Nunc Scio

I don’t really like vampires. Of course, in the imaginary worlds they inhabit, no one really likes vampires, unless you’re also a vampire or Anna Paquin. I’m talking more about the idea of vampires as fictional characters or plot devices. Zombies are my thing – they’re way scarier, and I find the metaphor more compelling*. The creepy sexuality of vampyr films makes me vaguely uncomfortable. I also dislike how a once-frightening movie monster has morphed into either a clumsy metaphor for racial intolerance in the Deep South or a stand-in for the tortured romantic yearnings of moony adolescents. More to the point, Twilight is a crime against the written word, the moving picture, and the dignity of humanity, in that order. This franchise may well have ruined the vampire genre forever.

And then I saw the trailer for Suck:

Yes, it will take the combined weight of Dave Foley, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and Henry Rollins (that wig really echoes his Black Flag era Jim Morrison-esque hairstyle) to pull me back to the vampire oeuvre. But just barely. And Moby doesn’t help at all.

It is a bit strange that it’s billed as a “Rock Musical Comedy”, and yet no one appears to actually sing in the trailer. But, you know, Henry Rollins. If I suffered through Wrong Turn 2 for Hank, I’ll put up with this**.

*I have a convoluted theory – cribbed from a variety of sources – that classic movie monsters are metaphors for aspects of humanity we find frightening. Vampires represent our fear of taboo sexuality. Werewolves are all about the terror of our animal selves. Zombies represent the terror of losing the self, of being subsumed into a faceless mass. In this sense, the walking dead are more of a political metaphor than the other two. And yes, thinking about these things is how I spend my time.

**I’m being a bit unfair to WT2 here. While not great, it was one of 2007′s better slasher/gore horror movies, especially considering it was direct-to-video. Also, soundtrack by BSG’s Bear McCreary! There’s a fun fact.

A Voice Pro student goes for it in the recording booth

As someone with very few interesting traits – and a variety of profoundly boring ones* – I am fortunate to have made the acquaintance of a variety of very engaging folks. It occurs to me I should write about them more, so I’m going to try doing some more profiles on the site. Hence, this.

Back before my knee ass-ploded, I enjoyed a brief career as a mediocre recreational Ultimate Frisbee player. Despite being rather ineffective as a defensive mid-fielder, my days in the heady world of barely competitive frisbee did yield some new friendships. One of them was with Melissa Altro, who, in addition to being an all-around cool person, is also a professional voice actor. And, as she informed me a few weeks ago, is now running her own business aimed at helping aspiring voice actors break into the business. This all sounds pretty neat, so I thought I’d chat to her about it.

By way of an introduction, give us the  100 word  Melissa Altro bio.

I’ve been using my voice to animate cartoon characters for over 15 years. I’m originally from Montreal, and since 1995 I’ve played ‘Muffy’ on the 4-Time-Emmy-Award winning program Arthur. Read the rest of this entry »

British comedian Charlie Brooker massacres TV news in this video, and the carnage is hilariously glorious to behold.

Mmmmm. Now that’s good satire. Via MN.

In short: I want one. I was skeptical at first, maybe even a bit standoffish. But once I saw the word processor functionality, the handy keyboard dock, and the price ($499 base, $599 for the one I’d want), I was sold. For a guy who does a lot of writing and jotting on the go, this just makes so much sense. In fact, this could be an excellent home computer for about 90 per cent of users- folks who just need a web/media browser. The brilliance of this thing is that it hits the most lucrative emerging computing market – those who use it for entertainment and recreation – so squarely, it’s like a tactical nuclear strike.

I’m getting a bit fanboyish, so I’ll stop before I drool all over my lame, so-last-year, physical keyboard.

As usual, Gizmodo has a nice round up of all the details. I also enjoy MightyGodKing‘s take.

If you have money to burn, this video will make you want one, too.

I, unfortunately, am one of them.

I don’t expect the title of this post to surprise readers of this blog. I’d say the idiocy of racists is more or less axiomatic. Anyone who believes in the inferiority or superiority of a particular group of people based on superficial morphological differences is clearly one mast short of a schooner. But sometimes, it’s important to stop, sit back and truly appreciate the dizzying heights of stupidity reached by these people.

Take Don “Moose” Lewis (please). He is the commissioner of the new “All American Basketball Alliance”, currently looking to set up franchises in 12 cities in the Southeast United States. In order to differentiate itself from popular basketball leagues that you might actually like to watch, the AABA has strict limits on who can participate. Namely, “Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.”

Yes, that’s right. “Moose” Lewis presides over the first overtly racist basketball league in the history of the game. Like most people of his ilk, Lewis justifies his hatred of others though poor grammar and trapezoidal exercises in logic:

“There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like.”

For the uninitiated, Lewis’ conception of “fundamental basketball” is distinct from “street ball” played by “people of colour”. It’s also different from fundamentalist basketball, which is like regular basketball with more frequent prayer breaks.

The phrase “fundamental basketball” immediately makes me think of a bunch of guys in bushy moustaches and tight pants throwing a leather ball into old peach baskets. This scenario is immediately recognizable to anyone who has watched Canadian television in the last 15 years:

So, to summarize “Moose” Lewis’ proposal, he would like to take basketball to it’s rich, honky-strewn roots, and therefore make it totally unwatchable. With strategic thinking of this quality, the AABA is surely poised to take over the world. Well, the predominately white parts, anyway (I’m looking at you, Switzerland).

To me, this just seems like a bunch of mediocre white basketball players sore that they can’t play in the NBA on account of all the fantastically talented Black/Spanish/Turkish/Canadian/Etc. cluttering up the court. In fact, this kind of thinking is the basis of most racism, scaled up by many orders of magnitude: a bunch of people, painfully aware of their own shortcomings and terrified of fair competition or equal interaction, building little walls to hide behind. Schoolchildren should be required to attend AABA games just so they can see what human failure looks like in shorts and hi-tops.

Also, never listen to a man whose nickname is “Moose”. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.

I have kind of a love-hate thing going with Pat Robertson. On the one hand, he’s a virulent bigot and ignorant worm who likes to preach hate. This is bad. On the other hand, he is the source of a seemingly never-ending stream of blog-worthy material.

Yesterday, on his daily television show, Robertson suggested that Haiti is “cursed” because it made a pact with the devil to secure its freedom from France in 1804. You can watch the video here, because I don’t want such vile material on my blog. You’ll recall that Rev. Robertson, a prominent religious conservative, also thinks that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for America’s sinful ways.

For the record, this is what Rev. Robertson said:

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said. “They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’

“True story. And the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal,’” Robertson said. “Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

This is an excellent example of what I like to call the “Onion of Insanity”. Some insane ideas, such as the conviction that your dog is a concert flautist or that your apartment is made of cheese, are fairly straightforward. They are what they are. However, there is a category of insane thinking that operates on several different levels. While presenting itself as a single insane idea, it is actually a densely layered, highly nuanced ball of crazy. In order to understand it, you’ve got to peel back the layers of the Onion of Insanity to get at each separate piece of nutbar logic while fighting the urge to weep.

In this case, the Onion of Insanity has three layers:

1. Incredible indifference to human suffering. Thousands upon thousands of people were killed in Haitian earthquake, and many million more are struggling through the aftermath. To suggest that this cataclysm is somehow the fault of the Haitian people is monstrous. It is especially disgusting to suggest that this punishment is the result of an alleged event that can only be described as superstitious nonsense.
2. Failure to grasp the theology which is presumably his entire job to understand. Pat Robertson is a Christian minister. Now, I’m not sure what they’re teaching in seminaries and bible colleges these days, but I assume that at a minimum, a cursory reading of the Gospels would be high on the list of required material. Funny then that Robertson has somehow missed the large sections dealing with “loving thy neighbour” and empathy towards the suffering of others. Maybe he just fell asleep after finishing the Old Testament.
3. Total disconnect with reality. Or, it’s a “True Story”. No, it’s not. This has never happened anywhere, ever. Satan does not make pacts with humans, for the simple reason that he doesn’t exist. Anyone who believes that “The Devil” is an actual guy who has the power to influence events in the real world is at best profoundly uneducated and at worse willfully ignorant. Look, it’s no secret that I give zero credence to religious interpretations of the natural world. And I would hope that most modern religious people understand that concepts like “Satan” are moral parables that speak to the human potential for evil. But if you really think that a horrible earthquake is the result of an unholy transaction between the founders of Haiti and Lucifer, then I am forced to conclude that you’re crazy. It’s not a rational belief, based on anything even remotely resembling evidence, science, or a basic grasp of how the world works. It must therefore be considered crazy.

Voila. Pat Robertson’s onion of insanity.  I have long since abandoned the hope that it will be forced from the public sphere and relegated to the compost heap of stupidity. But I suspect it will continue to grow and become more ponderous with each passing example of idiocy. Oh well. At least I’ll get a few more posts out of it.

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann says it much better than me.