Ok, this is the perfect companion to my recent “You need to get off Facebook” post. You may know that one of my pet hates is people who waste their entire day tending virtual crops on Farmville (among other stupid virtual activities). But how many people are doing it ?
Well, at Farmville’s peak, it is reported to have had around about ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS USERS. I’m not kidding… A HUNDRED MILLION people were sitting around tending virtual farms. And that doesn’t even count the amount of people in countries like Vietnam and China who are tending virtual farms on other sites because Facebook is banned in their country.
Seriously. Can you imagine what would happen if ALL of those people had to plant a single head of corn for every week they spent using Farmville ? Just imagine it. It would solve world hunger in a second. It’s amazing the way electronic activities can storm the world and become a global phenomenon, but imagine if they had a REAL impact. What if Farmville popped up a message every week and said “It’s time to plant something real now. With the money we have generated from advertising we have posted you some seeds in the mail. Go and put them in the garden now and we’ll remind you to water them every day that you log in. You can either use the food to lower your weekly grocery bill or you can donate them to people more needy than yourself who don’t have the time to waste 21 hours a week on Farmville like you do”. It could solve world hunger in a second, if Zynga actually gave a fuck about people instead of conning people into tending virtual crops in order to line their own pockets with cash.
Is this possible ? Could we ever use a worthless online activity to encourage people to perform good deeds in the real world ? Even if only 10% of all Farmville users grew a few items of food in their backyard and planted something new every week and donated their crop to charity, it could feed millions of people. Wouldn’t that be AWESOME ?
So, for every 20 hours you spend on Farmville, Zynga send you a packet of seeds and you spend 5 minutes planting them and 2 minutes a day watering them, and the end result is that starving people have food. Fuck. Is that possible ? Can we do that ? Apparently stupid people with time to waste online is a harvestable product in itself. Something that could be harnessed for good and not just advertising profit. Suddenly Zynga and all its users could not only make money, but be responsible for saving lives. Win-Win, right ?
People are lazy. Many don’t even remember to feed their fish sometimes. But they sure as hell remember to log into Facebook and tend their virtual crops regularly don’t they ? Because they are constantly REMINDED to do so. Maybe that’s all we need. Someone to say “Hey, go outside for two minutes and water your corn. It’s almost harvest time and a REAL starving child is relying on that food”.
Also, if someone poked me and said “Hey, I’m going away for a week, would you mind dropping in and watering my REAL lettuce crop ?” I wouldn’t feel the insatiable urge to hate them, de-friend them, and make a voodoo doll in their likeness and stab it repeatedly. That’s all I’m sayin’.
I’ve been critical of Facebook before. I’ve closed my account twice, and deleted all my friends and removed all my personal information, because I just got SICK of people being FAKE on it all the time. Much of my hate that I level at Twitter applies equally, or more so against Facebook. In particular, I hate when people post stupid, “socially aware” messages in their status. Your status is supposed to be just that – your status. Where you are, how you’re feeling and maybe what you’re doing (if it’s interesting enough to want to share).
It’s not meant to be a place where you can copy and paste bullshit Hallmark-style nonsense where you pretend to care. People post these pretentious, cheesy little messages about the importance of being a nice person, or a little message about being aware of mental illness that they saw on someone ELSE’S status, most likely with a message at the bottom that says “If you care about this, please post this as your status for at least one hour”, so that you feel like if you DON’T post it, you are an arsehole and you DON’T care.
Sometimes people just post garbage. I have a close friend who seriously abuses status messages to send meaningless messages to his girlfriend. He once updated his status to say “Honey, can you pour me another drink ?” as part of a dozen-update evening. It completely spams your homepage to the point where you have to consider ignoring certain friends’ updates. I like this person and I’d like to know what they do in life. I just don’t need to know when they pour a drink, have dinner, take a shit, or go to bed. I don’t care if you feel sleepy, or if you think it’s hot today. Not if you’re going to tell me shit like that a dozen times a day.
And I ESPECIALLY don’t want to know that you just attained level 53 in Frontierville and that you desperately need someone to give you a hammer. You can block games-related messages, but the very idea that you have to opt-out of this nonsense is absurd. Some people I know have over 600 apps installed, so I literally have to just tell Facebook “Block all app-related messages”, which is a shame because it is vaguely possible that those messages could serve a useful purpose. I’ve just never seen that happen.
I know people who keep Facebook open all day, and that’s ok. That’s fine. Keep it open so you can stay in contact with people if you want. But maybe don’t spend all day playing Farmville. Honestly, if you spent 4 hours a day playing World of Warcraft instead of taking care of your kids and cleaning the house, people would probably look down on you. But for some reason most people just ignore it when you spend that amount of time tending your virtual farm or playing a pet game that involves producing unusually shaped dog poo. NO I WILL NOT WATER YOUR LETTUCE CROP WHILE YOU’RE ON HOLIDAY !
Yes, I DID re-enable my Facebook account. I just don’t use it regularly. I make it send its email to an address that is no longer in use, and I might log in once a month just to make sure noone desperately needs me. This year I have made only one status update, and it’s almost mid-year. I don’t need to tell you that I’m sleepy or bored, because you probably have a lot of friends and if everyone did that you would be flooded with updates. Maybe I might let you know if I’m living in a foreign country and post you a video of where I live, just so that people I really care about can go “Oh, that’s what’s going on in pawz’s life.. he’s in Bangkok”. I’m just not going to announce what I had for fucking breakfast, nor am I going to pose and be pretentious by posting stupid feel-good messages about shit.
And I’m not going to tell you what I “like”. If you know me, then you know what I like, or we can chat and I’ll tell you. I don’t need to announce it to EVERY SINGLE PERSON I KONG. You’re not going to see the message “pawz likes Tiger beer” and go “Oh wow. I think I’ll have a Tiger because pawz likes it”. And it shouldn’t be a conversation starter. If you need me to tell you what sort of beer I drink in order to have a conversation with me, then we’re probably not really friends. If my beer preference mattered to you, you would just ask me. I don’t need to broadcast it. Get to know me by getting to know me, not by reading a stupid one-line pseudo-advertisement.
And I don’t care about your fucking causes either. Yes, it’s great that you’re a fan of the World Wildlife Fund. But are you REALLY ? Or did you just think that’d look good on your status. Do you donate ? Do you subscribe to their newsletter ? If it’s something we might share in common, there’s a good chance I already know you might be into that, and it’s something we’ve probably already had a conversation about. When I was at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, I noticed they have huge posters that stretch from the floor to the ceiling advertising the fight against people smuggling. At the bottom of every advert it invited people to “Like” the Facebook page the government had setup.
Really ? You want me to “Like” not liking people smuggling ? Apart from that being a double negative, so what ? Where’s the button where I can say that I DO like people smuggling. I want to press it just to make you question my announcement. Who the fuck would actually LIKE people smuggling. Why don’t you just announce “I LIKE not killing babies with an axe”. Really ? Wow, coz I thought everyone DID like killing babies with an axe. Way to state the fucking obvious. Do you really think that clicking a button is a form of positive action ? Do you think that people smugglers, smuggling child prostitutes into Australia are going to go “Oh shit. 1,843,857 people DON’T like people smuggling ? I had no idea. I should find a new line of work !”
No you dolt, it means NOTHING. It is NOT affirmative action. It does NOT change anyone else’s viewpoint, or send aid to the needy. Not liking people smuggling by hitting a button is precisely as effective as saying “Pray for Japan” on Twitter after a quake, a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown. IT MAKES NO GODDAMN DIFFERENCE ! You are contributing nothing to the world except creating more spam. So don’t do it.
I get the argument people make when they say “I don’t want to be on Facebook… but I have to be. Even my GRANDMOTHER is on Facebook”. Yes, I understand that. I have friends in foreign countries that I don’t want to lose touch with if they change their phone number or their email address and forget to inform me. That’s why I’m on Facebook. Because it’s a good way of connecting with people. But I only have 12 friends on Facebook. And one of them is a cat. No, seriously. A cat.
But being on Facebook to stay in touch with granny doesn’t excuse you if you use it to announce that you hate broccoli, or that you just harvested your corn on Farmville, or that it’s hot today. I don’t care. If we were chatting, I’d be happy for you to tell me that stuff (well, apart from the Farmville thing), so if we are chatting, tell me. Tell me something because you have a REASON to tell me it. Not because you just want to announce it to your 848 friends.
More friends is just more people you don’t really care about. You don’t really need to stay in contact with that smelly kid from grade 4 who you spoke to once in the cafeteria. It really won’t help your life, and in fact, all it’s going to do is make you judge him or yourself. Life is a game, but you don’t need to be constantly comparing yourself to people you really don’t know. Sure, stay in contact with the people truly important to you. But that doesn’t mean you have to literally “friend” every single person you meet in your life. If they are not someone you would accept an invitation to dinner with, then they’re not your friend, so stop pretending they are.
A kid called Ross Gardiner who is an English teacher in South Korea made a great little video back in late 2010 that was featured in a recent documentary on Facebook. I’m not saying you have to follow his advice and delete your Facebook account. But just think about what he says in this video and ask yourself: “Do I really need to tell EVERYONE everything and have 848 friends ? Or would it be better if I just had a few friends that I really care about and actually have the time to give a fuck about ?”
Think about it before you make that next status update or confirm that next friend request from some idiot you never really liked anyway. Now, I’ll let Ross say it even more eloquently and without speaking a single word. I especially recommend you turn out the lights, turn up the sound, and view this video fullscreen for maximum effect. It’s well done.
Don’t know who Paul Watson is ? Perhaps you know the name of his boat better. It’s the Sea Shepherd. He also has another boat in his fleet called the Steve Irwin. Yes, that guy. The wanker who runs around trying to get in the way of other boats, throwing acid at their crew and generally making a massive nuisance of himself.
Now, I’m not going to say that I support whaling, or shark-finning or any of that shit. I mean, I don’t even get finning, because shark is delicious, so I find it odd that people to fin sharks and throw the rest back, but that’s not the point. Those things are, arguably, morally wrong. But they’re not always legally wrong.
But what Paul Watson and his band of misfits do IS wrong. They are a terror (albeit a somewhat laughable one) on the high seas. They interfere with boats conducting what is for the most part, legal fishing activities because THEY don’t agree with it. They endanger people’s lives. They attack boats, they ram them, they throw acid on them and their crew. They put people’s lives in danger. In short, they are a bunch of fucking douches.
So, the Sea Shepherd were in Costa Rica, being as douchey as usual and harassing a boat which was allegedly engaged in illegal shark-finning operations. And of course they stepped in… made a citizens arrest and then demanded they turn around and allow themselves to be escorted back into port. I imagine this must have taken some form of pretty heavy coercion, which is what the boat’s crew are saying – that the crew of the Sea Shepherd tried to kill them. However, in an epic show of strength, a gunboat was despatched to intercept the Sea Shepherd and give them a pretty serious talking to. Oh to have witnessed that awesome checkmate.
Now, Paul Watson has been arrested in Germany and faces extradition to Costa Rica to stand trial for his crimes of bullying and threats. What he actually did is yet to come out, but naturally his crew are playing innocent and saying “Oh no. We did nothing wrong. We just asked the boat politely to follow us back into harbour. We have no idea why they sent a GUNBOAT out to intercept us. That was totally uncalled for”. Lulz.
I hope this fat, arrogant, crazy fucker drops the soap in a German prison and gets what’s coming to him. He’s a serial pest and it’s about time he got a good Assanging. I doubt he’s quite as smart as Julian though, so I expect he’s just gonna huff and puff and stamp his foot and go “It’s not fair ! Leave the wittwe fishies awone !”
Fuck you Paul Watson. Please change your nationality. I hate the fact that you’re Australian.
And the winner of the 2012 biggest douche in the universe award goes to.... PAUL WATSON !
This has been fairly widely reported, but I thought I’d add a mention here. You may know “Meow”, the 40 lb cat that was recently featured on YouTube and on news reports the world over. Well, sadly, Meow passed away last weekend. He died of a broken heart. Literally. But possibly because his owner gave him over into the care for his health. I’m sure he would have much rather died at home with his loving owner. Oh well, at least he became famous all ove the world before he passed. Oh, also, this is clearly evidence that diets KILL YOU.
I believe I’ve used that article title before, but it clearly had to be used again for this post. What’s it about ? Classic games that are now available for free, on the web without the need for old DOS emulators and such. I am so please to be able to say that two of my all-time most favourite DOS games are now available to play on the web for free, and in one case, with features never seen in the original game !
Firstly is that old classic which EVERYONE from the DOS VGA era of gaming remembers so fondly. The pre-cursor to Doom and really one of the first, proper first person shooters ever. I present to you…
Yes, it’s Wolfenstein 3D. The awesome game where you get to kill nazis and their pets ! Who could forget those great cries of “Achtung !” and when you kill Spengler, he screams “Mein Laben !” as he falls to the floor. This game honestly taught me most of the German I know (yeah, I don’t know much) and the sound effects are just great. The yelps the alsatians let out as they spurt blood when you shoot them are just epic. Killing dogs has never been so much fun.
Sadly this game didn’t appear to work properly on my android tablet. It sort of did, but it would sometimes fail to load properly, and when it did run, I could figure out no way to control it since even when using a bluetooth keyboard, my arrow keys would simply get sent to the browser itself and not the applet within the browser. Maybe it’s possible, because the game does feature mouse support and even the menus are clickable with the touchscreen, but I couldn’t make it work unfortunately. Your mileage may vary, and I haven’t yet tried on an iOS device, but this is still a great game to play on a laptop, and being able to bring it up on any browser and skip to any level means that you can find something else to while away those hours when the boss is out of the office without subjecting yourself to Fakebook. Enjoy those dogs yelping in pain ! Oh, and don’t try and say I’m sick for enjoying killing them. They’re NAZI dogs, remember ?
The other game that I loved to bits and honestly still play on a semi-regular basis to this day is one that maybe you don’t know. Many gamers from that era don’t. It’s a rather unusual Sierra title which is actually a computerised board game of sorts, a little bit like “The Game of Life” or something, only far, far more addictive and fun. It is…
Jones In The Fast Lane. Yes, that awesome multi-player game where you race your friends to be the first to achieve your goals in happiness, wealth, education and employment by studying, applying for better jobs and dealing with the pitfalls of life. Look honestly, this is quite simply, the most enjoyable game I have ever played, bar none. It’s not specifically the game I was most addicted to, but it’s the one game that I still play regularly, more than TWENTY YEARS later. How many games can you think of that stand up to that test ?
The absolute best thing about this game is that it includes a feature that never existed in the original for a very obvious reason… you can play it online over the internet now ! There’s only one thing that could make Jones a better game than it already was, and it’s internet play, and thankfully, now you can not only play it ON the internet in your web browser, but you can play it OVER the internet with a friend on the other side of the planet. I literally did this, playing a game with a friend from Australia when I was in Vietnam. It even includes a chat feature in-game.
The game has progressed from the original version with midi audio, to now including the full cd-audio and speech of the enhanced version which was released later. The game is an absolutely flawless recreation of the Sierra classic and I am just so thrilled that it’s now available and also that Vivendi (Sierra’s current owner) have not threatened legal action. The fact is, games like this deserve to be played by everyone. Also, I’m thrilled to say that this game works just as flawlessly on an iPad or Android device. You can play Jones anywhere now, with an opponent anywhere in the world ! This game is just timeless and with the new features and perfect operation on tablet, is now even more fun than the day it was first released. Just don’t forget to buy clothes when you’re warned and don’t let your food spoil !
There are other online versions of classic DOS games I could mention, but if I started, I would probably never stop. Two excellent sites in particular which provide such games are DosDose and RGB Classic Games where you can find such classics as Lemmings, Prince of Persia, Pirates!, Scorched Earth, Leisure Suit Larry and others. Also worthy of special mention is Sarien.net who provide a few Sierra games including the awesome Space Quest 1, which all work great on a tablet.
I’ve had meatballs a few times recently. I made turkey meatballs. I made tuscan-style beef meatballs. I like meatballs. They’re yummy. But for the third time in a month, I wanted something different. I pondered adding chilli. Then I decided they needed more. Well, let’s just see what I did, shall we ? Introducing my spicy, mexican meatballs.
Ingredients
500 grams beef mince
Plain flour
2 eggs
Parsley
Basil
Minced garlic
Oregano
2 large onions
1 packet taco sauce mix
chilli powder
400g tin of kidney beans
200g diced tomato
1 jar Bolognese sauce
Directions
Ok, I’ve explained how to make meatballs before but I’d better do it again. I didn’t make crumbed ones this time. Just plain ones. Take your mince, add two egg yolks and add parsley, basil and oregano to taste. Form into balls. Roll them in flour. Putting them in the fridge for half an hour helps them harden up and stick together more as well. That was easy wasn’t it ?
I like my kidney beans mashed in most mexican meals except for chilli con carne, so that’s what I did. Mash them up nicely with a fork. Dice your onions. Add some oil to a large saucepan on high heat and throw in the onion and a generous helping of basil, oregano and minced garlic. Stir briefly and then add in your diced tomato and stir thoroughly for a few seconds and then add the jar of bolognese sauce. You could use tomato paste instead, but if you do, double the quantity of diced tomatoes. Add your mashed beans.
Let this boil lightly for a few minutes then add your packet of taco seasoning and begin adding chilli to taste. Throw in your uncooked meatballs. Simmer on low heat for an hour or more, stirring fairly regularly. I love letting it simmer for a long time. You will need to add water because the beans are going to make it turn quite thick. Taste test and add more chilli if needed.
This meal is a delicious variation on regular meatballs. The mashed kidney beans make the sauce nice and thick, and the taco seasoning and chilli gives it a firey, mexican flavour. I like to serve this meal on its own. It needs nothing. It’s a good meal to eat out of a bowl while watching tv or something. Simple, tasty and it reheats well. No photo because it’s just not attractive enough a meal to photograph sorry !
Ok so I looked at my emails (I’ve been actually trying to keep my inbox small lately) and I saw a new Cuca video. Ok, fair enough I’ll look. What song is it ? Hmmm, S/Mileage’s “Dot Bikini”….. okay. I have some fears about this but I load it up anyway.
Before I get to see the video I see the comments and I facepalm totally. Comments such as “Very good !! I love your skirt and your top :D” …. Ok… I do know this song (yes, I am that sad) and I can only imagine what Cuca is wearing to inspire that response. I’m angry already.
Why ? Because Cuca’s barely 11 if that, and despite being talented, there are way too many people who post creepy comments on her videos. And when a 10-11 year old dances to a happy song in a spotted bikini and people comment on the outfit your jaw sort of hangs open and you go “oh come on.. could you NOT contain your pedo desires, weirdo ?”
I love when Cuca dresses up in amusing outfits to suit the song, and this one was ok I suppose, but seriously. Comment on her. Don’t comment on the outfits. Jesus H Christ.. leave the girl alone you weirdos. Sorry if I feel protective of Cuca, but I do. She’s my adorable little japanese talented daughter that I wish was my own. She’s NOT SOMETHING TO MAKE THOSE SORT OF COMMENTS ABOUT.
So anyway. Yes, actually, her performance WAS really good. I mean apart from the fact that it was incredibly energetic, the fact is, that particular song has some adorable moves. Some of it is pretty corny and to be honest I had a really, really hard time keeping a straight face through this video. When she does the really energetic moves and does the backwards egyptian style steps in profile to the camera and the crazy star jumps I find it very hard not to burst out laughing, but when she does the “doki doki doki doki doki” bits… Ok. That is pretty awesome. It’s not weird, not hilarious or anything like that. It’s cool.
Cuca, you really are progressing as a dancer. Ok, your singing clearly needs work, especially in this song, but your effort and enthusiasm and dancing talent. Well, it’s clear you have what it takes to make it. Sayumi Michishige couldn’t sing to save her own life either when she joined MoMusu, but she got taught and got better and she became a great idol due to her personality and her dancing talent and she DOES have some singing moments where she does a fine job.
Honestly I think it’s pretty clear why noone has picked Cuca up by now. It’s not about her singing. It’s just that despite being about 11 now… she still looks like she did when she was 8. She’s too young looking. Even Berryz Koubou, despite being young, had a fairly adolescent, sexualised look. Cuca just looks like a kid. She even looks too young to join the H!P Kids. Honestly, it’s the only thing I can think of to explain why she hasn’t been signed.
But, I wonder. Has someone contacted her parents yet ? Surely they have. Come on.. Japan loves a child star, and Cuca is one of the best. SOMEONE has her waiting in the wings, I just know it. I’ll be really mad if it’s NOT Tsunku to be honest. Cuca deserves his talent and exposure. But, ok. If he doesn’t see it, I’ll be glad if someone else does.
Just, for fuck’s sake.. Dont comment on her outfit in this video. It’s a song-relevant costume. Stop pervin’ on my Cuca you weirdos. Call her cute, call her song awesome and mention her talent… but leave this costume alone ok ? It’s odd enough that she’s wearing it as is. It’s a great performance. That’s all.
I wrote a weird little article prior to this today about my own funeral wishes. I have always said I wanted to save some money to keep my websites online after my own demise, but I have always wondered how viable that was and whether I would even have some money left to leave and how long it would last. But, then it occurred to me that there IS an organisation who is already dedicated to doing that.
The Internet Archive.
I have talked about them before and suggested that you give them money, but it was only in relation to something that didn’t involve me. Suddenly I wondered “Do they archive this site ?” Well, turns out they sort of do. They have spidered it once, and once only, in 2009. It wasn’t a very big site back then, and they haven’t spidered it since, but they did a good job and everything including styles and images is archived to that point. Maybe they will do it again in the future, but that’s not what this post is about.
I was laying in bed, almost asleep, and I guess I’ve been aware that my brother’s birthday is coming up next month. It’s the one birthday per year that I think about months before it arrives. And I was pondering the fact that I would again be overseas for this coming of it. Suddenly I wondered “Is Josh’s site archived on the Internet Archive ?”
Well, I got out of bed to check, and it is. It’s been spidered NINE times. The most recent of which was in December 2010. Yes, Josh’s site is heavily and repeatedly spidered it seems. Which means that our parents will have passed on, I will have passed on… god forbid, Suki and her own grandchildren will have long passed on… but you know what ? As long as that organisation still exists, which I strongly suspect it will… Josh’s site will live on. Josh’s memory will live on. There is nothing of my parent’s or my grandparent’s or anyone else in any time before me in history that will STILL be online in potentially a thousand years.
But Josh’s site will be.
When I made it it was just a tribute site because I didn’t know what else to do and how to honour him and remember all the stories about his life and pictures of him, except to create a website. But now, that site is part of an enduring, worldwide archive. Did you know that the Internet Archive bury time capsules periodically of the world’s internet history ? Human civilisation may end next year, in a thousand years, in ten thousand years or may endure for as long as our universe. But in a few thousand years, our planet will be exhausted of resources and we will most likely have moved on. But people love history. People go back and dig shit up just for the hell of it. And that’s why the Internet Archive exists. Because one day, someone IS going to dig that shit up and go “Wow, this thing says it contains all of human history as recorded by the internet in 2012, let’s go work out how to read these memory chips and see what they have to say”.
So, tomorrow, I think I need to donate a few dollars to the Internet Archive, and so should you. History was written on stone tablets, and they faded. It was captured in black and white photos, and they faded. It was captured in film and that faded too. But digital records don’t fade. As long as human civilisation exists and people care enough to keep records, things like Josh’s website will remain. Who knows. Maybe one day it will be one of the only things that do remain.
Josh, you may live forever after all, not just in our hearts while we are alive, but in the hearts of the electronic world, for as long as it exists.
It’s a lyric from John Mellencamp’s song of the same name, by the way. But this article is to lay some things out that I’ve been thinking about. It’s not like I’m constantly brooding over my own death. I’m only young after all. But I had a friend a fair bit younger than myself die very suddenly and without warning of a brain aneurysm, and and I thought maybe it’d be good to get a few things straight that I want done. My site has been crawled at least once by archive.org’s wayback machine and I’m proud to know that all my posts up until that time (sadly it hasn’t crawled me since 2009, but I’m sure it will again one day) are preserved, so maybe this message will be too.
I don’t really care how people want to commemorate my death. I no longer consider myself catholic, but I realise that my remaining family will no doubt want to bury me in a catholic ceremony. That’s fine. Your funeral is not for you, it’s for your family, and I’ll be dead, so what do I care ? If I can engage in a moment of whimsy, some people do choose a few special things about their funeral, particularly the three songs they want played at their funeral, and I’m going to suggest a few things. These may change in coming years, but at this point in time. I would like it if I there could be sakura blossoms present at my funeral. They’re not that hard to get and I just like them. No big deal.
The songs I want played ? Well, that’s pretty easy. There’s one for vanity, one that I love, and one just to fuck with people. Here’s what they are:
“Shine on You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd
“Daisuki Da Yo” by Otsuka Ai
“Inagadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly (the longest version)
Yes, I know that last one is a little silly, but hey. Give me one last joke after I’m gone, will you ? Besides, it validates the need for the first song. The second song is just one I love.
I do not want to be buried, but cremated. Burial is such a waste of valuable real estate and I simply cannot justify that sort of absurd vanity. I don’t want to become a rotting, worm-eaten skeleton. I want to die as a lived… in a burst of fire. What do I want done with my ashes ? Nothing special. Just scattered half in the ocean and half on the beach. It doesn’t matter which beach or where. Any will do. I don’t mind if it’s done by one person or if people want to be present.
The only other thing I ask is that my blogs be kept alive somehow. Please, if I have no money, at least sell what I have remaining that isn’t vitally important to your memory of me, and use the money to buy the cheapest webhosting available and keep my stories alive as long as possible. If I have any royalties or something from anything I’ve created, use some of them for this please. It’s not for the sake of my family reading it. It’s just that I like the idea that my thoughts still exist for people to read. I know how many people find them on Google today, and I wouldn’t mind if people continued to find them in the future after I’m gone. If you can, throw some onto some SD cards (or whatever technology you have when this finally needs implementing) and just… I dunno.. store them around the house… Bury them in concrete foundations in a glass bottle or something. Just … make sure that something I’ve written or done lives on, ok ?
Oh, and make sure everyone gets REALLY drunk and eats delicious food after my funeral please. What else is there in life but celebration, food and alcohol ? Celebrate my life, don’t commiserate my passing. Cry if you want, but don’t let it bring you down. I’m sure by the time I die I will be a ripe old age and more than happy with what I’ve done in my life. Life isn’t about achievements. It’s about experiences, and I’ve already had lots of great ones to date, so I’m sure I’ll have had lots before my final day arrives.
Oh, and if I’m ever vegetative or in the throes of serious dementia, please… up the morphine and let me die in peace. It’ll be best for everyone.
You all know if you read my site that I very rarely re-blog. I don’t post links to other blogs or re-post funny shit I’ve found on the internet. 99% of my content is my own. But tonight I just had to. I was headed to WordPress.com to pickup a new copy of the software for one of my new sites (which will be advertised later when it’s ready) and I stumbled across this, featured on the front page and I just had to give some respect to this person.
This guy, found an old Zenith radio, made in the 1940′s. It wasn’t working, and in fairly poor condition. But after replacing most of the necessary parts and even putting a new front veneer on it, it sparked back up into life, even searching an old FM band that is no longer in use in today’s world. Imagine what you could do with that old band if someone was listening. Anyway, I just had to give this guy a link for his awesome work. I know it’s not rocket science. It’s just a bit of effort and electronics. But how often have YOU restored a 1940′s radio to working condition ?
I can’t really explain why. I’m just happy. I just got a wonderful email from a friend in Japan that I met on my travels, and another from a friend in China that I met in another country. These people were both touched by me in a certain way. I introduced the Japanese friend to a fantastic Japanese anime producer who he was not aware of, and he told me that after watching the anime I recommended, he was absolutely in tears because it was set near his home town and represented a lot to him.
The Chinese friend, I guess I just touched as being an unusual person. We hung out with a lot of people that weekend that I met, but somehow, he was by my side the whole time as we talked furiously about photography and religion and travel.
Then the was the Vietnamese friend that I met, and we keep in contact from time to time and she is keen to catch up the next time I’m in the country.
I’m planning to visit at least two in the next year. One I hope to visit in a couple of months, the other in about a year, both in their home cities in China and Japan.
I always remember when my wife had her penpal Hiroko that she talked to in Japan. She used to exchange snacks with her initially and later when Hiroko got married, she lamented on how sad she was about having to quit the navy in her job as a helicopter pilot to go home and be a housewife to her husband and have his children. I always thought it was sad that she didn’t remain in contact with her, but as much as I am impulsive and flighting, I guess my wife was more, because despite Hiroko sending us a beautiful, framed copy of her wedding photo, I never heard anything of her after that. If my wife ever conversed with her any further, she never told me.
But I don’t want to do that. When you meet interesting people, especially from far away, you should nurture those relationships. You should stay in contact. I know it’s hard to know what to talk about with someone you’ve met for only a brief while or not at all, but sometimes you have to find things. Friendships can grow from the simplest roots and online and letter-based friendships are often some of the strongest because sometimes there are things you write in letters that you might never say in real life. They may be simplistic summarisations, but sometimes that’s the sort of expression that you never give to your feelings in real life.
People are important, and the ones afar more so than ones close sometimes. I once heard a beautiful quote in a Chinese movie that I once wrote on this site.
You know how it is when you meet people in life ? Sometimes you meet fascinating people, but you lose contact. You think you make a connection with them but you just don’t keep talking to them. It’s just a thing where you have a good time together and then life moves on and you don’t speak anymore. But then there are those other people who still look you up years later.
In the last week I’ve had two people that I met a year ago on the same camping trip in Vietnam email me. First Lil (not her real Vietnamese name) emailed me to say hi and let me know that she had a new email address and to make note of it so we could continue to chat and said that she hoped I would be back in Vietnam again soon and we could catch up for drinks and see what each of us had been doing.
Then there was Ben (also not his real Chinese name) who emailed me telling me that he’d finally finished his year-long tour of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia and had returned to his family home in China. He asked if I was coming to China any time soon as planned and said that he’d love it if I stopped into Chengdu where he lived and he could show me interesting places and introduce me to delicious local cuisine.
So there you go. Sometimes just going on a camping trip can make you friends for life. Friends who remember you years later and still want to catch up and see what you’re doing. Cheers to meeting great people on holiday. I’ll drink to that this labour day weekend ! Here’s a photo of Ben and Lil on the day I met them both.
A great American died today. A man of talent and a man who roused a generation and defined a culture. Adam Yauch, better known as “MCA”, the lead vocalist of hip hop band Beastie Boys died on Friday the 4th of May 2012, ending a very successful career and bringing to a close one of the most formative American hip-hop bands in history.
The Beastie Boys were a law unto their own. Mixing metal, scratching, and rap with lots of samples thrown in in a weird combination of hard rock, punk and hip-hop, they were a type of music unlike most others, yet still well within the bounds of the hip-hop genre. Inspiring later groups such as Outkast with their melodic tunes which could appeal to the most hardcore b-boy and yet still be accessible enough that regular listeners could find something to love about them. Hell, my 60 year old father has The Beastie Boys in his collection. They spanned at least three generations of fans.
I loved their early songs as great party songs but I never considered myself a real “fan” until their last album, the 2004 epic “To The 5 Boroughs”, a tribute album to the city they loved, NYC. The album was heavily themed to their love of New York City, as the title indicates and a tribute to the strength of the people who lived there, featuring some anthemic post-9/11 songs full of NYC pride such as “Right Right Now Now”, “Time to Build” and the awesome “An Open Letter to NYC” which I consider one of the greatest songs ever. The whole album features the same lyrical themes as their music videos, concentrating on things like public transport and urban society, making millions of listeners dream about the gritty New York life where people would “come together” on the subway. I listened to the album on repeat a couple of times a week when I was doing community service in the local Japanese Gardens where I would spend all day raking attractive patterns into the pathways and slipping into the bamboo to smoke a joint before rocking out to ’5 Boroughs on my iPod, unsure whether I was in Australia, Japan, or deep in New York City.
Adam Yauch was diagnosed with cancer of salivary gland in 2009 and given only a short time to live, but true to his party-hard, punk nature, he hung on for three years before sadly missing out on the Beastie’s induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame just last month, and passing away this last Friday.
I’m glad to see that their discography was well and truly seeded by hundreds of people online today and my download absolutely screamed. I think when someone like MCA dies, the record company should declare a one month amnesty on downloads of their album and let everyone share it around for free so that he can be truly honoured.
MCA leaves behind a loving wife and a daughter, pictured below.
I think there’s only one thing left to say.
“You gotta FIGHT, for your RIGHT, to PARTY !!!!”
Let’s hope Adam never stops partying, wherever he is now, though being heavily Buddhist, it’d be nice to believe that his party will go on forever.
Adam Yauch and daughter Tenzin Losel
UPDATE: I’ve been wandering around the net looking at other people’s blogs to see what they’ve had to say about MCA. Sadly most have just posted one or two sentences rather than proper, thoughtful articles, some only a single word link to the news report. But the comments sections have been well used on most blogs. I looked on Twitter and I found this video.
It’s Coldplay covering “Fight For Your Right To Party”, and yes, at first I almost facepalmed too. Until I listened to it. It’s amazing. It just goes to show how many groups’ hearts they touched. And as one of the commenter says, at 3:22 it’s virtually impossible not to have tears in your eyes.
My grandfather is visiting, and it’s always fun to cook for a new guest. Last night I did Chinese San Choy Bou as an entre, but tonight I wanted to do a main meal. My granddad is a pretty eater, though nowhere near as picky as my dad, so I had to go with something pretty mainstream. I know my dad is very fond of meals baked with tinned soup mixes, and I had a few in my cupboard, but I wanted to go a bit more creative than the usual boring stuff he makes. I decided to make something sort of original, but based on his favourite meal – macaroni and cheese, so I made what I call my “special chicken and asparagus pasta bake”.
Ingredients
Tin of condensed cream of asparagus soup
400g chicken breast
1 large bunch of fresh asparagus
1 cup of spring onions
3-4 large bacon rashers
1 small onion
4 pieces of bread
1 pinch of marjoram
2 pinches of ground pepper
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of basil
1/4 cup of cream
3/4 cup of grated cheese
Directions
Firstly, chop everything and put it into bowls. Very small pieces. Make the chicken quite fine, make the bacon very small, the onions extremely fine, and slice the asparagus into very thin pieces. Toast your bread and break it into smallish (but not too small) chunks.
Once you have everything ready, heat a pan with some olive oil and throw in the onion and give it a couple of seconds and then throw in the bacon. Cook these for about 30-50 seconds, stirring thoroughly and then put them into a bowl with a paper towel at the bottom to soak up the oil (we will be sautéing most of the items here and we really don’t want too much oil because the dish should be light and creamy, not oily). Set that aside.
In the same pan (a little cross flavour is ideal) throw the asparagus into the existing oil (add a little more if necessary coz you want the asparagus nicely cooked, especially if the trunks are thick) and add a pinch of pepper and the pinch of salt and sauté it thoroughly for about a minute, shaking the pan and turning it regularly with a spatula. Do the same as with the bacon; put it into a bowl with a few paper towels at the bottom and leave the oil in the pan.
Sauté the chicken as with the previous ingredients, adding the last pinch of pepper to this as you do so, but just seal it all over so that it’s still tender and not completely cooked inside because we’re going to bake it for quite a while. Again, put the finished chicken into a bowl on paper towels and empty the oil from the pan and set it aside.
Cook your macaroni, but not all the way. Just a few minutes. Test it by nibbling a piece. It should remain firm. Not crunchy, but definitely not as soft as how you would want to eat it on its own.
Get a large baking tray, preferably a deep one rather than a low flat one. A lasagne tray is ok, but it should have as high sides as possible, so I like a glass cake dish for this, but it will have to be a reasonably big one to hold all the ingredients. Throw all your pre-cooked ingredients in, and add your basil and marjoram. Mixed Italian herbs would be an ok substitute, but don’t add too much. No thyme or anything strong like that. Throw about 3/4 of your broken up pieces of toast and about half your grated cheese in along with your spring onions. Stir it all up well with a fork so that it’s nicely mixed together.
Mix your condensed asparagus soup tin with your cream. You can use milk, but if you do, use less. If you use thickened cream, then add a little milk as well. This dish needs to remain moist. Add the mixture into the baking dish and make sure the mixture nearly reaches the top. Give it a good stir and re-evaluate. Add a little extra cream or milk if necessary and stir it again. Once you are satisfied that the liquid is going to stay covering most of the ingredients, spread your remaining pieces of toast across the top and then your remaining cheese on top of that. Add a little more cheese on top if you like.
Bake on fairly low heat (around 160-170 degrees celcius) for 45 minutes before serving onto plates along with whatever meat you might like. Since this meal contains relatively expensive ingredients (unless you are lucky enough to get very cheap asparagus) you might want to serve it with sausages or some cheap pork chops. Because it’s a creamy dish, it goes well with greasy, bbq’d meats. Optionally, provide a plate of freshly buttered bread so the meal isn’t too heavy. Serve with red wine. We choose Bundaberg rum and coke because that’s what my granddad always drinks.
This dinner went down famously at my my house, because I told my dad that it was “macaroni cheese with bacon”, but he asked “What’s the green stuff ?” and I said “fresh asparagus” and he said “oh that’s ok”. He commented “There’s other flavours in here too. What are those ?” and I admitted that it also contained chicken breast and onion and that the sauce was based on a cream of asparagus soup to give it an extra strong asparagus flavour. Voila, I took a bog standard meal that he loved and made it a little more creative and interesting and everyone loved it ! Sorry, no photo of this one because we served it up and ate it so quickly that I forgot to take one, but here’s a photo of the ingredients, ready to cook. Sometimes when you are dealing with fussy eaters it’s good to take a simple meal they love and just add one or two extra ingredients that you know they won’t hate to give it a little extra flair beyond a regular boring meal. In this case, it was a great success. Enjoy !
Ok, this meal isn’t really very fancy. In fact, it’s mostly out of a packet if you don’t make the sauce yourself, but that’s not really the point. The point is that it’s a simple, cheap meal that can be well presented and that everyone will enjoy, from grandparents to grandchildren. It’s lemon chicken and rice.
Now, I adore lemon chicken, or honey chicken from a Chinese takeaway place, but typically the chicken is battered, especially in the case of honey chicken and I just don’t like that. It tastes too doughey and filling for my liking. Well, the crumbed version is still filling, but I find it a lighter, crunchier, more appealing sort of meal. So here’s how it’s done.
Ingredients
300 grams of chicken (You’ll be surprised how far this goes)
2 eggs
Plain flour
Breadcrumbs
Salt
Pepper
Parsley
Half a cup of diced spring onions
Half a red capsicum
2-3 slices of fresh lemon
Rice
Lemon Sauce (if you’re not using a packet mix)
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cup water
finely grated zest of half a lemon
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 tablespoon finely chopped ginger
Directions
Now, first thing’s first. Break your two eggs (you might need three if you’re doing a larger serving, I like to be generous with the egg mixture) into a bowl and add a generous few pinches of both salt and cracked pepper. Put in a large amount of crushed parsley. Around half a cup. Even if it seems like you have a lot, you’ll be surprised how quickly it disappeared into the mixture. Whisk the egg mixture nicely with a fork. Honestly this is really the only creative part of the recipe and you can see how basic that was.
Chop your chicken into thin strips. Personally, just to be different, I like to dice it into small cubes. It reminds me more of fish that way. But make them pretty small. Kids especially love the little crispy bits, so don’t make them too big, though if they are too small the meal will be a bit too filling due to the all the bread crumbs. As for the breadcrumbs, just buy it if you’re lazy (I did), or if you want to make it, lightly toast some slightly old bread that you’ve had sitting out. If you want to, you can crush up some Arnotts milk arrowroot biscuits or similar as well. I like thick crunchy breadcrumbs.
After chopping your chicken wash it briefly and then lay it on paper towels and make sure it’s nice and dry. Then roll it in plain flour. This will give the egg more purchase on your chicken, since the egg sticks to the flour and the flour sticks to the chicken. Once it is nicely covered in flour, throw it into the egg mixture a couple of pieces at a time and then into a bowl of breadcrumbs, rolling it thoroughly and put it into a deep trying tray.
Once you have your chicken pieces ready, set them aside in the fridge briefly while we make the sauce and rice. Start your rice in the rice cooker now. While the rice cooker will turn off automatically and keep your rice warm, you don’t want it to sit in there for too long or it might dry out. While it’s cooking you can look at making your sauce.
You don’t have to make the sauce to be honest. If you can get a decent packet mix from the supermarket for a dollar or two then go with that, but if you want to experiment with making your own, then go for it. Sometimes there’s a time for creativity, and sometimes you just want to make a decent meal that people will enjoy. Anyway, making the sauce is simple. Just throw all the ingredients into a saucepan and cook on a medium heat for about 5 minutes. Turn it down once it boils, but keep stirring thoroughly.
Start your deep frying on a high heat, and throw your chicken in and fry it until it’s a nice golden brown, but not too dark brown. Meanwhile, put a saucepan on the stove and put about half a centimetre of oil on the bottom. Quite a bit really, because we’re going to sauté our capsicum in it. When your oil is hot, throw your capsicum in it, and about half of the spring onions. Sauté it for about a minute, and then take it off the heat and drain most of the oil off.
Throw your chicken pieces into the saucepan and put it back onto a medium heat stove and then pour your lemon sauce over the mix and stir thoroughly. You really want the crumbed chicken to soak up the lemon sauce, but you don’t want it too soggy. I think about thirty seconds is plenty. Some people just pour the sauce over the finished meal so that the chicken is crunchier, but I prefer it to be more saucy, so you can go either way, but I do like to make sure that the capsicum and spring onions do get adequately covered in the lemon sauce as well.
Serve onto a bed of rice and attempt to arrange the capsicum nicely on top for effect. Sprinkle the remaining uncooked spring onion over the top so that you have the lovely colour combination of the yellow, saucy chicken, the red capsicum, and the green spring onion. Chop up the lemon slices you have into small pieces and sprinkle it over the dish for extra colour. Some people might prefer to use lemon zest instead for flavour but I think it’s unnecessary and I’m aiming for the lemon to be a part of presentation rather than the flavour because the meal already has enough lemon flavour and we just want the lemon to remind the diner that they are eating a lemon dish. Add a sprig of parsley to the top as a final garnish and serve with a nice white wine, although I’ve chosen to go with a lovely sweet pink moscato. Enjoy !
Ok, it’s Android bashing time. Prepare your hate machines and get out your flamethrowers.
I am getting sick and tired of Android fucking sucking so much. How so ? Well let me list a couple of simple examples.
I wanted to translate some text from Japanese to English that was on my phone’s screen (I couldn’t copy/paste it because it was in a specific app and not editable text). So I opened Google Translate on my tablet. But the handwriting option isn’t there on my Honeycomb-based tablet in Google Translate. What the fuck ? Why not ? It’s there on my Gingerbread based phone !
So I figured maybe Google Translate was out of date on that device so I went to the market to update it. Despite searching at length, the app simply did not appear on the market. I’ve had this happen before with other apps too sometimes. They will be there on Gingerbread, but not there on Honeycomb. So since Google refuses to recognise that their own app even exists on their own damn store on their own damn operating system, I can’t update it.
So I thought I’d take a screenshot of the app on the phone, then upload it somewhere, and view it on my tablet while I wrote the hiragana in on my phone (though I would have much rathered use the tablet due to the much bigger screen). Sadly this was not to be. Naturally on Android you need special software just to take a screenshot.
So I went to the market to get such software. But it wouldn’t download. I get this problem ALL THE FUCKING TIME on the market (Google Play as it’s now called). I will hit install and it will just sit there going “Starting download”, but it will never start. Sometimes I just have to go back and re-do it and it’ll work. Other times I have to exit the market and re-open it again. And sometimes, like this time, nothing I tried would make it work and I had to reboot the whole fucking phone, and after rebooting, the download had magically started all on its own.
What the fuck is wrong with you Google ? This sort of shit is just unacceptable. No wonder many people don’t want Android phones. You shouldn’t have to go to these sort of lengths just to install a simple fucking app to do a simple task like taking a fucking screenshot. I’m so sick of apps being missing from the market on one version of the OS but not another, or apps refusing to start downloading etc.
On honeycomb I can’t even use my browser to edit wordpress blogs because there’s some fucked up bug in honeycomb that makes it not respond to taps in long textboxes properly. You’ll tap in one spot, and the cursor will appear in some random fucking spot halfway up the page (it does this in all browsers. It’s an OS bug). You have to do this weird guessing game whereby you make the textbox really big and you keep tapping near the bottom of the screen to get the cursor to appear where you want at the top. My gingerbread device doesn’t have this problem. It has another problem whereby it’s impossible to scroll DIV sections that have scrollable content but no scroll bars. Between the two OS’s it’s basically impossible to use wordpress properly.
I know these two bugs are apparently fixed in Ice Cream Sandwich but frankly the fact that such serious bugs exist at all is just absurd, and ICS is still not officially available for ANY of my devices despite having been out for like a year or so. Get your fucking shit together Google. I have four Android devices, running three different versions of your operating system and they ALL have serious bugs of one type or another and I am just getting FUCKING FED UP WITH IT.
People may bitch about Apple’s “closed ecosystem” with iOS and how they restrict what you can do and all that shit, but at least their shit FUCKING WORKS. They don’t ship stuff out the door that has massive flaws and go “yeah well, hopefully noone will notice that problem. We’ll fix it in a few years”.
Google have a fucking lot to learn and I must say, the Apple-using Android haters really do have a good reason to be smug sometimes. Android IS a great platform and I love its abilities. But in terms of quality control it is leagues behind iOS, and anyone who says otherwise is just burying their head in the sand.
This is something that has to be said. Bitches just do NOT appreciate E-Young’s talent. I’m serious.
I was chatting in this Korean chat room. And despite the fact that it was supposed to be a channel for discussing Korean culture, noone, not the Koreans or the foreigners had any interest in Korean movies or Korean music. They were heathens. Even the Korean owner of the channel admitted he had little interest in Korean music and that I knew far more about Korean music than him. He admitted to be into Guns ‘n Roses and other such shit.
It’s not that I hate that music. It’s ok. But I don’t come into a Korean channel to discuss it. Oh but these people are not OK with what is popular Korean music. I mean, when one person dared criticise me I, for humour’s sake pretended to be obliterating it with SNSD’s “Gee”. The person did not even know what the hell that was. They literally asked “What the hell is that ? Should I have heard of it ?”
I mean, that’s ONLY the most FAMOUS Korean song in all of history, staying number one in the charts longer than any other song in history. I am not suggesting it’s a great or musically talented song. It’s not. But if you fancy that you are into Korean culture and you do NOT know that song, then oh my god, you are the biggest poser fuckwit that ever walked the earth. How sad. How sad.
For amusement’s sake, and I guess to further prove the point, I listed the other Kpop song that was most famous around that era and known internationally – After School’s Shampoo. I explained the story of how when I lived in Vietnam, those two songs were played in that order, religiously at 3am every single morning and how I would leave the TV on so that those songs would wake me up happily and naturally (since it was closer to my wake-up time back home).
I then discussed E-Young. Look, I don’t care what you call her. She has many names, especially to foreigners, but I have and always will call her E-Young. She is a genius. She is a virtuoso. An absolute madman of talent. She is talent itself. There is noone in all of history who I have thought had as much talent as she did in her little fingernail. She is amazing. No, she is far more than amazing. She is mind-blowing. She is just…. Not even human. Look, let me just paste one of her videos here. I have pasted some of these before in the past, but at least one was removed from YouTube due to copyright complaints, but fortunately this uploader has incorporated many of her most famous and most talented performances into once video and this one, for the moment at least, has survived removal.
There’s honestly not much I can say about that that it does not say on its own. If you are not impressed, then no words I say can save your miserable soul.
This girl is amazing. She can dance, sing, play guitar, drums, bass, piano and GOD KNOWS how many other instruments she has not even bothered to show us. I bet she is a violin virtuoso as well but keeps it to herself. She is clearly a genius. She is a one a billion. She is a Mozart in her own right.
But some people still want to be critical of her. They say that all she’s done is “practice hard”. Bullshit. That sort of skill takes more than practice. It takes sheer talent. Someone dared to even suggest that she dropped a few notes and that she was “looking at her fingers”. Fuck you guys. I’ve watched videos of Yngwie Malmsteen himself play this song and even he needs to watch his fingers.
How many musical geniuses do you see in your life who can play so many instruments so well AND be young and beautiful as well ? These people even dared suggest she was “ugly” but I realise this was a troll. That’s absolute fucking crap. E-Young is a goddess. She is above everyone.
It’s not that I want to put her on a pedestal. I honestly want her to be “just another cute girl with some talent” that I can quietly adore. But she is not. She is far beyond this. She is something incredible.
If you don’t see this, honestly, I feel sad for you. To those people who just want to troll me because they think it’s funny to insult her just to rile me up, that isn’t funny. It’s sad. Find something else to pick on, because she is clearly far beyond your stupid comments about being untalented and ugly.
I may have a sense of humour and I admit that most of what I do online is an act. But this girl is amazing and if you actually genuinely, trolls-aside can’t see that, then… I don’t even want to talk to you. I pity you. Go listen to your shitty Axl Rose songs from the early 90′s and pretend you understand what culture and talent is about. You have no fucking idea.
Attention Scott Mintred. Please rejoin the interwebs.
I have no idea when I first found your site, but it was fucking ages ago. Way before I found David Thorne’s. I won’t blow smoke up your arse by saying your site is good. It’s pretty average. But I still sorta like it because you really don’t give a fuck and you’re happy to let people insult you online. Well. At least you were up until October 2010, at which point you seem to have made this weird “I’m throwing in the towel” page where you claim that none of it is real and that you were just trolling people.
Well, yeah. We all got that. But admitting it is a bit lame. There’s no need to throw a “boo hoo I’m not really like this” tantrum and quit writing. I guess people finally got to you, though I suspect you won’t admit it and will claim that your life just got too busy.
The internet needs people like you who call it as they see it (even though I don’t always agree with your opinions) to counterbalance the pretentious bullshit that people like David Thorne spout all day. Could you imagine Mr Thorne ever allowing comments on his site ? No, because people would call him out on his bullshit and suddenly he wouldn’t get the attention he deserved because the journalistic outlets that constantly praise him would suddenly have reason to doubt if all his nonsense was real.
Get back on the computer, and find something to write about. Unless you’re in a mental institution, in which case, start bribing an orderly to post your crap to me and I will publish it for you. I might even visit. As long as you save me some of your better medication. (slip it under your tongue and they might not see it) Then again, it’s probably best I don’t go to the USA. I’m not very welcome there.
Have you ever watched a movie that was absolutely unbearable, but which you just had to see through anyway ? I don’t mean that it was awful. I just mean that it was immensely painful, awkward, upsetting etc.
I bought this Korean movie when I was overseas. It looked on the cover to be a happy, feel-good movie about some guy and a sweet, innocent looking girl. But an innocent movie it is not.
It’s called 허브 in Korean, and “Herb” in English, and I swear it has to be the most fucked up, frustrating movie I have ever seen in my life. It is just IMPOSSIBLE to watch.
The basic premise is this. There’s girl. She’s a little mentally handicapped. She’s not retarded per se, just developmentally challenged. She lacks maturity and she doesn’t really understand the world that well. She meets this guy. He sees her coming out of some office and thinks she’s most likely a beautiful international lawyer or something. He makes an absurd scene in order to find a reason to date her. They go out. She admits to being unable to ride a bike and he helps her. She falls off and her bag spills out and he finds her ID card which identifies her as being mentally handicapped.
That’s when things take a turn for the worse. He freaks out and won’t have anything to do with her. When she approaches him, he is very angry and rude and smashes the present she has bought for him and he tells her he never wants to see her again. But she keeps appearing in his life and he obviously can’t stop thinking about her.
So… they get back together. But things are not simple, by any means. She has a pretty confused life. Her mother is dying of cancer, though she really doesn’t understand what’s going on. Her niece stops talking to her, and she is unable to explain her feelings to her mother. She suddenly gets a hint that her mother is dying and freaks out. Her mother tells the guy that he must break up with her daughter so that she is the last person to ever break her heart.
The whole thing is really messed up and I honestly had to stop the movie early on (when he found her ID card and rejected her) and not resume it for more than two weeks. When I did, things just went from better to worse repeatedly and I honestly could not watch more than a few minutes at a time without becoming incredibly frustrated with the world and everyone in it.
It’s just so hard to work this movie out. One minute it’s a romance. The next it’s light-hearted comedy. Then it’s serious drama and the next it’s some crazy surrealist stuff with three inch tall fairy tale characters running around representing the girl’s inner turmoil.
Just when you think it’s going to go good, it goes bad. When you think it’s going to go bad, it comes good. It’s the single most infuriating movie I’ve watched for years. I mean, I *know* it’s obviously going to have some sort of happy conclusion (other than that the mother is obviously going to die tragically) because the cover art leads us to believe this, but like many Korean movies, it explores the nature of human relationships and exposes the worst parts of people.
Japanese movies love to explore what it means to be human. Whether they are sad or happy, they always try to focus on why we exist and what the reason is that people are alive. But Korean movies are different. They focus on people. On their hearts and what drives them and what makes them both good and bad. And honestly, sometimes I just can’t handle it.
There are a few very beautiful, quotable lines from the movie, but my favourite has to be when the daughter has been told by her niece that when someone packs all their goods to go away it means they are going to die. Her mother has been doing this for days, and she freaks out and starts burning everything. When her mother finds her and tries to calm her down, in her innocence she screams “Don’t go. Just pay the late fee and go later”.
Honestly, I still haven’t finished it. The further I get into it, the more complicated and heartbreaking it becomes. I just had to explain right now how it made me feel. I hate this movie. It makes me so angry. But it also exposes the fucked up, raw nature of human relationships. In a way it’s over the top. It’s charicaturised. The guy (a junior police cadet) hates her one minute, and then ten minutes later he’s there by her side and they kiss. It’s quite a whirlwind. But the point is, as dramaticised as it is, there’s nothing in that that you could say isn’t real.
The situations are very real. The people are real. Maybe the time is a bit compressed and sometimes things are more black and white than they would be in real life, but the way the craziness of the situation rubs off on the guy and he loses it in a supermarket and starts breaking everything, buckling under the stress of the situation. That is all very real.
Normally I love movies about insanity and mental illness because they’re sweet and funny and things always work out in the end, even if the ending is essentially sad. But this is not one of those movies. This movie is complicated and messed up and will screw with your mind and your emotions in a way I can’t think of many others doing.
The performance of the girl, Sang-eun is… I must say, extraordinary. Honestly, it is mind-blowing. The expressions on her face. Her childlike innocence. Her frustration, anger and at other times sweet love are just amazing. I am sure that the only reason I continue to watch it is to see what happens to her and how she reacts to each situation. I understand why this movie is such a classic that it has been shipped overseas as an example of classic Korean popular cinema. It is an amazing movie full of some of the most stellar acting performances I’ve seen in my life.
But it’s also undoubtedly the single most painful movie I’ve ever watched in my life, and I’m quite positive that most people would give up on this movie half-way through and just say “I simply cannot watch this anymore”. I did. But I came back to see Sang-eun’s pretty face and sweet character as she deals with all the trials in her life. All the actors deserve applause in this movie, and I don’t just mean the girl, her mother, and the boy, but also the emotional aunt and the crazy and constantly shocked head of the police unit.
Isn’t it funny that sometimes the worst movies are the best movies ? I love sad movies that make you upset and feel something, but this movie makes you feel EVERYTHING. I honestly cannot think of any movie that has made me feel so many different emotions constantly one after another. The term “emotional rollercoaster” simply does not come close to doing this movie justice.
Ok, this is the perfect companion to my recent “You need to get off Facebook” post. You may know that one of my pet hates is people who waste their entire day tending virtual crops on Farmville (among other stupid virtual activities). But how many people are doing it ?
A great American died today. A man of talent and a man who roused a generation and defined a culture. Adam Yauch, better known as “MCA”, the lead vocalist of hip hop band Beastie Boys died on Friday the 4th of May 2012, ending a very successful career and bringing to a close one of the most formative American hip-hop bands in history.
Have you ever watched a movie that was absolutely unbearable, but which you just had to see through anyway ? I don’t mean that it was awful. I just mean that it was immensely painful, awkward, upsetting etc.