used to have this awesome book full of illustrations of dinosaurs, but I can't find it anymore. It had a bunch of pictures in it. One was of this tricerotops mauling a T-rex's stomach with its horns. In reality, that wasn't very nice. I'd much rather have my dinos be more... laid back.
Nothing is better than a surfing Dino.. But maybe there is a way to top that.. How about TWO SURFING DINOS!
I sure did always love ankylosauruses. Ha ha ha, auto correct wanted to change that to tyrannosauruses. Touche, auto correct.
I have to admit, I was disappointed when I found out the dimetrodon wasn't really a dinosaur and all my childhood beliefs were sort of crushed.
It's cool though. Cause he eventually turned into us. Or something.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
And Yet MORE Newsroom Shit
And Yet MORE Newsroom Shit
This time I'm just going to post the A.V. Club's post on why the Newsroom, as much as I appreciate the message it is trying to relay, just does it all wrong because of Aaron Sorkin.
As much as I feel Aaron Sorkin is correct about the brokenness of the news media format, I'm finding myself getting more sympathetic with the people he's angry at, the ones wo knuckle under to the commercial gods and the terms of their contracts as Will McAvoy pointed out.
I agree that these news stars should use their power and influence to emphasize the facts and to elevate the worthy stories. But it turns out to have been pretty easy for the staff to convince Jim of that.
But the bold statement is the main reason why I will complain about The Newsroom. It's really the most truth to the whole complaints for the show. This whole notion that it's a person standing in front of the screen telling you WHY THE NEWS FORMAT IS BAD instead of just showing us in other ways like the wire did.
This time I'm just going to post the A.V. Club's post on why the Newsroom, as much as I appreciate the message it is trying to relay, just does it all wrong because of Aaron Sorkin.
The third episode of The Newsroom opens with footage of Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief under George W. Bush, issuing an apology to the American people for their government—and Clarke—failing to prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. No, the News Night team hasn’t gone back to report eight-year-old news, but Clarke’s remarks stand as the preface for Will’s own failure to provide an adequate service to the viewing public. It’s the great fantasy of The Newsroom that the news media would hold themselves accountable for failure—failures brought about by chasing ratings, bowing to corporate interests, and trying to present a false left/right “balance” on issues like evolution and climate change, where the facts favor one side unambiguously.
Here’s the thing: The show and its creator, Aaron Sorkin, are making completely valid points about how and why the media, specifically broadcast news, has let down the electorate. But the problem with the show is that it can’t help making those statements explicit. The Wire is a great show because it reveals, season by season, the futility of the “War On Drugs” and its corrosive, wide-ranging impact on a city’s social institutions and its people. It would not be a great show if Bubbles came out and said, “Man, the ‘War On Drugs’ has really had a corrosive, wide-ranging impact on the city’s social institutions and people like me.” Granted, Bubbles doesn’t have a camera in front of him so he can voice such an opinion, but Sorkin’s habit of stating his thesis over and over—rather than demonstrating it in the day-to-day reality of putting on a quality news broadcast—is The Newsroom’s biggest problem. And it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.
“The 112th Congress” doesn’t get worse than Will’s on-air apologia—or, perhaps worse than that, the awed reaction shots of his staffers—but the self-aggrandizement doesn’t end there. Sorkin and his co-writer, Gideon Yago (of MTV News fame), use the Tea Party revolution as an opportunity to expose the movement as a far-right, corporate-backed hijacking of the Republican Party. The episode plays like the dramatization of an editorial by David Frum, the Republican apostate who once served as a George W. Bush speechwriter (he coined the notorious phrase “axis of evil” to describe Iran, Iraq, and North Korea) and has since balked at the extremists holding sway in the GOP. And much like the moderate Republicans who have been marginalized for failing to take hardline conservative positions on every issue, Frum has been labeled a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and banished to the land of wind and ghosts (a.k.a. The Daily Beast). (Money quote: “Some of my Republican friends ask if I’ve gone crazy. I say: Look in the mirror.”)
Positioning Will McAvoy as a dissenter in the Frum/Andrew Sullivan mode is a savvy piece of political cover on Sorkin’s part, shielding him and his lead character (if only a little) from the accusation that the show is a sounding board for liberal opinions. In “The 112th Congress,” this allows Will to prosecute the Tea Party as a GOP-er interested in saving his party’s soul rather than as a hyper-partisan Democrat with an agenda. The bulk of the episode finds Will on a nightly campaign to expose the Tea Party not as a grassroots movement but as a radical, Koch Brothers-financed campaign to purge any Republicans who don’t tick every far-right ideological box. Will makes enemies of Fox News and right-wing radio talkers, makes friends of Media Matters and Think Progress, and loses the ratings bump he enjoyed after his Northwestern speech.
The episode is framed by another Network moment, albeit not of the “mad as hell” variety that The Newsroom has favored to date. As Will and his team spend the back half of 2010 squandering his ratings dominance, we get a glimpse of some corporate star chamber after the mid-term elections, where Charlie hears the grumblings of the higher-ups. In Network, Ned Beatty takes Peter Finch’s Howard Beale into a dark conference room to warn him about meddling with “the primal forces of nature.” Here that duty falls to Jane Fonda, who quietly absorbs all the ratings news before giving Charlie the same message: That the Tea Party and their corporate sponsors may be extreme, but ACN is but a tiny part of a much larger media company that has to do business with the Michele Bachmann, Jim DeMint, and their disciples in the 112th Congress.
Director Greg Mottola lays on the atmosphere a little too thickly: Setting a meeting like this one in a shadowy boardroom works fine enough for a satire like Network, but The Newsroom is ostensibly set in the real world and could stand a subtler staging. And though it’s fun seeing Fonda deliver the Beatty-style fire-and-brimstone monologue, it adds more freight to an episode that’s already painfully explicit. So far, there’s precious little subtext on The Newsroom—it’s all text, which thins out both the complex issues at play and the mucked-up agendas of the professionals trying to make sense of them.
Stray observations:
- I didn’t give myself an opportunity to comment on the romantic intrigue happening on the sidelines this week, which says something about how minuscule an impact they’ve had on the show so far. Save for Jim’s sweet scene with Maggie after her panic attack, the love triangle between those two and Don is still a bit lifeless. Worse yet, it colors the dispute between Jim and Don by making it seem like a case of romantic rivalry rather than a difference in showrunning philosophies.
- Will dating a succession of lovely young women—and bringing them to the office in a bid to hurt MacKenzie for cheating on him—similarly feels underwritten and damaging to the show’s fundamental seriousness.
- With each episode, Sam Waterston’s Charlie appears to be getting drunker. He’s well past the Freddy Rumson line here.
- Judging by Jim and Neal’s barroom conversation, a WikiLeaks episode appears imminent. If I were more confident in this show’s ability to parse complex political, ethical, and journalistic matters, I’d be excited by the possibilities.
As much as I feel Aaron Sorkin is correct about the brokenness of the news media format, I'm finding myself getting more sympathetic with the people he's angry at, the ones wo knuckle under to the commercial gods and the terms of their contracts as Will McAvoy pointed out.
I agree that these news stars should use their power and influence to emphasize the facts and to elevate the worthy stories. But it turns out to have been pretty easy for the staff to convince Jim of that.
But the bold statement is the main reason why I will complain about The Newsroom. It's really the most truth to the whole complaints for the show. This whole notion that it's a person standing in front of the screen telling you WHY THE NEWS FORMAT IS BAD instead of just showing us in other ways like the wire did.
Creator of Dilbert Has a Plan on How to fix America
Creator of Dilbert Has a Plan on How to fix America
Scott Adams is a man with a vision. Sure, you may know him by that terrible office cubicle comic strip Dilbert, but man, does that guy have a few ideas and while a sentence you never heard in America was "I wonder what Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert thinks we should do." here we are...
Scott Adams said: So his ideas are basically;
1. Be like China
2. There isn't some government system to educate people and we shouldn't have one
3. We should educate people based on a site used to compare cell phones and processors
4. It needs to be unbiased, providing the pros and cons on like subjects if rape is natural for men or whether women are just too emotional to engage in honest discussion.
5. Capitalism and Private enterprise something something *farts*
In short -- Scott Adams is a bad person and I do not like him. But hey, lets rip this asshole a new one while we're here. Because really, shit like;
I just don't get it. I mean, why does anyone actually believe China is a well run country or that they make decisions that are somehow "smarter". The only difference between China and the US in terms of politics or economic decision making is that here we have to put up a big shiny show about democracy and deliberation.
I was listening to this talk given by an author of some awful book that's literally called MAONOMICS: Why Chinese Communists make better Capitalist. She finished the talk by gushing over the fact that Steve Jobs just had the INNOVATIVE SPIRIT to find the way to exploit all the millions of cheap Chinese laborers and how the fact that we can distract ourselves for hours each day with apple toys to make our shitty existence less shitty is somehow worth it... Because yes, there was exploitation, but innovation.. innovation blah blah bbakdjsldaldsjaldaa
Oh, and she actually believes that a crisis in Europe would have limited effect on the US and China because FINANCIAL FIREWALLS are in place. HA! Fucking moron.
But back to the awful cartoonist. Scott Adams has his head so far up his own ass it's just sad. His mind is constantly locked into high school mode forever. It's as if everything he writes is on the level of 16 year olds discussing "crazy ideas and philosophy and shit", complete with the native arrogance that would be almost cute if it wasn't so vile.
And what is his reward? Well, he went and built himself a house shaped like Dilbert. Which is scary in itself.
Here's my theory - You are a bad cartoonist if your art style is boring enough to be load bearing.
I mean, that would be a pretty decent house with a less garish color scheme and without the dumb turret. He built it as an "eco home" or whatever the term is, but then he managed to put a giant high ceiling Dilbert tower in there, which I imagine is probably not easy on both heat and cold.
Even if Watterson is a shithead, he's still extremely quiet about it. He doesn't give out many interviews,, not for lack of people trying, and basically just spends his time making paintings and relaxing. I recall reading a thing in an interview where he'd sneak in autographed copies of his anthologies into the local bookstore cooperative so kids would be all "Whoa, whoa whoa!" But he stopped when he saw them go on ebay and sell for a shit ton of money instead of going into the hands of a starry eyed unsuspecting kid who got a special book.
Scott Adams is a man with a vision. Sure, you may know him by that terrible office cubicle comic strip Dilbert, but man, does that guy have a few ideas and while a sentence you never heard in America was "I wonder what Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert thinks we should do." here we are...
Scott Adams said:
I wonder if a country as a whole can have intelligence. And if so, can that intelligence be increased?
I'm not talking about average test scores in schools, or average IQ levels. Those things are important, but they are only part of the picture. I'm talking about how effectively a nation as a whole can make decisions and navigate its position in the world. For example, China has a political system that seems to produce intelligent decisions. You might criticize China's leadership for being heartless and brutal, but that's a separate discussion. If you consider how effectively they pursue their country's interests, their national intelligence seems quite high.
The United States, on the other hand, produces laws and foreign policy that don't always seem to be the result of intelligence or even good intentions. Our actions are a weird stew of religion, politics and randomness. A sentence you never hear in America is "I wonder what the smart people think we should do."
I was thinking about National Intelligence (NQ) in relation to the debate on health care. It seems that most American voters have a strong opinion on the topic while perhaps 1% of the public fully understand the issue. So whose job is it to educate voters?
It certainly isn't the government's job to educate voters. Our system is designed to make candidates compete for votes, and the most effective way to compete is by appealing to emotion and ignorance. The last thing a politician wants is to be labeled professorial. That's the same as boring.
It's not the job of news organizations to educate voters either. The point of the news is to inform citizens of what is new and noteworthy. It wouldn't be practical for the press to do a complete history and context for every news item.
In our system, citizens are expected to self-educate. That probably made sense when issues were simpler. But in today's world, that would be like expecting people to become doctors and lawyers just by doing some reading in their free time. It's unrealistic.
Our only real hope is the Internet. Recently I stumbled across a site -- http://Diffen.com -- that allows users to create their own comparisons of any two things. It's generally used for simple comparisons such as the differences between two models of cell phones. But I was struck by the power of putting information in a handy grid so you can compare things line by line. It's a great way to simplify complicated issues.
Diffen.com probably isn't the answer for educating voters, but it makes me optimistic that a solution is possible. The problem, as I see it, is that there isn't any profit in educating the public, so private industry is unlikely to wade in. That leaves us with the government, and the government isn't equipped to educate voters because we expect leaders to be opinionated, not objective. It's never a good idea to trust the cat to guard the canary.
So I put the question to you, my brilliant readers. Suppose you start with a website funded by private donations from a variety of citizens, with a mandate to operate independently, and your task is to find a way to populate the site with unbiased and useful information on public policy. What system could you devise to guarantee that the information is unbiased and, importantly, it appears that way to all observers?
I will seed this discussion by suggesting that the Diffen.com model of a customizable, side-by-side comparison is a good start for most topics. But you also need a way to rank the importance of each dimension of the discussion. And you need an easy way to view dissenting opinions on each "fact" in the matrix.
The genius of capitalism and democracy is that both systems embrace the destructive forces of competition and self-interest and channel them in a positive direction. Something similar needs to be done with information. What we need is a Founding Father or Mother who can find a way for arguments and information to compete in a way that kills the weak ideas and leaves only the strong.
Any ideas?
1. Be like China
2. There isn't some government system to educate people and we shouldn't have one
3. We should educate people based on a site used to compare cell phones and processors
4. It needs to be unbiased, providing the pros and cons on like subjects if rape is natural for men or whether women are just too emotional to engage in honest discussion.
5. Capitalism and Private enterprise something something *farts*
In short -- Scott Adams is a bad person and I do not like him. But hey, lets rip this asshole a new one while we're here. Because really, shit like;
You might criticize China's leadership for being heartless and brutal, but that's a separate discussionShould never be spoken. I mean, what more can you do to sweep China's human rights issues under the rug? I'm surprised a body part hasn't slipped out from under it.
I just don't get it. I mean, why does anyone actually believe China is a well run country or that they make decisions that are somehow "smarter". The only difference between China and the US in terms of politics or economic decision making is that here we have to put up a big shiny show about democracy and deliberation.
I was listening to this talk given by an author of some awful book that's literally called MAONOMICS: Why Chinese Communists make better Capitalist. She finished the talk by gushing over the fact that Steve Jobs just had the INNOVATIVE SPIRIT to find the way to exploit all the millions of cheap Chinese laborers and how the fact that we can distract ourselves for hours each day with apple toys to make our shitty existence less shitty is somehow worth it... Because yes, there was exploitation, but innovation.. innovation blah blah bbakdjsldaldsjaldaa
Oh, and she actually believes that a crisis in Europe would have limited effect on the US and China because FINANCIAL FIREWALLS are in place. HA! Fucking moron.
But back to the awful cartoonist. Scott Adams has his head so far up his own ass it's just sad. His mind is constantly locked into high school mode forever. It's as if everything he writes is on the level of 16 year olds discussing "crazy ideas and philosophy and shit", complete with the native arrogance that would be almost cute if it wasn't so vile.
Hey, why don't we be like China... but only, like, better. And maybe we should do this capitalism thing, but in a way that makes my life more enjoyable, you know. So like, capitalism but better! Bet I just blew your mind, man.It's nothing more than him saying they should ask "smart" people to run the country and he has his hand raised up in that "Oh, ME ME ME ME! OH GOD PICK ME!" mentality going on. Why hello, I'm Scott Adams and I normalize corporate slavery through light hearted propaganda cartoons... professionally.
And what is his reward? Well, he went and built himself a house shaped like Dilbert. Which is scary in itself.
Here's my theory - You are a bad cartoonist if your art style is boring enough to be load bearing.
I mean, that would be a pretty decent house with a less garish color scheme and without the dumb turret. He built it as an "eco home" or whatever the term is, but then he managed to put a giant high ceiling Dilbert tower in there, which I imagine is probably not easy on both heat and cold.
Even if Watterson is a shithead, he's still extremely quiet about it. He doesn't give out many interviews,, not for lack of people trying, and basically just spends his time making paintings and relaxing. I recall reading a thing in an interview where he'd sneak in autographed copies of his anthologies into the local bookstore cooperative so kids would be all "Whoa, whoa whoa!" But he stopped when he saw them go on ebay and sell for a shit ton of money instead of going into the hands of a starry eyed unsuspecting kid who got a special book.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Prometheus - Or How Jesus Gave us Xenomorphs
Prometheus - Or How Jesus Gave us Xenomorphs
Let's be honest, Prometheus wasn't what all of us Alien franchise freaks were expecting. It didn't help that it suffered from the whole Star Wars episode 1 syndrome. In that we have been waiting a god damn long ass time to find out something about the space jockey from Alien and this is the answer?
You know, it's not that it was BAD, so much as it was just a message... or an answer.. that was so fucking heavy handed and buried in metaphors and symbolism that you just want to shake Ridley Scott and tell him to keep it fucking simple, stupid!
How else would you react if you went up to someone who just watched Alien and their question is "How did the Alien Xenomorphs come to be?" and the actual - and I'm not bullshitting you here - answer is "Because Jesus was crucified.
The Jews killed Jesus and thus Xenomorphs came to be.
That is literally what happened. I, seriously can not believe that is actually a valid answer that we found out through Prometheus. Oh, did you not pick that up from your viewing of Prometheus? Well then, good sir, do I have a magical trip to take you down and it's fucking sad that it's true.
First off, we have to lay down the basics on who this name in the title is - Prometheus. He is in Greek Mythology the Titan that helped Zeus overthrow Kronos and the person who created man. He made us out of clay and then, in a move that angered the Gods, gave us fire. Because he did so he was chained to a rock and stabbed in his abdomen. Allowing the buzzards to pick through his organs. Thus life was created through the open wound...
Oh yes, this image is going to be so beaten into your mind by the end of this post that you'll think I'm the director here. We go back to Elizabeth Shaw, who was implanted with the super infected sperm of her husband, who previous to this was incapable of having children -- Miracle birth, anyone? And what does she have to do? She has to program the surgical machine for caesarean - note that it wasn't set to abort. Hmmm, I guess we could go into a long debate about pro-life/pro-choice, but we have enough on our plate already.
So the machine cuts her open and takes out new life. Man, that Prometheus life giving abdomen cut comes back again. Do we even have to mention that said removed life form later comes back and saves Shaw from the angered Engineer and completes its circle of love by planting the Xenomorph into it... leaving the movie end with yet another life bursting from the abdomen of a character.
Oh yeah, Jesus. Which did get stabbed in the abdomen, and in earlier scripts there was going to be a scene where Jesus, played and shown as a bald giant Engineer, is killed by the people. Thus making Jesus the killed Engineer that got the others to want to go back to Earth and destroy their creation -- Humans. So in a sense, or in entirety, Jesus dying lead to the series of events that produced a Xenomorph on LV-223.
And if you thought the bible references were already bad enough, how about this thinly woven fun fact of a bible passage;
The central theme of the film seemed to be "I suffer and die so that others may live." But hey, I guess you would have to be half dead to miss that one, especially with Vickers and her fuck you, got mine mentality. Which I would normally have no problem seeing get struck down.
It's sort of hard NOT to laugh when the elderly Weyland gets smacked to death by his own creation. Which I guess goes with the theme of "if you're greedy and don't know when your time is up, then you're gonna get it." that the film seems to be rolling with.
Then again, all this mental gymnastics isn't going to change the fact that while there was a shit ton of messages, meaning and what not to the film, that it didn't really work on the level that it tried to.
I heard rumors that this was supposedly the beginning of a trilogy. I'm not sure who else is the key demo-graph for a trilogy involving a tough as nails she-scientist and her disembodied android head sidekick on a slow, silent adventure through space seeking answers about the nature of our existence. I'm pretty sure that I'm part of a potential audience of about 12 people.
But hey, maybe I'll go see the sequel, which is rumored to be called Paradise... It has been a while since I had some bible studies. I'm sure I'll write another post about this film as it has huge amounts of hidden bullshit behind it, a lot of which were good concepts -- just a shame that it was executed so fucking jumbled that it would turn off the vast majority
Let's be honest, Prometheus wasn't what all of us Alien franchise freaks were expecting. It didn't help that it suffered from the whole Star Wars episode 1 syndrome. In that we have been waiting a god damn long ass time to find out something about the space jockey from Alien and this is the answer?
You know, it's not that it was BAD, so much as it was just a message... or an answer.. that was so fucking heavy handed and buried in metaphors and symbolism that you just want to shake Ridley Scott and tell him to keep it fucking simple, stupid!
How else would you react if you went up to someone who just watched Alien and their question is "How did the Alien Xenomorphs come to be?" and the actual - and I'm not bullshitting you here - answer is "Because Jesus was crucified.
The Jews killed Jesus and thus Xenomorphs came to be.
That is literally what happened. I, seriously can not believe that is actually a valid answer that we found out through Prometheus. Oh, did you not pick that up from your viewing of Prometheus? Well then, good sir, do I have a magical trip to take you down and it's fucking sad that it's true.
First off, we have to lay down the basics on who this name in the title is - Prometheus. He is in Greek Mythology the Titan that helped Zeus overthrow Kronos and the person who created man. He made us out of clay and then, in a move that angered the Gods, gave us fire. Because he did so he was chained to a rock and stabbed in his abdomen. Allowing the buzzards to pick through his organs. Thus life was created through the open wound...
Oh yes, this image is going to be so beaten into your mind by the end of this post that you'll think I'm the director here. We go back to Elizabeth Shaw, who was implanted with the super infected sperm of her husband, who previous to this was incapable of having children -- Miracle birth, anyone? And what does she have to do? She has to program the surgical machine for caesarean - note that it wasn't set to abort. Hmmm, I guess we could go into a long debate about pro-life/pro-choice, but we have enough on our plate already.
So the machine cuts her open and takes out new life. Man, that Prometheus life giving abdomen cut comes back again. Do we even have to mention that said removed life form later comes back and saves Shaw from the angered Engineer and completes its circle of love by planting the Xenomorph into it... leaving the movie end with yet another life bursting from the abdomen of a character.
Oh yeah, Jesus. Which did get stabbed in the abdomen, and in earlier scripts there was going to be a scene where Jesus, played and shown as a bald giant Engineer, is killed by the people. Thus making Jesus the killed Engineer that got the others to want to go back to Earth and destroy their creation -- Humans. So in a sense, or in entirety, Jesus dying lead to the series of events that produced a Xenomorph on LV-223.
And if you thought the bible references were already bad enough, how about this thinly woven fun fact of a bible passage;
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.So a character named Elisabeth in the bible, cousin to Mary, with a baron womb is suddenly able to conceive... God damn, Ridley. How about not slamming it on the nose so much. Wasn't that the purpose of NOT having that scene with Engineer Jesus? I guess he just couldn't help himself. Especially when the film was just filled with bible references. David washes Weyland's feet and the pilot of the ship, when they sacrifice themselves into crashing into the other ship, have their hands stretched out in the form of a crucifixes.
The central theme of the film seemed to be "I suffer and die so that others may live." But hey, I guess you would have to be half dead to miss that one, especially with Vickers and her fuck you, got mine mentality. Which I would normally have no problem seeing get struck down.
It's sort of hard NOT to laugh when the elderly Weyland gets smacked to death by his own creation. Which I guess goes with the theme of "if you're greedy and don't know when your time is up, then you're gonna get it." that the film seems to be rolling with.
Then again, all this mental gymnastics isn't going to change the fact that while there was a shit ton of messages, meaning and what not to the film, that it didn't really work on the level that it tried to.
I heard rumors that this was supposedly the beginning of a trilogy. I'm not sure who else is the key demo-graph for a trilogy involving a tough as nails she-scientist and her disembodied android head sidekick on a slow, silent adventure through space seeking answers about the nature of our existence. I'm pretty sure that I'm part of a potential audience of about 12 people.
But hey, maybe I'll go see the sequel, which is rumored to be called Paradise... It has been a while since I had some bible studies. I'm sure I'll write another post about this film as it has huge amounts of hidden bullshit behind it, a lot of which were good concepts -- just a shame that it was executed so fucking jumbled that it would turn off the vast majority
Friday, July 13, 2012
Comic Con Coverage - Day 1 - Zombies
Comic Con Coverage - Day 2 - Zombies
No, I'm not talking about the Twilight fan who got killed by a car coming back and eating the brains of con patrons (too soon?), I'm talking about the walking dead. With issue #100 coming on just yesterday and causing all sorts of shocked and pale looks on the faces of patron... okay, maybe they're pale due to the lack of socializing.
In any event, the walking dead is big this year. Which really shouldn't surprise anyone. With Petco Park turning into a zombie evacuation experience. Oh FEMA, you're such a waste and deserve to be zombie fodder.
So currently the walking dead survival experience is going on in Petco where people can act out those fantasies of being in a zombie apocalypse situation. Which, let's be honest, is typically what you're dealing with when you're in Petco park. Let's just say that a future article will be written about that experience...
In the horizon is the news of the upcoming season. Where we'll see the appearance of The Governor. For those who read up to issue #50 of the comic book, you'd realize how big of a thing this character is to push the story along. It's also pretty big in helping those who hate Lori's character like I do. What a terrible cunt of a mother.
Oh snap, is that who you think it is? Why yes.. and you wondered what happened to him at the start of the first season. I guess it only took 2 seasons to get back to that. Which, to be honest, in Kirkman's world, is at least a good thing that he's actually expanding on a previously planted plot arc seed.
Anyhow, a great thing about comic con is getting to see the new shit. Take this poster for the upcoming third season of this show. Greg Capullo did a limited-edition season 3 walking dead poster for SDCC.
That poster, my friends, is pretty bad ass. Then again, it's not as badass as watching Rick with a gun pointed at zombies...
You can never be too old for that sort of thing.
No, I'm not talking about the Twilight fan who got killed by a car coming back and eating the brains of con patrons (too soon?), I'm talking about the walking dead. With issue #100 coming on just yesterday and causing all sorts of shocked and pale looks on the faces of patron... okay, maybe they're pale due to the lack of socializing.
In any event, the walking dead is big this year. Which really shouldn't surprise anyone. With Petco Park turning into a zombie evacuation experience. Oh FEMA, you're such a waste and deserve to be zombie fodder.
So currently the walking dead survival experience is going on in Petco where people can act out those fantasies of being in a zombie apocalypse situation. Which, let's be honest, is typically what you're dealing with when you're in Petco park. Let's just say that a future article will be written about that experience...
In the horizon is the news of the upcoming season. Where we'll see the appearance of The Governor. For those who read up to issue #50 of the comic book, you'd realize how big of a thing this character is to push the story along. It's also pretty big in helping those who hate Lori's character like I do. What a terrible cunt of a mother.
With the evil Governor in the picture, does that mean the humans are the bigger threat this season?
The plan was always to evolve naturally into a place where the zombies essentially become a manageable threat. You know the rules. You know how to deal with them. To a certain extent they become something to not really be scared of unless you mess up. Humans, however, do not follow any rules and will always do something that surprises you and are capable of doing things far worse than trying to eat you…We’re definitely going to be seeing a lot of horrible things.
Michonne was introduced in the Season 2 Finale. How are Danai Gurira’s sword skills shaping up?
There’s been quite a bit of sword training going on and [Danai] is doing an amazing job. She’s going to be do all of the hard character stuff and drama that The Walking Dead is known for, but she has tremendous physical capability and the sword training that I’ve seen is absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to see her hack up some zombies.
This season has got so many exciting story lines…
When you think about The Walking Dead comic series, you think about oh, the stuff they with did the Governor, the stuff they did with the prison and Woodbury and Michonne. And that’s really a lot of the stuff that people remember the story for and that’s stuff we haven’t even gotten to in the TV show yet. So as much as people love the show, and as high as the ratings are, and as cool as the show is, I feel like we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet. This season is absolutely going to blow people away.
Oh snap, is that who you think it is? Why yes.. and you wondered what happened to him at the start of the first season. I guess it only took 2 seasons to get back to that. Which, to be honest, in Kirkman's world, is at least a good thing that he's actually expanding on a previously planted plot arc seed.
Anyhow, a great thing about comic con is getting to see the new shit. Take this poster for the upcoming third season of this show. Greg Capullo did a limited-edition season 3 walking dead poster for SDCC.
That poster, my friends, is pretty bad ass. Then again, it's not as badass as watching Rick with a gun pointed at zombies...
You can never be too old for that sort of thing.
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