God damn savages that rent from Blockbuster! At most, this copy of the
Kill Bill DVD has been rented out twice before I got it, but there's already a major disk error during Chapter 2, "The Blood-Splattered Bride", and I have to skip ahead to the next chapter stop. There's weird white scuff marks of some sort... what the fuck were people doing with this disk besides taking it out of the case, putting it in the DVD player, taking it out of the DVD player, and putting it back in the case? Ring toss, maybe? Carrot slicing?
EDIT: I know... I'll go to Blockbuster, ask who rented it before I did, and make a list. Then I'll go to their houses, and "Music Box Dancer" will be playing as I idle the car on the curb.
VIDEO STUFF
Okay, I've rented the first half of
Kill Bill, so I am, at last, going to see it. Yes, I was
boycotting Kill Bill primarily because of the split and also because I have certain specific problems with the ending which I discussed before (though the "domestic" version of Bill, from the clips I've seen from the second half, doesn't seem to be quite as much of a "nice guy" as he seemed in the script), but my boycott never extended to renting it. Also, I just wasn't that interested in paying $21 Canadian to see both halves at the theatre because it seemed like too much of an exercise in overkill and a homage to movies I'm not into, and my sister, who has seen it, agrees (though my brother, John, likes it, but he's a film student and is big on cinematography and set design). On DVD, if I get bored, I can skip ahead. I'm also giving it a chance because:
- I had a dream over the weekend where I watched Kill Bill and liked it, and
- God help me, I like the intentional cheesiness of the TV spot for the second half with Uma Thurman as "The Bride"/"bleep"/Beatrix Kiddo/"Black Mamba" is driving the Pussy Wagon talking out loud to no one in particular about how many people she killed to get closer to finding Bill. It's honestly the first piece of footage associated with the film that made me reconsider my boycott.
I'm giving
Kill Bill the fair chance I didn't give it last fall in theatres, but it's gotta knock my socks off for me to pay to see the second half over the weekend, otherwise, I'll just see
The Punisher instead.
Also, on Monday, I bought
Urusei Yatsura: Only You and
You're Under Arrest volume 4 with my GST/PST sales tax rebate cheque, so you can expect reviews of them sooner or later; the
Only You review, I'll probably just put in
my RottenTomatoes.com journal since Anime News Network
has posted a review of it already, but I noticed they don't have any reviews of
You're Under Arrest whatsoever, so I may work on that one first and submit it and see what happens. But I'm a bad procrastinator, and I'm still working on my review of
Super GALS! volume 4.
As a bonus, I've reposted my review of the first three volumes of
You're Under Arrest here, and
here's my review of Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer.
Also, I bought the first volume of the
Planetes manga by Makoto Yukimura in French from Panini Comics (hmm... I didn't know the sticker guys also now translate Japanese comics). I was waiting for the English version from Tokyopop, since English is my first language and also since this is one of the more expensive French mangas and the Tokyopop version is several dollars cheaper, but it still hasn't shown up at the downtown Montreal Chapters. This manga has lovely artwork and is about the camaraderie of people whom work together, with the workplace here being in orbit, sucking up pieces of space junk so that they don't smash the space planes, because even a simple screw can do great damage at 8 kilometres a second. I've said it before, but it's really pretty much like
Patlabor in space, alternating in tone between being a comedy and being a drama. It's a seinen title, for adult male readers, but I only mean it's mature in the sense that it's for intelligent adults... there's no sex and the deaths in this volume aren't from fighting. I've only read half of it, so I won't do a full review of it right now, but I suggest you should pick it up if you see it.
WHY DON'T YA JUST PISS OFF, CRTC, YA DOTTY WEE SKIDMARK?
Oh pooh. One of the few good American cable channels the cultural panjandrums at
the CRTC let us ordinary Canadian peons watch is
Spike TV, formerly The Nashville Network and then the New TNN once the 90s country music revival fad died down. Last year, it changed formats again and became Spike TV, a channel dedicated to providing the finest in (mostly cheap) entertainment for men.
Problem. We already had a channel in Canada dedicated to men, albeit one that had only been around for a year or so before TNN changed formats and became Spike TV,
Men TV. Not really a problem because competition is good, right?
Not in Canada, where our speciality channels can't usually stand up on their own two feet and need the government to restrict all competition.
"Almost four years ago, Viacom, the parent company of CBS and MTV, bought TNN. Shortly afterward, the station dropped its country format (and Dukes of Hazzard reruns). The first revamp turned the channel into the National Network. The lameness of the name change said everything about that attempt. Then came a restyling ostensibly oriented toward men, the New TNN, which then spawned Spike, a network unmistakably aimed at men (Baywatch and Star Trek: Deep Space 9 reruns mixed in with a cartoon called Stripperella, featuring the voice of Canada's own Pam Anderson.)
Despite the desperate aura surrounding those transformations, they are the focus of the current dispute. To get onto the CRTC's magic list of approved channels, U.S. channels can't duplicate something offered by a Canadian broadcaster. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters complains that Spike is in direct competition with Men TV, a justly obscure CanWest Global digital channel that until recently filled out its schedule with reruns of the now-defunct Mike Bullard Show. CHUM grumbles that Spike is muscling in on the turf of its Space channel."
Boo-fucking-hoo. While there's plenty on Spike TV I don't watch, it's still about the closest thing to being a channel specifically designed for Steve Brandon there is, because, you know, my dream channel would have, at the very least, plenty of cartoons and
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine reruns (because Majel Barett's royalties make the
Deep Space Nine boxsets twice as expensive as those for most series). I like the new "adult" episodes of
Ren & Stimpy from Chicoutimi-born John Kricfalusi, and
Takeshi's Castle Most Extreme Elimination Challenge MXC is good for a chuckle now and then. What's on Men TV that I like to watch? Nothing besides the odd
Benny Hill rerun; it's a channel for men full of lifestyle shows for "metrosexuals"; fuck, I don't care about that shit. And do they have a single bloody show in common with Spike TV? Not that I can think of. Obviously, I watch Space a bit more, but
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is shown more often on Spike TV, and, currently, the cartoon content, Japanese or American, on Space is about null.
So, I hope the CRTC does nothing... or even better goes away... and, if Spike TV gets nixed in Canada, I promise Men TV that I will never watch a single one of their programmes ever again because eliminating my viewing choices isn't any way to get me to watch you. In closing, to paraphrase Jay and Silent Bob, "Fuck Men TV. Fuck them up their stupid asses."
SKIP THIS IF YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT ANIME
Hmm... I don't remotely care about
Naruto other than I hope 4Kids licenses it so I can enjoy the
schadenfreude on anime forums, but I'm getting a real kick out of
this thread at AnimeNation, though I'm sure it's going to be deleted soon, and
NarutoGirl05t banned. I've actually been jaded by the forums at AN lately, since it's too much of the "same old same old", but this thread is exciting and legendary and the new "Venom112 vs. Hitler" (a short-lived but long thread from the summer of 2002).
Well, even though the thread will soon be deleted, she has the pics on her own page, so I'll link to some of the tamer ones. Do not click on these links if you don't know what Yaoi is.
1,
2,
3.
Aww... the thread went away, so I can't mine it for any more picture links.
Yes, I know it's all fan art, but, still, while I'm not into fighting anime, if
Naruto was less about fighting and more about loving, I think I'd be curious, if you catch my drift. Very curious.
BEWARE THE CANTANKEROUS MR. GLITCH ISLAMOFASCIST SAVAGES! THEY HE WILL EAT YOU IF YOU ARE WRONG INFIDEL!
I was going to make some jokes which I thought weren't going to be tasteless if the savage, barbarous, cannibalistic Mujahideen pigs in Fallujah decided to let the three Japanese aid workers they had taken hostage free instead of burning and eating them, but, it seems, they've
reneged on their promise to let them go (well, duh... you can't negiotiate with vermin), but, at least, the Japanese government is refusing to back down. So, sorry, they won't be sending in the
"Seaman Ship for Peace" any time soon.
However, I put so much trouble into getting that
Magic Knight Rayearth screencap that I'd hate for people whom have a taste for black humour not to see it at all, so I'll just give the link to the picture in my Photobucket account which I captioned, and you can choose to look or not look at it depending on how easily offended you are by such things. But it's actually fairly tame and a little too cute, all things considered.
You have been warned.
(Yes, that's supposed to be a cauldron of some sort, even if the way it's drawn makes it look a bit like a UFO. I think they made it look weird to indicate that Presea is a resident of Cephiro, a strange alternate world.)
Anyway, I hope the Japanese hostages and the ones from the other countries get released, and, then, I hope the Mujahideen pigs get slaughtered, preferably by pork lard-covered bullets.
Also, some of these pro-terrorist fuckwads from an Idiotarian rally in San Francisco are just too stupid for words. (Click on the pictures to get to the relevant
LGF articles I took them from, though they took them from
this SF Nazimedia article.)
Yes, "pro-terrorist", no two ways about it. It's called the fricking "Insurgency Solidarity March" for chrissakes. I'm not giving an opinion on anti-Iraq war protestors in general... this time... but these specific people are, on their own admission, on the side of barbarism and cannibalism, and not
the funny Alferd Packer kind either. Or are these people
covert operatives from ProtestWarrior.com trying to make the marchers look bad? Nah, but even if they were, it's not ProtestWarrior.com that called the rally the "Insurgency Solodarity March".
Yeah, as tempting as it would be for me to write a parody of a certain famous Vapors song, "Turning Japanese", burning Japanese people just isn't funny if they do it for real.
MEH...
Damn, sorry for the lack of updates over the past few days. My brother, Nick, is home for the weekend from Toronto, and he was using the computer a lot.
Then, on Saturday, I wanted to do something featuring a screencap from the anime
Magic Knight Rayearth, but I put it in the DVD-ROM drive and... it plain didn't work. I "flashed" my DVD-ROM drive with hacked firmware in 2002 so I could watch my Region 2
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou DVDs and I'd get unlimited region switch refills using DVD Genie and it worked just fine until one day last summer when my brother tried playing Radiohead's notorious
Hail to the Thief CD in that drive. Why is
Hail to the Thief "notorious"? Because of their music? No idea... I can't remember a single track from that thing myself... Radiohead's just not my bag, though I did find them amusing in the totally dark humour fifth season
South Park episode
"Scott Tenorman Must Die". Because the title of the album,
Hail to the Thief, seems to be a cheap shot at George W. Bush? I really don't know one way or the other, and my brother isn't someone a pro-Bush Canadian like myself can talk about Bush with and stay polite, so I ain't going to ask him. No, this album is notorious because it's a
Copy Control CD, with copy protection software on the disk to stop people "ripping" the tracks to MP3, and not only did it not play normally on my computer, the copy control is malicious and it seemed to have fucked up the firmware of my DVD-ROM drive completely so that, sometimes, the drive wouldn't show at all, and also so that the drive won't play the majority of my DVDs. We tried reinstalling the driver for that drive, and it worked a bit, but, still a lot of DVDs, particularly Disney ones, wouldn't play well or at all.
Though, alas, for whatever weird reason, volume two of
Magic Knight Rayearth did play on my DVD-ROM drive yesterday (though it took a couple of minutes for it to start), volume one, which is the volume with the image I wanted to use, wouldn't play at all, so I sought out hacked firmware and a flasher programme to re-flash my hard drive and I used it, and nothing seemed to happen, so I used different official and hacked firmware, and, eventually, somehow, the BIOS of the computer became corrupted, so I could no longer access Windows at all and got an error message if I started the computer without a bootdisk.
Basically, we had to reformate the drive from scratch, and, unlike the last time we had to reformat, when I was able to burn most of what I wanted to save to CD, this time there was no warning and I was only able to retrieve a couple of
Word files from the "My Documents" folder using the DOS prompt and save them directly to the boot disk. And I had to call Dell to be able to reformat the drive properly... yep, I was talking to someone from India, and I know they get training to remove their accents, but I got one of the Sunday morning (their time) girls who wasn't fooling anyone about where she comes from, though, actually, that's not a criticism. I think she had a lovely accent, musical and reassuring, and, honestly, if I'm talking to tech support people from India, and I fully support outsourcing, creating an Indian middle class and a market for more western exports, I prefer someone with a bit of an accent. It's just more honest. I'm sorry, I know they have accent training to fool a lot of intolerant people whom wouldn't knowingly take advice from Indians, but all I can think of when I see news reports of the American accent classes that the people at the call centers take is Apu pretending to be American in the
Simpsons episode
"Much Apu About Nothing". ("What do you say we take a relaxed attitude towards work and watch the baseball game? The NY
[which he pronounces "nye"] Mets are my favorite squadron.")
Yeah, reformatting the hard drive worked, and we got
Windows ME (yes, laugh at me all you like) reinstalled on this thing, and I got a new BIOS for the Dell Dimension 4100 and that installed fine and I no longer have to have to put the
Windows ME disk into the drive to start this thing. And I got
Word and
Photoshop reinstalled. I just gotta try and not think of all the files I lost, especially most of my live-action
Sailor Moon episodes, as well as fansubs of
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou,
Popotan,
Please Ask Dr. Rin,
Planetes,
Twin Spica, and several others. It's just too damn depressing to think of all I lost.
:(
