Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I Get Spam

Fuckups and formatting in the original:

Fearing the people, the assembly reinstated the andradas for a period of eight months, after which they were again ejected.

Hello, i am Naomi Johnsson
Try it for good luck

Do you remember.
Well, you old sinner, she went on, turning to the count who was kissing her hand, youre feeling dull in moscow, i daresay.


Did I mention this came from an email address at the domain anal_plastics? Because it did. Summons terrifying images.

"Mummy, I don't think my Play Doh factory is right."

"Shut up. Mummy's drinkin' gin."


Also, I'm now going to use 'feeling dull in Moscow' as a catch-all term for, frankly, everything.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Is...IT!...a...BIRD?

It's long been known that Nicolas 'Loudquietloud' Cage was going to play Superman in the long-mooted Tim Burton Superman Lives movie, but no-one thought they'd got this far into pre-production.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH


Fuck. It looks like his costume was made entirely from Percocet and spray paint. There's more horror here, but don't. Really don't. If you've never heard Kevin Smith tak about his miserable experiences as the main writer on this movie, address that right now.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Challenging.



Having seen this on the ever-splendid BoingBoing, I drunkenly decided that the world needs more Victorian reworkings of albums. This chap has already suggested "Very Well, Difference Engine", getting us off to a strong, firm and proud start. Further suggestions appreciated. The usual prize for the best.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Not Even Good for Dehydration.

Take off the quotation marks around evidence based and you have yourself a convert for life.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Good Work, Gents.

It's rare, but some days you just have to appreciate The Sun. Puerile in a way few would dare - a bold claim for a British newspaper.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Duh-duh-duh-death panels.

American politics resembles British politics about as much as their take on wrestling does. In both cases, it's a case of distance from the classical Greek system, which is rather neat if you need a pithy introduction to an otherwise content-light blog post.

The current Bete noir of the howling vortex of wrongheadedness that currently constitutes the American Right is a move towards socialised healthcare. Living in Britain, as most of the people reading this most likely do, we take a system by which people are treated as best they can with a grain of salt. It's a monolithic enterprise, employing an integer percentage of the population. It's failings are many, manifest, sometimes amusing, frequently frightening. It is however, all considered, really rather good, and certainly better than many people could pay for themselves. Private healthcare can be rather nifty, but I'm sure few people who live under a socialised system would imagine medical insurance companies to be friendly, trustworthy institutions.

Which leads me to this. If you don't fancy clicking through, it's a business-orientated breakdown of how healthcare in this country works. Not too exciting, particularly as it's written in a bizarrely hostile tone from someone from a nation with lower life expectancy than ours. Still, the pertinent sentence is this:

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

FUCK.

Amazingly, these people actually stand a chance of derailing the process to set up a government alternative to private insurance. This is an example of a literate one. A slightly less literate one is described here:



Yeah. Death Panels. This is why I can't follow British politics any more. I'm gorged on the artificial flavourings over the pond.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

So, Transformers 2.

Transformers 2 is a lot like being stuck in a washing machine on a repeat cycle, along with stones of various sizes, several racists, a few misogynists and a scatalogically obsessed 12-year-old boy.

Renowned auteur Michael Bay focuses primarily on the madonna/whore dichotomy that has so long been a part of western culture. He does this with shots of Megan Fox that would embarrass her gynecologist. He will sometimes cut to her pouting lip, seemingly operated by a length of wire from just off camera. Sometimes something will be blowing up when this happens. Sometimes not. You never know with Bay, and therein lies his genius. I don't know what point he's making, but several of the explosions were very large.

He has space for subtext though - there is a running commentary on the military industrial complex, specifically focusing on how frickin' awesome it is, how great it is to blow stuff up, and how empowering it is to point huge shiny penises that spray bullets wherever you goddamn please. Sometimes representatives of military industrial complexes that are not specifically the US turn up. You'll be able to spot these because they are on fire. Occasionally a robot farts. Sometimes one falls over in a comical manner.

Watching Transformers 2 is a lot like being Alex in A Clockwork Orange, but with Linkin Park instead of Beethoven. Same time 2011?