| Hot Buttered Death I wanna die just like Jesus Christ... with the radio on |
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Saturday, March 30, 2002
Seems the US' food drops in Afghanistan were all for nothing. Not only was the food often spoiled, quite a few of the Afghans unwittingly ate those moisture-absorbing things they tell you not to eat—and, like in Africa, most of the food packages were quickly snatched up by the local warlords and sold on the market. Even the US government has apparently had to admit they bombed out on this one (as it were)...
"I am the resurrection... whatever that may be." Fascinating piece looking at just what does it mean to say that that Christ character was resurrected.
A new blog I just discovered. Among the three participants are Marty Thau, who you may or may not remember as the man who first unleashed the music of Suicide on the world via his Red Star record label, which is currently the source of a legal wrangle between him and Heineken (with Heineken being morally in the wrong, I may add). Find the entry for March 29 and scroll down to the bit headed "WITH CALLOUS DISREGARD" for the story. He and his co-bloggers appear to be working on a book about Sept. 11 at the moment, particularly about how it was viewed through computer communications (chat rooms, etc), and if you scroll down from that bit mentioned above, you'll find an excised chapter from that. Looks like being an interesting read...
The Daily Telegraph, nothing if not boringly predictable. When Asian schoolkid gangs go head to head and you've got to write something about it, what's the first thing to do? Discover what movies they like and blame those. It's the easy knee-jerk response as usual. It'd be nice for the Telegraph to have actually displayed a bit of journalistic responsibility and tried to do a more thorough analysis of why kids are really getting involved with gangs like these. That, however, would evidently require thought, and there's no sense wasting energy in thinking unnecessarily when you can just point the finger at the movies the kids like. I've never bought this argument for a second, at least not the automatism of it. I don't think you can deny films and the like can have that sort of effect. As someone once wrote, if movies have no power over us at all, then they're useless. However, if they have as much power to influence people as we ascribe to them, why aren't we seeing even more crime than we already are? If they apparently have that much power over the people who watch them, why then am I not in a triad gang myself? I like Hong Kong action films. So does my mum. Odd, though, that neither of us has ever felt the need to live these things out ourselves. I liked the suits the guys in Reservoir Dogs wear, and ever since have found that black suit/white shirt thing to be very fine style. I had a desire to emulate that myself. I never had any desire to rob banks or kill people like the characters in the film do, though. So do movies have that much influence over their audience? Or is it really that the sort of people who are driven to commit violence by films of this sort are people who have the potential and the desire to do so in them already, while the majority of viewers are actually capable of drawing lines between fact and fiction, capable of knowing real from unreal, and able to realise that just because someone in a film looks cool doing something illegal/immoral/antisocial/generally wrong, that doesn't make it OK for you to copy them in real life? I go for the latter option myself.
This is just sad. For all the accusations of racism that have been gleefully thrown (by letter writers to the Telegraph at least) at people who dare question the Oscar-winning merits of Denzel Washington and Halle Berry, I still can't help feel there wasn't a whiff of political correctness involved. I know there's the whole voting process, but that doesn't necessarily rule it out. But even so, I don't know what hacking Ms Berry's website like that was really supposed to achieve. It doesn't bother me enough to consider that to be a justifiable action...
Political spam, even worse than commercial spam in my opinion. Carried out by no less than the brother of that Dubya character, too. The Democrat team were stupid to let the list of email addresses leak out like they did, but the Republican team's actions were pernicious. This is something there should be extremely strong laws against.
Oprah Winfrey doesn't have the time to go to Afghanistan. Yes, Oprah's actually refusing to extend her media empire for once. Maybe she just realised there's no point pushing her Book Club on people who've never been taught to read...
Czech art gallery owner claims to be the real inventor of Pokemon. If you believe a word of what he says, you're an even bigger clown than he is, that's all I'll say.
Just how do they determine the date of Easter? And more to the point, why is there not a fixed date for it, like there is for Christmas? I don't think I've ever seen that adequately explained. As it is, the impression you'd get if you knew nothing about Christianity is that Christ must've died and come back to life for five or six weeks in a row between March and April in whatever year it was he died, and that each year we commemorate a different one...
Intel takes on small yoga class provider over trademark violation. This is the most utterly stupid thing I've heard in a while. And big corporations wonder why people dont like them when they pull stunts like this?
Holy shit but do I ever wish I had a DVD player. Extended version of Fellowship of the Ring! Six hours of additional material on the four-disc set! Sigh... oh well, maybe we'll actually get a DVD player by the time it hits the shelves.
Hosts of radio talk show fired after getting a listener to shoot one of his toes off.
Peter Bogdanovich looks back at his life and career. Judge for yourself which of the two he's had more success with.
Friday, March 29, 2002
Andrew Watson: stop dreaming about aliens, we're all alone in the universe. What a humourless, small-minded man. I take particular issue with his closing comment: I think we dream of contacting aliens because we are scared of being alone. We seek companionship, and it is comforting to believe that civilisations older and wiser than ours will one day show us knowledge and wisdom. While I hope that there are superior beings out there in the universe somewhere, I do so not because I fear humanity's being alone in the universe, but because if there are no other advanced life forms out there, then humanity is the most advanced being in the universe. And given the quality of humanity we see displayed on the TV news every night, that's a fucking depressing idea, and a lot more frightening than the idea of us being alone... 2:56 PM | link
Love gone well and truly wrong: this guy just got 18 months for hacking into his old employer's computer system and giving this woman there a $140,000 raise. Only problem is, this woman had rejected him when he tried making romantic overtures to her and eventually got him booted out of the company for harrassment. He did try to do one thing right, by tipping off management that she'd been the one who'd carried out the hack, but frankly I think it'd have just been simpler to hack the network and cut the bitch's pay, not add to it. That's what I'd have done if I knew anything about hacking and was in his place...
The joy that is Triple J's Talkback Classroom segment, where high school kids from around the nation give politicians the grilling they deserve. I haven't listened to Triple J for quite a while, but always remember this segment, which I think is a monthly thing on the Morning Show, as being one of the better things it provided...
Word Document: a piece of Kentucky state legislation. Looks too much like a joke to be authentic, but then again it actually does come from the Kentucky Legislature's own site, so who knows...
US gov't to provide gas masks for Alabama residents living near an incinerator where they plan to burn deadly nerve agents. I've no doubt the residents are duly grateful for this magnaminity, but are probably wondering why the hell the government needed to use an incinerator in a residential area to destroy these things. Still, the gas masks apparently come in hood form, so I presume the KKK will be keen to get their hands on some of those...
Ex-PM of New Zealand David Lange claims Dan Quayle wanted him "liquidated" over NZ's no-nukes policy in the 1980s. I didn't know Quayle could spell "liquidate". That's impressive.
The "acoustic terrorism" of "boom cars". The author seems more concerned by the volume of people's car stereos these days than the amount of shit coming out the exhaust pipe; personally I'd have thought the latter was a bigger worry, cos being able to hear isn't much good if you can't breathe...
The silence machine. Blocks out any noise that may be annoying, while letting you hear what you want to. Sounds too good to be true, but if it'll block out certain of my neighbours when they have one of their fights in the street, I could be tempted...
The answer to a question I'd frankly never thought of. But you mean the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences doesn't have a cosy relationship with the Hollywood studios?
Roger Ebert blasts music copy-protection technology, and notes that you'll still be able to get around it by connecting your stereo to your computer and recording from that instead of directly from the CD-ROM drive. Admittedly that was a solution I hadn't thought of, though that's probably because my stereo system doesn't have the output slots needed to make the connection (it's what also stops me ripping from the few vinyl records I own), but it's worth mentioning, hence why I repeat it here. Go to it, kids!
Italian government threatens to sue The Australian. Seems they're incensed over a review of an exhibition of Italian masterpieces, currently showing in Canberra, which described the exhibit as "average". Sadly I can't find the original now, or else I'd link to it. In any case, though, it would seem that whoever's leading this lawsuit thing has never heard of such things as fair comment or individual opinions...
The rebirth of Marvin Gaye, doing not too badly for someone who got shot dead by his own dad in 1984.
Billy Wilder RIP. With him, Dudley Moore and Milton Berle, that makes the three that deaths are commonly said to come it. Can we have no more people dying for a little while, please?
Is the web getting more boring? Or are the people bitching about it just not looking hard enough?
Thursday, March 28, 2002
Oh, and I went to the Love and Death exhibition I made passing reference to last week. (The link from that archive page has changed since I posted it, by the way, thanks to the Herald's shit-useless redesign and restructure. I always liked the relative convenience of their structure, but for some reason they've felt a need to get closer to The Age's incomprehensible system.) I have to admit to being slightly disappointed. Very little struck me as being exceptionally outstanding, apart from a few notable (largely by virtue of their size) items, at least until you got to the "death" section... and unfortunately the really striking stuff there was outstanding by virtue of its glutinous sentimentality, which in a couple of cases was bad enough to choke the unwary. And Bruce James, in the above review, criticised the installation of the paintings, but it struck me as being OK... indeed the woman from the gallery leading the tour I attached myself to said that the painting of Diogenes in the exhibition comes from the AGNSW's own collection, but is normally hidden away in a corner somewhere (God knows I don't recall ever seeing it myself) where you can barely see it. On the whole, interesting, but I didn't find it interesting enough to spend forty-five bucks on the catalogue...
I normally avoid sports here and indeed elsewhere, especially the fucking AFL, but even I found this interesting. Channel Nine commentator Tim Lane has quit the AFL commentary team over the presence of the seemingly omnipresent Eddie McGuire. Not for personal reasons, but because he believes McGuire, as owner of the Collingwood team, has no place on the commentary team, especially when his team's playing. When Nine allowed McGuire to be on the commentary team, Lane decided McGuire's presence was an affront to his independence and quit. Eddie's apparently come out blasting that Tim was right to get out because he clearly wasn't 100% committed. I know nothing about Tim Lane, but Gareth Parker (whose blog alerted me to the story in the first place) is firmly in his favour. Since Eddie annoys me, I'll side with Tim in this one too...
Cintra Wilson takes a blowtorch to the Oscars ceremony. Not literally, no, but...
John Scalzi hates your politics, whatever they are. Though I tend to sympathise more with liberal politcs than anything else (not to be confused with the large-L Liberal Party, about whom there is little that is liberal), it must be said his excoriation of liberals, particularly his opening statement ("The stupidest and weakest members of the political triumvirate, they allowed conservatives to turn their name into a slur against them, exposing them as the political equivalent of the kid who lets the school bully pummel him with his own fists [Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself"]), has something to it. But at least Scalzi's hate is even-handed; witness his blasts against conservatives ("the sort of people who would rather shit on a freshly-baked cherry pie than share it with someone not of their own tribe") and libertarians ("Libertarians blog with a frequency that makes one wonder if they're actually employed somewhere or if they have loved ones that miss them").
Roger Waters reclaiming his Pink Floyd history. Unfortunately, if he wants up to $132 per ticket, he'll have to reclaim it without me. I might actually have been interested in that were it not so obscenely expensive.
This happened near where I live. Odd how Mum gets bothered about me being in the city or in Newtown at night, and yet this happens during broad daylight in the next suburb down from us, in the street behind the one where we used to live. Shit happens wherever it will...
John Brogden won his leadership challenge, by the way. One Liberal Party nobody replaces another, and by a margin of only one vote too. What I thought was interesting was this comment: "To think that a working class boy from Balmain can lead the Liberal Party of Australia in NSW is I think an enormous statement for the diversification of the Liberal Party." Personally I think it says more about Labor these days that a working class boy from Balmain goes into bat for the Liberals instead of them; obviously he couldn't see much difference between them. Piers Akerman is clearly not enamoured of Brogden, as evidenced by this crack: "What has Mr Brogden ever said that has even a scintilla of profundity, a shaft of gravitas? Answer: zero." Which could just as easily be said of uncle Piers too, of course...
Michael Eisner insists Abraham Lincoln would've been opposed to downloading music from the Internet. These people really are running out of ideas, eh? Next: What Would Jesus Download?
The wrong man gets his face on a Norwegian stamp. Trouble is, they don't know who he is. Meanwhile, the man who should've been on the stamp is understandably not amused...
Dudley Moore sails away on the LS Bumble Bee. RIP 1936-2002.
Man hospitalised while taping game show. I should add he was actually taking part in the show, not (as I must admit I originally thought) while sitting at home taping it off the TV. Imagine that scene: "Now where's that remote... AAAH! FUCK! I just dislocated my shoulder!"...
US government looking into Clear Channel's dodgy business practices. I mean actually legally dodgy, not just morally dubious acts such as the list of songs they sent out after Sept. 11 which they suggested/ordered their radio stations not to play any more.
As a bearded one myself, I should be sympathetic towards these lads. Unfortunately, I find myself scratching my chin carpet and thinking "what a group of fuckwits".
Jobless people in Berlin sent bowling. And this will help them find work how exactly?
How poetry is coming back thanks to small presses. Not that I read the stuff myself; unfortunately poetry is something I'm pretty much dead to.
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Here's one of the more bizarre online tests I've come across...
10:25 PM | link
Tony Wilson reckons the untruths in 24-Hour Party People are better than the truths. Yet another film I reckon I'll have to make a point of seeing. It's due out in the UK on April 5, so I'm hoping it won't be too long before it appears here, although it's not due to hit the US until July and director Michael Winterbottom's last film The Claim took nine or ten months to arrive here. Let's hope...
Intriguing post about the film that got Best Documentary at the Oscars. Evidently this is another film I should check out.
Drudge claims Oprah Winfrey is being considered as an Oscars host. Note to self: if that goes ahead, avoid Oscars telecast like plague.
Lost classics of Western literature possibly lurking in the wreckage of a Roman villa.
Who the hell are the Nuwaubians? Why have I not been told of their existence before this?
New supercontinent theorised about. Apparently this one, if it ever existed dates back about a billion and a half years, as opposed to the poncey 200 million years of Pangaea.
Guillermo del Toro to direct H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. I'm not sure how to take this. On the one hand, Lovecraft is notoriously difficult to properly adapt for the screen, and the proposed adaptation of At The Mountains Of Madness sounds like one of the hardest. On the other hand, it seems like del Toro is willing to take it seriously and try not to do the usual hack job that results of Lovecraft films. This is one I'll judge when I see it, assuming it does get off the ground...
Man gets three thousand letters rejecting his application for a credit card, despite never having applied for it. Seems the company confused him with his dad, who has the same name and who did apply for it. But three thousand letters? Can we say overkill?
Spider-handler at zoo forced to quit job after developing an allergy to spiders' arse hairs. Spiders have arses?
Banana-flavoured beer. I'm sure it's a nice idea, but for some reason I doubt that I can bring myself to ever actually try it.
Rogue elephants put Indian liquor bootleggers out of business. Police are happy because the local villagers now do other more constructive things than get smashed every night on moonshine.
Drunk woman attacks policeman with her knickers. The officer was not badly injured (thank God, cos what would those panties have to have been packing to do serious harm?), we're told, apart from a red mark on his forehead. Do we want to speculate as to where that red mark came from? I thought not.
Do killer dads get the same media attention as killer mums? Not according to the author of this item. I haven't written anything about the whole Andrea Yates thing so far as it hasn't particularly interested me, but thought this article was worth pointing up.
Robert De Niro will rock you. De Niro's production company are doing a stage musical based on the music of Queen, written by Ben Elton and starring Hugh Grant. God, what a combination...
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Talking of the Oscars, here's an article Raymond Chandler wrote about them in 1948. Clearly not a lot has changed in the ensuing five and a bit decades since this article was written.
The Oscars' TV ratings are slipping, with the 25.4 percent average from the other night being the lowest ratings the Oscars have ever scored. The number of viewers was up from what it was five years ago, but the larger number of TV sets available now meant the audience percentage share was lower than it was then. Perhaps the fact that it was apparently the longest Oscars ceremony ever may have been part of the problem; hopefully they'll take the hint that six-hour extravaganzas actually don't necessarily work...
John Chuckman on the history of America's flirtations with fascism. Grim stuff in which neither Democrat nor Republican comes out looking too great, though not entirely unfamiliar; just that you don't usually hear the word "fascism" attached to the items described herein. In fairness, though, it would probably have to be admitted that very few countries have escaped at least a tinge of fascism somewhere in their history, and it'd be disingenuous to claim Australia's always been perfect on that front...
The whole boat people business just gets more pathetic. Now the captain who apparently made the initial claims about the refugees throwing their kids into the water claims he has no recollection of doing so. Me, I just wonder when heads are going to roll at last and bring this bullshit to an end...
OW. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Ow. Ow. Ow ow OW.
The odd story of the "shadow government". One for the conspiracy freaks, I suppose...
What role for nonbelievers in the US these days? Apparently none, at least not while Dubya seems to pay little or no heed to the fact that atheists and agnostics do exist.
Boy shot, doesn't even notice. Like, if a bullet went through my right arm, through my abdomen and back out to land on the couch next to me, don't you think I'd notice something like that? So what on Earth was up with this kid that he didn't? I know he'd been sleeping, but even so...
VIRUS ALERT: new "Bill Clinton caricature" worm doing the rounds. This is a destructive one, apparently, and comes with one of those pseudo-screensaver attachments like the "hahaha" virus.
European Union wants its own .eu domain name. Apparently this will promote unity, create a real European identity, etc. Yes, like the .tv domain created a real identity for Tuvalu, didn't it? Does the EU really have no more pressing issues to deal with than this?
World's oldest man turns 113. Interestingly, he lives on the same island as the world's oldest woman, who recently celebrated her 114th birthday. Seems the secret of long life is somewhere in Japan...
Creationist website indirectly blames teachers of evolution for September 11 attacks. Funny, but I could've sworn the attacks were at least partly motivated by religious considerations, not scientific ones...
Dan Gillmor tears a strip off the entertainment industry and it's anti-competitive nature. Interesting article, well worth reading.
Author declares the swearing on South Park to be potentially beneficial for kids. Sorry, I'm proof that his theory doesn't work. I've been exposed to lots of swearing in films and the like, and I still have a potty mouth.
I know Jesus said "love thy enemy", but does the US have to train the Afghan army? Suppose Afghanistan goes to shit again and these guys wind up fighting them, won't they look a bit foolish for having trained them?
Man threatens to blow up comic book shop he claims received comics nicked from him. Granted, he apparently had about $100,000 worth of comics stolen from him, but he also apparently had no proof that this place had them. Either way, it seems like a peculiar move; perhaps years of exposure to comic books somehow caused him to forget there's such a thing as due legal process?
GROSS AS FUCK. Maggots breed in the noses of comatose hospital patients.
A report from the International UFO Congress. Remarkably, despite the communal psychic broadcasting of a goodwill message, no aliens showed up. I don't know. I believe in there being life in the universe apart from what's on the Earth. I believe in this much in the same way as people believe the world was made by God. And yet, despite this, I don't really feel the need to believe in UFOs that some people believe. I think the whole apparatus of conspiracy surrounding UFOs is what turns me off, but also I just don't want to end up looking and sounding as silly as some of the true believers...
Monday, March 25, 2002
Oh, and Fear Factory have split up. Good old musical differences strikes again. Only found out about this reading Revolver this afternoon, though the news was apparently released earlier this month. It seems that as a final release they're doing a song for a video game and finally releasing their actual debut album which they recorded in 1991 but never put out.
What was I saying the other day about Kerry Chikarovski and who would remember her when her time was up? 'Twould appear that one John Brogden, MP for Pittwater, is determined to call time on Chika tomorrow. Naturally, Mr Brogden denies personal interest: "I regret any personal downside this has for Kerry Chikarovski but I had to put the interests of the party first," he said. How convenient for him that the good of the party should just happen to equal his elevation from a nobody to the leader of the NSW Opposition, eh, children?
So much for the Australian Oscar hype after all. Phillip Adams can sleep safely. Did anyone think A Beautiful Mind wouldn't win? Did anyone think Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won theirs as much in the interests of political correctness as their actual merits? Is anyone else as surprised as me that Amelie didn't get Best Foreign Film? Given that the Best Foreign Film category often seems (at least to me) to contain one well-known film (in this case Amelie) that becomes the winner because no one's heard of the other four contenders, I was surprised to see No Man's Land get it instead. Hmm. Well, that one's due out here soon, I saw the trailer for it a week ago when I went to see Gosford Park, so I'll likely go and check it out now...
Capalert appraises the rerelease of ET, laments the continued presence of the "middle school locker room language" (a whole five uses of it), but gives thanks for the digital mutation of the guns into walkie-talkies. Just be grateful the author refuses to be drawn into debates about the evilness of levitation.
Man promises not to have sex to avoid being jailed. Apparently the man has 12 kids (though he disavows responsibility for two of them) from 11 different women, and owes $33,000 in child support to them. The wives are understandably not convinced that he'll make it; me, I can't help but think he should've done this abstinence thing after the second or third child to make it a bit easier...
English drinkers oppose plans for their pub to be made into a church. As one protester said, "There are plenty of places around here for the Holy Spirit. We just want somewhere we can carry on enjoying spirits."
The once-mighty PhD looking distinctly devalued these days. Interesting article on how PhDs are somewhat easier to get now than they ever used to be.
Jerry Springer: The Opera. God help us all.
Sunday, March 24, 2002
Phillip Adams on why Australian success at the Oscars might not be something to celebrate. I normally don't go in for Adams much—something about him strikes me as being as self-important and self-righteous as any conservative columnist—and there is a faint tone of (admittedly not unjustified) self-congratulation to part of it ("I saved the Australian film industry, I did"), but he does make a number of useful points. One point he doesn't make is that, though we may be justly appalled that Australian films have so little box office pull, just two or three years ago they had even less, so things are actually improving, even if only to bad from worse...
Screw social justice and concerns for the welfare of others, we need more prayer and worship. This is the gist of something Archbishop George Pell apparently said recently. Is it just me or does anyone else think that people in positions of power, like the good Archbishop, have no place having columns in newspapers with which to spout forth their politics and propaganda and bolster whatever position they hold? I know they have as much right as anyone else in theory, but I don't like the idea of it.
The 25 most inappropriate things an Objectivist can say during sex. I like #21: "You selfish bitch! You greedy, selfish bitch! What? You don't like my pillow talk?" I can't approve of this site in general with a clear conscience since they do take Ayn Rand seriously, but this at least is funny.
Ritual satanic abuse not dead yet. The fact that no real proof of there being such a thing as an organised Satanic ritual abuse network, or even Satanic ritual abuse, seems not to matter. Fortunately the author of this piece isn't buying it.
Unsent letters from the Hudson Bay Company archives. This is fascinating, and not a little sad.
Should we feel sorry that this group of US Senators have temporarily lost their dining room and private chefs, so that they have to eat like the rest of us proles? Or should we just say "fuck you, welcome to our world" to them? Read this and then stop wondering why I hate politicians... and these aren't even my mob; if it were the Canberra crowd making this sort of fuss they'd be laughed out of office.
Students have oral sex during biology class. That's impressive, in a twisted sort of way. Never had anything like that happen at school when I was there, though given that I went to an all-boys high school, that may be just as well...
"How do I land this thing?" I don't really like flying at the best of times, but ye Gods am I glad I wasn't on this flight. This would've cured me of ever wanting to fly again.
National park in Wales declares an end to "depressing" memorial benches and plaques. So does this mean they will also now place a ban on people dying because death is depressing too?
Corpse art show vandalised. Sadly the man responsible reckoned the people who saw him do it were more aghast at him than the show itself.
Tom Green accepts Golden Raspberry awards for his work in Freddy Got Fingered. Apparently he's the first actor ever nominated for a Razzie who's actually gone to collect their award, and the only other nominee to have ever done so is director Paul Verhoeven...
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