They're baaaaack!

In one week's time the second half of the 2011 season of Doctor Who gets underway, and will hopefully answer some very important questions (and stop us feeling quite so guilty about giving up on the current series of Torchwood). How does the whole River thing work? Why is the lady with the eyepatch such a total bitch? How many times will Rory die? Will Amy continue to be a whiny twerp? Head under the cut for some first half discussion, the trailer for the upcoming episodes, and a wee bit of gloating by yours truly.

Fruitless Pursuits now live!

It's been a little bit quiet round these parts for the last couple of weeks, but for good reason! A group of pop culture enjoyers (including yours truly) have decided to pool our talents to create a SUPERBLOG. The Voltron of blogs, if you will. This does not mean the end of Wall of Nerd of course, but it does mean that if I'm being a bit quiet with posting you can always pop over to Fruitless Pursuits and read the other great content generated by all my pals.

Go on! Go! Over there! Now!

Sunday HNNNG #2

A somewhat belated Sunday HNNNG, but it's still Sunday in...Honolulu. So it's technically still okay. You may notice there has been a couple of weeks in between hnnngs. I did originally plan to make it a weekly event, but nothing really stood out to me as a true hnnng in the last fortnight.

UNTIL NOW.

You may be aware of my recent minor infatuation with Michael Fassbender (you know, Magneto), an infatuation that I'm admittedly rather proud of myself for, as crushing on a manly man is much more satisfactory than the girly boys I tend to go for.

ANYWAY.

He recently starred in an adaption of Jane Eyre that has been out in the rest of the world for months, but is not out in Australia for another week (oh, the pain). I stumbled across the following cover the other day in my searching of the googlemachines:

Oh. My. I hear there were a lot of insurance claims stemming from that photoshoot. All the ladies in the immediate area became spontaneously pregnant after witnessing his carnal gaze.

HNNNG. Head on over to the W Magazine website to check out the full gallery of The Fass and his Jane Eyre co-star Mia Wasikowska. To state the obvious and crude: he can Bend my Fass any time.

Kickin' It Old School

The other day I discovered a stack of books that caused me nothing but pain and torture in days gone by. Yes, that's right. REQUIRED READING MATERIAL. I did English Literature in high school, which was wonderful in that it started my life-long love of Shakespeare, but bad in the respect that it was brain-smashingly hard and almost resulted in me failing Year 12.

Most of the required material is incredibly tedious when you're 16. I was actually really surprised to find I still had these books. The only one that appears to be missing is Hedda Gabler, but I had such a special hate for that book that I suspect it may have met a fiery end post-graduation. I've decided to revisit these now that I'm somewhat more 'mature' to see if they're any more enjoyable. Except Hedda Gabler. Just reading the synopsis on Wikipedia just about put me into convulsions.

Let's have a look at what we've got:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

What I remember: In a dystopian future, women are slaves. They wear red, they breed, they hang out. 

What Wikipedia says: The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, male chauvinist, nativist, theocratic-organized military coup as an ideologically driven response to the pervasive ecological, physical and social degradation of the country.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

What I remember: Africa. Some crazy white dude. Tim Roth (we watched the movie after we finished the book). 

What Wikipedia says: The story centres on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil.

Othello by William Shakespeare

What I remember: Black guy...something something...a-hole white guy named after the parrot in Aladdin...something something...conflict.

What Wikipedia says: WAY TOO MANY THINGS. In summary, Othello is a black guy in the army and a total badass. He's married to a chick called Desdemona. He's got a buddy called Iago who gets really pissed off when Othello promotes a younger guy called Cassio head of him. Iago proceeds to ruin the shit out of everyone's lives. Cause he can.

In all honesty I probably won't read this one again, but I have been wanting to re-watch a modern adaption called 'O' starring Mekhi Phifer, Julia Stiles & Josh Hartnett (oh, early 00s, I love you), so will probably do that instead.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

What I remember: It being really boring til we got the watch the BBC version. Ey-o! No, I do like P&P, but until you get it into your brain that Mr Darcy is a super Hottie McHottiepants, the book goes like this: Fairly nice girl has a whole lot of idiot sisters and an idiot mother. One idiot sister loves the new bland rich boy in the neighbourhood. Bland rich boy's friend is a frigid douchebag who is in general quite a douchebag to the fairly nice girl. The most idiot of the idiot sisters runs off with a total manslut, so frigid douchebag goes and finds them. Turns out he was only a douchebag cause he totally loved the fairly nice girl. Fairly nice girl marries him. You never find out if he stops being frigid.



I don't plan on reading this again, I have read/seen it ten million times. It's just an excuse for a picture of Colin Firth. The actual caption on this picture when I found it was 'Ideal Breeding Material'. TRUTH. Would also accept Matthew McFayden as potential babydaddy.

There are a couple of other books I'm going to add to this list even though they technically weren't school books. They feel like they should have been though.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I'm currently reading this for the first time, so no memories. I am quite enjoying it, even though there have been quite a few passages I've skimmed due to preachy God things. Though even those are ok in the end cause the character will say something along the lines of 'If I suffer without complaining, then God will like me and I'll get into heaven' and Jane will be all 'What is WRONG with you??' Very much looking forward to the movie, and not just for The Fassbender. Though I'm looking forward to The Fassbender a lot.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

This book was gifted to me by my Year 10 English teacher from his personal library, but I must admit I'm yet to read it. I saw the movie adaption 'In Love and War' starring the dreamy Chris O'Donnell and the sassy Sandra Bullock, but that's as far as I got. It's totally my sort of thing, wartime romance and all that, so I'm not sure why I haven't bothered to tackle it before now.








My task is set! Keep an eye on the Currently Reading section in the sidebar to see what I'm up to in my quests. I may or may not reblog about the books at the end, cause it'll probably be quite boring to read 'No, they were all just as boring as they were 10 years ago', but we'll see how it goes.

Joining the iCult

I am only a recent iPhone owner. I bought a second-hand 3Gs about six months ago because the idea of getting an iPhone4 and having a micro sim & not being able to immediately switch the sim to another phone if the current phone died horrified me. I'd bought myself an iPod Touch prior so I could try out this 'app' business and see if it was going to be something I would use. A few months later the second hand phone was offered, and the rest is history.

I AM NOW COMPLETELY DEPENDANT ON THIS DAMN THING.

I check my emails on my phone, I check all my social media accounts on my phone, I watch videos on my phone, I look things up on my phone, I do my banking on my phone, I play games on my phone...

And I suppose I make phonecalls too. Sometimes.

Even though I am painfully addicted to Tiny Tower, and I check Echofon every five seconds, my favourite apps are easily the inventory ones. I have a lot of crap, in various forms. I often come home with doubles of CDs and DVDs cause I can't remember what I do and don't have, so being able to have every single stupid thing I own at my fingertips is a godsend. Pop below the cut to check out my favourite inventory apps.

Kiva Karma

A few months ago I decided once and for all that World of Warcraft was not for me. I barely touched it in the months after Christmas, and despite getting back into it for a little while in April it seemed like a bit of a waste of money. 

Around the same time I was contemplating kicking WoW to the curb, I heard about Kiva. From Oprah. Oprah told me about it. Specifically, the episode of Oprah's Favourite Things where she gave everyone a Kiva gift card told me about it. Essentially, you loan money to a small business owner in a developing country (usually, I've seen some USA loans) so they can start/expand their business, and then they pay you back. It's kind of nice knowing that giving as little as $25 can make such a huge difference towards someone's life. And it was a far more worthwhile thing to spend money on than battling internet dragons.

I've currently got two loans on the go:

Ariel Francisco is 26, from Nicaragua, has two kids, and a business selling CDs and DVDs. The loan was to buy more stock, so he'd have more variety. I couldn't NOT give money to a dude with a record store. From everyone's first viewing of Empire Records, up until they're old enough to realise it's a stupid idea, they dream of owning a record store. Livin' the dream Ariel. Livin' the dream.

Sudura Qafarova is from Azerbaijan, has two kids, and wanted a loan to buy more cows and  fodder for her cattle breeding business. This one is less out of personal interest than the last one. I saw someone from Azerbaijan, went 'I loved their entry in this year's Eurovision!' and gave money. No matter how ridiculous the motivation, all the dollars count.

The reason I chose to throw my good deeds in your faces today is because Kiva are giving away a limited number of $25 free trial loans. There were over 2000 still available when I first looked this morning, but it's down to a little over 250 now. Click HERE to check out Kiva and sign up if you wish. Go on! Help someone buy a goat today!

PS. If anyone's in Azeroth, could you do me a favour and pop in and feed Wuff, my wolf and Vince, my turtle? It's been a while, they've probably started a fight club to see who gets the last of the food. My money's on Vince, tbh.

EDIT: Due to the success of the first lot of freebies, they've just released 4000 more. Go go go!

The one time it's not cool to be a Jedi Knight

Now, it's not very often that I talk about Serious Things on here, but I've had to take a bit of a detour on this particular issue (though essentially, it's still pretty nerdy, woo!). On the 9th of August Australians will take part in the Census, something that I didn't really give a shit about until I started watching Who Do You Think You Are and they were getting all this bitchin' info from the Census like 200 years ago.

Anyway, during the course of the Census exam paper we will be asked which religion we follow. In previous years people have put 'Jedi' or 'Jedi Knight' for the lulz. Specifically, around 55000 people put that as their answer in 2006. Instead of Jedi Knight being recorded as an actual religion, it is recorded as 'Not Defined', which is as good as being lumped under the greater 'religious' banner. By specifically putting 'No Religion' it will decrease the political impact these groups will have when it comes time to formulate new laws and policies for the entire country. 'Oh, gay marriage? Hm, seems we have a religious majority in this country, and they won't like that. DE-NY'.

From censusnoreligion.org:

'The Atheist Foundation of Australia believes all government laws and policies should benefit all members of society, not just those who adhere to a particular religious faith - even when that religion holds a majority position. As such, all government decisions should be based on empirical evidence rather than religious beliefs.'
 

I have no issue with people who believe in God, it is absolutely their personal choice. But it is not my personal choice for my country to be run on guidelines set by some 'hokey religion'. So, if you have no particular allegiance to a faith, put 'No Religion', and leave the Jedi Knight stuff for when you're LARP-ing with your friends.

Ugh. LARP-ers.

Barrowman. And Rainbows.

One of the best things about having a blog is checking your stats occasionally to see what things people are searching for when they stumble upon your posts. Usually, they're pretty normal. This blog hasn't been going very long from its current location, so most of the hits have been from people searching 'cosplay' or 'James Marsters' or 'Sean Maher' etc. Reasonable. HOWEVER, the other day I logged into Wordpress where the blog had previously been hosted for ~3 years and found some wonderful gems. The most common? Variations on the theme of 'John Barrowman & rainbows'. Interesting. Pop below the cut for more nuggets of crazy.

Supanova 2011: Supastar Guests

We have reached the final post of my Supanova wrap up, which I've deliberately left til last cause I'm slack and I knew it would be a big undertaking. But first, before I go any further:

Yep. Ok. Now, with that out of the way, pop below the cut to see my wrap-up of the celebrity-laden part of my Supanova experience.

Supanova 2011: Artists Alley

Artists Alley is the place at Supanova to discover both established and indie comic artists, as well as artists who create works based on cult pop culture themes. The comics above are from chums who occupied the Monster & Robot Industries stall. Pop below the cut to see more of their work, and some of my other favourites from the weekend.

Sunday HNNNG #1

Those Supanova posts are still on their way, but I need an outlet for a few bits of squee I've had bottled up for a while. Firstly:

 

HNNNG! The first movie was so good that I pretty much have no words for how much I'm looking forward to the sequel. Since Iron Man 2 and Transformers 2 I've been a bit wary at getting excited over sequels, but this can't POSSIBLY stink as much as they did, so it's all good (I am however prepared to eat my words in 6 months time)! It's released in the USA on the 16th of December, but we're not getting it in Australia until the 5th of January. Boooooo! At this stage I wouldn't expect I'd be desperate enough to torrent it, but we'll see how well my resolve stands up in December.

David Tennant as an eyeliner-wearing vampire hunter with a shotgun. HNNNG. Delightfully, we get this BEFORE the USA, on the 18th of August (they get it on the 19th, but whatever, small victories). You know what, I don't even really know what this is about, apart from him hunting vampires, and Colin Farrell being a vampire. That's all I need tbh. I always thought 'Fright Night' was a fairly campy name, so I was surprised when the movie seemed quite dark in the trailer. I know it's a remake, but still. Camp.

THIS. Oh my word. This looks so wonderfully terrible. When I first saw this was coming out, and I read the cast list, I was pretty excited. Orlando Bloom! The guy who played Mr Darcy in the new Pride & Prejudice! The kid who played Percy Jackson! The dude from Inglourious Basterds! Then I saw this trailer. My dreams of Orlando being a shit-hot Musketeer were dashed. My dreams of D'Artagnan not being a total twerp were dashed. HOWEVER. Buckingham has the most badass hair I have seen in a long time. And there's flying ships with cannons. And flamethrowers! And Milla Jovovich doing a whole lot of that slo-mo fighting thing that seems to be her forte. And D'Artagnan almost being stabbed in the face. This cannot possibly be as shit as Pirates of the Caribbean 4, so I am holding high (okay, slightly above average) hopes for this one. It comes out in Australia on October 13, and I plan on seeing it opening weekend before everybody else goes first and tells me it's shit and breaks my heart.

Pimpin'

Supanova 2011: Cosplay

One of the things I most look forward to every year is seeing what characters people choose to come along dressed up as. Most people aren't particularly hardcore about wanting to entering the cosplay competition, so there's some hilariously DIY concoctions to go along with all the jaw-droppers which are clearly the result of a lot of money and effort. Most of the really fancy ones tend to be anime or video game characters that I know nothing about, so the ones that get me excited are the more 'conventional' and creative ones, like last year's kick-ass Batman, and these guys dressed up as the crew from Misfits. Overall I'd say the cosplay probably wasn't as plentiful as last year. After seeing some photos from the east coast Supanovas, Perth has to pick up its game! There were some really cool ones though, so head below the cut for a few snaps from both days.

Supanova 2011: Lootz

I'm going to split up my Supanova coverage into three or four posts, as if I do it all in one post it will be super gigantic, and the photos of the cosplayers and whatnot won't be in the paper til Thursday (the paper gets to publish everything first, so despite how much I totally want to bombard you with event photos, it'll have to wait).

One thing the paper DOESN'T give a rat's ass about is photos of my phat lootz!

PHHAAAAAT. I didn't buy as much crap as last year, though I probably spent a similar amount of money due to all the autographs I got. Head under the cut to check out how I mis-spent all my money!

Supanova 2011 preview!

In less than a week the nerd circus will roll into town for this year's Supanova Pop Culture Expo. It's quite impressive how the country has embraced it over the last few years, within four years it's gone from being a bit too uncool for the general populace to a hugely popular and busy event.

Last year I didn't have much interest in the 'Supa-Star' guests, so spent most of my time shopping and taking photos of the cosplayers, but this year the lineup is awesome. Of particular interest to me are Sean Maher (Simon Tamm From Firefly), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto from Torchwood) and James Marsters (Spike from Buffy). Cary Elwes and Luke Perry were on the original lineup, but when they had to pull out they were replaced by Tom Felton from Harry Potter.  I'm hoping the Felts-hysteria takes some of the heat off the others, I do want autographs, but I'm not massively excited about the thought of lining up for an hour for them. There was like a ten minute line for Karl Urban two years ago, and that was well enough for me. Though Karl was super. I liked him a lot.

Anyway, because I'll be spending quite a bit of my time lining up for stuff and attending 'seminars' (horribly awkward Q&A sessions with the talent), I doubt I'll be taking as many photos as previous years. Will probably take my smaller camera in case of photo-emergency, but I won't be going out of my way.
Just in case I am a bit slack in the photo department, here are a few I was too lazy to post after last year's Supanova.

My main goal for this Supanova was to not spend anywhere near the obscene amount of money I spent on (really awesome) stuff last year, but given it will cost me over $100 just for the autographs (collectively, not individually), I may have to be realistic about how much I'll really be restricting myself. James Masters is doing a concert on the Saturday night, and the novelty factor will be high, so I already have a ticket to that. Also bought a ticket to the Supanova After Party on the Sunday night which essentially involves hanging out with James Marsters & Gareth David-Lloyd. That ticket was a wee bit expensive, but how often will that opportunity present itself? Hopefully there will be free drinks. I'd expect free drinks for the price.

I hope Ianto wears a suit.

Kiss My Camera 2011

Don't know how relevant this post is actually going to be, cause I'm not sure if the exhibition is still running, but last month was the start of the annual Kiss My Camera music photography exhibition run by WAM, as part of the WAMis. 50 photos all up, and for the first year included...absolutely none of mine. If I'm 100% honest I wasn't overly happy about it, but y'know. These things happen.

The gallery of the finalists is available to view at http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/explore/galleries/kiss-my-camera-2011-finalists. Jordan Shields won the Grand Prize with his portrait of Drapht, which was well deserved.

My submissions for your viewing pleasurez:

Jane's Addiction, Soundwave

Josh Pyke, Fremantle

Kasabian, Metro City

Operator Please, Capitol

Rufus Wainwright, Perth Concert Hall

 

Buried in Verona, Amplifier

When merchandising goes bad

I have been forced back into the blogosphere by an item I found and purchased yesterday. I buy a lot of dumb shit all the time, but never before have I been quite so compelled to share the ridiculousness.

So, yesterday I was at Priceline, and I would go so far to say that I blame Suzanne for the fact I was there in the first place. Her blog has opened up my eyes to the shiny appeal of the world of cosmetics, and Priceline is the primo place to go for said things.  So yes. All Suzanne's fault.

Anyway, I was in Priceline, walking past the perfume cabinets, and I saw this staring at me from the bottom shelf:

What. On. Earth.

Anyone who knows me well will know I have a 'slight affection' for boybands of the 90s, and Westlife are no exception. I liked them back when they were called Westside. Yeah! Look at me being all pop elitist! Yeah! Anyway, I saw this thing (whatever it was, I didn't even really look at it properly to be honest) was $12, so promptly tucked it under my arm and headed for the counter.

At home I opened it up. First the removal of the LUXURIOUS PLASTIC SLIPCASE:

Roses and a bit of a crap font. Nice! Time to pop the box open and see what treasures are inside:

Faux velvet, more roses, more crap font! I found an 'Eau De Parfum', a body lotion and a shower gel. Interesting. Upon spritzing some of the odour on my wrist (I'm having a hard time conceding and calling it a 'fragrance' at this point)  it was clear it was aimed at three groups of potential buyers.

• The Elderly, who would be happy with just about anything as long as it covered up the stench of Death.
• Little Girls, who just don't know any better.
• Twenty-Somethings, buying it for The Lulz.

I'll admit, when I first smelt it I thought 'Oh, it's not THAT bad!' It was quite dense, and tended to hang over you like a foggy cloud of odour as opposed to a subtle perfume, but I guess that's value for money? EVERYONE EVERWHERE WILL SMELL YOU! *shrug* The best way to describe it would be 'mature' (like the stinky perfumed talc that old people got from Avon about 20 years ago) but with a sickly sweet after-smell. Quite strange. Smelt the body lotion and the shower gel, they seemed similar, but much milder and a little sweeter.

Despite being something that I'd never wear myself, I did assume the perfume to be 'okay'. That is, until 4 hours later when I was headachey and nauseous and no amount of washing of my arm could remove the choking fog from my body. I'm wearing the jacket I was wearing last night and I CAN STILL SMELL IT. This is some potent crap. I'm far too terrified to use any of the other products now.

Sadly (or perhaps not), the Westlife fragrance set is destined to never again be worn by a human person, and will live out its days on a shelf in my bathroom. Cause it might smell like shit, but it sure does look nice!

"Why the fuck did I agree to this shiiiiiit?"

I give the Westlife fragrance set 1 Schnicky out of a possible 10.

I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!

Oh yes friends, it's that time of year again! Another six months agonising over the health and form of 20-odd young men from across the country. AFL season is back, so that means one thing: DREAM TEAM, BABY!

Now, this is my second year, and I made a lot of rookie errors the first time round, but I've learnt from those mistakes and am off to a pretty good start. I only cracked a score of 2000 once over the entire of last season, but I started off 2011 with a bang, scoring 2054. I'm stoked!

Go under the cut to check out my squad of super maxi legends.