Click here for the annotated 1602

Godzilla attacks are on the rise in Japan.

The Gender Genie
The Gender Genie is a computer program that attempts to guess your gender based on your style of writing. Acording to the test, I'm male. This is a good thing, I believe.

Thoughts on the Filth #12
SPOILERS for those who don't want to know.


-Isn't it interesting how similiar I-Life and the hand are? I-Life takes maligilant cells and pacifies them, making them helper cells. The Hand takes the scum of society (like the person that Moog Mercury was before his para-persona injection) and turns them into agents of the Hand.

-Is Greg Feely isane? If you look at the first issue of the Filth and look at what Greg's watching on the television, you'll realize that all the news bits are foreshadowing of what will happen. The Lost Children of El Bastard is most likely the children of Andres Kilimaks. Same with the Emperor of Siam's "black rice" "Are you willing to expose yourself, Mr. President" would fit with the president getting breasts "the size of the sun". Read it again. It's pretty much all there.

-Notice that cop at the end of the issue? Doesn't he look a little like Greg?


-Maybe there's more than one Greg running around. This would explain how he's managing to deal with Max Thunderstone in one part of the issue while in the other part he's writing a suicide note. This was alluded to as well in the "Inside the Hand" issue of the Filth.

-I still don't understand why Max Thunderstone would create Spartacus Hughs if he wants to be the world's first super-hero.

Gozu
Taken from Sk8 Jesus.

Miike's latest.

Yakuza Horror Theatre.

From the screenwriter of ICHI THE KILLER.

"That's definitely a Yakuza dog. I say we take it out before it takes us out!"

Chihuahua assassination!

Disappearing corpses!

Mysterious transvestite waiters!

Talking cows!

Lots of screaming!

Yakuza meets Polanski's THE TENANT!

"Gozu" means "cow head", by the way.

Gozu is playing at this year's Vancouver Film Fest. I plan on going down to see this and the Ressurection of the Little Match Girl.

In case anyone gives a fuck...
RoBlog will be updated on a weekday basis starting on Tuesday.

They can rebuild you. Stronger. Faster. Harder.

Marooned in this hot, humid, backwater town on an insignificant planet, the Klingon Capt. pInluH approaches the cluster of puny humans who are taking in the action. The captain is nearly 7 feet tall, his left arm is amputated at the elbow--lost in what must have been one glorious battle--and his gut hangs pendulously over his belt. He’s an aging warrior, but he’s bad news to be sure. He swaggers up to the earthlings, humans and some Vulcans, steadily swigging from cans of Old Milwaukee.

pInluH queries, “Are you ready to rock?”

The crowd is pensive. The Vulcans just stare at the spiny carapace of his forehead. Some smirk.

“I said,” he bellows, “are you ready to rock?” More smirks.

“I do not believe you are ready to rock,” pInluH says with a huff, and then he strides off.

At a sidewalk table nearby, documentary filmmaker Roger Nygard is taking in the scene with a childlike look of delight on his face.

You can sleep safely. Star Trek tribute bands exist.

Texas Man Wakes Up After Operation, Penis Missing

The headline says it all, really.

Grant Morrison does gaming

"By the time I was brought in, the game engines were already in place, so some of my wilder ideas for environments and machines had to stay on the drawing board. The Burning Brain--an alien computer that was part tree, part giant brain and ran on sugar--didn't make the final cut, and neither did the full-size counterfeit replica of Earth built by the Cylons as a cunning and expensive lure."

Grant Morrison is writing the Battlestar Galatica game. Really.

Internet Suicides Plague Japan

Glued to a computer screen in his north Tokyo apartment, the stocky, part-time sushi delivery man spent weeks searching the recesses of the Internet. Going simply by the handle "Murata," the 28-year-old surfed for online companions harboring his same dark interest: the desire to die.

He found what he was looking for on a host of new Japanese-language Web sites such as "Underground Suicide" and "Deadline." Promising to supply most of the materials, he made arrangements to kill himself with two anonymous Internet friends on a mid-May afternoon. Face to face for the first time, the three young men drove to a tranquil mountain pass six hours north of Tokyo. They shared sleeping pills, and then -- following detailed instructions posted on a Web site -- set charcoal alight inside their car and died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Maybe he didn't have high hopes for the future, but it is still so hard to understand how he could have done it," said Murata's 35-year-old brother, who shared their apartment. He spoke on condition that both their names be withheld. "I've disconnected the Internet at home, at least while our family comes to terms with this."

More in link.

I can't say that I'm surprised that this is happened. In Atwood's new book, Oryx and Crake, Atwood hyptothesized that once an audience was established for suicide websites, people would tune in just to watch someone end their life no matter how mundane or exciting. It's the snuff of the 21st century.

There is far too much love in the Clinton family.

Shannon Wheeler will be at this year's Vancouver Comicon

Pencils down. Disney terminates traditional animation

Unfortunately, the latest installment of Survivor doesn't take place at some remote tropical island. It takes place a lot closer to home… in beautiful downtown Burbank, under a giant Sorcerer's hat, at the Walt Disney Feature Animation building, where last week another group of stressed-out castaways were voted off the show.

Forget the official Disney line that Feature Animation boasts a staff of 1,000 to 1,500 artists. In Burbank, there are only about 60 traditional “2-D” animators left who actually pick up a pencil or a paintbrush, counting Layout, Animators, Clean-up and Background artists… and Disney has no 2-D projects currently in production for them to work on. (Disney has a like number of survivors holding on in Florida, where a half 2-D/half-CG (computer graphics) project tentatively called My Peoples is underway.)

The vast majority of Feature Animation's artists have been reassigned to a computer or shown the door. It all points to Disney's next two animated features (this fall's Brother Bear and next spring's Home on the Range) being their last.

More in link.

The pentultimate issue of the Filth is out
I won't be getting it until next weekend, however, but I did manage to get Neil Gaiman's 1602. More on that later. In the meantime, I'd like to know how the new issue stacked up with the rest of the run so far.

Falcon Press will be re-printing Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles later this year. Fnord.

Tokyo Temple Ceremony Honors Pinball Machines

In Friday's solemn ceremony, Buddhist monks in purple robes chanted sutras in front of a candle-lit, brocade-draped altar adorned with a golden replica of a pachinko machine.
""So many people play pachinko," said Hitoshi Osawa, an executive with leading pachinko machine maker Heiwa Corp . "We want to tell the machines, 'Thank you very much for all your hard work.'"

More in link

It's coming...

The Happiness of the Katakuris is the funnest movie *EVER*!
I pity those who do not crack a smile during that film. It's utterly brilliant.

I will not be coming to Vancouver/Victoria at the end of the summer
There might be a slim chance of me visiting around film fest, however.

This is the art of my good buddy, and all around nice guy, Mike Myhre. You can see more of his work here.

""I thought (the recall) was a joke. They thought it was a joke. And I thought, hey, why not, I'm probably the least qualified for the job, but I'll have some great people around me."

Gary Coleman is running for governor of Calinornia.

Stolen from the Micah Wright forum:"His campaign slogan should be "My name may not be Arnold, but I played one on TV."

Oh, in other news, Canada fucking rocks

Japanese group determined to find abominable snowman in Nepal

A group of seven Japanese mountaineers will leave for Nepal on Sunday to launch a two-month expedition in search of the elusive abominable snowman, a hairy humanlike animal also known as yeti that reportedly inhabits the Himalayas.

The team, led by Yoshiteru Takahashi, 60, of Mitaka, Tokyo will carry out this second search attempt in the same mountain range, the Dhaulagiri from late August through October with automatic cameras that can detect the body temperature of living creatures.

More in link.

American Splendor
American Splendor is this year's best comic book movie, and from all acounts, it's supposed to be the year's best film. Check out the website.

The Happiness of the Katakuris
I've acquired two new movies yesterday; Ping Pong and the Happiness of the Katakuris. After seeing 20 minutes of the later, I can say that Moulin Rouge now has a competitor for being my favorite musical. No other film effortless bends genres deftly as with the same amount of skill as the Happiness of the Katakuris. From the horrific claymation beginning where a demon falls in love with a woman's uvula takes it as his own to an over the top camp tribute to suicide, this movie is mind bending on all levels. From the subtle acting of the Katakuris great grandfather to the over the top wooden acting of Richard Sagawa, Miike makes a foreign musical worth the while.

Swimming
I haven't been swimming since the beginning of the summer, but I've started up again this week. I can't beleive that I've forgotten how good doing a couple laps in the pool makes me feel. With the summer winding down and with my hotel job finished, I'll probably start doing laps in the morning, right before I start the day job. That is all.

I want this t-shirt. As well as these ones.

Spurned female stalker turns to voodoo

On June 27, police at Kitakyushu City's Kokura Minami branch arrested Maki Sakaguchi, 29, on suspicion of violating the anti-stalking law. Yukan Fuji (June 28) reports the police acted on complaints that Sakaguchi had stalked her ex-boyfriend, frantically pleading him to return to her, and had also made repeated threatening telephone calls to his new lady friend.

The case took an interesting turn when the authorities searched Sakaguchi's residence and turned up a "noroi no wara ningyo," a straw doll used in Japan since ancient times for the purpose of voodoo-type curses. The doll was tacked to a board bearing the name of Sakaguchi's female rival; a pair of 5-inch nails had been driven into the torso.

More in link.

More Japanese "rape club" news

"It is wrong for women to dress almost naked...Men are like black panthers, so leniency can be contemplated (for the rapists)."

The Japanese can be fucking weird at times. More in link