Because We Can.
27/02/2002

Why do people do stuff? Because we can.

I honestly believe that it's as simple as this. 99.9% of the shitty, inhuman acts that only human beings are capable are done because people want to do them, and they can. Maybe they'll dress it up in some load of bollocks that's meant to make it OK, be it self-delusion or propaganda, but sometimes they don't even bother.

Case in point: I see in today's Herald that a bunch (and by "a bunch" I mean upwards of sixty) of aid workers in West Africa have been extorting sexual favours from children in exchange for food and medicine. You know - the stuff they're supposed to be giving them for nothing. Apparently the local representative of Save the Children said that the aid agencies these people worked for "would have to make sure staff understood that sexual exploitation of children was unacceptable".

Sexual exploitation of children is unacceptable? Well I never.

Does anyone think this happened because the offenders didn't know that what they were doing was wrong? That any of them are now scratching their heads and re-evaluating their conceptions of morality. Arse - they didn't do it because they thought it was OK; I imagine they didn't consider the rights and wrongs at all - they did it because they could.

There are a lot more men in prison than women. Some would say that this is indicative of men's inherent savagery and aggression. I simply observe that for a very long time men have had significantly more freedom to do stuff than women (possibly due to our inherent savagery and aggression, but that's a whole 'nother fistfight waiting to happen). The people who have been able to do more, did more. Because they could. Makes sense to me.

Intermonet!
22/02/2002

You know, I hadn't noticed: see the top right photo here? I've got long hair, she's got dreads, there's a swirly psychedelic background, and I'm wearing a T-shirt that says "groovy". Hippyest photo EVER. Anyway.

More fun and malarky on the Internet today! Why not go to Artbomb, and learn about Graphic Novels You Should Own Or You Are Stupid. In their entry for Lazarus Churchyard, you can even download (as a 1.7Mb PDF) the entirety of Lucy's Drowning, a little story involving the title character, and the saddest fucking thing I've ever read.

To get you over that downer, you can play with the old staple of comedy Internet translators. Take my site, for instance, and then... PORNOLISE! Further hilarity results in viewing my site:

• in pimp speak
• in Smurf
• in hillbilly
• as spoken by the Swedish chef

You can try the T'inator for yourself - I couldn't get it to work for me. Or you could visit these wacky folks and poke them with sticks. They like that.

Do you believe in sufficiently advanced technology?
15/02/2002

And then there was the time my girlfriend was informed by a Science-taking Christian friend of hers that "science is religion". Not sure if he meant "science is a religion" (and therefore comparable to Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc) or "science is religion" (the scientific search for answers amounts to the same impulse that drives religion or something equally profound) but who cares, he sounded like a bit of a fruitcake anyway.

Now, "science is magic" is a phrase that I think a lot more people agree with, although they may not acknowledge it, thanks in large part to old Artie C. Clarke. What doesn't get as much press is the corollary to this which says that sufficiently advanced scientists are indistinguishable from magicians. From the Professor in Gilligan's Island to Professor Frink in the Simpsons, you find characters who are generic "scientists", which basically translates to "answer machines" or "intelligent-sounding gobbledegook providers" as the situation merits. In the latest series of Angel, the character of Wesley has proved adept at everything from chemistry to obstetrics (!), while Fred is a mathematical/engineering/entomological/etc whiz as well.

Starting with the ancient Greeks you got your "natural philosophers", who were in the business of having their fingers in every scientific pie they could manage. These fellows lasted until a few centuries ago (Leibniz, who I've heard described as "the last man who knew everything" died in 1716), until the various fields of study became so large that people started to specialise. It wasn't long after that that they started calling themselves "scientists" and that was that. Could the present day phenomenon be some sort of throwback to this age? A racial memory of sorts? Or is it, in the words of Billy T. James, just bullshit? These days it's rare enough to find someone who knows everything about a single subject.

Take, for example, computers. Much has been written, mostly by irate geeks, about how ridiculous Hollywood "hacker" movies and TV shows are, with Hugh Jackman or Johnny Lee Miller sitting in front of a keyboard, furiously tapping away (without ever using the spacebar), muttering about "encryption this" and "firewall that" and whatever other IT terms the scriptwriter's chosen to name-drop, before cracking the security of some government site in the time it takes a real-life geek to pour themselves a glass of Red Bull concentrate, crack their knuckles and say something rude about Bill Gates before even putting fingers to keyboard.

But that's OK, because as far as John and Jane Q. Public are concerned, that's how computers work. A person who knows what they're doing waves their hands over them, and anything they desire comes to pass. Magic.

I've talked before about how I know relatively little in the computer field, and yet I'm still considered an expert by the less computer literate. My darling flatmate who assumed that a bunch of local geeks could have a go at her broken stereo, because they must know about lasers and stuff. Or my other flatmate, who when I tell him that I wouldn't have a clue what's wrong with his monitor, but hitting it seemed to work last time, asks me "what do you do for a living again?"*. Admittedly, he was probably taking the piss (the aforementioned geeks have got their hooks into him and are attempting to teach him about Linux), but still.

*To those just joining us, I write user documentation for a software company. I use a computer to do this.

Hastily cobbled together.
10/02/2002

Fuck, it's been two weeks. What's good space filler? I know: talking about films I've seen recently!

Shallow Hal: Wasn't really very funny. Jack Black was great fun as a pedantic, sarky arsehole of a supporting character in High Fidelity, and yet strangely enough he doesn't really work as a loveable (if shallow) leading man in this film. Huh.

The Farrelly Brothers keep their trademark childish gross-out humour to a minimum, making the majority of laughs revolve around the one central joke: Rosemary looks skinny but is actually fat. Har.

Not one I'd recommend.

P.S. It doesn't really matter what you look like, it's your inner beauty that counts. But Gwynneth Paltrow is still skinny and attractive in real life.

The Cube on Haunted Hill. Damn, I wish I'd thought of that first, but it's unfortunately an observation of Richard's (his first upon the closing of the film, as it happens). And he's right. Like Cube (which is a brilliant film that you must never watch), it features a gratuitously gooey death right near the start to establish a threat for the rest of the film that never really plays out.

Like The House On Haunted Hill there's some very pretty and jolly imaginative effects and set work, and kind of a nice ooky spooky vibe.

Problem is, it's not really that scary. You get a few jumps near the start with ghosts appearing and disappearing, and some good mileage is made of the people not being able to see the ghosts (until they put on their fancy spook-o-vision goggles), but basically, once you know the deal, it loses most of it's power to shock you. With the much more tactile, ass-kicking ghosts (actors in makeup, rather than CGI or blue-screen effects) that this film features, it's somehow less supernatural - the cast could be being menaced by a bunch of regular non-dead nutters for all the difference it'd make.

Still, the makeup effects are jolly nice, even if they don't make the most of them. The nastiest and most dangerous ones get a lot of screen time, as does the well-proportioned and bare-ass naked chick covered in knife wounds, but a few of them are barely seen, and a few of them are never seen well enough to appreciate the work that went into them (the car crash victim with half his body scraped up is seen a bit, but his wounds, which are fairly cleverly done according to the film's site, are never sufficiently shown off).

This one is worth a look, especially at the moment, what with Lord of the Rings having scared all the decent films off this summer.

Lord of the Rings: This about says it all.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: Love the dick jokes. Love 'em.

A tale of sadness and woe.
27/01/2002

Wipeout Fusion, raspberry Vitafresh and a bit much chocolate have left me in a slightly altered state at the moment, so I thought I'd take a moment, as I sit in front of a fan watching WWF Raw, to tell you a little story...

Once upon a time, there was a man called Rob Schrab. Mr. Schrab wrote a comic book called Scud the Disposable Assassin, and it was bloody funny. A weird-ass stream-of-consciousness dissertation in hip, it appeared to be made up as he went, and yet all fitted together perfectly. Example: robotic hero Scud loses an arm, and while it's off being repaired he is given the "loaner" - a human arm with a cybernetic adapter. Wackiness ensues when it turns out the arm is in fact a werewolf arm, which causes Scud to wolf out and start quoting Shakespeare at inopportune moments. Cue a trip to outer space (it eventuates that the arm's original lycanthropic owner is an astronaut) and the saving of the Earth at the notable cost of the planet Venus. Scud then beams back to Earth, landing in first place at the finish line of the first event in a galactic Mr. Tough Guy contest. Scud is entered in the competition, and - are you getting the idea? Brilliance.

The series was to run to 21 issues, and I had been diligently collecting them like a good little comics geek. Issue 20 came out - the fucked up state of the world is explained, Scud's girlfriend is killed, Scud is asked nicely to destroy the world, and... well, I don't know because ISSUE 21 NEVER CAME OUT! Turns out Herr Schrab caught the screenplay bug and went off to movie land and kind of disappeared from view. For a long time.

From time to time, details emerged - the pilot for Heat Vision & Jack (the touching continuing story of a solar-powered genius and his talking motorbike), occasional short film projects (go to Instant Cool, download Shocking Pussy, say "what the unholy, steel-toed, weasel-buggering fuck was that?!"), and his latest effort - Robot Bastard. All jolly good, but WHERE'S MY FUCKING SCUD?!

Well, I found an explanation, so that's a bit better, but I'm still left with one minor irk: my comicy geekyness is somewhat tainted by the fact that of the initial twenty, I'm missing number four. Internet to the rescue - looky what I found on eBay! Along with this! Oh no, hang on - Check or money order only. And won't ship outside of the US.

Curse you, eBay - CURSE YOOOOUUUU!

Ah, that's much better.

Teleology in Action.
21/01/2002

Now consider the car horn. What's it for? Well, it's supposedly a safety device, used to warn unobservant people of a potential accident.

But what's it used for? Abuse. An expression of displeasure, rendered totally after the fact. Beeping at someone after they've done something stupid doesn't avert a potential automotive mishap - if anything could be the cause of one, as the beeped-at driver looks back to identify/further abuse the beeper.

The closest I've come to a road rage incident was after I (in a bad mood after a long day at work behind a menswear counter) leaned on my horn when some dick passed me in a stupid and dangerous fashion. Said dick then stopped in front of me and wouldn't let me past. I'm not sure what he was expecting me to do, but it probably involved violence to my person, so I backed up and went around the block. I ain't no stupid beagle.

Now some might claim that by beeping at someone whose driving offends you, you are improving safety on the roads, because you bring their bad driving to their attention, thereby teaching them not to do again. Well there's a great steaming pile of donkey bollocks if ever I saw one (disclaimer: I haven't). Have you ever been beeped at by an irate fellow motorist and thought "Well golly gee willikers, that was a poor piece of driving on my part, I shall endeavour to be more transportationally proficient in future"? Or was it more like "What's that arsehole beeping at me for? Fuck him in his stupid me-beeping-at arse!" Thought so.

So you could take it as symbolic/representative of people in general that they take what was meant to be a provide for a safer driving environment and turn it into a tool of abuse and acrimony. The more optimistic view would be to look at this as humanity using every opportunity to communicate with their fellows (and sure, the horn is used to communicate in a friendly manner on occasion, gotta admit that).

But obviously it's more fun to bitch.

The birthday post.
14/01/2002

Yep, 26 last Saturday. Hoo-rah. How did I celebrate this? By going to see a movie, which ended up being sold out, resulting in me and assorted friends drinking, playing pool, and pissing about in Japanese Photo Machines. A good time was had by most.

You can't fall off the floor.
11/01/2002

You live and you learn. Last night I learned much about the relative merits of playing Twister with and without socks, and just the other day I learned that you must never, NEVER, play Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls in front of your girlfriend. I mean it, never. Just skip the track for the sake of all concerned.

Another thing I've learned, or at least come to believe, is that one person's laziness is another's efficiency. Doing something with the absolute minimum expenditure of energy required - is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's certainly a good thing when a car's engine does it, for example. But some people take exception when other people do it, and you get complaints like:

"You always only do the minimum of what's required of you."

What's the problem here - you just said I did all that was required of me - why isn't that enough? Surely the minimum is by definition the smallest amount that is enough - if it's not enough, then it's less than the minimum requirement. (Note: semantics is fun.)

There is, of course, a slight problem here: a lot of what we call stupidity would better be classed as laziness of thought. We're all guilty of it - no matter how clever we are most of the time, we've all of us at one stage or another guessed when we should have worked it out, gone with our guts (which have shit for brains) instead of reasoning things through, or let someone else do our thinking for us. Some people do it a lot. Are they just being economical with their brainmeats, or are their actions less commendable? Depends on where you place the minimum required level of effort, I guess.

Don't look at me, I don't know where it is - you want answers, read the Bible. No, hang on...

Santa is a bad man.
03/01/2002

So Josh, what did you get for Christmas?

Just the usual: books, clothes, CDs, facial hair, emotional scars that will last a lifetime...

Oh, and happy New Year, too.

I update. This pleases me.
29/12/2001

Right, that's enough laziness - time I produced something here again. Let's see...

Review:

I saw Lord of the Rings. It was good.

Whinge:

Why's it so fucking humid all summer in Auckland?

Quote:

"Money is to Everything, as an Aeroplane is to Australia. The aeroplane isn't Australia, but it remains the only practical way we know of reaching it. So perhaps, metonymically, the aeroplane is Australia after all."

Definition:

metonymy (mit-on-im-ee) n, pl -mies a figure of speech in which one thing is replaced by another associated with it, for instance use of Downing Street to mean the British Government.

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