Hot Buttered Death |
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 Occupying valuable Internet real-estate that could've been better used on other things since February 2002. Where do I find this rubbish? Generally from the following sources of various repute: 1. Local heroes
The Age 2. Strange news from other stars
All About George Archives 
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Saturday, July 06, 2002
Janis Ian takes on the RIAA over music downloading. A lot of interesting things said in here. Sample: As to artists being "marginalized out of our business", the only people being marginalized out are the employees of our Enron-minded record companies, who are being fired in droves because the higher-ups are incompetent.If you were still labouring under the assumption that the music industry is trying to protect the interests of artists, this may make you think otherwise. Confederate scientist came this close to inventing the atom bomb during the American Civil War. Uh-huh. I know it's the Weekly World News and it's a load of horseshit, but I can't resist picking them up on this: “He was also a brilliant researcher and scientist—in league with Albert Einstein. This made for a horrifying combination that almost resulted in the fiery deaths of thousands of innocent people.”Does the author mean in the same league as Einstein, or actually in league with him in the same way you could say "in league with Satan"? Cos if the latter, that's really pretty good, since Einstein would've been working on this alleged nuke 15 years before he was actually born... Whales steal food from the mouths of 800 million underfed children. Apparently this is Japan's latest excuse for continuing to hunt whales. Bob Dylan to act again. With Mickey Rourke. In "Masked and Anonymous," currently filming in L.A., Dylan, 61, plays Jack Fate, an aging rock star who is released from prison to play one last concert in an attempt to save the world. Rourke plays a post-apocalyptic president of the United States and Dylan's childhood friend.I know we shouldn't prejudge things, but does this sound like one of the worst movie ideas of all time or what? And someone involved with Seinfeld is involved? Pass me the sickbag now! Internet news service barred from linking to Danish newspaper sites. Copenhagen's lower bailiff's court ruled Friday that Newsbooster.com was in direct competition with the newspapers and that the links it provided to specific news articles damaged the value of the newspapers' advertisements.Oh well, those Danish papers are presumably going to have to be content with only being read inside Denmark instead of potentially around the world. Wonder how their advertisers will react to the idea that their ads now might not be seen in places like Australia or the US... Give Brendan O'Neill credit, he's obviously not afraid of taking unpopular positions. Read this article first—Pakistani girl basically sentenced by a court to be packraped—which has been covered in numerous other places, and then O'Neill's commentary on it, in which he wonders why people were even discussing it: When gruesome incidents like this are paraded before us, with little comment or insight, they become little more than a form of pornography, a way for us to get off on how much more civilised we are than those in the third world. [...] The story of the Pakistani girl tells us nothing. Let's leave it alone.I think I can see his point, but at the same time I think he's treading dangerous ground. Even if it's probably a one-off as he thinks, does that mean we shouldn't still find it appalling? More interesting is his response to other folks who found his position a bit untenable: Have you ever noticed how some webloggers revert to childish insults and slang talk when taking up people they disagree with? Protein Wisdom, a weblog that looks like it is run by some form of ex-hippy, disagreed with my piece on the Pakistani gang rape by writing: 'Ugh. Just ugh.' No explanation, no argument, just ugh.What was that you were saying there about reverting to childish insults? Florida councillor wants statue of crucified woman taken down. While Ellie Schneiderman, founder and executive director of ArtSouth, says it's a beautiful female figure, Homestead Councilman Nick Sincore says it's obscene and irreverent.Well it's not like Jesus was the only person the Romans ever nailed to a couple of planks now, is it? Remember those other two characters who got crucified with him? Ever seen Spartacus? Anyway, isn't there something slightly obscene about a religion which makes the image of a man suffering one of the most ghastly deaths imaginable so central to it in the first place? I think it's A.N. Wilson who says how weird the Christian fascination with the figure of Christ on the cross is, and he's got a point... Robert Mugabe not particularly fond of homosexuals. President Mugabe is well known for his hatred of gays and lesbians, and has described them as being worse than "pigs and dogs". He said the British Government was made up of "gay gangsters".Clearly the practice of calling a person gay in order to vilify them isn't a uniquely Western one. No word on what uncle Bob plans to do with all the people he doesn't like once he's decided they're gay. Mr Mugabe may use the list to rid his cabinet of gays. Officials said he became furious when allegations of homosexuality were raised against the former president Canaan Banana. Mr Banana fled the country before being charged and convicted in 1998 of sodomising an aide.Well, with a name like that, no wonder if people thought he was a bit fruity... Sex change operation draws quite a crowd. Eeeh. I don't think I'd want to watch some being operated on at all, but I'd want to watch a sex change least of all. Friday, July 05, 2002
Prozac by mail. Someone sent free boxes of once-a-week Prozac to south Florida depression patients—people who don't take regular Prozac and hadn't even discussed trying the new version with their doctors.Free Prozac samples? What are they complaining about? If someone wanted to send me a freebie like that, I don't know that I'd turn it down... Man who stabbed George Harrison released from hospital. Said the doctor, "Well, we don't think he's going to do any more harm to Mr Harrison, may as well let him go"... Author Graham Swift on the filming of his book Last Orders. I'm reading that now prepatory to seeing the film when it comes out next week. Good book, good-looking film. "Warriors of prayer" protecting the US. LeGette is one of more than 2,000 End-Time Handmaidens and Servants who call themselves "warriors of prayer." The ministry, founded in 1974 by missionary Gwen Shaw, is holding its 27th annual conference in downtown Washington, D.C., this week.Thanks, ladies, but I think even John Hagelin (see yesterday) is more likely to do the job than you are... Paul Wright on "The Enemy". Proving that biliously paranoid hate rhetoric is not necessarily the exclusive province of certain American right-wing pundits and religious figures. Osama bin Laden may not be dead, but his career is. Even if he were still alive physically, Bin Laden is dead politically. He may live some more years in the hide-outs of the tribal zone in Pakistan just as some Nazi fugitives survived in the remote areas of Argentina and Paraguay. Gunman goes mad at LAX, traps hundreds of Australians. Well of course. Who cares about the two people he killed when there were hundreds of Australians there at the time. Thursday, July 04, 2002
US scientist claims Transcendtal Meditation can stop terrorism. "We have an important message for the people of the Middle East," said Dr. John Hagelin, a quantum physicist and author, and recipient of the prestigious Kilby Award for scientific research.Personally I think flooding the entirely Middle Eastern water supply with Valium is more likely to do the trick. I should've put the word "scientist" up above in quote marks. Are you surprised to learn John Hagelin runs an institute called the Maharishi University of Management? And the Men in Black sequel gets a pretty thorough drubbing from Noy Thrupkaew and David Edelstein. The latter is particularly unimpressed: "If it isn't the worst sequel ever made, it's only because it has too much competition: Impersonal and frenetic, it's a landmark Hollywood disgrace." Yikes. I was never that crash-hot on the original to begin with, and I don't have high hopes now for its successor. David Icke returns to TV. Oh God. I've asked this before and I'll ask it again: why is it that if I said half the things David Icke has said I'd be locked up as a paranoid schizophrenic, and yet he gets to roam freely and spread his delusions to willing audiences? Hello to Goddezz Bidch in appreciation for the link, which I just discovered. (Yes, I do occasional vanity searches for the blog. Got a problem with that?) 350 million year old fossil identified as oldest known land animal. Oddly, the fossil itself was discovered as long ago as 1971, but thought to be that of a fish. Apparently at some point in the last decade someone realised it actually had legs on it. Capalert on the Men In Black sequel: Men in Black II contains nudity rarely seen even in R-rated features. The R-rated Van Wilder is the only one of most of 600 movies I've seen that presents what MIB-II does.The Capalert bloke has never seen Prospero's Books or The Pillow Book, I take it... Wellington astronomer claims contacting aliens could be "really dangerous". I think aliens are less likely to be pissed off at us just trying to say hello than by our decades of transmissions of bad radio and TV. They say all those signals get flung into space, so who's to say there's not some alien spacecraft out there receiving transmissions of Dog's Head Bay and plotting the destruction of a species capable of creating such horror... Zambian faith-healer being held "prisoner" by the Vatican. "How long can a period of penitence last? And what has my brother done wrong?" Mrs Chilumbu asked.Well yes, loving thy enemy and the forgiveness of sins and judging not lest ye be judged and all of that are in the manual for Christianity somewhere. Sadly, as history and indeed current events demonstrate, theory and practice don't always equate... RIAA finally to pursue individual file traders... maybe. While executives are putting distance between themselves and the story, they haven't denied that those specific plans are being developed. Today, those same executives who stumbled through early litigation now have four years of experience and public opinion polls to help them craft a better strategy to nab illicit swappers.They still don't get it. They must not have noticed the vilification that attended Metallica's threatened targeting of individual Napster users a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, even if they do go ahead with it, they won't be hurt by the action. So international sales are down 5%. The industry's still shifting 95% of what it used to. What's the difference, really, a few less lines of cocaine for the execs at Sony? In my opinion, that sadly only proves one thing: all the rhetoric surrounding the RIAA's anti-downloading mania (and I'd include this) isn't having any effect. Enough people don't give a shit about it, so the industry comes out unharmed. For every person who might refuse to ever buy a CD from a major label again, there are another 19 out there happy to keep the industry afloat. That's the damnable thing, the industry is actually not being hurt enough by all the pissing and moaning and rhetoric against it.. Queen's Millennium Beacon in England being used as a washing line by travelling crusties. Bruno Peek, who organised the beacon lighting, told the Daily Express he is shocked at its current use.A reminder of what, the time when people were needlessly shit-scared about the Y2K bug destroying civilisation as we know it? What ultimately was important about the millennium, beyond the fact that it meant we no longer began writing the year with a 1? What good did it actually do? Tim Lemire on "cannibal culture". We are, all of us, culturally ignorant to some degree and in some respect, whether the literacy refers to the kind endorsed by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., or to the pop culture kind. Not only are there works we do not know, we often do not know that the works that we do know often borrow, were inspired by, pay homage to, reference, appropriate or downright steal from works that we may or may not know. [...]I know exactly what he means. There's a shitload of stuff out there that I know I don't know enough about. And much as I try to excuse myself by saying "well I'm only 27, I've got time to learn" or claiming I just don't have access to some of the world's great masterpieces of art, or whatever, there comes a point when that stops being an excuse. Still, I do what I can to remedy the problem... Tim Blair on Cheryl Kernot. "I readily acknowledge the provocative nature of my comments," is as close as we get to an apology. Imagine if John Howard tried that line with Lowitja O'Donoghue: "I readily acknowledge the provocative nature of the white man's brutal invasion of your traditional lands." Somehow I don't think O'Donoghue would be impressed.The article seems to have been written before the revelation of the affair with Gareth Evans, but Tim makes up for that in his blog, calling it "[a] ghoulish, horrifying romance". And for once he agrees with something said by the SMH's Margo Kingston. Stepson of Saddam Hussein arrested in the US. "We had information that Mr. Saffi was coming here for flight training,'' said Jim Goldman, Immigration & Naturalization Service assistant director for investigations. "He was arrested without incident on an immigration violation charge.''Apart from his stepdad, at least. The renewal of interest in Jack Kerouac and the Beats. I saw a "new" Kerouac book the other day called Orpheus Emerged, apparently Kerouac wrote it even before The Town and the City. That's as much as I know about it, though, cos it was in hardback and I prefer collecting paperbacks. If anyone reading this knows any more about it, I'll be interested to hear from them. Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Not that many insect species in the world after all. Only four to six million instead of thirty million. Anti-Euro video provokes outrage in Europe. Dressed in a Nazi uniform, and raising his arm in the salute of the Third Reich, the comic actor Rik Mayall uses Hitler's language to declare: "Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Euro!" - one people, one realm, one euro - a reference to the Nazi rallying cry "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer".Oh dear. I have vague fears about the Euro myself—surely if all of Europe goes on one currency, and if the Euro performs disastrously, all of Europe goes down with it—but this doesn't strike me as an exactly ideal way of protesting it. Steve Fossett completes his balloon voyage at last. Problem is, at the moment he can't find anywhere to set down. Apparently, though, he's going to try and touch down on the Nullarbor Plain sometime tomorrow. Australia to decriminalise witchcraft. Oddly, the law criminalising it was enacted as recently as 1966. Wonder what the status of witchcraft was before that. But religious leaders and academics are worried the legal change will send the wrong message to vulnerable teenagers.Yes, just like certain members of the Catholic church... The return of the Japanese tofu monster. Think the Japanese fondness for tentacle porn is weird? This is weirder. Accusations of witchcraft surround the Bill Cosby eviction case. The artist formerly known as Cliff Huxtable evicted a tenant from one of his properties on the grounds she was practising some form of witchcraft. She in turn is accusing Bill of hiring some character as a "spiritual advisor" and claiming said advisor was doing the same thing she was accused of. Meanwhile, if you believe the current affairs programs on TV here, Australia is overrun with tenants who basically destroy their properties and landlords who have no way of getting rid of them. Maybe they need Bill's spiritual advisor... Despite the awards, not everyone likes the new NIDA building in Kensington. Unfortunately for the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA), the winner last week of the state's top prize for public design, the Sulman Award, the public - at least in some quarters - has been less than forthcoming with the glowing tributes.I go past it on the bus pretty much every day going into the city. Looks pretty damn ugly from where I sit. John Steinbeck's myth of the Okies. Having never read The Grapes of Wrath (saw the film years ago, don't remember much of it), nor having never learned much about the dustbowl period of the US in the 1930s, I didn't know it wasn't exactly an accurate rendition of the time. Interesting piece. Kids put off music by being forced to learn to play the recorder at school. Eh. If anything was going to put me off music at school, it would've been the music department's general practice, not just because of the recorder. Shepparton introduces vomit tax. The tax increases of up to 11% will be used to pay for cleaning up the mess left by drunks who are often sick in the street.That's right. Blame the publicans instead. If they didn't sell the drunks beer, they wouldn't be getting pissed and wouldn't be chundering in the street in the first place! Italian arts student sits exam in water-filled dustbin to give his teachers "a dadaist experience". Two fellow students pushed Andrea Musati, 20, from Pisogne, with his bin into the room where he was to be questioned by his teachers. Not that you probably care, but I'm off on a bit of a social call. Don't know if I'll be back tonight, but hopefully it won't be too long-lasting. No more "Rule Britannia" at the Last Night of the Proms. Leonard Slatkin, the American chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, said they were only reflecting the public's own ambivalence towards the popular anthem.Yes, and I'll bet "The Star-Spangled Banner" contains no references to war or anything like that either. And regardless of the song's merits, have any of the people demanding its removal seen a Proms special at all? Have they seen how swept up people get by it? Cheryl Kernot's alleged big secret: her and Gareth Evans were gettin' it on. Former Australian Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot had a five-year affair with former foreign minister Gareth Evans, Channel Nine said tonight.Well, only in the sense that some folks may now say "hmm, THAT's why she did it". Personally I don't think it changes a damn thing; whatever the reason(s) may have been, she still ratted on the Democrats, and she still got nowhere with Labor... New OzBlog™. And that Coulter-vs-Couric slanging match I cited earlier got picked up by Don Arthur today too (hello to Don and cheers for the link). Slowly but surely I am extending my tentacles of reference through the blogosphere! New series of Doctor Who in 2003? The BBC has hired one of the scriptwriters from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to work on a new version of Doctor Who.I fear this for reasons I can't explain. I'm sure I have no reason to fear it, and I'll most likely watch it for old times sake... but I fear it even so. Tuesday, July 02, 2002
It is now illegal to piss or shit on the streets of San Francisco. In other words, it apparently wasn't before. Yikes. But if you have a "verified medical condition", it's OK to still do it. Yikes. Jason Kottke got a weird email... and so did I. In fact, I got this selfsame piece of gibberish just this morning. A sample: I don't really care if anything I say has been said before, if it was portrayed in movies, in books, or in the lyrics of some useless song. With 6 billion people covering the globe at any given time, thousands and thousands of years of written literature, probability dictates almost any combination of words has occurred numerous times. Yet there is clear evidence there was no action, so those words, just like the people who spoke them, must have been just more fakes. I am forced to use this language (also created by the fakes) because there is no alternative, so everything I write here could be misunderstood to make me sound like one of them, but it will be the action that I take and the dedication that will separate me from them.I've had odd emails in the past, but this about takes the cake. Anyway, the whole thing leads to this website in the end. I've yet to decide whether it's merely someone's idea of a peculiar and not very funny joke, or whether it's serious, in which case I can only feel faintly sorry for the person(s) responsible that they clearly have nothing better to do. Unnecessary remake fever continues to grip Hollywood. Stephan Elliott is to direct a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Good God. I can't believe Stephan Elliott is still making movies after his experiences on Eye of the Beholder (which were rather graphically caught in that documentary about the film Killing Priscilla)... though having just checked his IMDB entry, I see he's got three films listed after that one, none of which I've heard of at all. One is listed as still in production and IMDB has next to no info on the other two, which makes me wonder if they've even been released or, for that matter, made in the first place. Noel Gallagher says old musicians produce crap. At least he admits his own songwriting skills are due to go downhill as well, though I daresay many people would say they've long since done that. Oasis lost me with "All Around The World", and haven't really recovered me since then. The Oscars move back to February for ratings purposes. Eh. I think if the producers of the awards stripped it back and didn't give it such a thick covering of sentimental slop, and actually made it worth watching, that'd help more than anything. As it is, I'm glad I live in Australia where the event is being played out during the afternoon so I don't have to watch the telecast or wait for the papers the next day for the results. The obituary writers conference. I didn't know such a thing existed, but for some reason I'm not surprised. What golden age of television? I wouldn't argue that these programmes constituted a 'Golden Age of television', but then I've never heard anybody use that phrase in earnest. Instead, people invoke it sarcastically and insist that there never was such a thing, the point usually being to justify the rubbish that is broadcast today on the grounds that there has always been rubbish on TV. That might be true, but it is no reason to keep churning it out. TV as judge and executioner, or how a BBC documentary on pedophiles drove one of its subjects to suicide. No great loss, I daresay, but even so... Serial pest Peter Hore one of the Woomera refugee liberators. Given Hore's previous antics, I don't know whether or not this surprises me. Tim Blair asks why isn't he in jail or hospital. I ask why isn't he dead. I still say there will come a time when he will make too big a public cunt of himself and someone will kill him before he can do it again. George Michael's new music video causing a fuss. Shoot The Dog, out this week, depicts the singer dressed in a leopard-print thong, trying to approach the Prime Minister's wife.I'm surprised Yiorgos didn't depict himself going after Tony or Dubya rather than Cherie. That would've been more like the thing. Asian-Americans urged to fly flags for Independence Day. Last month, the 80-20 Initiative—a political action committee which works to boost the clout of Asian-Americans—e-mailed about 430,000 people urging them to "erase our 'foreigners' image" by creating flag displays at prominent Asian-American locations and hanging flags at homes and businesses.Yes, and waving a stripey piece of cloth will really help. OK, I'm being overly cynical, but I'm just not convinced that flags have that much of a transforming effect, whatever their symbolic power may be. A happy ending for a bike-less chook hypnotist. This is quite a bizarre tale, but heartwarming nonetheless. Man attempts to rob gun store at knifepoint. Not surprisingly, the proprietor gave the moron a demonstration of his wares, right in the chest. This man really likes that last Trail Of Dead album. But it's hard to disagree with him. A fucking mighty record it is. Steven Berkoff deported from USA. Seems all you have to do is overstay your visa by 24 hours to get kicked out when you try to return five years later. Monday, July 01, 2002
New book claims most books suck. Morrison's Nobel Prize in literature, for instance, doesn't impress Myers, who relates an incident in which Oprah Winfrey called Morrison "to say she had had to puzzle repeatedly over many of the latter's sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was, ‘That, my dear, is called reading.' Sorry, my dear Toni," Myers declares, "but it's actually called bad writing." Capalert takes on Mr Deeds. Well, apparently it has frozen dead body beating, masochism with violence, attempted vehicular manslaughter, dead body humor, beating of foot with fireplace poker and enjoying it, admissions of sexual immorality with glee, vulgar dance, full rear male nudity, sadomasochism talk, and acts of immorality, which I don't recall being in the original version. The original version also lacked Adam Sandler, which is as good a reason to assume the original is better than the remake. Not that I've seen the remake—it's only just hit the US, which means it's still a few months away from release here—but somehow I can't imagine it being anything other than entirely unnecessary. Michelle Arrow reckons there aren't enough artistic types protesting the Howard government. I kind of agree with her, but just getting the bleeding hearts and the artists to make their stand isn't enough. Indeed, I don't know how much would be enough to sway Howard and co. Sadly, once they get their black little hearts set on something, they don't seem inclined to consider other options... and when you get fuckwits doing this, that only helps cement Howard et al. People like the below-mentioned T. Blair take one look, blow these idiots up as representative of the entire liberal Left, and use them to damn the entire lot to hell. Much as I habitually gravitate leftwards, it has to be said they don't always do themselves many favours... Tim's also raided his archives for his collected insults. I must find an excuse to use the phrase "carping suckweasel" either here or in conversation at some point. Tim Blair on Cheryl Kernot. Cheryl's got a new book out so I daresay it'll provoke a lot more of this sort of commentary. As for me, all I can say is I stopped taking her seriously after she switched to Labor. She'd built her career with the Democrats who'd built themselves up on the promise of "Keeping The Bastards Honest" (that was their slogan for a fair while), only to eventually turn tail and side with the aforementioned bastards. And look where it got her, too, though to be sure I don't know that she'd have done much better had she not switched sides. Still, if she hadn't, maybe the current dispute over leadership in the Democrats would've been better handled than it current is... The movie mistake-spotters. I'm faintly in awe of these people, especially the real pedants who can pick apart the minor details. Admittedly I spotted a few myself while watching From Hell—did no one tell the Hughes brothers the pre-frontal lobotomy wasn't invented until 1938?—but normally I don't even pick up on plot holes or continuity lapses, so people who can pick them sometimes astonish me. Aboriginal director wishes white Australian critics would be honest about Aboriginal art. "In Australia, you tend to receive the paternal, 'Isn't that nice', or from the bleeding-heart liberals, 'That was fantastic','' he says. "We have to enter into and engage in debate about the quality of the work, rather than its mere existence.''I'm all for it. I have never gone in for the idea that we should be obliged to praise, or even be interested in, work by a particular person or minority group simply because they are that person or minority group. The work either has authority and value on its own, or it doesn't. Lindsay Tanner: Channel 9 buying too many sporting programs. A shame he didn't have the balls to come out and say TV shows too much sport generally. Do we need five free to air channels all running some sport or other at the same time? Couldn't one of them at least play something different? Modern art really is a lot of shit. "The Manzoni was a very important purchase for an extremely small amount of money: nobody can deny that," a spokeswoman for the gallery said. "He was an incredibly important international artist. What he was doing with this work was looking at a lot of issues that are pertinent to 20th-century art, like authorship and the production of art. It was a seminal work."I'm glad she didn't mean that seminal bit literally. It's a forty year old can of shit, people. The only issues it raises are to do with the possible mental state of people who would pay thousands of pounds for it. Sunday, June 30, 2002
Currently listening to: 21 Singles 1984-1998, The Jesus and Mary Chain. Does exactly what it says on the tin, being a rather fantastic compilation of some strangely ageless music. Hearing "Snakedriver" again takes me back to 1993 when it first came out... I was in Scotland at the time, usually stranded upstairs in my Gran's house with her ancient one-speaker Grundig radio with all the European stations marked on the dial, tuned into Radio One waiting for "Snakedriver" to come on the radio, which it thankfully did on a more or less daily basis. I just about lived for that song at that time. Sounds every bit as good now as it did then. Anyway, this compilation handy collects that and the 20 other singles they released in their decade and a half of existence, from the early feedback jollies of "Upside Down" to the brass-flavoured "I Love Rock n Roll". Let that be my music recommendation for the day.  OK, so it's a cheap shot... This is a poster from the exhibit linked to below, just updated by me with Dubya's mug replacing Nixon's. When I can think of a good bit of text to go down below, I'll add it. Suggestions are welcome. Calls for me to quit while I'm ahead will be thoroughly ignored. Children die after being left in hot car. What makes this so horrendous is the mother's behaviour: The mother initially told investigators she had been abducted from the parking lot of the salon, raped, and then returned to her car, which was in the lot.Apparently when she came back and found the kids dead, she came up with the abduction story to try and save herself. I don't think the police chief will get murder one for her like he wants, but she's going to get hit bad over this one way or the other. Two Koreas clash at sea. I could be flippant and say this is how South Korea reacted after losing the third-place playoff in the World Cup last night, but I'll refrain from that. Political posters from the US, Cuba and Vietnam, 1965-75. Not exactly John Heartfield standard, but interesting. Jerry Springer moving to South Africa. "This show will be different, because I don't understand South African culture," said Springer. "When I ask a question, I truly won't know the answer."The implication being that he does understand US culture. Don't know about you, but I'm scared. Mayor forced to apologise to street full of residents accused of racism. The apology to Gaddesden Crescent in Watford was made after the council's racial harassment officer sent a personal letter to the 114 households following a complaint from a Polish and French pensioner couple about an alleged assault from white teenagers throwing stones, kicking balls and damaging their flowers. The officer, Jay Mistry, has been suspended and the council has launched an inquiry into its procedures.Evidently the man thinks being a harrassment officer involves harrassing people? The Guardian's Philip K. Dick quiz. My results: You scored 8 out of a possible 10Not bad, given that I've actually only read one actual book by Dick (The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch)... Gerard Jones argues that violent media is good for kids. I'm not going to argue that violent entertainment is harmless. I think it has helped inspire some people to real-life violence. I am going to argue that it's helped hundreds of people for every one it's hurt, and that it can help far more if we learn to use it well. I am going to argue that our fear of "youth violence" isn't well-founded on reality, and that the fear can do more harm than the reality. We act as though our highest priority is to prevent our children from growing up into murderous thugs—but modern kids are far more likely to grow up too passive, too distrustful of themselves, too easily manipulated.I don't know just how much I agree with his notion that violent media can be useful, but I certainly don't agree with the more common idea he tries to debunk about it being harmful. I do think it can have a bad influence, but its effects are vastly overstated, possibly because most people who enjoy violent media are actually sane people; if violent media were that powerful, the world would have gone to hell in a handbasket a lot faster than it currently is... Interview with Isabelle Huppert. I was surprised to see The Piano Teacher, her latest film, got an R rating here. Not that I knew anything about the film, but for some reason I'd assumed it was a bit more restrained than some of Michael Haneke's other films. If the description in the article is any indication, though, I don't think I could've been more wrong. |