Random Paul Stanley sightings...IN A CUBICLE

Lately, I haven't been turning the lights on up here when I work at night, so there is kind of like a Resident Evil feel sometimes, but I like it anyway. One thing that's really weird tonight is the excessive airbrushing of Paul Stanley in some random guy's cubicle.

Seriously, WTF?

Good times at lunch with honkies

I had some lunchtime fun yesterday that I'd like to share. I work in the computer industry, and right now I am contracted out with several engineers on a major project. I went to lunch with a few of them on Monday, and we started talking about the closure of the Mall of Memphis.

For a long time, the Mall of Memphis was the biggest mall we had, a large, well-Gapped mecca of typically shitty consumer goods. It started to decline for several reasons discussed in the link above, but basically, the number of crimes committed at the mall began to rise, including violent ones, and the local "news" "media" shit their pants in a mad dash to label it the "Mall of Murder." If that wasn't enough to keep Banana Republic-lovers away, the final coffin nail was driven in by its location in an increasingly African-American, semi-poor area of the city that was suffering from the exodus of many higher-income residents to the suburbs. Yeah, that's right, motherfucking white flight smoked that mall like a turkey.

Anyway, I said as much, at a table of four other white guys, one Hispanic guy, and one black guy. And, let me tell you, I couldn't have brought the conversation to a halt faster if I had pissed in the gumbo. One of the white guys, about my age and more or less in line with my thinking, assented with a nod in a pretty chilled-out way, as did the black guy, who understands a thing or two about white flight, I'm sure, from living in the national capital of scared honkies -- grand ole Memphis, Tennessee. I think the Hispanic guy probably couldn't give a fuck, except to laugh at the awkwardness, but one dude was like "oh wow...I can't believe you said that," and another sat silently in what I suspect was a stew of invigorated racism. The guy who commented is a nice guy, and I think he'd more or less agree with my politics as well, but what seemed to freak him out was just my having the balls to bring up something nobody wants to talk about, especially in Memphis. I mean, public works has near road-widening parties here so white people can faster escape their crippling, irrational fears of, like, jheri curl death squads, or some other figment of their Fox News-addled imaginations. All this while whole sections of the city have potholes you could drown a toddler in, not to mention crumbling buildings, schools, and other decaying remnants of an infrastructure serving people nobody gives a shit about. Fuck it, I'm not keeping the scary talk to myself while that's going on.

Still, good times, even outside of my sociopolitical-whatever soapbox. Go to lunch with a group of assorted white people, maybe some cheese-sandwich-eating goober from middle management, or, say, the weird lady in accounts payable with the toxic waste perm and find a way to bring up white flight in the conversation. Watch them scatter like ants unless they have the slightest clue of what's up in America today. Wheee!!!

(Digg) Newsweek: Bush approval hits all time low of 28 percent

"NEWSWEEK Poll: Bush Hits All-Time Low - George W. Bush has the lowest presidential approval rating in a generation, and the leading Dems beat every major '08 Republican. Coincidence?"

I don't wanna comment too much on this, because really, it's kind of unsportsmanlike to boast when somebody is getting their ass kicked this bad. It would be like shit-talking a man on crutches in one-on-one basketball, or picking on a retard. I will, however, share a mean but hilarious comment someone left on Digg: "the last third is usually backwash."

Congrats, caveman-like neocon assholes! The chickens have come home to roost!

read more | digg story

(Digg) Bring it on, iTunes: Amazon readying DRM-free music service

"Amazon is rumored to be readying its own music store for launch next month,
which will reportedly sell unprotected MP3s in hopes of cutting into the iTunes
Store's market share."

I hope other music retailers will follow suit here. It seems like market pressure might be the best hope of eliminating DRM. Trying to block thieves at the expense of legitimate customers is definitely not a great way to survive in a free-market economy.

read more digg story

Is that the sound of angels singing? No, it’s just Grindhouse being awesome

First of all, hello to the spoilers.

Now THIS is a comic-book movie. Yeah, I know it wasn't actually a comic book, but it missed a good chance to be. Grindhouse is the kind of movie I was thinking of when I talked so much shit about 300. See, it's fun without being insultingly stupid. There are no fucking queer jokes, there are no appearances by RuPaul knock-offs, there are no hunchbacks with questionable moral conviction (too bad, because Ugly = Bad Person, of course), and there are no handicapped-lesbian gang-bangs. In fact, Grindhouse shows a refreshing lack of any lingering flavor of "manly" by way of "excessive playing of video games and extreme living with parents." It pays homage to the cheesy, bloody, sometimes misogynistic traditions of '70s and '80s B-movies without absorbing all of their bullshit wholesale. But my favorite thing about Grindhouse is that Rodriguez and Tarantino chose to turn it into a Slayer story. And that's awesome.

Although Rodriguez and Tarantino's movies draw life from a hodgepodge of geek-cherished cinema, including all kinds of exploitation films, I don't remember either committing violence against women to film without reason. Granted, there is a fine line between violence in service of a story and violence for its own sake, and those distinctions can be subjective and difficult to judge. Still, think of the ass-kickers that both directors have brought to life: Jackie Brown, The Bride, Carolina, the prostitutes in Sin City. When you've reached that level of bad-ass-woman credibility, I automatically cut you some slack.

"Death Proof" is a perfect example of the difference between misogyny and just plain bad shit happening to women narratively. It tells the story of two groups of women: one murdered brutally, the other equally brutal in their vengeance against the murderer. To really stir up the pure movie satisfaction of watching Rosario Dawson crush Kurt Russell's skull with her boot, you have to go through the suffering he inflicted, and while it's hard to watch, I understand why those particular strings have to be pulled. Like, I remember thinking near the end, "you better let me see that fucker die." I would have preferred something bloodier, but really, I can't complain. I also like "Death Proof" as sort of a feminine retread of the talky roundtable scenes Tarantino is famous for. I was surprised at how real the female characters felt, and you'd think Tarantino would know fuck all about writing women if you focused on, say, Reservoir Dogs, but he pulls it off. And, Tarantino proves here, just like he has in the rest of his movies, that being a pop culture-obsessed dork is fine, but being a bitter, miserable dork who peers suspiciously at life through a fog of Doritos and emasculation is not. Somebody should probably explain that distinction to the macho retarded-gorilla powerhouse that is 300.

"Planet Terror" is the one that really stirs up my Slayer love, though. Here we have the go-go dancer with the secret destiny, the woman who finds her power by examining those places hidden in plain sight, who finds uses for all her "useless talents." She draws strength from the man she loves, but continues without him, leading those who survive fucking crazy zombies to a new home, a new civilization built among the ruins of a long-dead one. "One girl, in all the world, a chosen one." Plus, seriously, fucking crazy zombies getting killed by a machine-gun leg. What could be more Slayer than that? OR MORE AWESOME?