Chewie

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

*wipes eyes*

Courtesy of Smacked Face, I bring you... HRRR GLLLRRR UGhRR! (or, Chewie's Blog).

Pizza

Newly discovered evidence that not only is David Farrar a cock, he also doesn't know shit about pizza.



(UPDATE: see 'Pizza Redux').

Control

'A Scanner Darkly' Reveals Near Future Police State

(Much amused by the description as "A-list stars" of Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. Or did I miss something.)


Ok, well, to an extent they're preaching to a captive audience on that particular site, and it's all very amusing, but the key points remain: the film adaptation of Philip K Dick's seminal novel is imminent. A Scanner Darkly is being created and directed by Richard Linklater in a style similar to that of his well-loved Waking Life - combining 'live' action footage with animation - via interpolated rotoscoping.

Quite frankly, you couldn't ask for a filmic technique more suited to the hallucinatory prose and claustrophobic narrative of the novel.

Plot Summary:
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D -- which Arctor takes in massive doses -- gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.

Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

PKD (official site) A Scanner Darkly news here. David's (now year-old) pointless and absurd post about it here (trailer).

ADSL 2

Re: ADSL, on Campbell Live tonight the entire show is dedicated to the NZ + broadband + debacle issue; including, apparently, an appearance by Theresa Gattung, Telecom CEO. Presumably there to "defend the indefensible", as they say. And I'm not referring to her dress sense, despite her bizarre proclivity for Chairman Mao-alike high-collared pea-jackets ("mao jackets").

VD

Hmmm... so St. Valentine's Day came and went, as it is wont to do, once more.

It's a funny old thing, the V-day thing, eh? I've always thought it was a load of bollocks myself, a "hallmark holiday" as they say, invented by an American greeting card company in order to sell greeting cards.

Doesn't ever seem to have mattered how eloquently I explain this to women, though - I always get in trouble if I don't make an effort. No amount of reasoning can buy me an exemption, either. I even said to someone, once, "if you believe in Valentine's Day so bad, why don't you send me flowers" - my argument being the very reasonable one that I wouldn't, for example, expect her to take me to a one-day cricket game, so that I could try to convince her how great cricket is. You can imagine how well that went down - I might as well have announced myself as a holocaust-denier, or some other comparable contemporary reprobatish-type.

Of course, you can't even get away with playing lip-service to the tradition; you can't be self-conscious and/or sarcastic and/or even ironic. Any hint that you're not 100% sincere and you might as well be confessing to a multitude of infidelities, such is the depth and manner of shit you'll find yourself in.

So, I suck it in, man-up, and play the game.

Does that make me weak?

I think it does.

Fun Things to Do For Valentines Day
1. Hang around in a florist's, pretending to be an awkward, shy man who's waiting for everyone else to leave the shop so you can order flowers to be delivered to your wife/gf/whatever with the minimum of embarrassment, while secretly laughing at the awkward, shy men who are waiting for you to leave the shop so they can order flowers to be delivered to their wife/gf/whatever with the minimum of embarrassment.
2. When filling in the card to be delivered to your wife/gf/whatever with the flowers, hum and hah and suck on the pen and look pained, and ask "What do you think I should write?". Wait for the expressions of pity and scorn.
3. Compose some utterly appalling poetry, write it in a card, and have it delivered to your wife/gf/whatever with the flowers.
4. Compose some utterly appalling poetry, write it in a card, and have it delivered to your wife/gf/whatever without any flowers.
5. Send ugly flowers. (Yes, they do exist.)
6. Send flowers that smell bad (Yes, they exist as well.)
7. Send a huge bunch of flowers anonymously to the woman that works next to your wife/gf/whatever.
8. Expect that since you dropped $80 on having a huge bunch of flowers delivered to your wife/gf/whatever, you'll get laid.
9. Expect that since you dropped $80 on having a huge bunch of flowers delivered to your wife/gf/whatever, you'll at least get a hand-job.
10. Swear that you'll never observe the ritual of St. Valentine's Day again. (Hah. It'll never happen.) (I'm serious.)

Bloody Mary

"These Arabs are crazy!" That's what I reckon Obelix would be saying to Asterix right now. Don't worry, I don't have the conceit to try to add anything to the debate. Anyhow my thoughts have already been echoed by many prominent Arab-media commentators, who've pointed out the regular publication in newspapers across many of the Islamic nations of hugely derogatory and racists cartoons depicting jesus, christians, jews, and westerners in general; publication, I hardly need to add, which has gone without the accompanying killing, rioting, burning; indeed, any kind of protest at all. I really, really, really can't get my head around the hypocrisy and gall of the protesters. "Let him who is without sin" etc.

I can't believe I just quoted jesus, but there you go.

All this leads nicely to the next secularism vs. religion; genuine satire vs. offensiveness; cultural-freedom vs. cultural-transgression meltdown - the South Park "Bloody Mary" episode. Yep, South Park, the regular crossers-of-the-line as far as the bounds of acceptability go, did an episode which features a menstruating statue of the virgin mary. NZ catholics are demanding the episode be pulled from screening, and calling for an advertising boycott.

I normally have not the slightest bit of sympathy for catholics of any description. I'm willing to bend my usual strict stance, however, if the pope immediately reverses the catholic church's own stance on (a) abortion, and (b) contraception; and says sorry to the Cathars. But I know that it'll be a cold day in hell before this happens. So, despite my earlier quoting from the supposed son of god, as a deliberate mark of disrespect for catholics - and in fact christians of all denominations - I'm going to go back through this post and de-capitalise all the christian-related proper nouns.

Take that, you bastard papists.

Wikipedia episode precis of the South Park episode here. "Bloody Mary" Episode Ensures South Park Guys A Bungalow In Hell article here.

Perv

Having learnt my lesson last time (and here), I'm not even going to consider posting the (rumoured) identity of the "prominent businessman and television personality" who was "due in court today for the opening of his trial on 11 charges, including one of sexual violation".

The story on Stuff.

Having name suppression means he "cannot be named until after his trial begins in Whangarei District Court today"; at which point I imagine it'll be open slather.

I expect I'll commence getting 1000's of hits via Google any time now.

ADSL

For days, well, over a week, even, I've been wondering what it was going to take to snap me out of my blogging slumber. It turns out that it was a classically-Monday infotech story on Stuff.

Broadband woes media beat-up - analyst
The research arm of Australian broker Macquarie Equities has gone in to bat for Telecom, accusing the media of a beat-up over New Zealand's broadband performance.

Well well well. I can't even be biffed doing the decent thing investigating this story any deeper, but as far as I'm concerned, the research arm of Australian broker Macquarie Equities can suck a cock. New Zealand's performance relative to Australia is irrelevant to the debate, and the issue is not, as Macquarie go to pains to point out, speed; rather the horrendous prices we are forced to pay, and the ridiculous caps that are placed on our monthly traffic.

Fuck Australia; fuck Macquarie; fuck 24Mbps, or even 3.5Mbps; I'd happily take a 256 Kbps connection for 100% of the time, if I wasn't paying through the nose for the privilege, and had to gear down to approximately dialup speed after the cap is reached. Anyway, the day when I can use much more than about 50Kbps, or even have data served up at anything like that rate - due to load on servers and networks the world over - is surely some way off.

New Zealand's broadband services regularly make me the laughing-stock of the various online communities I belong to; quite frankly, it's becoming tedious.

If you're interested in reading further about this, I can almost guarantee - without even checking - that Russell Brown has written about it at length, and without a single cussword. Wanna put a fiver on it?

Dribble

Today the pain.

Yesterday the inaugral Wgtn Art and Hangers-On 5-a-side soccer tournament in Island Bay; yes, that's right, some of the most uncoordinated artists, gallery staff, technicians, administrators, writers, tutors, Masters of Fine Arts, poets, curators, mothers, fathers, hippies, and anarchists in the local arts community convened yesterday afternoon to ostensibly kick a ball around for a few hours.

David has photos. That's me, appearing to expertly dribble the ball around and through two hippies, and generally making them look (more) foolish (than me).

Despite being beaten in both matches, and finishing near the bottom of the table after the first round, our team - Lorrie's Lunatics - won several medals.

• Best banshee-howls in-place-of competent-tackling AND best smoking-on-the-pitch - David.
• Most crafty player - Dan (and Nadine) for their matching small tight undie-shorts. I'll leave it up to you to imagine whose undie-shorts left less to the imagination.
• Best (worst) injury. Me. For this.

And the colloquial award for most fun team to watch, to us!

Yeah. Like I said, today the pain!

UPDATE

Here's a cool picture of me taking a corner kick, for some reason apparently with the bottom of my shoe.

Drag

Oh dear. Poor old Lee Tamahori got busted chatting up an undercover vice cop on Santa Monica Blvd. In drag. Here's a song in comiseration.

Sun City Girls - CCC (right-click and Save As to download)

This is a track from Sun City Girls' (official site here) album 330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Big Veda. Reportedly, Tamahori faces a US$5000 fine, or up to a year in jail, or both... though "normally you don't get a long jail time for this." I'm sure he's gonna be ok.

Blog

Ok I said, I will try.

1. Dropped a bit of cash at Kazu Bar (newish) last Friday night and had a brilliant night with Ms. Brown. Enough sake to get a salaryman slurring, delicious and brilliantly varied yakatori (barbequed to perfection on the dinky little barbeque under our very noses by the chef in the comedy head-gear), very fine and spicy ramen, and plum wine sorbet, which was delicate and quite lovely. The service was exemplary, and over our 4 or so hour session, the ambience delightful.

I thought I had a picture of the colossally juicy King Prawn yakatori, but it appears not. These will have to do:


Note the pom-poms.

2. Juniper for lunch yesterday - a martini and 2 bread rolls. The bread rolls were delicious - little long sourdough rolls, served hot and with olive oil and butter. On the other hand, the martini was verging on miserable, and this I related to the barman on my way out. (To be fair, he asked. I gave it to him with both barrels.) (I even - somewhat disingenously - enquired whether he'd ever made a martini before.)

This bar continues to disappoint in the way that only a bar purporting to specialise in your favourite drink - but doing it poorly - can. Was forced take refuge in The Feathers, where I gorged on Island Bay English Sausages (very fine, if that's your thing; it is mine) and mash and gravy; my companion demolished a huge and fanstastic-looking steak sandwich.

Horses. Courses.

3. A beer you must try, if you like dark beer, is the (sadly unimaginatively named) Hog Dark, on tap at The Loaded Hog and One Red Dog, down on the waterfront. It's not too heavy, and has an absolutely divine bouquet of malt extract, treacle, molasses - that kind of thing. The body and the finish do not disappoint, either. Somehow it manages to be refreshing and more-ish, which are not traits I would usually associate with a dark ale like this.

Oh, and props to Tom, imbiber-extrordanaire, for assistance with an urgent alcoholic problem yesterday.

(click an image to enlarge)