Since they’re not selling the X1950 Pro anymore, they sent me the 3850 HD, which is almost the price that the 1950 used to be. (I’m not going to argue over £10 like, considering otherwise it’s an exact match, with 512 memory and GDDR3)

And it has overdrive enabled in the ATI CCC drivers so I can watch the temps and see if the games I’m running are on too high detail for it to handle.

Unfortunately my screen is b0rked. It’s not the card because I’ve nicked Decay’s and it works fine. My screen’s done this before (goes bright, then goes black with the power button still on) but it randomly started working again. Now it’s doing it again and it doesn’t appear to be fixing itself. It’s not the cables (I’ve checked them.) And it’s not the driver settings - it can’t even get through the BIOS post sometimes.

So Paul’s off to collect my new (22in, widescreen :D) monitor from Comet today.

I rang work to say/croak I was ill, and got mistaken for another colleague (mustn’t have heard me attempt to say my name) and got rang up, 2 minutes later, if I could cover someone who’d called in sick

I’ve completely lost my voice now ¬_¬

Back to the topic:

Feminist Laura Mulvey describes something in film called “The Gaze” (Which a friend of mine rather amusingly wrote, “The Gays” :P) by which a woman ‘prize’ character is put there to be looked at by the audience, who is assumed to be male. (I’ll state here that I’m sure not all men appreciate “the Gaze” )

So the first natural reaction is to say “Well, there’s women in the audience too, where’s our eye candy?!”

…But when I think about it, in modern film, there is eye candy. Men in six packs getting their shirts off, and think of the fan bases for Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, etc. Troy was a meatfest, and from a personal standpoint rather horrific because before then I didn’t realise that men’s muscle-boobs pecs bounced.

And we’re still clammouring about how skimpy women are plastered all over. Tarzan only has a loincloth and no-ones complaining about him being skimpily dressed and corrupting our young boys into become skinny gorilla men like him.

The problem is that by catering to the “female gaze” it assumes men and women are the same.

Men and women are equal. But they are not the same.

For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, the majority of women (and, of course, some men) just aren’t into “Visual pleasure”. And we haven’t found the female-catering-equivilent to the male “gaze.” yet.

(Excuse the generalisations here: We assume the ‘average’ man, woman here) Cleavage/bum shots work for heterosexual men. Crotch/bum shots work for homosexual men but make women cringe.

Of course, now I’ve got to find a book that describes the differences between men and women, while avoiding Men are from Mars, Women from Venus and its preposterous claim that rejection is worse than forcing yourself to have sex when you don’t want it. Not that rejection isn’t horrible, but there are certain practicalities that you just can’t get around.

(Watch, as I’m flooded by junk because I used the words “pleasure” “cleavage” “heterosexual” “homosexual” “crotch” “sex” and possibly “gorilla” They’ve been caught fairly well so far, like. …The spam. Not the gorillas.)

edit: To illustrate my “Gay Gaze” point, in possibly the most destroying-your-childhood way,

http://davidkawena.deviantart.com/gallery/#Disney-Heroes

(Safe for work, but you’ll get some odd looks :P)

They’re technically well done, and it’s not for an “OMG gay!” rampage, but it is to demonstrate that male eye candy works more towards gay men than straight women.

Edit 2: For anyone not willing to click on that because it reads as if it’s Disney heroes actually doing things, it’s portraits of male Disney heroes posing in their underwear (like for calendar shoots)

…Yes, I cringed too

And I’m writing about the equality of genders in animation and language for my dissertation. It means reading through a lot of hate filled stuff. Reading through radical feminist writings that claim all men are stupid, and the the backlash against feminist writings that claim all women are stupid and are trying to get rid of men.

I actually stumbled across it by accident while looking up cavemen (for my animation, and made all the more difficult by some silly sitcom) and came across something describing feminazi’s that take advantage of the legal system as cavewomen. “How refreshing!” I think, “A site that takes a balanced view. I think I’ll browse a bit!”

First warning sign: Not one article was written by a woman. Not that men can’t write about this stuff, of course, but I’d expect out of the many articles that at least one would be written by a woman. I’m sure I’m not the only non-radical feminist out there.

But eventually it starts dribbling off into how women have small brains and how all feminists are out to eliminate men from the family and so on and so forth.

This is insulting - it’s an outrage (any hopes of actually doing some research this morning has gone out the window btw =P) and it’s really not helping. A feminazi reads it, and it only makes her hate men more. A man reads it, and about the evils of manipulative women, and he becomes dismissive of feminism. And someone trying to go for equality becomes enraged because it insults their gender *ahem*

There are good points, obviously. In a courtroom someone that says they’ve been raped is a ‘victim’ before the trial is concluded, and unfortunately there are instances of people lying and using it to their advantage. Abortion, IMO, should consult bother the mother and father and councelling with both to get them to an agreement. Domestic violence against men is still largely ignored, and on TV a woman smacking a man is hilarious, but the other way around it’s an outrage (admittedly men are on average stronger than women, so some bias can be expected, but it’s not fair if he can’t defend himself.)

But all these points are buried in a mire of “stupid women” and “feminist propaganda” which makes it not only seem intensely biased against women, but exceptionally difficult to read and sift through.

I was glad to find my dissertation tutor was a feminist, and read up on feminism. But when I mentioned how Thelma And Louise can be offensive to men, and some men are offended by it* she responded by “isn’t it funny how quick they get offended while we’ve put up with cinema like this for years?” …yes, we’ve ‘put up’ with it for years, but a war of the sexes is not the way to continue. I was offended by a screening last year I saw of a somewhat-abstract film with men morphing into pigs - in that film (from the imagery of herself) I assume the animator had been abused, and therefore it could merely be expressing her view and perhaps pointing out that her point of view isn’t objective. But in translation, because she doesn’t say that in the film, the man-pig becomes the ‘everyman’ - that is, a representative of the entire male population, and he is depicted as a monster.

*(Thelma and Louise: Male characters in order of appearance: The possessive husband, the rapist, the ‘eye candy’ to be slept with for thrills, the chauvinist truck driver, and the one helpful guy… who turns out to be useless anyway. Besides which, if the only way for a feminist to obtain power is to pretend to be a man, (and a stereotypical one at that) it’s not really feminism, is it now?)

Anyway, I had to get that off my chest.

Be ready for many, many more rants when I actually get down to reading this stuff on purpose for my film.

Oh! And Sarah Palin. She’s a mother. Big Whoop.  Polls skyrocketed for them when she showed her face, and that’s a nice great big dose of feminazi-ism in action considering the woman can’t answer a question properly (fossil fuels? you were asked about the banks crashing! *smack*), or without slating the other side. Srsly, of the little propaganda we’ve had over here, all of their stuff has been saying “ZOMG Obama BAD!” without actually illustrating what they’re going to do.

And instead of saying that “We can’t retreat from Iraq, that’s surrendering!” …wth, what sort of ‘victory’ are you expecting if you stay? Pride should have nothing to do with it, it’s the good of both countries that should decide what you do. If there’s a valid reason for staying, do it. But not for your goddamn pride.

Ok, I’m actually done writing now.

“Believe it or not, we’re processing it right now. So you’ll have your answer by Wedneday!”

Well it seems I shouldn’t believe it, because its Friday and I’m answerless, and on hold again. (Side note: Most depressing music ever) Luckily I’ve found a geographical number from http://www.saynoto0870.com/ instead of the expensive 0870 number. Because 1 hour + 0870 = aww hell no. I rang them yesterday but hung up after an hour because I had better things to do with my life.

If they offer me partial refund, I will not be happy (and I’ll not be having it.) I bought a graphics card, I didn’t rent it for 1 year.

Grouch Grouch.

The ATI 4870 has GDDR5. That sounds shiny. I want one

Edit: Apparently, the manufacturers didn’t actually provide a replacement card to MicroDirect so they were waiting on that. Biatches. (I was only on hold for 15 minutes today. Amazing! ) So I’ll be getting a credit voucher at some point today.

I do wonder if they’ve only got one guy answering the phones, since he sounds exactly the same as the guy I rang on Monday

Cue attempting to get 2 hours sleep.

Start falling asleep.

Get one of those as-falling-asleep dreams of a zombie biting my face off.

I mean, I’ve been playing watching Paul play The Darkness a lot lately but it’s not really scarey stuff. I get more scared playing Yahtzee’s 5 Days a Stranger (7 Days a Skeptic is even worse) than The Darkness.

Anyway, I got pretty much no sleep. Not so much because of the initial freakout but just general anxiety from I-don’t-know-where.

Paul, having a barman’s body clock, is still asleep now that I’m back from uni. Lazy bum

Two months before my course started, I was informed I couldn’t get campus accomodation because I lived too close to the uni. (Or, there were lots of people that lived insanely far, and they get priority. Fair enough.)

So, of course, there’s a fair number of people scrambling for private accommodation. How it worked was that landlords put their properties to the uni who put them on a list and gave that list to all students that asked.

After many trips up and down to Surrey, I’m looking at this house (”I’ll furnish it after I get your deposits!” Ha! ) I come across these girls and, having already booked an ‘appointment’ time with a landlady, discuss with them which ones on the list are still available.

You can see where this is going, but I thought that I’d be seeing the property before them, right?

Wrong. They turned up at the property (without ringing first), asked to look around, and then took it, just after I got there for my (booked) turn to look around.

I was fucking furious. I was about to take the room when they called her back and asked for it. Cue me finding a flat the weekend before my course started, filled with roaches and getting threatened to be kicked out at Christmas, and not getting my deposit back because my sodding landlord couldn’t count.

And it’s not worth it. When it comes to your education or career, people will take and they will not be grateful for it. You try and be nice or noble and you just get walked all over. Give someone an opportunity they wouldn’t have had otherwise, it’s very, very rare you get someone that does the same back.

So… that’s my rambling, for today.

Also (I just can’t stick to one subject, can I?) my uni website is FINALLY up and running. Some stupid virus has been running around (Hallmark sends you cards as a .Zip file, really? You Muppets!) and when the site finally was online my entire inbox has been filled with the things. Bah.

Only, I didn’t get an Xbox 360.

Thing is, I knew I wanted Fable 2, but at the same time there’s several games I want for the PS3 - It’s infuriating looking for a game when you can’t remember the name, btw (It’s Folklore, I’ve found now, and for some ungodly reason it’s under ‘M’ on Play.com)

In addition, a lot of the games I currently play (the MegaTen games, for instance) will probably be coming out on PS3 in future. Not to mention Final Fantasy 13 Versus, Little Big Planet, and so on and so forth.

That said: The Darkness. Tastiest game ever. It’s gory, but it’s not just any gore; you’ve got two demon heads extending from your shoulders that will not only devour the still beating hearts of your enemies - they’ll fight with each other over the thing before gobbling it down.

…It’s also got story, and a fair one at that - enough to keep me interested, and I’ve never been good at first person shooters. Take GTA’s mob story, and actually make it personal so that you have a reason to be doing everything. (There is no car jacking and so forth, as it is mainly a shooter game)

You can interact with most of your surroundings, and there are intricate details, like TV channels, idle animations (the heads snap at each other when bored) and the four minions that you can summon to do some of your dirty work have their own rather vivid personality. The protagonist Jackie will have a monologue on the situation instead of some bland loading screen, which is refreshing.

I assume the animation is motion-captured, by the subtleties of body language, but the mouth not-quite moving enough to be convincing (Fair enough the guy mumbles a lot, but it does look unnatural some times)

There’s no health bar whatsoever - and while it seems a tad bizarre that you can crouch under cover for 5 seconds and be right as rain after being shot several times, it’s also refreshing to not have to worry about “Shit, I’ve used up my entire health bar in the first half of the level”. Your vision will go red when you’re near death so you know when you’re about to keel over.

The cliche name does have a purpose and if you want to be using the powers the Darkness gives you, you’ll be playing most of the game in the dark - You can shoot out most lightbulbs, allowing you to gain power from shadows. Should you pull out your carnivorous friends in the light, they’ll start burning and losing power, recovering from darkness or heart eating.

Or you could just shoot everything in sight without the things. Personally, I find that to be rather lonely and prefer the companionship of the dear, sweet, teethy things.

And he did.

And I laughed.

And he was in dire need of eyebleach.

And then I said “Don’t look up tubgirl either”

And then he did.

And then we both needed eyebleach because I’d only heard verbal descriptions and didn’t realise it was that bad.

But then I took the mick out of him anyway for not being able to resist looking up something you shouldn’t on google images. What sort of sane person does that?

(We’re going to ignore plastic asses, and “You don’t know what Rule 34 is? I’ll look it up on Encyclopedia Drammatica so I can give you a link- OH GOD MY EYES!”. Ahem. )

Anyway, We’ve somehow got to dismantle a bed that’s already in pieces, and secure it in a box that can fit 6 foot slats inside it because otherwise Argos won’t give us an exchange.

And of course, they rang with an automated machine so my yelling of “In what am I supposed to fit these into?!” goes completely unheeded.

(btw, in case anyone’s clawing their eyes out, it broke when we sat on it, and nothing more. I do know people that have broke them otherwise, and apparently it’s rather painful so I think rather than exchanging the thing, I’d be ranting and raving and demanding compensation to pay for a new cervix. Not an Argos brand one, of course)

In other news, I have a cold that’s slowly obliterating the upper half of my body, while stomach ache is waging war on the lower half of my body. That’s just unfair and illnesses/”your ancestor touched an apple, pain for you” ganging up on you both at once should be outlawed. (Pain for you being general womanly pain in addition to pain in childbirth, right?)

The next time someone gets ‘reparations’ because their ancestors were in slavery, or because their ancestors were in the Knights Templar or whatnot, I’m suing the church because I, personally, am in no way responsible for what some lady did way back when (apparently) and I refuse to suffer for it. So there.

Has anyone seen The Man who Sued God? Billy Connolly’s character sues the church for his boat getting sunk as an “act of God” (It’s struck by lightning) and they have a very tough time getting out of it because they can’t not pay it, as it would mean that God doesn’t exist.

I can’t remember what happens at the end because it got slightly drawn out in the middle and I got bored (I’ve never been a fan on entirely-in-court-films) but I think it was more a dig on the “act of god” clause in insurance than at the church.

Paul’s just got the book “I, Lucifer” which looks rather amusing. I think I’ll steal it while he’s at work. And put images of plastic-assed men as his desktop background for shits and giggles, and for picking on my slow booting harddrive. It’s slow because it’s trying to find the drivers for your 10 year old soundcard, so there.

Oh, and I reread my dissertation proposal after doing all my research in the summer after not looking at it all summer until the semester started and I need to start my actual dissertation, and my writing style is horrible. Sparing the fact that the semi-colon is likely to sue me for abusing it so much, I’ve got sentences that are 4 lines long. I can’t bear to read my own writing. I don’t know how my lecturers manage to mark 50 of the things.

No wonder the RP-ing never went well, I scared everyone off with paragraph sentences

Edit: Facial scrub/exfoliation/toner/watnot and moisturiser = win.

More awesome, said scrub facial thingy was 85p, as opposed to £72.63 or something insane for unique handmade organic peptapeptites antiaging whatnot shiny bollocks, and it works just fine.

But anyway, I generally don’t wear makeup - I don’t like the feel of it, and I don’t like the palava of putting it on in the morning. I don’t like the fact that my mother thinks the only way I can be an adult is to wear the stuff. If you don’t like my face the way it is, tough luck. But because I didn’t want anyone to take offence and think that I couldn’t be bothered, or wasn’t trying, I bought some and took it along.

Paul protested by breaking one of my eyeliners the day I got it. *glare*

Anyway, I ended up wearing eyeshadow and such for most of the week, and got lots of people saying I looked very different, more grown up and the like.

And then I fell into the trap.

That is, the trap of “I can’t be seen without makeup” or “I’m ugly without it”. I can’t believe my self esteem took such a nose dive because of it, and people’s reactions to it (treating you more like an adult, and so on and so forth) Quite possibly because I hate being treated like a kid when I’m 20 years old.

If I wear makeup, it should be because I want to, not because I have to. (And then I’ll be a great big fat hypocrite, because I’ll poke people and say “yes, smoking IS addictive, because you have to have a fag, you don’t just want one” )

If I have an interview when I try to get into animation in games, do I doll up so that it looks like I actually take care of myself, or should I just be makeup-less so I don’t get put into a girly-girl category?

I’d go on half a rant about how guys have it easier, but I’m sure you don’t. I actually have the option of being a tomboy, for a start, while any guy that’s remotely feminine gets attacked by the other lads Especially unfair when being a gentleman is apparently gay O.o

Lets not mention, BBC Three, that cashiers get very little commission for selling store cards. We don’t sell them so we can get commission. We sell them because if we don’t reach our target, we get sacked.

Let off the cashiers (although the ones that don’t know what APR is when you ask them are fair game =P), and start talking about the companies pushing the store cards instead, please.

When I’m old, I’m going to be one of those people that writes letters to everyone. Not the annoying ones thaty say “if you don’t give me a discount I’ll write to head office” ones because they’re stupid and annoying.

In other news, Spore, with it’s allmighty SecuROM, has been cracked before it’s been released officially in the UK. Mahaha.

But if anyone doesn’t know what all the SecuROM fuss is about,

http://reclaimyourgame.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56&Itemid=16