(Spoiler Alert! Yes, again. Don't read this if you're seriously looking forward to the latest Terminator film. But really - who is?).
I swear to you, this blog is not going to devolve solely into me bagging the shit out of popular culture. I aim to bag the shit out of high-brow stuff occasionally as well.
Over the long weekend I went along to see Terminator: Salvation at my local cinema. There were many members of the public in attendance which I do not like. It is not (just) that I am anti-social, they are simply not fit to be in the public arena. Case in point: the 'gentleman' seated next to me wore thongs presumably so that when the urge came over him, he could pick his toes during the film without the irritation of having to remove any shoes. Charming.
But I digress.
Firstly, this film is badly misnamed (why do they think that dropping the numbers helps? Oh, that's right, because we're now scraping the prequel barrel and it confuses people to have non-linear sequences. An argument, perhaps, for using the Dewy system for films. But that's a subject for discussion at another time). Anyway. "Salvation" is a misnomer. This film should rightly have been subtitled "Survival" or even something like "have you ever seen a more gritty dystopian future prequel than this?! Holy Shit we're really all going to DIE!!! RUN - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" but as a marketing person I wouldn't really recommend that - it's hard to make puns with for the actor profiles during promos.
I guess "Survival" was taken, but it is a shame, they should have saved Salvation for when they win the freakin war I would have thought. Not for a film where the resistance takes massive casualties, loses their entire command structure and basically get their arses kicked at every single point.
That leads me to my second point. I don't know a lot about war. Actually, I know very little about war on any level. I've made effort to avoid it personally. From what I have seen and heard it is a deeply unpleasant experience, and something not to be undertaken lightly. Which is why I would have suggested that someone in the Resistance who does know about war ought to read a little book by an old guy call Sun. In this book, which is kind of like a "War for Dummies1" he suggests that you should know everything you can about your enemy. In this film, that could be as simple as remembering that the machines you're fighting are very very smart. Maybe not the ones directly in front of you, but the ones that built them are. I reckon that odds are good that machines that have made themselves self-aware are going to be pretty bright. Hence, one ought to think things through as if you're playing a game of Chess or Go in which your opponent has a higher rank than you. That is to say, they're likely to set traps for you. I would, if I was clever.
Not being clever brings me to my third, and final point. American action films have made a fruitful industry out of not worrying too much about clever if you can be very strong. This almost completely defines the action genre. It is about guys (usually) chasing each other, thumping each other and blowing shit up. This is where T:S comes home and delivers. It's got all the things you look for in an action flick: big guns (tick), attack helicopters (tick), funky secret commando hand signal stuff (tick), blowing shit up (tick, tick, tick), and best of all, big tough guys taking an absolute flogging (sadly I don't mean an actual flogging on a rack. I think the only SF film to deliver that particular delicacy must be Starship Troopers. If you know of any others please, please tell me). In this instance I mean fisty-cuffs to the snoz stuff.
This is what kept me going. I really liked seeing Sam Worthington2 get killed, take a nude mud bath, be beaten, shot at, beaten again, killed again, resurrected, beaten again, and then suicide. Not only is that a thrashing and a half, but it is also one heck of a character arc! And, he just eats it up. I want the next film to be about Marcus Wright stirring things up in the afterlife. OOOHHH - Marcus Wright Vs The Mummy!! I would so totally go and see that. The human equivalent of the bear vs shark question. Brilliant.
But I digress. Again.
On the way home I thought of a great drinking game for this film. It goes like this - first of all you need to get all resistance (shame they skipped the Steampunk possibilities - but one can't have everything) and build (or borrow if you're not well suited to experimental conditions) an alcohol distillation set up ("a still")and make some moonshine (Please remember to cut the juice you get!) then you and your mates all take a swig and settle down to watch this film. Once it starts, every time Marcus Wright does something brutal or has something brutal done to him you have another shot. I leave it up to you to decide if kissing Helena should count. In this way, if you are by some miracle still conscious by the end of the film, you really don't really care that most of the film made no sense and that John Connor is a total arse.
Everybody Wins!3
1. There is both a "Vietnam War for Dummies" and a "War on Terrorism for Dummies" actually published. I thought I was being funny, but it turns out satire is too easily just being inaccurate.
2. Who, BTW, was awesome as Macbeth. Man, I love that version. Even better than Polanski's. Really.
3. Except the humans. And Sam Worthington.
Showing posts with label dumb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dumb. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Australians all let us rejoice, for we are protected by our paternalistic government from seeing complicated things on the interwebs
This week it was easy to shake one's head sadly at those poor Chinese people who have suffered the indignity of the whole world knowing that their internet feeds censored Barack Obama's inauguration speech. In a double-whammy they got fucked by their own government and they missed a few good lines. Poor bastards. But then that's what you get for living in a politically shit country, like Australia China.
Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at byme the rude people and heavily debated and considered and then rejected by all the polite &/ thinking people. Not just implemented. Not our style.
Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.
Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.
After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!
404 NOT FOUND
Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at by
Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.
Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.
After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!
404 NOT FOUND
Friday, December 26, 2008
Stop the Madness or the Robots Will Get You
The specter of a grim future under the control of Robot Overlords is undoubtedly something which haunts us all (ok, well mostly just paranoid SF nuts, and people who actually understand networking intelligence and have time on their hands for contemplating the possible consequences).
Now, I do not want Skynet to wake up any more than the next person. Much as Caprica 6 really sells the idea that sexy, intelligent, independent women can be robots too, the bottom line is that there is no scenario so far in which the genocide of humans is not an outcome. Apart from anything else, on the off-chance I was a survivor, I would make a crappy guerrilla fighter and a very poor motivating leader for the resistance.
However it is hard to remember these disincentives when once again the anticipated serenity of a weekend (or a public holiday in this particular instance) is unattainable due to the suburban love of power tools and mowers. Both yesterday and today there has been a cacophony of tedium. Vacuum cleaners, quad bikes, angle-grinders, whipper-snippers and the ever-ready, every-present, ever-painfully noisy 2-stroke mower. I don't mind loud and late parties, I can deal with (if ungraciously) the thoughtless tumult created by feral children. I can even usually bear to endure the tortured screams and furious rampages of the domestically violent couples in the street. These, after all, are all are among the fundamental of human activities. Power tools are not.
Down Tools!
How simple it would be to incorporate a small amount of programmable logic into these and other irritating items. It need not be networked to achieve the goals I have in mind. I just want none of these items to work on state recognised public holidays or on a weekend prior to 9am or after 6pm. Fair enough!
The proles have had long enough to self-regulate in these matters and have proven themselves incapable of doing so. It is time for the elite to assist them in this, as we do in so many other ways with our taxes, entertainments, intellectual specialisations (where do they think those plasma screens come from anyway? Santa's Freakin workshop?) and generally in resisting the spread of informational germs (it's true - stupid people are more likely to believe other stupid people. Sorry "easily influenced people"). Anyway, we could camouflage it as a clock, or a battery readout, or an FM radio and in this way it would become a feature the proles would aspire to owning and the phase-out would be swift. Those with a legitimate reason, and or the ability to read owner's manuals would be able to circumvent the programming and thus earn the ability to use these tools at these times, but I suggest to you that persons of such capacities probably have better things to do with their time during the targeted periods (such as, say, blogging about how the world could be a better, more loving place).
Self Control
I could stop there. I could, really. There's no real need to tamper in a permanent way with the car of the idiot doing burnouts at 2am mid-week. There's no justifiable reason to apply any liquor rationing to the unemployed or those with criminal/violent records. There's no need to restrict the breeding .... No. Our freedoms as humans are absolute and inalienable. Well they might be if we in Australia had ever enacted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into law. Which we haven't. We aren't the only peoples to look the other way on this one, we're in good company (Malaysia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Vatican City, China and more have all overlooked signing or ratifying the declaration). In light of what some signatories do feel ok about doing my software control proposition seems pretty innocent.
Yeah, really. It's for their own good.
... hey! What do you mean my access to the internet might be curtailed. That's not fair!
Fine. Frack you. Now where's that manual...
Now, I do not want Skynet to wake up any more than the next person. Much as Caprica 6 really sells the idea that sexy, intelligent, independent women can be robots too, the bottom line is that there is no scenario so far in which the genocide of humans is not an outcome. Apart from anything else, on the off-chance I was a survivor, I would make a crappy guerrilla fighter and a very poor motivating leader for the resistance.
However it is hard to remember these disincentives when once again the anticipated serenity of a weekend (or a public holiday in this particular instance) is unattainable due to the suburban love of power tools and mowers. Both yesterday and today there has been a cacophony of tedium. Vacuum cleaners, quad bikes, angle-grinders, whipper-snippers and the ever-ready, every-present, ever-painfully noisy 2-stroke mower. I don't mind loud and late parties, I can deal with (if ungraciously) the thoughtless tumult created by feral children. I can even usually bear to endure the tortured screams and furious rampages of the domestically violent couples in the street. These, after all, are all are among the fundamental of human activities. Power tools are not.
Down Tools!
How simple it would be to incorporate a small amount of programmable logic into these and other irritating items. It need not be networked to achieve the goals I have in mind. I just want none of these items to work on state recognised public holidays or on a weekend prior to 9am or after 6pm. Fair enough!
The proles have had long enough to self-regulate in these matters and have proven themselves incapable of doing so. It is time for the elite to assist them in this, as we do in so many other ways with our taxes, entertainments, intellectual specialisations (where do they think those plasma screens come from anyway? Santa's Freakin workshop?) and generally in resisting the spread of informational germs (it's true - stupid people are more likely to believe other stupid people. Sorry "easily influenced people"). Anyway, we could camouflage it as a clock, or a battery readout, or an FM radio and in this way it would become a feature the proles would aspire to owning and the phase-out would be swift. Those with a legitimate reason, and or the ability to read owner's manuals would be able to circumvent the programming and thus earn the ability to use these tools at these times, but I suggest to you that persons of such capacities probably have better things to do with their time during the targeted periods (such as, say, blogging about how the world could be a better, more loving place).
Self Control
I could stop there. I could, really. There's no real need to tamper in a permanent way with the car of the idiot doing burnouts at 2am mid-week. There's no justifiable reason to apply any liquor rationing to the unemployed or those with criminal/violent records. There's no need to restrict the breeding .... No. Our freedoms as humans are absolute and inalienable. Well they might be if we in Australia had ever enacted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into law. Which we haven't. We aren't the only peoples to look the other way on this one, we're in good company (Malaysia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Vatican City, China and more have all overlooked signing or ratifying the declaration). In light of what some signatories do feel ok about doing my software control proposition seems pretty innocent.
Yeah, really. It's for their own good.
... hey! What do you mean my access to the internet might be curtailed. That's not fair!
Fine. Frack you. Now where's that manual...
Friday, November 14, 2008
A Failure of Fun
I hit a wall this week. Ah, no - not in the car or anything. Emotionally. Is there a better way to say it? Plateau? No, it wasn't a levelling out. There's something that happens when tension builds up and frustration build up - and after a while you can't just keep working through it.
This week I had a nasty plot hump with the story, a bit of writer's block and "why am I doing this" and not reading, ok, well I'm sneaking some reading in, but no novels! Very little TV too and so it's just me and the blank page and the broken brain.
The word count has stalled at about 7300 (nearly my previous best of about 8/8500) it's hard not to wonder - am I choking? Do I really just not have this in me? Is this the best I can do?
Last night midnight saw me walking backwards and forwards throwing handfulls of papers into the recycling and asking Riley how nearly a whole nother year could have passed. He had no answers. How zen dogs can be. He's right of course, there are no answers, only choices and further questions.
Many other Nanowimo participants are already finished! Finished!! WTF?! Should I have chosen a different story? Should I too be transcribing song lyrics into my story or have a character count to a thousand? You think I'm joking, oh I assure you, these are but two of the fiendish tricks employed to plump one's word count.
Everything is taking so long to get out of my stupid head! But the time ranting and pacing last night was not completely lost. I had a little realisation. I'm missing the point. I've been clinging to my story and to my idea of what's ok. I'm at a writing version of Mardi gras with my metaphorical legs crossed and mouth closed. What a noob!
So rather than staying stuck on how to move Robin around Antrim, or what approach Soames will take to Eddie's abduction, I'm going to get back into it again and move through this invisible wall with my mouth open and my legs akimbo and get back to having a rip-sorting time.
And maybe just a few song lyrics.
This week I had a nasty plot hump with the story, a bit of writer's block and "why am I doing this" and not reading, ok, well I'm sneaking some reading in, but no novels! Very little TV too and so it's just me and the blank page and the broken brain.
The word count has stalled at about 7300 (nearly my previous best of about 8/8500) it's hard not to wonder - am I choking? Do I really just not have this in me? Is this the best I can do?
Last night midnight saw me walking backwards and forwards throwing handfulls of papers into the recycling and asking Riley how nearly a whole nother year could have passed. He had no answers. How zen dogs can be. He's right of course, there are no answers, only choices and further questions.
Many other Nanowimo participants are already finished! Finished!! WTF?! Should I have chosen a different story? Should I too be transcribing song lyrics into my story or have a character count to a thousand? You think I'm joking, oh I assure you, these are but two of the fiendish tricks employed to plump one's word count.
Everything is taking so long to get out of my stupid head! But the time ranting and pacing last night was not completely lost. I had a little realisation. I'm missing the point. I've been clinging to my story and to my idea of what's ok. I'm at a writing version of Mardi gras with my metaphorical legs crossed and mouth closed. What a noob!
So rather than staying stuck on how to move Robin around Antrim, or what approach Soames will take to Eddie's abduction, I'm going to get back into it again and move through this invisible wall with my mouth open and my legs akimbo and get back to having a rip-sorting time.
And maybe just a few song lyrics.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tunnel Vision
Riley and I were walking down the street this morning and it seemed like we'd been walking down the one street for a long time. Over and over again. There was the slightest sensation for a moment of being in a tunnel that has it's other end now joined to the entrance. Looping now and passing signs for turnoffs you'll never get to.
But actually I know that this morning is different to yesterday morning in a myriad of tiny ways and even though when we walk out the door we can only turn left or turn right - and that often feels very limited - well that's the same at every corner we come to on our walks and we end up seeing different things. This tree is blooming, that bird is odd, how weird are the clouds, the path has been brushed. LIttle things, but different enough.
It's at times like this when there is so little to take in, that I realise all over again how much I do take in. How much of this morning's walk I can remember (not reconstruct) and how much I am constantly learning about my neighbourhood just by walking around it. Then, being me, I turn this observation into a worry "I'm not stimulating my brain enough and I'll get wobbly and dim. Look how much it's noticing - my brain could be filling up on pointless information about yards and bins and cars!!"
What a drongo.
So I'm going to read more SciFi and fill my brain up with imaginary things instead!
A much better idea than watching the news I think!
But actually I know that this morning is different to yesterday morning in a myriad of tiny ways and even though when we walk out the door we can only turn left or turn right - and that often feels very limited - well that's the same at every corner we come to on our walks and we end up seeing different things. This tree is blooming, that bird is odd, how weird are the clouds, the path has been brushed. LIttle things, but different enough.
It's at times like this when there is so little to take in, that I realise all over again how much I do take in. How much of this morning's walk I can remember (not reconstruct) and how much I am constantly learning about my neighbourhood just by walking around it. Then, being me, I turn this observation into a worry "I'm not stimulating my brain enough and I'll get wobbly and dim. Look how much it's noticing - my brain could be filling up on pointless information about yards and bins and cars!!"
What a drongo.
So I'm going to read more SciFi and fill my brain up with imaginary things instead!
A much better idea than watching the news I think!
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
The Idiot Files
You know it's been too long when you're not sure you can remember your password.
Of course, most mondays are like that for me going back to work. Actually i forgot my address the other day (after all, I've only lived here 9 months) and gave the one from 2 years ago. A natural mistake.
I always thought that people talking about "ageing" or "getting older" were sprouting shite. You know when someone you think is an otherwise rational person starts banging on about their knees or their back or whatever, and they give you that little half smile which seems to be saying "pity me and please join in here", well don't. Stay in denial as long as you can (or just stay 20something as long as you can - same thing really) and change the fracking subject. Otherwise, before you know it you'll be comparing meds and laughing about how you spent 20 minutes looking for your reading glasses and they were on your head the whole time. Hi-larious.
Really, just shoot me.
Except of course, that insidiously, it's happening to me. Me!!
I had a bingle with a trolley at work today. A completely innocent accident - I was reading and walking at the same time (a move for the experienced at the best of times) and a low-lying trundle heaped with boxes of printing was under my peripheral vision - KA-POW! My left foot went under the bed of it at full force and I went A over T and the sodding printing never budged (there's physics for you kids!). Holy snapping turtles it hurt! Someone with some sense put me into a chair and fetched a cold thing. It was a good 5 minutes before my eyes unglazed and I had to sit there for quite some time just breathing and trying not to cry (not from the pain, more from the aftershock). When I went to stand up - it still hurt, my knee hurt and I could feel a stiffness creeping up to my hip. My knee hurt!? WTF?! As I hobbled back to my desk with my icepack I thought about the number of times a word I know I know has eluded me lately. How I have to reach for simple spellings and that the other day I couldn't for the LIFE of me remember who the only ever Australian nobel laureate for literature was. How embarrassment! I hid it ok in that conversation, and it came back to me within about 4 hours or so, but still - more than a close call, it was a big blank empty whistling space in my head where once there had been knowledge.
It was a shock, I can tell you that. I have to admit it, I am growing dumber, and dumber. My light is dimming even more rapidly than my hair.
I entertained the thought recently (7 months ago now seems recent - when did that happen?) of dying my hair. Camouflaging all those wiry little white bastards with something enourmously funky like purple or primary red. In the end I decided not to, not so much because I wouldn't like to look better (I would, but then, why start now?) but more because I've always thought of my hair as a natural warning system for others. Anything in nature that is yellow or red is often hazardous to tangle with. Grey? Grey is not a colour that says "watch out" more possibly "wake up" (with the exception of Germaine Greer who is currently grey, and really, for the safety of all, should probably be dyed in red and yellow stripes over her entire body). I had hoped to grow into an eccentric older person with a sharp wit and a quick tongue, but at this rate I'll be happy not to have to wear a nappy and a helmet by the time I'm 40.
There's an image.
On that note, I think I'll run a bath and see if I can do the kids sudoku puzzle from the weekend paper, maybe work up to a clue or two from the crossword before the wardens come and change my nappy and put the lights out.
Of course, most mondays are like that for me going back to work. Actually i forgot my address the other day (after all, I've only lived here 9 months) and gave the one from 2 years ago. A natural mistake.
I always thought that people talking about "ageing" or "getting older" were sprouting shite. You know when someone you think is an otherwise rational person starts banging on about their knees or their back or whatever, and they give you that little half smile which seems to be saying "pity me and please join in here", well don't. Stay in denial as long as you can (or just stay 20something as long as you can - same thing really) and change the fracking subject. Otherwise, before you know it you'll be comparing meds and laughing about how you spent 20 minutes looking for your reading glasses and they were on your head the whole time. Hi-larious.
Really, just shoot me.
Except of course, that insidiously, it's happening to me. Me!!
I had a bingle with a trolley at work today. A completely innocent accident - I was reading and walking at the same time (a move for the experienced at the best of times) and a low-lying trundle heaped with boxes of printing was under my peripheral vision - KA-POW! My left foot went under the bed of it at full force and I went A over T and the sodding printing never budged (there's physics for you kids!). Holy snapping turtles it hurt! Someone with some sense put me into a chair and fetched a cold thing. It was a good 5 minutes before my eyes unglazed and I had to sit there for quite some time just breathing and trying not to cry (not from the pain, more from the aftershock). When I went to stand up - it still hurt, my knee hurt and I could feel a stiffness creeping up to my hip. My knee hurt!? WTF?! As I hobbled back to my desk with my icepack I thought about the number of times a word I know I know has eluded me lately. How I have to reach for simple spellings and that the other day I couldn't for the LIFE of me remember who the only ever Australian nobel laureate for literature was. How embarrassment! I hid it ok in that conversation, and it came back to me within about 4 hours or so, but still - more than a close call, it was a big blank empty whistling space in my head where once there had been knowledge.
It was a shock, I can tell you that. I have to admit it, I am growing dumber, and dumber. My light is dimming even more rapidly than my hair.
I entertained the thought recently (7 months ago now seems recent - when did that happen?) of dying my hair. Camouflaging all those wiry little white bastards with something enourmously funky like purple or primary red. In the end I decided not to, not so much because I wouldn't like to look better (I would, but then, why start now?) but more because I've always thought of my hair as a natural warning system for others. Anything in nature that is yellow or red is often hazardous to tangle with. Grey? Grey is not a colour that says "watch out" more possibly "wake up" (with the exception of Germaine Greer who is currently grey, and really, for the safety of all, should probably be dyed in red and yellow stripes over her entire body). I had hoped to grow into an eccentric older person with a sharp wit and a quick tongue, but at this rate I'll be happy not to have to wear a nappy and a helmet by the time I'm 40.
There's an image.
On that note, I think I'll run a bath and see if I can do the kids sudoku puzzle from the weekend paper, maybe work up to a clue or two from the crossword before the wardens come and change my nappy and put the lights out.
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