Money (it's a crime).

People keep telling me money can’t buy me happiness, but I'm becoming suspicious of this claim. Here’s what I’d do if I were rich, and you can tell me if it sounds like something that would make you happy:

I’d live somewhere warm, like an island. If an island couldn't be found with the right climate, I’d have one airlifted nearer the equator, because I’d be rich.

Every morning I’d waterski behind a speedboat driven by my butler. Then I’d discipline him for splashing me, and getting my tuxedo wet (I’d wear a tuxedo when I waterskied, because I’d be rich).

Then in the afternoon I’d recline on a marble statue of Diane Lane and watch my Sopranos boxset end-to-end.

I think that would make me happy, but I guess I won’t know until I try it, so donations are appreciated.

A Very Bastard Christmas

The strangest thing happened last night. I had just been fired from my job as desk clerk at Mr Potter's nuclear power plant for impersonating a clergyman, and was taking out my frustrations the usual way, by helping the blind beggars cross the road onto the middle of a roundabout, and leaving them.

Then for no reason at all, a bunch of youths started harassing me. They said "hey, that's not cool", and "don't do that", very aggressively, so I ran a safe distance and called the police. I explained what happened to a great big fat desk sergeant, who seemed to think I was joking. It's like there's no justice anywhere in the world. What if I had been violently beaten, or gored to death? It was pure typical victim blaming. Calling the police officer a fat fuck, I handed the phone back to the gentleman who'd kindly let me borrow it, and ran across the road, causing a cyclist to swerve and skid into a lamppost. This made me lel so much I started coughing, and coughed up blood all over the pavement.

I was looking for a doctor, but it was Christmas Eve and the lines were round the block. I decided if I was to get treatment, I would have to outdo some of these malingerers with their gaping neck wounds, so I hurried off to the theatre store to grab some fake blood, only to find that it had closed down and moved. Pouting in anger, I hurled a lady's small terrier at the deserted husk of a store, and spun on my heel, which caused me to slip and fall on the slick ground. Then the lady, totally unprovoked, started wailing on me with her umbrella like a dervish. I defended myself in the manner I've been taught by social media: by screaming and crying and playing the victim. A group of passing thugs heard my cries and hauled off the lady, who protested vehemently. In the confusion, I tied two of the thugs' shoelaces together and fled.

Bedraggled and potentially dying of consumption, I staggered onto the bridge, where I looked down at the icy river below. I contemplated ending it all by jumping, calculating that if I hit my head on a rock, I would probably only feel horrific agony for a few seconds, whereas if I missed I would likely die a slow death of pneumonia, unless I could remember to hold my head under the water long enough to drown, my lungs filling intolerably up with water. But no! That would be the coward's way out!!! So I had determined to live, when an angel appeared at my side. He said "no dude, you should totally jump. Heaven is totally unanimous on this".

Was he right? Should I have jumped? Fuck that, why am I asking you? The world needs me. I've seen the light! It's a Christmas miracle!! I'm going to live forever!!!!23$%*.

Bastard role models: Grey Seer Thanquol

Grey Seer Thanquol's contributions to bastardry are many and varied. Thanquol is a Skaven (rat-man) from the city of Skavenblight, in Skavendonia, in the Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy setting. I like Grey Seer Thanquol, not least because he's blatantly The Brain from Pinky and the Brain on hard drugs. He is most well known for his brilliant plots being defeated at the last possible minute by the evil Gotrek Gurnisson and his pet man-thing Felix Jaeger, but his antics have taken him from Kislev (Poland/Russia/Czechoslovakia) to Lustria (South America) and Hell Pit (Birmingham).

Among his many admirable traits including Warpstone addiction (think red Kryptonite for everybody) and running human specimens through a giant maze (payback for white rats in real life), Thanquol is a master of the art of scrolling revisionism. This is the process, common to modern political parties and ideologies, by which defeats can be recast as victories, inconvenient allies as enemies, recent enemies as noble allies, and your own mistakes as the treachery of any nearby underling of sufficiently low status in the hierarchy to blame it on. This must be a virtue, as it informs 100% of our foreign policy, especially with regard to the Middle East. Think about it this way: if scrolling revisionism weren't a virtue, then our leaders, media, and ideological gurus, both left and right, would all be liars, incompetents and charlatans from head to toe and back to front. So, you see, it must be good to scroll.

Thanquol's contempt for any and all life makes him an ideal leader. He successfully captured an enemy tower despite only outnumbering them ten to one, and had his army burn down half a major city before escaping, leaving his bodyguards to die with the promise of "inevitable victory". OK, so he's a complete bastard, but let me ask you this: do you see someone capable of such reckless optimism failing his next interview? And isn't that why the upper echelons of our society are filled with that thing that always rises to the top? You know what I'm talking about.

Bastard role models: Tony Soprano

WARNING: This post contains MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILERS for a show you should DEFINITELY HAVE SEEN by now.

Tony Soprano is the gold standard to whom all bastards aspire: he conducts business from a strip club, smacks his son upside the head, and saved money by giving his daughter a car for a present he'd extorted from a degenerate gambler.

Some people think Tony isn't really a bastard, because he cares for his family. Which is true, except he tried to smother his mother to death, fucking killed his nephew, cheated on his wife with two Russians including one differently abled, and loudly announced that he wouldn't get a vasectomy because his son was too shitty to be his male heir, in front of his son. Tony is an inspiration to bastards everywhere.

He also mastered the art of positioning himself against even worse people, so if you were watching he even got you on his side. The fact that nearly all these people came up through his organisation is a minor detail, easily ignored. What sets Tony apart is that everyone rooted for him for seven years, even knowing about his murdering ways. I can't even get people on my side when I forget to flush.

The moral of the show is that you might as well be a fat, violent, addictive, antisocial personality, because everyone else is an asshole anyway. Even if he did get whacked in the final scene, he still had more fun than you.

Movie Tuesday Presents: ¿Onibaba?

Onibaba is the best movie ever.

When most people think of Japan, they think of squids banging schoolgirls, Godzilla, Sumo wrestling, sushi, and samurais, in that order. I've never been to Japan, but if it’s not all like that then I can’t imagine not being disappointed. Anyway, whatever. Onibaba is the best Japanese movie I've seen, and I've seen at least five.

Onibaba is about two women who live in a field of super tall grass and ambush samurais who stop by, so they can sell their stuff. They toss the bodies in a pit that goes straight down but doesn't lead anywhere. How did the pit get there? Did someone dig straight down until they couldn't get out again? What a dumbass.

Onibaba sort of feels like two movies. The first part has a guy come home from war and try to get in the younger woman’s pants (they don’t have names, because that makes them more universal. Names are for popcorn movies). It all seems to be playing like a drama with the younger woman torn between her mother-in-law and this guy’s affections. Then at some point, with a sort of dream logic, it switches to a horror movie, as this guy with a mask appears. I won’t spoil what happens but it’s pretty sweet. You should definitely see it. The word for this movie is: “atmosphere”.

Where's Wallie in the Garden of Earthly Delights

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Movie Thursday Presents: Point Blank!!?

Point Blank is the best movie ever.

I saw Point Blank by accident during a period of watching every movie on TV. And people said I’d never amount to anything that way. Well I proved them wrong: I saw Point Blank.

Point Blank stars Lee Marvin as the best character ever: WALKER. Walker is betrayed and left for dead during a heist in the classiest thriller location ever: Alcatraz. The rest of the movie is Walker hunting down and murdering everyone who betrayed him, except most of them end up killing themselves and each other in their panic over Walker.

In one scene he takes a car salesman out for a test drive and rams the car into everything, smashing it to bits. This scene probably (source) inspired Walter Hill’s movie The Driver, which you also should see. Oh yeah, and another time his girlfriend or whatever tries to beat him, so he just stands there until she tires herself out, and then goes to watch infomercials. Walker: 1, domestic violence: 0. Then she goes insane and runs around the house turning on all the appliances and hits Walker with a pool cue, but when he wakes up they’re already making out, because even unconscious Walker is the best.

The movie has witty socio-economic commentary too, like the scene where Walker tries to get his money out of someone who can’t pay him because it’s all tied up in overly secure investments. The movie explores the corporate nature of organised crime, and thus, by extension, the criminal nature of business. Even better, every shot in it looks super stylish, because it was the 60s. Point Blank makes your favourite movie look like bullshit.

In defence of tl;dr

Circumlocutory assholes on the interwebs are getting upset that nobody wants to read their pontifications, a point of view expressed since time immemorial by "tl;dr". tl;dr is, of course, Vietnamese for "too long, did not read" (source).

The reason people call tl;dr on your epic literature is because you can nearly always say the same thing using fewer words, which is considered common courtesy because no one's got time to listen to every idea you've ever had, especially not by way of a response to a two-word YouTube comment, like "this sucks", or "you suck".

There's a very complex algorithm modern homo sapiens sapiens use to determine whether something is too long to read. First, do they care what the conclusion is? Second, do they care more than they care about reading the next comment, or clipping their toenails? Third, is your writing entertaining? Why not? Didn't they teach you to write good at school? Why not?

tl;dr is an exhortation to write better; to be more efficient; to leave out the backstory about your dog.

If I were a literary critic (boring) I would call tl;dr on everything. Movies too. Drive was tl;dr as fuck. He didn't even drive that much. It's a soundtrack, not a movie. The Gone Girl was tl;dr too. The Hobbit? Too long for anyone to read. The book was like eight pages.

Anything tl should be dr.

Thinking Barbarian IV: The Final Thought

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James Bond is the worst special agent ever.

Since the title of the new James Bond film has now been released (SPECTRE), it seems like a fine opportunity to recap on the series so far. The doctors say this will be good for me ("whatever" was the word they used). This article will contain SPOILERS for the last three James Bond films.

Since Daniel Craig took over the role of James Bond in the 1967 comedy Casino Royale, starring Woody Allen, the world's most famous spy has failed to complete any of his missions, making him the British government's version of Team Rocket. Despite this, MI6 continues to employ him, sending him on mission after mission with all the dogged determination and shit-eating optimism of a gambling addict.

So in Casino Royale, Bond's first job is to capture a bomb-maker, which he seeks to achieve, Tom and Jerry style, by chasing him up a construction site. This chase ends when the terrorist hops a wall into a foreign embassy. Understanding the need for diplomacy, Bond backs out and informs M, who puts the squeeze on the ambassador to remand the terrorist into British custody. O WATE KNO. Instead, he hops in, murders the guy, and then flees like a buffoon. Presumably for several hours the foreign country gears up for war with Britain, until M is able to placate them.

Realising he nearly started a war just to kill a guy he was supposed to bring in alive, and therefore needs to stay on M's good side, he does the only appropriate thing, and breaks into her house like a burglar.

It's not even as if the screenwriters didn't realise that Bond was a colossal fuckup, as they then have M chastise him for these very reasons. Except rather than fire his incompetent, felonious ass like any normal person, she then gives him an even bigger mission. There's no reason for this: he isn't even James Bond yet, as this was his first mission. Is M supposed to be senile in the script? You or I could get fired for being late one time. James Bond can start a war, kill the guy he was supposed to capture, ensuring that an entire terrorist network goes free, and go on his merry way. What the fuck, M.

So then he's sent to bring in another guy, the guy that bleeds out his eyes. How does this guy not die all the time? I don't know. Anyway, again, it's essential to the mission that he bring this fucker back alive. The government also spot him a bunch of money to bet at poker, in what is easily the longest and most boring sequence ever filmed. Long story short, Bond loses all the money, gets the target of his operation killed, fails to spot that his lady friend is a double agent, and gets her killed too before she can tell him anything about the people she works for.

Why the fuck is this goober still employed? But to be ridiculously fair, this was his first two missions. So maybe he'll have gotten better by the second filO WATE KNO.

Quantum of Solace has our Inspector Clouseau stand-in bring home his one prize, a Mr White, to be interrogated. Instead of taking this dangerous criminal to a secure holding cell, he hauls him up in front of M. If M were as smart as, say, the mayor from The Naked Gun, she might well say, "are you crazy? Why have you brought this bleeding-ass terrorist into my office like a dummy?"

But she's nowhere near that smart, and in any case it doesn't matter, as her secretary then reveals himself to be a double agent and starts shooting everyone, allowing Mr White to escape. Did M hire this guy as well as Bond? Did she hire the double agent lady from the last flick? Is there a pattern we can discern here, like one of those magic eye puzzles, if we just stare at it for long enough?

So anyway, in the confusion, Mr White escapes, and Bond is powerless to overtake this limping gunshot victim. Possibly to get rid of him, M then sends him to Bolivia or some shit, where he has to uncover QUANTUM, a secret organisation whose name stands for BORING. Once again the film ends with Bond choosing for no reason to kill the bad guy who could have told him all he needed to know about the terrorist organisation. Is FUCKING BOND A DOUBLE AGENT TOO? At this point that would make more sense.

Then in part three, Skyfall, Bond has to recapture a device that gives the bad guys full knowledge of everyone in MI6. I don't know why such a device exists, but anyway. Naturally, he fucks up and gets shot in the heart and falls into the river, which counts as a pretty good day for him in these movies. The rest of the movie is spent trying to protect M from another agent she hired; a task at which he also fails, not only letting M die, but destroying his own mansion in the process.

I'll be honest with you, when I first saw these movies, I thought they sucked. But looking at them in a different light, I think they're brilliant. As a satirical portrayal of systematic incompetence they're up there with 4 Lions and Dr Strangelove. Maybe M's hiring practices are based on nepotism or something. Anyway, here's hoping Bond gets even one thing right in SPECTRE. That would be so unexpected I might just stop huffing CO2.

Who thinks this is weird?

I was standing in a queue with my bestfriend (guaranteed better than yours), and a thought occurred to me. Feeling I should share this thought, I told her: "what if we lived in a world where the only vowel sound was 'O'?"

"We'd count like: one, tow, thro, fo, fove, sox, sovon, oght, none, ton, olovon, twolve, thorton, forton, fofton, soxton, sovonton, oghton, noneton, twontogh".

She informed me that was weird. Is that true? Was my thought weird? Let me know (using only "O"s).