Spambot, this one's for you.

NEWS OF FRANK DARABONT'S "THE WALKING DEAD."

It premiers in October of this year....I have the strangest boner, now. No, wait, now.

I should append to this that I don't particularly like this comic. I was critical of it for the first 5 years it was out, and railed against it during its first year. But recently I caved. I still contend, however, that writer Robert Kirkman has come a long way in developing his storytelling skills, but he still has even further to go. If one were to look at this AMC adaptation in terms of an '80s movie, Darabont is the popular socialite who will transform Kirkman's frump girl into the hot freak at the party. But continuing with this metaphor, that also means Darabont will ultimately betray Kirkman, and Kirkman will get his revenge at the school dance, on the K-1 ski slopes, at the beach volleyball tournament, or at the karate competition. 

Yet another Big Lebowski post. I'm trying to set a record.

    So, I've haven't been sold on these porn parody movies, like Scrubs XXX or This is not Star Trek: A XXX Parody, but I'm a big fan now.
    I like the idea of appropriating someone else's work as a porno, especially something like Seinfeld or Jersey Shore: the Porno, which isn't much different from its originator. There's something profane and yet brilliant at lowering what some might call art by dragging it into the mud and making its story a frame for hardcore porn scenes. Mostly, it seems like a way for mainstream, or anyone who isn't making gonzo amateur shit like Gaping Anuses 9 or Throat Yogurt 2, porn companies to reuse the old story driven formula in a new way. Until today, porn parody movies seemed like a cheap trick with a tired whore.
But then someone made The Big Lebowski: a XXX Parody.

Stephen Fry pr0nz

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
by Xrunner17

This Sweater

This sweater is fucking badass. You know why? Because it has a racing stripe! It says, Fuck you! I'm no one's grandpa! I'm a fucking Ferrari! Bring me a flapper and a Tommy gun!
This fucking sweater, no, this fucking cardigan sweater, the Cliff Huxtable of the sweater world, is fucking Airwolf! That's right! It's the haberdasher's equivalent of an experimental attack helicopter that fires light missiles!
EXCLAMATION POINT

FUCK! or When your Heroes Do Really Stupid Shit

So, I have a few heroes, and maybe it's a statement on me as a person and on my sanity that most of those heroes are fictitious. Guys like "The Dude" and Spider Jerusalem deeply affected me in those years after I was first exposed to them. Hunter Thompson is another make-believe hero of mine because who he was on the page, the man I knew in that context was no more real than the sweet baby Jesus or the Hitler Brendan loves so deeply. But one, one of my heroes is as real as cancer or a sugar blister: Greg Graffin. If tomorrow the chips fall where they may and where they may is in a pile of shit and then if that pile of shit and chips hits the fan and then all of that is attacked by Zombies, then Greg Graffin is the man I'm listening to when they start handing our rifles and chanting, "Head Shot." That's just how I roll.
But now it seems that Graffin is making what I think is a reality show about being the lead singer for a punk rock band and a college professor.
I'm going to go quietly open up some veins, listen to the Cure, and die a little more inside.

A Mug Worth Considering

When we finally find the end of the Internets, and we will, mark my fucking words, this is the face that will greet us. The uninterested, disaffected, cherubic gob of this child. It is a face which crowns a personality both unintelligent and with out empathy. It is a Cyberman made doughy.
I find so much significance in this face for three reasons, and i believe that they all work in unison to divine the secret truths of the Internet, much like the innards of a slaughtered chicken tell the augur want next year's crops will turn out to be.
First, the pudgy fucker has a camera. The digital camera democratized porn, allowing any halfwit with no inhibition or sense to upload lurid, hastily snapped pictures of her or his bathing suit areas for all the world to ogle at. This device was one of the great levering hands that opened the flood gates of the Internets, and it hastened the fall of society, but fuck i like the stuff anyways. Nothing says sexy like poor impulse control and efficiency.
Second, the kid's white. Yeah, white is not likely the ethnicity most present around these parts, that honor goes to the Asians, but if there's any group more likely to bring about the end, it's us, if for no other reason than continuity. We did make the bomb after all.
The final truth about the Internets this exposes is, well, the chain. Yeah, that fucking chain, in all it's fished out of a coin operated claw game lameness. Jewlery, I contend, is the homeland of the vain, stupid, poor, or wealthy, but nost likely some combinattion of three. Jewelery, worn for reasons not ceremonial, is a way to display for social esteem and transport wealth. The fantasy of extravagant wealth is one the people defined above most often indulge in. This sad fucker, he can't even afford a proper chain, and what's more likely, his is probably inspired by Naruto, which is all the sadder.
So, I present for your consideration the picture we'll all find at the end of the Internets. Competing entrants are now being accepted, however, tub girl, goatse, other gross shit, and pics deemed too meta will be excluded from consideration. Enter if you dare, motherfuckers.

I had to share this.

Charlie Brooker, in the new episode of his show Newswipe, says "In terms of raw drama, the men of Dystopian future, Sci fi satirical shoutie porn (i think), sledge hammer of Fox News win out every time" when explaining how American news presenters are hands down better showmen than their brothers on the Beeb.
Thinking of Fox News as a skew of reality, rather than simply a skewed way of looking at it, makes the channel so much more watchable. I only wait for the day when, for what ever reason, William Gibson appears as a commentator on the latest cyber crime story and the code comes alive. And maybe Wintermute will be on Pap Bear's show, excoriating him for his recent remarks that algorithmic sentiences are not people, and do not have the right to marry.

"The vagina is full of AIDS," and other choice quotes from Youtuber Jesusophile.

His video about why sex should hurt the vagina is also comedy gold. This guy needs to be in the new Bruno movie. Srsly

An idea for a film

I twigged to this idea while sitting through another boring Seventies Film class:
REMAKE SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT!
Here's the pitch:
Smokey is a network security analyst who discovers that two enterprising fellows have secured a massive shipment of new Iphones which, of course, are anxiously awaited by thousands of early adopters. But there's a problem: they cause cancer, and so the state of New Hampshire has banned their sale within its borders. So, the two above mentioned enterprising fellows decide to sell as many as they can before the law shuts them down because that's what enterprising young men do! Smokey in this version could be either an FCC baron, refusing the allow their sale of the phones, or he could be an especially tight-assed senator, lucky to find a wedge issue to assure his/her reelection. Frog, the Sally Field character, really doesn't need to change at all. Recalcitrance is kind of universal.

FEMA wants your cornbread

In the Fox and Friends video posted by Dr.Brendan, conservative shitbird and blowhard Glen Beck commented a few times on FEMA run prison camps scattered around the country. What annoys me about this is how people like the Foxheads deliberately perpetuate a myth like this in order to instill fear in their audience and to further encourage viewership. I wouldn't normally care about bogey men lies conservatives use to scare each other back into line, but this is just ludicrous. Didn't Grant Morrison use this shit as a part of the back story for one of the characters in the Invisibles? And if copious notes about this super secret government program are readily available on Youtube and other outposts of insanity on the internet, can this really be such an ominous plot against free America? And if so, if this really works as well as Fox and Friends and the like seem to think it does, then we, my friends, need to start a new fear meme! It needs to be something related to Longcat. Something about Muslim radicals have bred super feline rape machines. You see, them being longer than most cats allows them to rape God-loving Americans with greater ferocity and tenacity. Something like a government collusion between extremists and PETA and gay animal husbandryists and the secret US government to rape the spirit of Christ out of Christmas, that would work. ANd that can't be any crazier than a plan, that is somehow relevant to the current administration, that was none the less started thirty years ago, and funded extensively by the last administration to jail Americans on "charges" once this country becomes "socialist" or "totalitarian."
It just seems that this persecution complex that neo-cons are exhibiting is a reaction to unconscious feelings of impotence. Paranoia in this case is a system of control for those with no control over the system; when you control your reality with external threat, it validates ego and vanity. It justifies the worst kind of behavior, and this FEMA camp nonsense seems like just another phantom to scare them at night.

Sasha Grey is in a movie.

A real movie, you know, one without skull fucking.

I get the feeling this is another Soderberg film in which he will use nontraditional filming techniques and postmodern story structure to tell some "deep" artsy story which will ultimately be as vapid and empty as his Oceans Eleven movies.

Mike Rowe at TED

i'll only post the link for this video instead of the embed so you can choose to view it on your own, but i think you should.
I think that the TED conference talks are at the same time fascinating and galling. What you will find quite often on the stage are bourgeois ideas about the world being fed by a bourgeois to other bourgeois. These are often nebulous, meaningless, and sadly impractical talks of importance to only the people in the audience. And that impracticality, that wasted time, money and energy, that is often used for nothing more that intellectual masturbation, hurts me. Take the General Tso's chicken video i posted a while ago. While it was an amazing talk, and while it left me thinking about the impact culture has on foods new to it, what i was ultimately left with was a feeling of "so what?" Yes, it added to the wealth of human knowledge, but what is the value of such an idea?
What is often left out of these talks is practical application. Not always, many of the talks detail real world applications for new technologies or the impact thinkers and innovators are having on their communities and the world. But not often enough. This talk by Mike Rowe, i think, sets a necessary precedence. The main idea of his speech can have lasting, national importance and affect. I think it lives up to the promise made by conferences like TED. It makes me want to look at more TED talks to prove myself wrong and to watch Dirty Jobs.
tell me what you think.

World Builder

Described as "A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves." It's a charming, nine minute silent film that effortlessly speaks the major elements of the plot to the audience while exploring a futurist take on existing image creation technologies. What i like most about the film is how elegantly the story moves from one sequence to the next. It's all about metaphor creation, and these are dense metaphors. Without any dialogue, it tells a story in which programs like photoshop are taken to their logical extremes and it does so with no explanation as to how or why. You are left to accept it. In fact, there are only two didactic moments, the opening with the guy looking at the photos and the last scene of him in the hospital. Yes, it is highly sentimental, but i think it works. But maybe since i've been in this situation, kinda, it works on me a bit more. Check out the director's other films.

Christopher Hitchens Shows the World Why Everyone Thinks He's Such a Dick

That's right, poke the bear with a stick in a foreign country.

In other news, I was recently attacked by a gang of angry evangelicals when I sodomized a life-sized reproduction of their Christ. I saw it sitting there, all harmless, on a park bench, and i knew I couldn't let the tyranny of their shitheadedness continue any longer. He, that smug zombie bastard, was the symbol around which they rallied, and I knew they would have to forsake him if I gave him the prison hello. So, unbuckling my pants, I stomped across the thoroughfare and proceeded to give that son of God replica a piece of my action. Where upon I was surrounded by a crowd of true believers, shouted at, pushed to the ground, and kicked at least once. I can tell you will all certainty that merely my pride was bruised, and I shall fight on. Tomorrow, I'll be in some other town, making a professional tit of myself and then attacking my enemies for the safety of a blog post. Because I'm just like Christopher Hitchens, a dick.

A few thoughts on Joss Whedon's new show "Doll House"

Doll House is Joss Whedon whacked out on strippers, a thirteen episode commitment, and bathtub meth. It boggles my mind why he ever went back to Fox after the clumsy way they molested his last show, Firefly.
You can really see the network enforced blandening in the first twenty minutes. We have an interview scene mixed with contract negotiation drama, both the hallmark of formulaic writing. Then there's the first action scene, arriving right before the show can get boring or the audience can turn to another channel. Whedon really indulges himself here, filming several minutes of rapidly cut footage of two stunt drivers slowly piloting their motorbikes through some unremarkable stretch of city. Which, of course, is closely followed by a party segment, memorable only in how well it proves that Eliza Dushku looks great in a dress that almost succeeds at covering her ass.
But that's all chump change compared to the face fucking he makes of the “doll house” scenes, when he shows you the “monster's” lair.
I have a great idea for you: what if we make a show about people who we occasionally make autistic, you know, as the plot demands. Then, how about we use mediocre TV actors to play these mind-wiped flesh dolls and see what happens. Think people acting like they've suffered partial brain death. Eliza Dushku succeeds at acting like she hasn't a personality about as well as I stalk the homeless: with titties and a vaguely disinterested expression. Whedon should pack it in if he plans to keep up this bullshit. Amnesia is the lamest character trait possible. And given how he pairs it with an etch-a-sketch on which the writers can trace out what ever personality the story demands is pretentious and lazy. Both of which typify sci fi storytelling, so maybe he's on to something.
What also bugged me was the plot device he spends so much time trying to scare us with. The “actives” I think he calls them, can be imprinted with any needed skills set and personality to manage it. Rather than keeping that magic box sealed, he carts it out into the scene, bug smile smeared across his face, and he demands, “Look. I made science!” No, instead of using hypnosis and trigger words he chose to go with something out of the Apple Store for mad scientists, like someone watched the memory scenes in The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, couldn't choose which to steal and decided on both. It's gray and trimmed with neon light, and when a character lies inside, it glows and bangs and they cringe. And people circulate petitions over the Internet to save what he creates. Fuck sake.
I already hate this and the next Whedon show.

Why Tom Zarek was Right.

Wow. Just wow.

From the poster Dr. Omega from jinxworld.com message board:

This arose during a lengthy argument over the Grant-meister and his shit-opus Final Crisis.

"Yes, yes, I know. I have been told this here before. Apparently, I am one of the lowlifes who is just not getting Morrison's artistic vision and interpretation of the discomfort of the human soul as expressed with metaphors about comic readers, creators and editors through the use of incomprehensible storytelling that teleports characters to Mars off camera from one book to the other without explanation or randomly throws Solomon Grundy's original form into a narrative for no rhyme or reason. Or what about the deep and inspired way he turned Darkseid into a gangsta' in a story that may or may not have taken place all in a character's mind. Except he died. But then apparently was coming back to life at the end.

Maybe Superman can sing a miracle song and make me understand it better."

and for the kids at home not following along, yes, superman does sing a miracle song to defeat Darkseid. A miracle song.

Why? Because he's the goddamn Batman and he will trash your lights!

Christian Bale loses his shit on the director of photography for Terminator: Salvation. Here's the story. I wonder where the director, the producer, or his handlers were when he lost it.

This incident adds further to my theory that our current (and i would say infantilized) culture can make a dance song out of everything.


Update: Bale vs O'Reilly YTMND

Softwear by Microsoft

Common, the dude who wrote I used to Love Her, has lost his mind, never had one, or been subjected to the MicroSoft-nanites attack from the Stepford Wives remake. That can be the only explanation for why he has bought into this crude and johnny-come-lately marketing ploy to make MS look cool again. The worst part about this is that he allowed MS to use his song, his fucking masterpiece actually, "I Used to Love Her," a song about how hip hop had strayed from its roots and how, after anthropomorphizing it into a woman, it is a woman he no longer loves or even recognizes. That, sadly, may be the biggest shock and tragedy this campaign exposes: that all hip hop greats will inevitably succumb to materialism. KRS-One, Common, Talib Kweli, Mos Def (sorta), each has cashed in his cultural credit for material gain. And i think it's time to club you all over the head with my soap box here, so i'll ask, is this the case? Is hip hop an inherently materialistic art form, or redefined, is it souly (intentional) profit driven? Or is this the reality of professional musicians, that they have to make money and one way to do that is to sell themselves (which they already are)?
Whatever, i'm going to go salve my sorrows with some boobs and death metal. Fuck you.

Misleading

So, the title of this article is "Al Franken Declared Winner Of Minnesota Senate Recount." The article and the embedded news story accompanying both state a slightly different story, that Franken has pulled into the lead after the recount concluded. His lead and status as victor will almost certainly be contested by the other candidate, and the incumbent has a pending lawsuit which could add hundreds of more ballots to the counting heap.
I have a new slogan.
"The Internet: Where Information Doesn't Stop for the Truth."