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26 April, 2004

Oh, that's right, I have a blog.

Umm... So, I saw Starsky and Hutch last night. My thoughts on it are best summed up as: "..."

When stuff that was presumably meant to be funny happened: "..."

When stuff that was presumably meant to be touching happened: "..."

When stuff that referenced the 70s and/or the original series happened: "..."

When Carmen Electra started making out with Amy Smart: "..." (but I was thinking "Heh. Heh. Alright...")

I'm afraid the most insightful comments I can make on it have been made elesewhere: The Herald's review, which pointed out that it's not so much an action comedy as a romatic comedy, with the two leads meeting, getting to like each other, falling out and making up; and The Trailer Trash's opinion:

"Lost somewhere in this mountain of wide 1970's lapels and enormous 1970's moustaches is the original Starsky & Hutch television show; a show that, believe it or not, people once enjoyed unironically. I'm sure these people are bound to be good sports about being made to look like idiots for actually having once enjoyed Starsky & Hutch. But I wonder if it grates a bit to watch your childhood heroes ridiculed on a big screen for the benefit of twenty-somethings snorting Pepsi One through their noses at it.

"Being in my twenties myself, I have no fond memories of Starsky & Hutch. I'm even looking forward to the film, since it looks pretty funny. Still, I hope I'm as good a sport when all the stupid shit I used to watch (Dukes of Hazzard, A*Team, Air Wolf) gets similar point-and-laugh treatment in the decades to come. The small part of me that's immune to irony kind of wishes every eighteen-year-old laughing at Starsky & Hutch in 2004 feels impossibly stupid in fifteen years, when Stone Cold Steve Austin: The Movie, starring Skoot Ulrich-Hewitt and Freddie Prinze III, hits theaters."

17 April, 2004

But in a sense, aren't we all prostitute robots from the future?

16 April, 2004

Read this this.

Then read this.

Then run screaming as fast and as far as you can.

13 April, 2004

Speaking of lyrics, it was with some amusement that I noticed Baby Bash's "Suga Suga" has a parental advisory warning on it. Now, I'm entirely certain that "treat you like my sticky icky or my sweet ooey gooey" is all kinds of obscene, but it's not exactly "fuck you, you ho" now, is it?

Still, in a world where the word "knife" is excised from D12's "My Band" , I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm firmly of the opinion that creative vulgarity should be encouraged rather than stifled. On the grounds that if you keep your smut obscure enough, maybe the censors won't know what the hell you're on about and will leave you alone. On the day I hear the word "blumpkin" on C4, you'll see me weeping sweet tears of joy, I can tell you right now (if only because, to get it in, they'll probably have to rhyme it with "pumpkin").

12 April, 2004

I don't know much about "UK Hip Hop luminaries" Phi Life Cypher, apart from their collaborations with Gorillaz, but their remix of "Clint Eastwood" features some good shit, to the point that if I were to give my favourite bits I'd just end up quoting the whole song. However, looking at various lyrics sites to link to instead, they all get bits of it embarrassingly wrong -- I mean, it's hard to hear everything they're saying, but how could you mistake "to the top my lyrics escalate" for "to the top - my lyrics are skeletons"? That doesn't even make sense.

So, my edited highlights:

My futuristic linguistics turn fools into statistics
I'm a lyrical misfit with sadistic characteristics

I'm as animated as Japanese animes causin' calamities

6 April, 2004

So Haden says, "you don't update your journal enough." A fair comment.

He continues, "and you never mention me." Starting to get a little whiney, but true nonetheless.

"OK," I say, "I will do this thing for you, and one day -- a day that may never come -- I will ask you to do something in return. Rocco! Get this man a website update!"

And so the lad finds himself immortalised in electronic print:

Funny -- there are those who believe that having your photograph taken steals a bit of your soul, and yet there are those who believe it in some way immortalises you. Is photography maybe an equivalent to the old stories of wizards who would magically remove their heart from their body and store it somewhere safe, thus rendering themselves immune to physical harm? Perhaps we realise on some level that a part of us has been stolen, but we accept that in return this single aspect will live on past us, keeping us alive in the memories of others. Who knows -- maybe if someone on Golgotha had just had a polaroid, Jesus wouldn't have had to put up with all that business with the scourging and the nails and whatnot?

Or maybe it's JUST A FUCKING PICTURE.

31 March, 2004

OK, The Butterfly Effect. Not as bad as I was expecting, but not without its problems.

See, unlike, ooh let's say Torque, which required you to hit your brain over the head with a pool cue, tie it in a sack and dump it over a bridge before you started watching, The Butterfly Effect is a clever and thinky movie. The problem with a film like that is that it better damn well have its shit together, otherwise you'll notice the holes when you're doing all the thinking it demands of you. And holes there are.

I could partially buy Ashton Kutcher as someone who isn't Kelso, provided he didn't smile or look like he was concentrating. And keeping his That 70s Show haircut out of sight was a help too. Unfortunately, there were numerous flashes of Kelso-ness, causing me to think of him as at best an unnatural hybrid of his character in that film (called Evan) and Kelso. I call him Evso. But on to my main problems with the film...

Problem one: It takes too damn long to get going, because it has to spend ages setting up all the various childhood traumas and mysteries affecting Evso and his mates for him to go back and fix/explain later.

Problem two: Despite all the "a little change here can have huge changes later" stuff, only Evso and his mates appear to be affected from one alternate reality to the next. Not really the Butterfly Effect as it's commonly though of (indeed, as it's quoted at the start of the film).

Problem three: As the past changes, the characters bounce from one caricatured stereotype to another -- first the love interest is depressed loser, then she's a sorority queen, then she's a crack whore; the brother goes from psychopath to clean-cut, sweater-wearing God boy; the fat kid goes from a shut-in to a nutcase to a perfectly adjusted, goateed smiley guy.

Now you can provide excuses for why all these problems exist, but they all come in terms of why the movie had to be like that for it to work. The beginning had to take it's time, because you had to set up all that stuff for the rest of the movie to make sense (and even then, they throw a few more revelations in near the end, for him to work out a solution to everything at the last minute). The film only concentrates on the core characters, so of course we only see the changes that affect them, and presumably none of them are important enough for changes in their lives to affect the wider world. The characters have to be stereotypes, because they're introduced and re-introduced a whole bunch of times throughout the film, so there isn't time for them to be anything else. And so on.

The question is though: if a story requires all these flaws in order for it to work as a film in the first place, is it a story worth telling? And it still doesn't get around some of the more specific plot holes -- if he loves the girl so much, how come in the original world (before he starts fucking with things) he's off at university, picking up chicks in bars, and has never so much as phoned the woman he spends the rest of the film trying to save/be with? And why, for the love of Christ, does he suddenly flip out and fuck up the first "perfect" world he comes to by beating a guy to death after he'd already subdued him?

I will give it this, though -- the ending was about as good as could have been expected, considering that the alternatives were:

(ANTI-SPOILER ALERT -- the stuff listed below does not happen in the film, which, by a process of elimination, may enable you to work out what does actually happen.)

• Nihilistic "everybody ends up fucked" ending, which wouldn't have suited the tone of the rest of the film, and would almost certainly have included a ton of "don't play God" moralising.

• Super happy "everything's perfect" ending, which would have just seemed dumb.

• "Everything's perfect -- or IS it?" ending, where it all ends well, but then they tack on one of those pointless twists right at the end to suggest that nasty things are still afoot -- DUN DUN DUNNNNN! (Incidentally, why do people still do this sort of thing? Is it a conscious attempt to set a film up for a sequel, or just a total lack of imagination?)

So there's that.

In conclusion, my girlfriend's flatmate told me this film was great. From what I'd heard elsewhere, I went in expecting to have to hunt him down and slap him one afterwards. I no longer plan to slap him, but that's about the best I can say.

27 March, 2004

You know you're living in the future when...

Yes, pay the machine. The machine loves you. The machine will stand on your puny headmeats if you do not pay.

24 March, 2004

There's not a lot that's more fun than a flatmate who's fucked up his leg:

"Hey Gimpy -- how's the gimpin'?"

"Why, if it isn't my old friend, Gimpy McGimperson!"

"I name you Gimplor, King of all Gimp!"

"What's that Gimpy? Old man Johnson's stuck down a well?"

And so on. Good times. He's going to set fire to my face now, but I'll die happy.

23 March, 2004

Needs "polish" (and a title), but for the first time in ages, I had a "hmm -- that'd be an interesting idea for a story" moment:

But you see I have to be interested in language. I own a genie.

Well quite, but tell me this: are you a Christian? Genies are in the Bible, you know. Solomon commanded them. "And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought there, so there was neither hammer nor axe nor tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building." They're in the Bible. In the Qu'ran as well. And in my possession. A recent acquisition -- current events in the Middle East have made it markedly easier to get interesting artefacts in and out of places. That big museum in Iraq that got looted? They didn't get everything back, and some losses you'll never hear about because they can't admit to ever having had them in the first place. (Hussein never knew about some of the things there, that's for sure -- if he had, Israel would be a smoking hole by now, I dare say.) But I heard about them - I "know some people who know some people", as they say.

At any rate, I only summoned it the once, just to be sure. Quite an experience: thunderclaps, fire, no smoke, but the rest of the usual theatrics -- the expected theatrics -- and then there it stood. Black as ash, all smiles and "master this", "master that", but you could tell -- the way it seemed somehow apart from its surroundings, as though the shape it was was merely a small aspect of it extended into our world, like a finger dipped into a pond. The way that behind all the smiles, there was that terrible eagerness, that desperate desire in those flaming eyes for me to make my first "wish". The self-satisfied expectation of a bully who asks "what are you looking at?", knowing he can justify giving you a hiding no matter what you reply.

Make a wish. Anything I can imagine. No, anything I can put into words -- and that's the problem isn't it?

Of course, I said nothing. Sent it away and commenced my study. I know how these creatures work: anything you say, they'll twist it to mean something else and shaft you as imaginatively as possible. Wish someone back to life and you get zombies; wish for her to love you and she turns into an obsessed boiler of bunnies; wish for money and the next thing you know, half the country's police force are politely asking you how the fifty million dollars that disappeared from the local banks ended up piled to the ceiling in your living room. But they only get away with it because our language lets them. Our filthy little whore of a language, rubbing up against every foreign lingo it has the slightest contact with, until we have so many words for everything, so much nuance and metaphor, that it's impossible to craft a sentence that can't be taken more than one way.

Surely this is not the case with all languages. I've only just started looking, but there must be a totally literal language out there, one where each word stands for one concept and one only, and each concept has only one word that denotes it. German was my first thought -- its consistency in spelling had me hopeful, but of course, no -- it's too modern, too contemporary, in the way that inbred mountain men with webbed toes and four nipples are too far removed from their strong, wilderness-faring ancestors. I need the progenitor -- the pure genes from before sibling languages started getting overly familiar and their essences became warped by linguistic incest. I need a language that lets me say what I mean and mean what I say and nothing else.

If this fails, I may have to become one of those "geek" people. Learn the language of computers, and create my own binary tongue where everything comes down to on or off, yes or no, black or white. Either way, I will find a way of making wishes that can't be misconstrued. And then I'll have it.

And the first thing I'll wish for is three more wishes. Just to take the piss.

18 March, 2004

Interesting idea for the Futurephone-endowed: Lifeblog. Not sure what I think of this (apart from "bugger me, the 7610 has the weirdest keypad yet"). The technophile in me says: cool; the cynic says: "Lifeblog"? Does it come with extra proactive synergy?

Obviously, it will be used in the most part for porn. Place your bets -- how long before we hear about guys creating lifeblogs of candid shots of womens' asses or schoolgirls' underwear? I'm going for a full five seconds, but then I'm a firm believer in basic human decency.

Incidentally, I found out about this when I was doing my daily check of www.geekzone.co.nz. I also fondle sweaters and rub mud on my ass. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to hump the fridge...

17 March, 2004

Don't waste
your time
on me
You're al-
ready
the voice inside my head.

Blink 182 - I Miss You

Surprisingly sweet yet disturbed for those chuckleheads. It should be noted that I'm just assuming that's what the lyrics are -- it sounds more like "the voice inside my yed", but I don't know what that means. Unless it's "the voice inside my Ed", which adds the problem of who's Ed and why does he have voices inside him -- has he swallowed a walkie-talkie? Inserted a yodelling gerbil perhaps? A matter best left between him and his proctologist, I fear.

15 March, 2004

What the fuck, let's give commenting a try. I've signed up for a free commenting service from these nice people:

I'm fairly certain this will prove even more depressing than the hitcounter, since not only will I have proof that no-one reads my site, said proof will be A) displayed publicly at the bottom of every post, and B) not accompanied by the warm fuzzy feeling you get from knowing that people arrived at your site by searching for lesbian vampire hampster fisting. Ah well.

To celebrate, I was going to post a movie of my windup horse-riding monkey, taken from my shiny Futurephone, but I can't seem to upload the bastard. Still, what do I care -- I have a Futurephone and a windup horse-riding monkey. Does it get any better?

7 March, 2004

Anti-semitism: don't geddit.

It's the why of it all -- no, sorry, the why is easy: people are anti-semitic/racist in general because they were told to be and don't have the brains to think for themselves. What I mean is, I don't get the reasons anti-semites themselves give for why they hate Jews.

The Jews killed Jesus -- let's look at that. Let's assume it's true. Obviously it's not true -- a small bunch of Romans killed Jesus, possibly at the insistence of a small bunch of Jews (although seeing as they controlled half the fucking planet at that point, I don't see why they'd let a bunch of God-botherers from the local temple tell them what to do). But let's assume it's true, that "the Jews" did in fact kill Jesus.

Here's the thing that gets me: Jesus was supposed to die. The entire freaking reason he came to Earth, if we're to believe the Bible (as your average Jew-hatin' redneck alleges to -- let's steer clear of the whole Jews vs. Muslims: This Time It's Personal thing), was so that he could die, and save everyone from their sins.

Which means that if the Jews killed Jesus, they did us all a favour -- "yew killed mah Lord, Jew-boy" actually translates to "you saved my eternal soul from damnation in the firey depths of Hell. Jew-boy." Kind of like saying "get fucked" and meaning it as an insult, really.

The conclusion of this piece -- that racism is not bound by the laws of common logic and rationality -- will stun and astound you all, I don't doubt.

4 March, 2004

OK, the actual story is nothing to laugh at, but it does feature the finest headline I've ever read.

Personally, I would pay good money to fund a game show called "Stabbed in Head":

Grinning presenter with comically implausible hair: "I'm sorry Johnny, but that's the wrong answer - you know what that means..."

Audience, hopped up on complimentary amphetamines and biting the adrenal glands out of live squirrels: "STAB! IN!! HEAD!!!"

Contestant: "Sweet Christ, my brainmeats! I need those to imagine my cousin naked with!"

Presenter, as his hair devours a puppy and spits out the bones: "Yes, take it, you little bitch. Well, that's all for tonight -- see you all next week for more..."

Audience, foaming from the tear ducts and brandishing stolen and bloodied prosthetic limbs: "STAB! IN!! HEAD!!!"

Roll credits, fade to black.

19 February, 2004 (PM)

Dear Diary,

Today, I got to use the phrase "Step away from the Chomsky."

This may be the funniest thing I will ever say. Am now depressed.

19 February, 2004 (AM)

Note to self:

"A mouldering sack of horse vaginas" does not constitute valid artistic criticism, nor is it likely to be construed as such. Unless the work in question actually is a mouldering sack of horse vaginas, I guess.

12 February, 2004

Bowling: The Musical

"Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal..."

3 February, 2004

Tears of Joy, Part II

Or: "I Liked Torque, Fuck You".¹

No, seriously -- this is a movie that is just so mindless, such drivel, that the only way to survive it is to shut down all critical thinking ability and just look at the purty pitchers, and as a consequence, you end up loving every minute of it. Kind of like the fight scenes in Equilibrium -- it's just so damn ludicrous (while at the same time fast-moving and flashy) that you end up with joy in your heart and a fixed grin on your face as the last bars of that Nickelback song with the "death is good for you" video drift by and the screen fades to black. And by "you", I mean "me". Certainly not any of the other people I saw it with, but fuck them.

I mean, this film has everything -- Martin Henderson (who, if nothing else has a good hero's squint to him) being chased by Ice Cube and what appears to be half of Metallica; Jaime Presley as the Biker Slut from Hell; total disregard for the laws of physics, logic and basic human psychology; snappy wisecracks from at least one character (even if the others appeared to have assembled their dialog from a set of those word magnets you get to stick on your fridge and make into rude sentences) and a monkey. Well, in my mind there was a monkey. And ninjas. Ninjas are cool.

Now, I know what you're going to say: "But the plot makes pretty much no sense"; "The dialog is the worst you'll ever hear in a film²"; "That CGI's a bit shit sometimes, isn't it?"; "Why is Martin Henderson such a pouty little bitch?"; "Why is Ice Cube not able to stop scowling?"; "How come they don't get bugs in their teeth when they ride at high speed with no helmets?"; "What's with the FBI agent and her Bulletproof Vest +3, Immunity to Explosions?"; "Why does everyone smash beer bottles all the time?"; "Seriously, are you on ecstasy?"; "No, seriously?"

Well you know what? Fuck you. I mean, what's your fucking problem? Fuck, Shakespeare's not that great -- "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" my arse -- what does that even fucking mean? Screw this, I'm off to get liquored up and shoot at squirrels.

¹ Original title: "I Liked Torque, And If You Have A Problem With That, You May Feast On My Bubbling Spunk" discarded due to length.

² EVER.

28 January, 2004

Tears of joy: Man sentenced for marrying his 15-year-old cousin, who was also his aunt.

For me, it's the "who was also his aunt" that really elevates it from "A-hyuck" to a full-blown "A-haw!"

27 January, 2004

So I'm informed that "Behind Blue Eyes" is in fact a cover of an old song by The Who. Which means I can no longer pillory Fred Durst for being responsible for the musical crime of rhyming "bad" with "sad". (I could still pillory him for being a bawly slaphead who lost all credibility when he appeared onstage with Christina Aguillera -- before she entered her Daddy's Little Crackwhore phase, no less -- but it's a bit too obvious.)

Still, there's always the All Saints.

And skate moppet Avril Lavigne, for rhyming "boy" with "boy" (a feat topped by Eminem, who in "The Way I Am", manages to rhyme "curse", "curse" and "curse").

Moving out of rhyming offences, we have Chrissy Hynde's "Got in the house like a pigeon from hell" ("Back in the Chain Gang"). Yes, "a pigeon from hell"; surely the musical equivalent of the late Brandon Lee's "you have the right to be dead" -- a black mark on the otherwise brilliant Showdown in Little Tokyo, which is then balanced by the "biggest dick I've ever seen on a white man" line, so that's OK.

And indeed, I can also forgive the Pretenders any number of crimes, on the grounds that they did the theme music for Cupid (moment of silence please... thank you) and wrote "Don't Get Me Wrong", one of the best songs ever, even if it includes the line "don't get me wrong/ if I split like light refracted". What are we to make of this? Is Chrissy brave for putting a tongue twister in her own lyrics? Should we congratulate her in the name of science, for managing to incorporate a basic principle of waveform behaviour into popular music? Or should we just ignore that which displeases us, turning instead to more stimulating and worthwhile pursuits than random bitching about song lyrics?

Well, off to see Welcome to the Jungle, then.

P.S. The Flaming Lips - "store" with "orange"? One of those "is it genius or insanity?" cases -- I'm stumped.

18 January, 2004

It is done.

18 January, 2004

More archiving done - don't want the pages to get too big. I'm still on dial-up; I don't know about the rest of you smug bastards.