groc's bloggette: March 2006 Archives

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March 30, 2006

Was that it?

It's that time of week - the latest episode of Lost has been shown in Merikaland, and to judge by the Lost-osphere forums I started reading while waiting for the download to finished this was supposed to be good one.

Spoiler-laden entry - hidden from those who care not to know what's happening - see you after the jump...

Oh. Well, personally I wasn't particularly impressed with it. The punning title was bad enough 'Lockdown' - all because the Hatch's blast doors shut down - one of them onto Locke's leg - so he was 'Locke down' too and his backstory was pretty depressing too - so that was another sort of 'down' - 'Locke down'. My sides are splitting. Stop. There are enough Lost bloggers out there who are far better writing synopsises than me to tell the rest. But the main piece of 'new' (cough) information is Locke seeing a map of the Island showing the other six research stations - written in glow-in-black-light florescent chalk or highlighter pen or whatever it is -on the back of the storm door he had his legs trapped under. A map complete with various notes - some of them in Latin for some reason, sheer pretentiousness I think. In a 'Oh am I talking Latin? Oh silly me - my intellect is so vast I didn't even realise' sort of way.
Latin phrases. I'm going to start calling these sorts of 'clues' 'google bones' from now on -it's too obvious that the creators throw in all that sort of stuff for the geeks (like me) to gnaw on - but they're not the real meat. Hitchcock would've called them McGuffins.

Like we didn't already know there were at least another 6 (maybe as many as 7 or even 8) stations on the Island. It said as much on the orientation film they saw. The Tailies where holed up for a while in another - and if Kate and Claire ever bothered to talk to anyone about their girl's own adventure -that's three definite known hatches. The map at least shows someone previously on the Island in the Hatch had a spark of curiosity about their surroundings and what was happening around them. Not only that -it looked like a collaboratory effort between two (or more) people. You know, people actually *sharing* information. *Gasp* It’s something the rest of the bloody Survivors should have be doing all along damn it. For example have Claire and Kate mentioned anything about finding the medical hatch to anyone else? It certainly doesn’t look like it. Nothing was said by Kate to Sun about her being pregnant and perhaps warning her to watch herself after what happened to Claire and her baby? They all know that there’s nothing the Others get more excited about than new babies and children. So no party setting out to investigate further in case there might be supplies they could use -even if it's just a few flashlights and a knitted hat? No, of course not -there’s way too much sunbathing, card game playing, novel reading and papaya eating to be done first. The lazy indolent bunch. Not even a word to explain why they don't. I'd be placated with even a "we're too scared of what 'the Others' might do to us if we wander too far" on this issue. But - nope nothng.

Given this track record I wouldn't be surprised if Locke kept totally schtum about the map from now on and nothing more was made of it until well into season three. After all -he was very reluctant about letting anyone else in on about the hatch when he first found it.

The other 'relevations' in this episode - are that the captured Henry Gale - is a bare-faced liar? Um - didn't see that one coming. Feh. In the flashback story (big snorefest) Locke had more trouble with his nasty con artist father - then his girlfriend rejected his ill-timed marriage proposal. Lastly that the Island gets Dharma-brand food supplies dropped in by parachute -presumably for Desmond. Big whooop -and it's this that gets thefuseage.com forum in a melt-down? Um.

by groc at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

Beige

There's a new TV commercial out at the moment -I can't remember what product or service it's actually for or even what it's about - because I was totally blinded by beige overload. It features some blond (beige) haired woman wearing a beige sweater top and the room she was in had a beige carpet and a beige sofa... I've got to get a screen grab of this monstrosity if I can.

To think -back in the past when sci-fi authors were writing their visionary stories about this period I bet not one of them ever foresaw the hideous blandness and dreary over-arching nouvelle Puritanism that this decade has currently developed for itself. Those sci-fi writers who had dystopian visions might probably have mentioned depressing greys or stark black and white - but I’ll wager not one of them ever counted on ‘bright and airy neutrals’ which is far more suffocating. How can you hope to resist something that’s being presented as so desirable by absolutely everybody?

Have you seen the sheer amount of programs that are currently on TV telling us what to eat, what to wear, how to decorate, how to clean house, all to the same standard of bland conformity? Look to Anthea Turner, You Are What you Eat, Honey, We’re Killing the Kids, Spendaholics, etc. Worse there aren’t just programs -there are whole cable/satellite channels dedicated to this sort of guff.

So this is it - the 2000s - the Beige Decade.

by groc at 07:23 PM | Comments (0)

visions

Now why have I got images in my head of stormtroopers with copyright symbols instead of swastikas - bursting down people's front doors to confiscate home 'puters - and huge scarily massive prison camps full to bursting with most of the population of Germany? Well, ALL the people who've ever owned a PC at any rate?

Oh yes - I read this article.

Doesn't anyone else think it's just completely wrong that the entertainment industry -the fucking entertainment industry -has that much power and influence? It's fast getting to the point where there ought to be a complete consumer strike on them to choke off their money supply so they can't ever afford lawyers anymore.

It's one thing to go after pirates who do make money for themselves ripping off everyone - but going after consumers... that's not good practise.

(oh great the comment spammer/vandal is baaaack)

by groc at 04:28 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2006

A for Ay? what's going on here then?

Just sat through 'A for Andromeda'. I was informed by people who go on about this sort of thing (critics) that this was a TV sci-fi classic. I think in this case when they say 'classic' they mean -boring. And it ends with the Lady alien committing suicide - but, but that's how The Quatermass Experiment ended too. Only there it was Quatermass going into the Tate Modern where the alien creature was hiding and talked and talked and talked until he had bored the poor thing to death. (I had to watch it three times before I managed to stay awake until the end of it.)

As I watched Andromeda I couldn't help noticing how the schlocky trashy sci-fi film 'Species' had ripped off the basics of the plot, even down to having a female alien protagonist -at least in that movie the alien lady got to escape and ran around killing and bonking away in a effort to make a few alien babies of her own. Surely that's far better than getting all miserable and topping yourself?

by groc at 02:50 AM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2006

Stupid Bird-brained humans.

People are so stupid.
Bird sanctuary hit by flu fears.
Really, really stupid.
Pets dumped amid bird flu fears.
There hasn't been a single case of bird flu in the UK, and abroad where it has been it's only affected wild birds. So any pets and those birds in sanctuaries are the safest of all from any chance of infection. Only 100 cases of human deaths worldwide from avian flu have been reported. There a damn sight lot more than 100 deaths from road accidents a week in the UK alone. (It's closer to something like 7035.) Yet you don't get people en masse refusing to use their beloved motor cars for fear of being killed or of killing someone. I'll bet more people die from accidents in the home every year - but no one is camping out in their gardens for fear they might hurt and kill themselves while indoors.

by groc at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

Party like it's 1427

Ali al-Sistani wants gays killed in "most severe way".

Shiites.

by groc at 03:45 AM | Comments (1)

March 25, 2006

When did Kafka take over the country?

I only heard about this whole thing today. I thought the Tories' Criminal Justice Bill was bad enough... but this...

the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill -is frightening.

In case no one has noticed -it's no secret most of the Ministers that run around in positions of power are deeply stupid creatures at the best of times. (Don't let me start a list of examples - we'll be here for days.) So it's crucial that it takes a big group of them to put checks and balances on each other just to stop them doing really totally catastrophically dumb (maybe even evil) things. Not they don't still manage to do that from time to time - but at least it's harder for them to do such.

At the rate this country this going -it's going to be US that will be needing an invasion force to come in to rid of us a totalitarian state and reinstate democracy.

saveparliament.org.uk

Spy Blog

Campaign Against...

by groc at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

Dem Damn Gays

they're to blame for bird flu you know.

"Rabbi says wrath of God behind Israel bird flu.".

As my grandma used to say: "there's more out than in"

by groc at 01:44 PM | Comments (1)

March 22, 2006

an old thought I keep having over and over again

Big enormous wigs, thick heavy garish make-up, ridiculous brightly coloured clothes -all done for (supposedly) humorous effect. Drag queens are just the clowns of the gay world aren’t they?

by groc at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

Spiderman II - and CGI

As it was a bargain and I'd missed seeing it at the cinema I bought the DVD of it the other day. So far I've only sat through it once and I was tired at the time and so nodded off during most of it -but woke up during the end fight scenes and even in my half-asleep befuddled state I thought "omigod they're so obviously cgi characters -they're so totally rubbish. Yeeesh", before falling back to sleep again.

I remember feeling the same way when I saw the second new Star Wars film on TV for the first time. I couldn’t get over how totally crappy the scene in the arena was - where the cgi human characters rode some cgi alien creatures. I mean at least in the old days when they used stop motion animated models - they all had a certain charm -it's something that computer-generated animation just doesn’t have for some reason. Not that cgi animation can’t have charm - see Reboot, or any of the Pixar films -etc. proving it certainly can have charm by the bucket-load. It’s exactly when it’s not pretending to be anything else is when it’s playing to its own strengths, but whenever it tries to take over from the ‘real’ (insofar as any film can be said to be ‘real‘) -is when it’s in its most danger of falling flat on its face.

So, in short, t’would appear I've become rather jaded with computer animation. What was once all exciting because it could invent and show us things that never could be seen before has now become wearisome from over-use, and oh my, isn’t it over-used. It’s problematical for film makers that for all their hard work they're still a long way off creating human-esque characters which are convincing enough for anything other than a quick glance - but when they insist on mixing live actors with their cgi-equivalents they only serve to make those differences all the more pronounced. Unfortunately for them when HD television starts making big inroads into everybody's life - those distinctions are only going to become even more noticeable to the masses.

Mind you - who’s to say that early cgi animation won’t develop a kitschy retro charm all of it’s own? If it hasn’t already. But it hasn't done so with me, maybe I need time. Until then I'll just go on grinding my teeth and whinging. Sorry 'bout that.

by groc at 05:21 PM | Comments (4)

March 20, 2006

DRM sucks

the life from your batteries, and pollutes the earth.

I seem to remember folk saying similiar things about playing copy-protected audio CDs on normal CD players - the protection stuff putting extra strain on the hardware's error detection mojo.

by groc at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)

ID

This ID project is even more sinister than we first thought.

"You will need the card when you receive prescription drugs, when you withdraw a relatively small amount of money from a bank, check into hospital, get your car unclamped, apply for a fishing licence, buy a round of drinks (if you need to prove you're over 18), set up an internet account, fix a residents' parking permit or take out insurance.
Every time that card is swiped, the central database logs the transaction so that an accurate plot of your life is drawn. The state will know everything that it needs to know; so will big corporations, the police, the Inland Revenue, HM Customs, MI5 and any damned official or commercial busybody that wants access to your life. The government and Home Office have presented this as an incidental benefit, but it is at the heart of their purpose."

Pet Shop Boys protest at ID cards. They've written a song.

And as of last year - without any open public debate or even put as part of an election manifesto 'Merikans can now look forward to their own ID card and National database.

by groc at 03:42 AM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2006

in your end -oh

Not an Ebay advert.
(Via the B3ta Newsletter)

by groc at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

Ah-aah

I knew he'd write about it sooner or later.
Dave Gorman's Flickr adventure.

by groc at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

Hey - look

A photo set on Flickr of someone's home in New Mexico. Look - not a bit of fucking soul-destroying beige - cream or 'bright and airy' neutrals anywhere.

The UK is all so frighteningly chromo-phobic.

by groc at 04:45 AM | Comments (1)

March 16, 2006

Hello Eurovision

For probably the first time ever I've had a sudden spark of interest in the Eurovision Song thing - usually I avoid the damn thing like the plague - but according to the latest Popbitch newsletter - Bodies Without Organs have an entry in this year. I *love* BWO. Their 'We've Been Conquering America' video is one of my all time pop video favourites.

by groc at 02:10 PM | Comments (1)

Random Lost notes

Aaaah - and it suddenly came to me out of the blue, in Lost: DHARMA = their own version of D.A.R.P.A. So I'm now left wondering what the M and the H could stand for... Military? Mathematical? H for Hanso?

815

Someone's Lat Long theory of the numbers. Palmyra - sounds suitably spooky.

by groc at 02:59 AM | Comments (0)

Oooooh touchy-touchy.

Isaac Hayes Leaves South Park Over Religious Issues.

I've torrented that particuliar episode with Tom Cruise (I'm not sure but it may well be banned in the UK -at Cruise's threats to sue anyone who dares to broadcast it) and it was hysterically funny. One of Southpark's best. See a clip here.

by groc at 01:35 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2006

How you spell: "Disingenuous"?

"Passports are voluntary documents," he insisted. "No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so."

Oh so that's OK then - the next time you need or want to travel abroad - you can do so without a passport - you can simply waive yourself through customs by quoting the home secretary, Charles Clarke. See how far that will get you.

by groc at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

People buying healthier food - Shock Horror!

Junk food industry in crisis. Alledgedly.

(Mmmmm... pizza and a fizzy pop drink.)

Be nice if they did something about getting trans-fats out of food altogether though. Would it kill them to make stuff that didn't kill us or make us ill?

While I'm having a rant - I'd just like to share with you how annoyed and irritated I was during the run up to Christmas last year by the News constantly telling us how badly the retail sector was doing because they weren't selling as much crap to us as they thought they were going to. As if we were expected to feel sorry for them. Boo-hoo. You mean that finally more and more people have been cottoning on to the fact that all the shops suddenly raise all their prices insanely high in the months running up to Christmas and then drop them drastically in the last week before 25th Dec - and even more in the sales after Boxing Day? That we haven't seen that pattern yet? That they're gouging us? Boo-hoo boo-hoo - they haven't raked in the millions upon millions they were expecting -so the Company Directors can't buy an extra yacht this year.

There I feel a little bit better now.

by groc at 01:33 PM | Comments (1)

March 11, 2006

Dr Sultan

"Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

by groc at 08:30 PM | Comments (2)

gadgetry

They showed one of these on the BBC news I want one. Not that I'll ever be able to afford one.

Home brewed PVRs.
DRM-ed TV broadcasts? Oh great. The other week I had my DVR glitch out on me and I got an on-screen message telling me the BBC programme I was already recording was protected (although it shouldn't've been). So I've had a quick taste of things to come -and it doesn't taste nice at all.

by groc at 06:49 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2006

one of my favourite ads

Orange have a history of doing very good - fairly avant garde commericials. I was mesmerised by this one during it's run - and it turns out it was directed by Chris Cunningham. Wow.

by groc at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2006

gay guinea pigs

and credit cards - what's all that about then?

by groc at 10:47 PM | Comments (1)

March 08, 2006

Great mysteries of our times:

Just who was the individual who thought that ‘Avocado’ and ‘Mushroom’ was a really nice colour for bathroom and toilet suites in the Seventies?

It must have been someone. Who’s going to cop to it?

by groc at 08:55 PM | Comments (1)

March 07, 2006

Um. Religion. Um.

A couple of days ago I was trying to find out about some small but possibly significant incident which had happened in the last episode of Lost - which had possible Old Testament overtones - so I was having a quick googling away about beard trimming and hair cutting in religion. Oh dear. Suddenly I found myself up to the neck in the murky worlds of Islam and Orthodox Judaism and their respectively rather tortuous take on the whole subject.

Jarringly it bought home to me one of the reasons why I really am so totally against any kind of religious dogma. Put basically -all these people are all trying to live their lives according to ancient precepts -all written down by a bunch of anonymous scholars hundreds if not thousands of years ago - and the crux is - no-one nowadays can really understand what these ancients actually meant. It’s not as if they can ask the original writers outright. So it all becomes open to interpretation and then that gets some reinterpretation and then a bit of extra reinterpretation on top of that, which could mean anything -or nothing. So round and round the discussions go, never getting anywhere, never being resolved once and for all - because by the very nature of the beast - it can’t ever be. But the various leaders can never at any time admit this to anyone -much less themselves, it all being deemed so vitally important. *cough* (Nothing to do with it yielding a quite cushy academic life for an awful lot of people. Although it depresses me to think that there are so many grown men (it's usually men) spending so much of their time on all this nonsense.)

Of course no one ever thinks -in the case of case of not shaving that it maybe be because of something utterly simple like ancient man having to use horrible painful blunt rubbish blades and not having any access to any thing like we have today such as the nice safety razor? Who’s to say if they had mach 3 triple blade razors with shaving gel back then they wouldn’t have cared one jot if men went around clean shaven or not. Which further leads me to think if this all-powerful invisible sky god had actually meant these writings as a proper manual for living our lives - then wouldn't he have made it all whole less ambiguous for his followers? I mean if we’re expected to believe she/he/it was super intelligent enough to have made DNA and ludicrously complicated and perfect cell structures and this and that and the other - which means evolution can’t be possibly true (*cough*) then why has it been so beyond him/her/it to write a simple enough instruction manual that lasts throughout the whole of time? Especially since it’s supposed to be important to know these things if you’re going to get eternal life and access to heaven. If memory serves there was something about some stone tablets and some commandments - that was all reasonably unambigious -so he/she/it managed it once upon a time... (allegedly)

Although I don't remember any one of those commandments being "Thou shalt not get a haircut or a shave."

by groc at 04:15 PM | Comments (1)