bafflegab.org

Well, there I was, sitting down ready to write about the weird evening I had the other night … by weird, I mean, I talked to people. This may not sound weird or unusual to you, but it is for yours truly, insular bunny that I am.

(Did I mention that the conversations all took place on public transport?)

Anyway, I was all geared up but felt it necessary to just see my colleague’s most recent posts: he keeps insisting I am letting the side down, or summat. And there it was: the possibly inadvertent pun.

If you, dear reader, can find this act of punnistry and email me the appropriate details before Bonus Wave does, then this will give me a great deal of ammunition to use against him in our ongoing war of words. Of course, knowing him as I do (i.e. in perspective) I cannot be sure that he hasn’t made the joke on purpose: it strikes me as just his sort of sleight-of-reference.

But what of this: when I was interested in writing on the Stoics, my supervisor told me to spend summer on the porch, sipping beers and reading a particularly good critical survey of their work. And as we all know, the Stoics were so named for congregating on the stoa poikile the painted porch.

It was unintentional.

So… what is the term for a reference that allows an unintended punning inference? It seems to me that there’d be two terms

(The only remotely similar tendency I could think of (not that I study lit, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc.) is Jung’s description of cryptomnesia in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Jung describes this in either Man and his symbols or in Memories, dreams, reflections, don’t recall which.)

Again, reader feedback is very welcome…

_{– posted by Rabbit Zero}

Oh dear, oh dear.

There I was, innocently violating innumerable copyright laws, trying to download some stuff by some local comedians , and having done a search on their name through my favourite P2P client what result should I get amongst the varied slurry of somewhat relevant files? I quote; “drunk_girl_put_under_a_horny_dog_she_does_not_realize_what’s_going_on_
REAL_CAM_SHOT.jpg” (you will note that this is not linked, and no, I don’t have the link handy. If you want this kind of shit, go look for it yourself.)

How the hell was this relevant to my search? Not one word in the rather florid title of this REAL_CAM_SHOT correlated to any of the words in my search, so I assume it ended up being returned as part of some knock-on effect get-semi-relevant-results extra thingy. The point being, the porn came to me - unsaught. What a boon this would have proven to my curious young mind a decade or two ago… no need to rifle through people’s hard-waste recycling piles for 2nd-hand magazines, or search the rather obvious hiding places of the fathers of schoolfriends…

So yeah, wall-to-wall porn, no surprises there. Anyone out there using any kind of filtering software to try to protect your kids; my only advice is talk to them. You’d do better to try to hand them some psychological tools than rely on sotware, ’cause its got the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell.

Still I s’pose that didn’t stop our noble Govt. from attempting to censor the ‘Net here is Aussie-land. Its been an expensive farce, of course, but everyone likes security theatre, right?

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_{Posted by BonusWavePilot}

Title: Dawn of the Dead

Actors: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames

Director: Zack Snyder

Year: 2004

Rating: 6/10

This is a remake of a classic Romero (sp?) film which I have yet to see, so I can’t really comment on whether they fucked it up or not.

Update – having seen Romero’s original, I can say I liked this one better, although it doesn’t have the low-budget fun feeling of the original (look out for the same stunt guy having to bounce off things over and over). Also, there are some amusing cameos from the original cast.

I’m a fan of the genre, and as zombie films go, this one is quite good. The zombies & zombie disease-spread are both rather fast moving, the soundtrack is apt, and there are some humerous moments to break up the splatter. No time is wasted getting into the action, the first death by zombie occuring about 5 mins into the film. There’re a few low spots on the acting, and one or two characters who are a bit too obviously doomed from the start, but that’s part of the fun as well.

Our heroic protagonists barricade themselves in a mall, so once they’ve secured it, they’ve got enough food etc. to last them, and the concern of some of the central part of the film is how they pass the time in their fort. One of the best features, IMHO is the relationship with ‘Andy’ the guy who runs the gun store down the street, seperated from our heroes by a sea of zombies below, but close enough to use binoculars to read whiteboard signs which are held up, which is howhe and our heroes communicate. Give it a look if you’ve a dark sense of humour, and a penchant for the living dead (and a strong enough stomach to deal with the odd chainsawing).

Title: Suicide Kings

Actors: Christopher Walkin, Dennis Leary

Director: Peter O’Fallon

Year: 1997

Rating: 3/10

A nonsensical attempt at a suspense.

A bunch of snotty college kids kidnap an ex-mob-boss (Walkin) to force him to help them deal with the kidnapping of one of their buddies. Characters are not likeable, plot is ridiculous, and by the time the ‘twist’ comes at the end, it’s hard to even give a toss. Mildly entertaining performance from Christopher Walkin.

So we have this wonderful colloborative medium here in the ‘Net, which follows Sturgeon’s law in terms of its content (i.e. 80% of everything is crap), and I am increasingly of the opinion that those of us with the pretentions to think that we can do better really should be. In the spirit of such a concept, therefore, I reckon that you could make a kick-arse apocalypse film with a worldwide network of amateur film-makers. (By apocalypse film, I mean like a zomie or alien invasion movie or something). Maybe a benevolent dictatorship model, with the skeleton of a timeline that people flesh out, and build their own plots around. Think of the verisimilitude of having hundreds of hours of footage from around the globe to assemble into news reports, or use as the basis for a whole spinoff story or whatever. The more people contribute plots & video for viewing & downloading, the more settings, individuals etc. there are to incorporate into your own concept. All you have to do is agree on a basic set of concepts (to make sure everyone’s monsters are in at least approximately the same make-up, for example) and away you go. Just a thought…

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_{Posted by BonusWavePilot}

Why doesn’t anyone ever use their fan base? Surely there could be no better continuity test for Star Trek than to ask the hard-core fans whether a planned episode arc would contradict previously established facts? Not to mentioned the fact that the fans in question would leap all over the chance to get onto episode stuff ahead of time. (Well, ok, so the Trekker example mightn’t be the best one since the franchise managed to alienate millions of fans with the goddawful dross that is ‘Enterprise’) Likewise if your local Fox affiliate is going to cut increasingly more of each Simpsons episode with each repitition, maybe they ought to consult someone who understands the humour of the show on which bits to cut? Case in point, I saw an episode the other day, which I’m sure through repeated viewing (and if you care to, I’m sure could be confirmed by browsing the info-banks of the online Simpsons zealots) has a segment of dialogue where Homer is promising he will give up beer for a while, and after the lights go out, the distinctive pop-hiss of a beer opening is heard.

Marge: What was that?
Homer: Uh, I said ‘psst, I love you’.

And the stupid fuckers had cut it after the first line. Cutting, in other words, the punch line. Any simpsons fan worth his bowl of m&m’s could tell you a better 3 seconds to cut from that episode; probably without even having to watch it.

Grumble, bitch, moan.

Thanks to Weird Al for the titular pun of this piece; from his song Too Much Jerry Springer.

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_{Posted by BonusWavePilot}