Mood: Tired
Currently listening to: Just A Day - Feeder (yup, still listening to it)

A good day in general - hey, its always good to hang out with my ma (cool lady that she is!)... ;)

Well, spent most of it at the HELP Institute in Bangsar watching their arthouse presentation of James Lee's feature length The Beautiful Washing Machine and three other short movies which pretty much took up my entire afternoon (and evening).

Good movie. A little surreal here and there (as arthouse movies go) but i'll get to that later. Here's the synopsis from the official website:

Teoh’s second hand washing machine has a life of her own: she washes when she wants to and stops when she feels like it. When Teoh discovers the secret soul of this temperamental slave, he exploits her for all his other household chores. And then he pimps her out to strangers. When middle-aged widower Mr. Wong takes her in, his prodigal son immediately tries to seduce her, while his petulant daughter becomes more and more suspicious. In this off-kilter dark comedy, the effects of alienation and desperation in the increasingly commodified city of Kuala Lumpur will spiral before you like a dry spin in slow motion.

Here's another brief synopsis (and review) from Variety:

Latest, intriguingly titled black comedy by James Lee, "The Beautiful Washing Machine" is as sparely composed and quietly ironic as last year's "Room to Let," but far bleaker and more unsettling in tone. Moving through vast sterile environments of cubicled offices, supermarkets and underground parking lots, Lee's cigarette-puffing characters exploit a mute girl who may or may not embody the soul of a malfunctioning washing machine. Strange little gem of the semi-sci fi persuasion should shine on fest circuit with cable date possible at cycle's end.

My impressions of it were a little different... Frankly i thought it was a movie that revolved around the themes of control, feminism, and isolation. I WAS going to write up an entire review of the movie but... i'm too lazy. I will however mention the highlights:

I'm pretty sure this movie explores various themes associated with female abuse, power, and the trials faced by 'domesticated' housewives everywhere. I mean, this mute girl is just so submissive to everyone's control that every man in the movie comes to desire her (over other women - who are not as submissive, she doesn't even talk) and through the movie she manages to get pimped by one, raped by another, and treated like a enslaved housewife by all.

One does feel sympathetic for these guys at first, since they are all suffering from relationship problems in one way or the other (one had his wife/gf leave him, the other's wife has been dead for years, another is in the midst of an unhappy relationship, etc.) but it seems that once they meet her and realise that they can bend her to their will with ease (aka, make her do anything with extremely minimal resistance) they suddenly transform from depressed, lonely men to near tyrannical bastards who take her for granted. Almost like a possession. That, and every man desires her...

Ironically its the other woman in the film who kills the mute... irnoically because she feels that she's losing her influence over her father and blames the mute girl for causing so much trouble in her family (despite not doing or saying anything).

Argh! I want to say much more, SO much more but...

Oh, best scene in the movie? The fatherly second guy with the family (Patrick Teoh). There's one scene where he's watching gay porn and wearing what looks like an ultraman mask. Surreal? You betcha - but the most memorable scene in the movie by far (aside from a very detailed rape scene)...

Hey, go watch it if you can - its seriously good and it gets you thinking. Hell, i should be letting my ma type this, it brought out some pretty strong opinions in her and, well, i guess it takes a woman and housewife to associate with this movie so strongly. Good stuff though, it really got me thinking.

Wanna know more? Buy me a coffee and listen to me rant! ;)

As for the three short films, to be blunt i found them a little long, disjointed, and dragged-out in general (except for the first one - short 'n sweet)...

Met up with Sneexe, Chen Hoe, and Albert for coffee at Starbucks and mamak at Devi's Corner in the evening. I don't know how the conversation turned there but we're all going to start playing AD&D (again, for some of us) in the upcoming weeks and currently i find myself downloading the various books required for the task. Geekdom beckons. Again (did i really ever leave it?)...

Any other takers? ;)

Ok, falling asleep now but, as promised to all those newbies, here's the first blog tutorial...

Tutorial #1: How to put pictures on your blog

Easy. If you're using blogger be sure to go to the 'Edit HTML' tag of your post first (its at the top right). Now just type the following:

img src="insert url here"

(The whole thing being enclosed within <> of course)

For example, if you want to hotlink to a picture on the 'net go to the pic you want, right-click (i'm assuming you're using IE) and select 'properties' and copy the complete 'Address (URL)' and place it in the above code snippet. Ta-dah!

Oh, and a note - its kinda considered mean and unethical to be stealing bandwidth from a site like this which is why i only recommend that you use this on larger sites that wouldn't give a damn, and not little Timmy's webpage and such. Yahoo wouldn't care.

Ok, but what if you want to host a pic yourself? Well damn man, you're spoilt for choice! There's a plethora of picture hosting sites out there (just do a Google search) but i recommend Photobucket - a decent amount of space, easy viewing, and the fact that they will generate the code to place the pics in blogs for you. Upload the pic, copy and paste the code into your blog, and voila!

In addition, use your WYSIWYG (or 'compose' tab) editor in blogger to resize the picture with your mouse or positioning it with the edit options at the top.

I was going to put up detailed instructional pictures but i'm sleepy and just a little grumpy now.

There, go forth and put up pics.

Nite.

*grumpily hops into bed*