And Jeremy Irons plays... HBO's Watchmen

Spoilers ahead - kind of. Go away if you never seen the series and want to do it.


In HBO "Watchmen", we are told that Jeremy Irons plays Ozymandias/ Adrian Veidt or, as the script says, "The Blond Guy".

Well, the writer of the series hints at that and all the indices go there - but, do they?
 

Jeremy Irons has a passable resemblance with the comics character, but as of the second episode some things ring quite odd.

In the first episode mr. Phillip, "The Blond Guy"'s butler, seems unable to cook a cake worth eating - which hints at him not being completely human, a replicant of a sort - android or clone.

In the second, we see that there are indeed many copies of mr. Phillip, and many have been sacrificed in the past.

In this episode we still see the same kind of "odd family life" from the first, as "Blond Guy" and his cronies go about playing "The Watchmaker' Son", the play in five acts written by B.G. - at the end, as mr. Phillip is sacrificed in a fiery fire (it was years I wanted to sprout that phrase) we are indeed introduced to the multiple nature of B.G.'s servants - as in, there are many copies of each one of them.

In Watchmen, the comics, the character Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias has spent his time delving into eugenics/genetic engineering, a significant product of such activity his tiger-sized, highly intelligent Lynx pet, Bubastis just a lead in to the master-piece: a building-sized telepathic squid, created to be teleported and kill half a city on his arrival through a terrifying telepathic outburst.

It stands to reason that such a character may possibly create his cadre of clone/android servants, especially in light of the "reward" he had to bestow on their predecessors at the end of the comics, where he took a page out of Alexander the Great's Gordian Knot solution to address the fact that "if four know a secret, that ain't a secret - that's just public knowledge that hasn't spread yet".

Veidt drastic solution to its need for secrecy is to kill every one of his collaborators in his plot to save the world, much to his shame - and pain: they represented the almost totality of all his acquaintances and friends.

All seems to be clear, and yet...

While riding toward his palace, B.G. stops  a moment and tastes a fruit dangling from a branch. It looks gorgeous, but it tastes afoul and when B.G. squeezes it, all we see flowing out seems to be water.

Now, while I can see Ozymandias having troubles re-creating functional humans, I can hardly accept that a human expert in genetic engineering would make a variety of fruit that looks wonderful, yet tastes bad and has no nutrients... it would simply not being worth the effort.

That's the kind of misstep that I would expect from a "god" trying to recreate life from the molecular basis up, without re-using the existing biologic material so easily available on Earth.

What I would expect, in other words, to see done by a Dr. Manhattan, in his Mars palace, as he makes good on his vague idea to create human life, some day.

I  henceforth suspect that Jeremy Irons is not really playing Adrian Veidt, in the HBO series.

He is playing Jon Osterman - dr. Manhattan.

As to why should a physical god decide to take the shape of a frail, old white man, it beats me - but if I am right, I think Damon Lindelof devised a funny reason for it.  
 
(HBO's Watchmen seems to be one hell of a series, but we won't forgive Lindelof any time soon for writing "Prometheus"' script). 

These are...

"These are the effects of seeing your face in the morning"

Pill

For some men, having met their own mothers is reason enough to contemplate deep misogyny as a lifestyle.

Happy birthday, mom... no matter what a petty parody of a human being you were, before dementia setted in and made you bearable.

Half truths (Pill)

 While it is not completely true that

              An apple a day keeps the doctor away

 It is a bit truer that

              A pill a day keeps the daughter(*) away

 OK, this is too stupid to be a novelty...

* An unwanted daughter, one may hope.

Biographical Notes

When I was a kid, my parents used to complain about their own stupidity at having produced me and my brother - their lives would have been sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better without us.

If I had one of those mishaps kids always incurs - say, broken something, hurt myself doing some stupid play -  my mother main issue was that my father would have gotten angry at her lack of supervision. Me being hurt? Does it matter? I was clearly full of myself, back then.

She was also always saying me that no girl would ever love me, because I was not as beautiful as my brother (whom, however, was despised by both parents as they were a 2nd and a 3rd children with enormous chip on their shoulders against their older brothers).

My father thought that I was not good enough to do any job but to keep going on with the small contractor business that he had, and he tried his level best to force me into doing it, although he loved the idea that I would somehow, someday expanded it "on a bigger scale".

The fact that I could not care less for masonry never managed to enter his skull before it was too late.

I went to a vocational high school with a somewhat narrow technical curriculum that, after the second year, branched in four directions: Electrics, Mechanics, Information Technology and Building.

I had no idea what "IT" was (it was 1987, in Italy), so I was undecided between Electrics and Mechanics - and went with E. simply because a couple of friends were doing it.

When my family discovered it, it looked as if I had killed somebody, with dishes thrown at my face and an atmosphere of betrayal.

They forced me - it was that, or to start working full time with my father as a labourer with no pay or insurance, and I wasn't keen on that either - to pick the stupid "building" course(s).

They thought that I tried to betray them but - really - they were betraying me  -
(as they did with my brother, before me, forced to follow the same idiotic path).

If I will ever amount to anything, I will use some suitable pseudonym that will guarantee that no light will ever shine upon their pathetic names.


_DB

The Frog and The Scorpion

A scorpion needed to cross a river, as he was on a shallow islet in its middle and the floods kept rising.

Unable to swim, he met a frog on the banks and asked the amphibian to carry him across on her back, using the suavest and most soothing of voices.

The frog asked: "How do I know you won't sting me?"

"Yeah, you're right, that's my nature" - conceded the scorpion. who immediately stung the frog, before she could ran away.

Then the scorpion patiently waited the rising waters -  Resigned to die, yet wholly satisfied that he had managed to reaffirm its true self one last time.



Originally witten in Italian: 

Uno scorpione doveva attraversare un fiume, ché si trovava su un'isoletta bassa nel suo mezzo e la piena stava salendo.  

Non sapendo nuotare, chiese aiuto ad una rana che si trovava lì accanto.
Così, con voce dolce e suadente, le disse: "Per favore, fammi salire sulla tua schiena e portami sull'altra sponda." 
 
La rana gli rispose "Fossi matta! Così appena siamo in acqua mi pungi e mi uccidi!" 
 
"Chiaro, è la mia natura" confermò lo scorpione, e punse la rana prima che questa potesse scappare. 
 
Poi, si mise ad attendere che l'acqua salisse - Rassegnato, eppur soddisfatto dall'aver potuto riaffermare un'ultima volta il proprio ego.

Pill

"Child abuse seems to repeat itself from generation to generation. It is highly likely that your narcissistic mother was severely abused or came from a highly dysfunctional family. Possibly, she had a narcissistic mother herself. Victims of abuse can reproduce the same type of abuse with their own children. It is therefore essential to break the cycle of abuse."

I decided to not pursue reproduction, so the cycle should be broken.


Should.

Torture Galaxy

A Girl Gotta Have Some Fun!

"Torture Galaxy", "Video Bizarre", "TG2Club" are some of the names that, along the years, have taken the websites distributing the work of  - mainly - a gentlesadist [sic] known as  Master Serpent.

The scene you see above - slightly exaggerate by yours truly, but only slightly - is pretty typical of his work: a very young looking woman strapped in a gynaecological chair, with her vulva sutured with surgical thread.

I will be honest - when I first encountered him - and his models - I stopped drawing my stuff for a while.

Because, well, he does in real life what I would only dare to draw!

At the same time, theirs [serpent & models] is not the most brutal S&M videography out there - for all his passion for piercing through a woman's skin and flesh with wildly inappropriate instruments, "Serpent" feels no compulsion to brutalize his models.

He may subject them to what amounts to sexualized elective surgeries, but that is all it does.

He uses no ill language, no open disrespect for the model but, rather, a matter-of-facts collaboration between equal dignity partners. The two of them - rarely more - are there to do what needs to be done - he to torture her, her to feel the pain and get an orgasm - and that's it.

I like it.

If the process was a bit more ritualized and they managed to convey the suggestion that they are operating for a higher purpose, it would be the perfect embodiment of the childhood fantasies that  boredom brought, on in me, when I was a kid and forced to go to Sunday mass (to date, my parents do not accept that I am agnostic or, even, that I have a sexuality of any kind - ).

It is, thus, easy to see why, from time to time, I like to pay homage to Serpent, and to the most fascinating - for me - of his models, Anita.

Arguably, the Queen of over the top breast-torture.