WildSybianRider

Without being too much of a lickarse, I could read you talking about this all day, Hollywoyzick. Can it be a part of your modly duties that you have to? Or just cut out the middleman and get a job at the Fortean Times.

Bon homme. It was boss, wasn't it? I got so desperate for discussion that I ended up reading the guardian blogs about it. The comments there were actually really good, though, loads of great theories. SPOILER - Highlight the black box to read

Also, Lena's tits.

 

Looking at my list, you can throw in another (fictitious) vote for the Returned from me. Although I might be forgetting loads of stuff.

 

 

Great work, LaGoosh.

If I'd known about this I wouldn't have went away for a fucking month.

 

I'm not sure if I could have managed a full list, though. Everything I would have voted seems well represented -

 

The Wire

Twin Peaks (totally disagree that it being cancelled was a bad thing. The initial run of Lynch episodes (15 or so?) is perfect)

Carnivale

Mad Men

Boys from the Black Stuff (is right, Frankie)

Oz

 

 

Who voted for the Returned? Had no idea that anyone here had watched it, we should have a thread. Everyone I know irl is an imbecile so I haven't spoken to anyone about it.

 

The world according to gladevon-m(alcolm)anccunt-arp-stone

 

fuckoff, Gladstone

I don't care about Gene Hackvman but I insist that Devon does one of these for Michael Madsen, to prove that he's a shit swalllowing super twat and Madsen pisses all over him.

So, the biggest "see, I told you they were all spying on us" story happens and no one says a word on here? I can only assume that people have been gotten to.

There's a good line somewhere in this thread that conspiracy theorists are like someone who has went along the street picking up rubbish and convinced themselves that it was all *meant* to be sewn together into their new jacket. Stuff like the NSA story - which I haven't really followed tbh - makes me think that some of the individual threads that conspiracy theorists follow aren't actually rubbish. Obv the cottage industry of linking them all together is crazy and that's what we mock. But there's a fine line between conspiracy and corruption - the border between moderate ct'ers and daring investigative journalists is probably even finer. Conspiracy theorists are nothing if not diligent researchers. Maybe they're worth some attention now and then. Or maybe stopped clocks and all that.(Does this mean I'm on the precipice of complete psychological collapse?)

Lots and lots of lovely ESPN 30 for 30 can be found here ready to watch at your leisure.

 

 

Giant love, Butch.

 

 

Everyone knows the Two Escobars so I recommend Once Brothers. I'd give a review but I couldn't do it justice - just watch it. The U is class as well.

 

 

EDIT - holy shit, the Straight Out of LA one is intro'd by Ice Cube.

Go travelling?

 

We have very different definitions of the word "problem". All summer off not skint with a great job guaranteed at the end of it sounds like the best thing ever- make the most of it you lucky cunt!

 

Yeah. Seriously.. the answer to that question is "absoultely anything at all that you want to do"!

 

Haha, my post makes me sound like a spoiled dickhead.

 

I probably will get away for a bit but I've been 'travelling'-travelling before and I have some commitments with the new job that mean I have to be around a couple of days here and here, so I can't just up sticks and come back in autumn. I was wondering if anyone had weird left-field ideas. I don't know... like, an archery course or some shit. Or something vaguely work-related that I could do over the summer. Fruit-picking?

 

 

 

Twinn, you shouldn't be embarrassed at all about your job. And if you want to leave, already having a job makes it infinitely easier to find a new one, so don't jack in the KFC one out of frustration. You need to decide what it is you want to do before you start looking for something else or you'll just drift aimlessly from job app to job app. The internet and recruitment agencies have made looking for work a fruitless, soul-destroying task so have a clear idea in your mind before you start. That's the only way you'll filter out all of the shit.

 

Or you could apply for this? This gets emailed to me about three times a week, no matter how often I try to block it. I don't even remember signing up for that shit site.

Good luck, mikey. That sounds like a vicious circle, though - eating/feeling like shit is only gonna make the job more unbearable.

 

 

Not to be celebrating mother's day at the orphanage but I just got a job. On the dreamjob scale, it's probably only a seven out of ten but it more or less guarantees a nine within a couple of years.

 

The problem is it doesn't start for ~5 months and I jacked in the work I'd been doing since graduating out of boredom. My boredom is now worse. I've done a bit of volunteer work but it's only a few hours pw. Anyone got any ideas what I should do all summer? I've got a couple of grand knocking about and I can probably access credit lines, given I've got a contract to show. So hit me. Help me help myself.

Just finished the second series of the Walking Dead, so spoilers....

 

 

 

I really don't like to be negative but fucking hell I hate this programme. I've stuck with it because I love anything post-apocalyptic and I'll probably watch s3 because the razing of Boring Farm gave me a glimmer of hope that they might have realised that months of rural ennui makes for shit television. I'm not so bothered by continuity errors or plot holes but The Walking Dead might be the most soul-crushingly bleak programme I've ever seen. Loads of great stuff is dark as hell - but TWD is bleak because the writing is so witless that you don't give a shit about any of the characters. There's something messed up when you end up rooting for the zombie hordes to come and break up the monotony.

 

I'm going through them in my head now and they're all either gobshites or cannon fodder. I'm relatively sure that Hick Hershel's group of ranch-hands has a different makeup - and actors - each week but they're so boring that no-one notices. The black guy with a ghetto name and the wise-cracking Chinese guy.... come on. Even when Dale's sanctimonious judging was right, it was wet and irritating and context-inappropriate. Andrea bitches and moans and projects her own issues onto everyone and her feminist self-actualization involves making eyes at every strong male she meets. I'm amazed she hasn't managed to start an argument with a walker yet. Daryl is actually quite cool but the Noble Redneck is a tired television cliche now and they're obviously going to have his brother come back and kill him at some point. The little girl's disappearance was apparently worth half a season of hand-wringing, but she was so rarely seen before going walkabout (in the most contrived sequence ever, btw), that I was totally nonplussed at the big reveal of Zombie Girl. Who's that? Oh right, that's who they've been looking for. Never mind.

 

All this would be ok if it wasn't for the main protagonists being the three worst people ever. Even when I was ten, I realised walking around in a cowboy hat makes you an absolute twat. I wish harm on that child. I'm trying to portmanteau Rick and Pinocchio but it won't work.... you're made out of wood and you're shit, fuckoff. Shane was a well better leader, he wasn't constantly wracked by some insecure need to be a hero, under the guise of wanting to do the right thing. If zombies ever kick off, I want Shane by my side getting shit done, not Rick fretting about everything. I've got some male guilt about despising Lori so much because it's not her fault that tv writers script secondary female characters as nags or sluts, but she has no redeeming features whatsoever. A widow taking solace in the arms of a strong man during an apocalypse is perfectly understandable but it's not as though she was vulnerable and hurt. She was tearing off her wedding ring and flipping over to take it up the arse, face first in the grass. And when her husband comes back, she second-guesses every thought process, kvetches at every decision, and then goes to play the coquette to Shane. Her one task is to look after her son but he spends a season wandering around zombieland in his stupid fucking hat, totally under her radar. And then she tells him off for her parental negligence. Fuck her. I'm glad she's trapped in a loveless shell of a marriage. I'm glad there's a slim chance the foetal spawn inside her is already undead and will eat her from the inside out. And if the baby isn't a walker, I hope it's a boy, the ringer for Shane, and I hope he grows up to kill his stupid half-brother, his cuckolded step-father and his whore mother.

It's a conspiracy..... inside a plot...... all wrapped up in treachery...... served with connivance.

There's a scene where Sam gets shot and then tries to do a karate kick which is one of the best physical comedy bits I've ever seen.

My brother's a tiler and his black tiles are still "Negro", for what it's worth.

 

They could just be imported from Spain, I know a lot of ceramics are.

 

 

It's an affectionate name for tiles in hispanic countries.

Someone get a documentary crew and Barry Hearn to the States asap.

Er, alright. I wasn't taking the piss out of what you said. It was an interesting point. But I feel that if you start thinking like that, you deflect the conditions surrounding rape back onto the victim. Helen Mirren's point is a total red herring. A woman can get pissed out of her mind if she so pleases. That creating compromising circumstances does not mitigate rape at all (I know you're not suggesting that it does). Claiming otherwise is what wraps women in cotton wool. Because it's planting the seed, isn't it - if you go and drink to excess, and something rogue happens, oof well it's a bit complicated isn't it? You sure you wanna go to the po' with that? A victim's level of intoxication is as relevant as the length of her skirt or her familiarity with the rapist. The partitioning of rape into 'knifey rape', 'stranger rape', 'boyfriend rape', 'night out rape'

Yeah, the comparison is spot on. I feel as cheated by anyone by Assange. I mean, it was inevitable that wikileaks and anti-US Latin America would have dovetailed sooner or later. And I would have been marking the fuck out. Eighteen months ago, Hugo Chavez and Julian Assange drinking mojitos and using the stars and stripes to light cigars Castro had sent them.... that was manna to me. But I'm not about to abandon my beliefs because the wikileaks figurehead isn't the hero I wanted.

Flame away but, in this matter particularly, I wish bobbins still posted here.

 

eh, I did my best.

 

 

I still find the cult of Assange incredible - even, in fact especially, from the left. It's starting to show flashes of conspiracy theorist mindsets. Evidence to support conclusions rather than conclusions drawn from evidence. George Galloway's been loco forever but I honestly think if you drove a big black car with U.S. plates past his house every day, it'd be a matter of time until he's living in a hedge somewhere, saying a rifle-wielding Dick Cheney is in the next field along. (Unless, of course, you happen to think Galloway is a professional cynic who's made a nice career out of it, but perish the thought.)

 

I'm a Guardian faggot so I'm all for America being held to account. And I don't want them to be able to silence whistle-blowers. But I don't know how people make the leap from that to rape denial. It's sad that the world knows all about the particulars of the incidents involving Assange. I pity those two girls. It's part of a wider problem that the first defence against rape allegations is to discredit the victim: throw doubt on the act ("it wasn't rape-rape"), the circumstance ("she was drunk") or the character ("she's lying because she regrets a one night stand"). The Assange case seems to have the trifecta behind it, so many people making excuses for this slimey piece of shit. Like I said a couple of pages ago, Fuck Julian Assange man.

For all their unpopular old-school opinions, what people like Helen Mirren are suggesting is that, whilst the personal responsibility for rape always lies with the rapist, to suggest that women's actions have no bearing on the creation of compromising circumstances is to paint women as weak-willed creatures who need wrapping in cotton wool. Roger Graef's Panorama documentary earlier this year showed that one of the reasons that conviction rates for rape have actually been falling in recent years is due to excessive drinking by young women. When cases come to court, and the defence can show security cam footage of the woman falling down drunk, it tends to blow the chances of a conviction! Given how hard it is to get rape cases to court in the first place, anything that reduces the chances of conviction is a bad thing.

 

Chest, do you mean Hudson?

.............. Hudson?

 

 

EDIT - gah, Gladstone quicker off the draw.

Kenny,

 

Yep. If I'm wanted by the U.S., the last place I'd want to be is Britain. I'd probably want to be in...... Sweden, I guess. Or Ecuador if I was a truly shameless cunt.

 

 

 

I agree with a lot of what you say, especially about how he is deflecting attention from a worthwhile subject to himself, but I think you're understating the impact of this being down in writing, from the source. To that point dismissing the information as "just a catalyst" is underplaying the signficance of having something that acts as a catalyst. Sure it could have been anything, but it was this. And as such, played an important role.

 

I don't disagree. But something being significant doesn't enhance it with any moral value, and it's frustrating that Assange and his thickfuck celeb backers have made his name synonymous with wikileaks, so the Arab Spring is portrayed as a glorious result of his noble endeavours. When he just wanted to fuck with America to get his name out there. I might be slightly irrational because he makes my skin crawl so much, too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for subversion, accountability and questioning the powers-that-be. But can anyone tell me any real developments that emerged from wikileaks? That's not rhetoric - I honestly can't think of any. I just read Amnesty International praising its role in the Arab Spring but that seems simplistic to me. Strictly as a "catalyst", ok I get that but the type of uprising that we saw last year is fostered by years of oppression and simmering resentment. Not some dickhead failed journalist releasing a load of cables and the Arab peoples suddenly realising that, you know what, their lives aren't that great and there's no democracy. Seriously, what did wikileaks amount to? Confirmation of what we already know about shady U.S. foreign policy and corrupt govts in developing countries. A giggle at diplomats sneering at their host countries' leaders. Probably a load of sensitive information in the swathe of cables that were released en masse. A chance to look up info on Madeleine McCann or UFOs or whatever. And some mixed up U.S. solder who's been thrown to the dogs by the organisation that never really protected him.

 

Like I say, despite all this, I'm glad that organisations like wikileaks exist. But for Assange personally, hypocrite seems more like a best-case than worst-case description. He's fucked over Bradley Manning, fell out with seemingly every senior wl staffer or contact, screwed those who were daft enough to post his bail our of their money. And, worst of all, made wikileaks' narrative all about him, using the controversy to deflect from the fact he's a slimey, self-promoting, possible-rapist, definite-misogynist. He's conflated important issues about freedom of speech and information with his own snidey little cause. Fuck Julian Assange, man.

Honestly think I despise Julian Assange more than any other public figure.

interested in your thoughts on this, GS?

 

A lot of it seems like common sense but you might be able to shed light on any story behind the story, I guess.