The Jarrett Duncan Blog

SUNday Gold, May 3rd, 2009

2009-05-03T08:31:00.005-06:00

“We’re Alberta. We’re a little different” -Lindsay Blackett on why this is the only jurisdiction in Canada to enshrine “parental rights” in law

(((So, Lindsay Blackett is the man responsible for the 'film czar' thing, well documented by Lawrence Krysak. So, until now, I had no idea what this Blackett fellow looked like. I imagined some sort of white-haired, entitled Gordon Gecko WASPy bastard.)))

(((Da Fug?)))

(((So, what's up in our favourite prairie tabloid rag? A whole lot of 'agreeing with Jarrett' on the whole, which is just unsettling.)))

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Top teacher schools province
Union head wonders what would cause parents to pull kids from class under new rights law
By RICK BELL

“As for the province's claim the new law is much ado about nothing, Frank "doesn't buy it." Why change something to not change anything?”

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Democracy Neglected
Few issues receive less attention from Alberta Tories than electoral reform
By ROY CLANCY

“In the last provincial election in March 2008, 41% of eligible voters showed up at the polls, the lowest provincial turnout in Canadian history.”

“Although the Conservatives garnered 53% of the popular vote, they won 72 of 83 seats in the legislature.”

[…]

“In Alberta, where 60% of voters shun their responsibility to go to the polls, most of the democratic process is carried out in the confines of the party which has ruled uninterrupted since 1971.”

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Pandering to Parental Prejudice
No amount of school lessons will prevent parents from passing along their beliefs by MICHAEL PLATT

(((Some good, jaded laughs to be had here, but what's with this 'giving up and shrugging'?)))

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(((Just when we were doing so well, Peter Bowal rains on the parade. Be prepared, this thing is EPIC.)))

Deep Into the Wackiness
Giving the nod to near-sacred gay rights and the finger to religion is itself discriminatory
By PETER BOWAL

(((I'm not clear on how Bowal means to use 'wackiness', but according to this definiton, it comes off as disparaging, patronizing in the context I assume he's about to go in...)))

U.S. President Barack Obama told the world this week that Chrysler will "use our bankruptcy laws to clear away its remaining obligations."

He confidently assured us "this is not a sign of weakness."

Huh? Chrysler is bankrupt because it is strong? Now bankruptcy is strength and solvency is weakness?

(((The context there isn't very clear, is it? ""Weakness" of what? I guess when you leave something ambiguously floating in the ether, it makes proving your point easier. Also, I have a hard time believing a professor of law would write an article in the Calgary Sun 'sentence paragraph' form, so I think this reveals how they feel is the best, and easiest, way to deliver information to a nearly functionally illiterate reader-base.)))

This political penchant to transform words into opposite meanings is also well practised in human rights discourse. Diversity, for example, is not diverse.

(((Ooh, so it is going to be one of Those articles...)))

If you doubt that, try to express an unpopular point of view and you'll suffer the force of un-diversity.

(((No...kidding? So, what, the point is that the acceptance of diversity isn't "natural" to people?)))

Other upside-down words are discrimination and equality.

Several years ago, I surveyed my students at the University of Calgary. Most agreed that "all forms of discrimination were illegal and bad."

(((Again, in what context was this survey done, for what class?)))

That is a shocking misunderstanding of the word.

(((Absolutely, what sort of morons are you teaching?)))

Even with the absolutist "all" biasing the question, people could not help but fall for the myth.

(((Or incredibly poor critical thinkers (who do you blame for that one, professor?).)))

By far, most of our daily choices involve legitimate discrimination between alternatives.

(((Yeah, see, who wouldn't agree to this?)))

To possess discriminating taste or judgment used to be an admirable trait.

(((You feel that? That's the ground of a slippery slope giving.)))

The debate over equality rights has hijacked the word "discrimination" and taken it hostage.

It is now such a loaded, yet meaningless, word that it has lost all value, except when it gets dragged out to obfuscate and stifle debate.

We're seeing that right now in Alberta. We're told sexual orientation protection is long overdue, but parental conscience over curricular matters is wrong-headed. We are warned our international image will suffer if parents question evolution or gay rights on religious grounds.

(((Our fucking local, provincial, federal image will suffer.)))

Human rights, equality and conscience got horribly messy back in the 1970s when we decided to apply state power, through law and Human Rights Commissions, to re-engineer society.

((("Horribly messy back in the 1970s"...how? Even if it was somehow 'messy', or difficult...wasn't it perhaps worth it?)))

Why stop the rights juggernaut now?

To give the nod to near-sacred gay rights and the finger to religion is itself to discriminate as to what is worthy of protection. It is unequal equality, another illusion.

(((OOOH Woe!)))

Equality enforcers have for decades parsed words and re-played gestures in workplaces to determine whether the boss committed actionable discrimination.

(((Uh, where the hell did that come from? And 'Equality enforcers'?)))

In the prickly world of discrimination in employment, how many workers have improperly benefited by a threat or call to the Human Rights Commission?

(((Shit, I guess you can suggest something, with no evidence, and pass it off as an open ended question to stir those who agree with you even when you are a 'professor of law'.)))

Our equality police suspect the motives of landlords whenever a prospective minority tenant is turned away. We compel employers and landlords to justify decisions and force them into sensitivity training.

(((Equality police? Landlords and prospective minority tenant? Am I being dense in not seeing the connections to the actual issue he's arguing for?)))

Our state orders small business persons to build ramps to nowhere and accommodate alcoholics and druggies to the point they are on the brink of closing the business.

(((I love making up stuff to prove my points, too!)))

If you speak the truth, you can be humiliated and punished if someone is offended by it.

((("The truth"? Really? If you speak a lie, you can be celebrated and rewarded if someone agrees with it. I don't know, what's worse?)))

We're deep into this wackiness, so what's the big deal about parental choice?

Allowing a conscience-bound parent to pull her Jessica out of the Heather Has Two Mommies class hardly seems revolutionary.

(((Yes, parents do it anyway, but should this be approved by the state?)))

Those who demand little Jessica hear Heather's tale are ideologically selective about rights. They prefer teacher and state rights over parents and religion.

(((Oh, the evils of "teachers" and "the state", and especially "they", telling parents and religion what to do!)))

The rights folks turn out to be advocates only for those rights they favour, and they seek to deny those which others might favour. Equality is fine as long as there is not too much of it.

(((Ah, the neglected majority white Christian...who look astonishingly a lot like Mr. Bowal (let us just assume that Christian thing...though, hey, I could be wrong!)))

(((He looks hard done by...)))

No theory has been offered as to what personal attributes will make it on to the list and which ones will not.

So the legislature takes instruction from interest groups and judges.

(((It is funny that two people on opposite sides of the issue (Bowal, Bell) both attribute the insidious nature of their opponent to shadow lobbyists and interest groups.)))

How has sexual orientation made it to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination?

(((Usually when a people are being harassed, beaten, and murdered based on something that makes them stand out from accepted culture, this usually gets you covered...but not before years of activism to actually get it. Oh, I guess that's what those 'horrible messy' times were he's on about.)))

It is not intuitively obvious how one's sexual orientation affects job performance any more than one's astrological sign. An employer would not know either, if one did not announce them. Why is sexual orientation a protected attribute when other worthy visible attributes are overlooked?

(((So to make sense of this job stuff, I looked up Bowal online and discovered he researches "employment law". Ok, that makes sense why he'd be writing about it, but in what way does this make him an authority on the topic of this proposed secret law?)))

Could it be our human rights anti-discrimination legislation is itself discriminatory?

(((Dun Dun DUNNNN! Oh, wait, that's...what did he call it? A shocking misunderstanding of the concept?)))

Alberta's statutory list of prohibited grounds is typical: Race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, sexual orientation, source of income and family status.

B.C.'s list adds political belief and criminal conviction. Ontario's list includes "citizenship, creed, and record of offences."

As they are moved by their own view of the world, a few judges of the Supreme Court of Canada add some more attributes to the list -- even if the legislature has purposely decided against including it -- to protect "historically disadvantaged" groups.

Social re-engineering is a big project. It needs all hands on deck. But not all historically disadvantaged folks are running to capture the attention of the legislatures or courts.

Shy people and those whose looks are less attractive, are not clamouring to get added to the list.

(((Because some people don't campaign means...nothing.)))

They don't compete on a level playing field at work.

Neither do short men. Research measures how they suffer discrimination because they are short. Obesity is hard to change, and visible. Body type and intelligence are permanent, visible and sources of discrimination, but those blessed with less are not campaigning for protection.

(((Ah, so that 'wackiness' he talks about is the one he creates for himself to prove his point. This is perhaps why Bowal doesn't actually practice law...)))

Historical disadvantage? You bet. Who cares about equality for them?

(((Yeah, remember all those shy, fat midget lynchings and beatings from a few years back?)))

Why can't the rights activists get past sexual orientation? They prefer to cherry-pick rights according to their political ideology. Parents and mainstream religions are to give way to sexual freedom.

(((What is the unfortuante mainstream heterosexual parent to do when the state is badgering them into obsolescents??)))

If we compare current prohibited grounds of discrimination against the criteria of permanence, visibility and likelihood of harm, we find some prohibited grounds embedded in the statutory list which do not warrant being there.

Ancestry, place of origin, ethnic origin and race are unnecessarily duplicative.

In multicultural Canada, are one's ancestry or place of origin really visible and factors in employment decisions, compared to race or ethnic origin? Is sexual orientation visible? What about religion?

(((Employment decisions?? I don't know, I somewhat agree that legalese can get out of hand, but in its attempt in precision, it is really aiming to cover any and all eventualities.)))

In Ontario, why are "citizenship" and "record of offences" irrelevant in employment? No one was born with a criminal record. They should be permitted grounds of discrimination.

Short men or naturally unattractive people, for example, usually do not want to draw attention to themselves.

(((Oh, so that's why they aren't politically active in getting treated better. This is just so fucking sad.)))

Yet we know these and other non-sexual attributes are factors which, intentionally or subconsciously, are measured against employees every day.

The reason we have a discriminatory list of prohibited grounds of discrimination is ideology, because that is what has governed the list.

(((So some discrimination is OK, because it is 'natural'. I dunno, can't this same line of reasoning apply to saying 'some' murder is OK, too? Murder is natural, innit? It happens a lot. Christ, isn't all law ideological?)))

Social engineering often leads to absurd results. Since all humans are different in so many ways, a complete list would have to be infinite to include every human attribute.

Any list of selected prohibited grounds is discriminatory and driven by ideology.

(((Again, to go one step further, everything is ideological.)))

Equality is not equal. The system inevitably will collapse under its own weight and the social experiment will end.

(((So it isn't worth trying at all, eh?)))

Ultimately, it would be less discriminatory to declare all individuals are equal before and under the law and leave it at that, a statement of moral principle.

(((Who doesn't think this is a good idea? So I can expect that if this "enshrining" law of Alberta "values" goes through (because that is what this is actually suppose to pertain too), then I can exempt my children from all subject matter I believe to be reprehensible? Canadian Law? Math? All of science? Not only that, but my children should be allowed to pass, regardless of their ability to write tests which they don't have to answer because they are exempt? The problem with this ultimately good idea is that it kind of means jack shit when parents can instill in their children ignorance and hate (which apparently isn't child abuse, which under 'the law' is...well, illegal). It is the dream of a liberal democracy, ideology of no ideology, but one that fosters and has the potential to incubate something that undermines the very principles that allowed it in the first place.)))

Even with the best intentions, law is too blunt an instrument to achieve all socially-desirable objectives.

(((Such as this particular topic, right?)))

In striving to do more, it achieves less.

(((Unpack this please?)))

Which brings me back to where I started in this rant.

Perhaps we actually prefer unequal equality and discriminatory non-discrimination.

Where diversity means narrow and bankruptcy is not weakness, doing more to achieve less might be precisely what our policy-makers want.

And what we deserve.

BOWAL IS A PROFESSOR OF LAW AT THE HASKAYNE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

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(((I wouldn't be surprised if no one finishes reading through all that...it was kind of a chore reading through it myself. But here's a two-fer cherry for y'all.)))

LETTERS

CLEAN UP KHADR MESS

I agree with the editor that we should repatriate Omar Khadr. We cannot extend our rights and freedoms only to those Canadians we like. The Americans' evidence is shaky at best, Khadr was a child when arrested and he has been illegally held for many years. Bring him home and let's try and clean up this mess as best we can.

Terry McKinnon

(Yeah, that's pretty much it.)

HANG HIM HIGH

I have the solution to the Omar Khadr problem: Hang him! You bleeding hearts make me sick! Let the Americans deal with this terrorist in their own way.

Byron Anderson

(It's unlikely they will string him up, Byron.)

Says it all, really.

-Jarrett

SUNday Gold Revisited

2009-04-19T10:29:00.007-06:00

Haven’t done this in a long while! Fun fact: former lolcow Licia Corbella jumped ship from the Calgary Sun over to the Calgary Herald sometime in the last year or so I guess. Putting this into perspective, the Calgary Sun has shed quite a few op-ed writers over the years. All the real Top Guns of Ignorance have left us! Disgraced Paul Jackson, the Byfield boys, Ezra Levant, and even (I think) the Bishop Fred Henry has dwindled right out. Not that there isn’t a whole slab of ignorant fat to gorge ourselves on anyway…

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Focusing on what unites us

LONG OVERDUE CHANGES STRENGTHEN THE MEANING OF BEING A CANADIAN CITIZEN

By Roy Clancy

It's about time somebody stood on guard for the things that have made Canada great.

(((Who could this valiant figure be??)))

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney wants to ensure people becoming Canadian citizens "have a full appreciation for the values, symbols and institutions that define Canada and are rooted in our history."

(((To the left, Jason Kenney of Calgary Southeast, reading.)))

In a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce this week, Kenney said the federal government is changing the citizenship program to create a stronger focus on helping people integrate into their new lives in Canada.

Information for new Canadians should emphasize our nation's history, the rule of law and principles such as equality between men and women, he said.

(((There’s something kind of off-putting with “such as equality between men and women”…)))

That's only common sense.

(((…because it is ‘common sense’, ergo if one of this values can be agreed upon, then all else that Kenney and Clancy suggest must also be common sense. It you are agreeing to one thing, but because the parameters of agreeance are so vague, I feel like I’m going to get associated with a whole bunch of other so-called values are more a matter of opinion. What do you call this sort of wordplay? Shell game language?)))

These are the things that have made Canada a beacon for freedom -- a land of opportunity to which people from oppressed cultures around the world have flocked.

(((I imagine this is true, but, without actually saying it, Clancy and Kenney are talking about a very specific type of ‘immigrant’, aren’t they? They aren’t talking about a British guy or gal coming over to live, or even a French family. They are talking about immigrants from third world countries with despotic leaders, or, the entire dangerous world outside of North America for guys like Clancy and Kenney. That’s assumptive of me, sure, but hey, this is the Calgary Sun we’re talking about.)))

This is a country which has encouraged individual liberty and diversity of thought and action, but we haven't been doing enough to make newcomers understand how it got that way.

(((“…individual liberty and diversity of thought and action…”)))

"We want to make sure when people become Canadian, they totally understand that Canadian history becomes their history, Canadian values become their values," said Kenney, MP for Calgary Southeast.

(((I am pretty sure that far less Canadians know their Canadian history or “Canadian values” as well Roy Clancy and Jason Kenney think they do (or at least pretend to in a move to pander and feed that “individual” ego of voter/readers).)))

Kenney also wants to ensure immigrants -- aside from children and seniors -- are able to speak one of our two official languages.

(((So you immediately have an advantage if you happened to be born in an English and/or French speaking region. I guess that helps cut down on the human chafe, doesn’t it, Roy? I want to stop and think about the kind of uproar that would happen in our land of individual diversity if we were asked to know both official languages to maintain Canadian citizenship. Just lucking out and being born in a particular slab of land seems suspiciously low qualification, what with all these much higher qualifications, on top of actively having to make an effort to move across the globe to live here by choice. Speaking English, barely able to write in it, and barely finishing high school isn’t exactly worth breathing space in my books either, you know…anyway, onward!)))

That's a policy that's already in place but, unbelievably, hasn't been fully enforced.

(((Unbelievable, as in, too hard to swallow due to the sheer impossibility of it?)))

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Kenney's approach is his dismissal of the "multiculturalism" programs which began in the 1970s, but have outlived their usefulness.

(((Maybe it is just every version of Microsoft Word I have ever used, but that should be “programs, which began…”, or, as Clancy has it, “programs that began….”. “programs which began” is just flat out incorrect. Also, the clarity of that statement isn’t exactly clear. Did Kenney say that these “multiculturalism” programs have outlived their usefulness? Or is that Clancy’s own opinion?)))

"We want everyone who comes here to be proud of their heritage, but become Canadians," Kenney told Sun columnist Rick Bell.

"We don't want government enforced diversity. Canada is already diverse."

(((Does Jason Kenney not realize that he is an MP, ergo part of the government, but also legislating, ergo to a certain degree ‘enforcing’ a view of diversity?)))

Few Canadians -- whether longterm or newly arrived -- would disagree with that.

(((I guess I am one of the few Canadians who might not necessarily agree with either, but am willing to question weak arguments.)))

That diversity lends a richness and depth to our society, but to ensure we remain glorious and free, the emphasis has to be placed on the future, rather than the past.

(((The future, rather than the past, is pretty nice place to be in when there is an uncertainy of how you look, while looking to the past definitely casts you as anything but benevolent. But, wait, aren’t Clancy and Kenney talking about Canadian heritage being so valuable? Why such an emphasis then?)))

"We need to focus on what unites us," Kenney said.

On Friday, changes to our citizenship laws came into effect that strengthen the meaning of being a Canadian.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens with no real connection to Canada will no longer be able to pass on the benefits of Canadian citizenship to their descendents in perpetuity.

The new legislation stems from the Canadian-funded evacuation of 15,000 Canadians from the 2006 war in Lebanon, many of whom subsequently returned there.

Canadians were outraged to learn about the hundreds of thousands of "citizens of convenience," living abroad, who retain few ties to this country and pay no taxes, but take advantage of its privileges.

(((Oh man, “citizens of convenience” brings back memories of outrage…I suppose if the government had done nothing for these non-tax paying Canadians, and they’d be killed or something, we’d be OK to sit back and complain then too?)))

Next on the agenda should be the tens of thousands of bogus refugee claimants who arrive on our shores every year seeking asylum.

(((Oh, that’s a leap.)))

Canada spends billions processing them and providing services, even though a minuscule percentage are legitimate.

(((Based on what information, Roy?)))

At the same time millions of real refugees languish in deplorable conditions in camps around the world.

(((Probably because of the iron maiden-like open arms of countries like ours.)))

Legitimate immigrants who play by all the rules, are also thwarted by the hordes of queue jumpers.

(((CITE, MOTHERFUCKER, CITE! Quit playing into your own and your reader’s middle-class white guy rage of unfairness!)))

Immigrants have been the lifeblood of this country since its birth. Hard-working people from all lands helped forge our modern identity and created more opportunities for those who followed.

(((Yes, and they weren’t forced to learn English or French, or know about our ‘heritage’ because it didn’t exist yet, and vague values, because they hadn’t been formed yet…)))

Kenney and the Conservatives should be commended for making changes that strengthen the meaning of being a Canadian citizen.

(((Or pointed at and laughed at how dishonest it all is.)))

The newcomers attracted by our opportunities and our freedom will appreciate that most of all.

(((How so? Oh, wait, that’s your concluding statement. Best way to not have to explain yourself!)))

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Picking on a tiny, troubled minority

By Ian Robinson

(((Well, I won’t bore you with the article, but it actually surprised me. Ian Robinson actually DEFENDS Gender Reassignment Surgery. And once you get passed his bigoted, close-minded bullshit, he has a good point: the amount of money being saved by cutting the surgery ($700,000 saved in face of a $13 billion dollar budget) is pretty insignificant, and, if the budget makers had spent a few minutes researching, they would have seen that a Human Right investigation in Ontario found the cut ‘inhumane’ (or something) and it was reversed anyway. But not before incurring even MORE provincial/governmental costs. I think this just goes to show: the way into the fundie Christin conservative retard's heart is through his wallet; if you can convince him that something is financially worthwhile, you can get him to do anything.)))

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The Bald Knobbers, an 1880s vigilante group from Missouri, as portrayed in the 1919 film, The Shepherd of the Hills.

Fightin' farmer a hero to many

Charges for collaring crook lacking in common sense

By Peter Worthington

(((The following I was completely unaware of until just a few days ago when friend Ira Wells had an article in the National Post about it. I think he did a pretty superb job of capturing my point of view on the situation, but let’s see what ol’ Pete has to say to challenge it!)))

This is one of those stories that gets the blood of law-abiding citizens boiling.

(((Yesssssssssssssssss.)))

It is also one of those stories that defies what many of us regard as common sense.

(((There’s now TWO appeals to ‘common sense’, this passing off of opinion and perspective and collectively (SOCIALIST) agreed upon.)))

It is the story of Brian Knight, who lives in rural Alberta, some 40 km from the nearest RCMP detachment.

One night in late March, he spotted a guy stealing his All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) and gave chase in his truck, rammed the ATV into a ditch, and when the guy took off running, fired at him with his shotgun, wounding him.

(((According to Ira, it was three guys trying to steal the ATV.)))

Knight and neighbours caught the guy and called the police.

While waiting, the wounded thief jumped into an idling truck and drove off, but lost control and was re-captured.

When the RCMP arrived, the wounded thief was arrested and charged.

End of story, you might think, with Knight being congratulated for his vigilance.

(((Haha, you say vigilance, I say vigilantism. You fucking punter.)))

Uh-un.

That's not the way the law works.

(((Yes, surprisingly enough, the law tends to not take a kind view of men shooting fleeing men in the back with a shotgun in a field in the dead of night.)))

Seven charges were laid against Knight, including criminal assault, criminal negligence causing bodily harm, discharging a firearm.

Unbelievable.

(((For what Peter Worthington imagines to be unbelievable, I’m sure he still finds time in his life to believe in something actually unbelievable…like God.)))

As Charles Dickens once so aptly put it: "The law is a ass."

(((Appeal to Dickens, that formidable practioner of law! Or, just one echoing the rabble’s angst when it comes to, when best applied, cold hard, fair logic and reason.)))

To some, Brian Knight is now a folk-hero.

(((I had to look up folk hero on Wikipedia, because I’m sure it isn’t quite as great as Peter thinks it is.

“Although some folk heroes are historical public figures, they generally are not. Because the lives of folk heroes are generally not based on historical documents, the characteristics and deeds of a folk hero are often exaggerated to mythic proportions.

“The folk hero often begins life as a normal person, but is transformed into someone extraordinary by significant life events, often in response to social injustice, and sometimes in response to natural disasters.

“One major category of folk hero is the defender of the common people against the oppression or corruption of the established power structure. Members of this category of folk hero often, but not necessarily, live outside the law in some way.”

(((Two not so random examples of folk-heroes: Bonnie and Clyde, Genghis Khan.)))

What he did was what many of us hope we would do when our property or home is violated -- and there are no police handy.

(((Chase a man down and shoot him in the back, as he runs away, with a shotgun?)))

It's been repeatedly established, in other places as well as Alberta, that police have too much on their plate to deal with petty stuff.

Often, people don't bother reporting crimes because they know there's no point.

(((Because the crimes are pretty and there’s probably no point in reporting it equals shotgun vigilantism?)))

Presumably, when Knight faces trial (assuming the law is relentless), a defence fund will have been raised to ensure he's adequately represented. It shouldn't be that way.

(((Or, it really should be that way. If a precedent isn’t set, you let Knight slide, then it becomes problematic drawing the line down the road.)))

If police can't help citizens, surely citizens are justified in defending themselves.

(((Are we really at this point? When you live in a rural environment, which the vast minority of the population actually does, yes, police response time is going to be kind of poor. That is one of those things you’ve got to keep into consideration when you live “some 40 km from the nearest RCMP detachment.” Because of this doesn’t mean you can do whatever the hell you want. You know, in the two articles I’ve read regarding this, no one has actually mentioned if Knight bothered calling the police first before taking to roads in a fit of vigilante rage…)))

Knight's case reminds me of an incident in Hamilton (I'm resorting to memory) when a man saw his absent neighbour's house being robbed, and fired a shotgun loaded with birdshot at the asphalt driveway -- which ricocheted into leg of a teenage thief.

Instead of getting a good citizenship award, the guy was charged.

(((Ah, from memory. I would be fairly surprised if the guy was convicted of anything…and, again, a guy taking matters into his own hands…did he even try calling the police?)))

Of course, no sensible person advocates vigilante-like behaviour.

(((“But...)))

But when police won't or can't respond quickly, or are occupied with more serious crimes, what's a potential victim to do?

(((And here begins the blurring…)))

If criminal elements know the police won't respond, and if they know victims will be charged if they fight back, then it's open season on society.

(((Smart criminals are probably more concerned about stealing whatever it is they are stealing and doing so successfully. They will probably target locations that they know police response time is slow (or slow enough that it balances out with the low-risk factor of the benefit), and, ideally, where the victims won’t catch them. I’m fairly sure that on the agenda of your common, stupid criminals (guys stealing ATVs on farms?), the fact that the victim is powerless because of the restraints of the law doesn’t factor into their decision-making, thus this ‘open season on society’ is fictitious. Ira wasn’t too far off base here talking about Batman comics. This isn’t like Knightfall, or Battle of the Cowl, with the inmates of Arkham Asylum breaking out, Batman is missing, and a crime spree erupts…)))

In parts of the U.S. where gun violence is endemic, laws have been passed to allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons.

Where this has happened, gun incidents have dropped precipitously.

(((CITE, please.)))

No one is urging similar laws here, but surely it shouldn't be viewed as a criminal act to protect yourself, your property, or your neighbour from those who seek to inflict harm?

(((Crime is crime is crime, for Mr. Worthington.)))

Too often our courts protect the "rights" of perpetrators rather than the victims -- to be more concerned about the living than the dead.

(((Hey, remember when we were talking about Brian Knight? Well, the only person who might have been dead in this case was an ATV thief due too shotgun shell poisoning.)))

This can undermine public morale, and denigrate the ideal of the "law" enhancing "justice."

(((It could, I guess? Or, it could be strengthening and restating ideals of “law” and “justice” in an actual reality we aim for, not television, comics, and movies.)))

Granted that "law" is more important than "justice" in maintaining and advancing an orderly society, but balancing the two is surely an essential goal.

(((Yeah, I don’t think Brian Knight in anyway represents a cause for “justice”.)))

There's a shortage of common sense in the charges against Brian Knight and hopefully the judge will correct this when his case is heard.

(((Where is the common sense here? Anyway, letters!)))

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CULTURAL CONFUSION

As an ESL teacher for 17 years, I am disappointed, but not necessarily surprised by some of the ideas in Rick Bell's April 16 column. First, I find it interesting to hear people use phrases like "a shared culture". How confident are Jason Kenney and Rick Bell that they can identify a "Canadian culture" that we all share? I'm sure my "culture" is different from theirs. Second, language is indeed important for newcomers, but people who feel immigrants "can't be bothered" to learn English show their ignorance to the complex process of learning a language, and world politics in general. It is an unrealistic expectation to get skilled workers already fluent in English knocking on our door ready to start contributing to our culture on day one. While I fully believe language is among the most important skill that can lead to successful integration in a new country, it is simple-minded to expect fluent English or French from immigrants before arrival. Our nation should invest in its own future by providing language training for intelligent and enthusiastic immigrants keen to start contributing to their new country.

Anthony Appleby

(Learning the language isn't too great a price for citizenship in this great country.)

(((So I keep hearing, but this is all well and good coming from the side of power, isn’t it?)))

SEX-CHANGERS SHOULD PAY

A question for these people wanting health-care funded sex-change operations. If this is so important to you, why can't you save up and pay for it yourself ? Why did you expect taxpayer to pay for it? Just like elective plastic surgery, this idea of a taxpayer- funded sex-change procedure is a farce. Let's face it, it isn't like a life-saving gall bladder operation. So save your money and get it done on your own.

D. Sells

(They claim it's sometimes a matter of life or death.)

(((What cold hard logic D. Sells has deployed to prove his point.)))

-Jarrett

Regarding Brows

2009-04-08T15:15:00.003-06:00

Recently I was flipping through an old issue of Re/Search featuring JG Ballard, and in the first interview Ballard makes note of a concept I had never really considered: middlebrow.

"The term middlebrow is used to describe both a certain type of easily accessible art, usually literature, as well as the population which uses art to acquire culture and class that is usually unattainable. First used by the British satire magazine Punch in 1925, middlebrow is derived as the intermediary between highbrow and lowbrow, terms derived from phrenology^[1]. Middlebrow has famously gained notoriety from derisive attacks by Dwight MacDonald, Virginia Woolf, and to a certain extent, Russell Lynes. It has been classified as a forced and ineffective attempt at cultural and intellectual achievement, as well as characterizing literature which emphasizes emotional and sentimental connections rather than literary quality and innovation."

While it is a tempting label to apply to a great many things that irk me, there is a danger of it being too broad, and easily abused to define something a person just doesn't care for. So what did Virginia Woolf have to say?

"Virginia Woolf explicitly articulated her derision of the middlebrow in an un-posted letter-to-the-editor of the New Statesman about a review of a book of hers that omitted the word highbrow. That letter was posthumously published in the essay collection The Death of the Moth in 1942.^[2]

Virginia Woolf distinguishes middlebrows as petty purveyors of highbrow cultures for their own shallow benefit. Rather than selecting books for their intrinsic value, middlebrows select and read what they are told is best. Middlebrows are concerned with how what they do makes them appear, unlike highbrows, the avant-garde men and women who act according to their indelible commitment to beauty, value, art, form, and integrity. Woolf said, “We highbrows read what we like and do what we like and praise what we like”. Likewise, a lowbrow is devoted to a singular interest, a person “of thoroughbred vitality who rides his body in pursuit of a living at a gallop across life”; and, therefore, are equally worthy of reverence, as they, too, are living for what they intrinsically know as valuable.

Middlebrows, instead, are “betwixt and between”, which Woolf classifies as “in pursuit of no single object, neither Art itself nor life itself, but both mixed indistinguishably, and rather nastily, with money, fame, power, or prestige”. Their value system rewards quick gains through literature already designated as ‘Classic’ and ‘Great’, never of their own choosing, because “to buy living art requires living taste”. The middlebrow are meretricious — which is much less demanding than authenticity.

It is noteworthy that while Woolf criticizes those members of the middlebrow, she wrote for middlebrow publications, such as The New York Herald Tribune Books section. Her literature has been classified as middlebrow, easily-accessible, and feminized — the very threat she claimed would provoke her to “take pen and stab him, dead” for such a label. Middlebrow audiences finance the works of the highbrow, and most artists must appeal to the wide audience for success."

I guess the term I've been using for this is 'pseud', a behavior that is pretty common in a college town. Speaking for just myself, I have consulted a list or three regarding recommendations of 'classics', and 'great'. There is this perfect Britishness in this idea, and that 'taste' is something you naturally have, proving one's station in life. French social critic and theorist Pierre Bourdieu has taken this notion to task, telling you exactly what it is: a bunch of hegemonic, hierarchical withstanding nonsense (see: Distinction). Russell Lyne had fun at the general stuffiness and absurdity of this classification.

Harper's Magazine editor Russell Lynes satirized Virginia Woolf’s highbrow scorn in the article "Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow". ^[4] Quoting her and other highbrow proponents, such as art critic Clement Greenberg, Lynes parodied the highbrow's pompous superiority by noting how the subtle distinctions Woolf found significant among the "brows" were just means of upholding cultural superiority. Specifically, he parodies the highbrow claim that the products a person uses distinguishes his or her level of cultural worth, by satirically identifying the products that would identify a middlebrow person.

Lynes continued distinguishing among "brows", dividing middlebrow into upper-middlebrow and lower-middlebrow. The upper-middlebrow's arts patronage makes highbrow activity possible. Museums, orchestras, operas, and publishing houses are run by upper-middlebrows. The lower middlebrows attempt using the arts for self-enhancement: "hell-bent on improving their minds as well as their fortunes". They also intend to live the simple, easy life outlined in advertisements; “lower middlebrow-ism” was "a world that smells of soap". Caricaturing Woolf, Lynes outlined the perfect world without middlebrows; lowbrows work and highbrows create pure art.

Months later, Life magazine asked Lynes to specifically distinguish among the right foods, furniture, clothes, and arts for each of the four 'brows'. That began national preoccupation, as people tried to identify their proper social class, based upon their favorite things. Although middlebrow often has connoted contempt, Lynes lauded the zeal and aspirations of the middlebrows.

And of course, what discussion of 'middlebrow' would be complete without talking about Oprah?

The Book-of-the-Month Club and Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club have been widely characterized as middlebrow, marketed to bring classics and 'highbrow' literature to the middle class. Janet Radway in her seminal account of the Book-of-the-Month Club (as it was from its inception in 1926 to the 1980s before it transformed to a purely commercial operation) “A Feeling for Books” argues that middlebrow culture is not simply an diluted impersonation of highbrow, but instead distinctly defined itself in defiance of avant-garde high culture[7]. The club provided subscribers with literature selected by expert and ‘generalist’ judges, but held the personal, emotional experience of reading a good book as paramount, while simultaneously maintaining ‘high standards’ for literary quality. In this way, the club was in opposition to the general criticism of middlebrow culture in that is forced high culture. Instead, Radway demonstrates that for the middlebrow culture allows readers to simultaneously access the emotional and intellectual challenges which good reading provides. Radway also identifies the conflicting gender messages sent by the selections. While the club was marketed extensively to the female reader, including its emphasis on the emotional pleasure to books, the focus on intellectual, academic literature of the middlebrow trapped the reader into the constrictive masculine standards of value, classifying ‘great books’ as those which fell in line with male, technical classifications of excellence.

My question is, where it the UNIBROW, an all encompassing trans universal brow of shared human experience, nature, and understanding?

-Jarrett

A New Post, Rape, Hindsight

2009-04-05T09:57:00.004-06:00

No one was online for me to rant about this to, so hey! A blog post!

First, a round of applause for Donato, producing perhaps one of the worst political cartoons I have ever seen (which is saying A Lot). Onward...

Afghan zealots arm their critics
Latest affront undermines all that may have been accomplished between the battles and the bloody
by Martin Hudson

"War, what's it good for?

Absolutely nothing if the people you're supposedly fighting for can't get their frontal lobes out of the Stone Age."

[...]

This is such an outrage, it makes one think the Neanderthals responsible should be frog-marched back to their caves to give the whole thing some more thought.

[...]

But a reminder for those running that country: the fine men and women who are battling to bring you along the evolutionary scale are not there at your good graces.

'Stone age', 'Neanderthals', 'evolutionary': Dig that racist language! I guess Martin Hudson is ignorant of the history of laws behind spousal rape in this western world, and that this marital rape exemption was only stricken from the law books in only the last thirty years or so, depending on the first world western Christian-based democracy you live in. Here's one of my favourite selections from Wikipedia:

The proposition of Christian teaching's influence in Western culture need be considered, in particular, St. Paul's teaching, "Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." (1 Corinthians 7:3-5, NKJV). This can be seen in Common law, in force in North America and the British Commonwealth, where the very concept of marital rape was treated as an impossibility. This was illustrated most vividly by Sir Matthew Hale, in his 1736 classic legal treatise, Historia Placitorum Coronae, History of the Pleas of the Crown, where he wrote that such a rape could not be recognized since the wife "…hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.

Yeah.

By 1993, this was the case throughout the United States.^{[citation needed]} However, as of 1999, 33 of 50 U.S. states regard spousal rape as a lesser crime [Bergen, 1999].

In Canada, spouse rape wasn't criminalized until 1983 which is the year I was born, but that point is currently buried beneath article after article about the outrage of Canadians about Afghanistan.

-Jarrett

"...and on that note."

2008-12-19T09:13:00.004-07:00

This has not much to do with comics, so here it appears...and what a note to revive the ol' blog on.

BURNING BODY FOUND IN VANCOUVER SHOPPING CART

"One person is dead after being found burning in a shopping cart in downtown Vancouver early Friday morning.

The body was found at Davie Street and Hornby Street around 4:30 a.m. PT.

Patrons at a nearby all-night coffee shop said just minutes before, a homeless man wearing a blanket had run into the shop screaming that somebody was on fire.

But witnesses say he was ignored by the staff and patrons for two or three minutes because there had been a number of incidents involving homeless people fighting and yelling in and around the coffee shop earlier.

Eventually one woman in the coffee shop went out to look and spotted the flames about a block and a half away, witnesses said.

Someone called 911, but the firefighters arrived too late to save the person."

Yeah, pretty ghastly...but a few of things.

1) My dad was watching Stanley Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY upstairs when I was checking the news online.

2) I had just started listening to the A CLOCKWORK ORANGE soundtrack when I read the news story...and this classic image popped into my mind (the second image is that bit in AMERICAN PSYCHO...oh pop culture has ravaged me).

3) A couple of my own 'hobo' comics have made light of the plight of the homeless. I'm not going to make any apologizes as there is quite a world of difference between what I decide to draw and what people do in real life...but yeah, kind of uncomfortable, and it is kind of sad that enough homeless people are burned alive in the streets every year for it to become a common story...a cliche of the news.

-Jarrett

On Steampunk

2008-07-27T17:12:00.003-06:00

"Steampunk Jungle Gym"

Hey, who says I can't irregularily update with non-comics related material?

Anyway, 'steampunk' is another one of those incredibly annoying buzzwords and fads that only exists in geek culture and on the internet. Anyone in their right mind who follows BoingBoing should be sick to death of everything 'steampunk'. I have stopped going to BoingBoing regularily for a few weeks now (what with notcot.org doing the same thing, just without the samey Cory Doctorow & Co. editorializing), and I think it has a lot to do with fucking 'steampunk', and how he justifies his overuse of the word. This actually KIND OF links to comics, so could be placed elsewhere, but I watched a video of Cory Doctorow in a comic store he frequents and he Actually referred to superhero comics as "underwear perverts". Talk about a guy who wants to be hated...

Anyway, this all sprang to mind when I read this hilarious and brief post from Christopher Butcher regarding Steampunk:

Observation: Steampunk is the new Klingons

Seriously people.

- Chris

Yeah, it really needs to be put to an end. I don't even want to think about the kind of costumes on display at the San Diego Comic Con. We need to, like, push this all back into the sea or something! No quarter! Die, Darkman, Die!

-Jarrett

Afterthought

2008-07-12T03:01:00.003-06:00

I kind of just stopped posting, eh? What got me back into posting at all was that I was producing weekly videos for my Video Sketchbook class. With a lack of access to the Mac labs, and no 'assignments' forcing me to put together videos....well, that's three months fast.

So taking a cue from Lawrence's shift to something more in line with his own hobby, I've done likewise. So come join me with my new blog, Comics Are Serious Business.

Oh, and to the left of me is just one of many very, very stupid things that DC Comics has been up to for the last....let's be generous....5 years. Just...don't ask.

-Jarrett

CHESTER FIELDS Trailer

2008-04-23T02:47:00.000-06:00

What seems like years ago (and it has been years), I wrote a screenplay called CHESTER BROWN. And then I realized there was a well known Canadian cartoonist named Chester Brown. I was still fond of the name Chester, and went with something perfectly Canadian: CHESTER FIELDS.

Having a screenplay and lacking the resources to do anything with it, Daniel Wong and I decided to just film a trailer for it. In the words of Michael Richards' Bow Tie Killer: "for kicks". So here it is, in all its...glory...

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Twelve

2008-04-22T17:52:00.001-06:00

This is it, the shattering conclusion!

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Eleven

2008-04-22T17:44:00.000-06:00

The penultimate chapter! Who lives? Who dies? FIND OUT...NOW!

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Ten

2008-04-22T17:17:00.001-06:00

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Nine

2008-04-22T16:22:00.000-06:00

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Eight

2008-04-22T15:48:00.001-06:00

Suspense!

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Seven

2008-04-22T15:22:00.001-06:00

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Six

2008-04-22T14:56:00.001-06:00

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Five

2008-04-22T14:10:00.001-06:00

Day two of the endeavor...

-Jarrett

TARANTULA (2004)

2008-04-22T13:26:00.001-06:00

The title really says....nothing at all about the film.

My love affair with Vimeo continues. With fast upload speeds, informative data as far as when my video will begin processing, as well as a time frame for how long processing will take, to a really smooth interface, with playability not reliant on subpar video players....it really is everything Veoh isn't. From what I have read, Vimeo is in fact the 'underdog' compared with Veoh too, so there is no reason why Veoh can't be better than Vimeo...only it isn't.

Oh yeah, this is suppose to be about the Chnoborov film, TARANTULA!

Tarantula (2004) from Jarrett Duncan on Vimeo.

TRIVIA! By my count, there are at least two WATCHMEN references (one in the movie poster, one in the actual movie).

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Four

2008-04-21T20:42:00.000-06:00

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Three

2008-04-21T20:16:00.000-06:00

And we keep rolling them out...originally envisioned 10 parts, but I want to cut each part at logical points. So might wind up being 11 or 12. Excitement!

-Jarrett

CAPES Part Two

2008-04-21T13:45:00.000-06:00

-Jarrett

CAPES Part One

2008-04-21T12:46:00.000-06:00

So Veoh has turned out to be a minor disaster: one week later, and the video still hasn't finished processing, with no reply from Veoh Support after flagging my own video on Thursday night. So, this has basically forced me to start chopping CAPES into 10 minute chunks. This will be a much slower process (I should hopefully have the entire film uploaded on YouTube by the end of the week, after exams and work).

-Jarrett

ONE FORTY (2003)

2008-04-21T01:28:00.000-06:00

So, um, in lieu of CAPES being actually processed by the less than impressive Veoh, I present to you another project from the murky early 2000s, done with Daniel Wong.

One Forty: An Intimate Portrait of the Chnoborov Brothers (2003) from Jarrett Duncan on Vimeo.

-Jarrett

And Then.....CAPES!

2008-04-16T21:06:00.000-06:00

Well, it only took five years...but CAPES: THE ADVENTURES OF ALLIGATOR MAN AND HIS LEAPING LIZARD is now (almost) viewable by you, the unclean masses. How about that!

Now, the only free video hosting website that I could find that would host all 1.4gigs and all 1hr36minutes of running time was Veoh. The tricksy bit with Veoh is that, I believe, one has to download the Veoh Player to watch CAPES. Now my five year old computer installed and runs Veoh Player just fine, so bear thahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gift in mind.

VIDEO TO BE....HERE.

It has taken almost a day for Veoh to get to the point of processing the film in its entirety and make it playable. At the time of this writing (9:09pm), it still hasn't finished being published on the website. This will all be edited once everything comes to fruitition though.

So for those who have watched it already....good on you. For those who haven't seen it...let me know your thoughts I guess?

EDIT: Well, Veoh sucks.

-Jarrett

Good-bye YouTube...

2008-04-15T23:00:00.000-06:00

...Hello, Vimeo! (For now). I'm currently playing with other video hosting options, and so far I'm liking Vimeo more than Veoh.

First new content is actually from almost 5 years ago, while making CAPES with Michael Robertson: STAN: Regarding Lawn Chairs.

STAN: Regarding Lawn Chairs from Jarrett Duncan on Vimeo.

-Jarrett

"Project Nine"

2008-04-08T16:39:00.001-06:00

Well here it is: the final assignment. It was to create two videos for two monitors that will be displayed on Michael Campbell's door. The two videos put together will run simultaneously. Here I have recreated the effect the video is to have while on the monitor.

-Jarrett

"Project Wood"

2008-04-01T19:57:00.000-06:00

A couple things.

1. This is a reworking of "Project Seven".

2. This is the first collaborative work between myself and Shanell Papp.

-Jarrett

"Project Zero"

2008-03-31T17:32:00.000-06:00

-Jarrett

"Project Eight"

2008-03-26T17:22:00.001-06:00

The viewing of this video is somewhat problematic as it is made to be viewed at a 90 degrees counterclock wise.

-Jarrett

I Hate You All...Project Seven

2008-03-20T12:34:00.000-06:00

My 'site specific' video piece for Michael Campbell's video monitor, which hangs on his office door. Here I have filmed his door....and that's about it. Props for Glen MacKinnon for walking by!

-Jarrett

Project Six, or "Hello, I'm Jimmy Stewart"

2008-03-12T21:52:00.000-06:00

Oh, wait, no I'm not.

This is the first in a series of videos I intend to make in reverence to Alfred Hitchcock.

-Jarrett

Project Five, Hoooooo!

2008-03-04T17:04:00.000-07:00

So, here's the deal: this video isn't due until Thursday. This is the 'rough draft' of the video as it stands. I am just not confident in what I've come up with so far, and would absolutely love and appreciate some feedback in the next day or so. So make with it, chop chop!

-Jarrett

Project Four, Coming At Ya!

2008-02-28T14:57:00.000-07:00

...and it disappoints even me. I am no Walter Murch style audio artist, that's for damn sure. Well better luck next time, wot!

-Jarrett

"The Wegnaukauf Show"

2008-02-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

-Jarrett

Video Sketchbook Role Call! Part Three

2008-02-14T01:53:00.001-07:00

And...GO!!!!

The Way Things Go, Peter Fischli and David Weiss (excerpt)

No luck finding Daniel Olson's White Trash.

Part One of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Robert Wiene

Cremaster 3: The Order, Matthew Barney (a wee clip).

I will take this opportunity to just say I am no fan of Barney whatsoever.

Film, by Samuel Beckett (Part One)

And speaking of Beckett, we watched a whole bunch of film adaptations of Beckett's plays by...

Play, Anthony Minghella (Part One)

Breath, Damien Hirst

And for whatever reason, I'm not seeing Neil Jordan's Not I with Julianne Moore. What really disappoints is that Lisa Steele's Birthday Suit-with scars and defects is not to be found online, even though it is described as having "entered the master canon as both body art and statement of identity. A litany of visible injury, it remains fresh and revelatory after more than thirty years." Boo!

So after actually posting my very own video, I think I will post my own additions I would have if I were teaching the class. Perhaps.

-Jarrett

Video Sketchbook Role Call! Part Two

2008-02-14T01:34:00.001-07:00

As promised, part two.

Some Lumiere Brothers films

We did watch some Thomas Edison films, but there really isn't much of a sampling of his work that I could find offhand.

I have posted this before, but fuck you, its William Wegman!

Man With The Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov (here's Part One)

Hey, no luck finding Hell by Ardele Lister either! From her website, a description: "Dante's hell interpreted for the electronic age. In the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York." Her website.

Hm, having no luck all of a sudden! The next film we watched was the short animation Ryan by Chris Landreth. No YouTube, but here's a link to the website with promotional stills and an excerpt (ie. snooze).

Maybe I should have stopped with Part One. Next we watched Errol Morris' Stairway to Heaven from his First Person series. Can't find it, but anyone who knows me should know they can borrow it from me anytime. The subject of the documentary is Temple Grandin.

Man, no luck at all with this Part Two. Maybe I'll have better luck...with PART THREE! Doing it just to break up the monotony of one giant post, maybe reducing the chance of you just skimming and actually watching the videos.

-Jarrett

Video Sketchbook Role Call! Part One

2008-02-13T22:49:00.001-07:00

A new video for class is forthcoming, but to bide my time I am going to reproduce, to the best of YouTube's capabilities the 'demo/example' videos Prof. Michael Campbell has shown to us this semester so far.

Ballet Mecanique, Fernand Leger

Anemic Cinema, Marcel Duchamp

Trip to the Moon, George Melies

The Reflecting Pool, Bill Viola

Pipilotti Rist, Aujourd´Hui

And that's it for Part One! Tomorrow, Part Two and my new video: "Excerpt from 'The Manny Wegnaukauf Show'.

-Jarrett

Something Else: The Pastor

2008-02-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

-Jarrett

And Now, Project Two

2008-02-04T16:36:00.001-07:00

So the first video posted worked out alright. Here's Project Number Two!

-Jarrett

"We.....we are not alone."

2008-02-02T17:14:00.001-07:00

I thought I was one of very few who had such contempt for this phrase...*sniff*

-Jarrett

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...

2008-01-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Literally just finished loading this up onto YouTube. I won't know how it turned out for a little bit now (going to catch the bus). I am going off the suggested specs on the YouTube FAQ on what format to upload in, so we'll see how that goes. If it looks like total crap, I can always delete it and try something else when I get back to the school this weekend. Fingers crossed!

-Jarrett

Hitchsese

2007-12-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

-Jarrett

Yes. Puppet Rapist.

2007-11-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Leila, mutual friend of Shanell and I, recommended the following web series to us a couple weeks ago. Just got around to watching it this morning, and it was worth it.

-Jarrett

Yes! Another List of Horror!

2007-10-25T11:40:00.000-06:00

And again, courtesy of The Onion's AV Club! This time, CABIN FEVER and HOSTEL's Eli Roth comes down with the recommendations. Again, it is another list where I have seen 90% of the movies, and those films I haven't (or want) to see are completely unavailable through convenient means in the province of ignorant Alberta. The list follows the conceit of a 24 hour viewing period starting at 12pm. I arbitrarily numbered the list, in no way suggesting a progressive drop or rise in quality. This is simply how Roth suggests viewing the films in a one day horror extravaganza.

1. THE THING (1982) Hey Lawrence, we never finished the John Carpenter filmography viewing did we? We stopped short of this! For shame.

2. ZOMBIE (1979) I personally do not care for this one (Romeros' vastly superior DAWN OF THE DEAD (that goes for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as well) is far more ubiquitous and anyone reading a horror movie list has already seen it...but they've probably already seen ZOMBIE too).

3. THE VANISHING (1988) Cory and I watched this a couple of years ago after he taped it off TV. Yeah, an ever increasing sense of dread throughout the film, climaxing in probably my worst imaged way of dying (HINT: see KILL BILL vol. 2)

4. PIECES (1982) Other than the utterly brilliant title, this movie is a big sack o' shit. A lot of unintentionally hilarious callousness, badly dubbed over English....basically the foundation for a shit cult movie that people forget when they bitch about Tarantino's DEATH PROOF being 'overlong'. "Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard!"

5. THE WICKER MAN (1973) Such a damn fine movie.

6. WHO CAN KILL A CHILD (1976) With a title like that, it is finding itself on my Amazon Wish List! Hey folks, the holidays are coming up and I've got no money! Put yourself in Jarrett's Good Books today!

7. ERASERHEAD (1977) In just watching INLAND EMPIRE, ERASERHEAD cools my thoughts. A lot of people who have watched this are shocked I paid almost $100 to get this some years ago when it was unavailable save from David Lynch's website. I really do love it though. I also like that after just mentioning David Lynch has made some of the greatest horror films a film of his winds up on this list.

8. SUSPIRIA (1977) Completely overrated, and Roth's explanation as to its presence on the list offers the same ambiguous, ill-defined reasons I have always read when associated with people saying they like it so much. For me pretty well the MOULIN ROUGE of horror films, with its all style, no substance, all craft, no engagement construction.

9. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) Probably the best H.P. Lovecraft-but-not movie made yet. Incredibly well crafted, an inappropriate, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT level, score, docu-grotesquery...fine, fine filmmaking.

10. TOBY DAMMIT (1968) A Fellini horror film? Terrence Stamp? What the fuck? Is it really worth 17-19.99 on Amazon though, for one 30 minute short? Well shit, I paid $50 for Guy Maddin's THE HEART OF THE WORLD.

11. EVIL DEAD (1980) It might be my jaded, horror-genre loving eyes speaking, but EVIL DEAD and Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE are two of the best films ever made. Yeah, tree rape scene and all.

12. AUDITION (1999) Well, I strongly suspect I'll be watching this with Cory and Lawrence tonight (perhaps a double header with VISITOR Q as well).

13. TORSO (1973) The only film that is unavailable at the moment on DVD and, unfortunately, I haven't seen it. Of course, with a title so similar to PIECES, I have my reservations.

So for me, 10 out of 13, with one completely unavailable (at the moment). Of those I have seen, I only own 6 (though I'd probably like to own all of them, yes, even the ones I don't like all that much).

-Jarrett

On INLAND EMPIRE

2007-10-24T14:04:00.000-06:00

Um. Hm.

I received the DVD of INLAND EMPIRE about a week after its official release date from Amazon due to no store in Lethbridge having it on shelves at the time. That was in August. I just watched the movie for the first time last night while I still had the entire house to myself, basically fearing the experience I had. That is, the experience of disappointment.

INLAND EMPIRE is an utter failure as a narrative, which I have to believe is intentional. I vaguely know what happened, I've read other reviews and discussions that more or less match up with what I saw...but I don't really care. I am not a proponent that a character has to be sympathetic, but I would like to be given a fair try at figuring out what is going on.

The same tropes of Lynch's previous two films MULHOLLAND DRIVE and LOST HIGHWAY (both tied for my favourite Lynch films), especially the notion of identity, are yet again explored again. Those same shots of characters moving into the darkness, losing their selves and emerging as something else? Check! Ominous phone calls and lamps? Check! Metaphysical manifestations sitting around in septically lit room? You've got it! 1950s pop songs? BAM! Even going back as far as BLUE VELVET, replacing the 'dark underbelly of suburbia' with the 'dark underbelly of Hollywood', Lynch is just reiterating his entire filmography for basically the same audience. Again, I cannot imagine Lynch doesn't realizing this, and perhaps you could tie this into the oft quoted line in the film, "I suppose if it was 9:45, I would think it is after midnight." Take the film as a larger, metatextual reading? But do I really care enough or like the movie enough? No. It really is far easier to dislike the movie for these reasons than to want to like it, sadly. There were at least a half dozen times where I said aloud to myself "Jesus Christ, why am I watching this?" And continued watching out of the sake of finishing the film.

Anything good? Absolutely. Impeccable, if not now-cliched-by-Lynch-standards, sound design. Listening to the special features, Lynch and I both agree that sound can never be loud enough. In those same special features, he talks about the 'infinite' possibilities of a sound a doorknob makes in a movie, and only one or two can be right. His precision in sound editing is still astounding.

Working with the sound design there are moments in the film that are absolutely TERRIFYING aurally and visually (I often refer to TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME as one of the great horror films). There's this one scene in EMPIRE where Laura Dern's character comes shambling out of the darkness, on a stage, with a spotlight on her. The scene begins with Dern moving in slow motion, and begins building up in speed unnaturally. It freaks me out thinking about it right now. Guh.

The movie genuinely does genuinely contains its share of absolutely great scenes, don't get me wrong. The way that the image and sound blend together, what parts of the story we are able to discern enough to care about or can piece together...it all gels, and I'm reminded why I watch David Lynch movies, even the failures (ie. INLAND EMPIRE). I don't really like WILD AT HEART all that much, but there are some great moments throughout. Where WILD AT HEART is still a better movie is that I can actually follow the narrative through and through.

Some critics seem to really hate the DV quality of the images. There are a small handful of shots that really outline the limitations of the format (especially involving lots of movement), but I thought the movie looked gorgeous. My only hesitation with Lynch using DV is it really allows him to be uninhibited and unrestrained, which INLAND EMPIRE clearly shows doesn't work for even his hardcore audience.

I was really looking forward to INLAND EMPIRE when I heard about the entire process of it being made: digital film, an incomplete, written-as-they-go screenplay, more or less self-financed...basically I was hoping for more of a rallying call for independent filmmakers ala Dogme 95 to come around what should have been a great film. Sadly, as the wankfest that is davidlynch.net suggests, it seems Lynch in the last few years has become far too self-involved and without restraint.

I don't doubt that Lynch will make a good, even great film again, but definitely not this time around.

-Jarrett

"Even More Disturbing..."

2007-10-02T13:18:00.001-06:00

"...I've seen half of them!"

A nice companion piece to my last post, the AV Club ran a feature entitled "Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful To Watch Twice". Here's the list (ie. more fodder for my Amazon Wish List)...

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
(yep, own it, and have watched it two or three times)

DANCER IN THE DARK
(after watching some Bjork videos, I realized I had yet to watch this)

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
(not two weeks ago I was struck by the urge to track down a copy)

THE SEVENTH CONTINENT
(not heard of this...)

WINTER LIGHT
(...or this)

BAD LIEUTENANT
(own it, and have watched it many times)

STRAW DOGS
(own it...and have only watched it once)

AUDITION
(yes...own this...and have only watched it once)

SICK: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN,SUPERMASOCHIST
(uh...ditto)

COME AND SEE
(not heard of this)

IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS
(this one either)

SAFE
(God, watch the trailer posted with the article...apparently hilarious after watching it and
knowing just how disturbing it is)

IRREVERSIBLE
(yeah, own this, and watched....parts of it. Bought it at Costco of all places)

BOYS DON'T CRY
(only watched once, and flat out didn't like it. This, Leaving Las Vegas, and
something like Monster's Ball just aren't all that good)

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES
(not seen yet, but always have wanted to)

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
(own the graphic novel, not even sure if this is available in the US)

LEAVING LAS VEGAS
(see Boys Don't Cry. But yeah, the gang bang/anal rape is far more effective than the one in Boys Don't Cry, FWIW)

JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE
(on my Amazon Wish List for the last few months!)

S-21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE
(not heard of this)

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT
(watched it twice, not sure if there'll ever be a third viewing...)

MILLION DOLLAR BABY
(eh...I haven't watched it other than the first time mostly because it isn't something even worth watching again)

UNITED 93
(own this...and haven't watched it yet, actually. Hmm.)

LILYA 4-EVER
(not heard of this...)

NIL BY MOUTH
(haven't watched this, but Cory just bought this at a new store called Giant Tiger. Sort of a Irreversible/Costco situation, that).

There are also some great suggestions from commentators on the article:
Larry Clark's KIDS (or any of his films), Harmony Korine's GUMMO (or...any of his films), Todd Solondz movies, ICHI THE KILLER (for more Miiki extremism), Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT,
Tim Roth's THE WAR ZONE, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, SALO (which is, you know, a shit movie), Peter Greenaway's THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER (which is probably the most pure "love/hate" film I know of...I hate it), and many others.

My suggestion? THE WAR GAME.

-Jarrett

postpostpostpostpost

2007-09-30T01:06:00.000-06:00

This is how Shanell's 27th birthday was spent...

Top 10 Most Bizarre Videos!

Another 10 Bizarre Videos!

10 More Bizarre Videos!

This is the stuff? genre? I most admire and want to make my own contributions to someday.

Hey, ever want to experience The Dream Machine? Here's your chance with your very own monitor!

Also learned from the birthday revellery is of something far more horrific than maggot cheese: Harlequin type ichthyosis. I honestly cannot even post an image of someone inflicted with the disease in good conscience. Seriously. If you are really, Really interested...click here.

-Jarrett

Hobolicious

2007-09-28T17:22:00.000-06:00

Another blog is doing my job for me!

Steeping in the back of my mind is a cinematic hobo opus consisting of a series of vignettes of the hobo stock character through the ages and various genres. Material like this just stokes the flames of my imagination.

...

Man do I hate Norman Rockwell.

-Jarrett

Oh Canada!

2007-09-19T14:37:00.000-06:00

In my Canadian Art History class with Leslie Dawn we were given a handout and expected to read a short introduction to a book called National Dreams: Myth, Memory, and Canadian History by Daniel Francis. Realizing that I had that class today and the reading was to be done by, well, today, I of course read it about 30 minutes before the start of the course.

It sounds like would make for an interesting book that I'd never get around to reading. That said, something blogpost worthy jumped out at me like a sex starved pedo! In the article Francis mentions a textbook entitled Our Canada, "a history text in wide us during the 1950s and 1960s" written by Arthur Dorland, a professor at the University of Western Ontario. How dull can you get? Here are some highlights:

-"North American Indians were Chinese in origin and most were cannibals (pg. 18)";

-"New France was a 'despotism' (pg. 59)";

-"That the Conquest is something 'on which both English- and French-speaking Canadians can look back with pride' (pg. 105)";

-"That Quebec is a backward province whose people 'cling tenaciously to the old French-Canadian ways of living' (pg. 353)";

-"That 'the British Commonwealth of Nations is onf the greatest achievements in human organization in all history' (pg. 413)";

-"That we should never lose our 'rugged spiritual independence' by relying on social assistance, which 'should never be a substitute for self help, and should offer no encouragement to the shiftless or lazy' (pg. 504)";

I want a fucking copy of that textbook yesterday.

-Jarrett

"Into The Night"

2007-09-19T10:08:00.000-06:00

So last night I walked down to Denny's to meet Mr. Krysak for a late night supper. Walking back to the apartment my mind began to wander and concoct horrific encounters that awaited me around every corner. Rallying Neo-Nazis who mistake me for a 'fag' in their Confederate flag sporting pick up truck? A wild eyed drunken madman who decides to assault me? Maybe those crackling leaves being blown down the street by the wind behind me are the sounds of a giant spider about to pounce? Maybe the cops are going to pull over and stop me for questioning regarding my whereabouts when the old lady two blocks away was bond, tortured and killed an hour ago? When the roads are completely devoid of vehicles and one gets the feeling that you are the only person awake in a eight block radius these thoughts are to be expected.

Since watching the BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD episode "Friday Night", I have been fascinated with the 'night life' story. It is sort of the fantasy of the 'straight-man' in the life narrative to imagine breaking from the day-to-day and seek out new, perhaps darker, experiences. Maybe meet a beautiful, fascinating woman who is more knowledgeable about the world, leading you by hand and cock to hadn't fathomed. A savage beating by mongrels, narrowly avoided by some other coincidence, foiling the mongrels in a fittingly ironic mode.

Many a story, specifically film, exist within this genre/sub-genre. I have been reminded of this by an AV Club article run a month or so ago upon the release of SUPERBAD. The writer of the piece has a strong emphasis on how "Into The Night" really had its spurt in the 1980s as a response to the ideology of a Reagan America. The a few examples given I have seen few of: AFTER HOURS (a Scorsese movie I've been meaning to see for years), INTO THE NIGHT (durr), and SOMETHING WILD (a movie often recommended to me).

There are a few areas where the article goes wary. SUMMER LOVERS, which I feel completely ruins the tighter time frame the genre should be operating in. In one of the comments, someones mentions a Keanu Reeves vehicle named THE NIGHT BEFORE. Reading the following plot summary on IMDB goes, I think it pretty well defines what the genre is.

Winston Connelly wakes up in the middle of the night in an alley with no idea of how he got there. Nor does he know where in Los Angeles he is or why he is wearing a beat-up tuxedo. Through a series of flashbacks, he remembers that he was sidetracked on his way to the prom the night before. In the meantime, he has to figure out what happened to his wallet, his car keys, his date, and why a pimp named "Tito" wants him dead.

I think this film might better fit in being mentioned. There is a push for a socio-economic lashback and acceptance in a few examples (see: RISKY BUSINESS, RUNNING ON EMPTY). The author of the AV Club article seems to be pulling far too many directions when he has a solid core he could have worked off of instead. The core, I think was established in the first page, which the 'grimer examples' of the genre given. Brian DePalma's films BODY DOUBLE, BODY HEAT. Perhaps the quintessential Into The Night film, David Lynch's BLUE VELVET. David Mamet has done this at least twice with HOUSE OF GAMES and EDMOND. And Stanley Kubrick's last film EYES WIDE SHUT. These films I think follow the rules/plot points the author in the article laid down which define this genre.

1. Start in a rut.
2. Get tempted.
3. Get in trouble, preferably with added destruction.
4. Get a buddy/make an enemy
5. Adapt.
6. Wake up.

When you look at the breakdown of it, it really does look like any old character arc for any story. One interprets 'Wake up' as 'Find Jesus Christ!', you've got yourself a parable story which is not the case for any of the films I mentioned in the paragraph before. As the author of the article mentions, the Noir genre is sort of the basis for the 'into the night' genre: "where "innocent" men discover that they—along with everyone else—bear the stain of original sin." Perhaps the 'Into The Night' films I am most drawn to are ones with that are more episodic, and whose stories are a Homer-like Odyssey into the underbelly. Someone in the article's comments also mentions James Joyce Ulysses, which I consider far more 'Day In The Life'.

-Jarrett

You Fucking Ugly Idiots

2007-09-12T14:03:00.000-06:00

Leaving my Old English class today, I encountered not one, not two, but THREE gentlemen who clearly did not know one another walk down the hallway past me sporting the forgettable 'faux hawk' hairstyle. My thoughts are clear:

GET A NEW FUCKING HAIRSTYLE, YOU FUCKING APES!!!!

-Jarrett

What the GUUUH!!!

2007-09-12T12:24:00.000-06:00

Casu marzu

Casu marzu (also called casu modde, casu cundhídu, or in Italian formaggio marcio) is a cheese found in Sardinia, Italy, notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Casu marzu means "rotten cheese" in Sardinian and is known colloquially as maggot cheese.

Derived from Pecorino Sardo, casu marzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese's fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called lagrima, from the Sardinian for "tears") seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as translucent white worms, about 8 mm (1/3 inch) long. When disturbed, the larvae can jump for distances up to 15 cm (6 inches), prompting recommendations of eye protection for those eating the cheese. Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming; others do not.

WHY????? WHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?????????????????????

-Jarrett

"We're Not In OZ Anymore..."

2007-09-05T08:56:00.000-06:00

'Thriller' prisoners prepare to make 'Electric Dreams' come true

CEBU, Philippines (CNN) -- The sea of orange moves with an urgent rhythm as music booms in the early morning light. The dancers twirl in unison, every movement carefully choreographed.

But what's most striking about these dancers are that most are accused murderers, rapists and drug dealers. They dance their jig behind prison walls. They are led by a choreographer who is accused of mass murder. One of their biggest stars is a transsexual, awaiting trial on methamphetamine dealing charges.

Welcome to the Cebu Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines. Once infamous for its gang violence, the prison is now famous for its dancing prisoners. Their hard work has spawned one of the unlikeliest hits on the Internet -- a reworking of Michael Jackson's 1980s smash hit video "Thriller." Filmed by the prison boss, it has drawn more than 6 million hits on YouTube.

They've also posted several other dance videos with less fanfare, including performances of "Sister Act," "Jailhouse Rock" and "Radio Ga Ga." Watch the prisoners boogie down »

"We don't have dumb bells here. We don't have weights. We have dancing," prison overseer Byron Garcia told CNN.

And dance they do. Every able-bodied prisoner -- about 1,500 of them -- must dance. If they refuse, they lose certain privileges, mostly conjugal visits. Sometimes, the dancing occupies up to five hours a day. Garcia rejects claims he's abusing the prisoners' rights by forcing them to dance so many hours a day.

He says it gives them a renewed sense of worth and confidence, breaking them of their violent ways. He is convinced his prison is a model for prison authorities everywhere, an example of how to crack the plague of violent prison gangs.

"These men learned they can dance and still be men," he says. "It makes them work together, it makes them exercise and they learn self-esteem.

"They no longer feel like lowly criminals." A smile breaks his face. "Now," he says, "they feel like celebrity criminals."

Garcia took a gamble when he took over the prison three years ago. Gangs and corrupt guards ruled the prison. Serious violence broke out at least once a week. He sacked most of the guards and ordered the prisoners, first to march and then to dance.

"I had to ignore everything in the handbooks to do this," he says. "People in the United States tell me it couldn't work in their prisons." He shrugs: How can they know without trying it?

The prison boss says there has not been a violent incident in nearly a year and a half. "They are just not hostile anymore," he says.

Garcia himself has a hard-line pedigree in law and order. His father, Congressman Pablo Garcia, introduced the death penalty to the Philippines in the 1980s.

Many of his inmates could yet be sentenced to death if they ever make it to trial. Philippine justice moves so slowly that simply to be charged can feel like a life sentence. Most of the inmates here are hardcore suspects, facing murder, rape, robbery and serious drugs offenses.

But many could be innocent -- and many remain here, as many as 16 in a cell -- awaiting trial.

Leo Suico, who's accused of mass murder, says dancing means "we don't think of bad things." Fighting back tears, he says the experience has taught him "love" -- pure and simple.

That sentiment is echoed by other prisoners, including Wenjiell Resane. An accused methamphetamine dealer and self-described "she-male," Resane shares a single prison cell with a dozen transsexuals. She has been waiting three years for trial.

Resane is the star of the "Thriller" video in which more than 1,000 other prisoners took part.

"I tried being a performer before, but no one took any notice," Resane says with the mock bashfulness of the practiced celebrity. "Now, in jail, I have become a star."

The Michael Jackson role is performed with flair by 36-year-old Crisanto Niere, an accused crack dealer who has been waiting five years for trial.

He loves the dancing and laughs at his unlikely fame, but says the video has brought him a reward he once thought would be forever beyond his reach. His son, Christopher, has only known him as a prison inmate.

"He used to be so ashamed of me," says Niere. "Now when he goes to school, he tells everyone the dancer on the Internet is his father."

He adds, "It makes me proud that my son is proud of me."

They are now practicing for their encore, a thank you and acknowledgement to their Internet audience. It is the 1980s hit "Electric Dreams," chosen by the prison boss.

"These people are behind prison bars," says Garcia, who admits he uploaded the "Thriller" video to YouTube. "But with the Internet, we all can be together in electric dreams."

And that's the YouTube video 'Thriller'. Just....wow.

-Jarrett

FAST FACT! D&D STILL ROXXX Part Two

2007-07-25T17:39:00.000-06:00

And so...(a continuation of a review of The Assassin's Knot D&D module)

There appears to be no retaliation from the keep Or the assassin's guild. The group is starting to become antsy, and uncertain that the innkeeper and the other suspects have been set up and are actually the real culprits.

They hear the voice of Meegan magically manifest into their heads (he does this from time to time). He informs them that the investigators are on their way to Garrotten (a day early no less!), and have already been snooping around Meegan's 'Cabinet of Wonder' store front where he runs his business. They are expected to arrive in Garrotten any time in the next day or so.

After the Meegan conference, the PCs receive another communication....

So, at this point, the module should be resolved. The PCs should have successfully raided the castle, discovered that the mayor's right hand man Tellish is the leader of the assassin's guild, did the deed, etc., etc. However, the raid on the castle was unsuccessful. Yes, the innkeeper was saved. However, I hate to play my NPCs as a bunch of morons. Would they simply not react because the PCs didn't hit the right story beats? In my mind the NPCs are either intentionally played dumb by the Dungeon Master (DM, or me), flat out played poorly, or played just as realistically as the PCs use their characters. To me I believe the Guild would do and offer most anything to ensure they retain power and come out on top. That said...

This time from an unfamiliar voice using the same magical means as Meegan. The voice is out to make an offer to the group. Give up the innkeeper, and they have gainful employment within the 'guild' as the PCs know it (by this time I had already started to think of the one-adventure guild as an extension of an even larger organization). The PCs had managed to earlier kill a handful of assassins within their ranks in their investigation, so there were some 'job openings'.

In a very different sort of campaign, this would have gone a different way. If I had laid down strict rules about PCs playing good/neutral alignments, the PCs would have seen this gambit from the Guild as an act of desperation, and a revelation at how destabilized they must be if they are going down this route. However, in this campaign, I allowed my players to play PCs with evil alignments. Expectations of what players will do suddenly open up a great deal. And when you have evil characters who suddenly have the opportunity to play out their wildest, sickest fantasies while getting rid of those that would hamper all the fun...you get yourself inner party conflict.

FAST FACT! It probably isn't the best idea to intentionally have your PCs facing off against one another, as it might turn into some bitter ass players. At the same time, it all depends on how serious you consider the role of the DM and his NPCs. If you just softball a lot of the game to your players, nothing feels hard won.

Since these messages are done on a mental level, no one exactly knows what the other PC is thinking. The gears are being all set in motion. The mysterious voice allows the players the day to think about the offer, and tells them the voice will contact them. Later that same day, there's a daily wine delivery and a note is passed from the delivery man to one of the PCs. On it are directions to a secret meeting place. Might it be the guild setting up an ambush? Only one way to find out...

While two of the PCs go to find out what lies before them, the other PCs start watching out for the investigators. When a group of rather powerful looking classed NPCs show up, the remaining PCs decide the best solution is to shout out they know who killed the Baron. This stops the investigators dead in their tracks. Brought up to the church where the innkeeper is kept, the paladin amongst the investigators automatically Detects Evil on the PCs and sure enough sniffs some out. She, the paladin, is fully prepared to cut the lot of them down and let the innocent family being held in the church go free, but the PCs are just barely able to wiggle out of a bloodbath (for the time being). The PCs fill in the investigators all the information that they know.

The other two players go to the secret meeting place and are met by the Captain of the Keep Guard, a half-orc named Ascrue. He knows that Tellish, the right hand man of the mayor, is an evil, corrupt man, and wants him rid of. He also suspects that Tellish is responsible for the assassination, and is willing to help the PCs gain entry into the keep one more time. This is not in the module at all. This was my way of getting the PCs back to the keep to finish the job they finished, one way or another. I imagined this tragic-romance that Ascrue was in love with the beautiful mayor and hated to see her supposedly falling under the influence of the evil Tellish. What Ascrue, the PCs, and you the reader don't know is that the mayor is in on the whole thing, any the only way to figure it out is basically depending on how you play through matters.

As you can see, I think I was fair in giving my players options as far as where the story could go. At this point I really am unsure how the players will go about resolving the story. Will they assist in the murder of an innocent man? Will they face down evil one last time and attempt to set things right? More or less, who is willing to double cross their fellow PCs?

The two PCs return to the church to find the now fully informed investigators facing off against their group members. The PCs match up their information and decide it is maybe worth raiding the keep one last time, praying that the Captain of Keep Guard keeps his word. Just as the group begins leaving the church to head back to the Keep, the mysterious voice pops into the PCs heads once again.

Two of the PCs, two out of three Evil aligned characters, agree to the terms of the Guild. They are prepared to assist striking down their fellow players. Are they bluffing? I'm not even sure. The PCs find another secret entry (via the Captain's directions) into the keep and make their way through familiar territory. They overhear conversation from the barracks (this time the PCs aren't so foolish to put a mirror under the door) that the Captain gave them all the night off, fulfilling his end of the bargain.

The PCs continue on their way, now going upstairs. They approach the throne room where, according to the module, there is a 40% chance that all three of the big NPCs inside the keep will be present (Tellish, Ascrue, and the Mayor, Lady Arrness). Instead of searching the rest of the keep first and Maybe actually finding some evidence that says Tellish is the murderer in this whole messy affair, the PCs basically decide to bust right into the throne room and take on Tellish right there and then.

Now comes my hand/the NPCs. The voice is heard once again by the two characters who have supposedly accepted the offer. I, as the DM, need to know what the PCs are going to do here. Just how powerful am I going to make the villains here? Whose side do I want to see play out? Do I want to see the Meegan-centric storyline playout? Or do I secretly want to run my evil campaign? Can I do both? Well, the two players let me know they were 'ready to do what was needed'. I started to prepare myself for a few pissed off players, and a lot of dead PCs.

The battle was more or less one-sided. Everyone went for Tellish, who was the only person anyone really knew was the bad guy to tackle...literally. The min/maxed half-giant monk grapples my NPC to the ground, giving me no real chance of breaking out of it. THIS could be a problem. Ascrue the Captain is uncertain of what is going to happen next, so begins to watch. The rest of the players start blasting away at Tellish, waiting for him to go down. All seems to be going good...until the PCs start blasting at one another.

Suddenly two stealthed assassins reveal their position in corners of the room and go in for killing blows against the PCs (they miss). Ascrue is dragging the mayor off to safety. The singed chaotic good dwarf cleric (played by Ryan) starts hammering away at the evil sorceror (played by Cory). The chaotic evil psion (Anthony) starts trying to mind blow the half-giant monk (Travis). The gnome bard (Lawrence) is panic stricken and doesn't know how to respond save rotating between healing the dwarf and the sorceror. The neutral evil duskblade (Scott) faces off against the assassins.

It is around this time that the group sees the Mayor slit the throat of the Captain of the Keep Guard.

The intensity of the dice rolls starts dying down at the PCs fighting for good realize they've just lost. The evil cleric Tellish begins healing himself back up. The assassins work the losing PCs over into unconsciousness, serving up several coup de grace. Tellish promises the PCs now under his employ their friends will make excellent undead servants in the basement. Taint overwhelms the sorceror and scion, hideously deforming them in the way of lumps, sores, and other leaky lesions. The gnome bard, who sat on the fence, is to be forced into addiction to the drug substance 'dreammist'. Members from another 'chapter' of The Organization are being called into tie up loose ends (ie. the innkeeper, the investigators, the pesky stableboy). The new PCs for the players will be these members.

It seems I got my evil campaign after all.

So, that's The Assassin's Knot. Not once in the module was it discovered by the players that there lives in the town a retired group of adventurers who now run various stores within the city. Also there's a side story involving a giant octopus, or something? I wonder if these aspects of the module ever get utilized by a group. Different DMs, different strokes?

For me, I didn't find the assassin and their methods written all that well. Why the hell would the Guild frame three people from the very town they inhabit to 'cover themselves' up? The risk that the framed individuals will be cut down or dealt with before telling their side of the story (like there's an Assassin's Guild in town who they've made enemies with) is far too high for it to pay off. In the module the person who set up the assassination is the Curate of Restenford who has aspirations of marrying the Baron's daughter for control of the region. Now, I do like the idea that a member of the church the Baron reigns over set up the hit, but just so he can bed the dude's daughter? Pfft. And apparently the Mayor is OK with this scheme, as she plans on having both the daughter AND the curate killed, allowing a vacuum of power to be filled by herself. I reworked all this to play into the politics I have set up in my own campaign setting, which has actually made writing further adventures for my group a lot easier. Also, a FEMALE mayor of a medieval/fantasy town? Sadly flying dragons and unicorns are more believable than this, at least to My players.

Ultimately, I did not suspect that a first-edition 32 page, black and white module would wreck such havok on my campaign. I guess that open-ended nature is something that deeply disturbs the mind of your typical D&D player, and they will cut their way out of any situation involving a wee bit of thinking (as seen in my first DM attempt, 'Melasurej'!)

So, would I run it again with a different group? Hmm...

-Jarrett

FAST FACT! D&D ROXXX Part One

2007-07-24T17:55:00.000-06:00

I will say this now: I think I enjoyed running The Assassin’s Knot as a DM than the PCs had playing through the open ended content.

The following is not so much a review of the actual module that Lakofka wrote back in 1982, but the sort of wanton havoc it wrought in my D&D campaign. First, a look at its Wikipedia entry (you can always count on nerds on the internet to make sure D&D modules have Wikipedia entries)!

"If you want someone murdered, go to Garrotten." It is a common saying in Restenford. The small, peaceful town of Garrotten is rumored to be the headquarters of a deadly band of assassins. Perhaps there is nothing to this talk. Perhaps it is true. There has never been any reason to find out. Until now... The Baron of Restenford is dead. The first day following his death, Restenford was a hornet's nest of activity. No one was allowed to enter or leave. The castle itself was sealed to outsiders as soon as the murder was discovered. Wild rumors hinted that the body was left in a condition that made magical restoration impossible. That evening came an urgent summons from the reclusive sorcerer, Pelltar, whose council continued late into the night. By midmorning of the next day, you were well on your way to Garrotten. Three slender clues are all that remain - three possible chances to unravel the tangled web of intrigue that doomed the Baron of Restenford. The sun is warm, and the land around you is full of life. By nightfall, you will arrive."

The nice thing about these modules is that they really want you to plug your own campaign setting details into their blanks. For the truly unimaginative, these are a godsend I would imagine So all I really need to do is plug in my Player Character’s (PCs) home base/town (Kesel) in for Restenford, play up the political West/East divide of my loosely Old West Fantasy setting, a tweak here, a tweak there…my very own adventure story!

Having a read through of the material, it was extremely open-ended (which is something I attempted with my first real D&D campaign ‘MELASUREJ’ two years ago), and a murder-mystery. It was a gamble to put this into a group that had so far been playing through hack-n-slash dungeon crawls up to that point…

Before running the Assassin’s Knot, the PCs were a group of wandering adventurer types out in the wild frontier seeking their fortunes, and all working under a so-called 'archivalist of wonder' named Meegan. When I first came up with my overall storyline, the story and events were going to be initiated through Meegan and his 'business clients' that Meegan sought books, weapons, and other artifacts for. Through this method the characers would come to discover the world and the universe ending threat approaching. What wound up happening was that I started to become more and more interested in the town of Kesel (which at first was just a throwaway for the first few sessions). I started to think up Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that could inhabit the town, and really bring out the characterization in my PCs. Instead of just sending the PCs to libraries and temples via magic jelly beans, I could start to create a place the heroes could call hom. I decided to localize the action a bit more, and sent the characters to the recently shut down mine just outside of town. A mix of side adventure, world building, and a break from the monotony of the overarching story I was about to begin, the 'mine' adventure I cooked up from scratch worked out well. In fact I would dare say that one of the best nights that our group has experienced happened within the mine, using a map I printed out from Wizards of the Coast and ad-libbed the details of what was found in the room. This was the first appearance of 'Taint' rules in my D&D world...

I had just incorporated Taint rules that I found in the Heroes of Horror book, which really helped begin bring together the campaign setting I had left ambiguous to that point. The notion that Taint works on is that the longer one spends in the presence of evil, the more evil will manifest inside you; mentally, and physically. Since D&D lacks the ‘Insanity’ rolls of Call of Cthulhu, I wanted to place some sort of deterrent over my PCs, who I fear would otherwise run all over the countryside killing whomever they saw fit. To ground the characters in the world, there had to be some cause and effect, some sort of consequence to their actions for any of it to matter. Taint seemed (and seems) to be the way to go in the D&D game system. To test out ‘taint’, I wanted to use a storyline that would take advantage of these Taint rules, putting my player's through the wringer. The best way to do so would be through giving characters choices, promoting better decision making and playing.

So running the actual module: it starts out with the characters in their home base/town chillaxing after their recent ‘victory’ at the old mine, sitting pretty with some fat lootz after selling off some Gnome Hardware mining equipment. As luck would have it, the Baron of Restenford is just passing on through the town of Kesel with his wife and daughter on a jaunt through the New Frontier of the North Kingdoms. Last night he spent the evening in Garrotten, and tonight in Kesel at the Pickled Pixie. Before the night is through, he makes a stop at the Black Unicorn where the PCs are residing on their downtime while awaint Meegan to call them on for another excursion into the dangerous unknown. While at the Black Unicorn, the Baron manages to offend most everyone in the common room (including the PCs), so there isn’t many tears shed when it is discovered the next morning the Baron has been murdered in his sleep by an assassin! After some medieval/fantasy style investigation by my badass NPC Deputy Ed, all points are pointing to the previously unmentioned town of Garrotten, residing a day’s ride south of Kesel.

The module pretty well lines out all the information the group is going to need while in Garrotten at the onset. This is about as clear cut as the module gets as far as telling the players where to go. Right from the get go the PCs are starting to sweat, complaining how much they hate murder mysteries. It takes me to really pushing the PCs to NOT stray away from going to Garrotten, to listen to Ed (who, fairly, I had set up as pulling a lot of bluffs on people all the time). The module gives the PCs three names to clearly chase down while in Garrotten, as these people were supposedly seen in Kesel the night of the murder.

Another nice thing about this module is that it gives the DM a time frame of what the villains are up to while the PCs are investigating. It also tells you what is going to happen by THIS many days after Event A. It is, of course, all suggestion, and can be modified and tailor-made for every D&D group. One thing I had changed was that the PCs were not in the hometown of the Baron, as the Baron was visiting. The equivalent to a phone in D&D is a spell (that’s name escapes me) which in my mind is used pretty commonly, and so the Baron’s murder is quickly spread around, and right back to Restenford. I add the fact that the Baroness is having ‘investigators’ from Restenford show up to bring about justice, and the player’s will only have a week or so to figure things out before they show up.

Why the rush? Well, as this is the ‘New Frontier’ of the West, the established Old Regime in the East is just waiting for any reason to hop on the money train of fresh resources, unscavenged dungeons, and land. The death of a upper crust politico/royal would be motivation enough. As a person who is coming out west to escape the very much tamed East, Meegan explains that he will not be able to do business if the East starts to encroach. Many of Meegan’s wealthier clients are, of course, from the East, and would prefer to be able to pillage relics and artifacts without having the East know about it, hence the convenience of a go between like Meegan. Meegan sends the PCs off to Garrotten to solve the problem, before the Eastern ‘investigators’ show up and make it look like ‘the West’ can’t look after itself.

FAST FACT! I think it is rather important that the players do NOT know the module’s title, nor any adventure’s title until after the fact. If the player’s are informed about the nature of what they are facing, the little bit of information is going to affect their playing choices. Can’t have that, no sir!

So you get the PCs onto horses, with the evidence-so-far in hand, to figure out the why of what has occurred. Maybe as they are traveling they see the shape of a dragon fly overhead, just to remind them they aren’t the toughest bastards in the land. They get to town, they hit the only pub in town, which just conveniently is owned by one of their suspects. After some not so careful questioning, you find out that all three of your suspects are friends and, asking not even remotely subtle questions, you discover that they’ve very recently stumbled upon an assassin’s guild! Now, some of your players are going to second-and-third guess themselves. What if their lying? Maybe we should just kill them? Or is that what the REAL assassin’s want us to think?

The problem with not-so-subtle characters in a murder-mystery is they’ll blab information all over the place, especially to spies. When you hear about an assassin’s guild, you should Probably start talking in hushed whispers, and never play your hand. Because you know what happens? Said spy finds out why you are hear, and he tells his boss who tells his boss that people are snooping about, setting very ugly things into motion. While you’re wasting time, refusing to split up, milling about town, the bad guys are still scheming, and planning.

So because of a info slip, the owner of the inn is being arrested by the city and keep guards, and being hauled away to the keep where the mayor lives. Fighting a room with a bay of wild, crazy eyed, howling gnolls is one thing, but taking on a fortified fortress with unknown odds inside? Kind of a whole lot more scary, yeah? You ask around what’s going on, and you discover that the murder is solved, the innkeeper did it. After all your second-thirding-fourth guessing, you figure he didn’t do it…maybe. What do you do? So not only is there the possibility of an innocent man going to death, but it sounds like the innocent man is being coerced into saying that a man named 'Meegan' is somehow responsible for the Baron's death as well. Suddenly the group's own regular pay check is on the line...something is going to have to be done. Something like a rescue mission.

Well, one of my players (his name rhymes with Awrence Rysak) decided to have his female gnome bard head up to the castle and scout around, trying to find a secret way in. With a poor Hide and Move Silent roll, the guards see and hear the gnome coming up. The guard asks what her business is. She replies she is here to service the guard. And so…

FAST FACT! Never again will I ever let a male player play a female character.

The gnome, with her hard found knowledge, returns to the group to inform them of the secret passage she discovered. The group hims and haws over what they should do, while it is announced the innkeeper is to be executed that very night. In the middle of the day, the dwarf priest amongst them decides to take on the castle himself, followed by the disguised as a male female fighter. The rest of the group, for a good while, begins plotting a peasant uprising in the town, trying to turn a revolt up against the guards as a distraction while they get Abe out. I have to set my players straight that causing a massive political upheaval in the region is the opposite of solving the problem of the murdered Baron. This faction decides to go catch up with their other two party members.

They arrive and, surprisingly, get a lot further into the castle than I suspected. Knocking out a couple of guards with sleep spells, two of the PCs put on armour and escort their ‘prisoners’ down into the basement with the assistance of weak willed wizard students. While downstairs, they are able to get far enough down into the basement of the keep without detection…until one of them decided to confirm that the room producing what sounded like a dozen or so guards in a barracks was actually filled with a dozen or so guards using a mirror under the door.

FAST FACT! DMs can get natural 20s on their die as well (for those wonderful Spot PC Putting Mirror Under Barracks Doors moments)! And my god, will they take full advantage of them!

So after some good rolls of the die, the PCs are able to wipe out half of the guards in their half-undressed state and, with my prodding them along to check ‘just one more room’ before fleeing, they find Abe locked up, badly beaten and tortured.

The group begins to run, and run they do, under the fire of crossbows and commands to stop. They run back to the inn, to retrieve the innkeeper’s family. While there, they discover that the stableboy mentioned briefly as they first arrived in town was somewhat responsible for putting Abe in the situation he was in (how the planted evidence discovered by the Baron from the three suspects was first acquired was never investigated by the PCs). Realizing he too is in danger from the guild, and if they want to prove Abe’s innocence, they grab the stable boy too and run to the local church. Making their argument that, even though the church paladin is not fond of the PCs, they are here to do the right thing.

The group decides to prepare for an armed conflict from the keep and the assassin’s guild (which the PCs are beginning to suspect are more than a little connected), and start to brace for it within the walls of the church…

FAST FACT! Times like this are always good for leaving a session, and a blog post, off on.

TO BE CONTINUED, TRUE BELIEVERS!

1984 and Such

2007-05-24T00:16:00.000-06:00

Been reading some George Orwell as of late: plowed through Animal Farm in no time (it is all of 90some pages after all) and I'm about a third through 1984. The following passage in 1984 stuck out at me in particular. A funny side note: though 1984 is not public domain in the US or much of the world, it is public domain in Canada, Russia, and Australia (not that this fact really changes its wide availability online).

‘It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well — better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning, or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words — in reality, only one word. don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B. B.'s idea originally, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

‘You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?’

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

‘Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’

‘Except—’ began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say ‘Except the proles,’ but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

‘The proles are not human beings,’ he said carelessly. ‘By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

-Jarrett

Satan And Such

2007-05-21T15:03:00.000-06:00

Woman: Blame devil for infant in microwave

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) -- A woman blames the devil, and not her husband, for severely burning their infant daughter in a microwave, a Texas television station reported.

Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua's efforts to become a preacher.

"Satan saw my husband as a threat," Eva Mauldin told Houston television station KHOU-TV.

A grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed the two-month-old in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds.

The infant, Ana Marie, remains hospitalized. She suffered burns on the left side of her face and to her left hand, police said.

Police said Joshua Mauldin told them he put Ana Marie in the microwave because he was under stress. Eva Maudlin denied it.

"He would never do anything to hurt her. He loves her," she said.

She is hoping to be reunited with her daughter, but Child Protective Services is working to have the parental rights severed.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This all reminds me of the controversial 'Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter' strip by Kyle Baker that caused the DC Comics Elseworlds 80 Page Giant to be pulped out of fear of...imitation.

And of course, two days ago...

Dead Baby In Freezer; Cops Charge Mom

(AP) A woman was charged with abuse of a corpse after police found the remains of a baby in her freezer.

Police charged Christine Hutchinson, 22, of Pittsburgh, after interviewing her Thursday evening, several hours after the remains, which police first characterized as a fetus, were found in the freezer in her apartment.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Perhaps Satan, after learning that microwaves don't quite do the job, decided to stick with another household appliance of terror?

-Jarrett

A Month Without Posting

2007-04-24T23:05:00.000-06:00

-Jarrett

Great Akting

2007-03-25T21:43:00.000-06:00

Akting (adj): acting (in the dramatical sense) poorly, or ham-fistedly, painfully, as the paycheck is already in your bank account.

In a digital dictionary, you will find this embedded file alongside my definition.

-Jarrett

"As it turns out..."

2007-03-21T02:59:00.000-06:00

A couple months ago Cory asked if Tom & Jerry cartoon were played on television anymore. We saw a Tom & Jerry Game Boy Advance game and were trying to figure out if the target market for the game (youngin's) would have any idea who Tom & Jerry were. I honestly don't remember even watching any Tom & Jerry cartoons when I was a kid myself. There's this video that was brought to my attention today that brought this conversation back to me...

Who'd a thunk it? It was there all along!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

One of my favourite online film critics Matt Cale came under some fire recently for his review of 300. According to Cale, it is one of the most ferverent responses he has received for anything he has ever written (including his think piece rant "Fuck The Marines"). In response to the criticism, Cale wrote 'Fuck the "300" Nerds'.

Now, I personally think (having not seen 300, only read the graphic novel) that Cale reaches a lot in his initial review. In fact, he doesn't really talk about any aspect of the movie beyond the political allegory he perceives. The comments left for that review go after Cale for exactly this, but I think their reasoning is a bit off. They argue that the film 300 couldn't possibly be about the Bush Administration's War(s) because the graphic novel 300 was written almost ten years ago, long before George W. was president. To me that is like saying CHILDREN OF MEN couldn't possibly be relevant to 'today' because the novel it is based on was written in the early 90s. This is where content and context begin to realign, especially when time and media are involved. This is addressed in Cale's rant against his detractors, but I think my Respect-O meter is drug down a tad as Cale makes outright ad hominem attacks against his "critics". For an individual such as Cale who places rationale, reason, logic, and intelligence as highly as he does, I kind of expected more. I guess that is the 'ruthless way'.

That said...

Who'd a thunk it! It was there all along!

-Jarrett

How I Learned To Stop Hating And Love Apple

2007-03-20T23:39:00.000-06:00

Wow, who would have thought I would be writing a post
about loving Mac? How to begin...

So about two weeks ago I started my job at the local meat grinder/employer known as Convergys. For those who don't know, Convergys is a call center that takes the majority of its incoming calls from Chicago and the surrounding area. My department is high speed internet. Had you asked me a year ago whether or not I would ever work at Convergys, I would have laughed at you. In fact, I may have even suggested, oh, I don't know, slitting my throat before even applying there. That was then, though. It is a shitty job that no one somewhat normal lasts longer than three months at. Being hard up for rent, credit card payments, and DVD purchasing money I decided to take the job which was close by, paid decently, and was full time. That's Convergys' "pros" right there. I guess I could add "ok bathrooms" to that list, but that would be pushing it.

OK, this isn't a rail against Convergys (though I'm sure one might eventually roll along before too long), but it is the setting for the events surrounding this post. As a new employee I have a three week training course to plod through before being unleashed on the sea of cubicles to fumble my way through other people's problems. In this training course I have had the opportunity to deal with quite the broad range of phillistines, emo-hipsters, mormons, dullard mothers, culinary students, and living scabs of humanity.

Let's jump to our emo-hipster, Matt. Matt is a Mac user. You know how I know this? He reminds the entire class of this fact about two or three (four, five, six....twenty) times a class. I wish that were an exaggeration (and I realize that people often say that when they really are exaggerating ie. "it's not even funny") but I am not kidding. Think that level of smug from the episode 'Smug Alert' of SOUTH PARK where every who owns a 'Smart Car' just feels like...."sharing"...it with everyone and smiling smugly at those from your smart car (accompanied with the sniffing of ones own flatuence from a wine glass in San Francisco).

The same day I met this Matt fellow Maddox made his first post in months about how Mac users should 'shut the fuck up'. It pretty well captured the essence of what I was thinking of saying to this Matt chap the next time he mentioned how 'so much better' Apple is than Microsoft. Regarding the Maddox piece; beyond the huff and puff and generally entertaining tone of it, he really says nothing about why Macs are bad beyond the evangelical users.

Earlier today, over at The VHive, I finally decided to read the 'Mac Thread' (started eight months ago and I've never once visited it) to become 'learned'. I learned all about (for starters) Quicksilver, Adium, Transmit, Candybar, Omni Outliner, Graphic Converter, Omni Graffle, and Unison. The worst things you can say about it? Apparently you are stuck with Azureus as your torrent client (though some say uTorrent is now compatible), and you don't get to play very many games (though there's also apparently an app called Boot Camp which fixes you up). So yes, a Mac owner actually listed off some good programs and why they like them instead of 'it never crashes' and 'no viruses!' Shocking, innit?

Really though, there's not much the Mac or the PC does that the other Just Can't Do. It really just comes down to preference. I haven't even mentioned Linux, but that's mostly because I know fuck all about Linux and if I ignorantly spoke of it Shanell's brother Rick would make sure I never heard the end of it. Uh, Linux is probably ok, too!

I was mostly looking at that VHive thread to prepare myself in case Emo-Mac Matt was speaking the gospel of Steve Jobs again in my vicinity. I began preparing my arguments, my evidence, my probing questions, to get to the bottom of why Apple is really better than Microsoft.

Nothing could prepare me for Windows Vista.

Is it unfair to be so mean to a new OS that isn't even a quarter of a year old? Perhaps. From what I have seen in a presentation on Vista during my training at Convergys, and from the hands thrown up in the air by Convergys agents who discover their caller is using Vista...it isn't exactly a favourite of mine or the whole of the call center community.

See this video there? "Ha Ha, Oh those PCs! You've got to love to hate 'em!" At the time when I watched this the other week I had no idea what this ad was about. None. I just thought it was just another stupid Mac ad. Well, guess what? You know all that stuff you use to just do in XP because it is your computer and you would expect you should be able to, say, configure your IP address? Well, it isn't so easy in Vista! No. I am sure there's a way to disable this shit, but you actually have to enter an Administrator password before the Vista OS will let you, say, configure your IP address. Because you're a retard. Well, not you specifically, but amongst the 89% of computer users in North America who are using Windows there are certainly some retards. Does that make this administrative password necessary? Apparently it makes up for the inherent lack of security found in the system. And I guess it isn't even all that secure now anyway!

I am certain after a good night's sleep my disdain for Windows Vista will die down a tad, along with it my lust for a Mac OS, but hey, apparently I needed to write a post with some content anyway. As little read as this blog most likely is, I really hope I do not get sucked into a flame war with Mac/PC users.

You know what would basically make up my mind about what OC I will have the next time around? Knowing what Werner Herzog uses. And then they could put him in an ad with John Hodgman again as the stupid PC man and I could jerk off maniacally and go out like a retard and buy what the commercials tell me. This sort of reminds me that not only do I want to write a DIRECTOR: Werner Herzog piece, but also need to actually finish writing my DIRECTOR: Spike Lee article.

Note: If this were a Lawrence Krysak blog post, there would be a photo doctored-in Powerbook where the roundtable at the bottom is in this image. That is the difference between he and I, that is, his manliness, and my boyliness. May I have a round of mad props for Krysak's mad Photoshop skillz?

-Jarrett

Shoes

2007-03-19T01:14:00.001-06:00

-Jarrett

Naumann

2007-03-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

An excerpt of the Bruce Naumann video "Stamping in the Studio". I'd be all too happy if I could find some video of "Making a Good Corner" where it is looped video of Naumann going through the process of drilling and setting a yardpost.

-Jarrett

Wegman

2007-03-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

What is going to happen to all the MySpaces and blogs when YouTube ceases to be and all these embedded videos go dead? Anyway, a brief look at the video work of William Wegman.

-Jarrett

My Favourite Tumour

2007-03-07T03:21:00.001-07:00

-Jarrett

Meat

2007-03-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

The short film THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT by Stephen O'Regan (2005).

And the thematic counterpart FOOD by Jan Svankmajer (1992).

-Jarrett

Monkey Butt

2007-03-05T01:12:00.000-07:00

First discovered Nina Conti in Christopher Guest's FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION. She pretty well does the same bit everytime, but it works.

-Jarrett

Paedogeddon!

2007-02-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

The Brass Eye Special.

-Jarrett

"Welcome...in Jam"

2007-02-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

Yes. Jam.

-Jarrett

"Ya Wanna Get High?"

2007-02-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

OK, so it looks a lot like Electroplankton, and is already available as a Flash game, it is probably the most interesting looking thing I have seen coming out for the PS3 (save, say, Metal Gear Solid 4 obviously). I can't help but notice the all too familiar cat calls from idiot posters online who make reference to how 'trippy' a game looks and how they are going to have to be 'drunk' or 'drop acid' to play or understand it.

Be it a Grant Morrison or Alan Moore comic, a brain dead college campus film (see: Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Beer Fest), or a visual inventive video game like flOw here, or something like Rez, a handful of boobs come along to comment unthoughtfully. It seems to be the response to any object that requires some intelligence to grasp. By downgrading a work as something to accompany your own hallucinogenic intake, you speak only of your own inability to understand a work that doesn't cater to your brain capacity. Drugs do not 'expand your mind', they only distort that which is right in front of you. Your high will eventually end, and you will be left alone with the unavoidable fact that the object in front of you, nor your own understanding, has changed.

Though I am not a staunch believer in truth persay, I think I would have to disagree with Post Structuralism and their lending authorial intent as secondary to the audience. I grant that there is probably a good argument that could change my mind, I doubt that drugs are the answer. See, Crackhead Tyrone.

-Jarrett

Other

2007-02-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

In Zoo Keeper for the DS, you can see if you have what it takes to take care of all the animals in a zoo. Maintain an orderly zoo by using the stylus to match up animals on the screen. Once you've lined up three or more animals of the same type, the animals are captured, and more animals fall in their place. Zoo Keeper features a variety of gameplay modes as well as wireless multiplayer capabilities.

-Game Ranking's Game Summary for Zoo Keeper

...plus...

Though many console game players may have never heard of it, there's a superpopular puzzle game out there called Bejeweled...That's where Ignition Entertainment's latest puzzle game, Zoo Keeper, comes in. Zoo Keeper is a shameless clone of PopCap Games' pervasive puzzler, but it replaces jewels with animals and includes a few different modes to choose from.

-GameSpot review of Zoo Keeper

...equals....

Hate crime! (courtesy of Lawrence Krysak)

Hell is too good for us.

-Jarrett

Compare/Contrast!

2007-02-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Bertrand Russell sez...

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. […] A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

H.P. Lovecraft sez...

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naïvely insipid idealism which deprecates the æsthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to "uplift" the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism. But in spite of all this opposition the weird tale has survived, developed, and attained remarkable heights of perfection; founded as it is on a profound and elementary principle whose appeal, if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.

My query: is The Bible the first entry in the survival horror genre?

-Jarrett

Obligatory Can Con

2007-02-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia article on 'Canadian Content'.

Why this song permeates the radio to this very fucking day.

-Jarrett

"INTRUDER"

2007-01-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Well, there's just so much ignorance running rampant I'm not sure when to begin. I would say this is a legitimate relationship problem; anything taken in with large, unchecked quantities qualifies as a dangerous addiction and should be treated seriously. That however is not the case. The stock psychologist obviously has not done any research whatsoever into video game culture so is not remotely qualified to discuss this matter in any serious matter, let alone on national television. Ms. Banks goes further and refers to World of Warcraft as if it was a single player game against 'the computer', nothing at all like 'going out with their friends all the time'. Sort of misses the point of the 'Massive Multiplayer Online' thing, eh? Dig that melodramatic montage music!

And then those YouTube comments...

lilxkev (3 minutes ago)

that chick is a tank I would leave her for a video game rofl SHES HUGEEE!!

veengrd (23 minutes ago)

If I was the leader of his WoW guild, I would have given that guy a big DKP bonus for playing when his wife was in labor.

s0nicfreak (52 minutes ago)

He's probably not attracted to her anymore because she got fat.

He probably ignores the baby crying because he knows she is there to get it like she is suppose to.

Bravo. Oh look, part two!

Well from the looks of the dude here, if it wasn't WoW it would be crack cocaine. I like how the ignorance of everyone save the husband thinks that shredding a disc is going to magically delete the game. Such powerful symbolism! It is like stepping on a heroin needle! "Wow" indeed!

-Jarrett

Simply Not Important Enough

2007-01-19T17:47:00.001-07:00

Hey, I'm turning into a news blog (for lack of anything of interest to say at this point...)

Gay bookstore loses bid for government-paid court fees

A Vancouver bookstore specializing in gay literature lost its bid Friday to have the federal government cover legal costs it had accrued over two decades in a fight over the powers of Canada Customs.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision sided with federal government lawyers, who argued the case was "simply not important enough" to warrant Ottawa footing the tab. The case had involved the seizure by Canadian customs officers of gay erotica bound for the shop because the officials considered the material obscene.

[...]

Friday's decision came after the Conservative government axed a $2.8-million-a-year Court Challenges Program last September. The Trudeau-era program was intended to protect the constitutional rights of minority and other marginalized groups by helping to finance their court battles.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It could be that the article isn't written very clearly, but was the government lawyers entire defense based upon the situation 'simply not' being 'important enough'? From what I did read in the article (and this is perhaps where the author's own bias plays into it), it sounds like the bookstore's lawyers had pretty damn good cause to be get their court costs back even on the taxpayer's dime.

What I wonder now is what IS simply important enough...

-Jarrett

What About The Children??

2007-01-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

Another boy dies copying Saddam Hussein's hanging

RABAT, Morocco (Reuters) -- A Moroccan man returned home to find his 11-year-old son hanging dead from the ceiling, a newspaper said on Thursday, the latest victim of a macabre game in which children mimic the death of Saddam Hussein.

[...]

Boy latest of children who copied hanging

Since then, several stories have emerged of children dying or being injured after being captivated by the manner of Hussein's death or by family conversations about the execution.

One 12-year-old Saudi boy died after using a chair and a metal wire to hang himself from a door frame, while another in Algeria was found hanging from a tree, papers reported.

Two boys in different regions of Azerbaijan hanged themselves at the weekend and may have been influenced by Hussein's execution, a security source in the country said.

The death of a 15-year-old boy last week in the Moroccan coastal city of Casablanca was also suspected of being the result of another re-enactment.

I actually read about this phenomena back on the 4th over at BoingBoing but I was kind of suspicious of news being relayed from the international scene via...well, BoingBoing. The story now being given frontpage coverage on CNN gives it a bit more credibility. If Adam Pafrey ever makes APOCALYPSE CULTURE III, this would make an excellent topic to be covered.

You know what I blame for this behavior though? Violent movies and video games. Not the actions of the 'US-backed Iraqi government', of course. That would be ridiculous! Since the dawn of history, man has always been influenced by the movies and video games he has watched and played, respectively! It has gotz to be one of them! And one of them (both preferably) should be banned so children don't hang themselves anymore!

-Jarrett

Understatements

2007-01-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Bush: Hangings show Iraq government's growing pains

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Tuesday the unruly execution of Saddam Hussein "looked like it was kind of a revenge killing," making it harder to persuade a skeptical U.S. public that Iraq's government will keep promises central to Bush's plan for a troop increase.

In his toughest assessment yet, Bush criticized the circumstances of Saddam's hanging last month, as well as Monday's execution of two top aides, including Saddam's half brother.

"I was disappointed and felt like they fumbled the -- particularly the Saddam Hussein execution," the president said in an interview with PBS' Jim Lehrer.

His use of our language never ceases to amaze me.

-Jarrett

That Smell Just Won't Go Away

2007-01-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

That's right, more garbage is floating to the top of the cesspool! What's poking its head out this time around? The new issue of Marvel's CIVIL WAR of course (#6 to be exact). I want to spend as little time discussing this as possible, so here is a quote that I think perfectly summarizes/reviews the latest issue (if not entire series) from a poster on The VHive message board I frequent.

"IRON MAN: LOL we're in yr base killing yr doodz CAP: ROFLMAO noes we're in yr base killing yr doodz They prepare to fight. END."

So in other words: go out and immediately buy 50 copies! And while you are at it, buy at least one copy of ALL STAR SUPERMAN #6.

-Jarrett

What's That I Smell?

2007-01-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

Why, another bad idea! Disappointingly from BoingBoing...

Fan video-game treatment for Y: The Last Man comic

Mike has created a treatment for a video-game adaptation of the kick-ass graphic novel Y: The Last Man. It's clear that somewhere in reading the series, a thunderclap sounded in Mike's head, and this whole game thing appeared as if in a vision. It's got the vibe of a bolt out of the blue.

GAMEPLAY: As much as YTLM is a story about Yorrick's struggle to survive, get to the bottom of the plague mystery and re-unite with his girlfriend, he is always surrounded by others vital to his quest, most importantly Agent 355, Ampersand and Dr. Mann. This lends itself beautifully to squad-based gameplay with the user able to control in realtime which character they control (more on this in a minute). To do justice to both those times when the story develops more deliberately as well as those when split-second action dominates, we see an Action/RTS hybrid.

Garbage. Yes, that's right. Sight unseen, I do declare 'garbage' on this enterprise. I am relatively new to this whole world of video games, but looking at the games I have accrued in the last month and a half, I know not one of them is an adaptation of anything I have previously enjoyed in a different medium. Why? Because a quick look on Metacritic or GameRankings reveals that these are usually a bit shit.

Actually BoingBoing hasn't been batting all that well recently. Yes, Cory Doctorow is back after about a month long sabbatical...but let's take a look at what has recently cropped up!

Book of Amazon reviews published

Poet and prolific Amazon reviewer Kevin Killian has had a selection of his best Amazon reviews published in a limited edition of 200 from Hooke Press.

Selections from the 1,000+ reviews that Killian has written for books, movies, and everyday products on Amazon.com. Subversive and delightful modifiations to a pervasive online art form. Includes an author's introduction and an editor's introduction.

Offered without criticism or contextualization! Not that either of those are guaranteed, I would still like to know why the hell I am reading about this on a website. And then...

God warns Pat Robertson of attack on America

God has told Pat Robertson that America will be savagely attacked in the second half of 2007:

"I'm not saying necessarily nuclear, the Lord didn't say nuclear," Mr Robertson said on his television show The 700 Club. "It'll be mass killing, possibly millions of people, major cities.
"The evil people will come after this country and there's a possibility, not a possibility, a definite certainty, that chaos is going to rule."
Mr Robertson told viewers they should not be afraid because "if you get blown up or something, you go to heaven; that's the worst thing that will happen to you".

Link (via Warren Ellis)

I find it kind of peculiar that I read this story on CNN a couple of days, and somehow it was via Warren Ellis (comics writers that Doctorow is unapologetic in his fanboy love for) that this news story comes to light on BoingBoing...again, without even offering Ellis' own insight on why this is being posted now. The cake is taken, however, here...

Racist applies for a job in Dubai

Amir Saffar, a Canadian web designer, sent a resume to a firm in Dubai, then peppered them with abusive, racist email accusing them of employing "Pakis and Indians" and underpaying them, even before he'd gotten wind of the salary on offer.

From: Amir Saffar
To: Mike Platts
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2006 9:11 PM
Subject: RE: hi again
it’s very simple Mike. You are interested in my profile and i wanted to know how much you were able to pay. no response means: you either can’t pay that much, or you only hire indians and pakistanis who don’t ask for a good salary. but dude, i am neither indian or paki and i have never worked for less than 2000 usd/month. You got it now!?
Amir

Uh....thanks for the update!

-Jarrett

Hey, More ZELDA!

2007-01-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

Whereas my first post on LEGEND OF ZELDA is sort of Light World, this post is Dark World. This is the seedy underbelly of the Zeldaverse as we know it, True Believer! Again, none of this is going to surprise those of you who know Zelda far better than I, but I think it bears reiterating.

I discovered this shortly after posting the 'tamer' Zelda commercial last week.

I have to say: this is probably one of the coolest, bestest commercials I have ever seen.

A game so popular some crazy individual will dedicate large chunks of their lives creating 'speed runs'.

Responses vary from

System777 (1 month ago)

Whatever ASS, it is cheating. Theres absolutely no merit to it.

bottles98 (1 month ago)

It's tool-assisted, you ASS. It's not cheating.

Clever, those gamers.

And no mention of Zelda would be complete without bashing of the utterly awful Philips CD-i games...

Faces of Evil!

The Wand of Gamelon!

The third one of a supposed trilogy, Zelda's Adventures, never even came to North America. Even though it was done by a different studio, it was seen only as a 'slight improvement' over the other two. "First place in the Special Olympics, etc." Actually, the most interesting thing to come out of my discovery of these truly awful looking games is the History of Russian Animation entry on Wikipedia.

-Jarrett

Thoughts of 2006, Part Two

2007-01-01T12:49:00.001-07:00

Thoughts of 2006, Part One

2007-01-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

Another One Bites The...SAND!

2006-12-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

So the sweet swath of death continues its international rampage as we near the end of the year. It appears Saddamn Hussein was the next to fall. Here are a couple of conversations I've overheard and been in so far today regarding Saddam Hussein's recent execution (expect updates as the day progresses, True Believer!).

Two Old Men From North Carolina

"Well, they killed ol' Sa-damn."
"Well it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
"They say on the news that they are worse off now than before."
"That's true..."
"....."
"....."

The Horrible Looking Housekeeper

HLH: *looking at the newspaper* "I wonder if they REALLY killed him."
Me: "......I would imagine so." *me thinking, he's not fucking Stefano DiMera!!*

Oh, and then there's this: the first actual execution I've ever watched.

You know, I was half expecting in the confusion, as he was dropped, a gunshot and Saddam riding away on a horse with Blondie.

My thoughts? Well I guess Matt Cale's plan is shot to hell. Oh wait! Hussein's wish to be shot by firing squad was ignored in favour of hanging! Classy! Speaking of class, I think the only way to really remember Saddam at this point is by watching SOUTH PARK: THE MOVIE (or, at the very least, watch any number of YouTube videos involving Saddam and SOUTH PARK)

-Jarrett

Hey, It's ZELDA!

2006-12-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

Though I don't think this will make any new converts, this is a very well edited, thought out, and well written document of the LEGEND OF ZELDA video game history.

I am creaming to play Twilight Princess now. Perhaps to kill the mood, a look at the original LEGEND OF ZELDA television commercial!

-Jarrett

Dead At The Apollo

2006-12-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

"James Brown Is Dead".....for real this time.

James Brown, the 'Godfather of Soul,' dies at 73

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- James Brown, the legendary R&B belter, a singer and songwriter who created a foundation for funk and provided the roots of rap, a man of many nicknames but a talent that can only be described as one of a kind, is dead.

Brown died early Monday at Atlanta's Emory Crawford Long Hospital of congestive heart failure, his agent said. He was 73.

Hey, a video! Plus, some other interesting links over at BoingBoing.

-Jarrett

To Serve and Protect (It Must Be Christmas Time!)

2006-12-24T09:48:00.000-07:00

I am not yet sure what my scapegoat for the lack of posts this past week is going to be. Is it my recently acquired gaming habit? Is it Christmas? Work?

Speaking of work, I'm there right now! My topic of today just walked through the lobby now: one of Lethbridge's Finest. This officer of the law brought to mind Reginald VelJohnson and his famous role as Sgt. Al Powell in DIE HARD 1 and 2 (or, any number of movies that Reg has starred as some sort of loveable cop). In the DIE HARD films specifically though, VelJohnson stood between us and Terrorism at Christmas time and did a fine job of it!

In memory of Reginald VelJohnson's past career , I salute you civil servants supplying an essential service and being paid a top dollar wage doing so at the tax payer's expense. May there be horrific home invasions and liquor store robberies so you can truly feel like you are earning your keep! May these violent acts result in your maiming and near death, so that you can result in a 'volunteer' in our Robocop program! (see ROBOCOP summary)

-Jarrett

Ho-Ho-Horror

2006-12-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Christmas horror movie offends religious groups

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Moviegoers seeking a bit of seasonal entertainment are being offered blood and terror alongside Santa and his reindeer -- much to the horror of U.S. religious groups.

Film studio Dimension Films has remade a cult hit from 1974 about a group of female students being terrorized by a killer during Christmas and is releasing the film, "Black Christmas," on December 25 -- tagging it as the "ultimate slay ride."

But religious groups have condemned the timing of the release of the R-rated slasher movie as tasteless and offensive.

"To have a movie that emphasizes murder and mayhem at Christmas, a time of celebration and joy around the world seems to be ill founded," said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, an organization dedicated to upholding religious freedom and traditional family values.

Jennifer Giroux, who co-founded Operation Just Say Merry Christmas as a way to reclaim the season for Christians, said it was abominable to release this film on Christmas Day.

"The use of religious music -- 'Silent Night' -- and the nativity set on the front porch in one scene are insensitive to Christians," Giroux said after watching the trailer online.

"It's not enough to ignore and omit Christmas, but now it has to be offended, insulted and desecrated. Our most sacred holiday, actually a holy day, is being assaulted."

But Dimension Films was unmoved. In a statement, the company said, "There is a long tradition of releasing horror movies during the holiday season as counter-programming to the more regular yuletide fare. 'Black Christmas' is a remake of a classic 1974 horror movie with a big cult following."

Cory mentioned this story yesterday, I saw it on The Onion AV Club this morning, and just last night I watched the Christmas episode of TALES OF THE CRYPT "And All Through The House..." with the escaped axe-wielding mental patient dressed in a Santa suit.

Why doesn't the media ever report on how offensively poor Hollywood movies are? "Shitty Hollywood movies offend with poor direction, acting" If you're going to express yourself freely, express yourself well. Where was the outrage over CHIRSTMAS WITH THE KRANKS? See Matt Cale's review.

"One last thought: it has come to my attention that Christmas With the Kranks is receiving some of the year's worst reviews, with the exception of right-wing Christian "critics." Hell, the movie's full page ad in my local paper featured four glowing reviews from such bastions of cinephilia as the 700 Club, the Film Advisory Board, FamilyNet, and Good News TV. Even Michael Medved, Christ's best friend (and sweaty lover) in the Jewish community, proclaimed it an instant classic."

The BLACK CHRISTMAS remake could very well be a steaming turd of cinema, but it isn't fair to let equally fecal caked endeavours slide because they make you 'feel good', but are poorly constructed garbage. This is why BAD SANTA ranks low for me: though I like the idea of the filthy Christmas film directed by Terry Zwigoff (see: CRUMB, GHOST WORLD), it was pretty bad. For what it is worth, I'm going to throw out Matt Cale's review of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT.

-Jarrett

“I’m going to peel off his skin and make him watch me wear it.”

2006-12-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Remember this post? My point that Mel Gibson is the unknown of the 'Splat Pack'? Well this review from the New York Times would seem to back my claim up...

“I’m going to peel off his skin and make him watch me wear it.” This grisly threat is delivered by one of the main bad guys in Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” The promised flaying never takes place, but viewers who share this director’s apparently limitless appetite for gore will not be disappointed, since not much else in the way of bodily torment has been left to the imagination. There are plenty of disembowelings, impalings, clubbings and beheadings. Hearts are torn, still beating, from slashed-open chests. A man’s face is chewed off by a jaguar. Another’s neck is pierced by darts tipped with frog venom. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the sight of hundreds of corpses haphazardly layered in an open pit: a provocative and ill-advised excursion into Holocaust imagery on this director’s part.

"Violence has become the central axiom in Mr. Gibson’s practice as a filmmaker, his major theme and also his chief aesthetic interest. The brutality in “Apocalypto” is so relentless and extreme that it sometimes moves beyond horror into a kind of grotesque comedy, but to dismiss it as excessive or gratuitous would be to underestimate Mr. Gibson’s seriousness. And say what you will about him — about his problem with booze or his problem with Jews — he is a serious filmmaker."

Case closed.

-Jarrett

The Why of Consumption

2006-12-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

"I saw my life before my eyes, and that is no shit - I mean not that I saw some zipping montage from birth to that queazy instant of existential vertigo, but that I saw myself walking in and out of countless record stores, forking over vast fortunes in an endless chain of cash-register clicks and dings at $3.38 and $3.39 and $3.49 and all the other fixed rates I knew by heart being if never on the track team unquestionably an All-Amercan Competitive Shopper, I saw litter bins piled high with bags that stores all seal records in so you won't get nabbed for lifting as you trot out the door. I saw myself on a thousand occasions walking toward my car with a brisk and purposeful step, turning the key in the ignition and varooming off high as a hotrodder in anticipation of the revelations waiting in thirty-five or forty minutes of blasting sound soon as I got home, the eternal promise that this time the guitars will jell like like TNT and set of galvanic sizzles in your brain "KABLOOIE!!!" and this time at least at least blow your fucking lid sky-high. Brains gleaming on the ceiling, sticking like putty stalactites, while yer berserk body runs around and slams outside hollering subhuman gibberish, jigging in erratic circles and careening split-up syllables insistently like a geek with a bad case of the superstar syndrome.

"But that's only the fantasy. The real vision, the real freaking flash, was just like the reality, only looped to replay without end. The real story is rushing hom eot hear the apocalypse erupt, falling through the front door and slashing open the plastic sealing "for your protection," taking the record - ah, lookit them grooves, all jet black without a smudge yet, shiny and new and so fucking pristine, then the color of the label, does it glow with auras that'll make subtle comment on the sounds coming out, or is it just a flat utilitarian monochromatic surface, like a schoolhouse wall (like RCA's and Capitol's after some fool revamped 'em - an example of real artistic backwardness)? And finally, you get to put the record on the turntable, it spins in limo a perfect sound, followed by the moment of truth, needle into the groove, and finally sound.

"What then ocurs is so often anticlimatic that it drives a rational man to the depths of despair. bah! The whole musical world is packed with simpletons and charlatans, with a few a genius or loone tune joker in between."

-Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung

Shame

2006-12-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears Lawrence has ousted me from my recently acquired deep dark secret.

I have purchased a PS2. A dirty, filthy PS2.

I keep trying to justify why I decided to spend $165 on picking up a brand new system (with memory card) while over the next eight weeks I plan on 1) quitting my job, and 2) buying a new miniDV camera. Justifications include "I haven't owned a console since my SNES", "My parent's house needed a DVD player upstairs anyway", and "My sister needed something to do around the house instead of watching Days Of Our Lives". Let us not forget "The system is so cheap now, how could I justify NOT buying it" and "The best games for the system are out there, and priced affordably".

Seriously, I just wanted to play me some games. Considering some of the remarks I have made regarding video games and gamers in general in the past…I expect some good, solid mocking for this action. I deserve it.

Lawrence and I have been going through the discussion of whether or not video games were 'big A' art (kicked off by this article here). The topic had come up before sometime last year the first time when Roger Ebert went on about it in his One Minute Answer Man column a few times. It started with his review of DOOM, which some poor bastard thought needed defending, and Ebert wound up saying enough to piss off video game fandom. That great debate raged there, here, and further over there. Well, is he wrong? Some say "No, video games really aren't Art. That goes for movies too, which makes Ebert a kind of hypocrite." Others say "Yes, absolutely, how can't they be? Everything can be 'Art'. There is only 'good' Art and 'bad Art." They are then called upon to defend shitty games. Well, there's shitty movies too, and there's still 'art films', designed to be not simply digested as popcorn films. There is definitely shitty art Art, too.

I think while discussing video games as art too much time is spent trying to compare video games to movies. "We're in the period of time for video games still that films were in the 1910s, before BIRTH OF A NATION came out!" That was me paraphrasing. Actual article here*) Though this argument has some merit (both are visual and audience oriented), I think this limits what video games can do and can be. Video games shouldn't just be interactive movies. METAL GEAR SOLID shows signs of this, but I think it is not the game maker's intent.

Ah, who am I kidding? Video games, DVDs, books, comics, CDs aren't about artistic debate. It is all just used for representation for the size of your DICK. Some men choose their car. Others use their 'collections'.

Games acquired thus:
THE PSYCHONAUTS
KATAMARI DAMACY
METAL GEAR SOLID
MGS 3: SUBSISTENCE
GOD OF WAR
SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS

...and borrowed from Bob:
GRAND THEFT AUTO III
DEVIL MAY CRY

MGS 2: SONS OF LIBERTY

This is the same dark road that Cory has taken: buy a bunch of 'top notch' games and watch them stack up as you try to find time to play any of them. There are other great games I will have to pick up 'eventually'**. RESIDENT EVIL 4, for instance. And GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS puts all previous GTA to shame, and presents the largest gaming world ever designed. For sports games, a MADDEN or NHL perhaps? Then there's those FINAL FANTASY games…literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay! Man, like I needed to ever watch any of those 'great movies' or read those 'great books'! Not when I've got Chocobos!

Ahhh!! Stop it! STOP IT!

-Jarrett

* Yeah, he compares METAL GEAR SOLID 2 to Picasso's Guernica.

**When I say 'eventually', I wish that that would mean I could have the freedom of 'months from now'. However, Lawrence has informed me that Lethbridge stores have this tendency of having games disappear from their shelves and claim an inability to restock (see: THE PSYCHONAUTS, KATAMARI DAMACY). The last thing I frankly need in my life is another hobby where the product is only available online.

DIRECTOR: David Lynch

2006-12-03T22:50:00.001-07:00

As I prepare for my Spike Lee post (by, you know, actually watching his movies before commenting), I will do something about that wacky David Lynch. Lynch is right alongside Werner Herzog and Errol Morris for my most influential and favourite directors.

ERASERHEAD (1977) A mix of autobiographical filmmaking, Bunuel dreamscape, industrial aesthetic, a nightmarish aura, and male nightmare. Wound up being my first purchase with my (first) credit card. Was it worth it? I would like to think so. It was one of those films that was just continuously built up for me, and its not being available just made me want to see it more and more. High expectations resulted in the film *just* about satisfying me, in a sheer audience viewing for entertainment sense. My quasi-brother-in-law John claims it to be one of the worst movies he has ever seen, which I suppose is quite possible. It is far from an easy, sit back and enjoy film as it constantly tries to defy conventions (in itself setting up Lynch conventions).

THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) Pretty forgettable, considering I've...pretty well forgotten all about it and it isn't until I look at IMDB that I remember David Lynch directed it. The makeup is amazing, but it seems to be a period piece stuck inside the world of ERASERHEAD (this might just be because it was shot in black and white).

DUNE (1984) The first 'what the fuck' of Lynch's filmography.

Did you know that at one point Lynch was on que to direct RETURN OF THE JEDI? I would argue that there are definite aspects of David Lynch's imagination in ROTJ as it is. Think of The Emperor and Robert Blake as Mystery Man in LOST HIGHWAY.

Regardless, ROTJ, and perhaps the entire STAR WARS trilogy may have suffered terribly had Lynch directed it, based on the general consensus of DUNE. I have never read any of the Herbert books so I had and have no concept of the 'Dune universe' outside of this film. I thought it was actually pretty good, and not in the least bit confusing as some complain. This actually was the first David Lynch movie I had ever seen, having seen it at my friend Aaron's when I was around twelve or thirteen. In particular the bit where the fat man Baron Harkonnen is left, stabbed in his lard, and floats around as the anti-gravity has failed on his outfit. If that isn't grounds for 'teh awesome', I don't know what is!

BLUE VELVET (1986) The groundwork for TWIN PEAKS and firmly imprinting audiences with what 'Director - David Lynch' exactly means. Best viewed for the first time late at night and by yourself to get that gut punch horror of the film that was intended. See, upon all repeat viewings of the film the over the top nature of Frank Booth will turn into that of comedy. Hopper's Booth is that dangerous psychopath that all towns have at least one of per 50,000 and we all hope we never meet in a very dark place. Hey, watch how Roger Ebert misses the fucking point (right along with my parents...)

I miss ya, Siskel! Also, trivial tidbit from Wikipedia:

Red Dragon: Before making Blue Velvet, the film's producer, Richard Roth, approached Lynch with another project -- an adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel, Red Dragon. Lynch was turned off by the content of the book and Roth subsequently took the project to Michael Mann who went on to direct the film as Manhunter (1986).

WILD AT HEART (1990) Only watched it once, and every single time I have tried rewatching it ever since I cannot finish it. Actually, throughout the late 90s, I remember vividly on Showcase they would play a lot of 'midwestern gothic'. Movies like NATURAL BORN KILLERS, BADLANDS, KALIFORNIA, and WILD AT HEART were constantly being played. A lot of the dark nature of man on the wide open plains of America playing out across celluloid, a lot of the films effectiveness in their shock. Probably the best work to come out of this subgenre was the comic PREACHER by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion, which borrowed heavily from WILD AT HEART. WILD AT HEART packs a lot of shock, but none of the substance that I think BLUE VELVET has. Of course, there's always this charming scene....

"Someday, hunny, I will! But I gotta get goin'!"

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992) Probably one of the best horror movies ever made, and it is no surprise why a lot of fans of the TV series don't like this at all. May or may not make sense without watching the television series.

LOST HIGHWAY (1997) I often jump between this and FIRE WALK WITH ME as my favourite Lynch movie. Why? Watch.

Emperor Palpatine indeed.

THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999) TRAILER! Yes, that's a Disney movie. From David Lynch. The second 'what the fuck' of Lynch's filmography. This strangely....straight...forward story about an old man (Richard Farnsworth) wanting to see his brother who lives across the country so he hops on a tractor and heads out to see her and finds quirky people along the way. This and DUNE are the two films of Lynch I don't own. There is a good chance I would buy this before I buy DUNE, if only because of the really good soundtrack supplied by longtime collaborator Angelo Badalamenti (hack).

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) Sort of the redux of LOST HIGHWAY, and sort of explains itself quite a bit more that HIGHWAY as well (though people will stupidly attempt to debate with me what actually happens in the movie). Really a wonderful movie though everyone throwing themselves at it like if they suck its cock enough it'll spit out a fortune turns me off of it. The film is really exactly what you expect from David Lynch at this point (though he may still throw those STRAIGHT STORY curve balls at you).

and INLAND EMPIRE (2006) The word of mouth on the film is negative at this point, but I can guarantee I will plop down the money for a ticket or DVD when the opportunity shows itself. What's interesting is Lynch, who has made absolutely beautiful films using film is now making the leap to DV, right along with Spike Lee and Michael Mann (noticing a pattern yet, true believer?)

I was thinking about mentioning Lynch's Transcendental Meditation stuff...but I'll leave that up to you. I will end off with Lynch's LUMIERE & COMPANY segment...

Lynch's Lumiere Film Segment:

-Jarrett

"Ding!"

2006-11-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the inevitable conclusion to my recent bout of 80s Action Movie Plague, I stumbled across the following while trying to find some video for my Michael Mann post. Charles "Ugly" Bronson, ladies and gentlemen. Could I have discovered the greatest video mix ever?

While you watch the video over, and over, and over again, take some time out of your day to visit the 80s Action Guide over on Ruthless Reviews and delve into Matt Cale's ponderances on Bronson and his filmography.

10 TO MIDNIGHT!

ASSASSINATION!

DEATH WISH II!

DEATH WISH IV!

MURPHY'S LAW!

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO!

-Jarrett

DIRECTOR: Michael Mann

2006-11-30T21:24:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week I talked about John Carpenter, sort of the king of the synthesizer in film. If Carpenter is the king, Michael Mann is the Crown Prince of Crime, or something.

THIEF (1981) Mann's first feature film (he did a lot of TV before that). This is the James Caan of the time between, say, GODFATHER and the more bloated MISERY Caan. A pretty decent, very straightforward, film depicting a tulmutous time for a professional burglar. Sort of a proto-HEAT.

THE KEEP (1983) Unavailable on DVD, sounds to be a strange fantasy/horror film involving Nazis and Jews teaming up, an ancient evil, and a dubbed Ian McKellan. There might just be a reason why this is unavailable, but I just can't put my finger on it...

MANHUNTER (1986) This film has been completely painted for me by ol Brett Ratner, when selling his RED DRAGON movie, that MANHUNTER was 'dated'. He isn't completely wrong, but this is coming from the man who brought us MONEY TALKS and RUSH HOUR. The balls! MANHUNTER is pretty fantastic. I tried but hard to try to find the wonderful scene of "The Tooth Fairy" killer (Tom Noonan) showing a slideshow to his victim, which has permanently marked me ("Do you see now? Do you see?") I even tried to find the scene from South Park ("Cartman's Incredible Gift") where the mark of MANHUNTER is felt as well.

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992) Not much to say about this fantastic action/adventure film than I recently heard it declared at Future Shop as amongst the greatest films ever crafted (alongside GET SHORTY and TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE). Burnings at the stake, scalpings, a perfect score, asskickings alongside precipitous cliffsides...Aces!

HEAT (1995) Must win some sort of award for 'Most 80s Film of the 90s'. Whatever urges that were restrained in MOHICANS from Mann wanting to throw his MIAMI VICE TV roots in were unleashed upon the soundtrack and parts of the production of this movie. Dig that synthesizer! Ok, the movie is infamous for its (WARNING: FULL FRAME) brilliant heavily armed robbery and a sharp script, and completely derailed ending. Robert Deniro's smart character suddenly gets stupid, allowing himself to be shot dead. As we all know 'the good guys always win only when it is shoehorned into a story.' It is really unfortunate this film couldn't avoid this fate, because it is otherwise all round excellent.

THE INSIDER (1999) The first movie I went to by myself. I'm currently writing up my Spike Lee post and this and INSIDE MAN keep getting mixed up in my mind (mostly because I haven't seen INSIDE MAN, and THE INSIDER never really left much of an impression on me). In a way THE INSIDER made me as indifferent toward the tobacco companies and Fellini's 8 1/2 made me want to smoke very, very much. Take that for what it is worth.

ALI (2001) Bought, not watched (yet). Forthcoming.

COLLATERAL (2004) Sort of a cross between THIEF (a professional doing his job and how 'normals' mess things up) and HEAT (the bad guy can't get away! really well done action sequences!), all under a digital camera. Probably the last movie with Tom Cruise I'd care to see (unless his rumoured Rod Serling biopic ever gets made, if only to see what a car wreck it is guaranteed to be), and sets up Jamie Foxx as some sort of 'talent'.

MIAMI VICE (2006) Haven't seen it. Based on the trailer, the film strikes me as completely unnecessary in a post-THE SHIELD world. Vic Mackey facefucks Sonny Crockett as Shane Vendrell lynchs his buddy Tubbs in the fucking woods. Strong words for a film I haven't seen, I admit, and I wouldn't mind watching it. I am just going to prejudiced as hell is all.

-Jarrett

Speaking of MAN ON THE MOON...

2006-11-30T02:20:00.000-07:00

Andy Kaufman!

That show FRIDAY looked terrible, doesn't it?

-Jarrett

DIRECTOR: David Cronenberg

2006-11-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

David Cronenberg this time, who should be nearer and dearer to my heart for the sole reason that he is a fellow Canadian filmmaker...he's alright (I've made some effort to acquire almost all of his films), but there really are better. What Cronenberg does, he does best...the horror of the body that is. It seems the further away he gets from this theme the worst his movies get. You'll see.

SHIVERS (1975) Both shock and shockingly bad, this film pretty well represents what all of Cronenberg's strengths and weaknesses will be for the rest of his career.

RABID (1977) Not a bad movie, really, but not as good as SHIVERS. Let us not forget the attacking mutant orifice in Marilyn Chamber's arm!

FAST COMPANY (1979) A true abberation in Cronenberg's filmography, a made for TV movie embracing his love for race car driving.

THE BROOD (1979) Horrible violence toward children. Aces!

SCANNERS (1981) The only Cronenberg film other than M. Butterfly I have yet to see. What I know of the film is....well...(see top).

VIDEODROME (1983) So fantastic it is part of the Criterion Collection! Huzzah!

THE DEAD ZONE (1983) Probably Cronenberg's only movie you could hand to anyone and they would really enjoy. Totally inoffensive, and also one of Christopher Walken's best performances.

THE FLY (1986) The first Cronenberg movie I ever watched...the snapping arm has stuck with me ever since I saw it back in junior high late at night watching Showcase. For you, my adoring fans, the scene of which I speak. Be afraid.

DEAD RINGERS (1988) The first time I watched this I felt that the first half of the movie was really perfect, and in the second half everything goes down hill. Second time I watched it I discovered I was half wrong and this movie is what amounts to Cronenberg's true masterpiece and everything that follows are pale shades. For the ladies.

NAKED LUNCH (1991) Not a bad movie, but not worthy of the Criterion treatment that VIDEODROME received. A pretty tough watch, something you really have to force yourself through (not unlike the novel).

M. BUTTERFLY (1993) Not seen....I know Jeremy Iron is in it, but I'm pretty sure this is pretty hard to come across. Someday?

CRASH (1996) This is sort of the cutoff for me with Cronenberg. Same thing kind of happened with CRASH as with DEAD RINGERS: wasn't a fan the first time I watched it. As a matter of fact I hated CRASH. Apparently I'm not alone as no movie I know is attached to the saying 'love it or hate it'. I think the movie improved for me as I became familiar with J.G. Ballard (author of the novel the film is based on).

EXISTENZ (1999) Really a needless retread of VIDEODROME, replacing television with video games. Not necessarily a bad idea, but coming from the same director strikes me as particularily lazy. But hey, as Roger Ebert writes, no movie with Harry Dean Stanton can be all bad.

SPIDER (2002) A drab, dull as fuck, pointless movie. This film for me marks a real departure from the central theme of Cronenberg's films. He is, of course, allowed to do so, but what is here just rings hollow.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005) Well, those who know me know my strong feelings toward the movie. It could just be a case of my having only watched it once and maybe a repeat viewing of HISTORY will bring it up in my books (maybe the same thing with SPIDER as well). With HISTORY I had watched DEAD RINGERS the day before and discovered that RINGERS was the best of Cronenberg's work up to SPIDER. Hearing all the positive buzz surrounding HISTORY, my expectations were high. Boy did it utterly fail for me. Your trademark Cronenberg geyers of blood were present (lots o' meaty chunks too), but the subtext of violence in America? What the hell? It probably doesn't help that the graphic novel the film is based off is a wicked piece of shit.

And of course no Cronenberg discussion would be complete without naming some of his acting roles! NIGHTBREED! THE STUPIDS! JASON X! Bam! OK, he was in the absolutely fantastic LAST NIGHT (which is also the best Canadian movie I have ever seen) too.

-Jarrett

Yeah, THAT Scream

2006-11-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

From BoingBoing...

Wilhelm Scream - Hollywood's favorite scream

A single scream, recorded for the 1951 film "Distant Drums," has made its way into dozens of films, games and TV shows. Afficianados call it the "Wilhelm Scream" and have cataloged many of the films in which it appeared, from Hercules to Pirates of the Caribbean, The X-Files to the short "Golden Dreams" film at Disney California Adventure.

And the scream itself...

-Jarrett

DIRECTOR: Milos Forman

2006-11-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

I think we've come to a point where I no longer need to hide beneath a 'veil of irony' and 'rises', 'falls', and the '80s' and can instead talk about directors of various cuts of the talent cloth. Hence, Milos Forman. There are several of his earlier films which are flat out unavailable outside of the Czech republic, I will go off those films that are available via Amazon...

BLACK PETER (1960) Well, OK, I guess I could watch this one if I had the opportunity but dig that link and the reviews it has received; yeah, it could be a great movie, but an overpriced, poor quality one at that.

THE LOVES OF A BLONDE (1965) and THE FIREMEN'S BALL (1967) I haven't seen either of these films that are only available on Criterion DVD (with a price that only a mother could love, and hundred different things I find to buy instead for whatever reason, these films aren't mine yet).

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKCOO'S NEST (1975) Taking a ten year leap in Forman's films (again, due to availability), we finally get a doozey of a film that is just as good as you've heard. After watching Tim Burton's BATMAN, I would ask my parents what other movies Jack Nicholson had been in. My ten year old hope would be that there were tons of movie with The Joker in them. My parents talked about this one a lot, saying how good he was. Remember, these are the same people who turned off BLUE VELVET after renting it. In my English 20 Honours class we read the play and watched the movie. It was pretty happening, though the thing we watched was in full frame. I went out and rented it (in proper aspect ratio, which I was just learning about for the first time), and it held up outside the classroom. I think the themes and subtext of the film didn't really start appealing to me until Grade 12 when my English teacher talked to us about Ken Kesey's other novels. Anyway, it is just another example of why the 1970s is arguably one of the best decade of filmmaking ever.

HAIR (1979) Not seen and I can't remember what Peter Bischkind said about it in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. It looks like some sort of dancing hippie movie and I think it is at King of Trade, on the cheap. Hmm...

RAGTIME (1981) Really not familiar with this film either. Remind me of why I am writing about Milos Forman again?

AMADEUS (1984) Ah, that's why. AMADEUS is this movie I was always curious about when I was younger. I remember in those Blockbuster freebie preview things, come Oscar time, they would have a list of all the 'Best Pictures', and AMADEUS' cover always baffled me (see above). It looked like some weirdo science fiction movie like ZARDOZ, or a fantasy movie like LEGEND, or a bad STAR WARS ripoff. A really strange poster anyway. Sometime after watching ONE FLEW OVER in high school I made a point of watching this and loved it even more. One of my favourite archetypes is that of The Hack, or the Second Rate. It flies in the face of that advice which plagues us all: you can do anything you want! Well, you can do whatever you want...just very poorly. And the absolutely worst fate of all is Knowing you will never be any better than you are. Pretty damning, and something I've pretty well put into anything I have done myself in the last few years (ie. the Chnoborovs, CAPES, the CHESTER FIELDS screenplay). These are all notions which anyone in the creative arts, especially myself, struggles with day to day.

VALMONT (1989) Again, never really heard of it until I decided to write this.

THE PEOPLE vs LARRY FLYNT (1996) I saw this with my Dad for some strange reason...I like the notion of documenting (or in this case fictionalizing) this rather important turning point in American history, but the film lacks a certain satisfation that Forman's other films have.

MAN ON THE MOON (1999) In my mind it is my favourite Forman film, but when you compare ONE FLEW OVER and AMADEUS to it, MAN falls short. Whereas AMADEUS I relate to due to my own fears and shortcomings as an artist, I think MAN plays to my strengths and my own perceptions of art. Somedays it really is a case of not knowing what the audience or viewer is going to like anyway, so do whatever you enjoy. Or else, maybe the audience isn't smart enough to get the material. At one point the George Shapiro (Danny Devito) tells Andy Kaufman (Jim Carrey) and Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti) that they are the only two people in on their jokes and no one else knows it. Story of my life.

GOYA'S GHOST (2006) His new film and, knowing Lethbridge, I will have to wait until it is out on DVD or the Lethbridge Art Society plays it at the Galaxy for one night only to see it.

-Jarrett

THE NEW WEIRD/THE SLIPSTREAM

2006-11-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

THE NEW (and old) WEIRD

The New Weird is an avant-garde literary movement or literary genre presently in progress. The writers involved are mostly novelists who are considered to be parts of the science fiction or speculative fiction genres. Its most notable authors include Steve Cockayne, Jeff VanderMeer, Ian R. MacLeod, M John Harrison, Thomas Ligotti, China Mieville, Alastair Reynolds, Justina Robson, and Steph Swainston.

There is, however, considerable debate about whether or not New Weird is in fact a movement amongst like-minded authors, or merely a label that has been applied to them after the fact to describe perceived similarities between their works. Many of the authors who are associated with the movement either disavow belonging to it, or simply don't care what categorical labels their readers craft to name their work.

The core idea of the New Weird is that literature should transcend the genre in which it is written. Writers are encouraged to blur the borders between genres.

The genres most frequently used in New Weird writings are science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Opponents of New Weird note that the divisions of genre are built for a reason and that the traditional divisions of genre are based on which types of ideas work best together. Other opponents claim the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy have always been one genre. Supporters speculate that the New Weird will become an important part of literary tradition.

The Wikipedia article goes on to talk about H.P. Lovecraft being considered something of the 'godfather' of the genre. In bringing up Lovecraft, I found it to be disappointing, mainly due to the massive exclusion of mentioning the author S.T. Joshi and his various books on the subject of 'the Weird Tale' (which doesn't actually have its own Wiki article either). Not only has he written several books on Lovecraft, he has also written books on 'The Weird Tale', the 'Evolution of the Weird Tale' and 'The Modern Weird Tale'. Though these books are more leaning toward the horror genre than transcending and mixing, both genres would definitely bring to mind Stephen King's Dark Tower series, as well as Rod Serling and THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Both are talked about in The Moden Weird Tale, and both mix genres left and right.

I guess I'm not the only one who has issue with the defintion of 'The New Weird' if this 'Talk' thread is anything to follow. It sounds very much like a albel that is being applied to writers without their agreement (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but it seems to be such a small movement at this time to really be purporting its existence.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE SLIPSTREAM

Slipstream is a kind of fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries and doesn't sit comfortably within the confines of either science fiction/fantasy or mainstream literary fiction.

The term slipstream was coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, July 1989. He says in part: "...this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility." Slipstream fiction has consequently been referred to as "the fiction of strangeness," which is as clear a definition as any others in wide use. Slipstream falls into the gap between speculative fiction and mainstream fiction. While some slipstream novels employ elements of science fiction or fantasy, not all do.

The common unifying factor of these pieces of literature is some degree of the surreal, the not-entirely-real, or the markedly anti-real. Many readers who have never heard the term slipstream will still recognize the names of authors whose works have been categorized as slipstream. These include Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, Angela Carter, Steve Erickson, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert F. Jones, Haruki Murakami, Christopher Priest, Steve Aylett, Jan Wildt, J. G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges and William S. Burroughs.

In films, Memento, Being John Malkovich and Intacto are recent examples that have been called slipstream.

A case could be argued that any example from New Weird could be used as an example of Slipstream to varying degrees. X-FILES? Grant Morrison's INVISIBLES (really, any Grant Morrison comic). Hey, is that a mention of Christopher Priest I see? The white, British novelist, not the black writer known for his comics output. Though that Christopher Priest's QUANTUM AND WOODY and BLACK PANTHER could definitely be called Slipstream at times as well. Hmm. Back to the white one, THE PRESTIGE is shaping up to be one of the best films of the year. I have the novel in my possession, but the offensively bad cover is keeping me from opening it up let alone reading it.

-Jarrett

Rises, No Falls (Yet): Another Tale of the 80s

2006-11-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

"Just do it. Just pick up a camera and start shooting something."

-surprisingly James Cameron and NOT the Chnoborov Brothers

So everyone has watched a James Cameron movie at some point, right? I don't think he's made a feature film that has flopped. He isn't terribly prolific either, which lends itself to his selecting projects carefully (which is admirable). Let's take a look! I'm not a big fan of box office numbers being used as an indicator of quality, but I'm going to include the box office numbers for Cameron films.

Let us forgo XENOGENESIS and PIRAHNA 2, shall we?

THE TERMINATOR (1984) Domestic Total Gross: $38,371,200
I am divided on this movie. Somehow there are people who prefer this to T2, which is just ridiculous. The movie has aged badly. I would like to think that since the movie deals with time travel that its "80s-ness" just captures the era. However, the film's production shows signs of the 80s, which cannot be explained away with 'time travel'. Lawrence has gone on record several times on how much he hates the music.

ALIENS (1986) Domestic Total Gross: $85,160,248
Again, another movie I am divided on. I have honestly never been a big fan of ALIENS (I've always preferred ALIEN outright). I used it recently in reference to comparing THE WIRE and THE SHIELD….but I still really like THE SHIELD for all its entertainment. ALIENS doesn't entertain me as much such.

THE ABYSS (1989) Domestic Total Gross: $54,222,310
One of the few movies that has ever made me cry for some strange reason.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) Domestic Total Gross: $204,843,345
Still one of the best action movies ever made (right alongside THE ROAD WARRIOR).

TRUE LIES (1994) Domestic Total Gross: $146,282,411
Lawrence and I just watched this recently…what a strangely paced movie. The whole start of the movie is exactly what you'd expect; Arnie killing and thwarting terrorists. One terrorist gets away and suddenly the movie turns into a quirky romantic spy comedy for a good half hour to forty five minutes with Bill Paxton playing an especially sleazy used car salesman. Jamie Lee Curtis dances around sexily, the escaped terrorist returns and nuclear bombs are detonated, bridges are blown up, and Arnie ends up in a Harrier jet. Also, for the first half of the movie Tom Arnold is the ultimate woman hating asshole and peters out to this caring family man. Entertaining throughout, but some real tonal inconsistencies I just never picked up on before. Very…madcap? The movie also reminds me of a day when movies could go right on ahead and blow up Arabs without anyone raising an eyebrow.

TITANIC (1997) Domestic Total Gross: $600,788,188
I think this may have been the first movie I watched in theater that was three hours long. I think because of its undeserved success (and being responsible for "I'm King of the World!") the movie has come under a lot of fire. Seriously, it isn't that bad of a movie at all. As far these epic tales of romance go, this is actually pretty good. Well, it was pretty good nine years ago when I was 14.

I'd have to look it up, but I think the only movie of his that might have done 'meh' was THE ABYSS for being 'too much' for mainstream audiences. Those numbers seem OK by today's standards, but while looking these up on Box Office Mojo the 'worldwide' numbers are absolutely massive. For instance, TRUE LIES did $378,882,411. And of course there is TITANIC and its $1,845,034,188. I guess my point is I can't believe that Hollywood has allowed so much time to pass between movies with Cameron. It is admirable that Cameron can afford not to work….but ten years is a long time. He hasn't been completely inactive though.

There was the awful DARK ANGEL tv show…various underwater adventure tv shows, IMAX 3-D documentaries…nothing exactly setting the world on fire. Of course there's the oft talked about BATTLE ANGEL which Cameron is now saying might just be ready to be made as technology as finally caught up with his vision (which sounds a lot like George Lucas and his STAR WARS prequels).

The next two (of three potential movies), which Cameron probably will never make, are written by Laeta Kalogridis. These films are are THE DIVE (yes, more fucking underwater movies) and the already mentioned BATTLE ANGEL. Films by Kalogridis include episodes of Birds of Prey, NIGHT WATCH, ALEXANDER, and the forthcoming PATHFINDER which is directed by the director of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake. PATHFINDER sounds particularly awful; "a Viking boy is left behind after his clan battles a Native American tribe. Raised within the tribe, he ultimately becomes their savoir in a fight against the Norsemen."

Riveting! The third film, something AVATAR, is suppose to come out before both THE DIVE and BATTLE ANGEL. Its plot summary is….well….

"In director James Cameron's original script treatment of Avatar, a man tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an alien during an interplanetary war in which aliens can manifest themselves by possessing human bodies -- avatars.[1]"

Mm-hmm. It is perhaps unfair to judge movies just based on a plot summary (what are the plot summaries for any of Cameron's movies? Yeah, exactly). Consider though that he has been out of the directing game for almost ten years. I suppose at this point it would be nice to have a new James Cameron movie than more rumour and talk: sometimes we need some damn action.

-Jarrett