Old Personal: April 2004 Archives

I feel the need to explain to him, perhaps on the off chance that he sees this, or not, whatever.

What happens when you have no future is that you come, literally, to live in the past. You see, he, perhaps you, don't/can't understand this, certain fuckwit doesn't understand it, but it's true.

And your reaction, after a while, is to think to yourself, that this is not what you want to do, that there is nothing noble or transcendent about confronting that aspect of horror, of concieving of the world around you as an attic.

There are some people who simply do not want to talk to you (ie: me) and for all that, I think I'd rather have an empty attic.

You see, even though my third chapter is meant to lead up to a descent into hell, perhaps there's a reason it's not written yet.

That said, wouldn't you rather go back to Tekong?

Tell you what, let's go and watch Elephant together and then you'll understand better.

I'm trying to stave off watching yet another episode of Sports Night, largely due to the fact that I can't stop, and one day there will be no more.

And also, I'm here to remind myself that I should write about how Sorkin's reliance on rock to express jubilation and exuberance - happy things - is a lot more convincing with sports than it is with politics. With politics it comes off as being - I want to say smug and exclusive - self-congratulatory, perhaps indulgent.

Part of me thinks the way he handles love is the way most people of a certain kind handle it, though obviously he does it with a breathtaking deftness in a way that is eloquent and moving. And there are times when I think those people are hideous.

Did anyone else notice that the Simpson's had a rather extended reference to the Economist? What's that about? It was in the one that just aired in the US, I think 15x18.

I'm missing being in the US right now. Largely because I've actually been watching most of the TV I download with the ads cut out, since people do that as a service, and also to reduce file size. I downloaded however, an episode of Conan, and while it's dated 22nd of April, it's an older show. Regardless, I'm watching a Zelnorm ad now and it's rather gratifying. What was also cool was watching Jewel do an ad for Loreal, and if I'm not wrong, having her music in the background.

Good times.

Sports Night is absolutely breathtaking. Sure there are episodes that aren't quite as pleasing or as lyrical, but there's an inescapable (I don't use this word often) verve about the show.

I don't like sports, I don't watch sports, which is why the tagline as quoted by IMDB is pretty cool: "It's about sports. The same way Charlie's Angels was about law enforcement."

There are also significant reasons why Aaron Sorkin should choose to work so often with Joshua Malina, and within a couple of episodes this comes into clear focus, he's absolutely brilliant. I must say though, that the women in the series are exceptional, who would have guessed Natalie used to be in a cheesy rip-off of Quantum Leap (Sliders). And as the title of this post suggests, Felicity Huffman is officially my new favorite actress, for a while at least.

I want to write a glowing entry on Sports Night and Aaron Sorkin, but I really can't muster up the will to do much more than link you to the TV Tome page and the DVD that's on sale, and tell you that some friendly fellow is posting it on Suprnova.org.

Very much in the same way as people are doing for Dead Like Me. Now I'm not saying that DLM is the best series, but I do really like "A. Cook", and once Bryan Fuller got done with the considerably stiffer early episodes, and esp. once Laura Harris comes on, the series really picks up. But yes, penchant for the character of the slacker girl, and a recurrent theme of family.

I can't seem to sleep. So let's tell you what's going on. I got my debit Mastercard today, which is fun, making my life in this place complete (aside from the fuck-you glasses). Apparently you should remember to notice the words in bold on the instruction slip that tell you to use your ATM card to activate your debit card. Anyway now I won't have to carry my ATM card any more and I can stop carrying around my HSBC cards (they sent me another debit card, my issue no. is now 7...)

I've applied for a job writing about games for this place called GameAxis, which I think is a subsidiary of HardwareZone. Sounds like an ideal situation for me, but we'll see how it goes, Louis has learned how not to hold his breath. But honestly I don't think I can be bothered to try for SPH till after these guys blow me off...

I've worked my way up to doing 3 rounds round the convenient circuit near here, which takes me a nice round 30 mins. If I keep it up I really should get new shoes. I should also get more CDR, an 80 pin IDE cable, buy some M&S shirts, and perhaps more pairs of socks. Shorts I think I'm doing okay with so far.

And yes, Overnet is doing exceedingly well, with my downstream being consistently about 90-100, which is pretty amazing. And as tends to happen, it just got around to completing a whole bunch of things that had been languishing for a while, so my queue is starting to see 300...

And the ficus election episode of The Awful Truth has somewhat renewed my idea of Michael Moore. Not to mention that Louis Theroux meeting the Hamiltons was quite a bit of a hoot if I should say so myself.

I suppose again that it doesn't matter how flawed Enterprise is, it doesn't matter how mediocre it is, there are just moments when it is simply sufficient. Part of me thinks of it as the uglier twin of Firefly, since they debuted at the same time. I mean I didn't have to watch beyond the teaser to just sense that this could turn out to be a good one - perhaps more moving that I'd give it credit for, maybe less.

And it's not that it evokes particular memories, it's more likely that it triggers some subconscious response that recalls without recalling. You can read one of my previous entries on Enterprise here.

I'd like to think that my cryptic titles would be at some point an interesting study or at least a point of consideration.

Tim Minear is a clever, clever man. Part of me is just convinced that he out-Joss-es Joss Whedon. He's the reason Out of Gas is the high water mark of Firefly, and why I've just watched the second episode (actually 11th) of Wonderfalls again with a certain kind of wry, loving relish. For all Joss' talk about space and imbuing, Tim Minear is the one whose handling of it is most deft, most "organic".

And so it's done. I now have socks and shorts, so that the world may tremble. I've also bought film fest tickets, after staving off inquiries by su-lin as to whether I had actually bought them yesterday as I had said I would. For better or worse, some of the seats are couples' seats, but I'm sure we can handle that.

Uh, so what's that?

The fuck you table.

The what?

The fuck you table.

Huh?

Fuck you.

And so I went to get my new table leg and to have my chair fixed, and was happier.

It's sort of happy making, and quite calming, rearranging the stuff in the room. My secret plan, which might actually come to fruition tomorrow, involves rug for the floor and probably table for me to work at. Ask, and IKEA will provide.

Oh, and I now have tumblers, ones where you can actually pour a whole can of coke (diet vanilla) into.

I'm probably better off not using the external keyboard in all this, my right arm is feeling marginally more comfortable this way. But thankfully the table I'm looking at will actually be able to have adjustable height, so that I can lower everything to the appropriate level.

It's nice having Angel Season 4 pour into my lap, and "Spin the Bottle" is a rather very good episode, restores some of my faith that Joss does certain things fantastically.

Must remember I should buy film fest tickets some time soon, though probably won't get the chance tomorrow.

It's not an anxiety by any means, but it is something I wonder about, that my physiology has really changed after. It's just a sense of your body being different, not to mention the short term memory loss.

So you see, when you're making fun of it in the way you make fun of mechanical (or electronic) reproductions, it is a private thing, away from the intrusion of society. So you're making fun about your own, non-present, anxieties. When people who live in a place where we have the end of satire talk about it, it becomes what kettles of fish become.

So no, how would that be personal?

I've entirely forgotten that it was the Alias pilot when we have Jack Bristow telling the guy from Shindig that it really is like asking your neighbours whether you can have a loud party.

Mean spirited.

This was a couple of days ago, but just to say, Borders Singapore makes fuck-off stupid plastic bags.

Went to buy tickets for Hellboy, remarkably few pre-sales, though I suspect that Winston and I will be sitting just in front of the Hellboy Fanboy Collective who got the entire row behind us. I'm hoping this means that I did not, in fact, get seats too far to the rear of the cinema. And that dead centre on the seating chart really is dead centre in the cinema.

Overnet has been behaving itself remarkably well since I changed ports, I suspect the cable company's trying to limit usage of the default ed2k port. And I'm no longer getting the same annoying firewall messages.

I actually should be listening to "Painted from Memory" now.

It's just so typical that the reason why they didn't cut Irreversible is more reprehensible than if they had cut it.

Spartan is good, but did they have to use a hacksaw? I can only imagine what they would do if jesus was spelled as fuck in aramaic. But to a certain extent, I would say that Spartan does for the political thriller what the Wire did for crime drama. It was good. I'll get the DVD, pity I won't want to watch it in the cinemas here again.

So I'm not the only one to think of pornography.

I'm sorry, but just the idea of Peishan and her nice spanky new Bible thumping, snuff film watching fuck-buddy was just too tempting to pass up. I apologise. I should have had more faith. And by that I mean Eliza Dushku.

Being funny makes up for a multitude of sins, which, if you've watched Firefly enough times, you understand. Wonderfalls is pretty funny. Lesbian porn :).

I am now officially a bit baffled by why Fox fucked with the series run order. It was a great episode, if only for "destroy her". There really was nothing to be gained by putting those episodes first other than to pump up the concept, which to be honest is exactly what they didn't want to do if they put this as the follow up to the pilot.

It's about the family. Not about the shop.

I can't remember if Kristeva is the one that talks about this, but there is the assertion that the process of pornography is to create metonomy - to reduce the thing itself to one of it's functions or appendages. Hence, they talk about how in sexual pornography, the woman is reduced to the vagina, or in "Not I", where the woman is reduced to a virtual vagina.

So an aspect is substituted for the thing itself. Affective piety is offensive.

I'd like to say (in this case) that I don't watch pornography, but that's patently untrue in at least one (if not more) definitions (colloquial or otherwise) of the word, even though I think the statement itself is pretty accurate. I'd like to say that well, I watch porn, but I don't watch snuff films - which is true, but not quite accurate.

Hitler-Cartman is endlessly amusing.

I'm altogether too happy about the fact that I now have claritine - or actually, a form of generic loratadine. Tufty.

Oh, and that christian rock episode of south park is funny beyond words.

I haven't laughed this hard in hours.

So... West Wing concept episodes... It's probably easier to criticise because it wasn't quite fantastic, but the gesture again is that of "we've had 4 seasons of Sorkin, and that can never be reclaimed, so lets go get dialectical on everyone's asses".

Perhaps it's because I've been watching Chris Marker documentaries (which I was trying to tell Cari about) but I had high hopes for the episode at the beginning. The immediate reaction at the end was of "not too bad", and yet 5 mins after, now, here, things are rather more like puddles of piss (ie fluid). The way the episode resolved, not even polemically, stating accusations and then putting the bow around at the end, demeaned the enterprise.

This is the reason we stopped watching the west wing after the first season, because it became insufferable at a certain point for the soft core of it's politics and the ejaculation of it's glow. What's more, the collusion of the diegetic documentary maker was all the more cloying for the looping sensationalism. Granted I came back to the earlier episodes later and couldn't find it, but I find it now, and something tells me it's different.

The digital look was fun, the press staff was fun, the use of sets was fun.

You get the feeling that the meandering of the earlier seasons served the broader aesthetic purpose, that resolution is constantly deferred, that like the trope of nation building, there is always constantly more work to be done. Now when things wrap up like candy wrappers, the twisting at the ends leaves your fingers sticky like cookies when you eat me.

It's all the more infuriating that the documentary is meant to have gestated till after the end of everything, the end of the second term. I'd never wish any series cancellation, but I wonder if I'm missing something.

I want a muffin.

I'm sorry I ever doubted how moving the West Wing could be despite everything. It's a pity that I didn't get to see the budget storyline before the later episodes. Everything really just makes Mary Louise Parker's lusciousness all the more central, all the more pregnant.

And I thought Overnet was starting to seem overrated.

Now this is what I mean and this is why I get pissed off. I don't like John Kerry enough to forgive him his demagoguery. Howard Dean is doing the right thing by his party, but he is the victim of his own sincerity.

People of integrity should be able to stand up and say what is right even when it isn't popular, and even when Lou Dobbs and the Trade Police are vershnickt. Kerry isn't stupid, Kerry is educated, and he should be standing up for smart not for ball tickling. Who would have thought that anyone would get to accuse Bush of being on the smart side of the fence?

It does make sense to send jobs overseas. I'll reference the economist to you again so you get that it is my newspaper of choice. The amount of jobs lost overseas are a tiny fraction of the workforce. There isn't enough of it to make up too significant a proportion of cyclical unemployment. Jobs are lost and gained as bad companies die out and new companies are formed. Good companies are good because they make money, would you have it otherwise?

People's jobs are more secure when the company they work for remains focused on being economically viable, which means it needs to make profit. If that means sending jobs overseas, they should be applauded with both hands. Going on a witchhunt against people who are doing exactly what they should is irrational - tell the leopard not to have spots.

More jobs overseas means what? More, and richer, people to sell your goods to. Expensive goods that only you can produce. Expensive goods that require highly paid staff to produce. And in the mean time, have you noticed that it now requires less people to do what you used to do before? A jobless recovery where production increases means a leap in productivity, which means you're getting better at what you do, which means in the future you can create even more than before - prosperity that is.

It's like Old Norse notions of honour, only this time, instead of reductive recycling of finite commodity (which seems increasingly unlikely), you have an ever expanding cycle of wealth and renewal.

And people wonder why I dismiss the Passion as affective fallacy.

People who criticise Bush on spending money on Iraq are the very isolationists that claim Bush to be so. You help yourself by helping others - if anyone should know that giving to others does not mean taking away from your own, it should be the Democrats.

Non-paltry comments can go to the forum - though for once I wonder if I shouldn't enable comments to the post. If you're not a fuckwit I'll reference you by editing this post.