Prime and Uma Thurman

This weekend I watched a movie called "Prime". What a total shite movie it was indeed! At the risk of spoiling your misery, should you ever care to watch it, I will not divulge the storyline. Rather I shall briefly mention the fact that it is one of the worst movies of the whole year! Very very boring and tedious! Funny in really really brief and very few patches. All in all, a movie to avoid unless the only alternative is internment and physical torture in Guantanamo bay.
Having said that, let's move to Uma Thurman. My God! What an ugly woman! How the hell did she get so ugly, and how the hell did she manage to get into so many films! I am forced to believe that USA is seriously bereft of good looking women which can be trained in acting and put into films. If that is the case, Hollywood should consider shifting base to Europe and start making films here, because a lot of the girls here are absolutely gorgeous!
That leaves us with the question of what should be done with Uma Thurman. I would suggest some plastic surgery to reduce that honker and even then good a paper bag to cover her ugly mug.

latest movie briefs - what to watch and what to avoid!

Recently I've been bolstering my flagging DVD collection. Also, I've been to the cinema a few times. I'm loathe to say it, but not all my choices of movies have proved to be good.

Brief comments on the must watches and the must avoids -

Hero - Definitely avoid! Dear lord, how could such a god-awful film ever come into being. And what's more surprising... what the hell is Jet Li doing in it and what the hell is Quentin Tarentino doing producing such a shite film! 0 stars!

House of Flying Daggers - What was said for Hero goes twenty times for this apalling waste of film, CRTs and movie screens! Zero stars! What a pity I can't rate a movie -20,000 stars!

Fun with Dick and Jane - Yawn... what a BORING and inane film! Every time I feel like Jim Carrey might redeem himself, he proves me wrong! 1/2 stars - and that only because of Tea Leone, whom I fancy!

Ice Age 2 - Meltdown... Now this is a nice film! Scary in the bits where the croco-saurs wreak havoc in the drowning mammals! I loved the possums and the sloth is funny! Not as funny as the first film, but watchable once. Three stars.

V for Vendetta - now here's an entertaining film! Definitely worth watching once... I'd give this one 4 stars!

She's the Man - Very funny film... gorgeous girls, good sport, cool guys who're not depicted as Gods... worth a watch! 4 stars!

Sin City - Dear Lord... now THIS is the Tarentino we know and love! None of that gay balletic kung-fu nonsense! A full-on, in-your-face guts and gore and glory film of real men and spunky women! 5 Stars! Shame I can't rate a film 10 stars!

Company of Wolves - what a waste of 6 quid of my hard earned cash! This one gave me a migraine! One Star!

2 can play that game - what an entertaining film! No bullshit, and the gorgrous and emminently sexy Vivaca A Fox... that works for me! 3.5 stars!

Harold and Kumar get the Munchies - funny film. Couldn't quite capture the humour of American Pie or Van Wilder... but good for passing time. 3 Stars!

Well... you have been advised and warned! So watch and avoid accordingly!

true nature of heaven

Heaven -
I do not talk about the biblical or mythical place floating on top of clouds, surrounded by floating people with wings etc.
Rather I talk about a concept, quite nebulous and ill-defined. For me, at the moment, it's just a thought, a fleeting glimpse.
In some ways, it's smart brilliant idea that's lurking just behind the veneer of regular mundane thoughts that infest waking consciousness. You know it's there, you can almost grasp it's form and figure. But at best, it's always just beyond your grasp, and forever threatens to slip deep into the unfathomable recesses to be never again retrieved.
I'll call your attention at this point, to an offbeat movie - Casshern, which tried to depict this difficult-to-grasp concept with some success. Without going into the specifics of the story (I don't believe in spoiling people's fun, just in case any of you reading this post might see the film at some point in the future), I'll just suffice by saying that the movie provides a visual reference to what I attempt to describe. Just before some of the characters in the film die, they see "it". This "it" is something that makes them visibly happy, and enables them to make sense of it all, of what's happening, where they're going etc. What is it that they see? It is different for everyone, and one can only assume that it's a glimpse of their own special heaven (and the film is worth watching for just that fleeting glimpse if nothing else).
So what exactly is heaven? Here, I will be slightly hamstrung by the nebulousness of the concept.
But in extremely simple terms, it's a place where you feel safe and warm and happy. It's a place where no worries touch your mind, where each moment blends into an endless stream of happiness. If you can imagine a life without worries, in which you are totally happy, the place and people you're with would be your heaven.
Few people actually experience this feeling in their life. Many people strive to achieve that feeling, work their entire lives to get their lives in a state that mirrors their personal heaven. But very few actually understand clearly what they search for.
Ever wake up in the morning feeling absolutely and deliriously happy for no apparent reason? If you haven't, you have my sympathy, for you have missed on a taste of your own personal heaven. It has happened to me once. I woke up one morning about 10 years ago, and I was almost tingling with happiness. I had a vague recollection of a dream just before waking up, but it was a brief fleeting shadow of a thought lurking just below the surface (sounds familiar?).
My explanation for this phenomenon is that the subconscious thoughts that shape your dreams, sometimes know precisely what your personal heaven is. Sometimes they manifest this knowledge in the form of a very real glimpse of your personal heaven in a dream.
Knowing one's personal heaven is tied very closely with knowing oneself. In spite of what we think we know, most of us do not know our true selves much. Most of what we think we know about ourselves is actually a complex mixture forged by social influences, aspirational self image, constraints of day-to-day life etc.
If you were ever to get clarity on what your personal heaven is, how would you go about getting there? In my opinion, you could go on to achieve it physically in the physical world that we live in and which we perceive, OR you could work towards it spiritually.
At this moment, I am not spiritually advanced enough to know how I would go about achieving my personal heaven. But I know that the first step is definitely to find out what my personal heaven looks like. Then the second step would be to evaluate if it would be possible to try and achieve my personal heaven in the physical world. My worldly experience tells me that this will be unlikely. My worldly experience tells me that I'll probably discover that the path to my personal heaven starts in self discovery and continues through the discovery of the nature of reality and creation.
There are a lot of spiritual gurus and a lot of spiritual philosophies which will tell you a lot of things about the true meaning of life and of creation and of reality. However I reject all of them on the basis that at best they all lead to somebody else's personal heaven. At best, they work for somebody else. I need to find my own path, discover my own self and my own personal heaven and my own way to get there. When my life ceases to have a worldly purpose, this quest will drive me on. Finding my personal heaven will be the purpose of existing.
Like I said in another post long ago, what gives me hope is the thought that there exists some good in the world. I might not be worthy of of it, but I strive to achieve it nonetheless. My personal heaven is precisely one such good.

a few thoughts about Alimony

Ahhh alimony and post-divorce support - definitely one of my pet peeves!
The law of most civilized countries heavily favours the woman in a marriage, though the benefits can be applicable to the man as well.
Laws in most societies entitle the wife to helf of the husband's assets and also a steady stream of financial support for future. It's as simple as that. Easy street - just a divorce away!
I, for one, think that this is a joke! Compensating the woman for lost revenues in terms of reasonable wages when she was not working because of her marriage is one thing. Entitling her to a share of the assets, proportional to what she reasonably could have expected to accumulate on her own against what he accumulated over the same period... sounds fair. But giving the woman a blanket percentage of all assets and financial support etc. is indeed a joke! It's a punishment for the man for getting involved with the wretched woman in the first place. "Serves you right", the judge must laugh in his/her mind, while passing this order for lifelong slavery on the man!
The woman, on the other hand, is set for life. Do absolutely nothing, live in a style beyond what she would usually be capable of supporting on her own, and be free to start hunting for the next loaded sap waiting to be parted from his fortune!
You might say the man strayed in his marriage, cheated on the woman, he deserves to pay for that. I say - a woman who can't hold on to the love of her man doesn't deserve to be married to him. If a woman isn't working to keep bread on the table and panes in the windows, she damn well work to keep her man happy and pleased, so he doesn't stray. THAT is her work. If she can't do that, SHE deserves a share in the punishment. When the marriage ends, she shouldn't come on the street - she should have enough to survive and get back on her feet... but for heavens sake, she shouldn't be set for absolutely the rest of her bloody life for probably playing a significant part in making her marriage fail! And probably for choosing the wrong man to marry in the first place!!
I say give the law of alimony major reconstructive surgery... the woman will be entitled to enough money to compensate for her FAIR share of the assets and to enable her to get back on her feet. This should include, if required, any cost of education and getting a job. But after that, she's on her own. Any children she might be raising, should be raised on expenses shared between her and him.
Make society a bit fair - re-think alimony!

the hot and the shitty

Just happened to see 2 hip and happening women in the newspaper today...

Shakira... definitely has it going for her.
A message for Shakira - you're hot! Haven't heard any of your music which I remember, but damn you make a fine photograph!

Scarlett Johansson... her shitty lips and gums and wierd face are certainly not doing her any favours!
A message for Scarlett - your name is hot, but you're shitty... you should stop coming in front of the camera and ruining perfectly good film or memory sticks!

Ban smacking of children!

What the title of this post suggests, is not what I intend to convey in this post.
Just read in the metro newspaper today that Britain's 4 child commissioners (hell, I didn't know they made them commissioners that young ;)) demanded that smacking young people (namely, children) should be banned in toto. That is to say treat children with the same respect for their human dignity as adults.
Ahhhhh.... compelling argument. Anybody else see the flaw in it?
Let's face it, you want to raise kids, not prima-donnas. A lot of times I have seen really irritating kids, and with more irritating parents. The kid just bawls out and the parents are scrambling over themselves to satisfy it's every whim! In no time, these young humans, in the peak of their learning abilities learn how to precisely wrap these stupid grown-ups around their little little fingers! That's precisely what spoilt little brats need... more power over adults!
And what these commissioners now expect is for parents to deal with kids psychologically, I suppose.... treat them like royalty when they deserve to be given 2 sound smacks. Maybe not... maybe they expect physical punishment to be replaced by some sort of shitty psychological punishment like grounding the youngster, so he/she can go to their room and play their X-Box by themself instead of going out and playing with their friends. Harsh!!
I am getting the distinct feeling that Britain is not the place to have kids. Discipline your kid by a spanking and you could get arrested, and your kid given up for adoption (I'm thinking that the result of this stupid law will be that many parents will start finding the second part rather appealing).
But seriously, spare the rod and spoil the child. If the kid does not respond to reason or disrespects its elder, it should be smack-city!!
I can see how people might get concerned over smacking kids in the face and all. Perhaps parents should be given lessons on how to smack kids so it smarts (like on their bottoms), but doesn't hurt (or in case of those over-zealous or abusive alcolohics amongst us... cause permanent damage) the child. The idea is the child needs to know there's punishment that matches the offence.
Anyway... that's my two cents. God sod this misled British sense of correctness! And have mercy on this society in 60 years time, when all these well-respected children are adults and maybe even raising children of their own!

Some reasons to be a Vegetarian

As if you really needed any more reasons.
As a follow up to one of my early posts...

At this point, I have to say that vegetarianism is not for heroes... because you don't really need to be a hero to be a vegetarian. There are so many compelling reasons for being a vegetarian, that anybody who's normal will be one. However, you do need a special mean streak, a special inbuilt cruelty to actually continue eating meat even when you realize how wrong it is.

A link to PETA's clip on more reasons - here - in case you really needed more reasons...
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=PETA+Chew+On+This

Japan - a country full of arseholes

Sometime back, I was smitten with Japan and her people... full of culture, courage, honour, intelligence, I thought. Not to mention the fact that I thought Japanese women had so much style and so many other things going for them.
But what I had forgotten was the thing that struck me on new year's eve while reading a newspaper article. Whaling.
Japan is the main culprit still responsible for the despicable and reprehensible act of hunting such magnificant creatures. Not only hunting, but hunting many to extinction or pushing them down the inevitable path towards extinction.
You see... whales are big. But they're mere drops in the vast oceans that they dwell in. Whales need a certain minimum population to be able to find each other in the vast emptiness of the oceans, so that they produce enough calves to at least maintain their population. Excessive killing of these gentle giants has messed it all up.
Most whalers start cutting up the whale while it's still alive. The gentle creature is harpooned and slowly reeled up the side of the whaler where saws cut into it's living flesh, providing agonizing pain to accompany the suffocation that results from the creature's massive weight crushing it's internal organs and lungs, without the pressure of the ocean to provide the necessary support.
I can comfortably state as a fact that a people who are capable of enacting such heinous crimes against such beautiful, gentle harmless animals are no better than the skidmarks that sometimes adorn public toilet bowls.
So if you're Japanese, and you're not picketing your government everyday to stop your shit for brains whaling, you're nothing but a ass-wipe skidmark, you dumb idiot excuse for a human being! I hope you choke on the shit you must naturally be swimming in, you piss drinking filthy maggots!