we are frogs

. . . .and the water is slowly coming to a boil.

I wish we were lobster. Then, at least, we could fight our damnedest against the encroaching night, instead of letting it slowly wash over us and deplete us of our humanity.

Mankind fought for millions of years to develop the sense of self, the individual. Now that he has it, he doesn't know what to do with it. And the luddites and pessimists and politicians and any cock-sucking, shit-eating, motherfucking jackass who has a smidgeon of additional power to wield over another can't think of anything constructive to do with it but rape the poor sucker's sense of self: tell him he isn't good enough, isn't smart enough, isn't free enough, isn't capable enough, isn't worth enough without this stuck-up, pocket hitler, tin-hat dictator making him better / freer / richer / more capable.

If you think you need X (insert: "education," "money," "health care," "safety," "security," "a loan," "a car," "the fire department," "40 acres and a mule," "a girlfriend," "crack," "the environment," etc.) to be free, i.e. to be an individual, autonomous, of worth, self-determining, then you're just as much a part of the problem as the tin-hat, small-dicked, crackpot, petty Hitler-wanna-be, imaginationless, hereditary aristocracies that you keep voting into power over you: you slave.

Yes, slavery really can be voluntary: for empirical confirmation, look in the mirror, sucker.

merchants in the temple

BEEM, 2nd place: DOA (Dead Or Alive)

[Best Editing in an Exploitation Movie Award]

"I know everything about this city; I came to Japan before you were born, cooking here at this stove . . . but even after 5,000 years, each day, a different flavor. Can you understand that?"

DOA, 1999, brought together for the first time Sho Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi, the two undisputed kings of Japanese V-Cinema. Takashi Miike, the greatest director of Japanese exploitation cinema (delivering examplary films in all exploitation categories short of straight-up pornography) has made better movies, perhaps, but none quite so excessive and exploitative. In fact, despite the thoughtful story and potent drama, it's hard to imagine DOA as anything other than a straight-to-video release. The sheer audacity of the imagery (a businessman snorting a 25 foot line of cocaine, a Sesame Street bird costume at a yakuza birthday party, a graveyard in the sand, a bonfire of bodies on a roof in the middle of Tokyo) strips the viewer of any lingering demand for realism, leaving him exposed to the emotional conflict which underlies the excess.

Thematically, the film explores the same subject as all of Miike's films: familial obligation and dynamics. In this case, the dedicated cop Aikawa's akward and tentative relationship with his sickly daughter and untrusting wife is contrasted with the "healthy" familial relationship exemplified by (Miike and "Beat" Takeshi regular) Susumu Terajima (who, curiously, tends to play "bad cop" when the duo interacts with criminals) on the one hand, and the strained fraternity exemplified by Takeuchi's relationship with his younger brother on the other. Takeuchi exemplifies another Miike theme, the dispossessed: in this case, as so often, embodied by 2nd generation Chinese youth in Japan, forced to bond together against both the Japanese and the 1st generation Chinese immigrants who dominate the criminal underworld. Takeuchi will stop at nothing (quite literally!) to force the other gangs out of business; Aikawa, likewise, refuses to accept the ensuing criminal rampage. The ultimate face-off between these twin stars of exploitation cinema may be disappointing from a plot standpoint, but faithfully delivers the sheer energy and violence demanded by the preceding 90 min. of this sonnet to excess.

the trailer for DOA:


memorable editing moment: DOA begins with an absolutely mind-blowing 7 min. montage, an exemplary microcosm of plot construction. Like a shotgun blast in reverse, numerous fragmentary images (a stripper falling from a 12-storey building, police beating a schoolgirl, a businessman snorting a 25 ft. line, a gangster assassinated while fucking a rentboy in a public toilet, the blood from his severed carotid spraying the tile wall and his orgasming partner equally, a bare-chested stripper, a shotgun hidden in a clown's bicycle basket, a cascade of noodles exploding out of a Triad's stomach as it dissolves under uzi spray) coalesce into larger and larger chunks until a coherent plot emerges: one gang attempts a takeover of another to the chagrin of the dedicated cops.

the plot

"Consciousness is a plot to keep the parasites feasting off our bodies alive. Civilization is a conspiracy of microbes: they've tricked us into creating music, science, medicine, art, plumbing . . ."

~ Ivan Brunetti

doubly special relativity

Special Relativity is special because it places an upper bound on speed: speeds faster than that of light are simply impossible. What does this really amount to, though? - an upper bound on the speed of time. Why? Well, if we distinguish different moments in time by the different events which constitute them, and if every event has a cause, then temporal change is constrained to the same speed as causal change, i.e. the speed of light.

So we've constrained time, but what about space? Doubly Special Relativity posits a limit on space analogous to the limit on time. What does this amount to? - a smallest unit of length. Just as there is a fastest speed, there is a smallest size.

Of course, this smallest size would be pretty damn small. However, the positing of a smallest size resolves some ancient conceptual problems about infinity. If space is a continuum, i.e. infinitely divisible, i.e. there is no smallest unit of length, then we seem to have a real infinity right under our very noses. Zeno's paradoxes all turn upon the puzzling nature of such an infinite. Of course, resolution of paradox alone isn't a good enough reason to adopt a theory, but it does increase its intuitive interest. . . .

the "peace" prize

And he raised conflict and strife across 7 continents and 7 seas,
And he called upon the Third World to suffer for the sins of the First,
And he aggrandized himself at the expense of accuracy,
And he demonstrated the most profound hypocrisy,
. . . himself committing the sins for which he faulted others,
And he cried "Wolf!" - and then he cried again,
And Hollywood finally heard him, and its cretinous denizens,
Uneducated, Ignorant, and Gullible, but endowed by fame with Supernatural Power,
Called upon their Dark Gods, and themselves followed his hypocritical path,
Themselves they flew in private jets to lecture their betters on the sin of Emissions,
And there was confusion and delusion and panic across the land,
And each man was weighed heavy by his guilt,
But only the Rich were exonerated, paying for the privelege to pollute with free conscience,
And class differences grew as a new mark of status arose,
And He, in his majesty, was rewarded for spreading ignorance and fear,
And crowned as all great conmen eventually are crowned:
The Prince of Peace.

the music industry

An army of pencil-pushing beancounters, devoid of talent, foresight, courage, or wit, who have made their living pimping out artists and marketing talentless teenage models as "musicians" and "artists" - these vampires deserve a slow death at the hands of internet "pirates." Like all bloodsuckers, they can't take a bloodletting; terrified that self-distribution might allow musicians to make a living again without the bloated publicity apparatus they provide, they have retrenched under the banner of "artist rights" ~ Hypocrites! They bought the radio stations and the DJs so music could no longer be discovered by the public, but only by imagination-less agents and executives, now they seek to control bandwidth and place information itself under lock and key. May whatever divine forces still hold sway over this corrupt and pustulant realm curse their legal dealings and condemn every last one of their noxious, parasitic souls to a sonic hell, their limp, flayed carcasses strapped to 40 mile high woofers, rattling their wounds with the hook to Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" for eternity!