To be uncharacteristically blunt, it’s said that there are less people bothering to vote because they feel let down by the corrupt politicians.

I’d like to offer an alternative theory.

This isn’t a particularly controversial theory and I’m unlikely to be the first person to think about it (though I can be quite visionary at times – I fancied Cheryl Tweedy when she was the still just the ’sporty’ one and a racist). You’re unlikely to see this theory written about by any of the daily columnists, however. Mostly because of two reasons:

1) It’s boring.

2) It goes against the sleazy politician narrative.

My theory is that fewer people are voting because, in general, more people are content about the way things are. No matter whichever way you spin it, the majority of us are far, far better off than we ever were. That’s a trend that seems to continue no matter who’s in charge. While the minority may be outraged by Labour’s benefits state, the Tory’s free market ideology or Nick Clegg’s smug little head, the reality is that MOST of the British public are not writing comments on the Daily Mail website.

Instead, they’re relatively happy. But we don’t hear about that because, as Charlie Brooker pointed out, the media’s view of the public has essentially been handed over to a fringe society of emotionally broken retards.

A typical accusation is that there is no clear difference between political parties any more – that this is another maligned cause for the dreaded voter apathy and something should be done about it. But what? True, British politics has converged somewhere nearing the centre of the political spectrum (although, in my opinion it’s slowly leaning further to the left), but why is this assumed to be a bad thing? The alternative is extremism. Do we really need our politicians veering away from the tried-and-tested middle ground so it’s easier for stupid people to pick between one stupid set of ideals on one side and another stupid set of ideals on another?

While that would undoubtedly increase voter turnout, I don’t think it’s a particularly progressive path for our country.

So is voter apathy a sign of a successful democracy? Of course it depends on your perspective. If my theory’s correct, it’s certainly sign of a relatively happy populace, which must mean the government is working in the best interests of the people. On the other hand, it’s bad news for the incumbent government who will find the millions of people that have steadily thrived under their leadership staying home on voting day; watching their HDTVs; facebooking from their laptops; stuffing their faces with cheap, readily-availalble food; and playing with their kids who haven’t been raped or forced into a warzone. We really are a bunch of lucky bastards.

*To borrow a turn of phrase from the most partisan of hacks before unleashing a totally uncorroborated attack on AGW, homosexuals, pro-choicers, socialists, free-thinkers and/or coloured people

After almost a decade of unleashing myself on the information super highway, I’ve developed more identities than Jason Bourne and signed up to more social media sites than I even know exist (sounds impossible, but it’s true). At first, I think I wanted to keep these identities distinct for a reason. Over time however, I’ve completely forgotten what that reason might have been. The problem of having such multiple personalities is that (if I want to gain as much exposure on the web as possible and keep each identity sufficiently vibrant) I’m essentially tripling my workload – or spreading my content thin. On the other hand, if I try to integrate all the varying identities there’s the risk of causing confusion. It’s a tricky problem.

The first step to solving a problem is understanding all the contributing factors. To this end, I began mapping out my social media presence, seeing what I use each site for and where it sits as part of my “personal brand” (yuck). This gave me an excuse to whack together a bunch of avatars (shown in the above image – click here for a larger version) – one for every identity I’m currently working with.

I may not be any closer to bringing any of this under order, but at least I have some snazzy boxes to play with.

The latest addition to my digital empire is the Tumblr blog Crimes Against Journalism – if you want to know what’s wrong with the British media, I strongly suggest you have a look (least of all because I think it looks bloody ace)…

Finally, I’d like to linger on the Demontrout logo that I knocked together earlier tonight. I went for the Jesus Fish with horns and devil-like tail approach. Thoughts?

Image credit: Dead Fox by JT-Pixel

Before we begin, let me get this out of the way:

Megan Fox is hot. Truly hot. Astoundingly hot. If you thought she looked good in Transformers and, um, Transformers 2, you haven’t seen anything yet. I was genuinely agog during some of her best moments. And there isn’t much time wasted between those moments. This film is stuffed full of scenes designed solely to show some oogleable aspect of – well, the title kinda gives it away. Let me not stress this enough: Megan Fox is fit.

Good. I’ve said it. Now, I can get on with the movie review.

If you’ve <a href="“>watched the trailer, seen the posters or heard anything about this movie at all, you will probably be thinking that Megan Fox is the star of the movie. If you’re anything like me, it’ll make the prospect of watching the film less daunting if you’re told the truth: she isn’t. In fact, I’m going to try and get away with not mentioning her for the rest of this review.

Amanda Seyfried, who at least gets her name on the DVD cover if not her picture, deserves virtually all of the credit for lifting this mostly silly, nonsensical and confused piece of teenage fluff up to the level of largely enjoyable and recommendable. I last saw (and, shamefully, wrote off) Seyfried as the blonde bimbo in Mean Girls*. That being so, she totally surprised me by putting in an engaging performance, bringing to life that most rare of movie personas: a horror flick character that you actually care about and want to live. She should be in your local cinema at the moment alongside Liam Neeson in Chloe and, after seeing her in Jennifer’s Body, I am definitely going to check it out.

It may be too early to tell, but Amanda has definitely impressed me with versatility, intensity and talent enough to separate her from 95% of the other young, female movie stars. Thinking back to Mean Girls, who could have guessed only Lindsay Lohan would not be headlining movies within ten years? Hold on, what’s Lacey Chabert doing now…? It’s almost definitely not worth IMDBing for.

Back to Jennifer’s Body… As I said, the film is pretty dumb. But it’s also fucking dark. Even darker if you mentally filter out some of the more torturous jokes and the so-ridiculous-it-almost-ruins-the-entire-movie plot cornerstone (asking a lot, I know… bear with me). Fortunately, I found this easy to do. Some of the suggested themes (that were perhaps more prominent in an early draft of the script, before Fox – the studio company I mean – opted to focus on tits and shitty gigs instead) are really quite disturbing and I found that, while certain key characters were played for pathetic, cheap laughs, some actors brought a gritty bleakness that made the experience of watching the film more disconcerting than most of its genre.

As I write this, I wonder if I’ve gone mad. It’s Jennifer’s Body for fucks sake. It must’ve been shit. Whatever I remember, it could not have been good. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Then again, even the title Jennifer’s Body doesn’t really make sense, which further makes me think there was the core of something good that was then distorted to within breaking point for the purpose of selling a tasty young actress. The title is just there because Fox (again, the studio) wanted to sell copies based on the eponymous character’s boobs rather than Amanda Seyfried’s acting skills.

Aside from the script occasionally not being complete shite and a few notably engaging performances, the film does have one major thing going for it: fuck loads of style. In thats sense, it reminds me of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (though I thought Jennifer’s Body was better). From a few minutes in all the way to the ending credits, with only a few exceptions Jennifer’s Body carried a bold, striking and surprising style – which, I found, more than made up for its severely ropey story. There was also a level of confidence sorely missed in most of the jizz Hollywood spunks out of its stonking, great producto-penises. For example, it’s an unwritten law in every movie that most settings have to be annoyingly explained by the characters – regardless of the impact this has on the mood and whether or not the audience give a shit about it. The process goes something like this:

Boy: Wow. What is this place?

Girl: This is the old brewery. My sister told me that it was shut down before we were born after three men got caught up in the machinery. It’s been left pretty much abandoned ever since.

Boy: Yeah! I remember hearing about this! There’s a whole dull backstory that is largely irrelevant but supposedly justifies a bunch of high school kids ending up in a vast, spooky environment with dangerous, mangly technology littered about…

The only decent excuse for having a character ask “what is this place” when they’re already at that place is if you’re making The Cube. The best I can remember, Jennifer’s Body doesn’t do this particularly annoying piece of background setting and I’m willing to bet nobody will bother correcting me if I’m wrong.

So, in conclusion, a thoroughly enjoyable film, deeper than the marketing would allow and starring a great, young actress – albeit not the one most people would immediately think of**. Jennifer’s Body haemorrhages style from every severed limb and is definitely worth checking out when you’ve got nothing better to do on a Friday or Saturday evening. It probably isn’t worth writing almost 1,000 words in a review though.

*Update: Have since looked at her IMDB profile and realised she totally rocked in Mamma Mia! – there’s no shame in enjoying that movie… However, it does make my sudden discovery of this “emerging young actress” about three to five years out of date.

**To be fair to Megan Fox, I don’t think she’s a particularly bad actress and, while the role was uncomplicated, her portrayal of a demonically-possessed cheerleader was pretty terrifying in its own way. Plus, she’s hot and if she reads this I don’t want her to think I’m not interested.

They say that every visit to my blog kills a fairy, so do your bit for pixie genocide and come back again soon! If you liked what you read today, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Otherwise, if you want to get a bit more intimate, stalk me on Twitter. Thanks for getting Crunky!

Exclusively revealed: the hidden alternative ending to Se7en (spoiler alert should go without saying). Presented here is an exact copy of what was in the original script…

[Morgan Freeman opens up the box and, holy shit!, it's Gwyneth Paltrow's head! He rushes back to Kevin Spacey talking crap about envy and whatnot to Brad Pitt. Will he make it in time before Brad gives in to wrath and shoots Spacey in the face!?]

[He does.]

Brad Pitt: (In a strange, whiny voice) Nooo, whaaaat’s in the boooooox?

Morgan Freeman: It’s your missus’ head, hot-headed but likeable detective Brad Pitt. Kevin Spacey killed her and, in a convoluted twist to an already far-fetched tale, arranged for a courier to deliver her decapitated melon at this precise time to enrage you enough to kill him. His reason being that this act will then complete the seven deadly sins motif he’s got going on (you being wrath and he being envy, in case you haven’t been keeping up).

John Doe: Everybody will remember this…

Morgan Freeman: Sure. However, this does raise a few questions. Brad, if you could hold off doing that weird clenching-face, determination-to-kill transition that probably earned you an Oscar nomination, I’ll like for Kevin Spacey to explain himself.

Brad Pitt: Oh (clenches face, looks determined). Go on, then.

Morgan Freeman: Thanks. Spacey, I will happily admit this final twist has all the makings of a movie ending classic. But, quite frankly, it just doesn’t add up.

John Doe: How so?

Morgan Freeman: I’m glad you asked, John. Well, for how long have you been planning the other murders? You kept the sloth guy tied to a bed for a whole fucking year, with every intention that we would discover him precisely when we did. That takes some organisation.

John Doe: So? I’m one of those murderously insane geniuses that, despite my grotesque and incomprehensible methods, offers insightful commentary on the shittiness of the world. What’s your point?

Morgan Freeman: Don’t you get it? You schemed and plotted these crimes for an entire year, at the very least. You stalked your targets and devised ironical means for their execution and wrapped it up in a neat, marketable narrative. Chronologically, it seems as if you prepared for sloth, gluttony, greed, lust (though I don’t know exactly how long it took to build that contraption) and, then, pride.

John Doe: So what?

Morgan Freeman: Did you get to pride and figure “fuck it, I’ll just wing it from now on”. You had no idea who Brad Pitt was a week ago, let alone a whole year ago when you first started this cinematically mind-blowing campaign. What would you have done if there was no hot-headed but likeable detective who recently arrived in this city with a beautiful, vulnerable wife put on the case?

John Doe: Umm…

Morgan Freeman: I mean, did you just expect something to turn up? I refuse to believe you hadn’t had every victim scoped out for months in advance. That’s part of what makes you such a classic villain isn’t it? And yet, now, it looks like you’re just blagging it.

John Doe: Blagging it!? After what I’ve done? His fucking wife’s head is in a fucking box I fucking well delivered here at the fucking end of the movie! It’s one of the greatest movie endings of our time!

Morgan Freeman: Good ending, for definite. Nobody’s disputing that. I’m just saying it doesn’t make much sense. Unless, you changed your existing wrath and envy plans in the last few days-

John Doe: That’s what I did then.

Morgan Freeman: Mmm…not buying it. This ending, rather than being the ‘piece de resistance’, the cherry topping the cake, actually exposes your entire operation to be pretty sloppy-

John Doe: Pretty sloppy!? Are you mental? I kept that drug-dealer alive for an entire fucking year! I planted fingerprints at the scene of the crime, I-

Morgan Freeman: Yes, yes. You started off well. Then you have to admit everything became increasingly hapdash. Pretty much from the time after we discovered the lawyer. Even in comparison to lust and pride, this plan for your last two sins seems surprisingly off-the-cuff. I’m also a bit dubious about your claim to feeling ‘envy’. Seems a little neat doesn’t it? Could it be you realised too late that you only had five sins sewn up and had to quickly pull something out of your arse at the last minute?

John Doe: Umm…

Morgan Freeman: Don’t bother answering that. I think we both know the answer (though it is probably beyond my companion here). In conclusion, you started off well but completely lost it at the end, realised you had only skim read your library books (on that note, why did you even bother borrowing those books? You’re supposed to be independently wealthy, just buy the fucking things) and forgot about the last two sins. In desperation, you went for blunt sensationalism rather than continuing with the cryptic, methodological, strategic, ironic creepiness. I’m disappointed.

John Doe: (sobbing) You’re right. I’m sorry. I fucked up. When I saw Brad get reasonably angry a couple of times, I thought I could blag it. It was silly of me. I’m not really envious. I love murdering people and living in my nutty room.

Brad Pitt: (clenching face, looking determined) Arrghh! Can I kill him now?

Morgan Freeman: Yeah. Go for it. We’ll lie and say he put up a fight.

Brad Pitt: Awesome.

[Brad Pitt shoots Kevin Spacey in the face. The bullet ricochets! Oh my God! It turns out he has an adamantium skeleton! He cuts up Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt with his retractable claws, before tearing off his clothes and fleeing in the wilds of... wherever they were at the end of the movie. Colonel William Stryker looks on via concealed video camera footage beamed into his military bunker.]

Brian Cox: Weapon VII has escaped! I want him hunted down and captured immediately!

Unnamed army officer: But…but sir, Weapon VII was designed to be unbeatable in combat and impossible to track. There’s no man alive who can do this job!

Brian Cox: [Wry smile] Then we’ll send no man. Get me Samus Aran!

[The words To be continued... fly onto the screen exactly like at the end of Back to the Future 2. A post-credit scene shows a hot blonde gearing herself up (reverse Barbarella style) with a yellow and red armour suit and bad-ass weaponry. Before she puts on the helmet, she turns to the camera - it's Scarlett Johansson! The end... for now!]

Ignoring Hannan’s spurious motivation for the time being, what is he hoping for from this emulation of the “spontaneous” (Hannan’s generous description – The Smirking Chimp has an article revealing exactly how grass roots the US Tea Party movement is) American protest? I can show you…

Nice.

What else to expect:

The scale of the movement is sure to be wildly overblown by conservative commentators. In fact, you will probably find the 2 million protesters figure getting chucked around by Hannan and his ilk.

If I do have to see any news coverage, I can only pray for such puntastic pieces as this work of genius… (also a brilliant dissection of the overall ridiculousness of the movement)

Rather more worryingly, if Hannan is successful at harnessing such unfocused hate here in the UK, we might see the Conservative party ensnared by the far right with a certain Eurosceptic MEP at its shiny head… What are you gonna do, Dave?

I’ll end this post by quoting one of Hannan’s supporters:

Oh, I almost forgot what I was going to write. I do not have an excuse for not attending the tea party,just an honest reason, namely the public transport system would never get me their in time, and would bankrupt an old state pensioner. But I do wish you well, and if there is anyway of helping, leaflets etc, I would be only too pleased to help.

With passion like that, I can’t see this thing failing…

Other blogs talking about this topic:

Liberal Conspiracy – Right wingers launch “British Tea Party”

Your Freedom of Ours – There is a certain lack of understanding

The Conservative Blog – Britain needs its own tea party movement

Ragbag – A British Palin

Independent Minds – Of Mad Hatters

We Are Respectable Negroes – It would be funny if they weren’t so serious…

This may have resulted in anybody already subscribing to this blog being lost. If this has happened, I’m genuinely sorry. I hope you subscribe again and forgive me.

Cheers.

I was pleased with Gordon Brown’s speech this morning as I thought it succinctly summed up some pretty damning fuck ups of the Opposition. My personal favourite has to be the claim earlier this week that a whopping 54% of girls in the most deprived areas of Britain get pregnant before they turned 18. Crikey. Britain, much like the big, flappy vaginas of those young ladies, must truly be broken.

Hm…not quite. As you might have guessed by that preposterously large figure, the actual stat turned out to be a significantly less frightening 5.4%. Oh, and this has dropped by 6% from 1998…

To be fair, everybody makes mistakes and, while I find the scale of this error particularly funny, on its own, the 900% misrepresentation doesn’t necessarily undermine their message or their competence. What really does make me distrust Cameron and friends, however, is that they’re repeatedly struggling to find evidence to back up their “broken Britain” theory. They clearly adopted this “strategy” because it’s an approach they believe (probably rightly) would resonate with floating voters and are now trying to grab headlines to justify their point.

This annoys me because it’s a waste of time. The energy the Tories could be investing in studying data and picking out the areas that clearly need work is instead being spent on a marketing strategy.

Similarly, refusing to take part in important talks about social care for flimsy reasons and stirring up hyperbole of “death taxes” reeks of shallow politics of the Sarah Palin variety.

It’s still relatively early days, so David Cameron could surprise with a clear, sensible and valid vision of the future that is based on more than just ‘what feels right’ and ‘common sense’. Personally, I don’t think he will. If he continues to carry on as they have been, playing the safe ‘fear and morals card’ with the support of the British media and national ignorance, the Tories are expected to scrape a narrow victory. I think Britain’s moved further from the right than most conservative commentators would like to admit, meaning David Cameron risks alienating a significant chunk of voters by exposing his true-blue 80s Tory values.

What does this mean to the voter? This is going to be another election in which at least one of the major parties stands to gain if attention is drawn away from policy and principles. This is going to turn many voters off and encourage some to vote based on single issues or personal prejudice.

What does this mean to the country? We could all wake up the morning after voting day to see David Cameron smiling smugly outside the door to number 10. Then what? Corking the fannies of teenage girls, cutting taxes for the wealthy, avoiding the advice of experts (in terms of the economy and care for the elderly), allowing the murder of foxes and paying people to get married?

Here’s a slogan:

Change: it doesn’t have to be anything you’ll care much about either way.

I, for one, am extremely excited about the iPad. I want one. But I warn you, I have something of a mutant power when it comes to early adoption: I have a superhuman ability to always make the wrong decision*. Nevertheless, as cool as the iPad may appear to me and as flawed as it may actually be, I think Apple has missed a huge opportunity to stake a claim on a genuine revolution.

The image above represents the five channels of digital communication all brands should be adopting for their web strategy in 2010 (you can add social and widgetised channels as well). Notice the big iPad-like object second to the right? My big hope for Jobs’ announcement was not just a new piece of hardware, but a complete rethinking of how the internet is designed and digested.

To get an impression of what I was thinking, watch this video of the Mag+ concept.

Vaguely similar in concept to what the NY Times showed off during the presentation? Maybe. And, yes, there have been rumblings from the big A about distributing magazines via the iPad. However, this approach assumes (wrongly and perhaps, in the case of newspapers, wishfully) that the only problem facing traditional media in the internet age is a question of viewing format. This ignores the matter of the real-time web, rich media and interactive content – i.e. everything you already get from a website.

What the web does lack (and this is something that’s been bugging me for some time) is the dull appearance and lack of creativity in layout and form – this is what makes reading magazines so special. I also believe that the ability to go nuts with the design of your site (beyond changing the header) is something that many bloggers will love.

Imagine, every blog post you write looking completely unique, arranged in an ever-expanding “blogzine”. Look around you and pick up the most recent copy of your favourite magazine. Flick through to the first double page spread that ensnares your attention and think “I can do that!”. Because, given the right tools, I’m sure you can.

This goes beyond homebrew magazines and news sites – fashion, tech, travel… these are just three industries in which brands would thrive on a lavish, brochure-like website layout – as easily navigated as a magazine (easier even – I see great potential for revisiting website navigation, in particular redesigning the ol’ sitemap and injecting greater user value into the term). Arguably, there is also a huge benefit for advertising as creative directors are given a broader scope beyond pop-ups and banners (if you don’t see why this is such a good thing, remember: goodbye advertising revenue, hello subscription-based internet). All in all, a good thing.

This could all still happen. For the moment though, all we have are more apps. I could’ve sworn a year or so ago the web was awash with excitement about the future of browser-based applications. Sure, in reality there’s room for both but I hope the app craze isn’t going to replace the evolution of the internets. Instead of waxing lyrical about “revolutionary” products and “magical” devices, Apple could’ve done something truly inspiring.

P.S. The little device second in on the left (sitting between the ‘keypad’ mobile and ‘touch’ smartphone) is a dedicated augmented reality device I christened ShopMate(TM). More on that another time…

*For example: Twitter annoyed me but I jumped on Pownce and Plurk (what? you might reasonably be asking); I bought a netbook at the point when they were all utterly useless; and I rejected the iPhone to buy a G1 – and don’t even get me started on the fucking G1.

Kick-Ass looks to be a brutal, OTT superhero comedy that’s part Mystery Men and part Kill Bill. It’s also, evidently, not afraid of the C-word. If you’ve only seen the green band trailer (as I had until I found this one for Hit-Girl) prepare for your estimation of this movie to increase dramatically. Roll on April 2010!

My girlfriend, being wonderfully keen to get involved in the unhealthy fixation of my bloglife (the wanking one, not the climate change one – she cares less about that than you do), has selected her own top five pics for your perusal:

5. Random pretty girl via fohguild.org

4. Blood/hand girl via Daily Dose of Imagery

3. More Ariel from Bad Girls Blog

2. Tinkerbell from DailyCostume

1. Vikki Blows via Red Balcony