Friday, November 20, 2009

Cooking with Conehead

I have written on Conehead the Barbituate’s woes in his ongoing struggle to kill the pain of late monopoly capitalism with the help of an illicit plant.

Well, Conehead’s troubles have worsened, he tells me, due to a somewhat uptight neighbour complaining about the smell of the smoke from his bedroom window.

As a result, we have Conehead’s latest sent to this blog, posted as a comment to the post on drug dealers inspired by his less-than-enterprising Man.

As these comments were educative and instructive, I have posted them in full below.

Of course, Carlo Sands does not encourage using this information for anything but academic studies. I've said it before and I'll say it again, abuse of the demon weed is known to lead to terrible scourge of swimming addiction.

If you *must* make this recipe, Carlo Sands advises you to use the non-THC variety of of the demon weed to avoid the pitfalls of a terrible addiction.

* * *




conehead the barbiturate said:

Cooking with Conehead

Ingrediants:
½kg self raising flour
125g cocoa
¾kg sugar
½kg butter
½oz Indian hemp [important for flavour]
3 cups water
4 eggs

Method:
1. mix flour, sugar & cocoa
2. chop up hemp
3. melt butter
4. cook hemp in butter on low heat till butter goes green
5. mix hemp and butter with flour, sugar & cocoa [HINT: do not strain hemp out of butter. to do so detracts from the subtle flavour.]
6. add eggs
7. mix some more
8. stick in greased baking tin and put in oven at 180°C for an hour.
9. use bamboo skewer to see if its ready. if nothing sticks to skewer take out of oven.
10. if stuff does stick to skewer, take it out of oven anyway because you can’t be fucked waiting to see how its turned out.
11. panic when liquiddy uncooked stuff in the middle starts pouring out everywhere. Try and get all the uncooked stuff back in baking tin and stick it back in oven.
12. In the process of following step 11, eat lots more than you were planning to as you stop bits of it falling on the floor.
13. get really shitfaced because you've eaten half the cake, forget how much you've eaten so you think its really strong, give small bits to your friends telling them they'll get really shitfaced [HINT: if you don't have any friends, anyone around will do].
14. wonder why the people you've given bits to aren't as trashed as you are & seem a bit disappointed.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

At last, an example of sanity in a truly mad world

The world plunges faster and deeper into climate chaos (to such a degree that, today, Sydney feels like Adelaide and that is never a good thing).

The disastrous Afghan war sinks deeper into a bloody mess with the only ideas that seems to have occurred to the occupiers being to send more soldiers they don’t have and spread the war to Pakistan.

The CEOs of the big investment houses have started giving themselves seven, eight and nine figure bonuses once more, while millions of citizens of the world’s richest country go hungry and the United Nations sends in investigator who reports gross abuse of millions of homeless.

Bon Jovi score a number one record in the US.

People are upset because Rove McManus quits TV.

I could go on. It is indisputable. The slide into barbarism is all around us.

But finally, there is a ray of light.

Amid all the insanity, bloodshed and impending apocalypse, something sane happened. Something right. Something that makes perfect sense and is as it should be.

Johnny Depp has been voted the Sexiest Man Alive in the 2009 People magazine poll.

In case you think that would just be automatic, last year the award went to Hugh Jackman. For christ’s sake.





“Finally, something sane in the papers.” For the first time since he won the Sexiest Man Alive award in 2003, Johnny Depp finds something in the news that is neither insane, infuriating nor bloodcurdling.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

I suspect this could be computer generated

I am always looking for correspondence from the great legion of fans of this blog, or indeed any acknowledgment at all from anyone that this blog exists.

So I was over-the-moon to revieve an email from someone wanting to share links!

Yet, and yet, I cannot help feeling this might be computer generated.

I don't know this for sure, and possibly I am just being unnecessarily paranoid. Possibly Shiela, spelled wrong (and I do love bad spelling) is genuinely a real fan of the blog.

But there is something about it... Well, unkind readers, you can judge for yourself:


Hello,
This is Shiela from substance-abuse-counselor.com.

We stumbled on your blog while searching for substance abuse related information. I understand that your website is realted to this topic. We operate the largest website featuring more than 30,000+ websites and blogs. Our site averages 200,000+ uniques visitors. As a kind note We have featured your site at http://substance-abuse-counselor.com/blog_awards/index.php?id=189 We would be grateful if you could add the following details to your blogs main page.

Looking forward for your confirmation.
Thanks
Shiela
Substance-Abuse-Counselor.com


I, of course, am thrilled to be linked from Substance-abuse-counselor.com, although I am not familiar with their work. I am more of a Modern Drunkard Magazine sort of a guy.

Still a friend of Carlo Sands willing to link to his blog from their site is a friend of mine.

That is my criterion in fact.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Never forget, never forgive: Castle reminds us fleetingly of what we could be watching

An episode in the second season of the US TV show Castle, which stars Nathan Fillion who formerly stared as Captain Malcom Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s Firefly, has made an in-joke reference to the late Whedon series cancelled by Fox before it completed its first season.

This is a cruel move that brings back painful memories.

The 21st century has already seen some truly great crimes against humanity: the invasion and occupation of Iraq at the cost of a million dead; Sri Lanka’s ongoing genocide of the Tamil people; and Shannon Noll’s recording career are three that come to mind.

But what the Fox Network did to Joss Whedon's brilliant, groundbreaking “space western” TV series Firefly is surely a contender for top spot.

They cancelled it after only 14 episodes of the first season had been produced, with only 11 screened.

This was after badly undermining the show, screening episodes out of order and forcing a new first episode to be written after disliking the pilot.

The feature-length pilot was of course one of the truly great episodes ever produced for television. It was beautifully shot, capturing the colour, feel and breadth of its highly original setting — the outer-rim of civilised space done Wild-West-style.

It packed a remarkable amount of information, introduced a wide cast of characters with their drama and tension driving the plot, told a multifaceted story the product of a remarkable imagination, and did so at a cracking pace littered with brilliant one-liners.

Fox executives hated it.

The fuckers sabotaged the show then dumped it.

Poor ratings were blamed for the series cancellation. Yet DVD sales of the aborted series were through the roof and the show, despite its forcibly short run, is regularly voted the best sci-fi show ever.

But Fox saw little value in it and had no interest in giving it the appropriate treatment for TV success. It was much cheaper and easier for them to churn out another reality TV show.

That was bad enough.

But it was not the first time Fox had killed.

In an act of presumably unintended irony, Fox announced it was dropping Whedon’s show Angel just as season five was investigating the question of whether it was possible to work within an evil corporation and still do good.

As a result, the final episode of the season and series understandably ended on the somewhat bleak note — concluding “No, not really” in a somewhat bloody, if heroic, conclusion.

Of course, season five was easily the best Angel season. If there is one thing a Fox executive cannot stand it is quality. It makes them uneasy.

And now, Fox seems determined to kill again. Like a serial killer, Fox has in its sights another potential victim that fits its profile: Joss Whedon's latest show Dollhouse.

Dollhouse has at least fared better than Firely. Not only did it make it through season one, it was even reluctantly granted a second run.

Now, the news is it is very likely to be its last, with Fox pulling the show for the entire of November.

The result of this killing spree is the actors are forced to turn their tricks in shows of far less quality.

Fillion is a class act and, in some ways, it is good to see him as Richard Castle in yet another inevitable variation of the police/detective murder drama.

Yet, while his charisma raises the show above the 100,000 other slight variations on the same theme, it exists as a permanent reminder of what could, and should, have been.

In Australia, Channel Seven seem determined to torment Whedon fans by showing Castle as well as Bones — the yet another variation on the murder drama featuring the former star of Angel, David Boreanaz.

In a particular act of cruelty that should prompt an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, it has been known to run them straight after each other.

If Dollhouse, which has never even screened on free-to-air TV in Australia, is finally cancelled, we can confidently expect Channel Seven to bombard us with prime-time repeats of Dollhouse star Eliza Dushku’s Tru Calling — a less memorable venture for someone so talented, to be polite about it.

In the episode of Castle with the Firefly in-joke, Richard Castle dresses up for Halloween in his ol’ captain Mal outfit.

There is a half-minute scene in which he tries to explain and defend the outfit to his teenage daughter.

Castle's annoying brat of a kid, supposed to ingratiating in that horrific stomach-churning way US TV shows imagine to be cute, asks: “Don’t you think it is time you moved on?”

Fillon/Castle/Reynolds speaks for us all with is to-the point reply: “But I like it!”





“Didn’t you wear that, like, five years ago?”

Fillion is amusing in the scene, but is it too soon? At what point does it become acceptable to joke about such an atrocity?

For my part, the actions of Fox executives raises series questions about the sort of society we live in.

The social-economic structures are, to my mind, utterly condemned by the treatment of Joss Whedon. No further proof is needed of late monopoly capitalism’s terminal decline.

These are the things by which a society is judged, and one with any decency would throw as much cash at Joss Whedon as it could possibly spare and shout: “Go away an entertain us!”

Unfortunately, in this society, “entertainment” is left in the hands of the likes of Fox executives. In other words, the lowest form of human life — an even greater symbol of moral bankruptcy of the capitalist “entertainment industry” than Kyle Sandliands.

There are some things that can never be forgiven.

Go about your daily lives of continuing to cancel Joss Whedon shows, Fox network executives, but Carlo Sands is watching you.

And one day, justice will be served.





“What did y’all order a dead guy for?” A quote from a Fox executive in a meeting in the not-to-distant future.




“I'm right there with you.” A quote from said Fox executives’ meeting about unlimited funding for any project Joss Whedon decides is appropriate after a persuasive presentation by Carlo Sands.