Friday, April 30

timewasting (again)

i watched the stupidest movie last night: jason x. you know, based on those friday the 13th movies with the guy called jason voorhees who kills people with a machete and is unstoppable (although in the first movie the killer is actually his mother, avenging his death by killing camp crystal counsellors, and trying to keep the camp closed, so why jason became the killer- and a pretty demonic, supernatural one at that- i'm not sure. o wait, he came back to avenge his mother's death. how cyclic. how deep. how stupid.) this was possibly the worst movie i've ever seen. i'm not sure why i watched the whole thing (okay,i channel-surfed, but still), other than i was trying to see if it was ever going to get better, only it kept getting worse. it wasn't even bad in a cheesy, funny kind of way. it was just bad.

so, the plot of jason x (courtesy of DVD Verdict):
Jason is hanging about at the Crystal Lake Research Facility while a battle of words rages over whether to take him away for further evaluation or freeze him solid in the Facility's cryogenic chamber. The former view prevails, but Jason doesn't cooperate; he naturally gains the upper hand and quickly manages to dispatch half a dozen guards. Things don't all go Jason's way, however, and in seeking out the rest of the Facility's staff, he manages to allow himself to get maneuvered into the cryogenic chamber where he's frozen solid.

Some four hundred years later, a scientific party exploring a no-longer inhabitable planet Earth stumbles across the Facility and discovers the still frozen Jason. They take his body aboard their spacecraft and proceed to try to resuscitate him, completely unaware of who he is. Once unfrozen, Jason immediately grasps the situation, remembers his schtick, and starts in on murdering the entire crew of the spacecraft.


In my role as your faithful reviewer, I really want to save you from this turkey, so here are a few of the things you'll be able to avoid by not seeing it. Let's see, there's the plot stolen from Alien and a dozen other imitators; the usual collection of stabbings and skewerings (including one on some sort of giant drill bit); a woman's head flash-frozen and then smashed into a million bits; a machete that manages to penetrate steel as though it's papier maché; a scientific party that comprises a dumb head scientist and a collection of half-clothed students who seem barely out of puberty and possessed of a collective IQ of about 60; the usual dumb people that go off down dimly-lit corridors on their own; a character who seems like he wants to be Jar-Jar Binks (the bright spot being that he gets killed off while we all know Jar-Jar's still alive and kicking); cheesy special effects including a collision between a spaceship and a space station which apparently has no contingency plan in place for such an possibility; the usual derivative sound track composed of swooping, pulsing music every time something supposedly ominous is going to happen; and the pièce de résistance, in which Jason becomes his own heat shield as he enters the local planet's atmosphere. There is also some choice dialogue that is quite descriptive and, in itself, perhaps tells you all you need to know about the film: At one point, the ship's engineer intones, "You weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict. We were beating each other with our own severed limbs." I have no idea what it means, but the screenwriter must have thought it was real witty. See, didn't I tell you the film was a comedy?

At another point, one of our intrepid student scientists comments "This sucks on so many levels." Imagine, a film that provides its own review. Too bad they didn't use it in the film's advertising, as a warning to the unsuspecting.



i know, i should have written my own review, but this one is better, and i'm lazy, and my computer keeps freezing, and i'm lazy damnit.

Monday, April 26

quake madness
kill aliens. kill kill kill. o yeah, have to work, run group, then more quake.ha.

lazy

i think i'm in one of those lazy phases. so far, i'm having difficulty waking up before 10am. not that i mind, really. i'm just diggin the low-motivation feeling right now, enjoying ignoring the world hurrying by around me. i watched starsky and hutch today, which was interesting as i've never seen the original and had no frame of reference, but i still got into the whole theme of the seventies/retro/cop tv show thing. there were plenty of other shows around that time and the very early eighties that i was reminded of. they riffed brilliantly on all the cliches and the comedy was well-timed and natural and saved the whole thing from being some sort of parody/spoof monstrosity (while not being one long music video like charlie's angel's).

ben stiller and owen wilson are my favourite comedy duo at the moment- everything they do together is perfect: OW's laid backness is the perfect foil to BS's nervy agitation. i don't subscribe to this whole "ben stiller is an irritating neurotic" thing, i don't even see it. even my gran liked zoolander and my gran does not enjoy that kind of comedy. she thought zoolander was sweet. i'd rather watch 1million hours of Ben than 1 hour of jim carrey, who i find repulsive and juvenile in a bad way

so anyway, after the movie i decided to go get a new wallet as the money was falling out of the old one which is a bad thing.. i ended up getting a sale copy of quake 2 as well (no. i can't afford it. i have no self-control. i suck at disciplining myself.), so i spent most of the afternoon playing quake. on god mode. that's when you cheat so you can't die. i have no compunction about doing this: i don't want to test my ability, i want to frag aliens and then shoot their dead bodies till they blow up and then blood goes all over the place.and hear the blood pattering onto the floor. which is weird since i can't even kill a bloody mouse without suffering pangs of guilt for years to come.

so this is how i feel at the moment. lazy

Saturday, April 24

one of those days...
so Carla and I went for coffee this morning. It started out well, carla's shoot was cancelled so she called me and arranged for her to come over at 11:15. 11:15 came no Carla: I got an SMS saying "sorry fell back asleep! Will be there in half an hour!". Which she was. We then decided to go to Cavendish for a change- I haven't been there in ages and we're both kinda sick of the waterfront. We walked around, first to totalsports to look at carla's poster-thingys in the store (we giggled so much they looked at us like we were weird), then trying to find somewhere to have the aforementioned coffee, but everything was packed, so after about an hour we went to nino's. Our waiter was foreign, somalian or Nigerian or Congolese or somesuch, so he did not know what scones or pancakes were. So we shared a bar one cake. mmm. Rich.

then, duly caffeinated, we window-shopped till we got bored, and headed up to the parking garage to pay for parking. The trouble was, Carla tried to pay for parking using an adelphi cantre parking card. Then, when she paid, the ticket machine kept shouting at us unintelligibly, until we were quite befuddled. on the way home, carla took the Muizenberg turnoff, so we had to go back to rondebosch and start the whole trip again. oh, and carla's car's cigarette lighter wouldn't pop out.

yeah, one of those days.

Friday, April 23

money money money money money... MONEY!
i am broke. in fact,i give new meaning to the word broke. i am, in fact shattered. by my calculations, i'm going to have to save at least ten thousand rand for my first month in japan, for rent and deposit and key money etc. there is no way i can save up that much, even without eating, and i need to eat. no really, i do.

so now i'm not really sleeping at night, and when i do, i have really bad dreams. i'm dizzy. my chest is tight. i feel depressed. this money thing is a pisser. in order to earn it, you have to have it. is it not bad enough that i have to pay off a student loan, a woollwoths account and some debit orders and a personal loan... do they expand personal loans?hmmmm.

i hate not having money. i HATE not having money. i never have money. i should be an artist, then i could justify struggling. i could make a virtue of it. but i don't like struggling.

oh boo hoo. such self-pity. i'm even annoying myself. i'm still bloody worried about money though. every damn day.

Tuesday, April 20


(still) to do:

  • passport!!!!!!!!!!
  • new underwear (i am not starting a new life in the underwear i have now!)
  • learn japanese including katakana
  • research japan! (history and modern society)
  • decide what to pack
  • large CD wallet
  • get everyone's email addresses
  • save up a huge amount of money for the first month


Friday, April 16

things about cape town i will miss

* summer days on the beach, relaxing in the hot sun than timidly approaching the icy water... icecream, melty smarties chocolate eggs, wild cherry energade, magazines and lazy conversations.
* winter mornings in bed with hot chocolate, listening to the foghorn.
* joburg, the shack, buena vista, cool runnings (obs), the armchair theatre and all the other laid-back cape town nightspots.
* cadbury's bournville mousse chocolate
* debonair's pizza's (no chopped tomato though please)
* late-night cheese croissants from the engen in gardens (the place to be post-club)
* the laid-back capetonian approach.
* scar, the space station, YDE, journey- where will i get my clothes?
* many many many cheap great fabric stores.
* the kilo stores- R10 magazines make my world a better place!
* thunderstorms

things about cape town i will not miss

* overcrowded, wildy veering taxi's with bass-driven ear-bursting techno music pounding away at my internal organs.
* my constant state of brokeness
* the smell. too many people here do not bathe. at all. and drink too much. and there's always someone who smells like broccoli. or wee.
* constant rain pissing down in winter- everything gets soggy and mif. oh and the howling gale-force wind every spring and autumn.
* R35 for a movie, R8 for a small popcorn!
* R100 buys you ten grocery items if you're LUCKY!
* the cliquey, snobby, label-conscious, social-climbing, backstabbing unfriendly capetown social scene.

i'll miss this place. it'll miss me too. hah.

Friday, April 9

can't touch this...

i'm having a much better week this week. it must be all the chicken. i had KFC for the first time in three years so i'm feeling a bit better about the whole animal rotting in my stomach thing. but the reason for my vastly improved week probably has more to do with my having been accepted in to the JET programme! so i'll be leaving for Japan in july! this is massively exciting, and nerveracking. now i really have to focus on earning (and saving!) some money for the first month. also i'll be trying to get as many contacts in japan as possible, so that i have someone there who is a friendly presence.

i have come up with a checklist (see below) of things i need to get done over the next few weeks and months, and i'll be adding to it as i go, and chcking thigs off as i complete them. this blog will, for the next few months, be chronicling my preparations, farewells and emotions. and then off to japan! i still can't believe it.

so angela at the embassy has said that she'll be sending me some forms and an information pack to get through, so that't the next step in theprocess. i like angela. i've never met her but she was so nice to me when she phoned and told me that i was in. she seemed really happy to be passing on good news, and i was so excited i wanted to cry or vomit or explode. but in a happy, healthy way. the news has helped me prioritise though, so i can no longer stay at san marco. especially as they have decided (without consulting us) to pay us on a monthly basis. so i am now training at five flies, which is silver service and very busy, and i have only two more training shifts to go! but in the end i can relax, knowing that in about 4 months i'[ll never have to waitress again. adult life has begun.

i also finished painting my room, so it's a calmer, moretranquil place at the moment. all i need now are curtains, as i keep being awoken by sunshine, which at this time of year is the visual equivalent of a drill sergeant screaming obscenities in my ear. can someone please explain to me why autumn sun is so harsh?

to do:
* passport!!!!!!!!!!
* new underwear (i am not starting a new life in the underwear i have now!)
* learn japanese including katakana
* research japan! (history and modern society)
* decide what to pack
* large CD wallet
* get everyone's email addresses
* travel guide (lonely planet or let's go)


Monday, April 5

arseholes

limp bizkit cancelled for the second time four days before they were due to play. they are now reviled by most of the youth of this country. they really should not ever return.

Thursday, April 1

april fools

today's stupid april fools rumours and misinformation:

* all smokers will now have to apply for a license to smake in their own homes. licences will be granted only if houses have been equippped with extractors and air- conditioning systems that cost R8000 per room.
* genetic engineers have bred a four-legged chiken that will be available in shops from today. it was not stated wether the chickens will be free range or not.
* herschelle gibbs will be giving up a lucrative cricket career to go and play rugby. for the Cats.

in other news, i found out this morning that one of my friends attempted suicide this week (she overdosed on myprodol, anado and bioplus). i'm not sure how i feel, i'm shellshocked and numb, and don't know how to deal. all my training out of the window.

also, i've decided to move back into the world of meat somewhat and return to eating chicken, as i feel my body needs it. however i feel vaguely disgusted with myself (i managed 3 1/2 years without it), but i did not make this decision lightly. i certainly won't be eating meat though.

i still haven't heard from the japanese embassy. i'm short of money. i hate san marco. i'm depressed.