Merry Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and/or Festivus!

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

Phew... Exams are over, thank goodness. Christmas break is upon us, and it is a good thing. Aside from having a cold, which I seem to get every year around this time, I have no complaints. I got a good haul of gifts for Christmas, and I gave a lot of gifts that were well received... Except for the book I got my Dad which he had already read. DOH! And the food hasn't been too bad either. Christmas dinner at the grandparents condo was awesome!

I like having time off from school. Weekday morning television; a phenomenon which I have been unaware of for the past several years, because I've either been at school or been soundly asleep, is pretty entertaining. The other day I watched 2 episodes of Maury Povich in a row! Jealous?!



On the topic of Maury Povich, it seems that he only has one topic for his show these days: Paternity Tests!

"My next guest has been on the show 9 times, and tested 20 different men, none of whom turned out to be the father."

Of course the poor woman comes on the show to test yet another man and the answer is always the same
"*INSERT NAME HERE*, You are NOT the father!"

Truly, very sad. But it's not like some of these women didn't have it coming. If you were so promiscuous that out of the 20 men you think you slept with in a few week period, none of them turn out to be the father... You really shouldn't have kids.

On the subject of illegitimate children and Christmas, I-Mockery.com presents :
More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About The Atrocity That Was THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL!


Chewbacca's horrifying father Lumpy.

Han Solo looks like he desperately wants to be elsewhere, Luke Skywalker looks like a teenage girl and Princess Leia sings at the end of the much maligned (and with good reason) holiday special. The first 15 minutes feature nothing but dialogue in Wookie between members of Chewbacca's family, and to make matters worse Bea Arthur shows up! BEA ARTHUR! Even the first appearance of everybody's favourite bounty hunter Boba Fett couldn't save this train wreck. I would say it's almost worth it just to say you've seen it... But there are some things you just can't UN-SEE! Read the article at I-Mockery and thank Buddha you don't have to watch it. Check it out here.

Back and to the right...

And on the subject of Star Wars... Someone put far too much time, thought and effort into this Greedo Assassination Theory website. Did Greedo shoot first or was Han just that damn good?

New Favourite Movie



The Third Man is an amazing 1949 film. Directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson Welles, the movie is a classic example of Film Noir. Set in post-war Vienna, the film finds American pulp writer Holly Martins(Joseph Cotten) fresh off the train looking for his friend Harry Lime, who has offered him a job. Martins soon discovers that his friend was recently killed in a mysterious car accident, and sets out to discover what really happened to his friend. In the end Martins discovers more than he ever wanted or should have known.

The Third Man is really just a top notch film, I can't recommend it enough.

I also decided to have a little fun in photoshop after watching this movie.

Photoshop Skills + Film Geekness + Borderline Narcissism = This picture.



Hey, you can't blame a guy for wishing he was in a classic film noir movie.
Photoshop is a hell of a tool, but I'm still no Orson Welles.

Stalin's Half-man, Half-ape Super-warriors


GIVE ME SUPER MONKEYS!

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

I'm really not surprised about anything concerning the former USSR that I hear coming out of Russia these days... Oh those crazy Commies, gotta love 'em.
Read the full article here.

Now I want a half-man, half-ape super warrior! Stupid ethics.

Crazy cool music video.



The artist, Jason Forrest has a very unique sound. Don't really know what genre it would be considered. I've never heard this guy before, but the music video is very cool. Basically, it's a bunch of animated Vikings having a musical battle with Furry Monster types involving ships and giant robots. Words really cannot do it justice, so check it out the video for War Photographer.

The Ultimate Showdown



This is an incredible flash movie detailing a battle of epic proportions. Pitting Optimus Prime, Batman, Godzilla, The Power Rangers, Darth Vader, Gandalf, Captain Kirk, Mister Rogers, Chuck Norris and many, many more against one another in a battle for ultimate power. Awesome!

Check out The Ultimate Showdown!

Good tidings to you and your kin.

- Will   Tuesday, December 27, 2005

 

A Tear For Spock and Kong

Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind,
And makes it fearful and degenerate;
Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep.



I just got back from seeing Peter Jackson's King Kong. I still haven't seen the original, but I was damn impressed by the movie. It was so well put together... acting, directing, writing, CGI - All great. I loved it, but it's a very sad movie. I will admit I shed a few tears at the end. A rarity for me, not since Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan has that happened. I highly recommend King Kong--It is what great film making is all about. Nicely done Peter Jackson.

Top Ten Most Memorable Moments in Comic Book Villainy.


"This is even more painful than it looks!"

To cap off IGN's Villain Month they have compiled a list of the most deliciously evil events in comic book history. From Bane breaking Batman's back, to Magneto ripping the adamantium out of Wolverine they've covered all the major evil acts. But where is Aquaman's entry? Surely introducing that character in the first place should count as the single most evil act in the history of comics. God damn Aquaman!
Worst. Superhero. Ever. Check out the full list here.

What the hell does IGN stand for anyways?

And from the "Not Meant For Mortal Eyes" files comes this image.



I don't know what the hell is going on in this picture, but it is most definitely wrong on many levels. I'm pretty sure Goldie Hawn is melting. Meg Ryan is also looking more plastic by the day. Here we have a lesson in Hollywood attitudes. Goldie Hawn chose to age gracefully, and ended up looking like the Gestapo guy melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Meg Ryan on the other hand is going the Joan Rivers route, soon the unrecognizable piece of flesh, bone and muscle she calls a face will be yelling at celebrities on the red carpet. Watch out Joan!

Daniel Radcliffe is SO busted!


For the love of god Daniel she's only 15!

Though I suppose he's about 15 years old as well, so it's not odd behaviour. However, young Mr. Potter is going to have take his attention away from Hermoine's chest long enough to learn a few things.
When it comes to cleavage, Jerry Seinfeld said it best,
"Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun -- ya don't stare at it!"
Oh those hormone fueled teenagers, when will they learn?

Pachelbel's Canon in ROCK!



Everyone loves a long over-blown guitar solo. Jimmy Page in Stairway to Heaven. Eric Clapton in Crossroads. Jimi Hendrix! However, these gentlemen only covered rock and roll tunes, they steered clear of classical.

Jerry L is different.

He rocks out to Johann Pachelbel's 17th century classic Canon in D. If you know the tune you're in for a treat, and if you don't you'll probably recognize it anyways.

Take it away JerryL! Canon Rock.

Finally for all you social alcoholic Family Guy fans out there here's a fun little drinking game you can play this Holiday Season!
Family Guy Drinking Game.

So from me and The Juice have a safe and Happy Holiday Season!


At least he's not holding a giant carving knife.

May your pint glass overflow with beer.

- Will   Thursday, December 15, 2005

 

Dear Matthew Good...

Newsflash: WEBSITES LOOK THE SAME!

In response to your recent post Coincidence? in which you claim the Consevative Party website design was lifted from the US Republican Party's website, I give you this image.

While they're not exact, they are eerily similar. Take a look...



Most political party websites do look similar... In fact the Liberal Party of Canada and the US Democratic Party websites almost look the same. However, a passing similarity does not mean that they're in cahoots. This isn't some New World Order right wing conspiracy Matt! Calm down!

You're a much better musician than you are a political pundit. Stick to what you know Matt!

You're last album was awesome by the way.

Sincerely,

Will Perkins


P.S. The chief export of Chuck Norris... is pain.   Monday, December 12, 2005

 

Reginald VelJohnson is Gay?!

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

Every generation has movies which they consider their own. As a child of the 1980's there are a select few films that defined my childhood. Ghostbusters, Transformers : The Movie, Labyrinth, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Goonies, The Neverending Story, etc. One of these definitive 80's films was probably the most influential movie for future gamers: The Wizard.



For those of you unfamiliar with The Wizard you don't know what you're missing! It is widely considered to be nothing more than a 90 minute commercial for Nintendo... However would Fred "Wonder Years/The Mole" Savage star in a commercial?! NEVER!

Basically, Fred Savage and his disabled, video game savant brother and some girl run away from home to compete in the Video Game World Championship. Only the evil Lucas Bartow with his amazing POWERGLOVE stand in their way! Let me tell you folks... NOT IF FRED SAVAGE HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT!



Check out this ridiculous clip in which Lucas Bartow demonstrates his POWERGLOVE skills.

And from the "You Can't Make This Shit Up Files" come these pictures and story.

JIM CARREY RUN OVER BY STEPHEN HAWKING



From ContactMusic:

Actor Jim Carrey was left howling in agony after genius Stephen Hawking reversed over his foot with his wheelchair.

The unlikely pair made friends when they appeared together on an American talk show, and Carrey visited Hawking in Cambridge, Britain, recently. The highly-paid star joined the physics prodigy and some friends and colleagues for a stimulating dinner.

Later that evening, as they chatted on the patio, Hawking, 61 - who suffers from motor neuron disease - ran over Carrey's foot.

The professor's secretary Karen Sime says, "We've all had our feet run over by the professor. You quickly learn to jump out the way!"

I can honestly say I never thought I would write a sentence involving Jim Carrey and Stephen Hawking. You live and learn.

Mysteries under Moscow.



I watched a very interesting Russian documentary this afternoon about the mysterious underground of Moscow. A labyrinthine collection of tunnels, sub-basements, bunkers and sewers that a team of Muscovites recently started exploring and mapping. Home to hobos, criminals, dissidents and impoverished people the Moscow underground has an incredible history to tell about a very historic city.

What is hidden under Moscow?

This question has intrigued Vadim Mikhailov since he was a child in the early 1970s, when his father, who drove a train in the Moscow subway, first gave him a ride in the driver's cabin and showed him the network of Metro tunnels beneath the Russian capital. By the time he was 12, Mikhailov and his friends had begun making increasingly ambitious journeys beneath the city.

Discoveries began with the first expeditions. Through manholes and building basements the boys wriggled into labyrinths under the Russian capital. First, they explored the bomb shelters under Leningradsky Prospekt, then they came across an Academy of Oceanology warehouse. "Imagine walking along endless corridors," recalls Mikhailov, "something dripping from the ceiling, the uneven light of torches. And all of sudden you find yourself in a room full of tanks of formalin, containing various sea monsters."

They soon went deeper underground. According to Mikhailov there are about six levels under Moscow, and in some places as many as 12, including old sewer systems, fountain foundations, and sloping drainage tunnels entangled in the depths.

As they grew up, the explorers took their investigations more seriously, drawing maps of their routes, studying history books, and talking to elderly Muscovites about past uses of the underground. Their explorations of deserted shafts and water mains built during the reign of Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century sparked a greater interest and enthusiasm for further expeditions.

"Ten to 15 years later we realized that we had investigated the entire level closest to the surface, comprising municipal public service tunnels. It was time to go down to deeper floors," recounts Mikhailov. In 1990, the underworld travelers formed a group called "Diggers of the Underground Planet," whose aim was to study the historical, ecological, and social aspects of the Moscow underground.

Check out the entire article over at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

I will try to upload the documentary at some point. Incredibly interesting and creepy.

Da svi`daniya

- Will   Sunday, December 11, 2005

 

Random Oddities and The Foibles of University Life

There is, sure, another flood toward, and these
couples are coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of
very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.

And the crazy old man of the day award goes to this guy!
Liberal backbench MP Don Bell gets an earful from a constituent.
You tell him old fella! It's actually not crazy to tell it like it is.

Video courtesy of Stephen Taylor.

Not to be outdone, the runner-up for crazy old man of the day goes the dude pictured below.


Old man refused to advertise for companies

Qian Daokang, a 105-year-old man, plays with his doggie at his home in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu province December 7, 2005. Qiao Daokang refused to work as brand ambassador for seven companies that produce health products. He said his longevity was due to exercises rather than eating health products.

Come on China quit trying to commercialize the hyper-elderly! I think his right eye can see into your SOUL. Crazy though, just think this guy was an old man in the 1960's!

And since we're over in Asia anyways, how about we hop on over to the island of Japan.



The year 1991. The Legend of Zelda : A Link To The Past has just arrived for the Super Famicom. In a move that will shock and appall people for years to come Nintendo unveils its Vanilla Ice inspired commercial for the game. BEHOLD!
The 1990's were not kind to us.

Trinity and Beyond



"Trinity and Beyond" is an unsettling yet visually fascinating documentary presenting the history of nuclear weapons development and testing between 1945 until 1963. Narrated by William Shatner and featuring an original score performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, this award-winning documentary reveals previously unreleased and classified government footage depicting in graphic detail these powerful and awesome weapons.

If you get a chance to see this documentary, do so. I've seen it on TLC and TVO a few times. Truly frightening but awe-inspiring at the same time. And can you say no to William Shatner?! I mean come on!

Check out this clip of 'Tsar Bomba' -- The King of Bombs. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated... By none other than the Russians! Truly scary.
The clip is from the movie, but it's being showcased on another program.

More info here.

The Foibles of University Life

A few months ago, a fellow student of mine at the University of Toronto sent me an entertaining Onion article entitled "Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up". Anyone who has attended school(everyone) knows what kind of person this is. That pompous, know-it-all, prick who wastes the students and the professors time by showing just how knowledgeable he or she is. I have one of these charming individuals in my Political Science lecture. For about 10-20 minutes each class the always entertaining Professor Kopstein will field questions from his students. This one individual however, feels it necessary to not ask a question, but instead make statements about what he thinks. NO ONE GOD DAMN CARES WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT POST-COMMUNISM! If you'd like to talk to Kopstein, do it on your own time, NOT MINE!

On the subject of post-communism I move on to my next topic.



I know I have something in common with this man. We're both eating fruit, we're both comfortably lounging on this bench, and neither of us are wearing shoes. Life as a monkey is certainly good... But something makes us different, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Excuse the odd analogy, but it will make sense soon. I'm in my second year at the U of T, and I have been enjoying the hell out of the experience thus far. When I look at my fellow students I see a hugely diverse group. People of every stripe, race, ethnicity, religion and political bearing. Yet we're all sitting on that university bench, eating the sweet fruit of knowledge and chilling with our shoes off. However, some of my peers at the university are an enigma to me.

Being accosted by Marxists and Trotskyites on campus, waving their Socialist Newspapers in my face is getting a little tiring. On campus clubs like The Spartacus Youth Club and The Marxist Institute can preach their Socialist beliefs all they want... Just leave me alone! If I bombarded them with Capitalist or Conservative leaflets they would probably tell me to fuck off as well.

Let us take a look at the mission statement of The Spartacus Youth Club.

The Spartacus Youth Club seeks to recruit, educate and train socialist youth to be life-long revolutionaries, to join the fight to achieve communism over the whole earth by class-struggle centred means that are at once proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist. If you want to do something about the racism and oppression endemic to this system, if you want to fight for a future of equality and decency, then struggle with us to send capitalism into the dustbin of history.

I'm all for an intellectual discussion of political ideologies, after all political science is my major. I've asked members of these clubs questions, asked them to defend their ideals and theories. I wanted to have an enlightened discussion with these people and instead had my ideals derided and mocked. I was being civilized, you Mr. Marxist are the one who jammed the pamphlet in my face... Defend YOUR views, don't attack mine! If you want me to take your paper, sell me on it!

One of the signs in the SYC booth at the Sidney Smith building read :
End the Support of Pro-Imperialist NDP!


Marx, Engels and I chillin' on the East Side!

That quote represents a Leninist standpoint. Lenin believed that Socialist parties working within the confines of a Capitalist system were not truly Socialist. Therefore, the New Democratic Party operating within our parliamentary-Capitalist system is undercutting true Socialism.

Now I'm not a fancy, big city lawyer-type... *Puts thumbs under suspenders* ... But it seems to me that an organization calling other Socialist groups hypocrites for operating within the Capitalist system really shouldn't be trying to push these views at a Capitalist university. The modern university is key to free market Capitalism. Students are there to get their degree, so they in turn can find a job and make money! Presumably, this Spartacus Youth Club was started by a student at the university. Uh-oh! They're working within the bounds of the Capitalist System?!

Stop the Pro-Imperialist Spartacus Youth Club!

Come on now! If you truly were professional Marxist revolutionaries you'd have overthrown the University by now instead of hypocritically operating within the school's pro-Capitalist structure.

A few more points about the true Socialists on campus... How are you paying for school? Last time I checked my bank account, U of Toronto is very expensive! Also why does your club have a President? If you truly are Marxist-Leninist you should have a central committee... Come on now! If you're going to go ahead with this whole revolution thing don't be half-assed about it!

Haven't Russia, China and North Korea already proven that Communism, no matter how well intentioned will always fall victim to greediness of human nature? Not that I consider subverting human rights and killing millions of people well intentioned... I'm just pointing out that Capitalist countries tend to not kill millions of their own people. Just saying...

I'm a firm believer in Voltaire's mantra "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." I just ask that you don't be a dick about what you're saying.

Call me when the revolution starts buddy!

- Will   Thursday, December 08, 2005

 

Doctor Oddlust : Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Exam Time.

These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse,
and fight for bitten apples; that no audience, but
the Tribulation of Tower-hill, or the Limbs of
Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure.

Just to clear things up... I don't love exam time. I had 4 hours of sleep last night, and wrote a 2 hour term test at 9 am this morning. The test went well... But that is beside the point. Boourns to exams!

I'm a fan of 24. I'm really looking forward to the 5th season in which Jack plays a transient hobo being stalked by Chinese assassins. But 5 years ago it wasn't Jack Bauer's ceaseless ultraviolent behaviour that drew me to the show, it was Canadian ultra-hottie Elisha Cuthbert.



Now I've had a crush on this girl since her days on Popular Mechanics for Kids (She's the same age as me: therefore not creepy/illegal), and I'm not the only one who will say this fine Canuck lass grew up nice.



But what makes a hot girl even hotter? A love for sports; particularly hockey. Not only does Elisha love hockey like any true-blooded Canadian woman should, but she also writes a Hockey Blog over at NHL.com! That my friends is hot, even if she is a Montreal and Los Angeles fan.

Now for some random news, links and assorted hilarity.

Pandora



My brother Evan was kind enough to send me this link earlier, very cool concept.

What is Pandora?
Pandora is a music discovery service designed to help you find and enjoy music that you'll love. It's powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Just tell us one of your favorite songs or artists and we'll launch a streaming station to explore that part of the music universe.

Just enter a song or artist and it will find similar music to cater to your tastes. It's already played some artists I've never heard before, but definitely intend to check them out soon. Pandora.com

Those nutball Creationists are at it again... This time they're accosting and beating Pro-Darwinist professors. Where you ask? You guessed it : Kansas!

Professor beaten; attackers cite KU creationism class

Now would a Darwinist beat the crap out of an intelligent design advocate? Maybe. But only to prove that Newton's laws of motion: (SCIENCE!) do in fact apply to them!

On the subject of religious fanaticism I'd like to present
The Passion of the Christ : The Benny Hill Director's Cut.



If this was the movie I had seen maybe I wouldn't have fallen asleep TWICE!
Before I fell asleep they were beating Jesus... When I woke back up THEY WERE STILL BEATING JESUS!

I guess Christians can take comfort in the fact that Christ's actual beating, torture and cruxifiction were not set to this hilarious music/sound effects.

Link thanks to Christie.

Now for some movie news!


Kelsey Grammar in full Dr. Hank "Beast" McCoy getup for X-Men 3.

The teaser trailer for X-Men 3 has arrived. Perhaps I was unfair in my assessment of Brett Ratner as a talentless, pompous, douchebag, hack of a director... from the teaser the movie looks decent. The film still has the great cast of the last two films... But a lot can still potentially go wrong. Whatever, I will reserve judgement until I see the finished product. Good luck Mr. Ratner!

As for me, I'm off to battle aliens on a far away planet.

That's Will-Speak for go eat some pizza and study.

- Will   Tuesday, December 06, 2005

 

Random News and Hilarity : Because It Beats Studying for Exams

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks.

I figured I would lighten the tone of this post, seeing how my last post was a dry, witless analysis of a political campaign. God forbid I actually incite intelligent discussion of the issues. Plus I have better things to do, but I don't want to do them. My exams start up next week, but I'd rather do this than read about the rise and fall of Communism in Russia. And we're off.

Newsflash : Geeks want to play Star Trek Online RPG!


Look Daddy! A virgin!

A recent market study by Nielson Media Research found that 69% of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Players surveyed would be interested in playing the Star Trek MMORPG currently in development. The study also found that 59% of Star Trek fans surveyed also showed interest in playing the game. Now I enjoy Star Trek as much as the next man... I'm not a fanatic, but I do have more interest in the series than the casual fan. That being said, I also would potentially like to try this game. I just don't know if a game like this is a good idea though. I mean do we want to add MMORPG addiction to the already myriad social dysfunctions hardcore Trekkies already suffer from? Just my two cents, but don't say I didn't warn you people when poopsocking reaches epidemic levels. Check out the full aforementioned survey here.

And on the topic of RPG's those wacky Japanese gentlemen over at Square Enix have some wonderful news for us all. They have unveiled a clever drink tie-in to coincide with the release of Final Fantasy XII in March 2006 -- Potion. An energy drink.


If it worked for Sabin and Cloud, it will work for me.

"The drink supposedly makes you relaxed like herb tea and tastes mystical. It contains nutritional supplements so that the company can claim that the drinker might recover real life hit points." - Gamebrink.com

I'm interested to see what exactly "mystical" tastes like, in any event it probably will not be available in North America. I guess I'll just have to settle for Pepsi brand Antidote.

Over at The Log of the Gamer, I discuss the Brutal Side of 8-Bit Gaming. Video game violence is not a new phenomenon, it's just more realistic now.

And now news from the real world.

In Soviet Russia Squirrels Eat You!



Anyone who has lived in Ontario knows that black squirrels are a menace to society. Anyone visiting Ontario is always shocked by the tremendous size of these terrible creatures. However, Ontario black squirrels are apparently quite tame in comparison to their Russian brothers. Last week in Eastern Russia, a pack of squirrels attacked a stray dog that had been barking at them, and subsequently bit the poor thing to death. First of all, a PACK of squirrels? Russia must be an even crazier place than I was led to believe. I mean, first Boris Yeltsin and now this?! What a country!
The BBC has the story well covered over on their website. Remind me never to bark at squirrels if I'm ever visiting Russia.

'Lost' Girls are DUI!



Two stars of my current favourite show LOST were arrested for Driving Under the Influence. Michelle Rodriguez and Cythia Watros were arrested in two separate DUI incidents on the same night. I guess they had beer in the tail section of the plane.
The Smoking Gun is there!

And now for some movie news.

Everybody's favourite hapless, hack of a director Dr. Uwe Boll is back at it again. This time he's ruining a perfectly good video game(Dungeon Siege) by adapting it into a blatant Lord of the Rings rip off. In the Name of the King : A Dungeon Siege Tale stars Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, John Rhys-Davies, Lee Sobieski and last and certainly least the stunning thespian talents of Matthew Lillard in his first non-Freddie Prinze Jr. movie role.



Now if the poster doesn't convince you that this is going to be one of the worst movies ever made, perhaps this stunningly awful trailer will. Dr. Boll has been kind enough to split his masterpiece into two 100 minute parts! The sad thing is, Boll is using the same fight choreographer that did Hero and House of Flying daggers, plus he has an incredible physical performer like Jason Statham... And the movie still somehow manages to look like shit. I would like to wait and see, to give this movie a chance... But given good Uwe's track record : House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, I'm not getting my hopes up.


No Uwe... Thumbs down.

And that as we say is that.

- Will   Friday, December 02, 2005

 

An Election Kind of Christmas and other Tomfoolery.

You have too much respect upon the world:
They lose it that do buy it with much care.

Didn't we just do this? Paul Martin's Liberal government was defeated in a non-confidence vote the other day up on Parliament Hill. So here we are off to the races, three days into the first winter election campaign in nearly twenty five years.

Recently I've been thinking about politics in Canada... I am a political science major, so it is only natural that my mind would tend to drift in this direction.

I have come to the conclusion that the Liberal sponsorship scandal was too complex for Canadian public. Now that's not to say the Canadian public is stupid, quite the contrary--they're just very busy. The Liberals would have taken a bigger hit in the polls if the scandal were more simple and straight forward... Politician A took kickbacks, Politician B blackmailed someone, Politician C had extramarital affairs, used tax dollars to cover it up etc. Something a little more baseline, less complex. The sponsorship scandal has so many levels, and even after the Gomery Inquiry the full truth still isn't known. It was a complex money laundering scheme, not some simple political SNAFU, it was major.



Had it been say, Jean Chretien punting small children for sport, or Paul Martin using ill-gotten money to deck himself out with bling, maybe then the Canadian public would have been up in arms. But with the sponsorship scandal, there's too much there... Did anyone you know actually read the Gomery Report? Probably not, and so the parties are left to spin the findings of the report.

As for the other political parties, the NDP keep chugging away. Jack Layton and Co. are proving what a determined bunch of people they are. They will be crushed.

The Bloc Quebecois meanwhile are doing what they usually do, standing up for Quebec rights, and pushing their separatist agenda. Good old Gilles Duceppe called for Quebec to get its own World Cup hockey and soccer teams, similar to Scotland and Wales having world cup teams, even though they are part of the United Kingdom. Interesting.

As for the Tories, they're off to a fairly decent start. Today Stephen Harper announced that if elected the Conservative Party would lower the GST from 7% to 6%, and 5% within 2 years. While the Liberals attempt to sling mud at their opponents, the Conservatives actually have a platform that does not involve constant name calling and character assassination. A "reporter" the other day asked Stephen Harper if he "loved Canada"... Firstly, what kind of hack reporter asks that kind of question, secondly why would any politician commit political suicide and say they didn't love Canada, and thirdly would Stephen Harper be running for Prime Minister of this great nation if he didn't love Canada?! This is going to be an interesting campaign.

I personally am hoping for a Conservative minority. It will prove to Canadians that the Tories are ready for power again, and limit any potentially socially conservative policies fringe elements of the party may try to bring up. I'm all for a fiscally conservative/socially moderate party - That's why I was a Progressive Conservative back in the day. The anti-gay marriage stuff isn't going to get them elected, if the Conservatives want to stand any chance in Ontario and other Canadian cities they need to drop that.

I am not a pundit, I know who I am most likely to support... Hell everybody does, I make no bones about where I stand politically. I am just going to watch the election play out and see what develops. For you intrepid reader, the ball is in your court.

For quality Conservative coverage check out Blogging Tories or Stephen Taylor's blog.
For Liberal coverage check out Progressive Bloggers.
And if you're looking for NDP coverage... Get off of my site you socialist bastard!

I kid... NDP.ca has all the info.

Enough election talk... Now for the saddest thing I saw all day. Kangaroo suicide.


Godspeed little buddy!

- Will   Thursday, December 01, 2005