Film Review: Babies (2010)

The reason most films have ‘plots’ and ‘dialogue’ is because staring at ethnic babies gets old after about five minutes.

Yet this film went for eighty…

That’s why I gave it a 0.625/10.

Twilight Raped Me and Gave Me Cancer.

A while ago, in the opinion section of ‘The Age’ website, there was an article by one ‘Jordan Baker’ about Twilight. The basic theme of her article was that ‘The characters in Twilight send bad messages to young girls unlike the characters in books from her childhood who sent good messages to young girls’.  She might have been right, she sounded like she knew what she was talking about, I haven’t read Twilight so I can’t comment. What I have read are billions of posts on the internet condemning Twilight for being a terrible book, a literary abomination on the same level as ‘The Eye of Argon’. It’s important to note that the kind of people who make posts like this are people who still think asking ”so i herd u liek muddkipz?’ is funny, which tells you how much of their thinking is independent, and how much is dependent on subscribing to a particular online culture.

I’m not saying Twilight is good, I already told you: I haven’t read it. What I am saying is that Twilight couldn’t possibly be that bad. My experience with Twilight comes from seeing the types of people who read it. My friend Louise loves it, as does my friend Sarah. Neither of them are idiots, in fact, Sarah is a particularly bright girl. My friend Mathew, who did better than me in high-school and has an understanding of the world that far exceeds my own is a huge fan of Twilight, in fact, he’s the only male I know who admits to liking Twilight.

So what am I saying? That Twilight must be a smart book because smart people read it? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m saying that I’d sooner listen to the opinions of smart, independent thinkers than listen to the opinions of some weaboo neck-beard who thinks ‘memes’ only get funnier the more times you say them.

That being said, I’m still not going to read Twilight. Nothing about that book sounds appealing to me.

Steve Jobs Must Have a Tiny Penis

Steve Jobs must have a tiny penis. He must. There’s no other explanation for the bullshit I have to deal with whenever I want to use my iPod. I used to use Floola, but—

— Sorry, Firefox just closed itself because QuickTime, which installed itself before iTunes (The thing, and ONLY thing, I actually wanted to install) decided to close down all web-browsers for me, because letting me close down my browser when I’m ready would be silly. Apple doesn’t believe in free will, things need to be forced upon the user–

–As I was saying, I used to use Floola, but I made the mistake of charging my iPod on one of the Apple computers in the journalism lab at my University, and ever since then Floola hasn’t worked with my iPod or, to be more accurate, my iPod hasn’t worked with Floola. I know that Floola isn’t the issue here. Floola is made by some independent programmer who probably has decently sized genitals, the issue is iPod. When shit like this happens I can’t help but think “Why would Steve Jobs prevent anyone from making software that competes with iTunes? I mean, I’ve already bought the hardware… and I can download the software for free… isn’t it in Apple’s best financial interest to allow Floola to thrive?” Then the answer hit me: Steve Jobs has a miniscule penis.

Steve Jobs needs the logo of his company on everything. It’s his way of compensating for his all-but-conclave genitals. In fact, Steve Jobs’ entire life becomes a lot clearer when you realize he’s over-compensating. Lets have a look.

Steve Jobs was an orphan. Possibly because his parents saw how tiny his penis was and didn’t want assumptions being made about the men in their family.

In high-school, Steve Jobs attended university lectures instead of hanging out with kids and playing stickball. Possibly because his stick wasn’t large enough to play ball with. If you catch my drift.

Steve Jobs was accused of having an illegitimate daughter by his ex-girlfriend. He rejected the accusation fiercely, and why wouldn’t he? Even if there was a cunt tight enough to stimulate his micropenis cum is too thick to escape from it. Steve Jobs can’t possibly have children with genitals so small.

The People I Know

There’s a guy I know who always used to pick on me in high-school. I don’t blame him, had I not had the obvious handicap of being myself I would’ve picked on me too. As it turns out whenever he picked on me he was always deeply remorseful afterward. This was expressed to me a few weeks ago when he was drunk. In order to make up for the way he had always treated me he told me that if I ever needed anybody physically hurt he had “contacts”. I was appalled by the idea, but my heart was warmed by the sentiment.

I have a list of people I know, not specific people, but types of people, and that night I added another type to the list. A type that, unsurprisingly, had remained under my radar for quite some time. The type of person is “The person who, while sober, tries to express remorse for all the bad stuff he’s done or said to me but in trying to express this remorse he chokes and ends up doing or saying something bad to me.” It appears that inebriation allowed him to drop his macho facade so he could act like something other than an angry and troubled ape.

Another type of person which I clued onto in my last year of high-school was “The person who is nice to me in a condescending manner. Hopefully you get what I’m talking about. This is the friend that thinks they’re doing you a huge favour by hanging out with you. They fail to realize that not everyone is a shallow, ultra-extroverted, moron.

A type of person who has followed me around my entire life is “The person who just hates me, plain and simple and for apparently no good reason”. I don’t understand why they hate me, I don’t say anything particularly mean about anyone. In my last year of primary school, while I was living in Queensland, I literally had no friends. I hung out in the library at lunchtime and mostly kept to myself. I would read a lot, because I didn’t own a computer and there was no television in my room, and I would often bring books into class. Not kids books, books like ’1984′ and ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy’. These books were easy enough to read, but at the same time were considered to be ‘intellectual’ (excuse the conceit). Most people ignored the fact that I read these books except for one kid who seemed to hate me for it. One day, after the aforementioned classmate started a chant “Ding-dong no schlong” (my last name is Bell), I asked him “Why do you hate me?” These were the first five words he had ever really heard me say and his response was “Because you think you’re so smart.” This kid was into engineering and often read books on how to make radios and other electronic devices, and so I think this was the first instance of ‘The misunderstood arts student’ I ever experienced. The rest of my life would be spent expressing how I don’t believe humanities is a noble pursuit at all, just one that entertains me, and how I think people with practical intelligence are much more smarter than I am.

A type of person I added to my list no more than a fortnight ago, based on someone I had been meeting for the first time, is the type of person who shares many interests with me, who knows about and who understands ‘Vonnegut’ and ‘Wodehouse’ but who will ignore me so that they are not ostracized. Let me explain: I was at, well, lets call it an ‘event’ just so I can keep the people involved genuinely anonymous, and at this ‘event’ I knew nobody. At least, I didn’t know anybody in depth. I was not the only one who did not know anybody, there was a girl who had literally never met these people before. So, in the interest of friendliness, I introduced myself to her, she seemed to appreciate this, but as the event progressed it soon became apparent to her that I wasn’t concerned with being well liked by a lot of people. So, despite our shared musical tastes, tastes in books and films and political knowledge, she decided to ignore me and try to win favor with the people who were much more popular and attractive than I was. I do not resent this (much), I just find it odd and, to be a honest, a little funny. Admittedly I felt bad for a few hours, but who gives a shit about people who are just out to climb the social ladder?

Aren’t rationalizations fantastic?

Another type of person I know is the type of person who should frustrate me, but who I absolutely adore. These people tend to be 18-24 year old females who are vegans and call themselves ‘Buddhists’. I really disagree with everything they have to say, but having a conversation with them is so fun that I just can’t get frustrated. When I mention that Prince Sidhartha was a selfish prick they ask ‘Who was Prince Sidhartha?’. I try not to be too condescending to these people, because they tend to be the only people who are genuinely nice to me. They are the type of people who are attractive and well liked (and thus don’t spend huge chunks of their life reading books) but still place a lot of stock in intelligence. They perceive I am smarter than they are and they feel bad about themselves. It’s actually a nice feeling to be the dominant one in a conversation.

The inverse to the above is the person who is opinionated, but refuses to defend their opinions. Being a humanities student I naturally have a lot of conversations with vegans and vegetarians, one of the things I ask them is ‘Why? Why are you a vegan/vegetarian?’ the response usually has something to do with ethics: They think it’s unethical to eat meat. I then present the following argument (courtesy of Maddox) ‘But combine harvesters kill heaps of rats, mice, voles, snakes etcetera’. They usually don’t even think of the best counter-argument (‘Combine harvesters used to harvest grain to feed cattle/fowl still kill those animals’) instead they’ll come up with some exceptionally non-witty quip. The most recent response I’ve heard (and it was said with no small amount of pretentiousness) is ‘Well, Tim, lucky I don’t eat combine harvesters’. The girl then proceeded to laugh obnoxiously for a good five minutes after which she continued to live in blissful ignorance of her own idiocy.

Of course, there are people who can’t be put in a box. I call these people my friends. I tend to gravitate toward anyone who is a genuinely independent thinker because they tend to be the people who can teach me the most.

Anyway, this article has been sufficiently self-indulgent. I’m out for now.

Sunday

It is a well known fact that Sunday is the longest day of the week. Sunday, according to the instruments we have for measuring time, only lasts for twenty-four hours, but most of us know better than to trust objective measurements.

Sunday lasts at least thirty hours to most people, it lasted about fifty hours for me today. I took a five hour nap that, according to my computer clock, only lasted thirty minutes. The reason it’s so long for me is because I’m hungover. I don’t know why I continue to drink. I made a promise a fortnight ago (after finding my savings account had thirty dollars in it) that I would not buy alcohol anymore, it was too expensive and I tended to wake up sore and humiliated. Since then I have been invited to three events where alcohol was free, last night was an engagement party with an open bar and I was very determined to drink the price of my gift worth of alcohol. Normally I’m comfortable with gift giving because I know, or at least believe, that it will eventually be reciprocated. But in the case of engagement and wedding presents I’m well aware that I’m not getting that back, if I ever get engaged it will only be a few hours before I get married (and I will probably wake up in the morning with an astoundingly large headache.)

I think humans have more of an effect on temporeality (a portmanteau of temporal and reality… figure it out) than they realize. The increased length of Sunday is caused by the combined anxiousness of billions of people who are all too aware that tomorrow is Monday. I have a feeling we are doing more damage to the fourth dimension than we realize and one day time will lose all of its proverbial elasticity and will become limp and useless like a drunk quadruple amputee.

There’s also the possibility that humans aren’t the ones stretching out Sunday. Maybe Sunday is to the Temporal aspect of the universe what a rubbish tip is to humans. That is, perhaps the universe just dumps all of its extra time into Sunday hoping sentient beings won’t notice.

My name’s Timothy Bell, and this is what I do to entertain myself on a Sunday.

What’s Your Poison?

I like my drinks like I like my mail order brides: White Russians, but given that such a drink is seen as pretentious, and that milk doesn’t blend well with alcohol in my bowels, I tend not to drink them as often as I’d like. Instead I drink other, more common drinks.

As far as spirits go, I’m quite fond of bourbon at the moment. Despite it being very acrid, I love the scent of bourbon. Subtle is not a word one would apply to spirits of any kind, but there is a certain subtlety to the smell of bourbon. The subtlety is a sweet and smokey smell beyond the acrid, nostril-stinging sensation. Kind of like the subtle taste of fish underneath the very abrasive taste of wasabi when you eat sushi. The only thing I don’t love about bourbon is that whenever I drink it it feels like someone is bludgeoning me with a very large sledgehammer, that, and the next morning it feels like someone is repeatedly pounding my temples with tiny mallets.

Beer is good, Australian beer, that is. European beer is, as Monty Python’s puts it, a little bit like making love in a canoe: It’s fucking close to water. Crown is a particular favourite beer of mine, but Carlton Draught comes at a close second. If there’s a european beer I can tolerate it’s Heinnikens, but only because it was the first beer I got drunk off and so I have a certain nostalgic, sentimental attachment to it.

Margaritas are the best tasting drinks in the world (besides White Russians), but unlike other alcoholic beverages they don’t let you know that you are, in fact, going to get drunk. This is a particularly big issue for me because when I know I am drunk I occasionally say ‘Lets not say/do that, you only think it’s a good idea because you’re drunk’ when I’ve been drinking margaritas, though, I think to myself ‘This is a really good idea, and I’m not drunk enough to think bad ideas are good yet, so it must be a genuinely good idea’. Unfortunately I rarely drink Margaritas. At the beginning of a night I tend to lack the confidence to order such girly drinks, and at the end of a night I tend to lack the coherency to properly pronounce the word ‘Margarita’.

Red wine is good and rarely after drinking red wine do I wake up with a hangover, I do, however, wake up with vague memories of telling people embarrasing, personal stuff about myself. Forget the Polygraph, if you ever want me to confess the truth just buy me a bottle of Pinot Noir.