退かぬ 媚びぬ 省みぬ

I found this article rather endearing, as I'm the sort of person who rolls their eyes at the ridiculous melodrama in scenes like the ones below, but still enjoys watching them. It reminded me of my man Loco's little series on what Japanese teens are thinking about.

So Let Me Get This Straight...

You fell off a ladder and broke your leg while looking at a house -you didn't have permission to be in that house, but the owners did you a big favour and decided not to press charges. You waited until the statute of limitations on a trespassing charge ran out, then sued the homeowners for negligence?

Arsehole. 

H/T: Mistermix.

Human Ingenuity

I was impressed with this effort by Colombian drug smugglers.


I can only imagine what ingenious methods have been cooked up by Nigerians. "Pigeons? We off that. But if you insist, here's a formula for assigning appropriately weighted loads to each bird.... That'll be $1000 for the consultation."

It was only a matter of time... (cont.)

You may remember my post last year about Chatroulette, a site that lets you have video chats with random strangers. It seems the site owners have finally figured out a way to make money out of all the guys who like to... perform... over the webcam. Surprised it took them so long:

The onslaught of disgusting naked men that seemingly destroyed interest in Chatroulette is now earning the site $100,000 a month. After being flagged by other users a certain number of times, the masturbators — there are about 50,000 on the site every day — are automatically redirected to adult pay sites with which Chatroulette has made agreements. The site's founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, claims that you'll run into a penis only once an hour now — still more surprise penises than you typically experience in an hour outside of Chatroulette, but a vast improvement nonetheless.

H/T

The Trouble With Lagos

I haven't been to Nigeria in a very long time, but one thing that sticks in my memories of Lagos is the sheer awfulness of traffic. Which I suspect got worse in the decade or so since I was last there...

Assorted community members: Eh heeeh, so you can go to this Jah Pan and America, but you cannot take time to go to your country! What do you mean you are a British? You do not belong there!

Putain d'enculer chikusho! Ok, got that out of my system. Moving on.

Caught this story in the Guardian about a plans for new railway service, which could potentially save untold amounts of time, hassle, and money. A city with the population of Lagos current 10 million or so -and rapidly growing- needs a good, efficient mass transit system. A positive development, though I think it's too early to say whether it will have the desired impact.

The King's Speech

I wasn't really interested in seeing this film as I really could not get excited about the prospect of watching a royal get over his stammer. Don't get me wrong. I'm of the opinion that great films can be made about such subjects as women who like to crush cockroaches with the point of a stiletto. The issue for me was the probability that this particular story would be told well enough to make me leave the cinema with a smile. It's not like The Man is paying me to review it - or to do much else these days.

Well, I'm happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. A very good, well-put together film. Intensely character driven. Much like the director's previous film, The Damned United, which I recommend. I don't know if it was worth my while to see The King's Speech on the big screen however; because to paraphrase a friend: it had the whiff of a BBC special about it. Which is good, but perhaps not so good at the cinema.

Just Because

This tune combines two styles that I can't hear without wanting to move.

The Night Terrors

I've been holding off writing this for a while, for the strange reason that I didn't want to look like an idiot. Which I realised was a completely idiotic position given some of the fumduckery I've splashed around on this very blog. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Tron: The Re-Up

What can I say? Not as bad as I'd been steeling myself to experience. Very very pretty film. Though the dialogue was so excruciatingly bad at points that it was hard to just sit back and enjoy the audio-visual extravaganza.

For My First Post of The New Year...

Some breakbeats by DJ RX78. I'm really feeling the Mechagodzilla breakbeat, and lawd ha' mercy! the G-Gundam mix is hot! (ETA: the stabbing horns the DJ puts together are hot, the tune as a whole got a little repetitive) Got me going through Youtube for the original tune. The horn that comes in at around 00:49 reminds me of The Fist of the North Star soundtrack, with all its bromance and melodrama.

I don't even really remember how I stumbled onto DJ RX78's music. I was probably doing something inappropriate...