I've seen many sexist adds in my life, because hey, I'm a child of Consumer Culture... advertisement is the culture.

But this one, takes the cake. ( Video Under The Cut )

I'm not a huge drinker, I in fact don't drink that much as I dislike being more than buzzed and it doesn't take much for me to get a buzz.
I do, however, know what I like in my alcohol and if there is a beer that I really relish drinking, it's Guinness.
I mean for fuck's sake one of my planned stops while I was in Dublin was the Guinness Brewery!

And now they bloody well went and ruined my love for them and their clever
and hilarious adverts.
Fuck them. They just lost a loyal consumer.
*weeps*

Edited To Add: I'm so upset by this that I actually wrote a letter to Guinness. Here's what I wrote ( Under the cut )

I want to be excited about Watchmen, but I'm just not managing.

The Trailer is very cool, visually beautiful, though I'm not sure why Dr. Manhattan is so shiny and Silk Spectre has this whole half naked thing going on... strange, no?

It would seem that Mr. Moore (as in Alan Moore, the one who wrote the bloody graphic novel!) has requested that his name be removed from the credits and wants to disassociate himself from the movie, which is only natural... seeing as adaptations tend to not be similar to their original medium - this is notorious when it comes to Alan Moore comic and their movie adaptations.

I love V for Vendetta, as you know; kind of hard to miss V's introductory speech posted on the side bar (also Vox Populi, Vox Dei, right :). I love the book - which can leave you speechless - and the movie - which makes you run out and read the book! Having read V4V before I saw the movie I went in there with quite low expectations and was not disappointed.

Watchmen is one of those life changing books. You come out of it different than when you went in. Very few books have the power to alter your perspective on things.
I became a comic book reader quite late in life, at around 15 and it started with Neil Gaiman - Sandman is another of those life changing stories - and when I began to delve deeper into the genre and its history you can't not find the Daddy of the Modern Age and read him.
I always think how much more appreciative I would have been of Gaiman (whose power comes from creating a meta level in the stories themselves) if I'd discovered and/or read Moore before hand (whose power comes from completely recreating the foundation of sequential story telling, beyond meta and deconstructing itself).

Watchmen takes the classic comic book genre (super heroes) and completely turns it on its head. After Watchmen heroes could no longer be Good and villains could no longer be Bad. It made no sense for things to be that way anymore.

The ethical questions raised in the story (and answered in one of the most gruesome and brilliant, sequences ever written and drawn) are questions we tend to not ask ourselves, they are too big and most likely not something we think about on a conscious level.
In any event it is a book of great philosophical and social commentary on the simplest of levels, so a deeper reading can be mind blowing.

I'm not excited about the movie. I thought I would be. I want to be. But I really can't imagine what a director like Zack Snyder will be able to get out of it. Especially since his directorial record leaves much to be desired in my opinion: Dawn of the Dead didn't live up to the original and 300 couldn't have been good since the source material was an overrated, indulgent, racist, testosterone laced excuse of Effing Frank Miller's self-congratulatory wank fests.
And so was the 300 the movie.

That's not to say I won't go see it when it comes out, but my expectations that it manages to even capture the atmosphere of the book are pretty much non-existent.

The trailer is cool though: ( Watch it )

So I had asked you to identify 10 lines from different songs in my collection.
Here's the answers:
1) You burst on the scene, already a legend. - lovechilde and redaxe both recognized Diamonds and Rust, and I have both Joan Baez and Blackmore's Night's cover. Personally, I prefer Blackmore's Night's version. But that is just me.
2) All I learned at school was how to bend, not break the rules. - joebrown42 correctly identified this as Baggy Trousers (yes, Joe, with the S) by Madness.
3) I am cool and smooth and curious, I never blink. - redaxe got this one. It's Small Blue Thing by Suzanne Vega.
4) Then he went to England, played the piano, and married an actress named Kim. - No one caught Jimmy Buffett's He Went To Paris.
5) She didn't tell me there were rocks, under the waves, right off the shore. - I would have been really surprised had joebrown42 not known Billy Joel's All for Leyna.
6) Some nights I just lose it all when I watch you dance and the thunder rolls. - No one? No one knows Meat Loaf's I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)?
7) And my brother's back at home with his Beatles and his Stones. - joebrown42 got this partially correct. David Bowie wrote it, and covered it, but officially it is Mott the Hoople who sings All The Young Dudes.
8) I'm hoping it´s going to come true, but there's not a lot I can do. - joebrown42 correctly identified Supertramp's Breakfast in America.
9) Now I don't mind'em choppin' wood, and I don't care if the money's no good. - trempnvt and redaxe knew that this is The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. I have Joan Baez' cover of The Band's song, but it's the live version where she gets the lyrics correct. In the version she released on album, she gets this line wrong.
10) You said your love had never died, you were waiting for me at home. - And no one got this either. It's Bruce Springsteen, Downbound Train.
Tonight's trivia is all about fictional officers. All of the following are fictional officers. All you have to do is tell me who or what they commanded over.
So here, in no particular order, is the list:
Clayton M. Abernathy
James Bigglesworth
David Bowman
Frank Hollister
Sherman Tecumseh Potter
Philip Francis Queeg
Thaddeus E. Ross
John Smith
The Honourable George Colthurst St. Bartleigh
Alter Tse'elon

Twenty five, don't recall a time I felt this alive,
So wake up boo, there's so many thing's for us to do.
Its early so take your time, don't let me rush you please,
I know I was up all night, I can do anything, anything, anything.

I sang this song to my sister on her 25^th birthday, over the phone, four years ago, then thought "Oh my God, in four year's time I would be singing the same song to myself. Wow". So wow.

Things change, they always do. Things stay the same. The same. Ebb and flow. The song's happy essence still accompanies me along my path, as I play pieces of it in my head. In the face of troubles I remember that I don't mind, to pretend I do seems really dumb, that I should look forward to a situation in which I shouldn't be up at this time, but i cant sleep with you there by my side, but most importantly that-

Wake up it's a beautiful morning, The sun shining for your eyes.
Wake up its so beautiful, For what could be the very last time.

Originally published at Distractions. You can comment here or there.

The BBC’s news headline (it is the default live bookmark in Firefox, so that’s where I see my news items) proclaims Israelis hit by new digger attack, which made me think they were talking about some classic video game. What’s wrong with Jerusalem Killdozer sequel?

Someone needs to update Wikipedia, BTW.

Earlier this month Israeli Palestinian Hussam Dwayat went berserk on a tractor, killing three and wounding dozens.

Bulldozers seem to be the current trend in attacks against Israeli's in urban areas.
Yes, another attack in Jerusalem, though thankfully the man on the rampage didn't succeed in killing anyone (though there more than a dozen injured) - the man driving the bulldozer was shot dead and at this time his identity is not known other than that he was male.

My family in Jerusalem are fine and safe and like before, I'm damn lucky they were not in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We'll see if any organization takes responsibility, or if this is another solo "artist" going his own way opposing the Occupation, or just a nut case which no one seems to believe exist in certain populations.

I might not have time to bring you updates, I'm taking a break from studying and will be returning to it very soon.

Related to this is the story of the shooting of a detainee by an IDF soldier while his superior officer looked on, in the West Bank village on Nil'in. The village has been on the News over the past month due to the protests against the building of the Separation Fence which has systematically expropriating land in the vicinity and owned by the people in Nil'in.
If you don't know what I'm talking about please read the following stories as they should give a large, if incomplete picture of what exactly went on in this incident:
Israeli soldier shoots restrained Palestinian at close range
Israel probes 'detainee shooting'
Barak condemns detainee shooting
And related to this incident - Israel fears scathing U.S. report on its West Bank policies

Remember kids, nothing comes from no where and we don't live in a vacuum.

I'm not saying that each incident is directly related by any degree of causality, but these are happenings that can be seen as correlating within the shitty context that is life in this Hell-hole.
This Hell-hole that I love and hope manages to stop bleeding all the time.

Edited to add two things: #1 The bulldozer driver has been identified as Ghassan Abu Tir.

And #2 the soldier who shot the detained Palestinian returned to his unit. I hope they court-marshal the commanding officer that gave the order.

A big Mazal Tov to my big brother, better known here as hemlock_sholes, for his release from the IDF after twelve years of dedicated and loyal service to the system.

It's their loss and our gain all the way.

I'm proud of you big bro, for doing what you believe in and not compromising yourself in any way.

My brother was released on the 20th of July 2008, which so happened to be the 39th anniversary of the first lunar landing by the Apollo 11 team.

To celebrate both these very auspicious occasions here is a recent video of the Earth from space.
It is quite humbling:

From NASA with Love.

Finally finished - it was a little project for quite a while just to get the hang of painting stuff without photoshop tricks - just me and a bucket of colors.



Indestructible by ~Infernal-Mercy on deviantART


Cheers,
Navot.

A very thorough round-up of comic book movies making their way to the screen in the next 5 years or so. Marvel are really whipping up a full ensemble here, doing one-off superhero movies and tying them all up into one big Avengers movie.

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/07/comic-based-mov.html

First of all, I am happy to report that they have finally made a sequel to The Lost Boys.
It's not as good as the first (of course), but it does have The Two Coreys and plenty of corny vampire lines. It was fun t watch, and if you enjoyed the first, you'll enjoy this as well, I think.
And now to trivia. I had posted 10 partners, and asked you to supply the other half of the partnership.
1) Larry Appleton - As kmelion knew, his partner is Balki Bartokomous (from the show Perfect Strangers).
2) John Francis Xavier McIntyre - Both redaxe and kmelion knew that this is Trapper John from M*A*S*H, making his partner Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce.
3) Martin Riggs - suburbfabulous knew that this is Roger Murtaugh's partner from the Lethal Weapon movies.
4) Ernest Penfold - I am not surprised that most people didn't get this. But still redaxe and suburbfabulous knew that this is Danger Mouse's sidekick.
5) Flamebird - Along with Nightwing, they started as heroes of Kandor (the city in the jar that Superman keeps in the Fortress of Solitude). Later, two of the Teen Titans used the names. redaxe and suburbfabulous got this right.
6) Sharona Fleming - kmelion knew that this is the young lady who looks after Adrian Monk, and serves as Watson to his Holmes.
7) Jaina Solo - suburbfabulous got this right, that Jaina and her twin brother Jacen are the children of Han and Leia, and Jedi in their own right. Jacen later went evil and had to be killed, but that is besides the point. It ain't easy being a member of the extended Skywalker family, I guess.
8) Reginald Jeeves - Jeeves is butler to Bertie Wooster, as both kmelion and redaxe got correct.
9) Zan - Both redaxe and suburbfabulous got this one right as well, and knew that Zan and Jayna are the Wonder Twins. For those who don't know who they are, they were these twins on the Super Friends cartoon show back in the late 70s and early 80s. Zan could turn into anything made out of water. Jayna could turn into any animal. Their pet monkey Gleek had the power of getting buckets.
10) Gracie Allen - kmelion and redaxe both knew that George Burns' wife was the brilliant comedienne Gracie Allen. Say good night, Gracie.
And today's question is from comics. Whose sidekicks are The Roach and Elrod the Albino?

I saw WALL-E (wiki page - caution! - it gives the entire plot away).

It is one of the most brilliant movies I've seen in a long time. It is an animated movie that not only raises the bar on what we consider to be communication, but also on what we consider humanity and Life (capital letter purposeful).

The movie shows us a highly plausible future dealing with the fate of the Earth and its Human inhabitants (and Cockroaches, which is a very astute criticism of Life).

( Spoilery review )

If you thought water animation was impressive (as in Finding Nemo) watching a Space Dance is phenomenal.

Even if you are not an uber conscientious viewer (like I tend to be) the philosophy, the criticism and sheer aesthetic extravaganza will speak to you and you will love it and enjoy it and keep the expirience with you for hours.
If you are a geek (which the Pixar people are) you will enjoy the endless (and often much too blunt) sci-fi references found all over the place - They pushed it a bit far with... well, you'll just have to see that now won't you.

PS - Next week it's The Dark Knight and I will be reviewing :D

Originally published at Distractions. You can comment here or there.

No, I haven’t watched it yet (although the bit I did see was cute). But look! here’s a trailer for Watchmen! No, here it is! Or here!

Maybe that’s what’s clogging the tubes. Or maybe it’s just the weekend, and my Internet doesn’t like working the weekend.

All I can say is that the Watchmen trailer looks amazingly cool.

The Movie Meme!
I love movies.
I'm a movie buff... so sue me.

( Are you curious... c'mon clickty-click )

Just watch the video:



Because it is ensuing hilarity.
Especially because just at the end there Iron Man kind of went Joker on Batsy, but whatever :)

Let me tell you, nothing will stop me from going to see The Dark Knight, which is opening this coming Thursday on the 24th... yeah, try and stop me.
Nothing will.
.
.
.
*squeeee* Yes, I've totally bought the hype.
I dun care! Nyah!

Oh and this is the fourth video of my two favourite "Men"