File This One Under “Winning Isn’t Everything”

 

Gold Medal Winner. Seriously.

Gold Medal Winner. Seriously.

India won their first individual Olympic Gold Medal ever the other day. Dude by the name of Abhinav Bindra. You know what it was for? Air-rifling. What a disgrace. Just look at the picture of that guy. My sympathies go out to you, peoples of the Indian nation. If I were from the sub-continent, I would demand that this dork decline the gold metal. This is like a home run ball that you throw back. Poor Indians, now their only claim to world sports fame is a fucking gold medal in fucking BB-guns. This dude looks like he practiced for the event by going paint-balling and having LAN parties with his buds from the dorm. That, sir, is not an Olympic athlete. Right now, Curling medalists are snickering “pussy” under their breath and feeling better about themselves. BB-gun shooting is an Olympic event? Fuck. How the hell has a big, modern country like India not won a real gold medal yet? Shouldn’t the other big nations bag it in like shot-putting or something just as a matter of courteous diplomacy? France has a shitload of gold medals, wtf? (editor’s note: with the Democratic Party sweep of Congress in 2006, it was once again deemed okay to make fun of the French.)

If any of our fellow world citizens of Indian descent are reading this, please offer up your own takes. Would you rather India won the gold in a cheesy event for the symbolism of it, or would you prefer the slate was clean until a more impressive victory came along?

On the other hand, I would totally watch an international competition of Nerd Games featuring paintball, Halo 3, Mario Kart, Mini-Golf, Street Fighter II, water-balloon launching and the like. That would kick ass. But only if the nerds had to play in every event. You wouldn’t want some ringer who was only there for the air hockey to skew the results.

I can has gold medal?

I can has gold medal?

In other news, Counterforce apologizes for the lack of an update from Occam Razor this week on Living in a Post Peak Oil World. Mr. Razor shall return next week. Suffice it to say, the ability to shoot an air-rifle with extreme accuracy is not one of the life skills needed to survive in a Post Peak Oil World. Especially if you’re shooting plastic pellets. Which, as we all know, are made of oil. Mr. Bindra had better hope he can parlay that shiny medallion into some big-bootied ‘tang if he wishes to make it in the Post Peak Oil crisis.

In today’s segment of “Ask Vin Diesel A Question…”

We have a simple one.

“Dear Vin Diesel, I have a question for you, and it’s a simple one: HOW DO YOU STILL HAVE A CAREER?”

Wow, that’s a good one. While logging into my social networking site du jour for some daily folksonomic gratification, I happened to be treated to this ad:

For the upcoming Vin Diesel movie, Babylon A.D.

Curious (about how uncontrollably bad it looked) I then watched the trailer, which looks like this:

Wow. That looks glow in the dark stupid. Like if you were to beat and rape Children Of Men and lock it in a dungeon (like that poor Fritzl woman in Austria) of mediocrity for a few years and then force it to mate with a Milla Jovovich action movie. And then unleash it on the unassuming masses who’ll pay for just about anything. I feel like like I’d rather be on ‘ludes for a year that be locked in a dark room with this movie for a few hours.

It may be stretching a bit, but I think I’d rather watch a year long documentary about the glam metal band Babylon A.D. while on methaqualone than spend any time with Vin Diesel.

Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice you in there slumming it up a bit too, Michelle Yeoh. 2008 is truly becoming your year for big crapfest Hollywood films, isn’t it?

You too, Mattieu Kassovitz, I mean… What the hell? You were in Munich and Amelie, for fuck’s sake. Ah, but wikipedia, tells me you actually directed this movie, this Vin fucking Diesel movie. Watch out, man, because I feel like kicking you square in your French balls.

I honestly can’t believe the guy that was Fast And The Furious (which I liked a hell of lot better the first time, you know, when it was called Point Break!) still is making movies. At least Paul Walker had the decency to fall of the face of the planet.

I think I’d rather spend two hours with Shaq Diesel.

Oh, and look at that, Wikipedia (our most important cultural oracle) tells me that Mr. Diesel has become a huge World Of Warcraft nerd. Wow. I didn’t think it was possible, but now I think I hate this guy even more.

In which we take you down to paradise city where the grass is green and the girls are pretty…

Well, it’s been a hell of a fucking day. Bizarre and fascinating, through and through:

Russia and Georgia on the brink of war.

John Edwards confirming that Billie Jean IS his lover, not just some silly girl who claims that he is the one, but the kid is STILL NOT his son. Not until the DNA test anyways.

Also, the Olympics kicked off. (Looking at that picture, I really want to coin the term “Apocalympics.”)

And scientists created stem cells for 10 disorders.

But, all that said, rather than talking about any of that, let’s talk about something fucking important. Something that means something in all of our lives. Something that change the very nature of the way we live and breath and fuck and drink water and appreciate nature and what have you.

Let’s talk about our internet crushes.

Commander Light and I have already discussed this very briefly, but even that could probably use some elaboration. By “Internet Crush,” we mean our goofy little infatuations on internet personalities, people who, for us, exist only online, usually on other blogs or writers at websites we like. Someday, we’ll probably do a bit on just the women we love or whatever, but that’s someday, and this is today.

And today, having already mentioned a few of my personal internet crushes like Molly Young, Molly Lambert (from whom I stole the opening ceremonies picture somewhere up above), and Lena Chen, I want to to talk about a young woman I haven’t mentioned yet.

Caitlin Hill, otherwise known on youtube and the rest of the internets as Thehill88. (Or, less frequently, as SnarkleKitten.)

Caitlin is a vlogger I discovered on youtube, along with about a million other people (according to Wikipedia, her regular audience is about 52,000 while her cumulative view count resides somewhere around 18 million) , roughly a year-ish ago, and I’ve been a google-eyed fan ever since. She’s been dubbed “the goofy princess of the internet,” by 60 Minutes (the one in her native Australia, not ours). Her videos tend to just be little bits of her ranting about on things that annoy her or acting out her own goofy little skits (or sometimes just wonderfully choreographed lip synching) that are produced and edited by her, starring her, but she has contributed to other’s youtubery as well.

She’s only just recently moved from Australia to New York, hoping to make a go of it in the acting field outside of her own online videos, and has already appeared in the occasional music video or small indie movie. But up until this year, she was a part of youtube’s revenue sharing partnership with the vloggers that got the most hits. She’s also used her internet fame for good, especially with nonprofits like The Darfur Wall.

Her first video, posted on August 16, 2006, was a response to then slow growing internet juggernaut, Lonelygirl15. This was back when you still thought she was a real girl, just weird and homes chooled, and for some reason, had an altar to Aleister Crowley in her room. “I saw one girl who I thought was real and could do so much with the world,” Hill said to cnet.com when present at a gathering of some of youtube’s top personalities in San Francisco early last year. “I wonder what I can do… I’m still trying to figure out what to do with it, but I think I’ll get there.”

She’s an actress and a dancer, as well as a sparkling personality on the internets and some of her videos tend to be her rants about the daily life of a curious and smart and sometimes goofy Australian girl, while others are skits and rambling bits of in character goofy fun. And other than porn and stock quotes, isn’t that what the world wide web is for?

The one thing I haven’t talked about yet is the most important, which is why I like her. And it’s simple: Watch some of her videos and you’ll see. She’s a pro at self deprecation and she’s real. Even if her every move and appearance and utterance was some cold, shrewdly calculated marketing strategy, she’d sell it perfectly. Plus, she’s gorgeous. She’s almost all smiles and she radiates more life from her than a maternity ward on a busy day. She’s tiny, but not in a tortured way, she’s filled to the brim with infectious energy. Even when she’s ridiculously silly, you can still feel her intelligence there, and she has a genuine quality that many men and women lack these days: She can be brilliantly funny a lot of the time.

One of the many shrines online to her glory.

A video of her with her ex-boyfriend, a fat and gross camwhore himself.

Here is an interview she’s done. And another.

This is her twitter, this is her official fan site, and this is her blog.

And this is miss Hill getting up close and personal with one of her IRL fans:

I think we can wrap it up here for now, but with maybe just a few parting shots:

Scarlett Johansson.

Lindsay Lohan.

Morgan Freeman!

Japanese women!

Mystery feet!

Sharks. T-Rex!

Ryan AdamsMake You Love Me

LowMonkey

How *not* to Survive in a Post Peak Oil World

Not as rare as you might think

Not as rare as you might think

 

Yahoo always runs such great AP headlines. There is really not much else to say. I like that after the crazy Chinese guy beheaded the dude, he then proceeded to cut off other body parts and eat them. That’s an A for effort. But the ad campaign: that’s just stupid. Nobody ever calls it “car rage” or “bus rage,” they call it “Road Rage.” And busses are on roads. Unless they’re AirBusses (then they’re nationally subsidized and anti-competitive).

Besides, I once did a cross-country 60-hour deal on a Greyhound and there’s nothing fucking relaxing about that. For one, you don’t sleep. Not if you want to keep your stuff. And even if you wanted to doze, the chairs are too uncomfortable for it. Plus, I think they stopped every four hours to refuel and you had to get off.

The moral of this story is that knife fights are totally in!

LA Face With An Oakland Booty

We here at Counterforce recognize there are many reasons to fear tomorrow. Terrorists living next door, government agents listening to your phone calls because there are terrorists living next door, climate change, Bravo’s never ending parade of reality competition TV shows based on the pastimes of homosexuals and the hags who love’em, a possible McCain presidency, a possible offspring of Madonna and A-Rod, a possible Bravo reality TV show based on Madonna and A-Rod raising said offspring (sure to feature lots of underwear swapping). We also realize that some of you might need your worst fears assuaged and advice on how to cope with these coming atrocities. Well, we’re sorry but you’re a big boy/girl and you’re just gonna have to learn how to deal with it.

We’re sorry, that was mean. We’ll tell you what, to make it up to you we have invited world renowned Zoologist, European playboy and World Champion Gitin’r Doner, Occam Razor, to write a weekly column on what you can do in preparing for a Post Peak Oil World, titled What You Can Do in Preparing for a Post Peak Oil World. Occam suffers fools lightly and will not be taking any questions at the end of each column.

Sometime after World War II the United States Military and its defense contractors were sitting around with an assload of explosives taking up space with nary a Nazi to toss it at. Sure, plenty could be stockpiled to ensure there would not be an explosives gap in the run up to the Cold War, but the principle language spoken there was nuclear weapons. I guess a truckload of ammonium nitrate just isn’t as sexy.

What to do, oh, how about we use said ammonium nitrate to fertilize our nation’s farms. Rich in N-P-K (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, the macronutrients needed by plants to grow), the nations factories kept busy by the war movement could now have peacetime purposes of supplying farms with monoculture producing fertilizers. Now instead of a small scale farm that used a rotation of seasonal crops to use and replenish the soil, we could just plant corn for a couple months, harvest, then plant some soybeans, harvest, repeat. And thus the industrial agricultural complex is born.

Ass so phat you can see it from the front...

Because the Nazi's surrendered

I feel like at this point I have to state the obvious, food’s kinda important. You, like, need it and shit. Unfortunately food in America just means you are eating oil. Mmmmmm nummy nummy. Oil goes into the manufacture of chemical fertilizers that help sustain large monoculture crops, oil goes into the pesticides to protect these monoculture crops that evolution has not developed any natural defense for. Oil goes into the harvest of these monoculture crops, oil goes into the transportation of these monoculture crops. Oil goes into the processing of these monoculture corn and soybean crops into new and exciting foodstuffs, and oil brings you to the store to buy them.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Post Peak Oil, when there’s enough oil to go around but it ain’t cheap no more, that the price of food will jump up a bit. Just a bit. Then when oil becomes scarce, well food will too. Which means in a Post Peak Oil World we will have to go back to a smaller scale of agriculture. Which means more than illegal immigrants and huge fossil fuel powered combines will have to toil in the farms to produce enough food for everyone to survive. Which means, like, almost everybody. Which means we have finally arrived upon today’s topic of discussion, a subject that’s very near and dear to me.

Junk in the trunk.

Junk, in the trunk

Junk, in the trunk

I feel like at this point I have to state the obvious, farm work is hard stuff, man. Bending over, squatting down, picking things up off the ground, like, trying to lead a stubborn cow to a barn or something. What do all these activities have in common? Ah yes, of course. They all require a sturdy back and powerful haunches. Sure, maybe now when society doesn’t have to worry about who’s going to plant and harvest their beets society can idolize knock kneed bimbos ackin’ like hoes. But when real work needs to be done my anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun.

Yes, we are going back to a time when physical attraction will again make perfect sense. Sure, right now Johnny Party Promoter makes his living organizing parties for a night club in Las Vegas. The masses are rich off of buying and selling homes, stocks, bonds and beanie babies to each other, and don’t have to worry about the hard work of obtaining food. Let Juventud in a tomato field in Coalinga, CA worry about that. So Johnny Party Promoter feels he doesn’t need to have kids with strong backs and hearty hindquarters, they’ll be IT managers or the head of marketing for a company that sells ad space on cable television systems. That’s why he settled for Jenny HR Analyst, the Associate HR Analyst (eventual successor to be HR Dept. Manager) for a company that consults with manufacturers of different types to make sure their manufacturing process is as streamlined as possible. Sure, she’s got a lower torso comparable to that of a water heater, but their kids are going to go to UC Riverside, why would they need to be physically suited for manual labor?

Seeking out Ms Fat Booty might sound like I’m objectifying women, but I have to admit, I am. If I’m to survive I need an around the way girl, one that’s right for me, and one that can fasten a bullock cart to my oxen before I take this season’s harvest to market. So I got Ms. Fat Booty loading my oxen, harvesting my rhubarb, pumping water from the well and pumping out stout legged children with great chances of survival to further propagate my genes. Jenny HR Manager probably would have troubles with getting the mouldboard plough on a straight and true path, fucking up my horizontal rows.

So turn around, stick it out, and waive that healthy butt...

So turn around, stick it out, and waive that healthy butt...

I will say this, the hard work, it’s mutual. I’m out there too, slaughtering chickens, diverting a local tributary to irrigate the recently planted bean sprout fields. And past gender specific roles, they can be broken or reversed. She is more than welcome to go to market and barter with the blacksmith over price or trade of a new plow, she can shoot at the Indians who try to reclaim our homestead. Just as long as she doesn’t lose that big ole juicy butt.

Well, I’m not gonna leave you gals hanging, the point of this article after all is what you can do in preparing for a Post Peak Oil World, that’s why it’s called What You Can Do In Preparing for a Post Peak Oil World. The first task at hand is do some side bends and situps, but please do something about that butt. What I suggest is a powerlifter’s routine, more specifically the Westside training routine. Lots of compound movements that will strengthen the core and add much power to the lower half of your body. A good starting routine would be:

Day 1:

Back Squats 5 reps x 5 sets

Straight Leg Deadlifts 5×5

Bent Over Rows 5×5

Flat Bench Press 5×5

Pullups 4×12

Preparing a Post Peak Oil World

Preparing a Post Peak Oil World

Day 3:

Dips 4×12

Incline Bench Press 5×5

Deadlifts 5×5

Military Press 5×5

Pullups 4×12

Day 5:

Front Squats 5×5

Dumbbell Rows 5×5 (each arm)

Decline Bench Press 5×5

Straight Leg Deadlifts 5×5

Hanging Leg Raises 4×20

On your off days you could stand to do some cardio, but really it’s not essential. Maybe read up on the farmer’s almanac so that you can get your circadian rhythm in lockstep with the sunrise and sunset.

Next Week: When Anarchy Ensues, Well, I Hope You Own a Gun: Preparing For When the Rest of Society Realizes They’re Fucked and Start to Panic.

Put on your Lollerskates!

“One! You’ve killed one Mummy!

“Yeah! Twice!”

Michelle Yeoh, pondering why she's in this film

Michelle Yeoh, pondering why she's in this film

or something. Have movie reviewers just completely given up? I think Ebert now gives any studio non-comedy three stars just for being screened (he’ll also give a movie with nice any tits at least three stars, but that’s another matter). Seems like no matter how shitty the summer blockbuster, critics around the country will consistently hand out apologetic “B” grades to all comers. These reviews tend to start out something like, “this is the retarded-est fucking movie ever made, and it hurt my ears, but it is what it is, so blah blah blah I’m calling this film above average-cakes.” What’s annoying is that any schlocky summer flick gets this treatment, but screen something indie or off-beat with a tiny amount of edge, and some critics will have no problem ripping it to shreds. I mean, really Roger, do you still think the fucking X-Files sequel is a star and a half better than Fight Club?

Side note: The Onion A.V. Club has really gone downhill lately. Their film reviews are all over the place and their film features (like “My Year of Flops” or “The New Cult Canon”) are starting to read like the overlong, overwritten ramblings of a second-year film student. Specifically, a second-year film student who’s not good at writing. And these are the same film writers who’ve been on the site for years. It’s bizarre and kind of ticklish to watch their skills deteriorate before our eyes. And maybe this is expecting too much from the dumb masses of the intertubes, but you’d think a site as witty as the Onion would have at least marginally sharp commenters in the A.V. Club article threads. As it is, I think the A.V. Club board people might actually be even stupider than AICN talkback.

Side note II: Skarkey’s Revenge!: It’s sad that Salon.com’s Stephanie ‘Thank God for Camille Paglia or I’d be the worst writer on this site!’ Zacharek gave a bad review to The Mummy 3 and I’m actually surprised by it. I mean, I can’t see how anyone could give this movie a good review, but she’s been so off-mark for so long that I was sure she’d spin some bullshit reason to like it. You know, like the A.V. Club and Ebert did. Three stars? Really?? Get the fuck out. Although really, Stephanie, how can you praise Hellboy Fucking 2 but not this?

This is what Tracy looks like when she's talking about under-sampled gender study results

This is what Tracy looks like when she's talking about under-sampled gender study results

Salon.com should just let some of their Broadsheet writers do the movie reviews instead. Speaking of which, my internet crush on Tracy Clark-Flory just got a little bit bigger. But she doesn’t even know I exist!

Epilogue: Have you ever sidled up and eavesdropped on the proles when they talk movies? It’s fascinating and soul-crushing and fascinating. And soul-crushing. I once heard a radio shack guy telling his co-worker about this awesome movie he saw the night before. He actually motioned for the other dude to stop what he was doing and pay attention so that he could earnestly tell him, “The thing about that movie is: it makes you think.” Solemn nodding all around. The movie in question? The Sum of All Fears.

It makes you think.