Californication Season 4, Hank’s trial
Posted on March 26th, 2011 by Richard Catto 1,754 views
I’ve just finished watching episode 11 of Season 4 of Californication, a season which has been dominated by Hank’s trial for the statutory rape of Mia, who was 16 at the time (in Season 1, 3 years ago). Personally, I can’t relate to this or find anything to be outraged about, firstly because in South Africa the age of consent is 16 and therefore Hank would be guilty of nothing in this country. Secondly, it was quite clear he had no idea that the girl was 16 as she presented herself as being 20+.
In episode 11, Hank is found guilty by 12 jurors, another thing I can’t relate to, because in South Africa we don’t have juries. In South Africa, judges hand down judgement, not lay people who have no understanding of law. So I found the whole trial concept a non-starter and a silly thing to base an entire season around, unless the charges had some meat to them. Like if Hank had killed someone while driving drunk or high. Getting drunk and high is something Hank does on a regular basis. He also has sex on a regular basis but he’s not a rapist, he’s actually a gentleman when it comes to the ladies. It’s not as if he’s out there luring young girls into hotel rooms and molesting them.
Also the whole relationship with Karen (played by Natascha McElhone), his ex, has become very stale. I’ve never found Karen’s character particularly interesting. She’s mostly humourless and serious whereas Hank is lighthearted and fun which makes for interesting viewing. Hank’s daughter, Becca, has also not developed into much of a character. She could be a lot more interesting. She could be out there ingesting drugs, playing at rock concerts, sucking dick and taking guys up the ass, getting pregnant, wrecking cars (okay, she’s finally managed to achieve that) and generally being a total out of control wild ass rock star teenager. But she mostly hangs out at home with Mom (and sometimes Dad) and doing very tame gigs with an ineffective vocalist as her band’s lead singer. She could be out there turning her mother’s hair prematurely grey and sharing laughs and drugs with her totally irresponsible father. That could be the real reason for the rift between Hank and Karen, not this overblown outrage over a half-forgotten pomp with the utterly characterless and boring Mia. Mia (and her dumbass father) from Season 1 should be dead and buried and consigned to the trash heap long ago already. We’ve all moved on from that shit already. Mia (and her dad) are yesterday’s boring news. Bringing them back in Season 4 to torment Hank is just not cool and it’s boring the crap out of me.
The one scene that made me chuckle was when Hank was wearing a dickass suit and had his hair all wet and combed back and he said (with disgust) that he looked like a fucking FBI agent. (David Duchovny who plays Hank Moody in Californication previously played the part of Fox Mulder, an FBI agent in the X files.)
So episode 12 is the season finale. Californication has been renewed for a 5th season and I truly hope that we won’t have to endure watching Hank sit behind bars being visited by Karen, Becca and Charlie Runcle, because that would truly blow. Unless we finally get to see Hank blow some dick. That might actually be worth it, but only for 1 episode.
I really hope that the writers of this bitching series will get some inspiration and produce a truly mind blowingly exciting Season 5. If not, I may have to consider a career change and start writing some motherfucking TV episodes to show them how its done.
Tags: Californication, David Duchovny, Hank Moody
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House MD Season 7 Episode 17, When Art becomes Fart
Posted on March 26th, 2011 by Richard Catto 1,828 views
Following on from the demise of the House and Cuddy stupid little “relationship” which has infected Season 7 with healthy doses of relationship insanity, House meets a gorgeous and very compliant Russian chick who wants a green card via the marriage route.
House marries the Russian trollop who then attempts to seduce him on their wedding night, but House declines her affections. Considering that this is the same guy who (in the previous episode) blew $30 000 on high class hookers while holed up in a 5 star hotel with an exceptionally eager to please and equally exceptionally overweight bellhop, it is hard to believe that House would not tap that Russian ass. Fuck, I’d tap that Russian ass!
Oh and House’s team saves the life of an asswipe who turns out to be a serial killer. Pity. If Chase had cottoned on sooner, this could have been his second patient he snuffed out.
Tags: House MD, Hugh Lawrie
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Movie review: Season of the Witch
Posted on March 26th, 2011 by Richard Catto 1,854 views
I sat down with anticipation to watch this Medieval Crusader thriller last night expecting a lot more than I got. The concept and the storyline seemed exciting and inspired but ultimately failed to deliver the entertainment it promised. Here’s how the tale goes…
Two Knights in the Crusader wars against the Islamic Saracen hordes, played by Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman are fully committed to the Church’s righteous cause until they are ordered to attack a village and everyone in it and end up murdering defenceless women and children. Cage confronts the Pope’s representative and tells him what a useless tard he is for committing such a senseless atrocity in the Church’s name. Unsurprisingly, the religious cockhead refuses to apologise and agree that he should immediately kill himself and Cage and Perlman tell him to go fuck himself and desert the retarded Christian army on the spot.
They make their way back home and find their homeland stricken with a horrendous plague that disfigures its victims with green boils all over their bodies and faces. The priests have diagnosed the cause of the plague as originating from witches and the cure is to apprehend them, hang them, drown them and repeat mindless Latin verses over their corpses. This will apparently solve the problem. Illustrated manuscripts with the Latin children’s rhymes are in the possession of priests and monk(ey)s and contain exorcism rites for witches and demons and hob-goblins and garden knomes and fairies and other such kak.
In the beginning of the film three women are accused of witchcraft, co-erced to confess and repent and then murdered by hanging and drowning. The priest who did the deed is informed by one old crone that he will die in hell. After the murder, one of the women rises from the dead, kills the priest and burns his little book of magick.
Our two heroes enter a town in search of good horses and provisions but are recognised as deserters and arrested. They are brought to the Church. The top religious dog in the town has been smited (sic) with the plague and he has a hard on for justice. A young girl, a witch of course, has been apprehended and she is, of course, the cause of all their problems. They make the knights a deal: take the girl to a remote monastery for the monk(ey)s to perform some mindless ritual on her (which no doubt ends with her being burned alive) and they’ll pardon them for desertion, or they can be hanged. So, ja, our boys are no dooses so they take the deal.
On the road to nowhere are the two knights, a girl in a box on a cart, another knight, a priest, a swindling ugly bastard of a guide and a young fool who wants to be a knight like Cage and Perlman, because everyone wants to be as ugly as them (especially Perlman). At the first stop, the third knight buys it after a bit of a chase through a plague ridden village (the girl gets out of her box, don’t ask how). The girl gets put back in her box and the guide leads them to a rotten old wooden and rope affair that barely resembles a bridge. As they get across it, it collapses into the chasm. The girl in a box also manages to demonstrate supernatural strength by rescuing the young fool from falling to his death, catching him with one hand and raising him up with the same. Nobody bats an eyelash at this happening, because everyone knows that young waif like girls can lift grown men using only one hand. Happens all the time… in the movies.
They then enter a deep foreboding mist shrouded forest called Wormwood. They immediately get lost and while trying to find the path through it, get attacked by big bad wolves who snarl and howl and go all werewolf on the knights’ asses. After beating off the first wave of wolf attacks, Cage loses his nerve and orders everyone to get on their horses and gallop blindly through the mist shrouded forest in an attempt to get away from what looked like about 5 wolves (after they had killed 20+). Makes sense to me. The wolves jump on the guide and chow down. Cage and Perlman decide that they can’t possibly beat off a whole 5 wolves and turn tail. When they turn around, they are suddenly and magickly (and I mean this sarcastically) out of the forest with their destination, the monastery, on the hill before them.
They make their way to the monastery and enter it to find all the monk(ey)s inside dead of the plague, except one, who, with his last gasp, points to the magical Latin manuscript that contains the magic words that must be spoken to fix witches and demons and what have you. The priest commences with his witch exorcism rite and immediately discovers that it doesn’t appear to be working. The young woman transforms herself into a big ugly bat like creature which is apparently a demon. At this point, this movie takes a turn for the worse and becomes another “From Dusk till Dawn” except instead of battling vampires, our fearless heroes must battle demons. It’s quite difficult to tell them apart actually.
Everyone dies, except the young fool and the now exorcised girl who bury the knights and the priest and ride off together. And that’s it. Oh and apparently the plague ends. If you like fantasy and bullshit mixed in with religious mumbo jumbo, this film is for you. Otherwise skip.
Tags: Claire Foy, Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Season of the Witch
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iBurst vs Cell C vs Vodacom re Internet Access
Posted on March 19th, 2011 by Richard Catto 3,371 views
On February 23 2011, iBurst summarily (without warning) suspended my account and sent me an SMS informing me that I owe them R4318 which must be paid immediately to be reconnected. I passed. I’ve told them to sue me for it and I will defend any actions they bring. I have been with iBurst since February 04 2008 and in that time, they have previously suspended my account a number of times (I believe it is 3), and each time it was their fault entirely. The first time they did it, around July 2009, they confused me with another customer, but they still deprived me of access for 3 days and offered me ZERO compensation for being offline. They did not adjust my bill or compensate me for the inconvenience in any way. I didn’t even receive an emailed apology. Fuck all. That’s how little iBurst gives a fuck about their customers – FUCK ALL. You are a big fat fucking ZERO to iBurst, if you are their customer. A big fat fucking zero.
iBurst suspended me again in November 2009 for a longer period. They had forgotten to bill me one month and when they discovered that, they suspended me again. Even once they had received the missing payment, their system did not reconnect me and it took me days and days to finally speak to someone who fixed the problem. Again no compensation, no apology, no fuck all from iBurst. Bunch of fucking loser wankers!
Despite this absolutely shit treatment from them, I remained their customer. Obviously they are complacent as fuck, because they think they can treat their customers like shit and still have a business.
In February 2011, iBurst suspended me for the last time and claimed that they had been underbilling me for several months now, going back to about September 2010. Each month they had been receiving from me around R1735. I was on their highest wireless service the 15GB package which costs R955 per month. I had been purchasing additional blocks of bandwidth of 10GB for R390, which brought the bill up to R1735.
I checked through the statement they sent me but I can’t actually tell whether the figures are made up or in error, because of the inherent unreliability of their billing software. I may have been underbilled, but I reckon that it is their problem entirely and they should write it off. If they had bothered to install reliable billing software they would not have this problem they claim to have. But I’ll be fucked if I am going to pay in R4318 now after they suspended me again. I have previously told iBurst that if they have a problem with my account, they must contact me FIRST to resolve matters BEFORE suspending me, but they couldn’t give a fuck what I want. They suspend accounts, demand payment and then fail to reconnect for days on end. So fuck them to hell.
So I looked for an alternative Internet Access Provider and decided that Cell C offered the best deal. I decided to apply for their R299 per month contract x 12 months for 5GB of data bundle. They credit vetted me and their system approved me, but they had no stock, so I waited patiently for a couple of weeks. When they finally got stock in, their system refused to give me a R299 per month contract because I failed to meet its criteria, whatever the fuck that is.
This past week I went into a Vodastore on Monday, March 14 2011 and chatted to one of their sales reps and he told me what I needed to bring in to apply for a data contract. The next day, Tuesday March 15 2011, I went in with my bank statements and ID document and filled in an order form for a MyGig2 data contract. Their system approved me and I was immediately provisioned with a USB modem, the K4505-Z (21.6Mbps), and a SIM card. The only niggle was that the SIM card could not be activated in-store. I had to wait till the next day. The next day my SIM card was activated and I got online for the first time since iBurst had disconnected me. In the interim, I had used iCafes and a good friend had helped me get my mailing list out.
I did, however, have a problem with the Vodafone K4505-Z USB modem they provisioned me with. It disconnected continually. I went back to the Vodastore in Kenilworth Centre and got a replacement K4504-Z but it suffered from the same problem. There is a discussion on MyBroadBand which confirms that there are problems with the Vodafone K4505-Z. The bottom line is to avoid getting this modem until they have resolved the issues with it.
So I decided to downgrade to the K3805-Z (14.4Mbps) which has given me no trouble so far. My sales rep had to wait for authorisation to downgrade me, so she provided me with a loan store USB modem to use while they sent my faulty K4505-Z away. The store USB modem only operated at 3.6Mbps but it was completely adequate. More on speed further down.
The service I got from the Vodastore was top class. My sales rep said she would call me, and she did. The Cell C sales reps at two different branches (Kenilworth Centre and Cavendish Square) both promised to call me to keep me apprised of the situation and both utterly failed to ever call me. What a bunch of loser wankers they are. Obviously they don’t give a fuck about their customers. One of the Cell C reps actually got angry with me when his system kept refusing to accept my bank details. I could tell what he was doing wrong (because I’m smart and the web interface he was using was not difficult to figure out, especially after I had seen it so many many times already) and I told him what to do and he became offended that I knew his job better than him. As soon as he took my advice, their assholic system accepted my bank details. But first he had to waste my motherfucking time pretending he knew what the fuck he was doing when actually he should go back to grade school to learn to fucking read.
So I am now happily online with Vodacom. However, they are an expensive option. Both iBurst and Cell C have much lower prices, but, in my experience, they are too much fucking trouble than they are worth.
Speedwise, Vodacom’s broadband blows iBurst completely and utterly out of the water. It makes iBurst’s wireless service look like dial up. At times, iBurst is actually only marginally faster than dial up. A 56Kbps modem translates into a max download speed of 7KBps. On iBurst I would typically achieve download speeds of 10-20KBps, bursting up to 40-60KNps (for seconds at a time). On Vodacom, download speed is well over 100KBps, sometimes as high as 400KBps for sustained periods of time. Small ‘b’ equals bits, big ‘B’ equals bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte which allows a byte to store a value in the range 0 – 255. This is Computer Science 101.
If those speeds don’t mean much to you, let me put them into context for you. I use most of my bandwidth keeping up with American TV series as they are broadcast in the United States. I currently follow House MD, Californication, Spartacus Gods of the Arena (just ended), and Stargate Universe. You can’t get them now in this country any other way than torrenting them. An episode of Spartacus Gods of the Arena is 550MB (there is also an HD version of over 1GB but the 550MB one is completely fine, not blurry or fuzzy at all). On iBurst, it would take literally 4 – 6 days to get down one episode of Spartacus. That’s a long time to wait for something you wanna watch NOW! On Vodacom, I downloaded the last episode of Spartacus in just over an hour. Now we’re talking!
In addition to those TV series, I also torrent movies, which are typically 1.4GB in size (some are 700MB, but they tend to be poor quality). On iBurst, despite their slower speed, I used to download in excess of 40GB per month (they had free data from midnight till 8AM) as well as a double your bandwidth 15th of the month deal) by running my connection continuously. It was always on, whereas with Vodacom, because they are so fast, I disconnect as soon as I’m done.
So yeah, what I spend on bandwidth per month is probably going to rise to around R3620 per month (cost of 20GB) + R449 = R4069 which gives me 22GB per month. That is a shit load of change. So now my rant becomes, why the fuck are we in South Africa still paying through the fucking arse for bandwidth when we have so many new intercontinental fiber optic pipes? Surely the price per meg could drop from the current exploitative 18c per meg to around 0.5c per meg?
If only I could get an uncapped Vodacom contract for around R500 per month? Then I would have to stock up on a couple of petabyte drives (which don’t exist yet). I truly hope that in the next 5 years, bandwidth prices in SA drop like a fucking stone, because I am beyond tired of shitty service providers and high prices when the rest of the First world enjoys top speed Internet for pennies.
I also have to remember how far we’ve come in a short 15 years. Back in January 1996, I got dialup Internet at home for the first time on a 14.4Kbps modem. Then it went to 28.8Kbps, then 33.6Kbps and maxed out at 56Kbps. Then ISDN was introduced at 64Kbps and 128Kbps. ISDN = Internet Service for Dinosaurs Network. Then came DSL. We also had some operators offering 2.4Ghz wireless Internet but they could not compete with DSL and folded within a year of its introduction.
The fastest Internet possible currently requires a fiber optic cable being laid to your premises direct from a connection hub. Fiber optic offers speeds up to 1Gbps. Google is currently piloting a 1Gbps Fiber optic service in selected US cities. I’m guessing it will be another 15 years before we see a similar service in SA, if at all.
Tags: Cell C, iBurst, Vodacom
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