Tonight

Although the element of dub and industrial drew me in on FF when I first came across their piece “ Ulysses” on one of those music playing Myspace page , after listening through a couple of tracks a couple of times from this year’s “Tonight” , I thought they were pretty funky as well. Emotionally, from the first time you read the track titles, the album has a fun maybe sarcastic, read The Ting Tings, but vastly positive vibe about it. While popular dub funk influences like the ting tings featured distinctive rhythm with pulse driven drum loops, most of FF songs have flat distortion working in the background of upbeat constantly changing drum works and something that almost sound like chimes. Although I inanely lean towards three cords guitar works with lots of noise, I have to admit tracks like “What she came for” could really sound like something unique, certainly distinctive and certainly enjoyable. And maybe I’m growing up/out of my Cobian-esque fixation.



I always feel that the process of making music have to be a lot about having fun and doing it for the love of it. I think that FF actually incorporate a lot of it’s feel good attitude into this album without sounding poppy or cheesy. Which is quite an achievement in itself, considering how thin the line can be between sounding fresh and sounding completely hip hoppy in these kinds of ambitious sounds. I guess what I’m trying to say is FF is kind of contagious if you’re here to enjoy rather then analyze.

Portables Fashion Victims

I’ve started using portable softwares recently and I’m really liking it. By portable I mean self contained minimized versions, they’ve got all the functions minus all the bullcrap. I’ve got portable Nero 8 which is like 50mb stead of 300, portable PhotoShop, portable office, Dreamweaver and all kinds of crap I can’t live without. Of course you have to learn the procedure for making portable softwares, which is fairly complex but totally worth it if you are plaque with constant disk space constrain like yours truely.

Speaking of softwares, especially in relation to throttling as much juice as you can from your modest specs, for the past few years what has been constantly nettling me are these memory resident passively active statistical monitoring crapwares, that even trusted manufacturers like Apple bundled in everything they give out for free. I’m not an Apple hater, I think the iphone is really interesting and all but after such a big hype over their fagoty ipods and i-whatnots, I was really hoping they’d strip quicktime and itunes of their bonjours and home-calling crap.

What’s the deal with Apple and their hide-the-ugly-plumbing products anyway, seems to me like as the years went past they seemed more and more intent on sugarcoating their overpriced products with sleek and attractive design, without backing them up with enough inside spunk for the money. Personally, I think that’s pushing the envelope in the wrong direction, technology-wise. See the direction Microsoft is taking on Vista for instance, they’re simply making people dump almost half the computer in the world and for what?!! so they can make vista more theoretically functional and look as good as a Osx. It’s like all af a sudden they’re emulating Apple’s design because they think they’re in a push-come-to-shove scenario where people are ‘waking up’ to the fact that simplicity is the solution. What they don’t figure is that not everyone content on being another dumb fashion victim and they want a robush scalable OS that’s gonna work on their current specs and have a little more to offer then some UAC panel popping up so frequently its drives them nuts.

It’s not that I’m overly concerned about what these softwares can do to my system given the fact that I don’t use them and don’t plan on using them anytime soon. It’s just that we have two systems running here and my girlfriend’s planning on getting one of those Vaio lappy and apart from mending the wounds on the homefront, I’m sick and tired of people calling me about their system suddenly ‘hanging by a thread’ after they installed one of these things. I could seriously make a living disabling self starting ‘services’ if I start charging for it. Last time I checked even simply getting your system looked at and I mean, literally LOOKED at without doing anything could have you approximately 500 bucks poorer. And most of us have to pay because there’s no other way, because we’re too lazy or too ‘outgoing’ to familiarize ourselves with what we own. You can call yourself victim of conformity or you can blame manufacturers for their flawed insights but when you get down to it, it’s the majority and the people who did the most yapping in the general media who gets to decide our fate eventually in these kind of situation.

Top 5 science fiction movies of all time

This list is entirely opinion based. I'm not an expert on science fiction movies or movie making for that matter. The list is based on the movies I've seen and biased toward live action films.

Sunshine: Many people assume that Sci fi movies set in space are supposed to be all about stylistic spaceships and ominous planets filled with bloodthirsty aliens and the fact is one way or the other that’s what these kind of movies are always all about. Sunshine by Danny Boyle is truly a breath of fresh air in this genre. Its realistic, believable and mostly what Sunshine is, is a beautiful work of art. I think this is one of those movies that truly gave it’s subject the respect and genuine appreciation it deserves. The obdurate surface of mercury, the details of Icarus II and the beautiful surface of the sun are just stunning. And below the surface of this beauty there is always the unrelenting loneliness of space surrounding everything, spreading its oxygenless presence like Sauron over middle earth, waiting to suck this band of astronauts to oblivion. Its very likely that a man alone in this atmosphere became a nutcase, as was with the Icarus I captain.
Sunshine did not exactly push the envelope as fars space Sci Fi films are concerned, but what it does is showed exactly how these kind of movies are supposed to be made in the first place, like an intricate piece of artwork.


Dark City: Although I like Dark City I have to admit the casting was a little off the mark. Rufus Sewell just don’t cut it as Murdoch in my opinion. What I like about this movie though is the production design. The dark foreboding city as the camera widens in the beginning just suck you in. This is like the Matrix and Bioshock messed together with a better story. And it has such a perfect ending too.



Blade Runner: I was reading an article by Julian Jonker at Ctheory.net the other day that reminds me of why I chose to be buried inside this hellhole I’m living in and why I love Blade Runner so much. For me this movie is the epitome of how a dystopian society that we are inevitably moving toward is portrayed in its entirety. The production design and cinematography is near perfection.


The Abyss: This is actually the movie that had me interested in Science Fiction when I was younger. It was so utterly different for its time that for most people it was a borefest. I think though that the most impressive aspect of this movie is the sound. The echoing sonar beep of the ship is what really transported me to the hopelessness and loneliness of the ocean. Two thumbs up for immersiveness and the greatness that is James Cameron.


Alien: I recently saw Wall E and was debating whether I should let it take the 5th spot but decided Alien deserved it more not just because of the entertainment factor, in which Wall E would’ve won hands down, but because of the authenticity that Alien is. In the fifteen years or so that I’d seen Alien, I’ve never been so scared of outer space as a place inhabited by ruthless killing beings. And the miraculous thing about Alien is that this creature is not just a dog like animal that’s protecting it’s turf with a vengeance, like most killing space beings in movies tend to be, but a creature with a purpose, and that purpose is survival. It’s like the crew and the alien are fighting it out to survive. The alien is the T 1000 of space.

Spider Jerusalem Wack

Since my beautiful girlfriend left for Zoland, I’ve been an image of lethargy personified by such anti-politically correct heroes as Spider Jerusalem. Means I’m lazy, I feel like everything I do is a waste of the things I could’ve done, I’m unfree in the liberty that perpetual self induced anonymity brought on my life. I’ve been listening to suppressive adult alternatives and drinking tropicana and nimbu pani with the illusion that they’re going to give me enough spunk to crank the juice one last time every evening before bed. A dreamless sleep and endless void, away from systematic carnage and one shots.



Speaking of Spider, I’ve been meaning to write a little about Transmetropolitan since I got hooked awhile back when I was scouring the web for Warren Ellis material. When I first saw the naked Spider with his tattoos flipping the birdy, the first thing that came to me were those old 2000ad publications of pseudo futuristic apocalyptic aftermath cyberpunk anti heroes and some of the Tank Girl issues. But I was surprised at how different Transmet is from the typical Garth Ennis type science fiction, although I respect Ennis and think highly of his works, after reading too much of it they’ve became boring and bland. Maybe its got to do with the lack of real purpose of his protagonists. There is no real sense of achievement after finishing an issue these days. Spider on the other hand is a ball to read, everything he does is contradictory to his personality, but there’s always that underlying suspense that everything in the whole damn place is going to implode on itself anytime. And he doesn’t give a shit as long as there’s truth in what he gives. He was driven to achieve this one deal with himself and that was his purpose.


Spider is a hard-hitting gonzo journalist and a reluctant political hero, in the wake of him covering a pro genetic modification movement which culminated in him stopping a state stimulated riot. The shape the city was in will be more then satisfactorily explained my this ad of cola on the preview issue.


The theme is a post cyberpunk dystopian comic noir society where morality is defined by your stance on genetic engineering, technological innovation and the resultant social disintegration that human advancement is supposed to bring about.

I have always been a fan of gonzo journalism, I like the cynical presentation and in-your-face sarcasm and mostly, the sense that the piece is written by an opinionated jerk who’s going to stand by his story no matter what. There are times when you just want opinions because you’re either too lazy to form your own from the average news or you don’t trust your instinct or you feel less informed. People like Spider Jerusalem make comprehending the complexities of the world a little bit easier by being honest to themselves and to us. I especially love the ending, without spoiling it for eanyone you can rest assured Spider doesn’t disappoint even when it seemed like he’s going to fade out he will light things up until he burns away.

Censorship, Death and Che Guevara

One thing that struck me while reading 21 Techniques of Silent Killing by Master Hei Long was the descriptions of the techniques were as cold as the title. Considering the sensitive nature of its subject (Killing, Death) the Master’s words were so literal and industrial that you wouldn’t be blamed if at some point you thought you were reading a recipe from a cookbook. If you’re interested in these kinds of things and have the tendency to imagine yourself in the shoes of the person you’re reading about, the book pulls you in, rolls you around a bit and just throws you out disoriented, into the faggot that you have become in your mind. It’s not that this is so different from all the murder inc type instructional books out there in what it contains and traditionally, most of these books give the impression that everything in them are theoretical and that actually doing them hands on are plain crazy and if some crazy guy actually does them for kicks they’d be sorry it happened, but in 21 TSK forget about the friendly metaphors and parental warnings, the assumption is if you’re such a morally binding citizen why the fuck did you read this book, now fish out your trusty nunchaku and sharpen that shiv cos you’re no longer looking in.



I was thinking about it and I realized that, bearing in mind the serious business that killing is, books like this have a reason for being banned as oppose to how determined and stupid we all are to demand censorship be lifted on all things people like Master Hei Long throws at us. The military precision of the writing is well deserving of the seriousness of the subject. It diverts the generally gullible minds to straggle away to greener or sorrier pastures. Anyway, let’s digress a little here, let’s lift the damn censorship and hawk the Anarchist Cookbook in the next book fair for instance; it becomes a best seller because people buy them as survival guide. Then popular publishing houses started rolling out books about killing with funny anecdotes and college friendly manga type figures come next winter. Then just when you thought it’s the best thing since discovery channel some crazy nerd went John Rambo on his high school friends because nobody likes him and he stinks. Fact is when people started explaining about the gravity of the subject at the prologue of instructional books, they only spur interest, it’s like smoking is cool when you’re in high school and stupid high school kids think you have street creds or whatever but not so much when you’re addicted to it and you can’t shit unless you turn your toilet into an indian smoke signal.



Let’s be fair to our senses and think about what we’re fucking with before we shout ‘Ban Censorship’ to everything. We are slaves of generalization, we tend to worship everything new without thinking about what we really want. A few years back we saw Che Guevara as some sort of cool public enemy type revolutionist, sure he’s a great guy with great ideas, utopian but great anyway but many of the people sporting Che’s Ts don’t know anything about what he stands for or what the trend was all about. And people who think they’re above the rest delved too much into the little details and realized that he was all about torture and didn’t give a cow’s backlight about them. We either hide behind our ignorance to find the ultimate coolness or we dig up the reason the rest of the world is not and fail to see the big picture. Some of us are so blinded by the trend that we’d mistake a nipple suction for a bong pipe while some of us read too much into stuff to be a little more obscure that we’d masturbate with it. The upshot is that we trivialize the ideals behind great ideas and pass them off as seasonal whim for peer conscious pricks to boost their ego with. Somewhere along the line we just played down what could have been more to us then we never knew when it hit the air in a big way.