Yet Another Star Mistakes Popularity for Authority...

So, all those skull fractures have finally caught up with the Buster Keaton of pagga, Jackie Chan, as he starts pandering to the mainland authorities, presumably to get the ban on his latest flick lifted. The Chinese 'need to be controlled', lest they just do what they want. Hmm.

'Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system' - Bruce Lee

Wankers

That's the word. Not 'douchebags'. For pity's sake, now even The Guardian's using it...at least if you want to ape American culture - ape being the operative word - don't adopt their most moronic terms or practices.

I should have seen this day coming, of course. It's already been nearly 10 years since I got accosted by teenage slappers in Crouch End wanting contributions to their 'prom'. For the love of God.

Oh the Humanity!

Barring notable exceptions such as Marcus Brigstocke's creditably thought-out recent appearance on Question Time, comedians really shouldn't mistake their knack for making the odd satirical aside on the news for being able to offer something of actual weight. The likes of Marks Thomas and Steel do not count, both having opted a long while back for satirically-tinted political comment as their field, leaving stand-up to the gag merchants.

No, I mean the Frank Skinners who get complacent after getting their column in a broadsheet and choose to comment on matters clearly outside their proficiencies such as, in this case, the braining of Berlusconi. There's no intellectual strigency at all. We're now to feel sorry for the old gangster because he's been bleeding on telly, which apparently shows us that he's human after all. And what is he really guilty of, anyway? According to Frank,

'Berlusconi might be a silly, egotistical old man who can’t keep his trousers on, but he didn’t deserve that.'

Really. Not an irredeemably corrupt quasi-dictator with less moral fibre than a pyramid scheme hawker, who's mangled Italy's already hopelessly precarious legislative system beyond all hope of repair in his mania to stay in power, then. No, he's Benny Hill. And now someone's broken Ernie the Milkman's nose.

Sadly, Italy is a nation of Skinners, and no matter what mayfly groups may have sprung up on the net, gleeful at someone finally doing to Silvio what many have dreamed of doing themselves, the sympathy vote will end up outweighing any positives to be gleaned from this.

Cruising for a Bruising

Rich Hall, the thinking man's American comic, helpfully sums up the world's leading pint-sized thetan's entire oeuvre in two minutes flat.

He was bloody good in Magnolia, though...as the truism goes. This is perhaps not unrelated to the fact that he was playing an utter arschloch.

Respite: Gentle Games...

This from the guy who first gave us Samorost. Delightful!

Courtesy of the Sun-Earther.

Send Them All Back Where They Came From

We should all rejoice, as with Nazi war criminals, that perverts (yes, a loaded term if there ever was one, but if there was ever a better shorthand for it, suggestions please) eventually have to answer for their crimes. Clearly forcing yourself on impressionable 13-year-olds cannot go unchecked or unpunished.
But...dangerous precedents apply. The Polanski case, in the greater scheme of things, is less to do with a priapic child molester than it is to do with Europe's thoroughly unhealthy and subservient role in the face of American power, which is neatly crystallised in wholly one-sided extradition treaties. In other words, we are that vulnerable child cowing to a domineering, demanding presence. No should mean no.

They Used to Be Called Houses of Learning

I joined my local library the other day. You might have forgotten these places exist. Within a few minutes I had 60 quid worth of new literature of genuine merit between my grubby paws...and nobody even tried to question me on the way on the way out. Some security check must have gone astray.
You take away things that contain ideas, fantasies, plots, dreams...everything of that ilk you'll readily go online for. Only that you will not have to rely on your server, batteries, wi-fi access. This might seem more about books than anything else. But we all pay for this. It's ours; it has been there for centuries and now it's neglected.
I'm not a revolutionary on this front; I believe the Net, particularly through the search engines and Wikipedia, has done more to further universally accessible knowledge to a larger part of mankind than anything ever seen. But the Net does encourage superficialism: it's simply easier to skim. You search, you find, you end up ignoring the context, and even with just factual information-trawls, let alone trying to make some sense of art, it'll mean you've missed the bigger picture.