Drag Me To Hell

Spiderman 3 showed what happens when a film gets away from Sam Raimi. He throws his bag of tricks at it and sees what sticks.

Drag Me To Hell shows what happens when a Sam Raimi gets his way. He throws his bag of tricks at it. And it all sticks.

This is a glorious film. It opens with a cute kid being flung to his death and then dragged to hell. This is a very lean film. And very mean. If a you see a gun in the first act, you can be damn sure it will be used.

There are no guns in this film.

There is no blood in this film.

Sam Raimi is well aware that there are many other fluids that can come out of a human body, or that can splatter all over a human body.

And Sam Raimi is well aware of the importance of sound. Some of the most disgusting stuff is nothing but sound effects. Yes: disgusting. I don't care what this film is rated there is stuff in here that could upset a stomach or two. Sam knows what to show, what not to show, and when to show or not show it.

This is film is exactly what its title promises. And then some. I jumped, I laughed, I often times did both at the same time.

Crank and Rambo

Wow. These movies are crazy.

Crank starts off crazy and just keeps on being crazy. Nothing gets in the way of its craziness. Not the budget, nothing. This is a cheap looking film. But a good looking film. You can tell just how fake some of the shots are, but the shots are cool so you understand why they wanted them in. Cheesy effects or no.

It has a crazy internal logic. A comic book/ video game logic. It just appeals to me.

Rambo does not start off crazy. It starts off with footage of real life atrocities. It turned my stomach. I don't like real life violence. Well... real life bullet and war related violence. Real life Mixed Martial Arts based violence is fine by me.

And gratuitous movie violence? Love the hell out of it. Which means I was squealing with glee for the last half an hour of Rambo. I had read about the violence in this movie. It did not prepare me. Nothing prepares you for a hat floating above red goo. Or a truck full o' folks just kinda disappearing in a cloud of bullets and gore.

Yeah.

Good times.

Terminator Salvation

I didn't realize that there was no colon in the title. I thought it was Terminator: Salvation. The lack of a colon makes it make less sense.

Which is telling. Not that the movie makes no sense, but that it is thoughtless and pointless.

The first fifteen minutes are a great indication of what is about to follow.

It starts with a horribly written, poorly acted scene. We are introduced to a new character in the Terminator mythos, Marcus Wright. He, more so than John Connor, is the lead of this movie. And he has never been mentioned in any of the previous three films. Hmmmmm...

After that crap, we see a bunch of text on the screen, explaining the Terminator story. Judgment Day and all that. Just a big ole wall o' text. That is lazy writing and direction.

After that we are treated to a great action scene. There is a great tracking shot, following John Connor into a helicopter, flying the helicopter and crashing the helicopter. Best part of the movie, in my opinion. And it is right near the start. All kinds of ominous portents in this review.

Cut to John Connor on a plane. He jumps out of a plane. Cut to John Connor on a sub as Michael Ironside explains his character to us.

Yup.

That is how the movie goes. Jumps from place to place, plot point to plot point, with no care given at all. All the film's attention is on the action scenes. And the action scenes are all well done. The whole film looks and sounds great.

But with no one to care about, what the hell is the point?

There is no point to this film. This story does not advance the 'Terminator' story at all. This film adds nothing to the cannon.

At least T3 ended with a bang. it killed off the world. Which is not how you expect a Summer Blockbuster to end. Sure, it kind of made the first two Terminator movies basically pointless, and it was not a good movie overall, but there is something in that film I can point to and appreciate. Other than the special effects, which are expected at this point.

What I'm saying is this is the worst Terminator film yet. There is no real reason to see it other than the action sequences. There are no characters to care about. Other than the kid who plays Kyle Reese, there are no remarkable performances. The music is forgettable. There is a scene where the whole god damn movie is explained to us. Stopping the movie dead in its tracks. So many nits to pick.

Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

Star Trek

I will be watching The Spirit again to try and dissect where and how badly it went wrong. I will also be re watching Star Trek. Because it is a really well put together film.

It starts with a bang. It is a great opening. Right off the bat, it demonstrates just how different this Trek is from past versions. Space is not sterile blackness. Light explodes across the screen whenever possible. The battles are not the slow, submarines in space affairs of before. The lasers are not solid beams. There is a lot more motion.

And George Kirk dies. That changes the character of James T a fair bit. It changes his motivations, but not his core. But the death of George Kirk also shows how this Trek is a lot closer to the classic Trek than some of the later series. Shatner was cast as Kirk for a reason. As was all the original cast. And there is a reason they are all so easy to imitate/mock.

They are larger than life, they are operatic. They had to be. Most of the original series was shot from a distance. So the cast set their standards to that. They were playing to the cheap seats. When the camera got in close, though, they didn't pull back.

The camera in this movie is almost always close, in on the faces. In on the action. The framing of the action and the actors is operatic, so the actors can be a little less so.

But they are all fantastic. Each actor inhabits their characters, without falling into straight mimicry.

There are some nits that can be picked.

The first for me is the introduction of kid Kirk. I understand that they were trying to show how the lack of his birth father had made him rebellious and angry. But the scene to me just made me think he was a douche. An ungrateful little shit. The bar scene a few scenes later was all does a much better job of setting up his character.

I understand that they wanted the symmetry there: young Kirk - young Spock - adult Spock - adult Kirk. But the kid Kirk is easily the weakest scene in the whole damn film, so I woulda chucked it. But that's me.

I also didn't like the chase scene on the ice planet. It seemed to Phantom Menace-y. Remember that scene with the fish? Yeah. Lame then, still lame now. Like a piece of screenwriting software flagged that section of the film for not having enough action. Superfluous.

And the villain of the piece didn't have all that much to do. I mean he did a lot. A lot. He changed the whole god damn Universe. But he seemed less a foil for the crew of the Enterprise and more like a plot point.

But this film was not about the villain, it was about the crew of the Enterprise. Who they are, how they fit together. And on that point, Star Trek more than succeeded.

More Spirit

I don't know how to approach this. I almost want to re-watch the movie to help me remember how bad the movie was.

But I won't. Not yet. But I will.

I have always maintained that you can learn a lot more from failure than success.

The Spirit

Wow.

Huh.

It is hard to put in to words what I think of The Spirit. Mainly because I have no idea what I think of The Spirit. I mean, I know that it is in no way a good film. It is poorly put together. In many ways.

But everything wrong also seems to work. At least, for me. I know that the writing is horrendous, but I dug the hell out of it. Same with the acting and the editing and so on and so forth.

It is amazing how singular this vision is. I no way do I believe that this is Will Eisner's vision. This is all Frank Miller. This is all tits and hatred of eggs and strange weirdness.

I am so glad that Frank Miller got to make this. It was his first film, and he was coming off the cachet of Sin City and 300 and he was given free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted. And he did.

Anyone else, I'd imagine, would have listened to some sort of voice of reason. I'm not really sure that Miller has any reasonable voices in his head.

The purity of the WTF-ness of this movie is...

I think I need to stop now and try to organize my thoughts.

Joel Plaskett

Dude put on a hell of a show. Not a huge rock spectacle, but rock-y, acoustic-y, indie-y goodness. with two encores. And he also played the opening set. Dude played for near three hours, near as I can tell. I can tell you that I missed most of the first set. Tickets said doors opened at 8. So we grabbed a cab at around 8:30.

Cuz that's how it works, right?

Nope. Joel Plaskett was on the stage doing his thing before 8:30. Colour us surprised.

Also surprising, no Emergency with him. But his dad was there. That was cool.

His dad looks old, but not. And Joel doesn't look old at all, considering he's been doing this since forever. I saw him when he was a part of The Super Friendz, way back when I was in University. Dude still looks and acts young. And skinny. And scrawny. A very Ichabod-ian body has he.

And he was mingling amongst the crowd between his sets, he passed right past me a few times.

And he was always talking. Between songs, during songs. Built quite a rapport with the audience. They were clearly digging was he was doing and he, in turn, dug their digging. As did I. I loved the vibe, everybody was in high spirits, and that is not code. It was just a purely positive experience.

And Mark was there, and it is always nice to catch up with that guy.

More

Lewis Black was funny. And got funnier the angrier he got. He is angry about a lot of things. Including his failing memory. He spent a lot of time umming and uhhing and then saying fuck really loud. I felt a little bad for the guy. But he has an iphone and I don't so fuck'im.

Also, I forgot to put my ring back on after my exercises yesterday and I felt all weird and out of sorts and off balance the rest of the day.

Lewis Black is a Really Angry Man

I listened to him rant and rave for over an hour and a half. It was very entertaining.

Age had not mellowed that man.

The lady sitting next to me laughed a lot. She had an odd laugh. High pitched and surprised and pleased, like each time she laughed she was discovering anew how nice it was to laugh.

And she also blew her nose a lot. Loudly. And it did not sound like she was getting anything done, they didn't sound snotty, they were just loud.

Yeah.

Movies and such

Been a while, let's get right to it.

I have a bunch of half finished posts about the various movies I have seen in the past while. This post should hopefully bring all that into the fold. And then some.

Why? Why now?

Because of Where the Wild Things Are. The trailer for that movie has just been released and holy good god does it hit me in all the right places. I already love Spike Jonze. I already love Dave Eggers. I was already pumped to see this movie. Then they add Arcade Fire into the mix? Fuck me. SOLD! I'll be there day one. And probably days two and three. It looks amazing, the Wild Things look just as they should, it's all just so... wonderful. It filled me with wonder. And happiness and sadness and the strange tingly feeling in my heart and gut.

Let's go from hypothetical greatness to proven goodness.

Coraline is my favourite Henry Selick movie. Nightmare Before Christmas has too much god damn singing. And I don't remember the reasons, but I was underwhelmed by James and the Giant Peach. But Coraline is just right. Great characters, great world(s), inventive action. Hardly any god damn singing. And it's in 3-D. My right eye is slightly lazy so 3-D rarely works for me. It worked far more often than I expected in this movie. And Even if it didn't work at all, I still would gladly pay extra for the Experience because the picture was SHARP and CLEAN and the COLOURS POPPED. The best picture quality I've seen since I've been back to Canada.

But the 3-D was cool. I liked the subtle use, adding depth to the picture without calling attention to said depth. I also liked when it did call attention to itself, like the lengthening tunnel. Loved that bit.

Loved Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married. Not that her character was lovable. But Hathaway never tried to soften her, to make her lovable. Everyone stayed true to the characters they were playing. It made for some uncomfortable scenes. Balanced out by all the joyous scenes of the wedding and its preparation.

Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler did much the same thing. The Ram did what the Ram did, thoughtless of the effects on those around him. I doubt there's many actors out there that could play broken down quite as well as Rourke.

And I don't know another director that would have filmed it the way Darren Aronofsky did. Randy's massive frame taking up most of the frame, just barreling through life. Unloading shit in a warehouse shot the same as a wrestling match.

A couple random Wrestler thoughts: any time a meat slicer appears onscreen, I start getting all tense. Who was topless more: Mickey Rourke or Marisa Tomei?

Now I've plum forgotten about any other films I have seen. Not nearly as many bad ones as I would like. Working on cheap movie nights sucks. I missed that new Street Fighter movie, haven't seen Taken or Push, nor any new Nic Cage movie. I miss my cheese.

Machine Gore Police Girl... Tokyo

Saw a couple of films lately. Including The Wrestler. But I'll blog about that one later.

I'm blogging about Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police. They are both super bloody flicks from Japan. Shot on the cheap.

Machine Girl is about a schoolgirl whose brother is murdered and has her hand chopped off by a family of Yakuza Ninjas. Said hand had been covered in tempura and deep fried earlier.

Tokyo Gore Police is about a Tokyo Police Woman (in the future, the police force have been privatized) whose father was killed in front of her and is now killing Engineers. Not people who build bridges, mind, but crazy killers who have some sort of key shaped tumor within them that lets them replace lost limbs with weapons.

Both contain some fairly inventive violence and countless geysers of blood. And I am glad that I watched them both, but Machine wipes the floor with Gore.

It is a question of approach. An approach best reflected in their leads. Machine Girl's girl is cute and energetic. Gore's police woman barley has one facial expression. And it is not an appealing expression.

The problem with these films is that I want to talk about the best gags. The bits of violence that elicits laughs. The insane quirks of the scripts. But I don't want to ruin the films.

I'll give one example from each. As a little taste of each movie. In Machine Girl, the Machine Girl attaches a machine gun to her arm stump and shoots a guy in the face so much that his face falls to bits, leaving his skull and a geyser of blood. In Tokyo Gore Police, there is a girl with an eyeball in her mouth, a girl with stitches where her nipples should be and a girl with her eyes on stalks and a shell on her back doing a sexy dance.

So yeah: go rent Machine Girl. The violence is more enjoyable, the girl is cuter, and there are more panty shots.

I'm classy.

Modern Horror

Kinda sucks.

In America.

But other places seem to be doing okay.

I say this because I saw The Unborn and Let The Right One In recently.

The Unborn is not good. The trailer was good. Made me want to see the movie. But stuff that looked freaky and scary in the trailer looked pretty damn fake in the actual movie. And the story was nowhere near good. And I don't think anyone involved knew how to end the movie. The answer is obvious: it never should have started.

But the lead actress displayed some epic camel toe. So there is that.

I'm not exactly sure if Let the Right One In is a horror film. It has horrific elements in it. One of the leads is a vampire after all. But it is mainly a story about a boy and a girl not quite old enough to fall in love.

It's very cute, but not in an obvious, Disney sort of way. The film hits all the notes you would expect it to but you don't always expect it to hit them.

The gore is almost always unexpected even though you know it is coming.

It is just a really well put together film. With great performances. And memorable scenes. Like the one of the most violent feel good ending I have seen in a while.

Really?

My iPod doesn't always like to play in the car. Such was the case today.

Which is me trying to explain why I was listening to local Regina radio today. And not the community station, neither. I was listening to the Zed. Z99.

*shudder*

I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of the Saskatchewan Top 20.

I weep for my past, present and future.

How the fuck does Nickelback stay at the top of any list for 8 weeks in a row? They are so unremarkable, you can't even remark about how remarkably unremarkable they are.

And Saskatchewan loves the fuck out of them.

Steve Martin

I saw a trailer for Pink Panther 2 in front of Yes Man. (Yes Man? An average comedy. Funny bits. Sappy bits. Zooey Desanchel is frickin adorable and awesome.)

I love Steve Martin. My sense of humour owes so much to him. My dad watched Martin, Monty Python, the Pink Panther movies and SNL with me when I was very young.

Thanks dad.

Seriously.

But manoman do his latest movies make me sad.

Especially since I just finished his book about his stand up days. Born Standing Up is a great read for Steve Martin fans. I can't say how it would play to non fans. But it is well written, funny and informative. It captures the spirit of a few different decades and how they affected Steve and his approach to his material.

And it details how it was a combination of luck, hard work and interesting connections that got him to the top of the heap.

It stops when his stand up career does, so it mentions not at all his sad, sad later days. I think that would be just as interesting.

But way more depressing.

Mini Me

And now I update you on the subject about which you have all been wondering about. I lost 0.8 kilos over the holiday season.

I don't know how the fuck I manged that either.

Yay me.

Role Models

Let us talk a bit about Role Models. It is a film I saw about a month ago. I haven't seen a film in a theatre for a month. That sucks. I am earning money, and that is nice, but I miss my weekly movie fix.

But Role Models was a good movie, all that aside. It played to the strengths of all its leads. Paul Rudd is basically what all males my age want to be. I know I sure as hell wouldn't mind being him. He is funny and handsome and can play mean or wry or sweet or whatever the hell. But he is especially good at being a sarcastic bastard.

Stifler has his best Stifler role since Stifler.

The little black kid is cute and foul mouthed, which is my favourite kind of kid. I found him a bit annoying at first, but he grew on me. I bonded with him over our shared love of boobies.

And McLovin showed that he he was more than just McLovin. He is the anti-McLovin in this one.

And even though the film laughs at LARPing, it also gives it a fair bit of respect.

It made me want to hit my friends with foam swords. More than usual.

Laughs were had, lessons were learned, I can't figure out how to end this thing.

Merry New Year's Mass

Now that it is the new year, and the first Monday of aforementioned year (the new one), I figured I should give this blogging stuff another shot.

By the time I actually become a regular blogger, the blogosphere will be old and abandoned. Much like I will be.

I already feel old. My back started hurting on Christmas day, and it hasn't gone away yet. It is better than it was, but still not all that great. So I haven't been doing my daily out workings.

I am afraid of my weight.

It was a delicious season of yumminess.

So that is that.

How Fat Am I Going To Get?

I busted out the Wii Fit this morning for the first time in a month. Mainly to see how much I weighed. Because I figure I should weigh myself before the big holiday season and then after the big holiday season and see how much weight I gain.

I reckon I will gain a lot.

Which sucks because I am already about as fat as I have ever been. I am 88 kilos. I think my heaviest ever was 90 or so.

Two Enjoyments Separated By a Disappointment

Saw the new Punisher on Friday.

I had read Ebert's review . And Pajiba's.

They were not wrong.

The Dark Knight was a hard PG-13. This movie probably hid behind that movie as much as possible. It gets away with all kinds of stuff. This is a very violent flick. Especially the sound. The sound guys must have had a field day on this one.

I want to talk about it more, but I don't want to ruin any of the 'gags' in the film.

There are some bad actors, there is a lot of bad dialogue, there is a lot of blood. A lot of blood. This is not a good film. But it made the entire audience laugh in shock. That has to count for something.

After the film, we ordered some poutine ribs.

There is a pizza place in town that offers poutine dry ribs.

What do you think that would be? I thought it would be dry ribs covered in gravy and cheese curds. Sounds delicious.

That is not what this pace does. Their idea of poutine ribs is ribs covered in sauce of your choice (barbeque, Thai, honey garlic, ranch, and so on) and then covered in pizza cheese. Pizza cheese is good on pizza, but pretty crap for poutine. It forms a hard shell of formerly melted cheese, making it hard to get to the non gravy covered ribs underneath.

We were all very disappointed.

And the first little bit of Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a bit disappointing, not as funny as we had hoped. But then it got funnier and stayed funny.

Lights in the Sky

Saskatchewan sure does have a lot of sky. It is oftentimes awesome. Our friend David stopped in Regina on his tour across Canada. The sky put on a couple great displays. But the sky last Monday was super duper awesome. It was like the Red Sea, both because it looked like the clouds were parted and because the clouds were red. Parted red clouds. It was cool as hell. It was nice to look at as Cory and I drove to Saskatoon.

Cory and I were driving to Saskatoon to see Nine Inch Nails' Lights in the Sky tour.

I have seen NIN in concert once before. I enjoyed the music, but the stage show was a little lacklustre.

That was not the case this time. Their show is great to look at. But I'll get to that.

First: as Cory and I ate dinner, I'm pretty sure I saw Amy's mother. She was sitting at the booth behind us. I didn't say hello to her because she was talking to her friend. I never know what to do in those situations.

Pretty sure I saw Carey Ceselski (sp?) at the concert. Didn't go up to say hello, because I wasn't totally sure it was him. We were about to maybe say hello to him when two older, drunken nurses tried to pick us up. That was awkwardly awesome.

Less awesome was The Bug, the opening act. The Bug is a dude in a heavy coat and a hoodie who fiddles nobs as a larger black lady, all the way from London, rapped. Here is what she rapped about: how 'ardcoah she is. "Me is outa me muva fukkin 'ead!" Repeat that ad nauseum whilst feedback screeched and squelched.

Woo.

But NIN was awesome! There were three huge screens above the stage. One behind the band, one midway through the stage, and one near the front of the stage. They would lower and raise throughout the set. There was all kinds of cool stuff going on on them. A lot of visualizers that reflected the music that was being played. In real time. And there were small cameras around the stage that could be thrown up on to the screen.

Everything, the sounds and the visuals were all distorted all to hell. In a good way.

This concert really made me understand what industrial music is about. It is all there in the name. It is industrial. It treats music as an object: a thing to be assembled and disassembled and reassembled.

It was kind of mind blowing.

Thanks Cory.

While I'm Bitching...

The iMac's wireless mouse can go fuck itself. It is a piece of crap. Always losing its connection or telling me the battery is dead or some such shit. Plus the scroll nub doesn't work half the time.

Horrible, horrible fuckin' mouse.

Conundrum of Solace

Casino Royale was a great reinvention of the Bond character and a great re invigoration of the Bond franchise. It was also a really good film. With a half hour boring film tacked on the end. Then another five minutes of cool.

I can understand why they structured the film the way they did, especially after seeing the new film, but that doesn't change the fact that the pacing in Casino Royale was bad.

The pacing in this new film is much better. It just kind of never stops. It starts right after the end of the last film (OMG! First true Bond sequel EVARZ!). It starts with a car chase. And Bond spends the rest of the film either chasing someone or being chased. Bond is a blond, bruised shark. Always moving forward. Unstoppable.

Which is not to say that there is no character development. This is all about Bond, about his obsessions, his weaknesses. Which is why I didn't use (the overused) Quantum of Soul-less. This is all about his damn soul.


Which is what makes this the least formulaic Bond film ever. I'm refering to the Bond formula, not formula in general. This film follows the Bourne formula nearly perfectly. But there is a nod or two two Bond conventions. There are Bond girls. Both with horrible fashion sense.

There are no gadgets. This Bond doesn't need 'em. He'll beat the fuck out of you with whatever comes to hand.

This film is almost all action.

Shame that the action is so hard to follow.

I'm not saying it is incomprehensible. You can tell who everyone is. You can usually tell what they are doing. But the outcome is almost always a surprise.

"Why did that car drive off the cliff?!?" "Why did that boat flip over and over into the air?!?" "Is that man bleeding profusely from the neck?!?" "Why is that man bleeding profusely from the neck?!?" "Why is everything exploding?!?"

This is a good film put together poorly.

Movies and the Watching Thereof

Tried to see Role Models this week. Was sold out. Only playing on one screen. Was sold out nearly an hour before the movie was to start.

Never trying to watch a new movie at that theatre ever again. It is always crowded and smelly and full of fuckwads.

So I can't talk about Role Models but I can talk about that Kevin Smith movie some more and Run Fatboy Run. Because they share some similarities.

Both are about losers trying to do something with their lives (which seems to be a recurring theme with both Pegg and Smith, and most of what I write).

I've lost most of my thoughts.

That happens a lot.

Fuck.

The porno one is way more potty mouthed.

The Fatboy one does a real good job of stacking the odds against the protagonist. Maybe too good a job. Pegg seems like a weak jerk. If this was my first exposure to him, I don't think I would be nearly as big a fan of his. They have to introduce an evil plot by the anaogonist pretty late in the game to try and level the playing field. The last act feels a bit forced.

Same with that there porno one. The conflict between the two leads seems to come out of nowhere.

They both have weak third acts. Is what I am trying to say.

This didn't come out near as good as I thoughted it would.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

This movie is not as good as Clerks 2. But Clerks 2 is my most favouritest Kevin Smith movie of all time. Forever.

And not it ain't got enough tits.

Fuck me

Damnit!

Published that one a bit too quick.

I wanted to work at least one more thing into that last post.

Another thing about McCain. About his speech last night. About the crowd. About how McCain felt about the crowd. When they booed Obama. The things they yelled out while he was talking. The huge cheers for Sarah Palin. I think the dude was getting pissed off.

Not to say that he doesn't like Sarah Palin. I think he does. I don't know if she was his first VP choice but whatever. Cheering louder for the non-VP then for the non-President? In his home state? That is like a slap in the fucking face.

Chanting USA? What the fuck is that? Is Obama not from the USA?

McCain hates that shit as much as we do.

I would love for him to write a book about this campaign. A tell-all, nuke the bridges kind of deal.

America: Fuck Yeah!

I'm sure this post's title has already been used, and used by better folk than me. But that makes it no less true.

I have no idea how to write this all down, so this is going to be a bit disjointed.

I consider myself to be a cautious optimist. I always try to look on the bright side of life. And I hoped that Obama would be the next President of the United States of America. But I didn't think he would win. All the polls, all the studies, all of it, everything that predicted an Obama victory would be proven wrong.

I've traveled abroad. Not to all that many places, but a few. Started traveling the month after the towers fell. And I have seen the turning of the tide. The way the world felt towards the U.S. after the attack, and how it changed over the years. How America changed over the years. The embarrassed smiles of backpacking Americans. The anger they felt.

My friend from work has parents that live in the states. I've known him for over a decade now. He has always wanted to move down to the states. That's been his dream. At least that was his dream before I left for Japan. That changed. He recently drove down to visit his parents. He came back afraid.




I'm playing Obama's acceptance speech right now. Fuck that man can speak. It is amazing. I will watch presidential addresses again. Not to see the language that I love mangled and misused, but to see it elevated.

Fuck that man can speak.

Also well spoken last night: John McCain. His concession speech was the best speech he's given in quite some time. And I say that as a huge fan of the guy. But...

I think the speech he gave last night was his best, because I think it is the first speech he's actually believed in in a long time. I think that running this campaign nearly ruined McCain. The compromises and the contortions and the changes of his beliefs. It was painful to see. I feel sorry for the guy. He loves his country, he would make a great President. If his party would let him.

But I don't think he is done yet.


Now here is where I piss some people off.

My mother woke me up on September 11th with these words, "You've woken up to a worse world". I watched the television. I saw the buildings fall. In my mind I had a reply to my mother. The world is no worse now. Buildings have been blowing up every day for who knows how long. It's just that these buildings fell down in America.

I know, I'm a dick. I'm working on it.

But the world did worsen. Somehow the Bush White House squandered all the emotion surrounding that defining event (along with untold trillions of dollars, and basic human rights).

I didn't feel despair the day the towers fell, I already knew the world was a pretty shitty place (remember: I'm a cautious optimist).

But today...

Today I feel hopeful.

Teen Movies

In the last couple o weeks, I have seen Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Sex Drive, and The Wackness.

I'll talk about the other two in a bit, but I'll start off by saying that Sex Drive was funnier than I expected. It is not some near classic like Superbad, but it is vulgar and funny and immature. It is a teen sex comedy, and as a teen sex comedy it is a teen sex comedy. It does what it is supposed to do. And I liked it. And Seth Green was in it. And Cyclops.

So it was a good movie. But The Wackness and Nick and Norah's... were more than just good. Maybe because they were movies about more than just raunchy comedy. They were (and are, I guess) movies about young love, music and New York.

I don't know if New York can ever live up to all the movies I've seen about it. But especially these most recent films. The Wackness and Infinite Playlist love New York. Two different New Yorks, true, but both are full of love.

The Wackness is a period piece. It takes place in 1994. New York was undergoing some massive changes, so the movie told me. The new mayor was cracking down on all of New York's seedy glory, and a new wave of hip hop was starting to bubble up. The crime crack down doesn't really play that big a role, but plays a huge role at the same time. Our lead doesn't get busted for dealing (spoiler?) but every scene of him dealing has an added edge because there is a chance that he might.

Our lead is a troubled youth. His home life ain't so crash hot, he doesn't really have any friends, he don't got much but his pot and his music. He's seeing a shrink. A shrink that has plenty of his own problems. They bond over pot, over music, and over the urge to get laid.

This is a nice looking film, washed out loveliness. And the soundtrack was stellar. That was around the last time I was actually in to the hip hop scene, so it ws filled with music I had forgotten I loved.

I didn't like The Wackness as much as N&NIP, but that opinion might change by tomorrow. They are two side of a coin. New York is beautiful (and seamy) and filled with great music (Indie or hip hop) and full of people falling in (and out) of love. And having their hearts broken.

And both films have mix tapes/CDs playing a big part in how their lead characters connect. I miss that. I miss agonizing how to best distill my essence, my mood, my me into 12 or so songs. It was an ephemeral art that I fear is already lost. We all carry all our music on us now. And I know I spend more time skipping past songs than actually listening.

How do I give my music to you? A playlist? It doesn't seem the same.

It's not the same.

kiss kiss bang bang

Is awesome. Seriously. It is full of great dialogue said by great actors. And it looks great. And there are boobs! And violence!

I must own this film! And memorize it.

I think the buddy action flick may well be my favourite genre of film.

That may just be my post-viewing glow.

Another Week Another Movie

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is a scruffily charming movie. There's nothing new in the film, but it is all just so dang likable. The music, the actors,... No that's basically it. The direction could have been sharper, as could the picture. But yeah I liked watching their like turn into maybe love. Just cute.

to be fair

I also didn't like The Big Lebowski when I first saw it. Or Pulp Fiction. Maybe I have bad first taste in movies.

Burn After Reading

I have not seen all of the Coen Brothers' movies. But I have seen a fair few of them. Liked a couple of them. Loved even more of them. Raising Arizona may well be my favourite comedy of all time.

But some of their films take a few viewings to sink in. I hope Burn After Reading is one of them. Because, having just seen it, I don't even know if I like it. This is the first time were I could see what critics of the brothers were saying. It seemed to be a collection of annoying people doing annoying things for stupid reasons. Some of the people died ugly deaths. And then it was over.

I have to see it again, but I'm not working forward to it.

More Movies

Rearranged the basement over the last few days. I like how it turned out. It's like a tunnel of couches in front of our big new tv.

Movies look good on our big new tv. It's like our own little home theatre. Kinda.

We watched a couple ridiculous movies in our home cinema; the new Die Hard and Snakes on a Plane. Actually, I believe Carla coined a new word to describe them: retardulous.

Which is the whole point of Snakes on a Plane and kind of regrettable in Die Hard 4.0 (as it was known in Japan)

Yeah, coulda seen the flick in a theatre in Japan but decided against it. It just didn't look like a Die Hard movie to me. Plus I was not all that sold on the director. He made an action film about the battle between vampires and werewolves and made it one of the dullest pieces of crap imaginable. That takes a special skill to screw a movie like that up.

Die Hard 4.0 was not a dull film. But in its sweaty efforts to not be dull, it just gets too god damn unbelievable. I know that action movies have to keep upping the stakes, but there have to be a line somewhere. Die Hard didn't just cross the line, it roared over the line in a semi on fire.

I liked the retardulous action, I ignored all the stupid cyber-talkery, and I enjoyed John McLane. There were a couple nice character beats in this film, which I was not expecting. And all the supporting characters were just ducky. Except for the main villain. He didn't get a good speech. He didn't kill anyone in cool or exciting ways and his backstory seemed off. I get his motivation, I understand his goals, but I don't understand his blood thirstiness. His motives don't match his means. To me. And while I enjoyed the action and enjoyed the characters, I'm not sure they needed to be in the same film.

And I don't know if Sam Jackson needed to be in Snakes on a Plane. It would have been just as retardulous without him. And he brings this baggage with him, this baddass baggage. It is hard to look all that badass when punching a small reptile. This film is not about the acting, it is all about the action. And nearly all the action is snakes biting unnamed characters. Which they do. The effects are not good. And that is why it is good.

This is not a good looking movie. There is one good shot in the film, one of the opening ones, a sweeping helicopter vista shot zooms in to follow an extreme dude on his extreme bike. I thought maybe this would be an interesting looking film. I was wrong. The rest looked like a direct to video effort. Which was fine.

I wanted laughable writing, average effects, amusing gore, snakes biting naughty parts and Mr. Jackson yelling and swearing.

Mission Accomplished.

Double Will

Meant to see Burn After Reading last night but was too full of shrimp to do so.

Instead we rolled into bed and watched Blades of Glory. Figure they're about the same - comedy wise.

It was better than I expected, but I was expecting sub-Taledega Nights level comedy. It was better than that. But still just an average Will Ferrel type comedy show.

But Stranger than Fiction was an above average Will Ferrel type movie. I expected to enjoy it and I did. And then I drank beer and ate wings and ribs.

also

Last night we went out to Red Lobster for their Endless Shrimp dealy. Now that I am not young, these all you can eat things don't make as much sense. I miss being able to eat stupid amounts of food. Maybe I should take up some kind of physical activity to increase my hunger.

After not eating very much shrimp at all I finished off the meal with a biscuit soaked in garlic butter. It was a soggy disgusting mess. Probably took three years off my life. But it may have been worth it. My bowel evacuations have been nearly light speed. They dart out like thieves in the night. Sneaky butt thieves.

multi-grain

I don't want to harp on this, but when you are having trouble sleeping sleep is a bout all you think about. The falling asleep and staying asleep are smaller problems, but it is the waking up that is the main issue. Every day waking up is like swimming through mud to land on a beach of sludge. It is just unpleasant and not a good way to start the day.

blerg flurm

This lack of sleep sucks so much. I woke up this morning, took my lovely wife out for a birthday breakfast then fell asleep for a few hours. Now I am up and am pretty sure that either the air or my body has increased in density. Moving is laborious and exhausting. I feel like I need a nap. But I fear how crap i might feel after the next nap.

The worst part is that our new bed is so comfy. I can't imagine how it is causing my current sleepless sorrows.

Ironical Funniness

The day after I blog about how I want to blog every day is a day where I don't blog. That seems to happen to me a lot.

But I have a feasible reason this particular time.

I was out at the cabin. The cabin is pretty much off the grid. It doesn't even have a phone.

But I am blogging now. Yay me.

I am blogging because I said I was gonna and also cuz I can't sleep. I've been having this problem ever since we got the new bed. Since before then even.

But before it was because the bed sucked. Our bed now is awesome yet still I don't sleep. Somewhat worrisome.

Almost as worrisome as my typing.

Regularity? Feh!

I'm gonna try to post something to one of my blogs every day before I g to bed. There always seems to be a few minutes left at the end of the day that would be filled nicely by blogging.

It'll be good practice. I gotta get into the habit of writing more. And I have to get used to writing with this fucked up finger of mine. It never goes where I want it to. Stupid fucking finger.

It angers me.

So what is new with me? Well thanks for not asking.

The Dark Knight did not disappoint. Which is pretty amazing considering how beloved the film already is. I can't really disagree with any of praise heaped upon it. Just a damn fine film. And Heath Ledger was indeed amazing.

Step Brothers and Pineapple Express were both funny. And uneven. And they made me long for a comedy with an actual script.

Hamlet 2 made me wish for a comedy with a better script. (I liked it, just to be clear)

Tropic Thunder made me laugh in just the way I wanted to. I don't know if it will hold up to repeat viewings, but that first viewing was a blast.

I think those are all the movies I have seen as of late. In the theatres. Watched some stuff at home as well. Checking out the commentary tracks on Spaced. Kevin Smith is still fat and filthy. And I really liked Juno. I love quirky dialogue. Love it. With love.

I think that is all for now. Until the next now: later!

All Wet

We didn't end up seeing any of the last day of the Folk Fest. There was lightning and rain and such. Stouter folk than we braved the elements, but we went out for dinner instead. I regret nothing.

I'm still trying to figure out what it was about Hellboy 2 that bothered me so much. Maybe bothered isn't the right word. Nothing in the film engaged me. No, there was also stuff in there that outright annoyed me as well. Young Hellboy for instance. Actually every single character in the movie annoyed me. That's kind of a big problem. I think del Toro was so busy focussing on the big themes of the movie that he forgot all the little things. i was too busy focussing on all the little things to care about the big things.

More Festevaluation

Day two was a much more subdued affair. very mellow. so low key i don't think imma gonna capitalize anymore. the great lake swimmers were very nice, full of wistful, lovely songs n such. as were most of the other acts of the night. the standout f the evening was Suzanne Vega. She gets capitalized, cuz she deserves it damnit! Such a great voice, full of cute and sweet and sad all at the same time, and she writes songs that serve her voice well.

There one big problem with this evenings line up was the host. I forget her name and am glad of it. Who the fuck can render the do do doo do do do doo do part of Tom's Diner unrecognizable? I thought it impossible. Bitchtard proved me wrong. Any time she approached the mic, I started feeling all punchy.

Folk Fest

The39th Annual Regina Folk Festival is going on right now. in years past, we had just bummed around outside, listening to the music for free. Cuz I was a young punk kid. But now I feel motivated to spend money to support stuff I like. And I liked every single artist onstage last night. The Weakerthans, Final Fantasy, Broken Social Scene, plus some lovely local bands like Library Voices and Polymath. And the crowd was great. Not too rowdy, not too pushy, but not too small either. It was just right.

Bits of Blog

So I went to the Exhibition this past weekend. As always, I went mainly for the food. But this time I did not partake of any of the old favourites. No Mr. Souvlaki, no little donuts, no corndogs, no brats covered in onions and peppers. Nope. Too much new stuff. New stuff like deep fried Coke. It tasted like deep fried Coke. And the deep fried Oreos tasted like deep fried Oreos. Those names are pretty self explanatory.

Hot Beef Sundae and Taco in a Bag need some explaining. The delicious Hot Beef Sundae consists of two buttery scoops of buttery mashed potatoes covered in melt in your mouth barbequed beef smothered and covered in barbeque sauce, said sauce sprinkled with grated cheese and topped with a cherry tomato. So good. Delicious as all hell. Only sligtly less delicious was the Taco in a Bag.

Take a bag of Doritos, crush it all up and then cut open the side of the bag. Throw some ground beef, some salsa, some sour cream and some shredded lettuce into the bag. Do all that and you have yourself a Taco in a Bag.

The food at the Ex was fantastic, as was the entertainment. And I'm not talking about the dog show, although that was nice.

I'm talking about Weird Al.

Go ahead and laugh, but that spastic bastard puts on a hell of a show. Multimedia as all get out. Video clips and skits in between the songs. The videos served two purposes: they were funny and they gave Al and his band time to change costumes. There were a lot of costume changes.

The guy played for two hours and then came back for another half hour encore. I was impressed.

I was not as impressed with Hellboy 2. I cannot believe that people are saying it is better than the original. The effects are better, the creatures are amazing, the action is great, but it all added up to less than the sum of its parts. The creatures were cool looking for the sake of being cool looking. Or maybe it was to show how vibrant the other world (the world mankind is greedily destroying) is. But it didn't seem all that vibrant. It seemed ugly. The whole movie seemed ugly. It was a nice looking ugly, but still ugly. And Hellboy seemed less likeable. Everyone did. Blurg.

Movies

It is just like me to start blogging to bitch. I bitched about my broken finger. But what really made me want to blog, before my still twisted finger, was Wall E. But I didn't. I couldn't. I can't. I can bitch. That is easy. But to properly praise such a glorious film? My ironic slacker vocabulary is not equipped to deal with that. All I can say is that it is a truly lovely film. The film is suffused with love and the longing that goes hand in hand with it.

I was going to say that I haven't really seen a disappointing film yet this year, but then I remembered the latest Indy. But for everything wrong in Indy, there was something right in Get Smart. Get Smart was so much more enjoyable than that Crystal Skull flick. The funny parts were actually funny. The action looked real. And the funny and the action were mixed together nicely. It was a good time. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

I feel like I should write more about all these films, but that would just be me wasting words. New Indy - why? Get Smart - surprisingly good. Wall E - God Damn Wonderful.

My finger

So I broke my finger round about a week ago.  Almost exactly a week ago.  Spooky.  The middle finger on my right hand.  One bone in that finger in a couple places.  It looked gross.  Still does.  I don't think the doctor who fixed my finger actually fixed it.  So I got my family doctor to look at it, to make sure that everything was A OK.

He said everything was A OK.  But he didn't look at my finger.  He X-rayed my finger (said the lady who took my finger X-ray, "That doesn't look right.") and looked at the X-ray.  He said the X-ray looked good.  That may be.  But my finger looks like shit.  Feels like shit too.  Not that it hurts, oh no.  But when I lay my fingers flat on a table, my middle finger feels WAY off.  Only half of the pad, half of my fingertip comes in contact with the table.

I don't care if my X-ray looks good.  I do care if my finger will work right at the end of all this.  And I don't think it will.  I'm kinda pissed off right now.

Uni Qlo

Yeah, there are scads of things I am going to miss about Japan.

But not scat. Won't miss that.

I will miss the commercials. Most are crazy, some are cute and then there is my new favourite commercial.

It is for Uni Qlo.

It starts with a topless lady walking into a room. The lady's shapely back is to the camera as she strides across the modern looking room (all white and bright). She picks a piece of clothing off of a chair in the middle of the room and steps into it. She fixes the straps on her shoulders and then turns around. It is a camisole type of thing, with the bra built in.

The commercial ends with the lady bouncing down the street, all happy like.



I spend all this time trying to describe the stupid commercial when i realize that I could just show it to you. You're welcome. And...

Yeah.  I miss the crap out of Japan sometimes.

Groverfield

That would have been awesome! A giant muppet tearing shit up in New York? Sign me up!

Cloverfield was not as cool as that. It was still enjoyable. It was indeed a cross between Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project. I didn't really have a problem with the Godzilla side of the equation. The monster was freaky looking and did a fair bit of damage. And seeing it from a civilian's perspective really did add to the impact. If I had cared more about the civilians, that would have been nice. None of them were horrible, but I only found one engaging. And the way she went out was awesome. I know they were going for realism, for believable dialog. But believable is not a synonym for boring.

And if they were going for a realistic/natural feel, the film makers should not have made the plot points so obvious.

I had no problem with the shaky camera work, but I had a problem with the editing. So they are running from the monster: fine. The camera is shaky: fine. Hud(the cameraman with the stupid name) somehow stops recording and then starts recording whilst running? No. Fuck that. Maybe he accidentally did it, but it just struck me as obvious editing.

And the sound. If you are going to get out of the boat, get out all the way. Shit or get off the pot. The mic should have been cutting out during the firefights. There is no way that the mic would have picked up a message playing on a cell phone held up to someone's ear, aforementioned someone standing in the middle of an electronics store that is being looted. And so on.

And (and) I can deal with the fact that the protagonists keep crossing paths with the monster, that is fine. But their final encounter with the Monster just rubbed me wrong? They didn't notice it was standing behind them? Can it be really quiet when it wants to? Is it a ninja?

But that final monster encounter led to my favourite shot of the whole movie, the shot that made the whole concept worth it. The auto focus couldn't figure out what to focus on. Loved that bit.

Didn't love the movie. But I liked it.

Hells Yeah

Just the other day I posted about how Wii Fit didn't think I would loose any weight. Well, I just now broke through my revised target weight. Wii Fit seemed quite surprised. Suck it, Wii Fit, suck it down!

It Figures

Every time I try to motivate myself to blog here more often, it always has the opposite effect.
Plus, I was supposed to be talking about my Wii Fit-ing and I kinda slacked off on that for a bit. But not no more. I've been averaging about 5 days a week, and that is pretty good. For me. And I've been loosing weight. Wii Fit told me there was no way I was going to be able to loose the amount of weight I wanted in the amount of time I wanted. So I changed my goals slightly. I changed it to 2 kilos in two months. I've been working away at that goal for 2 weeks now and I have half a kilo to go.

In your face Wii Fit!

It Ain't Gonna Happen

I can feel the negativity, man. I can feel me trying to bring myself down. It ain't gonna happen. I'm not going to let that happen.

So lazy

Too lazy eve to capitalize that lazy up there in the title.

So when you weigh yourself in Wii Fit, you give yourself a stamp for that day. But only if you weigh yourself. If all you do is workout, but don't weigh yourself, you get no stamp. If you were to look at my stamps you would think that I am even lazier than I actually am.

I am so lazy. I've had Wii Fit since January but I've only played it for like 12 hours. I've had Smash Brothers for three weeks and I've put in triple the time on it.

After the ten hour mark my little time keeper buddy changed colour. He is now bronzed.

Too lazy for witty segues or any sort of closing remarks.

Lazy Bones

I didn't Wii Fit at all this week, but I'll be damned if I slack off on the posting as well.

Maybe I Wii fitted once. I haven't weighed myself since last time, of that I am sure.

The main reason for all of this is the new Smash Brothers game. It just got released. And I am HOOKED.

I'll try harder this week, I swear!

Wii Fit/Me Fat

I'm once again trying to be more regular in me posts to this here corner of the blogosphere. Yeah, I hate that word too. I figure one way to make sure I update at least once a week is if I have something to report on on a weekly basis. Say, for example, I was trying to loose weight. Which I am. But I'm not so crazy as to join a gym or anything nutty like that. Heavens no. Instead, I am trying to Wii Fit every day for at least 30 minutes a day. I haven't been so great at the daily thing, but I haven't been all that bad either.

Making yoga and exercise into a videogame seems to work for me. Not that I've lost all that much weight.

I started this grand experiment on the seventh of this month. At that time I weighed about 84.4 kilos and had a BMI of 24.6. (I don't know what that means either). Today I weigh 83.1 kilos and have a BMI of 24.3. considering a person's weight can vary by a kilo a day, that isn't all that promising. But I do feel better. The stretching every day might be helping my back. And I seem to have more energy. But I'm more cranky.

Yay! What a great first Wii Fit post. hopefully I won't just post my weight and such each week. I hope I'll ramble on about other things since I'm typing anyways. That's the theory. We'll see how she goes.

I Don't Want To Be That Guy

Was out drinking with Carla and David and Fernanda last night. Over there at Captain Kangaroo's. The table next to us was filled with older white dudes. And by older I mean they could very well be the same age as me. But they were fatter and wrinklier. And all their efforts at talking with the girls at the bar met with failure.

I don't wanna be that guy.

Love Hotel

Here is a guided tour of our awesome love hotel room in Tokyo.

Grindhoused

For one whole week, one whole movie theatre devoted one whole screen to showing the 'American' version of Grindhouse. I was all over that like mutated rednecks on a stripper's leg.

I'm glad I saw it in the way the directors intended and I'm also looking forward to seeing them separately. Oh hells yeah, I'm seeing them again.

I'm also glad I saw them when I did and with whom I did. A bunch of geeky gaijins and some squeamish Japanese ladies. The fellas all laughed and hooted and hollered at all the same spots and the girls really squirmed. I felt bad for them. especially since I was the one who suggested the movie in the first place. But that didn't stop me from bursting into applause at the end of Death Proof.

And I wasn't the only one. I've never seen or even heard about a Japanese audience applauding and cheering at the end of a movie. So that was cool.

Know what else was cool? Everything.

Yeah, this was totally my kind of movie.

Although there don't seem to be any strippers who actually get naked in Rodriguez's universe. Small quibble.

The only other quibble I have is that the 'ladies' from the first half of Death Proof are way less engaging than those from the second half. Seriously. I found them kind of annoying. In no way deserving of what fate befell them, but maybe not worthy of all that screen time.

That's it. Thems is all the nits I have to pick.

It sucks that it didn't do so shit hot at the cinemas, but I hope they don't abandon this idea. In fact, since Grindhouse was inspired by the 70's, why not make a direct to video spiritual sequel inspired by the direct to video shlock that started popping up in the 80's?

I want to talk more about the films, I want to gush like that guy's black tongue, but it would just be a bunch of exclamation marks and OMGs. I dug it, and people who think that they might dig it will most probably dig it and I would never in a million years let my mom watch it.

Grindhouse

is finally coming here. But not as Grindhouse. It's being released as two films. Nearly a month apart from each other. Death Proof first.

I'm happy that I actually get to see it but sad that it won't be in the original format.

Also, Japanese people do the above a lot. They start typing out a sentence in their subject line and then just continue the sentence in the body of the email or txt message. It takes some getting used to.

The Only Way This Vacation Could Get Off To A Worse Start is if it Starred Chevy Chase

So I woke up this morning not to the alarm clock, but to Carla telling me to shut off the alarm clock. Poor girl, I didn't hear it at all. Next I awoke to the sound of the garbage truck. It was too late for me to get or garbage out in time. Next I awoke to an unpleasant feeling in my bowels. I dashed into the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes making sure no more hot chocolate soup was going to fly out my anus.

Welcome to my summer holidays.

Woot.

Some Kind of Pun Relating to the Movie and Its Relative Merits

Transformers was a pretty movie. All of Michael Bay's movies have looked nice (I assume. I haven't watched most of them. The trailers looked pretty. And retarded), but in this one, the cameras stayed still and the edits were spaced out so that you could actually appreciate the prettiness. Still no continuity once the action started, but I think that's just the way Mike likes it. That's just about it for the nice things I'm gonna mention.

There's an old saying, "An action movie is only as good as it's villain." That's not totally true, but it's a lot closer to right than to wrong. And that is one of the many reasons why Transformers is not very good.

Shut up, internet, it just isn't.

Megatron spends the bulk of the movie in a block of ice and then rips an ebonics speaking moron robot in half and then gets killed by an actor whose name translates into 'the beef'. That ain't much of a villain. Oh yeah, he also screams about hating all of humankind. Spooky stuff, eh kids?

His heroic opposition is Optimus Prime. Prime's actions play out thusly: he crashes into our planet, gets a rad flamey paint job, says a bunch of phony hollow bullshit, cuts the head off a dump truck (that part was kind of cool), gets the shit beat out of him, tries to sacrifice himself honorably and fails. Woot.

Not all the robots were handled so poorly. The opening with the helicopter was pretty sweet. Stuff blew up real good, there was a sense of menace. But it shows just how poorly Megatron is introduced.

Bumblebee, despite being involved in all the lame comedy, was pretty alright as well.

Notice how I singled out the two characters who spoke the least? Don't think that's an accident.

Nothing that comes out of anyone's mouths is any good. Anything that comes out of the humans' mouth is retarded and anything that comes out of the robots' mouth is inane.

Megatron hates humanity for no real reason other than he's the bad guy, and I can accept that. Bad guys are just born bad sometimes. But Optimus Prime loves humanity. He's been on earth for like three days and he's willing to sacrifice his Spark for us. Why? If he learned all there was to learn about humanity via the internet, as he stated, he would have nuked the planet from orbit.

I should have said pwned. Optimus would have pwned the planet from orbit.

There were other robots in the movie but I don't really know why. There was that medic who couldn't fix anything, the Autobot who got torn in half, the dump truck who got his head cut off, the jet and the police car.

Man. Starscream was pretty awesome in the cartoons. He was devious, always plotting to overthrow Megatron. I can't even recall if they had a scene together.

I saw the movie two days ago and I can't remember it. And that's not really a bad thing.

Anything to do with the internet was head breaking. I could hear Carla's eyes rolling.

The action was cool, if a little hard to follow sometimes. The Beef is charismatic. Navel McTits reminded me of Jennifer Connelly, and that ain't ever a bad thing. Plus it had Optimus' voice! I was so happy to hear that voice come out of that blue and red robot. Then I heard the words he was saying. And despaired.

I know that this is a summer movie based on an old cartoon that was nothing more than a commercial for toys, but they really could've done a better job.

That Rat Movie

As I mentioned before, I found it much easier to identify with a talking rat than with a talking car. But there were moments in the film that broke that connection between me and the rat. As soon as there were multiple rats on the screen, I would get freaked out. Masses of rats are gross, they make me shudder. I don't know if Brad Bird did that on purpose or not.

Pixar

Cars was the first Pixar flick I didn't catch in the theatre. It just never grabbed me. I read and heard the reviews, it'"s Pixars weakest effort, but still miles beyond most of the competition." Having finally seen Cars, I would only agree with the first part of that sentiment. I found cars to be dull, not all that funny, and un-engaging in just about every way. It looked fricking fantastic, but that's about it. Unless the car transforms somehow into an ass-kicking robot, I can't really care too much about it.

Transformers still isn't out here yet, not that I expect it to be good.

But yeah, Cars weren't so good.


Ratatouille (the spell check suggested Catatonia), however, is so very good. Fantastic, really. Gorgeous, funny, everything you expect a Pixar film to be. Brad Bird is just... I have to see every film he directs in the theatre. He's earned it.

And the trailer for Pixar's next film Wall E (or whatever) looks darn good too. That quick little snippet of film affected me more than the whole of Cars.

Spamalot

I joined Facebook a few days ago. The amount of spam my phone gets has gone through the fucking roof. Coincidence? Fuck that noise.

Drinking is Fundamental

Crikey, I must've been well in my cups went I posted that last post there.

There is a danger to drinking. And that danger is this: you might blog while drunk. And during your drunken blog, you might fuck up when blogging about what you've been drinking. And I really did Underage Hooker With A Bag of Coke a grave dis-service. I said it contained raspberry liqueur. That was a God damn die. You see, Kishen tries to bring the name of each shot he creates to life. The Southern Comfort is for the dirty. The Malibu is for the underage and the prostitute. That leaves us with the bag of coke. Raspberry liqueur may be a lot of things (it isn't), but it sure as shit ain't no bag of coke. No, this shot calls for Red Bear.

Red Bear is like Red Bull but full of alcohol. What a great frickin idea.

There, now I can sleep better at night, knowing that I've done right by Underage Hooker With A Bag of Coke.

By the way, you don't drink a shot of UHWABOC, you don't slam it, you kill it.

Drinking is Fun

Kishen is going home for his wedding in two days, so we went to Balas to see him before he took off. At some point it was decided that we should be drinking shots. So I got us some prairie fires. That was a good start. Then we started making up our own shots.

Spittoon Juice was way tastier then we were expecting. Southern Comfort, Peach liqueur, and Baileys. It mixed good in the mouth. But it weren't so good as the next shot.

Underage Hooker With A Bag of Coke.

A Wee Bit of Backstory: I was talking to a dude who knows a girl who's married to this other dude who is an RCMP officer, and so on. Anyhoo, I said to this guy your friend ain't ever getting fired, he could kill an underage hooker with a bag of cocaine.

Kishen thought that would be a good shot. So this is what he came up with:
Southern Comfort, Rasperry liqueur and Malibu Rum with a squeeze of lemon. Went down real smooth. Not much goes down easier.

I've been drinking.

What Good's a Mirror Without a Face?

So it has been over a year since last I wrote here. That, y'all, is just whack. But I'm a year older now. A year is a long time. I'm much more introspective and... deep... and stuff.

Salty Rations

There is this show on Japanese TV that I catch from time to time. A man is locked in a room with a video game and he has to play it until he beats it. And these ain't new games. These are old, obscure games. From back when they made games hard. I always get caught up in it. After about 10 seconds you can grasp the play mechanics and the goal of the game. So you know what he needs to do. And you cringe along with him when he screws up. You cheer him on when he looks discouraged. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it is totally an awesome show. Every once in a while someone will come in to berate him if he's not doing to well.

Also, there are a couple channels that show a lot of straight to video cheese. I'm loving it. Recently, there have been a lot of giant spider movies. Good times.

I've also seen the 'sequel' to Ong Bak, Tom Yum Goong. It's more ambitious, and more of the director's flaws are obvious but that doesn't matter. Tony Jaa is fucking amazing. He fucked up most of the stunt doubles from Thailand, so he travels to Australia to fuck up their Ozzie asses. And he does. A lot. But not just with knees and elbows like last time. Nope, he's expanded his repetoire. He's become quite adept at breaking and dislocating bones. It is gloriously painful to watch. He is a crazy whirlygig of pain! I loves it. I have no idea what the hell happened in the non fighting parts of the movie, but who the hell cares. He fucks people up!

Just Now

Just now we figured out Carla's Indain Porn name.

Dirty Pants in Mouth.

Odd Longings

There's a sandwich shop a stone's throw from where I work. The lady who owns and runs the place is Japanese but speaks fluent English. She spent some years in Vancouver. The chef is French. The sandwiches are delicious. I had no idea how much I missed Hoagies and Reubens and Philly Cheesesteaks until I couldn't have them. Seriously, you cannot find corned beef anywhere in this frickin country.

I used to go there every Saturday for my lunch break. I still go there every Saturday, but my work hours have changed and now I'm done at 12:30. So I can have a beer with my meal. That is good stuff.

And there's a new pizza place near where we shoot pool. The owners and operators are also Japanese who spent s fair bit of Canada. Toronto in their case. And their pizza rocks. No corn, no tuna, no squid ink. Fantastic sauce. And they have beer. But I didn't have the beer. Cuz they also have bubble tea. Hell, I didn't even have the pizza. I had a calzone.

All I need is a place to start serving crisp meat burritos and I'll be set.

And a hot Japanese mistress.

Yerp

Well, it sure didn't take me that long to completely fall down on that whole update very day thing. In my defense, this is the sickest I have been since I was in Australia when it caught on fire. Eric saw what I looked like. I was a smidge better this time. But I was working for most of the time this time. Not fun. But I believe I'm now on the mend. Yay.

And just to get back into the regular swing of things: There was other stuff I wanted to write about, but I forget them all right now.


It's good to be back.

My Humps

I've been watching a little bit of Japanese MTV, they've been showing the American Top 20. Is this shit fa realz? Seriously? My Humps? My fucking humps? Dude, I had no problem with Milkshake. That was a catchy song. And Kellis was nice enough to disappear immediately afterwards. But My Humps? Fuck you! That ain't catchy, that is just shit! What is up with The Black Eyed Peas? They alternate catchy, kinda good songs with absolute horseshit. And chick from The Black Eyed Peas? Fucking Die! All the Horseshit songs have way too much of you. And you are not hot. Don't sing to me crappily about your "luscious lady lumps". I don't want your lumps, I'd prefer painful lumps on my testicles. Fuck that is a shitty shitty song. FUCK!

And Madonna? When did she start taking vocal lessons from Cher? I guess they have a lot in common. For instance, I never want to see their unclothed asses again. Act your fucking ages!

And what's up with this shitty teen drama in the middle of Green Day's shitty ballad? Whatever. I'm all pissed off out.

Peace.

GIVE UP? GIVE UP? GIVE UP?

It is 5 in the god damn morning. And, if you ain't noticed, I am not asleep. I got a big long day ahead of me. This sucks. I went to bed at 10:30 in the hopes of getting a good night's sleep. More than a good night's sleep. A good ten hours of sleep. That didn't happen. Obviously.

I wanted to get all this sleep because I am still sick. I have been sick for basically the whole month of November. And it is getting worse. I was just about over it and then I relapsed. Hard. I think I've getting a cold sore. That really sucks. And I have no idea how to find the medicine I need in this country where the language is all crazy.

My head sucks. It is all the time dizzy. And filled with gross stuff. Every time I cough, I taste snot. Every time I sneeze, I taste snot. Every time I taste snot, I taste snot. With a hint of iron (I wanted to play some kind of word game with "irony", but thinking about it made my head hurt). Blech. And it be getting worse. Soon, when I cough, not only will snot and phlegm come out my mouth and nose, it will come out of my pores. And maybe my eyes. That would really suck, you wouldn't be able to just wipe it away, you might have to yank at it. Ewww.

And, at some pint when I wasn't paying attention, someone put two pounds of milk shake in my lungs. My breath is rattly, painful and cold. I am starting to get a wee bit concerned. Coming from me, that means something. I usually ignore what my body tells me. This is how I roll: if I feel sick, I just ignore it until I feel better. But I am not feeling better. I may have to re-roll.

Well, the cute girls wrestling in bikinis show is over so I'm gonna try to catch some sleep.

Pray for me.

There's No War But Ours

So I'm watching La La, the channel for women. I think. And there's an informercial on. Sorta. There are no peppy hosts, no fawning audience. No stubborn spots, no easy cash. Nothing but Toronto. Toronto from the eighties by the look of things. And the sound of things. Allanah Myles' "Lover of Mine" is the soundtrack to the cityscape and sundry other shots. I gotta tell ya, they ain't selling me.

I frickin LOVE this country!

No, But I Can See It From Here

This will be one of my last posts where I talk about the act of posting. At least for a little while. There's no reason for me to bitch about a lack of material when I have peppered this blog so liberally (Ivy league communists) with unfinished thingees. I am spoiled for choice. Starting tomorrow I guess I'll just start choosing. But not today. Today I tell you about tomorrow.

I also tell you that my throat really hurts.

And making and eating nabe all by yourself is not very fun and way too filling.

I watch tv as I type. The coming soon channel was showing a trailer for Star Wars Episode 3 and there was a shot of some sort of Star Wars videogame in there. Just the one shot. Not a very long shot. In a fairly long trailer. That was weird. Before that they were showing trailers for Idol DVDs. Idols are cute girls who put out DVDs filled with them looking cute and bending over. They don't get naked near as often as you might think. But I don't care. They are cute, they smile a lot and they bend over. That's enough for me.

There was more that I wanted to mention, but I forget it all. As always.

Oh yeah, I should mention that this is National Novel Writing Month. Have I done that already? Have I mentioned that there is a suggested word length for the 'finished' novel. Broken down, it averages out to about 1700 words a day. I'm happy if I break 800. But I just gotta keep plugging away. One day, I'm gonna be a real boy.

All Over It

I have a hurty head. There was something very wrong with the train car I rode on the ride home. It made this noise you see. I'm not quite sure if I'll be able to accurately describe it, but I'll give it a try. Take a violin and a trumpet and mix them. Not the instruments themselves, but the sounds they make. Mash 'em up using a substandard synthesizer. And make sure that neither instrument is in tune. And that both out of tune instruments are out of tune in different ways so they ain't in tune out of tune, if you dig. Then take that ugly sounding synthesizer and hold down the second highest key. That, kinda, was the sound the train was making.

It hit me and hurt me right where the skull meets the spine. The Skine. Or the Spull. Take yer pick. I don't know which one I like better.

And then, when the train stopped, I walked through a cloud of stink on my way to the train's door. Ladies, when you apply your perfume with a ladle, it is no longer an 'exotic scent' it is an 'unholy stank'. Just a little FYI.

But there's one more reason for my non good head. One of the kids today slapped me in the temple. Just out of fucking nowhere. We were doing the usual interview thing when we just slams his hand into my head, knocking my glasses askew. I am so proud of myself: I didn't harm him in any way. Rather, I grabbed him by the shoulders, said four words in a very serious voice: "No!" and "Say you're sorry!" I didn't let go of his shoulders until I was sure he meant it. If that had been my own kid I would probably be talking to a lawyer right now.

A lawyer who would hate my guts, think me lower than a impotent snake's penis. He would agree to defend only because he could then not win the case. I would end up being sodomized by a bunch of angry, angry convicts. But their penises would be small and not all that uncomfortable. And I would finally be able to say that I've had sex with an Asian.

5 or More Correct

I really should update the Japanese blog, but I really don't know what I can talk about. One of these days I really need to take pictures of our neighbourhood. It's a great place. A covered arcade that's a couple blocks long, three supermarkets within walking distance that mark some of their food down about when I finish work, multiple karaoke places, sushi places, izakayas (cheap food and drink), and a second hand shop fairly close by. It's good stuff. Plus there's an "esthe" place a stone's throw from our place. Now esthe can mean a place for relaxation and massage, but it can also mean a place where certain things get massaged. I'm not sure which one it is.

But hey, if you come to visit me, maybe you can find out and let me know. That'd be great. We may have a whorehouse out back of us. Yay us!

Have I mentioned the flyers that are sometimes thrust into our slot? They have cute and sometimes naked girls on them. Sometimes these girls are doing interesting things to pink blobs of pixels. I check the mail slot multiple times a day.

I had a week off from work but I feel not all that much better. Still real tired and my throat still hurts. But I've got the heart of a champion and that's what counts.

Maybe if I update a different blog every day, the posts won't be so same-y and lame. We'll see. I hope.

If not, well at least I suck.

Why Was I Not Informed?

I think I may have mentioned somewhere that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoRiMo). And I think that is just a damn fine idea. But yesterday I missed out on the chance to participate in an even better idea. Saturday, November 5th was (Inter)National Drunken Writing Day. You open up your blogging device of preference, you start to drink, you continue to drink, you get dead drunk and you try to write all the while. Before you pass out, or maybe after, you can spell check it (optional) and then you must submit. And you can't delete it later. Sounds like my kind of fun. But I didn't hear about it until today. God damn it!

I, also, think this box has been glued.

That is something I might type whilst under the influence of wheat and/or barley and/or potatoes and/or whatever else people can make hooch outta. Apples, say.

But I am not drunk right now, I typed what I typed above because I heard Carla say it and then I typed it down. It fills up the space, it does. The only problem, I suppose, with writing while shit faced is that I already suck at typing. I've been getting steadily better, I may actually be able to beat Typing of the Dead upon my return, but I still ain't anywhere close to good. I imagine tasty libations may widen that gulf, while simultaneously making that same gulf seem to unwiden. Yeah, the poor spell checker might asplode. Which is hard for a non-physical thing to do, but not impossible.

According to Nike, "Impossible is nothing". But then, they're dicks.

You may think that even though I claim sobriety I am actually imbibing most egregiously. You would be wrong. I am not drunk, just exceptionally tired. I played basketball today. More to the point, I was surrounded by people playing basketball today while I practiced and worked on my awkward flailing. It's really coming along.

The worst part about writing while fit shaced, I suppose, is the ever present danger of blowing chunks on the computer. That last sentence back there? I typed blow chinks, which is even more offensive than blowing chunks. Which is surprising really since chunks is my dog. "Why chunks with a small c?" you ask. (God Damn! Y'allz be hard to shock) Back in the day I did use to call my dog Chunks, but the capitalization thing just went straight to his head. You all know me. You all know how I roll. Ain't no way I'm going to suck on a conceited dog's cock.

Pardon me, I'm going to go return some videos and maybe rent some more. Be back soon.

Didn't rent anything new. We've got too much junk on the hard drive that we haven't watched yet. We gotta clean this bad boy off. It's chugging.

Ow. Typing hurts. I jammed my finger during basketball and it hurts.

Maybe I should go into more detail about my basketball experience. But I don't think I will. It was a fun, yet very emasculating experience. I was the tallest guy on the court, but the most useless. Well, Ben may have been more useless but not by much. Most of the other guys there were fairly good. Of course, their recording studio is next door to the court we played on. That might have something to do with something.

There was one girl who played with us, but her shirt was too loose to see anything going on as she ran. And she smokes. They all smoke. As soon as a game was done, they would light up. But neither they nor I experienced any shortness of breath. Yay breath! And yay after-baketball naps. That was nice. Boy, I sure do enjoy our new bed. It be sleep-tastic!

During our walk to return the videos, we stopped by a combini (as you do). I've mentioned man before, yes? Man can mean a few different things in Japanese. It's ten thousand and it's also a hot bun filled with stuff. Like a Chinese bun. You can get all sorts of man from the combinis here. The one I partook of this evening was a mushroom stew man and it was kinda tasty. I am gonna miss the man when I go home. Sure 7-11 has all kinds of overly salty snacks, some of which are even edible. I seem to recall not hating something called Taquitos.

Well, basketball was a bust word-wise, and my finger is getting more irate the more I write so I'm agonna wrap it up. L8terz!

Loneliness March

Sorry about that there previous post. I am even more sorry that I don't really have much of an idea of what I'm going to write about today. Tomorrow should be a bit easier, we're heading to a big flea market and those things are always at least a little interesting. Plus it seems that I am going to be playing basketball tomorrow. I'm not sure how or why. Hmm... maybe I should go buy some shorts. I'm not sure what the etiquette is. All my other shorts require belts, are belts kosher in B-Ball? I don't know these things. Oh man, they're all going to laugh at me.

But that will all be grist for tomorrow's mill, whereas today's mill is looking very grist-less. I've always meant to approach my movie reviewing with a bit more... profesionality-ism... ness? But whenever I write such a review, it doesn't sound like ME. I still haven't cracked that nut. Maybe I should keep whacking at it here, on this blog. That would certainly take up more than enough time and space. It might even be useful. Well then, it's settled: I'm too lazy to actually follow through with it.

This is something that always gets me down. My lack of word wrangling ability. I should be a much more accomplished word wrangler. I have all these ideas in my head, but somewhere between the grey of my brain and the black of these keys it all goes pear shaped. Once in a great while it all works perfectly, but it has been a great while since it last happened.

OOOPS! Got a little too introspective there.

Maybe I just need to post on one of my other blogs. Variety is a spicy lunch and all that. I have been meaning to talk a bit about our neighbourhood. It's nice, we like it, and I think it's about time we paint a word type picture of it. Or I could use, like, actual pictures. I have the technology. Plus, if pictures are worth thousands of words, as leading scientists have led me to believe, then just one of those babies would put me up over my daily minimum. But maybe that would be cheating.

Or I could go to my videogame blog and write up something. I have been gaming a lot lately. Mainly old games though, trying to catch up and all that. And next weekend is the Osaka Games Festa, so maybe I'll just wait till then. I could write about Jack Thompson. But to much thought has been wasted on that horribly thoughtless man. I do heartily approve of the motion that whenever someone uses the phrase batshit insane on the intraweb, they must link to Thompson's entry in wikipedia. Like I did just there. That way Thompson and batshit insane will forever be associated together in our hearts and minds. And all search engines. That's something I can get behind.

I also brought that up so I could somewhat smoothly segue into this: I read about the whole JT thing on Eric Burns' http://websnark.com/. Eric (I feel like such a phony calling a man I've never met by his first name, but I can't refer to him as Burns. I'll get confused and start talking about Simpsons stuff. And Eric is more of a Fat Comic Book Guy than a Burns.) uses websnark to talk about and critique webcomics. And anything else that he may want to talk about.

And he uses lots of words. Lots and lots of words at times. And he has a couple webcomics of his own and he's writing a novel this month because that is what you do in November. His word count on said novel is up over 15 thousand. I don't think I've broke a grand yet. That just makes me feel bad. Not that more words equals better books or blogs. But the fact that he can tap so freely into the inkpot in the sky and scrawl out so prolifically without getting his parchment all smudgy and gross humbles me.

But hey, lookee here! This post has more words in it than the last one and it weren't near as hard to type out. If only it worked like this all the time. Only, maybe, it would be better if I could also manage to make these posts interesting.

That Didn't Take Long

If you want to be a hard ass about it, I've already missed a day. I, being not a jerk, would not agree. I started typing this just before midnight, and a day isn't really done until I've had a nice long sleep.

Boy, I sure could use a nice long sleep. I just woke up from a nap, but that is just not the same. I could have just slept right through, stayed in bed, but I woke up for the express purpose of blogging. And maybe watch a bit of 24. But 24 has gotten so stupid lately, I would gladly choose sleep over it. But Carla had some online stuff she needed to finish up, so that's why for I had such a late blog start.

I could've blogged earlier in the day, but I was busy. Cooking, cleaning, various other little things. Plus I talked with Trev for like two and a half hours. That was nice. Real nice.

I'm kinda stretching here, if you couldn't tell. I have no idea what the hell I'm blathering on about. I'm both too tired to think of anything interesting and too lazy to care. That is a winning combination right there.

Crap, something just about floated to the surface of my brain, but then it totally wriggled away. Stupid brain.

I'm too goddamn tired to check to see how many stupid words I've used. Here's some words, just to pad this baby out: purple monky dishwasher incontinent jam monster ape bog frog dog mog pog. This, right here, this is a new low.

G'night folks.

The Water is Awesome

Been seeing a lot of movies lately. Corpse Bride this evening. I liked it. It looked quite lovely. Lots of bits that made me wonder how they did it. I enjoyed it a lot more than that there Nightmare Before Christmas. I felt like I was supposed to like that movie more than I actually did. There was too much singing in that Xmas movie and some weird live action shots quickly edited to and from so you hopefully wouldn't notice their non animated-ness. It was jarring.

But I had none of those problems with Corpse Bride. There were far fewer songs, none of them overstayed their welcome, and all the animation was... animated. I really, really liked the pen at the beginning, the father trying to smile, all the piano playing, and the liquids. It was a really lovely film. But a lot of the boobs, both bouncing and non, were a might bit disturbing. I'm not quite sure what was up with the butterflies at the end, but fairytales don't need to make real sense just fairy tale sense. Speaking of which, that ending was a bit abrupt, but what else really needed to be done? Other than the necrophilia scenes that better be included on the DVD.

The only thing that I didn't enjoy about the film was how full my stomach was during the length of it. We went to an all you can eat country style viking right before the movie. That was not the best of ideas. The food was good, but I always eat more than I need to at those kinds of places. I need to get a little more self control. Plus I think that I'm trying to fatten myself up for my trip back to Canada. I've dropped like 20 pounds since coming here. As soon as I learned this, I started eating more and exercising less. Not on purpose, I just realized it today, but that doesn't change the fact that some part of me doesn't want me to be skinny.

I am why I can't have nice things.

Well That Certainly Sucks

I wrote all kinds of words, placed in an easily read order, I wrote about all sorts of things. Well, mainly about my day yesterday but my day yesterday encompassed all sorts of things. It was good, I deemed it good. I hit the publish post button and it all just fucking vanished. I am a bit fucking pissed.

You see, I outlined in that lost post that since National Novel Writing Month has once again rolled around, I would use it as an impetus to (no, not write a novel, none of us want that) update at least one of my blogs every day. I also wanted every post to be at least 200 words in length. My last, lost post had way more than 200 words contained therein, then the shit cable connection conspired with Blogger's bloated badness to lose my words. Fuckers! Non corporeal fuckers!

Let's see if I can do a quick recap of my Saw and Saw 2 reviews:
Saw 2 is better than Saw 1.
Cary Elwes looks and sounds bad in Saw 1.
The devices in both are creative and gory.
I hate the "Spin the camera around and speed it up!" technique that the filmmakers seem to be in love with.
Both films need more (Read:they ain't got none) boobs. Although I appreciate all the nipples in Saw 2.
The ending in Saw 2 is more twisty but makes less sense than the ending of Saw 2.
I like Saw 2's ending better.
The writing in both is not as clever as it thinks it is.
I am even more clever than I think I am.

I think that puts me over 200 words but still far short of the fabled lost post.

See you tomorrow.

Wherein the Pervert Comes to the Fore

You would have to be a mongoloid moron who's on fire to not pick up on Halloween in Japan. Seriously, the girls just come up to you and tell you how cute and/or cool you are and touch you all over. Plus, the train was so crowded I'm pretty sure I molested at least three different girls. I wish I could have seen what they looked like.

Today, as I was out and about, I passed by a little fashion boutique down a small side street. There was a very cute girl in a very short dress tending the shop. We made eye contact, we both smiled and then she turned away from me. I thought I had repulsed her. Then she bent over, at the waist, and started adjusting her frilly stockings. Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

When I recovered, I crossed the street to look at the cute little puppies in a pet store. There was another cute girl in there who was squatting down and playing with some small, ratlike dog. I could see nearly the entirety (is that even a word?) of her thong. It was leopard skin. Today was a good day.

Dear Christ Why!?!

They are making a sequel to Underworld.

Words fail me.

Cool

I was just now watching the Discovery channel. There is a program on about the Universe and stuff. Stuff like black holes. Whilst explaining black holes, they showed footage from the end of Evil Dead 2. That is just plain cool.

Japan Fashion

Yesterday I saw a very attractive lady walking down the street. She had on a very tight shirt. On this shirt were these words: "I Large Breasts". Under these words was a black and white picture of large breasts. On this picture of the large breasts, right where the nipples would be, were bright pink stars. Exactly under this black and white (and pink!) picture of breasts were real breasts. Lovely large yet perky breasts, unrestrained by any bra. It was quite a sight.

Fanboyism

I don't know if all y'all have heard about this or not. Please click on that there link. Now chew on that for a bit. Unsure of what to think. Here's some more to chew on. Before Nintendo, the accepted form of controller was an uncomfortable stick with a button on the top. Or some unholy mishmash of keypads and click-y sticks. Nintendo invented the directional pad. That was way back in the NES days. The SNES introduced the world to shoulder buttons. The N64 was the first console to have analogue sticks. And four controller ports. With the Gamecube, Nintendo was the first First Party to release wireless controllers.

Let's look at the Microsoft 360 and the PS3 controllers. Dpads? Check. Analogue? Check. Shoulder buttons? Check.

Nintendo knows what the fuck it is doing. Don't be afraid.

Christ man, get excited! Think of the fucking possibilities! A racing game that requires no pushing of buttons at all! Imagine the sniping interface in an FPS! I'm giddy!