God damnit.

Guess what, I obviously forgot again.

Jesus Christ. I have no motivation for anything anymore. I'll try to post something. Not that anyone is paying attention.

I forgot about this thing again.

I keep meaning to write more here but I keep forgetting. Also, I just don't think my thoughts are really all that interesting. Still, I should at least practice writing if I want to go anytwhere with it.

Hunter S. Thompson. Wow.

I watched "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" a couple days ago, then bought and finished the book yesterday. Wow.

I want to be Hunter. His writing style is terrific, his commentary on the American Dream and 60's drug culture is scathing and he just strikes me as brilliant. He seems manic and bizarre, yet there's a real intelligence behind this. I'm profoundly jealous. This is how I'd like to write.

I want to write more about this, but my brain is currently stalled and won't rev up. Maybe I need some LSD to kickstart it.

PunkMatch.com

Because there's nothing more punk than using a dating website from the establishment to find someone in your anti-establishment niche.

I love Charlie Brooker.

Charlie Brooker is who I want to be: talented, misanthropic and hilarious.

I recently stumbled upon his BBC show Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and Newswipe on Youtube. I just finished the last episode of the first series of Newswipe, after spending the past week glued to Screenwipe. This show is precisely the kind there needs to be more of. Oh sure, some of it can be merely Charlie swearing at his television screen while they show clips of reality shows, but even then it's funny to watch. While glittering teeth and botoxed foreheads prattle on about car insurance or fashion, he raises his finger and merely states "Fuck you." Simple, yet defiant.

Those moments speak to us, to times when we watch talking heads condecend to us gibbering masses. The news filled with splashing effects, manipulated footage and useless feel-good stories to make us feel like maybe the little engine that could hadn't been bombed earlier that day by friendly fire. Charlie yells back at the screen, the clattering noise of the tv, rebuking it on televison. Yes, it's ironic, but still refreshing to see. I know I do it a few times a day.

When Charlie isn't rebuking his television, he's doing in-depth looks on how television works and how it's manipulated. We all know television plays with our heads in some way, but I can't remember seeing it deconstructed like this before. It's facinating to see the evolution of the news, for example, from simple beginnings with the paper, to the radio then to some non-descript man reading the news barely noticing the camera in his face on tv. Soon, graphics became featured in stories, to the 80's where they could use flashier but basic CG graphics to recent reality-showesque CGI extravaganzas with Anderson Cooper waving CG graphs around like exceptionally boring lightsabers.

He also welcomes guests on his show, who talk about certain shows or aspects of television. He has a philosopher on to talk about advertisements selling products as "natural". A cereal box sits in a corn field, meant to imply that somehow it's natural, and the cereal just popped from the ground like a Kellogg's brand radish. He also talks about a Colgate toothpaste ad, which posits that using their brand reduces plaque by 98%. Compared to what? Teeth that haven't been brushed since 1962? Useless statistics with no scientific basis, their credibility dissolving with even the closest scrutiny.

They make me feels as if I've been born in the endtimes. It's all over now. Commercials assume that all of us are drooling idiots looking to eat up anything with flashing lights. The media forgot how to report news, and most people don't care enough to say something about it. Not while they're stick Susan Boyles in our faces. "Wow, that thing sings well. I completely forgot about that ol' Iraqistan."

Charlie's seeming misathropy is also what I love about him. You can feel his utter disgust when he speaks of Celebrity Big Brother, The X Factor or The Jeremy Kyle Show. He's a bit like Jon Stewart over here, in that he stares incredulously at some of these shows or quotes, wondering how the hell these exist in reality. Shows like "Beat The Burglar", a bizarre exersize in how defend your home from thieves. A couple watches on a monitor as their house is broken into by a hired burglar. He ransacks the home, every room, looking for valuables. Once the shakedown of the house is finished, the couple will come inside and meet the hired burglar. They remark, detached from the situation, on how "it would be terrible if this actually happened." Well, it...did. Sure, he didin't steal anything, but your home is still trashed. Get cleaning. Another show, "Baby Mind Reader" staring Colin Fry (with a voice like Pippin from Lord of the Rings) is utterly insane. Whether you find psychics real or not means nothing, this is disgusting. He'll start randomly crying, claiming it was the baby's emotion. In one scene, he exposes the fact that a mother was a vicitm of domestic violence by swearing and yelling at her, pretending to be the baby. It's amazing this hasn't been picked up by TLC yet. It'll go great between the "Babies Everywhere Hour" and "I'm A Midget, Come Gawk At Me".

He has respect for video games, coming to their defence occasionally. You can see an Xbox 360 controller on his coffee table sometimes. He speaks with fondness about earlier games, but also modern ones. He knows what he's talking about, rather than a celebrity who consider themselves a gamer because they watched someone play Pac-Man in 1983. This is a rarity to see.

While Brooker may seem like he hates everything on television, he does have shows he enjoys. He's mentioned older documentaries like "Civilization", "The Ascent Of Man" ("like taking a bath in university juice") and "The World At War". For more recent fare, he's into HBO dramas like "Mad Men" and "Deadwood" or classics like "Doctor Who". During the last season of Screenwipe, he did most of an episode on the then-recently passed Oliver Postgate, an admired children's televison creator. Even with his cynical demeanor, he still comes across as someone who isn't a huge asshole in real life. He has a genuine concern about people in general, and utter contempt for the more patronizing people and shows on tv for how they treat the public.

Watch this from 4:20 on in this clip, a rant on "aspirational televison". It's like "Universal Chicken" from Brian Fawcett's Cambodia, becoming hyperaware of the inanity of consumer culture or in this case, the television selling the idea of the rich life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CthlAAZ3Rwo&NR=1

Charlie Brooker is what I strive to be in life. A good person with a nasty, cynical edge towards patronizing assholes.

Juno

I wanted to like this movie.

Honest to blog, I wanted to. You see, Diablo Cody (the writer of the movie) doesn't really know what subtlety is, or at least, in the first half of the movie. The dialog has been the most controversial aspect of the movie, some love it and some hate it.

Latter, for me.

Okay, maybe not hate per se. There's just something off about it. Nobody is that clever all the time, or at least, at 16. She seems to have a huge compendium of knowledge and yet remains strangely ignorant of even the most basic pregnancy terms which I found really confounding. Juno as a character just seemed like she was made up by a focus group. "Are pipes quirky? How about hamburger phones? What bands to quirky people listen to?" I thought Jennifer Garner's character was interesting though. She wasn't a caricature.

Also, the music. I got sick of it. The "I-love-you-indie-acoustic" songs. It was cute the first couple times, then it got a little grating, then it got to "I'm going to kill acoustic guitars. All of them." I mean, I'm into indie music but Christ, this was the most stereotypical indie you can find. There are in fact indie songs that have instruments that aren't just acoustic guitar. Who'd a' thunk it?

I give it a 5. It's not terrible, but it ain't all that good either.

Go watch Ghost World instead. Much better quirky girl movie.

I'll write something later.

Forgot about this. Fuck. I should really get back on the saddle here. I'll write something soon.

I know you will wait with bated breath on the edge of your swivel computer chairs.