and they want their children to hate them

Under the fluorescent lights of the Civil Court clerk’s office, Dalton Conley made his request: he wanted to change his four-year-old son’s name to Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles Jeremijenko-Conley.

At least he didn’t name him something totally ridiculous, like “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.”

In case you don’t know who Dalton Conley is, he’s the nutty sociologist who argues that men should have control over women’s uteruses.

People who want to burden their children with non-societo normative names that amount to nothing more than onanistic ego massages for the parents… really should just get a dog and leave the kid alone.

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Troy - 1/5

Synopsis:
Good: pretty people, decent choreography
Bad: everything else

What an abomination of a movie. Never have I seen such glorious source material shit upon with such a copious torrent of creamy liquid outpouring. How could someone have possibly created such offal out of the greatest story ever to arise out of Western civilization? That monumental failure, that catastrophic destruction, that should be the enduring legacy of this film.

From nearly the first scene on, the Homeric mythology is distorted and destroyed. These changes are tolerable… until the first storming of the Trojan beach by Achilles and his 50 (50?!?) Myrmidons. It was so pathetic and awful and offensive that I almost had to turn off the movie. Temple of Apollo? No massive monomachia with one of the lesser princes? Achilles sitting and greeting Hector? So they can have a expositional, poorly-delivered dialogue? The gods will surely drag the fucknut who wrote that screen from the back of their chariots for all eternity, and the producer who approved it shall be fed to the dogs.

On the plus side, the choreography isn’t bad. There’s a nice shot of an Achilles block of an arrow with a blind shield move to his back. Telegraphing that jump-stab thing, though. You know if Achilles was actually Achilles size, he wouldn’t have to jump.

This thing, this movie… it is no Iliad. No gods, no spoils, no grandeur, no pathos. Instead, it is a paint-by-numbers action piece with delusions of grandeur. Shame on all who were involved in making this unmasticated lobotomized robotron of an “epic.” Remember how Demi Moore said “no one reads it anyway” to the critics of the Scarlet Letter? I’m wondering if any of the people involved with this movie bothered to read the Iliad.

Or to quote Roger Ebert: Homer’s estate should sue. (that Ebert review is outstanding, you really should read it)

Read the rest of this entry »

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to have rug burn on your arm when you’re 32. A strange, strange thing.

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squid-flavored ice cream tastes yucky.

CMo - doing my part to keep the world informed.

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No doubt about it now, if Alito is approved, Roe is gone. There is one and only one appropriate response to Scalito by the Dems: filibuster.

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We need another Lee/Travolta/Cage fiesta, I can tell.

The woman had lost her nose, lips and chin after being savaged by a dog.

In the controversial operation, tissues, muscles, arteries and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor and attached to the patient’s lower face.

Doctors stress the woman will not look like her donor, but nor will she look like she did before the attack - instead she will have a “hybrid” face.

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Wilkerson continues his assault on the administration he used to work for. He was shocked, shocked!, when he found out these guys were lying. Also, evil.

Vice-president Dick Cheney’s burden on the Bush administration grew heavier yesterday after a former senior US state department official said he could be guilty of a war crime over the abuse of prisoners.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, singled out Mr Cheney in a wide-ranging political assault on the BBC’s Today programme.

Mr Wilkerson said that in an internal administration debate over whether to abide by the Geneva conventions in the treatment of detainees, Mr Cheney led the argument “that essentially wanted to do away with all restrictions”.

Asked whether the vice-president was guilty of a war crime, Mr Wilkerson replied: “Well, that’s an interesting question - it was certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect that it is … an international crime as well.” In the context of other remarks it appeared he was using the word “terror” to apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners.

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One of the places on the loofahnator’s enemies list - the NY Daily News - um… also carries his syndicated column.

You heard the man, boycott ‘em!

Oh yeah, O’Reilly also essentially called Rep. Murtha a Hitler sympathizer while on with Katie “superstar” Couric this morning. Don’t even get me started on Couric and her $15M/per to be a newsanchor. Grr.

Update: turns out, the NYDN dropped O’Reilly’s column, so it now appears in the NY Post. Hmm… I’m getting a feeling here about the source of enmity for the enemies… hmm…

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Today’s the last day of national novel writing month. I’d better get cracking, seeing as how my page count for the month is… zero.

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Are there any english-speaking good guys left? Canada and Australia come to mind… Singapore maybe.

Eleven police forces were today threatened with legal action if they fail to investigate allegations that UK airports are being used as secret stop-overs by CIA jets transferring terror suspects to torture camps.

The human rights group Liberty has called on the chief constables of forces from Prestwick, near Glasgow, to Bournemouth to investigate claims that the airports are facilitating kidnap and torture - which is illegal under British and European Union law.

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I would comment on it, except that it’s a meaningless puff of piffle. All public relations, no policy. All propaganda, no reality. It’s quite remarkable in that way, but otherwise unnoteworthy.

Think Progress did some heavy lifting anyway. For your enjoyment:

After two-and-a-half years and 2,110 U.S. troop fatalities, the Bush administration released what it calls a “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” (NSVI). The problem is, it’s not a new strategy for success in Iraq; it’s a public relations document. The strategy describes what has transpired in Iraq to date as a resounding success and stubbornly refuses to establish any standards for accountability. It dismisses serious problems such as the dramatic increase in bombings as “metrics that the terrorists and insurgents want the world to use.” Americans understand it’s time for a new course in Iraq. Unfortunately, this document is little more than an extended justification for a President “determined to stay his course.”
…
NO STANDARDS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
…
IGNORING KEY CHALLENGES
…
DISMISSING INCREASED VIOLENCE
…
REPLACING METRICS WITH EMPTY PHRASES
…
THE NATIONAL PAT ON THE BACK: The NSIV is less of a strategy and more of a pat on the back. Much of the 35 pages is devoted to describing how well things are going. Oddly, the strategy declares on Page 5 that “Our Strategy Is Working.” On the economic front we are told, “Our restore, reform, build, strategy is achieving results.” On the political front: “Our Isolate, Engage, and Build strategy is working.” On the security front: “Our clear, hold, and build strategy is working.” With everything going so well, the NSVI reminds us that “change is coming to the region… From Kuwait to Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt, there are stirrings of political pluralism, often for the first time in generations.”

That last part (the pat on the back) is the key purpose of this merkin of a document.

Billmon has the shorter NSVI:

* Use lots of bullet points

* Failure is not an option

* If it moves, bomb it

* Death squads

* Phased withdrawal

* Use more bullet points.

* Exploit the dead

* And don’t forget to emote

Reading from a letter written by a U.S. soldier on his lap-top computer before his death, an emotional Bush said America owes those who have died in Iraq to “take up their mantle, carry on the fight and complete their mission.”

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If you are a thinking person, you really knew that it had to happen. What I mean is, those of us who cherish freedom of speech and freedom of the the press have come to know the Bush Administration as one that shuts out ideas from the opposition while creating propoganda films which are aired as actual news stories on TV stations around the country. Since the Bush administration is happily installing western style democracy in Islamic countries, didn’t you just have to know that eventually Iraq would have a Bush-style propoganda machine in place?

Yes friends, the new U.S. colony of Iraq, now has Bush-style freedom of the press. Your tax dollars are being used to pay Iraqi newspapers to run news articles written by Army media experts and present them as if they were unbiased news accounts written by independent journalists. The U.S. military has also purchased a newspaper and taken over a commercial broadcast station which it uses to get the U.S. message out.

Interestingly, U.S. law forbids the military from planting propaganda with media outlets. That’s probably one of the things that the Bush lawyers found to be a “quaint” law. To their credit, several senior military officers are attempting to point out the hypocracy of attempting to install a democracy in Iraq while subverting the basic principles of democracy to do it.

In other news, the Bush Administration, after declaring “mission accomplished” two years ago, will present its plan for victory in Iraq today.

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Some people refer to him as “Hitch.” Richard Seymour takes him on here in The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens, the lighter side of mass murder.

Picture a necrotic, sinister, burned-out wasteland — a vast, dull mound of rubble punctuated by moments of bleak emptiness and, occasionally, smoking. Those of you whose imaginations alighted instantly on the Late Christopher Hitchens have only yourselves to blame, for I was referring to Fallujah.

Witty, heavily footnoted, oh, and it destroys that formerly talented waste of human flesh Hitchens in the process. Good times.

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Battle Royale - 5/5
Twisted, violent, full of motion, and interesting… in a unthinking action-only sort of way, but subtley thoughtful and quirky. Either it’s a retarded savant or a masked genius. Can’t decide. Kitano Takeshi (AKA “Beat” Takeshi) stars. Probably the only other actor westerners will recognize is Chiaki Kuriyama, who played Gogo in Kill Bill.

The setting is the future, and in this future, there is a law in Japan whereby one class of 9th graders every year is chosen… to be placed on a deserted island and have a survival of the fittest contest. And I mean “survival” literally. Everyone is wearing a tamperproof collar that explodes upon tampering or can be remotely detonated. The children have 3 days to find a winner and are each given a bag with a random weapon in it. There’s politics, idealism, murder, mayhem, love, pain, destruction, and all sorts of other meta commentaries. Essentially, BR is The Most Dangerous Game meets Lord of the Flies. On Steroids.

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Audition - 4/5
Not for the faint of heart. The first 4 Acts are all process. You know, where the journey is the important part, not the destination. Then… BAM that 5th Act hits and omfg, where did this come from? Ryo Ishibashi stars (he has the ideal face for a character actor, Americans may recognize him from the Ju-on remake The Grudge).

For fear of spoiling the movie, I’m not going to mention anything about the plot at all, but will rather just blabber on about whatever pops into my little head. My thoughts are like beautiful butterflies of soapy bubbles stuck against the window slowly, slowly sliding down leaving a light prismatic film trail on their way down… yeah, something like that. There are apparently some Italian movies by Dario Argento that are similar that I have to check out now. The director of Audition, Miike Takashi, also directed Ichi the Killer, which I have but was interrupted in my one viewing and have yet to go back. Ichi is far more surreal and disturbing than is Audition, but if you want to get 2/3rds of the Miike ouvre in one shot, there you go.

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