Sdtrk: ‘To Alison’ by Ecstasy of St.Theresa

You know what I like doing? Getting into the left-hand lane in front of an SUV and driving slowly. The feckers deserve it, frankly.

I’ve never liked sport utility vehicles. They’re overly large, horribly inefficient with fuel, and 95% of them are just plain ugly (with the exception of the Aztek and the H2O, both of which somewhat resemble vehicles that SHADO would’ve used). However, it’s recently struck home with me why so many people feel compelled to purchase the damned things. I was showing my friend Mari some pictures of the various pre-2000 Mini Coopers, and she was astonished at how small it was. ‘How could you drive something that small?’ she asked. ‘I’d be afraid that I’d get crushed under somebody’s tires!’ However, that whole mindset really came screeching to my attention when I happened to catch something on a local newscast recently:

Smart Car Promotion Draws Criticism

You’ve seen the ads where Casino Windsor is giving away three smart cars, but did you catch that tiny print? Right at the bottom, the ad says “not street viable in U.S.A.”

The smart car, sold in Canada, has a small diesel engine and a little motor that does not meet U.S. emissions regulations, and U.S. Customs won’t let it in the country.

In Detroit, there are signs advertising the promotion, but if you win, you won’t be able to drive your prize in the United States. Casino Windsor said despite all the advertising, the rules are clear.

If an American customer wins the car, he or she has an alternative to take $14,000 in Canadian money instead.

There were plans to import the cars at one time, but right now, the plans are on hold.

Now, I’m seeing the sentence ‘The smart car, sold in Canada, has a small diesel engine and a little motor that does not meet U.S. emissions regulations’, and reading it as ‘The smart car is not vast and heavy enough to compete with our ridiculously large vehicles, and as we don’t really want people to be flattened like pancakes by an Escalade, the US cannot allow it on the roads’. They could’ve added ‘Three days’ worth of fuel for an SUV would keep a smart car running for three months,’ but that wouldn’t be entirely professional.

It’s really struck me why most Americans just don’t buy smaller vehicles. They want something larger that they’ll feel ‘safe’ in. You’ve got some tosspot going, ‘Well, if I don’t drive something that takes up one and a half parking spaces, I won’t feel safe from someone else driving an SUV.’ So that tosspot buys an SUV, wherein someone else says, ‘Well, if he has a huge vehicle, I want something equally huge, otherwise I’ll get crushed under his wheels’. So that person buys an SUV. And so on, and so on. It’s the Arms Race, only on four wheels.

As far as I’m concerned, the argument ‘what if you need to haul around a family, or a lot of people?’ no longer applies. Go buy a station wagon. Remember those? They looked rather like long cars — I know it seems fantastical, but it’s true, they once existed, you can see them on Google. Besides, I’m fairly certain that most people who own SUVs probably don’t have more than five people in their family, anyway.

I suppose you could reason that I wrote this post due to the fact that I was shagged off that Smart cars aren’t street legal in the United states. But it just goes to show what kind of mentality we have driving round on the roads today. I guess people really dig having to spend $40 – $50 to fill their fuel tank each week. Reason no.478 to move to Toronto: Smart cars are legal.
If I had that kind of crazy disposable income, however, I’d rather buy a pre-BMW Mini, or a Fiat 500. I’d love to drive a smart car, but even I think they’re too small to own

Sdtrk: none, oddly enough. You’ll have to provide your own

Something occurred earlier this evening that was so irritating to me, that I delayed bedtime in order to post it and get it off my chest.

So earlier, I was on the phone with a (for the sake of argument) friend, that we’ll call Spike. Over the course of the conversation, he mentioned that he had given something that I bought as an Xmas present for him — a pair of action figures — to someone else. Heh.

As far as I’m concerned, this is something you do not do. You do not tell someone that you’ve given something that they bought for you to someone else. Perhaps if he hadn’t been born in a barn and had some sense of etiquette, manners, and common sense, he would’ve had the presence of mind not to blurt that out.

I can understand receiving something that you don’t necessarily want, and surreptitiously getting rid of it; that’s happened to all of us. But for fuck’s sake, you don’t tell the person. I’d like to give Spike the benefit of a doubt and say that he forgot that I picked it up for him, but still, that’s just fucking idiotic.

That was good that I typed that out, as I’m no longer shagged off about it. I feel pretty confident that Spike will never see this, as he never reads ‘Shouting etc etc’ anyway. And he no longer has to worry, cos he won’t be getting anything from me ever again. ‘O, your Xmas present? O, I’m sorry, squire, I was too busy to pick one up. I’ll get right on it.’ Give me a fucking break

Sdtrk: ‘An eye for optical theory’ by Michael Nyman

I’m back on the Internets! After browbeating two SBC Amerifuck tech ‘support’ monkeys, who I daresay were calling from India, we now have better speeds than last time. Going back and forth with some tosser named Sam, we assessed that the problem was their fault, not ours, and it’d be seen to before 6pm that Tuesday eve. So after still having hideous non-speeds at 11pm, I called a second time, this time speaking with a different churl, and telling him that nothing had improved. The connection speed was ramped up about twenty minutes after my call. Results!
Just so you have an idea of what I was dealing with, I took a screenshot of the speed our connection was at at its slowest point, after visiting the SBC Americunt speed test site. (It’s kinda helpful to know the URL if you happen to be cursed with their DSL service, so I’ve reproduced the link here.) Anyway, the screenshot is kinda dodgy, but you have to see it. Yeah. Now wouldn’t you agree that’s a reason to be angry?

On the lighter side of things, I have finally found the name of the style of shades/glasses that I love. If you’re a mate of mine that’s actually seen me in person on more than one occasion, you already know that I own four or five pairs of shades. All of them have the same frame, but they’re all slightly different — one is transparent with mirror lenses, one is black with blue mirror lenses, etc. I’ve always wanted to find more variations of those shades, and eventually buy a pair of (fake) glasses with those frames, as they’re the only kind that look good on my face, but I never knew what they were called. Well, now I know — they style is called the browline, and the models are called either the ronsir, or the clubman.

Classically ace! They’re fine frames, fine frames. Now I need to scour online stores and estate sales for those bad boys..

Gonna try to catch Death from above 1979 at the Lager house this Saturday. The more I hear them, the more I like them, even though the cover for their latest Cd kinda scares me

Sdtrk: none

Short and sweet: Both of the computers here are having difficulties getting a decent internet connection. Everything is moving very very slowly. I was online with a so-called SBC technical assistant for an hour last night, whereupon he had me go to their test page to assess how fast my connection was (or wasn’t). According to the test, my current speed is slower than dial-up.

Back later. Angry now. So there you have it

Sdtrk: ‘Me and my ding dong’ by Pankow

Good going, Blogger. Down for almost an entire day. Refuckingmarkable.

Anyway, here’s this thing:

My Mormon name is Darvell Friends Forsaken !
What’s yours?

Shi-chan’s is worse, if you can believe that. Hers is Andoorie Traudi Treasure Cocaine. *confused stare*
Thanx Veach, for Mormonising us! Now we must eschew all sinful things such as technology. Goody Andoorie will proceed to churn some butter, and I shall go raise a barn

Sdtrk: ‘Swinging bachelor pad’ by Vitesse

Last night, I voluntarily watched the pilot episode of the american version of ‘The office’. I don’t normally watch broadcast television, in fact, I really haven’t watched telly since ‘Seinfeld’ went off the air, and I wasn’t even aware there was a bastardised version of ‘The office’ due to air over here; I was helping my mother with her computer, and I saw it mentioned on the TV listings, so I decided, why not?

Yep, it was shite. I mean, I knew it was going to be shite, but I suppose I had to confirm it. Over the course of 22min, I audibly laughed three times. That’s cos, gee, I’d already seen the first episode before. Seriously, it was the same damn episode as the original pilot — same gags and everything — only with americans in place of the British cast.
Turns out Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are executive producers of it as well. Did you guys need rent money or something?? Why did you feel it was necessary to take a brilliant show, and essentially cut off its balls? I mean, there’s no way they’re gonna be able to come up with something equal to the gag featuring Tim and the dildo over here. And I’m thinking the Finchy character isn’t going to be nearly as funny, since 98% of his speech pattern is really horrible sexual innuendo.

O well. I’ve seen it, so now I can forget it exists. I had to watch the entire first disk of the boxset to wash the bad taste off my brain, so the evening wasn’t a total disaster.
I think later on at some point, I’m going to have to explain to you, the casual viewer of ‘Shouting etc etc’, why I despise most remakes, but right now I have to leave my house. Wish me luck!

Sdtrk: ‘Emaciator’ by Ramleh

Just watched the trailer for ‘Star wars: Episode Three’. My reaction? I don’t know what the hell’s going on! No, seriously, I don’t. Do I care? No! No, seriously, I don’t.

Picture a young, guileless, and innocent Davecat, seeing ‘Star wars’ (‘Episode Four’, for you rabid purists) for the very first time, back in 1977, at what was known back then as the Northland Theatre. My excitement level was, like most kids at that time, running desperately into the red. Robots! Spaceships! Aliens! Laser guns! Etc! That excitement level went up a little higher with ‘The Empire strikes back’, cos everyone likes ‘The Empire strikes back’, and leveled off with the third movie with the Ewoks, whose title, for the life of me, I cannot honestly recall.

Years passed, and not only did I get older, I got wiser, and various avenues opened up. Around the early Eighties, I started watching this quirky British scifi show called Doctor Who, and suddenly, straightforward American-made scifi seemed less and less ‘cool’. Sure, I saw the Star trek movies in the theatres like everyone else, but they were holding less of my interest with each passing year. (Except for ‘Wrath of Khan’. Everyone likes ‘Wrath of Khan‘.) Every weekday, I’d sit goggle-eyed watching the latest installment of Doctor Who, and of course, the coolest thing in the world would be to be a Timelord, tumbling headlong through Time and Space with a TARDIS (and a sexy companion) of my own. And when I wasn’t watching that, I was watching Ultraman.
I don’t know when it really dawned on me, but I think what drew me to such shows is yes, they had a high kitsch factor, but the writers got as much as they could with the limited special effects they had available. Sure, the special effects in ‘Star wars’ looked great at the time, but to me, the story was just boring. And Star trek was just very bleh straightforward. Part of the charm of the Doctor was his eccentricities — the viewers sometimes had no idea what he’d do next, not to mention his enemies or his companions. That alone was so much more fascinating to me than what was more or less a Western in space.

Then in 1987, the local channel that had been previously showing Ultraman started airing this brand-new show that was animated in Japan, and had these really sweet jet fighters that transformed into robots!!1! That show was called Robotech, and it was the Silver Key to the Gateway of New and Different Television Entertainment, or Something. I could go on about how Carl Macek, the producer, Frankensteined together three almost-totally unrelated shows in order to create Robotech, but that’s another post altogether. In any event, Star wars, Star trek and the like were completely dead to me from that point on.

But yeah, back to Lucas and his excretions! I saw Episodes One and Two, and my brain has such a resistance to anything bearing the conjunction of the words ‘Star’ and ‘Wars’, that both films were almost completely unmemorable. Here’s what I recall:
+ Darth Maul looked like a badass, but actually wasn’t a badass
+ Episode One contained Space Negroes (Jar-jar and his race), Space Arabs (that flying bug guy), and Space Chinese (the aliens in that giant round space station thing)
+ Yoda knew kung-fu
+ That Clone trooper battle at the end of Episode two was probably the best part of both movies
+ One of my old coworkers at Quest used to go out of his way to pronounce it ‘Palapaptine’, cos it was funnier
+ Ewan McGregor, Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson stuck in a shitty franchise
+ Jango Fett is a really stupid fucking name
+ Not enough naked Natalie Portman

I’m sorry, I have no respect for a film director who can barely direct his actors, and insists on constantly sodomising his own back catalogue, for the sake of ‘perfection’. I gave both Lucas and his goiter money for the ‘THX 1138’ DVD, and that was only reluctantly, as it was a new version with unnecessary CG scenes shoehorned in. Unless he starts a fund to request money to publically kill himself, that’s the last cent he’ll ever see from me.
Having said that, however, I would like to see what I hope is the final Star wars movie, and I intend on seeing it in much the same fashion as I saw Episode One: sitting over at Mike‘s, watching a second-gen VHS copy that someone filmed with a videocamera at the back of a theatre. That way, I’ll be paying exactly what it’s worth!