Sunday, November 09, 2008
End of year agenda
So the year's about to draw to a close. I have this month left then next month I will be put through the time warp of exam season at [Miskatonic University] and intensive Christmas shifts at [Pages]. Planned for this year, I will squeeze in finally doing the oft postponed black humour essay to give heft to the musing sector. Expect it November 28th, and expect to tickle your mind black and blue. I've hidden my behemoth of a manuscript in one of the cushions of my padded cell. The plan is to slip it out very soon and take a knife to it once more and then shop it around to more publishers. Ideally, I'd like to see this in stores for Devil's Night 2009 (October 30th), but I think the gestation period for publishing books is around 8-10 months, and I haven't landed a publisher just yet, and there's no guarantee that I'll get one in time.
But now I can free more of my time to these things since the US elections are over. I was obsessed. I got the doctor to surgically implant a slot into the back of my head so I could constantly plug myself into feeds of the latest presidential race coverage. Between learning about radicals that President-Elect Obama happened to cross the street at the same time with, to hearing Vice President-Elect Biden's wacky hijinks. From John McCain's hurtling descent down dotage lane to seeing [Spaghetti Western]'s dimwitted girlfriend Sarah Palin leave pundits arguing whether her IQ is in the double digits or single digits. It was a wild ride.The results are in, I'm satisfied.
I don't expect President Obama to bring about a vibrant coloured Utopia. That would be foolish, and even if it were remotely possible, it would be a nightmare to me. The world will always be imperfect. What I see him bringing to the world is progress. It's already been announced that his transition team is looking at ways to undo many of the imprudent policies crafted by Dubya to appeal to the Christian right. I won't agree with the moves of this upcoming administration 100%, I'm sure there will be things I will shake my head at, but that could be expected with any one, there are going to be some tough decisions to make.
I support Obama because I believe in the candidate, where in many other cases, people support a candidate because they dread the idea of their opponent winning. I mildly subscribe to that thought. John McCain, I have nothing personally against, other than that he didn't seem to have many principles. His campaign was all over the place, and I honestly don't know what all of his platform positions were because he was changing them up, as well as his tactics every day. However, I have deep hatred for Sarah Palin, reasons I've listed off before. One thing that I never mentioned that I should mention: She believes in banning books! Anyone who will ban any kind of book, whether it's Mein Kampf, The Holy Bible, or Winnie The Pooh, no book should be banned.
In the words of Ronald Reagan, there I go again...
This will be the last time for a while that I will pepper a post with political commentary. I mean, nobody expects Wolf Blitzer to rattle off about literature. But hey, I'm a junkie.
posted at 2:16 AM | Permanent Link
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
The 44th President of the United States of America is....
Barack Obama!!!
I feel 8 years of tension being lifted from my shoulders. Be safe and don't let us down, President 44.
posted at 11:40 PM | Permanent Link
Monday, November 03, 2008
And then there was one...
Tomorrow is the day I've been waiting for since last summer. Election day USA 08! Tomorrow night, chances are that I will be ecstatic if all things go well. But over the last 8 years of being dealt major disappointments, I'm not popping open any champagne bottles just yet. This phrase may be too often bandied about by the "pundits and media elite" but it really does hold true: This is one of the most important elections in recent history. Though to the pundits, the words, "until the next one" could very well be added, I genuinely mean this. If Americans decide not to vote for the candidate with the the first class intellect and the first class temperament and instead choose an anti-intellectual military brat who graduated at the bottom of his class and a frighteningly stupid, irrational and corrupt hockey mom, the states most complicit in such a travesty should be nuked.
Tomorrow I will either jump through the ceiling with joy, or blow a gasket.
Obama '08 and for good measure, Obama '12
I'm Todd S. Gallows, and I approve this message.
posted at 1:13 AM | Permanent Link
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Politically Incorrect: Part Deux
So I haven't espoused my political opinion in a while. I guess because Gallowmere is a Monocracy, there is no room for politics. Still I can't help but keep up with the political news in its neighbouring regions. Canada has an election coming up, apparently. Bland signs are all over my lawn. I don't know how they got there. They're all over the city. Roads and buildings are just made up of them. It's election day here, and I don't think I'll be casting a vote for any of the parties. I concede that I'm a total ignoramus in regards to Canadian politics, but the parties shake no earth form me in either way. The Conservatives are weak. The Liberals are a joke. And the New Democratic Party gives me nightmares of socialism.
I couldn't call myself a liberal. I mean, I'm fairly liberal on social issues. I'm all for abortions, freedom of speech, keeping the government out of people's private lives, ending the war on drugs, gay rights, fair representation in courts, legalizing prostitution, stem cell research, and separating church and state. You see, while most of those things have nothing to do with me - I don't do drugs, plan to abort fetuses, I'm not gay or bi, and I don't have any desire to get down and dirty with hookers - I'm at least big enough to realize that just because I don't subscribe to those ways of life doesn't mean I should prohibit others from that. They harm no one. And as for "killing babies", it's a very nuanced issue. are we going to start making it illegal for men to misfire into condoms and for women to menstruate?
It's hard to pigeonhole where I sit politically. I can't say I'm a liberal because I'm fiscally conservative. I'm against affirmative action and would like to do away with welfare. I know taxes are necessary, but they could at least be cut in half by eliminating unnecessary government programs which hardly work most of the time. While I'm a minarchist, I don't think government should be done away with, and I think they need be able to meddle in corporate affairs. A state ran by big business (which we're half way on our way to) would probably be less free than what western society is now while being run by big government. The only things which would be free in a Corporatocracy would be the advertisements tattooed onto our skin. In [The Obscure Opus] I take jabs at big government, amongst other things. In one part, I have a joke about a Senator proposing an oxygen tax, but I'm sure that in a Corporatocracy, they would race to that ASAP and capitalize on oxygen. First, maybe by saying it's sports oxygen with electrolytes, then they would figure out a way to have control of all oxygen and sell it in canisters in stores and/or have oxygen pumps which have to run into homes and bill people for it. In a Corporatocracy, instead of being taxed to death, we'd have to own stocks in companies which big CEOs could use to go skiing and get handjobs in Thailand.
But while I'm all for people being free to do whatever the hell they want as long as it isn't directly affecting or harming anybody else or impinging on their freedoms, when it comes to certain issues, especially law enforcement, I'm a fascist. I strongly support the death penalty and think criminals should be punished even more severely than they are now. Some prisoners, like Canada's Paul Bernardo get to live quite lavishly given the circumstances... and off of our tax dollars. If I had it my way, the worst criminals would get punishments of medieval proportions. They would get fed to pigs, drawn and quartered, given weights on both legs and forced to sit on a sharp edge, given 1000 cuts, covered in honey then sent into a room full of bees, et cetera, et cetera. And as I have mentioned in other posts, I would restrict who could or couldn't have kids, because, as neocon [Spaghetti Western] says, "If you can't feed, don't breed!"
On war, I'm a moderate. I believe sometimes war's called for, but not when a bunch of gristleheads just want to flex their cocks, as is what happened with this highly irresponsible war in Iraq. George Bush of 2000 had it right (shockingly) when he said that military force should only be used when it's in America's "national and strategic interests". That's it, plain and simple. The military should be used to defends the nation, and not just for the sake of action, and not to intervene in other countries affairs. America's going to shit, but they keep worrying about the other countries they have their thumbs in. It's like somebody whose house is going into foreclosure, roof's caving in, plumbing and power are all screwed up, has a rat infestation, whose daughter's a whore, son's a juvenile delinquent, having marital problems, but is concerned with counseling their neighbours' families and investing their money into the homes of everybody else except their own. Makes about as much sense, though of course with the American government there's the agenda of looting oil, and nation building, as well as meddling with a religious war that's been going on for centuries between Muslims and Jews.
I often identify myself as a Libertarian, but ideally, I'm a nihilist; it'd be better if nothing existed at all.
So less than 24 hours to make a decision (if I make one at all) and I have no idea where I stand. I might very well vote Conservative, or I might write in "Barack Obama" or "Ron Paul". I can't make it through Canadian news for more than a minute, and the political ads I've seen here are... cute. I've written it off. I'm not proud of this or anything. When something fails to catch my interest nothing in the world can force me to change my mind. As for America, that's another story.
I'm hooked on this shit. I can't not pay attention to American Political news and the beef of it being this Presidential race. So much has been going on. It's been an exciting time, but has taken a farcical turn ever since Senator John McCain picked Sarah Palin. What's there to know about her? She's the governor of Alaska, wife of a secessionist, is a Christian whose pastor is a crazy Kenyan who hunts witches. She enjoys shooting wolves from helicopters, and taking her little kids to shoot the heads off of wildlife. She abuses her power by firing people over personal vendettas, and bans books in small town libraries which promote views and lifestyles which don't tickle her fancy. She also doesn't read newspapers, thinks she has strong foreign policy credentials because Alaska's near to Russia, is a puppet for spouting out neoconservative views force fed to her by Schmidt and Rove, and is highly anti-intellectual. She's so anti-intellectual that she makes George W. Bush look like Socrates. This woman is a disaster.
I thought the idea of her as a choice was initially absurd, but I maybe there was something McCain knew that we didn't. Though, everyone seemed to know about Troopergate, and Juno from Juneau before he did. Nobody can dispute the fact that it was a purely cynical and political choice. He wanted a woman to snatch up bitter Hillary Clinton supporting feminazis who just wanted to see a woman in office, and to strengthen the conservative base with her "small town" values. She ignites holy wars in the pants of every doughy social conservative man in America as well as in the pants of [Spaghetti Western] in Canada. I guess she is fairly attractive for a 44 year old mother of 4 children and a retarded poster child for the pro life movement is who they would like to have whipping their pudgy asses with a crucifix while the moose loaf's in the oven. I wonder, if Hillary Clinton won the primary, and Obama supporters of African diaspora were embittered, would he have chosen Konservative Kristian Kook Alan Keyes to be his running mate?
I gave this - I'm sorry, there's no other word for her - bitch a chance as I did for most candidates of both parties this election. Her big moment was the RNC acceptance speech she gave. I anticipated that since this woman is new to the scene, she would come in humbly, make a strong case for herself and address her qualifications, paint herself as a political prodigy, introduce Americans to Alaska politics and not subscribe to partisan bullshit. I couldn't have been more wrong. She proved to be a Class A bitch. She gave a snarky speech making hurling school yard insults at "her opponent" the whole time with horrid smirk she always has plastered on, and stabbing her fingers into the air. She looked like a goddamn villain out of a Disney movie, especially with those Tina Fey glasses and her beehive hair. It was decided that people would flock to her, an unknown for berating Barack Obama, somebody who's been on the national stage for the last few years and has overcome a lot more than she has. She had so many skeletons in her closet, and she had the audacity to come out with that arrogant speech.
Fortunately team Obama-Biden are kicking ass and taking names at the moment. They couldn't have asked for the economy to be in turmoil at a better time. The gap widens in the polls, every day another state lights blue on the electoral map, and McCain looks more and more like an erratic old coot while Obama's veins run with arctic water. After Ron Paul lost badly to John McScary, it was Cool Barry's level headedness that made me first decide to really give this candidate a chance. I don't agree wholly with his views as I have said before. I agree with his views far more than I do with McCain, and now the thought of Sarah Palin going into office is enough to send a "cold chill up my spine" as lizard queen Cindy McCain once said. I mostly believe that he would be a good if not great President on his sense of discipline, levelheadedness, intelligence, and ability to find common ground.
Will Obama leave this world spic and span after (should all things go well) two terms are up? Not a chance, but I do think he can reverse the mess Bush has made, and re-earn the respect that America once had worldwide. I think he will inspire many people of all races to see that it's not such a bad thing to be smart. I think an Obama era will launch the 21st century into the direction that it was supposed to be headed. Unlike Chris Matthews, I don't get a thrill up my leg when I hear Obama speak, but my admiration of his character can't be denied.
And recently, I've noticed that some of my favourite authors are starting to jump on the Obama bandwagon as well. Daniel 'Lemony Snicket' Handler pretty much has a crush on Obama, and recently it came out that Christopher Buckley, a fellow Libertarian and the son of the late Conservative stalwart William F. Buckley has endorsed Obama. Christopher Hitchens has as well. Their opinions wouldn't sway mine either way on who I'd support, but knowing this makes me like them more, and also creates the feeling of finding out that your favourite High School English teacher is best friends with your Political Science Professor (substitutions may apply).
I see him winning, and being spectacular. All signs point that way, but I won't rest until January 21st. The Neocons can pull any kind of trick within the next 21 days. Time will tell. I'll be hoping for the best. If Obama loses to McCain, and McCain dies and leaves the country he puts first to Sarah Palin, every American who voted for them should be made into slaves for the Chinese, and the states that went to McCain should be made into giant sweatshops to pay off the their debt.
posted at 1:15 AM | Permanent Link
Monday, September 01, 2008
Thummer Thoughts
August comes to an end, and so does summer. I don't have anything significant to say other than that I plan on sending off a barrage of manuscripts to publishers in mid-October or early November. As well, I have also regained confidence in believing about 70% of people are shit. I won't bore anyone with a lengthy diatribe, I'll save that for a book. Don't mind me too much, I'm just a borderline schizoid and think people are too panicky, ignorant, inconsistent, presumptuous, shallow and irrational.
But again, not here for that. Instead I'll just ooze some of my thoughts into the thought depository. My brain pockets were getting a little too full. So I'll spill some of it here. A lot of trivial stuff.
I watched The Dark Knight which I deeply despised. After seeing the movie, I felt as if I'd soaked in somebody else's murky bathwater for over two hours. It was a very bland movie, full of no real substance, yet acted as if it had some. It had an overblown yet aimless plot. It was nothing but a lot of explosions, incongruous action sequences, stilted dialog filled with tawdry lines which serve to be cherry picked as quotes people can use on their web forum signatures. Instead of a soundtrack it had intense thumps interspersed with subtle sounds of other instruments forming picayune melodies! Batman doesn't even have a solid theme song anymore, just a stock action movie beat. With the Danny Elfman Batman theme in 1989 and 1992, you just had to hear 5 notes and you could know it was the Batman theme. With this theme song, it sounds like the silverware is spilling onto the pots and pans. The movie was dark, but had no charm to it at all, darkness without a cause. It was just bad things happening all the time, so there was never any pace. It was just pornography, exploitation. No one could ever accuse me of liking things light. I enjoy materials which disturb me and are unrelentingly dark. But this was just haphazardly directed. A pretentious mess.
I'll even go as far as to say that the Joker performance wasn't even that phenomenal. I preferred Jack Nicholson's a lot more. Heath Ledger was an up and coming actor whose movies (especially Brothers Grimm) I never cared for, but his performance was well executed. Speaking of performances, what was with Christian Bale's voice when he was Batman? It sounded like he was shitting gravel all the time. As a whole the movie as a product (and I stress the word product) was a well done effort. It was very manufactured, cold and gray. It made death look casual, but people say it packed an emotional punch. Maybe I'm missing something.
What bothers me the most about it is that I can't understand why Christopher Nolan, who by this time figures himself to be some sort of film auteur thinks the Batman movies should be hyper realistic. For fuck's sake, this is a movie about a guy parading around in a bat costume trying to thwart the plans of a goth philosopher/killer clown. Get real.
The movie was filled with so many far fetched elements and plot holes. If there was a city that chaotic, there has never been as chaotic as the ChicaGotham city in that movie. When Joker got caught, nobody could identify him. As if he's some sort of super natural entity? This guy didn't just start committing crimes out of nowhere. He would have to have a record. The police could have taken off his make up, and sent his picture around to different precincts and asylums and gotten the information. They probably could have found out that he was a homosexual cowboy. The movie rubs the viewer's face in shit for hours and then tries to show that humans are good because nobody on the boats blew each other up in Jokertes the philosopher's little sociological experiment? Then moments later squeaky clean district attorney Harvey "Half Burnt Face" Dent becomes a homicidal maniac and tries killing a kid just because his diseased looking girlfriend died. Batman who dodged running over Joker was able to kill Half Burnt Face with ease. And what was with the case they make for the Patriot Act? I could go on and on, but the movie should not be worth the energy. My opinion is in the minority. It will have zero impact on its massive box office revenue. And everybody and their mom will still jerk off over it, especially the comic geeks, even though it's nothing like the comic universe. Gotham city actually looks gothic, and not just like Chicago. And the Joker was an actual freak with white skin and green hair who had an arsenal of gag and toy themed lethal weapons, not a guy with "War paint". Comic fan boys can only say they like this movie because it's "adult" and not because it's faithful to the material. I will always prefer the two Tim Burton did, and his much maligned by comic book fan boys Batman Returns will always be at the top of my list. They were just funny and great to look at.
I know I'm pretty much alone on this one, and though my fan base is clocking in at about zero right now, professing my thoughts on this movie will probably push it in to the negatives. The only other person I've spoken to who shares a dislike for this movie is The Prince of Darkness. He quite appropriately calls it "The Dark Shite". His brother The Hell Spawn also didn't like it and rightly pointed out that the tag line "Why so serious?" should have been directed at Christopher Nolan and the crew.
The only other movie I cared to go see this summer was Tropic Thunder which was a hilarious Hollywood satire. It starred Ben Stiller as a Tom Cruise type, Jack Black as a mix between Chris Farley and Eddie Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. in blackface, and Tom Cruise in one of his funniest roles ever as a corporate asshole. I enjoyed it a whole lot. It reminded me of Hot Fuzz with its mix of action, comedy, and parody (though not Epic Movie style, thank god). I also gained a lot of respect for Robert Downey Jr., star of Iron Man (a super hero movie I enjoyed because it didn't take itself seriously at all) after catching an interview where he also had the balls to say that The Dark Knight was dark shite.
Other things to come out this summer were a few downloadable games I purchased. There was American McGee's Grimm. I played the first episode and boy... what a let down. The game offers no challenge at all. It's basically running around and "darkening" things which are within your radius. A blind two year old could do it. And it wasn't funny. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales were riotous as they were with their innocently relaying the grim details of the story. They had to fuck it up with adding a wink-wink nudge-nudge jokey tone to the thing. I played the first episode and demanded my money back from GameTap.
Next, there was Braid on Xbox Live Arcade which was a quick experience but a very refreshing and entertaining one. It's basically a platform game which superficially plays like the NES Super Mario. But as you go along you realize you can control time. First you realize it can help you get out of death, but then you find out you have to use the abilities to solve all sorts of brainwracking puzzles which involve reversing time (while other objects remain unaffected), slowing down objects within a certain circumference, and a level where your forward movements propel time forward and backward movements reverse time.It also has little notes you can read before entering levels and at the end of the game which provide profound introspective insight.
Then there was Bionic Commando:Rearmed which I had been waiting for for quite a while. It's a remake of a game I used to play on the Nintendo that came out 20 years ago. You're a soldier who can't jump, and who has to use an extending bionic arm to grapple onto walls and floors to swing across the levels. Simple and fun concept beefed up with new graphics and extra features such as 2 player co-op, death matches, bonus levels, hidden items, more weapons, and challenge rooms. They also revamped the soundtrack, and changed a few things up. My favourite feature of the original NES version was the shocking end where you find out the last boss is Adolf Hitler. The original Japanese version did indeed have you fighting a futuristic faction of the Nazis, but Nintendo in America was against featuring Nazis in games at the time, so they were renamed "The Badds" and Adolf Hitler's name was changed to "Master-D". The surprise appearance and ridiculous name made it that much funnier. Then to top it off, he calls you a "damn fool" which was pretty taboo for the time, and when you kill him, there's a graphic frame by frame animation of his head exploding. Good times.
I recommend the game to anyone who can get it. It's on Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and PC for download on things like Steam. I'm also now looking forward to their retail game sequel of it which will be in full 3D and feature state of the art graphics. I was skeptical about it before, because the producer guy behind it at first seemed like an out of touch corporate tool, but I've learned that he actually knows what he's doing and he actually gives a damn. And not that it's a selling point, but Bionic Commando will be voiced by Mike Patton. The man is a madman musical genius.
No books I'd want to read came out this summer, not too many books come out in the year that I'd want to read. The only book coming out this year I want to read is Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago. It comes out in October. Still, it doesn't mean I didn't do any summer reading. I read Boomsday by Christopher Buckley - funny, satirical, Libertarian. I read Satan Burger by Carlton Mellick III - bizarre, trashy, entertaining. I read The Trial by Franz Kafka - surreal. I tried reading The Crying of Lot 49 but discovered I don't like Thomas Pynchon and threw it in the incinerator.
The latest book I started reading is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. I took a break but I have to get back to and finish off. So far it's the best book I've read all summer. Contrary to what the title may convey, it has nothing to two with two geeks falling in love at a techie convention and having a Star Wars wedding. It's actually about a man who owns a freak show and his wife who's a geek - a circus freak who bites off chicken heads. They decide to breed a family of freaks so each time she gets pregnant, the husband concocts cocktails of drugs, radioisotopes and arsenic for her. The result is a family of children including a boy with flippers for hands and feet, a pair of Siamese twins, an albino hunchback dwarf, and a baby psychic. Page by page it has starkly dark and twisted material, more secrets are revealed, more bizarre things happen. I'm enjoying the book profoundly. I was just taking time off to focus on editing mine. I'm going to take time off of doing that again though, so I'll finish off the book before school starts next week. It reminds me a lot of the last book to really blow my mind, The Wasp Factory. Both books are "weirdly imaginative". They're both about strange families with dark secrets and sinister experimentation. And both are bizarre while being mostly grounded in reality. There are a few mildly super natural things in Geek Love, at least what I've read so far, and The Wasp Factory had supernatural elements, but they weren't actually there, and it was done to comment on people believing in superstitions. I'll finish it soon and deliver the verdict.
Sheesh, that was a long one. I should start blogging again more frequently so I can have shorter single subject posts. Would be a good idea, wouldn't it?
But until then...
See everyone in hell!
posted at 11:35 AM | Permanent Link
|
||||
|
||||
