“What Women Want” is a Sexist Piece of Shit

I understand that there are projects that actors and directors are a part of that turn out to be a lot of fun to do. People working on some movies have a good time with each other.
That isn’t an excuse for mediocrity and reinforcing social problems.

We may all be of the same species, but there are so many things genetically, physically, and chemically unique about all of us. A friend of mine once put it as “miraculous that we as a race are even capable of communicating with each other as well as we do.”
So why are there so many movies, books, television shows, blog posts, news reports and comics that display how completely different men and women are? The focus on a difference of gender in media works to remind us as a country that there are such bad odds of making true intellectual connections with other people, male, female, black, Asian, white, Latin…
It isn’t enough that Mel Gibson, a good actor, but poor decision maker, had to play a person who reads others’ minds, but only female minds. The film is a tool to assure its audience that men and women are so different, that we can only hope to live side-by-side if we read each other’s minds.
To understand how women feel about female products, Mel Gibson has to wear those products himself? NO! He can call in a group of his company’s female employees and discuss what works and what doesn’t work for them. THAT’S IT, people discussing with each other what they are looking for in life.

If the movie had its content altered so that Mel Gibson’s character went out of his way to understand women through equal communication, instead of being forced to hear every woman’s thought, it would’ve made for a potentially sincere message to its audience to stop dividing our race with different attitudes between men and women. Of course, the goofy romantic comedy with an indescribable supernatural occurrence to boost the whackiness wouldn’t draw in the romcom fans. No, what we have now is a message to men to stop being so inconsiderate toward women and a set of images telling women, “this is what men think of you.”

It makes me sick.

Make your own goddamn breakfast, motherfucker!

I’m ranting about everything in the first episode of Ai Yori Aoshi to:

1. continue my study of Japanese animations
2. use this time on something better than forcing myself to go to sleep
3. put all of my frustrations into a single subject, so that I may relieve the stress of holding in anger

Behold, the wonder of Trash Culture, from another country.
In these Japanese shows, the student wakes up at the beginning of the fucking episode, “is it THAT late, already? Oh, I’m gonna be so late!” Fuck! And they yawn to show that they haven’t had adequate sleep, because we just forgot the stupid little fucking sequence of this asshole oversleeping a fraction of a second ago.

Show me this motherfucker getting out of bed. I don’t want to hear him say he’s fucking late! If you want a sense of urgency to draw your audience, MAKE SOMETHING INTERESTING HAPPEN! Joe Fuckall panting all the way to class ain’t making things move along. Just show him in class. BAM! The scene’s started, he doesn’t have to go anywhere, and we have an understanding of his lifestyle, without the stupid cliched “I’m late” bullshit.
Next, the motherfucker says to himself, “I’m so hungry.”
Well, fuck! You seem like the kind of series that would use that stomach growling sound that every other one of your kind uses. JUST DO THAT! Don’t let me hear this motherfucker whine about it! Who is he talking to? Himself. What are the first words out of his mouth? Two things that a bitch says. You’re a bitch if you feel the need to say these things aloud to nobody in particular, because YOU’RE BITCHING! I don’t want to follow a bitch protagonist! I’ve seen far too many of those, and one is far too many to begin with! Why do ALL OF YOU have to be spineless assholes?!
“I think I’ll escape the doldrums of my day by watching a total fuckhead bitch about his day.” FUCK THAT! FUCK THAT! I WANT MY ROCKSTARS DEAD! I WANT MY ROCKSTARS DEAD!
“But this is a show for young adults who don’t know–”
SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO HIM PLAY!

Fuck.

Let’s also show that our loser “hero” isn’t in a relationship. Is he lonely? Poor bitch… he’s tired and hungry, and the couple in front of him are talking. She made him his favorite breakfast? Oh, my. Little boy bitch looks on the scene, obviously wishing that he could have a girlfriend, just like that guy does, who would wake earlier than he himself has to, make him a special breakfast before she’s got to take care of stuff like… GOING TO CLASS! Goddamn it! Why do the women have to make the meals all the fucking time in these shows? A man can make his own food, if he’s in a rush! Expecting a woman to cook two separate meals before going to a previously established early morning class at the same time as her boyfriend is what an asshole does.
MY protagonist doesn’t bitch, he doesn’t talk to himself, he doesn’t expect other people to take care of him, because he’s a fucking adult going to college, and his sole desire to be in a relationship ISN’T FOR FUCKING FOOD AND SLAVE LABOR!

Hey, I know what’s going on with this style of art. The characters are visually designed to look “cute”. We humans are born associating the proportions of a human baby’s head as adorable, so that the children of our race are more likely to be protected by not only the parents and relatives, but sympathetic bystanders as well. It’s human nature, and it’s wonderful.
The shape of your heads… they’re like babies’ heads. And they’re just as proportionate to your necks. Yeah, I’ve gotten used to seeing the style, growing up when I did in this country, but there’s something that bothers me.
Just because you have an ambiguously shaped head doesn’t mean you should have concave eyeballs. The surface of your eyeball doesn’t follow the curves that the surface of your face does. It’s actually, get this, a sphere in a socket. THAT’S IT! So why the fuck do your eyes look like stickers on a handcrafted ceramic doll?
AND YOUR IRIS IS SHAPED LIKE A TOMBSTONE!

Jesus Christ, Gantz may have been unbearable to watch at times, but it didn’t bullshit. People in a subway station, I don’t know what they’re like, but I’m pretty sure that they’re a little more… what’s the word? I can’t think of it. It’s where a person has his or her own mind and personality, instead of being a body that shoves a girl onto the ground without saying anything, having a face, or strategically setting the victim of assault where she’ll meet the pisser of a protagonist.

Hey, asshole, that’s your stop! Wake the girl, you fucking jerk! What a dick!

Yes, I’m very sympathetic to this female lead. She’s lost and confused, and the actress dubbing her voice is a hell of an actor for bringing character into this paper cutout cliche. (She’s supposed to be a cliche. The series is a riff on the “magical girlfriend” theme found in other Japanese animations, without the girl actually being magical. At least, that’s what I get out of this motherfucker of an episode.)
My sympathy for her convinces me that this asshole’s guided her to a dead end on purpose. Because he’s a dick.

“Drink this, and try to cheer up.”
Motherfucker, she’s in a strange place with a stranger, while she’d rather be with her lover, and you want her to cheer up because you poured her some tea. Either it’s damn good tea, or there’s something in it to loosen her up. That guy’s a monster, abducting poor, confused women and leading them astray so that he can abuse them when they feel helpless and vulnerable.
“Um… are you okay?”
NO, ASSHOLE!

Reveal.
Shit. She wants to marry a rapist.

Now, does this guy protest getting married to this girl? She loves him dearly. (I don’t know why.) HE wants someone to pamper him, and she’s willing to do it, and we know he’s lonely and wanting a relationship, because we were shown his face pointing in the direction of a couple talking about food earlier. (It’s the equivalent of looking longingly. These characters can’t emote well with faces drawn this way.)
“I’m sorry, but please leave now.”
DICK!

Now, these two gentlemen show up, offering the girl a nice time. Karaoke, a bite to eat, a good ocean view… these guys are so hospitable. What’s with the “these are dangerous people” music, and why is she backing away from them? Is it customary to treat all women like shit in Japan? Are the respectful men concerned for the well-being of others the punks of that society?
Now, when our protagonist FINALLY decides to take on action, instead of selfish inaction, he interrupts the conversation! He tosses that poor girl out like his used tissue, and expects to be the only person to talk to her? He doesn’t own her! He doesn’t even want to be in a relationship with her!

Yeah, fuck this show. Can you imagine how unbearable this would be for you if I were to fucking rant about my parents, instead? Because those jerks and the shit I watch online are the only two motherfucking things going on in my life, right now. BECAUSE NOBODY ANSWERED THE FUCKING PHONE!

Reasons Why the “Zeta Gundam” Movies Fall Flat (very long and oppinionated)

WARNING! SPOILERS AND LONG, HEAVY RANTING FOR ZETA GUNDAM! (Because that’s all a blog really is.)
SCROLL ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM IF YOU WANT THE SUMMARY OF THIS ENTIRE TEXT!
And if you have a problem with my structure, grammar or spelling, like… stop reading. This is just something I had to get off of my chest, badly, before my head could fall off or my heart might stop from the agony of keeping my frustrations to myself.

The biggest problem: since these are movies, not episodes, the creators try to use cinematic conveniences used in films to rush between sequences, like background noise and decorations, and uniforms worn by characters in the background. An animated feature isn’t filmed on a camera. There is no lens to focus on the foreground and background alternatively, so there’s no subtle way of showing the audience where and when the sequence is without static shots, wide shots, detail shots and reaction shots.
Hayao Miyazaki knows this very well. Can you imagine seeing this scene with only the main characters taking up a majority of each frame, and sped up to show only the beginning and end of the journey? I can, and it’s not good. Instead, seeing this scene, we know the space, we know the world, and we feel the time that our characters’ journey takes.

In a film, someone can see, far in the distance of a three-dimensional room, a clock above a water cooler. Two symbols of time and place, out of focus to show distance. Immediately, the audience understands this setting without asking about it, or even thinking about it.
Unless you can mimic the focus blur well enough or use dramatic exaggerations of a room’s proportions in an animated feature, the audience has no scale of depth. Your clock is painted, so unless you’ve scaled down a very large office scenery background to fit the frame, nobody can read the hands. Time and dimension are lost, so when we cut to this scene, with a speaker in the foreground and a strategically placed set of background elements, they are useless and confusing without being brought to the audience’s direct attention.

Heirs to the Stars has the same beginning as the series. Since we had two episodes to establish the main character and three more to explain why his situation is fucked, we have a steady start for a movie.
Here’s a little bit of what happens between our beginning and end. Kamille pulls Quattro onto the airship, narrowly escaping the massive nuclear explosion that kills the unfortunate pursuers left to grumble at each other. CUT! Amuro’s kissing Fraw’s cheek. What? There’s an intercom. Amuro guides Katz, who needs to use the restroom, through a door. Okay? Katz was faking. Why? They’re outside running towards a plane.
Can you see the confusion? I am thrust relentlessly from one intense situation to another without a moment’s notice, without a clue to what has just happened in Amuro and Katz’s side of the plot, and I only have seconds to assemble where they are and what they’re doing before the next sequence begins.
What should’ve happened before my eyes, instead: showing that the danger has passed momentarily for Quattro and Kamille, cutting to a visual description of the situation that Amuro and Katz are in. They’re in an airport. They’re making sure that Fraw and her foster kids make it to their scheduled flight. A man is watching them from a safe distance, incognito. Amuro is aware of the man’s presence, and tells Katz to pretend to need to use the restroom. They casually make their way to the other end of the building, where they exit in secrecy. We’re outside. The characters are outside too. Sound effects and the behaviors of other animated characters in the background alone aren’t enough to build an entire atmosphere, and they’re not enough to establish a situation.
Finally, at the end, I feel that all of our heroes are safe. There’s an image of two mobile suits in the sky. Amuro and Char are reunited. It’s big, it’s pretty, it’s emotional. The entire sequence was stretched out and represented by new, clean animation to replace the original visuals from the show. It’s a great visual to end a first act, no matter how rushed and uncomfortable that first act may have been. The actual final shots are so much better in pace and quality than the rest of the movie, it is the saving grace.

Lovers, part two, starts where we left off. Amuro finds that he has an admirer. This woman wants so badly for Amuro to reach his greatest potential, at the cost of bucking heads with Kamille. She’s a wonderful character and the force that eventually bonds Amuro and Kamille.
There is also another love interest to introduce. Four is a troubled youth, just like Kamille. They are forced to be enemies, but are drawn to each other and wish to become lovers.
In the series, Four wants her memories back, and she can’t be away from the villains long enough without having to go back for her medication, and everyone she’s ever known has abused her to make her into a fierce weapon. Despite all of the things holding her away, she falls in love with Kamille, and tries to get away from the Titans to be with him. While Kamille and Four are away from each other, Kamille sees his jealous friend, Fa, every day, and he has emotional conflict between the emotions he has for Four and the emotions Fa has for Kamille. It’s a wonderful trio of sadness with comedic moments, that ends with someone dying, and Kamille’s entire world being flipped upside-down all over again. Four’s death and Kamille’s horrible experience are also witnessed by Char and Amuro. They both know Kamille’s pain all too well, and Amuro blames Char for not protecting Kamille from the same experience that they shared during the One Year War. Kamille’s relationship is also the inspiration for why he tries so damn hard to persuade other misguided characters from fighting and dying for the wrong reasons.
In the middle movie, Four meets Kamille and they talk a bit. They’re forced to fight each other in mobile suits. Four gets shot while preparing Kamille a rocket to return to space. The boy continues life, as if someone he loved with all of his heart hadn’t sacrificed her own life for his sake. I realize that it takes time to build up the appropriate emotional depth that these characters originally had, but speeding through Four’s life and cutting her entire story in half makes her pointless. She might as well not have been in the movie at all.
So, the movie continues, there are visuals of mobile suit violence, the heroes are in need of help, and they’re helped out at the last minute by Haman. It ends with Axis swarming the AEUG fleet, and the promise of the two joining forces to defeat the villains.
Better ending: Four isn’t shot in the fucking face, and Kamille makes it to space. He saves Char from burning up in the atmosphere during a battle by using his mobile suit, just like in the show. Back on Earth, Kamille and Char meet Amuro again, and Kamille stumbles upon the secret base where the Titans are experimenting on Four, just like in the show. My heart strings are pulled, and Four dies in Kamille’s hands. Amuro screams at Char. END.

The final movie, Love is the Pulse of the Stars, is… ugh. Battles, battles, battles galore. Jared fights in one mobile suit for this moment, and the next he’s in another. When did he switch up?
Reccoa is captured by Paptimus, and she falls in love with him. There was no time for her to even get to know him. She heard the man’s name once, in the previous movie, and thought he was an honorable tactician. She’s so frustrated that Quattro doesn’t pay her enough attention, and goes to Paptimus instead. The show featured a very dramatic scene in which Reccoa bears her heart to the static lieutenant. The movie completely fails to show that Quattro was like that at all. There’s even a scene in one of these movies that shows Quattro and Reccoa having a romantic moment. So I’m confused why Reccoa is betraying all of her friends for a man she’s never met, with the excuse that Char didn’t love her enough.
One of the smartest things a person can do with a complicated story is plan out fifty episodes. A story arc can last a month, so in each episode, the directors and writers come up with inventive ways to make sure the audience remembers what happened last time, without treading the same waters, and they constantly provide new material to make the story progress at the same time.
In one episode, the good guys visit Haman to ask for help. Char doesn’t like asking for help from Haman, because he knows what a treacherous bitch she is, and starts a ruckus. Haman and the rest of Axis duke it out with the heroes, because of Char. In a following episode, the villains show up and stir some trouble with Axis, so Haman and Char set aside their differences. At the same time, Haman is planning with Paptimus to use his faction to start a coup against the main villain force. There’s secret war tactic and treachery in the works, and we see how vile Haman is, to pit two teams of characters against each other and lie to absolutely everyone, in the name of Zeon’s resurrection.
The movie doesn’t give the audience time to understand Haman’s tactics. She’s fighting AEUG, but the Titans are here, so she’ll be friends with AEUG, but she’s making a deal with a bad guy, and he’s fighting other bad guys, and… I’m lost, because the movie doesn’t take the time to show me that Haman has a master plan. I just know that she has an end to meet, and she’s making a lot of deals. Who is she lying to? Is she even lying to begin with? Who does she trust? Is she the puppeteer or the puppet? Who is the good guy? I DON’T KNOW!
Wong Lee is a businessman who funds the militant anti-Titan forces, which consists of the heroes of our series. It is very important that we know just how important this movement is to the world in which our characters live. The leader of a corporation who beats subordinate pilots for not following orders and barks amateur orders to war heroes and veterans tries to maintain as much control as he can, because he knows that his company’s money is going into a small group of rebels that has a lofty chance in freeing the human race of a galactic dictatorship. Either the operation floats, and the Titans are defeated, or he and everyone else will let the galaxy fall into immeasurable despair. He’s important, in the series.
In the movies, he’s just annoying. He doesn’t even have the air of someone with so much weight on his shoulders. He’s just a guy with a name and a suit, and he occasionally says something that a person in a suit would say.
More battles, no time to rest, Haman’s talking to Paptimus, she magically shows up at the villains’ space station and tries to kill the lead bad guy, there’s a battle, Paptimus and Haman magically show up at the lead bad guy’s next center of operations, Katz has a genuine moment of character advancement, lead bad guy dies, Paptimus blames Haman, more battles, the underdeveloped Jared dies forgetting that he has a revenge pact with Kamille, Katz dies after his love interest dies to save his life a few minutes ago, half the damn cast dies… it’s tiring and boring.
Finally, it ends. Again, an ending that is so beautiful compared the the rest of the movie, that I have to even wonder if it’s even the same damn movie I’ve been watching. I can now choose between the original ending, in which Kamille is in a vegetative state and I get a well rounded tragedy, or the new ending, in which Kamille is okay so that he and Fa can live their lives together. Like my Multi-Buffy-verse theory, both can be acceptable if I want to come up with a logical explanation, but it’s just an excuse for me to say that I want to keep both possibilities at the same time.

The bottom line is, these movies want to show a great television series in compact form, and they rush to do it. This sloppiness takes away some of the most important themes that the show has to offer, and a lot of emotional trials for our characters. Entire characters and stories are even lifted from the source material, to make time for the long battles after battles, which don’t amount to anything if the story becomes hard to follow.
I accept the beautifully orchestrated sequences that stand alone, and insert them into the fifty episode series, before thinking of this trilogy as a true retelling of Zeta Gundam.

My Parents Love “Twilight”

I enjoy a good laugh, but nothing is funny when a piece of shit gets treated like a freshly cracked geode. Why can’t my father respect that I treat film as individually as he does? I’ll make fun of whatever I want. He’ll enjoy whatever. Everyone’s fine, yeah?

No. Let’s go apeshit. Any excuse to take out our frustrations on our son will do just fucking fine. You steal our lives, you make existence a struggle, you take and never return, you selfish little shit, and insulting overpaid talentless teenage hacks is the last goddamn straw.

In this world, is it so terrible take pleasure in disliking? Fuck you for being so self-centered. A film doesn’t magically get spit out of a god’s anus and land in DVD boxes, father. There is an art, and it is being insulted, scarred, perhaps even destroyed, by meaningless indulgences like the “Twilight” franchise, and I couldn’t possibly live with myself if I saw all of this happening with serious eyes.

Your points of view aren’t even your own. You listen to those people on the internet talk, and you want to think just like them.

That’s a joke. It has to be. I would not be so passionate to defend the ideas of other people, would I? It breaks my heart when I hear people slander Terry Gilliam, though I actually enjoyed few of his films. My world was turned upside-down when I learned it was possible for someone to dislike “West Side Story”. I didn’t think I’d wake up the next morning, it was so terrible. When I think about the viewing habits that I’d grown up with, I stop breathing, because I know that for so long, I’d denied myself the self-respect that comes along with appreciating what empassions me. Watching mediocre comedies and Disney movies never satisfied anything. I only laughed when I thought I was supposed to laugh.
Nothing can make me angrier than thinking of what an idiot I used to be, and how my parents encouraged this delusional frame of mind.
Supposedly, this is all a false point of view inspired by the words of respectable film critics. Fuck you, dad. You think you’ve ever had an original idea in your life? because I’m pretty damn sure you wouldn’t accuse me of anything that YOU have done with your own life, out of the fucking blue. Get a therapist, you asshole.

The American President Under Attack?

Fuck no, dudes. Barack Obama, whose name is not yet accepted as an American English proper noun, has to fight to prove his citizenship? That’s absolutely ridiculous. Those who put him into a position to be elected by majority don’t care, but just to be fair, he would not have gotten through the earliest preliminaries otherwise, and those with power who really wanted a black president would get one, no questions asked. The masses demanding to see a birth certificate and the manipulated press giving airtime to these demands are just tools of the men behind desks, the men who want the American citizens to be confused about every aspect of their political figureheads to draw attention away from true controversy, like where the orders are really coming from and why saving the dollar is more important than saving the homeless. These conspiracy theorists are so fucking muzzled up in the odds between each others’ crackpot ideas that the truth can only be uncovered one generation at a time, just slow enough for the corporate monster to come up with more ideas to knock the credibility of those crackpots down day by day.

Instead of being a united consciousness, this monster, birthed at the landing of the first Anglo Saxons’ arrival to this continent, raised on the income of war and the fragile stock, fueled by the unquestioning proletarians and hidden from them with a cleverly long lasting illusion of government and justice, this monster, is America. We allow it to come in and rule us? Yes. We are rewarded with the sweet, un-tampered media, with songs and film from the intelligent, and literature from the brave, and so many more things… do I complain? Not about my precious arts, which have also been kept alive merely to keep the populace wary of crackpot theorists like myself, but I complain that I must endure the babbling of idiots with the capacity to understand the fallacy of the political ring and refuse to. Shit, man, I wouldn’t change much, I just want people to stop filling my beloved internet with propaganda that neither benefits me or interests me. This place is not just another gimmick, people. This is something we need to respect, the internet, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be kept quiet about being redirected from my favorite porn sites!

Time Traveling Theories

I just read in Roger Ebert’s review of Time Traveler’s Wife, and there are some points in the science that bother me. I haven’t seen it myself, and I realize that this is a drama fueled by a single aspect of science-fiction. It’s supposed to be cute, it needs to be sad, it must drive our emotions, but avoiding scientific principles to do so with an element of science fiction is like using a newspaper praising Spider-Man’s heroics to kill radioactive spiders. There’s nothing more than human drama to distract me from the time traveling, right? The only thing that keeps me from accepting the film’s rules as truth for the movie’s sake is that I’m following two people whose lives keep getting interrupted and shit, yeah? Well, damn it, that’s not enough, is it? I’m okay with LOST and the first season of Heroes. Why? Because I don’t give a shit about about disproving something that I willingly accept and take for granted on my own.

I’m not being fair.

When a person jumps forward or back, it is the living being taken to and fro, not his or her clothing, because that would be ridiculous! Why would non-living material be brought through a vortex created and sustained within a living thing? Following this logic, which I could without the upcoming flaws, wouldn’t dead cells stay behind? The man would be shaved bald, nail-less on fingers and toes, without bodily fluids… he would come into a new point in time needing immediate medical attention, just to justify why his clothes stay behind when he flashes away. That’s a big risk for a mindless summer romance. One that wasn’t taken, so why should I give two shits about a movie that doesn’t give any about me? Well, I don’t, now, and you can predict that this film is very low on my list of “need to see”.

George riffing on George?

Listened to George Lopes’ latest special, last night, while my folks were watching it. There was a long joke about how kids today have stupid names, and I recognized instantly that he was using material that George Carlin had. I’m not complaining, he seemed to put more thought into the logic and direction the jokes went, but a little pocket of disappointment resides somewhere in the visual metaphor that I’m too out-of-it to describe surrounding Lopez. He’s a good guy, a funny guy, (his masturbation jokes were hilarious) but this tiny little ounce of doubt may prevent me from enjoying his future material as much as I could’ve.

It’s like my realization that Carlos Mencia had run out of material after the end of his show’s first season, and when I found out that Denis Leary was a comedian. Just not as infuriating.

Now, I’ll return to my comical happy place, where Eddie Murphy can’t sign on for as many films because his touring gets in the way, and George Carlin gets an HBO special every couple of months, and Bill Hicks has a podcast for his comedy routines, and Dennis Leary never got onstage, and a new ethnicity emerges from our dormant mutation catalysts hiding in our DNA every week for Carlos Mencia to make fun of, and George Lucas’ science-fiction phenomenon didn’t sell quite as well as it could’ve and he moved on to projects closer to his heart while the rights to the Star Wars franchise found their way into Stanley Kubrick’s hands, and Harrison Ford died young at the top of his game, and Mark Hamill tours cross country all year long with Kevin Conroy to record freshly written Batman episodes live in front of a studio audience, and Bill Cosby doesn’t give a shit about being kid friendly, and somebody proofread the Rock and Rule script before it underwent animation, and Stephen Spielberg and Frank Cho buy an unpopulated island to fill it with dinosaurs and giant apes and tribes of fully trained camera men to capture the pure beauty of it all, and I have sex with a beautiful girl who loves me and earns money at one of those job-things. What a wonderful world I live in.

I can’t even imagine what it’s like to believe in anything other than humanity’s boundless value.

Being a follower of Scott Kurtz’s PVP, I’ve subscribed to the comic’s site and I view everything Kurtz posts. The motivational speaker whose video is featured on his site, now, had some interesting ideas to bring forth, in a round-about way of proposing the idea that the collective human subconscious is more responsible for creativity than any individual, which goes along with my understanding that we are all connected with everything around us in ways we refuse to acknowledge, generally speaking, as a society.

http://www.pvponline.com/2009/08/03/elizabeth-gilbert-on-nurturing-creativity/

This society of men and women who turn away from our connections to the Earth, Sun and moon, find no bond between the human individual and the human collective, and see everything around themselves in relative to its shorthand uses and hindrances is what we’ve allowed humanity to be ruled by, within our own minds. It isn’t difficult to see through the conventions that this novelist used in her speech to relay the ancient and enticing idea that I take for granted as truth: creativity is not a product of the individual alone. These conventions of “spiritual connections” and “divinity” that she alludes to is the same set of misguided conventions that invented beliefs in embodied deities, who were all once just poetic expressions of the source of life (the Sun) darkness (forces polar-ly opposing the natural occurrences that kept us alive and healthy) health (a connection and understanding of our origin from combined elements and conflicting energies) and the mind itself. She is very well onto something, but harnessing that something and cutting it free of its fatal confines within a religious perspective will benefit the human understanding, and bring it closer to the truth.

After I’d finished watching her speak, dad asked if I knew anything about what she’s written. I haven’t the slightest clue who the hell she is, let alone what she’s written, and it baffles me why any of that should impose on my desire to listen and learn from my fellow human beings. It feels like he’s so fucking deluded to the value of communication and expression. These are things that our souls thrive on! (That is an easy way of saying that without communication and expression between humans, its race is doomed to fall short of its potential rapidly. I’d love to take the Peter Joseph route on this point, and refer to a story about a king raising isolated children who died without human interaction, but I can’t remember it very well and I don’t feel like going through the trouble of finding anything more than its synopsis, which is more than enough to voice my thoughts.)
No offense to Miss Gilbert, but I really don’t care who she is, and that’s perfectly fine as long as the message she gets out is listened to. Hunter Thompson never had that kind of luck, with so many people caring more about his public image than his public message, man. This is a more substantially justified fear than not being noticed at all: being noticed for the wrong reason.

ReRuns of TV Guide

Listening to an illegally downloaded Madonna song wearing shitty headphones, while mom scribbles in a Sudoku book and dad’s gawking and repeating all of the events playing out on re-runs of Punk’d on the TV Guide Channel. Re-runs of MTV and VH1 programming that I can hear more clearly from behind me than slow techno beats thumping in my ear.

Only moments ago, I sat through a re-run of Real Time with Bill Maher, while dad interrupted my only vaguely reliable source of news to make cheap jokes of his own or explain punchlines to mom, who diligently stared at numbers on a grid.

Before that, I was watching a Rifftrax coverage of the first Fantastic Four movie. The humor started picking up when I realized that they really did know how bad the movie was.
This only sours the opinion of my parents that I’ve accumulated over the years, remembering how they don’t give a shit whether actors can act or jokes are funny, they’ll be entertained by anything that distracts them for more than a few seconds, like goldfish chasing an idiot’s finger on the other side of the glass, or even more accurate, like the idiot showing the fish his finger just to watch them chase it. I know that this is very critical of me to say, and I know how they’d react if they ever find this commentary I’ve made of them, but I don’t think I can manage much more. I’m remembering why I enjoyed staying awake only at night. It was to avoid them, if you’re too stupid to figure it out on your own and you actually give a shit about the unimportant little things that whack away at the inside of my skull. On the outside of my skull, I knock with a fist, every time they suck on their teeth like apes, or overly exaggerate stupid habits, like stomping their feet in overplayed shock for the comedic benefit of the audience watching their every move, and the whistle in their snore, the childish giggling at stupid “jokes” that they tell each other every night while “flirting”, or the generic universal grunting when they fuck, and the limited playlist of three songs that dad can ever whistle.
They make me cringe and gnash my teeth, and squint until I give myself a headache.

As if I needed to feel any worse about myself.

Over half a dozen comments I’d never known about popped out of nowhere, responses to stuff I posted last year. What the fuck is up with that? “Keep up the good work” and “I love this blog” are not spam, are they? Do comments like that really intend to steal or corrupt? Anyway, I’d like to apologize to those who’ve not been recognized appropriately, and it’s a really good feeling to see that I have people actually interested in my well-being and ideas despite my often occuring fits of manic depression.

I don’t know how to measure the lengths of time that I spend awake.

BOOK:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I haven’t touched a book from the series since the only plot-driven, plot invested, plot oriented, and, frankly, entertaining character in the series died by falling behind a black curtain. You can imagine my outrage to find that the woman writing these books expects me to invest my time in following an adolescent ass hole who thinks himself hot shit, when the only well developed character with dependable behavior dies so soon after taking my affection. Perhaps that is her way of pushing the main character’s internal conflict into my own mind, making me come closer to relating with him. Whatever, point is that I’m listening to the audio book, and it ain’t quite as thrilling as I’d hoped it’d be, so far.

COMICS:
Blackest Night seems cool. Really dig Red Robbin’s costume, and he’s okay for a start, but should he become a permanent character, he should at least find some inner conflict that drives him outside of his lost-father complex. Half of all the folks ever met Batman have that now, and he’s got potential to be a very disturbed, very tragically flawed figure. Dark Reign is okay, too. Bringing a gun to dinner may not make sense within the context of the story, and it might even stunt the progression of the story, but Nick Fury certainly is entertaining, and I forgive that the whole world stands still just for his romantic conflicts, as long as it’s a very grueling and ugly world waiting for his return. Of course, I’m very late in continuing to follow him and Dark Reign. And everything, for that matter.
Introduced the Luna brothers’ Girls to Nathan, who responded very positively to it.

MOVIES:
Rifftrax
These guys really improve any movie. Alex, if you’re reading and you haven’t heard their commentary on Spider-Man 3, I think you’ll find it isn’t all that bad of a movie with them to guide you through it. Same for Crystal Skull.
Audition
Didn’t like it.
3-Iron
Kim Ki-Duk continues to dazzle me with amazing cinematography, and with a story deserving of such dedication. The visuals, every sound and even the dialogue seemed mathematically arranged to equate the nearest value of perfection. To some, it may demand attention, and that may annoy those people, but it’s captivating and constantly peeking interest for me.

Speaking of Asian films, I had a doozy of a past-blast, to the days when I was a kid and Cartoon Network had incorporated Japanese imports to prime-time television, over here. A program idiotically called Toonami stole my attention, and everyday after school, I’d wait for the moment to watch gimmicky shows for impressionable little kids like myself. I’ll probably never go back to watching Dragon Ball Z, if that’s what you’re thinking, and if you’re actually reading and care about what I’m typing, no. Yesterday, I sat through the first run of episodes from the Tenchi Muyo franchise, recalling how much I’d loved the show, noticing that the plot shifted to match the comedic or dramatic liking of the writer(s), and hating, once again, how cool visuals met with not-bad vocal talent completely won me over without a hint of tangible plot development. Of course the plot exists, and it’d be idiotic of me to say that it wasn’t planned out, but it suffered from something that all captivating child-targeting series do so from, and it has something to do with predicting the kinds of things that grab a kid’s attention. I never noticed how stupid it was for the villain to show up unexpectedly to kidnap the demonic space-pirate just long enough to lose control over her and vanish to his organ keyboard-powered labyrinth spaceship and await the arrival of the only person who can kill him patiently, because I was distracted by the lightsaber fights, the slight comedic moments, the cute rabbit-thing, the “I’m your granddad, and you’re the savior” drama, the spontaneous love triangle and so many other things. As probably the first animated series to capture my emotional investments, when I was a lonely little boy without friends, the show still has a very special place in my heart, despite its failure to respect my intelligence.

This daily posting shit must annoy all three of my readers.

Except the two who hardly jack in until once every who-gives-a-fuck. (I know, I bullshit a lot, but really, some grade-A golden literature may be born of the ideas you’ll’ve read by the end of this entry.)

I want you to think of the only thing in your life that could be the last redeemable trait, should you find nothing else of value in the world or in yourself. The one thing that could be your saving grace, a last hope in days when your name is the last of your worries, and why you can’t remember it.
Yesterday… afternoon (?) I woke in a lazy daze, where I’d slip in and out of consciousness, but so frequently that the few things I was aware of slipped into the dream I seemed to have been having. I had the most fear-inspiring nightmares of abandonment, and the last thing I could ever count on, my writing hand, had disappeared when I needed it most. It was a dead hunk of meat hanging from my arm, stiff, rotting and heartbreaking. Of course, I thought it was dead because I’d slept on my arm, making it go numb, so the half-hour nightmare was just that, but it was terrible. In such a mental state, I couldn’t tell the difference between being paralyzed within the dream and wishing for suicide awake. It’s difficult for me to explain, right now, in my current state of mind, but it really fucked me up.
Incorporating water in my diet and pissing without agony. My sleeping’s gone erratic: waking in early morning, waking at noon without remembering falling asleep, trying not to pass out in the afternoon, waking at midnight… fuckin’ shit, man.
I must be two days ahead, now. It still feels like the day after Sunday, which for me was Tuesday morning, and looking at the digital calendar thing, it’s… Thursday! Shit!

I’ve almost completely been overtaken by an interest in Japanese animation, which ain’t bad, but it’s surprising, still, after my “anime’s for losers who follow gimmicks blindly” phase.
Gotta say, British attempts at animated features in the 70s and 80s have some great art and alright vocal acting, but the lack of enthusiasm for the projects really show, and the overall product suffers.
When the Wind Blows had the chance to have a long-lasting impact on me, if it’d tried to stop being so goddamn subtle in its message, which is kind of an unexplored one. There was a lot of potential for it to kick my ass, to really tug at my heart, but all it wanted to do was pose some interesting ideas without finishing them for me.
Watership Down was easy on the eyes and heart, as well, since I felt a presence behind the characters, but the dramatic elements weren’t fully realized, with the artists trying to show more of what was going on in a physical sense, than trying to make me feel what was going on. That music video in the middle of the damn movie also pulled out of it, because it was way the fuck out of place and not a very good song anyway, as well, the seagull character seemed to be treated more like a Disney comedic character than what he was obviously supposed to be: a crafty foreigner, with crafty foreigner ways of getting shit done.
The only thing that The Plague Dogs had going for it was the beautiful artwork. I could’ve invested more in the characters, if they’d been a little more steriotypical of their tropes, since I was forced to look for complexity in characters who’d started out being more interesting with single dimensions. The wiley Scottish fox was a great character from his appearence, but he turned out to be the expected deus ex machina for several lack-luster confrontations and the sacrificial hero, which is the archtype that the troubled smart-guy was set up to be from the very beginning. I didn’t want two-dimensional characters in an epic, because all two-dimensional characters within epic stories turn out to be all good or all evil by the conclusion, and that’s no fucking fun at all. The rogue, of all characters, should be expected to save his own fucking hide by the end, because that’s what ALL audiences want from their rogues! That’s what made Desert Punk such a great character in the Japanese show/comic (you guessed it) Desert Punk. That’s also why I felt such a loss from seeing Han get frozen in carbonite (which isn’t a metal at all), because I knew, deep down, that a self serving rogue like Han would only care about himself, which made the depressed mood amongst his friends even more tragic. I knew hat Han didn’t care about them, and if the last movie’d been handled my way, I’d make it very clear, without ruining any of his setups, and it would have been a much more dramatic production.
Imagine a film picking up where Han’s friends have rescued him, and he ducks out, like he’d planned to before the attack on Hoth, without a notice, and we focus on Han’s friends feeling betrayed after everything they’d done for him, Luke feeling abandoned by his father, his masters who’ve passed away, his best pal, and his sister who leaves the rebellion to look for Han. Academy, Hugo, Pulitzer and Eisner all wrapped around a single script (and its various adaptations), motherfucker! Just say it, I’m a genius.

Do humans find beauty in humanity, anymore?

I am a student and an artist, so I am expected to have many traditionally idealistic views on matters of the aesthetic, so the poetic moment that all of my friends and acquaintances expect of me every now and then emerges, but do they see the sincerity behind the words?

Photojournalists line the internet, helping to fuel the capitalist machine with images that sell, with men and women removed from their natural divinity (I find very little more appallingly disgusting than separating that which I naturally find attractive as a human from that which I love unconditionally as a human, and women, god damn it, are more than fuck orifices) and, with the help of modern technology, turned into monstrosities. I must admit, some breathtaking artwork can be accomplished when celebrating and uniting (for example) a woman’s visual beauty and elements of what we consider ornate or elegant to make a statement or to entertain, and is well in such for the aesthetic, but to use it as a tool to convey what constitutes “beauty” is human negligence to the self and the race as a whole.
These people who try to portray the beauty in some subjects have women wearing suggestive clothing, which is neither fully offensive nor complimentary to the individual, hiding their faces in thick creams and goos and dusts that are meant to reshape the structure of the subject’s face to photographer’s liking. I haven’t gone very far in my journeys with photography, I’m not a fan of art for the sake of sale alone, I have never modeled to portray an idea outside of my own, and I’m not much of a performer of any scripted material than that within my own mind, but I can’t help but think that there is something perverse in the nature of those who use photography and alter humanity’s appearance solely for his or her [the photographer's] own expression, if it is truly his or her own expression being relayed by such imagery.
I don’t think I’m being clear. I focus on women, of course, because I am a male who is attracted to females, and I tend to set my attention to what grabs it most often. A woman is beautiful, and can use makeup and set amongst an atmosphere that captures such beauty without the integrity of it being damaged. A woman is not beautiful with a black stripe dragged across her face, hiding the perfectly sculpted brow, nose, and eyeline. Her hair grows and falls naturally from her head, but why should it be plumed like a shrub to decorate an already desecrated face? This is not my branch of art, and being fair, I’m probably being far too critical, but when am I expected to draw the line for myself as to what must be acceptable?
The nose is a wonderful physical trait. Why do cats with Photoshop blur it the fuck out of existence? Truthfully, all of this frustration comes from having gone through a few pictures of my favorite actresses’ photographs for practice-sketching material, and having come across Jennifer Connolly represented in such hideous ways, as of late. They are to compliment the photographer’s attempt to be chic, when the awe-striking figure from my childhood is graffiti-ed by eurotrash art movements that dehumanize our sense of art and respect.

My current oppinion Zeitgeist:

Mister Joseph’s podcast is interesting, and inspiring, and though he uses it to speak for the Venus Project, I’ll keep taps on his bi-weekly cast while distancing myself from the Project itself. Learning Zeitgeist’s stance over time and observation is definately more beneficial than unquestioningly subjecting myself as a follower, for now.
He certainly seems to believe in his message, and only time can tell me whether he’s worth investing my trust, which is a thing he says is unnecessary for such an evolved form of humanity, and I’d like to agree with him.

Reading up on Jacque Fresco’s movement: Hour One

The connections between the Zeitgeist films and the Venus Project are presented outright by the message of the second Zeitgeist release, as Peter Joseph apparently serves as the coordinator of the active branch of Fresco’s futurist project known as the Venus Project. The outright denouncement of money’s value and corruption is something that I admire and accept with open arms, but this message seems to clash with the “store” section of the Venus Project site, which allows visitors the option to buy Jacque Fresco’s books and DVDs, though the same material can be viewed online for free. Am I to accept that these acts of charity are merely that, or can I safely assume that something is out of place?

I’m still fresh in my investigation, and I want more than anything to believe that Fresco’s intentions are to the benefit of the human race, altogether, but a single doubt can lead to larger and bolder divisions between visionary and activist, which seem to have been the same divisions between representative and banker, in their own infancy. This is not a connection that I feel comfortable implying, so believe that my doubt is as heartfelt as the pride that I’d found after having seen both Zeitgeist films.
No matter what I find out, and decide on the matters of futurist Fresco and his propaganda, know that I am still on humanity’s side, which is my own side, your side, and the side of everyone I love. It doesn’t matter what individual person or organization I support, the only matter of importance is that I support the values that I see great and admire about humanity as a whole.
It’d feel damn good to know that I can be supported by those with a great following, but it’s nothing when their goals contradict my own: our own.

First of all, I have to thank Colt Davidson.

Had he not informed of the existence of these films, I would be in the dark over whether or not my “realizations” on the seat of power in the world today are shared by anyone else alive. My ideas have always been sketchy, and in the constant presence of those who argue the invalidity of my ideas, have been incomplete. Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist documentaries have given voice to thoughts that I thought unspeakable. When I enter conversation on the subject of our role as humans in the world, I’ve been scoffed at, looked at in awe, and insulted in the most demoralizing ways, and I always play into the role of the failing revolutionary, giving all of my friends and family the benefit of living their lives without asking a single question about the importance of their own submission, and the harm they cause everyone else by this…

Of course, it may seem that I am trying to give myself a little more credit than is due, since I’d just seen the films, and they are very easily treated as propaganda. To this frame of mind in the reaction to my statements, I say:
It doesn’t matter if I came up with my ideas before or after viewing accused propaganda, the point of realization is that it was my decision to make, as it is anybody’s, and the only imposition being made by thinking of me as a victim is the harm done by those who think they’re doing good by thinking of ANYBODY as a victim who believes in the decisions being made by an individual who thinks openly, freely, and without consequence…
I’ve yet to investigate Peter Joseph’s movement, so I cannot say whether the propositions of his films for said movement’s success are beneficial to a minority, but I am certain that despite the true intentions of his movement, the message of his films are very clear, and can easily be detached from any organization posing as what it is not, and used as a guide for a movement for equal benefit to all of humanity, seeing as I can draw the same conclusions as Mister Joseph, my American History teacher, and every assassinated government leader and literary revolutionary who ever died to oppose that which destroys the value and progression of humanity, and as long as we are all capable of reaching these conclusions, then it is beyond a single man’s role in getting the message across. Before even considering joining this movement, I know, right now, that I am supporting the fundamental rights that humanity owes itself by acknowledging that I have these ideas, showing them to others, and letting people know that they are much more to me than the physical power that they can provide a dying system, as I expect the same degree of respect and love from others.

I recommend that everyone view these films. Take in the message, and decide for themselves. I’ve offered to do this by voice, many times, in class rooms and public locations, but it seems that Mister Joseph’s voice is preferred than mine. That’s fine, as long as you recognize what I am telling you through his words. These are words I tell my dearest friends, who look at me in pity for not following the same pointless routines that they do, my teachers, who defend their ideas like children defend a toybox from bullies in another class, my parents, who think that there is something for me to lose in choosing to agree with anybody but themselves, and to me, who was a damn fool for ever thinking that I was alone, and felt so powerless to the things that look so big from far away, who sometimes contemplated suicide as the only escape from the immense depravity that everything that I love can be seen struggling under the weight of, and…

I’m getting a bit emotional. Few of you read my blog. Those few of you may not recall my zealous rants in person. To those who do, I recommend viewing, once more, so that you understand my frustration without hearing my message escape in a cracking voice. I love you all, despite what you may think, because of the behaviors I’ve adopted in anger, but I do.

My Fascinations with Fascination

Recently, my curiosity’s tossed me onto a course to discover the appeal of a single Japanese series known as Oh, My Goddess! I am thoroughly thrilled to discover as much as I can about the culture surrounding me, and though I am a nerd, and nubile in my status as such, I know little more than nothing about it, though my collection of trivia is staggering against many others who allow such a multi-faceted thing slip right by their existences. Growing up after the introduction of anime and manga as a part of popular culture in America, I developed interests based on American companies’ distribution, and when I became more comprehensive, I found that most of the Japanese imports lacked something very important, logic. These were all, of course, things that were brought up over the years to sell things to children, which I’ve come to understand is called “shonen”. The writers and artists of such stories can’t anticipate a universal interest, so the possibility that logic in story-telling is lost-in-translation intensifies the frustration that came with trying to find quality entertainment in anime as a youth, when I am an American boy being sold Japanese stories intended for Japanese boys. Other youths who accepted these shows and comics in America are growing up to be what the Japanese call “otaku” in their own culture, but with the limitations at the time, there are stronger followings for individual series, as there once was a particularly strong following of Star Trek fans who never kicked their obsessions, called “trekkies”. As the budding brilliance of Japanese wealth forms over here, there are more and more “trash-culture” facets coming into view.

By “trash-culture,” I am referring to a phrase that I invented to help me understand my own perception of entertainment in multiple cultures, as well as our own. There are many different idols of trash-culture, and such a complex culture like our own breeds them every decade, as the Japanese do. The link: trash-culture, for example, can include Elvis movies, which were made to sell Elvis Presley through movie theatres, and have formed followings that block out the cruel truths behind the mediocrity of such idols of trash-culture. Exploitation films are trash-culture. B-movies are trash culture. Pulp comics are trash culture. “Trash-culture” is not intended to be used as a negative term, though the misuse of such power over an audience is a greater offense than many that I’d refuse to forget in a Lifeboat situation, if you catch my drift. I am a huge fan of trash-culture idols, like films released in the eighties and nineties that put teenagers through steriotypical situations that have died out long ago, and are being written about today, because the nerds in the 70s don’t knkow what it’s like to be nerds in the 90s… did that sound like ranting? It shouldn’t. It defines our culture, and as a cultureless-culture, as Americans have been described, there is nothing more important than another man’s trash: hence the term “trash-culture,” a modern treasure to people like myself.

Unaware of the importance of trash-culture, I’d reached teenage years with the mind-set that all Japanese imports are for little kids, because of the tight leash that American industrialists held for the products coming in. This was before I’d seen Ghost in the Shell, which helped me become more aware of just how many limitaions I was setting myself up for. Also, around the very end of this time, for me, I’d become completely devoted to movies, and comics were, like Jap culture, something to visit for kid-nostalgea. My complete immersion into film was slow, I couldn’t have gotten very far being limited to HBO and Blockbuster. Netflix hefted me into the history of Searchlight and Miramax, indie films opened my understanding of genre and integrity, and the acceptance of mediocrity for the sake of entertainment. Trash-culture filled everyone’s existence, as John Wayne for my father, primetime television for mother, and I was still exploring the millions of niches that the information age had created within and for itself.

I found a great confusion come about me, when I noticed the trends forming in fanboys and fangirls in America, who attempt to mimic the stereotypical otaku behavior. It’s the niche, I see, that they try to fill in order to pay back, respectfully, to the creators of their trash-culture idols. On close inspection of Oh, My Goddess! and similar other titles, the similarities made my confusion greater, to see a bunch of American kids worshiping plagiarists, until I realized that such stories follow a set of expected events, which have become staple within otaku trash-culture. The nerd gets a woman who loves unconditionally and has magic powers: this may be a familiar premise to Europeans and to Americans, but to the Japanese, this is a genre. An entire genre is based on a single common fantasy. It amazed me. This is the cycle of the “meme,” which develops naturally within a culture as a part of our evolution as humans. When I conducted this research I’d spent time reading American comics that aren’t necessarily recognized universally, but within the brotherhood of comic fans as must-reads. Bill Hicks, Pynchon, Raoul Duke and Hunter Thompson, George Carlin… these are all idols of a sub-culture that extends beyond the “one man’s trash” idea, and formed followings based more on their legend than their work as human beings. (This idea is thoroughly explored in a comic series called Transmetropolitan.)

The genre, the sub-genre, the idol, the sub-culture, scenes, memes… they all occur and coexists, like the millions of species of plant-life growing off of the husk of our information and entertainment. The living thing that culture is, thrives and reproduces, with its masters, the writers and artists, their worshipers: hipsters, nerds, geeks, fans, listeners and viewers, readers, true believers, otaku and anorak, we are all a part of this massive, gigantic artery of information in the body of the human race, and it is at a moment like this that I feel like the only person who sees it all. Like all the beatniks and trainspotters should find something in me to envy, like children looking up to the stiff-lipped gunslinger strolling through town, like a monolith on legs. What makes me so much more important than others? Richard Dawkins wrote these same principles down, more thoroughly, mapping down his thoughts and interpretations in a manner that allowed his own literature on the subject of memes to become a meme itself. In my mind, I see a map of all of these things I’ve collected in my research, and I’d swear it resembles diagrams of the human brain, but when I try to convey my understandings, the more scrambled I become, trying to find the words to describe my connections as five more are created. Every instant not spent on the next, new thing, is thrown into oblivion, as far as I can understand, and just sharing my ideas makes the entire endeavor to learn unravel.

Ah, shit!

Fuck my memory! I have been such a fucking idiot! I walk around, talking about shit, casually, and nobody even thinks of correcting me when I’m FUCKING WRONG! What the fuck?

By the way…

Stop searching for it, you loathesome metahuman filth! “How to draw the Watchmen characters” exists in the form of being an artist and drawing the fucking characters, not being told by an artist how to make a line-by-line reinterpretation of the characters! You want to feel the joy of finishing a piece of art, TAKE THE TIME AND FACE THE SHIT THAT THE REST OF US HAVE TO! By next week, if “how to draw the Watchmen” is still in my list of “top search” whatever-the-fucks, I’m going to rip off your heads and shit down your necks!

An Extension of the “Book” of Thoughts

Stephen King says it how it IS, and it feels good knowing I’m not the only sane
person in the world:

“In the case of Stephenie Meyer, it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole
generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in
those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it’s not particularly
threatening, because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of
it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand
over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a
shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.”

I was going to write a sarcastic paragraph stomping all over how much you
apparently enjoy this book series, but I only want you to know what I mean when
I protest it. I absolutely loathe books, movies, stories in general that are
christened masterpieces, when they are lacking in anything but audience
marksmanship. A cheap trick that disrespects a general audience and impairs its
ability to appreciate true quality. Steve seems to be the only person capable of
articulating my point of view on this.

I just got out of an “argument” with my dad. It was only him rambling about
things that he doesn’t understand as somebody who tries to connect the
capitalist values to aesthetic purpose: a complete contradiction. He sounds like
an idiot when he says that Stephen King “has no right to judge other writers.” I
understand how a simpleton can draw such a conclusion, but my own father? I just
want to write LOGIC in big black letters on a stone and slam it into his head
until it breaks through his skull. Fuck. HE is a symbol of everything that fuels
this nation’s descent into madness; this man who I would idolize, despite his
constant crusade to discredit anything that may prove that I am smarter now than
he ever was at my age; who discouraged my eagerness to discover things of my own
interests… I don’t mean that. Do I?

There was a time when I was very young, when I was being completely captivated
by a documentary on television about the possibility of a long-extinct species
being brought back to life with technology and science in “the near future.”
That would be now. And it hasn’t happened. All the same, the animal had died out
completely for maybe a hundred years or less, and the idea is quite impressing
to someone maybe six years old. So impressed was I that I’d not noticed my jaw
hanging open.
“Get that stupid look off of your face.”
“Huh?”
“You look like an idiot gawking at that screen.” He mimicked my state of trance,
leaning forward, twisting his face into a bug-eyed abomination with his chin
touching his chest.
Was that how I looked to him? Did I always look like an idiot? Look at him, now.
Look at how pathetic he seems. What a waste he looks like. Should he find out
what I really see when I look upon him, would he be as shattered as I was then?

“It’s okay to cry,” he’d told me when he tried getting to the center of my angst
a couple of years ago. I think it was a couple of years.
Was I supposed to think that men can’t cry? Did he really think that by then,
HIS approval was the one that worried me the most? He’s such a conceded prick.
He says that he wants to know what’s going on in my head, but he won’t shut the
fuck up for a single moment long enough, out of fear of hearing that it’s HIS
own fault for making his son this way. I don’t do drugs. I’m still in school. I
have honor. I fight for my own dignity. I am intelligent. Somehow, he dislikes
the person that I am, trying to convince me and himself everyday that I am still
the same person whom he would shout at for making stupid faces, or watching
reruns of the same stupid shows every weekend, when I am not.

I don’t expect to cry for him when he dies. I don’t expect to feel anything but
burden when he is gone. Somehow, this saddens me, but I don’t want to
acknowledge the truth that it is because I have a primitive sense of respect for
unrequited love. I would be nothing without my folks. Why do I hate them? HATE
them?

I just remembered the stickers. They would order books from catalogs that had
been ensured to increase the mental capacity of toddlers. Guess how old I was.
They would set down giant paper books on the floor beside me where I’d sit, and
try to explain that I had to place stickers on the page in groups that went
together. Color-A with color-A, shape-2 with shape-2, animals with animals,
words with words…
A toddler is shown a circular sticker with a picture of a circle on it, and a
circular sticker with a picture of a beach ball on it; isn’t it expected for
both flat, circular stickers to be placed together? Apparently, my idea of three
dimensions versus two dimensions was faulty when two flat, circular pictures go
together, when a circle is flat and a ball is 3-D. They were so… frustrated…
they practically wanted to burn that goddamned sticker book because I was too
stupid to grasp a concept that I had no idea I was intended to digress to.
That’s how it is. Make myself as stupid as them just to show that I’m smart
enough to be like them. Why can’t I be myself when I’m a kid?
“You don’t know who you are when you’re a kid.”
THEY didn’t know who they were when they were kids. They raised animals and
crops, cleaned the houses that they lived in, made lives for themselves, did
everything that they were told to, knowing that their own families depended on
it. How can they expect the same ignorance of me? I’ve never dealt with any of
that.

“When you’re an adult, you can make all of your own decisions.”
An empty promise told to keep me silent in my moments of disobedience. They’re
adults. Look at what the world is making them do. Things that they don’t want
to. They torture themselves with debts and shit jobs. Is that what they mean?
The freedom to be poor?
They don’t even NEED to be poor! They can grow their own food, they can cook
their own meals, they can build their own home, but they cling to this stupid
idea that capitalism is number-one and that will never change, like children
clinging to the pant legs of parents rushing through a crowd.

They worry about me. Fools. They worry about everything besides themselves, and
sink into a pit of idiocy without realizing that they helped to dig it.

“If you go to college, you won’t end up like us.”
No, I’ll end up like the other peons that make up the 45% of the American
population that feed their souls to the capitalist machine, hoping to be
rewarded with something a little more comforting than sleep every night and
sooner than death. They never get it. THEY NEVER GET IT. All they can do is hope
for the best of whatever they put into their own lives outside of the bullshit
that turns every single one of them into balls of pus on legs. All I could look
forward to after college, is that I won’t lose my friends and that death won’t
be my only comfort. That is what the runoff of the art community is. Visual.
Performance. Written. I’ve set myself up for something that is made easy in
schools, but is shit upon by the world. I can cope. THEY couldn’t.

I fucking hate it. I fucking hate it. I want my mind to escape so many things,
and all I have is a picture in my head that pretends to be something it’s not,
and all I can do is humor it while my mind slips into a hole of a different
nature trying to perform for dying mirrors.

Vicky Christina Barcelona

I started writing this 36 minutes and 27 seconds into the movie, expecting to see everything I love about Woody Allen’s movies: realistic human conflict, stylized criticism of how outrageous human interaction is, a nearly-impossible-to-believe love story, and the confirmed relief to know that I am capable of being just as paranoid and depraved as an aging writer/director that I am now. Imagine my surprise to see the oh-so-familiar opening credit sequence without my beloved Jew sitting atop the cast list.

I’m not sure if it’s good or bad that the only character in the movie I found interesting was the monotonous, unecessary narrator; or rather, I find his necessity much easier, knowing that he’s saving me the time and pain of finding out how the story unfolds for myself.
I am offended to have finally seen a film written by Woody Allen that both talks down to me as if I’m a child who can’t observe how characters interact, and is filled with such predictable plot that begs me to ask, “Why am I being told twice what I know already, through the narration AND the stereotypical  nature of the plot?” Not only does it beg, this movie is dying to hear me say how fucking disappointed I am.

One hour and 48 seconds into the film: Maria Elena, Penelope Cruz’s character, with her superior beauty (against Scarlett Johansson) and her incredible development from an expository rumor to a raging vesel of emotion and talent has improved the movie a great deal. While I still find it difficult to acknowledge that Woody wrote this, I no longer feel an urge to condemn him for it.

I feel the need to apologize for what may have seemed to be an eagerness to denounce this film before even getting the chance to experience the movie. Rather, I just criticized it (which was the point of writing while watching). With a clearer mind, I can say that today (really, yesterday) has been a day of great relief. End of the semester, I lived through auditions, just finished a scan-job I thought I’d never find the time to do, and because of the free spirit emitting from these characters (who I grow more attached to by the minute) and very helpful conversations with someone I regard a great deal of respect for, I am capable of looking at my own situation and find that it is not so painful, nor so difficult to face, knowing that millions of people feel the same things that I feel, fear the same things that I fear… my overall positive outlook that seemed to last only a few hours long in a single day is returning now, while I watch this film and allow myself to become a part of their realm, made much easier by how closely it was written to our own. In order to criticize this movie, I know that I must be subjective, as with anything, and without bias, but I can’t help but love this movie BECAUSE of its flaws.
At an hour and a half into it (three minutes from ending), I think this may turn out to be my favorite Woody Allen movie, skimming only just a few inches above “Annie Hall”.

SCRIPT: respectable
ACTING: respectable
DIRECTION: amazing
CONTENT: good

I really should work on my ratings. A system of merit, rather than the quality of particular aspects, maybe.

GIRLS

My first encounters with GIRLS were online. (Ha!) The covers depicting nude women? Yeah, that’d be difficult to find on the internet. Not so easy in the local comic shop… well you’ve got plenty of sexy covers standing side by side… you know… I do NOT prefer comics over chicks! I don’t! (I do.)
Beautiful covers. That’s all. How was I supposed to know what was between them?

I am a member of Spill.com, a movie and comic review site. Well, the primary focus is on movies, but the site being made for nerds by nerds, there are special podcasts that cover comics as well.
One cast pre-Christmas recording had a brief mention of GIRLS, which I sought to find more information about immediately after.

I just finished reading the series a few hours ago. Holy shit. Holy shit, that is the best… BEST small-town science/horror story I have ever, EH-VAR spent more than a few minutes paying attention to. I spent all night reading up to issue 21, and waited twenty-four hours for the last three issues.
The story had me so blown away, man, I had too look into the Luna brothers. I’m looking forward to starting on ULTRA, and I’m hoping to read THE SWORD all-at-once as well.

I’m back, bitches!

FIRST UP:

NIRVANA JUICE: Valley of the Bean

NIRVANA JUICE: Nausea Closeup

Okay. That’s out of the way.

I know that I’m late posting my thoughts on the following movies, but bear with me. Just saw ZACK AND MIRI, TROPIC THUNDER, BURN AFTER READING, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, and DARK KNIGHT (for the second time…)

Recovering from a lack of exposure to the past season’s best (outside of the comic character movies which, we all knew, I did not miss,) and it’s only now that I realize that so many people have been craving good material to flock to theatres for that they’ve invented a new type of theatre hype: stress-induced-illusion. The comedies were funny. That’s it. Just fun to watch. The only busted barriers were done in by BURN AFTER READING.

Malkovich axed that mother fucker in broad daylight! Goddamn!

Serious movies like DARK KNIGHT may have been incredible (a miracle after witnessing the release of the “parody” movie franchise…)  but are people so despirate for comedy-tragedy equilibrium that they’ll make a stoner flick filmed with the buddy-cop formula sound like the funniest thing since James Earl Jones reading the alphabet? Check it out, that shit is hilarious. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS: good for a chuckle.

ZACK AND MIRI shows me that Smith still has a few under his belt and WHAT Jay has under his. I laughed, and I didn’t need a smoking mime. Maybe people will lighten up on we View Askewniverse fans.

TROPIC THUNDER was also funny, but not what most people made it out to be. Yeah, Bobby did a great job, and so did Tom, but you know, it’s a flick for kicks. Why talk up something that really doesn’t need the hype to stay afloat for what it’s worth?

Also saw WALL-E not too long ago. It’s great. I have not said this about any Pixar movie before, because honestly, people see that their stuff is animated and forget to criticize things that Dreamworks is constantly hassled for. At least Pixar doesn’t make Family Guy-ish reference jokes to popular culture.
WALL-E was purely entertaining, and I think that it has a lot to do with the fact that the main characters didn’t speak more than two words each.

BEHIND THE MASK

The Rise of Leslie Vernon is an end-all film for me. No other slashfilm can be quite so intelligent, so shocking, nor entertaining.
A realistic take on cursekillers and their methods, this film opened perspectives that I may never have imagined considering to think about. Vernon’s traps, and staged scenarios aren’t inventive or original, but the way his character logically describes the cursekilling methods and even gives nicknames to certain stereotypes often found in horror films (the most popular of which are real events in this alternate universe where Camp Crystal Lake and Elm Street have become national symbols) is hilarious and appropriate.

The story was fantastic. Absolutely AMAZING, as opposed to the critically acclaimed OTIS, which suffered from a lack of ENJOYABLE SCRIPT. (Honestly, for a movie that supposedly redefined serialkiller movies, I should not have been able to predict the ending of every scene.)
Performances seemed genuine. The visual direction was convincing (Blair Witch cam) and a major role for the story itself, even when the cinematic moments took over.

I loved this movie. Its humor, its reliance on the audience’s understanding of a staple genre… especially during the quarter-hour plot twist at the end of the movie. God damn. My head is still rocking.

This film is not without flaws, but I can’t find any for myself.

BOB SAYS:

SCRIPT:  amazing
ACTING:  respectable
DIRECTION:  respectable
CONTENT: amazing

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

My first reaction after seeing the film was that its rudimentary use of film-within-filmstyle and shockumentary techniques allowed for the iconic images and sequences that people still vomit over today to be strung together with the excused of a plot and possibility of political statement.

The “introduction” of relating the cruelty of civilized man’s behavior with the most barbaric people was something that I did not intend to see from an anticipated gorefest, but was something of an excuse to allow Deodato to do as he wished with what he could get away with.

Not to say that I did not like the movie, that is. Quite to the contrary, but for reasons outside of the filmmaker’s “but, you don’t get it” list.
Foremost, I appreciate the gore. Ripping flesh, torn bodies, mutilated animals… it was an experience that I doubt I’ll ever have the chance to live through again. The feeling of genuine savagery, and the actual savagery that was used to capture the more shocking images were things that I enjoyed to the fullest. No excuses other than, “That’s what happens.” I felt connected to the barbaric nature of my species in a way that I can’t in daily situations. What else but careless abuse of our fellow man can make us feel closer to him?

Serious time: all people who consider themselves film critics NEED TO WATCH THIS MOVIE. It was my introduction to mondofilms, and it gives me quite the perspective of what I can stand for within a film.
I found that I can stomach a woman stoned to death by a dildo much easier than an old hag vomiting her guests’ food. The rape scenes were exceptionally sensational.
Perhaps my senses had already been numbed by this day due to American Psycho, which introduced to me the my own erotic fascination with explicit violence. (I have fantasies about carving vaginae with broken champagne bottles.)
But, if anyone expects to be taken seriously as one who has perspective on what should be expected of respectable film content, he or she MUST see CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. Losing your mondo-virginity should be seen as something to celebrate. Perhaps you’ll learn something about yourself and the way you view things after taking a long look at yourself in the mirror when the movie ends.

BOB SAYS:

SCRIPT:  not good
ACTING:  alright
DIRECTION:  good
CONTENT:  respectable

Team Fortress 2: N008

Just got Team Fortress 2. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO PLAY! My first encounter with an online FPS… I’ll figure it out, once I learn what the use of the word “server” means.
By no means should anyone assume that I consider myself a frequent gamer, so if someone happens to feel the need to pwn me wit werdz, I want to remind you to take a few moments to bask in your superiority of computer experience over someone beneath the status of a novice. Good show.

The Question

For some strange reason, I am compelled to not be where I think it is that I should be… wherever the hell that is. I should probably be sleeping, but in a way, I think I am right now.

This ridiculous, propaganda ridden “homepage” that my father refuses to remove from the machine I’m putting into use right now featured an “article” listing “television’s best catchphrases” and a picture of Homer Simpson saying, “D’oh!” This is not an accurate portrayal of what the best television has to offer.

Often, things that are labelled as the “best” are only the “most easily recognized by a ‘broad’ audience.” Comcast’s shitty attempts to make the impression of being a reliable source of important information is subdued very quickly by the obvious source of the site’s “news.” FOX.

FOX can kiss my ass. Anybody who tries to bullshit decent Americans the same way that thirties street vendors used to and expects an equally blind audience can kiss my ass. I’m so tired of seeing all of this stupid half-assed pyramid shit. It’s just disgraceful that SOMEBODY still exists today thinking that there are idiots who routinely follow advice from a banner advertising free electronic hardware. The only hardware that someone of that caliber of mental capacity could possibly want is a dildo to shove into his ears before he finally finds out that he won’t die from it the way a cellphone can allow. And guess what… those fuckers are so poor and stupid that THEY DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO COMPUTERS!

When will someone come up with a classier, more respectful brand of propaganda? Comic books have worn their use to the government, movies aren’t taken as seriously as they used to, and should be; those who can read are intelligent enough to pick apart the obvious propaganda, and nobody wants to click five times in a row over a cartoon basketball player to win a “free” iPod! Apple can kiss my ass, too. If you want people to buy your shit, stop treating them like children. Treat them like adults who have shitty jobs and can barely pay for anything outside of rent and insurance… that’s your target fucking audience, not twelve-year-olds who work minimum wage!

What worries me is that The World Gym-Class has everyone acting like mindless peons. Not to disrespect my parents who yell and cheer for the plastic glowing box showing pictures of people who don’t even CARE that someone STILL LIVES in South Carolina, let alone their own country… we all have our own shortcomings; and to me, my shortcomings are things that I find comfortable about my situation. It’s all perspective, that’s all anything of expression really relies on. That’s the only way that people seem to be drawn to irrational things: my mom to muscular athletes, my dad to women with green skin, me to vigilantism at it’s most romantic, and you to reading stupid blog posts by steriotypically cynical teenage boys.

My only consern about the “Olympics” is how hypocritical these events turn out to be without a bit of foresight. All of those people who made a big gas about protesting this year’s location don’t seem to think that the powers that be have made a date, torch or not. Outsourcing to China, friendly competition in China, Chinese food… with so many cheap things coming from China, you’d think that we would prevent such outcomes by not being so… greedy and lazy! I’m greedy and lazy, fuck, and I love shopping at Target! I have no delusions about avoiding some ironic fiasco involving my own consumption, nor do I intend on pretending to be a victim for letting it happen to myself.

Why? Why do I hate it when people trick themselves into thinking that something outside of their own selves is to blame for a perdicament that they complain and protest over so much? I don’t exactly know, and I try not to trick myself into thinking that there is a reason, because in just sixteen years worth of time I have at the very least begun to understand that people don’t need reasons for the stupid fucking shit they do!

A lesson taught to me by one of the last of a small few wise individuals that this species has to offer. This planet may not be going anywhere, but we are. “Pack yer shit, folks! We’re goin’ away.”
So, it really doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters. Matter doesn’t matter. Importance is something forced onto by perspective. Perspective matters not outside of the mind that precieves.
Rorschach had it right.
The Comedian had it right.
Manhattan had it right.
Ozymandias had it right.
Who doesn’t have it right?
Whoever the fuck I say.