Come on, is that the best you got?

No doubt everyone has heard about the outbreak of swine influenza A (H1N1).

I am sanguine about this one for a number of reason.

The virus was identified a threat early in the outbreak. The virus seems to be transmitted by droplet. While this is worse than if it was bloodborne its better than if it was airborne. In the past the morbidity rate for these viruses are around 4% and so far seem to be responsive to the antivirals oseltamivir (prescribed under the trade name Tramiflu in Australia) and zanamivir.

Medical authorities have raise the alarm, The World Health Organisation has set the ‘global Influenza Prepardness Plan at Phase 4 which is characterized by

"...verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks.” Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion..."

In Australia we have 8 million viable stocks of Tramiflu for our popualtion.
Our medical professionals have been briefed on the clinical signs and able to send samples to type the virus to confirm if it is swine influenza A (H1N1). The public is aware that if the display flu like symptoms to have them checked. Also the Government on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jim Bishop included swine influenza to be a quarantinable disease in humans under the Quarantine Act 1908.

Under the Quarantine Act, people who, in the opinion of the Chief Medical Officer, are likely to have been exposed with swine flu, can be placed under surveillance until it can be established that they should either be ordered into quarantine, or it is established that they are not affected by the disease.

For myself
I am following the news, still no confirmed cases in Australia though still awaiting results on some. I am carrying out good hygiene practices and have advise co-workers if they cough anywhere near me is shall ‘kill them where they sit’. So I am fairly confident.

How about you?

Haven't we suffered enough

Many media pundits report that in hard economic times people look to lighter, funny more comforting entertainments. A benefit the makers of the Star Trek movie look to reap while the producers of ‘The Road’ agonise over their poor timing. A similar suggestion is floated for books. So of the many tragedies that can be laid at the feet of the Global Financial Crisis (so much more bloodless than The Great Depression - Redux) is it also responsible for why for the first three months of 2009, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books took the first four spots quarterly best-selling books list. Sales of Meyer's five novels accounted for 16% of all books sold. The fifth being the uncharacteristically interesting ‘young adult’ alien invasion novel ‘The Host’. Worse if you consider she was responsible for one out of every seven books sold in the last three months.

Yeah I know “if it gets the kids reading” argument.

It seems there is a contrary section of the population that when civilization crumbles they crave “Paranormal, horror and especially apocalyptic-themed novels” says St. Martin's editor Michael Homler. This is reflected in sales of two of my favorites from last year
“Wastelands a collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction just went into a fifth printing selling over 30,000 copies a little over 12 months, and The Living Dead ,over 45,000 copies in six months.

But perhaps the worse effect the GFC has had on book sales. The UK’s Guardian newspaper has reported sales of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atla’s Shrugged’ have taken a marked jump. The Ayn Rand Centre for Individual Rights claims that US-wide sales almost tripled over the first seven weeks of 2009, compared with the same period in 2008.

Haven’t we suffered enough in this GFC, now to have to put up with a bunch of investment banker uber capitalists with copies under one arm and fists full of government bailout bucks in the other spouting about world in which the

"men of the mind" - inventors, entrepreneurs and industrialists - withdraw their labour from a society intent on bleeding them dry with taxes and regulations. Furious at being exploited by the government on behalf of the masses, who are described as "parasites" and "moochers", the striking capitalists retreat to a camp in the mountains of Colorado, protected by a special holographic shield. Starved of their genius, society collapses and wars break out until eventually bureaucrats are forced to beg the rebels' leader, John Galt, to take over the economy.

If you don’t believe it read some of

Japanese Education System continues to outstrip US, Australia & Europe

Easter
Sorry but a festival about a guy who dies and then comes back makes me tad uncomfortable.

A few posts back I mentioned the Onion panel discussion on whether or not the current crop of computer games: Left4Dead, Fallout3 or Fallen Earth are adequately preparing our children for the post apocalyptic world.

Japan has taken this to the next logical step.




Sure some of you may claim this may traumatize the little tykes, though I will say from a survey of the_weapon his only comments were: ‘Why didn’t they aim for the head’ and ‘bring it’.

Anyway is a preemptive scarring, like exposing your kids to chicken pox so that they don’t get it as an adult.

However Japan you and I are going to have words about this

SCHADENFREUDE

Schadenfreude is it wrong if the ‘other’ is a complete dick

Like Birmo’s and Flinthart’s offspring The_Weapon takes training in unarmed combat. To learn students are paired up and practice the demonstrated techniques with instructors watching and correcting.

At the dojo where he trains he is frequently paired with the same ukei (training partner) of similar age and size. Part of martial arts training is learning to be a good ukei: using the correct strike, moving the right way to help your partner practice the throw etc.. The kid he is paired with is not a good ukei. He tries to punch when he should use a strike, comes in too fast when they should be practicing the timing, moving out when practicing a throw to make it harder…generally being a dick.

We have tried to help The_weapon take this with focus and dedication to the discipline. We figure he is going to have to deal with idiots all his life may as well develop ways of dealing with them now. So when he has coped the odd blow to the head, kick in the shins etc… he will get up, brush it off and take up the posture ready for the next technique.

All the senior students, instructors and head of the school are aware of this ukei’s attitude, so they try to rotate him around different training partners.

Last night they paired this crappy ukei with a new student, a white belt, and as a new student will, they messed up the strike and accidentally landed a solid blow to the crappy ukei’s nose.

This kid who had often punched, stepped on or tried to trip The_weapon during training -fell over on his arse, looked up at his shorter and newer opponent and jumped up running from the mat ‘crying like a little girl’ as later described by the_weapon.

I swear the instructor at the time looked at the parents and smiled when this happened.

So is Schadenfreude still Schadenfreude if the ‘other’ really deserves it?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

Well me, obviously.

Twice now.

Once on the BIG screen at IMAX who tout their movies with the tagline - “Trust us......SIZE DOES MATTER!”

and once in Village Cinema's Gold Class, “mmm why yes - bring me the double wagyu burgers with tomato jam, cheese, lettuce, with onion relish served with shoe string fries and garlic aioli. Then for desert I’ll have the mixed berry cheesecake with grand marnier compote and mascarpone with my coffee, bring it out 30 minutes before the end”. For complete menu click here.

What did I think, - let me set the scene

THE GRAPHIC NOVEL (1986-1987)
Watchmen has been described, as the Moby Dick of superhero graphic novels and it must be a novel since it was included in Time Magazine’s 100 greatest novels of all time, Click here for the full list. Though with Phillip.K. Dick’s Ubik on the list a Mind-fraking component must have been included high on the priorities for selection. Watchmen used tropes and tabulae of images in the way big screen cinema had been using them for years and so it was this graphic novel that challenged the way such novels were perceived at the time. For the movie to have the same impact it would have needed to do cinema in a way that drew on the techniques of other media.

MY EXPERIENCES OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
Reading it in 1987 would be different to reading it now. I don’t know if it was in the 80s the US, UK and to a lesser extent Australia seemed to be facing economic and social woes that gave rise to an atmosphere of imminent collapse. Maybe it was my itinerant sharehouse lifestyle complete with transitory screaming random housemates, the marginal paying, time-shifted macjobs we all worked, the sense that the 20th Century was circling the drain of history that made the existence of masked vigilantes and indifferent world shattering forces as not only believable but indeed required. This and the increasing belief that the future held an absence of any shinny jetpacks, moon bases and hot android women added to a feeling of hopelessness and despair that the comic/graphic novel captured.

So Watchmen, though I didn’t realise it at the time, was the fear stink of sweat, semen, and blood of an era coalesced into a thick slab of a slowly crumbling paper.

MY EXPERIENCES OF THE FILM
Watching Zack ‘300’ Snyder’s WATCHMEN unfold on the big screen I was seeing a significant, much contemplated and beloved chunk of my youth up there in homage. That just doesn’t happen to me, usually its all boomer aging or gen Y angst.

BIG props to Zack Snyder who I can only imagine must as big a fanboy as the rest of us given how he lovingly recreates the novel. Almost every scene is a fractal of the complex story and panels worthy of framing.

The casting was for me spot on. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Supernatural’s John Winchester) as Edward Blake/Comedian, Jackie Earle Haley as Walter Kovacs/ Rorschach being my stand out favorites only because they were my favorites in the novel.

STANDOUT SCENES ******SPOILERS***********

Anything with Rorschach

“Is that what happens to us? A life of conflict with no time for friends, so that when it's done, only our enemies leave roses”.

"It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us".

Rorschach could have been a poet. Okay maybe a crazy, super-violent poet, but a poet.

For me the two scariest parts of the film are

when Dan Dreiberg is standing in the midst of a riot plaintively decrying

“What's happened to the American dream?” And the comedian smiling as he turns back from knocking down a protester with a smoke round (technically non-lethal) answers “It came true. You're lookin' at it”.

Dr Manhattan’s old colleague Wally Weaver is on a talk show and calmly and sanely says: “I never said the superman exists, and he's American. What I said was God exists, and he's American. If that statement starts to chill you after a couple of moments consideration then don’t be alarmed. A feeling of intense and crushing religious terror at the concept only indicates that you are still sane”.

THE SQUID
No its not in it.

Yes I think the ending they went with still works

Damn I did want to see that squid up on the big screen though.

But even in my most fanboy hopeful I KNEW they couldn’t keep the same ending.

For those who have read the novel you know there was NO WAY after 9-11 any studio would make a movie that recreated the first 8 pages of Chapter XII on the big screen as haunting and eerie as it could have been done up on the big screen.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK
The reviews and box office are mixed and I have read a lot now.
For an surprising take, check out some of the reviews here, really check them out.
It shows that Christian doesn’t mean fundamental, bigoted and narrow minded. A few provided an insight from a religious perspective on the movie that gave me a different but valid viewpoint seeing it as a morality play, a discourse on the materialist and the divine, etc.

Then of course some are just plain bat-frak crazy too, especially as they offer a section titled ‘comments from Non-viewers’ for those who want to say something WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN THE FILM.

Some of the comments/complaints in the reviews are about the violent and graphic nature use the scene in the prison saying “....By the way, the guy could have easily cut through the bars on the other side, since Rorschach's cell was quite wide. This is what I mean when I say excessive violence… there's often no point whatsoever other than to shock the audience, which makes it somewhat similar to the 'horror' movies of today”.

This is mistaken on two levels:

• Thematically -it helps reinforce the brutal, callous nature of the criminals that Rorschach faces everyday.

• Mechanically -as they are constrained for time they want to cut the least number of bars. They could cut through the bars further down but to make a sufficient space to allow access would mean cutting 3 bars twice, top and bottom. Instead they could cut the arms and get access to the two bars around the cage lock. Cutting two bars and the lock falls, cage open.

It’s a case of cutting through 2 arms is faster than cutting twice through a jail cell bar.

*****SPOILERS OFF*************

VIRGINS
What will people who've never read Watchmen even think of this film? What will it be like for them to sit through these crazy, violent, colourful three hours and not recognize almost every line – almost every image? Will they be utterly baffled, bored, or totally love it?

Perhaps if the economic downturn continues and this coming decade brings with it the every increasing hopeless and despair that the 1980s held then the movie will be reassessed.

IMHO
Is Watchmen a good or bad movie? I have no idea.

I’m going to go with the words of Matt Selman, The Times on-lines nerd in residence.

“I stand powerless before the Gods I once worshiped in my attic bedroom, now moving and talking and fighting and loving on a giant screen. And I find myself unable to judge them”.

FOR THE FANBOYS
But remember if for nothing else Zack ‘300’ Snyder deserves our thanks (and nothing would say thanks better than going to see it a few more times) for preventing the studio’s from committeeing the novel to death. Because for all the movie's magnificent follies we could have ended up with this:

Lunch, certainly not naked

Guru Bob and I caught up for lunch on friday, a fairly regular thing since we both work in the CBD.

Once we'd choose a different eatery each time, but now we stick with a great noshing place up a narrow, cobbled, crooked lane way in Melbourne that should lead to an opium den but instead reveals the 'Dainty Sichuan Food', and having eaten there - that word 'Dainty', I do not think it means what you think it means.
So each week we are working our way through the menu.

If you get there between 12.30 and 1.30 PM it also has the advantage of turning into Asian babe central. I think we can all agree you can never have too much spicy food or being surrounded by Asian babes eating spicy food. Another reason we keep going back is we see stuff people have ordered and we try to order it going on the names. Up till now that has being pretty hit and miss. This time as well as the usual menu they also gave us one of the novices menus which includes pictures of each of the the dishes.

This week it was:
• 'cumin pork spare ribs' - our must always have when we go,
• 'ants climbing the hill' which was surprisingly free of ants, and

• pork slice hot pot, and when they say hot pot they mean in spice, not temperature.

We then headed up to catch 'Watchmen' on IMAX but that's a topic for another post.

Its the debate we had to have

For those who aren't aware the zombieapocalypse is a subset of Eschatology. This is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with the final events in the history, the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world.

and while much has been written, sung and painted about Armageddon and don't get me started on those who talk about wanting to "immanentize the eschaton" never have I seen the post-apocalyptic wasteland more lovingly portrayed than in the computer game Fallout3.



but the question has to be asked

"Are these games really preparing our children for the post-apocalyptic wasteland, thank goodness the team at 'The Onion' have been tackling this vital topic.


Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

"grenades are more effective at taking out cyborgs than automatic weapons"

I think there is a lesson there for us all.