~ in further evidence that you are a tool of the movie industry, this is how those in the ‘academy’ decides what to serve you: “against a flood of fourth-quarter specialty product, the film couldn’t compete, registering only $2.4 million”

~ in further evidence new york city is inhabited by morons, this is the drivel with which someone flyered the b-train today:

” kill islam
  kill terror
  kill evil

  kill hijacker
  kill homicide-bomber
  kill missile-plane
  kill kidnapper
  kill traitor, oath-breaker
  kill bill n’ hillary clinton

  kill arafat…..kill bin laden

  9-11 never 4-get!”

( if this imbecility is your handiwork, please be advised that one of our agents collected all the flyers in the car and threw them in a trash can on 116th, lest they infect any impressionable young minds. it looks like you’ll have to buy more magic markers.)

~ from 34th street: ‘sax-a-ma-phone! sax-a-ma-phone!’

~ while passing by a couple who were failing in their confused attempts to operate a 44th street parking meter, we were able to overhear: “how dis bitch don’t take dollar bills?” we were left wondering, do people speak this way because they are trying to prove a point concerning the fluidity and proletarian authorship of communication or because they are idiots?

~ although we have had much success with flask/xmpeg, we have given dvd2avi and nandub a try. we are unsure that the necessity of dealing with four steps instead of two, eight hours instead of 4, and fifteen files instead of one, is worth the imperceptible increase in bitrate offered by sbc encoding.

~ we have received numerous emails concerning the possibility of an agent of the angry red planet having been spotted on broadway, weakly trying to force 70 pounds of sweeping compound back into the box from which it had just burst. if you noticed that this sad bastard was desperately weeping, then consider your sighting of an agent confirmed.

~ would anyone believe that we have been too busy to update? while some time has been concentrated on the work, we fear that most time has just been concentrated on work – predominately, its absence. our sympathies for those who have journeyed here in the recent past with the hopes of the requisite wry commentary on current events and found themselves discontent with the pittance they have been offered. perhaps an attempt could be made to contemplate our silence; it may be possible, although unlikely, for one to discern the slightest glimpse of the turbulent clouds thundering in our minds this season.

~ for those who are visiting for our requisite wry commentary on current events: a great method for earning our contempt is to ask for our opinion on the academy awards ‘controversies’ or to even mention the existence of the well-groomed, well-fed glitterati and to declare that not only do they actually have any problems in this world, but that they are such a burden to them, that some of the grief and worry must be distributed across the nation, lest it becomes too much to bear for the tender elite. as far as we know, we have not even seen any of the films that have been nominated, unless there is a category this year for downloading 1972’s ‘pulse’ via peer-to-peer networking.

~ anyone working at the village voice should note: contrary to the views recently put forth in your publication, we’re afraid that alanis morissette (2002) did not ‘make up’ the word ‘ungood’. please see orwell, george (1949): “If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not.”

~ something tells me that these roles are reversed:
Message Summary
Inbox 378 (367 new)
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~ according to today’s cnn.com poll, 19% of internet yokels who play polls think that somalia should be the next target in the united states of america’s war on terror, a distant second place to iraq’s 59%. seems like most of them still have a hard-on for iraq after ten years of saddam hussein’s refusal to either die or stop mocking the united states. somalia probably got a few points of support as a candidate in that it might make an easy target in that it doesn’t have an army to face the u.s., but we wonder if the reports that somalias laughed at the actors pretending to be american soldiers getting killed in the ridley scott docudrama ‘black hawk down’ would help them pull ahead. what is more likely, that the bush cabinet fed the story about the somali glee american at death to drum up american hatred for somalis, or that mr. hussein hired some folks to act like riled up somalis in the hope that some attention is taken away from what he’s got going.

~ time for an aclu take action! aclu action update: oppose attempts to allow unchecked domestic spying! click here to read more and to send a fax to john ashcroft, an attorney general who doubtlessly has much concern for input from the aclu in particular or from american citizens in general.

~ we have made a couple of mistakes recently: ‘nurse betty’ and ‘free enterprise’

~ the number of visits that can be made to westside supermarket before the angry red planet rips off some heads and defecates down some necks has reached the threshold of 10.

~ rasterweb [w] tangentially shares our dilemma about the new ‘digital hub’ being offered by apple. we don’t see any breakthroughs being made for those of use without and ipod or a digital video camera. regardless of all the digital satellites that you need to buy before the imac begins its function as your digital hub, when you do get them all, being able to rip and burn cds and dvds does not seem like the most productive thing for a computer to be doing. the new imac is a step down from the old one; now it is just an entertainment center; consumer electronics packaged sleekly seems like nothing progressive to us. if this imac – or any ‘computer’ – was hidden inside the wall with the fusebox and simultaneously delivered to our kitchen a cake recipe from vegweb [w], duplicate our friend’s franco nero dvd while it was being watched in the rumpus room, and printed and collated 1000 copies of our latest publication in the office…that would be a digital hub for us.

~ by the way, ‘american history x’ and ‘bad lieutenant’ turned out to be rife with beatings and murders.

~ our attempts to view less violent films have ended in failure. though we thoughtfully picked ‘the french connection’, we could not miss the unmistakable tinges of violence throughout the film; in a far worse case, we, in a moment of extreme weakness, demeaned ourselves with a viewing of ‘con-air’. our casual tally of 23 on-screen deaths (not counting the dozens of trained soldiers in armored cars with automatic weapons killed by slovenly cons in abandoned cars, and not counting the untold hundreds or thousands who would have perished as a plane plowed through cars and pedestrians on the las vegas strip) notwithstanding, ‘con-air’ would otherwise still make it into the top 10 worst things with which we have wasted our time. we hope that tonight’s viewing of ‘american history x’ is a more fruitful – and non-violent – expenditure of time.

~ go find a copy of marvel’s ‘a moment of silence’ and see if you don’t also find yourself a blubbering mass on the floor.

~ our kingdom for the first person to explain to us how we have accumulated so much crap in our offices.

~ movies since x-mas:
‘easy rider’
‘fistful of dollars’
‘for a few dollars more’
‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’
‘casualties of war’
‘guadalcanal diary’

‘guadalcanal diary’ had the most on screen deaths, which were countless; ‘easy rider’ had the fewest, with only three. the most lives taken by a single man would have to be in ‘fistful of dollars’, with the distinction going to the man with no name, clint eastwood. in each of the eastwood films, there is one woman who serves as either a pawn between men or as a tool to aid in the destruction of a man. one actress is featured in ‘casualties of war’; she is raped, stabbed, shot, and then she falls from a train trestle. women fare the best, respectively, in ‘easy rider’; they appear and powerful matrons of a commune, as lovingly cared for prostitutes, and as teenagers who are not abused by jack nicholson – whereas they would have suffered at his hands in ‘real life’. not a single woman appears on the screen in ‘guadalcanal diary’. we would like to move into more light-hearted fare, but ‘groundhog day’ is not yet available at our local dvd lessor.

~ it is an amazing coincidence that the highly anticipated osama bin laden confessional tape was released the same day that george w. bush announced that the u.s. is breaking its promise in the anti-ballistic missile treaty. we are sure that it took a couple of extra days to translate that tape, but it is too bad that its release has overshadowed the announcement of the broken treaty, since the bush administration doubtlessly wants the nation to know how well is defending the nation from the missile threat.

~ washington post [w]

~ cnn [w]

~ new york times [w]

~ guardian unlimited [w]

~ msnbc [w]

~ to whom it may concern,

as the angry red planet spends its time reading proust, we have no television or vcr in the office. since we can not view bin laden’s ‘smoking gun’ videotape that is being released today, please send us a copy in divx or quicktime. after watching the evidence, we can decide if the u.s. should begin seeking osama bin laden and/or bombing his al queda crew.

-the angry red planet

~ at the westside supermarket on broadway, the radio is playing over the loudspeaker for the sake of the customers’ entertainment. between commercials. the ‘dj’ – are they still called ‘dj’? – announces the news. “twelve people have been killed in an explosion in a mall” – the entire store stops what they are doing and looks up at the ceiling, from which the message is emanating – “in Jerusalem.” at the naming of the city, one far from westside manhattan or los angeles, the customers quickly drop their heads in indifference and refocus on the more crucial task of grabbing ‘portuguese’ rolls and hummus and tofutti.

~ didn’t the media just discover that it’s ramadan and tell us that it is suddenly the most important time of the year for muslims? apparently, it was so important – for a few days – that if the u.s. attacked this month, all the ‘support’ from muslim nations would erode. the bombers must have been some of those christian palestinians about whom we see some folks reminding israel, as though the zionists would actually have any more sympathy or humanity for them.