First and foremost: Burn Before Reading - what the fuck?! Seriously - just when you think the Coens have finally reformed and stopped churning out garbage like Fargo and The Big Lebowski - just when they throw something like No Country for Old Men in your face - they come out with a film which is (at best) the equivalent of a fart joke (brain fart, that is). God! The characters are two-dimensional, the acting is minimal (or overdone to the point of ridiculousness) and the humour is at about eighth-grade level; I don't know about the rest of those morons, but I walked out of the movie theatre about halfway through this train wreck and never looked back.

Anyways, I've got another beef to settle here. It's not that I misunderstand how world economics work (make stuff cheaply, flood the markets with it, make some more stuff, rinse, repeat), but there's something definitely repulsive in the way the Chinese have taken on over the world, product by product - but don't get me wrong; I'm all for economic dominance, 中国是最好 and all that. For me, it's not about the electronics made by children in smoggy sweatshops; it's not about the rock I found inside a cheap, Chinese made microphone the other day, or the buttons that just fell off my Chinese-made coat this morning. Hell, everything I wear and use in this very room - perhaps with the exception of my paperclips (made in the U.S.), Elmer's Glue (made in Canada) and Nokia phone (phone made in Mexico, cell made in Korea) - is made in China, China, and China.

Great! I understand your motivation; I understand your drive; I even understand your means and ends. There is one thing, however, I do not understand: Where is your pride, China? Where is your self-respect? From your terribly-written, serif'd user manuals, to your shoddy workmanship - where is your self-image? Yeah, sure, I cannot boycott Chinese products; I'd have to starve and walk naked if I did, but you know what, China? I'd pay even more, I'd worship and adore you even more - if you didn't fuck up so much in the details. If you want "Made in China" to be a brand, not a mere fist, stop cutting corners and poisoning our pets and start sewing our buttons on straight. On the other hand, maybe a fist is all you want. In any case, I am pissed off; that's all, folks.

No, you go back to where you came from. Where the hell do you get the nerve to tell everyone around you how to behave?! Sit your ass down, shut the hell up and enjoy the motherfucking ride - you fucking scowling, sneering piece of shit.

Anyways, more in the vein of bullshit: Max Payne, the movie - do not see it. It's nothing but a collection of story fragments and completely mismatched characters and plot twists from the two games, interspersed with rather rare slo-mo action shots. There are two good scenes - when the "dark angel" drags the Valkyr junkie out of the window and Max tries to catch him, and when Max does the flippity-twist shotgun thing - otherwise, it's just a pile of suck on top of more suck.

Finally, with regard to my birthday (which was officially yesterday), I have celebrated it on Saturday with the guys, on Sunday with the parents, and on my Monday-off with my grandparents and (sort of) with my girlfriend. I got a lot of presents. I ate a lot of cheesecake. All things considered, life is good.

Yesterday night, the school where I work had scheduled an in-house Halloween party (although, of course, Halloween is today) - with alcohol - during my classes (I am usually here 9 AM to 10 PM). Fucking hell.

To begin with, the biggest problem with ESL/EFL education in Vancouver is that over eighty percent of the 21-25 age demographic, who come here from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China to "study," already spend an inordinate amount of time drinking - and then skipping classes, coming in late, not doing homework, feebly apologising and, finally, complaining that they "have not learned anything in the last eight months." That's right, assholes, you didn't.

To add insult to injury (Is it the other way around?), I have come in this morning to find the listening class speakers blown and all the headphones simply not functioning. Thanks a lot.

Here is mig81.com's new feature: Stream of Headlines™ (because commentary is overrated): "Three Chinese Among Six Dead in South Korean Arson-Stabbing Spree" | "Korea to Join in $80 Bil. Asian Bailout Fund | "Premier Gordon Campbell Announces 10 Point Plan to Protect BC from Global Economic Turmoil" | "From a Strip of Scotch Tape, X-Rays". Enjoy.

I wasn't able to post in a while, because mig81.com was hacked yet again. God, I hate my webhost. Anyways, everything seems to be back to normal. It is safe to come out.

In unrelated news, I feel really good today.

It was quite fitting, that, after yesterday's rant against the iPod and exuberant praise of the Microsoft Zune 120GB, I was thinking to myself, playing around with the Zune: "Oh, wow, this could be a pretty nice (and capacious) replacement for my 32GB iTouch!"

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was then that I had found that the Zune software outright refuses to install on my WinVista Ultimate laptop, referring me to the elusive error 0x8007000e. Disappointed, but not yet disheartened, I brought the Zune home and tried installing it on my WinXP SP3 machine. It installed beautifully, but Zune.exe closed immediately after being run. Fuck me.

Remembering my trials with iTunes, I quickly uninstalled everything, packed up the Zune, returned it the same day and bought a camera (the Casio Exilim EX-S10RD - for a comfortable $239.99; more specs here). I think I'll take a break from portable media players for now (I still have my 30GB Creative Zen Vision kicking around somewhere)...then again, I'm just about ready to cream my pants over this thing. Yes, I'm fucking nuts. Deal with it. ;)

Anyways, where was I? I can't believe I bought into the hype of the iPod Touch and, almost (no thanks to Fido's stellar customer service - but more on that later) the iPhone. Well, what's done is done. I got the iTouch, played around with it for about three months - and then felt the pain of poor usability design, lack of phone features and, last but not least, planned obsolescence. I had withdrawal symptoms for the past couple of days, but now I'm back with a clear head.

Exhibit A: The OS on the iTouch is actually a piece of shit. It glitches when you scroll, touch or rotated items and it had a fucked-up file sorting order; it needs a lot of hacks to work right. To boot, iTunes won't let me load 35% of my songs, because they have to be converted or because it just can't read them. Don't even get me started on the non-free updates, the App Store, jailbreaking the iTouch or iPhone every three seconds, or Zibri's bitching. No cute game is worth this.

Exhibit B: What kind of portable media player does not work as an external hard drive?! Fucking hell...

Exhibit C: File conversion: Why do I have to do brain surgery to get songs or TV shows onto the iPod?! iTunes is nothing without at least two or three third-party programs.

Exhibit D: The iPhone-iTouch continuum. Let me paint you a picture: The good folks over at Apple shout their lungs off about the new iPhone. People listen up; they get really hyped up on the button-less design, the WiFi and multitouch. The iPhone gets released. It's pretty, buggy and expensive. Then, a refied version of the iPhone gets released - the iPod Touch. It's prettier, but still buggy and expensive (but it has no phone). People get turned onto the iTouch - bam - the iPhone 3G gets released, making a mint-condition iTouch immediately obsolete. Oh, and a second-generation iTouch is released shortly afterwards, you know, just to patch up those rough edges. If you are not thinking "What the fuck?!" yet, you should be.

Exhibit E: The pricing: The first-generation, 32GB iTouch cost me about $500. The 16GB iPhone costs $350 from either Rogers or Fido (which are, actually, the same company), provided you get their three-year, $90+/month contract...provided you can get it (Fido essentially told me to fuck off because I was less than ninety days on my current monthly plan). So, should I get a second-generation iTouch only to see it become obsolete in another three months because the designers forgot ton add some more buttons? No, sir, thank you kindly.

So what's the verdict, you ask? Well, I, ladies and gentlemen, am just about ready to revise the good, 'ol Weltanschauung. Remember my extensive rants about ubiquity, Microsoft, Apple and everything? At this very moment, I am ready to present a corollary of my earlier theory: if ubiquity is a positive-feedback loop driven by popularity, it must have constraints - either a lack of choice, or a lack of quality.

As I have had to admit (with more and more pain every day), dear, old Vista proves this point perfectly: the dummies love it, the normal people hate it, but it's still preloaded on a shitload of machines and getting it out and replacing it with a proper WinXP SP3 (heh) install is akin to skinning Michael Scofield alive to get those nifty tattoos off him. As the song goes, "you can check out anytime, but you can never leave" - (well, unless you go to *nix, eh, Mite? ;)

Anyways, the iPhnod [sic] seemingly went the other way, offering great quality and style for high value, at the same time offering ubiquity at no cost (after all, who doesn't want to be seen with those nifty, white earbuds). The problem, in this case (and, actually in any case concerning Apple hardware) is an exorbitant price for a pretty face and a below-par value. Microsoft Zune 120GB at 128 grams for $249.99 vs. the iPod Touch 32GB at 115 grams for $399.99 - that's an $11.77/GB difference, and, yes, all I need player is - that's right - movies and music. Fuck the maps, fuck the games, fuck the design, fuck the ubiquity. I am, once again, free.

By the way, I am still alive (overweight) and well. I read a lot of Ayn Rand (for the narrative, not the Objectivist insanity, mind you; Anthem was truly a literary masterpiece, I must add - and The Fountainhead, Rand's prototype for Atlas Shrugged holds me in thrall quite tightly at the moment). I am now a big fish in a *cough* big pond at VTC. I have a girlfriend, a backlog of poetry and occasional rectal bleeding (all unrelated, heh). Oh, I didn't vote in the elections because I am too old to play with toys. Dixi.

Fuck. The new and improved iPod Touch 32GB is now CDN $399.99. I paid something like a billion dollars $500 for the "first" generation player. Argh!

Having not said anything here for a long, long time, I would like to point out some interesting facts here about the upcoming presidential election. See if you can spot what is wrong with this picture:

What are these numbers, you say? Oh, top contributors from 2003-2008. Need I say more? Well, only a little. It is very interesting to see the ostensibly-altruistic interest of the two presidents-to-be in the recent, worldwide financial crisis, considering how much they have individually invested in it (sources here and here).

Same shit, different day; garbage in, garbage out. If I were an American voter, I would abstain.

[circa]

 i whisper my prayers
as I sin in you
   because there is nothing left
 except delicious sin
  when I sin in you
  sin in you
  sin in you
    sin black
   and sin rosypink
     sin sodomy
    and sincerely
  delicate incest sin
  and rough sweaty sin of omission
   sin synonym
   and a brain full of
 wild cooking pederasty

  i whisper my prayers
   as I sin in you
     sin in you
     sin in you
    sin in you
 statements losing their meaning
 in the moment
    and what is said
  is true
   but you listen to what is
   not said  unspoken
    you hang with me
    in the space between breath
 and breath
   thrust and thrust
 whisper and whisper

i do not exist
i do not exist
i do not exist
 (and neither does I

i have a mouth
  and i must scream
i have a mouth
  and i must scream
i have a mouth
  and i must scream
 and i must scream
 and i must be silent

(I does not exist
 and neither does i

i am an epigrammatic multitude
a lexical confrontation of write and wrong
 i am your quilted apology
    your excuse for incompetence
  and always  always a multitude
a low multitude
a high multitude
 a terrible multitude
    of self contradiction
  and pain

the mind mouths
what the eye sees
 but how can the eye see
    if the i does not exist
 (and neither does I

time flies
flesh wastes
  paper stops and flies
 sex on the mind
    hemingwayan nothingness
   on the face

why?

how does the one learn
nothingness

the one becomes
nothingness

so there is nothing
left to teach  or learn

hello sir
  do you still exist
hello sir
  do you still exist
hello sir
  do you still exist

the words are me nin less
  he s lla les ar  mean n less
t  pun tua ion  s meanin l s
    p op e  re  m    gl
p  tr    m  i  e

hel o si
  o  u  ti  e ist
  ell
h  o
  l

at the end of the day
  women are objects
 to be filled with

 information
   sperm
  time

  they are to be
 bought by the pound
   and sold by the bushel

pierced
   skewered
  eaten and destroyed

 but what will the man eat
  when
 the last woman
will go extinct

 where will
  the man
go to feed

where will he get
  his next
 meal

No news is good news. I am Jack's heavy eyelids. I am a summary of my actions. I am twelve to thirteen hours, work, money and words. Was there anything else? I don't write. I don't go out. I fix what I can, when I can, and, in my spare time at work, I wait. There was something else there, but perhaps it is gone. I am Jack's sense of time. My mother tells me to play with my balls, you know, to check for cancer. I play with my balls long enough to heal the whole world. I wake up, and Robert Downey Junior lectures me: "I'm from a group that says: 'Build many bicycles.'" I am Jack's thirsty lips and hard cock. No news is good news.

look how far we'd been brought
by natural selection
i can smell the coffee
in my urine
and the world is no more
than one word
after another

transformed by the sound or
rather
the expectation of sound
i observe intensely
that

which is not
that which is
and that which cannot be

what do i have
no
let me rephrase
what has me
what has to be
what has me
has to be

it is not you
not i (or I
it is simply the expectation
which yields
the absolution of absolutes
that have no equals
and no points of reference

to compare itself to
what else is
there
nothing else
only elsie's engine
and the turn
and the twist of the phase

of the fool moon
that transforms so well
under observation
changing while
(and because
it is being
observed