Anticipation: Clerks II

Got a heads up a couple of weeks ago from a friend, about the coming sequel for Clerks.

This guy was an ex-housemate. Shared an apartment with him for almost 2 years. Filthy boy. Colour blind, and also blind to dust. He sleeps with a warren of dust bunnies in his room, and we always try to keep his room door shut to contain the miasma of evil odours.

But otherwise, he's a fun guy, with some amazing super-human skills. Like, he can beat people at Columns, and probably do quite well at Puzzle Bobble too. Let me remind you again, he's COLOUR-BLIND! He is like DareDevil! I tell you, it's amazing.

Also, he has the entire Star Wars episode 4-6 memorised. All the Yoda speak, and all the muppet squeaks. It's very entertaining.


Anyway, back to Clerks. This guy is a fellow Kevin Smith fan as well. He must've watched Clerks at least 20 times. And even played Chasing Amy over and over until my DVD cracked.

Naturally, we're excited about the Clerks sequel. The trailer is here. ViewAskew.com has a ton of other footage to see too.

The movie is opening on 21st July. But I can't get too excited about the date, because there's a snowball's chance in hell that this kind of show will hit the screens here. Canne's films have little to no appeal to our zombie masses. Just checked Golden Village's Coming Soon attractions, and there's no sign of that there either.

I've often thought of Sibu as having no culture. Then KL as being a zombie culture. Seems, Singapore is mostly yuppie culture, things that feign culture. Maybe I don't belong to this world...


Well, just have to be patient, and wait for the mountain to come to me...

The first Clerks is an amazingly movie, made at the cost of a mere $27k, after Kevin Smith quit Vancouver Film School. The entire film was in black and white, cos that's the film he could afford. The movie takes place at the same convenient store where Kevin worked. He's a clerk by day, and movie maker by night, after the store has closed.

One film festival, a Miramax guy later, and the rest is history.


Clerks was a story of two guys, Dante working at the Quik-Stop convenience store, Randall at RST Videos, and going nowhere fast. They meet, and deal with, annoying customers, and spend the bulk of the film picking apart pop culture, especially Star Wars.

"Empire had the better ending: Luke gets his hand cut off, and finds out Vader's his father; Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. And that's life-a series of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of Muppets."

In Clerks 2, Randall has burnt down the Quik-Stop. Thus they have to get new jobs, at Mooby's, a fast food outlet. 32 yrs old, and flipping burgers.

"With no powers, comes no responsibility."


The dialogue and the characters are what made most of Kevin's films. And there's just something unbelieveably funny about watching a stoner dance.

The stoner above is Jay (Jason Mewes), and the guy in the back is Silent Bob (Kevin Smith). And the picture on Jay's shirt is the Buddy Christ, featured in Dogma, an excellent film which was unfortunately spoilt by Linda Florentino's lack of acting. It's like what Anakin's acting did to the Star Wars saga, but worse...


Closing off with an example of great dialogue in Clerks...

Dante: Yeah, right. You can't get enough of me.
Veronica: Typically male point of view.
D: How do you figure?
V: You show some bedroom proficiency, and you think you're gods. What about what we do for you?
D: Women? Women, as lovers, are all basically the same: they just have to be there.
V: "Be there?"
D: Making a male climax is not all that challenging: insert somewhere close and preferably moist; thrust; repeat.
V: How flattering.
D: Now, making a woman cum...therein lies a challenge.
V: Oh, you think so?
D: A girl makes a guy cum, it's standard. A guy makes a girl cum, it's talent.
V: And I actually date you?
D: Something wrong?
V: I'm insulted. Believe me, Don Juan, it takes more than that to get a guy off. Just "being there"-as you put it-is not enough.
D: I touched a nerve.
V: I'm astonished to hear you trivialize my role in our sex life.
D: It wasn't directed at you. I was making a broad generalization.
V: You were making a generalization about "broads!"
D: These are my opinions based on my experiences with the few women who were good enough to sleep with me.
V: How many?
D: How many what?
V: How many girls have you slept with?
D: How many different girls? Didn't we already have this discussion once?
V: We might have; I don't remember. How many?
D: Including you?
V: It better be up to and including me.
D: (pause to count) Twelve.
V: You've slept with twelve different girls?
D: Including you; yes.

Pause. She slaps him.

D: What the hell was that for?
V: You're a pig.
D: Why'd you hit me?
V: Do you know how many different men I've had sex with?
D: Do I get to hit you after you tell me?
V: Three.
D: Three?
V: Three including you.
D: You've only had sex with three different people?
V: I'm not the pig you are.
D: Who?
V: You!
D: No; who were the three, besides me?
V: John Franson and Rob Stanslyk.
D: (with true admiration) Wow. That's great. That's something to be proud of.
V: I am. And that's why you should feel like a pig. You men make me sick. You'll sleep with anything that says yes.
D: Animal, vegetable, or mineral.
V: Vegetable meaning paraplegic.
D: They put up the least amount of struggle.
V: After dropping a bombshell like that, you owe me. Big.

Movie: Superman Returns

Big Yawn.

Meteor crashes into a Kansas field. Kal-El is back from a 5yr road-trip to Krypton. Apparently Einstein is wrong about the Twin's Paradox, because Kal-El seemed pretty exhausted from his trip. Since he was travelling FTL, virtually no time should have passed while he was accelerating...

Off topic... Anyways, Clark Kent goes back to the Daily Planet. Lois Lane is in a relationship and has a son. Lois gets into trouble in a spectacular way. Superman saves her in similar spectacular fashion. Supe takes Lois flying. Fortress of Solitude. Lex Luthor steals Kryptonite, and uses it to kill Supe. Lex's floozy feels compassion for Supe and helps him. Supe saves the day.

Did I miss out anything from the first Superman movie?? Other than Lois' little bastard, Superman Returns is almost exactly the same thing as the one before Christopher Reeves discovered charity.


Oh, and apparently, Lois' little bastard belongs to Kal-El.

How the freak did that happen?! Clark had a Kansas upbringing, and his adopted parents brought him up so straight that he doesn't even spank his monkey! (If he did, there would be tell-tale 'bullet-holes' all through the Kent residence.) But suddenly he has a love-child??

Better minds than mine have contemplated the quandary.

In the words of Kevin Smith in Mallrats,

"Lois could never have Superman's baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes could handle the sperm? I guarantee he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back. What about her womb? Do you think it's strong enough to carry his child? He's an alien for Christ sake! His Kryptonian biological makeup is enhanced by Earth's yellow sun. If Lois gets a tan, the kid could kick right through her stomach. Only someone like Wonder Woman has a strong enough uterus to carry his kid. The only way he could bang regular chicks is with a kryptonite condom . . . that would kill them."

But the most comprehensive analysis was Larry Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex." Niven is famed for his Ringworld sci-fi series, with the two headed E.T. Llama. Read a couple of his books. Not bad. And any writer who can string together a sentence with, "obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape," will surely have my respect.


Moving beyond Superman's physiology... His psychiatry also makes for interesting study, in Dr. Blink: Superhero Shrink, by John Kovalic and Christopher Jones.


That's the greatest thing about Superman. Although the comics are pretty boring, but he is more identifiable than [insert name of any religious figure], and has been an inspiration for many good things in contemporary culture. Such as Three Doors Down's Kryptonite, or the name for Nicholas Cage's son, and a lot of Seinfeld wit.

Jerry: I think Superman probably has a very good sense of humor.
George: I never heard him say anything really funny.
Jerry: But it’s common sense. He’s got super strength, super speed... I’m sure he’s got super humor.
George: You would think that, but either you're born with a sense of humor, or you're not. It's not going to change even if you go from the red sun of Krypton all the way to the yellow sun of the Earth.
Jerry: Why? Why would that one area of his mind not be affected by the yellow sun of Earth?
George: I don't know but he ain't funny.

This has been just a lot of pointless ranting about Superman. Well, it's been fun. But maybe I can also give my two cents about the Superman comics I've read...

I've not read that much Superman comics. Find it terribly dull. I've read the comics telling his death in the hands of Doomsday. And that's pretty much it. Superman is pretty much a one dimensional character. He's a boy scout that solves problems with his incredible brawn, and everyone loves him for it. He has no problems. Everything looks like a nail to him, that he hammers into submission.

Most of the time I see Supe, it's in a Batman comic. The stick-up-the-butt do-gooder setting off the perfect contrast to the world's greatest detective, who doesn't hesitate to use any violoent means, short of killing, in order to solve his case. And the stories where the two clashes, are some of the most worth reading. Especially Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

And one other Superman comic I've enjoyed, is Kingdom Come. This has one of the best drawn art ever achieved in this medium. And the story is solid. Lois Lane is dead. Superman is retired. Batman is old. And at the end, Wonder Woman is pregnant with Kal-El's seed, thus proving Kevin Smith's earlier point....

Look for a browsing copy at your local Borders, if you get the chance.

BOFH

Discovered Bastard Operator From Hell a couple of years ago. Then it fell out of mind for a bit until I was suddenly reminded by a web-comic.

Just goes to show how seminal the BOFH is...

So, I just spent a couple of days catching up on the Bastard's latest exploits.

The Bastard is an anarchist. He is a systems and networks administrator, working on contract for a clueless un-named corporation. He is assisted by his PFY (Pimply Faced Youth), and managed by a revolving-door series of unfortunate bosses.

The Bastard is the anti-Dilbert. Where Dilbert's spirit becomes asphyxiated by the heavy fog of management cluelessness, the Bastard instead wraps himself in the concealing vapours, and strikes out for personal gain and profit.

No mercy. No quarters.

These are empowering stories, the stuff of fantasy for all IT administrators everywhere.

Suppertime

No one enjoys his supper more than Snoopy.

And this passion is something I can easily relate to. I have more than a few spare pounds of stubborn love handles that will attest to this fact. Incidentally, some of my favourite foods might be little different from dog chow too... (pig fallopian tube for example... ahh, what a rare dish that was, when will I ever find its like again.)

Anyway, supper was wonderful tonight.

Origins Awards

The Origins Awards, are like the Emmies of games, be they role-playing, table-top wargames, boardgames, card games etc...

And check out this year's winner!
WARMACHINE: Apotheosis had been awarded the Game of the Year!!

I still remember those tense months last year, as a bunch of us WarMachiners counted down the days until the game released in September, 2005. Every Saturday, we would sit around and speculate various aspects of the Iron Kingdoms. Hanging on the news leaking out on the forums, discussing the sculpts of the new models being released. Speculating on the mechanics of the new game play. Discussing what we think will happen to the storyline after WarMachine: Escalation from the year before.

Just before September, Wolf's Game Shop even hosted a tournament, with an Apotheosis book as the prize. And I won that one. Not an easy battle, that was...

And when the new range of miniatures featured in the book hit the shelves, things couldn't get any sweeter. They were some of the most ambitious models ever sculpted, and were visually stunning. The gameplay was no disappointment either, as each new WarCaster added unique playstyles to their factions.

Good times....

It's good to see the game I play getting the recognition it deserves.

Note also, the Warmachine miniatures also got the Gamer's Choice for best minis. Which really shows that the company has really captured the hearts of the players out there.


And coming up this September, WarMachine: Superiority.

I've already place an advance PressGanger order for the new epic WarCasters. So far, only two sculpts had been shown, and they look freaking sweet. Hope I'll be the first to show off the new stuff in Malaysia.

Movie: Running Scared

Holy crap... talk about a dirty and gritty mob movie!!

This is a good one. Lots of guns, blood, and exploding heads.

And it's not gratuitious.

Didn't expect there to be such a thing as artistic violence. But this is pretty close.

Nine years ago, I watched Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco at the theatres. It was horribly butchered by the Malaysian censorship board. Every time Al Pacino said "f*ck", the film skipped a milli-second.

Since then, there was an emptiness that I never realised I had... Until it was filled by Running Scared.

Paul Walker, (Mr Fast & Furious, but more enviably the guy that rode Jessica Alba in Into The Blue), is a low level mob grunt. His boss' son shot a couple of dirty cops, and hands him the gun to be disposed of. The gun ends up back in the street, and racks up plenty of mileage.

After that it's a fun ride painting the town red.

The story and the action is gripping. The characters are nasty. Although without the powerful commentary of Brasco.

It's a good watch. But don't watch it on Malaysian theatres.


"One Nike gym bag: 60 bucks.
One Nokia cell phone: 100 bucks.
One ounce Semtex: 500 bucks.
Getting rid of a dirty cop: f*cking priceless!"

Movie: Lucky Number Slevin

Not a bad movie.

Lots of big names: Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, etc.

Very enjoyable script. Slevin was in the wrong apartment, at the wrong time, and was mistaken for a loser who owes a bookie $96,000. And there's no way to get himself out of it... As if that wasn't enough, the rival ganglord also picks him up for a $33,000 debt. Then the police picks him up too, curious why he's been walking in and out of both mobster HQs.


"The first time somebody calls you a horse, you punch him on the nose.
The second time sombody calls you a horse, you call him a jerk.
But the third time somebody calls you a horse, well then perhaps it's time to go shopping for a saddle."


There are twists, of course, and if your eyes are sharp, you can catch what's going on before the end of the movie. The director was generous with the clues. (Hint: watch for things like watches and rings etc...)

But there's no need to think too hard. It's just a fun story to watch. Good script, good actors, good directing.

And it's cute how lucky Slevin somehow takes everything in stride, and still finds the time to fall in love. It's taking happy-go-lucky to a state of Zen-hood.


By the way, ataraxia is a bogus 'disorder'.

Book: Magic Street by Orson Scott Card

Plenty of time to catch up on some reading back in Sibu.

Managed to get hold of O.S.Card's latest one-shot offering. This time a genre of fantasy, that I might describe as 'urban fantasy'... Where magic happens in the streets of an urban city. Kinda like Megan Lindholm's Wizard Of The Pigeons, Charles de Lint's The Ivory And The Horn, or Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

It's an interesting genre, where authors weave magic and mystery around aspects of city life that frequently goes unnoticed. All too often, there is the theme of homeless bag-men and bag-ladies as being practitioners of magic. Remember Mad Hattie in Sandman. And it's usually a rather im-potent form of magic or illusions, not the fancy fireballs and magic missiles from D&D.

I can't imagine there being much fandom for this genre. But it's nice to read something less mainstream once in a while. Particularly enjoy Charles de Lint, but he's not mainstream enough for me to get hold of his books easily, else I would have read more...


Magic Street also starts with a Bag-Man, who 'be-witches' an English professor into giving him a lift, and driving him back to his neighbourhood. The professor gets home to find his wife giving birth, although she wasn't pregnant when he left home that morning. When the infant was delivered, unbreathing, the Bag-Man entered the room, took the stillborn, and put it into one of his plastic bags.

And with this sinister beginning, it segways into a story of an orphan boy growing up in a well to do black neighbourhood in LA. A boy who is influenced by magic in his life, and ultimately discovers his beginnings and his fate.


One of O.S.Card's greatest strength is his characterization. He can paint a character so real that you feel that you're living in his world, seeing everything with his eyes. And you inevitably form an emotional bond with the character. Like reading Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

Card's story ideas are wonderful also. I like his short stories best.

Magic Street started out wonderful as well... But somehow, towards the end.... I begin to feel like I'm reading Robert Heinlein, a prolific sci-fi writer whose stories always start out strong, but the finish always leaves you unsatisfied. Like fake Viagra that wears off mid-coitus... But in both authors, it is their skillful characterizations that made their books most enjoyable, so I kinda forgive them for their flaccid endings.

The protagonist is an abandoned child named Mack Street. He's raised by Cecil, a boy that found Mack. I don't think it's a coincidence that the two main characters are named Mack and Ceese.

Mack grows up and meets Puck and Titania as the story builds towards a showdown with a force of great evil.

Pretty standard fantasy fare. But the characters are interesting.


"What fools these mortals be..."
-----Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream-----

AirAsia, LCC, Sibu

Just got back from a weekend in Sibu.

Used AirAsia to get the cheapest fare possible. I saved hundreds flying on a weekday, instead of the weekend. Only costs me 2 days' work leave, rm60 for airfare and rm90 in airport taxes.

Flight was on Friday morning, 7am. Had to do a fair bit of research to find the most economical way there.

I used to have a strategy of parking at the Putrajaya ERL station, and take an rm6.40 train ride to KLIA. That won't work this time around, since AirAsia moved to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in March.

The earliest train will leave from the Putrajaya ERL at 5:50, that gets me to KLIA at 6:10, and I still have to take a connecting bus from the Main Terminal to the LCCT. Although both terminals are using the same air-strip, just on opposite sides, but getting from point A to point B is not a straight line. It's a 20km bus ride.

After further research around the net, I was convinced that there's a feeder bus from the Salak Tinggi ERL straight to the LCCT, first bus at 5am. That's what the AirAsia website said.

Downloaded GoogleEarth. Blew up the aerial shot of the Salak Tinggi ERL. Good. There's a good open air carpark. And no sign of those parking barriers, so the parking is free.

Plan A: Park at Salak Tinggi. Take the bus to LCCT.


To be safe, I scanned the aerial view of the LCCT too. Measured its distance to the post office. It's very near the post office where I went a few months back. There's a clearing where I parked that time, and its walking distance to the LCCT from there.

That's Plan B.


Worst case, Plan C, I can park at the LCCT carpark. The parking rate for a couple of days, will still be cheaper than 2 cab-fares to and from PJ.


Woke up at 3:30am on Fri morning, planned the route to Salak Tinggi with my GPS map, and left the house at 4am. The GPS map brought me via a rather _creative_ route... But it saved me more than rm10 in toll.

Waited more than half an hour at Salak Tinggi. The bus appears to be a myth. None of the workers at the station had ever seen such a bus. Scrap Plan A.

Found the clearing near the post office alright. But it's been cordoned off. Scrap Plan B. I could still park along the road-side there as many are doing, but decided not to take the risk. It'll be there for too many days.

Plan C, parked at the LCCT open air carpark. RM30 per 24hr period. Still not too bad. RM50 penalty for losing the parking chip token. ....hmmm....

Anyways, just barely made it to the check-in counter on time.


All this effort to drive to the airport? Cos I've an important date on Monday evening, right after I get back from Sibu. That's why I needed my car waiting for me.


Wasn't much to do in Sibu, except eat. And visit my 92yr old grandma. It's good to see that she has recovered a fair bit of strength, and was coherent enough to ask me why have I not found myself a girl at my age...

I also sinned. Again...

Gremlins

As if I needed any more reminders of how 'special' I am....

Penny Arcade goes and write a joke that I 'get'...

Or this one, for that matters....

Comic: Heart of Dorkness

WooHoo!!!

Finally got my hands on book 3 of John Kovalic's Dork Tower compilations: Heart of Dorkness.

This is the book where Matt gets back together with his ex-girlfriend Kayleigh, a woman who cannot understand Matt's passions and choice of friends.

Also, the one where Matt finally meets Gilly the Perky Goth, a heaven-made match, but they kept missing the chance to meet in previous books. Until the very second after Matt became unavailable...

The tragedy....

When oh when can I find Livin' la vida Dorka, the next book ??

Movie: Cars

This is the latest offering from Pixar. A CG animated feature featuring cars.

Rather disappointing. Not that the movie was bad in any way... Just that, I've come to expect excellence from Pixar after so many successive hits. Cars was only mediocre.

And I don't really fancy Owen Wilson's voice as Lightning McQueen. His voice has a patronizing, cocky quality, which I suppose is just perfect for the character... But after Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights, I just can't stand it.

Rookie race car works alone and fails to win. Gets himself impounded in the middle of nowhere. Discovers an old mentor, a young love, and a simple friend. Comes back stronger for the big finish.

It's like cliches have come back into fashion or something.

New Toy

Bought a Microscope from Lelong.

Is that cool or what?

It's one of those things I wished I had when I was a boy. To be able to look at the bristles on an ant, or the probocis of a mosquito.

Every boy should have a microscope! That, and a magnifying glass, and a telescope.

And I bought mine for only RM79.

It's been more entertaining than a TV.

And when I can get my hands on a couple of glass slides and cover-slips, there's the exciting world of blood smears and worm cysts to re-discover....

Game: Twilight Imperium

Suffered a case of serious brain-fart last Saturday night... Made a social commitment that I wasn't quite ready for.

Some time around 1130pm at Settler's Cafe, I agreed to a game of Twilight Imperium. 3rd Edition, no less.

I didn't leave the cafe until 7am.

TI3 is a huge boardgame of galactic conquest. A game of space exploration, diplomacy, trade, techonology research, fleet production and space combat. All the great ingredients of galactic empire building.

But OMG! It takes FOREVER to play!!

I can't even begin to get into how the gameplay works... But it takes oodles and oodles of time to play. Don't even buy the game unless you have a cadre of insane friends to play it with.

And incidentally, I have more than a passing acquaintance with insanity.

Granted this being the case... But there's no denying that this IS the best space strategy boardgame by far. And a 6-person game of TI3 is an experience that is not within the realm of possibility for many people. (Due to the inability of finding 5 other people mad enough to play with). Although Sunday became a Shaun-like haze for me, I think the experience was quite satisfying.

Movie: 杀破狼 SPL : Sha Po Lang

I hardly bother with HK movies nowadays. Too many disappointments. Too too many...

But boy, did I "drop my glasses" [lit. translation of 跌破眼镜] this time!!

Noticed the DVD of 杀破狼 (Saat Po Long in Cantonese, Sha Po Lang in Mandarin) many months ago. A few glances at pirated wares. Only noting the title of this movie with a pic of 洪金宝 (Sammo Hong) on the cover.

Noted the title, only because 杀破狼 was the name of a 'power move' by a memorable character in the 风云 universe. That's the HK comic by 马荣成, which got made into a so-so movie a few years ago. Followed this comic for a while, cos after 金庸 retired from writing, the only sword-fighting stories worth reading are 马荣成's comics.

Anyway, I just happened to find this movie in my housemate's harddisk, and I copied it over for a watch.

It's a cop movie. Sammo Hong is the evil gang lord. A team of bad-good cops have become obsessed with bringing Sammo to justice, to the extent that they were wiling to frame Sammo for the murder of an undercover cop, the death of whom Sammo was innocent of, since he only 4-Iron-ed the undercover half to death.

The bulk of the action happens on one Father's Day. There is some sort of a plot somewhere. An assassin under Sammo's employ kills a few cops. Donnie Yen, the good-good cop kills the assassin and Sammo.

The acting was OK. The plot was OK. The directing was OK.

The martial arts choreography was STUNNING!!

I was floored by the penultimate battle between Donnie wielding a telescopic baton, and Wu Jing with a Yakuza tanto. It was a vicious, go for the throat battle... fast and furious. It's like watching Bruce Lee, if he went full throttle and didn't have to slow down his punches for the sake of the limitations of the slow cameras of yore.

Donnie's baton fighting is as deadly as a viper, and Wu Jing's knife fighting has the fatal grace of a tiger. This battle even overshadowed the final show-down with Sammo.

There's no wire-fu. No fantasy, like fighting on bamboo. No flying shadow kick. No stylish Jackie Chan fighting with props. No Bollywood brawl where no less than 500 punches are thrown before somebody stays down. No Matrix's style over substance. And don't even compare it to VanDamme or Seagal flicks!

It's like a sword-fighting flick, but grounded in reality. Real martial arts masters going away at each others' jugulars.

I've really paid too little attention to HK films. But I'm grateful for this opportunity to find out more about Donnie. I didn't recognise him from the history-making fight against Jet Li in Once Upon A Time In China 2, nor as the evil eunuch from Dragon Inn (新龙门客栈), nor as 长空 (another name derived from 马荣成's creations) the spear-wielding assassin in Hero, nor in Tsui Hark's pathetic 七剑 (Seven Swords). And apparently in Blade 2, Highlander: Endgame and Shanghai Knights too. He'll be coming again in 龙虎门 (lit translation: Dragon Tiger Gate), which will be based on an ancient HK comic, from the time when Adam West was still Batman. Wasn't going to give two hoots for this movie, but I may have changed my mind now, though I still have to find a way to deal with my revulsion of Nicholas Tse....

Wu Jing had the misfortune of being obscured in disastrous films, like Tsui Hark's (again) embarassing Legend of Zu. But here's hoping that SPL will bring him better roles in future.

Malaysia: Don't Discriminate Against People Who Don't Speak Mandarin

Our Deputy PM is pissed at employers who have put up advertisements for job openings asking for candidates who are proficient in Mandarin.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/5/31/nation/14399649&sec=nation

Quote of the day, "It is discriminatory. Such a practice should stop."

The irony just blows my mind.

Movie: The Da Vinci Code

Crappier than the book.

Dan Brown is an over-hyped and undeserving second-rate storyteller.

News: Mystery of the Crooked Bridge

Finally, the mystery is explained.

After all the speculation and the debating, finally I read one take on the story that is reasonably believable. Although I have always had strong faith in Einstein's wisdom, even this faith was somewhat stretched when I hear stories of the bridge in our local papers.

But now, a story that makes sense and restored my faith in Einstein.

Movie: The Hollow Man II

It's a piece of shit.

Don't bother. You've seen all the invisible man special effects in the first Hollow Man already, especially the part where the guinea pig turns invisible fleshy layer by fleshy layer.

This time, you just get to see a lot of people getting shoved about by an invisible force. Or rather, you just see actors slamming themselves against the wall, to act like they've been shoved by an invisible force.

Pathetic.

Movie: 16 Blocks

16 Blocks. New movie from Bruce Willis.

A tired, aging, alcoholic cop fights impossible odds to deliver a witness from police custody to a courthouse.

Almost sounds like Die Hard, Die Harder, Die Hard3 all over again. But a lot less John Wayne. And Bruce doesn't do as much running with his character's gimp leg. And no C4's were employed in the production of this movie.

Still, the suspense is pretty good. A few interesting plot turns.

Bruce plays the part of the tired cop perfectly. The slouchy, apathetic demeanor...

"Life's too long. And people like you makes it longer."


Quite an OK watch.

Movie: Shaun of the Dead

Never liked zombie movies.

But Shaun of the Dead is one of a kind. It's hilarious.

It plays on that delightful stereotype that Brits are calm & polite, and more deathly afraid of making a fuss, than death itself. Versus the stereotype that Americans turn into selfish, twitchy schizophrenics in a life & death crisis, that we see so often in slasher flicks.

Here's a protagonist that's so slow on the uptake, that he practically blends in with the walking dead.

It's a story of the bond of brotherhood, filial responsibility, and love. After Shaun has an epiphany (in the form of a zombie with a hole in her gut), he rises to the occassion with heroic resolve as he saves his friend, his mother, and his ex-girlfriend. All the while, maintaining his British cool, and never forgetting to make the necessary introductions as good manners dictates.

Very funny. Must watch.

Comics: Infinite Crisis

Infinite Crisis is a new 7 part story from DC.

Apparently, it's spring cleaning. So DC started an ambitious story arc, bringing hundreds of the DC universe's characters together, and prune off a great number of them.

A society is organising all the villians together, methodically kidnapping and killing heroes.

A telepath, powered up just for the sake of this story arc (beyond the limits of the abilities he previously demonstrated in continuity), made Superman hallucinate that he is fighting bad guys when he's fighting the good guys.

Wonder Woman, was forced to kill the telepath because that was the only way to save Supe.

This act of violence destroyed WW's credibility as a hero. And triggers Batman's Brother Eye satellite to activate protocols to enforce justice. [OMG!! I can't believe that there's a wikipedia entry on Brother Eye!]

Batman's paranoia and trust issues had made him develop a satellite system to spy and keep track of all the superhuman on earth. He has always had trust issues, but this paranoia was exacerbated by the events in Identity Crisis, where he discovered that he had been mind-wiped by his own comrades in the JLA. Incidentally, Identity Crisis was a far, far better book than this one.

Brother Eye evolved into an AI, and became independent of Batman's controls. It launched attacks against several characters. Particularly WW.

Some kind of giant cosmic battle is taking place at the centre of the universe.

An aged Superman, a good Lex Luthor, Superboy Prime, a dying Lois Lane are introduced as being survivors of an alternate multiverse from Crisis of Infinite Earths. These penetrate some kind of space-time barrier to try to rally this foul and corrupted Earth, and convince the players to abandon it and recreate the other, better alternate Earth.

A few characters make their peace and unite again to face the crisis.

Superboy Prime goes nuts and kills some heroes. A couple of Flash-es grabs him and brings him to another time and place. He comes back stronger. It takes two Supermen and the sacrifice of a great number of Green Lanterns to subdue him.

Meanwhile Alexander Luthor is mixing and matching all the multiverses in a petri-dish in an attempt to create the PERFECT world.


Ever wondered how thin you can spread a plot? Well, here you go.

The heroes in DC comics' universe is just over-powered. Thus, they have to fight in these grand plot-lines. It makes the characters impossible to identify with, after a while. Then every once in a while, they tear too many holes in their continuity that they have to push a reset button to alter reality and start over.

Good thing I didn't spend any money on this series...

Movie: Final Destination

Just watched parts 2 & 3 of this franchise.

The movies have an idiotic plot: someone had a premonition of death, a half dozen people cheated Death as a result, Death comes hunting down the survivors in a series of bizarre accidents.

The acting is of the calibre of Dawn of the Dead. Actually, the zombies were a fair bit better. But I've only watched 10minutes of the classic, so I shan't comment too much on that.

But yet, there's a perverse thrill to watching Final Destination. You know who's gonna die. And you know that it's gonna be gory. And yet, the film still manages to keep you on the edge of your seat, and surprise you with Death's machinations.

Everyone who has seen FD2 will agree with me that the air-bag death was the most ironic, and the most memorable.

And the gore is like watching Fear Factor in one of those events where the participants have to bob in a barrel of chum. Seeing heads beheaded, impaled, squished, nailed; bodies impaled, sliced, smushed, toasted etc... It's a perverse and guilty thrill.

Quite a bit of SFX effort had been put into the highway pile-up and roller-coaster disaster. The movies deserve some credit for that too.

Movie: X Men 3 - The Last Stand

Watched the movie last night. Was free. Quality wasn't good.

But got the gist of the story.

The wikipedia entry has all the spoilers.

It's an OK watch, I guess. Prof X got atomised, Wolverine and Storm got their time in the limelight. Nightcrawler was cut cos his role just wasn't worth the make-up time.

And that's the end of the X trilogy.

But at least the movie got me in the mood for X-Men stories again. I last left off somewhere around House of M, where the Scarlet Witch (Magneto's daughter) was so distraught with grief that she's losing it, and was recreating reality. Eventually, she overcame Xavier's attempts to block it, and recreated the Marvel universe.

Into a world where H.Sapiens are the second class citizens. And millions of mutants have lost their powers, leaving only a few hundred, who has taken over important roles in government. Magneto lost his powers. Xavier is missing. Wolverine remembers his past. And Peter Parker is successful, until his secret was outed, that he did not come to his powers through evolution.

Right now, I'm 'getting' Deadly Genesis. Xavier will finally be found. And Scott fights his brother. Again. It suddenly appears that Scott has a SECOND brother, that's even more of an ass than the last one. Having Xavier as a powerful telepath is a convenient Deus Ex Machina. Whenever convenient, the writers can just re-write history, and make something happen differently, but Xavier had mind-wiped the events to protect the characters. Thus, explaining how they could just manufacture Scott's other brother out of thin air.

Movie: Firewall, An Unfinished Life

Firewall, the new Harrison Ford movie.

Think The Fugitive. But nowhere near as good.

Ford is a father in this movie. He's almost 64 years old. And he is playing a father.

Basic plot: some geeks with guns hold Ford's family hostage, while they force him to do an electronic bank heist. A few murders are pinned on him. He runs from the law and tracks down the villians via his dog's GPS collar.

Moral of the story: If you're a bunch of geeks that can't take down a 64yr old banker with automatic weapons, please invest in a couple of goons who can. You're heisting 200million dollars. You can afford a few goons for crying out loud!



Speaking of old actors, I also just watched An Unfinished Life with Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, and Jennifer Lopez. Oddly, I didn't recognise J.Lo at all until I checked IMDB...

This is just a simple, ungimmicky movie about a grandfather getting to terms with the death of his son, and connecting with his granddaughter and daughter in law. And Morgan getting to terms with being mauled by a bear.

Not the kind of movie you'll rush to the cinema to watch. Just something that you'll watch and forget on HBO.

TV: Giant Simpson's Foot - I'm LOST!

Lost season 2 has ended with it's final two episodes last week. And here be spoilers.

Michael got Walt back, and Henry gives them a motor boat to take them to 'rescue'. Once he leaves, he can never come back.

Oh, Henry the balloonist, is the leader of the Others.

Desmond, the ex-occupant of the hatch, comes back with his sail-boat. His love story is told. And he proceeds to solve the mystery, and assume responsibility, of the crash of flight 815.

John's faith, broken by Henry, refuses to punch in the numbers, and the hatch blows up. Two French guys in the Antartic detects the explosion and reports the event to Desmond's lover.

Sayid's plan went according to plan, he managed to reach the Others' camp ahead of Jack & Michael's group, and secured the premises single-handedly. He was an Iraqi Republican Guard after all.

On the way to that camp, the fisherman, his wife, and the soldier saw a collosal statue of Bart Simpson's foot. It's like a rubbled Argonath from FOTR, but only has four large toes.

But Michael wasn't leading Jack, Kate, Sawyer & Hurley to the camp. They went to a clearing where a pneumatic tube outlet was dumping all the surveilance reports coming from the ex-occupants of The Pearl.

Despite Jack knowing about Michael's betrayal, he still led everyone into an ambush. Hurley was released to warn the rest not to come after them ever again. Whilst Kate and Sawyer gave Jack betrayed looks, for betraying their trust in him.

Just because he's got an MD doesn't make him qualified to lead. His leadership, I might liken to 16th century Catholic church. All self-righteous and imposing his brand of morals upon everyone else. Expects blind allegience and gets hissy when he's not given what he wants. He doesn't give a crap about other people's opinions, believes his way is right and best, and gets mad when other people does things without his consent. He's undemocratic, and bordering on fascism, but his military decisions are all disastrous. Each 'invasion' against the Others had given the enemies more guns and/or hostages.

The original plan for the series was to have Michael Keaton play the role for Jack, and have the character killed very early. Wish the producers had stuck to that script.

Maybe the idea of the love triangle between the babe, the rogue & the doctor is just too good to give up. It makes for a fascinating case study of primate reproductive tactics. Had a good discussion about this before. Isn't it true that women want to swoon with the dashing, rogue pirate and his virile sperm, yet will also marry the grizzled old millionaire with the financial security? It's a fascinating dilemma, to either go with the good genes (maximising NATURE), or go with the rich partner (maximising NURTURE).

Movie: Hoodwinked - Trouble in the Hood

It seems an animated CG flick snuck under my radar last year. Hoodwinked is a relatively low-budget cartoon taking place in Little Red Riding Hood's universe. It's like Shrek, except that it's funny. They didn't even have simple physics like gravity right; and there's no fur/hair effects like Monsters Inc or Final Fantasy. Everything's just textured 3D. But they've got the humour.

It's a kid-flick. Complete with random bursting of songs ala Disney's Snow White, but no grand production like Beauty & the Beast.

But there's also a lot of adult sub-text meant for the grown-ups. The whole story is told like The Usual Suspects, a damn good movie if there ever was one.

There's also a bit of social commentary about big business killing the mom & pop stores.

Plot: There is a bandit stealing recipes all about fairy tale land. Red is safe-keeping her grandma's recipe book, and running from Wolf. Wolf is after Red. Grandma has a secret she's hiding. And the Woodsman has an ... impediment. It's up to Hercule Poirot, a toad, to cross examine the suspects and solve the case. (I figured it out 15min into the movie.)

There are some great voice talents, like Glenn Close and James Belushi. But my favourite is Patrick Warburton as the Wolf.

Patrick who?? He's the voice of Kronk (the guy who speaks to squirrels) in The Emperor's New Groove, still one of Disney's most enjoyable cartoons. He's David Puddy, the mechanic in Seinfeld. Joe Swanson, the cop neighbour in Family Guy. And plenty others. He's got a very distinctive voice that lends itself to humour. His voice has a special character, like... the anti-James Earl Jones.

Another special character in the movie is Twitchy, the squirrel photographer on Desoxyn. It's nice to see so many movie homages to insane squirrels lately. Ice Age 1&2, Over the Hedge, and now this. Twitchy gets to drink coffee here too.


Memorable quotes:
Wolf : What kind of candles are those?
Twitchy: Dee-na-mee-tay! MustbeItalian...

Villian: Dolph, tie up the brat; Liesel, hold the book; Vincent, get the truck; and Keith, change your name, please, that's not scary and I'm embarassed to say it. Boris, try that. Keith, ya know, OOOO Watch out for Keith!

10 Year Trauma

10 years ago this day, I had the worst time I've ever had in a cinema.

Ben, Julian and I somehow ended up at Bishan with time to kill. There wasn't any movie of note showing at Golden Village. We took stock of the options, and I voted for City Hall, by Al Pacino. Julian, wanted Nicole Kidman in To Die For.

Ben had no strong opinions either way. And it went down to a coin-flip. Which I lost.

OMG, that was the worst movie I ever paid money to watch!!

A story about a psychotic blonde who'll do anything to get on TV. What a bloody boring plot!

This happened during that period of time when everyone thought that the best ticket to an Oscar was to act a dumb / crazy character. Think Hannibal Lector, Nell, and Forrest... It's pretty naive thinking, but the Academy IS that shallow and predictable. Even Sean Penn, despite all his great works, had to play an idiot in I Am Sam to get noticed. (Which he didn't win, because 2002 was the Academy's 'Patronise the African Americans' Year.)

Back to the blonde... I sat through a shitty, dull movie, just so that Julian can get an eyeful of cleavage in the scene where Nicole jumped a high-school kid in order to get him to murder her husband.

There wasn't an ounce of suspense in the movie. The husband was gonna die, and I could feel nothing for the dumb jock. Nicole was gonna die, and I couldn't care less either. There was not one relateable character in the story. It's like a satire, that's not even funny. It's like watching a child's purple balloon drift away from his grasp; the event must have meant something for someONE, since the movie was made at all, but the rest of the world really can't care less.

I could have had two plates of Boon Tong Kee chicken rice for what it costed me to watch that movie.

yum-MY

I mean... wow... Fedora Linux has so much cool stuff now. But I blame myself for living under a rock for so long.

In version FC4, there's a silly bug when you change the Security Level. After you add a port that doesn't have a name (I was trying to add the BitTorrent port), the system-config-securitylevel.i386 will crash thereafter, with some lame port-name error.

The fix? Download and install the new version. And figure out the dependencies for it, and download and install the new version for the dependencies as well. Oh heck!

But now, there's yum.
[root@localhost norman]# yum list installed *sec*
to see the version currently installed.

[root@localhost norman]# yum remove *sec*
to remove current install.

[root@localhost norman]# yum install *sec*
to find new updates, and install them.


Freakin' sweet.

Movie: Over The Hedge

Went down to Seremban with a friend, to meet up with another friend there. And being a couple of good Christian boys, there are few options for after dinner entertainment. X-Men III wasn't out yet, and the only movie choice seemed to be Da Vinci Code.

I'm anti-Dan Brown. I read DVC. Not impressed. Couldn't care less about the conspiracy theories. Not offended by the heresy. But outraged that a second rate author like this is getting such big billings. No prose. No style. And when someone had to invoke a Deus Ex Machina more than once (and not for comedic effect), he has utterly failed as a story-teller. Heck, Dan Brown is even specifically mentioned in the above wiki entry!

It was with great reluctance that I finally agreed to watch DVC with them. But while queueing for the tickets, I saw that Over The Hedge had opened, and called a re-vote. Things went my way, and I denied Dan Brown of some royalties!

Over The Hedge is a Dreamworks CGI cartoon. Same guys that did Shrek and Madagascar, but without the big names in the funny business. Which makes the show funnier and more enjoyable. OTH has Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte & Avril Lavigne. Not too bad.

Didn't like Madagascar so much. Cos when you put names like Chris Rock and Ben Stiller in it, all you get are zoömorphic representations of the same two actors. Not that funny. And when you put in Zimmerman too, it's just too painful to watch. The cutest cast in that movie were the mobster penguins.

Over The Hedge, I loved!

The characters are based on the comic strip. I followed this strip for a while almost a decade ago. Needed something to fill the void left behind by Bill Watterson. But cute animals without a 6yr old protagonist just wasn't the same. I was skeptical about the movie, since this is Dreamworks after all... Still, it's gotta be better than DVC no matter what.

But I found myself enjoying the movie immensely. There's a good story written around the cast of the comic strip, and there's plenty of funny moments! Will never be able to forget the fantastic bullet-time sequence! Guffawed almost as loudly as I did at the Road Runner sequence in KungFu Hustle.

Good movie. Must watch!


Speaking of must watch movies... Ultraviolet is not one of them.

Unless you love Milla Jovovich. And that's the only reason to watch the movie.

Life isn't fair

Just spent the whole day at 'work' reading web-comics. There are days when this job is as easy as having tenure with Malaysia's Atomic Energy Institute.

And if you use Firefox, and download the Flashgot extension... Then you can go to Tools > Flashgot > Build Gallery, and just enter the following into the Content field:
http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comics/strips/200[3-6;1][01-12;1][01-31;1].gif

Then you can get all the strips of the webcomic, Least I Could Do, on one single page, without having to click Next repeatedly, without having to look at random ads.

And your work day will just burn right by...

Skarre, Pirate Queen

Finally! The Epic version of the WarMachine mini I showcased a few days ago. This should hit the stores in September, although, with my PressGanger privileges, I'm hoping to get ahold of it a few weeks in advance.

The mini looks awesome! PrivateerPress has not disappointed me!!

Gold Vehicles in Malaysia

Useful information to share here...

The easiest way to get into the gold action in Malaysia, would be via Maybank's Gold Savings Account.

This is an obscure deposit account, and if you pop into a random branch and ask about it, chances are, the teller doesn't even know that they have such a product. And a supervisor from the back has to dig up the protocol notebook somewhere to figure out how to create and fund the account for you.

But after a while, you get used to it.

Earlier this week, I walked into the PJ main branch at PJ State. It's one of the few branches where you can purchase the Kijang Emas gold bullion. While I was there, I also decided to ask about how I might withdraw my gold from the Gold Savings Account.

It's obvious that I can withdraw it as cash, but the website also promises that I can withdraw them as gold wafers. And there is an extra charge for doing so. I wanted to know how much are the charges. Didn't expect this to turn into an hour long consult with the banker, and several calls to the Shah Alam main branch and the KL main branch.

The PIC of the gold account in PJ doesn't even know what she's selling. And Shah Alam was telling her that I'ld have to sell my gold from the savings account at the bank Buying price (where I'll lose 8.8% in 'conversion'), and THEN use that gold to buy the wafers from the bank at the Selling price again!?! I'm estimating that such a transaction will cost me an estimated 13%.

It made no sense at all. I asked her to clarify it further with KL. And only then I got what I needed.
I can withdraw in 10g, 20g, 50g, & 100g wafers, with a delivery charge of rm25, rm30, rm40, & rm50 respectively. Walk to counter 20/21 at Menara Maybank.

With these numbers, I worked out how much it'll cost you to own gold via these vehicles.

If you want to hold about 3oz of gold in your hands, it'll be cheaper to buy the Kijang Emas coins. It'll be cheaper by about RM20.

OR, you can keep your gold in the savings account, and let Maybank guard it, insure it, sweat over the safe-keeping of the gold, until such a time when you actually want that gold in your hands. It'll only cost you rm20 more.

Which is a good deal. As long as Maybank stays upright. It's too easy for them to sell you gold that they may not actually own in their vaults. Who's the governing body in Malaysia that watches over this? Does Maybank even have all the physical gold they need to cover the deposits? Or are most of them on paper only, or is the gold already leased away, like what every reserves bank in the world is doing.

Maybank might just one day say that they've no physicals, but will liquidate your accounts through cash settlement. And you might be left holding bundles and bundles of paper that's cheaper to burn than the charcoal you can buy with them. (That's a cooking stove you see in the photo above, and bundles of German Marks just before Hitler rose to power.)

But let's hope that none of this comes to pass of course, that the world will continue to move around the sun.

Or why not buy stocks and shares in gold mines and other mining companies? That's a good way to make 10x more money, if you're lucky. But there, you'll need to know how to read company accounts, know how much hedging there is in their books, know some geology to read which exploration companies have potential, and be environmentally aware which mine is spewing its polluting filth into the ocean and getting sued by the Indonesian government etc...

But can't buy shares overseas in Malaysia. So not losing sleep over that bridge at the moment.

What I'm curious now, is the buying and selling price of Kijang Emas and GSPA at Maybank. I could be mistaken, but I could swear that the percentage premium I'm paying for the gold has changed a fair bit. Lucky I kept some records from last year, so I can check later. It's possible that the increased spread is a consequence of the depegging of the RM from the USD.

Comics: Cross Game - Mitsuru Adachi

Spent yesterday afternoon downloading and reading manga at work. It was just that kind of day.

Boss out. Manager out. Nothing breaking down. Those that had broken down had already been looked at or declared dead. Bushed from reading investment news. Caught up with all of Scott Adams' blog already.

So in between blogging, I looked for some comics.

Joyously, Mitsuru Adachi (あだち充, 安達充)started on a new series recently: Cross Game (クロスゲーム).

I've been a fan of Adachi's works since 1994, a few years since I gotten into Manga in general. Those were the days of Dragonball and Slamdunk. Adachi was serialising H2 when I stumbled upon it in the magazine I buy for my Dragonball & Slamdunk fix.

In the beginning, H2 didn't impress me much. The artwork is very simple. It wasn't the typical BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) style, but close to it. The plot is uninteresting, about high school kids playing baseball. It took me a while to realise that there was more than meets the eye.

The humour is... strange, with frequent 'product placements'. The characters' bookshelves will have collections of Adachi's manga. The bookstore girl will put out banners advertising his books. And the characters themselves will hold up previous issues of the comic he's starring in. It's cute, and mildly amusing. Once in H2, Hiro bought a dog that's a twin of the mutt in Touch, Adachi's first wildly successful manga series, also about high school baseball.

But after a while, I began to catch the nuances and the subtleties. A lingering stare, a hidden sigh... Adachi's simple artwork often speak volumes. When a character was wearing a skirt in one panel, then jeans in the next, through the use of some innocent panelling, the author established a deep history between the characters. It's quite hard to define, but if you can see it, you'll see it. It's like those 3D art posters. It blows your mind away when you first see the hidden picture.

Adachi is a master of the art of story-telling in his medium of choice. He uses the medium to work for him in each and every way. With simple lines, cunning perspectives, and humourous dialogue, he tells stories that are at the same time light hearted, passionate, and moving.

H2 spanned from 1992 to 1999. And I grew with it every step of the way. I scoured second-hand bookshops all over Singapore, and collected Adachi's earlier works. One time in JB while visiting some friends, I passed by a small bazaar and found the complete 26 volumes of Touch. I have a near complete collection. Last year, I bought most of Katsu! in the original Japanese publication from Kinokuniya. (As part of my aborted 'Learn Japanese' project.)

If one were to categorize the genre of Adachi's works, I think it mostly falls under sports-themed teen romance. Yea, I know that sounds very Barbie, but my distaste for gimmicky gore/nudity/Pokemon manga does not bring my sexuality into question. But it does raise question re: my maturity. Or maybe I'm so exceedingly mature, that I'm already way down the road to senility...

Cross Game is once again themed around Koshien, this is the venue for the national high-school baseball championships in Japan. Adachi has done at least a dozen stories, long or short, around this high school dream. Around this theme, he can inject a powerful passion into his characters that is very relateable.

In much the same way, Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿) has a recurring theme about flying in most of his animations: Porco Rosso (an ace biplane fighter pilot with the head of a pig), Kiki's Delivery Service (a young witch on a broom-stick), Spirited Away (flying on the back of a white dragon), Totoro (a giant flying cat) etc...

Anyway, I can't even find Cross Game on the shelves here yet, although it's been going on for more than 40 weeks. But if you know how to download stuff via IRC, you'll find lots of scan-lated manga at:
irc.irchighway.net
#Grandline

I might write up some "For Dummies" instructions on how to access these resources one day. Then, you'll know how to get ebooks and American comics as well.

A Beaver Ate My Thumb

No, my thumb is alright. Sorry to disappoint you. Yes, it's a stupid title.

Watched five straight episodes of Gilmore Girls.

Fans of the show will be familiar with silly titles. Mine's still tamer than Nag Hammadi Is Where They Found The Gnostic Gospels.

Yes, I follow a chick show. It just concluded its 6th season, and word is that the 7th will be the last. Started watching the show during my dark years. Humor was a rare commodity then. Between this and Ally McBeal, I barely scraped the RDA to live through with my sanity intact.

But I have a suspicion that there may still have been some irreparable damage from the 5/7ths of the time I went below the RDA.

This used to be a really good series. Very good writing with a lot of amusing dialogue. Just like how Calvin & Hobbes is funny, with a 6yr old spouting deep philosophy and using bombastic vocabulary. The Gilmore girls blather all manner of 'pop' culture references from the 40s to the present. Like, who the hell (in this time and age) has ever heard of Frances Farmer?

But they talk fast, and a large number of my peers are unable to follow the dialogue, so there are very few chuckle partners. The dialogue IS the show. The sarcasm. The wit. The bizzarre references. The plot is mundane. It's all character driven. And there are more characters in the show than a 12oz bag of pistachios.

As Luke describes Star's Hollow: "Everyone in this town should be medicated and put in a rec room with a ping pong table and hand puppets."

There's a short mad cat lady with a tall jazz-playing husband. A prickly handyman + diner owner. A rotund ballet instructor who's married as many times as Elizabeth Taylor. A village idiot with night terrors. A controlling mayor + gouging grocer. An overbearing Korean antiquer. A gay-ish inn receptionist. Snobby parents. A boy named Dean. A rogue named Jess.


But lately, I feel the show is going downhill. Rory just isn't innocent adorable anymore since she lost her virginity at the end of season 4. And after she starts getting it on a regular basis with a co-habitating boyfriend, a certain charm is just lost. The show never really made the right transition into the next level.

The endearing quirky characters are becoming more forced. In the last two seasons, they've tripped over quirky, and stumbling into becoming mental patients. Kirk the idiot isn't funny-stupid, but more loser-stupid now. Gay receptionist is getting too much screen time, and they just can't think of any more ways to make his gay-ness funny, so they're just making him neurotic.

Lorelai at least had stayed true to her character. The character was well developed from the very start, there was no reason to change it later. It's easier to cycle her men around. Waited 6 years for her and Luke to finally get together, and then she sleeps with Christopher in the season finale?!

What the hell?!

WarMachine

Showcasing some of the miniatures that I've painted up for WarMachine. These are just a few of my favourites, from the shambling undead legion of the Dragonfather Turok. I've spent the most time painting these up. Skill level still leaves much to be desired, but it's getting there, I hope.

Left to right:
-The DeathJack, the epitome of mechanical malignancy. This is one of PrivateerPress's most ambitious sculpts, with 33 bits of metal bits to glue and assemble.
-Pirate Queen Skarre. A Warcaster. One of the antagonists in the Iron Kingdoms. She has a Great Rack. No seriously, one of her melee weapons is called the Great Rack. It never fails to elicit laughs from all around the table when I declare her attacks in a game.
-Skarlock. A solo unit. The primary reason why I got hooked into this game in the first place. I was just wow-ed away by the dynamicity of the sculpting, and plunged into this hobby.

The majority of my stuff are still in pristine raw metal. Need to step up the painting pace.

10 Years Anniversary...

... for something that only I give a crap about anymore.

Keeping Mum

This being Mother's Day and all, thought it will be the best chance to watch, and review, a movie on moms?

Keeping Mum, boasts some familiar faces like Rowan Atkinson and Patrick Swayze, and that girl who showed up in a few episodes of Coupling...

Naturally, you'll expect some humour. Mr. Bean plays a role he had some experience in, if you count his cameo wedding two of Four Weddings & A Funeral.

But this is also a movie about emotional bonding between three generations of women.

Mr. Bean is the vicar of a small English village. His wife is sexually frustrated. His daughter is not. His son is missing a pair, so he's the only one not having such problems.

And if you have a dysfunctional English family, of course your best course of action is to hire a housekeeper, from out of no where, and without checking any references. Then the housekeeper will repair all the dysfunction either through song, or with their jolly, aged wisdom.

It's a very curious fantasy... I wonder why.

It is later revealed that the wife grew up in an orphanage. Then there's a tearful moment when the housekeeper reveals herself as the long lost mother. And grandmother, mother and daughter find a common ground and bond emotionally.

But there's plenty of light moments for those of us (read: XY carriers) who don't like the Ya-Ya / Travelling Pants stuff.

And there are twists in the movie that makes it truly enjoyable. So don't be discouraged by the Joy Luck Club elements. And if you've got the DVD and not watching it in the cinema, you may even see some 16yr old flesh.

fstab & mount

Situation:
One logical partition (/dev/hda5) formated in FAT32.
mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt/fat

Linux can now read all the files in that partition, but only the root has write access.

Neither
chmod 777 /mnt * -R
nor
chmod a+w /mnt * -R
works...
No errors. All the files just REFUSE to be chmod-ed...

But, if I edit /etc/fstab, and added:
/dev/hda5 /mnt/fat vfat users,owner,rw,umask=000 0 0
then
mount -a

Now I can chmod at will. And finally I can edit the documents in the FAT32 partition, while not logged in as root. WHY??
But it all works now, so that's the important thing...

Stupid people & Paris Hilton

I hate stupid people. This is a sentiment that I feel that I do not express often enough. Otherwise, there would've been a lot more people rolling on the ground after a meeting of my Nikes and their grapes.
Example of stupid people here. Also the teeming mobs of outraged parents blaming video games for their own lack of parenting abilities.
I find inspiration from Dogbert.
How many stupid people out there are already threatening my life with their irresponsible driving?! I can justify my actions as preemptive self defence.

On an almost unrelated note... I spent yesterday evening at Borders. Just to see what's new nowadays. There's a bunch of Band of Brothers spin-offs... An autobiography of Paris Hilton. I flipped through it just to plumb the depths of the dizzy blond. The plumb line didn't even get wet, and the plumbum bounced off the surface like a corpse skimming the Ankh-Morpork river.
Then there's a weird series of philosophy books, like Superheroes and Philosophy. Don't know what THAT'S about. Perhaps when I have the time to burn one day... But seriously, what demography was the book targetting? The niche intersection of small subsets of people who actually know the events of the Crisis of Infinite Earths, and also cognizant of the views of Aristotle? Much strange...
But the upcoming Bullshit and Philosophy sounds like something worth waiting for.

Incidentally, I saw a rather pretty girl at Borders. Reading the same Paris Hilton thing. RAPT-ly. Maybe she has the same curiosity and sense of irony as I did, far be it for me to make snappy judgments on strangers. But her hair was already 3 shades from blonde.
Just discovered that a far better place to meet interesting girls is in the pastry or cookbook section. Saw some sweet jailbait there. A really belated discovery. But maybe this knowledge can be passed on to help the younger generations.
The maternity and Feng Shui sections are a poor place for picking up girls, for obvious reasons of course.


Quote of the Day:-
"Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity."
-------Scott Adams------

St Petersburg & Jungle Fever

A reader was getting irate that I hadn't been updating the past couple of days...

Well, maybe cos nothing much had been going on... Was planning to go to a bike hash on Sunday, but skipped that cos wasn't feeling too well. The venue was also kinda far. And it has been raining recently so the tracks may be muddy. And also that I was at Settler's Cafe till 3am the night before.

I'm full of excuses. So will have to disappoint a few people. I'm sure more than a few were looking forward to hear about me getting injured again.

Was playing St. Petersburg, another boardgame by Rio Grande Games.

These guys are also famous for the award winning Puerto Rico and Carcassone, both of which I had played before also. I had many good times with Puerto Rico at Wolf's. Was getting quite good at it too, and won that particular event in last year's Board-lympics, but I sucked at Boggle and lost overall.

These kind of games sometimes have a rather complicated mechanic that takes hours to figure out from reading the instructions. But if you can join a game with experienced players, where all you do is decide what your actions are, while the other players decide where to put the colonists and what's a legal or illegal move, then it's much easier to pick up these games and have a good time all around.

Puerto Rico is fun. It's pure strategy. No randomness, after you've determined starting order (but that's also a test of your adaptability). Except when you introduce a player who has no concept of game theory, however many times he has played the game already, and keeps making moves that will inadvertantly help another experienced opponent. Yes, there are players like this... He never wins, but his X-factor-ness does mess up your carefully planned moves.

Carcassone is also a fun game. But it does involve flipping up cards from a face down stack, so there's some luck of the draw. Sometimes, you just don't get the piece that will earn you the mucho points.

St. Petersburg is more like Carcassone, in the sense that there is an element of randomness.

Objective of the game: earn victory points.

There are four phases in the game:
-the worker phase, where you use your limited roubles, to buy some worker cards, which will then generate roubles for you every worker phase from here onwards.
-the building phase, where you buy buildings, which will mostly generate victory points every building phase.
-the aristocrat phase, where you buy aristocrats, which will generate roubles also, and sometimes victory points, but far less cost effective than workers.
-the upgrade phase, where some random cards might upgrade your worker/building/aristocrat into something else that's usually more efficient in terms of production : investment.

So it's a game of resource management. Invest in enough workers that will give you a ready supply of roubles, which you invest in building more buildings that will generate victory points for you. Also, having a collection of artistocrats will give you massive bonus victory points at the end of the game.

So there is a delicate balance of building a cashflow, while earning victory points, and collecting aristocrats to give you that big VP payout at the end.

Failed to win a single game. But it was entertaining nonetheless.


But for more laughs, play something like Jungle Fever.

It's basically like Snap! Players flip over cards from their deck, until there is a match, and quickly snatches a wooden totem placed in the table centre. The slow guy will pick up the cards already flipped over. The objective here is to loose all your cards.

It really brings out the jungle in you. Charging you with adrenaline so that you are ready to pounce on the totem. It's somewhat stressful too, cos the cards don't show numbers, but rather elaborate shapes. And many of these shapes are deceptively similar.

But if one player is left-handed... Expect some injuries to happen.

Things I've learnt...

... which isn't all that useful for most of you.

And I forget things, or lose my notes. But look, here's a way for me to commit my findings in a place that's easily accessible, and backed up more frequently than my own PC...

Just installed Fedora Core 4 Linux on my office PC. Because I've got that kind of time.

Linux is simply amazing now. Still remember the good old days when I was messing around with Slackware 5.0... Good times... Now the installation is effortless, and is faster than WinXP! I even have Chinese support, but I don't know how!

First order of business... The Firefox it came with was version 1.0.4.
Got version 1.5.0.3 from http://getfirefox.com. The difference? With the new one, I can organise the tab windows around.

The download came in a tar.gz. I just need to unzip it somewhere and run.

1.0.4 is installed in /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.4.
I create an alternate directory to put the new one, make sure it works first before I burn the bridges behind me.
Click on the script. Didn't work. No error messages when I'm in the Gnome GUI.
So, pop into a sh terminal, and run the script from there.

sh-3.00# firefox

I get back the same Firefox 1.0.4.
There's a script in the /bin directory that's referencing the original Firefox.

sh-3.00# ./firefox
./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Ran a search for libstdc++.
Found libstdc++.so.6 inside /usr/lib

Ok... where to make Firefox 1.5.0.3 use the new library... Nothing in the .properties file. No obvious configuration file anywhere. Grab the source for Firefox and recompile the thing myself, and point everything at the appropriate libraries?? Hell no.

Well... Just fool it then.
sh-3.00# ln -s /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5
When Firefox looks for libstdc++.so.5, let the operating system point the way to so.6 instead.

sh-3.00# ./firefox
./firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5: version `GLIBCPP_3.2' not found (required by ./firefox-bin)
./firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5: version `CXXABI_1.2' not found (required by ./firefox-bin)
./firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5: version `GLIBCPP_3.2' not found (required by ./libxpcom_core.so)
./firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5: version `CXXABI_1.2' not found (required by ./libxpcom_core.so)
./firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5: version `GLIBCPP_3.2' not found (required by ./libxpcom_compat.so)

Still doesn't work...
Some search-fu later:
http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/4/i386/RPMS.core/compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-47.fc4.i386.rpm

Now it's OK.

Just delete the old Firefox, and edit /usr/bin/firefox, change all references to the old Firefox directory... And I'm done.

Epic Girl on Girl Action

I am often entertained looking at the kind of keywords that bring visitors to my blog. Asides from click-throughs from random blogs, or from selfrefresh & tehtariksatu, the most common searches are for Haley Starshine's cryptogram solutions on Order of the Stick. Some hits have been coming in from my Hanoi write-ups. But the funniest one was from an MSN search on "G-Spot". Other contenders like "tiger balls" was also amusing. The most mysterious being a hit from a Japan IP, solely on the write-up of The Bulge. Twice. Mysterious....


And now, with the misleading title from this blog, I wonder what kind of visitors I'll be inviting...

Anyway, to break the suspense, the title is referencing an epic battle of WarMachine I had last Saturday. It is a table-top war-game played with pewter miniatures. I liken it to a game of chess, but on a bigger board, played with more pieces selected from a wider choice of pieces.

And these pewter minis also had to be lovingly assembled, carefully painted, and meticulously detailed to bring out their best. It's a very nerdy hobby, but I find the craft pleasantly relaxing, and an excellent purgative for mental or emotional stresses. It's like reaching a vapid mental state, without the hangover nor the expenses of drinking. And remember the trouble I had with the Malaysian Customs, it had everything to do with this hobby.

What got me hooked on this game was the fantasy world built around the army pieces. Privateer Press began with some amazing creative talents, some names like Brian Snoddy and Matt Wilson, even I have heard of them before they formed this company. They began by creating the Iron Kingdoms fantasy world for an RPG system. Populated the world with xeno-races and monsters. Wrote the history, drew the geography and updated the politics of the kingdoms.

And finally creating the armies of the four warring kingdoms, each with their unique flavour and carefully fleshed-out protagonists. And each permitting different styles of armies and strategies. Then, last month, they added Hordes, the feral twin of WarMachine with new game mechanics whilst remaining compatible with the original game. Thus bringing four new factions into the Iron Kingdoms. And this was the new game that I HAD to get via mail order, in case the distributors here fail to receive their stock in time.

It's a good game. And there's a bunch of fun people playing it at Wolf's Game Shop, where I often hang out when I can. The hours spent battling, recounting past battles, brainstorming strategies, speculating on future expansions, discussing the stories (fluff), sharing painting tips, teaching or learning techniques, etc... It keeps my weekends full.

Sounds silly? Well, at least I'm not living my life vicariously through a soccer team half a globe away.

And I'm even the local PressGanger, responsible for running WarMachine tournaments and corrupting new players. Check it out, my name's listed.

Anyway, my opponent last Saturday night was Saleem, a Cygnar player. We played opposing sides of a vicious sibling rivalry illustrated in this story. This was the first time a 750pt game was played at Wolf's shop, and both of us were using new Warcasters for the first time.

Following is the battle report, which will make no sense to many...

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. ....

...whooops.... wrong notation...

My Cryx Army:
Epic Denneghra
1 Gorman de Wulf
2 Pistol Wraiths
2 Bloat Thralls
8 Bile Thralls
10 Croe's Cutthroats
1 Deathjack
4 Nightwretches
---748pts---

(Those who know my collection, will know that there's a lot of proxies here)

Saleem's Cygnar
Epic Haley
1 Lancer
10 Swordknights
2 Stormsmiths
1 Journeyman Warcaster
1 Thunderhead
1 Centurion
6 Trenchers
2 units of Battle Mechaniks & assorted gobbers
1 Eiryss, Magehunter


Cygnar deployed first. Knights on one flank with Lancer. Trenchers up the middle covering the two jacks.

I deploy my Biles to meet the knights. Croe and Pistols up one flank to greet the Trenchers. Bloats right up the middle. Deathjack up the middle waiting for a charge opportunity.


1st Turn
Cygnar advances. Trenchers felt threatened by Croe, and moves towards them. Centurion turns towards the assassins too.

Denny goes incorporeal and RUNS right into the frontlines. Croe's guys took a few unsuccessful shots at the Trenchers, but did kill a Stormsmith.


2nd Turn
Cygnar runs the Lancer forward. Hijacks an arcnode. Dominates another arcnode and tried to use it to belch on my Biles, without success. Some firepower was brought to bear on the Bloat, and killing it, but at some cost to tempo. Eiryss disrupts another acrnode. Centurion charges my ninjas, hitting only one. Trenchers did something useless. Dunderhead still hiding behind Trechers.

I wanted to slam the Lancer into the ditch. But the bone-jack I intended to use had its back turned the wrong way. Move one chicken to belch a grenade on the Trencher commander and kills him. Deathjack casts Dark Seduction on the remaining Trenchers and successfully turned them over to the dark side. Moved my new Trenchers away, giving free strikes to the Dunderhead, so that he helps me thin the numbers down to two. Thus opening a clear space to the Dunderhead. Denny moves up, stabs it with Eclipse, and Dark Banishes the 154pt Warjack into the ditch. ***PPPHHHHHIIIIISSSSHHHHH***

Pistols & Croe did something inconsequential. Biles moved in ever closer to the juicy SwordKnights.

Epic Denny was exposed. But she's just popped her feat, Shadowbinding all enemy models around her so they can't move. She only needed to survive this turn.


Turn 3
... This turn was unspeakably horrible...
A Telekinesis spell channeled through my own arcnoded hit my Deathjack and teleported him 2" to the right, into the ditch, right on top of the drowned Dunderhead.
And the rest of the battle.... Saleem will be bragging about it for months to come, so I won't bore you. But a double 6 from a Stormsmith did *just* enough damage to take out Denny. Lucky dice-rolls.

Else, my Croe would have the back charge against the Centurion, at (10+4d6)x8 points of damage. Biles would neatly take out the Swordknights and Eiryss. The Lancer will go into the drink. Epic Denny will heal up, then stay back, as the rest of my still intact army (with the exception of the swimming Deathjack) will corall Haley into her pen and lay down the hurts.

We live in interesting times

Was optimistically waiting for a correction in the price of gold, so that I can buy more... But apparently that didn't happen.

It just kept rising and rising. At the point of writing, it's moving towards 675usd/oz. I'm looking at a 20% returns on my investment in just 40 days. Should have bought more, is what I'm thinking now... But will there be a correction soon?

Iran doesn't look like it's going to kiss and make up anytime soon. They just need to spout some rhetoric, and oil prices will jump. Read this.

And the USD just can't seem to pull itself out of a death spiral it seems. But that isn't necessarily bad news for all.
This is the conversion rate chart for USD to MYR. The Ringgit is looking better and better, isn't it? Although I'm not sure this is such great news either. So glad that I converted my USD to AUD just before this.

Not that anything will matter much in the long run. I still believe that I'll see China as the next superpower in my lifetime. (Although, I'm making some broad assumptions with my definition of "lifetime", considering that Israel and Iran are staring daggers at each other, and Iran is so keen on having their new toys.)

Do you have gold yet?

Settler's Cafe, PJ

On 1st May, the first Settler's Cafe franchise opened in Malaysia.

Address: 32, Jln SS22/21 Damansara Jaya.

It's around The Atria, on the row of shoplots that is facing Giant's loading bay... The same row as the Michelin auto-shop.

It'll be opening from 2pm-11pm daily. Serving food, drinks, and lots of boardgames. Antike included!!!


A whole bunch of loyal Wolf's Game Shop supporters showed up on opening night and packed the place. I taught a bunch of guys to play Antike and managed to get two games in before we lost our numbers to the lateness of the hour and to other games. I won another game, bringing my win/loss record to 2/2. Both times that I try to go militaristic, I can't win.... This is a challenge that I must crack....


The Settler's Cafe is a quiet, family-friendly environment (unless there's a rousing game of Antike going on...) with polite, if not a little eccentric, staffs. I've seen most of them in their natural, uninhibited environment: they're a barrel of laughs most times, and it's almost disconcerting seeing them in a more sombre setting running a business.