Separately, fishermen from Kilmore Quay in Wexford concerned about the effects of diesel prices on their businesses, are travelling to Dublin today.
They will hand out free fish in the city centre as part of their protest to Government.
Nothing says people’s uprising like a free cod. Take that, OPEC!
No road skill makes hog road kill
Drop that over a Just Blaze beat, and you’ve got a club smash, yo.
Remember, Busey says to “Have a mind that’s open to everything, yet attached to nothing.”
I saw the new Indiana Jones film last night. It was odd, all weekend I was hearing such wildly differing opinions; from its damn good entertainment to its complete and utter shit. Like really bad. So, I had no idea what to expect when I sat in the cinema last night. And what did I end up seeing? Pretty much your typical Indiana Jones film; entertaining, funny, tense, full of action, cheesey. Is it perfect? No, its definitely flawed. Is it entertaining? Completely.
The one argument about it that people who disliked it keep throwing out there is that “the plot is crazy”. ITS A FUCKING INDIANA JONES FILM. I don’t understand this argument at all. They act like the previous three films feature Indy just lecturing for 2 hours. Lest I remind you lot, that Raiders of the Lost Ark features the ARK OF THE COVENANT being opened, GHOSTS COMING OUT and MELTING NAZI’S HEADS. THEIR HEADS FUCKING MELT BECAUSE OF THE GHOSTS IN THE GOLD BOX MADE BY GOD. Oh, ok. Now, I’m not dissing it, quite the opposite, I love the Indiana Jones films, but I am also aware that they were always batshit crazy. And this new one is no different. But people seem to be acting like this is the first Indiana Jones with crazy stuff in it. Like there wasn’t an 800 year old knight in Last Crusade…
As I said, its not perfect. There’s a scene near the start at a nuclear testing facility that has no purpose whatsoever really, and in the finale Spielberg makes one pretty bad mistake. He shows too much. I think alot of people might have enjoyed it more if what the film shows at the end was implied more, to leave it to our imaginations. Other than that though, its a really entertaining film. Its quite possibly better than Temple of Doom. If your looking at that sentence and raising your eyebrow quizzically I say, go watch Temple of Doom tonight. Its good, but its got major flaws too.
But the flaws are out weighed by all the stuff that works; the acting, the action, the humour etc. You know the stuff that makes Indiana Jone’s films work, they’re all here.
This is gold, I had never heard of it before.
I remember watching “The Time, The Place” when I was off sick from school and the morning cartoons had ended. There was that black hole of children’s entertainment until 3 o’clock during which you had to sit on the couch watching this, Kilroy and “Knot’s Landing”. I followed many an adventure of “Bergerac” waiting for the Den, I tell you.
Is that not done anymore? I was in a shop this evening and my purchases came to 3 euro and 1 cent. Now in days of old you would hand over your 4 euro or whatever, and the shop keep would hand you back the euro and say “ah, its ok”. It saved everyone the hassle of breaking up that euro into 99 cents. So tonight I handed over my 4 euro (you always handed it over, confident they wouldn’t break the euro), and lo and behold the shop assistant took the money and diligently handed me back 99 cents, in 50s, 20s, 10s, 5s,2s and 1s. Half that money has now made its way to the pile of useless shit little coins that has built up on my desk, never to see the inside of a till again. Its not that I don’t want to pay my way, but it was always the done thing to let the shopper off the 1-cent because it was handy. The shop keeper didn’t have to count out all those middling coins, and you didn’t have to carry all those middling coins.
I shouldn’t be surprised though. We live in an age where food and fuel have hit record prices yet Tescos and British Airways are posting record profits. When will we stand up to this? I’ve done my part, by complaining on the internet. What have you done?
I must make a retraction. As pointed out by my sister, in this post the No To Lisbon boyos I mistakenly thought were Robert Kilroy Silk’s “Veritas” are actually “Libertas”. So, they’re not down with the RKS, but they ARE anti-european and with a Latin name, so forgiveness please.
Speaking of “Libertas”, I saw one of their ads pass me on a bus today and it proclaimed that “Europes’s been great for Ireland, Let’s keep it that way”, which is about a cynical and greedy a statement as you can get. Very off putting for your undecided voter. I also read the neutral document over the weekend, its refreshing to read about this treaty without fearmongering histrionics, which both sides are tossing about the place. I have to say, the No side aren’t really convincing me at the moment.
I also saw a poster for “The Vagina Monologues” with the word “monologues” covered up, so all I saw was a giant poster for “The Vagina”. Which was great.
The Hollywood Reporter reports from Hollywood:
Seventeen years after “Point Break” washed up in movie theaters, surf’s up for the sequel, “Point Break: Indo,” with Jan de Bont aboard to direct.
RGM Entertainment and Essential Entertainment will exec produce this Asia-based follow-up to director Kathryn Bigelow’s original, which starred de Bont’s “Speed” lead Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent casing a gang of surfer bank robbers. The new film will take place 20 years after the disappearance of one of the criminal surfers (Patrick Swayze).
Point Break is truly one of cinemas magical moments. A film comprised of so much guff it transcends shit-ness and emerges on the other side as a gleaming jem.
Now, the talk of the town is whether Swayze or Reeves will return. Off The Meatrack asks, IS GARY BUSEY GOING TO BE IN IT? The man made the original, as Keanu Reeve’s partner he was the logistical and emotional heart of what other wise was your run of the mill bank-robbing surfer / sky-diving movie. Although I’m fairly certain he got shot to pieces in the first one, but this is Gary Busey, and this is Hollywood, and this is an unnecessary sequel. Who knows what could happen?
I don’t know what to do with this news. I really don’t. I’m going to lie down.
Via New Scientist, Via Boing Boing comes this great article by Stuart Kauffman. Kauffman argues that a reasonable truce between science and spirituality could be found by considering the universe itself God, to consider nature as “sacred”.
So the unfolding of the universe – biotic, and perhaps abiotic too – appears to be partially beyond natural law. In its place is a ceaseless creativity, with no supernatural creator. If, as a result of this creativity, we cannot know what will happen, then reason, the Enlightenment’s highest human virtue, is an insufficient guide to living our lives. We must use reason, emotion, intuition, all that our evolution has brought us. But that means understanding our full humanity: we need Einstein and Shakespeare in the same room.
Shall we use the “God” word? We do not have to, yet it is still our most powerful invented symbol. Our sense of God has evolved from Yahweh in the desert some 4500 years ago, a jealous, law-giving warrior God, to the God of love that Jesus taught. How many versions have people worshipped in the past 100,000 years?
Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of “God”. From it, we can build a sense of the sacred that encompasses all life and the planet itself. From it, we can change our value system across the globe and try, together, to ease the fears of religious fundamentalists with a safe, sacred space we can share. And from it we can, if we are wise, find means to avert wars of civilisations, the ravages of global warming, and the potential disaster of peak oil.
I find this kind of thing very interesting. I am reading a book by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the moment called “The Universe In a Single Atom” which is also about the neutral ground where scienticians and holy-rollers can meet and have peaceful picnics. I’d like to go there. Throw a frisbee. Frolic. In a similar vein (but more general) Alan Watts tackled this when he talked of Prickles and Goo. . The natural universe is neither prickly nor gooey, but prickly goo and gooey prickles. You see? I really think we need to find a middle ground, neither side accurately describe the reality we live in. Throwing our weight fully behind either one (spirituality or science) at the expense of the other can only be disastrous because either one exclusively leaves out necessary pieces of the jigsaw. The result? The apes take over. Those damned, dirty apes!
Or possibly we should talk our cue from Judge Roy Snyder, of Springfield when he spoke on the topic.
As for Science versus Religion, I’m issuing a restraining order. Religion must stay 500 yards from Science at all times.
Only one day in and I’m already sick to death of the Lisbon treaty campaigning. I can’t take much more. What gets me are the posters. The fucking infinite amount of posters. One of the No ones informs me that people died for my freedom, before telling me not to “throw it all away”. Freedom? What freedom? A man is not free when he can not walk the streets without being assaulted by an endless forest of Yes! and No! orders being barked from ghastly placards. We are subject to the tyranny of poorly design ill informed opinion.
Fine Gael in their infinite wisdom have put the semi-dead smiling visage of Gerry Anderson’s Enda Kenny on theirs, seemingly confident that his bad-guy-from-Thunderbirds face will scare us into voting yes. Almost works too.
There’s also a No-crowd called Veritas. At first I thought they were something to do with Robery Kilroy Silk and I was going to construct a homemade flamethrower to decimate their giant billboards. Quite frankly I’m not sure if there is a connection to Kilroy (who started a big moany party in England called Veritas) but he’s also anti-EU so no marks to them. Kilroy is a tool.
The No’s mainly try and scare you via some kind of vague connection with war, or by making you feel like you are a rebel hero, and can use your ballet to fire a missile down the vent shaft of the Death Star. One No poster features monkeys. That is a cynical trick if you ask me, everyone loves monkeys. The Yes’s mainly try and appeal to the greedy capitalistic heart that beats inside all Irish people.
I’ve had enough though. I’m going to trawl the Lisbon treaty and try and find anything that will allow Brussels to ban election placards. If it’s there, I will vote Yes, change my name to Hans and have done with the whole thing. Sovereignty is over-rated anyway, its quite patently obvious we cannot run our own country. It all boils down to this anyway, would you rather a man from Frankfurt or Offally run the show? Think about it.
You are currently browsing the Off The Meatrack blog archives for May, 2008.
