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Live Whacking Archive 6 April 2007 From this comments thread, where Billy Beck jousts with some freedom-hating zombies, culminating in this exchange: Beck reminds me of Bernard Goetz. Bwehehehe.
Sesame Street......as directed by Martin Scorcese. ...and after you've watched that, check out Kermit the Frog singing "Hurt". Definitely not safe for work.... or kiddies.
Insane Kiwi Rob Thomson, riding from Korea to England on a recumbent bicycle, decides to detour through the Anzob Tunnel in Tajikistan. Oy vey.
This Cricket World Cup has been outright harmful for the sport. Dull cricket, empty stadiums, the murder of Bob Woolmer, a tedious itinerary. In the modern world where cricket needs to do everything it can to sell itself against other sports, the whole event has had all the atmosphere and gravitas of a high-school athletics carnival. For the sake of the sport, all future World Cups should be held in the UK or Australia. Have a round-robin between all the teams, with a maximum of a day's rest between the games for each team. Then go straight to the semi-finals. No more than two associate countries. Run the bloody event as the intense competition it should be, and not some bullshit, elongated cash cow for the ICC.
The Communist Party of Australia sticks up for...... get this.... Robert Mugabe: Zimbabwe — a justified response? The sociopath who wrote this has his own blog, where there's much more Mugabe-blowing on display.
My libertarian chum Alex Robson sends me an e-mail: Tex,
It's amazing how every generation of greenie apocalyptoids end up looking a lot like Hal Lindsey. Well, maybe it's not so amazing: there are still people who take Paul Ehrlich seriously. I guess being a windbag with a serious case of the vapours gets you a captive audience.
Stolen from Kimmy: 1. What, in your experience, was the most overrated movie of all time? So many choices, so I'll say one of the following: Citizen Kane 2. What was the most overrated album? Exile on Main Street - The Rolling Stones Sounds like a bad recording of a drunken studio jam session. An absolute pile of shit.
Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
Drudge and Pajamas Media.
Carnivale. I think it's overrated, not bad. It's still way ahead of the general sewage of TV.
Rolling Stone. Three decades of beatnik whinging.
All of them.
John Lennon. 9. What is the most overrated genre in any form of art? Same answer as Kim: Ballet.
21 March 2007 Lesbian Orca joins 9/11 truth movement Rosie O'Donnell has come out of the freakazoid closet.
Well that settles it then. When great scientific minds like Rosie, Charlie Sheen and Ed Asner are brave enough to speak the truth, the great NeoZionConIlluminatiMcPretzelChimpyHalliburton Cabal's days are surely numbered. Ahhhh, Hollywood D-list celebrities: is there anything they don't know?
The famous "animal rights" crackpots now want to kill a cute little bear cub, to prevent it leading some kind of inauthentic existence. How very Heideggerian. P.E.T.A. loves killing animals, thousands of them every year in fact. From July 1998 through December 2005, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed over 14,400 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals." That's more than five defenseless creatures every day. PETA has a walk-in freezer to store the dead bodies, and contracts with a Virginia Beach company to cremate them.
Remember this the next time some celebrity jerkoff tells you not to eat meat or wear fur.
20 March 2007 In case we needed any reminders that "democracy" is no bulwark against tyranny, and often enough the very midwife of tyrannical government, the Daily Reckoning, an Australian libertarian web-site that I hadn't yet come across, provides us with precisely that. Robert Mugabe, one of the most malevolent president-tyrants on the face of the earth, is perhaps THE exemplar of "democratic reform" properly understood - demagoguery, mob rule, and, ultimately, thug violence.
The first MotoGP race of the 800cc era was won by 21yo Casey Stoner on the Ducati. Millions of idiots worldwide are probably thinking of ways to reason that Rossi was the "real" race-winner, just like he was the "real" champion last year. Bike season is back, praise the lord. I love my trike, and I'm thinking now of getting a two-wheeled recumbent to go with it. Why? Because I don't enjoy riding my road bike anymore. The Scott Sub 10 is a superb piece of kit. Light, quick, ultra-quick handling and looks great.
But after tasting the recumbent style, sitting on a road bike - even one as brilliant as the Sub10 - is about as comfy as planting your arse on a power drill. I tried riding it to work the other day, and gave up after fifteen minutes. While a recumbent gives you total comfort and let's you enjoy the ride itself, a traditional bike places pressure on arse, wrists and neck. It is, quite literally, a pain. Traditional bikes climb hills a little faster, but everything else seems hard in comparison to a 'bent. So, I'm gonna sell the Sub10, and get myself a 'bent bike, most likely in one of the following two styles: 1: "upright" short wheelbase, like the HP Velotechnik Grasshopper...
....or the Bacchetta Giro20....
2: "upright" long wheelbase... ...like the Bacchetta Agio...
...or the Easy Racers Sport LE... The LWB recumbents are heavier and don't handle as well, but they remind me of the dragsters I used to race as a kid....and they're comfy, which means I'll actually enjoy riding it. Bye-bye roadie..... Any religion which advocates tax evasion can't be all bad..... Muslim community leader Keysar Trad, who worked at the tax office for 14 years, said he believed some Islamic fringe groups would include "cheating on taxes" as part of their teachings. "We know that some fringe groups within the community have some aberrant teachings," the president of the Islamic Friendship Association said. 'Aberrant'? This is one muslim practice which should be mandatory.
Apparently controlling our light bulbs wasn't enough for the freedom-hating gestapo-nanny vermin in our government. The time has come to coerce Evil Fast Food Chains into not putting transfats in food. Fast-food chains in Australia have voluntarily agreed to reduce the amount of harmful trans fats in their products, averting the possibility of government intervention.
Yeah, do it "voluntarily" or we'll punish you. We're just thinking of the children of course. Snivelling little cunt. Frankly, I'd almost vote for Mark Latham before I'd vote for these nanny-state arseholes again.
First the putrid Grant Roff at Two Wheels, now we have some tool named Dave Morley at Scooter magazine, telling us about how "laid back" and free from Evil American Hamburgers is the People's Paradise of Cuba: I recently spent an amazing week in Cuba.
Tell me, Davey-boy, in your travels in the blissful communist retro-gulag with its "laid-back lifestyle", did you get a chance to talk to Oscar Biscet, Guillermo Farinas or any of these other guys? I'm guessing not. The suffering of others is no doubt a small price to pay for the ideological tourist daydreams of amoral toads like you. But hey, at least they don't have to face the horrors of American hamburgers, right? Fucking prick. What's happening amongst our local Stalinists? Let's look: - From the ISO: Labor should welcome a US defeat in Iraq as the only way to end the war and stop the useless deaths of thousands of young American soldiers, and acknowledge that full withdrawal is the only way to remove the root cause of violence in Iraq and create space for Iraqis to negotiate a political solution. - The Green Left Weekly hates Tim Blair: Trembling with indignation!
Angry enough to endorse a totalitarian mass-murderer: As Ernesto "Che" Guevara said: "If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine." Such pillars of virtue. - The Commie Party of Australia is predicting the imminent collapse of the US economy...again. Kim Du Toit has a great essay on that king of foods: cheese. His taste in the good stuff is almost identical to mine, though unlike him, I have nothing against cheapo tasty cheese. Makes bitchen toasted cheese sammiches. He's absolutely right on Emmentaler. If you don't like it, there's something wrong with you.
What's wrong with the both of you? Two blog posts on the great cheeses of the world, and no mention of Parmigiano-Reggiano?!? Possibly the single most sublime foodstuff known to mankind. I like it shaved in paper-thin slices and eaten solo, but eaten with dried figs it's spectacular. With a splash of good balsamic vinegar, equally so. Needless to say, the abomination in the green can does not count as Parmesan, nor, in my opinion, is it actually cheese. It tastes like vomit next to real Parmesan.
....please go read this, then do the world a favour and kill yourselves, you worthless shits. (Thanks to reader Nigel for the link)
Celebrity news: Liz Hurley Gets Married, Unwed Charlotte Church Gets Knocked Up, Paris Hilton Has Herpes. Oh wait… the last item is old news. Like we couldn't see that coming. Should have called this one “Sluts On Parade”.
Scott Wickstein, who has killed more blogs than a Chinese firewall, has returned with The Rum Rebellion. The racing was great. My accommodations blew chunks. Some random photos: The Expo tent had the new Ducati 1098...
It really is a beautiful piece of kit in the 'flesh'. Here's the view from Lukey Heights. Sadly there aren't any more grandstands for the world supers, but Lukey with the supercreen nearby is still a great viewing spot. Here you get to see them come out of the hard downhill braking area at the bottom of Lukey...
Click on the pic to see the full-sized version. ...twist your head slightly to the right, and you see the superscreen where you can keep track of the race on parts of the track you can't see. Here it is from a wider angle....
Click on the pic to see the full-sized version. ....and turn further to the right, and you can see them scream around turns 11 and 12 onto the main straight:
Click on the pic to see the full-sized version. If you go watch a race at Phillip Island, and you're "standing", I recommend Lukey as the best viewing spot. However, the best places overall are the grandstands at Bass Straight or Siberia, which is where I always sit during the Grand Prix races. Here's a shot of the main straight, with views of the ocean:
Best. Racetrack. On. Earth. ....the final showdown in The Wild Bunch. Just compare this to limp-wristed pantywaist vomit like Young Guns. This site is blocked by NetKiosk as 'harmful to minors' or some such.
28 February 2007 Away for a bit I'm off to Phillip Island in the morning to watch the World Superbike races. Next update on Tuesday. Seeya then.
You should try it some time, it's fun.
Other than perving at Beyonce Knowles, why does anyone watch this shit?
22 February 2007 I think I feel some fatwahs coming on...... Now you can play Dress Up Muhammad. Bwahahaha :)
21 February 2007
- John Humphreys, over at the ALS site This guy probably has a lot of fans in the hip-hop community....and Norman Mailer's house. - That cunting Channel 10 promo song, that ends with that harridan wailing "yooouuu, youuuuuu, yoouuuuuuouououou!!" - Hip-hop. Change the goddamned beat you illiterate crack-dealers. - NCIS. Assemble an array of talentless, annoying actors and a bunch of writers who desperately wish they were writing CSI, and you end up with this steaming pile of crap. - Subaru WRX drivers. Should be gassed. - David Hicks. The only tragedy about this Jew-hating jihadst chimpanzee is that he wasn't drowned in a bathtub at birth. - Annoying fictional polymath super-detectives, like that fat spazz Goren and William Petersen's wannabe Socrates. "Yes, I know all about this obscure Egyptian codex which explains hyperbolic quantum theory. It was explained in the lost diaries of Gottfried
Leibniz
that I happend to be translating on the way to work this morning". TV viewers seem to love this horseshit. Especially hard to understand given that neither of these idiots could act their way out of a shithouse.
20 February 2007 What spiritual needs could you possibly have that can't be met by watching a kitten climb on top of a water cooler? - Helena Handbasket Replace the entire Australian bowling line up with five quadraplegic children. Could they possibly do any worse than the asshats we have in the team right now? England took 18 months to lose the Ashes. Our cricket team has turned into a joke in less than a month. Our exalted leaders, not content with interfering with every other aspect of our lives, are now going to crack down on morally incorrect light bulbs: The federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is expected today to announce a commitment to phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2009-10, a world first by a national government.
To all you blubbering idiots who thinks this is OK: what exactly makes you think they are going to stop at your light bulbs? God I hate those bastards. I hate poetry. I just don't get it. I'd rather listen to a lawnmower. But as you've probably guessed already, I do have an exception to the rule I'd like to share with you. Word has it that one day in 1797, a very ill Samuel Taylor Coleridge got loaded to the gills on opium and penned Kubla Khan, the opening stanza of which reads as follows. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A strange, talismanic little slice of magic. According to the Castro-loving zombies at the Green Left Weekly, Zimbabwe's woes are being caused by free-market economic policy. No really. The 2007 model Yamaha R1 looks rather fast.
Bernie Slattery was right about Deadwood, and Tony Taylor is right about The Wire.
Just like Deadwood, I avoided this show for a long time. The reason? Because when those dickheads at the Nine network started showing The Wire in some dead late-night timeslot, they started off with season two. I found it impenetrable for something which was apparently the first episode of a show. Having just finished the boxed set of season one, I'll use the words from my Deadwood review: "Lordy, what a miscalculation". Like Deadwood, The Wire is so far above the general swill that passes for TV drama that it comes as manna from heaven for those of us who like to be treated as though we have functioning brain cells. The narrative is set around an investigation into the drug trade on the streets of Baltimore, though this is but a small kernel in the expansive, multi-layered stories of cops, crims, politicians, corruption, friendship, loyalty, and so much more. In a genre full of infantile pap like NYPD Blue, The Wire hits with the force of a wrecking ball. Like Deadwood, there is not a false note or cliche to be found. No phony bullshit 'hard core' action or stupid psycho dramas. Just superb writing, production, and acting of the highest order. Complex as the story can get, such is the skill of the writers, directors and actors that it's never an effort to follow what's going on. There are too many superb acting performances to summarise in any way that would do the actors justice, so I'll just say that this ensemble are almost good enough to give even the Deadwood guys a real shake. I've only had one problem so far with The Wire: the dialogue from the gangsta characters is often completely unintelligible. Still, thats what the "subtitle" option is for. I think seasons 2&3 are out on DVD here now. I'll be grabbing them this weekend...and so should you.
18 February 2007 Our beloved kook Jake McCrann has claimed that his demented biographical fantasies were merely "extended metaphors". Bwehehe. For those of you who are tempted to try basejumping, you may want to watch this first....and turn the sound up. (No fatalities, nothing gruesome, just a heap big agony)
All you "war on drugs" cretins must feel so proud. When avowed Stalinists start whining about theft of property and civil rights. It's not hypocrisy, it's just "social justice with intellectual characteristics". Can somebody please bring Antony Lowenstein up to speed as to the meaning of "freedom of speech"? I'll give you a hint Anto: me deciding not to give someone my money is not violating anyone's freedom. Got that?
Let me be unambiguous: I don't like 600s, or more specifically, the modern stable of Japanese four-cylinder supersport 600s, those cut-priced rockets which represent the biggest slice of the sportsbike market. Today's batch look great on paper: super light weight, huge peak horsepower, superb handling. They have everything going for them except for one small problem: they suck. They're horrible to ride: small, uncomfortable, twitchy handling, with engines which have fuck-all power below 10,000rpm, requiring you to revs the tits off them 100% of the time to have any momentum. This may be great for the World SuperSport Championship, which the current crop are designed for, but they make for shit roadbikes. It wasn't always like this. Back before Yamaha released their razor-sharp R6 in 1999, their representative in the middleweight sportsbike class was the YZF600 Thundercat. This bike got ditched because it was too fat, too soft and too slow for racing. It was however, a bloody nice roadbike. To start with, it was comfortable. Such wimpy considerations are out of place in today's wannabe-racer squidboy market, but I've never seen the attraction of riding a bike which leaves you in pain after 15 minutes, which is pretty much 100% of today's supersport bikes. The YZF has a comfy seat and sensible geometry which allows the bike to handle quick, but still leaves you some 'stretching' room. The screen gives plenty of protection, and there's just the right balance of weight loading between arse and wrists. It's comfortable enough to tour on, yet it still does the biz as a sports-roadbike. It steers well, is stable and has good brakes. The engine is stil a 600, meaning not a lot of torque, but at least with the YZF600 Yamaha were going for rideability, so there's enough mid-range in the engine tuning to make riding it more enjoyable than most 600s. You can get these bikes dirt-cheap and in good nick on the used market. You could do a heck of a lot worse. It's a good, no bullshit sporty roadbike which is bloody comfy and still can be punted at a fair pace. It's kinda like a 600-four Honda VTR. You could even buy a cheap used one, stick some hard luggage and high screen on it, and have your own unusual little sporty touring bike. Mmmmm, now there's an idea.....
14 February 2007 Bow down, praise me, and send money My 34th birthday tomorrow, which means I've outlived Jesus. Ha! Take that god-boy... If there are any friendly lunatics who want to buy me stuff in return for lavish public praise, these are always welcome. Or, if you're a crazed billionaire who's no longer enjoying the burden of massive wealth, you can throw some my way by getting me one or all of these: Honda VTR1000. This particular Suzuki TL1000R. One of these. Greenspeed tandem trike. Business class air tickets to here. I'd list luxury apartments and cars and shit, but I don't wanna be greedy. Well, OK, just one thing:
8 February 2007 Usenet donut David Moss, commenting at aus.politics on the famous toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad: Deliberately destroying a publicly owned art work is actually a war crime. Some people take war crimes seriously. People this demented are allowed to vote.
I think this bloke likes me: Any muslim fighters who think the time has come to get rid of this sub- Awww, aint he sweet? Some background. The gentleman in question is one Jake McCrann, of Coburg. He is very cranky that I have been making fun of him. Jake is a rather amusing specimen who surfaced on usenet early last year and commenced posting thousands of messages to a range of newsgroups, announcing that he had found out the "truth" about 9/11, and we would be amazed when we examined his "proof". Jake is - to put it mildly - obsessed with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jake believes pretty much all of them, even the ones which contradict the other ones. (WTC brought down by a controlled demolition, Pentagon being hit by a missile, planes being remote-controlled, etc. etc.). These theories - of course - all focus around an evil Zionist cabal which controls the media, silences critics and randomly sends out death rays to assassinate Australian TV celebrities. In one month, he sent around one thousand posts to usenet, all spewing the same nutball shit, one after the other, regardless of the topic of the list he was posting to. Jake's biggest hard-on is reserved for a web kook by the same of Daryl Broadford Smith. Jake-boy sees this dork as The Messiah of Truth, and includes the URL in almost every post. He also produces home-made Youtube documentaries as "ironclad proof" that the whole thing is a zionist plot. OK, Jake's an obsessive, batshit-insane 9/11 conspiracy kook. Amusing yes, but that's not what makes Jake special. What sets Jake apart is his amazing and ever-growing collection of Thom Lyons-esque fantasies. You thought Thom was a bullshit artist? You aint seen nothing yet. You see, Jake started getting rather upset that people were laughing at his demented howlings about 9/11, and he was determined to make them listen. So began a proverbial typhoon of bizarre claims and threats. As each one failed to get the desired response, instead getting poor Jake even more ridicule, he kept escalating it with even more demented self-praise and threats. Here is a small sample of some of Jake's amusing brain-farts... - Jake understands the muslim mind. They have superior intellects to us zionist-brainwashed folks. Jake has a prize-winning muslim scientist friend working at a Melbourne university in the field of advanced rocket science who was "disappeared" by those in authority for reasons unclear.
Needless to say, Jake does not react well to being mocked. Last year sometime, he promised to slit my throat if I didn't stop mocking him. Now he's promising to send my personal details to extremist muslims so I'll be killed. You meet the nicest freaks on usenet :) However, I'm really posting this as an enticement for you, dear reader, to experience the bottomless comedy of lunacy that is Jake McCrann. There's thousands of posts and too much madness to summarise here. If you have a few days to kill, please visit the Google group archives, and search for messages from his various aliases: Jake McCrann, jmccrann@hotmail.com, Midex,
FREEDOM AND JUSTICE, fidayeen,
Udi Goldman,
Israel Goldbergstien,
Leader of the Opposition, URGENT AND OMINOUS, milliondollarexecutive, and a bunch of others I can't remember.... Apparently, the Aussie notion of a “fair go for all” means stealing my money to pay this asshole to poison the minds of children: I am a teacher. I teach at a secondary school in Sydney's western suburbs In fact, Mr. Bob Treasure is the head teacher of a faculty at the Erskine Park High School in Sydney. He's also an enthusiastic supporter of totalitarianism: What's more, the considerably greater proportion of GDP expenditure on education in Cuba is spread evenly. It is designed to make opportunity the same for all. There is no palpable nor obscene inequality of private schools with abundant resources and public schools with few. The Cuban education system is one built upon social justice, and for that we say:
Sounds wonderful. Blessed with Fidel's munificent education system, the young Cuban Eloi can use their reading skills on books they'll get jailed for reading , research things on the internet which they're not permitted to access , learn about other countries they're not allowed to travel to, learn about their government which they're not allowed to oppose. Well, at least if they get sick, they'll be taken care of in Cuba's glorious “free” healthcare system . This is something of which the Cuban people are rightly proud, and it is something for which we say:
Well, I loved the cockroaches and blood on the floor. Very colourful. Viva Fidel ! Just the kinda guy we need teaching the young'ns. I hope the bastard ends up under Val Prieto's floorboards. (cross-posted to the ALS site)
1 February 2007 Senator Tex & the curse of democracy The Liberal Democratic Party - Libertarians with a douchebag of a name - have asked me to run for the Federal senate in this year's election.
I said I'd think about it on two non-negotiable conditions: 1- I wouldn't have to spend any of my own money Sounds lazy? Yeah it is, and with good reason: it's not just the fact I have no interest in running for any political office, nor is it just that the LDP has no chance in hell of actually winning anything, it's also the fact that even if LDP candidates did win a few races, those whole exercise is still quixotic. Here's a horrible truth: You can't get rid of the governmental bailiwick by vote. Tinker at the edges maybe, win a few minor concessions, but the big government mentality is so entrenched in the Australian psyche that even the LDP's wishy-washy-radical platform of small government and personal responsibility isn't going to gain traction anytime soon. Still, I'm tempted by the sheer novelty of it: me as federal senate candidate. Here's my campaign speech: G'Day,
Yeah, maybe I will run after all. Giving our statist rulers some verbal curry will be fun, even if nothing really changes. Y'all are gonna vote for me, right?
The loopy ravings of Dinesh D'Souza get torn to pieces by Jamie Glazov before being paid a return visit by Robert Spencer. This is your must-read for the day. Fat women sitting on toilet pics I wish you luck in your search, you weirdo. Five years after inflicting the visually hideous 999 on the world (I try not to think about the Multistrada), Ducati have released the 1098: the first new Duke in a half-decade which doesn't make you vomit on sight, but........
....Ducati's new flagship looks like a Honda Fireblade:
So much for all that European character. Good thing then that the new 1098 is apparently a wicked piece of machinery to ride, and is phenomenally quick, supposedly only a few HP less than a Gixxer 1000..... from a v-twin! Actually, digs aside, I like the way the new duke looks. It's no 916, but it's sleek and pretty again, and they've fixed up that hideous back-end with that stupid box-shaped exhaust. It should sell like hotcakes, and will probably reduce the resale value of those fugly 999s. I'd love to test-ride one, but demo Dukes are tricky to find. One thing is for sure: at $25,000, I sure as shit won't be buying one, especially not for a motorcycle with "Italian build quality". Alex Robson has brought to my attention this horror show: Ross Gittins - the economics guru of Australia - is a man on a mission. He wants to help us understand just how the economy around us works, and more importantly, to help us take control of our lives, do less of what doesn't satisfy us and more of what does. Sound simple? Sound appealing? You bet.
Sweet Cunting Mother of Zombie Jesus..... Gittens, "the economics guru of Australia" is the genius who.... ....made us aware of horrifying social problems: For a start, consumers often find the choices they're presented with quite confusing. You're being asked to compare an apple with an orange [Gittens calls this 'gangster capitalism'] ....decided that government should be involved in "relationship issues": Governments and political parties have largely ignored relationship issues, perhaps assuming they're the responsibility of priests and psychologists.
....decided that Medicare is so inefficient, we should give it more money to make it work. ....decided that the market was responsible for his weight problems. ....described tax reforms as "avarice". ....said higher taxes will make you live longer. ....claimed freedom of choice has "psychic costs". Ugh. I really don't want to dwell on how completely fucking horrifying it is that educated adults can consider this snivelling, disgusting twit to be anything other than a complete lunatic. For further reading about this "economics guru", I recommend this brilliant essay by the aforementioned Mr. Robson and Sinclair Davidson.
Thanks to reader Andrew, say hello to the motorcycle tank. God bless insane engineering nerds.
....what Thom Lyons is up to, I can report he is now the President of the American Ex-Servicemen's Association. Here he is laying a wreath at the Memorial Day service in Melbourne last May. Unbelievable.
23 January 2007 I am a sinner that does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official. - corrupt, serial-murdering sexual deviant Francis Wolcott, Deadwood
Überconservative cockspank Dinesh D'Souza gets pwned by Robert Spencer. The multitude of spelling and grammatical errors from the Deadwood post have been fixed. Oy. Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly is planning a challenge on three Labor seats, including that held by Premier Morris Iemma.
Well, I know one particular "community" that probably will. Lordy this film sucked. Michael Mann, when in form, is the world's best director. Heat, The Insider and Collateral were just mighty. This makes his occasional duds hard to explain. Ali was a tedious, incoherent mess, but at least the boxing scenes were superb. Miami Vice is a disaster.
It is incoherent and unconvincing as a drama, it is simply boring and muddled as a thriller and/or action movie. Some of Mann's other talents seem to be in shocking decline. The cinematography, once his strong point, seems to have been supplanted by murky, hand-held digital cameras. The choice of music was awful: lots of Audioslave, which might sound great in a pub, but grates horribly here. The whole film has a feel of something which was thrown together and the last minute and changed whilst being made. The first ten minutes are actually pretty good. Then the film goes nowhere very slowly. The horrible part is that Mann is actually planning on making a sequel to this shit. On the subject of shit movies, everyone on the internet has been wetting their pants over the new trailer for 300, the movie based on the battle of Thermoplyae.
I have one thing to ask these folks: what the fuck is wrong with you people? If the trailer is anything to go by, this movie is gonna be a mountain of shit to rival Battlefield Earth. I was sniggering with bemused horror while watching it. The dialogue looks howlingly bad, the acting reaches new heights of ham, the 'cinematography' is stylised CGI crap that looks like it was shot through pantyhose. The thing which nauseates me is that this isn't really the story of the battle of Thermopylae, it's based on a fucking comic book by Frank Miller, the mention of whose name results in ejaculations from millions of dateless web nerds worldwide. From IMDB: Director Zack Snyder says that fighting styles and formations (particularly the Spartan's phalanx) were purposefully changed - making them historically inaccurate - so they'd "look cool" and work better for movie purposes. Oh puke. What's next, a sequel featuring Luke Skywalker and Spiderman? The battle of Thermopylae is one of the most important events in the history of western civilisation. It deserves a better film treatment than some comic-book wank designed for fanboys too stupid to read books. For a fictional treament which does justice to the reality of Thermopylae, read Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire. You'll need an IQ above room temperature though.
20 January 2007 the only way to get a leftist to care about individual rights is threaten to take some idiots' stash of Turkish Blond away. From No Pasaran OK, I'm all moved into my new home (a 2br unit), I finally got my home phone and DSL accounts connected (which proved to be a ridiculously long-winded process), so after a period of general laziness, here I am. This site has been pretty much asleep for a long time now, but from now on I should be doing at least two updates a week, hopefully more. Moving house is a pain in the ass. Christ, it's tedious. I'll be glad if I never see another brown cardboard box for as long as I live. It's worth noting that we didn't have much stuff to move either, and it still takes an eternity. Our neighbours seem like decent folks, the place doesn't get too hot during summer days, there's plenty of light and lots of breeze. It's a good locale for my cycling-to-health kick. With a 14km each-way commute to work, it's a perfect distance for a good bit of exercise without it taking too long. Has Old Whiskers kicked the bucket yet? I wonder what that vapid airhead Jill Singer is thinking about Fidel's difficulties. After all, she's been telling us how bloody wonderful the Cuban healthcare system is: conservatives are hovering like vultures over the fast-fading Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, hoping his imminent death will signal the demise of communism in Cuba. Yes, there are also Cubans hoping for the same thing, but how about the conservatives start asking why Cuba can deliver a good public health system.
Yeah baby, time to adopt Cuban healthcare. If we're lucky we too could have hospitals like this:
Cuban hospitals respect biodiversity. Animal life is revered, and patients are spared any spraying of toxic chemicals within the ER.
Rumours of dried blood and filthy mattresses are all slander by the Disgruntled Cuban Miami Mafia. These are special 'retro-decorations' installed by The Party who value earthy dignity over empty capitalist notions of cleanliness and new products.
Disgruntled capitalist ingrate complains of festering leg sore while ignoring US war crimes in Vietnam.
This picture is a plant by the Miami Mafia. Just like the faked Apollo 11 moon landing.
Comrades choose environmentally responsible transport over gaia-destroying American SUVs.
The Sydney Morning Herald, they're having a forum on Fidel Castro's “legacy”. Naturally, the closet-fascist pinko loons - who would scream with rage at having to live under the same laws as Cubans - have come out in full force. Some sample comments: “Some one who gave his country free medicare and alot of pride and respect for themselves”
In the words of Kim Du Toit: Scratch a lefty, you'll find a totalitarian. (Cross-posted to the Australian Libertarian Society blog)
...enough fucking Bindi Irwin already.
did the titanic run over any fish
Meet my zionist cat, Loli: Aint she cute?
Occasionally, you avoid something for legitimate reasons, but realise later it was terrible mistake. Some time ago, after reviewing the horrifyingly bad Wild Bill, Bernie Slattery e-mailed me, telling me to check out the HBO show Deadwood.
Lordy, what a miscalculation. HBO has provided some mighty television in their day, but Deadwood is the new watermark as far as I'm concerned. Let's face it. The western genre is as dead as Yasser Arafat's arsehole, and it had a pretty miserable history before it croaked. Take away The Wild Bunch and a half-dozen Clint Eastwood movies, and you've got fifty-plus years of cornball bilge starring talentless wankers like John Wayne. Deadwood makes almost the entire oeuvre of The Western look downright cretinous. It is brutal, intelligent, profane, funny, fascinating, chilling and occasionally heartbreaking. Set around the early days of the Deadwood settlement, then illegally perched on Sioux land, we follow both small character stories and the larger narrative of the lawless town attempting integration with the United States, often through bribery, lies and violence. What makes it so good? Let me count the ways.... 1: It has the best ensemble cast in the history of acting. Not one movie, TV show or theatre production comes close. This is acting of the highest order. It would be enough just to have an Ian McShane as saloon owner Al Swearengen, but the vast array of supporting players deserve no less praise. Everyone seems to be living and breathing their roles. There isn't false note to be seen. 2: The period detail is pitch perfect. People walk around in clothes smeared with dirt. The saloons are dark, noisy and shitty. The main street is a swamp of mud and animal shit. The whores look filthy. People have bad teeth. Guys piss into chamberpots in front of others. The food served at the main hotel looks like congealed vomit. Some photos from the real Deadwood at the time the show takes place shows what a remarkable job the producers did at recreating the place. Unlike the majority of westerns, which look like someone just stuck up six wooden building facades alongside a dirt road, the town in Deadwood feels real. 3: The language and narrative: everyone talks about the amount of swearing on this show, and they aint exaggerating, but it's the old world constructions of the spoken word in Deadwood which is fascinating. Some dialogue, almost Shakespearian in tone and complexity, can verge toward the impenetrable on occasions. Yet such is the beautiful melding of dialogue, acting, editing and general narrative focus mean that while you may occassionally miss a point, you'll generally get the drift. 4: There isn't a cliche to be seen, from the western genre or any other, in the entire series. The characters act pretty much how real people of that type would act, which sometimes means unpredictably. But this is not to say it's some try-hard wannabe MTV-generation show, with wank-cool dialogue, jump-cut editing, and pointless graphic violence just to show how hip it is. Deadwood, apart from being great entertainment, is a beautiful, profane work of art. If you think CSI or NYPD Blue are great shows, or you like your westerns with some clench-jawed ham coming in to save some townsfolk from evil bandits, go elsewhere. This show is too damn good for you to lay eyes on it. Of course, being arguably the greatest TV show ever made, it was cancelled by HBO last year after only three seasons. Word is that there will be two movie-length episodes in the near future to finish off the story, but until then, I'll be counting the seconds till the season 3 DVDs come out. Gaaaarh. I haven't been for a ride on the z1000 since going to watch the Phillip Island motoGP race back on October, and it pisses me off. Once you've got the motorcycle-touring bug, it's hard to get it out of your system. The whole moving-house-and-spending-shitloads-of-money thing has curtailed my weekend trips for a while now, but I'm nearing the point where I'm about to get the whole thing re-started. There been another hold-up too: The piece of flimsy aluminium holding the exhaust pipe onto the pillion peg stem snapped in half while coming back from Phillip Island, and the Aus distributor took months to get me a new one. The good news is that the World Superbikes at Phillip Island is less than two months away. I'm chompin at the bit already.... Remember Kangarooistan? He's still sending hundreds of demented postings to a range of newsgroups, and his latest riff is telling us about the awesome new Islamic weapon of war: a box of matches. Silly Australians have not worked out yet how a box of matches is far
Bwehehehehe.
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He haunts usenet with multiple characters, resorting to attacking
individual posters with several of his characters at a time using
misrepresentative slanders, blatant outrageous lies, diversionary
arguments to sabatage constructive debates. 
Absolutely nothing about this movie works. The story is boring and hard to follow. The action scenes - at which Mann usually has no peer - are muddled and badly shot. The actors have little to work with, and they don't work with it very well. Chinese actress Gong Li is simply unintelligible in about half of her lines. Her romantic subplot with Colin Farrell has all the passion of a Star Trek convention. Jamie Foxx does a lot of macho preening, and little else. Mann falls into his occasional trap of too-clever-for-himself hip-street dialogue. 
Given that Deadwood seemed to revolve around the same subject matter, and the first episode was directed by Wild Bill's Walter Hill, I can tell you my enthusiasm for viewing this show was not particularly high.
