Evolution of the OC

Some may remember when I single-handedly saved the world from Moloch with my dank OC. Well, today I stumbled across an evolution of the original:

This is clearly in reference to the fact that professional liars and debate-question-givers CNN just went full Cosa Nostra by threatening to dox some kid for making a gif making fun of them. No, I'm not kidding.

As CNN are worthless and contemptible slime, I consider this a righteous updating of my OC, and thoroughly commend the artist. Boycott CNN!

Superman always wears red overpants.

Living in the Berenstain Universe, where everything sucks, you may have noticed that contemporary "Superman" depictions have no red overpants. This is one of the many, many, many, many, many reasons I stopped reading comics, and since the depantsing continued into the motion picture maladaptation The Man of Steel, I have considered dropping movies too.

Note that no-pants Superman is technically Bizarro.

Back when comics were good, a run called Superman: Red Son was released which posited the question: what if Superman's rocket had landed in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas? Of course the Ferrous Gentleman was raised as a communist and grew up to become a totalitarian dictator. This Superman did not wear red overpants. His overpants, where he had any, were grey - symbolic of the grim, conformist Hellscape communism wrought.

Contemporary Superman is a communist. This is because he is being written in the Berenstain Universe. Superman's overpants represent his conscience - their colour suppressed in Red Son as under a stifling ideology, and totally absent in the degenerate and nihilistic culture of today. Red Son was a warning about misguided ideals which we have failed to heed.

In 2013, forehead can crushing champion Zack Snyder gave us a movie in which Superman, stripped of the overpants of truth, justice and the American way, fucking murders General Zod by snapping his neck. Batman in The Dark Knight Returns didn't even kill the Joker, who was way more evil than General Zod, a military professional whose only crime in The Man of Steel was to attempt a necessary coup to save his world from destruction.

Some argue that Zack Snyder did this because he is a simpleton who doesn't understand things like character, character arcs, or that slow motion isn't new, or that making everything look visually dark doesn't create dark atmosphere, or that Superman without his red overpants is horribly aesthetically unbalanced, or that the field of design is best left to professionals, or that chopping up the chronology of a movie for no reason doesn't make it better, or that JJ Abrams style lens flare was stupid in Star Trek and is stupid in Superman, or that you can't level a city and expect people to feel like there was a happy ending in your movie, or that Ben Affleck already had a role in Mallrats which was stylised in the opening credits as "Buttman", or that no one likes Zack Snyder.

The Superman cape has a yellow S-shield on the back of it as well. If it doesn't have that it's not Superman. It's another design thing. You can't just take stuff out of a design and add a bunch of lines on it. It doesn't work that way.

A tedious analysis of the Bat Man Versus Super Man trailer

Batman Vs Superman: Yawn of Justice recently received a brand new trailer which is every bit as lame as the previous one. Beer helmet enthusiast Zack Snyder once again takes the lead as we're subjected to Mark Zuckerberg as Lex Luthor and Ben Affleck as Ben Affleck in a cheap-looking Batman costume. But there's so much more shit.

This is what the movie logo actually looks like. Lens flare by Pkisme.

Let's break it down like a small intestine.

The trailer revolves around Henry Cavill's Clark Kent being introduced to Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne. Kent asks who Wayne is, making himself look like the dumbest reporter ever, which makes no sense. Clark didn't arrive on Earth last week, he grew up there. This dialogue is so dumb I want to go back in time and stomp on our ancestors as they crawl out of the sea.

They talk interminably about whether Batman being a vigilante is any worse than Superman saving cats from trees. It is, but they're talking about versions of the characters we know from pop culture. Like how in The Man of Steel General Zod's girlfriend wanted to take Lois Lane hostage because she's Superman's girlfriend in some comics that she read. GOD DAMNIT THESE MOVIES FEEL LIKE THEY WERE WRITTEN BY AN EIGHT YEAR OLD.

You might be thinking it's unusual for a blockbuster movie trailer to revolve around a conversation, but it's important for this movie to do a lot of explaining straight off the bat, if you see what I did there. Firstly, the writers have to explain how Batman is the dark one when Superman just murdered a guy by snapping his neck in the last movie. That kind of throws off the dynamic between the two, don't you think? Or wouldn't a competent screenwriter have thought?

(Sighs internally)

The other big reveals of the new trailer are a derpy looking Doomsday who looks exactly like the cave troll out of Lord of the Rings, and Wonder Woman, who shows up at the end of the trailer just as she showed up at the end of the creative process because you've got to do something with Wonder Woman. This means that the movie will also have to explain why she sat on her ass and did nothing while Earth was invaded and nearly destroyed by Michael Shannon from the underrated movie Bug.

Because Zack Snyder is a douche, all the characters in this movie come across as assholes. He has also put lens flares in everything, like fellow douche JJ Abrams. Lens flare is now the official Hollywood seal of quality: it means you are in for a humongous turd. Only an asshole would think it looks cool, as evidenced by the two people who do.

Is there hope for a DC Comics cinematic universe?

There is presently no hope for a DC Comics cinematic universe. The Man of Steel, despite all the advantages of perfect casting, a big budget and Chris Nolan showing up to the set once, fucked the pooch without lube and now everything is ruined for at least another generation. "Cinematic universes" are another stupid trend to disguise the fact that Hollywood does not produce original content. When studios promise cinematic universes for properties like Ghost Busters, you realise that they don't understand their IPs, or the nature or purpose of storytelling in our culture. They know seven hundred ways to sell you seven hundred shades of shit, but in the end, it's just shit.

Starwars 7 will be stupid and lame.

So the new trailer confirms everything I knew would happen about Starwars 7: The Goatse Widens. Jar Jar Abrams has apparently directed the film in the same visual style as his last act of necrophilia, the Startrek reboot. This looks awkward and shitty, and not like the Starwars of the 1970s and 80s, when the series was good.

If you watch the movies from the 80s you'll notice they are elegantly shot and edited, making use of space, mood lighting and shit like that. The new trailers show that the new film looks ugly and fakey-fake and has too many medium closeups and closeups. The storm troopers are standing around in like a well lit space, which isn't very threatening, and basically everything sucks.

We know from interviews that Abrams is aware of how much everyone hated his shitty lens flares in Startrek, so including them in this new Starwars movie can only be interpreted as a gesture of spite toward his audience, most of whom will still pay to see the movie anyway because they like the abuse.

The old people from the original movies still just look like old people. There's generally a good reason characters don't age that much in like comics and shit like that. It's because characters in fun escapist movies getting old is sad and depressing. But this trailer doesn't have a fun escapist tone to it, so I don't know. Maybe it's an art house movie about Alzheimer's.

Everything in the trailer looks like a copy of a copy. There are no new, interesting ideas and you can tell because the only thing anyone's been talking about is that there's a woman and a black guy in the movie, even though there have literally always been women and black people in Starwars movies. This small detail hasn't stopped the filmmarketeers (for this is what they are) from smelling their own farts all over the interview circuit.

Nobody will like this movie. Everyone will feel hollow and dead on the inside after seeing it, despite all pretence to the contrary. That's because they are dead; listless consumer zombies shambling pointlessly between one gaudy beacon of hype to the next in the horrific wasteland of our lives....

Academia is carving out new frontiers in flimflam and chicanery.

Have Hugh ever wondered how to write an academic paper? What with the vertiginous standards of contemporary writing out there, no one would blame you for feeling intimidated out of it:

Real.

As you can see, this is real cutting-edge stuff. But don't be discouraged: with a bit of coaching, you too can write important essays on identity cults and the narcissists who love them. Follow these six simple steps to ensure your intellectual prolapse will pass for the real thing.

• Add "-ness" to words that don't end in -ness. Examples could include "unknowableness" or  even "being-ness". "Otherness" is a must.
• Always remember to pluralise words that don't need to be plural, in such a way as to imply that there are subtle differences within and around a concept that only you can understand. For example, never speak of "postmodernism" but "postmodernisms". Use this even with collective terms like "public" (publics). If you combine this with the above tactic, you score a combo which is worth at least 1000 ticks. Be sure to write about "Blacknesses" and "subjectivenesses" for mad approval.
• Find someone who is different from you and accuse them of "othering" you (or the minority you purport to speak for, if you're feeling in the mood for condescending to yet another group that are unlike you). If you do this quickly and stridently enough, nobody will notice that you are the only one "othering" people by bringing up irrelevant details about them like their sex or hair colour.
• Make sure to "reclaim" words like "bitch" and "queer" so you can pretend to be rebellious while getting headpats from a quintessentially establishment institution. I remember when I first learned that "queer theory" was used by professionals. You might as well call it "bumming studies". Troll academics by pointing out that this is cultural appropriation of black people, who invented reclaiming so they would have something to rhyme with trigger in their rap songs.
• Never write in the first person, as this makes it too obvious that everything you're saying is your unexamined left-lib prejudices. Instead of removing your ass-ignorant worldview from your writing, just remove all references to "I", "me" and "mine" (this is what academics actually teach).
• Astute readers will note that all this stuff relates to form and style. This is because the substance of academic writing ceased to be important in, like, probably the 50s. No one cares, for instance, that Hamlet is all about Shakespear's Sister's depression over their dead son, the decline of empire, and the existential horror of not knowing what comes after death. Is Hamlet gay? Does he exhibit othernesses? Academia demands to know.

If you but follow these few steps, you'll soon be well on your way to balding, supercilious glory.

My predictions for the new Star Wars movie!!!!

Hello everyone!!! It's me, your favourite bastard!!! Today I will be talking about a very important news topic: the new Star Wars trailer!!!! This is important because lots of people like The Star Wars, even though it hasn't been good since 1983, when I was six!!!!!

When the first teaser trailer was revealed, in 1987, scary people who think they're going to marry Chewbacca or something dumb like that got super excited because the trailer had storm troopers in it, which is like watching the trailer for The Harry Potter and being excited that it has wizards in it, except stupider. Also some guy had a light sabre with a cross guard. I think his name was Darth Toyline.

The reason sequels to movies from 2000 years ago don't work is cause you finished the arc. Luke Sky Walker's arc concluded in Episode 8, when he fucking killed Darth Vader. Han Solo's arc killed all those Nazis. Carrie Fisher got into meth or something. There's no story left to tell. Mad Max completed his arc in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, where he found redemption and a sense of purpose by killing gay bondage pirates. That's why The Thunder Dome was such a disappointment that I tried to hang myself (it didn't work: security asked me to leave the mall). By the way, I hope The Mad Max 4: The Fury Road doesn't suck!!!!!

The other reason The Star Wars Episode 4: The The Force Awakens is going to be rubbish is because it's made by JJ Abrams, who is a very talented filmmaker who turned The Star Trek from a utopian fable about people of all races pioneering across the universe into The Die Hard 4: Ugly Lighting, Too Many Closeups, Lens Flare And Pandering. In case you don't remember, that was the movie where Captain Kirk meets Dr Spock by running into a random ice cave.

Which is the gheyest politically correct term?

Hi everybody. My favourite politically correct term is "differently abled". This is a good and accurate term for people in wheelchairs: look at Professor X, he can read minds.

But not all politically correct terms are as on point as this. Take for example the term "people of colour". This is quite obviously just the old racist term "coloured people", they just changed the order of the words around. This is like calling a gay guy a "person of faggotry". I think politically correct people don't realise that that's how stupid that is, because their orthodoxy has eroded their brains like Creme Eggs erode teeth. Creme Eggs must only be eaten frozen. Put them in the freezer, they taste better. Be careful though: they may chip your teeth if you bite down on them like a dummy.

Sometimes "people of colour" is shortened to "POC", because nothing encapsulates respect for peoples' unique cultures and heritage like lumping them all in a homogeneous mass of not-whiteyness, and then reducing them to an acronym. If politically correct people were in charge of Hallmark, your happy retirement card would read "you're going to die soon", and they'd spend your retirement party bringing it up to everyone to tell them not to bring it up.

If this dystopia ever ends, history will look back on political correctness as a long, unbroken string of idiots shooting themselves in the foot for no reason, by first declaring pre-established terminology offensive, and then replacing it with something even worse, while the rest of us sat around wondering why you would need to invent ugly euphemisms for human beings in the first place.

Everyone is stupid re Jeremy Clarkson.

As you know, I can't watch Top Gear anymore because the BBC threw all its toys out of its pram again. TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has been "suspended" from the corporation for punching a guy and maybe saying naughty words again, unless he didn't. Every few weeks there's a story about Jeremy Clarkson going full retard, and every time it's about 20% true and 100% stupid. I've heard intelligent people seriously say that Jeremy Clarkson should be sacked, but one person who doesn't think so is the fucking producer he allegedly "punched", who retweeted the petition to reinstate him.

Oops.

The reason I'm busting out the "allegedly" is that all the stories about Jeremy Clarkson are systematically inflated and exaggerated because the news media want us all to think he's controversial, which he isn't. Only retards who read the Guardian and cycle (preferably at the same time) spaz out about Jeremy Clarkson. That's because the rest of us are grownups. Hey, remember when he said that people should be shot in front of their families? Except that it later turned out he was being sarcastic and making the opposite point.

Oops.

Jeremy Clarkson isn't controversial to real people, because we have real problems and things to worry about. Given that the petition to reinstate him is the fastest-growing ever in Change.org's history, it would seem that most people are more fed up with the BBC's histrionic bullshit than with Jeremy Clarkson, and for as long as we're paying the license fee, the BBC can shut the fuck up and do what we say. Maybe this wouldn't be such a pressing issue if the BBC had anything else worth watching.

Nothing is good anymore.

I was looking over trailers for upcoming movies recently, and I realised that an important strain or permutation of the filmic form has died: the good ones. I don't want to see anything that's coming out this year. Looking at everything else there is to do, I noticed the same trend: there are no comics I want to read, no paintings I want to look at, and no games I can afford (because I am a hobo).

I need the hype machine to tell me which show is the next Breaking Bad, and even then I won't watch it until it has enough episodes for me to binge. I've given serious thought to leaving my house and taking a walk in the park or something.

I think the reason everything sucks now is that everything is so politicised and fashion-conscious, and is greenlit by coked-up psychopaths who won't take risks because if they don't make enough profit they won't be able to buy a third helicopter, and then they'd have to make do with two.

It's possible that everything good has already been made, in which case all we need to do is mine the good stuff out of the past, until someone gets a new idea, if possible. That would make me so happy I'd blink.

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.