Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who is into movies. He mentioned that there was going to be a second Human centipede. Upon hearing this I was pretty surprised because I thought that the first was a terrible film both in realisation and premiss. Never the less I started to look it up on the internet and what I found shocked me, really shocked me... And I’d like to think that I have a pretty high tolerance for stuff like this.

The director, Tom Six, was quoted to say that “[he] wanted to make the first sequence look like my little pony in comparison” I would argue that just because he’s could make a film infinitely more sickening than the first, he doesn’t need to.  The BBFC refused it classification, and one of their many reasons was the “little attempt to portray any of the victims as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience" They went on to suggest that “the film could perhaps be a breach of the obscene publications act”. In defence Tom Six said “[its] f ictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art...” I would say that it is not art, it is just obscene, sickening violence that approaches on masochistic pornography. I read through the plot (linked here if you’d like to read it) and I just don’t understand what would drive someone to write let alone MAKE a film like this. Just to give you an idea the film was only allowed into Britain after 3 minutes of cuts where made which included:

“A man masturbating with sandpaper around his penis; graphic sight of a man's teeth being removed with a hammer; graphic sight of lips being stapled to naked buttocks; graphic sight of forced defecation into and around other victims' mouths; a man with barbed wire wrapped around his penis violently raping a woman; a newborn baby being killed; and graphic sight of injury as staples are torn away from individuals' mouth and buttocks.”

Its just needless, you don’t need to show things like this on film, you can allude to some of them and in some cases the scenes are more effective when you don’t show the

 violence. Especially when making a horror film, which this claims to be, I find that for myself its what I don’t see scares me more than what I do see. The scene that I find most disturbing is the scene where the new born child is killed. I don’t need to explain if you have read the scene why its horrible but suffice to say, its traumatising and very graphic.  

Finally I would say that I do not understand what would drive someone to act in a film like this, the actor that rapes a woman with barbed wire, the woman who births a child and then kills it. Surly at some point something would click in your head and you would say “hang on this is a little too far”. 

In my opinion films like this should not be made. But maybe I am missing a point in this film, maybe there is some sort of clever message behind the violence. Either way I don’t want to give it anymore time than I have to find it. I would suggest you give this film a wide birth. It has just been made because it could be made, and I feel that it is an offence to call this art. Its not “art” its just vile.

What is your opinion on this? Will you watch it?

Have you seen it?

I will be back with another film that I feel may have gone too far later.

-Cpt Chiken

Movember is almost upon us and today marks the last day that I am going to be shaving my upper lip for a month. 

No I didn’t spell November wrong, this year I have signed up to take part in movember which is an international charity for prostate and testicular cancer. From the 1 of November onwards men all over the world will be growing and pruning moustaches to become walking billboards for this organisation. Now unfortunately I have not been blessed with the ability to grow an awesome moustache, mine always tend to be a little sparse, but hey I've resigned to the fact that I will look like a muppet, at least I will be raising money at the same time!

I will post a picture at the end of the month so you can all laugh at how pathetic my facial hair is.

If you want to check out the website here it is.

In the videogame side, I havent really been playing all that much at the moment. I have downloaded and started playing again Daggerfall and my barbarian Regdar is currently completely lost in the middle of town. If there is one thing that I had forgotten I disliked about this game its how absolutely every building looks the same! Still its good fun and its filling the time until i get to play skyrim. 

In other news my poster has arrived and it has now filled that empty space in my university dorm, I've heard people talking about how one or two of the staff had not signed theirs so I was getting a little worried, but mine seems to be fine and even drew has signed it which was a nice surprise.  

Until next time

-Cpt Chiken

Over the last few months my best friend has had to watch as his grandfathers health disintegrate until he eventually died. It wasn't anything dramatic it was just old age, I suppose his organs had just got to tired to do their job anymore but despite the fact that he doesn't have the childish thought that everyone he loves will live forever it must have still been an emotionally exhausting and stressful time. When he has spoken about it he said that watching his grandfather die over 3 months was the most painful thing he has been through in his life to this point. I obviously feel badly for him and understand how much losing a member of the family hurts, having lost my cousin to a car accident a few years ago.

Now we were in the pub tonight with a few friends having a drink and chatting about things when one of my friends said something which I find interesting. Lewis ( the best friend) was talking about how his mum is still distraught at the loss of her dad. After which Ryan ( a friend) started talking about his uncle died unexpectedly of a heart attack and how that is so much worse than what Lewis went through because it is so sudden you dont have anytime to prepare yourself. If you look past how untimely and unthoughtful this comment was it actually highlights and interesting point.

Now I understand that the loss of a close one is going to hurt either way, and in my opinion my sudden loss of my cousin is of equal tragedy to the loss of Lewis' grandfather, but there are people who might think that their situation is so much worse than anyone else's. Yes, losing a loved one suddenly is very painful, but can it be more or less painful than watching your loved ones organs fail one by one until they cannot do anything but lie in bed kept alive by machines?

I am not one to pick between them, like I said I would consider them equal, but how do you feel?

I promise the next blog will be more upbeat.

-Cptchiken

University, it is what i have been working towards for most of my educational life, well that is from the point where I actually started learning academic stuff and not just learning that which revolved around played and/or seeing what new and exciting inanimate object I could stick up my nose. Biology has always been a subject I have enjoyed the most and therefore it was a natural choice for a degree, but nowadays I am getting more and more second thoughts.

Now let me get one thing clear this is not going to be a "oh woe is me" type of thing, I am simply writing my thoughts and second thoughts down in the hope that I will, through writing them, be able to make some sort of sense out of everything. If you care to read and comment at some point please be my guest I nearly always enjoy hearing peoples views on situations.

Anyway as I was saying, I have always had a particular interest in biology, in specific zoology, being more specific than that evolution, taxonomy and the history of the earth (which I suppose is a more geological thing really). However, I find myself recently wishing that I had looked more down the literary route, the study of language, literature, philosophy and such. I love reading and even enjoy writing on the odd occasion, I was one of those odd characters that once I started writing an essay I would actually find myself enjoying it, I still find this when I am writing up pages of reports for lab experiments. I guess that this feeling has been brewing since I started to be able to have educated discussions with my dad about books, and realised that I wish I shared the wealth of knowledge about the english language that he possesses as an english language master. That feeling of jealously or maybe as that sounds a little strong for how i feel, envy, will have only been strengthened by my coming to university and meeting people doing a whole manor of degrees. My girlfriend for instance is studying Mandarin, which the more she tells me about it the more fascinating it seems. Everyone seems so knowledgeable on their own subject and are able to discuss it at length. People seem much more interested in having a chat about books or politics or music than they do about science, maybe that is another factor of my doubt the feeling that has a biologist I feel left out? Or maybe science is too complicated to have a simple talk about? No, I doubt either of those are true.

I suppose I just love to know about as much as I can, learning new things is something I gather great enjoyment from. I suppose that there will be literary undergraduates who are just as envious of me learning the inner workings of a golgi apparatus and of Darwin's work on his origin of species as I am of their studies of the great authors.

At the end of the day I have hopefully another 60 years on this planet minimum, I have so much time to pursue my various interests. It would be foolish to make a rushed decision that I would regret.

See this blog is helping already.

I'll write more when the mood takes me.

Top 10 Games of 2010

2010 was a year of good video games, It was also a year of some down right awful ones too. Heres a list of the 10 games that made me think "oh snap" or were just too awesome for words.  
 oh and btw:

The game of the year is at number 10 on this list

	1. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction While not living up to be as amazing as I expected it to be SC:conviction was still a very fun game who's story while not the best was still interesting. I also liked the voice acting and come on, the first of those interrogation scenes brought a whole new meaning to a "Swirly". Awesome.
	2. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Putting more of an emphasis on just eating ridiculous, ridiculous amounts of ghosts was 100% the best route pacman could take for me. While the purists could complain that its not truly pacman no one can deny that its exciting and a whole lot of fun. I only wish the noise as you eat ghosts continued to rise and didn't level off.
	3. Limbo Limbo is a great game. The minimalist art direction, and lack of music gave the game the exact feel it needed. The puzzles remained challenging and interesting all the way to the end. The fact that I went back to collect every damn egg thing just speaks about how fun this game was. Now if only I could get though the game without dying five times...
	4. Call of Duty: Black Ops Possibly the "biggest" release this year falls at number 7 on my list for one reason. While i enjoyed the over the top story that so blatantly rips off fight club and the multiplayer which is still a ton of fun dispite the fact that I'm apparently a "cheat", "glitcher", "noob", and "faggot" all at the same time. I cant get over the fact that this game is just more of the same damn thing.
	5. Dead Rising 2 Ok, while i didn't buy dead rising this year i have played hours and hours with my friends on his xbox. All i can say is that Killing zombies is still a whole lot of fun, and the new and innovative ways you can use chain saws are amazing. I just wish the psychopaths weren't so damn annoying.
	6. Mass Effect 2 We hit the top 5 and heres Mass Effect 2. This supposed "RPG" turned out to be a third person shooter with cover mechanics and some basic squad mechanics too. I still love the world and the fiction spending hours reading all I could in my codex, and seeking out any and all side quests just so i could engage with the amazing characters of the world. The story, while a massive cliche, was exciting and i can't wait to play Mass Effect 3 when it comes out.
	7. Red Dead Redemption The wild west is a period in time that has been neglected of late. Red dead redemption rectified that and proved to me that i still love playing at being a cow boy. The story was fun and interesting, there was so much to do in the world, the characters were believable and the shooting felt great. John marston is my favourite character of 2010. Dude, you can stab grizzly bears in the face! come on, thats pretty awesome.
	8. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 I LOVE battlefield. And i loved The first Bad Company, the second is a worthy follow on and continues to have the best explosions I have seen in a game. The multiplayer was and continues to be the best of this year, hiding behind a wall trying to heal to have that wall suddenly disappear and be replaced with a tanks turret never gets old. The only thing that stops this game being higher is I felt like they stepped away from the humour of the first, the humours still there, its just hidden and seeing as its so good i feel it should be back in the foreground for the next in the series.
	9. Super Meat Boy Oh super meat boy, how i hate you. No other game this year has made me more frustrated or brought out my sadist side more evidently. Everything from the controls, to the sounds, to the art style is awesome. And that sounds track WOW. I have sunk god knows how many hours into this game and I still cant stop playing. I need those damn bandages. Super Meat Boy is just a hell of a lot of fun, you should buy it.
	10. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood My game of the year sort of snuck up on me (no pun intended, sorry). I was one of those people who dismissed it as a multiplayer spin off, so i was very VERY pleasantly surprised when i saw that it had a fully fledged singleplayer which has refined the formula they so nearly perfected in the second and have made it even better. That multiplayer could be better but it was such a breath of fresh air from the FPS laden multiplayer scene we have at the moment. Just like the first 2 games, i can see myself going back in to get every single goddamn flag and clue, and i know im going to love every minute of it.

Ok, so i just watched the 201st episode of southpark and all i could think was "Really?! has this gone THAT far?" 
I heard on the news that muslim extremists have been threatening trey parker and matt stone about the 200th episode because they were showing Muhammad, but what they were actually showing was a bear costume and saying muhammad was in it... so unless they discovered the truth that all muslims worship a bear i don't really see what the big deal is.  And now in the 201st episode they have had to sensor his name! I mean come on, we aren't even allowed to say his name now? How can one religion hold that much fear power over the media? 

Another thing that just seems ridiculous is that they take the piss openly about all the other leaders of religion:  
Buddha is shown as a Crack head sniffing crack the whole time. 
Jesus is shown as a retarded pornography addict. 
Vishnu is shown as a homosexual. 
Moses is shown as the evil software from Tron, and also a little bit dumb. 
 And non of these religions appear to have a problem with any of this, but as soon as muhammad is even suggested of being shown, even if that is of bear costume we arent allowed to do that and we start being threatened? 

I can't see how with all the other religions being ok with these depictions the muslims can't be ok with, to be honest, not even a depiction of their prophet and just a metaphysical symbolisation of him.  
But then i suppose every religions have their extremists... just some are more retarded than others. No doubt we will be hearing from the Wesbro Baptist church any time now. 
 
Is my confusion justified? or am i just being a little closed minded? 
 
Thanks.

... has arrived, i went pad instead of stick because i tryed my mates stick and didnt really get allong with it. 
Now its time to get some decent practice in for he next two weeks so i can get back up to speed, having not played street fighter properly since 3 was released. 
Expect to see me about very soon guys, I look forward to getting back on the street fighter scene again.