War of the Worlds

La mia Barista and I went to see perennial Scientology nutjob Tom Cruise's performance in the H. G. Wells remake. While I feel bad about any of my money going into Cruise's pocket, I was definitely entertained by the movie. The effects are awesome, and the movie, as a whole, is an enjoyable ride, though the ending sucked donkeyballs. The last ten minutes, it felt like they were running low on film, and just finished up without a proper resolution to anything. I understand that Spielberg was sticking to the original storyline, but, holy fuck, why start that exacting translation now? I mean, he had no qualms turning a PKD short story into a happy-ending Hollywood fiasco, why the sudden change of modus operandi on this thing? Whatever. Shit blew up, aliens came down, and even Tim Robbins was funny. I think la mia barista and I were the only ones laughing, but it didn't make it any less funny.

Spielberg: Paedophile?

Crispin Glover's take, from an article at lowculture.com:

Does Steven Spielberg focus much of his fantasy life on young people? Did he portray children wallowing in sewers filled with fecal matter in Schindler's List? Did he use children to finger-paint an adult in Hook?... Are the inclinations of Steven Spielberg above suspicion by the media-fed culture? Was Steven Spielberg very friendly with Michael Jackson? Wasn't Michael Jackson supposed to play Peter Pan in Steven Spielberg's version of the story? Now that Michael Jackson is no longer held in favor by the mass media, does Spielberg associate with him?

Some snippets from an Adam Parfrey essay in the same book:

Spielberg is known for his interest in young boys, certainly," said Martin. "A lot of the members have been talking about Hook, telling me how much they enjoyed it."

NAMBLA spokesman Renato Corazza refused to confirm or deny Spielberg's possible membership in the Man/Boy Love Association: "We don't divule our membership rolls."

[...]

There's not room enough to detail the pedophilic implications of other Spielberg productions: the man/boy relationship in "Empire of the Sun," which begins with John Malkovich's comment about young Christian Bale's "sweet mouth" and reaches its emotional climax when Malkovich directs the chicken to move his cot next to his; the child-alien/human ectodermal interactions in Close Encounters; and the sanitized incest theme of Back To The Future.

However, it was E.T., Spielberg's most exalted triumph, which seems to clothe boy-love fantasy in New Age vestments.

Spielberg uses every trick in the director's chapbook to induce us to love a wrinkled, potbellied cosmic interloper that hides in boys' closets and communicates with a glowing, phallic finger.

Speaking of which...

Chickenhawk: Men Who Love Boys

In trolling a site full of morons (an aptly named site full of morons, at that), I derailed a conversation about how the entire Bush administration is nothing but chickenhawks by pointing out that the term "chickenhawk" doesn't mean what they think it means. Proof positive of prior art here. I remember reading about the movie in, I think, one of the two Apocalypse Culture books, a billion years ago, though I was never able to scrounge up a copy of the film. I really want to see it now, but it seems not to have ever been issued on DVD. Interestingly enough, one of the whopping three imdb reviews seems to be by one of the subjects of the film. To wit:

I felt that the underlying treatment of this documentary was generally hostile to a fair understanding of men who love boys and the message we have for society.

There were many "cheap shots" which I saw Adi taking in his film. Incidentally, not towards both sides, equally, but only towards boy lovers. There were technical maneuvers, such as making close-ups on people's teeth, or looking up at Leyland while he drove-and panning on old, dead trees they passed. And the music that was used-stuff that added to an emotion of we boy lovers not being all there, and even pathological.

Now, if Adi had made such a film about black men who loved white women in the 1920s, people would see what I'm talking about. You'd have a movie of "pure" interviews and images from that time. There would be no attempt at analysis. The result would be a film in which there would be a huge uproar in society about the way in which no one attempted to humanize the black men adequately. Adi's career might be ruined before it even started. And you can bet that he would not even begin to allow himself to make an oversight like that.

To conclude, i say that "CHICKEN HAWK: Men Who Love Boys" as a film is in the grey area between a constructive communication to the public, and a destructive one. For the media literate it should hold intriguing questions that can be thought about at length before coming to tentative conclusions. For the media illiterate, the film will most certainly be just one more reason to enhance and enable the increasing psychiatrick-industrial complex. They won't desire to look at we "perverts" as individuals, nor wonder how the film-maker got so close to such people who are supposedly forever "beyond the reach" of "ill-equipped" and "weak budgeted" law enforcement agencies. They'll just foam at the mouth and want to KILL KILL KILL like good citizens are supposed to do at the whim of imposed authority.

Free Lunch

A big conference call today resulted in the proverbial free lunch. Unfortunately, mine came with mayo on it, so I threw it in the trash, and had a chocolate chip cookie and additional cup of coffee, instead. Nice. Thanks, guys. Fucking dicks. I could have just sucked it up and eaten the sandwich, anyway, like everyone suggested, but I didn't feel like spending the rest of the day in the emergency room, waiting for my throat to stop swelling, and the hives to go away. Psychosomatic, my ass.

Disappearing Diskspace

God, I'm a dork. I just had a panic moment where I couldn't figure out why my drive space was decreasing by the second, then I remembered I was scping a 4.18 GB file to my desktop to burn db backups. Whew.

Thou Shalt Not Mention My Name

Lest thou be willing to suffer the consequences. Get it out of your mouth, and out from under your typing fingers. Serious. Rinse if you have to. I don't care.

Local Computer Salvage

${college_friend} IM'd me this morning to tell me of his bootyious score of sub-ten dollar 21" CRTs at NC State salvage. They're apparently open to the public on Fridays between 8am and 11:30am, so next Friday, we're gonna go pick up whatever we deem worthy of purchase. For one, I need 3 21" CRTs; one for a secondary display for the laptop, one for the SGI O2, and one for the mnslog server. I should probably get another one, just to have a spare around the house. Fuck it, for 10 bucks, I'll buy as many as I can fit into ${college_friend}'s tiny little Mitsubishi Whateveritscalled. And maybe a big six foot rack. You know, for the dining room. Doesn't everyone have a six foot rack in their dining room? I mean, where else is something like that supposed to go? The bathroom?

Office Parking Lot WTF

I just went outside to have another smoke breaksend the weekly database backups to ${livesInTheMiddleOfFuckingNowhereAndCan'tGetBroadbandDeveloper} only to see a BMW 740iL, a Porsche Carrera, a DeLorean, two new H2s, and my personal favorite, the Mercedes G-500 sitting in the front lot of our relatively small office complex. None of them belong to any of my coworkers. Or if they do, everyone but me seems to have gotten a raise. WTF?

Office Air Conditioning

Everyone is here today, which is rare, and it seems to be negatively affecting the ability of the office AC to keep the temperature down to a reasonable measurement. I've got ants in my pants, and I'm ready to leave here now. La mia Barista and I are gonna go look at Mr. Patch as mentioned in yesterday's diary, after I stop by the bank and transfer some money around. Payday, yo. Get your payday on. I know I did; I picked up over four hundred dollars worth of liquor yesterday before the movie. My bar is as well-stocked as it can be without having to make a trip out of state to get the Good Stuff.

Anyway, Happy Saint Benjamin Franklin Day, motherfuckers. I'm AUDI. Well, sort of. I'll be sitting here commenting and shit for a while, but I'm AUDI of this here text editor, and I'm going to hit SUBMIT right fucking now, knowing full well the computer will disobey me, and refuse to submit. Goddamn computers.