Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Pomegranates

I usually buy a pomegranate in the fall, then I dry it out over the winter on a little altar and ritually burn it in the spring along with stuff I don't want anymore--old journals, used up tarot decks, sad letters, sacrificed tobacco that's all dried out, etc. I bought one the other day thinking I would do the same as usual, but after reading Chris' post I decided to eat it instead.

Eating a pomegranate is sort of like smoking a cigar--there's no half-assing it, and you'll almost certainly get sick of it before you're done. The seeds look cool, like little rubies (or maybe big rubies, since I'd be happy if I had a real ruby that size), but the hard parts get stuck in your teeth and can ball up in your mouth into a big, bitter, um, ball. It tastes pretty good, but the rind tastes like shit and dries your mouth out, and it gets all over your hands, then onto the seeds and onto your tongue. While eating the second half, I just took all the seeds off the rind at once and put them into a bowl. That worked better, although I still got pomegranate juice all over my hoodie. I'll cut some arm holes in a garbage bag next time.

RATING: 78%

(Image from playgirlmag.files.wordpress.com.)

Pomegranate Phone

The Pomegranate has everything: web browser, MP3 player, voice translator, electric razor, harmonica, coffee maker, and a whole lot more. I strongly recommend checking out this link--even the music is great! I'm going to buy, like, 5 of them once I get back to Nova Scotia, just as soon as I get that rusty old stove out of my yard.

RATING: 88%

(Image from www.pomegranatephone.com.)

Pomegranate Tootise Pop

Sometime long ago Americans began to refine their palate and the lame "foodie" explosion began. Now, there are a ton of people with blogs (lame) writing about food (losers) and "discovering" things folks (like you and me) knew long before. I mostly blame these assholes (possibly you) for the creation of things like the pomegranate tootsie pop. Really, pomegranate? Maybe I should place the blame on America's new reluctance to anything unhealthy (pomegranate is a superfruit, afterall). Despite my skepticism, the pomegranate tootsie pop is actually good. Sure it doesn't actually taste like pomegranate, but does watermelon candy ever taste like a watermelon? No, because if it did then I'd just eat the fruit instead. Plus, tootsie pops have that chocolate center or whatever.

RATING: 70%

Mars

Mars is the planet most frequently named most likely to invade Earth. Well, I guess that's probably reasonable if a bunch of red dust and lifeless rocks develop space travel, complex though, and emotions. The best movie about Mars ever made is "RocketMan" starring Harland Williams. Mars has two potato shaped moons but they are so lame because they can't even look like a regular ball. Get with it! Mars is the most likely planet for colonization, but that is like saying Friday the 13th Part IV was the most likely film in that series to have won an Oscar. In conclusion Mars is ok I guess, but if I had to pick I'd still live on Earth since I do and it's great.

RATING: 61%

The New USS Enterprise

(Nerd Alert) I think it looks like it was drawn for a Mad Magazine parody of Star Trek. It looks buck toothed. I mean, the saucer and nacelles are fine, but the "neck" part where the saucer connects to the secondary hull is way too far back. It seems all smushed. Oh well, I guess we'll see how it works in motion.

RATING: 56%

(For fear of ruining their exclusive first look due to our massive audience, I will point out that I got this picture from Entertainment Weekly)

Wilhelmina Murray

As anyone who read the 20 bajillion comments I left on Glenn's recent post can probably guess, I'm totally in love with Alan Moore's Wilhelmina Murray. I think she's an even better study of the kind of radically feminine strength that Moore tries to showcase in Promethea, precisely because she's physically and emotionally vulnerable and can't just turn bullets into moths or teleport into other dimensions.

I believe that if we succeed at getting homo sapiens settled down and happy in the 21st Century without wiping ourselves off the map, it'll probably be because we come to better recognize in ourselves exactly the kind of qualities Moore has embodied in this character. Especially soul.

RATING: 98%--"She'd be cuter if she was a redhead," said the man-ape.

(Image from farm4.static.flickr.com.)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Ideological Critique: The Enthusiasms of Political Reduction

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses the word "nigger" over 200 times. The Merchant of Venice depicts the humiliation and ruin of a Jewish villain at the hands of a Christian majority; Othello, a negro who strangles his perfectly innocent wife. The famous first line of Pride and Prejudice can be read as a blatant formula for prostitution, if one so chooses. The women of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight inspire and manipulate their men, but don't engage in any decapitating contests themselves.

It's pretty easy to point one's finger at a work of art, especially challenging art, and denounce it as ideologically unsavory in some way. Anyone can (re)apply this or that political formula (e.g. the "Woman in the Refrigerator" or any of the other 3 million ways to reduce a story to who's-doing-what-to-whom) and bandy about the -isms of the day in a denunciatory fashion. There are people with tenure right now who have made entire careers out of doing nothing but. It's a lot harder, however, to make a sincere effort to participate in an artist's world view, to try to give him or her the benefit of the doubt, to make an honest and uncompromising critique that nonetheless adds value to the world rather than merely taking it away.

I'm talking about imaginative generosity, not apologia. And I'm not always great at taking my own advice--I talk more lazy, cheap, snide, cynical shit than a lot of people I know. I'm just saying I'd rather watch Othello than Gothika.

RATING: 8%

(Image from mincer.en.alibaba.com.)

Symphony No. 8 by Gustav Mahler

I'm not that familiar with the works of Mahler, but his 8th symphony is pretty great. It's very pre-Schoenberg early 20th century, with not so much of a melody as a repeating cycle of chord motifs played for emotional impact. I suppose you could call it the classical music equivalent to the impressionist painters - Debussy's work also fits into this category. The popular nickname for this symphony is the "Symphony of a Thousand," because in its original instrumentation it takes 850 choral singers and around 200 symphony members to perform. Damn, Gina! Talk about excess. It's pretty great like I mentioned so if you've got an hour and a half to spare why don't you get some culture in you said the post colonial westerner.

RATING: 78%

Monday, November 10, 2008

Earth

Earth is a place you might know by looking around right now. It is the only planet in the solar system to have produced three Knight Rider television series, sentient life, and pornography. If you want to go to CiCi's Pizza and eat all the pizza you can until you puke for $4.99, then Earth is the planet for you. If you want to immediately die of asphyxiation and extreme atmospheric conditions, then try any one of the other seven planets why don't you. Other things Earth has produced that no other planet we know of can get credit for: poetry, love, the Chick-Fil-A advertising campaign "Eat Mor Chikin," hate, witty bumper stickers, jock straps, and Darkhawk.

RATING: 100%

Friends by The Beach Boys

This is a Beach Boys album a lot of people like to shit on because it sounds like every other rock album in the 60's, but I like this album because there's some great songs that break the mold of a typical Beach Boys album. I mean, back then everyone was doing crazy shit and practicing transcendental meditation, so what did you expect? This is the most chill Beach Boys album, and I think it's great. Particularly "Busy Doin' Nothin'" is probably one of the best Beach Boys songs ever.

RATING: 81%

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1

This is comic book storytelling at its finest. What Alan Moore does in this book is essentially create a Justice League of the late 19th century, assembling a team of famous literary characters from the time to fight a criminal threat to London. The team is lead by Mina Harker from Dracula, and features Allan Quartermain from King Solomon's Mines, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and Captain Nemo. The literary allusions are numerous, and Kevin O'Neill's art is like nothing else out there. There's a direct sequel to this volume starring the same cast, but this is the sort of idea that could take place in any decade in any place and still be wildly entertaining. Pick this up if you like comics. Ha, just kidding, I know you won't read this you elitists.

RATING: 90%

"Confessions of a Shopaholic" Trailer

For some reason, no matter what kind of movie I go to see, this trailer runs before all of them. I've seen it about five times now, and it just looks so dated. The Shopaholic books were published during the height of Sex and the City, and now, a glittery movie full of New York women obsessing over shoes just seems so five years ago. And besides being outdated, it's annoying as fuck -- it's a mere two and a half minutes that manages to fit as many brand names as it does women stumbling into embarrassing physical gaffes, and, on top of that, a full six eardrum-piercing girly screams. I can guarantee the whole film won't be half as good as this infamous video. Does anyone really need to see another movie where a charmingly clumsy girl earns her career stripes by rising in the ranks at a magazine? People don't even read magazines anymore! By the time this shit is released on DVD, magazines will only exist in The Museum of Sad Extinct Print Media.

Review: 14%
PS - Way to heat up my leftovers, Gawker!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Tahitian Victory Poncho

"Ah, Tahiti. The lush island whose carefree natives the painter Paul Gaughain used as icons of primitive bliss. The serene culture which Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered evidence that humans had been 'noble savages,' peaceful and benign, before their corruption by civilization. Unfortunately, as the anthropologist Lawrence Keeley has noted, Rousseau relied for this conclusion on reports of Tahiti that had omitted relevant parts of its history. For example: the custom in which a victorious warrior would "pound his vanquished foe's corpse flat with his heavy war club, cut a slit through the well-crushed victim and don him as a trophy poncho"" (Robert Wright, Nonzero, italics added).

This may be the most badass thing I've heard in my entire life.

RATING: Off the motherfucking chart.

(Image from www.oceansbridge.com.)

Mercury

Mercury (Hg) is a very useful element (liquid metal) that helps products like thermometers and thermostats work properly. It's also in mascara and dental fillings, used as a laxative/diuretic and even a treatment for syphilis. A very long time ago mercury chloride was even prescribed to help fight depression. Mercury is just a wonderfully versatile element that is very good for you. It's also probably the most delicious element you'll ever eat, but don't eat too much tuna or swordfish, kids. Feel free to go ahead and play with it using your hands as much as you want too! Hooray for neurologically damaged children!

RATING: 92%

Venus

The planet Venus and the goddess Venus have one thing in common: they're both hot. That is, if you land a space probe made of almost any metal on either one it will melt within about ten minutes because their surface temperature is around 460 degrees Celsius. Venus is about the same size as Earth, but its atmosphere is incredibly poisonous and dense, so don't go planning those vacations yet. If Venus and Earth got into a fight, Earth might win because it is bigger, but Venus probably has a better shot since it is all poison and gross.

RATING: 53%

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Mercury

Some bloggers think Mercury is the worst planet, but he's definitely one of the coolest gods. He's the god of communication, but also of exchange and profit--two jobs that might look unrelated until you consider that a free market is basically a big price computer, and that the "invisible hand" of the market described by Adam Smith is actually an invisible brain (I guess this isn't so counterintuitive in the age of the Internet). English words like market, merchant, commerce (and thus the m in "dot com"), mercenary and mercy are all cognate with Mercury.

In Greek mythology, Hermes (Mercury's Greek incarnation) stole Apollo's cattle, and only agreed to give them back on the condition that Apollo would exchange his caduceus (the winged staff entwined with snakes that you see on hospitals, ambulances, etc.) for Hermes' lyre (the symbol of poetry). So even though Apollo is the god of poetry and poets (*ahem*), he actually has Hermes/Mercury to thank for it.

It's human nature to hate our creditors.

RATING: 100%

(Image from www.antinopolis.org. Read Frederick Turner's book Shakespeare's 21st Century Economics for a deeper discussion of markets, myth, meaning and morality.)

Crimes And Misdemeanors

#44 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

I just saw this a couple of weeks ago, but it single handedly replaced Annie Hall on my list. I mean, I love Annie Hall, but this movie is so depressing and wonderful. I love the way the two main stories, that of a rich man planning on murdering his mistress and that of a poor documentary filmmaker trying to woo a woman, hover around each other, briefly brushing occasionally. I haven't seen Match Point, which all the critics say is his best, but this is easily my favorite Woody Allen movie. I would also like to say that I hope Woody Allen puts himself in another one of his movies before he dies. Since he makes about 10 a year, that shouldn't be too difficult.

RATING: 92%

Se7en

#45 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Maybe about 60 or 70 of the movies on my list are murder mysteries. Ah well! One of my life goals is to solve a murder. Wouldn't that be sweet? Anyway, although this movie can be held to blame for every copycat psychological murder thriller that followed it, it is actually great. So even if hundreds of awful movies try to copy this one, you can't really blame this one, can you? I love the neo noir style, the raining nondescript city (that's right next to a desert? What, is this Springfield?), and the careful writing. Then, last year when Fincher made Zodiac he totally shucked the convention he created with this movie. Oh, what a genius!

RATING: 90%

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

#46 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

This is the only movie on my list with a busty cartoon in it. Also, isn't it a little bit fucked up that Jessica Rabbit is married to an animal? I mean, I guess in the cartoon world that is ok. Maybe that's why Judge Doom wanted Toon Town destroyed. He was tired of the rampant bestiality. They also have talking shoes. Anyway, the movie's great the end. What more do you want?

RATING: 89%

Mercury

Planet Mercury is some stupid burning rock in space. It is the closest planet to the sun, but it is not the hottest so it can't even get points for that. When you watch a science fiction movie, you never hear about aliens from Mercury because everybody forgets it's a planet it's so useless. It's such a wussy planet that it's even smaller than Ganymede and Titan, which are satellites. LAME. One cool thing about Mercury is that it has ice sheets, ha ha, get it, cool? In conclusion, Mercury is the worst planet in the solar system, even behind dwarf planets Pluto, Haumea, Ceres, Eris, and Makemake, but if it was possible not to die I guess I'd still like to visit it.

RATING: 31%

Friday, November 7, 2008

The Sun

Have you ever looked up in the sky and been blinded by a giant ball of light? Well, you just saw our good friend the sun, or you were at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, sorry dude. The sun is cool because it is the source of all life on our planet so if you don't like it then why don't you just leave, commie? All matter that makes up you, me, my Captain Kirk action figure, and the sun were all part of the same pre-solar nebula a little while back, so we're basically broskies. The sun is a gigantic perpetual (as far as we're concerned) fusion reaction, and we can use it to make hot dogs or power wussy cars. One bad thing about the sun is skin cancer and global warming, but the alternative to having a sun is for all life on Earth to have never existed so I guess we lucked out big time, am I right?

RATING: 98%

Punisher: Kitchen Irish

When Garth Ennis was on this book, creator of The Preacher, it was probably one of the two or three best monthly books being written. One of the things that made it so strong was that Ennis recognized the fact that the Punisher himself is not a very deep or interesting character, so for every storyline Ennis would create a new and fascinating villain and mainly focus on developing them. Of course, they would all end up dead by the Punisher's hand, but we all knew that would happen anyway. This book was like a morality play. The plot of this one involves a bunch of Irish gangs who are fighting each other to get a huge stash of money, and some MI6 agents are trying to get revenge on some IRA fighter who killed one's father. The Punisher is just there as the catalyst, but it's still pretty great.

RATING: 77%

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Moonraker

This is without a doubt the worst fucking James Bond movie there is. I cannot comprehend how the franchise ever recovered from this, or how Roger "Zero Charisma" Moore kept being James Bond for like two more movies. It was made to cash in on the Star Wars money train (space train I guess) so the climactic moment takes place on a space station designed by some megalomaniac who wants to start the human race again, in space, and also there are a lot of space lasers everywhere. This movie features Looney Tunes like comedy (a henchman named Jaws falls in love to Tchakovsky's Romeo and Juliet), terrible acting all around, and not one, but two boat chases. Boat chases? Can't we all just agree that there's not such thing as an exciting boat chase? Anyway, this movie's bad and everybody associated with making it is also a bad person so sorry if they're your third cousin or something bucko.

RATING: 22%

Private Selection Angus Beef Patties with Swiss Cheese and Mushrooms

I'm not usually big on beef, or frozen meat in general, but I hurt my foot the other day, I don't drive, and these were in the freezer. A better name would be "Private Selection Angus Salt Patties with Salt and Salt." Also, I don't know what the big deal is with "Angus beef." Maybe it's the Albacore tuna of the beef world, but it seems like overnight all beef became Angus beef, so it can't be that great, can it?

RATING: 20%, but it might have been as high as 45% if I'd had a bun to put it on.

(Image from www.industryplayer.com, but they don't really look like that.)

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Flat Tires

Every now and then you might sin so badly God decides to punish you and puts a nail or a glass bottle on the road for you to run over. Usually this will happen on the hottest day of the season when you have to get out of your car, take the old tire off and put the little baby one on. But maybe you got two flat tires, in which case you have to get your shit towed and get them fixed. Of course, you might find out all of your tires are old and you actually need new ones. You'll probably end up spending $500 and have wasted 4 hours. In conclusion, don't sin because you'll not only go to hell but you'll get a flat tire someday too.

RATING: 3%

Infant Tylenot: Tasteless or Tasty?

Infant Tylenot is delicious and nutritious. You can enjoy it on a bowl of vanilla ice cream, or squirt some into your glass of milk to create a refreshing pink dairy beverage (apparently no one calls it "strawberry cow" anymore) with the added health benefits of acetaminophen. This won't work with Canadian Infant Tylenot, which has no fun red dye and fewer chemicals for some stupid reason.

Four or five Tylenot 3's crushed up in a good stiff drink may also work for you (up home we call that an "Amy Winehouse"), but the election's over now anyway and don't do drugs, kids.

RATING: 90%

(Just kidding! Abuse of pills and booze causes analgesic nephropathy.)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Ultimate Spider-man Vol. 2: Learning Curve

I said it before, and I'll say it again: this Spider-man book is consistently the best one being written right now. These early books are the best and most often heartfelt, since they still didn't have all the weird Ultimate continuity to deal with. In this book, Spider-man decides he's going to take down the Kingpin, but whoops! He's probably being a little too cocky for a fifteen year old, even if he has powers. Meanwhile he has to deal with the start of his relationship with Mary Jane, which is hilarious and pretty realistic. These USM books are great, and it's not just the superhero stuff that does it.

RATING: 88%

Monday, November 3, 2008

Grading

I used to really despise grading when I only had to grade two classes worth of papers (around fifty at UH). But now I have five classes worth, which totals up to somewhere around one hundred and twenty papers. Yowzers! It works out to about fourteen hours of reading through lazy, underdeveloped writing by students who have systematically been taught that rigorous thought is valueless, and the best way to get through any assignment is the simplist possible formula. Also I just read that kids are now less likely to finish high school than their parents. Thank you, goodnight!

RATING: 21%

Carnival Of Souls

This is some dumb old ghost movie that people are always saying is as good as Night Of The Living Dead. Well, I guess there's a lot of creepy imagery, but the big shock reveal at the end is kind of dumb and was also a Twilight Zone episode and fifty thousand movies since. Anyway, the plot is this girl gets into a car accident with her friends and she is the only survivor. She then goes to some town to play organ in a church but keeps on seeing this weirdo ghost face everywhere. I guess that's kind of spooky, and also the way the ghost and his ghostly pals just kind of laugh under their breath whenever she sees them, but overall I don't think I can recommend this for human consumption.

RATING: 49%

Starbucks


A lot of people hate Starbucks. They've been accused of using anti-competitive business strategies, like allowing certain locations to operate at a loss in order to run smaller, independent competitors out of business. They're also often disparaged, at home and abroad, as representing the metastasis of American-style consumerism--an aesthetically repulsive, morally dubious, homogeneous, tacky and inauthentic update on the same old mercantile "bourgeois" culture that populists and aristocrats alike have been hating on, in one form or another, since feudalism ended.

Permit me to digress for a moment: I have 2 coffeeshops in my hometown. One (let's call it "Rim Rorton's") has plastic booths and stools bolted to the floor, a 30 minute time limit in their seating area, and miserable employees who make minimum wage and wear humiliating fast food-style uniforms. The other ("B***** Street Cafe") is an independent establishment wherein a staff of slouching, moody undergraduate hipsters (who also make minimum wage) complete orders at their leisure, get stoned at work, and generally act like their customers should be grateful to get their coffee at all.

I like Starbucks. They're friendly, professional, relatively consistent, and not too expensive. Sure, they're only asking, "How are you today?" because they want my money, but that's better than a "Fuck you, Jack" from people who are still taking my money. If Naomi Klein and Kalle Lasn wanted to serve me better coffee for cheaper, and maybe throw in a heartfelt hug or handshake and a hot meal for the homeless in the bargain, then I'd happily throw my $1.70 their way. In the meantime, I'll get my coffee at Starbucks, and I won't feel guilty about it.

RATING: 90%

(Image from www.therealestatebloggers.com.)

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Tragedy

Tragedy is the condition of having a sufficiently complex nervous system to know you're going to die someday while at the same time being able to imagine what the world will be like after you're gone. You can't ignore it, but you can't dwell on it, either-- it's a question of finesse, not solution.

RATING: 100%, alas

(Image by Eduardo Risso, 100 Bullets )