Published on
May 31, 2008 in
Movies.
I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night at the pictures and I heartily recommend that you all go and see it as soon as possible. I have to admit that although I usually quite like going to the movies very few have made me smile like a schoolboy all the way through. From the opening scene of a hotrod racing along a highway to the strains of Rock around the Clock to Indy’s greaser sidekick clearly modelled on Marlon Brando in Rebel without a Cause, it was a perfect fit for the McCarthy Era in 1950’s America. I also loved the playful and fun way they dealt with the fact that Indy (and Harrison Ford) are both much older than they were in the first three movies. I think if they had tried to play it of as being a year after the Last Crusade with Harrison Ford’s botox-ed, hair dyed and body doubled to make him look 40 again it would have been a disaster.
Cate Blanchett played a good turn as the cold and calculating KGB villainess which contrasted well with Indy’s world weary but sparklingly cheeky personality.
There were a very few WTF were they thinking bits though and a couple of glaring plot holes that made my teeth hurt but overall it was great movie that I would definitely watch again.
***Spoilers hidden below, if you’ve not seen the movie GO SEE IT FIRST***
Continue reading ‘Indiana Jones and The WHIIITT?’
Published on
May 31, 2008 in
News.
This week I was both fascinated and delighted by the story in the news about the photographs of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon that has never been in contact with the world. The pictures were taken by FUNAI the Brazilian government’s Indian Affairs department as part of an ongoing campaign to prevent indigenous people being forced out by illegal logging.
I think it’s both amazing and wonderful that people could have managed to remain isolated from the world even into this highly interconnected world in which we live. Just think, these people have never heard of George W Bush, they’ve never been roasted with the War on Terror and Rising Oil prices don’t mean a thing to them. Hell they even get to paint themselves red and parade about in loincloths without getting lifted by the busies.
Survival International a charity that tries to help indigenous people protect their land, rights and even in some cases lives has organised a campaign to help keep the tribe’s lands free from exploitation. If you’re of a charitable frame of mind you can help them by sending a letter to the Peruvian President asking for him to intervene and protect them by law.
The greatest irony of all this is the fact that the tribe probably thought the plane was some kind of sky spirit. No doubt they’ll take it as an omen and migrate right into the middle of Sao Paulo by mistake. Though as a Cynical AyrshiremanTM can’t help but wonder if the images themselves could have been faked especially for this stunt.
Wonder if they take in lodgers… (that would kind of end their isolation though, wouldn’t it…?)
I don’t know if anyone’s ever noticed this before but I see it quite regularly. There’s a blackboard on the corner of Wellington Street and Sauchiehall Lane just next to Clinton Cards and the Sauchiehall Shopping Centre. If I remember rightly it’s there to advertise the menu of a resteraunt that’s down the lane (name escapes me just now) but instead it’s played host to some very witty jokes over the last couple of years.
Here’s the latest one:
I’m almost sorry that I haven’t documented them as each one was far and above the usual level of jabber found scrawled on city centre walls.
I’ve noticed on occassion that shopping trolleys can make some pretty impressive bids for freedom but I’ve rarely seen one as determined as this one:
Somehow this intrepid piece of shopping equipment has managed to make it all the way from ASDA, (presumably the one on Helen Street in Govan) to the verge underneath the Kingston Bridge. What’s all the more amusing is the fact that it’s got one of those anti-theft wheels that locks up as soon as you try to take it out ASDA’s carpark. Not sure exactly how it managed it, but I assume it had some kind of help since Google Maps reckons it’s about two miles from ASDA to where I spotted it.
I think I might have gotten a bit much sun this afternoon while I was walking home from work because I’ve been thinking a bit about Cauliflower. Here’s a picture of a head of Cauliflower to set the tone:
Now for the life of me I couldn’t see a thing like that growing naturally out in the wild. It just doesn’t look like the kind of thing that would spring up in a say a forest glade or on some river bank. What it does look like is the head of some alien pod person waiting to lure honest folk to their doom.
I’ve since discovered that the modern Cauliflower more than likely isn’t a species that evolved naturally though it’s certainly been around for several thousand years. Wild cabbage did exist at some point in the dim and distant past but it’s long been bred and cultivated by humans into it’s present form.
You might remember that I wrote a bit recently about the fictional blog Life on Fram which details the colonisation of Alpha Centauri. While I was on holiday I’ve been scouting around the internet having a look at similar blog fiction. They run the gamut from the bizarre collaborative stories of Space Haggis to the more serious “hard sci-fi” Life on Fram I mention earlier. The fictional blog movement isn’t confined to the realms of Sci-Fi either I also discovered the more contemporary Diary of a Heretic by Kathleen Maher amongst others. In addition to these works of fiction there have also been several high profile blogs that are accused of being fictional creations. The most famous of these is probably the blog of Belle De Jour the inspiration behind the TV series starring Billie Piper.
The idea of writing a fictional serial of this kind appeals to me and the notion for it comes and goes on an annular basis. I even started writing a couple of entries a few years ago during the summer break from Uni to get a feel for it. At the time I was less than pleased with the result and abandoned the experiment after only a few entries. The original premise was that the journal recorded the observations of a researcher aboard a spacecraft when it made contact with an alien species. The story would unfold slowly as it was revealed that the aliens were far more socially and technologically advanced than they led the human explorers to believe.
I dusted off that piece of work for a second look but the idea didn’t hold my interest anymore so I’ve been casting around for another idea to play with.
The germ of the idea came to me the other night while on holiday. Probably because I’ve also been reading some of the works of HP Lovecraft, specifically the penguin version of The Thing on the Doorstep and other stories.
So far the basic skeleton of an idea I’ve got is this:
The Protagonist a returns home from serving in the army, his father has just died and he has inherited the family home in a small village. He arrives back to find the place hasn’t changed much in the time he was away. He goes out for a drink with some friends from the village and gets drunk. There is a confrontation in a back room of the pub between several prominent villagers and the representatives of a major developer that has been buying up ground in the village.
In the morning he wakes up with a blinding hangover and the uneasy feeling that something is wrong. He can’t quite put his finger on it and dismisses the feeling as a symptom of being hung-over and sleeping in an unusual bed. He tries to turn on the light but the power is out. He very quickly discovers that the phones are out and he can’t get a signal on his battery powered radio. Worried about the meaning of these strange phenomena he ventures outside to see if anyone else in the village has similar problems.
It quickly becomes apparent that the village has somehow been transported to a pristine version of Earth untouched by the hand of man. The original great deciduous forests still cover the whole of lowland Scotland. Wolves, bears and other animals long hunted to extinction roam wild outside the bounds of the otherwise intact and fairly modern village.
The rest of the journal/blog would record the day to day events as seen through the eyes of the protagonist. Strangely I’m deeply tempted to write this based in a fictional version of Darvel, but I’ve not decided yet.
Recently I’ve been having a serious look at my financial situation. I can’t even remember a time when my outgoings weren’t perilously close. I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of people out there in this same situation, but to be brutally honest I DON’T GIVE A F**K about them.
I’ve tried in vain to follow all the good old advice about bettering myself and getting ahead at work. The end result of which I’ve already posted on here. As I’ve noted in that post I’ve managed to wall myself into a corner in my current job. They’ve promised me enough of a raise and a fancy new job title to satisfy themselves that I’m being rewarded, but on the flip side they’ve also put me in the position that it’s difficult to find a decent job with a similar salary. I’ve gotten something of a salary increase as my so called development plan ticks along, but I’ve not actually done any developing. I’ve not been on any training courses and I’m not doing anything different form what I’ve been doing for the past year or so anyway.
My blood boils every time I see some Jake wandering about on a pair of NHS cruches that they clearly only keep handy for when they need to nip into the jobcentre for their bi-weekly jobseekers interview. No wonder the government thinks chronic back pain figures are so high, half the country seems to be claiming invalidity on that alone.
To this end I’m giving a lot of consideration to kicking my infernal contact with Orange into touch. It’s costing far too much compared to the usage I’m getting out of it. Maybe I’ll go onto a pay as you go tarriff, there seem to be quite a few good deals out there just now and it’s probably a damn sight less annoying.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my fitness levels. Sure I walk a large distance most days to and from work, but my body has long since adapted to that, even varying my route doesn’t produce any substantial gains but it does keep it from making any backsteps.
One particular goal still eludes me however, something I like to call The Route. In the map below you can see The Route. It runs from my old flat at Dick Street in Kelvindale, to my old workplace at BT’s Linfern ATE.
Now The Route isn’t really that taxing, I used to walk that way back and forward from my work every day. It’s about 2.3 kilometres give or take and it runs along quiet west end back streets. There’s little traffic and few obsticles to get in your way. It’s also free of beggers, drunken students and the other arseholes that infest parts of the west end. The main thing is that it’s an achievable goal within a set timeframe.
Wikipedia is a vast an often useful storehouse of information. Granted there’s far more information on topics such as Anime, Computer Games and Films than on say the Biology of Scorpions but it’s still more than you would probably find in any expensive printed volume. The fact that it’s so big, so easily edited and so easily indexed leads to several very interesting and often unintentionally humorous list pages.
One such page I found today while looking up stuff for my rant about Hillary Clinton is this: List of Political Catch Phrases. Some are astoundingly moving, others are banal, some funny in hindsight and others are truly the definition of the phrase “What the hell is this guy on?” Some of the most bizarre or famous even have their own pages explaining their origins.
Here’s my top Ten:
- “Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet,” attributed to the campaign of Ernie Eves in reference to Dalton McGuinty.
- “Gentlemen, we must all realize that neither side has any monopoly on sons of bitches,” said by C.D. Howe while in Washington, D.C. to resolve a shipping dispute.
- “Mit Verlaub, Herr Präsident, Sie sind ein Arschloch.” (Begging your pardon, Mr. President, you are an asshole.) Joschka Fischer.
- “Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.” (No one intends to build a wall.) Walter Ulbricht a couple of months before the Berlin Wall was built.
- “Spieprzaj dziadu!” (Piss off, old man!) Polish President Lech Kaczynski – spoken to a man on the street during the 2002 Warsaw mayoral campaign
- “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is,” said by Bill Clinton
- “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” said by Ronald Reagan
- “Two words: Chuck Norris.” Mike Huckabee, Regarding his plan for border security during his 2008 campaign for the Republican Nomination.
- “¿Por qué no te callas?” (Why don’t you shut up?) said by king of Spain Juan Carlos de Borbón to Hugo Chávez.
- “If nominated I’ll decline. If drafted I’ll defer. And if elected I’ll resign.” – Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, shortly before launching his leadership bid.
McDowall will no doubt be amused by the SNP one at the bottom.
Before I say anything else I’d just like to say that I quite like Bill Clinton. He’s always seemed the kind of man that has, at the very least, stood by his principles. Notwithstanding the fact that one of his guiding principles seems to have been what they call “sexual misconduct” frankly if you look at the history books this stuff was more or less par for the course for anyone in such a lofty position. Still the world seemed a lot friendlier and a lot less crazy when he was running the show over in the good old US of A compared to where we’re at today.
Bill seems like the kind of man who wouldn’t have invaded Iraq or Afghanistan in the wake of 11/09 (aye this is the way we do it in old country! It’s the 11th of September ya fruits, none of your 9/11 bullshit). I think Bill would have gone through every possible diplomatic channel, maybe even flew over there himself and had a chat with Osama and Saddam and said “Listen guys, you’ve got second hand soviet weapons and a bunch of farm boys from the back end of Tatooine. We’ve got tanks, gunships, cruise missiles, nuclear missiles. We might even have the Death Star… Why don’t you see it my way?” I reckon Osama and Saddam would have taken a look at Bill and thought, He seems like an honest man, I will accept his terms. The world would be a safer and less Orwellian place and I could get back to not worrying that the UK government is going to microchip us all and tattoo 666 on our foreheads.
Now of course we’ve got his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton and she’s freaking me the hell out. If Al-Qaeda or any other potential threat to the so called Free World took one look at her they would shoot THEMSELVES for fear of being turned to stone. Seriously she’s so scary I’d just give her the president job and scrap the nuclear deterrent. I can’t find a SINGLE SOLITARY picture of her on the entire internet where she doesn’t look like one of the Autons from Dr Who.
Spot the odd one out:
