A Racist Was Here – or – Edward Carson Was Here

Do you want to learn more about our ill informed little visitor and perhaps a little about racism as well? Probably not - discovering how backwards the world is is really depressing. Yes, you are probably thinking, “But racists come here all the time" (see transformers comments). This is true but that’s usually in an anonymous capacity. A few days ago Edward Carson’s tiny little head appeared on our Bloglog. It’s not hard to guess how he found his way here.

I was catching up with the comments on an article at capetownnews.co.za when I came across Ed’s comments. Here is a disturbing extract:

In a perfect world, kaffirs would not be so resistant to civilisation; they would embrace it and become part of it, and in time would acquire some of the human characteristics that us whites take for granted. In a perfect world. It doesn’t take rocket science to realise that we live in an imperfect world. So my friend, put aside your utopianism and guilt associated with our inability to get the blacks to transcend their sub-human nature, and wake up to the real world.

Very poetic. For non-South African’s, the ‘k’ word he uses at the start of the quote is a derogatory word for a black person, similar to the ‘n’ word, but if you’ve heard it spoken in South Africa you would understand that it is a hell of a lot worse. After reading this comment, out of curiosity, I went to his site and he obviously followed the link from his Bloglog.

Anyway Mr. Carson is one of the few racists out there I’ve seen who is brave enough to put his real identity on the line. He peddles his Hitler babble on his blog which features the old South African flag in the title. I am fairly certain this guy thinks Lamborghini’s are sexy.

Anyway there are few positives to discuss about Ed (other than freedom of expression and the fact that he is open about his bigotry). And a list of negatives would be a far too time consuming list of the obvious.

Instead let me rather present to you a theory of racism. I would like to bring up the work of Geoff Lakoff and Mark Johnson , specifically Metaphors We Live By. This is a sort of misleading title since the book deals with metaphors and metonyms but Metaphors and Metonyms We Live By just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Johnson and Lakoff believe that metaphor and metonym (along with their weaker versions simile and synecdoche)are important parts of our conceptual systems that guide our existence. Here’s a quote:

Metaphors have entailments through which they highlight and make coherent certain aspects of our experience. A given metaphor may be the only way to highlight and coherently organize exactly those aspects of our experience.

Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities.

Metonym, or more precisely synecdoche, proves to be particularly useful to help explain sheet wearing hoodlums such as Eddy. For those who can’t remember grade 11 English a Metonym is a relationship based on two things through association (ie. Referring to ‘the springboks’ to represent the South African Rugby team).

The weaker form, synecdoche, is when a part is taken for the whole, like when the stereotypical construction worker refers to a woman as “legs”. This particular form is what a lot of racists, and in particular Ed, do. For instance Ed groups all black people in the same category even though I highly doubt he has proof that this is the case for all black people.

So yes most of the violent crime in South Africa is being committed by blacks but it is not being committed by all the blacks. This is where Ed is having his problems - he is letting personal experience ("I did not have a gun. I did not believe in violence. I was not a ‘racist piece of shit’. But none of that could save me from black hatred and violence.") rather than logic guide his thoughts. If all black people were out there killing whites there would be no more white people left in South Africa.

In closing before people go off to Ed’s badly decorated blog just remember what Voltaire said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” Ed has the right to say what he wants (well technically in SA you can’t say hate speech) and we have the right to tell him that what he says is a load of crap. Oh and Ed if you read this why not write a post about Dina Rodrigues on your blog (oh and here is a little something you might find interesting).

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Vancouver 2010 - What's Up With the Mascots?

Check out the crazy new Winter Olympics mascots. Can you guess which one used to be named after sex? Well, can you? My money's on the green one.

Remember the good old days when choosing a mascot was a simple matter of saying, "Hey, we're in Africa, why don't we just use a giraffe?" Well apparently that was a long time ago. The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics have gone and made the whole thing complicated and awkward.

Firstly, fuck that idea of having just one mascot let's have a whole army. Yes Vancouver 2010 has 3 official mascots and wait for it... they in turn have their own mascot (or sidekick), leaving a grand total of four mascots. Here they are, Quatchi, Miga and Sumi (who has "special powers") Note - Mukmuk not picture:

Secondly, these mascots aren't just cute cuddly images but they also have elaborate back stories. For instance:

Quatchi, a shy and gentle giant, is a sasquatch - a popular figure in local Aboriginal legends of the Pacific West Coast. Quatchi reminds us of the mystery and wonder associated with the great Canadian wilderness. Although Quatchi loves all winter sports, he's especially fond of hockey and dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie.

You wouldn't want to have an event without exploiting the environment so one of the mascots is also "environmentally conscious".

In addition, screw whatever Canadian heritage the country has, the designers opted to go with an Asian influence because Pokemon is what the kids love these days. Corporate greed is pretty. You can find more information about the mascots at their own minisite, where you will also find a rather addictive game about recycling (don't mock it I was going to post this yesterday but got distracted).

Oh and before I forget one of the mascots was originally named after an offensive word (apparently something to do with sex). If anyone finds out what the original name is I am willing to give you a back rub.

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Women are Evil?

Women are evil, at least that's the word on the street. Inside this post is "scientific" evidence that will prove absolutely nothing of use but hey at least it exists.I remember a few years back at varsity a friend of mine had this stuck up on his wall:

At the time everyone had a laugh (ha ha ha) and thought it was a clever joke. While the person who created it undoubtedly meant it as a joke (as well as an ode to masculine hegemony) and did not intend it to be analyzed seriously lets just be crazy and do it anyway.

First off, "Girls = Time x money". This is debatable as while women definitely equal time (what doesn't?) they certainly do not have to equal money (maybe who ever created this should have tried doing some sit ups). Sure there are enough Gold diggers out there to allow Kayne West to make millions off a song about it but this is a rampant generalization. A more accurate formula would be, "prostitutes = time x money". I'm sure that conservatives will be delighted to finally have a scientific argument against prostitution. Perhaps Senator Craig will present it to Congress (oh that's right he can't because he resigned after soliciting for sex).

But hey lets role with it and pretend that this is true. Then it is safe to say that anything that equals time and money is just the same. Hmm what else equals time and money. How about children, yes children equal time and money, thus children are evil (I always knew it). How about education and health care (republicans must love this formula)? What about any entertainment you can think of - video games, movies, books, etc. they are all evil too. 

According to this anti-terrorist programs are evil and so is war (maybe Republicans aren't so crazy about it). In fact the only things that are not evil are free methods of spending our time and of course working for money. That means this whole formulae is un-American and anti-capitalist. Thus, according to this formulae the correct form of political action is communism.

I don't know who came up with this but lets call him Lloyd. According to Lloyd women are evil but so is everything else that's worth a damn in this life. In conclusion Lloyd is a commie bastard that wants to piss all over the American way, and that my friends is what my good friend Ronald Reagan would call evil.

Note: The author of this article is not American nor has he ever met Ronald Reagan and he possibly watches far too much of the Colbert Report.

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Live Writer - Blog Like a Pro

Windows Live Writer will help you blog better and it's free. 

I seriously recommend Windows Live Writer to anyone who blogs. Particularly if you are a Blogger user as this is the platform I use and have found Live Writer to be an extremely useful tool. I started using the beta version a month or two ago and found it helpful. The only problem was that if you did not have access to an FTP server you could not place images from your hard drive in your posts.

My hard drive crashed this week and after I reformatted it I began reinstalling all my programs. I went to the Live Writer website and it turns out that it is out of beta (a notification from the program would have been nice). Anyway the previously mentioned problem has been fixed and now the program will upload images straight to blogger for you.

It is an extremely powerful blogging tool. You can create your posts in Live Writer and post them to your blog when you want. The program downloads your template so you can write posts in your blog format. In addition you have a spell check, a link bank and you can create templates for posts to follow. Plus you can do different to effect to images you upload such as gaussian blur or drop shadows.

Live Writer is especially useful if you have more than one blog. You can switch blogs in seconds. Live Writer works best for those who make complicated posts that are more than just text. Try it for yourself. 

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The Bachelor: Forrest Gimp

According to Chris Harrison (host of The Bachelor) the bachelor's decision not to pick a mate is what everyone is talking about in North America (I personally haven't heard anyone talking about it).

I did, however, happen to land on the season finale while channel surfing and notice that this years bachelor is a bigger gimp than usual. He talks like Forrest Gump (as does Bush). I am starting to think that the films success played apart in George W's election. I guess that's how they roll in the states.

What's more shocking than the season finale is that this sexist piece of crap is still on TV. A bunch of women fighting over one man really does nothing to further the feminist movement. You can even hear the sexist undertones in the way that show creator Mike Fleiss talks about the finale here.

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Review: Smorty

Want to get paid for blogging? Try Smorty.You may have noticed our review of Pro360 a week or two ago. This was our first review for the blog advertising system Smorty. It allows you to blog for money. Basically it works in much the same way as Pay for a Post.

The first posts you have access to pay about $6 a post. The more you post the more points you earn and this gives you access to the higher paying posts. The system allows you to post your own opinion. However, the advertiser has to approve the post, so this might impair your ability to give an objective opinion, but our review of Pro360 was by no means a praising of the service and it got approved.

The Smorty service is ideal if you want to blog for money but do not get enough traffic to support the pay per a click systems such as Adsense. I can vouch for Smorty in that they paid promptly straight into my PayPal account.

One problem I have had with the service, which is not really a problem, is that there are very few post options that are relevant to this blog. Once more companies start to use Smorty to advertise on blogs this problem will resolve itself.

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More Spiders and Some Mice on Drugs

Animals seem to be getting high left, right and center.A big heads up to --Bamboo Blitz-- who drew my attention to this. In a previous post we showed some images of what allegedly happens to a spiders web when it is on drugs. Here is a video on the same topic. It seems to be a far more thorough investigation.

It's been on YouTube forever so you've probably already seen it. Over here is a flash app that shows the effects of drugs on the brain with the use of mice as a visual aid.

  The Explanations aren't so interesting but watching the mice act like they are on drugs should entertain you for a solid 60 seconds.

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Spiders on Drugs

When humans get high they become promiscuous, do nothing or freak out. When spiders do it they spin some crazy ass webs.Cannabis.net have the following pictures of what happens to a spiders web when a spider is on drugs.First off here is the regular straight up sober spider web:

Then if that spider decided it was a good idea to drop some acid his web might end up looking something like this on the right.

That looks pretty groovy but what if that spider had thought, "You know what I don't really want to see giant Oranges running up the sides of buildings chasing Evan Rachel Wood. Why not try mescaline Hunter S. Thompson used to do that it would be pretty cool. "

Well then the spider would end up producing a web more like this one on the left.

Ok, so I'm sure we can all agree that if Spiderman is taking on Doc Ock he should definitely rather be on acid than mescaline. You wouldn't be able to beat many super villains with that web.

Ok so the peyote is not for you. Why not rather sit back and smoke some hash.

 Well then the spider would manage to spin this out of his ass. 

But maybe the spider decides that drugs aren't for him. Instead he heads down to Wimpy for a nice cheese burger and caps it off with a good old cup of coffee.

 

 

This is what would happen to his web:

So if any of you out there happen to be spiders stay away from the Red Bull cause that shit will fuck you up.

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Box Office Expert or Spin Doctor

Do you know who Paul Dergarabedian is? Do you know what his link to Bee Movie is? Do you know if Dreamworks pay him in diamonds? If the answer is no you've found the right article.Bee Movie captured 1^st place at the box office in its second weekend of release after opening in second last weekend to American Gangster. "It's so rare to do what Bee Movie has done," Media by Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian told the Los Angeles Times, attributing the jump to "terrific word of mouth."

This is an interesting statement from Dergarabedian but before I discuss why this is so interesting and unusual let us first learn a little more about Dergarabedian and Media by Numbers.

According to the Media by Numbers website Dergarabedian has been the industries most widely respected and widely quoted expert for nearly 15 years. Media by Numbers goal is to provide in-depth analysis and perspective for everything in the box-office and filmed entertainment industry. According to them, “We don’t just give you data. We help you understand it, use it, learn from it and profit from it.”

I am not disputing the validity of Media by Numbers mission statement. What I am concerned about is the validity, or intentions, behind Dergarabedian’s Bee Movie statement. Interestingly although Bee Movie has become number one in its second weekend its second weekend drop is worse than previous animated films that opened in early November. Consider the following:

Chicken Little – 21.0% drop

Monsters, Inc. – 27.2% drop

The Incredibles – 28.7% drop

Bee Movie – 32.8% drop

In addition Bee Movie has lower user ratings than each of these films (with the exception of The Internet Movie Database user rating for Chicken Little):

Chicken Little Yahoo User Rating: B- IMDB User Rating: 5.8

Monsters, Inc. Yahoo User Rating: B+ IMDB User Rating: 7.9

The Incredibles Yahoo User Rating: B+ IMDB User Rating: 8.2

Bee Movie Yahoo User Rating: C+ IMDB User Rating: 6.5

In addition Bee Movie’s second weekend drop is less remarkable in light of the Veterans Day weekend meaning more kids would have been out watching movies on Sunday. This is more likely the main factor helping lead Bee Movie to a first place finish rather than word of mouth.

This analysis is interesting for one specific reason. When the media says a film has terrific word of mouth it convinces the public that the people who are watching the film are loving it. However, clearly the yahoo and IMDB user ratings paint a different picture.

It is an interesting explanation from an analyst with over 15 years of experience to give and one has to wonder if Dergarabedian is a credible news source or if he is merely a spin machine being used by certain Hollywood players.

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Animated Oscar Contenders Announced

The animated oscar contenders have been announced. Who do you think will make it out of the 12 films?12 films have been submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 80^th Academy Awards.

They are Alvin and the Chipmunks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, Bee Movie, Beowulf, Meet the Robinsons, Persepolis, Ratatouille, Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie, Surf’s Up, Tekkonkinkreet, TMNT.

Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beowulf and Persepolis have not yet had their required LA qualifying runs. 3 Films will be chosen for Oscar nominations, which will be announced on Tuesday, January 22, 2008.

My money is on Ratatouille and Beowulf to definitely get nominated with a wild card coming from a foreign film or box office powerhouses Shrek and The Simpsons.

I’m glad to hear the Aqua Teens submitted, who cares if they have a snowballs chance in hell. Hopefully they won’t try any guerrilla tactics to promote themselves to the academy. Who do you think will get the nod?

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Planet Terror vs Death Proof

It's the battle of the Grindhouse. Who do you think will win? I'll give you a clue it's not Morgan Freeman.

You have to love the mainstream media for being completely useless. It was big news in April when Grindhouse was released and had a mega-disappointing opening of $11.6 million. The $60-million film only grossed $24 million in ticket sales by the end of its run.

The media was a blaze with speculation as to why the high profile project failed. Generally the blame was pointed at the project being badly marketed. Apparently a large portion of the market didn’t realize that the film was in fact two separate features being played together with fake trailers in between.

The two features being Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Robert Rodriquez’s Planet Terror. The media blamed the poor performance on Planet Terror mainly because critics loved Death Proof and many ticket patrons not knowing it was a double bill left after Planet Terror (which screened first). It also seems so did the studio as The Weinstein Co. decided to withdraw Grindhouse from Cannes in favour of a longer cut of the isolated Death Proof.

The poor box-office performance resulted in The Weinstein Co deciding to release the films separately on DVD and internationally. Now we have reached a phase in time where both films have had their separate DVD releases. And the media has done… nothing.

Death Proof has been in release for around 7 weeks and Planet Terror has now completed its 3rd. Yet there is no buzz about what happened with their sales figures. Well lets fill you in.

Planet Terror has convincingly drawn larger numbers than Death Proof in almost every respect. The film that was blamed for the failure of the Grindhouse venture is the more financially successful of the two. Lets look at the numbers.

Here are the first two weeks of DVD sales for Planet Terror and Death Proof:

Death Proof   DVD Week 1 - 367,661 total units sold - $8,242,960 total gross

Planet Terror DVD Week 1 - 424,474 total units sold - $9,741,678 total gross

Death Proof   DVD Week 2 - 479,019 total units sold - $10,803,080 total gross

Planet Terror DVD Week 2 - 561,524 total units sold - $12,886,976 total gross

Thus Planet Terror is about $2 million ahead of Death Proof after they both had two weeks of release. In terms of rentals Death Proof debuted to the tune of $2.87 million while Planet Terror soared past this with $5.77 million in its first week. As it currently stands Death Proof grossed $12.16 million after 7 weeks, while Planet Terror has grossed $14.45 million after just 3 weeks.

Anyway these figures would suggest that Planet Terror is the stronger of the two features. Plus there is this poll on sucksorrules.com that suggests the same thing. I think somebody owes Robert Rodriquez an apology.

Here are the Trailers:

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Think Green Video Competition

Do you want to read a post filled with really bad environmental commercials? No, what if I told you there's free candy... and makeup? Now maybe? Ok, ok, I'm sorry I'm just really bad at giving away free puppies. That's right there are pictures of cute fluffy little puppies in this post. Just read on. [note joke stolen from Blood Car].

But seriously watch the videos and have a pretentious laugh at those with noble hearts but no talent.

The following videos were selected in a Think Green video competition at rollmio. Firstly, I'd like to say that the videos that came in the top three were just not that great (in fact nor were the special mentions). Obviously the competition was open to the public and clearly people were not working on these with large amounts of time or money. However, what shocks me is the unoriginality of the concepts, each add looks like something that's been done before.

Anyway here are the ads in there order of placing and my comments.

1st Place:

 

What the hell's up with this country song? The big problem with this ad is that if it does stop people from littering the world will still suffer from a large excess of vomit caused by this ad. Plus what's up with the music at the end? Has anyone here heard of a little something called phasing out?

2nd Place:

 

This is in another language so I don't catch the phrase at the end, which might have helped me get it. The point is fairly obvious when it is viewed in context but if this popped up on TV randomly I'd have no idea what this was about. On the plus side this is definitely the best produced video of the lot.

3rd Place:

 

Well done on finding the most annoying kid's laugh in the world. I almost dumped the entire contents of by bin out the window in protest of this. Plus an animated tree growing in an environmental commercial, I've never seen that before. Well done.

Special Mention 1:

This one gets some points for originality and spirit. Main problem have these guys not heard of sound editing? The music was so muffled I thought I had a hearing problem.

Special Mention 2:

 This one works the best on the whole. Again nothing spectacularly new but this definitely should have come somewhere.

Special Mention 2 or The Toilet Selection:

This, seriously? What the hell? I definitely do not want to "keep the trash in the bin" after watching that. I guess none of these resorted to sex to make a sale but then again maybe they should of. Leave your comments. How would you rank them? Oh and in case you came here looking for pictures of puppies:

 

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Review: Pro360

Have you ever wanted to gamble online but have been scared off by the mass of options. Maybe there is a solution...

Have you ever wanted to gamble online but have been scared off by the mass of options. That’s where Pro360 comes in. Pro360 is an online casino review system. They list a bunch of online rooms and provide reviews of them. The rooms are arranged according to rank and have been rated by both the site and user reviews. It’s easy to narrow the list down to your game of choice: craps, poker etc.

The incentives are obvious for such a business. They get the referral fees from the casinos that they sign up people for. Obviously there is nothing wrong with this and Pro360 have set up some fairly impressive bargains for people who go through them. For instance, if you sign up with Titan poker regularly you get a $200 sign up bonus but if you go through Pro360 that increases to $500.

Problems:

There are 76 poker rooms and Party Poker is not one of them. It just doesn’t make sense to not review one of the biggest poker rooms if that’s what you are about. There is also no mention of Absolute poker, which as has been mentioned earlier on this blog, is going through a bit of a scandal. I think it would be a nice addition to mention the dodgy gambling destinations and some kind of warning. Otherwise the whole thing is a good idea but it just doesn’t go far enough.

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Review: Private Practice

For those of you who can't get enough of Grey's Anatomy here's the spin off...

The Plot: After discovering that she is infertile; being rejected by men left right and center; and failing to get promoted (tough year), Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) leaves Seattle Grace, in this Grey’s Anatomy spin off, for sunny California. She begins working at a private practice, which is filled with TV regulars such as Taye Diggs (Day Break, Kevin Hill, Ally McBeal), Tim Daly(Wings), Amy Brenneman (Judging Amy) and Paul Adelstein (Prison Break).

The Good: Generally an enjoyable show and will definitely please a large portion of Grey’s fans. It’s also good to see Daily and Diggs on shows that will actually stick around. Plus Adelstein just continues to impress me (did any one catch him on Scrubs – hilarious).

The Bad: One of the things that makes Grey’s work so well is that it is in Seattle and filmed with a greyish or dull tint, which is contrasted by cheesy character moments. The cheesy moment seem less cheesy in the bleak setting of the show. Practice on the other hand plays it’s equally cheesy (or possibly more so) elements against a very bright and cheerful atmosphere, making it kind of vomit inducing at times.

The Ugly: I’ve seen two episodes so far and none of the medical cases have been particularly interesting. Which is strange because the Grey’s formula is: Find an unusual medical case - Apply it to the character on an emotional level - then further allow it to be a point of reflection for one of the main characters. Also there's an unattractive receptionist/surfer with no acting ability and flabby man boobs who continues to walk around shirtless. Disturbing.  

The Verdict: This show was the top debut of the season for awhile until fellow ABC freshman show, Samantha Who?, knocked it off that pedestal. Plus the ratings have been continuously high and it has already been picked up for a full season. This one is bound to be a success and with time the writers and actors will be able to better define the characters and their situations.

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