blue_monarch

Red Cliff = Dynasty Warriors: The Musical.

Srsly.

This week, another great of entertainment has passed away.

Mollie Sugden was an immeasurable talent, and will be sorely missed. To honor her, let us all join together in tribute. This tribute is simple, and, I hope, a fitting farewell.

Hold your pussy.

You don't have to hold it for very long (although you are more than welcome to), but hold it close, and hold it tight. Do not let it go. Feel your pussy's warmth, and let it know just how much you treasure it. Do not be afraid to show your pussy affection in whatever manner comes to mind - you can stroke it, pet it, massage it or gently scratch it. Whatever makes your pussy happiest. Share this moment of intimacy with your pussy, and never forget the love you feel for it.

Let us all hold our pussies, firmly and lovingly, in memory of Mollie Sugden.

Please copy this into your journal if you want to join in on holding your pussy for Mollie.

This is really not good enough.

I recently put my name to the Amnesty petition regarding the treatment of child refugees and their internment at the woefully under-equipped Christmas Island Detention Center. You can check the Amnesty page out here.

( This morning, I got a response from the office of the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship )

I don't blame the secretary for this, but goddamn it must take a lot of willful disregard for human rights to stay in that sort of job.

So I finally get around to actually doing some readings for my course on Kant (and I have been ignoring that class for all it has been worth, these past weeks), just in time for his ideas of 'duties to the self'. Cue some of the most heterosexist, patriarchal crapping on I've ever seen. And what, I wonder, are the odds that we'll just skip on merrily through this without ever actually engaging with the text and criticising it for being so full of shit? Oh right we never actually engage with the texts anyway.

Seriously, from now on I'm taking only pure logic and/or feminist philosophy courses. I do not have the time or energy to be this disappointed in academia every semester.

So, uh, it turns out I don't have a job.

Uh-oh.

So, I spent a good chunk of time tonight looking for some of my favourite awesome-songs-that-have-awesome-video-clips, and I figured I should share the joy!

My Moon, My Man by Feist

I just adore this for the choreography. Talk about good use of an airport!

Money Note by Camille

There are no words for this. It is just silly and awesome.

Soon We'll Be Found by Sia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSts_0sCUeg(Embedding Disabled)
Not only is her voice incredible, but the video is just stunning. The multiple styles employed, the use of AUSLAN, the gorgeous mixing of motion with music. I love this an inordinate amount.

Paper Bag by Fiona Apple
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kkg1IkGJ0Y (Embedding Disabled)
Fiona Apple is always great, but this video especially so. There's something about the way she walks backward and shrugs her shoulders that just looks fantastic.

Babooshka by Kate Bush

This was more a question of "Which Kate Bush video do I put in as a representative of all Kate Bush videos?" Every single one is a weird, wonderful trip. But Babooshka was my first, and my favourite.

Once In A Lifetime by Kermit the Frog

If you don't find this awesome, I don't know what to say to you. You monster.

So! I'm kind of sitting here, wondering what it is I should be writing. I like most of the ideas I have, but I want to focus on a single one for a little while. In the tradition of all internet users ever, I'm going to shirk my indecisiveness by asking everyone's opinions!

The ideas I'm keen to work on are:

1. Blue Monarch - a group of complete strangers all wake up in our everyday world, which is odd since for the past five years, the world has been ruled by a supernatural, quasi-omnipotent being that altered the very fabric of reality (or at least, that's what they remember). [Magical Realism]
2. Almaser - a war hero returns from years of recovery from torture, only to be charged with a quest to once more work to protect the nation from potential ruin. [Fantasy]
3. ReNewYork - one evening, New York up and disappears. Or, from the point of view of New York, the rest of the world disappears, and they have to live with the strange new reality they're in. [Weird]
4. Phaedrus on High - Phaedrus is plucked from his idyllic existence inside the text of Plato's dialogues and stuck in an Australian high school. Hijinks, sexual escapades and ethical uncertainty ensues. [Magical Realism I suppose?]
5. Furious Angels - multiple accounts of a worldwide phenomenon: winged humanoid beings start drifting down from the sky and walking the roads. Then, things turn ugly. [Weird/Horror]
6. Hiding Places - imagine finding a spot no-one had ever really looked at before, that grew as you grew familiar with it, that became your own secret place. Would you risk letting the rest of the world know? [Magical Realism]

So if you could tell me which ones sound most interesting, I will finally be able to push my brain into one and start working on it!
:D? :D?

So, I just got back from staying in Nowhere, Japan - more precisely, the (city formerly known as) Hiwasa (now Minami-cho) in Tokushima, on the Shikoku island. It's kind of really really far from anything - the nearest convenience store is a good ten-minute drive. It's also the place where some of my favourite people in the world live.

( The Tsuchitani Family )

Huh, it's 2009 already. I know this is kind of completely obvious, but it feels so weird to realise there's no objective gap - it's just a line we draw from one second of life to the next. Somehow comforting, though. The world rolls on no matter what, or something like that.

Thinking back on what has happened this year... it's been something, alright. The last New Year was rung in with champagne and a slowly-growing sense of estrangement from my coworkers at the Cake Hole. There was remorse for hurting someone's feelings when I truly didn't want to, and there was a ten-hour shift, 5 am to 3 pm, and I still don't know how I did it after the amount I drank.
I took six months off from uni to try and save money - I failed. But I also learned a lot about what it was I wanted to be doing. Negative reinforcement, I suppose? I knew what I didn't want to be doing for the rest of my life, so I pushed myself to get into something I did want to do. I made that change consciously.
I moved into a place of my own. This was one of the biggest things; I needed to find my own space, and I feel like I did.
I made the effort to make new friends, find people who I really enjoyed the company of. I found that, more than I'd hoped for, really.
I made the effort to educate myself further about heteronormativity, sexuality, gender politics. I started to get it - I started to understand why I never quite felt at peace with my sexuality.
I started university again, and I made some big choices at the same time - I left the Cake Hole, and began work at the cafe. I put effort into making it work at uni this time, and while I still stumbled and procrastinated, it began to work. Things went well - hell, better than well. Things went spectacularly.
I lost my virginity, and that was all kinds of conflicting and scary and awkward, but I worked out what was holding me back for so long, and what it was I was after. And what I wasn't interested in.
Something I found out a couple of days ago - I put on seven kilograms this year. I didn't know because I'd finally stopped weighing myself so often. That sounds really bad. And it kind of was. But I stopped obsessing, and that's the first step.
I took chances, here at the end of the year, and they paid off. I let my logic and my emotions work together, and while I have no idea what's going to happen, I know I'll be ready.

I fuck up a lot. I say stupid things, or say nothing at all when I know I should. I'm clumsy, and I can never seem to commit myself to things with enough passion to see them through to the very end.
But I'm learning, and I'm becoming more of the kind of person I want to be.
I think this year will be a good one.
I hope yours is, too.

Hooray for Tokyo >:D

Pictures coming soon!

I'M OFF! I'LL BE PICSPAMMING TOKYO FOR YOU SOON!

( Things I like (and don't like) about Cairns )
ANYWAY I HAD BETTER WRAP THESE PRESENTS AND MAKE TRUFFLES. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Well, finally settled up here in Cairns for the first leg of my holiday! And my phone has now lost all Skype capability thanks to the terrible reception.

Is it just me, or did this town get more redneck?
That's probably not quite a fair thing to say - for the most part, I'm simply guilty of glossing over the more obvious cultural issues of this town with a thin veneer of nostalgia blended with LA LA LA I CANNOT HEAR YOU. But since arriving, I've encountered a constant cavalcade of the bemulleted, the disturbingly heteronormative and the Twilight fans. I LIKED MY LITTLE BROTHER'S GIRLFRIEND, DAMNIT. NOW I KNOW SHE WANT SPARKLING VAMPIRE PEEN AND I CAN'T LOOK AT HER THE SAME WAY.
Sure, these issues have always been present in this town, and it's disingenuous of me to claim that I'm only now realising them - I had more reasons for moving away than the potential for a better education. But it feels like this year has given me just the right sort of eyes to really see how backward and unpleasant this place can be. I'm not just seeing the dull, touristy-yet-racist swelterbox of my childhood, but the same social mechanism that perturbs me in Brisbane, and everywhere else I go - which is probably best described as 'boganism'.

All complaints aside, though, I have been in heaven today, soaking languidly in the pool for hours at a time and thinking that all I really needed was a set of speakers blasting Kraftwerk and a cocktail bar staffed by nubile Scandinavian swimsuit models named Lars to make this my ideal of Hugh Hefner-esque decadence. The liquid suspension has also done wonders for my brain, and I'm slowly brushing all of the boredomspiders and their webs of short attention span out the front door. I'm even thinking about multiple projects at once, which is something of a novelty given how stagnant my imagination has been for the last few months.

Anyway, before my Yahtzee-styled ramblings reach their incomprehensible zenith, I'm off to munch distractedly on sub-par pizza (but hey, it's free), and see if I can work up a review for Oscar Wilde's Batman: The Killing Joke. What a rollicking tale of Victorian manners, skullduggery and underage buggery that comic is.

YOUR MOVIE IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD. >:(

Er, allow me to clarify which of his crap films I'm talking about. Today, it's the "period epic" (wtf does that even mean, Wikipedians?), ~*~AUSTRALIA~*~. In allcaps and tilde'd because it's that kind of bad.

So, what about this cockbrick of a film is so bad? Let's start with two very important words: MAGICAL NEGRO. For those unfamiliar with this terminology, it is used loosely to refer to any instance of a person of colour in film having superior moral qualities or wisdom simply by virtue of their being a minority. You know, the all-knowing black guy who kindly dispenses advice so that the characters with agency (the white ones) can go finish the movie. In ~*~AUSTRALIA~*~ the magical negros are in fact magical Aboriginal people, and I mean that in a literal sense. There is a scene where, turn your head aside if you're a pussy for spoilers, the little half-caste Aboriginal boy stops 1,500 stampeding cattle by humming a ditty. That's right, the Aboriginal people are in fact magical Noble Savages, kids! It's not just that they're a different culture with a different relation to the natural world, but their not being civilised means that they can do all sorts of neat magic tricks to help us white people!
Excuse me while I go vomit noisily into a bin.
Okay, I could forgive this film its trespasses if it also showed its Aboriginal characters as just as human as the "rest of us", a message I will tell you it takes every opportunity to grandstand about despite failing to act upon its own ideology. Instead, they're pushed into the superhuman category, able to calm wild beasts and survive impossible conditions with stoic Aboriginal valour. This is just as problematic as treating Aboriginal people like a subhuman group, because it portrays them as essentially different. That's what racism boils down to - a firm belief that those people are different because of the colour of their skin. And it's bollocks. If you're preaching the equality of Aboriginal people, but your Aboriginal characters are only there to either get a fridge dropped on them or to use their magical music to save the day, you are not doing it right.

But there are so many other things to hate about Australia. Nicole Kidman, for example. Now, before anyone lobs a chair, I don't hate Nicole Kidman. I thought she did a great job in The Hours, and I even liked her portrayal of Marisa Coulter in The Golden Compass. Plus, I'm watching Dogville tomorrow and I'm pretty certain already that I'm going to enjoy that. But in ~*~AUSTRALIA~*~, she's intolerable. But I don't know that she's to blame - the script is made of duct tape and mismatched tits, and every character's motivation can be summed up in a couple of words and/or grunts. While I'm on the subject of bad acting, Hugh Jackman is just as guilty here, and that's a real disappointment, because he's done some good stuff. But the moment he turns on his MANLY AUSTRALIAN DRAWL, I lose it. It's too ridiculous to listen to.

My number one gripe with this film, however, is a big one - the entire second act. Halfway through, we're given this quasi-ending where everyone is happy and has succeeded and really, you could have made the film end there. God knows it would have been a welcome one after the torturous first hour-and-a-bit. Instead, Luhrmann drags ~*~AUSTRALIA~*~ kicking and screaming into a second part which is even more torturous than the first, filled with the dull brown explosive horror of CGI bombs, valiant struggles to save the children, and the most incorrigibly unfair fake-out in the history of cinema. Never before have I hoped so vainly that a main character was in fact dead and not about to suddenly appear on my screen without even a scratch on her delicate skin but NO, LUHRMANN, YOU HAD TO BRING HER BACK. Another big problem is that there's timeskips aplenty in the Act 2, and this leads to relationships appearing completely nutfuck out of the blue. Apparently these two are friends? And these two have met now? When did she get a job in town? What does that knowing smile and that phrase mean? Have you two used this before when we weren't watching? Who's that guy? It was incredibly frustrating - you felt as though you'd missed an entire hour worth of character development, and in a film this achingly long, that might seem like a good thing, but it just makes it harder to understand the action at the end. Not to mention, the 'villain' of the piece is so transparent and monologue-prone he might as well set up a giant laboratory, shave his head, get a pet cat and cackle menacingly that mwahaha I have you now, Lady Ashley!

All in all, this movie was a painful waste of a good several hours of my life, and I now hope that one day someone makes a film out of Patrick White's The Tree of Man just to sledgehammer Australia with how painfully dull and whitewashed our dominant culture is.

So, instead of sitting down and rereading my Logic textbook, or working on my NaNo project (and oh isn't that a trainwreck of failure and tiny word counts), I've been playing video games. In particular, I picked up the ostensibly final installment in the Onimusha series: Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams.

Now, putting aside my opinion of the gameplay itself (which was an incredible melange of entertainment and shit), and to avoid any comparisons to that stylishly-hatted man who reviews games with long run-on sentences on the internet, I'm going to focus on a specific theme in the game that really quite surprised me when I saw it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a game that either has a strong subtext about Western influences on Japanese storytelling, or is just kinda xenophobic. But mostly the latter.

So, what the hell am I rambling about? Let's introduce the story. The Onimusha games are all alternate-history stories of high adventure and demon-slaying set in the Sengoku Period. Its starting point is the erroneous reports of the death of Oda Nobunaga, the first of Japan's "three unifiers", at the Battle of Okehazama. In this tale, he does in fact die, but is returned to life through a deal with the Genma - evil demonic creatures that want to, you guessed it, try to take over the world.
(Raul Julia screams "Of course!" here.)

Opposing the nefarious nasties and their zombie hordes is Akechi Samanosuke, a quasi-historical figure, in this story blessed by the Oni (Japanese for 'ogre'), with the mystical doodad required to fight back this menace. Suffice to say, over the course of three games, and with a lot of shenanigans (and Jean Reno!) thrown in for filler flavour, he eventually repels the horrible monsters and saves the world. And gets the girl. Tiny winged Navi-from-the-Legend-of-Zelda-clone made real girl sized. Thing.

And so, we come to Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams. Oda Nobunaga has fallen, and in his place is Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the second unifier, and even further in bed with the Genma than his predecessor. It's with this shift in antagonists, and increased information about the Genma, that the weird xenophobia of Onimusha really comes to the fore.

Let's first take a look at our heroes: we've got Yuki Hideyasu, the second son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who eventually succeeds in unifying Japan where Toyotomi and Oda failed. He's the very incarnation of the God of the Oni, and as such has the power to repel the evil Genma once and for all.

Next, there is Yagyu Akane, the next "Jubei" of her family line, a cute girl sidekick with an annoying voice, just like the factory used to make 'em. But her fighting style is fun to use, we'll forgive this. Take a guess which family steeped in martial traditions were tutors to the Tokugawa shoguns. Go on, I dare you.

There's Ohatsu, the gesticulating, gun-toting 'badass babe' who's a pretty weak character in general, never you mind her costume. Or implausible lack thereof. The historical Ohatsu was, for reference, something of a mediator between the Tokugawa and Toyotomi families, having strong ties to both. In the game, she''s steamrolled into blandness.

Next is Tenkai, who in real history was an advisor to the early Tokugawa shoguns, and in this tale is our old hero Samanosuke, now grey-haired but full of Botox and/or mystical Shinto powers. And of course, hell-bent on getting rid of these pesky Genma.

Finally, Roberto Frois, the only original character, and he barely even passes as that. Of course, he's half Japanese, and half Spanish, because putting a completely foreign character in as a hero would just be weird. His motivation is that he's an escaped guinea pig for the Genma with arms of INCREDIBLE MIGHT, which he can use to... punch the living hell out of things? Yeah. Anyway, he's pretty much devoid of any connection to the Tokugawa group, but he is the ~*~ironic~*~ experiment that turns on its masters.

So, let's do a headcount.
Historical Figures with Connections to the Tokugawa Shogunate: 4.
Creations Turning on the Creator: 1.

Now, villains! These ones are all a bit shallower, so let's breeze through. You have your Evil Triumvirate of Sinister Types, named as follows: Claudius, Rosencrantz, Ophelia. Notice a pattern? Right, all major Shakespearean characters. Each one is portrayed as a hideous oozing thing that takes over a minor character and distorts them into horrible monster-people. Let's look at who gets this treatment- Mitsunari Ishida, famous for the last stand against Tokugawa, Lady Yodo (who has all sorts of other stuff done to her), wife of Toyotomi, and Luis Frois, a Westerner.
Then, of course, are a whole range of little baddies. Munenori Yagyu, for instance, who becomes some sort of freakish hybrid between Oni, Genma and Human because he's crazy, y'all! Oh dear, our racial purity has been compromised! Then there's Danemon and Sakon, both powerful, noble warriors bewitched by the evil Genma into working against the good of the nation. In real history? Both loyal to the Toyotomi (although Danemon has a pretty checkered history, we'll simplify)

Then we get to the really big bad guy, the Genma God of Light, Fortinbras. Those of you who noticed the Shakespearean Genma names may not be surprised - why not name the big evil guy after the King of Denmark? What's really fun about this game, however, is that when you defeat the monster you first think is Fortinbras (haha, I see you referenced the two characters named Fortinbras there!), you are then introduced to the real deal: a British man in a white suit. That's right, boys and girls, the worst enemy imaginable is a white guy in a suit. But our Heroic Sakoku Rangers will defend us! Because apparently, if the ending of the game is correct, what the Japanese warriors have, that all these British-sounding people lack, is faith and a sense of community.

What are the numbers?
Allies of the Toyotomi: 4
Foreigners: 1
Race Traitors: 1
Foreign Devils: 1 really big one.

Now, I know it seems like perhaps I'm jumping the gun here - surely, you are thinking, it's just a naming convention, and they're not actually setting them up as British? Well, let's take a look at the way in which the Genma are portrayed. Starting with the obvious point, the Genma are set up as a foreign enemy that is attempting to conquer Japan (because that's what villains do!). Put this together with the flow of the plot, with Japan moving from Toyotomi rule and thus into the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted the sakoku policy of closing Japan's borders for a good two centuries. That's right, the expulsion of the "foreign devils" happened in the real world too.
To continue, the Genma are constantly portrayed as having arcane and horrible technology that stands in opposition to the more natural 'magic' of the Oni. The Genma really are the West here, pushing their strange technological advancements on the idyllic ~*~traditional~*~ life of Japan.
The best bit, though, is the whole Light/Dark dichotomy. I will admit, I enjoyed seeing a game that didn't just take the binary and apply it factory-standard, but this was still pretty ham-fisted. It's very much a Milton feel, here - the Satanic Oni God of Darkness striking a blow against the divine Genma God of Light, who is attempting to eliminate all traces of Oni and of Japan's own culture. Yes, okay, this does sound a lot like what most missionary work seems set on doing. The problem here is that it is identified with the Genma in their entirety - all of the Westerners, therefore, want to destroy the Japanese culture and replace it.

So, I hope you can see where I've gone with this - The Oni, and the heroic team, are Team Tokugawa, dedicated to closing off the country and getting rid of this horrid foreign influence, while the bad guys, the Genma, are all amoral WASPS with high technology that threatens to crush the beautiful agrarian nation of Japan.

I think Jubei's last line in the game sums it up well: "These trees that you gave your life to protect; it's my turn to protect them now."

In short: lol overanalysing video games

So, I got the urge to write some silly, short horror stories, and I thought I'd share!

---

Scientists often discuss theories that deal with multiple dimensions. One of the best descriptions of such an idea categorizes the fourth dimension as the one-dimensional line of 'time,' and the fifth dimension as the two-dimensional branching of possibility. Everything we could do or be stretches out before us on branches of this five-dimensional manifold. In one direction we could become wealthy, in another we could die in a car crash.

We are three-dimensional creatures - we see ourselves pass through time, and become only one of these possibilities. But not all life could necessarily be this way.

One thing that the scientists don't like to talk about is the evidence they have compiled that suggests that there exist creatures that move through the sixth dimension the same way we move through the third.

A creature that lives in the sixth dimension would perceive our entire lifespans, the branchings of our life's potential, as an object similar to a drawing.

Do you think that you would know if they decided to change a detail?

---
And this one is for /x/. Or the meme, works on both.

There's an time that comes, late at night on certain websites where people type away under the veil of anonymity. You know the sort of site - strange discussions, no names, no IP addresses. Just chatter. The time I am speaking of is just few minutes, not very long, really, when the rest of the internet goes a little quieter, and these are the only places making any noise.
The people on those nameless, faceless websites may often notice that it seems to get progressively quieter, and that less people are responding to what is being said. As if the number of people involved is steadily shrinking.
That's because in all the quiet of the rest of cyberspace, something can now hear you quite clearly, and that something wants to sleep.
It will do whatever it has to to get some peace and quiet.

So, I'm reading Orpheus Lost as part of an assignment - specifically, I'm reviewing this book.

I wish it wasn't too late to change my choice of book. My hatred of this book, let me show you it.

My first big gripe is the opening chapter, where the two main characters get together. Now, I'm all for whirlwind romance and all that crap, when it's done well, but this was flat out stupid. It seriously plays as follows:
Him: [plays sombre violin pieces for no money in a subway station]
Her: [watches]
Him: [keeps playing]
Her: [keeps watching]
Him: [finishes a song]
Her: Hi.
Him: Hi.
Her: Coffee?
Him: No coffee.
Her: Coffee?
Him: No coffee.
Her: Coffee?
Him: No coffee.
Her: Sex?
Him: Sure!
And thus, true love is born, or something. I had to hold back from imagining him asking "DO I DAZZLE YOU?"

And the characters! Allow me to summarise them:

Leela: Genius mathematician from Rednecksville, Carolina, has sex with lots of guys before shacking up with her man (oh noes!), 'insatiably curious' (read: attracted to people who act like assholes to get her attention), and oh yeah! She can sit in an interrogation room for three hours and not get nervous at all. She's the specialest snowflake of all!

Mishka: Musical genius from the middle of the Daintree rainforest (um, no. Mossman at best, buddy.), of Hungarian Jewish and Lebanese Muslim descent. Is ~*~conflicted~*~ about his heritage and can't escape the possibility of finding his father because omg his father is such an important part of his life, especially since he's never ever met him. Is emotional and passionate, and can only communicate through his music. Hello, tortured artist stereotype!

Cobb: He's a bad guy. His dad beat him around as a kid, and now he get sexual pleasure from making people scared and/or uncertain. Also a genius mathematician and has been obsessed with Leela since they were kids. Uses his position as intelligence specialist to stalk her. Wants to make her feel how ~*~fragile~*~ safety is. Oh, and in a wonderful moment, long after we've established that he's a complete asshole, we find out he sexes up hookers and then sticks them on a chair with a rope around their necks. BECAUSE WE COULDN'T PICK UP THAT HE WAS THE BAD GUY ALREADY, KTHX.

Not to mention the story, or lack thereof. I'm sorry, Ms. Hospital, but there's nothing particularly interesting about spending the first two thirds of your book doing introspective ~*~character studies~*~ and ignoring the actual dramatic tension you spent the first few pages setting up. Especially when it takes you to page 280 JUST TO GET TO THE ACTUAL ORPHIC MYTH PARALLEL, instead of rambling on about how Leela sees Mishak as ~*~Her Orpheus~*~ and how she longs to understand him.

TL;DR this book is a festival of shittery, and I would like to issue a hearty "Oh fuck you" to Janette Turner Hospital's failed attempt to make a meaningful study of modern terrorism. Hint: You didn't actually say much about terrorism other than a few good points about paranoia. The rest, is shit.

Oh shit I'm really confused.
The course profile says September 2 is the due date.
The assignment handout (and the eLearning page) says September 9.
Which one do I believe? :\