This show's the missing link between Evangelion and FLCL. Bakemonogatari fans might find the protagonist's two young sisters familiar as well;
Watch K.K.J. 01 in Animation | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Monday, September 07, 2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Strange Clouds and the Cats Beneath
An odd cloud formation yesterday;
I tried to take some video, but Snow the Cat decided the movie should be about him;
The music is from the Japanese version of Kiki's Delivery Service. It wasn't used in the dubbed version because that's when Disney felt it was important to Americanise their imports as much as possible.
Here are the strange clouds from the mall parking garage;
Here they are after sunset, lit by the lights of the city;
My tweets last night;
A cross-eyed cat is the End Times saviour.
When clouds become behemoth clay pigeons.
And the pope's a Stuart Gordon voyeur.
Quick rogue rabbits steal off with dark engines.
There's been a rabbit on the lawn the past couple nights when I've gotten back from Tim's. The rabbits normally congregate in front of the house, but this one seems to wait a lot longer on the lawn before running away from me. I assume it's the same rabbit just because.
I drank a martini while watching part of Stuart Gordon's The Pit and the Pendulum last night, a 1990 film that resembles Edgar Allan Poe's short story about as much as Gordon's Re-Animator resembled its source material. I remember watching The Pit and the Pendulum when I was a kid and thinking it was one of the most serious, scariest movies I'd seen. I remember being so shocked by the nudity and the guys poking around in that young woman's anus. Now the movie looks so cheesy it seems more like a slightly prudish porno with high production values, except for Lance Henrikson's dead serious performance. His character seems to be existing in an entirely different reality from the other characters, one with psychological subtext and genuinely threatening torture and weapons. Everyone else seems to be in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
I got kind of sad thinking this was the movie I was spending my Saturday night watching, so I switched to watching Yojimbo again. More than any of Kurosawa's movies, Yojimbo seems to me to be about suspense, more than its given credit for. Sanjuro's one man, putting himself between two dangerous groups. Although he seems preternaturally confident and skilled, Kurosawa makes the threat from the other characters believable enough. Unosuke having a gun helps a lot. The scene where Unosuke confronts Sanjuro while the note that would incriminate Sanjuro goes unnoticed on the table never fails to make me tense. It's a perfect example of Hitchcock's "bomb under the table" theory--that a bomb suddenly going off under a table is nowhere near as effective as characters sitting at a table while at least one of them is aware during the conversation that a bomb could go off at any moment.
I tried to take some video, but Snow the Cat decided the movie should be about him;
The music is from the Japanese version of Kiki's Delivery Service. It wasn't used in the dubbed version because that's when Disney felt it was important to Americanise their imports as much as possible.
Here are the strange clouds from the mall parking garage;
Here they are after sunset, lit by the lights of the city;
My tweets last night;
A cross-eyed cat is the End Times saviour.
When clouds become behemoth clay pigeons.
And the pope's a Stuart Gordon voyeur.
Quick rogue rabbits steal off with dark engines.
There's been a rabbit on the lawn the past couple nights when I've gotten back from Tim's. The rabbits normally congregate in front of the house, but this one seems to wait a lot longer on the lawn before running away from me. I assume it's the same rabbit just because.
I drank a martini while watching part of Stuart Gordon's The Pit and the Pendulum last night, a 1990 film that resembles Edgar Allan Poe's short story about as much as Gordon's Re-Animator resembled its source material. I remember watching The Pit and the Pendulum when I was a kid and thinking it was one of the most serious, scariest movies I'd seen. I remember being so shocked by the nudity and the guys poking around in that young woman's anus. Now the movie looks so cheesy it seems more like a slightly prudish porno with high production values, except for Lance Henrikson's dead serious performance. His character seems to be existing in an entirely different reality from the other characters, one with psychological subtext and genuinely threatening torture and weapons. Everyone else seems to be in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
I got kind of sad thinking this was the movie I was spending my Saturday night watching, so I switched to watching Yojimbo again. More than any of Kurosawa's movies, Yojimbo seems to me to be about suspense, more than its given credit for. Sanjuro's one man, putting himself between two dangerous groups. Although he seems preternaturally confident and skilled, Kurosawa makes the threat from the other characters believable enough. Unosuke having a gun helps a lot. The scene where Unosuke confronts Sanjuro while the note that would incriminate Sanjuro goes unnoticed on the table never fails to make me tense. It's a perfect example of Hitchcock's "bomb under the table" theory--that a bomb suddenly going off under a table is nowhere near as effective as characters sitting at a table while at least one of them is aware during the conversation that a bomb could go off at any moment.
Friday, September 04, 2009
The Underrated Virtues
I'm really digging Senator Al Franken, I have to say. I actually like that he's downplaying his comedian past and sounds both humble and inexhaustibly knowledgeable whenever he talks. Yet he still isn't afraid to stick it to T. Boone Pickens while the other Democrats blissfully schmoozed with the billionaire.
And then, a couple days ago, Franken actually went and reasoned with a mob of tea baggers who had been screaming outside his booth at the Minnesota State Fair;
Wow. This guy oughta be president. An independent minded politician who's not a misanthrope? Too, too rare. Here's the unexpected benefit of a comedian turned senator--he's used to hecklers, who can be a lot more vicious than political protestors tend to be nowadays.
All day yesterday was spent on my comic, from when I finished breakfast at 3:30 until I finished uploading it some time after 2am. To-day I realised I'd forgotten the scar on Wircelia's left shoulder and re-uploaded one page--you can see the new and improved chapter 33 here.
My tweets last night;
French fry effects sometimes precede the meal.
I find vegetables almost everywhere.
With endless organisms some can't deal.
There are always Smurfs floating in the air.
And then, a couple days ago, Franken actually went and reasoned with a mob of tea baggers who had been screaming outside his booth at the Minnesota State Fair;
Wow. This guy oughta be president. An independent minded politician who's not a misanthrope? Too, too rare. Here's the unexpected benefit of a comedian turned senator--he's used to hecklers, who can be a lot more vicious than political protestors tend to be nowadays.
All day yesterday was spent on my comic, from when I finished breakfast at 3:30 until I finished uploading it some time after 2am. To-day I realised I'd forgotten the scar on Wircelia's left shoulder and re-uploaded one page--you can see the new and improved chapter 33 here.
My tweets last night;
French fry effects sometimes precede the meal.
I find vegetables almost everywhere.
With endless organisms some can't deal.
There are always Smurfs floating in the air.
Venia and the Faeries
The new Venia's Travels is online, a little later than usual. I got behind from all the lack of sleep last week so I had to do two pages Wednesday and had a lot to colour Thursday night. But here it is--Chapter 33, an ode to love, of sorts.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Yeah, Fucking, Yeah
I've had a really nice day to-day. Nothing complicated, just a lot of drawing while listening to Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, and The Rolling Stones. I heard a discussion on Howard Stern a little while ago about whether or not Hendrix was really high when he performed, whether someone could actually play competently, let alone brilliantly, while on the drugs Hendrix was supposedly on onstage. Looking at some videos on YouTube while eating breakfast to-day, I have to say, if he wasn't high, he was a great actor. What's more, yeah, his fingers are moving quickly with complete precision. The impression you get is someone whose skill is so great that the barrier between himself and his guitar is totally eradicated. You're getting pure information from his brain. I wonder if it could really be possible and, if so, how rare it is.
Two performances spliced together for some reason.
YouTube's sure been getting obnoxious with the advertisements lately. I was watching Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix this morning and ads popped up multiple times for each video. Classy, record companies, trying fatten yourself further with dead artists. I'm just glad so many artists seem to be getting wise to you nowadays. It's no wonder the music with the heaviest promotion is total shit these days.
My tweets last night;
I'm recycling now broken snack boxes.
My wine bottle's left me a room of bread.
Watching from my closet are three foxes.
I need a little caffeine before bed.
I finally figured out I enjoy wine a lot more when I drink it around lunch time. For some reason it gets me kind of wired.
Two performances spliced together for some reason.
YouTube's sure been getting obnoxious with the advertisements lately. I was watching Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix this morning and ads popped up multiple times for each video. Classy, record companies, trying fatten yourself further with dead artists. I'm just glad so many artists seem to be getting wise to you nowadays. It's no wonder the music with the heaviest promotion is total shit these days.
My tweets last night;
I'm recycling now broken snack boxes.
My wine bottle's left me a room of bread.
Watching from my closet are three foxes.
I need a little caffeine before bed.
I finally figured out I enjoy wine a lot more when I drink it around lunch time. For some reason it gets me kind of wired.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Facsimile Connexions
Twitter Sonnet #56
Opposing ear canals are in your head.
Kerouac and Gollum are lost and beat.
This heavy wine is like red liquid lead.
You'll never get home from the car's back seat.
Telephone hopping's how to get places.
Don't let Karl Marx see your blackberry.
So I'm taking my teas through the paces.
Wine has now become my adversary.
I don't know why I have to eat and sleep.
Insomnia yields possible profit.
It really is a shame mead doesn't keep.
Bags of finite coffee beans are bullshit.
Too much water in the bowl drowns cous cous.
An arsenal's concealed in sleeves of Mousse.
I was surprised to find myself actually kind of liking the Buffy/Riley relationship stuff in the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched last night, "Into the Woods". The concept of Riley enjoying the bloodsucking because it signified a greater need for him than what Buffy felt was interesting, and Buffy's inability to trust anyone enough to be comforted by them is a nice aspect of her character to play with. I can see the previous episodes sort of leading up to this now, but it seems like it's a story that could've been told with a lot fewer episodes. Certainly Riley's descent into the bloodsucking addiction seemed silly and awkward until the show let us in.
I read the second story of the newest Sirenia Digest this morning, "PALEOZOIC ANNUNCIATION", which seemed sort of like a vastly superior version of what James Cameron's Avatar appears to be. The lengths to which the lead character goes to establish communication with an alien species do much more to convey the terror of unknown sentients whose abstract cultural concepts are built up differently from familiar, primordial physicality.
Anyway, I'm short on time again to-day.
Opposing ear canals are in your head.
Kerouac and Gollum are lost and beat.
This heavy wine is like red liquid lead.
You'll never get home from the car's back seat.
Telephone hopping's how to get places.
Don't let Karl Marx see your blackberry.
So I'm taking my teas through the paces.
Wine has now become my adversary.
I don't know why I have to eat and sleep.
Insomnia yields possible profit.
It really is a shame mead doesn't keep.
Bags of finite coffee beans are bullshit.
Too much water in the bowl drowns cous cous.
An arsenal's concealed in sleeves of Mousse.
I was surprised to find myself actually kind of liking the Buffy/Riley relationship stuff in the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched last night, "Into the Woods". The concept of Riley enjoying the bloodsucking because it signified a greater need for him than what Buffy felt was interesting, and Buffy's inability to trust anyone enough to be comforted by them is a nice aspect of her character to play with. I can see the previous episodes sort of leading up to this now, but it seems like it's a story that could've been told with a lot fewer episodes. Certainly Riley's descent into the bloodsucking addiction seemed silly and awkward until the show let us in.
I read the second story of the newest Sirenia Digest this morning, "PALEOZOIC ANNUNCIATION", which seemed sort of like a vastly superior version of what James Cameron's Avatar appears to be. The lengths to which the lead character goes to establish communication with an alien species do much more to convey the terror of unknown sentients whose abstract cultural concepts are built up differently from familiar, primordial physicality.
Anyway, I'm short on time again to-day.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
The Violence of Indecision
Very short on time to-day. With breakfast I read the first vignette in the new Sirenia Digest, "WEREWOLF SMILE", which ended up being a nice meditation on violence in art and a predator/prey dichotomy in relationships. Caitlin's Prolegomena mentions David Bowie's Outside album, and the "art crime" murders of that album's story bear some thematic resemblance to what happens in "WEREWOLF SMILE". It's one of those stories from which a sense of horror and dread is aided greatly by the mood of the narrator, as well as references to the infamous real life murder of Elizabeth Short. If, like me, you've seen photos of that woman's body as it was found, you won't be able to help feeling again a mix of sadness, revulsion, and hopelessness, which in this story assists in creating sympathy for the narrator.
I was pleasantly surprised to-day to find the eighth Zan Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei had been subbed and that it was one of the best episodes of the season. Particularly the last segment--I can't find any streaming service that has it subbed, but even if you don't speak Japanese, you might want to watch some of this. The animation's beautiful;
The matter at hand here is people who ask questions as though they haven't made up their mind even though they actually have--the "mystery train" carrying them to a supposedly unknown destination, yet one that's in fact inevitable. Kind of reminds me of the trolley to the graveyard metaphor from Double Indemnity.
My tweets from last night;
Telephone hopping's how to get places.
Don't let Karl Marx see your blackberry.
So I'm taking my teas through the paces.
Wine has now become my adversary.
I ended up trading in my blackberry for a regular cell phone. A blackberry just seemed to decadent to my commie heart, and, anyway, I wasn't going to use half its features. I'm back to drinking lots of green tea.
I was pleasantly surprised to-day to find the eighth Zan Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei had been subbed and that it was one of the best episodes of the season. Particularly the last segment--I can't find any streaming service that has it subbed, but even if you don't speak Japanese, you might want to watch some of this. The animation's beautiful;
The matter at hand here is people who ask questions as though they haven't made up their mind even though they actually have--the "mystery train" carrying them to a supposedly unknown destination, yet one that's in fact inevitable. Kind of reminds me of the trolley to the graveyard metaphor from Double Indemnity.
My tweets from last night;
Telephone hopping's how to get places.
Don't let Karl Marx see your blackberry.
So I'm taking my teas through the paces.
Wine has now become my adversary.
I ended up trading in my blackberry for a regular cell phone. A blackberry just seemed to decadent to my commie heart, and, anyway, I wasn't going to use half its features. I'm back to drinking lots of green tea.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Toothless Vampires
Now I'm really digging Bakemonogatari--Saturday's episode went back to the S&M subtext that first caught my eye about the show, and the thinly disguised kinky dynamic is clear--Araragi, who has supernatural healing abilities, lets himself be abused by beautiful women who need to hurt him to work out their own psychological issues.
This latest episode was the last part in an arc that introduced the athletic lesbian character, Kanbaru, who's jealous of Araragi for capturing Senjogohara's affection. But the layers of story deployed before the characters reach this conclusion themselves are nice--Kanbaru blames the supernaturally extreme violence she wreaks on a monkey's paw granting her wishes in ways she does not expect--and she seems to believe this explanation herself. I love the alternate opening for the episode, "Ambivalent World", which superficially plays like an Aim for the Ace style, optimistic sports series, but with sinister undercurrents;
I'm even growing more comfortable with Araragi's shyness, as I see it now as an aspect of his desire to be punished. And I've been thinking more about the standard "shy guy" in anime and manga--I downloaded the first episode of a hentai series the other night called Stretta. I only watched the first part of the episode, but it featured a guy going to a maid cafe where apparently sexual services could be purchased. The maid seemed happy and eager to perform these--hardly unusual for a character in a porno--but what struck me is the guy, the whole time, acted sincerely shocked by the maid's behaviour, "Oh my god, she's taking her clothes off! Oh my god, she's giving me a blowjob!" etcetera. It's like the Ani DiFranco song about the goldfish with bad memory always being surprised by the little plastic castle--we all know any halfway intelligent person would've figured out sex was happening pretty early in the proceedings, so it seems to me this is a conspicuous play-acting, though perhaps it's not consciously read as such by the typical viewer, even less likely read as such in standard anime and manga where the shy guy often appears. Bakemonogatari might be an honest attempt to analyse the type and what it means that the type is so popular, or is deemed necessary in order for a show to have abnormally affectionate and sexual fantasy women. Perhaps it's a sort of automatic solution for guilt young men are made to feel for being attracted to women's bodies, a solution based on poor understanding of the actual issue of women being treated solely as sexual objects, or just jealousy over the fact that women get to be both beautiful and intelligent and guys feel they can only hope to be the latter.
On kind of the same subject, I find I'm having exactly the same reaction to the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nine episodes in, as the first time I watched it. Well, except I really liked the episode with Amy Adams where the Buffy gang tells Tara's conservative family to fuck off. But I'm hating the Buffy's mom stuff just as much as I did the first time and feeling just as frustrated by wanting more Spike than is being served.
I remembered thinking the episode where Buffy's mom dies was lame, but I'd forgotten about all the cheesy Lifetime movie stuff from earlier in the season where Mrs. Summers was dealing with a brain tumour. Though this time I started thinking about how a two-dimensional, standard sitcom "Mom" character getting cancer might in some way be a discussion of a disease attacking an extremely broad, amorphous concept, but the show isn't really exercising that discussion. I feel more like Joss is punishing me for wanting to see more Spike, "No, you callous viewer, you, you must WEEP FOR BUFFY'S MOTHER." What's more, the precious few moments with Spike are misfires anyway--one of my favourite moments in the entire series comes at the end of "Fool for Love" where Spike is about to make an earnest go at murdering Buffy, only to find her crying and finding he wants to comfort her. The play of emotions on James Marsters face here is great, and the episode does a good job of establishing something of an inferiority complex for Spike that prompts his need to go for big targets, like Slayers, and craft flashy styles and mannerisms for himself. But it's like the writers became worried about the amount of sympathy the episode generated for him, because the only times he's appeared in the two episodes afterwards, he's committing piddling stalker crimes--sniffing Buffy's sweater, stealing photos from her basement. I don't buy it--Spike's been around over a hundred years at this point, he's used to getting what he wants, and is concerned for his self image. This stuff is clearly here to set up for Buffy really shutting him down.
Meanwhile--hey--he's a murderer. We don't need this. If we feel bad for Spike when Buffy spurns him while she's unquestionably the heroine and he's a soulless killer--well, that's interesting. When you have an audience whole heartedly liking something they know they're not supposed to like, that's a great moment in art. Though that assumes mortality means anything on Buffy, and, of course, it increasingly doesn't. Oh, well.
My tweets last night;
Opposing ear canals are in your head.
Kerouac and Gollum are lost and beat.
This heavy wine is like red liquid lead.
You'll never get home from the car's back seat.
This latest episode was the last part in an arc that introduced the athletic lesbian character, Kanbaru, who's jealous of Araragi for capturing Senjogohara's affection. But the layers of story deployed before the characters reach this conclusion themselves are nice--Kanbaru blames the supernaturally extreme violence she wreaks on a monkey's paw granting her wishes in ways she does not expect--and she seems to believe this explanation herself. I love the alternate opening for the episode, "Ambivalent World", which superficially plays like an Aim for the Ace style, optimistic sports series, but with sinister undercurrents;
I'm even growing more comfortable with Araragi's shyness, as I see it now as an aspect of his desire to be punished. And I've been thinking more about the standard "shy guy" in anime and manga--I downloaded the first episode of a hentai series the other night called Stretta. I only watched the first part of the episode, but it featured a guy going to a maid cafe where apparently sexual services could be purchased. The maid seemed happy and eager to perform these--hardly unusual for a character in a porno--but what struck me is the guy, the whole time, acted sincerely shocked by the maid's behaviour, "Oh my god, she's taking her clothes off! Oh my god, she's giving me a blowjob!" etcetera. It's like the Ani DiFranco song about the goldfish with bad memory always being surprised by the little plastic castle--we all know any halfway intelligent person would've figured out sex was happening pretty early in the proceedings, so it seems to me this is a conspicuous play-acting, though perhaps it's not consciously read as such by the typical viewer, even less likely read as such in standard anime and manga where the shy guy often appears. Bakemonogatari might be an honest attempt to analyse the type and what it means that the type is so popular, or is deemed necessary in order for a show to have abnormally affectionate and sexual fantasy women. Perhaps it's a sort of automatic solution for guilt young men are made to feel for being attracted to women's bodies, a solution based on poor understanding of the actual issue of women being treated solely as sexual objects, or just jealousy over the fact that women get to be both beautiful and intelligent and guys feel they can only hope to be the latter.
On kind of the same subject, I find I'm having exactly the same reaction to the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nine episodes in, as the first time I watched it. Well, except I really liked the episode with Amy Adams where the Buffy gang tells Tara's conservative family to fuck off. But I'm hating the Buffy's mom stuff just as much as I did the first time and feeling just as frustrated by wanting more Spike than is being served.
I remembered thinking the episode where Buffy's mom dies was lame, but I'd forgotten about all the cheesy Lifetime movie stuff from earlier in the season where Mrs. Summers was dealing with a brain tumour. Though this time I started thinking about how a two-dimensional, standard sitcom "Mom" character getting cancer might in some way be a discussion of a disease attacking an extremely broad, amorphous concept, but the show isn't really exercising that discussion. I feel more like Joss is punishing me for wanting to see more Spike, "No, you callous viewer, you, you must WEEP FOR BUFFY'S MOTHER." What's more, the precious few moments with Spike are misfires anyway--one of my favourite moments in the entire series comes at the end of "Fool for Love" where Spike is about to make an earnest go at murdering Buffy, only to find her crying and finding he wants to comfort her. The play of emotions on James Marsters face here is great, and the episode does a good job of establishing something of an inferiority complex for Spike that prompts his need to go for big targets, like Slayers, and craft flashy styles and mannerisms for himself. But it's like the writers became worried about the amount of sympathy the episode generated for him, because the only times he's appeared in the two episodes afterwards, he's committing piddling stalker crimes--sniffing Buffy's sweater, stealing photos from her basement. I don't buy it--Spike's been around over a hundred years at this point, he's used to getting what he wants, and is concerned for his self image. This stuff is clearly here to set up for Buffy really shutting him down.
Meanwhile--hey--he's a murderer. We don't need this. If we feel bad for Spike when Buffy spurns him while she's unquestionably the heroine and he's a soulless killer--well, that's interesting. When you have an audience whole heartedly liking something they know they're not supposed to like, that's a great moment in art. Though that assumes mortality means anything on Buffy, and, of course, it increasingly doesn't. Oh, well.
My tweets last night;
Opposing ear canals are in your head.
Kerouac and Gollum are lost and beat.
This heavy wine is like red liquid lead.
You'll never get home from the car's back seat.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Incorporeal Assets
Twitter Sonnet #55
Malls are haunted by con ghosts of commerce.
I crawled there from ocean society.
My phone instincts have only gotten worse.
But I've kicked telegram anxiety.
Old machine mouths would speak to new elf ears.
Anarchy's safely looked at online now.
Detective mice smoke their pipes on the gears.
They cannot conceive of skinning a cow.
Invest in paper worms with metal guts.
But Lawrence maintains nothing is written.
Britain may fall for want of Pizza Huts.
Valuable leaves are not for the kitten.
Yoked with electrodes is our Fred Astaire.
The uncashed cheque is remembered somewhere.
Yesterday I received this letter from my car insurance company;
Dear Insured:
A reconciliation of our outstanding refund checks reflects that a check issued to you by Wawanesa Insurance in 2006 has never been negotiated. The amount of the refund check was $8.00. We have voided the original refund check and you will find enclosed a replacement check.
Someone has a really fun job.
I rolled sixty dollars worth of quarters yesterday, and I haven't even gotten through half of my loose change. I guess what I've learned about myself this weekend is that I accumulate a lot of money in very small quantities. I often imagine capitalism as a frustrated child, constantly trying to get my attention.
Yesterday Tim ran my human rogue through Dead Mines again. Now she has all kinds of Defias gear and is wielding two swords, the Thief's Blade and the Butcher's Blade, though I kind of miss the rolling pin she had until a little while ago;
I've gotten my rogue, Galatea, to level 21 now, neglecting my level 40 warrior. I've been enjoying the Disneyland Fantasy Land quality of the human lands, while I guess the undead areas are more Haunted Mansion.
Anyway, I'd better get back to my comic . . .
Malls are haunted by con ghosts of commerce.
I crawled there from ocean society.
My phone instincts have only gotten worse.
But I've kicked telegram anxiety.
Old machine mouths would speak to new elf ears.
Anarchy's safely looked at online now.
Detective mice smoke their pipes on the gears.
They cannot conceive of skinning a cow.
Invest in paper worms with metal guts.
But Lawrence maintains nothing is written.
Britain may fall for want of Pizza Huts.
Valuable leaves are not for the kitten.
Yoked with electrodes is our Fred Astaire.
The uncashed cheque is remembered somewhere.
Yesterday I received this letter from my car insurance company;
Dear Insured:
A reconciliation of our outstanding refund checks reflects that a check issued to you by Wawanesa Insurance in 2006 has never been negotiated. The amount of the refund check was $8.00. We have voided the original refund check and you will find enclosed a replacement check.
Someone has a really fun job.
I rolled sixty dollars worth of quarters yesterday, and I haven't even gotten through half of my loose change. I guess what I've learned about myself this weekend is that I accumulate a lot of money in very small quantities. I often imagine capitalism as a frustrated child, constantly trying to get my attention.
Yesterday Tim ran my human rogue through Dead Mines again. Now she has all kinds of Defias gear and is wielding two swords, the Thief's Blade and the Butcher's Blade, though I kind of miss the rolling pin she had until a little while ago;
I've gotten my rogue, Galatea, to level 21 now, neglecting my level 40 warrior. I've been enjoying the Disneyland Fantasy Land quality of the human lands, while I guess the undead areas are more Haunted Mansion.
Anyway, I'd better get back to my comic . . .
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Pickled Chaos
I see pictures are circulating of the Dawn Treader from the Narnia movie of the same name. Actually looks pretty much the way I always imagined it--and pretty close to the illustrations. But there were a lot of great sets, costumes, and props in the first movie (I never saw the second). Hopefully now that someone besides Andrew Adamson's directing, we'll have a Narnia movie worth seeing. Of course, there's every possibility it'll still suck, though I actually see the vastly reduced budget as potentially a good thing as perhaps it might force a filmmaker to try to create suspense and tension with pure composition, lighting, and lots of the mysterious unseen. Do I even have to point out C.S. Lewis' printed word succeeds far better at creature-making than the films' cgi?
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader's such a great fucking book, a good movie out of it would be a really nice surprise.
My tweets last night;
Old machine mouths would speak to new elf ears.
Anarchy's safely looked at online now.
Detective mice smoke their pipes on the gears.
They cannot conceive of skinning a cow.
My sister sent me a link to photos from BlizzCon in which she's featured--she's the blonde girl on the left in the third to last picture and she's in the last picture on that page. Apparently the price of admission is 125 dollars for both days. Which seems absurd when Comic-Con costs only 75 dollars for four days and there isn't, strictly speaking, anything at BlizzCon. If you spend a hundred twenty five dollars to play shuffleboard and get autographs from the booth girls, something's wrong. There was the Ozzy Osbourne concert, I suppose.
I was struck by this crowd shot where you can see one guy's wearing a Dark Knight Joker t-shirt. And it seemed to me a nice indicator of the sort of counterfeit freedom many World of Warcraft players subscribe to. Here's an emblem of chaos and anarchy, but it's hard to imagine this guy jay-walking. It's easier to think of the world as truly a chaotic free for all when your world is contained on the internet.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader's such a great fucking book, a good movie out of it would be a really nice surprise.
My tweets last night;
Old machine mouths would speak to new elf ears.
Anarchy's safely looked at online now.
Detective mice smoke their pipes on the gears.
They cannot conceive of skinning a cow.
My sister sent me a link to photos from BlizzCon in which she's featured--she's the blonde girl on the left in the third to last picture and she's in the last picture on that page. Apparently the price of admission is 125 dollars for both days. Which seems absurd when Comic-Con costs only 75 dollars for four days and there isn't, strictly speaking, anything at BlizzCon. If you spend a hundred twenty five dollars to play shuffleboard and get autographs from the booth girls, something's wrong. There was the Ozzy Osbourne concert, I suppose.
I was struck by this crowd shot where you can see one guy's wearing a Dark Knight Joker t-shirt. And it seemed to me a nice indicator of the sort of counterfeit freedom many World of Warcraft players subscribe to. Here's an emblem of chaos and anarchy, but it's hard to imagine this guy jay-walking. It's easier to think of the world as truly a chaotic free for all when your world is contained on the internet.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Finding the Summer Frost
My tweets last night;
Malls are haunted by con ghosts of commerce.
I crawled there from ocean society.
My phone instincts have only gotten worse.
But I've kicked telegram anxiety.
Which is to say, I got a blackberry yesterday. I feel sort of like I got fleeced, and it put me in a bad mood. At least I was able to get online to-day and switch my plan from a hundred dollars a month to seventy dollars a month. And Morrissey on my mp3 alarm clock put me in a good mood. But I'm still not sure I'm happy about this thing.
I was also in Ocean Beach yesterday, where I stopped in at the Rite Aid where I worked for three months several years ago. There was no one there I recognised, and it was eerie being in the place and getting rung up by someone using a register I know I used to know how to use but have absolutely no idea about it now. It's amazing how completely my memory on that got wiped. I remembered learning it very quickly.
Mainly I remember working in the freezer to stock ice cream. I used to have to bring my leather bomber jacket to work every day in the middle of summer.
I finally got to drawing yesterday on the new Chapter. It was the happiest I'd felt in days. More and more, it seems to me when I'm immersed in drawing it's the truest thing in the world. So I might as well get back at it now . . .
Malls are haunted by con ghosts of commerce.
I crawled there from ocean society.
My phone instincts have only gotten worse.
But I've kicked telegram anxiety.
Which is to say, I got a blackberry yesterday. I feel sort of like I got fleeced, and it put me in a bad mood. At least I was able to get online to-day and switch my plan from a hundred dollars a month to seventy dollars a month. And Morrissey on my mp3 alarm clock put me in a good mood. But I'm still not sure I'm happy about this thing.
I was also in Ocean Beach yesterday, where I stopped in at the Rite Aid where I worked for three months several years ago. There was no one there I recognised, and it was eerie being in the place and getting rung up by someone using a register I know I used to know how to use but have absolutely no idea about it now. It's amazing how completely my memory on that got wiped. I remembered learning it very quickly.
Mainly I remember working in the freezer to stock ice cream. I used to have to bring my leather bomber jacket to work every day in the middle of summer.
I finally got to drawing yesterday on the new Chapter. It was the happiest I'd felt in days. More and more, it seems to me when I'm immersed in drawing it's the truest thing in the world. So I might as well get back at it now . . .
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Second Nature Demonic Summoning
Twitter Sonnet #54
I held distant doors open for babies.
So my journey was kind of not in vain.
County's covered with miles of maybes.
My skull filled with a single useless brain.
Twitter hides shyly behind error drapes.
There's no shield from the affection of Lum.
The day's drowned in the red vessels of grapes.
Pan knows grapefruit was created for rum.
Dampened brains collect layers of grey lint.
I can't see my way to a fresh squeezed juice.
Texts of human progress are left unsent.
Wonder what motor skills I can deduce.
Swing shadows moving are fine substitutes.
Escaping dirt are running mandrake roots.
More noises around the house waking me up to-day, and I was having trouble sleeping before that, waking up at 6am and reading Anne Sexton. But I made myself stay in bed until 2:30 and I think I feel rested enough to be useful to-day.
I watched the first regular episode of Twin Peaks last night, the one after the pilot, and I got to thinking about how subtle and yet crucial some aspects of an artist's abilities are. The episode's directed by Duwayne Dunham, who normally works as David Lynch's editor, and it's curious how ineffective his style is even when he's using exactly the same actors, sets, characters, music, and screenwriters as the far more effective pilot episode, directed by Lynch. A moment that stands out for me is a scene where James, being led to his cell, is taunted by Mike and Bobby in another cell. Both episodes have a scene like this. Lynch chose to shoot James from a distance and give his eyes dark shadows while going to extreme close-ups of Bobby's face. Somehow this creates a real menacing feeling, as James conveys practically nothing but somehow the lighting and camera distance make him seem vulnerable to Bobby's uncomfortably close face, bared teeth, and slightly inscrutable yet clearly threatening barking. Dunham, meanwhile, employs diluted lighting, lets James get close enough to give Bobby an absolutely empty look, and Bobby says something conventionally threatening. Not half as effective.
But still a basically enjoyable episode, especially for Agent Cooper's breakfast scene with Audrey.
I held distant doors open for babies.
So my journey was kind of not in vain.
County's covered with miles of maybes.
My skull filled with a single useless brain.
Twitter hides shyly behind error drapes.
There's no shield from the affection of Lum.
The day's drowned in the red vessels of grapes.
Pan knows grapefruit was created for rum.
Dampened brains collect layers of grey lint.
I can't see my way to a fresh squeezed juice.
Texts of human progress are left unsent.
Wonder what motor skills I can deduce.
Swing shadows moving are fine substitutes.
Escaping dirt are running mandrake roots.
More noises around the house waking me up to-day, and I was having trouble sleeping before that, waking up at 6am and reading Anne Sexton. But I made myself stay in bed until 2:30 and I think I feel rested enough to be useful to-day.
I watched the first regular episode of Twin Peaks last night, the one after the pilot, and I got to thinking about how subtle and yet crucial some aspects of an artist's abilities are. The episode's directed by Duwayne Dunham, who normally works as David Lynch's editor, and it's curious how ineffective his style is even when he's using exactly the same actors, sets, characters, music, and screenwriters as the far more effective pilot episode, directed by Lynch. A moment that stands out for me is a scene where James, being led to his cell, is taunted by Mike and Bobby in another cell. Both episodes have a scene like this. Lynch chose to shoot James from a distance and give his eyes dark shadows while going to extreme close-ups of Bobby's face. Somehow this creates a real menacing feeling, as James conveys practically nothing but somehow the lighting and camera distance make him seem vulnerable to Bobby's uncomfortably close face, bared teeth, and slightly inscrutable yet clearly threatening barking. Dunham, meanwhile, employs diluted lighting, lets James get close enough to give Bobby an absolutely empty look, and Bobby says something conventionally threatening. Not half as effective.
But still a basically enjoyable episode, especially for Agent Cooper's breakfast scene with Audrey.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Do Not War with My Web
I saw a bunch of funnel web spiders as I was walking home from my parents' house last night and I took pictures;
I'm starting to pick up on a subtle hostility from people who see me taking pictures of spiders. A car drove past behind me while I was taking these and a young guy angrily yelled out, "What are you doing?!" I'm taking pictures of spiders, man. What are you doing?
So, so tired to-day. I'd set my alarm for 2pm, fully an hour later than I've normally been waking up, in the hopes of being properly rested to-day to go back over the Chapter 33 script and come up with rough drawings. But someone was having a good time with his leaf blower outside my window at 9am. This gentleman and his friend found various noisy activities with which to amuse themselves in the vicinity of my window over the course of the succeeding two hours.
Not much sleep for me. But several snippets of sort of unpleasant, violent dreams. One involving a high speed red monorail on a very high altitude track that stopped at a small, floating mall platform where I wanted to buy DVDs. The place was crowded with pretty girls dressed as prostitutes from the 50s, all talking loudly to each other or into their cell phones. And in another dream, I was part of a group of four kids investigating a large old house which turned out to be haunted by a big, floating Asian woman's head. Somehow we knew she was sucking the life out of all the kids in a nearby orphanage and to kill her we had to peel the flesh off her face in layers. She was screaming when my mp3 alarm clock woke me up with the Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime", which I'd never realised before begins with a high pitched noise of some kind.
I'm okay for about an hour after I've had coffee on a day like this, but I'm already getting into the mode where I forget what I'm doing half a minute after I've start doing it. I hate this mode.
My tweets from last night;
Twitter hides shyly behind error drapes.
There's no shield from the affection of Lum.
The day's drowned in the red vessels of grapes.
Pan knows grapefruit was created for rum.
Happy birthday, Felis Demens.
I'm starting to pick up on a subtle hostility from people who see me taking pictures of spiders. A car drove past behind me while I was taking these and a young guy angrily yelled out, "What are you doing?!" I'm taking pictures of spiders, man. What are you doing?
So, so tired to-day. I'd set my alarm for 2pm, fully an hour later than I've normally been waking up, in the hopes of being properly rested to-day to go back over the Chapter 33 script and come up with rough drawings. But someone was having a good time with his leaf blower outside my window at 9am. This gentleman and his friend found various noisy activities with which to amuse themselves in the vicinity of my window over the course of the succeeding two hours.
Not much sleep for me. But several snippets of sort of unpleasant, violent dreams. One involving a high speed red monorail on a very high altitude track that stopped at a small, floating mall platform where I wanted to buy DVDs. The place was crowded with pretty girls dressed as prostitutes from the 50s, all talking loudly to each other or into their cell phones. And in another dream, I was part of a group of four kids investigating a large old house which turned out to be haunted by a big, floating Asian woman's head. Somehow we knew she was sucking the life out of all the kids in a nearby orphanage and to kill her we had to peel the flesh off her face in layers. She was screaming when my mp3 alarm clock woke me up with the Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime", which I'd never realised before begins with a high pitched noise of some kind.
I'm okay for about an hour after I've had coffee on a day like this, but I'm already getting into the mode where I forget what I'm doing half a minute after I've start doing it. I hate this mode.
My tweets from last night;
Twitter hides shyly behind error drapes.
There's no shield from the affection of Lum.
The day's drowned in the red vessels of grapes.
Pan knows grapefruit was created for rum.
Happy birthday, Felis Demens.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Big Jokes
Last night's tweets;
I held distant doors open for babies.
So my journey was kind of not in vain.
County's covered with miles of maybes.
My skull filled with a single useless brain.
Writing at strange coffee shops seems to help me get started on a new script sometimes, but last night I ended up just buying coffee. I had too many things I wanted to do with Chapter 33--every time I started to address one item, another part of me would freak out that I was maybe forgetting two of the others. The fact that I was weirdly groggy yesterday certainly didn't help.
Of course, when I wrote the script to-day, it came out having almost nothing to do with any of the items on my agenda. But it's a necessary series of events that I think will strengthen the narrative.
One of the things I really admire about Inglourious Basterds is its ability to switch easily between parody and drama without dissonance. Last night I was thinking about the very thin line between comedy and tragedy as I watched the Rifftrax of The Room, a fascinating independent film from 2003. I don't think I could get through it without the Rifftrax, but I can understand why it gets midnight showings and why people see it again and again. It's not just bad, it's bad in a way no other movie is bad.
The film's auteur--writer, producer, director, and star, Tommy Wiseau--has spent some time trying to convince people that the movie was intended to be a comedy all along, but it's the unmistakably earnest quality that makes it so fascinating. Funded entirely by Wiseau, six million dollars out of his own pocket, the movie feels a bit like the faux suicide note of a self absorbed teenager, depicting Wiseau's character Johnny as a "wonderful man" whose girlfriend and best friend cheat on him with each other for vague and sometimes contradictory reasons. The plot is sort of astonishingly plain with characterisations that seem to come from someone who doesn't actually credit people other than himself with having a soul. As the love triangle drama the movie tries to be, it fails, but as an exploration of its director's own personality, it's actually quite illuminating. This movie is a singular artefact; it's what happens when someone who's not an artist has the absolute confidence he is one and the money to execute his project. Wiseau's a genuine, modern day Ed Wood. Almost a Werner Herzog character.
And so, ironically, it is a valuable piece of art. I suppose it's in line with Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame idea--that any human being, regardless of whether or not he or she is an artist, is capable of submitting a valuable artistic contribution to the public discourse.
Apparently Tommy Wiseau guest starred on an episode of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, clips from which I watched to-day while I ate breakfast, and that sort of deadpan comedy seems to suit him well. Tim and Eric seems to find comedy in the realisation that what unites most of humanity is a fundamental creepiness and inadequacy. Which is I guess why it's funny in short doses but becomes increasingly depressing the more I watch it. I needed a chaser, which for me turned out to be YouTube footage of Tori Amos performing "Leather" live in 1994. Early Tori Amos is a cure somehow for the weight left on me by a Tim and Eric sketch that seemed to be about the common ugliness of affection. I guess, when you think about it, the two items were almost about the same thing, but it's comforting I can tell Amos feels about as unhappy about it as me. It's the fact that she seems to feel there can be something better, I think.
I held distant doors open for babies.
So my journey was kind of not in vain.
County's covered with miles of maybes.
My skull filled with a single useless brain.
Writing at strange coffee shops seems to help me get started on a new script sometimes, but last night I ended up just buying coffee. I had too many things I wanted to do with Chapter 33--every time I started to address one item, another part of me would freak out that I was maybe forgetting two of the others. The fact that I was weirdly groggy yesterday certainly didn't help.
Of course, when I wrote the script to-day, it came out having almost nothing to do with any of the items on my agenda. But it's a necessary series of events that I think will strengthen the narrative.
One of the things I really admire about Inglourious Basterds is its ability to switch easily between parody and drama without dissonance. Last night I was thinking about the very thin line between comedy and tragedy as I watched the Rifftrax of The Room, a fascinating independent film from 2003. I don't think I could get through it without the Rifftrax, but I can understand why it gets midnight showings and why people see it again and again. It's not just bad, it's bad in a way no other movie is bad.
The film's auteur--writer, producer, director, and star, Tommy Wiseau--has spent some time trying to convince people that the movie was intended to be a comedy all along, but it's the unmistakably earnest quality that makes it so fascinating. Funded entirely by Wiseau, six million dollars out of his own pocket, the movie feels a bit like the faux suicide note of a self absorbed teenager, depicting Wiseau's character Johnny as a "wonderful man" whose girlfriend and best friend cheat on him with each other for vague and sometimes contradictory reasons. The plot is sort of astonishingly plain with characterisations that seem to come from someone who doesn't actually credit people other than himself with having a soul. As the love triangle drama the movie tries to be, it fails, but as an exploration of its director's own personality, it's actually quite illuminating. This movie is a singular artefact; it's what happens when someone who's not an artist has the absolute confidence he is one and the money to execute his project. Wiseau's a genuine, modern day Ed Wood. Almost a Werner Herzog character.
And so, ironically, it is a valuable piece of art. I suppose it's in line with Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame idea--that any human being, regardless of whether or not he or she is an artist, is capable of submitting a valuable artistic contribution to the public discourse.
Apparently Tommy Wiseau guest starred on an episode of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, clips from which I watched to-day while I ate breakfast, and that sort of deadpan comedy seems to suit him well. Tim and Eric seems to find comedy in the realisation that what unites most of humanity is a fundamental creepiness and inadequacy. Which is I guess why it's funny in short doses but becomes increasingly depressing the more I watch it. I needed a chaser, which for me turned out to be YouTube footage of Tori Amos performing "Leather" live in 1994. Early Tori Amos is a cure somehow for the weight left on me by a Tim and Eric sketch that seemed to be about the common ugliness of affection. I guess, when you think about it, the two items were almost about the same thing, but it's comforting I can tell Amos feels about as unhappy about it as me. It's the fact that she seems to feel there can be something better, I think.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Quality Webbing
Here's some footage of one of the big orange spiders that are again constructing massive webs throughout the neighbourhood;
Music is The Pogues doing their rendition of "Star of the County Down".
Still feeling a bit groggy, four and a half hours after waking up and drinking a pot of extra bold coffee. It can't be a hangover--I didn't drink anything last night after the scotch, figuring I'd had enough alcohol for the day, which led to an abnormally sober session of World of Warcraft after I watched Yojimbo again. I think I've crammed enough frivolity and art appreciation into the last couple days, I think I'll feel okay getting to work on the next chapter of my comic to-day.
On Saturday night, I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a movie I'd somehow expected to be much better than it actually was. Sean Penn's character could easily have been a lot more fun if he simply never learned his lesson by the end of the movie. The abortion sequence was kind of banal and awkward, despite the fact that Jennifer Jason Leigh turned in what was easily the film's best performance, and actually came off far sexier than Phoebe Cates.
Mainly, the movie felt like a series of character studies that not only felt unfinished, but barely even begun. Damone seems cool, turns out to be a jerk, and . . . so what. The shy lead guy cockblocks the viewer in his first makeout scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh and has no arc, neither overcoming or learning to accept his shyness or even exploring in any way its nature. I couldn't even get a bead on Judge Reinhold's character--I feel like I know Moltar on Space Ghost, Coast to Coast better. It didn't help that none of the teenage characters were played by anyone who looked like a teenager, particularly not the guy playing Damone. They didn't even seem to be written as teenagers, it was like watching a half-written movie about people in their 20s attending high school.
Twitter Sonnet #53
Somewhere in my headache a brain yet lives.
No amount of cola beats a coffee.
Good cinema's carved with very big knives.
Crocodiles are big, slow and daffy.
Most dwarves have way too much time on their hands.
At least I can always rely on them.
One day I will conquer all English lands.
And have a different tea for every limb.
Spiders instruct thieves with physical pain.
Empty boxes can only teach so much.
Sprites and dragons flit dimly through the rain.
Yakuza wars require a light touch.
Coffee's the thing that creates human souls.
With it, oatmeal spackles in from your bowls.
Music is The Pogues doing their rendition of "Star of the County Down".
Still feeling a bit groggy, four and a half hours after waking up and drinking a pot of extra bold coffee. It can't be a hangover--I didn't drink anything last night after the scotch, figuring I'd had enough alcohol for the day, which led to an abnormally sober session of World of Warcraft after I watched Yojimbo again. I think I've crammed enough frivolity and art appreciation into the last couple days, I think I'll feel okay getting to work on the next chapter of my comic to-day.
On Saturday night, I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a movie I'd somehow expected to be much better than it actually was. Sean Penn's character could easily have been a lot more fun if he simply never learned his lesson by the end of the movie. The abortion sequence was kind of banal and awkward, despite the fact that Jennifer Jason Leigh turned in what was easily the film's best performance, and actually came off far sexier than Phoebe Cates.
Mainly, the movie felt like a series of character studies that not only felt unfinished, but barely even begun. Damone seems cool, turns out to be a jerk, and . . . so what. The shy lead guy cockblocks the viewer in his first makeout scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh and has no arc, neither overcoming or learning to accept his shyness or even exploring in any way its nature. I couldn't even get a bead on Judge Reinhold's character--I feel like I know Moltar on Space Ghost, Coast to Coast better. It didn't help that none of the teenage characters were played by anyone who looked like a teenager, particularly not the guy playing Damone. They didn't even seem to be written as teenagers, it was like watching a half-written movie about people in their 20s attending high school.
Twitter Sonnet #53
Somewhere in my headache a brain yet lives.
No amount of cola beats a coffee.
Good cinema's carved with very big knives.
Crocodiles are big, slow and daffy.
Most dwarves have way too much time on their hands.
At least I can always rely on them.
One day I will conquer all English lands.
And have a different tea for every limb.
Spiders instruct thieves with physical pain.
Empty boxes can only teach so much.
Sprites and dragons flit dimly through the rain.
Yakuza wars require a light touch.
Coffee's the thing that creates human souls.
With it, oatmeal spackles in from your bowls.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Default Belle of the Ball
I just had an object lesson in how alcohol can slow reaction time--walking back from my parents' house, I spotted one of those enormous webs with a gigantic orange spider in the middle I tend to post photos of from time to time--I spotted it a second before I walked into it. Fortunately, I saw the spider, a specimen with a particularly bloated orange abdomen, scrambling up the remains of the web.
I'd had a scotch at my parents' house, where I talked to my sister, who'd recently returned from BlizzCon. BlizzCon, judging from my sister's description, must be the saddest place on earth.
She told me the vast majority of the people there were men ages 40 to 50, large, and extremely smelly. She said when she walked to the restroom, she had to go through curtains of body odour. She said there was maybe one girl for every twenty guys and that, despite the fact that she and her co-worker weren't in WoW costumes and didn't know the first thing about the game, they were both treated like celebrities simply for being pretty girls. I'm not exaggerating.
My sister and her friend Kelly were there running a shuffleboard game as part of a promotion for some computer hardware she didn't know much about. When a Con goer asked her about it, she referred him to one of the tech guys and he said, "I should've known you were a dumb blonde. No offence." Other guys walking past shouted "Whores!" at her and Kelly. I speculated to my sister that the ease of escape from social situations and anonymity on the internet breeds people whose social skills are made up entirely of inconsiderate and insensitive devices.
On the other hand, when another guy asked her where she was from, and when she told him, he replied, "Oh, I thought you were from heaven." Which, you know. Was nice, at least.
When my sister and Kelly decided to go on a ride set up for Starcraft, which was a metal sphere with wrist, ankle, and waist straps that suspended a person in the centre while the whole contraption spun horizontally and vertically, an entire crowd of cheering guys formed who preceded to line up afterwards to pose for pictures with the girls and to get autographs from them.
So. BlizzCon sounds even less worthwhile now. Though my sister also said she met a couple who'd met through WoW, which seemed sweet, though I can't imagine how one could even begin a relationship like that through the game.
My tweets from last night;
Most dwarves have way too much time on their hands.
At least I can always rely on them.
One day I will conquer all English lands.
And have a different tea for every limb.
I discovered yesterday that Lauren Bacall twitters thanks to Bill Corbett retweeting a comment from the lady that she posted as three tweets;
Yes I saw Twilight my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever.After the "film" was over I wanted to..smack her accros her head with my shoe, but I do not want a book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die, so instead I gave her a...DVD of Murnau's 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, now thats a vampire film! and that goes for all of you! watch Nosferatu instead!
Epic, as the kids say, win.
I'd had a scotch at my parents' house, where I talked to my sister, who'd recently returned from BlizzCon. BlizzCon, judging from my sister's description, must be the saddest place on earth.
She told me the vast majority of the people there were men ages 40 to 50, large, and extremely smelly. She said when she walked to the restroom, she had to go through curtains of body odour. She said there was maybe one girl for every twenty guys and that, despite the fact that she and her co-worker weren't in WoW costumes and didn't know the first thing about the game, they were both treated like celebrities simply for being pretty girls. I'm not exaggerating.
My sister and her friend Kelly were there running a shuffleboard game as part of a promotion for some computer hardware she didn't know much about. When a Con goer asked her about it, she referred him to one of the tech guys and he said, "I should've known you were a dumb blonde. No offence." Other guys walking past shouted "Whores!" at her and Kelly. I speculated to my sister that the ease of escape from social situations and anonymity on the internet breeds people whose social skills are made up entirely of inconsiderate and insensitive devices.
On the other hand, when another guy asked her where she was from, and when she told him, he replied, "Oh, I thought you were from heaven." Which, you know. Was nice, at least.
When my sister and Kelly decided to go on a ride set up for Starcraft, which was a metal sphere with wrist, ankle, and waist straps that suspended a person in the centre while the whole contraption spun horizontally and vertically, an entire crowd of cheering guys formed who preceded to line up afterwards to pose for pictures with the girls and to get autographs from them.
So. BlizzCon sounds even less worthwhile now. Though my sister also said she met a couple who'd met through WoW, which seemed sweet, though I can't imagine how one could even begin a relationship like that through the game.
My tweets from last night;
Most dwarves have way too much time on their hands.
At least I can always rely on them.
One day I will conquer all English lands.
And have a different tea for every limb.
I discovered yesterday that Lauren Bacall twitters thanks to Bill Corbett retweeting a comment from the lady that she posted as three tweets;
Yes I saw Twilight my granddaughter made me watch it, she said it was the greatest vampire film ever.After the "film" was over I wanted to..smack her accros her head with my shoe, but I do not want a book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die, so instead I gave her a...DVD of Murnau's 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, now thats a vampire film! and that goes for all of you! watch Nosferatu instead!
Epic, as the kids say, win.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Glorious Monsters
With the possible exception of Kill Bill, I've noticed something that defines a Quentin Tarantino movie is a lack of focus and a rather arbitrary point of view. We don't seem to see his movies from the perspective of anyone but him, the cinema lover. None of his movies--not even Kill Bill--have a real nucleus character, the way Peter Jackson felt it essential the Lord of the Rings movies should have (Frodo). The Bride is almost a MacGuffin at times, but our appreciation of, say, O-Ren Ishii's story requires us to divorce our sympathies from The Bride for at least a moment. And this can be a great strength as we realise in his films that there aren't any real "good guys" and "bad guys", just people with conflicting motives and needs. "That woman deserves her revenge . . . and we deserve to die. But then again, so does she. So I guess we'll just see, won’t we?" as Michael Madsen's character puts it in Kill Bill.
There's a moment in Inglourious Basterds where Brad Pitt's character, Aldo Raine, holds forth on how the Nazis are inhuman, but the previous scene had already contradicted this idea, not by showing a "good side" to a Nazi character, but by laboriously conveying his thought process, reasoning, and tactics. It's a scene that recalls the openings of both Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a movie filled with Sergio Leone references, but the aim of this scene is slightly different from the aim of the two Leone scenes. It is about a man breaking a hard peasant until he gives up the innocents he's protecting, but it does so in a way that establishes character and theme for the rest of the movie--as usual in a Tarantino film, through lots and lots of dialogue. Since the camera's POV is almost always Tarantino's, we know the characters entirely through dialogue, performances, and how Tarantino feels about the characters. It's the first two items that set Tarantino's films above a Baz Luhrmann or a Zack Snyder film--two directors who, even though they might cast good actors, tend to maintain a distance from the characters with neglect of POV that is not offset by anything like what Tarantino's dialogue provides.
Inglourious Bastards begins with inevitably beautiful shots of French countryside and this scene ends with Nazi brutality and composition borrowed from John Ford's famous shots of proscenium-like black silhouettes of doorways through which we see bright landscape inhabited by a character while another character--in this case Landa, the Nazi "Jew Hunter"--is seen to move through the doorway. Tarantino created a similar shot in Kill Bill vol. 2, and it's little wonder he should like it so much--in The Searchers, it conveys our point of view on the "cowboy", John Wayne, as an entity whose essence inevitably makes him an alien to mainstream society, or the viewer, even in spite of the popularity the archetype enjoyed in the 1950s. It's not about how Ethan--Wayne's character--feels, it's about what he is from an exterior viewpoint. And so, too, is the shot in Inglourious Basterds about the Nazi in the doorway and the Jewish girl running away from him across that beautiful countryside. We know the relationship between these two characters before we enter the theatre--movies and literature even more than actual history has made these two forces larger than life entities in the public consciousness.
It's interesting, then, that the Nazis should be as three dimensional as they are in the movie, because I think it suggests that, really, the horror that maintains the existence of the Word War 2 Nazi in the public consciousness isn't in response to their lack of humanity, but in response to what they showed us human beings are capable of. That the movie is a fantasy rather than an examination of reality means we are really seeing the Nazis and Jewish refugees inside Tarantino and therefore us.
The Basterds themselves, the title characters who actually seem to have the least amount of screen time, represent the film's righteous Id. In real life contexts, we would see their brutality as being scarcely better than the Nazis', but in movie context, theirs is the visceral reaction we have to the situation--they're big as mythological creatures, which is why the film is theirs despite having very little screen time. Barely any time is spent with their back stories, and here the casting of Brad Pitt and Eli Roth is essential. Everyone knows and, in a way, loves Brad Pitt, and Eli Roth carries the baggage of having directed the Hostel movies, movies that most people are disgusted by without ever having seen (they're actually good movies, by the way). Therefore, a legend--he's a sadistic maniac of mysterious proportions, but he's our sadistic maniac of mysterious proportions. Which makes him perfect as the so-called "Bear Jew", who comes out of a completely darkened tunnel preceded by the hollow sounds of his baseball bat against the walls before emerging to brutally murder the Nazi prisoner whose POV we've briefly alighted upon.
One of the things I absolutely adore about the movie is its attention to language--the Germans speak German, the French speak French, the Americans and English speak English. Supposedly 75 percent of the movie is not English, and it is established early on, in that same Leone-esque scene at the beginning, why this is important--the movie's about this sort of POV-less POV. People may superficially complain that subtitles are silly and hard to read, but the movie assumes people are, underneath, intelligent enough to know language makes a difference. Inglourious Basterds takes popular impressions seriously, even the ones we don't realise, or won't admit, we have.
Anyway, great movie. Some other things I really liked--a British spy who's half young Sean Connery and half Charlton Heston, a brutal Nazi sniper who turns out to be a boy with a crush, and the French Jewish girl, Shosanna, who gets a truly badass montage with the unexpectedly great use of David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)".
Saw a couple nice trailers. Avatar doesn't look quite as silly in very short, non-3D form, but I still don't think it's going to be very good. Scorsese's Shutter Island looks amazing, and Benicio del Toro's Wolfman looks like it borrows a lot from Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. It might be okay.
Last night's tweets;
Somewhere in my headache a brain yet lives.
No amount of cola beats a coffee.
Good cinema's carved with very big knives.
Crocodiles are big, slow and daffy.
There's a moment in Inglourious Basterds where Brad Pitt's character, Aldo Raine, holds forth on how the Nazis are inhuman, but the previous scene had already contradicted this idea, not by showing a "good side" to a Nazi character, but by laboriously conveying his thought process, reasoning, and tactics. It's a scene that recalls the openings of both Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in a movie filled with Sergio Leone references, but the aim of this scene is slightly different from the aim of the two Leone scenes. It is about a man breaking a hard peasant until he gives up the innocents he's protecting, but it does so in a way that establishes character and theme for the rest of the movie--as usual in a Tarantino film, through lots and lots of dialogue. Since the camera's POV is almost always Tarantino's, we know the characters entirely through dialogue, performances, and how Tarantino feels about the characters. It's the first two items that set Tarantino's films above a Baz Luhrmann or a Zack Snyder film--two directors who, even though they might cast good actors, tend to maintain a distance from the characters with neglect of POV that is not offset by anything like what Tarantino's dialogue provides.
Inglourious Bastards begins with inevitably beautiful shots of French countryside and this scene ends with Nazi brutality and composition borrowed from John Ford's famous shots of proscenium-like black silhouettes of doorways through which we see bright landscape inhabited by a character while another character--in this case Landa, the Nazi "Jew Hunter"--is seen to move through the doorway. Tarantino created a similar shot in Kill Bill vol. 2, and it's little wonder he should like it so much--in The Searchers, it conveys our point of view on the "cowboy", John Wayne, as an entity whose essence inevitably makes him an alien to mainstream society, or the viewer, even in spite of the popularity the archetype enjoyed in the 1950s. It's not about how Ethan--Wayne's character--feels, it's about what he is from an exterior viewpoint. And so, too, is the shot in Inglourious Basterds about the Nazi in the doorway and the Jewish girl running away from him across that beautiful countryside. We know the relationship between these two characters before we enter the theatre--movies and literature even more than actual history has made these two forces larger than life entities in the public consciousness.
It's interesting, then, that the Nazis should be as three dimensional as they are in the movie, because I think it suggests that, really, the horror that maintains the existence of the Word War 2 Nazi in the public consciousness isn't in response to their lack of humanity, but in response to what they showed us human beings are capable of. That the movie is a fantasy rather than an examination of reality means we are really seeing the Nazis and Jewish refugees inside Tarantino and therefore us.
The Basterds themselves, the title characters who actually seem to have the least amount of screen time, represent the film's righteous Id. In real life contexts, we would see their brutality as being scarcely better than the Nazis', but in movie context, theirs is the visceral reaction we have to the situation--they're big as mythological creatures, which is why the film is theirs despite having very little screen time. Barely any time is spent with their back stories, and here the casting of Brad Pitt and Eli Roth is essential. Everyone knows and, in a way, loves Brad Pitt, and Eli Roth carries the baggage of having directed the Hostel movies, movies that most people are disgusted by without ever having seen (they're actually good movies, by the way). Therefore, a legend--he's a sadistic maniac of mysterious proportions, but he's our sadistic maniac of mysterious proportions. Which makes him perfect as the so-called "Bear Jew", who comes out of a completely darkened tunnel preceded by the hollow sounds of his baseball bat against the walls before emerging to brutally murder the Nazi prisoner whose POV we've briefly alighted upon.
One of the things I absolutely adore about the movie is its attention to language--the Germans speak German, the French speak French, the Americans and English speak English. Supposedly 75 percent of the movie is not English, and it is established early on, in that same Leone-esque scene at the beginning, why this is important--the movie's about this sort of POV-less POV. People may superficially complain that subtitles are silly and hard to read, but the movie assumes people are, underneath, intelligent enough to know language makes a difference. Inglourious Basterds takes popular impressions seriously, even the ones we don't realise, or won't admit, we have.
Anyway, great movie. Some other things I really liked--a British spy who's half young Sean Connery and half Charlton Heston, a brutal Nazi sniper who turns out to be a boy with a crush, and the French Jewish girl, Shosanna, who gets a truly badass montage with the unexpectedly great use of David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)".
Saw a couple nice trailers. Avatar doesn't look quite as silly in very short, non-3D form, but I still don't think it's going to be very good. Scorsese's Shutter Island looks amazing, and Benicio del Toro's Wolfman looks like it borrows a lot from Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. It might be okay.
Last night's tweets;
Somewhere in my headache a brain yet lives.
No amount of cola beats a coffee.
Good cinema's carved with very big knives.
Crocodiles are big, slow and daffy.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Corrected Vision Makes the Familiar Strange
I just took a picture of myself for a conversation I was having with Chris Walsh about hats. I realised I hadn't shown off my new glasses yet;
The picture also makes my nose pointier than it actually is, making me look a bit like The Shadow;
It occurs to me Kakeshya's look may've been unconsciously inspired by The Shadow (remember, there's a new chapter online of Venia's Travels).
Twitter Sonnet #52
From killing satyrs to colouring clouds,
There's always something to do before sleep.
The local ghosts are demanding more shrouds.
Ethereal beans through tortillas seep.
There's always a forest lying in wait.
Headlights turn Alice's hair to bright fog.
Some video records preview man's fate.
The channel needs a serviceable cog.
Some people won't stand for food division.
The registers here close for ten minutes.
My mint addiction is in remission.
I dreamt that I knew nothing of walnuts.
Snack agendas can take the subconscious.
To the doom of many starship launches.
I really did have a dream where I found myself discovering walnuts. First through walnut butter--like peanut butter, but from walnuts. I have no idea if they really make the stuff (oh, they do). But in my dream, I investigated backwards until the trail led me to the nut originally behind the strange butter.
Feeling very low energy to-day. Maybe the dreams a sign I need more protein. At least there's nothing scheduled for me to-day that requires a lot of concentration. I am very much looking forward to seeing Inglourious Basterds.
I'm so glad Jon Stewart's on his game;
The picture also makes my nose pointier than it actually is, making me look a bit like The Shadow;
It occurs to me Kakeshya's look may've been unconsciously inspired by The Shadow (remember, there's a new chapter online of Venia's Travels).
Twitter Sonnet #52
From killing satyrs to colouring clouds,
There's always something to do before sleep.
The local ghosts are demanding more shrouds.
Ethereal beans through tortillas seep.
There's always a forest lying in wait.
Headlights turn Alice's hair to bright fog.
Some video records preview man's fate.
The channel needs a serviceable cog.
Some people won't stand for food division.
The registers here close for ten minutes.
My mint addiction is in remission.
I dreamt that I knew nothing of walnuts.
Snack agendas can take the subconscious.
To the doom of many starship launches.
I really did have a dream where I found myself discovering walnuts. First through walnut butter--like peanut butter, but from walnuts. I have no idea if they really make the stuff (oh, they do). But in my dream, I investigated backwards until the trail led me to the nut originally behind the strange butter.
Feeling very low energy to-day. Maybe the dreams a sign I need more protein. At least there's nothing scheduled for me to-day that requires a lot of concentration. I am very much looking forward to seeing Inglourious Basterds.
I'm so glad Jon Stewart's on his game;
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Venia and Successfully Transmitted Impressions
The new Venia's Travels is online. Now I think I'll watch movie.
Dubious Conveyances
Last night's tweets;
There's always a forest lying in wait.
Headlights turn Alice's hair to bright fog.
Some video records preview man's fate.
The channel needs a serviceable cog.
Talking about a cog, the medieval sailing vessel, going across a channel like the English Channel. A reference to some ship in World of Warcraft I was on last night. I guess my sister's heading to BlizzCon to-morrow or the next day, where she's working as an attendant to a shuffleboard game, I think. Crazy shit us WoW-heads are into. Youths to-day are into extreme aging.
I was at my parents' house yesterday and saw that they've gotten a hybrid car. They name their cars, and my sister wanted to call it "Spock", but I think I've just about convinced them to call it "George Takei".
I'm starting to feel like a frightened animal on Facebook. Everything you do seems to ask if it's okay for some application to get access to yours and your friends personal information. And some things end up leaving weird messages on my "wall"--that is what it's called, right?--I didn't think I was bargaining for. I actually put my profile on "public" since the whole idea, if I ever get around to devoting time to it, was to find another outlet to promote my comic and the general grandness of "me". But it seems generally built for someone more hyperactively social than I am--I made a comment on Sara Benincasa's Facebook, and now I'm getting e-mail notifications for people who commented on the same topic--people that aren't even replying to me.
Anyway, it's the part of my social theoretical homunculus that gets the least love, neglected, shrivelling and bloodless. Nevertheless, please friend me.
I read about something called phone novels to-day--novels that are published in the format of text messages. Apparently they're big in Japan already, maybe it's a viable artistic medium, but mostly it seems like it'd to be for a somewhat shallow crowd-- like what the Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei episode I posted yesterday was poking fun at phone novel readers for being. I suppose a lot of the artforms enjoyed and respected nowadays were considered cheap and patently lowbrow in their infancy--like comic books and movies. Maybe I shouldn't judge until I've read one.
This bit from the Wikipedia entry strikes me as just ominous, though;
Cell phone novels create a personal space for each individual reader. Paul Levinson, in Information on the Move (2004), says "...nowadays, a writer can write just about as easily, anywhere, as a reader can read" and they are "not only personal but portable".
There's always a forest lying in wait.
Headlights turn Alice's hair to bright fog.
Some video records preview man's fate.
The channel needs a serviceable cog.
Talking about a cog, the medieval sailing vessel, going across a channel like the English Channel. A reference to some ship in World of Warcraft I was on last night. I guess my sister's heading to BlizzCon to-morrow or the next day, where she's working as an attendant to a shuffleboard game, I think. Crazy shit us WoW-heads are into. Youths to-day are into extreme aging.
I was at my parents' house yesterday and saw that they've gotten a hybrid car. They name their cars, and my sister wanted to call it "Spock", but I think I've just about convinced them to call it "George Takei".
I'm starting to feel like a frightened animal on Facebook. Everything you do seems to ask if it's okay for some application to get access to yours and your friends personal information. And some things end up leaving weird messages on my "wall"--that is what it's called, right?--I didn't think I was bargaining for. I actually put my profile on "public" since the whole idea, if I ever get around to devoting time to it, was to find another outlet to promote my comic and the general grandness of "me". But it seems generally built for someone more hyperactively social than I am--I made a comment on Sara Benincasa's Facebook, and now I'm getting e-mail notifications for people who commented on the same topic--people that aren't even replying to me.
Anyway, it's the part of my social theoretical homunculus that gets the least love, neglected, shrivelling and bloodless. Nevertheless, please friend me.
I read about something called phone novels to-day--novels that are published in the format of text messages. Apparently they're big in Japan already, maybe it's a viable artistic medium, but mostly it seems like it'd to be for a somewhat shallow crowd-- like what the Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei episode I posted yesterday was poking fun at phone novel readers for being. I suppose a lot of the artforms enjoyed and respected nowadays were considered cheap and patently lowbrow in their infancy--like comic books and movies. Maybe I shouldn't judge until I've read one.
This bit from the Wikipedia entry strikes me as just ominous, though;
Cell phone novels create a personal space for each individual reader. Paul Levinson, in Information on the Move (2004), says "...nowadays, a writer can write just about as easily, anywhere, as a reader can read" and they are "not only personal but portable".