Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
How To Skim A Slider
Requirements;
A six month to a year old slider, species unimportant.
An open expanse of water such as a lake or pond.
Koi sticks or lettuce optional.
one: Chosing your slider.
For the purposes of this exercise I have chosen to use my own pet turtle Choire, because he's a fat little bastard and is likely to travel really far. He also happens to be gay, but thats not why I chose him, he's just bigger than his little compatriot Philo... who also happens to be gay.
two: Correct holding of your slider.
You have a choice to begin with whether you would rather hold the slider length-ways or width-ways. For the purposes of adding spin however many people will find that length-ways will lead to more pitch and less spin in their throws, causing turbulence and ultimately a poor throw, so I recommend width-ways.
Pinch the sides of the shell between index and thumb, allowiing about a quarter of the circumference to nestle into the padding of the upper two-thirds of your index finger. (see diagram 1) If you have a little stroppy slider like Choire is then simply tap his head repeatedly with your finger until he shirks back into his shell, alternatively you can stunn him with a home-made taser. (see previous How To Make a Taser From Household Appliances)
three: Correct body stature in preparation to skim a slider.
Many amateurs will simply stand facing the pond and lean back slightly as they whip their arm round throwing the slider at a low angle across the water, however for maximum velocity and spin, you can do no better than emulating a discus thrower.
Facing away from the expanse of water, with your arm out-stretched at a 120 degree angle away from your line of sight, feet placed firmly so that they are perpendicular to your upper-body direction, you will find yourself feeling not unlike a wound-up spring.
four: Releasing your slider.
The point of release is the quitessential element to any throw. Adding spin is crucial to causing the slider to skim across the top of the water correctly, bouncing as he goes. Teaching someone how to throw a decent slider is like trying to teach someone how to throw a decent fastball. You'll learn it over time, some people are naturals, but others require a lot of practice.
Poorly thrown, a slider can bounce only once or twice before disappearing under the surface, or even worse the slider can crash and burn on the first strike of the water. Alternatively though I've seen true professionals cause sliders to explode into flame on the third or fourth bounce across the water as their little belly heated up from the friction.
At the point of release your wrist should be bent sideways, your thumb drawn up and your index finger almost straight, in a mock gun position as shown. If you're not careful however you can cut the tip of your index open on the sharp shell as the slider leaves your hand at great speed.
five: Enjoying the results and scoring.
With the slider out of your hands its up to you to enjoy the trip. Count how many bounces he makes as he travels across the surface of the water and don't worry if you miscount as the splashes will leave ripple rings for you to go back and count again when he finally stops somewhere out across the water. He may be a little stunned by the trip when its all over but they're amphibious by nature so don't worry about him drowning. Having some Koi sticks or lettuce in the water at your feet should attract him back to you for another throw.
I use a sliding scale for scores (no pun intended) and factor in age, weight and diametre of each slider thrown, multiplied by the number of bounces achieved, my highest score so far is 6,732,114.
The above paragraphs are entirely fictional, anyone who even attempts throwing their pets across lakes has to have some serious problems. Our turtles are going to be staying at the petstore while we're away on vacation where hopefully no-one else will buy them.
Signs and portents
Somebody is trying to tell me something.
Since last night I have been working on doing a cartoon strip for the page, just a one-off thing about finding a job. Working in Photoshop and Fireworks I was down to finishing off the text bubbles last night when...
BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!
The age-old PC problem where a program causes an error in some area of the machine with a codename like 001770-EEFG-132XX... and the problem is brought to your attention with a halt of all activity and the screen turning blue (that was just for the benefit of those of you with Macintosh computers... the ones that make toast as optional)
It was late and I was tired and so I just let it go.
This evening, after a lengthly day of playing Grand Theft Auto 3 and watching Buffy, West Wing and Six Feet Under, I got back to work, starting from scratch again.
Within minutes of finalising it... having again neglected to save over the course of my work... a power surge caused everything to cut out. My PC, Pix's PC, the cable box, the TV... everything. It had this eerie "end of the world" feeling to it I realised because I've become so used to having electrical devices making noise and blinking lights and the purr of fans and motors.
Turns out that our cable TV provider was upgrading the service and to do so they sent an update packet down the broadband line... something happened, the cable box spiked and bang, everything went.
I take this to mean that I shouldn't be doing a cartoon for this page, so I'll leave it at that.
E.T. fuck right off home
"So D, why do you shiver every time you see the trailer for the E.T. rerelease?"
Glad you asked, I'll tell you why. Quite simply, I never trusted that little guy. Everytime I see that squat little alien with his telescopic neck and glowing finger I have this deep-rooted suspicion that he wasn't giving us the full story. The FBI guys were the good guys in that movie as far as I'm concerned, whther they were holding walkie-talkies or shotguns.
"E... T... phone... home..."
Yeah right little buddy! And tell them what? The state of our planetary defences? How tasty human brains are? How supple and fleshy our females are? You're a sugar-coated alien spy! Confess! Confess dagnamit!
If he can make an interstellar transmitter out of household objects, just imagine what he could have done if he'd been let loose in a hardware store or, heaven forbid, if he'd broken into NORAD.
I first saw E.T. on a pirated videotape my mother obtained from the club she worked in (where I got a taste for lime and sodawater I might add... ah, those were the days, hanging out with Sal and Tony, Maria and The Don... I was the only kid without a violin case... kidding) and some kids will tell you they hid behind the couch when watching stuff like Dr Who and the Daleks, or they were scared by the Predator or the Aliens, well not me, no way, I hid from that stumpy bastard E.T.
Something about the nature of movie monsters and aliens should always reflect the darker side of humanity in my opinion. "But its magical" yeah? And? So is Peter Pan, but you don't see him scaring the crap out of little girls, dressing in drag and then getting drunk, do you? Hmm, although I haven't seen the sequel yet, so maybe he does...
I'm reminded of something I read by Pat Mills in the late Eighties;
"It was the way he liked his aliens to be... utterly evil. He had always been disappointed that real aliens weren't the bug-eyed monsters of science fiction - constantly pursuing young women... this was something he'd sought to correct. The tentacled creature chasing luckless victims across science fiction covers, of course, symbolised the dark side of human nature, man's fantasies not about space but about himself..."
I do have one proposed solution to the problem. At the end of the movie E.T. lights up his finger (thats what you get for sticking your fingers in plug sockets kids), points it at Idiot's head and says that he'll "be right here"...
...bring me the head of Henry Thomas!
Flirting with the cowgirls...
Hi there, my name is D and I have a girlfriend which means I have to put up with a hell of a lot of flakey white chicklet music. For those of you who don't know what flakey white chiklet music is... anything with a girl and a guitar, anything lamenting lost loves solemnly at a microphone, and/or anything sung in a coffeeshop by struggling female college students.
Or so I thought...
We snagged two tickets for the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) private box at the Royal Albert Hall to see Jewel tonight (Pix did all the snagging, I just did the showing up) and sitting there in our little private box, just above and to one side of the Royal private box, I watched in curious wonder as this solo singer with guitar... and her brother on keyboards did a mix of white chicklet music and comedy.
Remember back, way back in the mists of time, when you heard Alanis for the first time and she was fresh and unsullied by endless airplay and MTV exposure... when you could feel emotion in those words rather than just the melody, that was what listening to Rosie Thomas felt like tonight. I seem to have this bad habit of enjoying the support acts more than the billed artists. First it was Four Star Mary being overshadowed by the excellent Farrah, then Tori Amos by... I forget his name... he's so obscure I can't find any info about him...
Rosie was the perfect warm-up... she set the mood and atmosphere perfectly, with a good dose of on-stage humor, but what was so surprising was the duality of her voice. On one side she had this incredible singing voice, it went all the right places and caused goose-flesh at times. But her speaking voice... it was so... I don't know... Gee Golly Mr Brady, I Just Wanna Date Your Son sort of thing... not squeeky or nasal... almost comical in itself, her innocent star-struck demeanor and affectations were so endearing...
Jewel was entertaining, but it'll be Rosie's CD in the player tomorrow. Don't think this will be the start of a trend though, this is one white chicklet and only one, the rest of the CD collection remains untainted.
Believe me, the irony of a private box with a glorious view of the stage normally being reserved for the blind is not lost on me... also, my chair was covered in Guide Dog hairs.
How to squat
Although a hell of attention is being lavished on the friction between India and Pakistan here these past few days, I was more interested in the story of a 24-hour rave taking place in the Brick Lane area of London, Aldgate more precisely.
Since the late Eighties there have been illegal raves going on across the country, with the majority of them taking place in and around London, leading to one techno act chosing to call themselves after the motorway that would take them from one gig to another; Orbital. The Prodigy wrote a very eloquent track regarding the Criminal Justice Act for their album "Music For The Jilted Generation" with the lyric "Fuck 'em, and their law"
What made this rave so interesting was that the organisers made use of a nice little squatting law by breaking in and changing the locks. Under civil law, providing they are not witnessed causing criminal damage or caught on camera (they can claim any damage was previously unreported vandalism) they can legally claim a right to be on the premises and even threaten to take legal action against anyone trying to forcefully remove them.
Providing somebody stays on site at all times during the first few weeks and that the occupiers do not receive a summary possession order from the landlord, which in any case cannot be enforced for a full five days. So the cunning ravers moved in, changed the locks, set up their sound equipment and started the rave. If they were smart about it they'd have posted up the following article of UK law in anticipation of the first people to complain about the noise calling the police;
LEGAL WARNING
Section 6 Criminal Law Act 1977
As amended by Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
TAKE NOTICE
THAT we live in this property, it is our home and we intend to stay here.
THAT at all times there is at least one person in this property.
THAT any entry or attempt to enter into this property without our permission is a criminal offence as any one of us who is in physical possession is opposed to entry without our permission.
THAT if you attempt to enter by violence or by threatening violence we will prosecute you. You may receive a sentence of up to six months imprisonment and/or a fine of up to 5,000.
THAT if you want to get us out you will have to take out a summons for possession in the County Court or in the High Court, or produce to us a written statement or certificate in terms of S.12A Criminal Law Act, 1977 (as inserted by Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994).
THAT it is an offence under S.12A (8) Criminal Law Act 1977 (as amended) to knowingly make a false statement to obtain a written statement for the purposes of S. 12A. A person guilty of such an offence may receive a sentence of up to six months imprisonment and/or a fine of up to 5,000.
Signed
The Occupiers
N.B. Signing this Legal warning is optional. It is equally valid whether or not it is signed.
The rave lasted for a full 24 hours starting from midnight on Saturday despite repeated complaints by the locals and visits from the police. Unfortunately a 29 year old man was found dead of an overdose in the street outside the warehouse. Pity that they were smart enough to use the law to their advantage to get what they wanted but not clever enough to just say no.
3720 to 1
Your chances of drawing a Royal flush during a game of five-stud poker are appoximately 649350 to 1 out of the four possible combinations available to you in a standard 52-card deck.
The average interval during full moons is 29.5 days, whereas the length of the average month is 30.5 days leading to the rare occasion whereby a month will contain two full moons. This is now erroneously referred to as a "Blue Moon".
The mistake dates back to 1946 when a journalist for Sky and Telescope magazine misunderstood the meaning in a 1937 Maine Farmer's Almanac that said a "Blue Moon" was the third full moon in a season containing four. Since then the popular misconception has remained that any second full moon in a month is a "Blue Moon". It still denotes a rare occurence, but we've been using the wrong mesuring stick for over fifty years.
So, just as I did with the Eighties, which of the following is utterly fabricated?
1. blue fizzle; slang for a poor recitation. Used as far back as the mid-1800's.
2. blue-gum; a derogative term for blacks during the civil war, due to the color of Union soldier uniforms.
3. blue ruin; a 1920's expression for poor quality liquor, usually applied to gin.
4. blue socks; trench slang for cowards with cold feet during the first World War.
5. blue nose; a person with ultra-strong puritanical moral convictions, convinced that having fun is immoral.
6. blue loco; a narcotic weed from the south-west plains with a blue blossom, also known as rattleweed.
Also, don't forget that the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand, seven hundred and twenty to one, and I think Aaliyah said it best when she said "Did I remember to pack my training weights?"
Kentucky Fried Dreams
As we sat in Ed's Diner in the red leather upholstered booth with milkshakes and burgers, the walls covered in 50's Americana, the harsh reality was brought home to me when upon asking Pix if she thought there really was an "Ed" somewhere she gave me a wake-up call.
There is no Ed, there is no friendly guy who had a dream and worked hard on a burger stall, grinding the beef and included a pound of love in every quarter pounder, he didn't add his tears to the frying onions or lovingly chip the potatoes (hence the reason they're called chips cause the french sure as hell had nothing to do with french fries)
Furthermore there was no Joe McDonald who worked hard and built up a franchise over time of McDonalds restaurants. If Old McDonald did have a farm he used mechanisation to obliterate his herds into small ground beef patties after striping the Amazon forest for grazing lands. There was no Burger King, there is no country in South America called the Coffee Republic, and Captain Ahab did not prefer Starbuck's coffee over Ishmael's.
I'm at a loss here... I always blindly trusted these corporate images given to... oh who am I trying to kid, I haven't trusted any fast food since I was in California. Other than Denny's... Denny's rules. I think I actually met Denny in one of his restaurants on Sunset Boulevard when I was a kid... honest.
Nelson laugh comes as standard
While out and about in north London (was he searching for buried treasure? was he on her majesty's secret service? was he bumming for quarters and cardboard sheets? We'll never know...) I was witness to two extremes of the verbal communication spectrum.
While sitting on a bus I heard "Aga-ga-goo-gaga Badaga-gaga-gaba" and noticed that the speaker and the speakee were both pre-schoolers. The speaker was pointing with one chubby digit and the speakee was wailing in distress. Best I could translate;
"Hey, you seem to have dropped your pacifier and have become terribly distressed by this state of affairs... haha! Sucks to be you!"
Conversely though, after getting off the bus and crossing the street I noticed two elderly gentlemen (see they had walking canes and hats, they had to be gentlemen) one of whom had fallen down and was being assisted by the other.
As I drew closer to see if they needed any further assistance I heard "Gwaram-brr eh engrr-em mwarmwam erg..." which seemed to translate to;
"My dear fellow, allow me to assist you as you seem to have fallen over and... haha! Sucks to be you!"
Duly noted
I hate finding old notepads with stuff scribbled throughout and you can no longer remember if any of it is important or not...
On one page I find "Fly to Lucifuge, enter Ritz in Santa Romero" and brother your guess is as good as mine because as far as I can determine there is no airport called Lucifuge, there is no Ritz in Santa Romero... and there is no Santa Romero.
Another page holds the following mystifying table;
AP WE GO CO
CO YA AP WE
WE GO CO YA
YA AP WE GO
Glad I kept a note of that... what is it?
Phone numbers are less of a problem... I mean, I can just call the number and find out who they are. Sort of;
"Hello..."
"Hello."
"Uh, who is this?"
"What do you mean who is this? You called me."
"Yes, but I didn't write your name down beside the number see..."
"Oh, hi Dave."
Then there's lists of coordinates for who-knows-what...
donut 50, 30000, 5, 08.04.02
teddy 20, 80000, 2, 08.04.02
etc, etc...
Coffee mug rings, check, frayed corners, check, partially torn pages, check. URLs now out of date, equations to problems I don't ever seem to have worked out, CD track lists and directions to places I don't remember. My problem of course is that I subscribed to the Indiana Jones school of thought; "I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember it." I just didn't leave myself any cunning clues as to what it all means.
Acerbia: The Movie
After a spate of young trendy teen movies like American Pie, Road Trip, and the inevitably self-referential Not Another Teen Movie, we are now treated to the obvious evolution of the genre as scriptwriters and producers turn to the young and struggling twenty-somethings as their focus.
Think Bridget Jones' Diary meets the teen movie of your choosing. With the splendid Josh Hartnet (The Faculty, Black Hawk Down, 40 Days, 40 Nights) playing the role of D as he tries to make his way in London, here given the beautification treatment Jean-Pierre Jeunet used to great success in Amelie courtesy of local studio Cinesite London.
As the foil to his dry wit and bitter perspective of life is the gorgeous Mena Suvari, displaying one of cinema's least convincing English accents. Rounding out the ensemble is Jean Reno as D's boss at the advertising agency he works for and Gary Oldman as the rival ad man looking to steal lucrative contracts out from under them.
As source material goes we've seen books, comics, video games, and even in the case of Bridget Jones, a serialised fictitious newspaper column being translated onto the silver screen. To my mind this is the first project based upon a relatively obscure medium known as "blogging" where online writer's display unedited and uncensored views on current affairs in the hopes of informing and entertaining their audiences. If past experience is anything to go by, this may be the first of many.
Cartoon violence
It was agreed by general consensus amongst the support group that all of our lives would be greatly improved if Gumby were to die.
At first I was somewhat worried when Alan strapped the napalm tank to my back, but after the group's initial contact with the green bastard I realised there was no such thing as overkill when tackling polymorphic childhood television characters.
Rowan called in the airstrike and after we'd levelled our first city block pursuing Gumby, the rest just seemed to happen naturally. Detonating the town's gas supply pipelines was inspired thinking when it came to flushing him out and although admittedly civilian casualties were high I trust everyone who survived will agree that we did the world a great service.
With that final blast from the 12 gauge to his front temple Alvin finished Gumby off once and for all, as such he got to sever the hollowed head and take it home to mount on his wall. All I got was a severed foot to turn into an umbrella stand.
Next week the group will be getting together again to track down and hopefully kill some of the supporting cast of The Simpsons. I wanna bag me a Sideshow Mel.
Indulge me
I tease at first, my fingers dancing over the soft, padded keys of a Logitech keyboard. A little intro paragraph just to whet the appetite and leave a hankering for more.
What could this be about? Could it be a decadent admonition of tender guilt? Could it be a spiral of nostalgia curling up from the depths of my memory to be eviscerated and exposed in stark naked textual butchery before a limited audience? A digression? A critique? A frank revelatory smattering of words held together with punctuation and the occasional typo?
With the double-tap of the enter key another paragraph is broached and the intrigue only deepens. What does this all mean? To whom is this addressed? A narcissistic, self-penned, introspective diatribe? A soliloquy to the ether of the Web? A moment of clarity punctuating a period of delirious sleep-deprivation? Maybe this is one of those experiments where a writer sits with a bottle of liquor and takes sips at various intervals? Primal scream therapy translated to a different medium?
Maybe there is no rhyme or reason to the whole endeavour, maybe its all been a sham from the start, what can anyone take for granted these days anymore? A piece of composition remains a piece of a composition, the meaning there to fathom by those who chose to look, and a superficial sense of reasoning gleaned by those who simply scan. Look closer and maybe you'll see something multi-layered, multi-angled, multi-purposeful, or maybe you'll just hurt your eyes.
Maybe this was just put here to fill space and serve as a piece of self-referential ego-inflation, or maybe there's a cunningly disguised secret meaning behind it all only the smart ones will see. You know, the ones you look up to... they'd spot it immediately... if it was there...
Eat me. Drink me. Buy me.
I sat in the lobby of the London building of one of the world's biggest and most prestigious advertising companies. On the top marble of the entranceway was engraved "Nothing is impossible" but it might as well have been "Nothing is unsellable"
As I sat on the leather-topped bench, my shined shoes reflecting the vaulted cieling, the seams of my black suit trousers aligned perfectly with the swirling black marble tiles and today's copy of the Guardian crisply spread before me I noticed the wall screen playing commercials.
It took me a few minutes to realise that this was no advert break, there was no program to be returned to when the sponsorship messages were finished, this was the ultimate in marketing, an all-commercials looped showreel. Sure enough after five minutes the same commercials began again and even though I had just sat through them all and had a damned interesting newspaper before me, the hypnotic capitalist branding was ever-so-slowly brainwashing me.
I almost felt like Hans Zarkov having his mind emptied by Klytus and Kala in the 1980 Flash Gordon. Emptying my mind like they would empty my pockets... consume! Consume! CONSUME! from this day forth you would have to call me Agent D, number two-one-double-three, of the imperial anti-insurgant espionage group. Hail Ming! Also, buy more stuff!
I survived only by mentally armoring myself by humming tunes and sketches from the Muppets to myself. Mahna mahna, Hugga-wugga, this is Dr Bunsen Honeydew here at Muppet Labs where the future is being made today... bork, bork, bork. Oh, and I got the job.
Service Unavailable
An entry for Saturday is missing. Why is it missing? Well quite simply because although the technology exists for me to have been swinging in that hammock in my parent's apple orchard in France with a cool iced peach tea beside me and an Iain M. Banks book only to reach over and use Pix's new laptop coupled with an international GPRS mobile phone to write about and publish to the web the joys of being in a hammock in an orchard in France with a cool drink and a good book... it didn't quite work out that way.
My video tutor was constantly bitter about the fact that modern science can split the atom and put men on the moon but can't develop decent devices without wires. This was a few years before Bluetooth became available.
The laptop made the journey over to France enjoyable simply by allowing Pix to tool around in Fireworks and I to vent a little anger on the citizens of Liberty City in the Grand Theft Auto games. I expressely had international call barring lifted from my new micro mini teeny-tiny mobile phone (otherwise known as the Nokia Lost-It-Again 8310) so I could make that call as the Eurostar pulled into Gare du Nord; "Yes, I've arrived, have the car waiting out front"
Also, the laptop has a DVD-ROM drive which would have been really great for allowing us to watch the 94-minute long Final Destination (talk about a script dwelling in contrivance!) on our return journey this evening if the battery hadn't run out after an hour and a half. We got home to find we'd missed The Osbornes and very nearly 24.
I just can't help but feel that I've been cheated out of a "Textism" moment by the limitations of call center operators and battery manufacturers. Peter Mayle never had this problem.
Wanted, nice house in Tehran
Having seen The West Wing I understand that White House staffers will occasionally appear on shows like "Crossfire" and debate issues with their opposition and critics... but that the President himself never need sit down and be interrogated... sorry... face an open debate on his policies with a hardline journalist.
I wonder why that is? Over here in the UK we've had the pleasure of watching one of the hardest-hitting critics of government, Jeremy Paxman, grilling Tony Blair... in his spare time Jeremy hosts an intellectual quiz show called "University Challenge" which has to be watched drunk at 3 a.m. to be appreciated properly.
On the issue of the Axis of Evil, the line of question and answering footsie went as so;
Paxman: Do you believe that there is an Axis of Evil?
Blair: I believe that weapons of mass destruction are a real evil.
Paxman: I note that you have never used the phrase Axis of Evil.
Blair: I think the President was right to say weapons of mass destruction are a real issue and evil in the world.
Paxman: But the phrase Axis of Evil is a silly phrase, isn't it?
Blair: No, I don't agree.
POaxman: You think there really is an Axis of Evil?
Blair: As I said to you, I think weapons of mass destruction...
Paxman: Do you believe there is an Axis of Evil?
Blair: I believe weapons of mass destruction are a real evil.
Paxman: I'm asking if you think there's an Axis of Evil.
Blair: What I'm saying to you is that what the President was referring to is the issue of weapons of mass destruction and support for international terrorism.
Paxman: Do you think Iran is part of an Axis of Evil?
Blair: I think Iran, in certain of the actions it takes, has the capacity to threaten the world.
Paxman: Do you believe they're part of this Axis of Evil?
Blair: I think certain things they're doing are wrong.
Now who can argue with reasoning like that? There may or may not be an Axis of Evil out there, they may or may not actually be evil, Iran may or may not be a part of it, but one thing we are certain of is that weapons of mass destruction are involved and that Iran isn't such a great place to live.
Bored now
It was a very hot day here and I spent most of the afternoon sunning myself on the terrace with a cold drink and a book about the 101st Screaming Eagles. I had attempted to book tickets over the Net last night for Episode 2 but gremlins got in the works and I ended up with two different error messages and a request to contact their support team. I did so and they booked the tickets for me.
Already I can see that a lot of people are liking Episode 2, perhaps because Episode 1 so drastically lowered everyone's expectations, perhaps because... well I don't know why.
I didn't enjoy it. Sure, the final half hour was more than entertaining and exciting and there are at least two other action sequences worth watching... but it was all just so dull in places. The investigating Obi-Wan, the mournful Anakin and the tarty Amidala. I never thought I would check my watch during the two hours and twenty runtime, and yet an hour and a half in I was bored.
Too many times an idea that had been seen before in Empire cropped up. A line from one of the original trilogy was reitterated under different circumstances. Anakin's nightmare brought tittering and giggles even from me it was so ham-fistedly portrayed. The blossoming romance made me ill, a lot of the blue screen work left me unimpressed. Some locales were incredibly impressive, but others... a diner on Coruscant... sorry... a diner? With red leather seats in booths and a droid waitress who offers a cup o'joe? A fat diner chef who pushes the plot forward? What the fuck?
Yoda's attempts at seriousness, especially his attack stance, caused outbursts of laughter I'm sure weren't intended by Lucas. So much for the "darker, more mature" theme to the movie, it just wasn't happening for me. Seemingly not only can I not recapture my youth but I can't even enjoy what many people are hailing as a vast improvement on Episode One.
It was a shame that Pix didn't have her digital camera with her, for the first time ever I saw a queue of people extended around the block waiting to get in for the next showing. I had to feel slightly sorry for the die-hard fans among them who didn't know yet what they were in for.
D's Silly Hate Crimes 2000
Last night Pix and I took part in a debate on discrimination in the workplace. The debate was being recorded on audio tape and chaired by one of my housemates that we'll call U. To be fair... U's... well, she's one of the blonder women around. Y'know... a few volts short of being the brightest spark in a darkroom. An analogy to the situation would be if Brittney Spears chaired a debate on nuclear disarmament at the United Nations.
From U's list of four scribbled questions, the various participants gave their anecdotes of never actually having felt discriminated against or witnessing it within the workplace. U was obviously hoping for more conflicting opinions and exciting stories of power struggles within the office. Since Pix works in HR she had plenty to say but there wasn't really anything desperately juicy or controvertial revealed and people's mobiles kept going off and messing with the microphone.
At the end of it all, with everyone wondering what, if anything, had actually been resolved or said, it turned out that the micro-cassette recorder had been playing a blank tape instead of recording the debate onto it, leaving U with 3000 words to come up with out of a debate she had only been half listening to because she was convinced she would have a recording of it to review at her leisure.
I wonder if the U.N. ever has that problem...
Justify my geekiness
Since I was in the Tottenham Court Road area anyway for an interview with a major advertising company I headed down to New Oxford Street to see if there were any good comics out this week at Forbidden Planet.
Upon entering I saw again that they've devoted an entire wall to Star Wars action figures and vehicules. In front of this wall a female interviewer and cameraman were talking to some of the customers about their love of Star Wars, I avoided them like the plague.
As I was browsing the shelves for decent new releases I heard the interviewer ask if any of the fans could do impersonations of their favorite characters. Incredibly one of them actually impersonated Jar Jar Binks...
With each fan interviewed, the interviewer would ask for an impersonation and a chorus of wookie roars and Jawa "oo-tee-dee"s from the staff would ensue until a cacophony of Huttese and Ewok "beecha-wa-wa"s would just leave everyone in fits of laughter.
Having sidestepped the camera crew on the way in I had to avoid them again on the way back to the cash register and when stopped and asked if I could do an impersonation of my favorite Star Wars character two things simultaneously passed through my mind. One was my best impression of Greedo "Oo-ta Goo-ta So-lo?" and the other was the mental image of me in my best interview suit as a piece of filler at the end of the evening news looking like a complete fanboy geek.
I told them I didn't do impersonations.
Not in a suit at least. Besides, what if I didn't survive? I'm worth a lot to Boba Fett...
I want... one million dollars!
So its half one in the morning and I'm sitting, listening to the more-than-superlative Jin-Roh soundtrack by Hajime Mizouguchi and wondering where it all went wrong.
I had such wonderful, wonderful plans.
First I would amass a small core group of violent yet obedient hellions. We would slowly take over a nice quiet neighborhood and rig a local election so I was elected to government.
Channeling funds into a slush-fund I would purchase arms for the growing ranks of my suburban army and we would take over some of the smaller boroughs of London, all the while assuring my remaining constituents that I had their best interests at heart...
Staging a mock coup with a third of my armed militia, I would supress it with the remaining two thirds and proclaim myself the people's guardian. On a swell of media attention and public appreciation I would elevate my political profile to become a candidate for Prime Minister.
Once elected I would sever all ties between the government and royalty and dissolve both chambers of the houses of Parliament, effectively turning britain into a dictatorship. Having battle-hardened my private army to the level of shock troops I would instigate a small Europe-wide scandal and withdraw from the European Union and the UN.
Next, with carrier groups in place and a signed non-agression treaty with the US I would attack France from within by stirring up civil unrest and impose an occupying army under the claim that it was in the best interests of my own country. Using France as a staging area I would subjugate the various other European states one by one.
With pin-point aerial attacks on the capitals of the Middle East, severing their communications and intelligence-gathering resources, I would hold the rest of the world to ransom for...
...thats as far as I've got.
Just remember what history has taught us; that the best way to unite a people behind even an inept corrupt leader (possibly with junkie twin daughters) is to convince them that it is all someone else's fault and to point the finger or occasionally go to war with them. War is good for the economy as well as public moral, other matters seem trivial in comparison when they would have stuck out like a sore thumb beforehand.
Kitchen Ballet
I live with a Financial risk statician (or anal-yst) who works for a large Italian bank. He's a pretty interesting guy, if only he had the social skills to make that obvious. When we cross paths there's usually a terse "hi" or rhetorical "hows it going?" and we never get beyond a three-volley reply situation as conversation peters out after establishing that we're both fine and neither of us cares.
So when we meet in the kitchen and neither of us is willing to just wait we engage in what I would call "kitchen ballet", the rules of which are very simple. After establishing that we're both fine and neither of us would spit on the other if they were suddenly to become a human fireball, you avoid all manner of eye contact. Physical contact is avoided no matter how extreme a contorsion you have to manoeuvre, sprain a joint, slip a disk, whatever, you do not even brush past one another.
The areas where this becomes most difficult however are the fridge, the sink and the cutlery drawer and when I'm making nachos and he's washing cutlery and worktops this can prove to be pretty tough going. Imagine if you will the Anti-Kama Sutra: positions for people who loathe being in the same room together.
I go for cheese and body-swerve him as he moves from sink to drawer, I need cheese grater and we side without looking, a sixth sense saves me from even noticing he's breathing as he wipes the counter near me.
I'm reminded of that episode of Buffy where the girl becomes invisible simply because everyone ignores her. With a little luck... maybe I can make him disappear too... but who am I to complain? I won-won, I have a plate of nachos and a clean kitchen.
Vampires, Zombies and Werewolves, oh my
In the past four weeks or so I have seen a vampire movie, a zombie movie and as of tonight a werewolf movie. I'm not really a horror fan, in fact I prefer my horror movies to be psychological horror rather than straight-out gore (except for anything with Bruce Campbell). The last time I was scared shitless by a movie was the final fifteen minutes of Ring... y'know the bit I'm talking about? When she's down there in that well and they're emptying the water out bucket by bucket and we all know whats down there already...
Resident Evil was filmed with London and Berlin standing in for Racoon City (must be a Japanese thing, who would call a city "Racoon City"?), Blade 2 was filmed with Prague standing in for... well... if it was supposed to be Prague then all the locals spoke surprisingly good English, and Dog Soldiers was filmed in Luxemburg, standing in for the Highlands of Scotland... this due to the fact the film was made with a grant from the Luxemburg Film Comission (eh?!)
Resident Evil cost $40 million to make and had a strong backstory to lift from in the popular games series. Blade 2 cost $55 million to make and had an enjoyable predecessor as well as the wealth of talent available from Marvel Comics. Dog Soldiers cost all of £3.5 million (about $5 million) to make, pinched from all sorts of places and was easily the best of the bunch.
Yes it was low budget, yes you could see through a lot of the plot, yes the visual effects and pyrotechnics were ropey at times... but! They never pretended to be anything they weren't and they were so obviously all about the low-budget horror in the vein of Evil Dead and Braindead, with no hidden pretenses or aspirations to be "art".
All three films had ensembles (even Blade who should really be a one-man show), all three had traitors within the group; vampires tainted with the Reaper mutagen, Umbrella special forces bitten by zombies, squaddies slashed by werewolves (since when did getting slashed by a werewolf turn you into one?) all three ended with a lone survivor... but only one of them didn't make me roll my eyes persistently and that was the cheap one.
It really is a crime that Dog Soldiers won't get a US release. Possibly an arthouse release, but seriously, the script had moments of sheer brilliance, the humor was pretty sharp, the gore was... gory... while Resident Evil had a pretty low gore rating and Blade had dust instead of gore. Here in the UK theres an outcry for decent cinema, since we can't hope to compete with the sheer saturation of American movies good and bad and Dog Soldiers should be taken over there and shown to the aspiring guerrilla film-makers and the people who remember American Werewolf in London with fondness. Paul Anderson (whom I've lost all respect for since Soldier) and David Goyer should hang their heads in shame at being shown up by the new kids.
Green tea... yay!
We spent part of our Sunday afternoon of the aforementioned Long Weekend in one of the not-quite-as-local-as-it-could-be supermarkets. As we trawled up the very first aisle we paused at a display of oriental delicacies. Cans of Oolong tea, boxes of pre-made sushi, packets of calamari... my eyes settled on cans of chilled green tea. I picked one up and checked the list of ingredients... no sugar content, no carbohydrates, no fat, no preservatives, just 100% natural green tea.
Because I wanted one, Ann decided she'd have one too. I went to pull the ring-pull and she frowned.
"Don't open that here."
Why not?
"Just don't drink it until we've paid for it."
But we're going to pay for it whether its empty or full.
"I just feel like its stealing."
We eat in restaurants before paying... thats not stealing.
"I don't want you to open it, thats all."
I paused and asked a woman stocking shelves if it was okay for me to drink the green tea before paying for it. Ann's frown became one of those facial arrangements only women can make and all men dread, so I didn't open the can.
We continued along the aisles... somehow getting turned around because we finished in the back left corner instead of at the tills... maybe there was an odd number of aisles... or even... whichever would make you end up where we ended up... maybe we skipped an aisle... and eventually went along a few aisles a few more times to ensure we really did have everything we needed to survive another week (this is sometimes referred to as "bimbling")
Having finally gotten through the check-out and paid for everything I popped the can open and took a long cool sip of the... Jesus H. Christ! I can't believe I put that in my mouth!!! I let Ann have a sip, she disliked it immediately also, so we gave the resident vegan the unopened can, I understand they're not fussy, so long as its 100% natural.
Snooker Loopy
We're having a Bank Holiday here in the UK this weekend. Whereas in the US your bank holidays are days when bank's don't open because of some other event like President's Day, Columbus Day or Thanksgiving, here in the UK the banks take it upon themselves to give us all a public holiday because we don't have Presidents, only ever see reruns of Columbus (he was the guy in the dirty trench coat who discovered America, right?) or have anything to give thanks for other than we went and lost every country in the Empire.
Bank Holidays are different between the various parts of the UK with some days only available to people in Scotland and some only in England... sometimes months can go by without one and other months you'll find two and happily break out the barbeque. They tend to be on Mondays.
So this weekend we get to enjoy the Snooker World Championships. Something else we have that you Americans don't, which would explain why the "world" championships are being held in cosmopolitain Sheffield. Its difficult to get excited about, its like trying to make a big deal about the baseball "world" series... when only the US and Japan take the game seriously and the Japanese only semi-seriously at that.
Snooker is far more boring than Pool. Pool requires drinking. Snooker requires plaid waistcoats and very stern looks at angles and cueball spin ratios. You could never have made The Color Of Money about Snooker unless you replaced Paul Newman with Leonard Nimoy and Tom Cruise with... Milhouse from The Simpsons or something.
The final takes two days to play itself out, assuming both players are of a high enough caliber, and is the best of 35 games. One player is required to win 18 games over 48 hours... with sessions of four or five games being played with break periods between them.
Amazingly its not always the tallest player who wins. I understand patience may play a big part of it...
Phone home
I got a new mobile phone on a whim, as it was pointed out to me that I had been with my service provider for more than a year and I could trade up to a better model. My old phone was the Matrix phone with WAP capabilities and the large screen. None of that mattered because the lower part fwipped. *fwip* Just like in the movie. Ring, ring... ring, ring... *fwip* "Hello? Morpheus, is that you?" Of course within a few months the next model, the Charlie's Angels model, became available and I couldn't trade up, not for a year.
My new phone is small. Very small. Propotionally, it is shorter than my index finger, thinner than my thumb and lighter than my keys. Its shock-proof, future-proof, and idiot-proof. Upon getting it home I set up the various FM radio channels it can receive and assigned voice tags to the speed-dials. All I have to do is say "phone Ann" and the phone calls up Ann and apologises to her profusely (a very useful feature) I've even set the ringer to silent so that I don't disturb anyone with annoying shrill ringtones.
Now... where did I put it?