I finally got round to watching Kick-Ass last night. It was well worth the wait! Not only was it funny, brutal and offensive, it also featured the best performance by Nicholas Cage since…. umm, Raising Arizona? What was the last good film he did?

The only weird thing about the film was that it was rated MA15+ here in Australia. This is a film where an 11-year old girl calls the bad guys c*nts before plastering the wall with their brains. Maybe we don’t need an R18 rating for games after all if this is the standard…

Don’t Shit Your Pants

Clone High was genius. This also.

thedailywhat:

Things That (Need To) Exist of the Day: Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Clone High fame directed this impossibly awesome fauxmercial for the Super X-treme Mega History Heroes Brontë Sisters Power Doll set as part of a “series of educational shorts about action figures based on historical figures.”

The educational value of the spots was deemed “somewhat suspect,” and, consequently, they never aired.

[h/t: yesbutnobutyes.]

Beijing, day two. We woke up reasonably early (for us) and headed off to check out the Beijing Underground City. After getting our hotelier to ring ahead to make sure it was open (no answer, but she was sure it was) we bundled into a taxi and made our way there.

After getting slightly lost and wandering around an old, decrepit neighbourhood we finally found the entrance. It didn’t impress from the outside, with the paint peeling off the sign, but we were keen to check out Mao’s folly, a tribute to Cold War era paranoia. Unfortunately, we never made it in. A lady grunted at us as we walked past and directed us to a tiny, inkjet printed sign. “The Beijing Underground City is closed”. Under that, someone had handwritten “Permanently”. Ah, crap.

So, that was the end of that. We instead spent the morning checking out the last remaining section of Beijing’s old wall. The walls used to encompass the whole city, and stood for hundreds of years until Mao dismantled them during the Cultural Revolution. What did he do with all those bricks, you ask? Why, he created a vast network of tunnels under the city to house 7 million people in case of nuclear war! That sounds like an awesome place to visit! Oh right. Damn.

After checking out the wall we headed out to the 798 art district. This is an old factory complex that has been converted (against the owner’s wishes) into an artist community. The Beijing art scene is thriving these days, and there was a lot of amazing and inspirational art to see. Michelle was like a kid in a candy shop, running left and right trying to take it all in. It was a fascinating blend of original artwork, (not so) cheap knock-offs and touristy crap. We even had lunch at a New Zealand Cafe. We had the nachos, very kiwi.

thedailywhat:

Look At This Fucking Cat Video of the Day: The world’s ballsiest seagull runs into the world’s laziest cat. It’s a match made in AFV heaven.

[arbroath.]

thedailywhat:

You Can’t Draw That On Television of the Day: Meanwhile, in Tennessee, it’s raining cats and dicks.

[videogum.]

Our first full day in Beijing we decided to tackle the Forbidden City, which proved to be a near insurmountable task. The overcast weather and heavy smog made it almost impossible to take any good pictures, and the huge throngs of tourist pushing against us (we went back to front to avoid the queues) meant that most of the time we couldn’t be bothered getting the cameras out. Still, it was an awesome and unique experience.

Wow. I promised to post some updates when I got to Hong Kong and then I totally didn’t. I am such a liar! Well, the truth is even more sinister. I bought an iPad.

Yes, I succumbed. I was even this close to buying a macbook pro as well, but common sense won through (well, this one time). Truth be told, the iPad is a pretty awesome piece of engineering, and both Michelle and I have used it almost exclusively to browse the internet and post on facebook. Unfortunately, it is not that good for posting on blogs, especially since all the photos are on this laptop… so it is not without its flaws. All in all, it fills a niche in my browsing habits that I didn’t even know was there, but there is still a place in my life for this humble old netbook.

I super extra promise to post some pics as soon as we get back. I might even try to put some up tonight if I am not too tired.

We’ve tried to pack so much into our time in Beijing that we have both felt shattered at the end of each day. It seems that our B&B is in the middle of a transport deadzone, and we ended up walking to a lot of places. Those places have been, for the most part, pretty darned excellent. Today we capped it all off by doing an 8km hike along the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai. It was an awe inspiring experience, but once again we are both knackered. Rest assured, there are plenty of photos just begging to get posted, so once we have some quiet time in Hong Kong we’ll resume our regular scheduled programming.

Ah, Kunming. We had a pretty average time when we were first there; getting to the Stone Forest was an epic chore, the hotel staff was incompetent, there was a street vendor playing endless Happy Birthday tunes outside our window, and Michelle lost her shoes. We were happy to see the back of it and weren’t too keen on coming back. At least it was only for one night. Or so we thought.

Our travel agent had looked at the intrepid schedule and decided that we would need an extra night at either end of our trip. This was fine at the start, as we didn’t want to fly in and start our tour on the same day, but the last day of the tour is called ‘departure day’ for a reason. Nevertheless, the travel agent booked us in for an extra night to be safe, and so we would have to endure Kunming for one more day.

I was determined not to let Kunming get the better of us, and although Michelle was a bit over the whole thing we headed off to check out the recommended sites. Our hotel being absolutely useless, we had to head to one up the road to get travel advice. The receptionist helpfully laid out all the travel options, but it all seemed a bit too complicated and Michelle was advocating spending the entire day sleeping in the hotel room. After a minor domestic, we grabbed some snacks and hailed a taxi, keen to get on our way.

The first taxi took one look at the first destination (15km away in the hills) and waved us away. Advantage, Kunming. Undeterred, we managed to get into the next cab and were finally on our way. The driver turned out to be a really nice guy, and he quickly guessed that we would need a ride back after visiting the first temple. After a bit of negotiating we settled on a price for taking us around all day (about $50) which saved us from having to deal with public transport. The first temple was great and things were looking up. Advantage us.

There is a saying in Kunming (well, actually in the Lonely Planet section on Kunming) that goes “If you haven’t seen Xi Shan (the western hills) then you haven’t seen Kunming” and so off to the western hills we went. There is a walking track that takes you to the summit, but we were feeling lazy and so got the taxi to take us to the highlights. The very top is a place called Dragon Gate (“…and if you haven’t seen the Dragon Gate, you haven’t seen Xi Shan”) and so we made our way to the entrance and got ready to go. That was when the thunderstorm hit.

It had been getting a little cloudier at each stop along the way, as if Kunming was getting angry that we were enjoying ourselves so much. When we reached the entrance to the Dragon Gate, the skies opened and it started bucketing down. We hid with our driver in a parking building until it subsided, and he loaned us his umbrella so we could keep dry (he was unusually nice). We decided to by tickets on the tourist tram to avoid the hike, but the rain and thunder started again and we ended up camped under a shop awning until it passed again.

Michelle bought us some raincoats (at no doubt inflated prices) and we gave the Dragon Gate our best shot. The path has been literally carved into the side of a mountain, and in places there were sheer drops with only a flimsy handrail and a caution sign standing between you and a very messy end. Michelle got wobbly knees about half way up and so I made the last dash to the summit by myself. I was a bit too paranoid to get my camera out, so I made do with snaps from my iPhone.

Satisfied that we had given Kunming our best shot, we negotiated the slippery carved stone steps back to our driver and made our way back to the hotel. The driver then asked if we could pay him some more, as it took longer than he anticipated. I was planning to tip him anyway (he was really, very nice) so we were happy to pay. We finally arrived back in town, cold, wet and very tired. We paid the taxi driver and went to crash out, but Kunming wasn’t done with us yet. We had given the driver a deposit at the first stop, but had forgotten to deduct it from the final amount. Looks like he got a bit fat tip in the end anyway. He was probably laughing all the way home. Alright Kunming, we surrender. You win.