Daniel85

I haven’t done a food review in a while, so here’s one.

I found this in the cupboard at my mum’s house, with no prior knowledge of the product’s existence. I have to believe there’s some kind of devilry, or at least bewitchery, involved.

I find fault with the box design. It’s not really very conspicuous, just a regular Corn Flakes box with some retro typography thrown onto it. I can imagine many dazed housewives just grabbing it thinking it’s regular Corn Flakes, and all the hijinks that would ensue at the breakfast table the next morning.

I never realised the Corn Flakes rooster had a name before, but there you go: Cornelius. It’s kind of unsettling for a stylized logo to have a name. I can accept the Yogorilla and the Paddlepop Lion, cos they’re animated characters with life, but the fact that this is just a symbol who’s never been shown to move or talk or go whitewater rafting makes it a little bit disturbing that it has been named.

Now, through the magic of poorly animated GIF imagery, here’s the addition of milk to a bowl of Choc-Malt Corn Flakes! 

As for the taste, it’s nothing to write home about. As I said- I have no idea what ‘Choc Malt’ signifies, so I have nothing to compare it to. That said, it tastes kinda like those ‘Choc Dot Krispies’ that came out in the mid-90s (yeah, I’m full of useless knowledge about discontinued cereals. Remember ‘Grinners’?). And by that I mean it tastes gross, if you can’t recall Choc Dot Krispies.

I dunno, man. I’m usually pretty progressive, but there are certain things you don’t mess with. Corn Flakes is one of ‘em. The taste is fine as it is.

Couldn’t think of a title for this post, so I just put down the first thing that popped into my head. And because advertising jingles run through my head every waking hour, it was the Roof Seal song.

Speaking of the Roof Seal, has anyone noticed that they’ve done away with their classic ad for a newer, less-catchy, less-awesome one? It boggles the mind, really. That jingle was all they had going for them. Who cares about some crappy tile sealing business? It’s like Lube Mobile– they are at the top of their game, solely because of their kick-ass jingle and equally kick-ass ads. I hope Roof Seal goes out of business now, just to teach them a lesson.

I forgot what this post was actually supposed to be about.

Oh yeah, it was about some stuff I’ve overheard on trams recently. The first one was yesterday morning, where I saw a guy get pinged by the trenchcoated boys-in-blue-and-green (Yarra Trams ticket inspectors). The conversation went a little something like this:

Ticket Inspector: Excuse me, mate, can I see your ticket?
Fare Evader: Nah, I don’t have one, so I’ll just grab my license for you.
TI: (Slightly bemused) Alright. (Takes license, starts writing down details.) Can I ask why you didn’t purchase a ticket?
FE: I’m only just going up Bourke St. Short trip; thought I could get away with it. Just being honest with you.
TI: (Crosses off the report he had been filling out, with savage penstrokes.) You know what? Forget about it. Because you were honest with me. Just get off here, just next time buy a ticket.

Rather nice, don’t ya think? It’s kind of like how parents always say ‘We’re not going to be angry with you, just tell us what you did.’ And then POW!

The next thing I heard on my way home tonight. Some vacuous airhead trying to explain the metaphor ‘the icing on the cake’ to her jock boyfriend, only she didn’t call it a metaphor and she didn’t really explain it. It was painful just listening to them.

The final thing, and the most hilarious, was from that same trip. It was pretty packed, being peak hour and all, and there was this lady standing up in the aisle holding her baby. No-one thought to offer her a seat, of course. She was doing the usual maternal stuff, singing to her baby and such. After a while I realised what she was singing: “One rude person, two rude people, three rude people, four!” Awesome.

And in scholarly news, I just got back a Lit essay that I wrote the night before it was due. Got an H1 for it. Whoever said you can’t procrastinate your way through university?

I’ve been with the default Kubrick theme ever since I started the blog, and since that’s kinda like the 2006 equivalent of a Geocities page done in Times New Roman, I decided it was time to play around a bit.

This theme (”Neat!”) is probably the least lame of the themes with custom header support, so I’ll stick with it for now. If I weren’t such a tightass I’d spring for the custom CSS package so that I could change the colour scheme to jive with my header image.

As Mike Sterling says, “blogging about blogging is a sin”, so I’ll bring this to a close now.

Hey, folks.

I have a new article up at Retro Junk, ”The Wacky World Of Comic Book Ads“. It’s an irreverent look at some of the silly crap advertised in comic books back in the early 80s, including:

Go check it out!

No disrespect to Steve Irwin or Peter Brock, but is anyone aware that Colin Thiele passed away this Monday?

Colin Milton Thiele, 1920-2006

I don’t mean to sound all superior and condescending here, but it says a lot about this country that the deaths of a media personality/adventurer and motor sports champion can ‘bring a nation to its knees’, but the passing of one of our literary greats barely rates a mention.

I think I’ll go and re-read Storm Boy in his honour now. (Or at least watch the film adaptation, which contains one of my favourite movie scenes ever- David Gulpilil versus a snake in mortal combat. Hells yeah.)

Oh, and I’d like to take this opportunity to say FUCK OFF, GERMAINE GREER. NO-ONE CARES WHAT YOU THINK ANYMORE. 

Apologies to my American readers, who will not be able to appreciate all this Australian crap. Regular programming will resume shortly.

I’ve nothing to write about today, so here’s a panel from a comic I read recently that amused me greatly.

This one’s from Rom: Spaceknight #22, written by the incomparable Bill Mantlo and pencilled by Our Pal Sal Buscema.

You don’t really need an explanation, it’s just a bunch of kids fleeing in terror from rocket-men armed with laser guns!!

It’s funny how they don’t actually look like children, but more like miniaturised adults. And those are some trademarked Sal Buscema freckles on that girl right there.

*Yes, I know I didn’t come up with it, but it’s so funny.

Currently drinking: Carlton Draught.
Currently listening to: New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle.

Just thought I’d do the drinking/listening thing as an homage to Crommo, who has now entered the blogosphere (here’s hoping he doesn’t burn up on entry!).

Anyway, I went along and saw Snakes On A Plane yesterday.

Naturally, I grabbed a bag of Allen’s snakes as my confection for the event. I would’ve preferred a King Python, but the Safeway next door to the cinema didn’t have those.

I really enjoyed SoaP. It was just a fun, unpretentious action flick in the tradition of the 80s and 90s summer blockbusters. Equal parts action, disaster, comedy, horror, thriller, star vehicle, creature feature all wrapped up into one awesome high-concept package. You look up postmodern in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of a snake wrapped around a fuckin’ 747.

One of my favourite aspects was the lampooning of current cultural arche-/stereotypes. The Paris Hilton type chick with the chihuahua (I thought it was Alicia Silverstone, but it was actually the chick who took over her role of Cher Horowitz for the Clueless TV series), the rapper with delusions of royalty (Three Gees/3Gs), and the ‘extreme’ kid hopped up on Red Bull, just to name a few of the more obvious ones.

Speaking of the chihuahua chick- I hated that pompous old dude until he threw the dog to the boa constrictor. If I ever wrote a book called “Fuck Yeah Moments In Cinema”, that’d be in it, along with the Knuckle Puck from D2: The Mighty Ducks, and the President’s speech in Independence Day. 

And, oh God, the product placement! This movie is like the E.T. of the 2000s with regard to product placement. PSP, Nintendo DS, eBay, Red Bull, Playstation 2, XBOX… and whatever else I missed. If kids from this generation ever get nostalgic for the 2000s (and I don’t see why they would, cos the 2000s got nothin’ on the 90s and 80s) they’ll just have to track down a vintage DVD of Snakes On A Plane to get a sense of the zeitgeist of the decade.

Probably my least favourite thing in the movie (and this goes for pretty much all Hollywood cinema these days) was the overuse of CGI. Before the snakes were unleashed, when they were just slithering around in those mood-establishing sequences, they looked really, really fake. I’m talking 1930s King Kong fake. It wasn’t so noticeable in the ’fight’ sequences in the coach cabin, when they were latching onto tits and dicks and eyeballs and stuff, but it was really bad in those earlier scenes. I wish they’d just used real snakes or even animatronics for those bits, and left the CGI for the action scenes. It’s just another exhibit in the case of Craftsmen vs Computer Nerds in special effects, Judge Me presiding.

I should probably wrap this up. I’m not saying Snakes On A Plane is the new Citizen Kane or anything, but it is an entertaining, original (yet very much rooted in what has come before- postmodernism rules, bitch) film, which is more than I can say for most contemporary Hollywood cinema.