World Dumbination - Stupidity Ad Infinininitum

Sunday, October 26, 2003

What do you call 450 naked women in one room.....?

It's Art baby....



The women crossed their arms to keep warm in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal early Sunday as they prepared to pose for Spencer Tunick's latest human art installation. All 450 of them were nude.
The women, all volunteers, arrived at about 3 a.m. Sunday, stripped off their clothes and composed their bodies into sculptural shapes and formations meant to imitate streets, buildings and cityscapes. The building had been closed to the public during the shoot.


"I wanted to bring the most beautiful people into the most beautiful building," he said Sunday inside the Grand Central concourse.


Tunick took photographs from a stairway in the concourse. He shouted instructions through a megaphone, telling the women to form triangles and square with their bodies on the floor.


"I love his art and I think he's creating an amazing thing — something different, something fresh," said Anna Springer, 30, a real estate executive.


Tunick, a New York-based artist, has gained an international reputation for his arrangements of nude art installations involving hundreds of people in cities around the world. He's also been arrested several times in New York for previous projects.


For his latest, he said, he first sought permission to use the New York Public Library and the Museum of Natural History but was rebuffed by both.


Tunick's past nude shoots in New York have sometimes provoked controversy.


In January 1996, two of his nude models were arrested atop of a Manhattan snowdrift, posed beneath an ice-cream parlor sign that advertised "Frozen Fantasies."


On New Year's Eve 1994, Tunick and a model were arrested when she posed nude on top of an 8-foot-high simulated Christmas tree ornament at Rockefeller Center.


Charges were dismissed in both cases.


"In the past, the New York administration considered the body to be a crime, or pornographic," Tunick said Sunday. "I hope this administration considers the vulnerability of the body."


The current installation is part of the artist's "Naked World," in which he has been traveling the world, hoping to gather more than 35,000 people to pose.

The world hates me pts 3-5

Ok, so as an add on

3) Because of the power cut, my alarm clock was reset, thus leading to me oversleep by an hr and a half. Thus leading to me missing my bus and losing money.

4) I'd decided that with all this "bad luck" I'd been having, if there was such a thing as karma or whatever, that I was in line for some "good luck."
There's a twisted logic in that having so much bad luck could only mean that I was in line for some good luck, surely?
So, to play karma at it's own game I went out and bought a lottery ticket in preperation for my good luck streak.
And 10 minutes later when I put my hand in my pocket, it had gone.
My phone was still in there, so obviously not a pickpocket.

It was at this point that I decided that if fate was being a cunt, those numbers would come up and a tramp would have my £14million....

The numbers didn't come up, so I guessed that by that same twisted logic, my "bad luck" run was over.
If I was having bad luck then those numbers would have come up.
But they didn't.
So it didn't matter that I lost the ticket.

So everything was square.
Until today when

5) I dropped my 10 month old digital camcorder, breaking part of the lens off.

Though I might put that down to me being a twat and leave it at that....

Kill Bill Vol.1

Amazing.
Brilliant.
Stupendous.

Kill Bill Vol.1 comes complete with the Phil Thomas seal of approval.

This film was the greatest comedy I have ever seen in my life.
It may not have had Barbara Windsor in it, but Carry on Assassin, aka Kill BIll, more than made up for it with rough women doing stupid things.

What's that?

It's not a comedy?
It's supposed to be taken seriously?

Not even black comedy?

Hmm... let's rethink this then...

Kill Bill, The 4th film from Quentin Tarantino - Yes, that's right the 4th, a fact that has to be stressed just in case anyone on the planet hasn't heard of him before so he can add another couple of strokes to his already seemingly huge self obsessed ego, was even more of an excuse to live up to all those childhood fantasies of killing people than his first 3 films. And I never thought I'd actually say that.

And hey, because having the film shown out of sequence worked so well in 1 of my other 3 films that I made before making Kill Bill, the 4th film from Quentin Tarantino, let's just throw it in here as well, even though it doesn't serve any real purpose.

Let's see how unrealistic we can make the fight scenes. Let's see how much blood we can show spurting.
Hell, let's make sections of the film in black and white to "pay homage" to Seven Samurai.
Why don't we even make one fight scene in the pitch black so the audience can't tell it's a stunt double and not actually Uma Thurman.

And there's another 2 and half hours?????
Is there really any need?
Really?

Fucking hell....

I mean, there were some good concepts, and I suppose I'll be told that the point of the violence was to make it over the top and that there were scenes of intended "ironic" humour, but to me it just came across as one massive ego puff.

The one saving grace of this film was the animated section.
I only wish that it could have carried on as an animation rather than me having to see Lucy Liu as a Yakuza boss...

All that ranted though, I imagine I'll go see Vol.2...

Saturday, October 25, 2003

The world hates me pts 1-2

Okay, I've never been one to believe in karma or luck, but I'm starting to get scared....

1) No sooner had I written my rant about hating the world last night, that one of my pc software packages that I NEED to get any work done, somehow corrupted despite nothing having been changed on my pc.
I uninstalled it, reinstalled it. No difference

So I then went to reformat my whole C drive to sort it out. When...

2) The entire block had a power cut.

Bollox to everything.

Friday, October 24, 2003

I hate this city/country/world pts 1-3

1) It's that time of the year again, already teenage twats are lighting fireworks and throwing them out the window of dbl decker buses. During the day. In broad daylight.

2) The other night a group of about 7 teenage males "attempted to mug me" for cigarettes with the phrase "Oi mate, gis a cig or we'll kick yer head in."
When I pointed out I didn't smoke and therefore had no cigarettes on me, I got "We'll let ya go this time then, yer lucky."
So, my wallet bursting with money and my new mobile weren't good enough, yet a single cigarette would have been? Words escape me...

3) I was returning home from an afternoon at the cinema (Kill Bill, review to come) and as I walked I decided to kick through the autumn leaves lining the pavement (which makes a change from the puke that normally does) when I kicked something that wasn't quite leaves. Or even stationary. The squeaking noise kinda told me as much.
What crawls over my foot, but a dirty great big rat.
Now, I know people in this country have a tendancy to exaggerate the size of rodents, but I swear (Hmm, they tend to say that too) that it's body was the size of my foot (8 1/2 - 9 UK, yes I have small feet) and it's tail about the same.
Suffice to say I wasn't impressed.

Fuck knows

Okay, it's like 6am, I've been awake for 3 hrs after falling asleep almost face first into a chocolate gateaux in front of the tv at about 9pm.

I'll rewind a bit.

I'm pissed off.
I'm having an exceptionally shitty day today. Well, being as it's technically Friday now, yesterday.
And for anyone that's been following my online prescence for a while, note that it falls on the 23rd of the month....

Nothing specifically is wrong, but nothings right.

I'm just at the point where I'm not quite being lazy, but my enthusiasm for everything has disappeared.
Nothing I'm doing is turning out right, and I'm high in self loathing.

And I'm sure this is coming out as a cry for attention/compliments, but fuck it, it's almost 6am, I'm alone and wittering and this is as good a place as any to do it.

Monday, October 20, 2003

Nagging thoughts

Ok, so last night I cooked dinner as usual, went and ate it and basically carried on as per...

A few hours later I just had this nagging feeling that I'd left the oven on.

So, one quick "Nah, I couldn't be that stupid." later, and it was dismissed from my head.

This morning.... do I really even need to finish the story? :|

A few updates

There's another animation added to the page. It's from about a year ago, so it's nowt special.

Also, if you've checked out the gallery lately, you'll notice that one of the thumbs has, err, changed. Nowt to worry about, just teaching someone about linking to images that aren't theirs ;)

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Cocktail time

1 shot premium Russian Turkish Delight Vodka
1 shot premium Russian Cola Vodka
1 shot premium Russian BubbleGum Vodka
1/2 can Red Bull energy drink.

I call it The Arseholer.

Or at least I think I did... funnilly enough I'm not sure anymore....

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Finding Nemo

Managed to catch this yesterday, and despite my stance on Disney (They're the epitimy of everything I hate, this rose coloured, everything has a happy ending and every animation is a a hand drawn talking animal that loves everyone) I always check out their PIxar films (Bugs Life, Toy Story, Monsters Inc), if only for a total geek perspective over enjoyment factor.

Monsters Inc. was quite annoying for my girlfriend as I sat there and dissected all the animation and layers, breaking it down into skeletons and skins in my mind...

While I didn't think the animation in Nemo was as good as Monsters Inc, and the plot seemed to be a rehash of Toy Story, it was still quite an entertaining yarn, and probably worth seeing just for the 150 year old turtle saying "dude."

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Good News For McDonalds?

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12815981,00.html

RARE COW IS A SIXY BEAST


Monks in Cambodia have been knocked for six by an unusual present - a cow with two extra legs.

The farmer who donated the bovine rarity feared her extra set of pins would bring him, bad luck.


Two-month-old Cham Leck, which means "Strange" in the Khmer language, is being cared for by monks at the pagoda near the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

As well as her standard four legs, Cham has two extras hanging from her neck.

Some locals in the heavily superstitious country have been treating the calf with some caution.

One said: "She looks so calm and peaceful that after a while you forget she has six legs.

"Then you raise your head and see these two extra hooves on the end of these spindly legs coming out of her neck."


--

Amazing....

Monday, October 13, 2003

We apologise for the delay in regular service...


England 0 - 0 Turkey

England qualify.

More drinks.

Oh yes.

Friday, October 10, 2003

Cabin Fever

Let's get something straight from the start.

I'm fucking pissed off with all the fucking bullshit coming out of Hollywood at the moment.
I'm fucking pissed off with handing over my hard earned cash to sit and watch drivel.
I'm fucking pissed off with reviewers who give shit films good reviews.
I'm fucking pissed off with well edited trailers that make a fucking shite film seem decent.
And most of all, I'm fucking pissed off with writers that come up with a semi-decent plotline, and are on the verge of creating a really good film, and then go and spoil it by throwing in fucking unbelievably shit comedy sequences.

Everything from Final Destination to Jeepers Creepers to this.

Bollocks to it all.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Swirly Things

I've just finished a new painting entitled "Swirly Things"

It's uploaded to the gallery(as with all of the paintings the pics are pretty low-res at the moment and colours don't look quite right, so apologies), but for the lazy amongst us all....

Monday, October 06, 2003

Guess who's back...

ITV tonight sees the return of The Frank Skinner Show.

Wa-fucking-hey!

Guests tonight: Jordan and Blue.

Erm... okay....
Still, hopefully he'll rip them to shreds.... should prove amusing. Fuck listening to the song at the end though.

Spam of the day

Just something that caught my eye and made me chuckle...

--
From :
"Kimberly Morgan" < kimberlymorgan309@canada.com >

Subject : Eliminate insane Debt

--

If fucking only.....

That monday feeling....

Quick trip down to HMV today produced a few goodies...

blur's new single Good Song, on CD and DVD.

I'm a fucking huge blur fan, as you've either read or guessed, so their singles are always a must. The addition of a dvd with videos and animatics is always a welcome bonus in my line of business, and as always some cracking b-sides.

Also out today from React, the company behind the massive selling Bonkers cd series, in association with Hixxy and Raver Baby is Hardcore Till I Die, the first in a new series or UK Hardcore based compilations.
Highlights of the cd are new rmx's of Praga Khan's Injected With A Poison which is a fucking class rework of the old classic, and recent anthem You're Shining by Breeze & Styles.

Part of the appeal of the compilation is the 2nd unmixed cd, always useful for cd-jockeys, featuring classics from the team behind the Raver Baby stable. My own personal favourite on the CD, Euphony's Space Invader.

On the horizon from React and Nukleuz is a hard dance compilation mixed by Styles & Breeze, with one cd Upfront Hardcore, and one of Hard House and Trance.

Also out today is Simpsons Season 3 on DVD. Haven't picked this up yet, as I ordered it from Play to save a tenner, so it should be here in a few days.

Friday sees the release of Matrix Reloaded, and despite the shit reviews/reactions from some, I really enjoyed it, more than the first one in some ways, so that's on order to.

Derren Brown's Russian Roulette

Well, having been a fan of his Channel 4 show, I was quite interested to watch this, despite all of the bad press about it.

To me, it seemed that this was less irresponsible than a lot of shows / films shown on TV, so couldn't see what the fuss was about.

If you didn't see it, the concept was that Derren Brown, a man called by some a magician, by others as a psychologist selected one person from thousands of applicants to load 5 blank bullets and 1 live round into a gun without showing Brown, which he would then use to fire 5 shots into his head and survive.

To find this one person, he went through psychological and analytical mind games with the applicants to see which ones he could click with mentally. Through this analysis, he was able to learn how these people worked and how to read them.

He eventually wittled them down to the one person, who did the deed.

Brown obviously survived, though he did fuck up judging one of the blanks to be a live round. This however seemed to me to be planned to create tension. He did correctly guess that the last one he fired would be the live round, which seems to me convienient for television and tension.

It was an interesting show, if only for the contestants reactions, and seeing how easily they could be manipulated.
It was also nice to see Brown make mistakes a few times, as it's never really shown on his TV show.

All in all, not a bad viewing, even though it did drag a bit at the start and you just wanted him to get on with the shooting.

Friday, October 03, 2003

Q, I salute you....

An article in The Sun today caught my eye.

The article in question was about the 2003 Q Awards and was basically moaning about the lack of awards for Coldplay and The Darkness.

Well, you know what I say... 2 fingers to you Victoria Newton.

You've all read my feelings on The Darkness, and as to Coldplay.... fuck that.

People are always on about how Radiohead make music to slit your wrists to, which I've never found myself.
If anything I find Coldplay to be music that you switch on whilst driving, and then just let go of the wheel and gradually drive off the road ala Fight Club. It's just that fucking unintersting monotomous droan that they have in every single song. Their first album sounded just the same as the second.
I mean, I like a handful of singles, but they're nothing fucking special, God knows how they've done as well as they have.

So well done to Q magazine, and congratulations to blur and Radiohead.

Underworld

Finally got to see this last night, and to the contrary of most critics I really enjoyed it.

The plot wasn't the most original, but it was entertaining, and to me that's what counts.
Since The Matrix every film released has been compared to it, yet I'm damn sure people were wearing black leather/pvc costumes in films waaaaaaaay before that(Batman off the top of my head). And surely the whole point of the fight/action scenes in Matrix was that they were homages to films of the past, and Eastern meeting Western.

To put in a comparison to other recent vampire films, for me personally it beat Blade 2 hands down, but still didn't top the first one.

There were things that pissed me off about the film though, Hollywood's insistance on bringing a "Romeo & Juliet" plotline into every fucking story.... that's got boring now. Face it.
Surely there could have been better reasons for the war?

And finally, the one thing that's stopped me from having to pick up the DVD when released....

The fucking ending....
Not knowing you've just had your head sliced in half? Not being able to see it, or feel it?

Fucking hell... talk about graduate of the "Commando" school of film, all Beckinsale needed was a cheesey one-liner.

Thursday, October 02, 2003

Paradigm: Segue To An Interlude

Recently released from Image Comics comes the trade paperback of the first 4 issues of this amazing series, and I cannot urge people enough to buy it.

It's avaliable at speciality comic stores now, and through bookstores soon.

Amazon UK are expecting stock soon, and strangely enough there's a review from a certain person from Wolverhampton.....

--
Throw in a smidgen of Invisibles, a dab of Strangehaven, a spoonful of Jinx.
Season with the pacing of Fight Club, the grittiness of The Wicker Man, the mystery of Memento and the tone of Donnie Darko.
Throw in pop culture references to everything from Doctor Who to Woody Allen, from Friends and V to GI Joe’s.
Turn up the heat to the maximum, stir and distort into one attractive looking package.

Then forget about it.
Paradigm is better than the combined result - it’s all this and more.

The painfully realistic dialogue and characterization of twenty-first century relationships, the analysis of the TV dinner generation, the exploration of cause and effect, of fate and destiny and of choosing a path for yourself.
Writer Matthew Cashel weaves a compelling tale of the citizens of Bogsdale, and all they have to deal with in a tale of sinister agendas, misdirection and mystery, where even the smallest detail is important.

All this is shown through Jeremy Haun’s absolutely stunning photorealistic artwork and eye for detail, conveying and exploring pure emotion in every panel.

This, is sequential art at its finest.

In this the opening chapter the creators give us no doubt that they know exactly where the story is heading, but they’re holding onto the cards for now. A big picture slowly unravels in the most compelling manner, that’ll have you frantically waiting for the next part.

Packed with extra behind the scenes sketches, a guide to the characters, and pin-up’s this book is well worth the price, and well worth a purchase.
--

As you can tell, I simply can't recommend this book enough, go buy it!!!!

Good Music.... Bad Music....

If you've been watching any of the music channels in the UK recently you'll have seen these 2 videos.

Firstly, REM's Bad Day.

Now while the song's not anything amazing, it's typical REM and flows along well, and you've got the melody and words from the very first listen.
The brilliant thing about it is the video.
Some really nice imagery and effects, as well as synchronisation.
I can really see Michael Stipe as a newsreader, it just works.

Now...

For every ying there has to be a yang.

Gay Boyfriend by The Hazzards.

Words cannot describe how dire this song really is.

Well, except maybe the lyrics......

"I don't care that you are queer, 'cause I'll never be lonely when you are near."
"I like cigarettes and that's no drag, but you'll always be my favourite fag."


Class on a stick....

Ok, so I was wrong...

The Darkness failed to reach #1.

Ahh well.... maybe they'll be gone a bit sooner then, eh?

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Gallery Section

The new Gallery section is now active, and has had pictures of my 23rd birthday bash added to it, and yes I can see how stupid and drunk I look in them....

No, not a mirage...

I'm still alive.
I'm now sober.
I'll be updating shortly.

:)