Corpus Intorqueo/Twisted Writings

If it broke, fix it!

2013-03-16T15:14:00.002-03:00

I don't really like having this place known as Corpus Intorqueo anymore. It just doesn't fit with what I want this place to be and thus, I'm aching to manipulate this blog to reflect my desires. So, I've decided to renovate this place.

The changes are forthcoming, perhaps within a few days. Lots of things, I think, will be cleaned up. I may have to go with a placeholder layout at first until I can generate a competent, rather clean one on my own. I don't want things stretching out all over the place like they are now. Expect a black (mostly) background, a new banner, and if it's possible, a new URL as well.

Inception Review

2013-03-13T14:32:00.003-03:00

Foreword: This review is admittedly long overdue, since the film came out nearly three years ago to the day (in a few months, anyway). However, I just felt the need to write it after seeing continued praise permeating the corners of the internet.

By the way, spoilers are present. This review is only meant for those who have viewed the film themselves.

Dreams are fantastical, surreal canvasses for nigh-incomprehensible yet appreciable wonder. Thus, there's much ambition and potential in any media, especially films, to rest their premises on dreams. It's also a daunting task that is difficult to capture. One could posit that it is a requirement of dream-based films to have surreal qualities to them. While dreams may, but certainly not always, have an overlying "plot" of sorts to them, the presentation should not be overtly mechanical, planned, detailed. With all of this in mind, basing a film's premise around dreams is understandably intimidating.

Inception, the Nolan brothers' so-called (post-Memento & The Dark Knight) magnum opus, doesn't quite manage to achieve such feats. The film doesn't suffer too much from not achieving the surreal quality of dreams, but it's the near complete lack of humanity of any of its characters.

Oh, but the rabid, froth-at-the-mouth fanboys of this film are probably already foaming at the corners of their lips over my criticizing this film! So let me back up my assertions, you impassioned, self-annointed Knight Templars of the Christopher Nolan order. I'm sure you jest, but I'm going to try and convince you on why this film does not deserve its overwhelming praise.

First of all, it's the dreadful, obnoxious, ad-nauseum delivery of expository dialogue that serves to, perhaps non-deliberately on Nolan's part, insult the viewer. I'm not sure about you, reader, but I don't want a film to explain to me the concepts of the film's premise over, and over, and over again whilst not allowing me to care about the characters involved. I'm sorry, but if characters can't display humanity by talking like flesh & blood people do, to each other, and then I can't fathom a hint of empathy (let alone sympathy) for them. And when they speak dialogue that doesn't allow for character development at all, there's no intensity to be had.

As a slight merit for the film, it is redeemed a bit by the rare, rather prized incidence of humanity in the form of real dialogue. One (of few) examples comes from a revelation into what happened to Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio)'s late wife Mal; in a flashback to the incident that claimed her life (and sets up why he's carrying out the "heist" in the first place), he pleads to a delirious, fatally dubious wife to come to grips with reality. Since one of the over-explained concepts involves people being trapped within their dreamscapes (which are scrutinized by the function of a personally-chosen totem, which can help them snap back to reality if they function correctly), she didn't have the saving grace of a proving factor to prevent her death. She sought to kill herself in a dream (as she felt she was) in order to wake up. The problem is, she was already awake.

Whereas the rest of the film is a convoluted excuse to throw in slightly surreal encounters with "projections", described as being similar to white blood-cells reacting to pathogens, only in the subconscious instead. The Matrix had a more fleshed-out excuse to justify non-stop shooting of passerby and armed combatants, whereas this film indulges in pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo. Inception actually suffers because of this since it lowers the film into a simple action flick, which it actually is.

Instead of what we got here, we could have had a stunning, actually human look into the emotionally conflicted characters at stake (well, at least that of Cobb, who is the only character we should care about who is granted any semblance of character at all). The struggles could have been exacerbated on with quite a bit of emotional appeal. However, that would not make for a good thriller film, as Deirdre Barrett of Harvard University attested when discussing the merits of the film's principle theme. Oh but the film would be far more interesting had it gone the actually creative route instead.

Ellen Paige is a somewhat fledgling but truly capable actress, who, so far at least, has not succumbed to the condescending machinations that Hollywood typically burdens female celebrities with. In spite of her latent talents, no progress was made with this film. Instead, Adriadne (Paige) serves as the foil to the expository vessels in virtually all characters surrounding her. Such as when she asks if they're in reality or in a dream, or when she tries to make sense of the plans carried out by the likes of Arthur (Joseph Gordonn-Levitt) or Cobb. She is the character meant to reassure the reasonably confused audience that "this ain't so confusin'!" Oh and, since I mentioned him just previously, Arthur is the most manipulative and mechanical character of the merry band that we, the audience should care about. Like Adriadne, he doesn't do his actor any justice, either. Just what is at stake for him? Sure, he's a member of Cobb's team, but surely you could provide him ample back-story as well since he's regarded as a main character. His struggles mean next to nothing if he doesn't have any humanity to begin with.

What about the aspects of the film that actually resemble the alien nature of dreamscapes? Well, sure, there are some neat special effects involved, such as the folding street effect during the demonstration of Adriadne's ability as an architect (one who constructs the dreamscapes to implant in a mark, the target of one inception). The slow-motion freeze-frame antics of the following effects are kind of cool, too, but they are not exactly redeeming qualities. The more intriguing effects are not computer-generated at all, such as the iconic zero-gravity hallway scenes which feature Arthur battling a couple of, err, projections. And then there's a set of Penrose stairs featured in another scene involving Adriadne and Arthur going over final details prior to the heist. A ruined, claustrophobic city-scape of Cobb's imagination makes an appearance and it certainly is a meritorious set, but it's too little too late.

The thing that marveled me most is just how mechanical, how planned, how rule-bound Nolan's vision here turned out to be. It bothered me after my cinema viewing right after its release and it bothers me even more now. I sometimes remember my own dreams just enough to recognize margins of their overall narratives, but this film didn't do much justice at all. It felt like false-advertising on the part of the film, because had they been honest about its presentation (like describing it as an action thriller along the likes of The Matrix), then it wouldn't have been so insulting to me. All of the dream within a dream (rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat) jargon are of only moderate consequence and are simply excuses for what amounts to a tale of corporate espionage, with tension-free gunfights and fisticuffs (because of the hollow shells that are the characters) thrown in for good measure.

And then there's the squandering of the talents cast into this epic (I find it difficult to call it such, but it technically is one), namely in particulars as Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Caine (who serves the role of his father-in-law, also his mentor), Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Nobody except for Cobb and Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) are granted a hint of humanity, and again, it all happens too late and they are few & far between (indeed, Fischer isn't as important as he was intended to be, yet in two very brief scenes we are provided some backstory for him).

The so-called “projections” are just an excuse for this film to be yet another action romp. Unfortunately for the film, the action pretty much falls flat because the film doesn’t allow us to care about the consequences. At face value as well, these projections are no different from generic mooks you find in virtually every other action film anyway. If they’re projections of the sub-conscious, then why can’t they perform strange feats to get at their adversaries? They die just like everybody else you ever see on film, so the whole thing about them being akin to white blood cells of the mind is fluff that never amounts to more than that. Ah, excuses are in full supply when trying to justify what should have been an otherwise insightful film turns out to be a shooting gallery on film, with dreams and all that for good measure! Oh and because the film is set in dreams, our heroes can simply will any weapon of choice into their possession with which to blast away these otherwise generic grunts! No, this ain't no stinkin' rip-off of The Matrix at play, folks.

I’m just wondering whether the fanboys will come with their threats, seeing as I’ve committed what amounts to blasphemy for criticizing the work of their god, Christopher Nolan. If the film weren’t so mechanical, dry, hollow, and unimaginative, I’d have given it ample praise. However, since the film barely allows us to give a hoot about anyone, the “dreams” are so literal and so far from being surreal that they’re not particularly fascinating, and the so-called “intellectual” prowess of the film really is just an insult to the viewers in the form of non-stop expository dialogue, I just can’t give it that good a score.

There’s a reason I left the theatre perplexed as to just what was so special about the film. It seems to be an intriguing puzzle upon the first one or two sessions, but after that you’re bound to piece together an over-ambitious, inhuman, sterile piece of overrated mediocrity. Why not put a real visionary like David Lynch up to task! Hell, put Adrian Lynne up to it if Lynch isn’t available. They'd have conceived of a masterpiece in comparison to this tripe.

In closing: It isn't terrible, but it isn't particularly good either.

The Good:

+ An all-star ensemble cast

+ Good special effects, especially when Cobb is demonstrating the powers of Adriadne's role as an "Architect"

+ Some actual, and rather decent character development towards the end

The Bad:

- Way, way, way too much exposition. It's so bad it encompasses perhaps 90% or more of the dialogue. Bad move, Nolan! That doesn't do anything for the audience except to confuse and annoy.

- Are these supposed to be dreams? Or are they just set pieces periodically accentuated by "oddities" like water flowing from out of nowhere, trains rumbling down streets, and sudden (but slight) changes to the scenery?

- The approach to the subject matter is far too literal. This isn't art that rocks your senses, it's just an excuse to make a "brainier" action film.

- Character development is severely lacking.

- A couple of plotholes are present, for example the beginning sequence where Saito (or whatever his name is, played by Ken Wattanabe) somehow brandishes a gun to threaten our main gang when you'd think they'd be careful and thorough before performing "inception" on him.

- It's all fluff.

- The ending isn't quite as ambiguous as you would think. Subtle hints point to it taking place in reality after all because of 1) Cobb's father-in-law being present, 2) His seeing their faces again after not being able to for a year, and 3) Cobb doesn't stick around his totem for long after spinning it to test his state of mind, he just loses interest. Oh, so ambiguous, so stunning an ending!

This Planet. This God of War. This Mars.

2013-03-11T06:39:00.002-03:00

It lives.

It thinks. It breathes. It sheds its skin.

It watches. It consumes.

It craves...

Us, for her.

Then its slumber will wrack onward.

We are not the first; we are not the last.

We are but an express course.

It frothes at the mouth.

To take us in.

To make us one.

This planet.

This God of War.

This Mars.

One into all, Queen Mab's will.

The sand shifts. The water runs.

Phantoms of yore beckon the curious.

Hands of the past reach to us.

Voices of memories, and of yearning.

A scale tips and we're on the brink.

To take us in.

To make us one.

This planet.

This God of War.

This Mars.

One into all, Queen Mab's dream.

Opportunity Looms

2013-03-06T15:36:00.001-04:00

My goodness has it been a while, and it's been a long, tedious, inactive road travelled for the past several months. Since my last post, not much has happened, which is rather unfortunate given that inactivity doesn't allow for anything much to occur. That is obvious and I don't need to flesh it out further.

However, I've recently took advantage of an opportunity to finally break free from my enslavement to inactivity (namely unemployment). I'm leaving this dump at the end of April this year to greener pastures, where jobs are aplenty and independence, confidence, and most of all inspiration will surely follow. Suffice to say, I'm rather anxious about it because my circumstances had taken their toll to a degree. I think it's been so bad for me because I was unsure of what options I had, since there's very few left where I am right now.

I've had no luck since in getting my personal terminal in operating condition again, which aggravates me quite a bit since my work is just sitting there collecting dust. But when things pick up, so too will my terminal and things will happen again. I'm just glad I've been given the chance to really get things back on track. Much thanks are due for my father who allowed me this chance. I prefer this in every way to being enslaved to these conditions of the Canadian Maritimes. After all, I wrote a piece about it over at Superbious.

A Self-Annointed Intellectual and the Bread Recipe

2012-11-24T13:59:00.001-04:00

TheAmazingAtheist, whom I've critiqued before on this blog, is the target of this post. This will be pretty concise and it might garner a few laughs. For clarification purposes, this man romances himself as an intellectual above the typical man, which is his form of misanthropy (which is arguably the most recurrent type of misanthropy out there; so much for being distinct on his part). Yet his own stupidity is particularly hilarious because he displays 1) the inability to learn from and recognize his mistakes and 2) the unfamiliarity with age-old & very common practices, such as what I'm going to talk about in brief next.

He doesn't know how bread is made. Un-fucking-believable...

TJ, as he's usually called in his social circles, once said in a video, "You mix wheat & water..." Is this guy serious or just fucking stupid? I'm not angry with this, I'm just frustrated. How can someone who so brazenly and repeatedly claims intellectual superiority over most of his fellow men & women be completely unaware of one of the oldest recipes of man's creation? And since he's admitted more than once that he spends a lot of time on the internet, in which there are literally countless recipes for countless types of bread to be found, how is he, at 27 years, still ignorant of even the most basic bread recipe? When he admitted this I began contemplating that the man is an irredeemable retard in denial. No offense to those who are retarded through no will of their own. Such people are above this cretin.

Here's a brief history for you, TJ: the oldest known bread was a flat-bread, made by collecting plants and pounding the grains, forming a shape, and cooking it over a fire. This specimen was dated to be as old as 30,000 years. Yeah, you read it right. It was a flat-bread that was not even complex whatsoever. It makes you think why anyone who makes any kind of living today even bother to buy bread from supermarkets, given how simple and cheap it is to make your own loaf of fabulous and fresh bread.

This idiot is known to have dropped out of high-school because he "was sick of all the bullshit." That's just a cop-out from a coward who prefers things to be handed to him on a silver platter; an excuse to avoid the responsibilities that life always demands of Earth's denizens. You see, if you stayed in high school, you could have taken culinary class. In that class you learn how to cook mostly basic recipes, usually some kind of baked food. You get accustomed to the entire process; preparation, cooking, serving, and clean-up. It's one of few classes in high school that is mostly devoid of bullshit that most educational institutions put you through, like when they discourage creativity and going above & beyond the process.

Anyway, you don't simply mix wheat and water, idiot. Wheat is a plant that you find in fields, farmed or otherwise. You can't make bread with wheat, you have to extract ingredients from wheat instead. And for many bread recipes, you need yeast. It's your choice if you want gluten for consistency, but most avoid it entirely because of the unnecessary added fat from that ingredient. If you care about your body even a little bit, you won't use the bleached, nutritionally-void white flour, either. Use the real stuff and work with whole-wheat flour. Add oats and whole grains as well for added nutritional value as well as flavour, because it's fucking easy to do so. Mix, knead, let it sit for the bread to rise (air pockets form after all, and it helps give the bread form & shape), and then bake. You have, as mentioned, countless sources of information available with just a few clicks and key presses. So TJ, you have no excuse to be this blatantly ignorant.

I guess you're just too stupid and hopelessly lazy to care.

Playing with Politically Incorrect Fire

2012-10-22T16:03:00.002-03:00

I'm one of the authors over at the fledgling opinion site Superbious. Feel free to check the place out. To be honest without coming across as an arse, some of the writers could use a bit more work on perfecting their craft (myself included, but not quite for the same reasons). A couple of them have, so far, demonstrated mistakes with:

- The "their" & "they're" conundrum.
- The "then" & "than" puzzle.
- The dreaded proper demonstration of the oft-misused apostrophe (knowing when to use it makes all the difference, folks!).
- And common, often overlooked spelling and/or grammar mistakes.

Also on my first article, the editor of the site didn't take care to remove the final paragraph where I mentioned to the reader to view a video. That same video is featured in my second most-recent post in this blog (the one before this post you are reading). In fact, they're the same article.

Another note is that, by request of the webmaster or editor of Superbious, any of the articles I write for them won't appear anywhere else, including Corpus Intorqueo.

In the end, this should be an interesting ride. Someone took notice of me and has accepted my tutelage as a content contributor. Thanks, Superbious.

Bill "Sore Loser" O'Reilly: I Won the Rumble!

2012-10-13T12:53:00.000-03:00

At least, in his mind he did.

Bill O'Reilly is, as expected, not owning up to how much devastation he incurred by the likes of Jon Stewart, especially when he called him 'The Mayor of Bullshit Mountain'. As you watch the video (provided below), you almost wonder what was going through the old man's mind at that point. You could tell that he wanted to retort, but he just couldn't. Yet it wasn't at the debate where he'd attack Stewart with any measure of effectiveness.

Later, nestled in his safe zone in the 'no spin zone', O'Reilly post-humously claimed victory over Stewart by, shocker alert, taking him out of context. Here's the piece where O'Reilly performs his usual tactic on his merciless opponent:

If you saw Jon Stewart and me Saturday night, you may have noticed there was a very important theme among all the chaos. Stewart, an honest and smart liberal, supports a 'nanny state' where everyone is provided basic life necessities and economic outcomes are guaranteed.

I disagree, not because of the intent, but simply because it's impossible. The Constitution provides Americans protection so they can pursue happiness, but the Founding Fathers did not guarantee happiness or material well-being, and if you try to do that you will bankrupt the nation.

Stewart and I previewed what we'll all be voting on - do you want a nanny state or do you want a self-reliant nation? That's what's at stake in this election. The left-wing press is not going to tell you that; it portrays President Obama as a moderate. And the right-wing media says he's a socialist, maybe even a communist, bent on destroying traditional America. But Stewart and I pinpointed the real situation: nanny state vs. self-reliance.

Polls show the country is deadlocked, but I find it very hard to believe that 50% of us want to be Western Europe. What do you think Europeans are rioting about? They're angry that governments are cutting back on entitlements. This is what the nanny state mentality leads to - give me free stuff or I will hurt you. Jon Stewart doesn't believe that, but it is absolutely true. So I hope you will watch our debate, which is available at TheRumble2012.com.

Thanks Steve of oreilly-sucks.com for the quote above.

See how pathetic he has to be to claim victory over Stewart? Of course, he didn't bring his opponent on to discuss the results, or talk about their respective talking points. O'Reilly also assumes of his audience that no one actually bothered to watch The Rumble. One couldn't blame potential audience members from not actually watching the event, because it required paying a fee to do so. Exploitative as he always is, O'Reilly took advantage of this obscure tidbit, and of his audience, and spun the debate as ending in his favor. After all, no one likes 'the nanny state'.

Watch the embedded video below and you can judge for yourself as to whether O'Reilly ideologically "beat" Stewart in The Rumble, or whether Stewart argued for a nanny state government that wants its citizens to be dependent on The Man.

Greenpeace is right, Globe and Mail; you're not

2012-09-26T16:17:00.000-03:00

The article in question, authored by Margaret Wente: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/greenpeaces-golden-rice-stand-should-appall-us-all/article4541042/

This is a response that I made in the comments section for that article. I am aware that it is categorized as "commentary", but that doesn't diminish the necessity to put this shill, which she seems adamant to paint herself as, in her place on this issue. The issue is GM crops, in the end, but it is specifically about the fledgling "golden rice" that is apparently being manufactured, and thus sold (and therein comes the downsides) to curb the advent of Vitamin A Deficiency (or "VAD"). With my ever-growing knowledge of the dark side of the GMO market, I can only sense negative implications with this crop, amongst the many genetically-modified crops already present (such as virtually all corn you'll buy anymore, as well as nectarines & tomatoes). What's worse is that you can't escape from GM crops, as they are taking more hold on the agriculture industry than otherwise, and Monsanto owns over 90% of the shares of said market.

Without much further ado, I'll present to you the comment that I authored on that page. It had a maximum character count, but it was surprisingly enough to write what I wanted to. I've added a bit more "exclusively" for this post. Just a quick note: it appears that the overwhelming majority of comments get down-voted, thus hinting at a frightfully unattractive community of nitwits.

---

How much were you paid to outright promote GM crops, Mrs. Wente? Your credibility went right out the window when you said that GM crops improve health, which they don't. I'm referring to the following paragraph, completely un-edited so as to not manipulate any information for readers:

Genetically engineered crops do far more than improve people’s health. They can dramatically boost yields in places such as Africa. They are the key to feeding the world’s exploding population. But GM opponents have been tragically successful in stalling the spread of modified crops to the people most in need of it. In China, where people are already terrified about food safety because of major scandals over tainted milk powder, GM crops are generally shunned.

Previously, you decried Greenpeace's skepticism in the risks and implications that are not-yet-known, but at the same time quite possible, with the consumption of this new "golden rice." Keep in mind Mrs. Wente that these are genetically modified crops, and given how it appears that every GM crop causes implications in health and even in economics & biodiversity (after all, GM crops negatively impact natural crops), you made yourself appear quite one-sided. Here is the excerpt where you fail to defend your claims with a source while attacking Greenpeace's necessary skepticism:

The last thing Greenpeace wants is for Golden Rice to be effective. It insists that the rice poses all kinds of environmental and health risks, even though repeated risk assessments by leading scientific bodies have found no such risks. In fact, according to scientists at the University of California, GM rice reduces pesticide use and improves farmers’ health.

Oh, brother. In regards to the last sentence, do you have a study to back up your counter-claim? You should, as a "journalist", provide any and all information to such studies, via sourcing. Let's also not forget how aggressive Monsanto gets with this method of stifling opposition to the ever-growing GM crop market. They pay many "study groups" to produce results that coincide with Monsanto's wishes. They really are that scared of groups like Greenpeace, who help keep people aware of the industry's malpractices.

You're also ignoring the economic implications that GM crops will bring about. I know that the inventor of the GM crop had good intentions with the idea, but that idea has become a ploy to gain a monopoly over what is inarguably the most important industry on earth; agriculture. Monsanto is notable in their quest to dominate the agriculture business by:

1) Owning all parties involved in the agriculture industry with their patents and corporate takeovers.

-and-

2) Using patents to eliminate competition, and the products that they manufacture in greater amounts to destroy any chance of would-be competitors gaining any ground (high costs of seeds, eliminator genes in said seeds which prevents sustained re-growth, buying pathetically weak politicians who implement loopholes and laws to protect Monsanto's interests, etc.).

Another economic hurdle will be in how much money is spent on these crops. Millions will be spent on producing this product, but read on further. Greenpeace is right when they note how it is not yet known what side-effects of consuming this rice will bring about. You can ignore it all you want in favor of "feeding the poor", but if it has impacts on health, then it'll do more harm than good in the long run. So to invest in this new product which only addresses VAD, while at the same time there are proven healthy methods of addressing VAD as well as other nutritional concerns such as supplements, proves how short-sighted you are, Mrs. Wente.

Shame on this Roger Cooper (a user who wrote a comment on this article previously) for exploiting the sad fact that millions of people around the world are malnourished and starving, while ignoring the sad fact that the parties involved in the sale of GM crops are only in it for the money and nothing more. Only bad things can come of that, especially if this product gains a foothold in its market and gives the producers an excuse to increase their stranglehold on said market.

I feel pity for those who fall to the temptation of money, and let it blind them, or allows them to demonstrably deceive those who seek information on the issues that really affect us, like the things we eat to survive. After all, Monsanto doesn't give a spit if you are a healthy individual, just as long as you depend on their often poisonous, artificial "food" products. Politicians routinely display their cowardice, their weakness in resisting the temptation of money to keep them in power, and Monsanto & its few competitors easily stifle progress in the industry this way. It's one of the many reasons why I think all politicians should be fired and lose all their money.

I understand the need to feed as many people as possible, but this actually proves to be a double-edged sword; it is causing the hopeful in these decidedly third-world nations to have to depend on Monsanto more and more, paying more and more money because of the dreaded eliminator seeds. It's also a burden against people who still luckily possess natural, or semi-natural crop seeds because should Monsanto be made aware of any growth they feel would impede on their control of the world's agriculture markets, they'll do what they can to stifle the growth, or sue those in question, or take over their resources, or easily do all three.

Margaret Wente should be ashamed for this shilling, but I doubt she is. She gets paid for it, so why should she be? Money brings down many an otherwise respectable individual, and she appears to be no exception. If anything, I wish for her sake that she didn't stupidly destroy any semblance of credibility she had with the paragraph (which I quoted, and that's the first one I quoted in this post) where she didn't hold back in defending the GM market. You might as well be a spy stating outright to his/her targets that you're spying on them with this gaffe. It didn't bolster her argument one iota, and only proved Greenpeace's point.

With that said, good job, Wente?

Malicious Smile

2012-08-28T20:31:00.002-03:00

The new single from Converge's upcoming album "All That We Love We Leave Behind", the song "Aimless Arrow", is the inspiration for this piece. I don't know the lyrics at all, and I don't think anyone knows, but the sound & the feel of the song were enough to inspire me.

---

My back is against the wall, but you wanted it this way.
What you felt for me is now gone; I can see it in your face.
From where did the memories come, when we'd go the extra mile.
A time when I'd beg to god, before his malicious smile.
The burden replaced our hearts; anger was the killing blow.
We could've sought a fresh start, but time sank our souls too low.
The end began too soon.
The end came too swift.

Walt is toppling the mountain - Review for Breaking Bad, episode "Say My Name"

2012-08-27T00:48:00.001-03:00

This episode was fairly slow throughout. Very little intensity occured when compared to some of the earlier episodes in the season, but that's only if you take it at face value. Walt continues to devolve into something monstrous, selfish, and most damneding of them all perhaps, confident. This episode is centered almost entirely around Walt's pride (indeed, take note of the title of the episode), which has been the focal point of the season in general, but so far this is the episode in which that story element takes the front seat all the way through., relentless & defiant of all that stands before it.

This episode may also be the end of the Fring investigation on part of the DEA, but you'll have to read further into my review to understand why. The final episode of this half of Breaking Bad may also mark the eve of the coming conflict, which seems inevitable, between Hank & Walt/Heisenberg, de-facto, man'o-a-man'o. Hank has even been usurped officially by his superiors in the DEA, specifically in the case against Gus Fring's right-hand man, Mike, but Hank will no doubt find his attention turned towards the ever present "blue sky" that Walt produces, right under Hank's nose no less. The vestigial remains of Gus' empire are coming to a heed in a big way, and as always it seems, Walt has something to do with it.

Mike has let a little something slip so far, and that something gets picked up on, big-time, by the DEA. They're hot on his heels with warrants for his arrest, and while he's a very resourceful fellow who has dealt with perhaps worse scenarios before, this occasion will be the end of him in some way or another. His part of the deal with Walt is all that he's vested in now, but that also carries a price. Just when it seemed he was getting out for good, to be a grandfather for good, and to get away from the life that could have seen him dead many times over, Walt decides that he won't let Mike leave on his terms. Just before the episode closes, tinged with a tugging sense of tragedy, Mike, sitting absolutely still and shocked, the last of his blood leaving his body, falls dead.

It wasn't a heart attack that did him. It wasn't ricin that did him. It wasn't even a hit-man or a DEA shootout that did him...

It was Walt, fueled by his craving for further power, who took his life. It was all for the money that he felt was entirely his. It was the Olympic-summit of pride that drove him to make this the old man's last day alive. Some could say it was all coming anyway; after all, Mike has almost killed Walt several times in the recent past, and Walt doesn't let things like that slide as everyone knows. However, did it have to be out of his boundless pride? Could Walt be any less noble and any more morally bankrupt?

Now that just leaves Jesse, and then Hank, and then...Skyler, for Walt to deal with. What further damage he'll do to carve his niche as the great and powerful Heinsenberg, is anyone's guess. After all, the Walt that everyone wanted to love is gone. Just know that crap is going to hit the fan, and it won't be pretty

A Canadian, proudly endorsing:

2012-08-21T23:20:00.004-03:00

Humanity is grey

2012-08-21T22:50:00.000-03:00

There's a clique of mostly unintuitive folks polluting the internet, and even beyond, who deem intelligence as the ultimate test of a person's worth. These same people often wax misanthropic, or at least border on it, by claiming that the majority of humanity is stupid and needs to go. Hell, even I have had this feeling here and there so I couldn't exactly wash my hands of this.

I do feel an ounce of shame for it, though.

What prompted me to drop my two cents on this subject? Why, the following video of course:

Before I tear into "TJ" here with my frustrations over this overrated wave of misanthropic pessimism, I'm going to summarize him.

I'm a Youtube user and I am subscribed to his channel. He's been around since 2006, about as long as I have. The guy found an audience amongst those interested in, fledgling, or those who hold the sigil of atheism. He's evolved into a fat (noticeably less-so over time due to short-lived weight loss), almost witless rip-off of George Carlin since then and one could never describe his delivery as consistent if they would want to maintain an ounce of dignity. He sometimes pumps out something entertaining, such as his film reviews or where he addresses people directly usually to argue against them, but when he does something like the embedded video above, that's where he dives right into the abyss of pretention.

Plus, given its premise and what he says, and with a good look at what this guy pulls off with his off-Youtube activities (it's always good to question its veracity, but there is some truth to be found on his Encyclopedia Dramatica article), he really shouldn't throw stones in the glass house he calls home.

When TJ talks about humanity, he often broadly underhands us as unintelligent, uninteresting nitwits who are just sheeple trudging along for comfort sake. It's as if intelligence is the penultimate measure of anybody's worth or character to people like this conniving motherfucker. Are people like him missing the fucking point? Do they not realize that some of the most heinous people to ever walk the earth were also some of the most intelligent? Do they also conveniently leave out the acts of altruism that people carry out, such as food banks, animal rehabilitation centers, and other usually volunteer organizations that help less empowered in the world? It is one of the things that goes to show that no matter how intelligent you are, if your principles, or lack thereof make you a reprehensible piecce of shit, then your intelligence means nothing to someone like me. To someone like the asshole in the video above, all you need is to be intelligent!

What is a measure of intelligence, anyway? No one is a jack of all trades, and that applies for even the smartest of folks. A person who may come across, at face value, as a slack-jawed yokel may be quite proficient in repairing downed vehicles. Whereas a person is an experimental physics prodigy, he or she may be out of their element as per the intricate mating patterns of the Portuguese Man 'o War. Is anybody who thinks that the average man or woman is a bumbling idiot who follows the herd, any one of these arrogant assholes starting to see just how much grey there is to humanity?

I think the best way to judge anybody is their strength of character. It's a far more admirable quality to have than just being a smart cracker who can invent a new slice of bread or, as for what happens with many scientific breakthroughs, voluntarily or involutarily strengthens the military-industrial complex in some way. I'm sure if Einstein were alive today, he'd feel immense shame at what some of his inventions were used for. After all, he is one of the brains behind the nuclear missile. But how many oh so intelligent scientists are remorseful knowing that their work is being used to take lives around the world? Keep "strength of character" in mind, think of the potential number of Mensa society members contributing to death & destruction, and then talk to me.

TJ, on the other hand, is anything but as intelligent as he seems to champion in his videos and some of his writings. The guy is really no different from the average man. He's obsessed with the size of his dick, he bumbles at more than half of anything he does (see: 'Freespeech videos' for an embarassing example) , and he is lazy. The guy can't lay claim to much by way of strength of character because of his conning his Youtube audience through e-begging campaigns. The guy once said, "you motherfuckers owe me" in an e-begging video where he was desperate to do the nasty with a fat chick. That is called SELF-ENTITLEMENT folks. He also once gave a lame excuse as for refusing to get a job like any self-respecting asshole (hint: he doesn't really have any) - he doesn't want to work for a giant corporation! To that I say this:

You, Mr. Contradiction Synonymous, "work" for a giant corporation with your moderate Youtube audience & success, and you directly benefit them through monetization. That company is called Google, in case you forgot, and you contribute to their continued rise to be one of the most powerful IT companies on the planet every time you post a video. And for more than a year now, you've actually made a few videos in which you blatantly advertised for numerous products. Your latest baffling piece of advertising crap was for an NCAA videogame by Electronic Arts. This isn't the only time you contradicted yourself, but boy, any time you talk about how giant corporations are shit (I do agree on this to some extent, but I'm more realistic about it than you are), you should simply keep your mouth shut if you want to maintain any dignity whatsoever.

Compared to him, here's my checklist:

I actually want to work, namely in the IT and Film industries.
I have an independent spirit and I'm more likely to gift someone else than to even ask for anything.
I don't care for cliques whatsoever.
I'm not self-entitled.
I don't con people out of their money with false advertising or guilt-trips, let alone flat-out incompetence in living up to my end of the bargain.
I'm not fat.
I don't envy people for their success; I only think about mine.

Although I have to give him kudos for intending to vote for Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party for U.S. President this year..

Misunderstanding The Occupy Movement; Now in Film Reviews!

2012-07-24T21:32:00.002-03:00

Tom Charity, of CNN.com, wrote a review for Christopher Nolan's closing chapter in the current Batman film series, The Dark Knight Rises. In summary, it's a negative review, taking shots at political subtexts in the film. That's not a big deal, for not all moviegoers will get the same reaction. No, the problem lies in a sentence from the review in question.

To quote Charity directly, here's an argument he used to lambast the film:

She's no Joker (who is?), but Hathaway's slinky, light-fingered, high-kicking thief is the film's best idea of fun, even if she's also weighed down with the Nolan brothers' irrepressible urge to smuggle topical, half-baked Occupy sermons into the script (as others have noted, the movie's defense of the establishment in the form of philanthropic billionaires and an incorruptible police force gives it a conservative gloss and makes you wonder what on earth Nolan saw in the two films he's cited as inspirations, "The Battle of Algiers" and "Prince of the City").

Notice the text underlined and in bold. Now, if you are worth a salt at all in terms of the Occupy movement, at least in what you know about it, then considering the context of the entire paragraph, Charity displays ignorance of this movement that should have dissipated by now, almost a year into the movement notwithstanding. I'm irked by statements of this caliber, especially when they're used to down-rate a film.

A problem I have with the film review, other than the reporter's flagrant ignorance of what the Occupy Wall Street, is the fixation on the thematic elements of The Dark Knight Rises. He neglects to mention anything technical, or the plot at face value. There's no mention on the soundtrack, either, which is in some ways more bombastic than the predecessors.

Plus, it is so brief, without actually listing an effective number of arguments against it for him to call it "Nolan's biggest and worst movie to date." Really, Charity? Talk about exaggeration! Oh, isn't that one of the usual suspects in why the mainstream media (CNN, Fox, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, etc.) is steadily losing credibility among the masses? And then, given how much information you are capable of extracting thanks to the corporate bosses you work for, you barely use anything to substantiate your arguments.

Mr. Charity, please, don't write reviews until you can actually point out strengths & flaws readily. I know you make a few legitimate jabs in a few places, but that's far too little for an article that, in spite of it being an opinion piece (and not truly factual, because not all viewers will get the same reaction or pick up the same things), really does influence the experience for other potential viewers of the film. And working for CNN, you'd think, given your larger audience, you'd try to give them reason to take your platform seriously. But you pretty much failed to do so on your part. Better luck next time, I guess.

---

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/19/showbiz/movies/dark-knight-rises-review-charity/index.html

RE: American Dhimmi (Pat Condell's latest video: 21/07/12)

2012-07-22T01:55:00.000-03:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3KOZCM91c&feature=g-user-u

Dear Pat,

Pull your head out of the sand, and wake up to reality, the oh-so nuanced reality. Sure, Obama bowed to the Saudi Royal Prince; sure, he apologized for the brutal history of the U.S. and its foreign policy that mostly targeted Muslims; sure, he's outright praised Islam, but in the first example, it's a customary practice centered around paying respect. However, this same President (funny you emphasize his middle name like so many right-wing nutjobs writhing around have done before you. You're a comedian, right?) has done the following:

1) Declared numerous born-and-raised Americans to be enemies of the state, to be killed by government forces (rendition). A cleric called Awlaki is on the list. You know about those "Terror Tuesday" meetings that the President and his staff, including Axelrod have been attending, right?

2) The number of drone strikes has increased significantly under Obama's watch. Compare that to the number of strikes carried out in the period of time between 2004-2007 (Bush Jr.'s negligible second term), where as many as 89 strikes (low) to 112 strikes (high) were carried out. (this article details the number of strikes, and number of deaths be it militant, civilian, or total: http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones)

3) He also ordered Navy Seals to apprehend and kill Osama Bin Laden while he was taking refuge in Pakistan. This move has soured U.S. relations with Pakistan since then.

So yeah, Obama is SOOO soft on Islam, Pat. Of course, your idiotic fanbase (like almost any that exists, mind you) doesn't question a thing. It really does go to show that Atheism is not synonymous with reason and skepticism. Not to mention...the Daily Caller? The Media Research Center? Just commit seppuku, already, 'cause those sources are atrociously slanted.

The Chamber Review

2012-06-24T02:08:00.000-03:00

I've wanted to get this off my chest for a long time. I watched it when it premiered, and I was horrified at what was transpiring on the screen before me. Just looking at the faces of every single contestant as they walked away with whatever "prize" payout

One of the many indicators that FOX Entertainment was well on its way to fame for being a platform of pure shit, The Chamber is a take on the hype surrounding 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' and 'The Weakest Link'. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you can do something different that hopefully captures an audience significantly enough. This sounds fine, right?

Wrong. The premise of the show is that the contestant is strapped into a "chamber", a concealed contraption (which looks fucking scary) that pit the contestant against extreme conditions whilst they had to answer progressively difficult questions, just like you'd get in 'Millionaire'. Those conditions are either extreme heat, or extreme cold. In the former, the temperature goes in to the triple digits, fire actually bursts around the contestant, simulated earthquakes rocked the player, foul odors eventually crept in, and they're probably on the fast lane to a heat stroke or mental breakdown in the process. On the other hand, extreme cold sees the player get drenched in cold water, which is then essentially frozen as the temperature drops dramatically, possibly causing hypothermia and frostbite, or both. All of this for roughly 7 minutes a game. God, even water boarding lasted usually 5 to 10 seconds.

There were un-aired episodes that featured three chambers, and just by the sound of them, they all sound just as horrible; electric shock, water torture (most likely akin to water boarding, without a blindfold perhaps), and an insect chamber. Got a fear of bugs crawling all over your face? Prone to getting freakish nightmares of sometimes giant monstrous insects infesting every facet of your unconscious excursions? Then it's good you never had to go through that one yourself.

Let's just get to why that is all just so horrible. It really is the worst part of the show. Each contestant I saw that had to go through with the thing showed absolutely no sign of enjoyment, not even a hint of masochism. All of those things that the chamber was advertised as doing were real, so they put up with conditions that could only have been concocted by a psychopathic, sadistic tyrant. As the game went on for each contestant, the conditions worsened. Yeah, try answering a fucking question that actually makes you have to think thoroughly while you're being burned to a crisp, or frozen in ice-water, all within seconds of each other. There was little fucking around with that machine; it worked quite efficiently in its torturous designs and you had little room for error (you were kicked out .

The biggest insult to the contestants, aside from the inhumane conditions they signed on for (they either had big cajones to accept the almost impossible deal being handed to them, or they were flat-out lied to about what they were going to deal with), was the prize payout. The maximum prize payout of fucking $100,000. Think about that for a second; you're being essentially tortured, the game got harder and harder (the questions weren't exactly a cakewalk, people), and you're distracted by so many factors the least of which being the chamber conditions, and you expect people to walk away happy with one-hundred grand? Fuck you, Dick Clark Productions.

A poor sucker by the name of Scott Brown did beat the game more than anyone else, by answering 20 questions. The minimum to win the grand prize is 25. So they gave him a lousy fucking $20,000 for his troubles. Like the swift branding of justice that a competent and by-the-books judge would hand the most deserving criminal, Brown sued the show because he was hospitalized after getting out of the chamber. Dick Clark Productions did him right, I guess, by giving him $100,000 more.
It's funny that Matt Vasgersian turned down the show out of integrity because the show was so horrendous in design.

A goof even existed in the show as well in the headset the contestants had to wear, because there was no way they could be heard just by talking through the chamber with all that crap attacking his/her body. The headset was so shoddy that it often created a problem for the contestant, and because it was held together by scotch motherfucking tape, it came apart.

This show lasted just a couple of episodes, and god damn, I was disgusted then and I am disgusted now. Fuck the people who came up with it. I won't format this review like my others because it's a TV show that lasted just a couple episodes. I'm just glad I was able to vent.

The PS3 Controller vs. The Xbox 360 Controller

2012-05-31T11:42:00.001-03:00

There are new gaming consoles on the horizon, perhaps even as early as next year (given that Infinity Ward [revision 2] is developing the next-gen title, keeping in mind the annual release schedule for this heavily milked series), and one of the debates about which will come out on top is on the controller.

One of the biggest game genres these days, unfortunately, is the first-person shooter. You know what I mean; Halo, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Resistance, Half-Life, Doom, etc., are all FPS names that we can all recognize. The consoles were not remiss in their supply of this genre, but they were very much in contention with one another as to the question, "which console is better for shooting games?" The Xbox 360 generally comes out on top for this question.

As a Playstation 3 owner myself, who also owns an Xbox 360 Controller S for Windows (Wired), I feel like levying some accolades (represented as a "+") & complaints (preceded with a "-") towards both. A note to anyone reading this post: I am FAR more used to the PS3 controller than with the latter, which I hardly ever use on my PC, so I'm speaking out of bias in some places.

Let's start with the Sony side:

+ Lightweight controller helps to prevent my hands from getting sore.
+ The D-Pad is precise and feels better to use.
+ The Start/Select buttons are easy and quick to access, without being too small, either.
+ No button jamming of any kind has ever occurred.
+ Good R1/L1 buttons, little resistance when actually pressing means less effort on the hand muscles (which get sore quite easily).
+ I can wrap my hands around the controller a bit more easily than the other controller, so this helps for comfort.
+ USB 2.0 interface allows for far more flexible cord options.
+ Six-Axis is innovative, and when used right, feels neat...

- DREADFUL R2/L2 buttons. You have to push too much in order to press them, they're clunky, and don't work for the few shooters that, idiotically, relied on them for the main command most players will use them for; shooting/throwing grenades. Unfortunately enough, they're hardly any good for any other game genre, either.
- Analog sticks are too loose.
- Analog sticks have little grip, even with the rigid texture.
- Battery is built-in, so if your controller's battery ever fails to the point of no return, you have to buy a new controller outright. Bad move for the consumer, Sony.
- Getting more controllers on your system is a hassle, as it requires going through the XMB dashboard to assign a controller to a slot. Plus, only two controllers can be plugged in at any one time on most models of the system.
- You have to tilt the controller slightly to see what port your controller is assigned to.
- ...Six-Axis is also a gimmick more than it is a useful feature.

Now with the Mickeysoft side:

+ Feels more solid.
+ Much more grip with the analog sticks.
+ Analog sticks aren't loose, so they feel right. Plus, they seem to have more of an angle of movement.
+ The controller assignment process is crazy easy, and efficient. You just plug in your wired or wireless controller to the numbered ports, press the Xbox 360 button on your controller, and the system finds the controller in a breeze (lights up a number on the face of your controller, too).
+ Excellent shoulder buttons that feel like they're made for shooters.
+ Battery packs on Wireless controllers can be replaced and managed by the user if need be.

- A bit on the heavy side. My hand gets sore far more easily and far sooner.
- D-Pad is awful on the original 360 controller. It's too imprecise, and many a time I've, by accident, done something I didn't want to do in the heat of a moment in a game (Resident Evil 5 comes to mind. It makes all the difference when you want to quick-select a hand-cannon to stop an instant killing monster in its tracks).
- The shoulder buttons are good for shooters, but hardly good for any other genre which doesn't really need them.
- Too much resistance on the bumper buttons, and they don't feel right at all.
- TINY start & select buttons, and they're too far from your thumbs 99% of the time.
- From experience, buttons jammed far too often for my liking. I hardly ever use my 360 Controller S for Windows and some of my buttons are jammed right now.
- Can't wrap my hands around the controller because it's too big, and unshapely. This helps for comfort, people!
- When accessories are plugged in, they can get in the way.
+/- No controller feature that is comparable to the Six-Axis of the PS3 controller. But this is neither a plus or a negative.

Take it or leave it. That's my rundown of the pros & cons of either controller. This is not about the systems themselves, as that would take a whole day to cover, so I won't bother going into it.

Fury - Final Chapter Listing

2012-05-21T18:37:00.004-03:00

It's been revised once again, but I'm sticking with this. By the way, I haven't made any progress for quite some time, but since I have too much free time on my hands these days, I think I'll get back into the project.

So here are the chapters for one last time:

1) The Pride and Joy

2) The Unfazed Guardian

3) The Deathly Scream

4) The Trail of Blood

5) The War Cry

6) The Embodiment

7) The Demon’s Card

8) The Pace of Vengeance

9) The Snarling Wolf

10) The Wicked Roots Wither

11) The Sorrow it Wrought

12) The Cry for Help

13) The Sworn Oath

14) The Act of Vengeance

15) The Setting of Justice

16) The Fading Flame

17) The Impassible Slope

18) The Well is Poisoned

19) The Wolf's Anguished Howl

20) The Would Be

M.Night Shyamalan's "Signs" Review

2012-05-17T16:11:00.003-03:00

It could have been a good alien flick, but numerous plot elements, the blase performances, stupid & uncreative aliens, and a terrible twist all bring it down.

M. Night Shyamalan did relatively good on The Sixth Sense, but in spite of a few more arguably decent films after that, this film seemingly began his downfall. His camera-work is undeniably of high quality, but there's nothing else really that was all that redeeming about this flick. The Sixth Sense did so well because of the twist and the original idea about a kid who sees and interacts with spirits, which no one could say was underwhelming. In this film, the twist basically ends up being a big non-coincidence, a test from God to test Mr. Hess' faith. That's stupid, fuck you Shyamalan.

One of the plot elements is that crop circles are forming on a family farm. No one likes that because crops are destroyed when those are made, so the family from that farm gets bothered by that. The family in question, the Hess family, was broken by the loss of their matriarch in a horrific car accident, as shown in the film opener. They are being terrorized, I guess, by the makers of those crop circles; aliens. As the film continues, it becomes apparent that there's more aliens around, many more. In fact, there's a world-wide invasion imminent where so many people will die. Whoop-de-doo, because everyone is seemingly detached from what, you'd think, would be a dark and uncertain time. I'd be busy getting prepared, armed, and whatever else for such an attack, incensed and scared along the way. But these people are bored, borderline-cynical at all times, depressing, and rather uninteresting. Plus, there's no chemistry to be had with ANYBODY.

Another plot element is that there are some character traits that turn out to be integral to the family's well-being in the end, for some stupid reason. Towards the end, the patriarch of the family reminisces about what his wife said in her last moments; "tell Meryl, swing away!" You're an idiot, Shyamalan. Was this a premonition, let alone a prediction on her part? If so, why didn't she just say, "aliens are going to invade the planet and attack you as well, get ready for that!" The little girl is obsessive-compulsive with drinking water and by the end of the movie there's dozens upon dozens of nigh-full glasses of water peppering the entire house. Though it would've killed most of the movie's stupid points to have her sent to a psychiatrist for such behavior, I guess the writers of the movie stuck with it. And the Caulkin kid has asthma and it manages to be the only sensible 'coincidence' in the plot.

The aliens are amongst the most disappointing in film history. Sure, you could call the 50's sci-fi flick aliens dreadful in comparison, but those were lighthearted efforts in film-making; this Shyamalan idiot took the project seriously, though. The aliens to be found here amount to big green men with somewhat rugged features, naked as the day they were born, somehow being such a grave threat to humanity. Oh, and it's revealed that although they wish to attack humanity en masse, they don't want to use any of their weaponry against us because they somehow know of our nukes and think we'll resort to using them on their plentiful supply of flying saucers. We first get a good glance at one of them in a scene-in-a-movie where one of them walks across a pathway into the bushes, with amateur child actors screaming and insanely ranting in Spanish or Portuguese or who cares. That scene apparently took place in a rainforest. Keep note of this observation because it plays a fucking stupid role in their fucking stupid design later. Or maybe you can put on a tinfoil hat like little Caulkin does in one scene (as well as Phoenix & whoever the little girl is) and forget it.

Said aliens are also terrorizing the Hess family, as has been established already. Though it does takes a while for them to actually realize this (Mr. Hess figures it out last, must've been praying too hard to care). They can leap at least a dozen feet into the air onto the roof of their house and stuff, Olympians can apparently do the same thing too as one minor character states, and play cat & mouse games with them, scaring everybody and click-talking to each other while being snooped on by our protagonists with...baby monitors. Nothing else seems to detect their communications but these devices with focused radio frequencies (this was discovered by these passive-aggressive kids filling roles of protagonists of all people). Further, no one else on Earth seems to have mastered eavesdropping on these aliens speaking to each other like these kids do, not even the military full of highly trained adults, who you'd think would have achieved even better results. Well, moving on, the patriarch later kind of runs into one of them one-on-one, behind a closed door. Earlier, he stupidly went on journey through his corn-field trying to get a drop on just who or what is tinkering with his food supply, without ANY defenses whatsoever, and ends up running away scared. Shyamalan made a cameo in this film, and his boring character locked one behind said door as it tried to kill him. It doesn't make much sense but who cares, right? Anyway, Hess ends up casually going into Shyamalan's messy house and goes to that door (which leads to a pantry), kneels down, tries to get a glimpse of it, but the alien unsurprisingly lashes a clawed hand out at him from under the door. In panic, and since he was brandishing a knife of all things to try and get some sight of the thing, he cuts off the fingers of the alien. Why it doesn't just break down that damn door is beyond all sense since it can otherwise leap fairly high into the air, but whatever, it screamed in pain and he went back home so this scene can finish justly.

Just before that scene, though, was described the aliens' Achilles Heel, their kryptonite. Well, is it fire? Is it very high sound frequencies? Is it light? Cold? A pop singer's non-auto-tuned singing voice? A mother's constant nagging? No, it's none of those sensibly fatal things. It's only one of the most abundant compounds within the biosphere of our planet that's what; WATER. Yes, water hurts them, burns at their skin and is poisonous and the whole she-bang. They apparently "try to avoid places near water" as an uncharismatic Shyamalan tells us, although basic logic paints virtually every location in the biosphere as being QUITE NEAR water, so why the aliens would even try to invade the world butt-fucking-naked is beyond understanding. Did Shyamalan and the other buffoons writing this just throw out all notion of basic chemistry with this shit? Or did they think there's a significant difference between the water that is in vapor form (think humidity) and water that is in liquid form? There is none. All of the elements are there! WHY DOES A COMBINATION OF ELEMENTS IN LIQUID FORM HURT THEM WHEN THE SAME COMBINATION OF ELEMENTS IN GASEOUS FORM DOESN'T? This should have kept these retards in green skin from even going near the rainforest areas of South America and the Northwest Pacific region of North America (amongst many other high-humidity regions across this water planet), but for the sake of this stupid, half-assed alien invasion movie intended as a subtle conversion method to continue so that we can have a climax at all, they were able to survive just fine with the high humidity of such regions, even brushing up against plants that collect water in liquid form. Shyamalan and anybody else responsible for this plot element must've been high at best, one-hundred percent ignorant at worst, but regardless either-way ended up insulting the audience with such trifling attempts at portraying an enemy's weakness.

A little earlier in the film, the whole thing about there "being no coincidences" is shoved RIGHT IN YOUR FACE, and Gibson is the weapon for this task. Allusions are made about the incident displayed at the beginning of this stinker film where, you know, maybe Mrs. Hess was hinting at something while dying and all that because God wills it of course! So is Shyamalan trying to push his beliefs onto his audience with this tripe? Or is it a clever plot piece that will dazzle us in the end? Are the aliens in fact demons from hell and his immediate family angels from heaven? Is this one person's struggle to maintain his faith in god the only important thing to him rather than trying to help save the world, and should the viewers care? Should I just stop talking about this plot element that makes this film a deceptive & pretentious moral lesson in film form and because it is completely unimportant for entertainment and escapism value? Okay, I will do that then.

The invasion begins on the family a while after he gets home. Before that, they have a nice meal where they pray and everyone starts crying, on depression overdrive since throughout the film's entirety everyone is depressed (except for the little girl of course), and Hess Sr. tries to get everyone to stop crying and they all embrace in the end. Aw, so touching! Anyway, with the only real smart decision they've ever made at this point in the film, they figure that maybe they should huddle inside of the house, keeping the aliens out with barricades built over windows & doors as best as possible. When the aliens start trying to make their way inside to kill everybody with their naked selves without any laser cannons or whatever, Mr. Hess realizes he forgot to board up the attic and all that. Nice going, Slim! You pretty much doomed your family even though because this is a movie you're predictably going to live anyway so this doesn't matter at all! Anyway, they figure they have little time to get to the last safe part of the house before getting killed, so they descend to the basement. There's no barricade to be made so they use an axe. Yeah, that's right, a mere axe does the trick against aliens that may or may not be strong enough to bust down the old looking door (that's definitely not oak). That and they shove their body-weight up to the door to hopefully keep the stupid green things outside from getting in to kill these stupid humans we're supposed to care about. No one thinks that perhaps there's nothing wrong with using that axe to defend themselves, but then this movie would approach cliche territory wouldn't it? In spite of their efforts, those idiotic, naked green aliens manage to partially get in anyway, through a fireplace conveniently built inside of this pitch dark and dirty basement. But it doesn't matter since the aliens seem to give up trying that way, in spite of being able to grope the Caulkin kid and make them knock out their only light source in a panic. Fuck alternative measures to kill stupid humans! Well, eventually this meager attempt at an intense action scene (coupled with the boy having an asthma attack to keep the audience interested with emotional appeal) fades out, the aliens have clearly given up despite having traveled billions of light-years for this shit, and daylight breaks. The aliens are nowhere to be found so they go outside confident that there's no more threat, and then that confidence is soon broken by just one lone alien holding lil' Caulkin. It's the same one who Mr. Hess butchered earlier in the film. Payback time!

The little girl's obsessive-compulsive habits of leaving nearly-full glasses of water EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE allow Meryl's propensity to "swing away" (remember, Shyamalan is trying to tell you that NONE OF THIS IS A COINCIDENCE and that this is scary shit), showing the possibly dumbfounded audience that these aliens are dangerously sensitive to fucking water, of all things, and it won't fight back against this bored Joaquin Phoenix, either. It just snarls at him and takes each long-delayed swing of Meryl's wooden bat like a retarded oaf, a completely naked bondage-loving masochist. Even when he's clearly going to swing away like the dying woman at the beginning movie said he would, twirling his bat like a giddy minor league kid would, the alien at most strafes around doing nothing otherwise. And when it finally dies, breathing its last stupid breaths since it and its race felt that using weaponry against humans would make us stupidly use nuclear weapons against them (the Caulkin kid somehow knew this bit of detail just by watching the news all the time and killed any hope of the film making sense later on) making their efforts somehow made useless after such a result, but no one gives a shit. It fucking dies and the Caulkin kid is asleep pretending to be unconscious.

The alien managed to poison the kid with some kind of gas (which it didn't use at all in any previous frame of this turd, could have been useful for them) before this stupid scene, but the poison doesn't actually work because he conveniently got hit by an asthma attack that very moment, so his lungs were closed, effectively saying "fuck you" to any reason for the audience to care. While there was no struggle on his part to get some air like a (depressed) fish out of water, he's stone-cold knocked out and completely motionless and of course no one wants a little boy to die in a movie in this sensitive culture of ours, especially a relative to Macaulay Caulkin! So Mr. Hess holds him in his arms desperate for reprieve and he eventually wakes up just in time. It's a miracle! He doesn't die, relief washes over Gibson's melodramatic face, and lil' Caulkin asks what happened and bla-bla-bla, and the girl named Bo goes to get another drink and waste the town's supply of fresh water like a typical brat would. People are crying at this point like Gibson always does and we're left to wonder, "anything else?" The film fades out for a second, comes back, and it's winter-time, snow all 'round. Gibson's character is donning preacher garb again since he regained his faith in god for some reason and that's all folks, so much for signs popping up, there were no coincidences as you were forced to hear, and maybe he'll marry again and maybe we don't care.

That twist wasn't even invigorating and no one could conceivably give a shit about anybody in the film. It's a popcorn flick and that's where the film's quality ends. The music was one of the only redeemable qualities of the film, while the content we're supposed to care about was bland and uninspired. It's like only the technicalities of the film (audio & visual) were the good parts, while the ideas conceived by the kindergarten-level idiots (water hurts aliens, my god) writing this shit were severe misses. That's definitely NOT the result a filmmaker should shoot for, but it was done this way regardless. Shyamalan's camera skills couldn't even make up for everything wrong with this movie, which is nearly everything we're supposed to be entertained by. And I'm not scared or thrilled by aliens stupid enough to attack a water-abundant planet in spite of their deadly weakness to said compound, naked and without any body protection, never using anything remotely resembling weaponry, since you know, they can achieve interstellar travel and complete cloaking of their flying saucers. They're the most incompetent space-traveling warmongers ever conceived.

And the crop circles seen in the film were unimaginative. People are still making crop circles in the real world and they look absolutely insane and creative in comparison. Fuck Shyamalan, his most recent boring efforts only prove that he's a one-hit-wonder.

+ Has a good thriller soundtrack.

+ Good camerawork and high quality picture.

+ Mel Gibson does a fairly good job as usual.

- Retarded aliens, stupid design of said aliens, and the worst idea for an Achilles Heel ever.

- Boring

- Plot idea of "everything is a coincidence" is outdated and poorly executed in this film.

- Everyone is depressing, bordering monotonous, and low-key. We don't care for anybody, really.

- Overly generic crop circle designs. Look at the many photos of REAL crop circles and laugh at what this film presented.

- Not scary whatsoever.

- Cookie-cutter intro text.

- The wife should have said something useful instead of saying that one of the boring characters should "swing away."

Deepest Reaches/Dressed in Crimson

2012-02-13T22:50:00.000-04:00

Where will the prayer reach when I seek its solace?
I've done the worst of deeds again today
When will the beak that utters an answer with wings
Break the pattern of my voracious stupor?

I'll just wish for a chance to stop
Her essence flows from my hands
I'll just call out my anguish to a non-audience
Her essence peppers the ground

And ye' I know, I took her life this day
Me in my power, and her awash in frailty (an angel if she were)
The visions cleared and ye', dressed were my hands in crimson
Any other way could I choose, I'd clothe them in ash

Where will the prayer I shout finally make way?
I've taken an irreplaceable spark so undeserving
When will the blind cycle of crimson thirst break?
I'm the harbinger of the reaper's soulless aim

Her form lies pale & motionless and I tear
My upward glance is my desperate heart's first chance
I'm reaching out to kill the killing switch
Her essence still peppers the ground

Ye' the mirror breaks as I stare at it red-eyed
Those tears have dried as the splotches on her dress
I still feel her words and I still bask in their meanings
And I stand here aside and urge with outreached red-dressed hands

Where will the prayer I utter ring a willing ear?
I've snuffed out a flame to her bright-burning light
When will I be put on the pedestal of karma?
I cannot forgive my deepest reaches no more

The Foundation of Fury

2012-01-02T02:03:00.002-04:00

Fury
(placeholder text)

“I would see the world purged of life if it meant my daughter’s safety.”
Do not bring pain to those whom a man holds closest to his heart; for you will know the wrath of a world in him if you do.

1)       The Pride and Joy
2)       The Broken Lock
3)       The Deathly Scream
4)       The Trail of Blood
5)       The War Cry
6)       The Embodiment**
7)       The Demon’s Card*
8)       The Pace of Vengeance
9)       The Snarling Wolf**
10)   The Wicked Roots Wither
11)   The Sorrow it Wrought***
12)   The Cry for Help
13)   The Sworn Oath
14)   The Act of Vengeance
15)   The Heel of a Titan
16)   The Fading Flame
17)   The Slowdown
18)   The Long Walk Home
19)   The Grateful
20)   The Would Be****

The protagonist is so far unnamed.
The antagonist, or antagonists rather, are named: Alistair, Hector, and Gillean. They are all blood-brothers. Alistair is the oldest, and is the schemer, the leader of the brothers. Hector is the middle-brother, he tends to get most of the action done, and fears little. Lastly, Gillean is the youngest and most mentally unhinged, easily manipulated into doing even the most heinous things by his elder brothers. They are all bloodthirsty, crafty, dangerous brothers. And yes, they are Scottish. Now you have another reason to want them all dead!

Kidding...of course.

But they will know pain, for they have crossed the protagonist in the worst way imaginable.

* Newly added. Desired chapter will involve a dog, bred to kill, being used to impede or even destroy the protagonist.
** Swapped with 'The Embodiment' because of pacing and story-placement issues.
*** Newly added. After a new development in his quest to rescue his daughter single-handedly, he begins to despair at his more extreme actions.
**** Newly added. This will be the true ending, an unconventional one at that.

Holiday or two, and long-needed progress on 'Fury'

2011-12-28T00:50:00.000-04:00

Happy Holidays, readers (no matter the quantity).

2012 looms, and brings with it an unusually mild winter with surprisingly high temperatures. A turkey feast with a bi-annual meet & greet with some of my family members were par the course for Xmas. The new year is just a couple days away and new classes will become palpable on the ninth of the first month.

I've also made some necessary progress on my current project. It's not a whole lot, but it's a good way to get the ball rolling again. The progress I made includes editing a notably vague few sentences, adding of a chapter to the chapter list (since I felt it didn't describe a desired story element), and completing a subsequent chapter to what I left off.

So with that, I'm signing off. Just hope nobody, for their sake, gets hurt in the celebration of another year's passing.

FURY, a new story project WITH SNEAK PEEK

2011-10-22T00:12:00.000-03:00

Here's what I've been able to produce tonight. It's coming along nicely so far, with no visible errors to be seen (big bonus!). It's a new project I just began. It's a revenge story, and you'll get an idea of what kind of vengeance the main character seeks in this sneak-peek.

The Pride and Joy

Vivien is nine years old, has been for three weeks. Every day is a new one, and I’m always happy that she is there each time. She’s my pride and joy, and I’ll take any bullet or fang that threatens her well-being without hesitation.

What I like to do each birthday is to excite her with something totally new. I still remember her third birthday, where I bit the dust, in terms of finances, and managed to get her four hours of time at a horse ranch outside of town. It was all the worthwhile and it’s been a tradition that I have stood by since then. She’s been called spoiled and I guess there’s some merit to that, but it’s just a token of my appreciation.

That was six years ago, and things have changed only a little. With that in mind, I realized that rather than having the total innocence of a toddler, Vivien has the rambunctiousness of an almost-adolescent, curious and sometimes reckless. But I think my smarts were passed onto her, because she’s proven to be resourceful and thoughtful. The worst she’s experienced in her life has been just a stray nail, which didn’t amount to anything. She knows no true pain, and while it would prepare her for the reality of life to experience such, I won’t force anything on my girl. It’s always better to let your child experience such shaping things on their own, after all.

I was in a fantastic mood yesterday after dinner, and I announced to Clarissa and Vivien, with Vivien bearing the smile I’ve come to know and love, that deserts were in order. We had decadent chocolate sundaes at the finest restaurant in town, each and every one of us. When I tucked her into bed last night, just a few hours later, I heard her call to me as I was just walking out her room, door barely closed.

She felt nervous about something, but she couldn’t describe the reason for it. But I didn’t have to hear her say anything to know why she was nervous; her body was shaking. I know the language of the body fairly well, and her shaking spelled to me that she was in fear. I do know that she’s not afraid of the dark; she’s been past that phase since she was almost eight. So in response to her inability to verify the source of her fears, I reassured her that she would be alright.

That did the trick. She started closing her eyes right away, and to keep assurance still, I walked out of the room at a calm pace. Just as the door was about to shut, I peeked in and noticed that she had fallen asleep. The jewel of my life had lain there, peaceful and motionless.

Today we are going to the meadows, located only a few minutes from the house. We go there most days of the week in the better part of summer, because the temperature is just right and the air is pure, untainted, and perfect for enjoyment. I’m sure she’ll enjoy herself out there today, as she always does.

It turns out that she did. We played a few rounds of ultimate, relaxed on the lush green grass, the soil soft as a bed, and because she brought along the balloons that she got on her birthday, we blew them up and let them fly with the calm winds. There must’ve been as many as thirty of them, all in the sky. I could imagine a fleet of heated balloons embarking on a worldly adventure at that very moment I saw all those balloons. The sun was setting at that time, and we were spent.

As she was eating, she asked me to read her one of the books she received as a gift from Clarissa, just before she would fall asleep. I promised her I would do so; what kind of parent would I be to deny her that?

After a few chapters, she eased into slumber. Today was a great day, looking back on it, and I too took off to sleep. Just as easily, I shut my eyes and, with a few inane thoughts racing through at the pace of a burst of light, began to doze off. This will be a long night.

The Broken Lock

A menacingly slow twist of a safety pin, inserted in the front door, roused only squeaks of steel and wood. At the same moment, the window to Vivien’s room was being hoist open at a rate only a stealthy individual would produce. A figure now stood, hunched, on her window sill. One would only see this person as a shadow in the darkness and the dim moonlight from the outside, but they would still distinguish this figure as being male. Not a particularly tall one, either.

The front door had finally been rested open, but only to remain slightly ajar; this was not the main focus of the two men responsible for these breaches, for the window made entry for both of them. It’s not known why, then, the front door would be unlocked with such effort and left alone.

Both men were, whispering to each other, would have appeared to be murmuring indistinctly from only a few feet away. They were quiet, and methodical. It was obvious that Vivien was in danger.

The man who unlocked the door remained inside the room, just at the foot of Vivien’s bed. The other climbed outside, landed on the lawn below with a quiet thud, and walked towards a car parked at the curb only a stone’s throw away. He produced a sack, leather in composition, of large size.

Meanwhile, as the man was walking back to the house below Vivien’s window, the man in her room began to sweat. But he wasn’t nervous. He was Hector Buchanan, the front-runner, who loved to cause fear and shake things up. The man outside the window was Gillean, the depraved runt, who loved to trap and to maim. He stood there in anticipation, sweating more profusely than Hector was. He was also grinning, eyes wide open. He was embellished with sadistic glee, and this wasn’t the first time he and Hector had done something like this.

Hector, in a rapid movement, turned Vivien onto her stomach; this awoke her, but at the same time, he prevented her from screaming by sealing her mouth with his right hand. With the other, he swept her up out of the safety of her bed, dashed toward the window, and tossed Vivien down to Gillean. The latter’s eyes almost seemed to glow at that very instant.

The Deathly Scream

Vivien screamed. I’ve never heard her utter one like that in my life and I am not going to stall any longer to find out what is happening to her. Children scream like that for a reason.

I broke out in sweat, and Clarissa was also awake at the moment. She immediately clung to my right arm with a vice grip, begging me to check on Vivien. I ran to the closet, put on my comfort clothing, and ran out into the hall.

First thing that caught my attention was that the front door had been opened. I was descending the stairs to investigate when I heard the loud creaking of wood from Vivien’s room. I had no time to waste here, so I went back up the short flight of stairs I travelled with the pace of a rabbit, and found myself trapped behind Vivien’s door, which was locked.

I turned the door knob furiously, begging for a purchase beneath my nerve-wracked breaths. I was finding no such thing, even pushing violently on her door. That was when I could hear Vivien shout to me, but there was something wrong: she was outside. She shouted again, but her voice drowned out mid-note. At that moment, I gave up on her bedroom door and almost leapt down the stairs to the front door. Clarissa was rushing behind me, sounding appropriately distressed.

Right after I threw the door open, I spotted two men fleeing from the house, one was leading the other carrying a sack of some kind. It was writhing around and that was when I deduced that they had placed her in it. They were kidnapping my life, with their path interspersed with an idle car. A shadowy figure was waiting at the driver’s seat.

I screamed her name in rage and pain, pain at the sight of these animals stealing my child away from me like this, while I ran at full speed. The one who wasn’t holding Vivien in the sack turned quickly after hearing me, and threw something at me. At first nothing happened, and while I was still running at full speed towards them, I then felt a jolt of piercing pain in my right calf. It was enough to make me fall to the grass, soaked with morning dew and causing Clarissa just behind me to fall as well.

I was crying at that moment, terrified at what was happening. Both men had been in the car for a second now, and the car began to accelerate. The driver window had been rolled down, and the driver was pointing a gun at me, which I was able to discern because it reflected the moon light. I was getting up, just barely past the knees, when he fired three rounds in quick succession. Neither of them hit, but it was jarring nonetheless.

They were in full speed by then, and there I stood, paralyzed with fear. Some of the houses began to light up, but I was absolutely writhing with something I have never felt before. I fell to my knees, and cried out loud into the night.

I felt the fury of a thousand worlds.

The Thing Review (2011)(SPOILERS)

2011-10-15T17:22:00.001-03:00

There's little imagination to be found here. While it didn't have the huge shoes to fill that a sequel would, it didn't serve much justice as a prequel, either. The audience of the Carpenter original didn't need to be brought up to speed as to the creature's origins; it was established right at the beginning sequence. This review is only intended for others who have watched the film, because it has spoilers.

I had a problem with the in-your-face nature of how the Thing went about its practices. Most daunting was how it was so illogical; it attacked people often when they were surrounded by others, even when armed with weapons it must have realized at a point could kill it in a painful, hot way. It wasn't subtle, it didn't 'scan' the area for vantage points or hiding spots in case it screws up its assimilation attempts (in Carpenter's film, the dog thing goes about the camp, finding out the layout of the place, and listens in on the crew members and finds out how it can go about its activities).

The beginning of the film was better than the ending, even though the ending is
spot-on, faithful to how the canonical sequel began (the man with the slit throat, the split-face corpse, the bloodied axe embedded into the wall, and the block of ice with a large opening are all present). Indeed, the beginning of the film, all 20 or so minutes of it, gives a feeling of some mystery, like, "what is this thing? Where is it from?" However, that is thrown out the window the moment it literally leaps into action and begins its assault on the crew members without a care in the world what happens. Surely the creature would be as weary of foreign lifeforms as the humans are (except for the Sanders character, who was unbelievably naive and should I say, stupid); why would it choose to throw itself into possible danger like that? Oh, that's right, the writers of the film wouldn't have a movie if they gave it more of a dimension than what it ended up having, because they had little imagination.

The characters were virtually card-board cutouts, most of them soulless or lacking of any depth to make them interesting. There was some paranoia development between the characters, I'll give the film this merit, but it didn't have the same feel as the sequel. Plus, why bother being paranoid about people when for little reason, the Thing assimilates someone completely random with no indication as to why, where, or how the person became a victim. I did like this film's own take on the identity test, which relied on, get this, tooth fillings. There actually was some logic to be found in this little plot device, as when it tried to assimilate a person (unsuccessfully I might add), it rejected a metal leg plate during the process because it was inorganic. That's a simple AND clever plot device and it is a plus for the film. However, this is one of the elements of the film that gives it the classification of "remake", seeing as it borrowed many elements from Carpenter's film, as if the design team of the film had nothing else to go on.

Atmosphere is a helpful way to give a film identity, and this film doesn't disappoint, for the most part. It doesn't help that the creature takes no liberties, doesn't seem to hatch any effective plan to take people over, and that even when it goes about its business, there's always people right there to burn it to death. There is a lot of tension during these moments, but the film is chock full of them that it doesn't allow for much ambiance, any breaks from action, which in Carpenter's film were used to great effect thanks to Morricone's stunning soundtrack. While I forgot the name of the person responsible for this film's soundtrack, it was rather forgettable other than the remix of "Humanity" heard at the end sequence, which sounded too much like the original anyway.

CGI was heavily used in this film. It didn't bother me, though, because I've come to accept this method of film effects (except for some cases. 'Deep Blue Sea', I'm looking at you!). Frankly, they were well done, but they didn't have the visceral feel that Rob Bottin's creations from the Carpenter film had. Indeed, many of the mutations were unoriginal or uninspired; Bottin had things like flesh flowers, a huge set of dinosaur-like teeth inside of one's chest, massive deformed-looking claws, a huge skull of what looked like a huge and mean looking dog, and many other things. This Thing almost always had a set of octopus jaws in the chest of the host, and crab-like claws. That's about all that I could say of it because the creature design was decent at best.

In closing, this is a decent film, but it doesn't add anything new to The Thing canon. There was little imagination, it made way too many nods to the Carpenter original, and character development and interaction was, in most cases, nonexistent. And the creature, while still as scary as ever because of its shape-shifting abilities and the way it mutates, is made one-dimensional and somewhat boring. Paranoia is still there, but there's nothing else to speak of. I guess the only real upside to this film is that it'll expose this canon to more people, and might invigorate some interest in it to generate a possible sequel. However, because of the ambiguous nature of the ending of Carpenter's film, it'll be hard to fill such shoes.

C+

+ Does have some faith to the Carpenter film

+ Retains some of the paranoia you'd think people would feel in such a situation

+ CGI is not bad, but it isn't spectacular, either

+ The beginning gives some sense of wonderment

- Doesn't try anything really new, but does have some twists

- Too many nods to the original

- Monster behavior, and the situations where it attacks, are illogical

- Forgettable soundtrack and the atmosphere is almost nullified by the constant action

- Not as scary as it is gory and intense. In that case, it is more of a sci-fi thriller than a sci-fi horror film.

Additional note: Congrats on the clever identity test method, guys.

Complimentary Photo Art - Acquiring the Means

2011-09-09T21:32:00.002-03:00

I don't think I've mentioned it before in this blog, but I've perused the art of photography, albeit in a non-contemporary fashion, so as to compliment my writing. And the one thing I cannot do without in this endeavor would be a camera. Not just any camera you get for fifty to one hundred dollars and that you can fit in your pocket; a Digital SLR camera with the capacity for crisp picture clarity.

It's hard enough to find something of at least decent quality in this niche market. Most of the professional level cameras are jaw-droppingly expensive and at that point, you don't know whether you're overpaying or not for the various models competing for the annihilation of your wallet. Then again, if you go to the bottom of the barrel in terms of price (for which I will have to settle, and it's pragmatic to consider why), you need to keep on the lookout for the features and the undeniable picture quality you look for.

I'm no professional, and I don't romance the idea of taking on a career or anything as a photographer for hire or anything. But, I would like to share my art in some fashion or another. They won't be portraits of people, nor landscape shots. What I will snap will be hard to describe (let's just say it involves theatrical blood, lots of after-shot editing, and even some props), since there are few photographers I've heard of who do what I want to do. What I do know is that I want the camera to take notice of fine details, such as shadows and reflective lighting. Ordinary cameras that saturate the majority of the camera market don't do it the same way an SLR camera does.

There's one camera, within my limited budget (and because I'm patient enough to go with a rather "entry-level" purchase), that I've been looking at with ambition: Fujifilm Finepix S2950

As you can see, it has a decent optical zoom range, which helps because digital zoom isn't nearly as effective; has a good ISO range, which will allow for the camera shot to compensate for any otherwise diminutive effects it would have on the quality of the photograph; a fairly modest 14 megapixels; is capable of 720P HD video capture at 30 FPS, with sound; and a wide angle lens of 28MM.

The possibilities are so real it's almost palpable. Here's to keeping in mind that the camera is one part of the process, as props and even models will be required to make my imagination a reality.

(Overdue) Purge Completed

2011-08-22T16:58:00.000-03:00

Finally, I was beginning to think it would be drawn out forever.

I am late with this post, however, because it's been finished since last Tuesday (August 14th). I submitted it to Clarke's World Magazine and as far as I am aware, it is still pending approval as a submission. In fact, the status of the submission reads as "Under Review." This can take a while, given that the length of the story is at 7,140 words.

I'm hoping that works out, if only to get my name out there and give me an audience.

As for a second story, it will not be a sequel, but a follow-up of sorts. Plus, as soon as I have a half-decent camera at the very least, I will make the photo art. Then, the novella version can really begin. As for the next story, I think I'll begin when I have more free time, perhaps this weekend. Also, it'll be a modification of a prototypical story I wrote last year, but never completed.

Griz out.