In Which I Expound On If I Ruled The World

The other day, I, in my usual way, was being completely AWESOME, and I started pondering what it would be like if I ruled the world. I'd be a benevolent dictator, of course. The planet would flourish under my rule. And there would be hardly any torture camps or death squads. I mean like, one or two per city. TOPS. Is that too much to ask, for a little order amidst the chaos? OF COURSE NOT.

But it wouldn't be all cake and death traps, of course. I'd have PLANS. I'd set some rules to live by, commandments, if you will. Not any set number, though. You put limits on things, and then you find yourself caught in loop-holes that you can't close, etc etc. So yes, here are some of the myriad and sundry proclamations I would no doubt enjoin on my citizens of the Planet Fabulous. (Catchy name, right?)

IF I RULED THE WORLD:

• Dogs would be compulsory, but cats would require special permits, granted only to those I randomly decide deserve them. As such, there would be an overwhelming mouse problem, but I would be less allergic to everything. Hail, Fabulous!
• "Philosopher-king" would be a viable career path. The only qualifications would be "well-read" and "kind of a dick." Also: you'd have to make it through the Hyper Colossal Death Maze. Hail, Fabulous!
• The Wayanses would be shot out of a cannon into the sun. All of them. The entire family.
• Every day would be Rex Manning Day. Every day would also be David Tennant Day. Then they would fight for my amusement. Hail, Fabulous!
• It would be nap time whenever I say it is. Because a well-rested ruler is a happy one.
• Batman would be the world's mascot, and all would be required to wear a piece of clothing with the Bat symbol on it once a week. Hail, Fabulous!
• Ayn Rand and all her works would be retroactively erased from history. Hail, Fabulous!
• Every day would be like Sunday. Morrissey fans worldwide would rejoice. Hail, Fabulous!
• Personal jet packs for all. Mark it down. Hail, Fabulous!
• All currency would be replaced by high-fives. Sales transactions would come to resemble elaborate celebration rituals. Hail, Fabulous!
• There'd be robot gangsters, and maybe robot orphans. BUT THOSE WOULD BE THE ONLY ROBOTS. Hail, Fabulous!

And that's only a few of my MANY MANY ideas for how to make our planet more awesome, more spectacular, more, dare I say it... FABULOUS.

The Look of THE WRESTLER

This is not a film review.

I want to state that again: this is not a film review.

I love this movie, and in fact the totality of Darren Aronofsky's film work, so much that there is no way I can be objective enough to "review" this. Thus, my aborted (and long overdue) attempt to write about his last film, The Fountain. (Maybe I'll be able to sort through my thoughts and feelings enough in the future to produce something of worth on that, but for now, it shall lie, fallow and unfinished.)

But THIS is not ABOUT The Fountain. THIS is about The Wrestler, Aronofsky's newest film, starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood. It is undoubtedly the best film of 2008. And while theme-wise, it is not as drastic a departure from Aronofsky's previous work (especially Requiem For A Dream), VISUALLY, it is as different from them as almost anything can be.


His first two films, Pi and Requiem For A Dream, had a lot of stylistic touches, very overt and showy, almost. Not to the "oh look at me, I'm fancy and can do these fancy things" point, but in ways that service the story being told. The editing of Requiem was rhythmic, sticking to a beat and pattern that repeated throughout the film (Aronofsky refers to it as "hip-hop editing), as the point was to inure the audience to the acts of drug abuse, and make it a very big deal later when the pattern lengthens, or is interrupted, or changes. It exemplifies the point that addiction is all about habit and repetition, and that it is a cycle that only degrades.


The Fountain, his third film, while as stylistic as the earlier films in its own way, did less with rhythm, but was all about visual patterns, the same images and actions used at different points in the film to (both overtly and subtley) connect different scenes and time periods. The theme of "recurrence" was an important point to be made and stressed, and thus the similarity of such disparate time periods as 1500's Spain, Modern day America, and the deep space of the far future was brought to bear, and made to relate to the movie's theme of death, rebirth, and acceptance. Death is nothing to fear, the film says, and while it maybe should not be celebrated, it should be embraced as a necessity.


The Wrestler uses very little of these tricks, and in fact goes as far opposite from those films as possible in terms of style, to point of being very documentary-like in feel. The grain in the image implies harsh reality, and the washed out colors of everything in Randy "The Ram"'s life, accentuate the vividness the film adopts during the scenes of action in the ring. The blood and lights "pop" that much more when contrasted with the mutedness of Randy's trailer, really of his entire life outside of the ring. Like all of Aronofsky's films thus far, this relies, at its center, on the interpersonal relationships between its characters; in this case, between Randy and the people in his world: his estranged daughter Stephanie, his only real "friend" Cassidy/Pam, and the various acquaintances of his wrestling career. Aronofsky has always focused on how people relate to their world and each other, and Randy's disconnect from both is at the heart of the film, and the reasons for why it looks the way it does.

Repetition still plays a small part in the film, as it is, in its own way, about addiction. Contrast the scene of Randy's walk-out to the ring in the beginning of the film with his walk out to the floor on his first day at the deli counter: the crowd noise piped in over the latter seals it, as does the exact same type of plastic curtain in front of each place's respective entrance. Randy is addicted to the crowd, the noise, the reaction he gets from people who know him as a character. He gives them his sweat, his blood, his very life, and they applaud, they cheer, they chant. He needs that, he craves that, and his life is a complete shambles because of it. His health, his family, his ability to deal with every day life: all sacrificed within the altar of the "squared circle."


There's more to say about the film, and its themes and ideas, like the similarity between Randy and Pam's stories, and his own self-destructive streak, and the (deceptively) unambiguous ending, but I wanted to stick to discussing the look of it. It is a fascinating film, and one I hope everyone gets to see. Aronofsky and Rourke, especially, deserve all the credit in the world for a wonderful piece of filmmaking and acting. Go out and see The Wrestler whereever and whenever you can. It is on a limited release now, but I believe it goes wide shortly.

We're all looking for the crowd's roar. Very few of us ever find it. The ones who do, sometimes have trouble letting it go.

My Year In Lists

As promised previously, here is my mythical and always highly anticipated Best of the Year lists!!!!

(The extra exclamation points are there to emphasize my complete awesomeness.)

Now, normally, I would expound at length on each entry of each list, or at the very least on the choice for number one. As it stands, though, I am loathe to do so at this time, because I can't quite verbally quantify my feelings for some of the entrants on these here ladders of excellence. And so, I expound not at all. (Except here, because that is how I roll. Deal with it, America!)

In any event, these are my favorites of this past Year of Someone's Lord, Two-Thousand and Eight. Notice I do not say "Greatest" or "Best", because one's mileage may vary. (Though why anyone would think to disagree with me, I'll never know. I am right and good in all things. Like Ghandi.)

So yes, so anyway, here's a list of things. Links where appropriate. Maybe a picture. Enjoy it. Add comments at the end, let's see what some of yours are.

FILMS

1. The Wrestler
2. The Dark Knight
3. Wall-E
4. Cloverfield (I wrote about this here. You should read it.)
5. Iron Man

ALBUMS

1. Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster... / We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (They put out two full albums this year. I'm counting both, as both are amazing, though each has a slightly different feel.)
   
2. Thrice - The Alchemy Index, vol 3 & 4: Air & Earth
3. the Killers - Day and Age
4. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
5. Stars - Sad Robots EP
6. Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins
7. Atmosphere -When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
8. Paddy's Well - First Friday (this is my dad's band!)
9. Alkaline Trio - Agony & Irony
10. Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
    

SONGS (links lead to downloadable versions of the songs. I cannot guarantee the links will last forever.)

1. Baskervilles - "A Little More Time"
2. the Decemberists - "Valerie Plame"
3. Los Campesinos! - "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed"
4. Okkervil River - "Calling and Not Calling My Ex"
5. Chairlift - "Bruises"
6. the Killers - "Spaceman"
7. Ben Folds - "You Don't Know Me (feat. Regina Spektor)"
8. Alkaline Trio - "Help Me"
9. Amanda Palmer - "Astronaut (A Short History Of Nearly Nothing)"
10. Los Campesinos! - "Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats"
    

COMICS (specific issues highlighted): creative team

1. Casanova Vol 2. (issue #14): Matt Fraction, Fabio Moon
   
2. All-Star Superman (issue #10): Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely
   
3. Pax Romana (4 issue miniseries): Jonathan Hickman
   
4. Final Crisis (issue #5): Grant Morrison, JG Jones, Carlos Pacheco
   
5. Aetheric Mechanics (a graphic novella): Warren Ellis, Gianluca Pagliarani

TELEVISION

1. The Venture Brothers season 3
   
2. Doctor Who season 4
   
3. The Venture Brothers season 3
4. ok, so I don't watch a whole lot of television...
   

So there you go. Comment with your opinions. Otherwise, I'm just going to assume that all my lists are comprehensive and completely correct.

Excelsior! And never forget:

In Which I Share Some Music, and Make Blanket Statements About Various Things

PART THE FIRST::

SO, every year I make a "Best of" mix. Most of the time, this mix ends up just staying on my hard-drive/Motherboxxx, occasionally to be burnt onto disc and given to someone. BUT THIS YEAR, I have decided to share with the world the SPECTACULARNESS of my music tastes. Sit/stand/lounge in awe of my ability to find good music and combine it into new forms and lists!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/28jkjq

But yeah, this is it. It's less a "These are the best songs" list, as it is a "These are songs I love the shit out of" list. I didn't duplicate any bands (because then it would've ended up being 75% Los Campesinos! tracks), but yes. It is awesome. Go ahead. Taste the freshness.

PART THE SECOND::

All your opinions are wrong.

This is a statement which will cause some ire, I understand. But make no mistake: here, I am the arbiter of all things that are fine and good, and as such, I am forced to play both liberator and captor of the opinions of those who visit. Thus, I am stating, unequivocally, that all your opinions are wrong. Unless they happen to agree with mine, or you have proof that yours are correct and mine are not. (Which begs why they'd be labeled "opinions", but stick around, there's a point here...)

Actually, no, there's no point. I just felt like putting that out there. Whether you realize or not, you are wrong and I am right.

By the way, there is no possible way that this is all tongue in cheek, so... put that right out of your head.



(cough)

Buy the Ticket; Take the Ride

I've been in a bit of a Hunter S. Thompson mood lately. Re-reading a couple of his books, watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on dvd. I was given The Kitchen Diaries, a sort-of memoir/series of stories about Hunter told by two of his close friends, and that's most likely what kicked this off. He's one of my favorite writers, and was one of my few living heroes (until he offed himself, of course. Then he wasn't living. [for completion's sake, the others are Grant Morrison, Eddie Izzard, and David Foster Wallace.])

Anyway, I've been writing, though nothing's finished. As such, I have little to post, though I feel I should say SOMEthing. Thusly, here is an excerpt from HST's book Kingdom of Fear, published in 2003. It was his last completed book (other than a collection of his essays from espn.com called Hey Rube), and this brief selection from it encompasses a lot of what I love about his writing: his wonderful sense of rhythm, the beauty of his word usage, the elegance of his phrasing, his eye for a musical phrase. RIP HST.

"

Whoops! How about a break, people? How about some Music? Yes. Music is where it's at, so consider this:

I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back into music --except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who knows why? Maybe I just feel like singing --so I type.

These quick electric keys are my Instrument, my harp, my RCA glass-tube microphone, and my fine soprano saxophone all at once. That is my music, for good or ill, and on some night it will make me feel like a god. Veni, Vidi, Vici. . . . That is when the fun starts. . . . Yes, Kenneth, this is the frequency. This is where the snow leopards live; "Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round. . . ."

Herman Melville said that, and I have found it to be true, but I didn't really know what it felt like until I started feeling those shocks myself, which always gave me a rush. . . .

So perhaps we can look at some of my work (or all of it, on some days) as genetically governed by my frustrated musical failures, which led to an overweening sublimation of my essentially musical instincts that surely haunt me just as clearly as they dominate my lyrics.

-- November 19th, 2000

"

House of Leaves.

I'm not entirely sure how to go about writing about the last book I read, House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski. It defies easy description, and any sort of conventional review or analysis is right out. So I won't be attempting to do so in any concrete or normal fashion. In lieu of such, I am putting here bits and pieces of conversation, some observations, a few photographs taken while reading, and other flotsam and jetsam.


A conversation:

Nicholas: the book is the house is johnny is zampano is the film is the book
The Bandit Queen: Care to elaborate?
Nicholas: not yet, need to formalize thoughts a bit more
Nicholas: but the book is obviously the house, that much is easy
The Bandit Queen: yes. And Johnny's story is the same. The house is just one name they put on this intense madness that they all confront.
Nicholas: mmhm
The Bandit Queen: It's like the Boogeyman in that very real sense: just that basic, primal childish fear that comes with being alive.
Nicholas: the house = the other outside which is also within
The Bandit Queen: It's no one thing in the world, it's just...yeah, yeah exactly
Nicholas: also, god as an equals sign and an echo
The Bandit Queen: It's any inner place you're unwilling to go.
The Bandit Queen: oh god.

Nicholas: It's also about how art critique is irrelevant, as any art's meaning can only be entirely unpacked by the artist, and even then its an unreliable sort of unpacking
Nicholas: It's also about relation of cinema to print and vice versa
Nicholas: labyrinths and spirals and echoes and codes and oh god I'm never getting out of this am I
The Bandit Queen: Don't worry. At least you're in good company.
The Bandit Queen: Also: moo hoo ha ha.
The Bandit Queen: At different times, Truant says: "Known Some Call Is Air Am". Although it appears to be a random string of words, it is actually phonetically equivalent to "Non sum qualis eram", Latin for "I am not as I was".

Nicholas: ALSO, theory: the Navidson Record is entirely fictional, even in the world of the book
The Bandit Queen: Oh, yeah! That's totally a possibility. Which...what was Zampano's deal?
Nicholas: three pieces of evidence of such: Johnny can find no trace of anything to do with the house or film, there's a card in the front collage (more visible in the appendices) saying something about "killing the children", and how the house might do so
Nicholas: also, the occasional pronoun switch in zampano's writings like, in while writing about Tom Navidson: "He might have spent all night drinking had exhaustion not caught up with me"
Nicholas: also, the "deletion" of all the minotaur sections, as they implicitly mention that the minotaur was a hoax and not real, though the labyrinth was
Nicholas: so the labyrinth/book is quite real, and you can become lost in it, but the secret it contains/story it tells is not
Nicholas: I am way too into this


Words are swallowing me, surrounding my head with suffocating syllables and breathless boundaries, all ensconced about my person, my throat closing from declension and circling the systematic series of statements started and stopped in my stead. I am lost in the leaves, pages turning over like a record and repeating around themselves again, footnoted and obliviated into a perfect spiral of senseless apprenticeship. They are eating me alive. I see them, in the corners, lurking, waiting, to tear into me with claws of consonants and teeth of tangents, low murmurs and growls emanating from the walls of willful mispronunciations. I hear them, I see them, I know them, they are mean and meant and meaningful and meaningless and every verbal trick in the vast vocabulary I can voice does not dissuade. I am drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning drowning drowningdrowning drowningdrowningdrowning drowningdrowningdrowningdrowning. Breathing in brings broken phrases, basked in battled bafflement, breaking down the days and numbers into equational phrases and fractured fractions of format. I am sorry to suffer for sensory perception, still somehow syllable and sentence stick together to set me aside and send me swooning. Air air air. I need some air.


Additional thoughts:

:: A blind man "writing" a book about a film is too much of an irony to not be a comment on the writing process, and how one is always feeling in the dark towards a goal you cannot see and will not witness entirely.

:: The journey into the house as an exploration of the human brain, as one cannot map out or define what one does not understand and is constantly changing.

:: The center of the story really being about the damage one's own history causes on the present and the future. Navidson's past intruding and effecting his relationship with Karen; Johnny's past disconnecting him in his relationships with everyone he encounters, especially all the various hook-ups and one night stands he mentions.

:: the underplayed story of Zampano as a world war vet whom life has passed by, leaving him blind and unloved. Also, the connection between him and Johnny's mother: "My dear Zampano, Who did you Lose?"

It is very easy to get lost in this House.

Quoting the Cube*

I am currently in the process of writing 2 blog entries of film review and analysis (on Cloverfield and The Fountain, respectively), and a short story about ghosts and writing, and 2 different songs, and still attempting to piece together a story in my head about dealing with the death of a loved one and robots (I AM AMBITIOUS AND FULL OF BEES!), thus you, my wonderful reader[s], are receiving the following list of quotes that I A) like quite a bit, and B) tend to apply to my own personal world-view. And you know very well that all that I say and do is right.**

So anyway, more substantial content coming in the near future, but for now... courage! And interesting epigraph-worthy material...


"What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care."
:: William Blake

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
:: Philip K. Dick

"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.
(There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.)"
:: Seneca

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."
:: Terence McKenna

"See, now! Our sentence is up "
:: Grant Morrison

"When you start worrying about whether someone likes you, or whether you're going to get what you want, or whether you'll ever become the person you want to be, just remember: we're all doomed."
:: Warren Ellis

"I know I can write my way out of this."
:: Blake Schwarzenbach

"A tradition is a past that distorts the present."
:: Albert Camus

""In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move."
:: Douglas Adams

"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy."
:: William Shakespeare

"Knowing and being are mutually exclusive."
:: Nietzsche

"Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal."
:: Oscar Wilde

"To perpetuate one's name, one must carve it on a heavy stone and sink to the bottom of the sea; depths last longer than heights."
:: Herman Melville

"The world's a fucking brilliant place to live in."
:: Douglas Coupland

"It is not certain that our time has lacked gods; many have been proposed, usually stupid or cowardly ones."
:: Albert Camus

"To define is to limit."
:: Oscar Wilde

"Buy the ticket; Take the ride."
:: Hunter S. Thompson


Plan on seeing more like these at some point in the future. I like collecting interesting quotes.


* Kind of like Gleaming the Cube, but less skateboarding and more literature. Still involves lots of yelling of the word "RADICAL!"

** This statement might be insanely untrue.

In Which I Make a Triumphant Return and Declare Myself Lord and Master of All I Survey

Maybe I should write something in here. I feel neglectful and ashamed at my lack of productivity towards my worshipful masses. (Hi, Mom!) The pop culture landscape has been rife, RIFE I SAY!, with subjects worthy of venom, bile, and excoriation, and yet I have remained silent, content in my place of "Fuck that, I would rather keep (re)reading Douglas Coupland and David Foster Wallace, while the world falls apart around me." Which, admittedly, is a rather ostrich-esque way of dealing with things. But screw you, I am the master of this particular domain (not in the internet "domain name" sense, but that's just splitting rabbits), and I will say WHAT I want, WHEN I want, and NOBODY, you hear me meatball?, is going to tell me otherwise!
.....
Sorry, I went all Master Shake for a second, I needed a space to breathe.

BUT ANYWAY, like I said, there's been a lot that has pissed me off, and I would go into exactly what, but then this would become a fount of negativity, and if there's anything that there is too much of on the internet, it's porn. Followed by cat pictures. Then negativity. And I'd like to think that, today, in this rather expansive and (some might say rarely) jolly mood that I am in, I'd like to balance that equation with some positivity. So, without further ado (ok, maybe SOME ado), I will write on what my favorite things of the past Year of Their Lord Two Thousand and Seven are. Bear in mind, this is just one lone (handsome intelligent and awesome) man's opinion, and that it might not necessarily agree with yours. In that case, leave a comment, telling me I'm wrong and why, and then fuck off and start your own blog.* But yes, favorite things, here we go:

Favorite Movie of 2007:
HOT FUZZ
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are awesome. That could be the only sentence in this section, and it would still be a perfect encapsulation of why I love this film. They have made two almost perfect films now, Shaun of the Dead and this one, and also produced previously the great BBC series Spaced, and I am now willing to follow them everywhere they go. I mean, jeez, even their contribution to Grindhouse, the fake trailer for a British horror movie Don't!, was genius.

Hot Fuzz was a note-perfect parody of the distinctly American genre of "Buddy Cop" action movies, but set in a distinctly non-American setting: a rural village in England. Skewering every cliche and trope that the genre is known for in its first two-thirds, while also playing as a wonderful mystery with elements of the giallo, the movie then takes an abrupt, Adaptation-esque turn, and BECOMES what it was parodying: a thrill-ride action movie. Except this time, the audience is in on the joke, and what would have seemed ridiculous earlier now makes complete sense in the world that Pegg and Wright have established. As full of laughs as Shaun of the Dead (which I maintain is, along with the first Back to the Future, one of the few perfect screenplays**), it's not only the funniest movie of the year, it's one of the best, period.

honorable mentions: Grindhouse, American Gangster, Knocked Up


Favorite Album of 2007:
Motion City Soundtrack - Even If It Kills Me
I wholly reserve the right to change this at some future date, as I am nothing if not capricious about music. But, as of right now, Motion City Soundtrack's latest entry in their catalog of goodness is the number one on my own personal Billboard chart. While not as rough as their earlier work, and without the apologetic air of "I fucked up" of their last album, the pop sheen production on this album, along with the much more... well, not overtly positive, but less mopey lyrics, I suppose?... makes Justin Pierre and company's latest effort the one I keep coming back to out of the albums that have come out this year.

The themes hit the usual for Pierre: love, loss, love lost, but this time, it ends on a good note. His struggles with his chemical dependencies and mental instability have been well-chronicled, both on the previous records and elsewhere, but his new-found sobriety seems to have coincided with a brighter outlook in his love-life, as the songs "It Had to Be You", "Antonia" and the title track evidence. The stand out track to me, though, is number 4, "Last Night", if only for the bridge section, which contains the lines "My body aches, it heaves it shakes / all somersaults for so-called art. And I still don't know exactly who I am / I never will, amen." No one knows exactly who they are, and it takes a very strong person to admit that. This album is a great accomplishment for the band, and a stand-out for the year in general.

Honorable mentions: Radiohead - In Rainbows, Sundowner - Four One Five Two, Say Anything - In Defense of the Genre


Favorite Book of 2007:
The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is a writer I have been following since high school. To give a better picture of that statement: the only other writers who also fall in that category are William Gibson and JRR Tolkien. My reading taste has changed... not drastically, but has... I suppose the phrase would be "been refined" since then. And yet, Coupland remains. He endures. And this year, he put out one of his best novels since Girlfriend in a Coma (which is in my top 5 all-time).***

Honorable mentions: Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis, Rant by Chuck Palahniuk, I am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert


Favorite Comic/Graphic work of 2007:
The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman

This one was the hardest for me to decide, because there was quite a few great things to choose from this year. And it was made even harder by how much OLDER things I read this year, which confused in my head what came out when, and so forth. As it stand, Jonathan Hickman's mini-series from Image, The Nightly News, keeps popping out in my head as the one. The very distinct art style, and very "controversial" subject matter, kept me interested and involved through it's running time.****

Honorable mentions: LoEG: the Black Dossier by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, Casanova by Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba/Fabio Moon, Fell by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith

___________________________________________

SO. Yes. I will be writing in here more. So, check back... I dunno, a lot. There'll eventually be more posts. And they will be fun. And full of awesome. Much like me!


* Make sure to link to me, and tell me, and then we'll have a circle of disagreement. It'll be AWESOME.

** I'll probably do an entire post on my views on this in the future.

*** More info coming.

**** More info coming.

Da Vinci's Robot.

Around 1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed a humanoid automaton. The design notes for the robot appear in sketchbooks that were rediscovered in the 1950s. It is not known whether or not an attempt was made to build the device.

The robot is a knight, clad in German-Italian medieval armor, that is apparently able to make several human-like motions. These motions included sitting up, moving its arms, neck, and an anatomically correct jaw. It is partially the fruit of Leonardo's anatomical research in the Canon of Proportions as described in the Vitruvian Man.

OK Computer.

Radiohead's OK Computer is often thought to depict a dystopia, and its artwork contains references to George Orwell's novels, especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. The band have cited Orwell several times throughout their career. However, singer Thom Yorke said, "Loads of the music on OK Computer is extremely uplifting. It's only when you read the words that you'd think otherwise." A notable aspect of the album is an apparently circular narrative. In the opening song "Airbag", someone survives a horrific car crash, while the final song "The Tourist" contains the line "they ask me where the hell I'm going / at a thousand feet per second" and ends with a chorus of "hey man, slow down". However, the band said this had not been intentional, but they had noticed it after finalising the track listing.