Oooooh, it's been a while, but I'm back in the blog-seat again and ready to communicate.
Viz:
Tráiganme La Cabeza De Sam Peckinpah
One of the worst things about the years of exile in the land of the East Angles was missing out on
the NFT. I spent a good deal of this month in that venue during the Sam Peckinpah season watching the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Warren Oates and Steve McQueen (the dead one, not the black one) slap their lady friends about and gun down crooks, cops and Mexicans in dazzling slow motion. These are the sort of motion pictures that make a man want to pack it all in, quit his job, sell the house, kiss the wife and kids goodbye, charter a flight to Central America and just open fire on every hombre he lays his whiskey-quenched sights on until the Federales show up and riddle him with bullets, the slags. And speaking of crimes, punished or otherwise...
Frost / Nixon
Whilst it's wonderful to see a film that changes the way you think about things, I was happy to come out of this film with all my opinions on America's 37th president reinforced: that Nixon suffered from the same character flaws that pretty much every other national leader does and did since ancient times and that the Republicans seem to be much worse at burying their crimes than the Democrats. I don't think he was any more or any less wicked than any of the other US monarchs since the end of WWII and I imagine the new sovereign will follow much in the footsteps of his predecessors. Also, for once I want to see an anti-Kennedy film in the cinema; Christ knows there's a lot of material to run with. And speaking of regimes where things go tits up occasionally...
The Tamil Tigers
Are Fucked But I'm sure they'll be back before long: you can't keep a good Dravidian down. I don't like the Sri Lankan government (those Buddhists will oppress anything that moves) but when it comes to the LTTE themselves, although I hold an unlimited surplus of sympathy with a fellow pre-Aryan people (especially ones lucky enough to preserve their language and a large part of their culture which is luckier than we were) I just really fuckin' hate Marxists. Hopefully, now that they've dipped, everyone will realise suicide bombing isn't cool anymore. And speaking of fanatics fond of a bit of the old ultraviolence...
God In Acholiland
I read two books recently on the situation in North Uganda (
Wizard of the Nile and
Girl Soldier) to supplement my knowledge of the LRA and their leader and prophet, Joseph Kony, who I've had an obsession with lately. The former book was basically a rather unbalanced rewrite of Heart of Darkness but with Kurtz being an Acholi warlord and (unfortunately) not dead by the end of the tale. The hunt for Kony wasn't as interesting as the conflict's background and the diverse atrocities for which the man is wanted internationally (as well as the details on atrocities by the current Ugandan government against the Acholi). The second book was a first person account by one of the abducted children about her capture by, survival in and escape from said group. It was co-written with an American missionary who saturated the stuff with calls for prayer and appeals to the deity etc etc which is all very pointless really as everyone knows Kony takes his marching orders directly from the Holy Spirit. What a clusterfuck. And speaking of shit going down...
Blocked Toilets
Finally unblocked. The plumber said it looked like a lake of frozen chocolate in the outside tank, but it weren't chocolate, it was SHI~
And Now The End Is Upon Us
I've only seen the first episode of Generation Kill but I already want to go to Iraq. I just can't get enough of Mr. Simon and Mr. Burns' televisual and literary output. God bless Sex and the City for keeping HBO in enough revenue to keep producing the stuff. Amalekite out.