Eh Pea Bee

Eh Pea Bee: all words have escaped —Copy?	Ten Four: on the watch for nouns and adjectives on the run —Copy?
Over: on the lamb grammar and poetics armed and dangerous —Copy?	Repeat: all words have escaped —Copy?
Dispatch: suspect matching description of ten point font with bold typeface spotted at Softcover & Spine —Copy?	Car Fifty Four: where are you? watch out for adverbs known to suddenly modify situations —Copy?
Dispatch: suspect is on print not obeying meter or rime possible free verse —Copy?	Repeat: all words have escaped —Copy?
Ten Twenty: Dime Novel & Fifth Avenue in hot pursuit drunk form-class words —Copy?	Ten Eleven: eee eee sea problem can't understand too much dialect try a the hemming way —Copy?
Ten Twenty Six: suspect is apprehended clause subordinated successfully subject agrees with verb bringin' 'em in —Copy?	Repeat: all words have escaped —Copy?
Over and Out!

Nighttime Melancholy Insanity

      Another lonesome night,
Spent up in the wastes of humankind,
      I crawl up to the moon and sigh,
There's little left to lose when you're all alone.

      The jagged loneliness has grown,
Another night of sin for which to atone,
      Worn out in the shadow of my gravestone,
No love is invulnerable to the weight of loss.

      The truth does not hide its ugliness,
A world full of meaningful nothingness and regrets,
      What was once holy is now rotten secrets,
I've lost my fragile senses of goodliness and wronging.

      Where you tread cautiously,
The moon cuts it viciously askew,
      The warm blue light of night anew,
Replaced by a yellow burning ferocity.

      I want to hold,
A piece of time,
      Leafed in gold,
In this heart of mine.

      I want to know,
You will stay,
      Where it glows,
And I shall see.

      I will pray,
For redemption,
      For recollection,
Madness cured.

      Another lonesome night,
Used up in the bowels of wretchedness,
      I lay on my empty bed of lies,
There's little left to know when you're long lost.

Further Cop-Outs: More Delays

The barrage of real-life-type affairs contines to prevent me from sitting down and truly writing anything worthwhile. I will be taking this week off from even attempting to do as much, so that I can catch up with the obstacles in my way (that I can see clearly now). In case you're curious, basically restarting the college semester and taking up the mantle of the head or vice-head of various organisations has preoccupied my time, along with visiting missed acquaintances who were away for the summer. My life is uninteresting; the interesting things I do with my life will commence, again, next week.

I also swear the two entries I promised "next Monday" will actually surface soon. They're big'uns, so I hope you, my imaginary readers, will understand the time expended hasing them out, editting and revising the myriad words I type on the keyboard to ensuring that what I inevitably put up here is not complete tripe—only fractionally so.

Cop-Out: Delays

Revising and editting the second part of this story has taken me much longer than anticipated, so the next part will be posted Monday, as I really don't want to put up anything of compromised quality in the name of filling space.

Una Canzone, Ein Getränk & Un Bais

The pianist is alit on the little, slipshod stage in the corner,
       He looks through you with glassy eyes, straight to the red and blue,
Song spun on a twisted loom, every note a heartbeat of your life,
       “Raise your glass, a toast to freedom, the will to fail!”

The barroom scene of man's folly wrapped in a garbage can,
       Leave the lid down and flush it all away, come and sit and pray,
To the gods of olde, to the powers that be, so that it won't burn so much…
       “Here's to lowered expectations and ground-up hopelessness!”

The bartender smiles, rag in hand, and pours another,
       You squint up at him and slur a word or two, he wipes up your life,
Spilled on the counter, next to the ashtray wherein burns your soul,
       “What a lovely crowd, tonight, dressed up in funerary garb, I see!”

You listen to the pianist as he tells his story to the empty air:

“I knew a girl, she had a mouth,
       A real pearl, a regular Hellhound,
Time and time again, truth unfurled,
       Sin-bound she was, drawn to fire.

“I loved her, I told myself,
       It didn't help that she loved me,
Complicated the whole matter,
       Beyond reconciliation, at that point.

“There were some obvious plot holes,
       You know, clichés and the usual,
Another man, a small dog, the usual,
       Lipstick on the collar, keys on the dresser.

“I knew a girl, she had eyes,
       A real pearl, a regular Succubus,
Spun our lies, together in a lovely world…”

“Pay up, pal,” the bartender spits and slips the bill,
       You look down at the counter without a word, your worth the cost,
Dripping from his rag, down and down, ashes within smoulders your soul,
       The black and red lights on the crowd's eyes strobes and pulses…

A memory from below comes up high, the cats cry in alleys far gone,
       The hand of fate contains two eights and two aces, they pray,
They pray, the mouth curls up into a ball and hits the gong, the village scatters,
       Up and up, the smoke signals read, “Pay for your sins, pal.”

Mewling children we all once have been, the pianist swaggers,
       He murmurs to the rafters, to the hidden desires of the hereafter,
Tune told on a sinister needle, “Did a camel leap through it?”
       They clink their tumblers and drink three more, three more.

The empty air listens to the pianist as he mouths his sobs:

“I knew a girl, she had no soul,
       A demon, a ghost, a wraith,
By many names, she tricked me,
       What was true, what was a lie?

“I cannot answer for the past,
       I cannot recompense for my regrets,
She drew me in her arms with a sigh,
       I was but lost for a lack,

“It'd make a poor film, I bet,
       No hooks, no twists, no surprise,
A romance without a token hero,
       Sex only sells so many scripts.

“I knew a girl, she had legs,
       With those, she walked away,
A real pearl, a regular Jezebel…”

“My marriage was a sham, here's to that sonuvabitch!”
       The jester twirls the pins, you gawk and point your tail,
She saunters up with malice in her groin, smiling like a jackal,
       “Here's to new beginnings, and the same old ends!”

You sign your name away to the barroom to-nite,
       To-morrow, maybe you'll reclaim it after a gutter-nap,
The coffin is built, plank by plank, the hammer falls in time,
       Playing along, the pianist is there until the lights go dim…

“Won't you pardon me?” she asks, a touch of apology,
       Unaccostumed to such degrees of false sincerity, you are stunned,
Your heart is hung on a nail driven through the bathroom wall,
       The eulogy is done, the casket is closed, the dearly departed departs.

The pianist listens to the empty air as you lower your baton:

“I knew a girl, or so I thought,
       Lies are spiders, we are flies,
The analogy is clear, so I think,
       Yet we still miss the trick.

“The same old tricks, the repeated refrain,
       A relationship like a farcical play,
Our minds the stage, our parts all played,
       Dancing, dancing, dancing.

“She was here, then gone,
       I was there, then fallen,
Heaven's missing an angel,
       Hell's locked its gate.

“I knew a girl, she had breasts,
       Which was a good thing,
Because that's, at least, something to miss…”

The bartender puts on his coat, takes out his key,
       From his pocket, out falls your life onto the floor,
He shakes it out, pursing his lips, wonders what it is,
       “What a night, here's to the ludicrous profit margin.”

The pianist grabs his hat from off the rack,
       Next to where your heart is still hanging,
He cracks a grin and laughs, the song rattling his brain,
       “I know, I know, I know.”

She sucks it off her lip,
       Your eyes rolled to the sky,
Breath like turpentine,
       Here comes the kiss…

[Adios]

Three Reviews: The Animus Inside Weeps

I would just like to take a moment to confess that this week, the writing did not exactly flow freely, and I had a hard time getting these six reviews out and done. Just today, I realised exactly how much I've been making myself write, that when you actually put the entries, with all the HTML code, into a word processor like WordPerfect, they come out to four, nearly five pages, each; I've been writing everything in Notepad and aiming to write "a full page," which meant a window full of text with Notepad maximised—which, up until this week, didn't feel like that much. Perhaps, now, I will consider putting my goal length at something a bit shorter, so I don't die, or, more than likely what the case would be, push myself to write so much I burn out and don't feel like updating anymore. Anyway, here are the three reviews I just know you all have been on pins and needles for all day…

Cars

      Pixar does a notoriously fair job with the whole "CG Animated Feature-Length Family Film" deal, and Cars is not really an exception, here. The premise: a cocky and showy race car gets in a threesome with two other hot, sleek Lamborghinis—er, I mean, a threeway-tie for the racing season championship title, The Drunken Redneck Budweiser & Chicken Wings Cup or somesuch, and there is to be a plot device to teach the son of a bitch how to be a better person-car-guy-thing—er, tie-breaking race in California. On his way to the Big Racist Sporting Event—er, Big Race, whacky circumstances occur (Jinkies!) and he ends up waylaid in a piss-Antz town at the end of the status quo establishment—er, in the middle of nowhere, arrested, tried, and found guilty; the punishment: death by lethal fuel injection—er, I mean, he has to repave their street that he fucked all the hell up with his speedy hijinks. There, Steve McQueen—Er, "Lightning" McQueen (the fancy racing-type car, voiced by Owen "The Ugly, Whiny Brother" Wilson) meets a hot-ass bitch—er, a sensitive, self-actualised and independent female role '05 model, Sally Carrera (the automative puns never stop, folks; voiced by Bonnie "Who?" Hunt), and befriends the slobbering retard—er, I mean… wait, yeah, slobbering retard, Mater (the joke: Mater, like tomater, 'cause he's RED, ya know, like a tomater; voiced by Larry "Makes the Other Three Blue Collar Comics Look Smarter" The Cable Guy); other characters in Radiator Springs include: Flo, the obligatory fat and sassy black-sounding lady-car (Jenifer "Not Queen Latifah" Lewis); Sheriff, the, uh, sheriff-car (Michael "Where Did I Come From?" Wallis); Ramone, the dirty hippie-sounding stoner-car (Cheech "Who Else?" Marin); Sarge, the angry, impotent—er, militant jeep (Paul "Not Lee Ermey" Dooley); and Luigi and Guido, the greasy Italian jobs (Tony "Monk" Shalhoub, and Guido "Guess Who I Voiced" Quaroni). They all own various, silly businesses, but I imagine I should leave somethings to be discovered by the viewer. One of the two directors, Joe Ranft, makes the noises of Red the Obvious Victim of Child Molestation—er, Firetruck, as well; he also voices "Peterbuilt," but mentioning that would require me to remember which character that was.
      This is actually a pretty amusing movie, a lot better than I was expecting. The plot progresses, life lessons are learnt, McQueen realises the dark, nasty secret of Doc Hudson, the grouchy and incontinental elder-car (Paul "What Do You Want From Me?" Newman), bonds are formed, love blossoms, the Architect incoherently explains the world, the Machine is contronted, Neo is crucified—er, I mean, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Mater, who falls out of a helicopter and dies tragically (fade to white), bringing everyone together in a moving scene of coming to grips with the harsh reality of death (SPOILER ALERT: I'm a liar). Oh, right, and there's the whole "championship-determining race" between McQueen, Chick Hicks the dick (Michael "I'm the Goddamn Batman" Keaton), and The King… that's right, they race-off against the creepy, plastic-faced Burger King mascot… no, actually, they race-off against Richard "I ACTUALLY DRIVE A RACE CAR, WHOO!" Petty. Guess who wins? Cole Trickle, that's who.
      Ah, random cameo by George "You'd Think Inappropriate For Family Films" Carlin as the voice of sleazy but lovable sponsor, Fillmore, there's always room for George-O; because Pixar clearly owns his soul, John "My Last Name Is More Awesome Than Yours" Ratzenberger provides the voice of Mack the Kni—er, Truck, which leads into a rather amusing re-envisioning of all previous Pixar films he was in, as placed in the Cars universe, at the end of the movie ("You're a TOY CAR! A TOY CAR!"). All in all, I was quite satisfied; another bang-up job by John "I Write and Direct All These Pixar Films" Lasseter and Pixar Studios. Failure Rating: 12%.

An Inconvenient Truth

      Not so much a movie as a highly controversial video slideshow—it's been called a PowerPoint Presentation by many, including Jon Stewart, but I prefer to imagine he didn't use PowerPoint—Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is an informative and interesting presentation of the Global Warming issue; an issue which has been called everything from "Cause for Alarm" to "Liberal Hoax." It's funny, to me, to see how this has sparked up the conservative end of the spectrum to put back on their anti-environmentalism (not called as such, but that's the basic notion) and spouting off about how it's all a conspiracy to challenge civic freedoms or somesuch—been awhile since I heard terms like "treehugger" in the news. I'm a registered member of the Green Party of Virginia, you don't have to show me a fancy video to get me to go, "Oh! This is problematic!" I've been reading and following the issue for years, and my biggest thought on the matter is this:
      It's mostly debated from the entirely wrong angle. Global Warming isn't a scientific issue, it's a political issue—or, rather, it is based on science, but the importance of the issue isn't of a scentific nature, it is of a sociopolitical one. Al Gore used very legitimate scientific studies in Inconvenient Truth; I'm not qualified to contest the validity of his data, and I don't think most people who do are, either. It seems like a simple correspondence: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere equals a higher greenhouse effect. Thus, every other aspect of this debate aside, we do not want more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than necessary—I don't like one hundred degree temperatures in the summer let alone, say, all year long. Indisputably, industries spew out CO₂ gases; internal combustion-based, gasoline-burning and coal-burning engines spew out CO₂ gases; if we do not want a ton of CO₂ gases in the atmsophere, then these things that produce the carbon dioxide need to not produce so much, eh? It's that simple: we know carbon dioxide is problematic, we know what is producing an abundance of it, let us work to curb the production.
      I don't really care if the global warming effect is entirely manmade, or if it part of a natural cycle—most of the scientific community does agree that we are entering an era of a level of CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere that is higher than ever in history—the dissenting scientists there are few and hard to find; Republicans and conservatives, or anti-environmentalists of whatever creed, do find them, of course, which leads to needless bickering in political journals and on the news and so forth. FOX News, of course, is content to put entirely unqualified people on the air who call Global Warming a complete hoax, that it doesn't exist—I saw this, with my eyes, and just felt saddened. This muddles the issue: this is not an important point. Our civilization is not accustomed to dealing with the effects that the predicted climatic changes will induce, whether or not it's ever happened before, hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago is moot: if it happens now, we're fucked. Not Earth, the Planet… no, no, I don't mean we have to "Save the Planet," here—I do think that's a good idea, but that's not what I'm specifically referring to in this instance… We need to save ourselves; we need to make sure we don't incur massive destruction, huge loss of life, and possibly global catastrophe. Whatever happened to the axiom, "Better Safe than Sorry," folks?
      The problem is there are powerful forces that don't want change, progress, advancement toward a cleaner burning fuel and to a cleaner environment as a whole, so they intentionally obsfucate the nature of the issue and keep the public as uneducated as possible, or plant stupid ideas in their heads like: "Global Warming does not exist. These are not the CO₂ gases you are looking for." They wave their hand and steal our shit while we're mesmerised. While there's still oil in the planet to harvest and exploit, overpriced gas bills to hand out, cheap and dirty industrial practices to maintain low-cost, high-profit endeavours, the Powers That Be will not want to see things like electric cars, hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells, effective solar power, etcetera, etcetera. So, let's take the message of a movie like An Inconvenient Truth and let's skew it all out of whack until people just laugh and go, "Oh, that Al Gore, what a silly hippy." There is a problem with our corporate and industrial practices in this country, and it stems from too much freedom with too little thought, this selfish attitude of "Let 'em do what they want, it's their right." No, this isn't a natural, human rights issues, as businesses are not people: this is not what Jefferson meant by life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—what they do harms everyone else, whether or not they're cognisant of it.
      I've, apparently, hijacked this review and turned it into a political rant, huh… The movie itself was well-constructed, although the little sentimental pieces about Gore's life were kind of unneeded and felt a bit like emotional pandering; the bit about the 2000 election was superfluous, as well, and just diluted the point of the movie, making it more about Al Gore and less about Global Warming. What I've heard and read is Gore did not want to include these parts, but his producers pushed him to do it—ah, marketeers, always there to sell, sell, sell. People will continue to use this as a reason to lambaste Gore due to their petty, political grudges, of course, and people will continue to miss the point, that we should change no matter the real motivation. In the end, the point remains: trees are awesome. Failure Rating: 13%.

Muse's Blackholes & Revelations

      Muse, a British rock band heavily influenced by classical jazz, is one of those gigs that you either really get behind or sounds too pretentious and "artsy" for your tastes, akin to other bands such as Mars Volta, Fugazi or Spiral Architect; these bands are usually labeled "progressive," which really just means they're doing something atypical and creative, and one's enjoyment of can be dependent on having an acquired taste. Their big, big radio hit last year, "Our Time Is Running Out," earned Muse a spot on the billboards, in movie soundtracks and on the bad TV drama commercials, and was probably the most easily digestable track off of Absolution—a fucking brilliant piece of masterful work. Blending the sound of Jazz, Rock, and old-school British Pop, Muse is spearheaded by Matthew Bellamy, the amazing vocalist, lead guitarist and frequent pianist, whose voice is a wonder to behold, as bizarre as it is beautiful, with Chris Wolstenholm backing it up with the driving bass line, and, finally, on the ever-essential drums, Dominic Howard, making sure everything stays rhythmic.
      Blackhole & Revelations is a bit of a divergent endeavour by the band, the sound having more in common with older album, Origin of Symmetry, than the previous one, Absolution, which was an epic torrent of monumental-sounding songs that built on each other; Blackholes returns to a format of more self-contained songs, independent with differing feels and textures of their own. The track which lyrics wherefrom the title is derived, "Starlight," is reminscent of older songs like "New Born," vast and "space-age"; the first single cut off the album, "Supermassive Black Hole" (which you would think is where the album got its name), reminds me a lot of the band Self, and is the easy radio hit. "Map of the Problematique" and "City of Delusion" continues in the same vein as Absolution, with a highly charged energy of a Biblical proportion—har, har, that's a pun 'cause they use a lot of Biblical imagery and metaphors in their lyrics. "Soldier's Poem" is your usual dose of the slow and romantic fare, which you always find one or two examples of on every album, along with "Invincible," a rolling, melodic tune, another very sweet song. Track number one, "Take a Bow," and later on the album with "Assassin," Muse throws in some fast tempo, throbbing tunes for the kids to jump around to; the least remarkable cut is, in my opinion, "Exo-Politics," which would stand out in the repertoire of most bands, but not Muse—I just expect more from them, as it reads like a less interesting version of their other works. "Hoodoo" is a strange song, calming and soothing but, yet, motivating and pulsing, another trademark of Absolution, leading into what is the perfect, awe-inspiring bookend to the album, "Knights of Cydonia," which departs from any other song they've ever done. "Knights" proves to me that Muse would be the band I'd hire to compose a soundtrack for my quirky, medieval fantasy slash science-fiction movie if I were to ever make one; this is a song in the same league as "The Hope Overture," by the Kroonos Quartet, that requires listening to understand how compelling and immersive it is to hear.
      Overall, there is little complaint from me here, but I still think Absolution is their masterpiece. Blackholes and Revelations is a great ride though, and well worth time and money. Failure Rating: 1%

[TIA;TY]

Three Reviews and a Baby (Minus the Baby)

Yes, this was posted a day late, in reality, contrary to the day and time displayed. My apologies, I forgot to actually publish it, after I wrote it, so it sat around as a "Draft" until around 5:00 PM on Wednesday. But, here goes, nonetheless, three reviews of a moderate length, in lieu of five briefer ones. Thursday's reviews will consist of the same.

A Scanner Darkly

    I was very eager to see this film, because I have a love of animation to a nigh perverse level, on top of being an independent film geek; so, put both together, with delicious rotoscoping effects, and I'm there, right quick. After trekking to the nearby independent movie theatre and sitting down to watch, wide-eyed like a schoolgirl in awe, quivering with joy and fear—fear, for you are never quite certain if such adventures in non-mainstream movies will be regretted or not—the film finished and I did not know what to think. The style of animation, rotoscoping, is something I think only I fervently adore amongst my friends, for when trailers were being ran for A Scanner Darkly, I was going, "Ooo!" and my friends were going, "Eeeh…"—I ultimately thought the film looked awesome, just so bloody neat, that I am far from retracting my opinion there.
    The performances were pretty admirable; Keanu Reeves did what he does best, namely not having a clue what's really happening (unsure if it's acting or reality); Robert Downey Jr. was a brilliant conspiracy theorist; Woody Harrelson was the perfect drugged-out, surfer dude; Winona Ryder maybe gave the most bland performance, but there wasn't a lot to do with her character, I have a feeling. The bulk of this movie was a string of scenes centered on the daily lives of Bob Arctor (Reeves), Barris (Downey), and Luckman (Harrelson), in or around Arctor's house or in the car together, where they interacted with each other or with Donna (Ryder), Arctor's girl, and friend, Charles Freck, a minor part played quite beautifully by Rory Cochrane. A Scanner Darkly begins with Charles Freck, actually, following the course of his breakdown due to the drug, Substance D, which is highly addictive and induces serious brain damage; the final scene with Freck is quite hilarious, quite sad, much like the whole story of the movie.
    Here's the jist: Fred is a police officer, a Sheriff, assigned to flush out Bob Arctor, a dealer in Substance D. Sheriffs wear a suit at all times which constantly mutates their outward appearance between hundreds of thousands of combinations of body parts from the government's records, in order to overcome the identity recognition technology located essentially everywhere in the country, so that the police force can operate with anonymity themselves. What you find out early on in the film is that Fred is Bob Arctor… something Fred slash Arctor doesn't seem to realise. Fred "takes on" the identity of Bob Arctor in order to do his job, and installs surveillance technology, scanners, all over his own home. Barris and Luckman are two druggies who live with Arctor, and, thus, the movie flips between scenes of the three men interacting with each other, and, then, Officer Fred later observing himself interacting with his two friends. Substance D splits the two hemispheres of the brain apart and causes them to conflict, to send criss-crossed messages to the nervous system, to, in essence, fight; therein you have the primary tool for the theme of duality within the movie: the self within the self that observes itself (O Existentialism, thou art so grandly overdone).
    For the majority of the time, the film is a meandering observation of the schizophrenia of Arctor, Barris and Luckman, a "caustically comical" view of their paranoid delusions, their ridiculous conspiracy theories, their drugged-out lunacies—the funniest sequence in the movie is probably the one I refer to as "Come On In, the Door is Unlocked" (better watched than explained). That which I would fully understand as a reason to dislike A Scanner Darkly is that it does a lot of aimless wandering, takes no semblance of a direct route through the story, and leaves you wondering what the point may be. There is a backbone of a plot within the story tying everything together, but each scene, individually, is almost a short in and of themselves. No traditional, Hollywood moviemaking going on here, and I like that—maybe you don't, though, I don't know.
    This is a drug movie, irrefutably. Did you like Requiem for a Dream? I did; this one is nowhere near as dark, though, much more of a dark comedy. Failure Rating: 10%.

Tom Waits' Big Time

    Let's talk about Tom Waits, shall we? As a musician, he's been a creative force in the musical underground—the real one, not the one fueled by rebellious, snivelling teenagers and mindless trends—for decades. His music is a throwback to Blues, with a heavy influence of Jazz, plus a heavy dose of world music; his voice is an instrument of its own, a powerful, fear-inducing thing, bass and strong, hoarse and raspy, twisted and bewildering. The music of Tom Waits is bizarre and delightful, like a beatnik but good.
    Watching Big Time, a live performance of sorts by the man and his ensemble, helps solidify what it is that makes Tom Waits so interesting: Tom Waits is the music you would expect to hear in the corner of a bar in Hell; you find yourself in the Underworld, you make your way to some seedy, dim and smoky dive, on Queens Street of Pain perhaps, and there's Tom Waits and his band, in the corner, playing. Tom Waits is the Blues of Hell—it doesn't help that the man is some form of demon, easily seen when you watch him performing, as no man can make such frightening expressions and do such creepy dances unless he is secretly demonic. His voice is a channeling of dark forces, indeed, as well.
    Could there have been any better music to have playing in the barroom scene of Fight Club? I say, "No," and the producers of the movie agreed. When you need someone to play the deranged doctor in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Renfield, is there any better man to fit the part? Again, "No," and it is agreed upon by the moviemakers. Want a random, desert wanderer in your movie to spout prophetic riddles at the protagonist, making her unsure if he is an apparition or mirage? Tom Waits is there, Mr. Tony Scott, to appear in your film, Domino.
    Big Time seems to be a couple concerts by the madman, cut apart into several different sequences, and spliced back together in some kind of strange nightmare vision. In case the music of Tom Waits wasn't weird enough, now we have his idea of his own music video movie. It's all strangely perfect, however, the imagery and scenes matching his sound perfectly, and the man may be crazy, but he's a brilliant showman on stage. Each little vignette tells the tale of a grimy, run-down little theatre and the characters—all Tom Waits—associated, in the loge, in the ticket booth, in the bathroom. It's the story of every down-trodden American in the city ever told, set to the tune of Tom Waits.
    The lyrics of Tom Wait feel as though they are one long story of barroom misery, of drunken failure, of love lost and heartbreak, of time wasted down the drain, of mistakes made and sins enacted, of unseen dramas in back alleys and deserted docks, the ringing sounds of an abandoned warehouse and the rats within. To listen to his modern-era albums is to listen to the dark side of the American dream, like a beautiful retelling of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," or if William Faulkner wrote of the big cities and was put to song; Tom Waits is black comedy at its best, a dark look through a red lens set on life, love and everything inbetween.
    Imagine all that, in a concert movie. It… is… so… fucking… awesome. Failure Rating: 0% (Big Time is no longer in distribution, can only be found on preowned VHS tapes, and has been put into DVD format and is freely distributed, legally, by very cool individuals only).

xkcd

    For several reasons, I have a special interest in this particular webcomic, "xkcd." For one thing, I know the writer and artist—not really that closely, mind you, but an acquaintance, nonetheless—who graduated from the same college I attend and is now living with my ex-roommate, locally. Being able to watch things develop firsthand, as it grows from a secondary LiveJournal for random doodles on occasion, to being updated thrice a week, to becoming a standalone website with powerful hosting, all at specific, timely stages, I find the whole experience intriguing and telling of things I always knew to be true, but only from secondhand sources. Seeing a webcomic's popularity deliberately engineered by virtually exploiting the big social networks on the Internet is a curious sight.
    The comic itself is fun and great for gags. The art is usually neglible, for it's mostly stick figures or crudely drawn objects for the purposes of conveying textual jokes, so there's not much interesting to look at in most cases; once in awhile, the creator utilises a visual trick or sketches an animal, landscape or famous person, all of a very "margin doodling" style… The joke-writing is the real strength of xkcd, typically able to produce a good laugh—or a groan, due to the puns, because when he says a "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language," the "language" part means horrible puns, the bastard. The "romance" part is of a variety of sappiness I can't get behind, as he definitely strikes very "emo" chords here and there: bemoaning lost love or complaining of a broken heart and the such. The "sarcasm" is my personal favourite part, and it can be very well timed and executed.
    What is the most interesting part of it all is how it got to where it is. This is not a webcomic made for the webcomics community, or really much a part of it, on the whole. The creator is only recently initiating himself with the world of webcomics (to probably try and figure a way to farther expand his readership). The fanbase of the strip was garnered almost entirely from the Blog community and the LiveJournal community, the two largest social networks on the Internet, via simple manufacturing of links and associations. The website is separate from any webcomic studio or network, nor is it syndicated through any major webcomic label; it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license, however, making it freely shareable (if that's a word). The trick was accessibility: xkcd has had, since nearly day one, an RSS feed and a LiveJournal for the RSS, plus the permanent links for both comic page address and image URL are explicitly displayed for each comic. So, when it got linked by big Blog sites like BoingBoing, the hosting guaranteed site stability despite huge traffic, the RSS made it easy to keep up with afterward for the visitors, and other, smaller Blog sites would put the links and comics up, too; all the while, it's trickling slowly through the LiveJournal community, thanks to the creator's efforts and a few associates who persistently linked it to friends, who, then, "friended" (a verb I do not endorse) the RSS LiveJournal. Thus, a moderately popular webcomic that has nothing to do with the webcomics community whatsoever.
    My only notable problem with xkcd is the tendency to be a tad high-flown, mostly with the "math" part of its tagline. Some jokes boil down to little more than mentioning a complicated or highly advanced mathematics or physics (the field he got his degree in) concept, perhaps with pretense of being otherwise, but a lot of it can be "Ha, ha, look at this! Isn't this funny?" Other people see it, and say, "Oh! I know what that is! Ha, ha, that's awesome that he mentioned that thing I, too, know about! That is funny!" Very apt for the Blog community, really, which is fueled by such practices of large, psuedointellectual circle jerks. A lot of the times, xkcd is being quirky and clever, but, other times, it's straddling the fine line between pretentious and merely observational, reminiscent of the songs of Tom Lehrer. You can sometimes not quite be sure if he's making funny of others for doing this same thing, or if he's doing it himself—if you consider that clever or not is your choice, I choose not.
    Mostly a "non-comic," in the vein of Far Side, with little to no continuity, small amounts of narrative, zero characters, xkcd is a mouthpiece for the author to crack wise about entirely random subjects, and I respect that. It, also, truly is simple as pie (or pi, AHAHAHAHAHA) to keep up with new updates; bonus points for consistent updating, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, always on time (especially considering he has automatic scripts for posting and a queue of comics for always about a month ahead). Failure Rating: 15%.

[TIA;TY]

The Concatenation of Propoganda from Corporate America, or Why I Hate Hating Microsoft

—Title Link Image from "This Modern World," by Tom Tomorrow: http://www.thismodernworld.com.

After having read this long interview between EGM and Peter Moore, a representative of Microsoft for the X-Box 360, I began to think of snarky things to say about Microsoft. For example, who the fuck created the adjective "next generational" and why didn't I get to cast my vote for whether or not that word exists? I truly wish I could vote on things like that, for it'd, at least, give me the ability to say, "I voted 'No' on Proposition 'Heart as a Verb"—which could then be printed on a t-shirt that I would proudly wear.

    And I thought about how this interview is pretty much EGM trying to "take Microsoft to task," because that's what a lot of old-school gamers and computer nerds would want to see. Everybody—within the sphere of geekdom—wants to tear Microsoft to shreds and eat them alive, garnished with pure, unbridled spite. I've got beef with Microsoft, too, surely; to quote myself:

“Questionable obtainment of intellectual property, slightly underhanded and convuluted methods of avoiding classification of a monopoly, continual expansion of all-inclusive contracts with proprietary systems manufactors and distributors, vague and veiled marketting strategies which mislead and verge on fraud, unspoken agreements with solicitors and known spyware distributors to continue to allow private information to be bilked from the unknowing customers duped by said marketting . . . All of this, and none of it, whatsoever, presents any disagreement with the current capitalist, American society. Maybe the question is not about whether or not Bill Gates is entitled to his money, but whether or not anyone should be entitled to such vast amounts of money through unscruplous means. But, really, who wants to raise this question in an economic environment where it's alright to break American regulations and laws so long as you establish satellite factories and branchs in other countries in which you break those laws and then "sell" your own product back to yourself at cost so that you can, then, turn around and mark it up five hundred percent to the American public. Microsoft, Heinz, Exxon, Walmart, Sears, Nike, Adidas, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola . . . Perhaps it's just my hairbrained opinion, but maybe it's just taken a company as big and shady as Microsoft to gain so much power without explicitly breaking any rules to cast doubts into the American public's mind about the nature of its capitalistic economy, and that's what's so upsetting?”
—from "My Humble (Pah!) Opinion: Fuck Off, Andy Not-Rooney", December 29th, 2005

    I still stand by those opinions stated above; I have no reason to have changed my mind, since then, about things such as multinational conglomerates and shady corporate practices… Microsoft as a business is still evil. Big Business, two capital B's and all, is evil, period, in my mind. Cutting every possible corner and cheating the public isn't ethical or moral, or plain right, so sayeth I.
    I'd like to see Microsoft taken to task, as it were, but not by reading some hoity-toity magazine interview which is trying to do it only to sell their own product. Why is it that the educated population more commonly seems compelled to sit in their Towers—that may not necessarily be Ivory, but the metaphor stands—and raise their pinkies in disgust at the corrupt practices of American business and, maybe—just maybe—write something snarky, rarely witty, about it in their journal, in their magazine, in their Blog?
    How many times have I witnessed, first- or second-hand, someone intelligent and educated only use their knowledge to be derisive, to mock others, and go off to fulfill their base desires, live their selfish lives, and poke their noses out long enough to laugh at everyone else who doesn't know the truth, who is too occupied with surviving in a more difficult living condition, or was under-privileged, or poor? The divide in the American middle-class seems to be between those who are too stupid to know better, and those who know better but would rather just act stupid than be proactive—with a small percentage of people who don't fit into either categories.
    What's the point in taking potshots at Microsoft in magazines? I have a better idea: don't buy their shit. I don't like their products, I don't buy them. The X-Box is a faulty product? Their games are subpar? They're trying to sell us games at higher prices that are but a slight margin better? Don't support it. Boycott it, even. I don't like Microsoft Office, so I use OpenOffice.org, an open-source program…
    As an aside, what does it prove that something like OpenOffice.org is open source? I'm tired of hearing (or, more often, reading) that it's the superior method of developing software… That's simply not true; it's not a viable business model by any stretch of the imagination. What open source software typically proves is that the retail products out there are overpriced, that the software market is saturated with products that aren't that difficult to make, that a small community of bored programmers can do the same thing, for free, in their spare-time, and the market expects consumers to pay hundreds of dollars for something a corporation produced that does veritably the same thing as the free, open source equivalent.
    Word processing just isn't that robust of a thing. I write most everything in Notepad, for fuck's sake, and maybe run it through Corel WordPerfect—an OEM product I bought for thirty bucks—or OpenOffice.org if I feel ther emay be a prolific amount of spelling errors or somesuch. I don't need animated avatars telling me about suggested grammar corrections, I only need the suggestions. But, corporations want to justify the ludicrous price-tags they slap on their software boxes, so they throw in all this useless, shiny shit, and people pay for it because they're too lazy or don't know better, and they need something newer, for some inexplicable reason, than the last incarnation of point-and-click document making and chart production which still works fine and performs the same, basic functionality (Hint: this is called, by airy intellectuals, Manufactured Obsolescence).
    "Ooo, this version can make PDFs (or, alternatively, the useless Microsoft equivalent)!"
    "Ooo, this version can make colourful, three-dimensional scatter-plots and animated pie charts with shadows!"
    "Ooo, this version can make more silly noises when the slide changes, and has a host of dumb-looking, new clip-art!"
    When you stop and think about it, bells and whistles like this are worthless and don't justify the fact that you're shelling out a hundred and fifty dollars again for the exact same core features of word processing and desktop publishing. I wonder, occasionally, if new versions of Windows were made solely to sell new versions of Microsoft Word—look at Windows fucking ME, with its added feature, over 98SE, of memory leaking. Of course, corporations rape consumers! It's their nature. Of course, Big Business wants our money for little to nothing: it's why they exist.
    The products we pay for en masse are capable of being created and distributed with the most minimal of effort: bored programmers make better word processors, better operating systems, better software as a whole. Stop buying and using Microsoft products if you don't like this.
    The problem is that these bored programmers, these cynical nerds, they are more content to sit on the knowledge that they can do better things on their own, that the big businesses are butt-fucking America, and twiddle their thumbs within their cliques, on their private forums, on their self-ran IRC servers. And they have the nerve to sneer and laugh at everybody else, when they really are doing nothing better than the corporations because they are doing practically nothing. They horde their information and knowledge and masturbate amongst themselves, talking about how great they are…
    So they can smirk at interviews in EGM that "teach Microsoft a lesson"—EGM, a magazine which undoubtedly has sold plenty of advertising space to Microsoft.

    "Well," you say, assuming you are one of these sardonic fellows sitting in eager anticipation of the next big anti-MS Internet joke, "everybody else should just figure it out, too. They should educate themselves, and they should learn how to use Linux or FreeBSD, how to code their own hardware drivers and build open source software." How kind of you to be considerate of other's lives, to perhaps give someone the benefit of the doubt that maybe their life doesn't revolve around surfing the Internet and wallowing in geekdom… I am so glad people have assumed this attitude that everybody else should help out their fellow man, that the best thing to do is to give everyone else all the helping hands they can provide in a world where greedy corporate fucks and evil politicians are out to swindle everybody and their sister; it is certainly a blessing that we don't just yell, "Every man for himself! Fuck the women and children!"—as we dive headlong off the sinking ship, having stolen a lifesaver for one's own salvation. It is definitely awesome that this isn't how people are acting.
    Why do we feel the need, once we've attained knowledge on our own, to horde it, like dragons, snarling and blowing smoke out our nostrils when anybody comes venturing near our lair of impenetrable doom? If I could do it, anybody can… Right, right, haven't we heard that line before, again and again. It's not like some people grew up in the wrong time and place, or that the propoganda hasn't drowned many, that the commercialised television programming hasn't lured millions to sleep while their wallets are drained by credit card companies, brand-name prescription drug companies and cell phone companies. It's not like any of this should ever be our concern, because, well, we're fine. We're not still on the sinking ship, anymore. We got off it, 'cause we're so smart.
    How much hypocrisy is there, too? How many "Anti-MS" people are there who buy X-Boxes and X-Box games? "I know better, so it's alright for me to bend the rules." That way, you can end up right where you started, except with a smug feeling of superiority. Video games are entertaining, so I guess that's different. Microsoft is only evil so long as they aren't making cool things. Walmart is only evil when I don't want something cheaper. EGM isn't just another business venture taking our money for little return, for a flimsy product dripping with advertisements. Give me convenience, or give me death!
    And it's not like people are asses about their "superior" knowledge of things; oh, no, this is definitely not the case—people don't automatically look down their noses at people who haven't happened to dedicate their life to random information and obscure trivia. I am happy to know that when someone expresses an opinion that may be mislead or wrong that the response from many isn't to derail them so they feel like a giant idiot for not knowing something inconsequential to survival or their own lives. After all, this is a world where people are compassionate and caring, where we help all our fellow men, where we don't abandon hope for the education of mankind based on our slim perspectives and middling amount of life experience. Yes, the answer to ignorance is not biting sarcasm, thankfully.

I'm certainly above this. I haven't made these mistakes. I've never been mislead in my life. I don't get fooled into thinking a certain way to the advantage of Big Business. I'm guitless; my hands are clean; my soul is pure; I have been Saved! It's great that I can make these statements with absolute impunity, that I don't have to hold myself up to the standards I set for everybody else. I expect things of others that I'd never bother to do myself. I love Walmart. It's open twenty-four hours a day! Three dollar DVDs! Holy shit! Why am I not at Walmart right now? Why am I not playing my X-Box? I could be fragging "n00bs" in Halo 2 or someshit, yo. I could be chatting with my programming friends about how awesome I am for knowing how to use Linux and code. I don't know why I'm not at Walmart while on my laptop engaged in a circle jerk with all my nerd friends at this very moment, getting off to how great [Insert Obscure Programming Algorithm Here] is. I've been wasting all this time writing this…

[Adios]

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Shark: Prima Facie

Much like a superhero, I have a secret identity. Unlike a superhero, I can't fly, shoot webbing from my wrist, tear through steel with my bare hands, punch the planet and shatter it into pieces, shoot lasers out of my eyes, freeze people into blocks of ice with my breath, sprout multiple appendages at will, grow one hundred times my usual size, shrink to the size of an atom, stare menacingly at a cashier until he gives me whatever I am buying for free or get away with wearing neon-coloured spandex. Instead, I make poignant and profound statements about the world around me through the written language!

Previous works by my secret identity include a biting piece on the unfairness of life and that bitch Katie, a deep exploration of the state of the human race, and a seering song about romance and relationships.

And, now, for your reading enjoyment, I shall feature here a new release by the world-renowned, infamous writer, my secret (shh!) identity.

"A Generic Political Commentary Unnecessarily Put Into the Form of a Poem (Meant to be Angrily Screamed at a Poetry Slam),"
by c.Jay hawtsk8r88 on August 1st, 2006

it is very unfortunate
that our president
is George W. Bush
for I do not
much care for him

he likes oil a lot
he likes money a lot
he likes cock a lot
by cock i mean chicken
(not really)

Karl Rove is Satan
not Ronald Reagan
sorry Mr. McGruder

Dick Cheney is a cyborg
half-man half-machine
cold hard metal unbeating heart inside

i like making vague
unsupported statements
about our president
and quoting Mr. Stewart
isn't his show funny?
(i think so)

all i know about
our last president
is that he liked sex a lot
i do too so i can relate

and the first Bush
puked all over
the Japanese

who is this
Jimmy Carter
you speak of?

Ell Bee Jay?
Jay Eff Kay?
Eff Dee Are?
Eeh Bee Bee Vee!

all i know
is that i do not
much care for
George W. Bush
(the end)