Watching Anime So You Don't (have to)

I studied Japanese. I lived in Japan. I nearly died there. For 4 years people asked me what I studied, and when I said Japanese, the follow-up question would be either, "why?" or "do you like animé?". But no, I don't like animé. Animé is popular with retards. With society's losers. People who wear clothes with cat-ears attached or use Japanese words like "kawaii" in everyday speech deserve our derision. We should point at them in the street and laugh until they start to cry. To be perfectly honest, and to make a huge sweeping generalisation about a whole entertainment medium and its subscribers, I think it's mindless shit mass-produced for halfwits. But I digress. Actually I didn't, I just want to change the tone.

I've tried it before. But now I'm unemployed and I want to kick something when it's down. And since that asthmatic kitten was tougher than it looked, I'm going to give the lowest of the low a damn good thrashing. Animé perverts. Ok, I'll try to be a bit subjective. I'll even start with Ghost in The Shell, which was a pretty good movie.

Actually to start at the very beginning, when I began with Japanese, it turned out that I was in the minority not being a lonely animé bastard. So I tried it. The first one I watched was Full Metal Alchemist. I didn't make it through the first episode, but what I saw had a profound affect on me. My eyes widened. My heart opened and a new feeling began to flood in. I was addicted. I found the one thing I hated more than anything else. I had to bully every animé geek I could find. Now to the beginning.

Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex 2nd G.I.G
I hoped that the use of the word "gig" in the title meant that the crew would be using their magic eyes and telepathy to create a middling emocore band. Instead the key words were "Stand" as there is a lot of standing, and "complex" because it doesn't make a single lick of sense. This seems at first to be the exact same as the opening to the first film, and finishes kind of similarly, but I couldn't understand any of the middle bits, even though I speak Japanese and had English subs. Something about terrorism and politics. A strange move was to have the main character not take her clothes off even once, a rare example of the makers trying to make their animé less perverted. Even wierder is that there was actual justification for the nudity, which is an even rarer example of people in anime who should be naked being totally clothed. Hmm. Strange times.

Black Lagoon
Undeniably beautiful, Black Lagoon is set in a bizarre world where people covet Sony Minidiscs and the Filipino Navy is trying to prevent piracy. When the world's wettest blanket is held to ransom by pirates, his shady corporate employers attempt to get him and his minidisc cargo back, or run him over trying. Stockholm Syndrome sets in after a mere 7 minutes, and before you know it everyone's the best of friends, and the real bad guy is... big business. I've seen this movie before, have you? At one point a character says "this is much better than any movie". It's not.

Hanaukyo Maid Team
Best described with the phrase "oh no", this is relatively charming for the first minute and 40 seconds, as a child with no obvious eyes and whiting hair walks to his grandfather's house because his dead mother died to death. Then he arrives and even though he's, like, 6, he's encircled by a gaggle of maids, one of whom immediately shifts him. That they even animated the residual saliva is the first insult. The gist of this story, such as it is, involves an old git, the grandfather figure, whose wife leaves him because he's as boring as the guy in Up. He then shows her two fingers by populating his enormous mansion with naked maids. The boy now owns the house and all the maids too. His grandfather leaves him a tape, at the end of which he suggests that the boy should tap that shit (if I understand the phrase). Being an animé he decides to fall in love with the only one that is wearing clothes. The rest of the episode involved:

1. 5 maids taking his pants off so he could use the loo.
2. him being washed by what appeared to be identical triplets, one of whom prelathers the soap on her own breasts
3. our hero being felled by "a tsunami of skin"
4. the act of a 10 year old boy losing his virginity to 3 maids. This is the final insult.
   

Things I learned: animé breasts all look the same. If you were going to argue in favour of animé, you're going to have to work a lot harder now, pervert. At least it was only 12 minutes long.

Itazura na Kiss
Worryingly billed as a "slice of life romantic comedy" (may God have mercy on us all), it is saved by clearly being for girls. Girls are, by definition, 75% less likely to be perverts than men, so that's good. It's all about the dreamy guy in the top class, who's like Japan's best sports and textual genius. He's so cool he doesn't even have to open his eyes the whole way, but leave them sort of 3/4 open, as if that's as much respect as he can give you (if only you could tame him?). But you're in the bottom class and your friend is a chubbs. Facepalm. It's like stepping into the mind of that ginger stalker I had, especially since the protagonist is a ginger too. And much in the same way as I threw her a verbal bone on Tuesday by saying hello to her (the last time I'll be in DCU mind), I sort of felt for the bimbo in this show. It's remarkably cruel for the first while, I'm guessing because it was written by a real-life lonely, speccy nerdlinger, aka losers in life but winners in self-pity. After a while Ginge gets over her daddy-complex enough to move in with her hunky piece of man crush while her house is being rebuilt following an earthquake. Like cringe! In a bizarre twist, the guy's mother is simultaneously stalking Ginge because she doesn't have a daughter. They probably end up together, but it's not like I'm going to watch a second episode. The alternative is that the inherent, latent, obsessive craziness exhibited in any stalker ultimately consumes them all. Still, when I look at the super-awesome genius dude she's stalking, I can appreciate that there but for the grace of the Hannuka Zombie go I. A lucky escape.

Lucky Star
Sweet Enola Gay, this is diabetes for the eyes. Hopefully intended for children, because if it isn't then it's more wrong than anything else ever, a series of small schoolgirls with gigantic eyes wander around being extremely sweet to the tune of no obvious plotting. How to eat a cream-puff becomes a 5 minute exercise in cuteness so faun-like you'll want to just smash this shows sugary fucking face. Hold on, they're supposed to be in high-school? I guess it's made for forever-babies. Add vinegar to taste, it's going to be a long journey.

Onegai Teacher
The reverse of Itzura na Kiss, an ubergeek sissy sits moping around all upset that the woman of his dreams won't just magically fall out of the sky and marry him. Try a hobby, pizzaface. Then a pink-haired (of course) star woman falls out of the sky. Oh fuck dude. From the Spider-Man school of logic, where the only thing you need to be buff and engaged is a plot device rather than putting a bit of effort into living a life, four-eyes over here gets to live on a spaceship and teach his hot alien teacher to make sweet love in the earthling manner. Utter shit from start to finish, proof that the geeks with kill us all with their confused longings and their ridiculous manifestations. Try talking to real girls, it's not so difficult. Sure they're not aliens, but you know the problem with aliens? Wrong answer, there's no such thing as aliens.

Midori no Hibi
AAaaaaaahhh! Another Itazura na Kiss, a girl, who appears to be a drawing of a doe, lusts over a blonde guy, who this time isn't a genius but a street-fighting master of karate and beating-you-up. The only thing Seiji is good at is kicking arse, so everyone, including the ladies are scared of him, leaving him all alone, bar his right hand. Then one day he wakes up and his right hand is the doe-girl who secretly loved him from afar. Did you hear? The chick is his hand. This show is fucking awesome. Even it's credits song wasn't crap. Starting off insane and opening the taps as wide as they'll go, it's a show about a guy with a hand-sized girl fused to his wrist by the power of her stalker-obsession with him. And all the while I think, there but for the grace of BO'D go I. Much nudity and Fight Club-style self-beating ensue. When gangbangers come to kick his arse for all the names he'd been taking, he uses the hand-chick's tiny head to fend off the blows. Amazing. It's also impossible to shake the feeling that he's just a dude who talks to his hand and imagines that it has boobs.

Strike Witches
The final insult, chosen because it would be a misrepresentation for me to not watch an animé about magical schoolgirls with animal ears and tails, this utter filth has a squad of cameltoed, trouserless teens fighting space-nazis in the sky. A lot of stuff blows up but it's 90% crotch, with low angles and a distinct lack of pants the order of the day. This is even worse than the maid one. You knew what was coming with the maid one. But the propensity for arse in this is ridiculous. Every shot is full of arse. It's wall to wall arse. When they fly it zooms in on the lady area. Where're the pants? To make it worse, you really know a show is being gratuitous when the character with the eye patch actually keeps raising it so she can see. Probably to better judge how far away the arses are. Awful stuff. Still, the upskirt 3:16 seconds in is the best, smoothest piece of animation I've seen all day. Maybe in later episodes they find where all the pants went, but it's too late. I've seen everything.

So there you have it. If you're thinking of watching animé: don't.

I Believe in Tim Tebow

American Football. Now there's a game. People over here note that the players wear pads, but that's sort of missing the point. I know the hits in rugby are massive, but gridiron hits are different. Consider this: before a player is chosen to play in the NFL, they are scrutinised in terms of tangible performance metrics, how high they can jump, how fast they can run, how much they can lift, how many balls they can catch while blindfolded. They also break a mental sweat. After that they work out the most important facet, the edge any player needs to succeed: can he survive a single down of NFL without being killed?

What most people who think NFL is boring (it is) and takes too long (it does) don't seem to realise is that all of these guys are killing themselves. You remember the way John McCain can't raise his arms over his head because of Vietnam? Well John Elway can barely move either arm. Night-train Lane is in a wheelchair. Johnny Unitas is dead. It's sort of like the Large Hadron Collider: the NFL shapes the human body to the limit of its capacity then smashes it together head-first at incredible speed in the hope that bits'll fall off. NFL should be on the curriculum at medical schools in America. Did you know that the knee has 5 ligaments, the posterior and anterior cruciate ligaments, the lateral and medial collateral ligaments and patellar ligament? Well you can see them all when Lawrence Taylor breaks Joe Theismann's leg. It's the only time I've ever seen two stretchers come on for the same injury, one for the guy, the other for his leg.

But wait, I hear you say, who are any of these people? What is this blog even about? Where am I? Well shut up grandma. In general, the Irish level of knowledge on the game is low. When I play it on the lawn with my friends, the self-commentary goes sort of like, "Farve throws long! Caught by Dan Marino! Touchdown Los Angeles!" or some such rubbish. Lets just pause for that lead balloon to deflate.

Usually people only know the big names of a certain era, or a few choice highlight reel players for the team you "allegedly" follow. Sorry, mixed up my sarcastic quote-marks. You see, I play fantasy football. Fantasy football is like Dungeons and Dragons, only with more statistical analysis columns. Trying to figure out my starting line up each week requires 27 minutes of crying. I have acquired a raft of information on players I don't even think I've seen play, since I only watch Denver games and the Superbowl. Still I know who Danny Amendola is (the Italian Wes Welker). Fantasy Football is just so competitive that this kind of useless knowledge gives you a helping hand to mid-table mediocrity. The biggest selling weekly publications in America are fantasy football statistics records. There's so many columns and names it's ridiculous, but it allows you to make an informed decision. That's why this week I've started Chris Cooley, the Redskins H-back. Yeah, you see, he usually gets about 5 recs per game, but the Skins are playing the Eagles, the only team in the NFL that has a logo facing left, who are weak at safety and DE, so I'm expecting Cooley to make significant YAC (he's averaging 10.4 YAC as it is), which makes him a legitimate threat. I just hope Jason Campbell can perform the 5-step drop behind an overmatched line and pump-fake to the max to extend the play and avoid resorting to flea-flickers and end-around hand-offs on third-and-long situations. If he can, Cooley could be in for a big game between the hash, and maybe act as a deep-threat on coffin corner routes to the pylon. Fumble!

NFL is a bit boring itself anyway. I don't understand how Americans can call soccer boring (and I'm not suggesting it isn't by the way) when their popular sports are baseball and NFL, where a bunch of fat Italians play a game so physically undemanding that it can be played on consecutive days for a whole week and a 60minute game that takes over 3 hours respectively. Anyway, Since the attachment of my emotional bandwagon is purely coincidental rather than based on any sort of sense of pride of place or whatever, I've begun to see other teams behind Denver's back. To avoid detection (Denver are winning this year and I don't want to upset the football Gods), I do so in other leagues than the NFL. I began watching college football last season. If you think NFL games take too long (they do), and are a bit boring (they are), then college ball is a pretty good answer: it takes 2/3 the time and scores are like in Madden 2003, when you could score on the QB sneak every time.

Here's where Tim Tebow comes in. I've begun to follow the Florida Gators, based in Gainesville, largely because I like their jerseys. Tim, the Gators QB, is possibly the most talked about sportsman in America. Last year he delivered "The Promise" which seemed a bit gay at the time, it still does but it did then too, but they haven't lost a game since. He's since won a national championship and set a new record for scoring running tds, completely unheard of for a QB to do. When he got a concussion, people cried, and tv cameras showed him vomiting into a bucket for some reason. He's been on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice already.

Tim is the home-schooled son of a pair of religious fanatics, and has had a series of tough Christian values copperfastened directly to his soul. His dad even said he asked god for a preacher but got a quarterback. Now people are actually beginning to wonder: is he the son of God? Possibly. If there is going to be a new messiah, why not make it a football messiah? Obama's not working out. The way Tim has played and conducted himself in spite of ridiculous media scrutiny, especially coming from an enclosed childhood in religious centers, is incredible, and I say fair play to him.

But now for the bad news. The NFL Draft is the system whereby new players enter the league from college, like the Army draft only with more convicts and death. Tim is a hugely talented player and he'll go in the top 5 picks for sure, especially considering that people are going to come from miles around just to see his enormous head, something that would be a huge boost to loads of struggling teams. The thing is that in a league designed for parity, the shit teams get the first picks, so Tim will be scrambling and sack-fumbling from behind the lines of one of the following teams, in my estimation:

• Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Tampa are probably never going to win a game again, ever, and they draft a quarterback in the first round every year. The thing is, Tim already plays in Florida and has a sizeable following, and nobody goes to Bucs games, probably because they go to Tampa Bay, a body of water, rather than the City of Tampa, the actual location of the team, so he'd be a huge draw. Hopefully the team'll go broke so they won't be able to afford to pay Tim first-pick money and we'll never have to see his magnificent jaw in pewter.
  
• St. Louis Rams: more religious fanatics, Tim might not agree to sign, though, because the Rams are going to take his Christian butt to LA, which I hear is where the devil lives ("I want to go there"). They need a QB, but please don't go there Tim, their jerseys are rubbish.
• Cleveland Browns: I don't think Cleveland could handle Tim and LeBron. A few weeks ago Braylon Edwards beat up an acquaintance of LeBron's and got traded to New York two days later. That's how big LeBron is. It was just an acquaintance, it wasn't like it was his mum or someone. And the Browns are just so awful, they don't even have cheerleaders, or logos on their helmets.
  
• Washington Redskins: The skins are a total disgrace. First of all, they are located in an area spanning parts of Maryland and Virginia, around the Potomac. Secondly, Redskin is a derogatory name for native Americans. I don't think Tim should play for them, unless they change their name to the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons. Then I guess I'd be ok with it.
  
• Tennessee Titans: Tennessee are so bad that in a game this year, they used two quarterbacks, ok? Quarterback is the guy who throws the ball, he's the only one, yeah? The ball is the brown thing with the laces. QBs are usually white. Tennessee started a white one, and he only threw it successfully to a player on his own team 2 times, out of 17 attempts. That's bad. These completed forward passes resulted in his team going backwards 7yards. That's also bad. He then threw the ball to the other team, an act known as throwing an interception, colloquially known as a "pick", the worst thing any qb can do. So they brought in a new guy. The new guy is black. That's bad. He didn't throw any passes to his own team, but did throw a pick. Are you getting this? At one point in the highlight reel, Deion Sanders actually says, "Oh snap son! Whuuut? That's kablamo". It is the single worst play by a qb unit in the history of football. Elsewhere, the defence conceded 59 points and nobody else could score on offense. They lost 59-0 (a league record losing margin) to the Pats. Buckle up, Tim, I think I hear your name being called.

Quotefest: Snake

"Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."

From the never ending dickhead parade that is Comment Is Free, which is the main bulk of my lunchtime reading. I think it's pretty good except I don't think the tree is supposed to be especially magical.

Religion, eh?

Losing your voice

I've lost my voice. And not the one I talk with either. Le sigh. Four things:

1. C'mere, what's so bad about playing France at football? They haven't been any good since about 1998. That's over a millennium ago (possibly). And we can put Richard Dunne man-marking Terry Henry, and that'll be that for him, unless he takes a free kick before the whistle or convinces the ref to overturn a penalty decision or one of his other Arsenal tricks. And if history has taught us only one thing, it is that Frenchmen headbutt right-backs, probably while wearing a manteau, eating an onion and driving a Peugeot. Ireland's right-back? John "Dear God, make him stop" O'Shea. That's win-win. If you want to crown them, then that's your business, but one question: France are so great, then why didn't they win their group?

2. It's breast cancer "awareness" month in America, and to, er, celebrate the NFL has this pink accessory thing going on. Some players are wearing pink boots, gloves, sweatbands, Denver played a whole game dressed like homosexuals (probably unrelated); coaches are wearing pink-peaked caps and pink ribbons. For every touchdown scored, John Madden promises to show some nip. But, and bear with me here, why? Surely everyone is aware of breast cancer? Aren't they? It's easily the most vaunted of the cancers. The Brett Favre of cancers as Madden would say. Call me old fashioned but I think cancer research should not be segregated. If the NFL goes pink, I call upon the LFL to force its players to have a set of fake testicles dangling from their shorts. Not necessarily for cancer, but I guess that would be a bonus if it were.

3. Did anyone actually watch The Byrne Ultimatum, formerly of RTE 2? I ask because it'll surely never be seen or heard of again. I read a piece on Cheryl Cole the other day, entitled: "Cheryl Enjoys A Night In With The Telly!" (Someone, call Pulitzer, I've found the new Woodward and Bernstein). In it she revealed that she likes both Eastenders and Corrie. Wow, my life is now complete. Anyway, I decided to embark upon a nightmarish blog-related journey into watching actual telly, to see what the celebrity fuss was. I started at 7pm with Nationwide, and was fine through Leirgas (easily the best thing I saw), GAA 2009, The Apprentice Ireland (instead of saying "you're fired" Bill Cullen just hands the loser a Pot Noodle and says "get used to it"), but The Byrne Ultimatum just blew my mind clean off of my cerebordum. Nothing can prepare you, no medic could revive me.

Clearly an attempted rip-off of those fake BBC quizzes where the questions are just thinly veiled prompts to tell jokes, TBU is unspeakably awful. But don't turn it off, it's so bad as to be mesmerising.

At the start, you see, Jason Byrne picks two people out of the audience, one to sit beside him and keep score, the other to play jingles on a tiny If-You're-Into-It-era-Jemaine-Clement piano (actually the best thing about the show). But, you see, Byrne is only a made-up comedian. He's like one of those guys who hears what he thinks would be a really cool nickname for himself, like Skittles, Flatbaby or Sugar Cock, and then starts calling himself it whether anyone catches on or not. Basically he's a comedian in the same sense that a coyote can run on air for so long as he doesn't look down, i.e. not in real life. But he has his own show somehow, and you bought a ticket for it because you wouldn't know funny if someone ran up and wifflebatted you in the balls with it. Wait, what? Anyway, now you're up on stage, and you've to talk with Jason Byrne, who isn't funny either. Hilarity doesn't ensue.

It is a terrible way to start a show. There's a reason why everyone isn't a comedian, and this show is it. Byrne invites a foureyed geek onto stage and then neither of them can think of a single joke. Wow. But luckily for you, there's a series of guests, one of whom you've seen before. But he wasn't that funny, no, he was Adam Scott. Scott is an Aussie, and he's about as funny as a wooden leg. To demonstrate this, he removed his wooden leg and waved it around a bit. To my knowledge, he has done this every single time he's left his own home. It's his whole act. Scott said to Byrne that he and the guy dragged up on stage looked like a ventriloquist and dummy. And they did, in so far as any two people sitting beside one another do. What ensued went on forever.

On to the games. Oh dear. Byrne can't present, so he doesn't really try. To introduce the games he just starts talking until he has said all the words he knows and about 7 he just made up. Then the game begins. One was "Whose line is it anyway". This involved a washing line, upon which things relating to a famous person would be put. Try this: A cup, a sausage and two rashers paper-clipped together, and a doll's head? Lady Gaga! Of course!

Then to finish there was a game involving cards face-down on a board. Byrne said about 2,000 words about what everyone had to do, then just stood up and shouted "HIGHER OR LOWER?". He turned over the card to reveal... Ozzy Osbourne. "HIGHER OR LOWER THAN OZZY OSBOURNE?!" Silence. "As in the drug-takin'" he shout-added (shadded). Next was a picture of Kelly Osbourne. Was she higher or lower? Not important. Who was next? Edmund Ignatious Rice. Really. The other team had a bizarre version of the same game, involving guessing "higher or lower, hated wise". The first person was Enda Kenny, probably the most popular politician in Ireland at the moment. Eventually a picture of Sean Fitzpatrick (anyone?) was turned over, and Byrne humped it.

When the games ended, the idiot dragged out of the crowd couldn't add up the score, on account of his apparently severe mental retardation. This prompted one of the panellists to proposition Hector O'Heochagain to the effect that if Hector could add up the scores in Irish then Hector's team could win. What a cunning plan! Maybe the fluent Irish speaker can't add in Irish! Next time you have an argument with a French defeat them by requesting that they respond in French! Go all in, with tactics like that, you can't lose.

His team lost, as did everyone watching or anyone reading this.

4. Thanks for nothing, youtube. Internet videos are the most moving pictures on the web. Cough. Youtube still has all the cats, geeks, special needs comedians, totally fake self-sodomising Americans and miscellaneous awful videos set to the awful "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" you could ever wish to be sent a link to (or not), but that's not necessarily a good thing. Short pointless videos are only so good, but sometimes you want to see something proper mental. Like a meta-Kanye West quasi-music video directed by Sofia Coppola's ex-husband Spike Jonze from Three Kings.

Or a piece of animation that basically gives you the history of Africa in 8 minutes.

Yellow Cake from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Or how about a short in which a... well, just see for yourself.

Fine, enough. Youtube me!

Accidental Attempted Suicide part 1 (of 1)

Unemployment: Jayzuz aren't you sick of it? There's only so many episodes of The Hairy Bikers a person can watch (2) and by Wednesday you've allowed yourself to get so upset at The Sunday Times putting a picture of a baby in a Munster Rugby shirt in Leinster's ERC Heineken Cup on the front page, in Sepfuckingtember, that you've written a strongly worded email to former director of RTE Pharrell Corcoran's eyebrows out of sheer simmering, drunken rage. But what do you do the rest of the week?

Recently I've been playing Final Fantasy VII. I know. This is the game that your pal and mine Gordon Agar had tattooed on his body (well, a logo representing it, the game takes ages). When I was about 10, possibly less, I got it for Christmas and immediately flung it over my shoulder in a non-competitive rage. I raged a lot, even as a child. Just ask GI Joe. Then when I got back to school I found out that my mortal enemy, and all round nice guy, James "Jimmy Shannon" Shanahan had got the same game, and suddenly we found a way to make competitive a game in which you spend an hour buying a dress for a blonde Manga pervert: by trying to finish it first.

Thusly I did verily skip through the story to a point where I got completely stuck and promptly gave up. Then after about a month I went back and tried again, but still couldn't do it. If you have patience (and if you're reading this I'm guessing you don't) and get stuck in a game, you should try that. Just walk away from it for a while and when you get back to it you'll somehow be better at it. I reckon your body and mind just needs a break from sitting in a huddled position in the dark trying to make out the image on a 12" screen from behind the cloak of stars and stress colours brought about by sleep-deprivation and Mario refusing to jump across a metre wide gap.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I got FFVII again about two weeks ago, and played through it pretty briskly (what else was I going to do, find a job?), all the time searching for the bit that I gave up at. And yesterday I found that bit. And yesterday I finished the game. I got to the second last boss and then gave up the first time. So if you ever have a lot of time on your hands and want to spend it slowly going insane, try FFVII, it took me over 10 years to finish. Was it worth it? No.

But one way of spending your time you should probably avoid is try to accidentally kill yourself. I know, I've tried. Bear with me. You see I've never done drugs... actually that's not strictly true, I've done loads of drugs, the kind that make your face round and your immune system fall off. So I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to do them too. Just not the kind of drugs people think of first. I just never thought it seemed like a good idea to buy synthetic German biochemical solutions from a man with a gun. And I know that there's supposedly always a positive to putting things in your body that somewhat outweighs the negative, like the dexamethasone I was on that makes your nose- and back-hair grow like nuts while also making your nuts grow like nuts. Anyway, booze never actually did anything, didn't make me loosen up, didn't give me hangover, didn't make me burp like Barney Gumbal. Why would I bother then, they're the best parts?

Now since taking hallucinogens would be a doubly bad idea (since my immune system fell off) I had to do literally moments of research to discover a better way of inducing a stupor. Online. That's where I found this. It sounded pretty neat. A little too neat. So I decided to do a little more research. Then remembered what I was looking for in the first place and tried it out.


In retrospect, taking advice from Cracked.com probably isn't the best idea I've ever had. Never ever do the Ganzfeld Procedure kids. It's the same deal you get at Guantanamo without the form-hugging orange overalls. When you deprive yourself of sensory stimulus strange things happen. After a while my head felt a bit weird, but I still didn't think anything was going to happen. Then everything goes all colouredy, and there's sort of WMP visualizer on random deal going on. Suddenly, you're in a bright room with Beth Maguire, and it feels and sounds like she's actually there. And that's not so bad. But then she'll go off and it goes black and you'll start hearing things. Voices, not all of them speaking English, and things appearing, not all of them English. Dogs. A harlequin baby. Several members of the FFVII cast. It's like a Ken Ishii video. All terrifying and all right there. And the thing is, you kind of get lost in it, and because it's so like dreaming that you try to convince yourself that you're, you know, dreaming so you can wake up enough to take the pingpong ball off of your eyes.

But you're stuck, you can't move. When I finally woke up, I had a large (small) bruise on my left knuckle from flailing in my Ganzfeld procedure. Now that I think about it, I do remember feeling all tired and sleepy, and the next thing I know I'm in some sort of dreamscape, and I didn't see a unicorn or a muttonchopped foureyes, or any of the accoutrements to the Ganzfeld scene depicted above. Maybe I should have breathed through my mouth. Maybe I just fell asleep. God I've been having some strange dreams lately, ever since Waltz With Bashir came and ruined my life. Zach Galifianakis was in one. I played league for the Rabittohs in another. Still, I don't think I'll be trying the Ganzfeld procedure again. It's probably easier to just take some LSD.

Useless

The title refers to the Irish international soccer team. "Sucker team" more like, am I right? Well, no, because we are the suckers for having faith in the bastards. When I was at the Heinekin Cup final in Edinburgh, I expressed my doubts over the kicking prowess of Johnathan Sexton. A racist Scotsman in a tartan hat turned around and told me to have faith, before turning back around and shouting something about English bastards. Johnathan kicked the goal and I became a European champion at supporting Leinster. I've resolved to have faith in the teams I've attached my emotional carriage to the bandwagon of ever since once.

So, like an IDIOT I decided to watch the Ireland match even though I hate soccer and think I'm better than both John O'Shea and Kevin Kilbane, as well as Stephen Hunt and Darren Gibson, not to mention the other 6 (I'll admit that Shay Given is better, but I did keep a clean sheet against my dad one time in the garden). But I, you and most mammals are better than Aiden McGeady at football. Whales. Women. Titus Bramble. All better.

At least Il Trappo left him on the bench. But then he brought him off the bench and onto the pitch. So I did something I've been threatening to do for as many as 1 second after his substitution was announced: I catalogued every touch he made to see his effect on Ireland's performance. Here it is.

• 65 minutes: arrives on pitch in limo.
• 67: first touch, gets tackled, ball goes out for throw
• 68: ball thrown to him, loses possession.
• 69: heads ball straight up in air, loses possession
• 74: tries to pass the ball 3 metres, fails
  
• 79: inexplicably comes scorching into frame when three Irish defenders have a single, long-haired Cypriot cornered and boots the ball into row Q, giving away a corner
• 80: gets the ball from the clearance because he doesn't do defending, starts running with ball, poor control sees ball fly away from him, can't outpace balding defender, holds ball up in opposition box, ends up passing it back to John O'Shea (dear God) on the half-way line, who kicks the ball over Duff's head and out for a throw. That wasn't really his fault, but at the same time, it clearly was.
• 84: contribution to the goal: stood on the side of the pitch not involved in the move. His biggest contribution.
• 87: loses possession, out for throw.
• 87: loses possession.
• 89: loses possession, gives away free.
• 90: disappears as Ireland desperately mash traditional away-lead-suicide button.
• 
  

I add that Eamonn Dunphy said he came on and immediately had a huge impact, which is hyperbole having an affair with lying. Eamonn then added that Aiden won the Brownlow Medal, knocked out both Mike Tyson and Shaquille O'Neal and did a better dive than Wayne "I'm an honest player"[dives] Rooney. And I didn't make any of this up, I diligently watched his contribution, which consisted of him kicking the ball to the other team before running away crying. He had a single, backwards pass to John O'Shea. Alarm bells are ringing, Willie. Seriously, myself and Rosanna Davidson could do way better than that. The performance in general was bad, but seriously, Aiden McGeady is an awful player, and looks like he's about to cry all the time. Maybe that's because Trappo looks like he'd snap his neck given half a cha- actually forget that.

Listen to me talk

(I wrote this post at 6am after being up all night watching films, the day after being up all night in Stradbally playing poker and winning despite not knowing which hands are better than others. It's not terribly coherent, which is why I didn't publish it earlier. At the time I think I just clicked the "save now" button instead of "publish")

Crank isn't a very good movie. Let me tell you about Crank. At the end of the movie, 20 begunned Chinamen stand facing Jason Statham, and he doesn't see them. It's that kind of football. I didn't like it, but the directors made a sequel, even though Statham's character Chev Chelios dies at the end of the first one. His resurrection is never addressed. However, his erection is. Four times or so.

Anyway, enough about Crank. What do you think of Crank? The guys behind Crank have invented a new movie for you to watch, featuring Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under. It looks like this, and I really want to see it. My favourite films are all directed by P. T. Anderson and Stanley Kubrick, but still. Did you see all that stuff blowing up? And that car flipping over with the tracer rounds zipping by, and everything's all like BLAMBLAM DUKKADUKKADUKKA? Did you? It looks so buff it could convert gays, or convert straights to homosexuality, whichever is macho-er. I'll be seeing it next week.

So c'mere, did you ever see the movie La Haine? Yes, it's French, but you can't blame it for that. I liked it. It's about a Jew, Arab and African walking around the volatile Parisian banlieues one riotous day. Then a riot breaks out. It must be said, the Kaiser Chiefs predicted it.

It's very good. It's one of those films where nothing seems to be happening, but if you listen to stuff and read the subtitles or something you'll learn about things or whatever and Vinz finds a gun and he's all like "fuck the police" and yaddayadda. It's about drugs.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Read the subtitles, and you'll get into this story a lot deeper. The subs were Americanized, which meant they make ridiculous cultural assimilations, like switching all talk of Asterix the French comic Viking (he's in comics, he doesn't tell jokes) to talk of Snoopy. Then a character named Asterix comes along and guess what, America? They keep calling him Snoopy in the subs, even though we hear them say Asterix about 11teen times. Who can I call to arrange a riot over that? Can you arrange a riot?

Anyway, it's really cool, and it's French and monochrome so even though you'll enjoy it guaranteed (this is not a guarantee), you can say you're now into arthouse film. This is because in the popular consciousness, foreign language films are all arthouse, even though that's insane. La Haine is basically Boyz in the Hood, only better and about the Jews and nobody uses the "n" wor- actually forget it.

WHAT IS GOING ON?

A long time ago I was a student. It wasn't actually a long time ago, because I'm still technically a student right now. Towards the end there, I used to be in the library a lot, something they don't tell you when you sign up. On Saturdays and everything. I used to sit on the top floor, since this was the only place where the Spanish students didn't go to throw their little family reunions and there was a slightly lower chance of people eating Pot Noodle while talking at full volume either into their phone or into their cupped hand. Since humans are creatures of habit, I used to see the same people there all the time; the African man who used to never wear deodorant, the only scene girl in DCU, the geek who followed the only scene girl in DCU around all the time, the most nervous man in Europe, etc.

There was also a ginger girl. Only she was different. She used not be only in the library, she used to be only everywhere. I'd go to the library on a Saturday, there she'd be. I'd go to the canteen, she'd be there. I'd get up at 12pm and walk through the Hub at 1, she'd be in the Hub having lunch there. I'd go into the Spar, and I never go into the Spar, magically she'd follow. Then I actually finished my exams, so I thought, no more Ginger. But then I was coming home from the pub after watching Barcelona steal candy from the baby that was Manchester United, the day after the exams, and there she was again, looking at me with her huge green eyes, that seemed to say, "I'm stalking the shit out of you". She also looked exactly like a young, green-eyed Jayma Mays, from the tapestry of injustice that is Epic Movie.

The thing is that I assumed that I'd been seeing her everywhere by accident or something, and that she probably thought I was following her around, because that's what guys do isn't it? I, therefore, seemed to be accidentally stalking her, and the more I tried to avoid her, the more I saw of her. I tried sitting in a different part of the library, only for it to be the area where the books for her course (*cough* biochem *cough*) were located. I tried going to the library at unusual times, but she must have lived on campus because she'd walk to Hampstead behind me about 3 times per week at closing time. Then one day I was sitting at the window overlooking the revolving doors. I was leaving to talk to someone when I saw her right there sitting adjacent to me. When I came back, in my TweetDeck window someone ginger had typed "xxxx xx x".

But girls don't stalk people do they? It's this norm, and also because I'm so slow on the uptake that I make continental drift look like Usain Bolt, that it took me so long to realise that she was stalking me, and probably not that accidentally. This, as far as I can tell, is the 3rd time that's happened. Still I didn't see it coming.

Now, however, something strange is happening. Girls stalking men is the new black, after the brief period when red was the new black and then black was the new red. There's not one but three movies about women stalking guys coming out. Beyonce's husband gets stalked in one of them, but by a woman, in a PG-13 movie, where nothing really happens. This one with Sandra Bullock looks utterly insane, as if it was filtered through the lens of a mental patient during break-time at Lunatic Camp. It even implies that her autism-spectrum disorder and aggressive sociopathic disregard for Bradley Cooper's lack of interest makes her "unique and different", rather than scary and certifiable, presumably the first thing that comes to mind to any men watching. The trailer blows the ending by showing them get together, which is a bad omen ripe for misinterpretation from delusional and dangerously impressionable young women. It's also bordering on sacrilege, as Sandra's character is clearly taking off the love of my life, Rita Leeds, but in a more hardcore, "full-retard" fashion not commensurate with the (lovely) source.


And now Lady Gaga comes out with a song featuring the line, "I'll follow you until you love me"? Wha-? What's going on? Is Lady Gaga going to be rummaging through my bins and hiding her penis in the bushes outside my house? Is that what time it is? Someone call John Hinckley Jr, all is forgiven.

Actually, there's one for you. Hinckley became obsessed with Jodie Foster, for some reason. Foster was a closeted lesbian for years and years, but any of her on-screen partnerships were a luminescent indication. She always came across as a frigid ice-queen. Mmm ice-cream. Hinckley didn't seem to care, and tried to stalk her in a more romantically insane way. He slipped notes and poetry under her door, and called her on the phone. When that didn't work, he considered killing himself in front of her to get her attention, because nobody ignores a corpse. Even he was sane enough to notice the flaw in that plan, so instead he attempted to murder both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan over a period of over 5 years. What I'm suggesting is that simply being where I am all the time and typing nonsense on my twitter feed isn't going to cut it. I mean, my tweets are all barely English as it is. Note to female stalkers: must try harder.

Crimes Against Cinema... Inglorious Basterds

I never liked Tarantino. Pulp Fiction has a few good bits. And that's it. His entire canonisation revolves around the fact that his films are violent, which critics tend to hate, while simultaneously being rip-offs of other, better films made from 1930-1974, which critics love. When Reservoir Dogs came out, it actually made a big storm of controversy, but I can't recall anyone talking about it since in terms of its plot, direction, writing or performances. All that matter is that scene where Tarantino talks about Like a Virgin being a song about big dicks and the one where a sloppily-rendered prosthetic wound is mounted onto a bloke's ear. Pulp Fiction made noise. But then he made Jackie Brown, and people said, "OK, well we'll allow him an off day." Then he made Kill Bill: Vol 1. Then Vol. 2, one of the single most unwatchable films ever made. I haven't seen Death Proof, but I know it's shite. I just know.

But Inglorious Basterds would be a return to form, surely. And I can safely say that it is:

• It's overwritten, under directed, and apparently totally unedited.
• It's long. It's very long. It's literally 2 weeks long.
• I actually wanted the Nazis to win. That's how bad it is.
• Tarantino interrupts the film about 34 hours in to give you the lecture on Nazi cinema you didn't pay for.
• Brad Pitt is in it, and Brad Pitt is a cunt.
• Eli Roth is in it. OMG. Stop giving roles to your pals, Tarantino.

I read a review in the Sunday Times today and the King of the Dicks Cosmo "Not my real name" Landesman said that some people called it a return to form, while others thought it was insufferably boring, but that they were both wrong. What a prick. How can my opinion be wrong? I know when I'm bored. I thought it was one of the most uninteresting stories with some of the least interesting dialogue ever committed to film (which is saying something coming from the guy who watched all of Captain Corelli's Mandolin), and I was bored to sleep by parts of it because whole scenes were meaningless, the characters were bad, the story could by tied up in a 30 word synopsis but went on for $230, and I wanted to get my money back. It had the highest number of walk-outs I've ever seen, and I saw Southland Tales in the same cinema. It was boring, Cosmo, you don't need to pretend you're an intellectual and that conversations about Nazi actors is the reason you go to see a film where Eli Roth, the director of Hostel no less, kills Hitler in the end.

I love... A Pint Of Milk

Most publications have a signature way of gleaming seemingly innocuous personal information from contributing guests. In the Sunday Times, it's A Life in The Day, a seemingly acceptable syntax error. In The Sun, they get a woman to take her top off. In Empire Magazine, they have A Pint Of Milk, a quiz that asks the question: How much is a pint of milk?

This is a seemingly innocuous question, but of course it isn't. When you earn 11ty trillion dollars sterling every time you blink on camera, you're likely to lose contact with all semblance of the real world. For another example closer to home, think of the British MPs, who thought nothing of having the British tax payer fork out £250 on a pen. But when you live in an ivory tower, money is no object, especially when it's not yours. I mean, Mariah Carey bathes in bottled mineral water and has an assistant whose job it is to tell her how hot she is every day, a job that's becoming increasingly difficult.

But back here on planet earth, where we pay for other people's expenses, drink tap water and get told how fuckin ugly we are daily (or is that just you?), we should probably know how much a pint of milk is. Should.

What's your earliest memory?
I don't know, I can't think back terribly far. Sometimes I see tweets from earlier that day I can't remember what I was getting at. My earliest memory from today was waking up and thinking, "why do I keep dreaming about Ashley Tisdale?". Did you know the Freudian concept of dreams being unconscious desires has been discredited? So that means there's some other reason why Ashley keeps washing what appears to be my car, with Sophie O'Connor.

How much is a pint of milk?
Super Milk (I need my vitamin R or I'm no good to anyone) is €1.44 for a litre. But a pint? According to the internet, a pint is the size of o.473176473 litres. So, let me get my calculator out here, a pint is... €136? That's not right is it? Dear god, that's a lot. Don't think I'll be buying too many of those, the litre is much better value. You ever wonder what the first guy who drank cow's milk was thinking? It's lucky he did it before the days of public obscenity laws. I mean, if you decided to have a sup of the cat, nobody'd come to your next Birthday party. Because it would be in a jail.

What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?
That burger I had last night was awful. The worst thing ever was deep-fried rashers. That or fish and eggs, I can still see that on the fork. Deep-fried rashers was a bad idea from the start. Actually it was really the sausage meat that nearly killed me back in 2005. When your lunch puts you in hospital it puts drisheen in perspective.

What kind of dog was it?
Oh, right. This question asked because I copied the questions from Danny McBride's Pint Of Milk last month. The worst thing he ever ate was a golden retriever.

Have you ever been in a real fight?
Yes. One day I was sitting in a bar when I noticed a large crowd marching outside. A procession had begun behind local stuntman, Rod Kimble, who was on his way to jump over 15 school buses to earn money for his step-father Frank's conveniently priced ($50,000) surgery. I went and joined. There was determination in the air. A Chinaman, white woman, and black man were singing "You're the Voice". It was super-positive. Then a guy threw a bin through a window and all hell broke loose.

What's the best piece of gossip you've ever heard about yourself?
That I fancied Laura Dowling. We've all seen a movie, or a tv show or read a book, or seen a cloud formation depicting the ancient tale of a boy and a girl who meet, instantly hate one another only to later reveal that their initial, instinctive dislike for one another was masking explosive sexual chemistry between the two. Well, I knew Laura from primary school and hated her stupid face and her stupid everything else too. I used to see her around all the time, because I played football and was vaguely popular at the time, and only spoke to her in response to her being a big, smelly jerk. Then around 15 or so I was in the cesspit that is Pedigree Corner (a boy lad!, Scale sham, a-ohs, etc.), sitting on a broken couch when she actually climbed on top of me, like something out of a bad tv show. I was amazed, as if in real life someone would confuse hatred for sexual attraction. I made her get off and spat the harsh truth like arrows of hot fire. It's also the only time that I know of when I actually made someone cry. But if you like someone you should probably do better than being a caustic, antagonistic, ignorant bitch before trying to rape them.

On a scale of 1 - 10, how hairy is your arse?
It's fairly hairy. Mostly in the crack really, the cheeks aren't too bad. But you've given me a woolly descriptor so I don't know if 1 is the highest or the lowest, so I'm going to give it a solid "kind of hairy, it's not that hairy".

Have you seen a celebrity sex tape?
I've seen a Lindsay Lohan one. It wasn't Lindsay Lohan in the video, it was just called that because yer wan had ginger hair. Still, to my mind, it counts as Lindsay's second best performance.

When were you last naked outdoors?
I don't think I've ever been naked outdoors. Do you ever wonder if dogs get self-conscious about being nude all the time? Probably not, they're all too busy smelling arse.

What's the worst smell in the world?
Fish and eggs and a dog's arse.

What would you choose for your last meal?
I don't know. But did you know that lobster is the most commonly requested final meal for death row inmates in American prisons? The interesting point is that (HISTORY ALERT!) lobsters are basically the spiders of the sea, and were originally not fished, but came up clamped to the fishermen's nets. Since most of them died, the fishermen tried to sell them, but they were seen as detritus, rather than actual food, so they largely went cheaply as fodder. One major use was as prison chow, and poor families would bury lobster shells because putting them in your rubbish left them open to discovery. So in a time when people apparently dug through the garbage of strangers, eating lobster was deemed socially-unacceptable. Then somebody saw a Frenchman eating one and thus Las Vegas was built on €6 lobster baize. For my last meal I'd like to think of a clever escape plan. Like, I'd ask for a gun, the key to my cell and a long length of rope, in club sauce.

Everyone: Happy 100th post Cormac!

Cormac: Aw, thanks everyone.