Ninja-tek
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Below are the 30 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mr. the Cutup" journal:[<< Previous 30 entries]
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07:58 pm
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Location: Santa Maria, California
And the Nina... and the Pinta... and the....
I'm in Santa Maria (a week later than planned), and the air is even cleaner than where you are. I'm at my aunt's with the parents.
We left Fountain Valley at 5 this morning to beat LA traffic and there were still tons of people on the road, fortunately moving along nicely. How do people survive the LA rush hour?
We stopped in Lompoc on the way here and drove out to the beach along the road between Vandenberg Air Force Base where we were the only ones. A cloudy marine layer and it was cold. True cold, right in the middle of summer like we'd walked into a different movie.
Later we met with a real estate woman and she drove us around San Luis Obispo, Orcutt, Santa Maria, Grover Beach, and Arroyo Grande. I don't like driving around all day and got a headache. At one point the real estate woman said I looked pale. My mom bought me some food&drink, I took brain drugs and came back and ate my aunt's macaroni and cheese and then I lay down and I'm fine now.
You know what my favorite album of the last few weeks is:
Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom - so many layers.
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07:03 pm
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Watchmen
Finally got around to seeing Watchmen (I was waiting for a clean DVD rip). I have to say it was much better than anyone had any right to expect - the chore of adapting such a work to a 3-hour film is no easy task. And it could have easily been much, much worse.
I can't imagine how the film holds up to the uninitiated. I've read the book a couple times so had no trouble keeping up with the shifts in time.
The book's greatest strength is the characters, and I think they were very well portrayed (the Ozymandias actor was kind of scrawny). They effectively captured the ambiguity and complexity that takes them miles beyond the good and evil of most superhero films (I'm left liking Rorschach and the Comedian - psychotic killers - for some reason more than Ozymandias, who supposedly saves billions of lives).
The movie succeeds in finding the inherent weirdness of its era, and our own world. The ending is different from the book, but in a minor way that keeps the theme intact. The fight scenes cater to the lowliest denominator of superheroics... but like I said, I enjoyed it, and it didn't seem nearly as long as it was.
Sure, it's not the book. Yet it transferred some of the best moments of horror and beauty to film. It's cool to see things move, hear sounds.
One note: In 1996 I went to the San Diego Comicon and attended a panel where Dave Gibbons, the artist of Watchmen, interviewed himself. He's a witty and very intelligent guy, one of our best artists. Watchmen had been released less than a decade before, yet there were only about 15 people at the panel to hear him talk. I was amazed - comic fans are notoriously fickle, but even as a teenager I recognized Watchmen as one of the high-water marks for the comics medium. Everyone else was at the Todd Mcfarlane panel, I guess.
Anyway, the point is that the movie brought a lot of attention to the book and Gibbons (and Alan Moore, of course). And they rightly deserve it. Whatever you say about adaptations of comics to film, I think they definitely bring people to the original comics (it did with me via Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and as Alan Moore pointed out, the book will always be there, unaffected by motion picture counterparts.
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08:21 pm
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Hard Times
I'd be blogging like crazy right now if something was happening like crazy right now. But it's pretty quiet. I'm just enjoying the awesome weather (I'm so glad my parents get that beach breeze) and chillin. Here's my picture in vintage black & white:
JUST KIDDING IT'S WILLIAM FAULKNER IN A BAMBOO WHEELCHAIR.
I'm rereading The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner was such an awesome crackerhead writer and this book is like Ulysses or To the Lighthouse or the Cantos of Ezra Pound that you dare not even approach without a guide. I was prepared this time after hearing Faulkner lectures and listening through Absalom, Absalom! (another crackin book with some of the same characters). I want those Library of America editions of all the Faulkner novels. For now till I have a bookshelf I'll settle for library.
Yesterday I walked to the bookstore for research and google says it's 4 miles each way. I didn't really notice because even Fountain Valley/Huntington Beach seem better to walk than Korea.
Everyone seems fat here.
Tuesday I'm going to Santa Maria. In a car.
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11:04 pm
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Location: Fountain Valley, California
I'm back on Livejurinal so watch your back.
Today I bought a bicycle helmet at Walmart, an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. Walmart operates in Mexico as Walmex, in the UK as Asda, and in Japan as Seiyu.
Orange County's always a bit of a mindblower.
What do you think of the new font-size that is just like everyone else. It makes me feel more common. You can press "Control +" to make your eyedrums bigger. Maybe you are having the adjustment trouble.
My mom and stepdad retired this month (I retired this month too but nobody believes me). They're putting their house on the market soon. Even in "this economy" they think they will get big money for it since they bought the house cheap from my grandpa (R.I.P.) ten years ago and the neighbors just sold their house for like $539,000.
Today's Mr. Rogers style moment was a sandwich wtih peanut butter and honey and cinnamon that was awesomeness itself.
My dad mailed me my old phone and it arrived today but it's still dead. Don't cry for me, Argentina.
I'm not really using the internet and that's awesome.
I apologize for all this reading, what is this a fripping book man.
I'm gonna buzz my head off.
mOrTaCuM!!!!!!!
(after while, pedophile)
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10:39 am
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THE TRANSMIGRATION OF MR. THE CUTUP
I decided to give up blogging.
I needed a change.
A chance to reassess.
But now I'm back.
And I'm not gonna use Livejournal anymore.
I want a new location.
Rather than have Ninja-tek rise like a phoenix from the ashes, it will take over the dead 'Audio-tek' blog.
Zombie-like.
Why throw out the bathwater with the baby.
It can be used to sponge bath retarded uncle Joe who won't even know the difference.
Future blogging will be over here from now on!!!!!
Sleep tight.
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07:43 am
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THE WORLD WITHOUT US
Old Taylor said
Old Taylor meant to cry -- oh my
Field Marshall meant
Field Marshall went away again
Watch out below; the tides
Lean heavily like wine
We are all innocent in spite of you and me
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09:20 pm
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DISTRIBUTION
Notice that bittorrent makes a Star of David which proves it is just a tool of the Elders of Zion.
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08:37 am
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MEMORIES OF MURDER, HALO JONES
Memories of Murder is probably the best Korean movie I've seen, possibly the best Asian movie I've seen. It's based on true events about South Korea's first serial killer in the 1980s, making it a quasi-Silence of the Lambs. But the killer in this movie is more ghostlike, elusive, and the conclusion is more puzzling and haunting. It also lacks the melodrama and heightened Romanticism typically found in Korean films (see The Brotherhood of War, for instance - a good film, but melodramarama). I normally don't like murder mystery cop films, but the characters are effin amazing.
The Ballad of Halo Jones is an early Alan Moore work, originally conceived as nine books, of which only three were completed. So add it to Big Numbers, Supreme, and 1963 as a Moore book we'll probably never see the end of. It starts out kind of slow and took a while for me to enjoy the 80s proto-sci-fi dialogue and Ian Gibson art (kind of like Mort Drucker). In book 2 it starts to pick up and the story and details start working retroactively to reveal all these hidden things that seemed throwaway in the narrative. I also read D.R. and Quinch, which is more disposable, and both works have a Douglas Adams feel, but Halo Jones has darker themes at the more serious end of the spectrum. It's like a retort to Starship Troopers, saying that war isn't worth it, that politicians don't have your best interest at heart, and that there is a better way. Not Moore's best work, but for such an early book, pretty good (I like it more than his Swamp Thing work, for instance).
Also, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) brainwaster and I were discussing stories that have both a really good book and a really good movie. Here's all I could come up with:
The Princess Bride
A Clockwork Orange
2001
Anything else?
By the way, check out all these great Marshall McLuhan quotes. Just pretend I said them:
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10:08 am
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08:55 pm
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ALTERNATIVE COMEDY
On the train home today a couple were arguing, Jerry-Springer style. They seemed out of place, like they belonged in Arkansas, not San Francisco. Their skin was redneckcolored, dehydrated, and they seemed kind of drunk. I had ear buds in and still heard them arguing. They separated at one point and yelled across the train, and then the man found an empty bottle of liquor sitting on a seat (I think it was his). He opened it, turned his back to the woman and other passengers, unzipped his pants, and filled it with yellow liquid. When the train came to the next stop he threw the bottle thirty feet away like a Urine-Molotov cocktail. The bottle didn't break when it hit, bouncing. "The world's going to shit," he said, "The choice for president is a woman or a black man. It's going to shit."
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02:38 pm
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I.J. 4 TRAILER
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08:20 pm
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SOMETIMES A MAN
I recently renewed my passport only to discover that the new passport is filled with jingoistic pictures of cowboys, bald eagles, buffalo, steamboats, prairies from sea to shining sea, national monuments, and cacti. There are also "inspiring" quotes about America from America's greatest quotemakers. This is very reassuring. The day will surely come when I find myself in heathen lands, forgetful of what America is and what it stands for, and now I can just pop open my passport (don't bend it or you might damage the "sensitive electronics" [i.e. RFID tag]) and be reunited in word and image with all I've left behind in my pearly homeland.
Over the weekend I went to Fort Funston twice. It's one of those places that tourists don't really know about, but which is one of my favorite places in San Francisco. It's like the white cliffs of Dovercisco, and one of these days I'll be there when one of those stupid dogs runs off the cliff chasing a seagull. One human year is equal to seven dog years, which means that dogs experience time seven times slower than us humanoids (this also explains why dogs can't understand human speech). If a dog chasing a bird stupidly fell from the cliff to the beach below (twenty stories?) it would seem like a few minutes passed to the dog before he hit the ground and he would have time to realize that even if he did catch a seagull it would not be enough to slow his fall, and that dogs really aren't so smart after all.
Also weird: my dad sent me that link with info about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead but I failed to read the info that he attached with it, mainly that I'm distantly related to to the director, Jordan Galland. He is my dad's cousin's son, so my second cousin (according to wikipedia, which knows all).
Sold my Grado SR60 headphones tonight for $30. I feel like I should write a book about how to sell shit on craigslist and call it How to Sell Shit on Craigslist. I think that site has made me thousands of dollars (especially when you add in the jobs I got through it). I've gotten to the point when I talk to people on the phone that I can tell how old they are, what they look like, and how much resistance they'll put up for the purchase. I told this bitch I'd be selling other stuff soon and she wanted to look through my room and I had to kick her out. Plus I could smell the pot from my roommate's room wafting through the hall.
The longer I go without blogging the more I feel obligated to inject value into each post. But it's a blog, and I also want the vapid ejaculatory quality of a tabloid.
Movies I saw recently are Lady Vengeance and Samaritan Girl, both above average. Ki-duk Kim is probably my favorite Korean director, but I wanted a movie I could watch several times to test my Korean, and both were too sad to watch again right now. I have a copy of Paprika I may watch tonight because the trailer looks cool (although it's Japernese, not Korean).
This is weird enough to steal:
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06:08 pm
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12:53 pm
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IT'S A COMPLICATED WORLD
Some sick person on youtube wrote:
"this film is inspirational,i recomend it.I watched it 4x in a row"
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10:36 pm
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SOMETIMES DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE
While searching for Korean movies I found this gem. Unfortunately the library doesn't have a copy, can't find a torrent, and I'm not gonna shell $18 for this piece of shit. But I'd still like to see it.
Here's an enlightening description of the book version.
| Summary | Doggy Poo has few friends and lives in loneness until it finds out the real value of being a poo. In this tale, a seemingly worthless piece of a dog's excrement eventually discovers its self worth by sacrificing all of itself to help a flower bloom. | | Note | Translation from the Korean. | | Subject | Values -- Fiction. | | Added Author | Chon, Sungaku. |
And surely the greatest review on Amazon:
"Come on it's a movie about CRAP. People are seriously running out of ideas. They should just keep rereleasing the classics."
Yeah, Korea, you're fffucked up.
Hi!!!!
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09:56 pm
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I LOVE THE SMELL OF INTERNET IN THE MORNING
My internet broke then healed. While away from www I watched TV called Flight of the Concords and listened to audiobook called The Black Swan. I reacquired a vast archive of my old writings and artwork. I worked and wrote. Did you know there's a movie called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead coming out with the train steward from Darjeeling Limited? It's like Shakespeare with zombies. Happy Chinaman New Year!!!!! ^^
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11:27 am
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LIBROS
( Books I'm Reading, Rereading, Recommending... )
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10:21 am
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SNEAK PREVIEW OF TOMORROW'S HOLIDAY (SPOILER ALERT)
Because of Martin Luther King Jr (an American civil rights pioneer), I've been thinking about quitting my job at some point soon. It's pretty easy work, but I feel kind of crunkled and angry at the end of the day. The kids I work around use so much profanity (I hear the nigga word a lot) that it infects my head with a disgruntled syntax, and it takes three-day weekends like this to restore my traditionally sedentary brainwave patterns.
When the Martin Luther would speak in Hispanic, his skin darkened, he would repeat himself, he took on a glazed look in his eyes . . . and he almost seemed to smile.
At a bar the other night I told a stranger he looked like an evil Kryptonian from Superman II. I forget which one.
I can put Ebonics on my resume, but in the end, that won't get me hired at Google. Can someone please create a Linux distribution called Ebonux.
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10:00 am
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ANNOTATIONS
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10:16 pm
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ANIMATED VIOLENCE
I just watched Dragons of Autumn Twilight, which was a so-bad-it's-good type of thing. State of the art 1983 animation. I think it's better than The Godfather and Citizen Kane combined (but not separately).
(new desktop background)
I've been meaning to blog more lately but I've been busy/lazy. And I have things to blog about, decisions to make . . . maybe I'll just wait till things happen and blog after the fact.
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08:40 pm
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HWAAH!
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03:23 pm
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FAMILY CIRCUS REDEMPTION PROJECT #29
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11:00 am
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DRAGONLANCE
Probably the first "real" book series I read growing up was the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I never got into that Tokienoid crap and for me it was all about Weis & Hickman. I read a few thousand pages of that stuff before moving on, and occasionally I would think about rereading them to see if they still had the magic, but any time I looked them over again I found myself criticizing the writing ("Too many adverbs") and knew that the moment, alas, had passed. I still like the original Larry Elmore covers, and don't understand why they redid them.
Looking over a list of the characters now, I'm surprised how clearly I remember them all (I read these in junior high). They have archetypal names, and I know them like real people. Probably my favorite character was Raistlin, who transformed over the course of the series from a neutral red mage into a dark black mage.
Hella evil.
And despite my inability to reread those books now, I find myself excited and curious to check out the animated movie of Dragons of Autumn Twilight (straight to DVD) coming out in a few days. The art looks kind of bleh and I don't know how they'll fit a 400 page book into 90 minutes, and god knows they'll tone down the violence of trolls getting their heads chopped off etc. But I still want to see it. Kiefer Sutherland as the voice of Raistlin. Downloading now.
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08:49 pm
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MERV GRIFFIN
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06:30 pm
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WEALTH PATROL
I have $20 in the bank right now, and $21 in my wallet.
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04:34 pm
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VISIONS
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03:26 pm
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READING
This pestiferous weather - all I want to do is stay home and read. Lowell Bair's translation of Madame Bovary is very good. Kamandi is awesome, too.
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11:57 am
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Posted using TxtLJ
Outside it's like KATRINA 2: THE RECKONING. Maybe this is the worst weather i've seen in san francisco.
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05:44 pm
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NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION
My New Year's resolution is to never hear George Michael sing "Last Christmas" again, a song that makes even Jesus cringe.
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04:36 pm
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