Tag Archives: Occam Razor

Who is Natalie Portman fucking these days?

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Came across this gem on the internetz the other day:

Oh, that gave me quite the chuckle.

And, from that, I have some points to share with you, all of them only barely related to each other…

1. The other day, while speaking to Benjie, I was just bullshitting and joking around, as I am wont to do, and I retorted to something or other that I should start a single serving website called Who Is Natalie Portman Fucking These Days?

I think I actually called it Who Is Natalie Portman Dating Now? in that conversation, but let’s get right to the bottom of it: No one cares who you’re dating. Or, if they do, that’s only half as interesting who you’re actually fucking.

2. Case in point: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. They’re still married. They have stayed married for five years past what the expiration date on that joke should’ve been. Congrats! You’re boring celebrities! But now we find out that he’s fucking around or perhaps they’re in an open relationship, whatever. Whoever you’re walking down a red carpet with will always pale in comparison to who you’re rubbing your genitals on. Of course we wish it wasn’t that way, but it is. Right?

1, continued: Meanwhile, Natalie Portman has certainly had an eclectic dating history. I don’t know all of it, which is probably a good thing, but Moby, for one. When I heard about that way back in the day I thought, “Well, great, that’s when I reach for my revolver. Ha ha. Bad joke, sorry.

But she also dated Devendra Banhart, which is… Well, regardless of whatever it is, that’s a thing that happened.

Perhaps she dated Hayden Christensen, an actor of dubious charm, too. I remember that was rumored around when they were filming the Star Wars prequels.

Though, again, were they dating or were they just killing time together while stuck in Australia spending hours and hours surrounded by green screen on movie sets? You can hardly fault an actor for the sexual shenanigans they get up to while filming a movie down under, methinks.

Also, Jude Law. Maybe. Face it, straight dudes, whoever that young ingenue that you have a masturbatory fantasy about, well, Jude Law’s probably gotten there first.

And, possibly Sean Penn. That’s weird, and kind of sad, but I’m not one to judge. At least it’s not Mickey Rourke, you know.

Some fashion designer/former male model or a British millionaire. Or Ryan Gosling or Gael García Bernal. Who cares? Those are less than tremendous choices for an inamorata.

John Mayer. Let’s just be thankful that, as far as I know, she hasn’t gone down this street yet. Thank God. That’s the kind of dead end that far too many cars have ran out of gas on or broken down on. I sincerely apologize for comparing women to cars in that metaphor.

But, speaking of John Mayer, there are a lot of things Natalie Portman is: a competent and incredibly inspiring actor that’s fun to watch, an Academy Award nominee, a good role model, a Harvard graduate, Jewish, someone with an Erdős-Bacon number, a director, a producer, a democrat, a vegan, a fashion designer (she has her own line of vegan shoes), a nonbeliever in the afterlife (good for you, Nat), someone whose birth name is Hershlag, an outstanding spokesperson and fundraiser for many fine organizations and causes around the world, a friend of Lukas Haas, a fan of NBC”s new hit comedy, Outsourced, and fluent in Japanese, German, French, and Arabic.

And thankfully there are a lot of things that Natalie Portman is not and one of those Jennifer Aniston.

And, of course, I made up the part about her liking Outsourced. Nobody likes that show.

I just typed “Natalie Portman” and “boyfriend” into google the other day and was informed that she is presumably currently dating a professional ballet dancer.

3. I really want to see Black Swan. It looks interesting and kind of b-movie cheesy brilliant. That perfect sweet spot where artsy films meet b-movie plots and Roman Polanski-esque level creepiness (I’m referring of course to the director’s movies, which I’m a fan of, and now his IRL creepiness).

4. Benjie Light and I were discussing that the other night and ruminating on what a poor year it’s been for movies. Also, we were kind of upset that we find ourselves having to say that thing every single year, it seems.

But 2010 has especially been strange since it seems like The Social Network, which is a fine, solid movie, will probably have serious Oscar potential (certainly Best Adapted Screenplay, but I’m talking Best Picture here too, party people)  just because we’re not going to have a lot of just stupendously great movies to nominate. Black Swan will probably be there somewhere in the Best Picture nominees too, I bet.

That said, I’d still prefer to see Aronofsky doing Superman rather than Zack Snyder, but that’s also kind of like saying I’d like to keep typing rather than sticking my hand in a blender, I know.

from here.

5. Because of The Social Network (and it’s strong success), I think a lot of blogs are having to step back and get a little meta maybe and also start thinking about the story of themselves. The amateurs map themselves onto the percieved personas of your Mark Zuckerberg/Jesse Eisenbergs and your Eduardo Saverin/Andrew Garfield/Peter Parkers, but that’s something you do after running around in the yard and peeing on plants and right before it’s naptime.

The big leagues is analyzing yourself, really getting into the dark and nasty places of your own blog/website, the twisted nitty gritty of your own origins, and pondering who’ll play you when your story of internet conquest hits the big screen.

Seriously, blogs o’ the interwebz, I am posing that question to you.

Benjie Light and I were contemplating that the other day ourselves. In a fucked up scorched earth production of the Counterforce story, we’d probably cast Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau as ourselves. But that’d be just so we could be dicks to each other about it.

Or, the recession era variation of that casting would probably be Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, I guess. And directed by Ron Howard. Ugh.

6. And Jeff Goldblum as Occam Razor.

7. And Kristen Stewart as Peanut St. Cosmo.

8. No, I’m just kidding about that. I wouldn’t even presume to guess at who could capture the bold essence of either Peanut or Maria, nor do I want to risk my testicles in the gambit of making a choice they’re not pleased with. They know who should play them far better than I could ever hope to guess, I imagine. That is, of course, if they’re too busy to not play the parts themselves.

9. But if they don’t comment on my fucking post then I swear to God I’ll combine them into one amalgamation character as played by Christine Hendricks!

10. You could probably cast any old twink as August Bravo. As long as they smell like straight up mayonnaise (that’s an inside joke that you don’t really want to nor need to get too inside on, believe me). Or maybe his favorite character on Mad Men (see above)? Or maybe one of Will Smith’s kids?

11. And, August Bravo, before you even say it…

…trust me, it could be worse. It could be Vince Vaughn playing you.

12. That said, I’ll say this in defense of Vince Vaughn: He’s probably the hardest working actor in that particularly bleak game of comedy films these days. Unlike the Owen Wilsons of the world, Vaughn is the long distance runner in this game. Just look at a sleazy guy like Bradley Cooper and tell me that you honestly think he’s got Vaughn’s stamina at this shit. No fucking way. That said, I’d say that Vince Vaughn is a lot like Magic Johnson in that he’s not necessarily great on his own, but he’s a great team player. If you pass him the ball in a really interesting way, then he’ll do something extra interesting when he shoots for the basket. And a little sleazy, as that’s the default of where his comedy riffage always seems set at (but still feeling classier than your average Bradley Cooper… anything). If he’s got no one to work with then it’s just a sad study in a man running up and down the court while dribbling.

13. Extreme side note there: I feel like every time I see a picture of Winona Ryder now, I’d describe the look on her face as if you had literally just caught her in the act of shoplifting.

14. In conclusion: Going back to point #1, Vince Vaughn, thank you for not being John Mayer. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’ve gotten pretty fucking close to that territory more than few times, but you’ve still yet to fully cross that line and we appreciate it. I don’t think I could quite believe you as the romantic companion of Natalie Portman, but then again, I’ll believe just about anything these days.

REDRUM.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Puberty sucks hard.

I’m in a mood tonight to watch The Shining. Well, tonight or tomorrow sometime. I’m a scary movie mood, I guess. Something festive. Something seasonal. And I’m open to suggestions. Conrad Noir suggested The Exorcist which, no joke, I’ve never seen. Occam Razor suggested The Wicker Man remake with Nic Cage which, unfortuanetly, I have seen. And Benjamin Light made a joke about some new movie about a reanimated zombie pop star called This Is It.

All work and no play puts Marco Sparks in a mellow Halloween mood. The Shining, it is. Martin Scorsese agrees with me. Trick or treat, you sons of bitches.

This is roughly my mood as of this moment.

Between the covers.

Posted by Occam Razor, Lollipop Gomez, and Conrad Noir on
So about two months ago, Marco had this great idea to do some posts on Counterforce about summer. Summer traveling, summer adventures, flings, weird things to be done to the world and to yourself during the course of summer, and of course, summer reading.

Not a hard subject for us to tackle. Quite the opposite, in fact. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all voracious readers and also, frankly, scary brilliant. But we got a little wrapped up in the business of having a summer, which we’ll leave undefinable for now, and before you knew it, the grass started getting a little less greener, the wind started getting colder, those chirping annoying kids finally went back to school, and the season of summer flings quietly faded away.

So let’s talk about what’s on our nightstands as we head into the autumn months, okay?

Occam Razor:
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What that Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt.

Because you assholes don’t know how to behave on the road and your idiotic fucking tendencies just lead to me being in traffic. I read most of this on my lunch breaks while eating sushi. Now, I’m not saying you have to read this at lunch while eating sushi, but you probably should to get the same exact experience I did. California Rolls will not be accepted. Unless its the ones with the fried shrimp in the middle, I don’t know why but I can’t get enough of those. Damn, I could go for some right now. If I only had a book about the traffic culture of Mumbai to read.
Lollipop Gomez:

Youth In Revolt is one of my favorite books. I read it 10 years ago and then I re-read it when I was recovering from surgery in 2005. It is a treasure. I’m very worried of what they will do to it.

If there aren’t any donuts in the first 20 minutes of this movie, which is a major detail in that they go get donuts all the time in the book, I will be very upset. I remember sending my ex up the hill to get me Maple bars because they kept mentioning them. So, if there’s no donuts in the movie then I will torch Michael Cera’s house. And I don’t know how I feel about this fake Amanda Seyfried as Sheeni. I don’t know if I imagined her being so faux-sexy. Ugh, Hollywood.

Marco Sparks: Cera’s starring in the upcoming movie version, right? When reading the book originally, can you say that you ever would’ve thought to see Michael Cera playing the lead? I totally want some donuts now, by the way.

LG: No, Michael Cera is not Nick. But he’s the awkward man of the moment and I think he’s producer, so we can thank his dollars.

Marco: Hello, Nick and Norah!

Conrad Noir:
Why this book? Because why the fuck not, motherfucker? This book is like experiencing what it’s like when a mentally ill person has an orgasm during a car wreck. It’s fucking wonderful. Here’s an excerpt:
“Soon after this episode there was a birthday party for me. Prince came, he was sitting at a table with some people not drinking. I walked up to him, grabbed him by the back of the hair and poured cognac down his throat. He spit it out like a little bitch and I laughed and walked away. I loved fucking with him like that.”
Occam Razor:
Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price.

Because of several reasons. A) Richard Price wrote some of the best episodes of The Wire. 2) For the first 350 pages or so it’s an entertaining read. Nevermind the end, though. and C) For all intents and purposes the subtitle A Novel is actually a part of the title of the book. It’s not Lush Life, a novel by Richard Price, it’s Lush Life: A Novel! Why can’t more titles be that informative like this, imagine Bruno: A Terrible Film Where This Guy Sexually Harasses Rednecks Until They Finally Snap.
Conrad:
This one isn’t as easy to enthusiastically recommend. Honestly, I haven’t read it yet, but I certainly intend to. Especially now that I know they’re making it into a movie.
Marco:
I’m honestly too indecisive to pick just one, or just a few books here. I apologize. So, speaking of the post Lollipop and I did yesterday, I’m going to suggest…
What a fun and fascinating read this book was (for me, anyway). On one hand, you could take it as some very factually based interesting guesses into what tomorrow holds for us, but in a lot of ways, due to it’s style and subject matter, I think you could almost take it in as a very experimental novel. Especially if the futurist angle just isn’t for you. In fact, be warned, because I think I may have more to say about this one in a few days…
Occam Razor:
Why Your World is Going to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization by Jeff Rubin

Because I’m too fucking lazy to properly prepare you for Peak Oil.
And you’ll have plenty of time to read after the end of the world…

One Year Later.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

So, on this day in history, about 62 years ago, the US Air Force shot down and captured what was either a weather balloon or some kind of “flying disk” in Roswell, New Mexico.

Perhaps related or not so related, just over a year ago, Benjamin Light mentioned something outlandishly foolish to me. I really thought he was off his meds, no joke. But he had that kind of dangerous, scary clarity that only a nutcase can have. The kind where you don’t turn your back on them, are afraid to look them in the eye, and you pretty much agree with whatever the fuck they say just so you can get out of the room with her genitalia intact. He said to me, “I think I want to start a blog.”

And I – always the level headed one – said, “What? You’re fucking crazy.”

And he said, “No, no, trust me, it’ll be good.”

And then crazy psychotic history was made…

So here we are.

What a long strange trip it’s been, right?

We’ve talked about post peak oil, we’ve talked about Lost (like, a lot), we’ve talked about politics and the news in general. And general weirdness. We’ve talked about being cool with yourself, not so cool with yourself, and how to get laid either way. We’ve barely give you a chance to get a word in edgewise, because we’ve been talking about cats (and more cats), and things that are in bad taste, and the moon.We’ve talked about film, music, and literature at times, and everything in between. Including the stuff that’s just bullshit. We’ve talked about ourselves just a little, both with words and in video, and we’ve even talked to people we love (other than ourselves)(though this site is filthy with onanism, to be sure). Hell, we’ve even talked about talking (but mostly about ourselves, again with the onanism)!

Look at all that talk talk talking. It’s like we’ve found the nexus of the fucking universe and we’re mapping it for you.

Michael Jackson is dead and we’re still alive.

And not to brag too much, but we’ve seen a few faces and we’ve rocked them all!

Sometimes we’ve felt like we’re a bit alien ourselves, or maybe we’re transmitting to you from outer space, but we do it anyway. We do it because, no joke, there is something very seriously wrong with us and we love it.

This Recording already used the blog as a spaceship metaphor that I would love to use here, but rather than appropriate it here, I’m just gonna outright steal it. But rather than a proper spaceship, Counterforce is the fucked up. The weird one. The one that the prisoners took over and started running their own way. Like Spock and Nero and all of those pointy eared fuckers, we’re bursting through your black holes and disrupting your time stream and hopefully reality as well. Hello there, we’re from the future. We’re in your here and now and you’re our living sexy museum and we’re yours. Don’t take us to your leader, because we only care about you.

Not that we haven’t made some mistakes. Sometimes we’ve been really on our games and sometimes… well, really off them. That’s usually on me though, I’m not gonna lie. As blogonauts, we’re still learning out here in space. There’s a few less rings on Saturn because, well, we crashed into them just a little. Same with the Big Dipper. We did something inappropriate with a black hole for the same people climb Everest. Also, we found life on Mars and then accidentally blogged it out of existence. And Halley’s comet won’t make it’s way back to this solar system for a few more years than it was already scheduled to because we saw it, liked it’s style, were in kind of a naughty bad place, and now, long story short, it won’t look our way, won’t return our phone calls, and wants to take a break with the Earth. Our bad, kids.

That said, we’re still here, and even though we’re sometimes the blogging equivalent of the chaos cloud that will someday end all life on Earth, we’re also hopefully going to only get better. Help us? Tell us what you think. Tell us how much we rock, or how hard we suck. Tell us what you want to see and maybe, just maybe, we won’t poke your eyes out.

We’ve been proud so far that with us, you’ve gotten basically 6+ different blogs, some that overlap, and some that are drastically different. We’ve enjoyed it and hope you have too. My co-bloggers all wanted to be more involved in our very special 1 year birthday here, but most were busy with jobs and living sexy lives of danger and adventure. Benjamin Light has been off the grid and we eagerly await his return, and his shocked disgust at how I’ve trainwrecked this beast in his absence. And Occam’s probably not speaking to me since he realized that I stole some CDs from his house during a Lost party. And Lollipop especially wanted to remind you of how much greater the blog has gotten since she first commented and then joined us (and she’s more right than she’s wrong about that) and August Bravo wants to let you know that he’s giving up Heroes due to relentless scrutiny. Bravo, August Bravo.

This is where I wrap it up. If it was just me closing this up, I’d say something like: We’ll see you out there, space cowboys and cowgirls. But instead I found someone to put it even better than I can…

And now a special word from the desk of Peanut St. Cosmo:

hello readers! funny to think we’ve been in existence on this “series of tubes” for a year now! it feels kinda like the first rocky year of a marriage and if you make it, you figure you’ve got about six more years before the itch comes on and you’re both fucking the pool boy/baby sitter and filing for divorce. you get the idea, i give us six more years until you call it quits on us, but you’ll never find a better lay! i promise you, i’m the best you ever had!!!

but in all seriousness, i do appreciate the two of you who like my infrequent posts. thanks for stopping by :)

Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics

Posted by mariamargarita on

This is a picture of two baby bears playing:

This is a picture of a fresh plate of cookies:

And this is a picture of a man with a funny mustache:

The most popular post on Counterforce is by the least prolific writer, Occam Razor, and is called LA Face With An Oakland Booty. The least popular is about sports. The most popular “bio” page is the Marco Sparks one. The interview with the most views is Tess Lynch‘s, but the Topher Chris interview is catching up. Coincidentally, the day the site got the most page views was March 28, 2009 when Topher Chris posted a link to the interview on his incredibly popular Tumblr. The most popular outgoing click that is not a link to another page on this website is a blog post on documentaries on Hulu. In the past thirty days, the most popular search term was simply “chuck.” For the past quarter, the most popular was “junk in the trunk,” followed by YouTube star Caitlin Hill.  At the bottom of the search terms list is blogger Lena Chen. Just searching “counterforce” or “counterforce wordpress” is also a slightly popular search term.  In the last quarter, 4 of the top 5 viewed posts have been interview posts. Peanut St. Cosmo‘s bio page has gotten 146 more views than about 20 (I didn’t count) other posts, two of which were related to Lost, one about abortion and another about Obama.  Almost all referring links come from the Counterforce tumblr, followed by the Tumblr dashboard. 18 referring links came from within Gmail. 22 referring links came from a Sylvester Stallone message board. Overall pageviews started increasing in January, doubled in March, and have stayed about the same for April & May.

Counterforce on Vacation: I’m only happy when it rains.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

This is my weird but wonderful celebrity sighting from over the past weekend:

Most of my associates here at your semi-friendly neighborhood Counterforce have gone back to work, whatever their day jobs are, or back to school. They’ve gone back to the grind. But not yours truly. Marco Sparks is still on vacation, grinding away here in the golden state and chilling in Benjamin Light’s apartment while he’s off making a little paper.

Anyone care to know the contents of Light’s porn folder?

The nice thing, let me tell you here, about starting a blog with a bunch of people is that when you go on vacation, it gives you places to stay. So, you know, thanks to both Peanut and Lollipop for putting me up for a while. Occam, understandably, is a cheap bastard who wouldn’t put any of us up, but he has been hosting the official Counterforce Lost parties the last two weeks, and that’s pretty stand up of him.

Speaking of official Counterforce anything, over the weekend, all of the assorted weirdos from this blog were gathered together in one room, and in the same hotel room for a while, in San Francisco. There were some lurid stories, some large quantities of consumed alcohol, and some down and dirty drama: The ingredients of any good party, yes?

In SF, pretty much all of us attended a nerd convention, and Lollipop took home the best spoils: a picture autographed by Mitch Hurwitz, Will Arnett, Henry Winkler, and Kenan Thompson (Kel was busy manning the Coolburger). Oh, and the guy who did the voice of Spongebob was in there somewhere too. A very cool grab.

But me? Other than the pleasure of everyone’s company, which would’ve been more than enough for me (more than I deserved, certainly), I got the photo you see up at the top of the page of a certain flame-headed singer of a 90s “alternative” band (who now sadly stars on that Sarah Connor show in the middle of the Friday night graveyard of programing on Fox)(Right before Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse which, sadly, I’m expecting to get cancelled any second now).

The story of the picture is simply that I was out to lunch with August Bravo (who smells like straight up mayonnaise, no joke) and my friend Anthony at some Chinese place. “the best dim sum in the city,” the sign outside told us. I was broke, Anthony was buying, so that meant I would’ve followed him into hell. Or a dim sum place when the sketchy looking tempura house he originally wanted was closed (damn you, SoMa!).

I’ll spare you the nitty gritty of our conversation there, but Anthony’s training for a job in which he’ll have a gun. Sigh. What starts out there was cop talk slowly devolves into cock talk and something tells me to look over my shoulder. Perhaps alternarock nostalgia. Either way, there’s Shirley Manson, radiant and glowing, like 5 to 6 feet away from me, having lunch with some wanker. I quietly mutter to my associates in a hushed, stealth tone, “HOLY WTF OMG JESUS CHRIST, THAT’S SHIRLEY MANSON OVER MY LEFT GODDAMNED SHOULDER FUCK!” Luckily, August is on the ball (he was already sexting away on his iphone, so it was cool) and snaps the photo. We decide not to be the kind of pricks who interrupts a celebrity’s life or meal, even if it is with some wanker, to ask for an autograph or ask them to marry us or seek out any kind of validation for our own weird existence. Instead we took a much more subtle and despicable route of just casually glancing back at her like constantly. I suggest to Mr. Bravo that he should get another picture of the lovely Ms. Manson, this time with me leaning into the frame (cause I’m an asshole like that)(and cause the one above has Anthony in it staring off into nowhere or perhaps our waiter’s ass cleavage). He tries to, but it’s too late, the jig is up, and they’re onto us.

The wanker proceeds to look back at us constantly now and we feel shame. Not too much, mind you, a little. Anthony orders more duck and we bullshit our story for in case the wanker decides to say something to us, you know, to stick it too us. Anthony orders some shrimp porridge, rattles off all the police codes for various nefarious sexual acts one can visit upon a minor, and we bullshit that we’re celebrities too. No, not as bloggeurs, but that we’re actually an avante garde folktronica groupe called Infinity Sign. The story we come up with to back that up holds no water and of course, Shirley Manson isn’t going to lower herself to talk to us, and that’s understandable, and I do feel bad about taking the picture. By the way, our first single, “Put My Thing In Your Thing Where All The Other Wild Things Are” will be available on itunes soon.

This picture is absolutely for Peanut, who loves Gwen Stefani so much.

Eventually Shirley Manson and the wanker – whom we try to hypothesize could be her young lover that she takes whenever in the city or her bodyguard or both – leave. And let me tell you here: Some women leave a room and some women leave a room angry. And some do it in the sexiest way imaginable. That’s Shirley Manson. And most likely that dopey guy enjoying the meal with her was probably just the executive producer of her show, but whatever, he’s still the executive producer of that show. Wanker-ish.

Several days later, Commander Light and I took in a showing of the new Clive Owen picture, The International. What a bizarre, wonderful film. Total 70s paranoia thriller fetish porn and all the major action sequences take place in post modern art museums. There’s a wonderful collection of weird European hair happening this film (this weapons manufacturer character who’s running for Italian PM in the film would appear to have a sleeping falcon resting on his head at one point, but, no, it’s just his mega hair). Naomi Watts is barely in it (because, I assume, Jennifer Connelly was busy) and Clive Owen has clawed his way into being my favorite living movie star. Why? Because he’s not a star. He’s not even a man. He’s an animal in a suit and it works.

That, of course, leads me to the Clive Own interview in the latest Esquire. An excerpt:

It just didn’t occur to him to feel the part in advance of doing it. British actors are utterly different animals. You talk to a British actor and he’ll tell you about the night before very matter-of-factly: ‘I fucked her three times.’ They don’t care about your reaction. And you’ll say, ‘Hmm. You fucked her three times. How did it feel?’ and they’ll be blank. ‘Feel? Feel? What’s feeling got to do with it?’ They don’t cart around their emotions about the job. They have lives.

As for Lost, since we do tend to ramble on about that show a bit here, I have to express some love for this past week’s episode, “LaFleur.” It was packed with little tidbits for the fan, and quite frankly, you know that any episode that’s “previously on Lost” clips package starts with a character getting slapped is going to be. Plus, there was this:

“Hustlers, get your guns/This shadow weighs a ton…”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

It’s going to be a busy next few weeks for the ladies and gentlemen of Counterforce as most of us go on a vacation of some sort or another. We’re going to try to keep coming at you with regular updates but just understand that if we don’t post as much as we normally do… well, it’s because we’re off having loads of fun away from the internet. Sorry. We’d love to take you with us but there’s really just not enough room.

from here.

But for now we invite you to take a trip down memory lane and remember why you love as much as you do and get caught up on some of our old posts…

Occam Razor loves America and is going to tell you how to survive in a post peak oil world. Also, there’s pictures of Esther Baxter.

Lollipop Gomez is remarkably like David Frost, Barbara Walters, and a sexier Geraldo Rivera all wrapped into a tiny glasses wearing package. Take a gander at her hard hitting interview series where she puts only the best and the brightest in the hot seat and asks them probing questions about food, card rooms, and wacky religious cults.

Benjamin Light talked about the Oscars earlier and really disgusting “film reviewer” types a while back, but catch up on some of our earlier film reviews:

X-Files 2: I Want To Believe.

The Dark Knight.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Jack Nicholson and The Witches Of Eastwick.

And Hellboy 2 and the death of the modern action flick.

Quantum Of Solace.

The Candidate.

Let The Right One In.

And why Point Break is one of the great films of this time or any other.

And film remakes to be terrified of.

And don’t forget that August Bravo and myself get a bit pretentious (well, a little) about films that we’d consider super duper classics, which you find here and here and here (and parts four and five coming very soon).

Plus, Benjamin Light does a nice counterpoint to that with films that he considers to be hidden indicators of bad taste.

Oh, and politics! Back during the campaign season, this site used to be just filthy with political trash talk. Now, it’s just filthy.

And Lost. Yeah, I guess you could say that we have Lost mania. Or something.

And that’s not to say that we don’t talk about literature and music and art as well, cause believe me, we do. In fact, we talk our asses off about it. About all of it and more.

And don’t forget we have Peanut St. Cosmo too.

So, just remember, we’re not going anywhere. We’re still here and we still love you. Sort of. We’re just going to go on a little vacation and we invite you to join us.

Winning IS everything.

Posted by counterforce! on

Well, hello there, America:

Crazy week, right?

We here at Counterforce were just like you this time last week.

Because of this:

and this too:

Ha ha! Beautiful.

The transition is beginning, the big meetings are happening, the staff is being hired, and soon Renegade, Renaissance, Radiance, and Rosebud will be moving into the White House.

So that just leaves the question… What’s next?

The election is over, we have a candidate, so what’s next for the country, the world, and even, selfishly, for us here at Counterforce?

No idea. But let’s find out, what do you say?

Bloggerdammerung.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

The other day, the stats on our site visits just shot through the roof for good ol’ Counterforce here, and a majority of those hits were deservedly for part two of Occam Razor’s continuing piece on a post peak oil world. Personally, I choose to believe it had everything to do with how well written the piece was and what a visionary our own Mr. Razor is. But I know that the picture of Esther Baxter didn’t hurt either.

So, that in mind, before we get started, let me just say this:

The great big bottom of an era, sure. But the end? Nah.

Okay, and now that that’s out of the way…

The other day, someone told me in conversation that they thought that practice of blogging was going to soon go out of style. They said we’d go back to “official” things for our entertainment, such as “real websites” and what have you, and the whole idea of personal reporting would vanish on the wind. They had no real basis or examples to back up this theory, which makes sense since they were just some nutjob who wasn’t going to let a lack of facts get in the way of them having too many opinions.

But what got me thinking was that they literally said that the “twilight of the blogs” was upon us.

Ho, maidens of the Rhine! Splashy splashy?

"Ho, maidens of the Rhine! Splashy splashy?"

Personally, I couldn’t agree less.

I feel like the internet is on the cusp of another metamorphisis. Web 2.0 is taking hold more and more, and yet I feel like it’s the middle stage of something new. The dawn of TMI? Maybe. Or maybe we’re just fattening ourselves up with better access to info and porn for the inevitable and impending robot (and/or zombie) holocaust of death, doom, and destruction. Or, you know, the fucking penguins, man.

Skynet was busy, so we get Dalkes instead.

"Skynet was busy, so we get Daleks instead. Exterminieren!"

But in the here and now, it kind of seems like everyone’s blogging in some way, trying their hand at the role of escribitionist, trying to put new, weird information out there and reach people and make connections that aren’t normally made in your usual day to day living. Some of the guys from The Office and their friends started a sports blog during the writer’s strike just to have something to do and someone to talk to. It’s not called just “Dr. Horrible,” it’s called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. And isn’t blogging what Duchovny’s character does in Californication when he’s not fucking around or having his new novel stolen by nymphets?

So I’m going to list a small little blog roll (and other random links) of my own here, not a full and complete list by any means, but just a sampling. And I probably won’t say too much about any of these just yet because… Well, I imagine I’ll go into them much more later and for now, you should just give them a slight gander yourself.

Heres another article about the Ruskies invading Georgia.

Here's another article about the Ruskies invading Georgia.

The list naturally begins with the good folks at This Recording. If I had a gun to my head and was forced to sum up this in one sentence, I’d probably come up with “This is eye candy for intellectuals and fans of Mad Men.” Back in the day I would routinely land on this site via The Hype Machine, but now it’s become a (at least) once a day destination for me. Some of the finest writing on the net and let’s not bullshit around, it hosts two of my aforementioned internet crushes, M. Young and M. Lambert. Although Tess Lynch is pretty awesome as well.

Reverse Cowgirl is a blog I’m a big fan of. Her and Lena Chen and Gawker (which I don’t look at that much, but still) and Jezebel and Girl With A One Track Mind all scratch some kind of itch that’s somewhere inside the sexy complicated mess that is me.

Here’s a quick link to all the blogs at Wired. Most of them are pretty good.

More quick mentions: Overheard In New York. Animal! Boing Boing. Bookslut. Jean Snow. Defamer, but only very occasionally. Kieron Gillen. Magibon and JWZ. The Huffington Post. John Rogers, the Kung Fu Monkey. Julie Klausner, who’s fast becoming another of my internet crushes. Fancy and Synthetic Pubes (though I keep wanting to say “Sympathetic Pubes” for some reason) and Professional Negro and What Would Don Draper Do? (which is so much better than the others, like, oh, What Would Pete Campbell Do? cause, I mean, who the fuck cares?) and Garfield Minus Garfield. Girl Farts, Open The Future, All Things Go, At Her Discretion, and 3 AM. BitchBuzz, Democratic Underground, and L’Emploi du Temps. And Motel de Moka. Oh, and definitely the Schrute-Space and Creed Thoughts.

Probably worth a quick mention here is Rich Johnston’s Lying In The Gutters, if for the name alone. Mostly just comic book and other genre wankery gossip, it’s something I read every week. I’ll catch you up quickly: John Byrne is a bit of a stupid racist and Frank Miller is a sexist misogynist. Mark Millar is a crazy Scottish bastard, Steven Moffat is an unstoppable genius, and Neil Gaiman will probably be writing Doctor Who next year. Oh, and Valerie D’Orazio has her moments as well.

Dont we all? From here.

Don't we all?

Oh, and I feel the need to talk about how every day when I log into the Counterforce here to see what’s going on and steal a little of my cohort’s genius, I notice that the top blog here on wordpress is something called Black Celebrity Kids. When you look at it, you’ll see that the blog is exactly what it says it is. It’s interesting, but man, I want their numbers. Also, the numbers of the number 2 blog on wordpress everyday, which is a Big Bang fansite. Big Bang being a Korean hip hop group and not, you know, the start of the universe as we know it (which I think also deserves a fansite). You know who I don’t want to steal numbers from? The number 3 blog on wordpress, something called Texas Darlin’, which seems to be on a perpetual Obama haterade bender.

Dont knock masturbation. Its sex with the one I love.

"Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with the one I love."

I should also name drop a tumblr out there that seems designed to stalk the wonderful Caitlin Hill, and who actually linked to us. Thanks bunches.

Speaking of tumblrs, there’s always the Counterforce tumblr if you’re absolutely bored beyond belief and in need of a good (or just cheap) laugh. In the same vein, there’s the Counterforce youtube channel. Both works in progress, and both are dirty little sluts.

And speaking of the women, we love, I should make two very important shout outs here…

The first to Peanut St. Cosmo, who finally joined us here at Counterforce and did so wonderfully. Here’s the thing you don’t know about P’nut just yet: She’s breathtakingly gorgeous, but the only thing that surpasses her quite frankly intimidating beauty is her big, sexy brain. Seriously, it’s massive, like the size of a medicine ball. And she uses it to headbutt people and penguins into comas.

And secondly, I want to say hey to someone who’s said hello to us recently: Maria from One Sharp Broad. In a short space of time, I’ve become a big fan of hers (plus, Maria, you’ve got good taste) and anytime she wants to write something for us, we’re more than interested. I mean, shit, we’d be interested if she just wanted to put on high heels and step on us.

Molly Young likes Phillip Roth. Hes probably a big fan of hers too.

Molly Young likes Phillip Roth. He's probably a big fan of hers too.

Oh, and a little random blogness from the blogosphere…

Starting with this one, which is just for Benjamin Light.

And just for Peanut St. Cosmo, highlights (or lowlights) from the Tucker Max script.

And the Ryan Adams’ tumblr, just for Peanut.

And shit, this article is practically all about Occam Razor.

Like I said, Molly Young likes Phillip Roth.

Are Obama bloggers really making an effort to bring the democrats together?

GWB actually a comedian? That would make sense. A lot of sense, actually.

My thoughts exactly. Well... no, I cant back that up. From here.

My thoughts exactly. Well... no, I can't back that up.

And with that, I’ll wrap this up for a bit. You’ve got new reading material, so that should keep you busy, at least until Occam Razor returns. I leave you with two quotes and some mp3s. Go back to whatever the hell you were doing.

For serious.

For serious.

“I think the pleasure of the completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for their own reasons. Blogging is like work, but withoutcoworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of the completed task.” -Scott Adams

For super serious.

For super serious.

“Blogging is like masturbating into a mirror while you videotape yourself so you can watch it later while you masturbate.” -Lewis Black

Mans best friend is feeling just a little more best friendlier.

Man's best friend just got a lot more best friendlier.

The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You

Brazilian Girls – Good Time

The Cold War Kids – Something Is Not Right With Me