Repeat Post: The Gestapo Franchise

Hello to my blog, people who have just come from Facebook! This is a special repost for you.

Again I am on public transport.

I don't know why I stick with it - I could drive - but perhaps it's out of some kind of environmental (and now socio-political, given the war in Iraq) responsibility I feel to support mass transit; or perhaps it's due to some quaint notion that Melbourne's public transport actually provides some service. That's more weltschmertz to deal with, as Melbourne's system disappoints me at every turn.

So my sister and I catch the 477 10:50am bus from our home. A strange, totally empty bus passes us, unmarked and the driver doesn't look us in the eye. We wonder why. Is it late? Was it canceled? The unaccountability of buses is bloody amazing. They can cancel buses at whim and never have to announce it, all the while still calling their lacklustre bus line a "service" - how Orwellian! The actual bus is over 5 minutes late, being driven by the rudest driver I have ever had the displeasure of knowing. This guy has also driven off on me twice, while I was clearly standing there right in front of the door, waving at him to keep the fucken things from closing on me. This guy doesn't ever look you in the eye, doesn't bother to answer your questions about how much a given ticket is with full sentences, and enjoys waiting past the due time at time checkpoints and then driving the bus, Keeanu Reeves in Speed style, in an attempt to drift the long vehicle down the back lanes of Moonee Ponds.

Jay Chow stars in Initial D II: Revenge of the Bus Driver's Union!

We found out why the bus was late. It was packed with mums with prams and teenagers rocking their Motorolla RAZRs and iPods. Run more buses, Tullamarine Bus Company.

For the first time ever, I saw bus inspectors! Yes, that's right - you heard it here first. The Gestapo are now working on all of Melbourne's public transport systems.

They got on at the depot, resplendent in their regulation uniforms and imperious manner. Surely they knew the bus was running horrendously late. They actually announced to us to all "get our tickets ready for inspection." Also of note was that fact that there were five or six buses just sitting there, so lonely, without anyone to drive them. I said:

My ticket for inspection? You mean the one I had validate to get past the driver to get on? Like the one my sister had to to buy off the driver when we got on?

God, I hate running through rules imposed arbitrarily, like some poor show dog jumping through hoops repeatedly at its owner's whim.

He said yeah: "And I don't give my permission for you to take a photo of me, and put it on your blog or youtube, or whatever."

Yes sir.

There is surely some kind of broken logic working here. Perhaps the government regulators of our system live in a parallel universe, where logic is not logic. Why else would the transport minister ask her colleagues not to forward complaints from regular citizens regarding her portfolio?

I get to Essendon (or Moonee Ponds?) train station. Trains canceled. Connex apologies for my inconvenience for the eight-thousandth time. The next thing must be SEEN to be believed. They make us wait 20 minutes, with the "time till train arrives" changing with no regard to the real time, moving backwards and forwards ALL ON ITS OWN. 20 minutes later, when the next train is due, the announcements says that the original train has come. 20 minutes late - it's actually the NEXT train - I wonder if they get fined less for late trains rather than canceled trains?

Maybe this fuxn thing happened:




From the heart of hell I stab at thee! Comment if you hate Connex.

Short Reviews

I used to be a film critic for a lifestyle website, and if you know me at all, you know me loves ze filmses. Here is a short, unedited ramble about why you should watch my top three.

1. Hero (China, 2002)

The most beautiful film ever made. Christopher Doyle's cinematographic artistry combines with the vision of Zhang Yimou and the martial arts perfection that is Jet Li to create, in effect, the world's premier piece of cinematic history. Hero is a story told in colours that develops with Byzantine twists and turns in the style of Rashômon, rending the heart with its beautiful tale.

The King of the Kingdom of Qin (Chen Da Ming) receives word that lowly county sheriff with no name (Jet Li) has fought and defeated the three greatest warriors of the neighbouring kingdom of Zhao, Flying Snow (In the Mood of Love's Maggie Cheung), Broken Sword (Infernal Affair's Tony Leung Chi Wai) and Sky (Donnie Yen).

The nameless warrior is received into the court as the head of ten thousand families, sitting but paces from the King. From this vantage point, the nameless warrior tells his lord of the story of how he conquered the three warriors using love and hate.

The King of Win is no fool and realises that the nameless warrior's tale is a complete lie - and the King believes that he has the true story figured out. All is not as it seems - the truth is an elusive quarry.

From the tale told, all will learn that the greatest hero is one that does not fight, and that true understanding is achieved without violence.

But for those who live in a world ravaged by war and plagued by the sword, it takes a great hero to find a love that lasts beyond life, to find a meaning beyond the endless bloodshed, and to find perfection in all arts.

This is Hero.

No shot is wasted, from Moon's (Zhang) single rolling tear drop after her master's ultimate betrayal of her innocence, to a perfect shot of Flying Snow and Broken Sword as peaceful, warrior-scholar lovers. The cinematography is unmatched, and the script represents two years of work from China's greatest filmmaker, so it is sure to not disappoint.

Yes, there are undertones of totalitarianism in implicit support for the reign of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, but to dislike this film for such petty political reasons to deprive yourself of truly great art, and blind yourself to deeper meaning.

*************************

2. The King and the Clown (Korea, 2005)

Wang-eui Nam-ja is, without a doubt, Korea's greatest film. In a nation whose cultural phenomenon known as Hallyu is sweeping across the world, proving so popular that some Asian countries are attempting to curb the one-way flow of this marginal imperialism, we have something truly worthy of importing.

My mind is still boggling.

Korea is the origin of many a fluffy romantic drama and chiseled popstar. Who would have known that amongst the "My Sassy Girl"'s and the violent meaninglessness of various wannabe Beat Takeshi films such as "Old Boy" there would be my number two pick? This film has won pretty much every Korean award there is, and a few international ones to boot. It's a damn shame that they didn't run it in Cannes.

The literal translation of the Korean, Japanese (王の男) and Chinese (王的男人) titles of this film are "All the King's Men" or "The King's Man" - a more poetic and deserving title than the English, evoking exactly its original eponymous pun. Wang-eui Nam-ja is a heart-rending tragedy in the finest Shakespearean tradition, updated for modern sensibilities and set in Korea's most popularised period, the turbulent Chosun Dynasty, during the reign of King Yeonsangun of Joseon.

It is a tale of two street entertainers, Jang-Seng (Gam Wu-seong) and Gong-Gil (Lee Jun Ki), who escape life in a circus under a heavy-handed circus owner, who pimps out the (male) feminine actor Gong-gil to bisexual barons and petty landlords who are curious about the man who would act like a woman. Jan Seng is Gong Gil's unspoken protector and friend and eventually convinces the other to escape from the traveling troupe.

Do not be so small minded as to let that confused gender bending turn of events put you off. Lee Jun Ki's performance is spellbinding, as an actor who, who specialises in female characters, moving and talking and acting so much like a female one wonders whether he truly is male. A scene in particular, played out over grassy field, where the two runaways deal with their worries and fears by falling back on the only reassurance they know - acting it out in a beautiful, poignant and multi-layered ad-lib play about two blind old men.

Things take a turn for the better when the two entertainers flee the clutches of the old circus master and get to Seoul. They manage to out dance, out sing, out perform all the rival entertainment there, and begin a show that directly mocks the King and his sexual obsession with his mistress - a fact widely known in gossip circles. But mocking the powerful has its price, and the two are drawn into powerful palace intrigues and yet another show of masks and acting - the true story of the man behind the throne, with all its human complexity.

Do not miss this goddamn film.

*******************************

3. Fight Club, (Hollywood, 1999)

Do you really need a review to see this film?

It is not, as most women seem to believe before watching it, some kind of macho guys only beat-em-up film. Blame that on the stupendously stupid marketing campaign.

As an underground DVD hit, Fight Club is the story of the modern man, raised by the single mum and struggling to find meaning behind service desks and collared shirts. It is the ranting, raging, powerful outpouring of a generation that sees no salvation of the nation, no hope in god, no struggle in war. In the words of Tyler Durden:

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

How would one act in a society that places self perfection, the feminisation and the taming of man, as the end goal of human progress? Indeed, very pissed off.

It's Fight Club. You really don't need me to explain more.

******************

The others, which I will get around to at some point in time:

4. The Road Home (China, 1999)
5. The Jammed, (Australia, 2007)
6. All about Lily Chou Chou (Japan, 2001)
7. LoTR Trilogy (2001-03)
8. Once Upon a Time in China (HK, 1991)
9. Star Wars Eps 5,4,6 (1977-83)
9.5: (NEW) Lust, Caution
10. Matrix (1999)
11. In the Mood for Love (HK, 2000)
12. Miracles (HK, 1989)
13. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Japan, 1984)
14. To Live (1994)
15. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
16. A Very Long Engagement (France 2004)
17. Dead Poets Society, by Peter Wier (1989)
18. Zoolander (2001)
19. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ireland ,2006)
20. The Incredibles, by Pixar (2004)
21. Toy Story 1&2, by Pixar (1995, 1999)
22. The Gangs of New York (2002)
23. The Pianist (2002)
24. Troy (2007)
25. Infernal Affairs (2002)
26. Being John Malkovich (1999)

Wikipedia again

Taking a moment away from my massive addiction to Facebook, I found a few interesting articles about Wikipedia featuring an interview with the "liberal" creator of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and "conservative" Mr. Robert Cox. Here are a further posts about Wikipedia, from various points of view.

Warning: It's a very long read, you could just read the interview (first post), and then scroll to the "Cult of the Amateur" section in the last article. For those with some guts to get into great detail, the second article is amazing, and pedantically outlines everything that needs to be said about Wikipedia's poor quality in some pretty exacting detail.

It certainly won't change the opinions of my fellow free-information software engineers, but it certainly does illustrate that my opinion is not the ramblings of a lone lunatic.

While I was reading the first article, I found three things stuck with me:

1. Why are Americans so obsessed with labeling this or that person "liberal" or "conservative"? It seems to be a label that seeks to divide people into two groups, an never acknowledging that there is a middle ground, or even that the true situation is very much a spectrum - a whole, massive range of middle is possible. Such a black-and-white mentality clouds the discussion and draws battle lines for lots of people to knock heads, but will foster very little compromise.
   
2. There seems to be a kind of xenophobic fear that these "conservatives" have (and Jimmy Wales loves to exploit, pointing it out repeatedly) that the rest of the world is not as conservative as the U.S., and in fact far more liberal. Jimbo seems to want to paint Robert Cox, in that article at least, to be a rest-of-the-world fearing anti-liberal campaigner. But it really does get you thinking. What is "neutrality"? What is liberal/conservative, as a label, really?
   
3. Jimmy Wales is not very good at defending Wikipedia - he's okay at re-explaining things that his detractors get wrong (either accidentally or deliberately), but he's not very good at giving an impartial point of view or backing up his own side with anything that is not anecdotal or personally opinionated.
   

Let me know what you think!

The last article goes onto a tangential point, and says:

And so, having gone on for so long, I at long last come to my point. The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it's created by amateurs rather than professionals, it's free. And free trumps quality all the time. So what happens to those poor saps who write encyclopedias for a living? They wither and die. The same thing happens when blogs and other free on-line content go up against old-fashioned newspapers and magazines. Of course the mainstream media sees the blogosphere as a competitor. It is a competitor. And, given the economics of the competition, it may well turn out to be a superior competitor. The layoffs we've recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.

What do my fellow free-information software engineers think? Are we really so idealistic to believe that all the open-source, free-software anti-corporation software we are creating isn't going to affect the software economy and ultimately make us poorer? It's kind of a loaded question, I know, but I feel just a little bit queasy every time I hear open-source software described in semi-rapturous tones, as if being open-source is an inherent good.

I'm far from a free-market loving uber-capitalist, but I am very wary of points of view that seem more like dogma than cogent arguments.

Fighting, I sit

I sit.

Thin slivers of light enter my room from the faint diffuse street lamps outside. Row upon row of twinkling bars they form, an outline of the world outside. A war rages inside.

It's quiet. The breeze cools the crystal tears upon my cheeks, tracing a faint outline of the grief that dwells within. Its cadences and waveforms break upon the rock of my mind, and tears, unbidden, begin anew.

The grief that dwells within runs rampant, a morose darkness that sweeps across the expanse of my virgin happiness, desecrating, destroying.

I sit.

My hands clasp around my knees, wrapped tightly around my body, as if to shield that which is within from that which is without. The darkness, my friend, my lover, my only consolation from the opposition that exists in the light.

It's dark. An empty roar, the sound not of wind but of the air itself. Dragged objects. The crickets hum outside, a hum repeated as if to a great, spiraling infinity, I listen.

The grief is one I can defeat. But it is fed from without, from and unending torrent of passion, emotion and fiery violence.

I sit.

Motionless, where I must. Chilled to the bone from the reverberating footsteps that signal a return to my grief, and a feeding of the inner daemon. The sacrifice of my inner resistance upon an altar built from tears and blood.

I shudder. Sounds that walk by. I shudder at the tremors in the ground, at the light touch of the breeze against my skin.

Taut, coiled elastic as a tremulous snake, I hold my ground and clasp my knees. The war rages inside.

Fighting.

Fighting.

Fighting, I sit.

Earthsea: Why is they white?

Again about Tales of Earthsea:

Ursula K. Le Guin said this:

"I have received letters that broke my heart, from adolescents of color in this country and in England, telling me that when they realized that Ged and the other Archipelagans in the Earthsea books are not white people, they felt included in the world of literary and movie fantasy for the first time."
— Speech to the Book Expo America children's literature breakfast, June, 4, 2004.

They ruined her book in the American miniseries, but I never expected the Japanese to miss this point: the characters of Earthsea are black. They are dark skinned, the same colour as say, American Indians or native Pacific Islanders.

They made Ged white! They made everyone white! Only Tenar is supposed to be white!

They'res scarcely enough non white fantasy/sci-fi heroes around, somebody's gotta leave us with something to look up to.

This is a bigger issue:

For decades, we've had to endure Tolkien's "White men of the West" vs. the "swarthy, evil multitudinous men of the East", which you can argue was a product of the times. Conan the barbarian was a tanky white man versus hordes of ethnic-looking people, also a product of the times.

Spot the difference:

• Muad'dib Paul Atredies, Emperor of the Universe, (Dune, F. Herbert)
• Rand al'Thor, The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time, R. Jordan)
  
• The Companions of the Lance (Dragonlance, M. Weis/T. Hickman)
• Harry Potter, and his friends.
  
• Garion, Overlord of the West (Belgariad, Malloreon; D. Eddings)
• Every superhero in every comic: Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Wonderwoman, 90% of the X-men, Captain America, the entire former and present Avengers, the entire Fantastic Four;
• Name your-science fiction hero - Hari Seldon, every Star Trek Captain, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, the list goes on.

They're all white.

The only non white people are sidekicks, lesser characters, comic relief, or GET KILLED. Even when we do get our boys on the screen, they are naught but comic relief, and never, ever get the girl, and never get to be the hero or overshadow the white people.

• Ororo/Storm (X-men) - the only non white person on the (Ultimate Universe, 1610) roster. Seems a little bit token, methinks. Meanwhile, every white boy fantasy is played out, white leaders like Professor X and Cyclops, white heroes with awesome powers like Angel and Wolverine. The only token that they'll even allow non-white is the "hot chick" role - e.g., Psylocke, who used to be British, is now Japanese; resident hottie Storm is black.

• Hiro Nakamura/DL Dawkins (Heroes) are excellent! But we don't let this infringe on our white man fantasy - these heroes are powerful, but the guys who can take any power they wants just by thinking about it/chopping heads off and is gloriously and ridiculously unmitigated supermen are Peter "I'm important, look at me" Petrelli and Gabriel "I can't die" Sylar.

• DL dies (cause he's black) and Hiro doesn't get the girl.

• Takezo Kensei, greatest Samurai in Japanese history - some English guy!?!

• The Last Samurai - starring Tom Cruise!?!

• The Immortal Iron Fist, greatest martial artist ever... is... Danny Rand = some white guy!?!
  

Don't get started on David Eddings: the defenders of the west (who are white, blond, Alorns = Vikings, Asutrians = Frenchmen, Mimbrates = English, Tolnedrans = Romans) against the unrelenting hordes of the East (Nyssians = Egyptians, Murgos = Huns, Malloreans = Persians).

Even Forgotten Realms and their franchises are in on the act, the Tuigan (= Mongols) invade the Western Empires of Faerûn (= the goodies, who live in Europe) from the East, and it's up to King Azoun IV of Cormyr (= France) to stop them.

Baldur's Gate, the arguably greatest RPG ever made, gets my props for including Yoshimo, "Japanese", and prompty loses them by making him betray the entire party.

Even Jackie Chan isn't allowed to be sucessful with women in a romantic way in any Hollywood movie - the white girls find him "cute" but the cardinal rule is that he should never, ever get jiggy with them. Chris Tucker's character gets them in Rush Hour, Owen Wilson's character gets them in Shanghai Noon.

White people reading this definitely think I'm bitching about nothing at all. Don't give me shit about how "no one notices what colour people are in the novels." That's cause you have a luxury to have been blind all your life to the divisions of peoples and colour that non-whites face everyday, entrench in our shared popular culture. It's a luxury that we don't and can't share.

Ursula K. Le Guin said this:

"I think it is possible that a good many readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, maybe don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being 'colorblind.' Nobody else does."
— Commentary on Slate, Dec. 16, 2004.

I'm not being unreasonable - all I'm asking for is one Asian character, I don't care who or what he is, but one Asian character in a major book, comic or film made by anyone, that I can look up to.

Just treat him/her exactly the same as you would treat any white protagonist. They do cool things. They have cool powers. They are attractive, and get the girl. They *aren't* some cheap Fu Manchu rip off, and they save the day, flying the spaceship, fighting the sword fight, finding the holy artifact.

Please.

Yellow men need role models too!

In Other News...

The SMH's technology section is so full of wonderful, informative articles.

One problem (of many) with Australian media is that the whole shebag is geared toward old, conservative, baby boomer Australia, who really don't know anything about technology at all, least of all anything on the internet.

But god, do they love writing articles about it!

Ripped from the links above, we have.

• Poor little boy, realises that four hours a day of games is baaaad for him!
• A study finds games are baaaaad.
• Children like playing games. That's baaad.
  

XKCD said it best:

"People try to shut us d-d-down
Just cause our music gets around
Old folks act like total noobs
Get off OUR net, YOU block the tubes
Why don't you all just d-d-disconnect
And don't try an' grok our dialect
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensatation
I'm just blogging about my generation"

The SMH, Sensationalism, Government Control

Wow! Singapore bans Mass Effect, a game that features "a scene of lesbian intimacy".

My favourite Chinese-run nation state in the world is so ultra conservative it's can't handle a little bit of alien lesbian love.

Of course, The SMH being the fountain of information that it is, also provided us with a further tidbit of information:

"As part of major revisions to the Penal Code approved by parliament last month, Singapore legalised oral and anal sex between heterosexual couples but retained a law which criminalises intercourse between gay men."

I only have three comments.
1. Can you say sensationalism!?!?
2. Shi-et. I'm glad all the Singaporean couples, husbands and wives, casual sex buddies and international students can now begin to explore the sweet, sweet avenues of oral and anal hanky panky, because the government told them that it is okay now. Because you know, we wouldn't want to break the law in the privacy of our own bedrooms.
3. I wonder how he powers that be policed these horribly illegal acts before this change in legislation?