Guess what I just finished watching? It's nauseating. Every single character is annoying, except Tumnus who is creepy. Don't let that put you off though, the special effects are fantastic and you wouldn't want to live your whole life without seeing a beaver wearing armor and a hat. Also, the film is absolutely packed with old fashioned moral lessons and traditional values which are tediously, painfully spelled out. This is a childrens movie and kids don't go in for subtlety, you have to rub their nose in stuff before they get it. More mature viewers may wish to pause the movie, phone up the production company and scream at someone. ˝Enough already, I get what you are trying to say.˝ To paraphrase:
Santa is real and he gives children weapons, even in you're like six years old or don't want them, he'll see to it that you're armed. This is good news for young boys, who are generally very keen on weapons. Frustrated and belittled by a lack of agency in their lives, most would very much like some power to wave around, to be taken seriously and to execute summary judgment. What today's young boy really wants from Santa is a gun, not the lameass pair of pants He left last year.
Traitors MUST be killed. It's in the movie, it's in the Bible [Psalm 59:5], and I'm sure if you ask any good Republican he'll tell you it is so. After all, a traitor is someone who you think should be on your side but in fact has a different opinion to you. I shouldn't even be having to explain this: if someone has a different opinion it means they disagree with the good guys, so it's obvious they should be killed. Oh, and if you do ask a Republican and he doesn't corroborate this, he's a traitor. Kill him.
Ugly people are evil. That's how you know who the bad guys are. If God made someone ugly he must want them to suffer, and it is our duty to do what God wants. See, that's how God lets us know. You already know your side is in the right, I dont have to tell you you're one of the good guys. If someone looks way different to you, or acts differently, they must be one of the bad guys because they're not like you, the good guys. You can tell right away, they're either with us or they're with the terrorists.
We're all supposed to cheer when a woman gets mauled by a lion. Now that's entertainment!
Human sacrifice keeps the universe ticking over nicely. To be performed on the traditional stone table with a ceremonial blade. If you don't, the world ends. Because of magic. Burning stakes, firing squads, secret CIA prisons and the Texas judicial system are also acceptable settings for this very important work.
Some namby-pamby liberals might have a problem with all this, but don't pay them any notice. These are traditional values - our heritage - passed down from generation to generation since the time of Abraham. Sure, they're stupid, bloodthirsty ideas but they've been stupid ideas for a very long time, so we must not question them. If we abandoned the values and passions of our pious, warlike, witch-burning ancestors we might stop acting like them. It's our duty to our forebears, our family to fight for our family values. This is called conservativism, because it saves the past for the future and that's what makes the Republican Party great, they're a Conservative party. Go White Elephant!
OK, I'm bored with sarcasm now.
For the keen eyed, there's a super creepy subplot you might enjoy. Lucy - who's all of six or seven - gets lost and is wandering around alone by a lamp post. She meets a charismatic but strange man called Tumnus who insists on taking her back to his house. Once there he gives her some tea and she promptly loses consciousness. She's out for several hours, we don't know what happens in the interim but when she wakes up Tumnus is overcome with remorse for something he's done and is crying to himself saying ˝I'm a bad fawn, I'm a bad fawn˝. When the police find out about this they come and take Tumnus away. Tumnus says his time with Lucy was worth it. Later, Lucy's slender, pre-pubescent, pretty young brother meets a stranger in the same spot and gets given some candy. He goes to the strangers house after being promised more candy and winds up locked in a dungeon with Mr Tumnus. It's pretty bad.
It gets more disturbing at the end of the film, when Tumnus gets out of jail and is reunited with Lucy. They're all touchy feely and gazing into each others eyes all the time, when Lucy's around Tumnus has eyes for nobody else. It's a little uncomfortable to watch a grown male act this way with such a young girl. I guess they live happily ever after. I'm dying to make a 'come out of the closet' joke right now, I'll resist.
Make no mistake about it though, this is Christian propaganda, following C. S. Lewis's customary religious themes of heaven and hell. King Aslan the lion represents Jesus, showing his people the way, then being sacrificed because of a traitor, then coming back to life to lead the ˝good˝ people in the final battle against evil. Aslan raises all the dead at this battle, and afterwards the ˝good˝ people join the dead in his paradise. Very Book of Revelations. Lots of little Gospel references too, which the WIkipedia has more on.
The Inquisitors over at ChristanAnswers.net find that 'This story is beautiful and heartwarming... Nothing objectionable.' Most of the movie seems to be about fear and killing, but that's OK because of its good morals and positive message.
In short: I'm not sure which is worse, this movie's message or that it's meant for children. In its favor, it does have a dramatic battlefield scene involving an armed militia of beavers. Yes, beavers.
I saw this guy this afternoon and was immediately overcome with the most profound sense of fellow feeling. It was as if I looked into his soul and saw a mirror of my own. Of course, I don't eat bacon, being a vegetarian and all. And I don't have a drug-zombie girlfriend with big teeth. But you get the idea.
One can imagine the internet as a great muddy sea that we surf with our keyboards, skimming it in erratic arcs and bursts, leaving yellow foamy wakes that spread out in a big V behind us, disturbing the lumps and bits. Floating rubbish and plastic bottecaps bob over the wake and it tips up an ancient condom wrapper suspended just below the surface, bouyed by tiny bubbles on it's foil underside, the logo still barely visible.
As I was surfing today a small white object caught my eye. I cut the power and slid the keyboard to a halt, the wake taking me over as I did and pushing the board the last meter to the white square. It was a page of scripture, sodden and stained, but holding together. It's from the Book of Joe, and made me smile:
Chapter I
1. In the beginning was the Invisible, and the Invisible was with the Unicorn, and the Invisible was the Unicorn.
2. The same was in the beginning with the Unicorn.
3. All things were blessed by Her; and without Her was not any thing blessed that was not blessed.
4. In Her was a life; and the hedonistic life was the Pinkness of women and men.¹
5. And the Pinkness shineth in the dark evil atheist conspiracy; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6. There was a man sent from the Unicorn, whose name was George.
7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Pinkness, that all women and men through Her
might believe.
8. He was that Pinkness, but was sent to bear witness of that Pinkness.
9. That was the true Pinkness, which lighteth every woman and man that cometh into the world.
What follows is the most lamentable comedie of Carlos (pictured in the poster below, top right) and his magic frog juice. From an early age Carlos was widely renowned in Barcelona as big dumb galoot. Truly, the boy was dumber than buttered toast, but possessed great physical strength of which he was very proud. By age ten his favorite game was to run up behind small, elderly people and scoop them into the air, shaking them around with joyful cries of ’’Look Mama! Look at Carlos!’’
The many difficulties Carlos faced growing up were only made worse in adolescence when his obsession with bodybuilding led to heavy steroid use. The side effects included roid rage, asthma, and that dreaded Spanish sexual malaise: impotencia. Carlos became violent and depressed. Due to his dim wit he was mostly unaware of his medical problems, but he'd noticed that Carlos Jr no longer wanted to come out and play, which he had attributed to his growing paranoid fear of cats in his bedroom ceiling.
Then, just before his 21st birthday, Carlos met the man who would turn his life around. A wandering Chinese immigrant advised Carlos that all his ills could be cured if he would prepare and consume Extracto de Rana, the juice of frogs. Though it began as a private joke between two asian hobos along the lines of ’’Lets make the crazy Spanish eat stuff’’, our hero soon realised great improvements in his life. His asthma cleared up, he finally graduated seventh grade and found a stable job in the clergy. His sucesses culminated one humid Thursday afternoon when he finally brought the beautiful young Maria del Pescados del Oro to his apartment.
As he laid her down on his gubby single bed he realized with crushing certainty that Carlos Jr wasn’t with the program. Impotencia! Desperate not to lose the moment, Carlos leapt from the bed and banged a blue plastic box of frogs down on his dresser next to the blender.
Maria’s blissful gaze turned to surprise and then shock as he began skinning the frogs, each in one fluid, practised movement and throwing them in the blender. ’’C.. Carlos...’’ she murmured. But Carlos wasn’t listening. He’d never been with a woman before and knew how urgently he must get his magic fix before the moment passed.
’’brerBRBRBRRRBRBRBRRBRBRBRR!!!’’ The blender rattled to life, a deafening, frightening sound in the quiet room. One long burst, and the blades had hardly stopped spinning as Carlos lifted it to his face, greedily gulping down the mashed frogs, with bits spilling round the corners of his mouth and splashing on the floor at his feet. He lifted the blender right over his head to let the last gulp fall into his mouth, the rim leaving a muddy crescent on his forehead.
As he placed it back down on the dresser he felt a rushing, tingling in his loins and knew the cure had worked. His panic turned to triumph and he turned around to face Maria, thrusting with his hips and fists in celebration, ’’vroom-vroom’’ motorcycle noises bursting enthusiastically from his frog-flecked grin.
Maria was backed into a corner of the bed, a sheet clutched tightly across her breasts, her eyes wide with terror, focused on a mangled frog’s leg clinging with tiny dead claws to Carlos’ thrusting member, swinging with the movement of his body. This was not the strong young shepherd she had met at the Iglesia de la Espátula. Still making his ’’vroom vroom’’ noises, Carlos advanced towards the bed. Maria hesitated one moment more, then screamed and ran naked from the room, out the apartment by the front door. She kept running until finally caught and subdued by police.
News of the event spread far and wide throughout Spain, first as a comic headline then as unverified reports as the gullible and desperate tried this remedy for themselves. A following grew and sought Carlos out, helping him to finance his very first sala del milkshake de la rana, or frog milkshake parlour, and soon it was a chain with locations as far away as Madrid and Sevilla, where you can try extracto de rana out for yourself.
What you have just read is a true story, which I made up. Visit the Red Spot to watch the process of frog juice making. It’s horrible but you... can't... look... away. Until you see the dude drinking it, that is.
This priceless photo is from the Idiotarod 2006, New York's annual running of the idiots which I hope to take part in someday. It's like the Iditarod raced with shopping carts instead of dog sleds and teams of homeless people volunteers for huskies. More details from precisionaccidents.com:
Best in Show: Team COBRA (Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association)
1st Place: Double Down Red Squad
2nd Place: Running With Scissors
3rd Place: Hawaii 5 - 0
Best Sabotage: Scout Troop 666
Last Place: The Burned Out Burners
Special Judges Awards:
Best Bribe: Barrel O' Monkekyz
Purple Heart Award: Bar Back Mountain.
Most Disgusting: Mayo Clinic/Chum Buckets
Best Weaponry: Five Horses of the Apocolypse [sic]
Best Shopping Cart Liberation Story: Team Jack Ass
Alderney's main currency is the Guernsey Pound, which unlike british sterling has a one pound note, known sometimes as a green drinking voucher, which explains these coupons for the Alderney Week beer tent:
President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a blog, where he writes about not liking Jews and Americans, and it's gone offline. Glad I'm not his techie right now, might learn him a thing or two about using the infidel software of Microsoft.
If you are viewing this page from the United States and are using the craptastic Internet Explorer web browser, you have just broken the law.
You now have this number in your browser cache, and have come afoul of the DMCA. This number when converted from base 10 to binary and executed strips the copy protection from DVDs. The NSA has observed your download, and your ISP has probably logged it.
Illegal numbers. What is the world coming to. What's that Timmy? You guessed there were 51103 pennies in the jar... *gasp* No! officer, wait! he's just a child, he didn't know...
From: humanresources@company.net
To: all@company.net
Subject: Recent Changes
As you are no doubt aware, Sony Corporation(tm) has recently acquired international copyright on the number 43. The copyright comes into effect Tuesday. For this reason the 43rd floor will now be known as the 'Carribean Suite' and will have the braille abbreviation CS on elevator buttons and door plates.
Office parties celebrating birthdays between 42 and 44 will be referred to as Disillusionment Year parties. In all other correspondence and business in which the number may appear Sony Number(tm) will be used in place of 43 once our licence has come through.
The IT department is issuing a software update to all company computers that will allow Sony Number(tm) to evaluate correctly in spreadsheets and our proprietary software. For efficiency, the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+S will be implemented to type 'Sony Number(tm)'.
From Tuesday, any employee using the number 43 without express written permission from Sony Corp and consultation with the legal department will be deemed to be comitting copyright infringement and subject to the usual disciplinary procedures. Remember what happened to the intern who downloaded that illegal Justin Timberlake .mp3? She's still in jail, dont let it happen to you - police *will* be informed.
If there are any remaining queries about these changes, please contact your supervisor or the HR department.
Wishing you a productive day,
Joan Davis
humanresources@company.net
ps: Happy Dissillusionment Year to to Jim in accounting!
In actual news, copyrights and patents have been granted on some numbers, and you're not allowed to use them. Details:
Dearly beloved (et Al) we are gathered here today to celebrate the most weird and dreadful crap ever inflicted by the entertainment industry on the great public consciousness of mankind, so, without further ado here they are:
Stricky's Guide to The Worst Music Videos of All Time... in no particuar order.
7. Judge Dread - Big Six
Ah Judge Dread, the original Pervy Welsh Uncle. Until I saw this I'd belived that in the '70s the Germans had a monopoly on sex fiends this creepy, but this man is clearly Welsh, though he is on German TV. I don't know what became of Judge Dread, I'd hazard a guess he's in jail, probably something involving his topless backup dancers. NSFW - says 'pussy' a lot.
3.Uchoten - Pinokiwo
If you've ever wanted to see a Japanese guy in lots of makeup sing the same lines over and over agin, then roll around on the floor and screaming, now's your chance :-)
6. Fannypack - Cameltoe
Moving on up to the year 2003, when a kids group from Brooklyn would start to change the world by singing about how to wear clothes on your vagina. A mutlicultural troup, members are Black, Irish, West Indian, Thai and Puerto-Rican, and there's a white guy called Fancy. I give you... Cameltoe!
9. The Shadows - Apache
Go get your parents, drag them in front of the computer, this topped the UK singles charts for five weeks. Somewhere out there hippies were getting high, making love and giving birth to the sound of this disco monster. Get a load of the moustaches :-) and dig the girls in their 'indian' outfits.
1. Ohjaaja - I Wanna Love You Tender
And the winner is: Swedish people Finnish National Treasures (thank you Fairuza) doing aerobics! And their Battlestar Galactia lookin' video. This is so bad it's good. Enjoy :-)
This Wikipedia article describes how the Romans used magic, psychic chickens to tell fortune. I wonder if they'd laugh as hard at modern religion/superstitions. Probably.
The Romans used chickens for oracles, both when flying ('ex avibus') and when feeding ('auspicium ex tripudiis'). The hen ('gallina') gave a favourable omen ('auspicium ratum'), when appearing from the left (Cic.,de Div. ii.26), like the crow and the owl.
For the oracle 'ex tripudiis' according to Cicero (Cic. de Div. ii.34), any bird could be used, but normally only chickens ('pulli') were consulted. The chickens were cared for by the pullarius, who [...] fed them a special kind of soft cake. If the chickens stayed in their cage, made noises, beat their wings or flew away, the omen was bad; if they ate greedily, the omen was good.
In 249 BC, the Roman general Publius Claudius Pulcher had his chickens thrown overboard when they refused to feed before the battle of Drepana, saying 'If they won't eat, perhaps they will drink.' He promptly lost the battle against the Carthaginians and 93 Roman ships were sunk. Back in Rome, he was tried for impiety and heavily fined.
So now you know. Next time you lose a sea battle, it's probably because you didn't have enough chickens along with you, or they weren't hungry enough.[read on...]
LOS ANGELES, California -- A woman is in stable condition with bubonic plague, the first confirmed human case in Los Angeles County since 1984, health officials said Tuesday.
Los Angeles had the Black Death in 1984? I had no idea that diease still existed, I assumed it had gone the way of smallpox. Huh. In a related note, Alderney is reportedly the only place in Europe where one can still find plague rats - they were outcompeted by Rattus norvegicus and almost all populations in temperate latitudes have died out.
So.. we have a new item for 'Things to do in LA:', contract plague. Life is funny. [read on...]
This is terrible, one of lifes wonderful joys is being taken away from us. Australia has joined the list of countries which have banned sexy, midriff-baring cheerleader uniforms. From Si.com:
Australian cheerleaders have been banned from baring midriffs by officials of the sport who fear displays of skin may encourage eating disorders.
Gymnastics Australia has ordered cheerleading troupes to find new uniforms by the end of the year.
I think this is a complete load. Yes, eating disorders in teengers are something we should take seriously, they're sad and tragic things, the causes aren't easy to explain. Factors involved may include the advertising industry and low self-esteem from the likes of religious guilt or emotionally distant parents during childhood.
But not cheerleader uniforms! Watching beautiful, lithe schoolgirls shaking it in tiny uniforms is the very best part of American or Aussie rules football, in fact the only part I care about. Myself and millions, nay, billions of other men (and some women) take enromous pleasure from the cheerleader fantasy.
Goofy press has a brilliant, exhaustive dictionary of sexual terms. I'd have thought that being a barman and regular citizen of the net I'd have heard every sexual euphamism there was. I'd be wrong.
CHICKEN OF THE SEA
a young gay sailor.
COTTONTAIL
term that nude sunbathers sometimes use for a person who wears a bathing suit; see 'textile.'
DICK-HEAVY COMPANIES
businesses where the bosses are men and the secretaries (oops! administrative assistants) are women.
FARMER TED
term for an undesirable male who is trying to make a move on you; from a character in the movie sixteen candles, 'Oh crap, it's farmer ted'.
FIFTY-FOOTER
someone who looks hot from across the room, but starts looking less attractive with each approaching step.
FRAZIER
manliest lion to ever live in captivity; once had intercourse more than 160 times in less than three days. died shortly thereafter.
FRENCH EMBASSY
place where there's lots of gay sex going on.
FROG KISSER
person who believes that she can turn a loser into a winner.
Today on the Daily Show, Demitri Martin's Trendspotting looks at life coaches, what they do and whether you need one. At the end of the show he shares with us the only available tool to help you decide if life coaching is right for you, the Life Of Satisfaction Expectation index.
''You just take the age you were when you moved out of your parents house, multiply by the age at which you lost your virginity, plus the square root of your monthly income, divided by the number of cats you have plus one''
Twelve Reasons Gays Should Not Be Allowed to Get Married
1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can't legally get married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if Gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are property, blacks can't marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
10. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to things like cars or a longer lifespan.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a ''separate but equal'' institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages for gays and lesbians will.
