Friday, January 30, 2009

 

mrs wino's boobs

if you ask me who are my current favourite singers or bands i must admit i can not name any name. the local radio stations aren't any help at all...most play infantile ditties or those stupid ghetto hip hops that i detest. of course there are memorable songs here and there such as that song about umbrella ela ela ela...but i don't think i'd go out and buy her albums. pop isn't exactly my genre of choice. though i must say now that she's coming to perform here next month i don't exactly mind and go and watch her perform. though most likely i won't. one of the few songs that i like in recent years in the pop/rock catergory is audioslave's like a stone...but that was years ago...i seem to get stuck with trippy songs from the seventies...pink floyd, yes (tales from the topographic ocean, fragile, close to the edge era) , genesis (peter gabriel era). and i just bought from a local pirate Lou Reed's BERLIN a julian schnabel directed 2006 concert film of lou reed playing songs from his great 1973 BERLIN album. julian schanbel is an interesting guy. he once came to canne's film festival wearing a sarong. i hate his paintings but his films are good. especially his latest the diving bell and the butterfly.

but these days one is hard pressed to name any really good and interesting english singers. one name quite stand out though. amy winehouse. otherwise known as Barmy Amy , or mrs wino among other things. this lady has character. a boozing drug addled 'genius'. she's living her life to the max and slowly killing herself in the process. with a husband in jail and personal life in tatters and probably going psycho (by common conventional standard that is) one ought to feel pity for her but hey, it's her life. she hasn't killed or harm anybody as far as i know.

even so it came as a small surprise to me to see her doing a 'balcony boogie' in the nude as you can see here in st lucia where she's having her holiday right now. but for a drug crazed babe who looked half dead not long ago, she seemed to be quite healthy now and she sure has quite a nice body (i stole this pic from one naughty blog ). i give her 7.5 out of ten.

and here's one of her very good songs titled appropriately enough you know i'm no good.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

 

the year of the ox

there's so much rubbish on the internet about what this year of the ox will portend to us mortals in the next 365 days already that i'm not going to add my two cents worth of nonsense here. if only the world is that simple and we can understand the future simply by reading the meaning of the zodiac signs....

i'm a monkey based on chinese calender, and this is what they say about monkey people...

People born in the Year of the Monkey are the erratic geniuses of the cycle. Clever, skillful, and flexible, they are remarkably inventive and original and can solve the most difficult problems with ease...

that is laughable hah hah hah...at least in in my case that is.

almost six years ago to the day , i went to kolkata and by pure coincidence i stumbled into a huge book fair on the kolkata maidan. i couldn't remember why i ended up on the maidan but i recall coming there and watched people playing cricket. i was there for a long while and towards the evening just ambled to the other side and there it was. the 25th Kolkata Bookfair in full swing as one might say. and if you know me, i go crazy about books the way women go crazy about shoes, handbags and chocolates.

and according to wiki entry...

It is a unique book fair in the sense of not being a trade fair - the book fair is primarily for the general public rather than whole-sale distributors. It is the world's largest non-trade book fair, Asia's largest book fair and the most attended book fair in the world. It is the world's third largest annual conglomeration of books after the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair...

there i was cursing myself for not realizing it sooner and went there directly instead of watching unknown teams playing a poor cricket match. and so i dashed about in and out of the many book sellers' booths and just about 30 minutes to closing time i found this booth selling old books on all kinds of muslim esotorica , books on mughal rules and biographies and indian histories. i felt truly dismayed because it was closing time but i did manage to buy a hard to get 5 volume hardcover copies of Dr J.C Mardrus complete translation of The Arabian Nights .

but not only that... there were some other stuff going on and i found this poor looking boy selling rolls of charcoal drawings on a dusty part on the edge of the field and i bought four charcoal drawings from him . he couldn't even understand english (which is quite rare in kolkata) and i had this beautiful bengali lady translated and haggled for me and i got the drawings for almost nothing.

and here's one of them. it's in a series of 3 . i thought i might post it here as this is the year of the bull .

Monday, January 26, 2009

 

redacted

Of all the films being made about America's involvement in Iraq, evidently none is more loathed in the United States than Redacted. This "fictional documentary" by Brian De Palma, about an outrage committed by US troops on Iraqi civilians, is powerful, provocative, shocking and even slightly crazy in ways that may not be entirely intentional. By the end of its 90 minutes, the china shop of taste and judgment is pretty well smashed to pieces by this great big bull of a film. I've seen it twice now - at the Venice film festival last year and at a screening in London - and both times I could feel huge numbers of people, hawks and doves alike, being gripped, baffled and appalled by its sheer semi-controlled offensiveness.

that comes from the first paragraph of peter bradshaw's review of the latest brian de palma's movie 'redacted' in the guardian. it tanked horribly in the US and probably haven't been seen much elsewhere outside of the festival circuits. probably it's no surprise but a real pity. people don't want to see themselves in the mirror if what they see is not what they want to see and redacted shows some of the worst aspects of american war on iraq. someone ought to give this movie as a farewell present to george w bush.


i hate to watch movies about iraq as atrocities are still going there right now and it's too painful to sit and watch and be reminded of everything that is still going on. the pain is too raw. so it's doubly amazing that brian de palma can go through making such a painful movie. most people need the distance of time to softhen things up. the only two movies about iraq that i've seen are this and the equally great screw ball black comedy the three kings set during the first iraq war. This later one is quite the opposite apart from the fact that both are in a sense 'anti-war'.


it would be interesting to see in years to come whether the movie makers would treat the middle east, iraq and iraqis as they treat the second world war and the germans and the jews and the nazis. and who would be the nazis in this case?



Tuesday, January 20, 2009

 

jay leno

these days we don't get too many good comedies on tv. it's a real pity that astro doesn't have a comedy channel. about the only comedy i get these days are from jay leno . but in general i hate talk shows . i never watch the local ones. they are mostly embarassing and sometimes quite stupid. and i detest oprah, she's so tedious and boring...i can't understand why she's so popular...but i quite enjoy that trinity of american funny talk show hosts (david letterman, jay leno and conan o'brien). unfortunately we now only have leno here. and he's good.

women can never compete with men when it comes to being funny. may be they have smaller funny bones in their body. but there could well be scientific reason for it. and it's probably evolutionary. in fact christopher hitchens had a very interesting thing to say why women are not funny. read it for yourself here.

the other day jay leno mentioned about the playboy lord hugh heffner. do you know that this guy is now 88 and currently has three girl friends? two of them are twins. nineteen year old twins! this guy has all the luck in the world. but i can't imagine what he can do with all those girls though. but then again may be he's still a randy bugger as he always is. why, the other day there's a local news about an 84 year old molesting his 10 (Ten!) year old grand daughter. he was caught 'lying on top ' of the girl. he is an animal it's true but it proves one important point. this is very good news for us males. even in our sunset years we can still be as randy as any young studs. and not to worry if our weapon of mass destruction don't function too well by then. we can buy viagra by the jars. and what about the women you ask. that is absolutely no problem. one thing i learn about women. they LOVE money. they'll do anything for money. it's all evolutionary.


and on that day dustin hoffman was on the program. i don't view dustin hoffman as a funny guy so it came as a surprise to see him on jay leno cracking jokes and enjoying himself acting like a comedian. i know that he has acted in comedies before in films like meet the fockers but i remember him more as a dramatic actor and some of the most memorable films and my favorites are his seventies films like papilon, midnight cowboys, marathon man and straw dogs.


i usually don't watch comedies like meet the fockers or those other tedious family oriented and feel good comedies that holywood seems to dish out every year. the kind of comedies meant for people who read the fucking reader's digest and business books . i personally like my comedies a little bit shall we say of 'industrial strength'. i'm more of a borat person than that sienfield asshole. and so it was quite fun to listen to dustin hoffman telling a joke about oral sex and the bullfrog on jay leno. i think i'll now go and look for his film lenny about the very very bad mouth comedian lenny bruce . there is a version of this oral sex joke on the internet somewhere but the one i read was nowhere as funny as the way dustin hoffman told it. but then again dustin hoffman is a very good actor....



Sunday, January 18, 2009

 

trengganu kite, CONGRATULATION!!!

KT people has done the right thing! MY HEARTFELT CONGRATULATION!!!

as a kelanatanese i have always looked at terengganu as a kind of an idiot brother. they speak funnnier than us, they tried to copy our nasi dagang and get it hopelessly wrong (they use WHITE sticky rice!) , and they are weak when it comes to politics. they wilt when umno assholes wave twenty ringgit to their face. not like us who don't give a fuck for umno briberies. we'd rather become backward and live in stone age rather than be ruled by bastards from umno. we love our nik aziz but trengganu people don't seem to love their great tuan guru hj hadi very much.

but not this time around! they have done BETTER than we kelantanese would have done. i think if this 'buy-election' had occured in any kelantan seat ,with all the bn big goons swarming the place , and the unheard of promises and candies thrown every which way, WE would have wilted! but you, people of P36 did not wilt this time! you're the hero! i'm overjoyed.

and looking at this picture of raja petra kamarudin (RPK) broke down in tears , overwhelmed with emotion brings tears to my eyes. now here's a man - a special one among many - who had worked so hard and tirelessly to ensure the KT people especially the chinese to vote for PAS.

this by- election proved many things and all the political wags will have a field day in the next few weeks to come spinning and pontificating to their hearts' content but i'll just point to one. khairi jamaludin was quite cocky when he tought he trapped PAS and dragged the 'hudud' issue in as a bogey for chinese voters , but this failed. ironically the debates that ensued and explanations by PR people and thanks to people like RPK in the end it turned into a a non issue here and ultimately with better understanding it will perhaps lessen the fear among non muslims in malaysia as a whole. in short KJ looked like an asshole. i'm amazed why umno is so besotted with this guy. the fucker is a liability to umno. and that reminds me. why on earth did umno still drag that rat ezzam to do last minute dirty job for them?. that cost umno a few hundreds votes at least.


and so, i hope this sweet victory in kt proves once again that malaysians are not too stupid after all. i can see a potential new beginning of a really new malaysia where malaysians of all colors and religions will live and love each other as one.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

 

altruism


scientists are very clever people. take my collegues for example. they are in the business of torturing rats to find out certain things. it's not always rats though. in some cases they do it to rabbits, and also to other 'lower' animals like birds, fishes, and even earthworms. and in the old days to 'higher' animals like dogs and monkeys. but these days they just stick to rats mostly, or sometimes to rabbits and guinea pigs.


and the things they do to these animals are rather interesting . for example they force feed certain chemicals to pregnant rats to see if these rats will abort their feotus. and they force feed male rats to see if their little balls and their little peckers will shrink as a result of feeding on these chemicals. sometimes they will spary these chemicals into the rats' eyes and see if these will result in what they refer to as 'eye irritation'. needless to say some may go blind if the chemical is nasty enough. in other cases they will feed these rats at varying doses over long period of time and at the end of the 'experiment' they will cut up the animals to see if the chemical produce CANCER to any organs.


and all these tortures, slow death and killings are done in the name of science and for the benefit of mankind. because the thing is, from all these tortures my collegues will get a body of data and results which they will then extrapolate to us human beings and make a wise ponouncement whether a certain chemical can be used by humans without giving any unaccepatble health hazard and risk. so in a sense my fellow collegues, who are so pacifist and won't hurt a flea , all very upright and some very god fearing and religious even, can sleep easy. what they do is something they had to do for the greater good of fellow human beings.


i guess that is how people like george bush and those israelis justify their atrocities. they have blood on their hands but the things they had to do are something unavoidable. something they had to do for the greater good of mankind. i suppose the same argument also applies to the suicide bombers and all the other 'murderers' who kill for idealism. i suppose the nazis cooked up about six million jews because they think their action was for the greater good of mankind for in their eyes jews were vermins. so who are we to say who is right and who is wrong?


what is the difference between killing one man and one million? what is the difference of killing a rat and killing a human being. the jains of india certainly won't see any difference there. and so we go on and on for ever and ever killing each other because we think what we do is for the greater good of mankind. we burn and sacrifice ourselves because we think these are a small price to pay for the ultimate goal. in a morbid way we think that these killings are in fact an act of altruism.


i once had a conversation with a british taxi driver in a very little quaint town called letcombe and i remember mentioning to him that if a man from two thousands years ago were to raise up from the dead he would find our world now with all the technology and modernization would be completely alien and incomprehensible to him but he would find absolutely no change in our human psyche. our greed, our thirst for blood and our territorial instinct will be completely understood by him. we have not changed an iota in these respect from the first bipeds that ever walk on the face of the earth since half a million years ago.


i wanted to talk more along this line but he wasn't interested so we found a common ground and talked about women with big tits instead.

Monday, January 05, 2009

 

films i watched in the last week of 2008

uncharateristically of me, i watched quite a lot of dvds in the last week of 2008. first i watched the openly gay director gus van sant's very good gay themed film my own private idaho. i'm 110% hetero but i absolutely have nothing against gays and lesbians and as long as a film is good i don't care if it's a gay themed film or a gangster movie or a comedy or whatever. and by sheer good luck i saw andrei tarkovsky's 1974 sci-fi classic solaris in the bargain bin at my usual pirate dvd store and watched this several days ago. the film was based on a book of the same title by the polish writer stanislaw lem . this moody and complex film moved me to go and dig stanley kubrick's classic 2001: a space odyssey for an encore. although this film was made in 1968 the special effects still doesn't look dated. the film was based on the book by arthur c clarke.

on the last day of 2008 i watched a very good film the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford. based on the book of the same title. easily one of the best films of 2008 in my book and the last minutes of 2008 went by without me noticing it. what a boring life. i spent my last day of 2008 sitting at home watching a pirate dvd rather than popping all those fancy pills and screwing around in sex parties like some people apparently did.

watching a good old western movie led me to dig old cowboy movies and i revisited an old favorite , the wacky sergio leone's the good the bad and the ugly. and after that the lawrence kasdan's wyatt earp and last night watched the recent ed harris quite funny cowboy movie appaloosa based on a novel of the same name. and so i thought that's enough of westerns for a while and so i picked something quite different. i chose modigliani a film about this famous painter. i had a special affinity with modigliani not least in the sense that his is one of the first art books i ever bought. when i was a young student many years ago i bought modigliani and the painters of montparnasse. it was on 27 December 1979.

modigliani is a very captivating film despite what the critics say. uncharateristically 'tomatometer' in rotten tomatoes only gave a very low 5% approval rating. the lowest i've ever seen for a movie in this movie review site. but this is totally rubbish. modigliani is fantastic , at least up to the first 30 minutes of the film.

i can't watch the film beyond that because my stupid pirated dvd just got stuck there. that's one of the setbacks of buying pirated dvds from china. some are ok and some can be played half way. and so i did the next best thing. download it using ares but again, bad luck. the one i downloaded had no subtitles and the language is french. and i download again, this time i make sure it has english language. bad luck again, this , the only one in english has a very poor connection. the download goes nowhere. so i am stuck.

and then i turned to youtube. and found this. this clip of paintings by modigliani has a fantastic and moody music by Pasquale Catalona. a complete unknown to me. it is a soundtrack from a 2004 italian film le conseguenze dell'amore. i need to go and look for this film. and for pasquale catalona.

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