Musings of the Cosmic Calamari

Next Year: Kittens Bad, Wasps Good

2012-02-01T10:17:00.001Z

My baffling obsession with the morass of stool water and maggot-filled black jism that is the contemporary Republican Party is finally retroactively explained today: not only are they anti-puppy, they're also pro-snake.

(For context, my girlfriend has pretty bad ophidiophobia, as well as being even more of a dog lover than I am. She actually mentioned Florida's python infestation to me yesterday, and told me they were trying to get something done about it. My immediate thought was that I could probably guess why she had to use the words "were trying" instead of "had begun".)

"Retreat To The Upper Levels!"

2012-01-31T16:42:00.033Z

There's a lot to enrage about this Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that CO2's role in global warming - and specifically our own output - is in fact exaggerated, but it's all stuff we've seen before. Deliberate misrepresentation and misinterpretation? Check. Accusations by oil company executives that those arguing for global warming have too much money at stake to be trustworthy? Uh huh. The conflation of uncertainty in predicting values with uncertainty in predicting trends? Naturally. Using a piece in a newspaper with a circulation of two point fucking one million to compare themselves to Soviet researchers who were "disappeared" to prevent their research being promulgated? Yep, that's in there too. [1]

I must confess, however, that I'm grimly amused by the balls on these people. First we got "There's no evidence the world is warming, and everyone claiming otherwise is lying to you!". Then it became "It's just possible the Earth is warming, but there's no evidence human activity is contributing to the trend, and everyone claiming otherwise is shilling for money!".

Now, apparently, we've reached a new stage: "It seems the Earth is warming - though everyone else lied about how fast it would warm up - and it seems humanity's actions might be part of the reason why. But there's no evidence that our contribution is anything like as big as all that, and everyone claiming otherwise is involved in a vast international conspiracy to increase taxes for some reason!"

Lesser minds might have flagged at this point, and wearily admitted that it's just about possible that the accumulation of ever more evidence might once again force them to ~~silently move the goalposts to ensure their lies continue to have the veneer of plausibility~~ conclude they're wrong on this occasion as well, or at least that those on the other side of the issue might at least be arguing in good faith, rather than reading Solzhenitsyn and jotting down ideas.

But, heh: that's exactly the sort of thinking that doesn't get you thrown in a Siberian gulag, and that's not the sort of concession to the enemy those with a selfless dedication to revealing the truth in exchange for money are prepared to make!

[1] Interestingly, Think Progress notes that the WSJ was sent a letter by proponents of the other side of this little fracas, and the paper didn't think it was worth printing. Now, I don't get to decide what does and doesn't deserve to be printed in the Wall Street Journal - though, really, it's hard to see how I, or a concussed dugong, could do worse than its own staff these days - but one might have hoped that someone involved in this piece at some point might have wanted to reconsider their Soviet gulag analogy. Whatever one's personal feelings about the USSR in general, I'd think we can all agree that had a scientist received a letter from Director Lysenko saying "knock this shit off", they were unlikely to have gotten away with burning the pages in public and releasing a press release calling him a prick.

"Maybe I'll run another piece on how the phone-hacking scandal
has turned Rupert Murdoch into a helpless victim..."

Conflicting Interests

2012-01-30T12:47:00.000Z

One of my co-workers is having trouble with a deeply antisocial neighbour, who amongst other things keeps playing music at four in the morning. She also suspects he might be a benefit cheat, and there's significant evidence that he's gay, so I suggested phoning the Daily Mail. YOUNG WOMAN KEPT UP BY GAY BENEFIT-CHEAT seems right up their alley.

Except then I remembered that my co-worker is a German immigrant who took one of our jobs. It's hard to predict which way the Mail would jump on that one.

A Tale Of Cocktails #22

2012-01-29T15:52:00.001Z

Dennis the Menace

Ingredients

1 oz peach schnapps
1 oz Malibu rum

1 1/2 oz pineapple juice
1 1/2 oz cranberry juice

Taste: 7

Look: 7

Cost: 8
Name: 7
Prep: 8
Alcohol: 5
Overall: 7.1

Preparation: Shake the schnapps and Malibu along with crushed ice. Strain into a Collins glass and add the juices.

General Comments: This is something of a re-working of the inimitable Woo Woo, one of my all-time favourites. Alas, this cocktail doesn't really measure up. It's not a bad drink by any means, and all four ingredients blend perfectly together. Paradoxically, however, this actually ends up working against the drink. The amount of cranberry juice in a Woo Woo gives the cocktail its bite, by mixing in the pineapple juice, you get far less of an effect. It's light and refreshing (and more powerful than you'd imagine by taste alone), but it's begging for something extra to provide a kick.

It also looks a bit dull (I think a glace cherry garnish would be a good idea, at least), and the name, whilst nicely playful, doesn't really make any sense. All in all, it's less than the sum of its parts.

Friday Comedy: Mocking The Giants

2012-01-27T09:09:00.001Z

Much as I love Stewart Lee, a fact demonstrated more than once on this blog, I have to admit that this is a pretty funny deconstruction of his style.

Bring Back National Service (Or Possibly Fur Coats)

2012-01-26T21:40:00.006Z

Sodding leopards! They're stealing our cameras now! I'm sure the tree-hugging eco-maniac types are crying tears of joy into their vegan lasagnas that there's an "unusually high" density of snow leopards in these mountains, but the disgraceful behaviour of their children demonstrate why: it's a big cat council estate.

Well, that or it's a staging area for the upcoming invasion. Depends if those cubs are uncontrollable snipes flogging hot goods in exchange for cat-nip, or a highly trained paramilitary youth movement helping to fund the leopard war effort.

If our government starts flogging Harriers to Tajikistan, we'll know what's happened.

Update: Dammit, now they're trying to blame the oranges! Link should be fixed now.

Special Bonus Prick

2012-01-25T12:16:00.002Z

Shorter Rand Paul: "I don't want special treatment because I'm a senator, I want special treatment because I'm white."

The Life-Easing Properties Of Tiny Shit-Cannons

2012-01-25T12:03:00.004Z

Ah, Cameron's Conservatism. So... compassionate.

I don't really have anything to say on the specific value of the cap Cameron is proposing. I lack the necessary data for that. I would, however, like to point out three things:

Arguing that the cap can't be too low because lots of people want it to be lower still is functionally equivalent to saying "A lot of pricks want me to be a bigger prick, so I don't see why my prickishness should be a problem" [1];
Telling people that in a time of high employment the cause of child suffering he's focusing on is the people who could work but can't be bothered displays an ear so shot through with tin it belongs down a mine in Poldark;
How can a man with four children possibly be so stupid as to sign on to arguments that suggest people view an extra baby or nine as being a good way of avoiding hard work, or ensuring a greater amount of living space?

A quick pitch for a reality TV show: David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith are invited to live for six months in Blenheim Palace, only to discover on arrival that every one of the staff has been replaced with a three month old baby and a single bag of Pampers. The entire area is then sealed off, save for a weekly Tesco's delivery, and the resulting mayhem is filmed until it looks like a baby's health might be in danger, or Dave and IDS reconsider this government's social policy. Or the next election is called, whichever comes first.

Working title: "Rugtwats".

[1] I wonder if Enoch Powell ever tried that one? "A lot of people wanted me to say 'The river Tiber foaming with much blood, and also the piss of darkies and the semen of homos'!"

Dwarves Have Weird Hobbies

2012-01-21T19:44:00.004Z

Since The Other Half was kind enough to buy this for my birthday, you might want to take this review with a pinch of salt, though if I had hated it, I promise you I'd just keep quiet, rather than spinning an intricate web of internet-based deceit.

Anyway, whether you believe me or not, Drako is pretty good. Much as I love games of significant, even implausible complexity (as previoulsy reported, my favorite game is now so staggering convoluted even its expansions need expansions), there's something to be said about a game you can pull down and play through to completion in under thirty minutes.

Drako fulfils that need exceptionally well. In large part, that's because it's a game about three dwarves trying to mess up a dragon, Who wouldn't want to play that? They're pretty good at it, too. Perhaps they've been practising, working their way upwards from particulary vicious pigeons (alas, not represented in the game mechanics). They've brought a net, and a crossbow, and one guy who gets really angry, and they have to chop off the dragons wings, its feet, and whatever bit of it lets it breath fire, before they run of out time and the dragon flies away . Oddly, the dragon can still do this without wings. And feet. Maybe if necessary it can roll its broken body down the mountain side? We can only speculate.

For its part, the dragon has to survive until the dwarf player runs out of cards (you can draw two cards or play one each action, and there are two actions to a turn), or it manages to kill all three dwarves (no easy task - in our first two games not a single dwarf was killed). The dragon player has a deck, too (running out of these doesn't end the game, but it does mean that the dragon can't do anything, which generally seals its fate). The cards themselves display the various actions that can be performed - moving, flying, attacking, or launching nets/quarrels/jets of flame. They can also display defence actions, which protect you from attack, but at the expense of not getting to use whatever else in on the card too.

And that's pretty much it. There's enough going on to make the game more than just hoping for the right card (both times we played, the dragon died as a result of the last attack left in the dwarf deck, which suggests the game is nicely balanced, at least for rookies), but you can read the rules in ten minutes and explain what matters in about half that time. It's only disadvantage is it's for just two players play it (I suppose three people could take a dwarf each, but the bitching over who got to use each card would probably ruin the speed of the game), but otherwise, it's a really nice way to plug a half-hour hole in your day.

It's nice and pretty, too. Looks like there's four more miniatures to add to my increasingly ridiculous paint list.

Late As Well As Not Very Good

2012-01-20T09:31:00.000Z

Count up for me all of the days
You've managed to survive
Subtract one for every leap year
And divide by three-six-five
If the remainder equals zero
Then do not be surprised
That it's socially demanded
You say you're glad to be alive.

Merry Quizmas Redux

2012-01-18T14:21:00.001Z

Answers up now. Faintly surprised no-one reads Billy Bunter anymore, and that "2,000 Miles" isn't more well-known a song than it apparently is. Admittedly, its link to Christmas has maybe been overplayed a little (depending on how one interprets the lyrics), but in my opinion, only "Fairytale of New York" is more a more welcome tune when heard through shop speakers or a pub jukebox over the festive season.

Anyway, that's another holiday period sorted. Time to start planning the Easter edition.

Apparently, We're Mainly Conserving Intelligence

2012-01-17T21:25:00.008Z

I realise that this is intended to be a light-hearted article/conversation-starter, rather than a coherent political argument, but holy lizard balls, this list is stupid.

(The tell of course, is the fact that his three criteria for a "conservative" film are patriotism/love of the military, a pro-free market message, and pissing off liberals. Quite the set of principles you've got there, Gardiner: no wonder you're grinning like Dale Winton on Supermarket Sweep, ten seconds after he's eaten a locust and turd panini).

Ordinarily, there'd be a few things to say about this: the increasingly annoying idea that liberalism/leftism (delete as required) is a priori anti-military or unpatriotic (the latter in particular is never argued by anyone other than those who are convinced that loving one's country requires that you love their specific view of the world in general - which is to say: cunts); the failure to distinguish between being pro-military and being slavishly pro-military to the point of propaganda (see A Few Good Men, for example, a film which rips apart those who abuse their power in the military precisely because of the respect it has for the institution as a whole); the endlessly idiotic suggestion that conservatism is something that automatically annoys the left, as oppose to annoying us when they stick together a list of films about white people shooting darkies and then pretending not to notice the recurring theme.

All of that would be redundant, though. The only thing you need to work out Gardiner's opinions on cinema or anything else are objectively worthless is this quote right here:

Zulu is one of the only films of the modern age that chose not to condemn or vilify Britain's imperial heritage, but instead highlighted the extraordinary courage of the men who fought and died in defence of the largest and most benevolent Empire the world had ever seen.

Most. Benevolent. Empire.

Aside from this being an award functionally equivalent to being crowned "most tall dwarf" (screw you, Stewart Lee!), we've apparently learned that being conservative means telling the Irish they can go fuck themselves. I'm sure we can find a film about that somewhere, can't we? Gardiner will doubtless love it.

(Also: The Killing Fields? That's a film about how horrible Communist dictatorships are, and how they can get their foot in the door following the callous and murderous actions of Western conservatives. So I'm fairly sure you don't get to claim that one, actually).

Another Year, Another Post

2012-01-15T21:20:00.000Z

The unquestionable mathematics of linear time have deemed that this day be considered my "birthday". It's been thirty two years since I first squirmed out into the world, and global domination is still as far from my tentacle tips as ever it was. Other than that, though, I seem to have done OK.

I've certainly been damned lucky in my choice of friends and girlfriend, certainly. Currently sitting on my kitchen worktops is this deliciously citrus-tinged delight, baked by The Other Half, and just waiting for me to digest my Chinese dinner enough to allow me to start gorging.

Also on display in chez calamari: this truly beautiful birthday card, designed by My Other Half's workmate, and our mutual friend, Michelle Webb.

Cocktails, doggies, and probability formulae. The woman knows her audience.

Further examples can be found at her shop, which I recommend browsing.

Friday 40K: The Motley Crusade

2012-01-13T10:31:00.002Z

After getting my Tyranid army up to 2500 points, and completly re-basing both it and my Tau force, I thought I'd go for something at least a little different, so I've set about finishing painting up the Space Marines from the Assault on Black Reach box. I've now gotten through the tactical squad, which combined with its equivalent from Battle for Macragge, and a Sterguard Veteran and old-time Veteran Sergeant, has given me the beginnings of a Space Marine Crusade army, which for those who don't remember the term, just means "a shitload of different Chapters who all show up at once."

(For those of you who remember the Space Squids back-story I started putting together - and which I still intend to complete, though that's true of about eight different things at this point - the dark-skinned individuals above were born on Four Feathers. The Kringrimmi will have a different skin tone, but none of those that remain will be likely to be sergeants, or at least not without Terminator armour as well.)

Meanwhile, at the paint station:

That Dreadnought is destined to join the ranks of the Salamanders (who are looking somewhat under-represented just now). But what are those two things that look like tiny ironing stands? For those who don't recognise them, I shall give you a clue: the only reason they haven't progressed beyond the undercoat stage is that I've run out of Regal Blue.

Pope-ulation Control

2012-01-12T10:32:00.005Z

Oh, for the love of God.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony in that statement. I don't believe in the Catholic's concept of God, or anybody else's. But I'd like to think that, if the Christian God were (or is) real, he might be a fan such things as basic logic.

Listen up, Benny: there are seven billion people on this planet. Seven. Billion. Seven zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero (85% of which aren't Catholics, by the way). The things that threaten humanity itself are, in no real order; asteroid strike; nuclear war; super-charged flu pandemic; and a shadowy international conspiracy of murderous leopards.

And running out of room. The natural world can offer plenty of examples of species and local populations who plummeted to their extinction just after reaching their highest ever numbers, because they eat all the food, drink all the beer, and generally carry on with no more thought to tomorrow than Bill Murray in Groudhog Day. The human race isn't there yet, of course, but we're a damn sight closer to it than we are to being wiped out if gay people get to tie the knot. At least when your predecessor banned in-vitro fertilisation, that was a move in the right direction, cold-hearted and nonsensical though it was. [1]

I'd actually have more respect for the Pope if he just came out with "Dudes, it's in the Bible. Go check that shit out." That raises other questions, of course, but at least it would be honest. Trying to dress up common-or-garden homophobia as a principled attempt to save humanity is the highest form of bullshit, and it's cowardly as well.

[1] Perhaps this whole thing is a two-pronged attack to ensure The Forever War never comes about. I can't imagine the Catholic hierarchy getting along too well in a world where overcrowding issues have been solved by growing all new people in vats, and turning the entire population gay to prevent pregnancy. It's a neat idea, and demonstrates conclusively that being the only straight man on a planet filled with lesbians isn't nearly as brilliant an idea as Nuts might want you think.

Just Checkin'

2012-01-11T20:05:00.000Z

How time flies. It's already been three weeks since I delivered the Christmas quiz to a room full of confused drunkards and sarcastic barmaids. It's always strange how different your former local feels after you've been away for a while, and when circumstances demand you stay sober.

Ordinarily it would be past time for me to put the answers up to the online transcript, but since takers were pretty thin on the ground this time around (maybe everyone was too busy trowelling on the brandy butter, or maybe I've just gotten out of practice and lost my quizzing mojo), I'll wait another week, in case anyone feels like having a go.

Li'l Ludo Is Also An Option

2012-01-09T20:17:00.004Z

News that there's a Labyrinth comic book prequel in the works is nothing to be sniffed at, obviously, but two important questions spring immediately to mind.

First: isn't the whole idea of a prequel to that film kind of missing the point? Given that the crux of it is that it doesn't really matter whether Sarah's adventure was real or not, so much as the process of going through it? And even if it was real, the power of the central metaphor is sufficiently strong that I'd be leery of trying anything else with the franchise once that idea is excised.

Secondly, and far more importantly, if you're going to do a Labyrinth prequel, why in the name of all that's holy are you basing it around Jareth, and not Sir Didymus.

Here, let me show you how awesome that would be:

Plus, you get to call it "The Adventures of Diddy Sir Didymus."

You're welcome.

Progressive Dementia

2012-01-06T15:57:00.002Z

George Will is not a good writer. He is a hack; a man who uses every ounce of the intelligence he has (or had) to disguise shameful lies as reasonable points. He is a man who claimed there was no global warming in the '00s, because the hottest year on record was in the '90s. You know, like how black musicians aren't increasingly being listened to and enjoyed by white people, because no single album has outsold Thriller, and that came out in '82.

Not only is he a poor commentator and a mendacious charlatan, though, he's also horrifyingly dismissive of people who do not share his opinions, or his lack of journalistic standards. On top of all of that, he has a stupid face, as though Bill Gates were constantly meloncholy and also an owl.

All of this has been true for a while (and indeed mentioned here more than once). So why am I going back to this particular well? Because of this:

For the indefinite future, a specter is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance. Because progressivism exists to justify a few people bossing around most people and because progressives believe that only government’s energy should flow unimpeded, they crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing — by them — that produces ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.

Imagine what a horror 2011 was for progressives as Americans began to comprehend their stunning abundance of fossil fuels — beyond their two centuries’ supply of coal. Progressives responded with attempts to impede development of the vast, proven reserves of natural gas and oil here and in Canada. They bent the willowy Obama to delay approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil from Canadian tar sands; they raised environmental objections to new techniques for extracting gas and “tight” oil from shale formations.

An all-purpose rationale for rationing in its many permutations has been the progressives’ preferred apocalypse, the fear of climate change.

Following this outburst, I can longer bring myself to believe that Will is merely a peddler of low-grade bullshit. He can only be completely, irreversibly out of his fucking tree. That last line, admittedly, is Will's bog-standard outrageous lies: the Keystone XL pipeline was campaigned against because it would risk the extinction of several endangered species, and the principle objections to the new extraction techniques are that a) we haven't had time to ensure they're safe for nearby people, and b) they seem to have a nasty habit of poisoning surrounding water supplies. The discerning reader might also ask why, if the US has two centuries of coal reserves remaining, it really needs a massive oil pipeline from Canada, when Will's children and his childrens' children can play safe and free under the harmless coke clouds belching forth from Middle America until the twenty-third century.

The rest of it, though, is just the ravings of an id that's collapsed under the weight of its own suppressed shame. Decades of ignoring and misrepresenting his political and philosophical opponents have left Will unable to even comprehend the letters, symbols and sounds that issue forth from the hated hippies. Instead, he's concocted an amazing conspiracy theory in which we're so obsessed with the idea of making life harder for everyone - including ourselves - we've put together the Biggest of all Lies.

Here's my question, though: if we really had forged a massive deception in the ~~fires of Mount Doom~~ ivory towers of the intelligentsia, with the specific aim of hobbling the march of civilisation, why would we choose a scenario entirely at odds with the richest people and countries in the world? Why not come up with something aimed to strike against the unwashed and downtrodden? Like, I don't know, the idea that organised labour isn't a necessary counterbalance to management, but a con trick designed to stifle innovation through the application of Big Government?

If in November Republicans capture the Senate... only weakness of Republican will can prevent, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board from being unconstrained instruments of presidential decrees.

See? That's how you make shit up in order to force other people to live the way you think they should!

New Thoughts On the Snow Job

2012-01-04T14:52:00.003Z

So, George R R Martin has updated the "sample chapter" page of his website, offering us the first taste of The Winds of Winter. It's a short one, and unsurprisingly one which will appear early in the book (indeed, chronologically speaking, it takes place before the final events of A Dance With Dragons). Nevertheless, it does offer some tantalising scraps of additional data to those formulating theories as to one of the questions the latest book left us with: how much of that letter was actually true?

Because such attempts to piece together theories always interest me, even when the events in question are entirely fictional, and because I've been discussing this over at the SFX Forum in any case, here are my thoughts on what this fascinating new evidence suggests. Obviously, spoilers follow.

The letter I'm referring to, of course, was the one that arrived for Jon Snow at the wall, which claims that Stannis' army has been slaughtered in the field, but that Ramsay Bolton is still looking for "Reek" and "Arya". At the time, this seemingly confirmed that they had indeed escaped (I don't see how lying about that would profit Ramsey in any way), but beyond that, we had no idea as to their fate.

We now know though that "Arya", at least, is liable to be elsewhere when Stannis' forces clash with the Bolton host. That's one point in favour in believing the letter. On the other hand, Theon is still with Stannis, and if he remains chained, it's pretty hard to see how the letter could possibly be true - how could the Bolton's smash the King's army and not find Theon?

Similarly, if Stannis does execute Theon, it's hard to believe that word of that wouldn't reach Ramsey following the battle (whatever the outcome). At first glance, then, this chapter seems to make Ramsay's claims harder to credit.

Except, and here's where it gets interesting, what if Theon manages to escape again? Stannis would keep that quiet if at all possible ("I've lost that kid who massacred the heir to Winterfell and his toddler brother. How's about you Northerners finish eating your horses and throw your lives down for me, hmm?"), and if the Bolton forces did crush the Lord of Dragonstone, they'd be none the wiser as to where Ramsay's favourite pet had got to.

In sum, then, the letter seems less plausible if Theon remains a captive/becomes a corpse, and more plausible if he escapes (obviously, neither of these possibilities proves anything either way). The question you have to ask yourself, then is this: how likely is Theon to escape?

From an island?

Specifically suggested by his sister?

Who until recently commanded a host of men in longships that can be carried across the ground when necessary, some of whom remain with her?

And who specialise in assaults upon coastlines?

Answers on a postcard, addressed to the ruins of Winterfell.

Hiyeemuhcuff!

2012-01-03T23:09:00.004Z

It is an observation so obvious and well-worn that, were it to issue forth from the lips of some worthless low-brow comedy hack (or Michael McIntyre, but I repeat myself), the man himself would excoriate them for it, but Stewart Lee has always (or almost always) had a tendency to sharply divide opinion.

My good and dear friend, the mighty Dr L, for example, once told me she found his routines impossible to watch because of the arrogance she felt oozing from his every pore. And given that Dr L does not exactly lack for self-confidence or strong opinions, married a man who lacks those things still less, and is right now being described in these very words by a friend so entirely in possession of those properties he's only prevented from sinking into total narcissism by being too lazy to try not be fat anymore, one has to assume her understanding of and tolerance for bullet-proof self-assurance must be stronger than most.

As it happens, Lee is arrogant, by his own admission (though it's sufficiently obvious that fessing up to it is probably little more worthy of credit than his willingness to concede that he is white), and that's not the only reason some people dislike his work. I don't think I heard a single word of praise for the first season of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle amongst my friends when it was broadcast (for the record, I thought it was fairly uneven, mainly because it really didn't play to his strengths, but frequently funny and occasionally brilliant). His monotone, disinterested delivery, combined with his habit of endlessly repeating the same few phrases (which the casual punter could be forgiven for assuming was an attempt to make up for a lack of actual material, Dark Place-style), and there was a general feeling of bafflement as to why people (including me) spent so much time heaping praise on the man, even if everyone agreed that - to paraphrase a paraphrase - no man who hates Richard Littlejohn can be all bad.

Of course, if Lee himself were here, he'd probably want me to search out the source of the original line, along with its first paraphrasing. This obsession with ensuring everything is properly attributed is occasionally irritating (which is why I chose the title I did for this post - it's a blatant misappropriation of a Richard Herring riff, and thus amuses me). Does Lee really want to moan about someone else using the "winning this award is not unlike being declared the world's tallest dwarf" line, for instance? Hell. I've come up with that one, though it's possible "I'm the largest element in a set defined by conditions describing only small values" is a uniquely obvious joke to a mathematician.

Far more often, though, this search for the origins of jokes makes for fascinating reading. Especially when combined as it is here with Lee's meandering (by footnote standards) tales of his experiences within the world of comedy which, due to the books format, which is chiefly comprised of three annotated routines, are mercifully untethered from anything so prosaic as chronology or coherent theme. For people like me who have already seen these routines played out (multiple times in the case of the first two), these brief forays backstage are the real joy of the book.

I use the word "backstage" with some trepidation, because I realise what the phrase has often come to mean: gossip and bitchiness. This is not the case here (Lee is almost never bitchy, though naturally he is frequently rude, curt and dismissive, and not always for the sake of comic exaggeration, I think). Lee's interest is not in how comics behave behind closed doors, but how comedy itself is crafted, just out of view. Whatever one's opinion of Lee as a performer or writer, his genuine love for the history and development of comedy is clear. Put in this life, then even that arrogance that truly belongs to him (rather than being summoned on the stage as part of a carefully crafted act) can be partially understood - a man who has spent a decade studying the art of sculpting pottery, for example, could perhaps be forgiven for snorting at those novelty mugs that when warmed remove the underwear from the woman emblazoned thereon. Whether or not said master of theory can so much as slap together an ashtray, of course, is a different matter.

In other words, then, there's plenty of reason to read this book [1] even if you know all three routines: Stand-Up Comedian, '90s Comedian, and 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, by heart. Even if you do, it's worth reading them on the page. I'm not entirely convinced by Lee's insistence that doing so is a completely different experience to seeing him deliver it (on DVD, I mean, rather than live). Whilst in general he certainly has a point, I'd argue that there's less reason to feel one's missed out having read a transcript of a Lee routine than there would be for almost any other comedian - so much of Lee's approach could be thought of as(simplistically speaking) "anti-delivery", I'm really not sure it matters to simply read the piece to yourself. Of course, it's possible I'm sufficiently familiar with the material to mentally substitute in his rhythm in any case, though my comparative unfamiliarity with 41st Best..., which I've seen only once, during its initial tour, makes me dubious.

If you're familiar with Lee, it's a brilliant book. If you know little to nothing about him, then it will be at the minimum a very interesting read (even if the angry, bawling mob of footnotes plays havoc with the flow). If you hate his stuff (and not just because of Comedy Vehicle), then this probably won't change your mind.

Everyone, though, should read the penultimate appendix, featuring a five thousand word poem written by Lee [2], which starts off as something seemingly semi-autobiographical and self-indulgent, becomes progressively more involving and character-driven, and finally becomes unexpectedly touching and poignant from entirely out of nowhere. Brilliant.

[1] I haven't even mentioned the anecdotes that spring up from time to time, some of which are brilliant. I'm torn regarding my favourite of the bunch; it's either the Cluub Zarathustra device employed on-stage which projects the word CUNT onto heckling audience members, or the occasion Lee wrote an extended rant about the mawkish, unthinkingly sentimental and suffocating nature of March of the Penguin's traditionalist Christian subtext in order to demolish it in front of a crowd at the Brighton Picture House, only to find the version being screened had cut all of the dubious stuff out, leaving him forced to periodically launch acerbic abuse at what everyone else in the theatre believed was an entirely harmless film about how penguins are cute, and sometimes fall down.

[2] Apparently the editors of the book for which he wrote it rejected the piece, purely because they didn't think poetry was going to work as part of the overall volume. He therefore knocked out the commas and resubmitted it as prose, and was accepted. Lee does not share what he believes this outcome signifies, but I'm left wondering if it is further proof that timing and delivery is not necessarily quite as important to his work as he believes it is.

Booze Hound

2011-12-31T14:11:00.002Z

As something of a left-field but certainly not unappreciated Christmas present, the Other Half has chosen to pass to me full responsibility for the world's shiniest canine polymath, Professor Steeldog.

That photo was taken during Professor Steeldog's inaugural lecture "Scrambled Eggs Are Delicious". Note that the professor is delivering his talk whilst simultaneously preparing scrambled eggs as an after-lecture snack, and whilst powered by a bottle of Blaxland Estate Shiraz. That's not really all that much for a proper academic, actually, but then he's a very small dog, and allowances must be made.

Besides, see how sad he looks once the plonk has gone:

In fairness, the bitter horror of rapidly coalescing reality isn't the only reason for his shrinking posture. Steeldog's lecture has started off a veritable intellectual shit-storm, and both Professors Ironcat and Vanadiumsquirrel-Smith are on the warpath. It's tough being a drunken carnivore trying to justify high cholesterol breakfast snacks.

Fortunately, Professor Steeldog has a secondary career to fall back on, as a cybernetic battlesuit.

Unstoppable war-suit modelled by Misty the dog.

Trial By Fire

2011-12-29T02:04:00.000Z

Having tried out the latest Talisman expansion last night, I got to thinking about the nature of board games. The catalyst for this consideration was my immediate reaction to the change in experience the new rules offer, which is best described as "Making a long game even longer."

Obviously, a man who'll sing the praises of Arkham Horror to anyone who'll listen can't complain too much about games that suck up time. Not all examples of time dilation of time are equally welcome, however. The problem with "The Dragon" isn't that it ramps up the difficulty per se, it's that in doing so, it makes the game even lonelier than it was before.

Let me explain. Some competitive games are lonely, and others are not. Snakes and Ladders , for example, is as lonely as they come. If one were so inclined, one could email the same S&L board to a half dozen of your friends, have them play it alone, and then compare the number of dice rolls each of you required to get to whichever corner you were aiming for. That, I would argue, is a lonely game.

Care must be taken here, of course. S&L is not only a lonely game, but one entirely devoid of skill, and it's important not to confuse the two. Talisman is not devoid of skill, by any means, (contra my friend R, who is convinced the whole exercise is nothing more than Ludo played on a gigantic and exceptionally entertaining board) but it can still be a somewhat lonely game, in the sense that one's interaction with the other players is fairly minimal compared to one's interaction with the game itself. How many times do you encounter another player and attack them, or cast a spell designed to impair their progress, compared to how often your turn revolves around only where you've moved to, and what happens to you there?

"The Dragon" skews the proportion even more in favour of strategic solipsism. It takes the game one step closer to being played independently, with everyone involved simply noting how long it takes for them to beat their own personal Dragon King, and comparing times.

That, irrespective of how interesting the new rules, cards and characters prove to be, strikes me as something of a shame.

The Caretaker, The Sexist, And The Dishonorably Dischargeable

2011-12-26T18:18:00.002Z

Well, that wasn't too bad at all. Maybe a bit slow moving for a Christmas Special (I was all stuffed with meat, parsnips and wine, so staying awake was a definite problem) and a little to saccharin for my tastes, but it had some nice ideas (there has to be naturally occurring Christmas trees somewhere being my favourite), some great visuals, a typically excellent turn from Matt Smith and better child acting than the BBC is usually known for. Also, I have to admit there did come a point where I realised to my own bafflement that I had a lump in my throat.

A few more unordered thoughts:

Man, Androzani Major's military must be permanently undergoing a funding crisis. First they couldn't manage to clear a few dozen androids out of a cave system in order to secure their most treasured natural resource, and now they send overweight bunglers to guard their fuel sources. Two soldiers in full armour can't overpower a civilian with a service revolver? Please. I presume they're only using acid rain to melt the forest because none of them can be trusted to swing an axe without disemboweling themselves.
I'd have hoped we'd moved beyond plot tropes like "only a woman is strong enough to commune with nature". Doubtless it's well-meant, but at least as far as I'm concerned it always comes across as rather patronising. "See, we respect you, life givers that you are!" It's also slightly difficult to process a story in which the Doctor can't carry a sentient forest in his head, but Arabella Weir is considered fit for service.
Having said the above, it's nice to see a story in which the Doctor isn't the last-minute saviour everyone is praying for. I suppose one could point out that this deliberate (if exceptionally vague) aping of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has swapped in the Doctor as a replacement for Jesus, of course. Or note that linking your story to one of the finest moments in the entirety of the show's history isn't an act of humility and understatement. But let's not search too hard to find things to raise our eyebrows over: it's Christmas, after all, and at least this time round no-one's told me people think killing the Doctor is worse than the Holocaust.
Speaking of the Doctor's death, having him refer to himself as "the Caretaker" was a nice idea - a way of dealing, at least for now, with the idea that he is now operating undercover. It certainly helps me buy the idea that a time-traveller can fake their own death. I'd be surprised if they keep it up for Season 7, but at least it's delayed the problem for a little while.

Merry Quizmas

2011-12-23T17:02:00.013Z

Since it doesn't look like this "Christmas" idea is going anywhere, we might as well embrace it. Have yourselves a Christmas quiz. The highest score when I ran this at the pub on Wednesday was 32. Good luck!

Round 1: Chranagrams

(Five anagrams of things associated with Christmas)

1. Hell wrath, yo! (Holly wreath)

2. Ethnic girls (Christingle)

3. Most elite (Mistletoe)

4. Staunchest sort (Roast chestnuts)

5. He doddered sheerer unlit porn (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer)

Round 2: December

1. In which Russian city did the Decembrist uprising take place in Senate Square in December 1825, which led a century later to the location being renamed Decembrist Square until 2008? (St Petersburg)

2. "A Long December" was a 1996 single release for which band, whose back catalogue also includes the 1993 hit "Mr Jones", and the song "Accidentally In Love", which was Oscar nominated following its appearance in the film Shrek 2? (Counting Crows)

3. People born in December have either the starsign Sagittarius or Capricorn, depending on the day. Which two planets are associated with these signs? (1/2 for each) (Jupiter and Saturn)

4. "Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December" is a line from which poem? "The Raven"

5. In the evening of which date in December do the Dutch begin the celebration of Sinterklaas? 5th

Round 3: The Ghost of Christmas Past

1. Former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day 1989, under a wide range of charges, in which country? (Romania)

2. Which British physicist, mathematician, natural philosopher, theologian and occult obsessive was born on Christmas Day 1642 (Julian calender), and shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for developing differential and integral calculus? (Isaac Newton)

3. Which space probe stopped trasmitting on Christmas Day 2003, just before its scheduled landing on Mars? (Beagle 2)

4. On Christmas Day 1941 the Free French liberated their first piece of former French territory, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, by successfully defeating a different group of French people. Saint Pierre and Miquelon lies just off the coast of which country? (Canada)

5. Which R&B and soul singer, who passed away on Christmas Day 2006, was known amongst other things as "The hardest working man in showbusiness", having released well over sixty albums over a career spanning six decades? (James Brown)

Round 4: Cake

1. Which '90s satirical series featured an earnest Bruno Brookes warning us that "Only an idiot would enter the nightmare of Cake." (Brass Eye)

2. In what decade of the 18th Century was Marie Antoinette executed, after her cake-based prescription for society's ills was found wanting? (1790s)

3. Yellowcake is a concentrate powder primarly made up of which radioactive element, atomic number 92? (Uranium)

4. What do the eleven marzipan balls atop a simnel cake represent? (The original disciples of Jesus, minus Judas)

5. Who sang "MacArthur Park" in 1968, in which a cake is left out in the rain, causing great consternation to the singer, who has for some reason misplaced the recipe? (Richard Harris)

　
Round 5: All I Want For Christmas... Is Another One Of Squid's Increasingly Unoriginal Music Rounds

(Five Xmas songs that have been laterally/cryptically renamed. Half a mark each for the real title, and the artists who recorded it).

1. "A Made-Up Story From South Of Albany" ("Fairytale of New York", The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl)

2. "3,200 km" ("2,000 Miles", The Pretenders)

3. "Perambulation Without A Surface" ("Walking in the Air", Aled Jones (though Peter Auty sang the original version in The Snowman))

4. "Poison Plants And Fermented Fruit" ("Mistletoe and Wine", Cliff Richard)

5. "Arrest Those Men on Horseback" ("Stop the Cavalry", Jona Lewie)

Round 6: Santa-Shaped (AKA "Who ate all the mince pies?")

1. Who played Fat Bastard in the second and third Austin Powers movies? (Mike Myers)

2. Who was reputed to hold important wartime meetings whilst still in his bath? (Winston Churchill)

3. Sumo wrestling, a noble sport in which two expansive gentlemen pit themselves against each other in martial combat, requires that the competitors cleanse the dohyo, or ring, with what substance prior to each bout? (Salt)

4. What was the nickname of prepubsecent obesonaut Billy Bunter? (The Fat Owl of the Remove)

5. Which foodstuff is created by forcibly turning geese or ducks into horrible fatties and then removing their livers? (Foie gras)

General Knowledge

1. Who won this year's Crucible World Snooker Championship Final? (John Higgins)

2. What is kudzu? (A weed)

3. Which planet has moons named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope? (Uranus)

4. Modern-day Romania is made up of three former principalities of autonomous regions: Moldova, Transylvania, and which third region, which is sometimes further diivied into Muntenia and Oltenia? (Wallachia)

5. Which instrument represents the duck in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf? (Oboe)

6. Jonquil, Mikado and Naples are all shades of what colout? (Yellow)

7. According to popular legend, for whom is a "Dead Man's Hand" in poker named? (Wild Bill Hiccock)

8. For what crime was former French President Jacques Chirac convicted last week? (Embezzlement)

9. What shape is the playing field in Australian Rules Footaball? (Oval)

10. What is the square root of 841? (29)

The Day Job

2011-12-20T15:12:00.001Z

Gosh. This place is falling dangerously quiet, huh?

I do have an excuse, though. I'm currently in the middle of a hideous chain-reaction of ever more horrifying catastrophes at the office. I haven't been this dumbfounded by the degree to which things can go off the rails since I was asked to teach algebra to kids who recoiled in horror at the thought of multiplication.

It looks like I've put a lid on the chaos, though. Just. Who knows what will burst into flames once more the instant I've left for Christmas. Surely it can't be as bad as what happened last week, when our external expert revealed a shift in position meant he was no longer external, and that on careful reflection his field is too far from ours for him to constitute an expert. Like hiring a stripper for a stag do (I hear stories), and finding out she won't take off her underwear. And she's your sister.

Oh, and you only have three days to find another stripper, or the wedding's off. Some people have the strangest pre-nups...

I'd Hope My Life Would Read Rather Better

2011-12-18T20:46:00.002Z

Hmm. I have to say I was somewhat underwhelmed by this Ted Chiang collection, considering the amount of praise that's been heaped upon it. The rear cover promises much: "Here are stories that explore the boundaries between science and religion, between determinism and our ability to choose, between words and the entities they describe."

That's not entirely inaccurate, insofar as there is a story about how science and religion would view very differently the ability to animate entities by discovering their "true names". Indeed, that story - "Seventy-Two Letters" - is almost certainly the best of the seven on offer here (I'm discounting "The Evolution of Human Science", which at three pages is simply a nod to what could be a story rather than a narrative in itself). This tale is base on two excellent and solid concepts. First is that the method by which the golems of Jewish myth is both real and obeys rigid logical laws, allowing it to be studied as both a scientific discipline, and as a method for unveiling the secret code through which God fashioned Creation.

The second is the idea that the capacity for all life was brought into being at the same time - that foetuses are not created, merely enlarged, generation after generation being already prepacked and stored like Russian dolls. The drive of the story is the discovery made by French scientists that humanity's supply of foetuses is five generations away from drying up entirely.

This concern with the difference between form and life and energy and control is used to great effect, and manages to say some quite interesting things about the way humanity views the world along the way. More importantly, however, it's genuinely a story, with a beginning, a strong impetus, a revelation and a conclusion.

Not every story here is constructed so well. "Division By Zero" simply stops, apparently because Chiang believes he's made his point. Said point is this: mathematicians would probably go completely bonkers with misery were arithmetic to be proven to not be consistent (essentially, that 1+1 need not equal 2). Obviously, I have no problem believing that to be the case, but it might have saved some time had Chiang simply told us that straight out rather than trying to fashion a story from it. Indeed, Chiang does say it in the story notes that conclude the collection, rendering the entire exercise (interesting mathematical asides notwithstanding) seem rather pointless.

"Story of your Life", too, also simply seems to peter out once The Big Idea (spoiler: that learning a language which can only be read holistically would give one the ability to perfectly predict the future, which I assume is why the above blurb refers - somewhat disingenously - to deerminism vs free will) has been fully deployed. There's some intellectual challenge in realising that that is what's going on, and in piecing together the purposefully jumbled narrative, but in order to set up his good-but-not-that-good payoff, Chiang introduces a fascinating cultural exchange between an equally absorbing alien race who visit Earth, and then simply disappear at the story's conclusion. I suspect this in particular is simply down to personal taste, but it does feel like the most interesting aspect of the story - the how and why of these delightfully impossible creatures - has been hastily jettisoned once they're no longer needed for Chiang's pet idea.

It also doesn't help that Chiang's technique isn't really good enough to overcome the obvious difficulty of describing languages and attendant concepts that exist beyond what we can readily conceive. "Understand" suffers to an even greater degree from the same problem - a first-person story about a super-intelligent human attempting to assemble the perfect language which is written in English is problematic enough, and Chiang's rather utilitarian prose simply compounds the issue.

Worse still, there's really nothing particularly original in the tale, either. "The Tower of Babylon" is better, with some nice ideas about the nature of a tower tall enough to include multiple settlements with their own lifestyles, but the language isn't good enough to sustain the journey, nor the ending sufficiently strong to impress with its arrival.

The collection does pick up in the second half. We've discussed "Seventy-Two Letters" already, but there's also "Hell is the Absence of God" and "Liking What you See: a Documentary". The former is built around a rock-solid core: even if God's existence s irrefutable, it still wouldn't make it simple to love someone so unpredictable and seemingly disinterested in your welfare. The latter features multiple testimonials about the possibilities offered by a method that blinds one to human beauty, but ultimately takes a left turn and becomes something far more interesting.

Even so, the same problems resurface: uninspiring prose, and a significant difficulty in avoiding bland info-dumps. Even within the confines of a fictional documentary, the exposition feels too thick to easily swallow. In the end, I rather suspect whether or not one likes any of these stories is based entirely on how interesting one finds the one (or if you're very lucky, two) ideas Chiang is spinning out. There's simply too little else here to hang your interest on.

There's Definitely A Very Slim Hope Of Being Like Us

2011-12-14T23:07:00.000Z

It would seem an awful lot of the denizens of the internet are pissed off with Gene Marks, for what they see as a tone-deaf article dripping with patronising platitudes and white privilege.

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. I mean sure, if I were an ex-teacher, I might want to point out that assuming the conceptual framework of adulthood is available during childhood is to fundamentally mistake how the human mind develops. If I were someone who dealt with probability for a living, I'd likely be enraged by the suggestion that because two groups of people both have a strictly positive chance of achieving the same goals, the difference between those chances isn't what should be focused on. And if I was someone with any kind of racial awareness whatsoever, I'd point out a) it's one thing to offer advice to black kids, and another to presume to tell them how you would act as one of them, and b) if you've written that advice for Forbes, you're not actually offering advice to the black population, you're offering comforting "we're not to blame" bullshit to well-off white guys.

Since I'm clearly not any of those things, however, I say we should applaud Marks for being unafraid to deal with significant obstacles and nigh-insurmountable power imbalances by offering advices both obvious and unrealistic.

And yes, I realise that from a certain angle, I've just equated the struggle of black youth to prove themselves sufficiently exceptional as to be permitted to earn the same breaks in life white people take entirely for granted with the struggle of Bill Clinton not have interns suck his dick.

Don't shoot the messenger, people. I'm not responsible for what went on in the 42nd President's head.

Dude looooved getting his dick sucked.

For The Record

2011-12-13T22:04:00.000Z

Two important points regarding this week's episode of Misfits:

Zombies are so, so much more unsettling when they can talk, and remember who they were, and even try to resist the urge to feed;
It doesn't matter how stylish the execution, it's still a bad idea to write stories in which a main character gets her heart broken and over a dozen people are murdered, all on account of a freak wanking accident.

Support Wars: Return Of The Tech-Jedi

2011-12-12T22:21:00.002Z

Yesterday saw the final instalment of the Support Wars Trilogy, as I took to the highways to seek out Master Garathon, a fearsomely powerful Tech-Jedi currently residing in the hideous swamps of ~~Dagobah~~ Shropshire. Within moments my worst fears seemed to have been realised; the problem was indeed so simple that a child could have solved it (indeed, as Garathon noted, an eight year old child is probably exactly what the situation needed), though apparently not a man whose only job is to successfully deal with such things.

A quick re-plugging of a component later (apparently my technique for checking sound connections is insufficiently robust), and everything was solved.

Or was it? Connecting the stack to a spare monitor revealed no joy. Not only was there no evidence that the CD drive was fixed, but now there was no evidence that the computer was working at all. What I now had, in fact, was either an intolerably noisy and ridiculously delicate portable heater, or the world's most power-hungry and unconvincing wasp simulator.

Needless to say, this was all very embarrassing. I'd already promised Garathon payment in the form of a slap-up meal at the location of his choice (he chose not to pick "your mother", which proves he is a far more mature man than I), but that was based on the seemingly reasonable assumption that even if he failed to deal with the CD drive issue, he would at least avoid demonstrating the Mad Hatter approach to delicate repair work. Could I renege in the face of his clear incompetence? Or was the decent thing to buy him dinner, but lace it with paraquat? Etiquette is a tricky business.

Fortunately, this incredibly awkward situation/upcoming homicide attempt was eventually dealt with once it was discovered exactly where the problem lay: a loose RAM connection.

So, to summarise, PC World:

Sold me the wrong hard-drive;
Failed to contact me on the telephone, or using the email address I gave them;
Were two days late in putting in the new drive and transferring the data on top of the delay from the hard-drive mix up;
Failed to reconnect either my RAM or my CD drive;
Demanded I give them one week and fifty quid to clean up their own mistake.

Presumably if I had given them their money to deal with the CD drive, the loose RAM would still have fallen out, and they'd have extorted a further fifty pounds in order to fix that, whilst no doubt frying the power supply or trapping an orphan inside the stack in the process. That's potentially £100 and a fortnight for them to sort out their own mess. Garathon did it for under a tenner in about the same time as a round trip to the computer store.

Fuck you, PC World.

Our Inevitable Doom: Liveblogged

2011-12-10T13:18:00.000Z

Regular commentator and all round smart guy Tomsk79 has asked that I update his blog in the "Fellow Travellers" section, which I have done. I urge you all to go read him at his new place, assuming of course that you have a burning desire to become immediately suicidal at the thought of what Europe's about to have to go through.

Or if you just fancy a bit of political commentary that's far less focussed on a) America and b) exciting experiments in unecessary profanity.

Idiocy In Every Direction

2011-12-07T21:20:00.005Z

Sometimes I have trouble keeping my food down:

Just when you thought Barack Obama couldn’t get any more out of touch with America’s values, AP reports his administration wants to make foreign aid decisions based on gay rights...

Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.

... Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong.

President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles.

That's from the campaign of Governor Rick Perry, who you may or may not know as Dubya with better hair, the man who disbanded a committee investigating the possibility that he let an innocent man be executed, or the guy whose hunting lodge is called "Niggerhead" but doesn't see why that's a big deal. Oh, and the guy who'll happily use the hatred of gays as a route to power. In short, when Perry lands in Hell, Satan will probably ask for his autograph, though he'll probably ask that it be made out to Beelzebub so as to avoid embarrassment.

For a few weeks, he was first in the race for Republican presidential candidate.

And what is the announcement from Pennsylvania Avenue that has this murder-happy mentally deficient Machiavelli so outraged?

President Obama will direct all U.S. agencies abroad to make certain diplomacy and aid programs "promote and protect" the rights of homosexuals.

This is why these gitchimps can't be reasoned with. The barriers between us and them aren't merely political, or philosophical, or even theological. They're linguistic. Perry sees a plan being mooted by which American money is contingent on people not hanging or imprisoning or refusing to hire homosexuals, and he starts claiming these are "special rights." Because God knows there are enough countries out there that execute or lock up people for being straight. I promise that the exact instant Lesbos becomes its own country and starts getting up to its old tricks, I will immediately take Perry's side (as well as a holiday to said island paradise). We went through this with Santorum not so long ago, but I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that people might hate gays so much that they insist on arguing removing laws and practises aimed against them constitutes a special privilege.

Of course, it's easier to believe (or it would be, if Perry wasn't so stupid he thinks ambiance is something you get by dialling 911, though in his state you can only get one if you're white) that Perry's just cynically manipulating this in the hope of getting back some of those votes he's been hemorrhaging, ever since he accidentally revealed that being white wasn't a necessary condition for him to listen to what you're saying. That's not really any better, though. In fact, it's arguably worse, since it would replace a disgusting yet honestly held conviction with a degree of disinterest so pronounced it leads to using the lives of tens of thousands of people as a stick to beat your opponents with. I'd lament the death of the principle of politics ending at the water's edge, had the GOP not already proved it was quite happy to risk the deaths of tens of thousands of US citizens to get its way.

So, like I said: not vomiting with rage and disgust is becoming tougher and tougher.

Still, at least that food I'm having trouble with isn't Asian, amirite? What could be worse on the anniversary of Pearl Harbour than to eat food from the continent that started all that Tora Tora Tora bullshit?

The answer, of course, is letting the President's children eat it!

Apparently, this is a genuine source of outrage in some quarters, which is genuinely terrifying. Not because I have any particular interest in ensuring American children get to taste teriyaki chicken (though it's pretty damn tasty, of course), but because I find it difficult to imagine that there is anyone in the States who's wound up about this who isn't also desperate to reintroduce internment camps.

(Also: for fuck's sake, Blogspot, it's December 2011. Add Barack Obama to your spellchecker, would you? Y'all a bunch of racists!)

Three Weeks Late

2011-12-05T21:21:00.001Z

Somewhere in the darkest yet most well-decorated rooms of the BBC.

Ricky Gervais: Stephen! Glad you could meet me. I know you've got a lot of winsomely charming voice-overs on the go, right now, so that's clearly keeping you busy -

Stephen Merchant: Go fuck yourself, Gervais. I hate you. I hate you so much. All you ever do is show up, play yourself, rake in the cash, and tell everyone you could probably have done it without me.

Ricky Gervais: That's not up to me to decide, really. So, though, if the public want to brand me as -

Stephen Merchant: There's no way you could have done it without me, Richard. I could have done it without you, though. Easily. Because there's only one cocksucker in this room who knows how to be funny deliberately, and we both know it isn't you.

Ricky Gervais: Don't call me Richard.

Stephen Merchant: Give me two hundred grand of the money you owe me for making people think your petulant fucking bullying is fucking fucking hilarious, and I'll think about it.

Ricky Gervais: Anyway -

Stephen Merchant: Prick.

Ricky Gervais: Anyway. I've got an idea for a new show.

Stephen Merchant: Do you? Or do you just want to do The Office again with all your famous mates and pretend it's a new show?

Ricky Gervais: Are you talking about Extras?

Stephen Merchant: No, I'm talking about you being a worthless ballsack. Extras is just Exhibit fucking-A.

Ricky Gervais:

Stephen Merchant: Will it be about an egotistical loser completely unable to recognise his lack of talent, good looks, or comic ability?

Ricky Gervais:... Maybe.

Stephen Merchant: Will it be stuffed to the gills with your famous mates pretending to be idiots so people can get a cheap laugh?

Ricky Gervais:... To an extent.

Stephen Merchant: So what's different about it?

Ricky Gervais: This time we'll be taking the piss out of dwarves.

Stephen Merchant: Wait, what?

Ricky Gervais: We'll get Warwick Davies to do it. It'll be hilarious. He's a dwarf, but we'll make him a David Brent style prick! Literally the same! That way no-one will feel sympathy when we mock him for being small!

Stephen Merchant... Well, at least it'll make a change for you to not -

Ricky Gervais: I'll be in it.

Stephen Merchant: Oh, of course you will.

Ricky Gervais: And you. And our famous mates will keep popping in to see us.

Stephen Merchant: So why do we need Warwick Davies in this at all?

A very long pause

Ricky Gervais: Liam Neeson say's he'll do the first episode.

Stephen Merchant: Urrrrrrgh. OK, fine. I'll write that bit so it's absolutely fucking awesome.

Great Minds/Stopped Clocks

2011-12-02T15:01:00.000Z

This, right here, is a thing of awesome, inspired beauty. Indeed, it's so good, I can't believe I didn't think of it myself until less than three years ago.

Mind you, they've clearly put exponentially more effort in. Especially since I had Senior Spielbergo do all the actual, y'know, work.

Those Wacky Colonials

2011-12-01T10:07:00.000Z

Earlier this week I had a brief email exchange with an American political journalist, and he asked me if I had any particular insights on how the upcoming presidential election (now only eleven months away and its attendant mishigas was viewed across the pond.

After chewing the question over for a little while, I wondered whether I'm necessarily well-placed to answer this question, since I spend far more time listening to Americans describe their political system than I do to British people trying to interpret it.

So, perhaps you can help me out. Any answers to some or all of the following queries would be greatly appreciated:

1. What do you think of President Obama's first three years in charge?

2. What (if anything) do you think of the Republicans currently vying for the right to be his opponent ...next year, and do you have an opinion of which one will (or should) be chosen?

3. What do you think are the chances of Obama retaking the Oval, and is that something you'd want to happen?

Please note that "I don't know nuffink" and "I couldn't give two shits" are both entirely acceptable answers. If it turns out no-one on this side of the Atlantic could care less who gets to put his feet up on the resolute desk, then that's still useful information.

The Rain Of Blame Falls Mostly On The Cain

2011-11-30T13:19:00.001Z

At the time of writing this post it's not clear whether or not Herman Cain will shut down his campaign for the Republican presidential candidacy over allegations of a thirteen-year affair (he's "reassessing", something he might have tried after he accidentally revealed he doesn't know which country Libya is), but given the howls of outrage coming from his former followers, it's worth revisiting what I said three weeks ago: far, far too many people consider a man committing adultery to be a much worse activity than a man pressuring uninterested women into sleeping with them.

Adultery is a "sex scandal", and as such, I don't give a shit about it. I feel bad for the man's wife, because it's not going to be much fun for her in the next few weeks/months. But that's it. Maybe she knew, maybe she didn't. Maybe she'll forgive him, maybe she won't. Maybe there'll be a divorce. Hell, maybe it isn't even true (though apparently Cain's lawyer's statement is somewhat damning - I've not read it myself).

Sexual harassment is not a "sex scandal". It is merely scandalous behaviour which happens to involve the pursuit of sex. And it's scandalous not because it offends the Victorian mores of certain groups of the population, but because it's the deliberate refusal to respect the feelings and motivations of another person on an intimate subject in order to get exactly what you want without any of that complicated business of actually finding out how someone feels.

And every time someone tries to equate the two, they're implicitly making the argument that all that matters is whether a man is attempting to cheat on his wife, and any other women in the story is simply a mechanism by which that man's goal can succeed or fail.

See also.

The Xth Iteration

2011-11-29T18:49:00.000Z

Depending on how one looks at it, Uncanny X-Men #1 has either two jobs, or three. The first is the most obvious: it has to work as a jumping on point for new readers. The second and third jobs are to still be recognisable as part of the progression of a book now in its forty-second consecutive year, and to justify the fuss and bother of a) removing half of the characters and setting them down on the other side of the country and b) renumbering a book which was only five months away from reaching UXM #550 [1]. One could argue that the second task is contained within the third, but whatever. This book has shit to do.

(Spoilers after the jump)

So, how well has Gillen done? Given the difficulty of the task, I'd say pretty well. Somewhere around a B, maybe a B+. The biggest problem this issue has (up until the last two pages) is that it feels like we've seen it all before. More specifically, we've seen it all before in UXM #500, when Matt Fraction took over the reins, and presented us with his own re-shuffle.

The similarities range from the presentational (the bite-size introduction panels for each character are back), to the narrative (the Dreaming Celestial once more makes an appearance, and is targetted by an old enemy the X-Men never expected to face again) to the tonal. It's that last one that really stood out - watching Cyclops gather together his A-roster and discuss how everything's all shiny and new again really reminded me of the opening days at Graymalkin Industries.

Are such echoes of the past really such a problem? Well, maybe not, and given my opening to this post, I clearly can't bitch too hard about UXM #1 drawing on the past. It's the specific past it's drawing on that worries me. I generally agreed with those people who consider Fraction's X-Men run to be a little disappointing. The man can clearly write some excellent comics (Invincible Iron Man is always readable and frequently brilliant), but for whatever reason, his magic didn't quite work when it came to the X-Men. If I had to guess, I'd suggest it was the ludicrously unwieldy number of characters the exodus to Utopia left him feeling obliged to juggle, but that's a conversation for another time.

My point right now is that UXM #500 promised a great deal that later issues frankly failed to deliver. The Dreaming Celestial was presented as desperately important in some nebulous way to the future of mutant-kind, but not much was really made of it. Graymalkin Industries was intended to be a genuine new beginning for the team after they finally left the shattered remains of the Xavier Institute behind (naturally, Wolverine has now gone back there), but pretty much the only interesting story that was ever particularly reliant on the San Francisco location was "Utopia", which ended with the team settling on an island off the coast for a new new beginning.

Obviously, Gillen can't be blamed for Fraction's fumble four years ago. At the same time, though, this first issue does have me worried that Gillen is going through the same process - casting around for something, anything to make the book about. Throwing Sinister back into the mix doesn't really reassure me, especially since I'm not at all sold on Gillen's take on the man. The humorless and mysterious Machivellian super-villain of the '80s and '90s have had their day, true, but that doesn't necessarily make it sensible to recast them as a sword-carrying Victorian adventurer type (now, if Sinister had started that way...) I mentioned above that it's only in the last two pages of the issue that I can't claim there are parallels to UXM #500; that's because the book ends with Sinister using the Dreaming Celestial's head to create his own theme-park.("EVERYTHING IS SINISTER!", indeed). Readers of my other blog will know how aggravating I found Arcade even amongst the excesses of the '80s, I dread to think what a 21st Century equivalent might do to my blood pressure.

Still, that's a lot of complaining, and I did say this was a B-grade book at the very least. There are five reasons why. First, the actual battle between Sinister and the X-Men is competently done, with none of the deliberately exaggerated macho posturing involved in the similar battle with Magneto forty five issues earlier (Emma having her arm chopped off is also a bonus). Second, the new team roster (included at the end of the issue) allows Gillen to deal with the large number of characters on Utopia (over forty are listed here) without it becoming the unwieldly mess occasionally demonstrated by Fraction. Third, as a related point, that same roster, along with an extract from a San Francisco guidebook and a letter from Scott to the United Nations, goes a long way to clueing newcomers into exactly what's going on, and why this book is different from, say, Wolverine and the X-Men.

Lastly, Scott's idea of an "Extinction Team", which consists of his most powerful X-Men and exists purely to repeatedly save the world and rub humanity's nose in it is absolutely fantastic. I've never understood why the X-Men didn't answer every anti-mutant slur with "Fuck you, we saved you from the Z'Nox." Hell, there is literally not a single lifeform, sentient or otherwise, across the entire length and breadth of the Marvel Universe who doesn't owe their lives to the X-Men. Not one. If Scott is right (and he may well be) that his top-tier mutants are actually better than the Avengers, then they're damn well going to get their props. And in the meantime, they can scare the ever-loving shit out of anyone who might be gunning for Utopia. It'd be like how the US nuclear deterrent worked in Independence Day, the morning after they'd used that nuke to destroy the alien mothership.

That, though, brings us to our final reason to love the book: the very real possibility that Cyclops has very genuinely lost the plot. Storm notes almost as soon as the "Extinction Team" idea is floated that more than half its members are one-time supervillains, and now Scott wants to use them to scare people. Hell, Magneto tried this trick years ago in UXM #150, and all it got him was a brace of nuclear missles fired at his face, and a beating at the hands of the X-Men. And now the guy who was in charge of that beating is sitting across the table, telling him it's time to give it another go.

It's mainly that degree of moral ambiguity that's keeping me interested. Whether or not that interest can survive if issue two introduces Sinister's Log Flume, we shall have to wait and see.

[1] Of course, one can one point out that once you remove reprints, that issue should really only have been #523 in any case. Comics are nothing if not difficult to precisely quantify.

Also, it's a small point, but you'd think the people in charge might wonder if things have gone too far when they need to write "brand new ongoing" onto one of their most high-profile comics, wouldn't you? Presumably they were worried that without that label, people would assume that this was just the first issue of an Uncanny X-Men: Regenesis mini-series. This is why slapping banners on everything you can find and renumbering whenever the mood takes you is probably ultimately counter-productive.

Retronica

2011-11-26T10:31:00.004Z

I've been playing a lot of Streets of Rage 3 lately, since I bought it three years ago and still haven't gotten around to finishing it (or even getting more than halfway through). My initial opinion was that it was a big disappointment, but I decided to give it another chance whilst sober, rather than just playing it at 1am after everyone else has passed out, as I've been doing up until now.

(Note how the black kid has been left off the cover art
in favour of a marsupial. That's some racist BS right there.)

Turns out I was right the first time. I can't believe how successful Sega were in making literally every aspect of the game worse than its predecessor. The previously wonderful music (one level's music was so good that I used to pause the game at that point and sit and read with it in the background) is now a nightmarish jumble of nonsense - apparently a random note generator was employed, and my God you can tell. The sprites have been enlarged for no real reason, meaning the limited frames used in animation are more obvious and, more critically, you can have fewer opponents on screen at any given time.
That ties into another problem. The real fun in Streets of Rage 2 lay in cranking up the difficulty so that the screen became flooded with a host of villainous scumbags all practically begging to be punched in the face. This game has drastically downgraded the damage each of your moves does, meaning the game is both harder (though some of that might just be my difficulty in shaking the tactics I settled on in the first game), and features significantly fewer enemies. Moreover, there's fewer kinds of foes, which is completely unforgivable. Even the naming conventions are less interesting: the prancing shuriken-throwing ninjas from the last installment are back, but back then they all had their own names. Not anymore. There also seems to be less variety even of moves, the Thai kickboxers (all with their own names, natch) have been replaced with flame-haired fashion victims with a fraction of the repertoire.

The only slight improvements are the ability to run and roll, which speeds the game up, and the inclusion of more interactive backdrops. Even this causes more problems than it seems, though, the controls (at least in the Wii version) are too sensitive, meaning that all those lovely new pits and cargo-carriers are too difficult to avoid - one moment you're happily kicking some fat fucker in the gonads, the next you've dropped into a forward roll and tumbled yourself into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Plus, once you get past the increased interaction, the backgrounds themselves are massively boring. Gone are the days of stabbing muggers on a pirate ship, I can tell you.

Still, it's not a complete write-off. You do at least have the option to play as a violence-crazed slap-happy kangaroo (a master of the... martsupial arts?) On the other hand, you don't have the option to play as a character in a particularly good game. Which is a shame.

Requiem For Podsixia

2011-11-25T08:27:00.002Z

This may require knowledge of two entirely different cult TV shows to work at maximum effectiveness, where "maximum effectiveness" is defined as "laughing your ribs through your lungs". On the other hand, you may just have to be a BSG fan. Let's find out.

(As soon as this video started, I knew Gaeta was going to end up being Hesh).

h/t to Gooder, for finding this and bringing it to my attention.

Mitt & Al

2011-11-24T15:35:00.000Z

Steve Benen (amongst others) pulls Mitt Romney up on the latest of lapses of truthfulness.

Benen notes that claiming that your middle name is actually your first name is hardly a big lie. I'd go further, in fact, and say it's a total non-event, especially when, as in this video, it's at least arguable that Romney is making a joke.

Basically, there's no "there" there. So why am I even mentioning it? Because the incident brings to mind two thoughts. Firstly, had Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. claimed that his first name was "Al", would it have been ignored, or would the press have sunk their teeth into it as another piece of evidence that the man was a congenital liar? (Hint: it's that second one.)

Second, why is the "Mitt is a liar" narrative not caught on the same way it did with Gore in 2000. It's certainly not been totally ignored (once George Will calls a Republican a liar, you know things have gotten bad), but it's not reached anything like the lunatic fever pitch that Gore went through. Is it because Romney is merely the presumptive nominee right now, as oppose to the chosen candidate?

And if the latter is true, what happens when (and it surely is when) Romney gets the nod? Will the storyline take hold, or will it actually be dropped entirely as "old news" (which, of course, means "a storyline we're bored of and OH LOOK YOU GUYS A SHINY PENNY!").

I'm guessing it will be, actually. Someone needs to keep an eye on Bob Somerby; I'm not sure his heart can take what's coming.

Still Unsupported

2011-11-24T10:04:00.001Z

Sorry for the paucity of posts around here right now. I actually had something in mind to write about last night, but I got caught up fighting with my CD drive again. Through the application of a knackered external CD-RW drive I found buried in my gubbins, I have now successfully demonstrated that my computer can recognise CD drives (unfortunately said drive is too knackered to be of use otherwise). The hunt for why it refuses to recognise the internal hard drive continues.

Also, thanks for the various offers of tech support and suggestions for what to try next.

True Facts

2011-11-22T03:22:00.003Z

Insomnia, insomnia
There's clearly something wrong wi' ya
Tomorrow I'll be a zombie, yeah
Just shoot me in the head.

Statistics Is Fun And Easy

2011-11-21T12:04:00.000Z

This caught my eye (from multiple sources; original here) today: a handy graph proving that you can underline some of the most serious obstacles to economic justice without even having to reach for a protractor.

Could the above have some connection to some US billionaires having a de facto 1% tax rate? We report, you decide!

Fire And Balls

2011-11-20T22:20:00.024Z

I had been planning to use this post for a quick review of Stephen Donaldson's Gildenfire, which I picked up from Barter Books a little while ago. That plan lasted right up until I actually read it. Billed as "an untold episode from The Illearth War", it's pretty much a single chapter that Donaldson cut from the book, with the print blown up so it can fill a 94 page hardback book.

It's not bad, by any means (Donaldson cut it for narrative reasons, and entirely correctly), but I feel slightly ripped off just for paying £3.50 for it second hand. It hardly helps that the "missing" story it purports to tell was actually three times as long, with this slice being apparently the least interesting.

That's pretty much all there is to say on the subject. So let's talk about something altogether more awesome: power snooker!

I had no idea this existed until I happened to stumble across this year's semi-final between O'Sullivan and Robertson. It's like someone watched those "Extra time multi-ball!" ads from a few years ago and decided to apply it to snooker. Instead of a frame limit, the game has a half hour clock. Instead of counting the frames, the scores just keep being added to until the timer runs out (O'Sullivan was north of 500 by the time the match ended). There's only twenty seconds allowed per shot (on pain of a 20 point penalty), and only nine reds at break-off, but what makes it really insane is that one of the red balls is the "power ball", which once potted doubles the score of all other balls for the next two minutes, irrespective of who's at the table. In addition, anything potted from behind the baulk line is worth double points as well (quadruple once the power ball is in effect).

The whole thing is ludicrously, delightfully mental, and the crowd are encouraged to add to the madness with chants and boos. Apparently the game is only a shade over a year old, but I hope it becomes a permanent fixture. As much as I love snooker, when the funniest moment your game of choice has to offer is "Snooker Loopy", it's time to shake things up a little.

Tech Lack Of Support

2011-11-17T22:31:00.000Z

The scene: SpaceSquid arrives at the PC World help desk, his desktop stack clutched in his slightly effeminate hands.

Friendly Assistant #1: Can I help you, sir?

SpaceSquid: Yes. I paid you guys to transfer my data to a new hard drive, and the CD drive wasn't working when it came back.

FA#1: That's odd.

SS: Yes.

FA#1: It's probably a connection issue. Or the software.

SS: ...Yes.

FA#1: I guess those are the only two options anyway.

SS: Indeed. A haunting would be my next guess, but it's a distant third.

FA#1: Well, I'll hand you over to the tech guy.

SS: Thanks.

Friendly Assistant #2: Can I help you, sir?

SS: Yes. As I was saying, you guys were kind enough to transfer my data to a new hard drive not long ago, but the CD drive no longer works.

FA#2: Oh.

SS: ...Yes. And I was wondering if you could fix it?

FA#2: Well, we're not allowed to do that kind of thing in-store anymore. We'll have to send it away.

SS: Really?

FA#2: 'Fraid so. Should take about a week, cost fifty quid.

SS: Fifty quid?

FA#2: Fifty quid.

SS: I'm finding it hard to understand why you expect me to pay for a repair that only became necessary after you got your hands on my PC.

FA#2: Well, do you have an agreement with us.

SS: Meaning?

FA#2: Do you pay us every month?

SS: No.

FA#2: Then it's not our responsibility.

SS: It's not your responsibility to do the job you say you'll do after I give you money?

FA#2: That wasn't the job you paid for. You paid for the hard drive.

SS: Yes, because the CD drive was working when I gave it to you! How is "Don't break anything" not implicit?

FA#2: I'm saying we did the hard drive job. Think of it like in a garage. You come in, pay us to fix a wheel, we fix a wheel. But then you want your suspension fixed: that's a new job.

SS: Fine. If this a garage, then this is what happened: I came in, paid you to fix a wheel, and whilst you were fixing the wheel, you set the car on fire. And now you want me to pay to borrow a hose.

This goes on for some time, and ends in stalemate. No money changes hands, but I still can't access by back-up CDs or listen to "Ashes & Fire". Balls.

The Lies Of Leonidas

2011-11-15T14:49:00.007Z

This is a very interesting article by David Brin, in which he essentially tells Frank Miller to go fuck himself. Obviously, anyone telling Frank The Dark Knight Strikes Again Miller to go fuck himself is entirely welcome, because Frank Miller going and fucking himself is literally the most aesthetically worthy thing Frank Miller can still be considered capable of.

It's the specific reasons David Brin suggests Frank Miller go fuck himself that are worthy of note, though. The news that 300 is about as representative of the actual Battle of Thermopylae as Plants vs Zombies is of horticulture during a pandemic can hardly be considered surprising. But I think Brin is dead right when he suggests there are different categories into which fiction which is at least nominally historical can be placed. There are various ways one could do this, of course, but let's consider the following four:

Striving for as much accuracy as is feasible (Changeling, Cry Freedom, Zodiac)
Not really interested in accuracy (U-571, Evita)
Actually goes so far as to invert the truth
As above, but for specific political ends (Jud Suss)

There's definitely grey areas between each of those, of course, depending on how one defines "political ends", what one does and doesn't consider "sufficient" accuracy, and of course how well a film tallies with your own personal opinions of historical events and figures (you'll have a job finding a Republican who thinks Road To 9/11 lacks accuracy, for instance). Nevertheless, they do give us a framework with which to operate upon.

Assuming Brin's description of the surrounding history is accurate (and it quite closely to what I dimly remember from primary school - I suspect Jamie might have more to say on the issue), then I think there's ample evidence that 300 has failed the tests necessary to place it in either of the first two categories. The important questions are this: has the film, as Brin alleges, actually fallen into the fourth class, and become propaganda, and does it really matter if it has?

Regarding the first question, I can certainly see an argument - Miller clearly hates the idea of people protesting against dire economic conditions when they should be signing up to fight Al Queda, which certainly ties in with 300's contempt for any form of civilian (even those willing to fight) in comparison to career soldiers. The moral of the tale (such as it is) must surely be that we need as many batshit-insane heavily-bronzed murderous motherfuckers on hand as we possibly can for the day we're attacked by brown people riding ~~hijacked planes~~ prehistoric rhinos, and any form of civic consideration in the meantime is just going to get in the way. Well, that, and that those who advocate peace are traitors and rapists. It may not be a slam-dunk, but it's certainly a plausible case.

The second question is harder to answer. Should we care? We're not required to like the politics of a given artist, or even the art itself, to enjoy it (though of course there's a difference between disagreement and taking objection to). And, like all such films, it's hard to expect anyone who knew nothing about the second Persian invasion of Greece to care much upon learning that it didn't happen the way Miller and Snyder have told them it did. There's also the fact that the narrative bookmarks itself as propaganda, by having Dilios telling the story of Thermopylae to fellow Spartans he is specifically trying to encourage and inspire ("Leonidas was a bit shit but the Athenians really saved our arses!" isn't likely to lead to same swelling of one's martial pride). And to be entirely frank, just how much intellectual damage can be done by a film which is bursting at the seams with painted-on abs?

So does that let 300 off the hook? It's too ridiculous and divorced from reality to be taken seriously as propaganda? Would it make a difference if Miller had written about three hundred Space Spartans fighting off an alien horde on the planet Thermopylae IX (cf. Heinlein's Starship Troopers)?

I admit I haven't made my mind up yet, but it's certainly all food for thought, as we all sit around waiting for the violent self-fucking Miller so obviously deserves...

Old Man River

2011-11-14T20:24:00.002Z

Fevre Dream is very intentionally a novel of two parts, to the point where I'm not entirely sure why Martin didn't make the split more explicit. Having said that, I think doing so would have made the main problem with the novel all the more explicit: the break in the action robs the story of almost all of its forward momentum. The narrative manages to claw itself back into full gear, but only just - pretty much the very instant we're back at full speed, the main story ends, and we're left with only a brief epilogue to round things off.

Which is a real shame, because for most of its run, the book is very good indeed. As is common with Martin, the narrative is third-person limited; our windows into the story are Abner Marsh - a spectacularly ugly but formidable steamboat captain, and Sour Billy Tipton - a depraved slave master with eyes on rising above his station. Abner is a nice creation, dogged loyalty and grim determination warring constantly with a volatile temper and knuckle-dragging masculinity. Sour Billy is somewhat less interesting, a fairly standard sadistic bastard, but his observations are critical to the novel, and are interesting enough in their own right.

It's the basic theme that's the real winner here. Using the unthinking, endless erosion of the Mississippi River as a metaphor for the immortal power of vampires is an inspired idea. The river itself is constant, but by gouging out new channels as it erodes it surroundings, it ends up changing itself. The same is true of Martin's vampires - they cannot change themselves, but by the gradual accumulation of their actions, they find themselves changed from without, and not simply because mankind is desperate to kill them whenever possible.

Contrasted with this are humans like Abner. Their surfaces are as changeable as that of the Ohio - calm or turbulent, pale or cloudy or dangerously dark, or even frozen entirely, but underneath it all, they are the same river. Part of the point of the arresting stop partway through the book seems to be an attempt to drive this home as explicitly as possible, which is a shame, because it was working exceptionally well as subtext, and isn't well-served by the sledge-hammer approach.

That gripe aside, however (I'd say this issue reduces the book from a four and a half star work to one that just scrapes four stars), the constant intertwining of stasis and change provides the perfect backdrop for what is, at heart, perhaps not the most original vampire tale one could imagine, and combined with the vivid atmosphere provided by the moonlit river and by Martin's descriptive skill, it's a story well worth reading. Especially since the ending, if rushed, is solidly built, both surprising upon initial encounter and completely obvious upon reflection. Martin has proven already with A Song of Ice and Fire that he's more than capable of seeding sufficient clues into a tale to make the reader slap themselves when they finally figure out what's going on, and Fevre Dream pulls off the same trick.

Plus, it's a full-length Martin story that has actually ended. That's worth celebrating in itself.

What Happens Tomorrow

2011-11-13T19:04:00.003Z

I remember a lot of people raving about Let The Right One In when it first came out three years ago, and having finally gotten to see it, I can see why. It features two very impressive child actors - Kare Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson - in what can't have exactly been easy roles (Leandersson, in particular, manages to maintain the balance of vulnerability and danger playing a lonely twelve-year old serial killer demands), who manage to carry the film more or less entirely on their own.

This is important because, the occasional tweaking of the vampire myth aside, this is a film almost entirely about how lonely it can be to be a child. Oskar is almost entirely disconnected from his parents, his father by distance, and his mother by, well, I'm not entirely sure what, but there's definitely some kind of problem (one wonders whether Oskar took his father's side during the split). Eli, for her part, has only Hakan for company, a loyal assistant who nevertheless has become too old to help her as well as she requires.

(Spoilers follow)

It seems almost inevitable that the two of them will forge a bond, and that's exactly what happens. What happens next can be viewed on three levels. Each one is less explicit than the last, but also much more depressing which, of course, is a big part of how good the film is.

On the most obvious, surface level, this is a simple story of two children forming what they doubtless consider a unique relationship. That's the thing about being a child, everyone and everything you love seems genuinely unrepeatable, and on a level only you, alone in the world, could ever experience. The fact that Eli is a vampire, and so this friendship may very well actually be unprecedented, just drives the wider point home. Eli changes Oskar's life, by giving him someone he can open up to and teaching him how to defy the schoolyard bully. Oskar returns the favour by running away with her, providing her with companionship she has lost with the death of Hakan.

More than that, though, Oskar provides Eli with forgiveness for what she's done, and that's damned important for anyone, let alone a child. Guilt is a difficult thing for a twelve year old to process (hell, it's difficult for all of us), and the fact that Oskar never really sees Eli actually doing what she does doesn't really matter all that much.

That leads us onto the second level of the film, actually, which is the question of whether Oskar's choice to abandon his mother and follow Eli is really anything other than hopelessly naive. He knows Eli is a killer, but it's just a dry, meaningless fact, compared to the very real presence of Eli and his feelings for her (compare this with the overwraught "But they're kinda evil!" routines of, say, Buffy or True Blood). She tells him the deaths are necessary, and he's only too happy to believe her. Because it's simple, and because it allows him to love her without condition. Back before those awkward teenage years (and often some way into them), everything was all or nothing. Your brain was developed enough to weigh the evidence - however subjectively - but once the choice is made, every competing idea is dismissed in its entirety. Maybe this isn't so much a story about how children form bonds the like of which our bile-matured brains cannot possibly understand (until, perhaps, we have children of our own), so much as how such bullet-proof devotion can produce problems all its own.

So we arrive at the third, bleakest possibility. I've mentioned that Oskar never really sees Eli in action, but he comes damn close at the end of the film, when she eviscerate the bullies who are busy trying to drown him. At that point, her true nature becomes clear, as she pulls him from the water of the swimming pool and up into a charnel house.

By our first theory, this is simply more evidence of the bond between the two. Eli shows no sign of having fed from those she's killed. The blood is there, but she ignores it in favour of ensuring Oskar is OK. In terms of the second theory, we can note how the only time Oskar comes face-to-face with Eli's true nature, it's in the context of her saving his life; once again, it's easy for him to focus on what her actions say about their relationship, and ignore what they imply about her nature.

The third and most cynical reading was that this was part of Eli's plan from the start.

When Eli and Oskar first meet, our dark-haired vampiress is adamant that the two of them can never become friends. Later on, she relents. Again, one can interpret this change of heart as being entirely due to the way Oskar presents himself. But what if it isn't? What if her desire to form a bond with Oskar comes directly from her realisation that Hakan is too old to be much of a helper and is actually coming dangerously close to being a liability?

What if this is how Eli chooses her helpers? Hakan begs her to stop talking to Oskar, but is that out of concern for a child's safety, or out of jealousy? Hakan clearly favours children as victims - is that Eli's wish, is it a recognition that he's getting too old to take down adults in their prime, or is it something more simple - Hakan met Eli as a child, ran away with her as a child, and has watched the only constant in his life remain a child throughout his life. Perhaps he never actually grew out of that childish certainty that all adults (outside one's own family) are best ignored, and that it is only children who can truly be considered "real."

Looked at it this way, Hakan's life was forever retarted, left circling childhood endlessly just like the girl he followed. Further, and worse, the inevitable conclusion is that Oskar himself has embarked on the same journey, without any thought as to what that might mean. One more thing about being a child - you manage to convince yourself that things are going to stay the same forever. Running off with the one person for whom that's true makes a certain horrible sense, but the corollaries are all too obvious. Indeed, Eli's killing of the bullies was itself only necessary because she insisted Oskar stand up to his antagonists. Was that simply life advice? Or a deliberate attempt to start Oskar down a road where she would have to step in and intervene?

All of which means, of course, that it isn't merely a touching, bittersweet and occasionally horrific film; Let The Right One In is also desperately sad. It's just desperately sad in a way that some people might never even notice.

Advent Of Destruction

2011-11-12T09:00:00.012Z

After I returned from voluntary exile on Arran, I stopped in to visit lyndagb and James, along with their gorgeous spawn. In between games of "Who's phoning Thea?", it was brought to my attention that I haven't passed judgement on the season finale of Doctor Who. Even my Supernatural post wasn't so tardy.

We therefore jump in our SIDRAT (what? They're much more reliable!), and consider the conclusion to Season 6. Spoilers, obviously, follow.

Actually, and sorry for all the effort you went to clicking on "Read more", there's really not a lot to say. By my lights, this was by some distance the least irritating season closer since the show returned, but that's faint praise, given that a) it didn't include a Bill and Ted temporal get-out clause in order to disguise having written oneself into a corner, and b) it wasn't written by someone who holds their audience and logic itself in equal contempt.

It should also be noted that after five years of being disappointed by the new series (though in fairness Season 5 was a massive improvement on what had gone before), I've made the conscious choice to watch the show in as dispassionate a manner as possible, viewing it as a weekly curiosity rather than the continuation of what was for much of my childhood unquestionably my favourite show. Has Doctor Who improved over the last two years, of have I simply stopped caring? It's difficult to say.

Still, we all bring something by way of baggage and training to any show we return to, so perhaps it doesn't matter all that much. "The Wedding of River Song" was fast-paced, funny, and gave us as many answers as we could have possibly expected (again, this is training: Moffat will feed us tidbits at the end of a year, RTD will explain it all, but it will be shit and make no sense). It seems from looking at the explosion of internet traffic that followed the finale that for the majority of people, whether or not one enjoyed the finale was almost perfectly correlated with whether or not one considered the Doctor's escape from certain death a BS swindle.

Personally, whilst I completely understood why so many people were annoyed, I was OK with it, because as convenient as the Tessalector's sudden arrival was (and how come it was suddenly able to fake the Arton energy that surrounds a regeneration these days?), this mattered less than the realisation that the Doctor was planning to fake his own death. Compare that with, say, the Season 4 finale, in which the Doctor suddenly claims he doesn't have to change his form if he doesn't want to so long as there's a severed hand around and that hand can then turn into him so he can fuck Billie Piper. At least Moffat's dodge was motivated by coherent characterisation, and not the apparent desire to write a show's slash fiction into the programme itself.

I suspect, in fact, that I would have forgiven much worse under the circumstances, because Moffat was doing exactly what a good showrunner should: finding the most interesting and entertaining way possible to fix a serious problem with the narrative. That problem, of course, was the evermore ludicrous "lonely God" angle to the Doctor's character, that was fascinating when it was nodded to during the McCoy yeas, and absolutely unbearable when RTD took it and, like everything else, smashed it into our skulls with a mallet. Moffat is not blameless himself (witness "Forest of the Dead"), but he saw a problem, and now he's fixed it, and managed to have fun doing so.

All in all, then, it was a pretty good conclusion. The real problem now is where to go next. If the Doctor is now believed to be dead by the universe, what's going to happen the next time he fights the Daleks? Is he going to have to wear a disguise? ("I wear a Groucho Marx mask now. Groucho Marx masks are coo - wait, forget I said that").

I hope not. Indeed, I hope the Daleks remain in blissful ignorance of his survival from this point on. Not just because their latest designs are utter shit, but because I love the idea that the scions of Skaro have believed since the beginning that they only had to weather "The Oncoming Storm" until he hit his eleventh incarnation...

How is he even blowing that thing?

Friday Redheads

2011-11-11T08:00:00.008Z

Well, it might be auburn, actually. I've been making an effort to increase my painting speed, which has dropped precipitously in recent months. Here's the first miniature off the production line (aside from a few extra Ultramarines who will doubtless show up at some point) the cheeky Rogue from Talisman's Highland expansion.

(I apologise for the photo not being particularly brilliant - I'm having trouble getting it to do what I actually want it to. All the rest are worse, if you can belive it.)

Thank God We Have White Guys To Explain How Women And Black People Should Act

2011-11-10T15:23:00.001Z

I don't have enough time (though I certainly have sufficient vitriol) to tear apart this horrendously inaccurate and occasionally creepy National Review article on the subject of Herman Cain's recent troubles over multiple charges of sexual harassment Fortunately, Charles P. Pierce has done a lot of the work already, with his characteristic flair. It's particularly impressive to watch someone argue that contracting a disease with a 30% chance of survival should count against five women alleging sexual harassment or sexual assault against them. Presumably, if that number had fallen to 10%, he could have gotten away with chasing them into the bathrooms and slapping their faces with "little Cain".

One thing I did want to pick up on, though, was this quote here:

Cain, who has not as of yet actually been accused of engaging in sexual intercourse with a female subordinate, finds himself in the "sexual harassment" labyrinth, from which there are few paths out in the present era.

This is indicative of the confusion that lies at the heart of much of the white noise that endlessly hisses away throughout these free-for-alls: the Puritanical inability (or refusal) to comprehend that sexual harassment and sexual intercourse aren't remotely the same thing. Indeed, it's pretty difficult to manage both of them at the same time with the same person. The majority of this article - when it isn't busy trying to persuade us that it's actually the people in power who are the victims of all those hot little pieces of pert young ass - is the lament that for some reason, it's harder to get away with telling women they won't be hired if they don't put out than it is finding people who want to sleep with you, and then sleeping with them.

It's almost as if in Hanson's deranged mind Cain deserves credit for the fact that he's too unattractive to have managed to commit adultery. "Sure, he kept trying to get his subordinates to fuck him, but no-one's even suggested he was ever successful." Of course, the true giveaway as to what's really going on here is this:

Monica Lewinsky[s] ... subordinate status in an asymmetrical relationship with her putative boss should, in terms of doctrinaire sexual harassment, have made her a victim and the president a predator, irrespective of her eager consent.

Let's take a moment to let that sink in: "doctrinaire sexual harassment" shouldn't take into account whether both parties were eager to get their freak on. I'm not particularly interested in defending Clinton's actions in general, but the above quote is a flashing warning light - this is an article about how extra-marital sex and sexual harassment both have "sex" in their names, and sex is icky.

Until these people pull themselves together and start making distinctions between behaviour they find appalling as observers, and behaviour people find appalling as victims of it, we're going to have to face this nonsense every time. Moreover, until they reach enlightenment, Hanson and his ilk are going to continue to remain hilariously unaware of their implicit sexism: "Why is horndoggery more acceptable just because the woman's into it"?

The Hypocrisy Two-Step

2011-11-09T11:50:00.004Z

I read Steve "The Machine" Benen's defence of Elizabeth Warren against some typically unhinged conservative attack lines this morning, and it got me thinking.

A narrow and pedantic point, first: I don't think Rick Manning actually is using the word "hypocrisy" incorrectly. To be sure, the charge of hypocrisy he is levelling against Warren is total bullshit, but that's because he's straight-up lying about what Warren has actually said and done. If I called George Osborn a hypocrite for decrying domestic violence despite him holding his extended family captive in a windowless basement so he can drink deep from their arteries in strict rotation, it wouldn't be the word itself that would be the problem, but the invention of a mode of behaviour out of whole cloth. I'm not saying Osborn doesn't have an underground lair filled with emaciated thralls kept alive merely to provide him with an alternative to consuming back-benchers live on camera, I just assume they'll be no-mark peasants, rather than members of his Secret Barony of the Ebon Heart.

However, both Benen (and Krugman before him) are right in the wider context that any attempt by a wealthy American to actually suggest wealthy Americans should use that wealth to stop the country falling apart and all the peons starving to death is immediately condemned as being a hypocrite.

Obviously, this is a feature, not a bug. It's the second stage of Operation: Plutocrats Uber Alles that's always and everywhere underway, but is close to total success over in the States. Stage one, of course, was to ensure that meaningful political participation in the US is all but impossible without being a millionaire oneself (or being close friends with a whole mess of them). Stage two is to ensure any millionaire with interests outside their economic bracket is labelled a hypocrite, and hence discredited. Watching media outlets like Politico pretend not to understand this as they help out their obscenely wealthy overlords is endlessly frustrating, but it's not particularly difficult to work out what's going on.

Supernatural Supreme

2011-11-08T21:45:00.021Z

So I heard tell that various peeps across the internet were dissin' up Supernatural Season 6 during the first half of its run, and I decided to jump right on that and offer a full-throated defence a mere three months too late. Punctuality is not how I roll!

Well, there's that, and the fact that the sixth year of the show is really something that has to be viewed as a whole. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm particularly happy about that fact: I'm on the record (so, so many times) as feeling a little disappointed that this series has become so wrapped up in its year-long stories that the only time we take a break for something different it's invariably a "comedy" episode, which don't always work as well as people think ("The French Mistake" isn't funny, it's just several dozen people shouting "We can take a joke!" straight at the camera), and can become rather irritating in bulk. Like the X-Files before it, this show needs a string to its bow besides "mythology" episodes and taking the piss (though admittedly Supernatural does both significantly better than its spiritual antecedent).

In any event, I might not necessarily be entirely happy with the direction the show took somewhere around Season 3, it is what it is, and that has to be recognised. And, viewed in its entirety, I think Season 6 is probably the best year the show has put out since Jeffrey Dean Morgan stopped showing up for work.

From this point on, spoilers are abroad.

The thing about Supernatural is that it's a show about two men trying to save innocent people from the depredations of the horrific denizens of the night. That is not really a set-up that allows for a great deal of moral ambiguity. Given that basis, the show has done pretty well in introducing shades of grey - not all monsters need be killed, sometimes deals with demons are the only way out, exactly how many civilian casualties can you justify in a war to save humanity - but the basic poles of Good and Evil have always existed. Particularly evil, of course, whether it be Azazel, Lilith or Lucifer. The good guys have become increasingly complex, and we've learned thanks to Zachariah, Raphael and Michael that simply being a servant of God doesn't prevent one from being a thundering douche, but the opposite corner has always remained the same, Lucifer's unappreciated freedom-fighter shtick notwithstanding.

This is fairly unsurprising, of course. There's a limit to how much second-guessing a show like this could allow from its heroes - and note they are heroes, not merely protagonists - so even as Sam succumbed to his demon-blood addiction in Season 4, it was important we not start wondering whether we wouldn't be better off with Lilith in charge. Besides, the first five years of the show were all about accelerating downhill, plunging towards the end of the world, and that's not something anyone needs to think twice about wanting to nip in the bud.

Season 6 has re-written the rules somewhat. Not entirely, but enough. With the apocalypse averted, or at least delayed, the story has not become one of frustrating the ultimate evil, but of staking out a piece of territory after the ultimate evil has been conquered. It's Europe after the fall of Berlin. It's Babylon 5 after the Shadow War. It's the Federation after defeating the Dominion, if they hadn't insisted on giving us years of Jeri Ryan's tits and absolutely nothing fucking else.

In short, it's time to move on from the struggle against what can safely be considered an objective "bad guy", and move on to the desperate political wrangling that would inevitably follow. The the first three years of Supernatural gave us the Winchesters versus the demons, with the occasional spoiler thrown in, and where Seasons 4 and 5 offered the angelic host as a de jure third party (though de facto all of them bar Anna were either pretty much on Dean and Sam's side, or doing what Lucifer wanted in any case), Season 6 presents us with no fewer than five factions vying for power: the two sets of angels led respectively by Castiel and Raphael, the hordes of Hell under Crowley, the remaining Lucifer loyalists represented by Meg, and the creatures spilling out of Purgatory under the command of Eve.

That's the first success of the season - a level of complexity the show hasn't even tried for until now. The second success is just how well it inverts our expectations. Balthasar - played with louche reptilian charm by Sebastian Roche, who I've loved since his stint in the criminally underrated (albeit written by a right-wing prick) Odyssey 5 - evolves from antagonist to unwilling ally and finally stool pigeon, and works just as well in all three roles. Crowley continues to impress by playing all angles simultaneously and with Mark Sheppard's trademark rough charisma. Eve confounds expectations not so much in how she's played by Julia Maxwell, but how she's played by Crowley and Castiel, spinning the entire series 180 degrees.

Which brings us to Castiel himself, of course. By the end of the season he's gone from being an honorary member of the Winchester clan to an untrustworthy asset, to a shifty enigma, and finally to a vainglorious, violent thug. What makes this so tragic isn't just how far a fan favourite character for three seasons has fallen, but that in retrospect it was so horribly inevitable. Season 6 isn't about the Winchesters versus the forces of darkness - though the writers were smart enough to pretend that it is - it's about how three different groups of ostensible heroes - Castiel's forces, the followers of Raphael, and the Winchesters themselves - end up thoroughly screwing each other over in their attempts to achieve their idea of what a post-Lucifer world should look like.

A lot of what I've described above only becomes explicit later in the season, though, and I'm aware that I started this post by suggesting fans who disliked the first half of the year were in error. The reason why is simple - the PTSD-inducing series of earthquakes and explosions that rocked the latter half of Season 6 could only work following an extended set-up. In any post-war power struggle, there will always be people who don't actually realise there's a struggle going on at all. People who have fought so hard, and lost so much, that they're happy to just put down their weapons for a while, and who assume everyone else feels the same way. Indeed, Dean specifically did that, and the show needed to address that.

Hence the return of Sam, but not as we knew him. I know some fans were disappointed that Sam's all-new, all-soulless persona really cut down on the banter (which I'm not sure is true, so much as that the banter got a lot blacker and meaner, which I'm generally a fan of, obviously), but it served three purposes. Firstly, it provided Dean, and the viewer, with a puzzle, an introduction to the season's events, and in a very obvious way. "What has happened to Sam" works much better for me than "What's all this crap about Purgatory, then?", and unlike some developments in previous seasons, actually makes sense in retrospect, considering Castiel's conflicting desires to repay the Winchesters, but also have them not poke around the bigger picture, whilst also holding up his end of his deal with Crowley.

Second, it allows Dean to get back into the game without being able to hold on to Lisa and Ben. Much as I think the series could have ended perfectly about ten seconds before the credits rolled on "Swan Song", now that we got a follow-on, it was clear Dean's new family couldn't really come along for the ride. Had Sam returned whole, I don't think there's any chance he would have allowed Dean to become estranged from Lisa to the degree he did.

The third reason ties into the second: Sam's brusque return to Dean's life almost perfectly mirrors Dean's unannounced arrival in Sam's dorm all the way back in the series premiere. This show has gotten a lot of mileage out of first the idea that Dean and Sam aren't all that different, and then later that Sam might actually be the better hunter despite Dean being the more dedicated to the job. This, though, is the true inversion, with Dean constantly reminded by what he's had to leave behind, and Sam focussed on nothing but the next kill. If Jessica hadn't burst into flame on Sam's ceiling, then who knows? Maybe this is exactly how the first season would have developed, with the two brothers simply swapping roles. Season 6 is supposedly not just the tale of what happened next, but a new beginning, unhindered (though obviously not uninformed) by what has gone before. Starting it off with a photo negative of the shows initial steps out into the world strikes me as thematically very powerful.

The other objection I've heard regarding the first half of Season 6 is the rather peripheral role Samuel Campbell played in events. He showed up, shouted a lot, betrayed our heroes, and got himself killed two thirds of the way through the year (his poor relatives didn't even do that well). Again, though, I think that's a strength of the season, not a weakness. Samuel was brought back by Crowley (or more likely by Castiel on Crowley's recommendation) to perform exactly one job - find Purgatory. Once Eve was loosed on the world, poor ol' Sammy Senior Senior became entirely superfluous, and got himself done in by Crowley's new toy. The fact that neither Samuel had no more idea than Eve that they were only on the world because Crowley wanted it makes his death all the more senseless and tragic, but it certainly doesn't make his brief resurrection pointless. It's just that his return was one more fake-out in a season that turned the bluff and the red herring into an art form (as oppose to, say, the aforementioned X-Files, which wound up using them as crutches).

I've been told that Kripke had a great deal of input into the second half of Season 6, after the first half was badly received by fans. I've no idea if that's true, though I don't find it particularly difficult to believe, but that doesn't really matter. For whatever reason, Season 6 hangs together as a complete and wonderfully complex whole. It's no longer what it once was, but what it once was had a limited shelf-life in any case. I say hail to the new boss, whether or not they're the same as the old boss or not.

(Seriously, though: dragons and phoenix look just like regular dudes? Knock that shit off!)

Walking In Circles

2011-11-06T18:53:00.002Z

It's been a little while since we talked about any comics over here, so let's fix that with a look at The Walking Dead. Specifically, Volume 13: "Too Far Gone", since I've finally gotten hold of the seventh hardback volume this weekend.

Spoilers for the entire run up to this point - and likely by extension, the TV show - after the jump.

I've actually talked about this volume before, last year, after I read Volume 12. Those issues seemed to point pretty clearly towards what was coming. Rick and what was left of his group of survivors had been welcomed into a gated community filled with what can best be described as well-intentioned noobs. Exactly the kind of people, in fact, that Rick was when this story began, and who would be horrified to encounter anyone so cold-bloodedly murderous as the person Rick has become.

At the time I suggested this would become a story of inversion - after months of encountering ever more violent and depraved survivors, this time it would be our heroes who were the liability, who would be unable to just settle the fuck down and get along. Our guys worry about cannibal attack, theirs worry abut cooking a meal people won't like. It's hardly a recipe for harmony.

This impression was reinforced by the arc's final issue, in which Glenn and Rick hatch a plan to steal back their confiscated guns, basically the one real rule their residence in this sanctuary requires of them. What made it so horrible was knowing that they had a point - if this place went south like everywhere else they'd holed up, they'd need their weapons to hand. But if the zombies don't come, and the leader of their new home Douglas noticed the missing weapons, they'd be thrown back out there to fight for their lives until they starved.

The Walking Dead is often at its best when dealing with these situations - I'm thinking in particular of Rick murdering Dexter, and then ~~Ramirez~~ Martinez - when there's no clearly correct course of action, and someone has to choose which way to go.

In the event, I wasn't entirely incorrect with my predictions, but I got a lot wrong. More importantly, I think what we actually got was something of a disappointment, considering the set-up. The stealing of the guns is over within a few pages, and goes off without a hitch. Andrea (rather sensibly) points out that it was a stupid move, but that's all. Bullet dodged. Father Gabriel - who you'd think would have the decency to keep his mouth shut after letting his entire congregation get eaten - tries to tell Douglas about the horrors Rick and his people have committed (it's just not Christian to violently torture the people who want to barbecue your friends) , but Douglas has no intention of listening. Bullet dodged. Rick goes ape-shit on a suspected wife beater, comes close to killing him, pulls his stolen gun on Douglas when he tries to intervene, actions so off the chart lunatic that Michonne smashes him to the ground with a rock, and Douglas still doesn't throw Rick to the wolves (note to self: zombie wolves - has potential). Bullet not so much dodged as tangoed with.

In fact, this encounter leads to one of the worst instances yet of a recurring problem with this comic. We'll call it RARS: Rick is Always Right Syndrome. It seems that sooner or later we always find out that Rick's decisions were the right ones, or at the very least that his friends will insist they were right. For all the times Shane or Lori or Tyreese scream at him to charnge course, it always turns out that his way was the best way. He was right about Hershel's approach to zombies, he was right about setting up in the prison, he was right to prepare for an attack from Woodbury. Indeed, the worst two mistakes made by the group both haoppened whilst he was unconscious from his second gunshot wound: Dale leaving the prison (taking two able bodies and the sniper who pretty much one their first battle single-handedly) and Tyreese and Michonne's attempt to sneak into the Governer's camp to do more damage. That latter action weakened the prison's defences and cost Tyreese his life, and frankly I think that had Dale satyed the prison would never have fallen at all. Naturally, Rick decries both ideas as totally ridiculous the instant he wakes up.

Even Dale, who spends the whole of Volume 9 bitching about how Rick constantly puts the group in danger (which is a bit rich from the man who bailed on his friends just in time for them to be attacked by a psychopath in a goddamn tank), has an abrupt change of heart on his deathbed and tells Rick how brilliant he is at keeping people alive. This is not the first time that people - including Dale, in fact - have changed their mind and decided Rick is their best hope, it's like watching the last four episodes of Buffy over and over again (without Felicia Day, of course, which is a real shame).

I was really hoping that this was something the comic would finally get over, that we'd quickly see that the experiences that have forged Rick into such an effective leader out in the field would make him a truly horrible authority once they returned to what can be at least plausibly described as normal life (somewhat like, say, King Robert Baratheon, though for very different reasons). Instead, Douglas flat out tells Rick that his unwillingness to follow the rules, his stealing of guns, and him nearly beating a man to death without conclusive proof are what makes him an asset to the community. By the end of the arc, Douglas has Rick execute the wife-beater in cold blood [1], and a few pages later, after Rick's paranoia (or, as some might call it, "basic intelligence") leads to the community beating back an attack by other survivors, Douglas basically hands over control of the settlement to him.

Part of me is glad to see that things haven't completely disintegrated within the ten issues of the settlement being introduced - I think there's plenty of interesting stuff to be done here. And certainly Michonne braining Rick wasn't something I saw coming, but it makes total sense in hindsight (Kirkman has a habit of fitting characterisation around plot, rather than the other way round, but he seems to be getting better at striking the balance than he once was). In general, though, this feels like a wasted opportunity. Indeed, given the hints laced through these six issues, it certainly looks like the story of this township is going to be either about how it's not as peaceful as it seems, and/or about how it gets ripped to pieces by a zombie herd.

In other words, not all that different to what we've seen before. And that's a shame.

[1] Not without reason, admittedly; Mr Wife Beater apparently wasn't too concerned about whose wife he'd go for, and kills Douglas' spouse whilst trying to get at Rick.

Friday Compare-And-Contrast

2011-11-04T15:41:00.000Z

Further proof today that those claiming the Tories and Lib Des have become indistinguishable now they're in power together have gotten it badly wrong, Animal Farm quotes notwithstanding. Yes, they're both willing to throw away confidential documents without reference to security or basic common sense, but only the minority partners will recycle whilst they're doing it.

(Much as I've recycled this "joke", in fact).

This calls for another Friday song, naturally. Something nice and relaxing, and tangentially related. Emphasis on "tangential", I assure you, but if we can't agree that we should be recyling air, then who would be?

(Maybe conservative white males, actually).

Valid Comparisons

2011-11-01T14:11:00.002Z

Just a brief (well, not really) note on one aspect of the struggle for gay rights in America, because once MGK is missing the point [1], then it's a fair bet other people are as well, and an interesting signal is getting lost in the noise.

George Takei is in MGK's sights for sarcastically noting that the ten weeks Kim Kardashian managed to be married before filing for divorce is clearly proof that what would really demean the entire institution would be letting gay people get hitched. MGK's stance is that since KK is pro-gay marriage, calling her a hypocrite over this is spectacularly unfair. My stance (along with several other people) is that Takei's point has nothing to do with whether Kardashian is a hypocrite, and everything to do with hypocrisy in general.

And that's what needs to be focused on. How can a society which is willing to allow two people to get divorced after less time married than "Umbrella" was at number one also hold that marriage is so sacred an institution, so foundational to society, that it needs to be legally protected from people not treating it the "right" way?

That's a question I'd like to ask every single American politician who stands opposed to gay marriage (as, presumably, would this guy). Would they favour a legal minimum on the amount of time between tying the knot and filing for divorce? (One might already exist, of course, in which case you could ask whether they'd favour it being longer than the average HBO season). How long a period of time would be necessary to avoid demeaning marriage to the same extent as allowing two people of the same gender to devote their lives to each other? Ten weeks? Ten days? Ten minutes?

For that matter, would they favour making adultery illegal? I'm pretty sure Newt Gingrich has slept with more women than Portia de Rossi since their respective wedding days. I've not seen much support for putting playin' away back in the statute book. We'd rather just tut about it and get back to our lunch, thanks.

It would be nice to force politicians to take stances on these things. Much like abortion, these incoherent positions can only come about by pretending to not understand the logical endpoint. If two men getting married damages marriage as a concept, then so does cheating on your wife whilst she's dying of cancer. If abortion is murder, then women who have them are accessories and co-conspirators, and need to locked up. Let's see how those ideas poll, shall we?

We can go further, and link this into another desperately aggravating argument regularly trotted out by those in power: "what we did wasn't technically illegal, so what's the problem?", as though legal and illegal were the only measures of one's behaviour in society. The truth, of course, is that (very roughly speaking) behaviours fall into one of six categories: encouraged, approved of, shrugged at, disapproved of, discouraged, and illegal [2]. Leaving aside the fact that not everyone will agree on what goes where, and what should go where, and the fact that society itself is more clear on some issues than on others, all of these arguments are based around the idea that anything they want discouraged should be illegal, and anything legal they do should be approved of.

Justice by solipsism, basically. Everything else that comes out of their mouth is just a smoke-screen for that fundamental fact. Why they want it is irrelevant. What would logically follow from what they want is irrelevant.

All that matters is that what they want, they must have. And if they can't have it all, because no-one is going to get elected by promising to bring back jail sentences for cheating on your wife is going to get themselves elected outside of Georgia (and maybe Utah; I've never completely understood the exact circumstances in which it's permissable to double dip your flesh celery over there), then they'll at least make sure the groups they can beat up on without consequence are going to feel their wrath.

Why else do you think they bristle when you call them bigots? It's not about their bigotry, it's about society's bigotry allowing them to be insufferable fuckers selectively on issues for which they'd rather be insufferable fuckers across the board.

[1] Actually, to be fair, I'm sure he does get the point, he's just focussing on defending one celebrity over a snark attack by idiots on Twitter by pretending they're aping another celebrity, who in fact hasn't said what MGK thinks he has. I don't have any problem with "people are idiots on the internet!" posts, but I think they should be fairly labelled as such, rather than conflated with other, more intelligent positions.

[2] If people wanted to argue that "approved" and "encouraged" are essentially the same thing (and the same with their opposites), then I might not argue too hard.

Crazy Like A Fox!

2011-11-01T11:12:00.000Z

This is interesting. I had no idea Fox had links to ALEC. Certainly shifts the balance still further away from "compassionate Conservatism" and towards "labour-hating wannabe plutocrats [1]" as regards Cameron's crew, huh?

[1] A word I got wrong last week due to being so drunk I confused it with autocrat. Let this be a lesson: only play Cranium on at most one bottle of wine.

Five Things I Learned On Arran

2011-10-31T19:08:00.002Z

1. Weather reports for the Firth of Clyde are dangerously skewed by local experience. On Arran "good weather" means that though rainstorms are inevitable, you might get to see a rainbow when it stops for a bit.

2. During the sky's brief pauses for breath/reloading (depending on your choice of metaphor), the best way to see red squirrels is not, as is suggested, to walk through the woods in total silence. Instead, creep up to a random hedgerow and begin ranting at the top of your voice. You're bound to flush something out, and it might even be a squirrel. My rant was on the difficulty in understanding my girlfriend when she refuses to include nouns in her sentences, but that's probably not a necessary condition.

3. Further, wildlife observing on the whole island is harder than you might believe. I saw more species from my bedroom window (swans, white-fronted geese, curlews, oystercatchers, kittiwakes, ducks, crows both common and hooded) than the rest of the island combined (admittedly, there wasn't too much time spent more than twenty feet from the booze supply). Hell, I saw more naval vessels from my bedroom window than I did species anywhere else. We spotted at least one Daring class destroyer (presumably the HMS Defender), two more similar ships of unknown class, and what looked like a Vanguard class submarine (though it might have been the Astute, which presumably thought it was somewhere east of Madagascar).

4. Attack the Block is immensely silly, throwaway fun; Downton Abbey is entirely absurd period melodrama that at least looks gorgeous, and High School 3 Senior Year DANCE! for the Wii is so miserably terrible that I resent the amount of time it took to type the name in order for me to diss it (sorry, Chemie!).

5. It is not possible to adequately play Mario Kart with one's feet, even if someone is willing to operate as gunner.

The Silent Call

2011-10-31T13:12:00.000Z

Whilst on Arran, the Other Half and I had a chance to watch the silent-film adaptation of Call of Cthulhu, made by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society ( HPLHS) silent-film adaptation of Call of Cthulhu. I have to say I'm impressed. There were a number of hurdles that this film had to clear, perhaps more than are readily apparent.

The most obvious of those is financial, of course, but that's not really particularly of interest. Years of watching '60s and '70s Doctor Who has pretty much inured me to cheap SFX, as oppose to cheap-looking SFX, or sub-par SFX which have been used as a lazy stand-in for imaginative approaches (see Jackson's King Kong, for a good example of this: close-ups of actors by cliffs do not require that the rock face be CG-fucking-I).

Indeed, the only way in which this issue becomes relevant is in conjunction with a larger and much more interesting consideration: how well does the film recreate the artistic ethos and production approach of the 1920's. The answer to that, from my admittedly limited experience, is "pretty damn well, actually." The island of Ry'leh, all unsettling asymmetry and contempt for right angles, looks like it came directly out of German Expressionism. The heavy make-up and slightly overstated body language likewise is reminiscent of, say, Metropolis (though from the clips I've seen of Rudolph Valentino's work it's just as likely - and intuitively reasonable - that this was a general silent movie trend), and both of us independently thought that some of the lines we saw being spoken were actually German from their delivery. This ultimately proved not to be the case, but it's interesting that we both had that same reaction, despite The Other Half both being fluent in German and never seen any silent cinema.

In general, then, the illusion is expertly maintained. The only real problem on display was, as I read it, a difficulty in deciding upon exactly what budget the '20s film they were pretending to make actually had. This is where the budget issue does become relevant. The effects of the Emma as she arrives and leaves Ry'leh look desperately cheap, but would probably seem entirely of a piece with say, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In contrast, some of the (gasp!) green screen work is both very shoddy (hardly surprising) but clearly intended to give a sense of scale to the Ry'leh sequences that might conceivably have been possible with actual sets had the film been on the scale of Metropolis. Even then, I'm not completely convinced it would have been feasible. I was willing to forgive this film almost anything if it had been clearly done in the service of aping its chosen style, but every now and then the film over-reaches itself, and doesn't really have any good reason why.

That's a minor quibble, though. This is an excellent stab at dramatising Lovecraft's story, especially since - the final hurdle - I've long considered it to be very close to unfilmable. Three distinct stories, of which only two have real conclusions (and one of those is entirely free of suspense given the nature of the person telling it)? An ending which is absolutely reliant on the relationship the reader develops with the narrator? Those are difficulties enough without the extra level of dissociation from the events on-screen that silent movies suffer from, and this is compounded still further by the degree of information that must be imparted to the viewer.

Despite all these potential pit-falls, though, the HPLHS have managed to pull this project off with a truly impressive amount of success. Definitely recommended, especially for those amongst us who can watch Metropolis without bitching about all those biplanes.

The Complete Set

2011-10-23T19:49:00.000+01:00

Senator Lindsey Graham is a worthless, bloodthirsty warmonger. I don't think I've mentioned him before here, but that's only because he's one third of the American Worthless Bloodthirsty Warmonger Olympic team, and is the least interesting of all three since he neither sold his soul and decency to try to become President, or attempted to block legislation he supported six months earlier and that would save the lives of tens of thousands of Americans just to say "fuck you" to his previous party.

So congratulations, L Grizzle! You've finally gotten yourself on here by being such a vicious, mindless grave-robber that I couldn't ignore you any more!

If we could have kept American air power in the fight it would have been over quicker. Sixty-thousand Libyans have been wounded, 3,000 maimed, 25,000 killed. Let’s get in on the ground. There is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya. Lot of oil to be produced. Let’s get on the ground and help the Libyan people establish a democracy and a functioning economy based on free market principles.

Note the swivel here. Literally immediately noting how many thousands of Libyans have been killed or injured in their struggle against a repressive regime, Lindsey recommends the US sends in people to start making money.

I'd also like to add my utter amazement at the idea that an increased military presence by the Americans would have led to fewer civilian casualties.

I'll grant Gadaffi might have fallen faster with an increased US role. That would also be true had the States simply nuked Tripoli. There is no doubt in my mind that whether or not Graham would have signed up for that approach would depend entirely on whether a nuclear explosion would have contaminated the surrounding crude.

Blown Roses

2011-10-21T15:26:00.001+01:00

I'm delighted that three quarters of the Stone Roses have allowed themselves to be in the same room for long enough to acquire enormous amounts of cash, but I don't care how impressive a voice actor he is, or how brilliant Spinal Tap was, it's not OK to pretend the whole band has reformed by sticking Christopher Guest in a Squire wig and hoping no-one notices.

Also, I note that Mani is now most of the way through his decades-long transformation from cheeky Manc scamp to the shrunken-headed ghost from Beetlejuice...

That's Bobby Gillespie on the left, obviously.

Friday Filching

2011-10-21T09:00:00.014+01:00

Courtesy of Senior Spielbergo, the delightful site of a wonderfully cute penguin robbing its neighbours blind.

What I find hard to believe is the director's description of this activity as "occasional". The penguins at Edinburgh Zoo are always engaging in a bit of three-toed discount at each other's expense. Maybe it's something brought on by captivity. Or, you know, exposure to the Scottish.

Just look at how happy that little bird is with his ill-gotten gains. Clearly he's more well adjusted than similarly criminally-minded jackdaws, who I've read sink into deep bouts of paranoia that everyone else is as crooked as they are.

Actually, that might have been Al Capone.

Posting might be very light for the next week, as I'm off on holiday with the Other Half, along with Chemie, Tomsk, Moddy Dhoo and various other members of our less than savoury gang. Everyone be nice whilst I'm away.

The Chaplain Conundrum

2011-10-20T20:22:00.000+01:00

This is an interesting article/interview, about the viability of atheist chaplains in the US military. Farley's brief comment on the idea is interesting as well. In a sense, Farley's point about definitions is pretty much irrelevant in practical terms (and I don't think Farley is arguing otherwise): if atheist soldiers want someone to attend to their spiritual needs, and if they want to call them "chaplains", then that's pretty much all their is to it. Unless of course enough other atheists weren't happy with the title, but that comes down to weighing opinion, rather than sticking to strict use of language (I can imagine BigHead reading this and reaching for the shotgun, obviously).

And yes, I very much believe that atheism can have a spiritual aspect. It doesn't have to, indeed if I were to be asked, I say that I don't think my personal variant does. That doesn't mean it can't. Of course, others would disagree, possibly depending on how they view the word "spirituality", and also how they define what it means to be an atheist, rather than an agnostic. Whilst such discussions of nomenclature can be very interesting, though- I've engaged in them myself many times - on the kind of practical level we're discussing here, then I'm not sure it's particularly helpful. Again, it doesn't really matter whether I'm correct in terms of cold, unyielding definitions (and adjectives of this type must always be used carefully - human experience is a continuum that's generally too complex for these terms to be completely prescriptive), all that matters is that enough people agree with me, then we need to make sure those people are considered when putting together systems of support.

I can see why Farley is asking whether a chaplain without the faith might as well be a counsellor, but (to use anecdotal evidence) none of the counsellors that have guided me over the years ever really came close to discussing my religious views [1]. That's by no means intended as a criticism, I'm simply drawing a distinction between people who don't talk about faith and those who talk about a lack of it. I think the idea of someone who has been trained to get people through a world without a God is a brilliant idea. Certainly, to draw once again from my own experience, I wish that I'd had more experience of listening to the thoughts of other atheists whilst I was younger, rather than those of people who were pretty much just anti-religion (Richie D; I'm looking at you!)

Put simply, I can see why "chaplain" might seem like a strange title for such a role (though does it really make sense to talk about Jewish or Islamic chaplains either?), but "counsellor" isn't going to cut it either.

[1] I believe that they all knew I was an atheist, though (except for the counsellor I saw as a child), so for all I know they used different approaches when talking to those with faith.

This Long And Bitter War

2011-10-19T20:05:00.001+01:00

One of those rare examples of unambiguously good news, as we learn that science is close to perfecting a malaria vaccine. 50% efficacy isn't brilliant by medical standards - certainly we're a long way from doing to malaria what we did to smallpox, but the number of lives that stand to be saved by this drug is truly astonishing.

Naturally, however, there are knock-on effects. In response to the hobbling of its mosquito foot-troops, the Insect Overlord (currently believed to exist in a blood-soaked wasp hive somewhere in war-torn Congo, or possibly Jan Moir's chest cavity) has struck back by arraying a mighty invasion force of Asian hornets across the French coast, ready to invade at a moment's notice.

I know what you're thinking. We beat the Nazis, we can beat some trumped-up foreign-johnny wasps who've gotten above themselves. But hornets, unlike Messerschmitts, don't show up on radar. We may never know when their vespidated take on Operation: Sea Lion is finally launched.

Plus, say what you want about the Luftwaffe, they never sent over pilots heavily pregnant with the next generation of National Socialists. That may have only been due to ejection issues, but still...

The Cain Scrutiny: Holiday Special

2011-10-18T15:10:00.002+01:00

Having already broken the seal by mentioning the dreaded Xmas last week, I don't feel too bad bringing this article to your attention, courtesy of Daily Kos. It's from last Christmas, in fact, but I missed it at the time, probably because even I had too much respect for Republicans to think they'd end up with Herman Cain as one of their top two presidential candidates (albeit temporarily - please, FSM, tell me it's just temporarily).

It's actually truly impressive, in terms of its construction. Trying to run Jesus' life through a hard-right prism is always liable to raise some laughs, but Cain's variant is in a league of its own. It's not worth the necessary ergs of intellectual processing to consider Cain's contention that Jesus was sentenced to death by a "liberal" court, any more than it would be worthwhile arguing with a Steve Irwin fan convinced his hero was stabbed to death by a Nazi stingray (IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Nazi stingrays would be awesome), but the "Jesus didn't need big government" line of argument has to be read to be believed.

Yes, Mr Cain. Jesus didn't require food stamps, or a healthcare system, or social workers. You know why? Because he had magical fucking powers! The very moment - the very nanosecond - that you work out how conservatives can cure cancer by touching people, I promise you I'll be willing to revisit the idea of universal health coverage.

If Someone Would Pay Me, I'd Make It Myself

2011-10-17T23:00:00.013+01:00

I support this idea whole-heartedly. No-one is a perfect prognosticator, obviously, but some people (koff - William Kristol - koff) are so frequently wrong, and on such a thoroughly large scale, that there should be some kind of resource somewhere in which their levels of stupidity can be indexed.

Maybe we need something like the h-index in academia. The h-index is equal to the number of papers you have with at least that many citations. So someone with an h-index of four has four papers with at least four citations in other works, and at most four papers with five citations or more (my h-index, rather abysmally, is either 2 or 3, I think).

Let's do something similar for political predictions: the p-index, equal to the number of mistakes you've made at an equivalently bone-headed level (working out the bone-head scale is the tricky part).

I also think McCain's ignoble display on the subject of DADT is a good place to start. Whilst vile and scabrous turds like Rick Santorum rely on "logic" to vomit their contemptible bilious swill across American politics ("Treating a minority like they're the majority is granting them special rights!"), McCain's ilk prefer to tie their miserable bigotry to actual testable hypotheses.

In the last three years, we were told that the US military couldn't work with DADT gone because the American forces work differently to all those allied countries who got rid of such policies without consequence, which was a little insulting to the US allies McCain et al are usually so keen to pay lip-service to. Then we were told that the problem is that gays can't keep their hands to themselves, which was insulting to homosexuals, and that the military would be unable to maintain discipline, which was insulting to the military itself (nice going guys). As a final, last-ditch effort, the argument was then switched to a fear that recruitment would become impossible, which at a time of double-digit employment, is pretty much insulting to fucking arithmetic.

Much as I give the American press a hard time, I don't think it should necessarily be their job to demand explanations for every mistaken prediction. Life's too short, and we've all been wrong at least once (with the possible exception of Paul Krugman) - my predictions regarding the midterms alone should guarantee a place on the board of shame somewhere.

But the next time John McCain opens his freakishly wide mouth to tell the people what calamity will befall the military if they fail to do exactly what he says they should do (bombing Iran, probably), someone should possibly have the presence of mind to ask whether we can avoid said catastrophe by deploying an elite unit of all those gay soldiers McCain swore on his soul would destroy the armed forces as we knew them.

A Long And Noble History

2011-10-15T20:33:00.003+01:00

So a few months ago, I promised the incomparably lovely Talia that I'd put together a post on wenching for her. I don't remember why exactly, it probably involved cider. But a deal's a deal. The only problem was: what the hell am I supposed to actually say?

I thought about cheating, actually, and discussing the life and work of Professor Wen Ching Li, but then I remembered that number theory is the very mathematics of Satan, and therefore deserving not of a post on this blog, but of utter extermination throughout all tine and space (though in fairness it's still better than mathematical physics). So that's out.

Part of the problem is defining what a wench actually is. Like so many historical terms, the word has picked up an awful lot of meanings, some of them less than complimentary. There are undertones of low social status and prostitution in there, because, well, of course there are. I doubt you'll find any concept of women providing any kind of service without it eventually turning into some kind of implication that they're providing that service. Why else are so many pixels taken up across the internet with "sexy" nurses and French maids? [1]

So let's stick with the less unpleasant reading of the term: an attractive woman serving you beer, possibly whilst on board a pirate ship. Honest to God, what could possibly be more awesome than that? The answer, quite clearly, is nothing, as the chart below ably demonstrates:

So let's hear it for wenches! The most perfect combination of my endless love for the ocean, my borderline addiction to alcohol, and my entirely unsurprising interest in pretty ladies. May their overflowing tankards and ribald jests (seriously, how awesome a word is "ribald") remain a feature of this world until the sun itself
goes dim.

Next week on Unexpected Sexytime Blogging: slatterns; is it time we gave them another chance?

[1] I know that the standard belief is that there's something inherently sexy in the uniform. I confess that I've never been able to understand that. Sure, I get how the various Anne Summers-style costumes work, but that's got nothing to do with anything other than the fact that men like plunging necklines, short skirts and stockings. Which of course is pretty much how people imagine the "sexy wench" in the first place, of course.

Friday Issues

2011-10-14T11:45:00.000+01:00

Who cares whether Letwin is dumping sensitive material in park bins? All I want to know is: why isn't he recycling?

Anyway, in honour of the man's antics, let's have ourselves some good ol' Wille Nelson.

(OK, so it's a stretch. You try finding a song about government officials being insufficiently discreet with their official papers. At least this song has paper in it. Also, ignoring the homeless, so it definitely fits in with Letwin's loathsome brood. And yes, it's a bit early for Christmas songs, but there's only ten weeks to go, and frankly,that's far too fucking nigh for my liking.)

"Burdens"

2011-10-13T21:43:00.000+01:00

Fading Back In

2011-10-12T22:06:00.003+01:00

Hurrah! Three of the most important (SPOILERY) questions in The Fades answered! To whit:

If the Fades need human flesh in order to touch, how could they ever start grabbing people to eat them in the first place?
Why do the Angelics have weapons to fight spirits that until recently they never thought could be of any danger to anyone?
Is Paul too horribly, indescribably stupid to live?

Honest to God, you Angelic douchebag. If Hannibal Lector tells you he's switching to Muesli, you don't buy him steak knives and an instant barbeque set by way of celebration...

(This episode also rather confirmed my long-held conviction that butterflies are totally evil. Just sayin').

"I Don't Think We're Safe In Kansas Anymore, Toto..."

2011-10-11T21:54:00.002+01:00

I realise this is my third post in a row on the ongoing American shit-storm. I'm also aware that this is currently at the discussion phase, and in media terms that word can include anything down to the level of "one guy said this and wasn't immediately cast to the pavement by an outraged mob".

Still, it sounds like the discussion went further than that on this occasion. And even if it didn't go very far, and even if this never comes close to becoming enacted, the very fact it's even on the radar scares the absolute crap out of me: in order to save money, Topeka City Council is considering striking the ban on domestic abuse from the city code, so as not to have to pay the costs associated with prosecuting offenders.

It's wouldn't be a complete free-for-all out there, from what I can tell, since the laws regarding more serious levels of violence will remain in place. Obviously, though, that's horribly cold comfort for anyone being effectively told "Don't worry, we'll only tolerate your spouse beating you up to a point".

The United States of America, ladies and gentlemen. Tens of thousands of deaths a year due to lack of health care, thirteen million children below the poverty line, and coming soon: a strictly positive value for the number of times your other half will be allowed to punch you in the face.

(h/t Balloon Juice)

Update: By a vote of 7 to 3, the City Council repealed the local law that makes domestic violence a crime.

The Cain Scrutiny

2011-10-11T13:42:00.000+01:00

I am getting heartily sick of Herman Cain AKA Mr "Let's simultaneous decimate the federal budget and increase tax rates on the poor by a factor of nine". Zandar does a fine job of dismembering his "racism is dead" bullshit here. [1] Zandar, as I understand it, is black, so I'll let him or her dissect the degree to which Cain's nonsense is especially surprising and aggravating coming from a black man.

I will note however that one does not need any personal experience of the pain of racism to realise that Cain claiming that his rise to wealth and power is proof that the playing field is level is ludicrous. It's exactly as logical as Frodo returning to the Shire and announcing any hobbit who can't make the trip to Mount Doom is a feeble-minded, unmotivated pussy, because he's done it, Sam's done it, and all those raspy, scraping Nazgul don't seem to have any trouble with it either.

Newsflash, Mr Baggins: you didn't get there on positivity alone. As Zandar notes, we don't know whether Gandalf the Grey represents affirmative action in this metaphor, or just an astonishingly impressive run of good luck, but either way, that dude was there, keeping the Balrog off your back whilst you gritted your teeth and applied yourself. To turn round and announce the moral of your story is that you have proved the uselessness of wizards doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Cain's loyal coterie of defenders can piss off as well, while we're at it. Every time someone argues the Republicans can't be racist because Lincoln freed the slaves (Pierce eviscerates one such fool here), it makes me wish Honest Abe had left a seven course banquet sealed up somewhere in the Whitehouse, just so we could feed its dust and bones to these idiotic fuckers and demand they claim it's still the hautest of haute cuisine. You might as well cite Friedrich Ebert as proof that Hitler was a fan of political compromise and coalition building to ensure peace.

[1] Is there any more perfect encapsulation of Republican thought than "Now I've passed beyond the need for something, it's high time that it was removed?" See also the wretched husk of humanity men call George "No global warming since 1991" Will.

Choose Your Targets Wisely

2011-10-10T17:43:00.000+01:00

I've been following the Occupy Wall Street/"We are the 99%" protests for a little while now, and I think I understand the situation. For a while there, I was baffled as to why the Tea Party was covered in so much more detail during it's early stages than OWS has been.

I think I've got it, though. Becoming disgusted at watching the banks almost destroy the world before demanding public money and demanding President Obama be held accountable = grass-roots movement of real Americans. Becoming disgusted at watching the banks almost destroy the world before demanding public money and demanding the banks be held accountable = bunch of unwashed hippies with no clear agenda.

Does that about cover it?

(Also, I'm not sure this guy is really following a winning strategy here. Others with a greater knowledge of the period than I might have a different reading, but I'm struggling to see what King could be referring to other than the Civil Rights Act. I can't see how "Last time we let this happen, them Negroes got themselves equality under the law" is going to be much of a rallying call to action. Or at least, not any action in the direction he's hoping for).

By Any Other Name

2011-10-09T17:30:00.004+01:00

The Other Half and I watched The Descent: Part 2 earlier (SPOILERS FOLLOW). To review it as quickly as possible:

First third: pretty good, and successfully evokes the combination of the vast wilderness of the Appalachians with the claustrophobic terror of the cave system used to such great effect in the first film (and once again, the caves themselves are at least as dangerous an enemy as the crawlers).

Second third: fairly boring. Part of the problem with horror sequels is the difficult tight-rope that always has to be walked. You can't stick too closely to the last film, or the scares will be lessened by simple familiarity. On the other hand, it's far too easy to overcompensate for this and end up chucking in too much new stuff that doesn't sit well with what's gone before, or even helps to undermine it (Tremors 2 parodies this problem by having its giant subterranean worms turn out to be incubation chambers for voracious heat-seeking velociraptor-beetles, or something). TDP2 sticks very much to the first of these options, which really means you're just watching the exact same film again with less interesting characters.

Final third: this actually does something new, by forcing the survivors to start thinking about what - and who - will need to be sacrificed in order to ensure at least someone escapes. There's a scene in which one character is forced to chop off another's hand with an ice axe (a somewhat unergonomic utensil with which to perform the task, to say the least) which is both hideously difficult to watch and probably the most grimly realistic idea in the whole film (why she actually needed to do the cutting is another story).

Plus, Juno is back, which is awesome because a) Natalie Mendoza is astonishingly pretty (even covered in grime and crawler blood) and b) she uses her gymnastic skills in the fight against evil. It also gives Sarah and Juno some closure, which the first film wasn't exactly crying out for, I suppose, but at least lets us know at exactly which point Sarah went mad (so far as I can tell, she escaped from the caves and only her tremendously serendipitous finding of the car wasn't actually real).

Having said all that, the film does have one major problem. It's not the director's fault, or the screen-writers', or any of the actors' (always good to see Gavan O'Herlihy in action, whether he's fighting crawlers, the French, or the Nockmaar army that destroyed Galadoorn).

No. The person to blame is Diablo Cody, because thanks to her, all I could think of whilst watching the last half hour of the film was this:

You win this round, Cody...

Careless Words

2011-10-05T19:48:00.001+01:00

I've held off on posting about this article by Brooks, mainly because the excerpts of it I'd read were so horrific I got too angry to type. I promised myself I'd calm down, read the piece in full, and then comment.

I'm glad I did, because it isn't as bad as I'd thought. Not quite, anyway, in that it's merely contradictory and ill-considered, rather than desperately offensive.

Still, though, I have to wonder what is it Brooks is ingesting to make hm seem lucid despite his total amnesia about what he's written just a few sentences earlier.

Brooks writes that the US is currently in the grip of an "empathy craze", where you can't move in a bookstore without stubbing your toe on a book on the subject that presumably is expecting you to apologise to it. Brooks thinks this is proof that people over-value empathy. I'd be more inclined to think that it's an obvious reaction to a country in which people deride the president for saying judges are better when they can understand the experiences of other people, and in which one entire political party has concluded that lowering unemployment or funding disaster relief for those hit by hurricanes are things only pussies would want.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Brook is right, though. What's his point? That empathy alone isn't going to get you anywhere.

Thanks for that, Davey boy. Really fucking insightful. You know what I've seen recently? An awful lot of cook-books. You know what didn't go through my mind? "Don't these people realise they'll need an oven as well?"

The crux of Brooks "argument" is that unconsidered, spontaneous empathy might not be as much use as a firm moral code, and that the world would be a better place if we could just respect each others core beliefs (man, if only there were a word to describe understanding other people's convictions are as important to them as ours are to us, huh?). He "demonstrates" this in several ways, but the two that stand out are a) that Nazi prison guards sometimes wept when machine-gunning prisoners, but that didn't stop them, and b) it turns out that happiness/good fortune actually makes one more likely to be charitable than empathy, under certain conditions.

The degree of cognitive dissidence to include these arguments in a piece based on stressing the importance of a moral code is truly staggering. To take the second example first, any first year student of any course requiring any logic whatsoever would be able to point out that "A is better than B because B doesn't do so well as C" is a fallacy of the most egregious and embarrassing kind. It can't possibly matter that people are more likely to give money to tramps if they've found it on the street than just because their empathic, unless you also prove that whatever moral rules you live your life by clear the hurdle empathy fell at.

Moving on to the Nazi example first (I can't believe I even have to type that sentence), either the prison guards were obeying orders for fear of being imprisoned or executed (in which case it's not proof of anything), or they did it because their moral code told them obeying orders was more important than their personal feelings.

The fact that Nazi soldiers massacred civilians despite finding it abhorrent isn't proof that empathy isn't sufficient, it's that a moral code divorced from empathy can lead to murderous, even genocidal outcomes. Whether the guards felt empathy for their prisoners is irrelevant, what matters is that Adolf Hitler, who moulded the moral code on which Germany under the Nazis was based, clearly didn't.

This is where Brooks argument completely collapses. He assumes a priori that a moral code is important, and empathy "a sideshow", without stopping to think for a second that maybe empathy's real use is in shaping moral codes to begin with [1]. Brooks suggests we think of people we admire, and then note that what drives them is liable to be a moral/religious conviction rather than empathy, but the people I admire - take Martin Luther King, Jr., for example - based their convictions on the simple truth that empathy is the bedrock of human society. Remind me again, who was it who said "Love thy neighbour as thyself?", again?

Which brings me back to Brooks initial reason for writing the article - the sudden explosion of "empathy" books in America. In response, I'd point out two things. First:: I will bet all the money in my pockets that books on Christianity outweigh those on secular empathy by a considerable degree. Second: the vast majority of American citizens are religious, which means the moral codes that Brooks is so fixated on have already permeated US society. We don't need more people to have codes, we need more people to act on those codes in a consistent, thoughtful way. Every one of the major religions in the United States is quite clear on the idea that being nice to people is good, and suffering is something we should take steps to avoid. The fact that some people don't do this in a sufficiently cool-headed way for David Brooks (a man whose moral code, let's not forget, puts politicians being nice to each other above attempts to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans without health insurance) is almost indescribably less concerning a problem than those who claim to belong to a religion demands empathy, but who demand the children of immigrants be deported, Iranian citizens be killed so as to teach their leaders a lesson, homosexuals are booed for daring to want to serve their country, young women die of cervical diseases for which vaccines are freely available, etc., etc., et-fucking-c.

It's like Brooks has seen people drinking tonic water in bars, and lambasted them for not realising how great a drink gin and tonic is, all whilst pretending not to notice that his friends have gotten themselves completely wasted on Bombay Sapphire, and killed a stripper. Actually, it's worse - it's like Brooks has deliberately launched into his "just because it cures malaria doesn't mean you can order it on the rocks!" tirade specifically to give his buddies time to dump Candi's corpse into the Potomac.

Which, of course, makes David Brooks the real sideshow. The fact that this is rhetorically satisfying is cold comfort to say the least.

[1] This is what Davey does almost every time, of course. Hell, we should call this the Brooks-Douthat Inversion. Every time Republicans in Congress or high-profile positions in "grassroots" organisations say something thoroughly abhorrent, Brooks and/or Douthat will crap out a colum arguing that the exact opposite position might be pretty bad as well. If Bush had nuked San Francisco, Brooks would have pointed out that hating radiation might lead to a loss of business for banana farmers.

The Perfect Score

2011-10-04T11:06:00.005+01:00

Excellent! My most popular Lucifer post just reached 666 views since it was first published.

No-one is to view it again! Here, have a link to it to ensure you know exactly which article must never again be seen by human eyes!

Update: Goddamnit, you guys!

Update 2: Seriously; stop that! What the hell, people?

Satire With Bite

2011-10-03T20:45:00.000+01:00

For the last couple of days I've been trying to figure out what exactly I thought of Teeth. It's difficult to go into any detail without discussing large chunks of the film, and since the five year rule still applies (though only for three more months), I'll stick my thoughts after the jump.

The gentlemen in the audience should consider themselves warned, however - grown men have run weeping in terror from the merest glance at the DVD box. This is not a film for the faint of heart...

The set-up to this film is almost entirely as simple as you're all thinking - a girl has a set of gnashers buried inside her vulva, which leads to all sorts of hilarious misunderstandings, in which a variety of men think they're going to orgasm, and instead die screaming in a fountain of blood after their spam javelins get bitten off. I think they did that plot on Frasier once.

What makes the film interesting, and made me want to write about it, is how it goes about setting up a situation in which a woman who knows she's afflicted by vagina dentata is still willing to lower the drawbridge, as it were. This is especially relevant because the film opens with our heroine Dawn (SHE IS AT THE DAWN OF WOMENHOOD DO YOU GET IT YOU GUYS?) making the rounds as a speaker at what I can only call abstinence rallies for children who are either just into or about to hit puberty.

In itself, this is fair enough, of course. I'm not - surprise! - a big fan of the idolisation of virginity, but there are perfectly valid reasons both psychological and physical in letting teenagers know that giving in to their rampaging hormones isn't necessarily a good idea. Besides, I don't need to agree with someones politics in order to watch a film about them.

More than that, though, as the Other Half pointed out, this is arguably a necessary part of the plot, since we need to believe that Dawn has never had sex (so that her... condition is not yet known to her, though she suspects on some subconscious level).

That's true as far as it goes, of course, but already early in the film I was getting nervous. Is it really the case that the only two options for teenage female virgins is that they're not particularly attractive, or their part of what comes worryingly close to looking like an abortion cult?

On its own, that's a minor point, but it got me thinking about what the film is trying to say. Dawn's first sexual experience comes after she goes swimming with a fellow member of "The Promise", a boy named Tobey whose combination of engaged respect and inexpert patter lead to Dawn beginning to fantasise about marrying him. However, once she swims into a nearby cave and snuggles herself up in the duvet within (I don't know why it's there, presumably she brought it over earlier), Tobey ignores her request to stay in the cold water (he's too desperate to enter the warmth of the cave, you see). For a minute or two he's content with the cuddling and the kissing, but very quickly he's moved on to raping Dawn.

Obviously, this goes spectacularly badly for him. Dawn, mercifully, is unconscious for all but a few seconds of the experience, after which her defences kick in, and Tobey learns "no means no" for the last time in his life.

There are two obvious ways to read this scene. One is that men who seek to physically dominate women may get more than they bargained for. The other is that Dawn's abstinence group was right all along - you just can't trust teenagers.

Terrified by what has transpired, Dawn books an appointment with a gynaecologist, hoping he'll be able to explain to her what exactly is going on down there. When Dr Godfrey asks what has her so concerned, she can only mumble something about "adaptations", because she's been told evolution is a waste of time, and the local school board has forbidden its pupils from seeing a cross-sectional diagram of the female reproductive system.

So is the lesson here that we should ensure teenage girls understand the changes of puberty to be more prepared for them? Or that a girl's "natural modesty" as Dawn calls it is better off left entirely alone. Certainly Dr Godfrey is probably in the latter camp - he loses four fingers to Dawn's cervical chomping - but then I'm not sure any gynaecologist who removes his gloves to make it easier for him to fit damn near his whole hand into a girl is necessarily the most reliable expert on these matters.

Again, this is what I found confusing. Is this a revenge fantasy against men who are perverts and sexual abusers of women? Or is it a warning that men can't be trusted and a teenage girl is better off out of the whole nasty business?

The gleeful viciousness with which each miserable piece of work is dispatched suggests the former reading, but if this is about female empowerment, why is it Dawn's entire arc for the first two thirds of the film involves her running from man to man to confide in or tell her what to do? I need to be as clear as possible that her being raped is entirely her attacker's fault, but even so the circumstances that lead up to it occur only because Dawn hasn't the strength to stay away from the man she's been lusting after. She tries to ask her stepbrother for help, only for him to tell her he's far too keen on fucking her to be interested in sharing their feelings. After she maims Tobey she runs to Dr Godfrey, and after she attacks him, she runs to a friend of hers from school named Ryan, who through a combination of sleeping pills and finger-mounted vibrators then seduces her.

In short, every time things get tough, she puts her trust in another man. The fact that she has a rather unique way of dealing with the situation when it inevitably goes south is of course the whole basis for the film, but that doesn't alter the fact that Dawn herself seems to be not her own character, merely a test for the men in the film to overcome or not. In that sense, Teeth does not encourage men to treat women better any more than Arachnophobia encourages us to be nice to spiders.

The most puzzling aspect is still to come, however. Ryan and Dawn successfully have sex. Ryan claims he is the mythical "conqueror" of the teeth, a hero out of legend who has bested his opponent. A more plausible reading is simply that the teeth respond to Dawn's subconscious, an idea which seems to be confirmed when Ryan admits mid-coitus that he seduced her for a bet, and the vagina dentata immediately do their work. What's interesting is not so much the discovery that the teeth are discerning in their attacks, it's that the screams of uncomprehending horror that Dawn let fly when she maimed Tobey have now been replaced with an exasperated "Shit!" and a quick exit. Sex is still bad, then, but she's becoming inured to it.

We then learn that Dawn's mother has died, in part because her stepbrother was too busy having sex to help out when she collapsed. Immediately Dawn settles on her plan for revenge. If her stepbrother really is desperate to bed her, then she's going to give him what he wants.

Sex has now become a weapon. The girl who just days ago was proudly telling complete strangers that she intended to remain a virgin until her wedding night is now happy to run straight to fornication as a way of getting revenge. By this point, the message is no longer "Don't try to rape a girl, or sleep with her under false pretences, or become a gynaecologist as a way of copping a feel", it's "Be careful about sleeping with a girl even if she walks into your room and seduces you".

The film ends with her hitchhiking to parts unknown, entirely happy to maim any man she considers too aggressive in requesting access to her body. The innocent girl has become, almost literally, a sexual predator. Sex has indeed destroyed the person she used to be, as well as leaving three men without their penises and a fourth with a 20% reduction in digits. So are we supposed to respect women, or be afraid of them? Indeed, is it the woman themselves that's to be considered, or are we to concern ourselves merely with their cunt? Because I don't see how fearing it is any better than lusting after it. Either way, you're still only thinking about women in terms of how they're going to fuck you.

Radio Lifetime

2011-09-30T09:00:00.002+01:00

It's been over a week now, but I thought I'd post a few thoughts on R.E.M., now that they've called it a day.

R.E.M. are a band who have been around for my whole life. That in itself is comparatively unusual - there are plenty of bands who were playing in 1980 who are playing now, but many of them have broken up at least once during that period.

R.E.M. are unique in my record collection, though, in that their time together was, until last Wednesday, pretty much exactly as long as my time on this earth. Michael Stipe first met Peter Buck whilst my mother and I were in hospital, either just before or just after I had crawled into the daylight. They played their first gig when I was three months old; I couldn't have crawled to watch it even if it had been in Stewart Park rather than Athens, Georgia. The first copies of Murmur were being shipped whilst I sat at nursery school, wondering how long it would be before I got my bottle of milk to drink (this being just before Thatcher had gotten round to stealing daily dairy produce from the mouths of children).

I was never really into music much as a child - I bought my first album at eighteen, and that was only because someone else had gotten me an album for my eighteenth birthday that I was so disappointed with I resolved that it would not be the only CD I possessed [1]. Even so, it was impossible not to notice the arrival of Automatic for the People . Not its actual arrival, back in the summer of 1992, the last time in my life in which my brain functioned according to its intended parameters [2] but it's sudden pandemic-like outbreak amongst my teenage friends when, approaching fifteen, we made the leap from "lower" to "upper" school (which, if any foreigners are confused by such arcane terms, basically just meant we got more tasteful ties and access to the coke machine in the "upper school room").

At the time, the album's popularity baffled me. I just wasn't ready to appreciate it, I guess. It probably didn't help that at the time my friends - and therefore I - were mainly listening to ...And Out Come the Wolves and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (alongside other, stranger beasts), and amongst all that high-tempo bombast and melodrama "Drive" and "Try Not to Breathe" were never likely to leave much of an impression (in fairness, "Monty Got a Raw Deal" and "Star Me Kitten" are still exceptionally boring songs even today). Basically, Automatic... seemed then what Around the Sun unambiguously is today. Suggestions I try the rockier Monster hardly helped (I'm actually quite fond of that album these days, but there's certainly no doubt that only an idiot would spin that disc purely because rock was what they were in the mood for).

For years, then, I was pretty dismissive of R.E.M.. Indeed, even now, I'm not really much of a fan of "Shiny Happy People", "Losing My Religion" or "Everybody Hurts", which given those three song's dominance of the R.E.M. radio appearance probability distribution made them a band who were easy to claim to dislike. Eventually, at age eighteen, I copied Automatic... from my first girlfriend, hoping to understand her obsession/gain easy Brownie points, and took it with me to university.

And then, one day, I got it. I don't know exactly when - it might have ironically been whilst the aforementioned relationship was in its agonising death-throes - but R.E.M. suddenly made sense. When I went out and bought Up (an under appreciated gem of an album, albeit with at least three songs that could be culled without a moment's hesitation), I was lost for good.

My late appreciation of the band means that they ultimately only released four albums which I experienced at the same time as everyone else, and only two after I'd finally acquired their full back catalogue (though I never did buy Around the Sun, because there's a difference between loving a woman and letting her steal money from you). Perhaps that's why so much of my thinking on the band differs from the conventional wisdom. Certainly I continue to be baffled by the level of praise heaped upon Document, Green and (especially) Out of Time almost as much as the lack of love Up receives, and I wonder whether the idea that Accelerate or Collapse into Now are mere shadows of their former glory would be less common had people, say, heard Lifes Rich Pageant for the first time in 2003, rather than 1986.

Anyway, the spigot has been turned off, and we now have (assuming they don't reform) the complete work of R.E.M. to consider. Some of it is excellent, some of it is disappointing, and some of it is gloriously, thrillingly messy. In short, If I came to R.E.M. too late for them to soundtrack my life, I can at least say they've reminded me of my life, which is probably all one can ask for in any case.

"It's the End of the World..." would clearly be too obvious a choice for a video here, so let's go with "Nightswimming" instead. I know that's only a shade less obvious, but I don't care. It's the best song the band ever wrote, and well up in the highest echelons of the best songs ever put together throughout all of time and space.

[1] For the record (hah!), it was Radiohead's Pablo Honey, and over time my opinion of it has definitely improved. It's no The Bends (I find all other Radiohead albums unlistenable, and I don't care what anyone else says - OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac - the point at which I gave up even borrowing their albums - is music written by people who spend their lives wishing they could be reborn as smug computers), but it gets the job done in a few places, and "Lurgee" is without question their most underrated song.

[2] I was presented with my first set of shiny happy pills a few months later. I actually remember hearing Shiny Happy People on the radio soon after that and thinking "Whoever these guys are, they can go fuck themselves".

Denying GW

2011-09-29T08:00:00.015+01:00

I don't know which annoys me more; the fact that Games Workshop's new piracy game isn't the Battlefleet Gothic for the high seas I was so desperately hoping for (which isn't their fault, I suppose), or that they've decided in their wisdom that seventy pounds is a reasonable price to charge (which very much is their fault).

Obviously, it's hardly news that GW's general pricing strategy is best described as "Gouge Everyone At All Times" (I still remember being thirteen years old and going to the January sales at my local GW shop - those were the days, huh?), but even by their standards this makes my head hurt. When the new edition of Space Hulk came out - a game, remember, that was both massively successful and unquestionably adored in its earlier iterations - it wasn't just absolutely, outstandingly gorgeous, it was my only real chance to own a game I'd been hearing about in the most glowing terms since I'd been old enough to lift a paintbrush. But I still didn't buy it, because sixty quid seemed excessive (a choice justified entirely when Cocklick, Jamie, lyndgb and Pause gave it to me for my thirtieth birthday, but I digress).

In comparison, Dread Fleet is nothing. No-one's played it before, no-one remembers it; if it has any similarity to any previous game it will be to Man O' War, which was generally agreed to be something of a flop for the company. Clearly, then, what needs to happen is fot another tenner to be slapped on the price.

Bah. Get off my lawn, and such.

(I'm also, like Frontline Gamer, more than a little suspicous of the combination of high price, limited print run, and complete dearth of information. Presumably information will be forthcoming in the new White Dwarf (which didn't see, to be available as of this Saturday), but even so, the implication seems to be that we will have a vanishingly small window opportunity to buy an incredibly expensive game about which we'll have almost no opportunity to consider or experience in any detail.)

Being American Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

2011-09-28T11:00:00.001+01:00

What the Hell is wrong with Maggie Gallagher? It's un-American to stop booking people to give seminars when it turns out you strongly dislike their politics? People are required to continue to funnel money into the pockets of bigots?

This is the kind of lunatic "We are the victims!" thinking that makes so much of conservatism so maddening to me. I'd think if would be hard to come up with anything more un-American ("We hold these truths to be self-evident") than to be told there are two consenting adults who are maddeningly, hopelessly, breathlessly in love who want to entwine their futures until the flesh fails, and say "Sure, but only if their genitals don't match". That's not really the point here, though. The point is that Gallagher wants us to swallow the idea that people should be discouraged from and lambasted for choosing who they want to hire as a speaker based on the things they've previously said.

Because that's all this is. If you want to be hired as a public speaker, and also write books explaining how certain subsections of the population should be denied what is not only freely available but culturally encouraged and lauded (you could even say pushed upon people, and you'd have a case), you'll have to deal with the fact that some people won't consider you the best choice to run their seminars. Whether Gallagher wants to consider this or not, whether a speaker is going to prove a significant problem for members of an audience is a valid consideration when hiring.

But then this has always been the problem. This is how miserable bigots like Gallagher twist their brains into the pretzel-cum-Moebius strip configuration necessary to believe what they believe. They have to simultaneously think that preventing gays from tying the knot is so important as to require the writing of books and the forming of pressure groups, and also that it's so irrelevant to society as to have no bearing on who a company might want representing them in public.

Obviously, there are wrinkles here. Just because I think it's ridiculous to ignore the reaction of homosexuals to a speaker doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy to ignore the reaction of racists. Moreover, I recognise that if someone called a company un-American because their policy was "No black speakers in case the Klan's in tonight", I'd not even look up from my comic. There are no hard and fast rules here.

But we already knew that. We already realised that balancing a speaker's desire to keep being paid despite them advocating the disenfranchising of a minority, and the audience's desire to pay for an event in which they meet no-one who's written a book saying their love could damage the country, is going to be tough, and is going to depend on the individual circumstances.

Such considerations are beyond Gallagher's intellect, however. Or her patience. Or her strategy. It's at least one of those, without a doubt. But (s)he who lives by the sword, and all that. If we are playing the Bright Line game, I'd like to point out that Gallagher's argument means it is un-American to stop paying a speaker after they write a book about how miscegenation is damaging the country. Is that something she's prepared to defend?

Maybe she is. I've never spoken to the woman. So take another example. Following Gallagher's logic, it would be un-American for her to fire someone after they penned a book entitled "Oppose Gay Marriage? Then You're A Cunt".

You'll forgive me if I express doubt that this is a position she could stick to.

Lodged In The Craw

2011-09-27T22:11:00.000+01:00

In case anyone's wondering, here is a list of things that would have been less stupid than defeating the Cybermen with love:

Defeating the Cybermen with anger;
Defeating the Cybermen with sulkiness;
Defeating the Cybermen with ennui;
Defeating the Cybermen with provolone;
Defeating the Cybermen with woodlice;
Defeating the Cybermen with the letter "K";
Defeating the Cybermen with Burt Wards gonad-reduction drugs;
Defeating the Cybermen with gold coins (again).

Also, contrary to the opinions of some, the stupefyingly ridiculous and cliched ending to "Closing Time" is not improved by the Doctor trying to argue there was more going on than "love > Cybermen", mainly because he gives up and admits that was what happened (in fairness, that's not how everyone read his conclusion; see the above link).

As far as I'm concerned, the Doctor grinding to a halt in the middle of attempting to cook up what only in this situation could be referred to as a less ridiculous explanation serves as a giant flashing sign above the episode: "Even the Doctor has to admit it was love". Which, of course, requires another sign just beneath it: "So the ending is exactly as fucking awful as you were thinking".

That's not undercutting, that's underlining. That's telling your audience that any attempt to fanwank some kind of borderline plausible - or even simply non-nauseating - explanation for what just happened simply won't do.

About seven years ago, I was sitting in my friend Richard's sitting room for a meeting of our creative writing group, and I was writing a ping-pong story with our newest member. She started, I continued, and she continued some more. Apparently, she hated what I'd written so much that she actually pulled the "It was all a dream!" move halfway through the exercise. Rather put out at this heavy-handed editorialising (the point of a ping-pong story is to adapt to what you are presented with, not rub it out because you can't twist it back to the tale you wanted to tell all along), I wrote in something even more extreme than my previous effort, complete with a random bystander exclaiming "It's like some kind of horrible dream, except it's clearly real".

What I did as a (hopefully) mild rebuke/quick gag in my friend's house, Gareth Roberts did to reinforce a terrible narrative resolution in a show watched by millions. Presumably, he still got paid.

(Seriously, we're really supposed to believe the Cybermen's "assimilation machine" can't deal with a father scared for his baby? That's really not happened to them in all the time they've been terrorising the galaxy? God, these new Telosians are useless, aren't they? As though trying to conquer Victorian London with Mecha Kong, a mad prostitute and Cuddles the Monkey wasn't stupid enough.)

Quote Of The Day

2011-09-27T08:52:00.000+01:00

From Charles P. Pierce, who's assessment of the current race for the Republican candidate for President is both entirely correct, and viciously, bleakly hilarious:

If Bill Kristol went to the track, he'd bet on the fucking starting gate.

Kristol only has a tangential part to play in both the article and the topic it covers, but since he insisted on taking credit for Sarah Palin showing up on the national radar, he certainly deserves some blame for the freak show we're currently watching.

And it simply cannot be said enough: Bill Kristol is the anti-Cassandra, repeatedly cited and asked for comment when the man's predictive powers aren't merely random, they're perfectly calibrated to choose any option but the right one. If Bill Kristol picked up a bridge hand to see thirteen spades staring back at him, he'd bet eight no trumps. He'd also immediately redouble when you called him on it, and argue that the bridge itself would never be safe from terrorism unless we bomb Tehran within the next 24 hours.

Faded Glory

2011-09-24T09:55:00.002+01:00

So, a quick multiple-choice question to anyone else who saw the first episode of BBC3's The Fades. Was it:

a) Ghosts vs birds feat. the nympho off This Life?
b) "You got Kairo in my Sigur Ros video!" "No, you got a Sigur Ros video in my Kairo!"?
c) An argument that hot girls prefer a sulky bedwetter to a black guy, no matter how funny he is?
d) All of the above?

P.S. I really rather liked it.

Only Straight Uggos Need Apply

2011-09-23T13:33:00.001+01:00

Clearly, the fact that a significant number of the kind of Republican who'd want to watch their presidential candidates bitching at each other are classless shitheads is hardly news. What's more aggravating, in the sense that so many people think he's conceivably presidential material (even if few of them would have him as their choice), is Santorum's comments on the recently repeal of DADT:

I would say any type of sexual activity has no place in the military. The fact they are making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to and removing Don't Ask Don't Tell I think tries to inject social policy into the military.

This is one of those nonsensical, ugly answers that overloads your logic circuits so hard that you have to sit down for a while and try and piece your shattered brain back together. I'd like to make fun of it, but I'm just overwhelmed by the possibilities. It would be like catching David Cameron in bed with Margaret Thatcher, whilst both were dressed in stocking and Nazi armbands and singing "Fuck the Miners" to the chorus of "Panic" by the Smiths. I mean, what are you supposed to focus on?

This is probably one of the clearest demonstrations yet that for a large number of people on the American Right, homosexuality is completely inseparable from homosexual sex. Letting gays in the military is a "special privilege", you see, because they'd presumably find it easier to do the nasty than all those poor straight guys would. You know, the same way letting black people into the army is a special privilege, because of how it's harder to see them during a night mission.

Obviously, if Santorum doesn't think soldiers should have themselves any poon tang, then that's his right. On his first day in the Oval, he's welcome to issue an executive order forcing the military to become completely celibate (and then watch it collapse into anarchy and cannibalism in, ooh, three weeks or so). In the meantime, banning gays from the military makes exactly as much sense as banning handsome, charming men. With the greatest respect to my gay friends, I don't believe a single one of them would get more ass than would George Clooney, should they all decide to take up arms together.

There's little more reprehensible than someone telling a whole group of his fellow human beings that giving them the exact same treatment should be considered a privilege. "Hey, just as a favour to you, how about I let you have the same opportunities I got, huh?"

Friday 40K: Another Brick In The Wall

2011-09-23T08:30:00.009+01:00

Things have been exceptionally slow on the painting front lately. My horribly old DVD player (kindly donated by Gooder when I moved out) finally gave up the ghost a few months ago, and I do most of my painting in front of moving pictures.

I finally caved and bought a new player a fortnight ago, and already it has borne fruit. Here is the next addition to my Planetstrike defences, following on from the bastion I finished about eighteen months ago. Holding the line are my Ultramarines, freshly re-based and about to receive some reinforcements - where "about to receive" means "about to gather dust whilst I spend six months painting another three of them."

Another Tremor Beneath The Tower

2011-09-22T09:30:00.000+01:00

So, the next installment of my increasingly tardy series of data sets has arrived. Naturally, it's completely incompatible with what I already had. Turns out, rather than simply missing the third data set, I was also missing fully one half of each of the first two data sets, and now I'm missing the other half of the third.

And all of this is just the baseline data. I've no idea in the slightest whether there's actually been any information gathered at the end of all this. Not that it particularly matters at this point - there's little point in trying to figure out if patients have seen significant changes in their test results if their original results are missing.

To paraphrase Josh Lyman, the fifth year of this two-year study doesn't seem to be going any better than the first four.

Oil-Dogs

2011-09-21T21:36:00.001+01:00

I've finally gotten around to taking a photo of the oil painting I commissioned for The Other Half's birthday. This is her bearded collie, Star (technically Woodland Star, since he's a pedigree, and therefore is required to have a stupid name).

I'm immensely happy with this; it captures Star's personality very well. Anyone who's looking to get a pet (or a landscape) painted for them might want to check out Isabel Clarke's home page. (Try to avoid the stuff on her politics, though...)

The Seven Facebooks Of Mark Zuckerberg

2011-09-21T11:38:00.000+01:00

Man, the internet is a scary place these days. Netflix has apparently been infiltrated by anti-capitalist Skrulls (or something), and Facebook is apparently going through more abrupt personality changes than '80s Doctor Who. Presumably that means we're due for a year-long disappearance, mangled grammar, massive budget cuts, a sudden and remarkable improvement in product, and then lots of cats followed by cancellation.

Hopefully one day Sorkin and Fincher will dramatise this period of hyperactive, directionless cosmetic fiddling in The Social Network II: Antisocial As Fuck, in which the frenetic lunacy of the time will be represented by having the actors receive page after page of updated dialogue whilst the cameras are actually rolling. Each scene will only end when Jesse Eisenberg becomes disorientated and overwhelmed, and bursts into tears. Which is presumably how meetings end at Facebook's secret underground volcano lair these days in any case.

Unwelcome Traditions

2011-09-20T21:48:00.001+01:00

My comments on Giant Size X-Men for the other blog eventually got so ivolved that I thought they might be worth putting up here as well (after very minor tweaking).

It's entirely unoriginal and obvious to point out that with the benefit of hindsight, "Secomd Genesis" marks probably the most important turning point in the entire history of Uncanny X-Men. That fact eclipses all others, I think, and people forget - or at least don't discuss - exactly which parts of the book proved the most transformative and, more importantly, whether their effects were actually desirable.

A lot has been made of the international flavour of the second generation of X-Men, which is hardly surprising. Of the seven new mutants to be recruited by Xavier, only one was born within the borders of the US, and as a resident of an Apache reservation, it's fairly clear John "Thunderbird" Proudstar would not consider himself to be an "American" as the term is generally understood (which is to say, he very much considers himself American, but sees Xavier and Cyclops as "white-eyed" interlopers).

In all this talk of race and nationality, though, the more important change is often overlooked. With the introduction of the new team, the book is no longer about five teenagers who follow their mentors orders to the letter, but about eight characters in their early twenties through to (seemingly) their late thirties at the very least, who all have their own motivations for joining the team.

In short, the book is now stuffed full of conflict, both over the tactics best suited to getting the job done, and the strategy that should be being employed in the first place. "Second Genesis" makes this very clear once the neophyte X-Men arrive on Krakoa by having Cyclops split the group into four pairs, each of which (barring Storm and Colossus) consists of one team-player, and one surly, objectionable turd.

After all, there's no logical reason for splitting the team up - having them advance on the centre of the island from four different directions seems ludicrously counter-productive (rescue missions rarely requiring the target be surrounded) - so it must have been done to allow us to understand what is happening. The age of bickering and insubordination has begun.

I've discussed this at length over at the other blog, of course, as part of my attempts to deconstruct the '90s X-books and work out exactly what went wrong during that decade (not that I think it was as bad as some do). Ironically, given that I blame him for so much of what made those years sometimes tiresome, Wolverine actually comes off the best of the three designated dickheads here, appearing to be (as he is) a man willing to give his all to complete the mission, just with little interest in other people's opinions about how to do it. In contrast, Thunderbird and (especially) Sunfire are little more than argumentative children, constantly reiterating their disinterest in being part of a situation they volunteered for mere hours before.

Indeed, this is part of the fundamental problem of the book. Let's consider the original series of Star Trek for a moment. I once saw Nichelle Nichols tell, with visible emotion, a story about the day Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. approached her, and told her that Star Trek was one of the few shows he allowed his children to watch because it, almost uniquely for US television during the '60s, neither excluded black characters, nor made an issue of their presence.

He was right. One of the great strengths of ST:TOS is how little interest it had in pointing to its black comms officer, or its Asian helmsman. There is perhaps some mileage to be had in an argument that says writing Sulu and Uhura as being indistinguishable from white characters (which, by and large, they most certainly did) brings its own set of problems, but in the context of the era and the surrounding culture, I think the show deserves a lot of respect (c.f. the hideous back-slapping atrocity of "Far Beyond the Stars" DS9 offered up thirty years later) .

The point here is that it isn't enough to put together a multiracial cast of characters. You also have to not spend all your time sticking flashing arrows above those characters with their origins written on in neon.

The amount of noble gas expended in the thirty seven pages of Giant Size X-Men could have been used to make Las Vegas visible from high orbit. Banshee can't go two sentences without a "Begorrah!" or a "Sure'n it looks like...", and I'm not sure how comfortable we should be with the idea that an African tribe would worship a mutant as a god (though that's not really something I know enough to comment on), but it's Sunfire and Thunderbird, with their constant refusal to simply do what they'd agreed to without endless petty sniping, who get the most raw deal. Sunfire, just as he was five years earlier, is portrayed as a stereotypical arrogant, gaijin-hating, honour-obsessed Japanese citizen, and his simultaneous loathing for Westerners and desire to prove himself worthy of the Bushido code apparently compel to him join up, quit, and then join up again, all entirely without reason (naturally, in the next issue, he quits).

Thunderbird, though, is in a league of his own. Every analogy he makes involves Custer or his last stand - because clearly Little Bighorn is the only thing an Apache would think about or reference - but the real problem only arrives when Xavier gets him to sign up by essentially calling him chicken. "What will this Apache hate more", asks the subtext, "the white man, or his own people's miserable shell of an existence?"

It's not that I can't imagine a Native American who would look at his people's situation and find it lacking, or even that he would blame them for it. It's just the idea that a Caucasian could use those feelings to manipulate the Native American to do exactly what they wanted that leaves an excessively sour taste in the mouth, especially when you realise that a white writer is using a white character to tell an Apache that he needs to prove that his people are still worthy of respect.

In fairness, both Wolverine and Nightcrawler escape any kind of cultural pigeonholing, and Colossus' dedication to the ideals of Communism is presented without comment. So it's not all bad. There are definitely issues that need to be resolved, though. And whilst Sunfire and Thunderbird themselves very quickly stop being an issue, the basic concept of using someone's nationality as shorthand for their characterisation is something that lasted an awful lot longer.

Forced Donations

2011-09-20T11:26:00.000+01:00

Found courtesy of lyndagb: a nice little analogy to remind us how messed up some people's views of sexual assault accusations can be. It's not entirely equivalent (a stranger with a gun can't exactly claim they thought the victim was happy to go along with it all), but it still makes an excellent point.

Disc Junkies

2011-09-18T11:02:00.002+01:00

A few months ago, via a post over at MGK's place, I was introduced to the concept of "Ameritrash" board game and "Euro" board games. Simplified extraordinarily, Ameritrash games focus on creating an experience that could be considered evocative of the setting to the game. Euro games concentrate on sticking together the best mechanics possible, without any interest whatsoever in whether, for example, the game is in any way representative of colonising an island, running a medieval society, or burning down people's buildings and running away sniggering.

The potential problem with Euro games is that there isn't a sufficiently powerful hook to hang the experience on. On the other hand, Ameritrash board games can try so hard to ensure the gaming experience includes every conceivable facet of its inspiration that actually having fun becomes a secondary consideration [1]. There's another potential problem for Ameritrash games, though: how do you make a game fun to play for people who think the source material is a monstrous waste of time?

Despite reading a half dozen or so of the books, I've never been even remotely grabbed by Pratchett's Discworld series. I don't particularly dislike them, or anything, I just find myself baffled by people who tell me that they're fascinating and hilarious and sprung from the mind of a genius. As far as I'm concerned, they're perfectly good entertainment, with the occasional genuinely funny line, but it's like I've taken some Nytol and had a perfectly good sleep, only to discover that everyone else who took it has experience lurid sex dreams with their ultimate sexual partner. Or something.

All of this went through my mind when we started playing the Discworld board game. The good news is that the setting certainly doesn't overwhelm the game. I'm told by Jamie - my personal expert on all matters Discworld - that the various events that take place during the game certainly give the flavour of Pratchett's universe, but there was certainly no point no expectation of or advantage to my giving a crap. Essentially, the game plays out like Chaos in the Old World, in that all players are playing according to the same rules, but in an attempt to achieve different goals.

Well, sort of, anyway. Whilst each one of the four factions from CitOW have their own unique victory conditions (killing things, infecting cities, seducing nobles, or chasing after shiny rocks), three of the seven characters in this game have identical winning conditions. That's a bit of a shame, actually: since the game can only have four players, it might have been better to include five unique conditions instead. I did wonder if the three identical goals - representing Lords Rust, Selachii and De Worde, [2] and requiring control of just under half of the city - were there because such land-grabbing antics required more than one participant for balance, but since a game can include only one lord (or no lord at all), that surely can't be it.

Whilst the aforementioned nobility are busy trying to hoover up all the real estate, Lord Vetinari is trying to spread his minions across the city, the Chrysoprase is collecting gold, the Dragon King is hoping to set the city ablaze with riots, and Vimes is just trying to stop anyone else from winning before the game ends. Unlike CitOW, each player's identity is kept secret, which leads to a lot of second-guessing about what your opponents want, and whether your actions might be giving them advantages too. The resulting detective work, bluffing and double bluffing, and general paranoia is the game's real strength, and works very well with what is at heart a very simple game mechanism - each turn you can play a card, most of which have multiple effects (place a minion, kill someone else's minion, construct a building), and which may let you play another card, allowing you to potentially string together a great deal of cards. That's pretty much it - at least until the dragons arrive.

It's fun, it's quick once you've learned the ropes - and these are pretty simple ropes, none of that double inverted slipknot business - and it keeps Terryite thralls locked in the throes of Practchetty passion. Recommended all round.

[1] This is why I'm terrified that the final expansion to the BSG board game will simply contain three dozen chilled colostomy bags of Ronald D. Moore's urine, which are to be liberally spayed across all players in the penultimate turn.

[2] Whoever the hell they are.

Friday Meloncholy

2011-09-16T09:03:00.001+01:00

I'm off for a weekend's gaming with Jamie and Pause in Devon, so I thought we should have a video that nodded to that. Obviously, that county is most famous for pirates and cream teas - both awesome, obviously, but not immediately suggestive of a Youtube clip.

Looking at Wikipedia's entry, though, I discovered that Devon gave rise to some or all members of two of Britain's most internationally popular and staggeringly overrated bands. Obviously, I'm not going to sully this blog with anything by pompous dirge-factory Muse, even one of the two good ones. That leaves Coldplay, who have at least managed a good half-dozen genuinely brilliant songs alongside the chaff that everyone else seems desperate to fall about over.

Anyway, this is my pick of their back catalogue, (though "Don't Panic" comes a very close second). Be warned, though, it's not exactly a particularly happy song. I wouldn't recommend listening to it just before you go to the pub for your Friday drinks, unless of course that pub is where you're meeting someone who is slowly and surely boiling away your heart inside your chest, and pretending not to notice.

The Mistake

2011-09-15T23:33:00.002+01:00

A few hours ago I sat down and watched "The French Mistake", the fifteenth episode from Season 6 of Supernatural. I know plenty of people who've raved about it - terms like "funniest episode ever" have been observed, though at a distance, as a hunter might observe a gazelle as it told its gazelle mates about the TV shows it's been watching in-between smelling musk glands and fleeing from lion prides.

I was pretty much expecting to hate it, actually. Not because I'm a knee-jerk contrarian (not on this topic, at least), but because I couldn't see any good coming from the episode's conceit. A more conceited conceit would be hard to come across, actually, and this is coming from a guy who once wrote a story about an army of his own clones taking over the world (it was for a writing assignment; long story.)

Below the fold; spoilers.
The basic idea behind the episode, for those that don't know, is that Sam and Dean, for reasons that we don't need to go into, find themselves in the "real world". Which is a pretty old idea, but OK. They also discover that Supernatural is just a story to everyone around them, which is a pretty old idea for this show, but again, fine. The point where things become unglued is when it transpires that not only is Supernatural a TV show, but they are its stars, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki.

Even that is an old idea - Eerie, Indiana did it back in 1992, for a start - but that's not really my problem with it. It's just all too hideously back-slapping. Too self-conscious in it's attempt to seem laid back. Which is fine, of course. This show has a long and glorious history of sly winks to the audience, most obviously in the form of the Prophet Chuck ("You guys sure do cry a lot"). Nobody who watches "Ghostfacers" or "Monster Movie" is going to be unaware of Supernatural's self-depreacting streak.

But telling us they're not taking it seriously is something else. Watching "Robert Singer" and "Eric Kripke" show up and act like total douchebags is a giant neon sign saying "We don't take ourselves seriously, honest!". As though I care what they think of themselves or what they're doing, as oppose to just wanting to experience the story they're telling.

Remember that episode of the X-Files, "Hollywood A.D."(written by David Duchovny) in which one of Mulder and Scully's cases was made into a film, and Mulder is furious to learn he's being played by Garry Shandling? That's how you do something like this. That's using another story to highlight the absurdities in the one you're following. Further, casting Duchovny's real-life wife Tea Leoni as "Mulder's" love interest in the film is a nice little nod. Casting Jared Padalecki's real-life wife Genieve Cortese as Padalecki's real-life wife is a headbutt from a drunken Glaswegian who has conspired to set himself on fire earlier in the bar fight.

And whilst "Hollywood A.D." was deeply silly, it respected the logic of its show. "The French Mistake" makes no sense at all. Why those names? Why those relationships? It's not even particularly funny for much of it's run-time, partially because it's too reliant on what it thinks is the automatic humour of having Sam and Dean lead Jared and Jensen's lives, and partially because the amount of knowledge about the show and its actors required to get some of the jokes (Sera Gamble is just a voice on the phone, Misha Collins has a massive Twitter following) means that, once again, everyone just looks like they're trying too hard (to be fair: there were two moments that had me laughing so hard I almost choked. "Ola, Mishamigos!")

It doesn't help that the show did something similar all the way in Season 2 with "Hollywood Babylon", in which Sam and Dean pretended to be stage-hands in order to investigate a possible haunting of a sound stage on which a horror film was currently being filmed. And that's where the problem really lies. If this episode had just been about Sam and Dean becoming actors, either as an undercover gig or due to some "Changing Channels" style shenanigans (a Season 5 episode in which Sam and Dean find themselves trapped in a series of TV shows - starting to sound familiar), it would have been obviously derivative. By adding in the "they play themselves playing their characters playing themselves" idea, it does at least become something different.

But because something is different, of course, does not necessarily mean it's something particularly good. Ironically, given that "Robert Singer" spent this episode muttering "Season 6" as though it were a curse, this is the first time this year that Supernatural really seemed to be showing its age.

However, since I am at heart a fair man, I have tracked down a clip of the best scene in the episode, which is not only one of the funniest three minutes of television I've seen in a while, it also - crucially - doesn't rely on Sam and Dean being Jared and Jensen to work. All you need to know is that Sam and Dean are impersonating actors, and that means trying to act out a scene whilst the camera rolls.

The Ivory Tower

2011-09-14T16:08:00.000+01:00

I love academia. So far this week I have:

Been asked on a Sunday afternoon to rewrite a section of a paper with a deadline of Monday afternoon;
Spent Monday morning writing the changes only to discover the paper was submitted first thing that day, without me being told;
Discovered that the woman responsible for cleaning and providing the data has left some mistakes in the data - or at least, in the 33% of the data I currently have - and has then gone on holiday, despite the deadline for having the full set ready for me being the end of this month;
Found out the deadlines have been changed in an email I was never sent, and now involve me analysing the full data set in the next two weeks.

And this is all just one project. I can't begin to tell you how screwed up my research programme is right now...

Waiting In Line

2011-09-12T14:43:00.004+01:00

I have to say, I loved that episode. A lot of people felt it was too cynically manipulative, and that's entirely fair enough. God knows I had that reaction enough times during RTD's reign of VERY LOUD MINOR CHORDS terror. This time, though, it worked on me entirely, and has made me reconsider my somewhat low opinion of Karen Gillen as an actress (and as my friend Boo pointed out, it was probably the first episode of the series that actually sold the idea of Amy genuinely being in love with Rory).

Having said that, there is one thing that keeps rolling through my head regarding the ending of the episode (spoilers...)

There's some interesting debates going on across the internet right now about what exactly the ending to The Girl Who Waited says about Rory and, especially, the Doctor. Some people are horrified that the Doctor could lie to one of his companions, offering her hope when he knew full well she would have to be sacrificed. Others saw his actions as a welcome return to the ruthlessness that periodically raised its head during the original series. And still more people judge his gambit as a fundamentally pragmatic one - he can only save one Amy, so it may as well be the one who hasn't been trapped alone for the better part of four decades.

For the record, I can see some truth in all three approaches, though personally I find it hard to get past the fact that the Doctor deliberately lied to someone in order to ensure they got themselves erased from existence. Furthermore, I think Rory was entirely justified in complaining to the Doctor that "you're turning me into you!". The Doctor insists it must be Rory's choice, but the choice isn't "young Amy or old?", it's "Leave young Amy in the TARDIS, or actively throw her out in order to bring old Amy in (the third choice is to let the TARDIS explode and kill them all, but presumably Rory isn't going to go down that route). In other words, the Doctor offers Rory the choice only after ensuring the deck is stacked as heavily in favour of young Amy as possible.

That does feel out of character for the Doctor, actually, but that's not what's really got me thinking. What I really want to know is this: given the deck-stacking mentioned above, what would the Doctor have done if the older Amy had gotten to the TARDIS first. I wouldn't go so far as to say Tom MacRae was taking the narratively lazy path by doing things this way round - mainly because older Amy's choice to distract the robots to ensure Rory's safety seemed entirely in-character - but it does force one to wonder - just how "monstrous" was the Doctor prepared to get?

Spectrum Spleunking

2011-09-11T16:30:00.003+01:00

Time to rock it older-skool (old-skooler?) than we ever have before, with one of my favourite childhood games. Our ZX Spectrum was frequently a treasure trove of low-tech brilliance, each one of its 48K was pushed to its absolute limit to produce excitement, challenge, and from time-to-time, more than one colour.

There are, of course, no instructions offered for the game. Nor will I give you any help - that would be contrary to the spirit of '80s video-gaming. I will give you a few tips, though. The Black Knight is the best bet for a nemesis; axes aren't quite as good as you'd think they are, and the best way to kill the Oracle is to put on a magic cloak, grab a sword in each hand, and hack his tentacles off, preferably whilst screaming "You didn't see that coming, didya, bitch?"

Future's Fools

2011-09-11T14:27:00.001+01:00

What is it with sci-fi films and stupid people? The Other Half and I had a movie double bill yesterday, and as far as I can tell, City of Ember is about an underground society so stupid they assign people their careers at random, and then are surprised when their engineers can't fix the generator they are entirely reliant upon.

Splice, in contrast, is apparently about two idiot scientists/gigantic aresholes who cross Lily Cole with a naked mole rat, and then are surprised when locking it in a barn doesn't leave to domestic harmony.

Better social and intellectual authorities, please!

Friday Cephalopods

2011-09-09T08:30:00.005+01:00

Courtesy of Chuck, here's a 2007 short film which contains everything that's good and right in the world.

(Also, I just realised that this is post number 1234. That's a lot of swearing.)

Complements

2011-09-08T21:11:00.001+01:00

Mathematicians learn, fairly early on in their intellectual development, that presence and absence are the exact same thing, simply observed from opposite directions. To a more reality-based mind (and anyone who argues maths is reality based simply hasn't done enough maths to know what they're talking about), there are sights and sounds and tastes in abundance that distinguish what we have from what we don't have, but in the realm of sets and closures and numbers both rational and otherwise, an outline is an outline, and it doesn't really matter on which side of it you're standing. The train tracks from one to the other go both ways, after all.

If "Paradiso" was about what Lucifer has, then, either what he's gained from his new universe or imported from his own one (which is far more than he wants to admit to), then "Purgatorio" deals with what he lacks. And not just him, by any means.

Every character in fiction can be broken down according to four criteria: what they have and want, what they have but don't want, what they are trying to acquire, and what they are trying to avoid. Lucifer has said right from the very beginning that there is nothing he is trying to acquire (that's why the Voiceless Gods were unable to influence him) and that nothing he has is of any interest to him (or so he keeps insisting to Mazikeen, at any rate). Nor is the fear or losing anything something he would or could ever admit to. What drives Lucifer - or, more to the point, what he says drives him - is simply the desire to be rid of those things he does not desire.

Hence his own Creation. His goal is not to compare his universe to that of his father's - either as mockery or as competition - but merely to ensure there exists a reality in which he is free of Yahweh's desires and Destiny's dictates (if indeed that's not a tautology - the relationship between God's plan and the Endless' book remains murky to say the least).

Except... that can't be the whole story, can it? Exiting Creation would have been enough to ensure his freedom, but a letter from God giving him that option just wasn't good enough. Indeed, on learning Yahweh had constructed the letter of passage in such a way that the gateway out of his realm would prove a one-way trip, Lucifer was incensed.

The question here is: why? Why would Lucifer ever want to return to the reality that runs entirely according to his father's will? Why wasn't his "Get out of Creation free" card good enough?

The only logical explanation is that Lucifer is lying. Lying to everyone he meets, and to himself as well. There is something else here. Something else he wants to be rid of. And, because absence is just presence looked at from another direction, there must be, despite his protests, something he is attempting to gain.

It's Death who spells this out for us, as she sits with Lucifer, watching him straddle the line between life and, well, death. Even the Endless have a healthy respect for the Morningstar, and clearly would think twice about pissing him off, so as Death says, this is probably the only tine she can have an honest conversation with him, whilst he's tied up fighting the damage caused by Susano O Mikoto and the Basanos. So she tells him what she's been "dying to say" (geddit); namely that no matter what Lucifer wants to believe, that this is all about his father.

This, of course, is the exact opposite of a surprise. By creating his own universe, and by demanding its inhabitants cling to no religion whatsoever, Lucifer is saying more than merely "I don't need you father", he's moved on to "No-one needs you, father." It's not about proving he can escape Yahweh's influence, but proving that influence was unnecessary from the very beginning. It's as though Lucifer is writing an instruction manual: "How to Run a Light-Touch Universe". Either he desires proof that he can do things better than his father, or he wants to be free of the idea that his father alone can run a universe. Two sides of the same outline.

Clearly, whatever it is the Lucifer seeks, it's something he's prepared to risk his own existence for. And not just him, either. Susano O Mikoto, Meleos, the Basanos, Michael, the Lilim and presumably Elaine as well, all are as immortal is the Morningstar. We are not watching them fight for survival, but risk survival in order to obtain what they want, or divest themselves of what they want to be rid of.

That fight is always about absence, it seems. For Mazikeen and her followers, it's the absence of a home (until the return of Lilith, at least), but for everyone else in this maelstrom of violence and intrigue, this is all about the absence of family.

This is just the latest in the long list of reasons why Carey is such a talented writer. He's taken as a foundation what is probably Western civilisation's most well known tale about the rejection and betrayal of family, and turned it into a story in which family is all important. Susano is so consumed by rage over the death of his brother Kagutsuchi that he's willing to face off against a former archangel whom he couldn't best even whilst his foe was mortal. Meleos, in contrast, is so ashamed by how totally he was beaten by his "children", and by how much damage they have caused that he's willing to try and destroy them. And whilst Elaine's need to save Lucifer is clearly based on more than the fact that he's her uncle, that factor should not be dismissed entirely.

If we return to Meleos briefly, though, his role in "Purgatorio" is crucial, and not just because it is his actions that make it clear to Lucifer that his own success (and indeed survival) may be contingent upom the cooperation of others. When first we met Meleos, he was incidental, all but irrelevant to the story other than for what he possessed: the Basanos. This time around, his presence and help is all that allows the Basanos to be defeated.

Up until now, a fundamental narrative strand of Lucifer has been the manner in which we deal with our parents. Lucifer, Michael and God, Basanos and Meleos, Elaine and her angry, violent foster father. This is the point where the tables turn, and we begin to see how parentsdeal with their children. The same track, but the opposite direction.

This is true not only in Meleos' dealings with the Basanos, but with the Basanos' own attempts to gain themselves a child. So desperate are they to renew themselves through procreation, they're prepared to challenge Lucifer in his own Creation, where he is at his most powerful, and where their ability to see the future no longer functions. Indeed, why else does our sentient tarot deck favour the small girl so heavily, if not as a demonstration, conscious or otherwise, of what is truly important to them? The fact that the next most commonly witnessed card is that of the Grim Reaper (I would call him Death, but that role is already spoken for in this little drama, thankyouverymuch) tells you all you need to know. The future, to paraphrase G'Kar, now consists of only two possibilities: the Basanos gain a child, or they lose themselves. Give me nappies or give me death, as it were [1]. Secure my future, or end it (that damn outline again).

We can go further, though. The conclusion to this story makes clear that the Basanos are not really willing to risk death if it can gain them a child, they are willing to ensure death if it guarantees them a child. They are more concerned by what is absent than what is present. Their loyalty to and love for their (only just conceived) child is already greater than their own sense of survival. The unswerving, unquestioning loyalty to one's offspring is in evidence elsewhere as well. Michael chooses to bring down the wrath of God upon him (and remember: Michael has witnessed the wrath of God before, and knows exactly what it entails) in order to protect Elaine, and even Elaine's adopted father seems genuinely distraught when faced with her "death".

This raises a crucial question: how far would Lucifer himself go to protect his Creation? What is he prepared to give up in order to ensure he and his world are finally free? We already understand this up to a point, in how savagely he deals with the Basanos. Had someone invaded Lux in such a way, Lucifer would have taken his revenge, but only as a matter of principle, not because there is anything in the nightclub that he truly values. The same is not true of this world he has fashioned for himself. There is more at stake than his pride: this is about the life of his child.

His Creation is not his literal offspring, of course, but how else can you interpret something in which you've poured all the time and effort and blood you have so as to create, except as your child. Especially considering Lucifer (and Meleos), lacking Michael's demiurgic power, are completely sterile. Creation is the closest thing they'll know to procreation, and they know it. Indeed, once again we return to the relationship between Lucifer and his father. What better way to cut the cords that bind you to your father than to create your own child, and raise them in as different a way as possible as what you experienced? Sometimes, we define what our children need to have by what was absent from our own childhoods.

Of course, that isn't the whole story. For that, we must consider those who love both their father and their child. Whilst Lucifer is - ludicrously - trying to ensure he is nothing like his father whilst ensuring the nature (as oppose to the nurture) of is own child is as close to that of his father's as possible, Michael is forced to choose between father and daughter. In choosing Elaine encapsulates "Purgatorio" perfectly. What we want from our fathers, and what we want for our children are the exact same thing. The same destination, a little further down the track.

So which is it? Is Lucifer thumbing his nose at Yahweh, or trying to escape him through contradiction, or simply letting him know how all of this was supposed to work? There's no way to be sure, really. Lucifer isn't telling, and it would be foolish in the upmost to question him on the matter. Death looks like she knows, but as Elaine has already found out, the price of learning from Death is that you don't get the chance to come back and tell anyone about it.

In any event, we now know who Lucifer is, what his goals are, how he deals with his foes, and what he is prepared to risk in order to keep his Creation free from the control of others. The next obvious question, as Lucifer travels to Effruil to fight a duel he cannot possibly win in his current condition, is just exactly how much all of this is going to cost.

[1] I am very much pro-children, so long as they're someone else's. Indeed, one regular commentator on this blog has a daughter that I love to bits. Even so, it does seem like the development of one's offspring can be summarised thus:

"I need you to clean up my poo!"
"Here are all the toys you must give me now!"
"I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!"
"Can I borrow the car?"

1.7 Matriculation, Part 4: Keep Digging

2011-09-07T08:00:00.002+01:00

Apparently some costs are universal.

1.6

Ursine Undone!

2011-09-06T22:09:00.002+01:00

This is something you don't see every day. Though you should, obviously. Let all dangerous and voracious predators be warned: come at our dogs, and we will fuck you up.

Artist's impression