NVDL: If Beeld was an English newspaper, The Star would be in trouble. At least we won't have stories like these when easy motoring finally slides into oblivion. In SA 13000 die annually on our roads.
 clipped from www.news24.com
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
BEELD: Tiener-vriende sterf saam
Ideas Worth Spreading featuring Jim Kunstler (VIDEO Distributed by BMW)
"Here's a building that's designed to look like a DVD player" - Jim Kunstler.
Click here to watch the video.
Kunstler: The sclerosis of American life is shocking
Everywhere you turn in this nation, you see a society primed for implosion. We seem unaware how extraordinary the American experience has been, especially in the last hundred years. By this, I don't mean that we are a better people than any other society -- these days, ordinary people in the USA make an effort to appear thuggish and act surly, as though we were a nation of convicts -- but for decade-upon-decade, we were very fortunate. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s may seem like a relatively peaceful and gentle "time out" from a frantic era of hypertrophic growth, compared to the storm we're sailing into now.
NVDL: America is a nation of places not worth caring about. The world is filled with cities and eyesores not worth caring about, and so it's no surprise that we don't.
We were fortunate to inhabit a New World filled with productive land, lots of minerals, and plenty of coal, oil, and gas; and the land itself was insulated physically from the great theaters of 20th century conflict, though we fought in wars "over there." That experience itself, especially our victory over manifest evil in the Second World War, left us with a dangerous mentality of triumphal exceptionalism. Even now, we think we are immune to the epochal hazards of history. The notion that nothing really bad can happen to us is reflected in the blind cluelessness of our current news media and their simple failure to report what is now happening.
I drove up along an obscure stretch of the upper Hudson river on Sunday, starting in the old factory town of Cohoes, north of Albany, where the Mohawk River runs into the Hudson. There is a powerful waterfall there, and along the high bank the massive old red-brick Harmony Mill still stands with its Victorian towers and mansard roofs, like a vision from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Behind them are streets of red-brick, three-story worker row-housing from the same period. Today they are inhabited by a different kind of poor people, not necessarily working, and probably suffering from a sheer lack of structure in their lives as well as plain poverty of means. These are people who probably don't follow the Bloomberg financial bulletins, and their experience of a cratering economy may only be the rising cost of cigarettes and beer.
The tattoo quotient among both men and women there is impressive. In the days when the Harmony Mill was built, only South Seas cannibals and sailors wore tattoos. You wonder: are tattoos now the only way left for this class of Americans to assert their selfhood? And what exactly are they proclaiming? I am a warrior. Or is it: I am a television (I display pictures, too) !? The expanding class of the poor-and-idle has been remarkably passive in the face of their dwindling prospects. Perhaps they passed the point years ago (a generation or two ago!) when there was any sense of sequential improvement for the family's station-in-life. The destiny of their everyday lives must seem totally beyond their control. They are subject to the fate of distant corporations who sell the staple corn-syrup byproducts and gasoline on which daily life is based. Where government is concerned, they are all potential victims of Katrina-ism, awaiting their own personal disaster.
North of the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson was the old town of Waterford, where the Erie Canal began its journey west -- bypassing those powerful waterfalls. The locks are still there and still in operation for the infrequent tanker ships and ore barges that come and go to the Great Lakes. But the operation of the canal system is automated to the extent that it requires only a handful of people to run the locks now, and the town around them has deteriorated into slum and semi-slum garnished with a few convenience stores and pizza shops. There is no other commerce there. No matter how poor, the denizens are required to drive a car to a giant chain store for groceries or hardware or clothing.
As you leave Waterford, the river road becomes a suburban corridor of 1960s-vintage ranch houses and stand-alone small retail business buildings which, if used at all now, are mostly hair salons, chiropractic studios, and other services not generally rendered by the chain stores. All this stuff was deployed along the road with the expectation that Americans would be driving cars cheaply forever. Now that this is distinctly no longer the case, corridors like this are entering their death throes. The awfulness of the design and construction of these buildings is now especially vivid as the plywood de-laminates, and the vinyl soffits fall off, and the dinge of neglect forms a patina over it all. Hopelessness infects this landscape like a miasma. Whatever young adults remain in these places are not thinking about a plausible future, only looking to complete their full array of tattoos and lose themselves in raptures of sex, methedrine, and video aggression.
Eventually, after running through the disintegrating towns of Mechanicville (once a place of earnest labor, just like it sounds, now a morass of sinking car dealerships and Quik-stops), and Stillwater (smaller version of the same), the road turned completely rural and few other cars ventured up there. The decisive Revolutionary battle of Saratoga was fought near there on the bluffs and hills overlooking the Hudson in 1777. You wonder what the heroes of that battle would think of what we have become. What would they make of the word "consumer" that we use to describe our relation to the world? What would they think of excellent river bottom-land that is now barely used for farming -- or, where it is still farmed (dairying if anything), of farmers who will not even put in a kitchen garden for themselves because it might detract from their hours of TV viewing?
The sclerosis of American life is shocking. If you go further north up the Hudson River, to Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, you'll see a nation that seems ready to crawl off and die. There, it appears too far gone to even put up a proxy fight on a video screen. Frankly, I don't want that version of America to survive -- the America of chain stores, and muscle cars, and grown men obsessed with video games, drugs, and pornography, and women decorated like cannibals, and the vast, crushing purposelessness of it all. I have no doubt we're heading into a convulsion that will wring much of this junk and dross into the backwaters of history. We're capable of being something better than this, of putting our time on earth to better use, including a more respectful treatment of the land we inhabit. This year and the next will be the years of letting go, and out of that we'll commence a re-becoming.
The View from my Bicycle (Column)
At recent soccer games between South African sides and Man U, by far the majority of South Africans dressed in red. That's because everyone loves a winner. Which is what makes the support we've seen by our politicians of Zimbabwe so utterly crazy. How do you support someone who runs a country into the ground? There is one possible reason - if you're embarking on the same scheme. That is, finding ways to liquidate a country systematically, and lopping off the gravy for your own account.
In the Mail & Guardian I read an excellent article which said that the current debate shouldn't be about politicians deciding Zimbabwe's future, it should include civilian groups, to allow them the opportunity to redress their own deplorable circumstances. After all, it's politicians that have screwed that country up royally. Tsvangirai and Mugabe sit around playing cards deciding how the spoils should be shared, while South Africa's president nods sagely...this bodes ill for Africa and the subcontinent.
There is a saying in the bible that if you are given a little and you do nothing with it, it will be taken away. With great power comes great responsibility. Africa's leaders, almost without exception (Botswana is one) fritter away responsibility. I think a reckoning is at hand. The great powers are amassing, and looking at Africa with envious eyes. It is a continent that has loitered over its own resources. In the same way that the USA supports a dictatorial regime in Saudi (one friendly to their interests), we are likely to see the Chinese and Americans playing chess with African governments, and while the politicians feather nests, the people will burn. Right now, they smoulder.
250 000 people have streamed into Botswana via Zimbabwe recently. In South Africa, the country that points the finger of blame endlessly to the evils of Apartheid, now exposes itself as a hotel for hypocrisy. After faux measures were taken to 'take care' of foreign immigrants, these are now being hounded and harassed by the authorities. The news tonight had that old Apartheid dog Pik Botha troubling the current authorities with the illegality of land seizures. Botha was saying that the Constitution that was agreed upon via a process during '92, '93 and '94 never agreed to these measures (land can be bought by government at a price decided by government, and these prices cannot be contested in court - what the government says goes).
I've predicted this before, but we will see - as the high fuel and food situation continues to worsen - crime levels in South Africa soaring to levels that resemble anarchy. It will be a great tide, and vast swathes will cry about the extinction of the Scorpions...nothing will stand in the way of this growing disorder. The police and military will commit acts of violence that will become indistinguishable from the criminals that prey on the innocent.
It is a sad fact that while our 2010 games today seems a foregone conclusion, this time next year there will be serious doubt, and by 2010 the suburbs will be burning, no one will be flying here or overseas. Economies will experience convulsions. A lot of empty stadiums will be standing there, but might find a use as venues for Kristalnacht type ethnic cleansing or rally points for the ANC as they drum up support for Zuma or eventually, both. It will be the greatest battle South Africa has ever seen: The Law vs The Lawless, the Haves vs The Have Nots in a great seizing of fizzling power. In fact, when the country was handed over in '94 to a man leaving jail, the metaphor was not evident. There was a glimmer of hope that Mandela had ushered in a new era. But Mandela was one man. And he has passed the country over to lesser men, with great visions for themselves.
The View From My Bicycle is for a rapid deterioration of law and order in South Africa, and also the complete dissolution of political order and sensibility. I cannot imagine that people will be safe in big cities, or on farms, which begs the question: where will it be safe? Maybe Madagascar. Maybe the moon. The dark night is now upon us.
In the Mail & Guardian I read an excellent article which said that the current debate shouldn't be about politicians deciding Zimbabwe's future, it should include civilian groups, to allow them the opportunity to redress their own deplorable circumstances. After all, it's politicians that have screwed that country up royally. Tsvangirai and Mugabe sit around playing cards deciding how the spoils should be shared, while South Africa's president nods sagely...this bodes ill for Africa and the subcontinent.
There is a saying in the bible that if you are given a little and you do nothing with it, it will be taken away. With great power comes great responsibility. Africa's leaders, almost without exception (Botswana is one) fritter away responsibility. I think a reckoning is at hand. The great powers are amassing, and looking at Africa with envious eyes. It is a continent that has loitered over its own resources. In the same way that the USA supports a dictatorial regime in Saudi (one friendly to their interests), we are likely to see the Chinese and Americans playing chess with African governments, and while the politicians feather nests, the people will burn. Right now, they smoulder.
250 000 people have streamed into Botswana via Zimbabwe recently. In South Africa, the country that points the finger of blame endlessly to the evils of Apartheid, now exposes itself as a hotel for hypocrisy. After faux measures were taken to 'take care' of foreign immigrants, these are now being hounded and harassed by the authorities. The news tonight had that old Apartheid dog Pik Botha troubling the current authorities with the illegality of land seizures. Botha was saying that the Constitution that was agreed upon via a process during '92, '93 and '94 never agreed to these measures (land can be bought by government at a price decided by government, and these prices cannot be contested in court - what the government says goes).
I've predicted this before, but we will see - as the high fuel and food situation continues to worsen - crime levels in South Africa soaring to levels that resemble anarchy. It will be a great tide, and vast swathes will cry about the extinction of the Scorpions...nothing will stand in the way of this growing disorder. The police and military will commit acts of violence that will become indistinguishable from the criminals that prey on the innocent.
It is a sad fact that while our 2010 games today seems a foregone conclusion, this time next year there will be serious doubt, and by 2010 the suburbs will be burning, no one will be flying here or overseas. Economies will experience convulsions. A lot of empty stadiums will be standing there, but might find a use as venues for Kristalnacht type ethnic cleansing or rally points for the ANC as they drum up support for Zuma or eventually, both. It will be the greatest battle South Africa has ever seen: The Law vs The Lawless, the Haves vs The Have Nots in a great seizing of fizzling power. In fact, when the country was handed over in '94 to a man leaving jail, the metaphor was not evident. There was a glimmer of hope that Mandela had ushered in a new era. But Mandela was one man. And he has passed the country over to lesser men, with great visions for themselves.
The View From My Bicycle is for a rapid deterioration of law and order in South Africa, and also the complete dissolution of political order and sensibility. I cannot imagine that people will be safe in big cities, or on farms, which begs the question: where will it be safe? Maybe Madagascar. Maybe the moon. The dark night is now upon us.
Monday, July 28, 2008
I haven't been to Namibia yet...
Must go...perhaps this spring...
 clipped from travel.yahoo.com
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For one reason or another, the 2008 Olympics will be remembered
The stakes are high. It's US vs China- they are competing in sports for medals, and in the real world for resources. Who will win, and what lengths will each go to win? Willthere be cheating? Will Phelps break Mark Spitx' ultimate medal haul? Will the athletes suffer asthma and choke on China's noxious atmosphere? In sum, will it be a success, and will there be another games in a world with no airlines?
Meanwhile, what will terrorists achieve in this Olympics, and who would dare to bankroll them?
Meanwhile, what will terrorists achieve in this Olympics, and who would dare to bankroll them?
 clipped from www.nytimes.com
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Dark Knight to be biggest movie in history
I predicted after watching this flick that The Dark Knight would be historic, breaking all previous box office records. It is already halfway to eclipsing Titanic's mammoth $600 million earnings.
At our local IMAX cinema today, there was one solitary front row ticket by midday today in the 9pm show, nothing else.
Later this week I will be going to IMAX, making it my third view. And I still have a lot more to write about the movie... I believe there is a reason The Dark Knight is so popular. It is a perfect reflection of the crimes (the growing darkness) of our times. It is a welcome, in a way, to the horror of the real world.
At our local IMAX cinema today, there was one solitary front row ticket by midday today in the 9pm show, nothing else.
Later this week I will be going to IMAX, making it my third view. And I still have a lot more to write about the movie... I believe there is a reason The Dark Knight is so popular. It is a perfect reflection of the crimes (the growing darkness) of our times. It is a welcome, in a way, to the horror of the real world.
 clipped from movies.yahoo.com"Dark Knight" overshadows box office rivals again Batman buried his rivals at the "The Dark Knight" now ranks as the second-biggest movie of The last movie to break $400 million was the 2006 "Pirates
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Price up, circulation down at the Sunday Times, but is local lekker?
Press the panic button
Major newspaper publishers are reporting significant falls in ad revenue and the internet is gobbling up classified. So can print media bounce back from this downturn?
Times raises newsstand price amid falling profits
In 2006, The Sunday Times, Britain's first £2 newspaper, saw its circulation fall 3.74% in September compared 2005, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Although circulations are falling across the board, newspapers hope to maintain their revenues by increasing cover prices.
Today when I visited SPAR at around 5pm, the newspaper racks appeared untouched. Usually there wouldn't be a Sunday Times left come lunchtime. Now it looks as though very few were purchased at all. People are obviously sukkeling, and cutting down on non essential expenses.
I think at times like these people wonder how relevant all those New York Times stories actually are in these times - in Johannesburg. I know I want to know what is happening in my city, in my neighborhood, in my country.
Is this the beginning of the beginning for online news in SA, and the end of newspapers (which have to be a strain on forests, see above graphic) or are both going to take a hit? I wonder. I find it hard to believe we can have both.
I ended up walking out of SPAR with a chocolate eclair, some tomatoes, blitz and braai chicken. Money well spent I'd say.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Report Rotten Reviewers: The 2nd Worst Dark Knight Review I've Read (and it's from M&G)
First of all, I am reading a book titled: Batman and Philosophy, The Dark Knight of the Soul, De Waal's title for his review is The Dark Knight of the Soul. I could end there but I won't.
If you're writing a review with that title you might expect a little gravitas, even a little philosophy, especially if you'd thought up the title to begin with. As such, it's odd De Waal opens up his review with multiple allusions (in two separate open paragraphs) to Batman's camp beginnings. I'm not sure whether even referencing this is relevant given the subject matter at hand, and the space there is to talk about this HUGE flick. You could argue that it is relevant, but then I'd ask (perhaps intuitively) why you chose such a soulful, philosophical, non campy title for your piece. The review then cherry picks it seems from a bunch of reviews I've read, referencing homoerotica, nipples, Alfred as Q, and other non serious, snatch and grab epithets (by the way, de Waal even uses the word 'epithet' in his review.) So for his title, the amount of distracted levity in the piece itself is surprising.
Personally, I wonder whether the following epithets add value to the writing:
The Dark Knight, er, returns to that style... [Ums, ers and aahs...what's that about?]
In the early 2000s (or the zeroes, as I like to call them)... [Too much information thanks]
The title alone announced that we were back to Genesis... [Stick to the plot, this is a comic book hero, not the Bible, and the words you're looking for are 'origin or creation stories/myths]
What that indicates in moviespeak is that a film has a realistic feel... [So you're telling us what words like 'dark' mean... in the special language that only you as a move reviewer, fluent in moviespeak, understands. Intwisting]
Christian Bale, of course, returns as Batman, plausibly butch without being a bonehead...[Bale, butch, bonehead. Of course, you're simultaneously insulting and complimenting your hero, but perhaps you needed to decide what it was that you actually meant to say or convey, rather than just using clever...er lexical choices.]
Freeman, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Maggie Gyllenhaal are likewise returnees... [Is a returnee like an employee?]
...there's talk of a posthumous Oscar [Yes, there is. Anything else?]
And, yes, it is indeed "dark"... [Indeed]
...because he's not really a superhero in the way Superman, say, is a superhero. [You don't say]
...I dare say it will be restored... [Don't you dare.]
The movie is undoubtedly skillful in the highest degree, but it did make this reviewer at least long for a dose of full-on over-the-top fantasy. Roll on Hellboy II, I say. [Are you sure that's what you are longing for? You don't want to let us know more of your personal longings while you're at it? Anyway, so long...]
There are a lot aren't they, and I found all of them incredibly irritating. On the other hand, the review itself became an interesting study for how not to write a review, and it was on that basis, that depraved sense of satisfaction, that I bothered to read the rest.
I don't know why we have to read an entire review only to be referenced - at the end - to another movie that the reviewer feels more in the mood for. Could we get a reviewer to write about a movie because they really enjoyed watching it, or at the least, want to stick to writing a review about the movie? There is also something glib about reviewers who do one of two things in their writings:
1) demonstrating their incredible wit and intellectual acumen in a way that distracts - the reader is trying to get past all that self referencing smart alecky twaddle
2) two many spoilers - vomitting up 70% of the plot, thereby robbing the audience of the surprise, but making the reviewer somehow seeming to be the owner, or benefactor of a franchise they have virtually zippo to do with.
This (1 and 2) reminds me of young children who use tracing paper to draw the outlines of cartoons, and then hold these up proudly as 'their picture'.
What I did like in this review was this:
Batman Begins had the realistic style that another British director, Paul Greengrass, used so successfully in The Bourne Supremacy a year before that.
Even the Joker, a real pantomime villain if ever there was one (only the Penguin beats him at that), is transformed here into a convincing psychopath. The characterisation is helped considerably by the fact that he's played by a real actor, Heath Ledger -- and there's talk of a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal. Ledger's Joker isn't funny in the way Jack Nicholson's was: he is simply very scary.
So far the two worst reviews I've read were written by:
1) a woman who appears in general to hate movies
2) a man who didn't seem to like this movie, but otherwise appears to like men, or himself excessively
Both reviewers fail because the focus is on them, how clever they are as wordsmiths (and somehow I'm not sure if that compliment extends beyond Stephahnie Zacharek+).
I would like to offer constructive criticism, so here it is:
The first and best Dark Knight review
My review - keeping it simple and giving away the minimum
One more barb before I sign off. De Waal - isn't that an Afrikaans name? So is English this guy's first or second language? Reason I ask is I taught English in South Korea and two colleagues were second language okes (Afrikaans guys) teaching ESL. I remember the one guy used the word 'rather' in almost every sentence. Even the English aren't that english. The other guy used words like 'realm' and other grandiose sounding words I can't even remember. You can over anglicise* English, but only idiots (and a handful of poorly educated Afrikaners) think it sounds any good, in fact it never sounds any better than the real thing.
I think publications that are interested in selling newspapers, and movies interested in exposure, ought to steer clear of rotten reviewers who compulsively bring themselves into the picture when everyone is trying to get past them (as in, get over yourselves) to find their enthusiastic search for enthusiastic attention for some or other flick rewarded. I also think more reviewers need to say in the very first line: I hated this film/I didn't like this film/This film isn't my thing/I find my job a drag/I find life in general a drag/I'm depressed/I have an inferiority complex and need my ego stroked/I'm not really sure what to say or whatever is the case. That way audiences who know what they are looking for in a review (wise, original, insightful, fresh, passionate responses) can actually find it.
+De Waal does write an intwisting and well written piece entitled SOCK IT TO ME which may provide added background to his fascination with nipples and homoerotica.
*Anglicise: make English in appearance, make fit for, or change to suit a new purpose
If you're writing a review with that title you might expect a little gravitas, even a little philosophy, especially if you'd thought up the title to begin with. As such, it's odd De Waal opens up his review with multiple allusions (in two separate open paragraphs) to Batman's camp beginnings. I'm not sure whether even referencing this is relevant given the subject matter at hand, and the space there is to talk about this HUGE flick. You could argue that it is relevant, but then I'd ask (perhaps intuitively) why you chose such a soulful, philosophical, non campy title for your piece. The review then cherry picks it seems from a bunch of reviews I've read, referencing homoerotica, nipples, Alfred as Q, and other non serious, snatch and grab epithets (by the way, de Waal even uses the word 'epithet' in his review.) So for his title, the amount of distracted levity in the piece itself is surprising.
Personally, I wonder whether the following epithets add value to the writing:
The Dark Knight, er, returns to that style... [Ums, ers and aahs...what's that about?]
In the early 2000s (or the zeroes, as I like to call them)... [Too much information thanks]
The title alone announced that we were back to Genesis... [Stick to the plot, this is a comic book hero, not the Bible, and the words you're looking for are 'origin or creation stories/myths]
What that indicates in moviespeak is that a film has a realistic feel... [So you're telling us what words like 'dark' mean... in the special language that only you as a move reviewer, fluent in moviespeak, understands. Intwisting]
Christian Bale, of course, returns as Batman, plausibly butch without being a bonehead...[Bale, butch, bonehead. Of course, you're simultaneously insulting and complimenting your hero, but perhaps you needed to decide what it was that you actually meant to say or convey, rather than just using clever...er lexical choices.]
Freeman, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Maggie Gyllenhaal are likewise returnees... [Is a returnee like an employee?]
...there's talk of a posthumous Oscar [Yes, there is. Anything else?]
And, yes, it is indeed "dark"... [Indeed]
...because he's not really a superhero in the way Superman, say, is a superhero. [You don't say]
...I dare say it will be restored... [Don't you dare.]
The movie is undoubtedly skillful in the highest degree, but it did make this reviewer at least long for a dose of full-on over-the-top fantasy. Roll on Hellboy II, I say. [Are you sure that's what you are longing for? You don't want to let us know more of your personal longings while you're at it? Anyway, so long...]
There are a lot aren't they, and I found all of them incredibly irritating. On the other hand, the review itself became an interesting study for how not to write a review, and it was on that basis, that depraved sense of satisfaction, that I bothered to read the rest.
I don't know why we have to read an entire review only to be referenced - at the end - to another movie that the reviewer feels more in the mood for. Could we get a reviewer to write about a movie because they really enjoyed watching it, or at the least, want to stick to writing a review about the movie? There is also something glib about reviewers who do one of two things in their writings:
1) demonstrating their incredible wit and intellectual acumen in a way that distracts - the reader is trying to get past all that self referencing smart alecky twaddle
2) two many spoilers - vomitting up 70% of the plot, thereby robbing the audience of the surprise, but making the reviewer somehow seeming to be the owner, or benefactor of a franchise they have virtually zippo to do with.
This (1 and 2) reminds me of young children who use tracing paper to draw the outlines of cartoons, and then hold these up proudly as 'their picture'.
What I did like in this review was this:
Batman Begins had the realistic style that another British director, Paul Greengrass, used so successfully in The Bourne Supremacy a year before that.
Even the Joker, a real pantomime villain if ever there was one (only the Penguin beats him at that), is transformed here into a convincing psychopath. The characterisation is helped considerably by the fact that he's played by a real actor, Heath Ledger -- and there's talk of a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal. Ledger's Joker isn't funny in the way Jack Nicholson's was: he is simply very scary.
So far the two worst reviews I've read were written by:
1) a woman who appears in general to hate movies
2) a man who didn't seem to like this movie, but otherwise appears to like men, or himself excessively
Both reviewers fail because the focus is on them, how clever they are as wordsmiths (and somehow I'm not sure if that compliment extends beyond Stephahnie Zacharek+).
I would like to offer constructive criticism, so here it is:
The first and best Dark Knight review
My review - keeping it simple and giving away the minimum
One more barb before I sign off. De Waal - isn't that an Afrikaans name? So is English this guy's first or second language? Reason I ask is I taught English in South Korea and two colleagues were second language okes (Afrikaans guys) teaching ESL. I remember the one guy used the word 'rather' in almost every sentence. Even the English aren't that english. The other guy used words like 'realm' and other grandiose sounding words I can't even remember. You can over anglicise* English, but only idiots (and a handful of poorly educated Afrikaners) think it sounds any good, in fact it never sounds any better than the real thing.
I think publications that are interested in selling newspapers, and movies interested in exposure, ought to steer clear of rotten reviewers who compulsively bring themselves into the picture when everyone is trying to get past them (as in, get over yourselves) to find their enthusiastic search for enthusiastic attention for some or other flick rewarded. I also think more reviewers need to say in the very first line: I hated this film/I didn't like this film/This film isn't my thing/I find my job a drag/I find life in general a drag/I'm depressed/I have an inferiority complex and need my ego stroked/I'm not really sure what to say or whatever is the case. That way audiences who know what they are looking for in a review (wise, original, insightful, fresh, passionate responses) can actually find it.
+De Waal does write an intwisting and well written piece entitled SOCK IT TO ME which may provide added background to his fascination with nipples and homoerotica.
*Anglicise: make English in appearance, make fit for, or change to suit a new purpose
How/Where to watch the Dark Knight on Imax (and booking information)
South Africa's IMAX website is kak. There are no numbers to call. But help is at hand.
If you live in the Johannesburg or Pretoria area, your best bet is Menlyn. Cnr Atterbury Road & Louis Ave, Menlo Park, Pretoria.
Call: (012) 368 1188 to book.
I have just called and for today there is just one ticket left, and it's a front seat for the 9pm show. I guess I'll be going during the course of the week then...
The schedule for screen 1 is as follows:
12:00 15:00 18:00 21:00 every day, but no 21:00 show on Mondays.
Enjoy.
If you live in the Johannesburg or Pretoria area, your best bet is Menlyn. Cnr Atterbury Road & Louis Ave, Menlo Park, Pretoria.
Call: (012) 368 1188 to book.
I have just called and for today there is just one ticket left, and it's a front seat for the 9pm show. I guess I'll be going during the course of the week then...
The schedule for screen 1 is as follows:
12:00 15:00 18:00 21:00 every day, but no 21:00 show on Mondays.
Enjoy.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Oil's Slippery Logic
Oil prices have slipped $23 dollars since they topped $147. The factors that pushed oil to those levels remain present, and will remain present for the forseeable future. Expect a lot of volatility. Any demand concessions made by the US will be sucked up by China and India. There is no slack in the market, so expect massive up and downward spikes, but the trend overall remains higher.
My Prediction:
I don't see prices going under $110 for the remainder of the year, and see them reaching $150 or higher, even $170, towards the tailend of 2008, particular once that report on the world's wells comes out in August.
My Prediction:
I don't see prices going under $110 for the remainder of the year, and see them reaching $150 or higher, even $170, towards the tailend of 2008, particular once that report on the world's wells comes out in August.
 clipped from www.bloomberg.comCurrent Oil Price `Not Expensive,' Gabrielli Says (Update1)
``Oil is an exhaustible resource,'' Gabrielli said in an
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Sinking Standards and the Dark Night Before the Dawn
Paul Ash's article in this weekend Lifestyle is pretty good. The last paragraph is brilliant. That said, the cover of the supplement is festooned with Standard Bank graffiti which shrilly shrieks: swipe your credit card 50 times (or whatever) month and win this. Swipe it 40 times and win that, etc etc. Now I dunno about you, but every time you 'swipe' a card, that usually involves a transaction. So you have this incentive to spend to get something for (apparently) nothing. Er....we are facing chronic interest rates, and nosediving markets in general. With fuel and food prices where they are, should we really - responsibly - be swiping away?
Now I am a fan of Standard Bank for a variety of reasons. My buddy works for the company, and I'm a member of the Standard Bank cycling club (and its an excellent club with lekker perks). As such, I'm disappointed in this frankly irresponsible marketing jaunt. Are marketers just plain dumb, or just plain ruthlessly greedy?
Some people are going to shake their heads at this, but amongst health professionals it is common knowledge that drinking the likes of milk (and milk products) doesn't increase the amount of calcium in the bones, by consuming milk products you tend to discharge or flush out calcium. This is assuming the person doesn't have chronic calcium deficiency to start off with (in which case milk would do some good). See how it works in healthy people is that a person's skeleton acts as a calcium bank. So when calcium is needed (and the blood levels are a measure of this), more and more calcium is withdrawn from the skeleton bank. People become calcium deficient not by consuming too little calcium (in fact, most people consume too much via too many milk products), but by drinking highly sugary beverages like soft drinks, and coffee. Coke and coffee have a leeching effect on the skeleton. I think many people are aware that high volumes of daily cola consumption dissolve the teeth over a relatively short period of time. Btw - teeth are made of bones. Coke (and similar high fatty, high sugar foods) have a similar impact on our skeletons.
There is currently a radio ad - by either Parmalat or Clover - where Alex Jay intones the myth that milk = calcium. It is similar to the myth that meat = protein or 'the only way to get enough protein is by eating meat'. The milk and meat industries rely on this deception to prosper, and while we're at it - so do the egg industries. We get egg in everything these days, including an ordinary chocolate. We don't really need more than a single egg a month, and even then, the albumen is what might come in handy. The rest is cholesterol, exactly what a mature adult doesn't need - in a society where the number one cause of death is heart attacks. Heart attacks are caused principally by poor diet and lifestyle choices (lack of exercise, stress, drinking, smoking) and to some extent from genetic predispositions.
My point is, Alex Jay/Clover or Parmesan blah de blah are not doing anyone any favours either. What would be great would be if the milk industry could find a useful way to do something with that white stuff. Maybe make it into a kind of biofuel. I'm guessing they can't. In fact, the meat industry is the greatest cause of global warming on Earth - so give those cows (the dairy aisle at your supermarket) a miss if at all possible.
Now, believe it or not, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking why is van der leek fucking pontificating about clacium and proteins and heart disease? What do these arbitrary health issues have to do with anything? Thanks for the question. Right now, financial troubles are placing large swathes of middle class suburbia under severe stress. It's financial, but it expresses itself as hopelessness and increasingly - desperation. The upshot of all this (shouldn't it be downshot) is a severely stressed population that is susceptible to disease, depression and disorder. Each of those D's is significant, not least of which DISEASE. People under extreme stress start to suffer increasingly from infections, limiting their already increasingly limited ability to dig themselves out of the financial cemetry that is suburbia. Depression and disorder will feed unopposed in this shark tank filling with the bleeding middle class. So there is very good reason that even at this fairly early stage (let's call it The Beginning) we maintain ourselves as far as possible in good condition. Stay fit, eat well, sleep well, maintain discipline.
In Nedbank this morning I joined a queue ending in a solitary human being perched behind a wooden desk. The queue was moving at 0.000001 km/millennium. A woman in front of me started to complain about the service there (ironically, I did the same thing in the same bank several weeks earlier). Curiously, 4 people including me immediately joined in for a group rant, including an old gentlemen who said he had once been a manager at Nedbank, and called current service levels 'deplorable'. It was not so much the subject of our discussion that I found fascinating, but more the increasing readiness of consumers to bitch and moan. I believe this irritable zeitgeist is spreading around the shopping malls of the world like AIDS through Africa.
That's another thing. Have we forgotten about AIDS. It's a disease you get that kills you but it goes under the radar long enough for you to infect a dozen or so people before you start feeling kak, which boosts its human kill rate. From the behaviour of certain people I know, the AIDS bedfellow is a matter of time (if it's not already there). Shudder.
Last night I was in a movie and since I had no date, had a seat open next to me. H13. After a few minutes a guy comes along, asks if the seat is taken and I say 'No.' He sits his ass down, but about an hour into Dark Knight, when the Joker is doing nurse-duty to Two Face, he starts gabbing with his wife on the phone. I can hear what he's saying, and I can hear what she's saying. I'm actually at the cinema to hear what the characters on screen are saying, but instead, while Heath Ledger is saying I can't remember what, the character beside me is saying:
"I'm in a movie."
"What?"
"A movie. I'm in a movie."
"Oh are you in a movie. When does it finish? And what are you watching..."
The guy goes on and on, and despite a nudge from me, he goes on gabbing for about 2 minutes in all, then signs off and turns to me: "Don't push your arm against me. What's your problem?" He explains his phone is on silent, and he has right to talk to his wife dammit.
"But not in a movie."
The guy goes on to argue with me, when the point is we'd all like to watch the movie, that's why we're here. He tells me if I'm not happy I'm welcome to call security and discuss my problems with them after the movie. I tell him to shutup but the comments keep on coming. So I exit the cinema, call the manager, and have his bum removed from seat H13, a cursed seat that I unfortunately had put money (and a no-show gymnast) on. My point is, you've got a guy sitting in the wrong seat chatting to his wife and asking what everyone else's problem is...
And finally...driving home from work I saw two posters from two different newspapers:
ATM BOMBINGS SOAR
STROOM MENSE UIT SA WORD RIVIER
In today's Mail&Guardian: KEBBLE: SHOCKING NEW CLAIMS
Let me put this into some sort of perspective. During my troubled viewing of Dark Knight, I noticed 2 things which I find frankly scares the bejesus out of me.
1) Just before Dark Knight was a preview of the movie HANSIE. A lot of people - when this came on - were chuckling in the packed cinema, and I daresay someone jibed: the devil made me do it. Thing is, if you watch that preview, it has a lot of gravitas in it. It's not meant to make you chuckle. There ought to be a lot of pain linked to the Hansie ethos. The movie is I think a catharsis for the family, who knows, perhaps the rest of us. In any event, it suffices to say that laughing during the preview presents an astonishing lack of manners from what appears to be the average South African
2) In The Dark Knight many of the Jokers appearances were associated with similar giggling. To clarify - the Joker presents a very disturbing series of escalating scenarios. The Joker is funny peculiar, but everyone knows he isn't really funny. I found the audiences levity (and my seat-neighbors arrogance) galling.
God help us (if there is one), because the night time of this world is approaching...we can allfeel it...this growing sense of gloom...and it really is growing darker. Except, you know there is no Batman, no Commissioner Gordon out there to save us. There's just Gotham, the dark and us.
Batman impersonator to Batman: What's the difference between you and me?
Batman: I don't wear hockey pads.
Now I am a fan of Standard Bank for a variety of reasons. My buddy works for the company, and I'm a member of the Standard Bank cycling club (and its an excellent club with lekker perks). As such, I'm disappointed in this frankly irresponsible marketing jaunt. Are marketers just plain dumb, or just plain ruthlessly greedy?
Some people are going to shake their heads at this, but amongst health professionals it is common knowledge that drinking the likes of milk (and milk products) doesn't increase the amount of calcium in the bones, by consuming milk products you tend to discharge or flush out calcium. This is assuming the person doesn't have chronic calcium deficiency to start off with (in which case milk would do some good). See how it works in healthy people is that a person's skeleton acts as a calcium bank. So when calcium is needed (and the blood levels are a measure of this), more and more calcium is withdrawn from the skeleton bank. People become calcium deficient not by consuming too little calcium (in fact, most people consume too much via too many milk products), but by drinking highly sugary beverages like soft drinks, and coffee. Coke and coffee have a leeching effect on the skeleton. I think many people are aware that high volumes of daily cola consumption dissolve the teeth over a relatively short period of time. Btw - teeth are made of bones. Coke (and similar high fatty, high sugar foods) have a similar impact on our skeletons.
There is currently a radio ad - by either Parmalat or Clover - where Alex Jay intones the myth that milk = calcium. It is similar to the myth that meat = protein or 'the only way to get enough protein is by eating meat'. The milk and meat industries rely on this deception to prosper, and while we're at it - so do the egg industries. We get egg in everything these days, including an ordinary chocolate. We don't really need more than a single egg a month, and even then, the albumen is what might come in handy. The rest is cholesterol, exactly what a mature adult doesn't need - in a society where the number one cause of death is heart attacks. Heart attacks are caused principally by poor diet and lifestyle choices (lack of exercise, stress, drinking, smoking) and to some extent from genetic predispositions.
My point is, Alex Jay/Clover or Parmesan blah de blah are not doing anyone any favours either. What would be great would be if the milk industry could find a useful way to do something with that white stuff. Maybe make it into a kind of biofuel. I'm guessing they can't. In fact, the meat industry is the greatest cause of global warming on Earth - so give those cows (the dairy aisle at your supermarket) a miss if at all possible.
Now, believe it or not, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking why is van der leek fucking pontificating about clacium and proteins and heart disease? What do these arbitrary health issues have to do with anything? Thanks for the question. Right now, financial troubles are placing large swathes of middle class suburbia under severe stress. It's financial, but it expresses itself as hopelessness and increasingly - desperation. The upshot of all this (shouldn't it be downshot) is a severely stressed population that is susceptible to disease, depression and disorder. Each of those D's is significant, not least of which DISEASE. People under extreme stress start to suffer increasingly from infections, limiting their already increasingly limited ability to dig themselves out of the financial cemetry that is suburbia. Depression and disorder will feed unopposed in this shark tank filling with the bleeding middle class. So there is very good reason that even at this fairly early stage (let's call it The Beginning) we maintain ourselves as far as possible in good condition. Stay fit, eat well, sleep well, maintain discipline.
In Nedbank this morning I joined a queue ending in a solitary human being perched behind a wooden desk. The queue was moving at 0.000001 km/millennium. A woman in front of me started to complain about the service there (ironically, I did the same thing in the same bank several weeks earlier). Curiously, 4 people including me immediately joined in for a group rant, including an old gentlemen who said he had once been a manager at Nedbank, and called current service levels 'deplorable'. It was not so much the subject of our discussion that I found fascinating, but more the increasing readiness of consumers to bitch and moan. I believe this irritable zeitgeist is spreading around the shopping malls of the world like AIDS through Africa.
That's another thing. Have we forgotten about AIDS. It's a disease you get that kills you but it goes under the radar long enough for you to infect a dozen or so people before you start feeling kak, which boosts its human kill rate. From the behaviour of certain people I know, the AIDS bedfellow is a matter of time (if it's not already there). Shudder.
Last night I was in a movie and since I had no date, had a seat open next to me. H13. After a few minutes a guy comes along, asks if the seat is taken and I say 'No.' He sits his ass down, but about an hour into Dark Knight, when the Joker is doing nurse-duty to Two Face, he starts gabbing with his wife on the phone. I can hear what he's saying, and I can hear what she's saying. I'm actually at the cinema to hear what the characters on screen are saying, but instead, while Heath Ledger is saying I can't remember what, the character beside me is saying:
"I'm in a movie."
"What?"
"A movie. I'm in a movie."
"Oh are you in a movie. When does it finish? And what are you watching..."
The guy goes on and on, and despite a nudge from me, he goes on gabbing for about 2 minutes in all, then signs off and turns to me: "Don't push your arm against me. What's your problem?" He explains his phone is on silent, and he has right to talk to his wife dammit.
"But not in a movie."
The guy goes on to argue with me, when the point is we'd all like to watch the movie, that's why we're here. He tells me if I'm not happy I'm welcome to call security and discuss my problems with them after the movie. I tell him to shutup but the comments keep on coming. So I exit the cinema, call the manager, and have his bum removed from seat H13, a cursed seat that I unfortunately had put money (and a no-show gymnast) on. My point is, you've got a guy sitting in the wrong seat chatting to his wife and asking what everyone else's problem is...
And finally...driving home from work I saw two posters from two different newspapers:
ATM BOMBINGS SOAR
STROOM MENSE UIT SA WORD RIVIER
In today's Mail&Guardian: KEBBLE: SHOCKING NEW CLAIMS
Let me put this into some sort of perspective. During my troubled viewing of Dark Knight, I noticed 2 things which I find frankly scares the bejesus out of me.
1) Just before Dark Knight was a preview of the movie HANSIE. A lot of people - when this came on - were chuckling in the packed cinema, and I daresay someone jibed: the devil made me do it. Thing is, if you watch that preview, it has a lot of gravitas in it. It's not meant to make you chuckle. There ought to be a lot of pain linked to the Hansie ethos. The movie is I think a catharsis for the family, who knows, perhaps the rest of us. In any event, it suffices to say that laughing during the preview presents an astonishing lack of manners from what appears to be the average South African
2) In The Dark Knight many of the Jokers appearances were associated with similar giggling. To clarify - the Joker presents a very disturbing series of escalating scenarios. The Joker is funny peculiar, but everyone knows he isn't really funny. I found the audiences levity (and my seat-neighbors arrogance) galling.
God help us (if there is one), because the night time of this world is approaching...we can allfeel it...this growing sense of gloom...and it really is growing darker. Except, you know there is no Batman, no Commissioner Gordon out there to save us. There's just Gotham, the dark and us.
Batman impersonator to Batman: What's the difference between you and me?
Batman: I don't wear hockey pads.
Friday, July 25, 2008
In the early 21st century, the death of air travel
Who woulda thunk?
 clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com
But irrational exuberance is nothing if not irrational. The biggest airlines — American, United, Delta, Northwest, Continental and US Airways — can't make money at $130 a barrel. They can't make money at $100 a barrel, either. Nor can their smaller competitors.
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Airlines will be doer and gone in 12 months. So what? No, not so what...
For reference oil prices above $100 render the airline industry as dead as a dodo. Never mind $110, $120 or worse. The last time any airline was profitable was doer and gone at $80.
Meanwhile:
Wags now openly speculate on the survival odds of one carrier or another — Midwest, Frontier (already operating in Chapter 11), US Airways, Sun Country and Spirit seem to be popular picks in death pools — I wouldn't assume any carrier will fold. Or survive. Know your options for every flight you book. And carry your Plan B and Plan C with you in case your carrier folds while you're on the way to the airport. Seriously.
Stop “banking” frequent-flier miles. If you've got enough miles to claim an award, use them now. The value of miles is depreciating even faster thanks to the route cutbacks and new fees imposed when you redeem an award. Besides, if your airline collapses, there's no guarantee that another carrier will step in and honor unused miles.
More.
Meanwhile:
Wags now openly speculate on the survival odds of one carrier or another — Midwest, Frontier (already operating in Chapter 11), US Airways, Sun Country and Spirit seem to be popular picks in death pools — I wouldn't assume any carrier will fold. Or survive. Know your options for every flight you book. And carry your Plan B and Plan C with you in case your carrier folds while you're on the way to the airport. Seriously.
Stop “banking” frequent-flier miles. If you've got enough miles to claim an award, use them now. The value of miles is depreciating even faster thanks to the route cutbacks and new fees imposed when you redeem an award. Besides, if your airline collapses, there's no guarantee that another carrier will step in and honor unused miles.
More.
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