emo.ware

laurence ruins the doctor who blink episode

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on numerous recommendations i've started watching doctor who (finally something with a reasonable ratio of good female characters). studying the episode list grilly recommended, it looks like i'm mostly watching the moffat episodes (perhaps it's a ploy so that i can read his moffat blog post, i don't know), starting with 'blink'.

oh, that's where the weeping angels in minecraft come from..

so far i'm quite impressed. as i remember it from my childhood (watching a mix of old and then new episodes) the stories never used time as a plot device enough. perhaps i was too young to understand it, but the time travel always seemed to be more of an excuse to tell random stories from any era than anything else. from what i've seen so far (only a couple of episodes, chosen because they're either good or would appeal to me, so no bias there then) i'm quite hopeful that time is more integral to the plots.

otherwise what's the point of watching them, right?

anyway, there's a few things i want to say about 'blink' (um, spoilers). because about halfway through i gave up on the plot. doctor who is a time traveller, unless he is forever stuck in the past there is no reason why he can't sort out all these shenanigans himself, with no need to involve some chick with a funky donnie darko related name (that's me pushing references too hard). but then i started thinking about time loops, and how every non-paradoxical time loop needs a first iteration (er, a primer). perhaps this is that story - early iterations of the doctor being stuck back in time, how he escapes by sending messages forward to a point from which he can be reunited with this time machine and escape linearity again. and then another but, if he succeeded why would he bother fixing it further? it's not like he would save anyone's life, and all the people involved seemed happy with their outcomes. so the story remains intact. and i'm happy too.

you may have noticed i'm having new thoughts as i'm writing this and my original point is slowly being eroded way to the point of nonrecognition.

question - is there a reason there can't be 'two' doctors involved in a single story? something about rips in the space/time/fabric of the universe, or some other anti-deus-ex-machina? has he never been pulled in to save himself from certain death? or does the doctor try to avoid interfering with time? (in which case none of it makes sense anyway.) are there rules here? or is it arbitrary? the problem i might have with 'blink' is how it seems to mix time 'theories' (and no, calling it time "wibbly" or whatever does not help).

anymore, an effect can't be its only possible cause for me to be satisfied with a story. the paradox needs to be iteratively constructed into the stable time loop that we're almost exclusively presented with in such stories. this is the "the permutations are endless" clause. the line that spirals into a circle. and it's the spiral that's interesting.

in 'blink' the doctor was lucky enough to have been given the key to unravelling the escape in his past (the story's future). the spiral is the evolution of the document he receives. and it works because for the majority of the episode the cause and effect is linear - people in the past effect the story only after they've been sent back there. however, there's also the easter egg messages and what i can only refer to as the 'wibbly excuse'. it's a chicken/egg problem in ways that the chicken/egg problem can't even fathom (which is all about definitions, btw).

i guess this post is falling apart because i'm saying one part of the story is ok whilst another is an unexceptable paradox, and only because i don't understand how the events might arise from unseen non-paradoxical time iterations (if this was hinted at or acknowledged i could let it slide).

all that complaining over something i thought was quite good? well, there's more. for instance, what's with the ducking at the start? who threw that rock (or whatever it was)? the scene makes no sense at all. does it relate to a previous or future episode?

also, why were the angels running around holding the key to the tardis? if they're aware of their weakness (presuming they are, since they cover their own eyes) then you'd think they'd at least keep the key in a pocket so no one could steal it.

then at the end the angels are left staring at each and we're led to believe they'll be stuck like that forever-ish. however, we're also shown that darkness allows them to move freely without observation, and how long would that light bulb remain illuminated? maybe they can see in the dark. but then all is required is for someone to block their lines of sight. nevermind. it's quite a weak trap, is all. maybe that's the point.

as an answer to some of my own questions, if that was a trap by the doctor then it surely would have required many time iterations to perfect (i suppose i'm thinking of something like the party scene in primer). many of the plot points in the episode would have been set up precisely for this purpose, and they couldn't have been constructed in a single take. is this subtext, or am i looking too deeply into this for the author's intention? (by intention i guess i mean 'attention paid to time lines and a solid theory of time travel'.) either way, more postulating along those lines would have been nice.

bechdel and comic adaptations

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i've mentioned the bechdel test before, probably multiple times even, but it's so easy to forget. yesterday i began craving for a movie with substantial and meaningful female roles, something i'd neglected to think about when choosing the shitty movies i've decided to watch recently, most of which have been fragmented over various late nights, when i'm all on my own and drinking whiskey very slowly. times like these all i want is a crappy comic adaptation, so really it's my own fault. it's like choosing churros over sachertorte (dead fucking easy).

but if i'm actually going to watch captain america or green lantern? shame on me. in my defence at least i'm not paying for it (hey movie industry, if you want my money then make something worth paying for, as opposed to the offensive bay-esque hollow spectacle that apparently needs to be seen on the big screen bullshit). rise of the planet of the apes was worse because it had qualities (i.e. wasn't completely shit), but just not a large enough budget for two female actresses, or what?

first thought - "i can't believe they they can get away with making movies with only a single woman in, especially if she's only there as a love interest and has absolutely no substance or relevance"
counter thought - "of course they can get away with it - it's only stupid guys that go and see these movies"
realisation - "this is horrible feedback loop"

focusing on comics, it's as if the 'genre' has defined itself into a corner, a particular ugly misogynistic one. comics have eaten themselves. imagine if apple suddenly announced that their products were for men only and all ipods and ipads and igivesashits will now come with naked women plastered all over them, no exceptions. you kill half your market.

and meanwhile, what? DC and marvel think it's the medium that women aren't interested in?

having said all that. the mainstream comics industry has been almost exclusively been driven by boys, and these fucking nerds clearly don't know a thing about women. we're probably better off without them trying to write realistic female characters. but then we're suddenly reminded about sam kieth.

either way, you can't just blame the source material. hollywood seems to spend most of its time wiping its arse with comics instead of reading and understanding them. green lantern was a good example of this. firstly, why is hal jordan the green lantern? alan scott was the original (golden age) green lantern, kyle rayner and guy gardner have also been 'the' green lantern, and john stewart is argueably the most well-known green lantern due his prominence in the justice league cartoons. hal jordan is a ridiculous choice, especially given that the main villian in the movie is parallax, who was infact hal jordan himself (originally hal turned supervillian, then later retconned into a demon who possessed him). and i suppose it's too much to ask the film's main role be given to jade (alan scott's daughter), who also spent time as one of earth's green lanterns.

i guess there was the ghost world movie. but um, nevermind.

final thought - "how the hell do the oscars manage to get enough actresses for the best female actress catagory?" (incidentally, in 2011 i'd seen three of the films in the best actress category, but only one of the films in the best male category.)

ok, that was a bit too rambling, but nevermind that either. grilly has already covered this kind of thing much better than me.

facebook gone

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i'm about to rage-quit facebook. the final straw is the tag removal process, which now requires four clicks and all kinds of bullshit options. um, let me illustrate..

first of all you have to find the remove tag link, which took me an extra ten seconds than normal since apparently clicking "remove" wont work anymore, which is instead some arse to do with the photo appearing on my profile page (yeah sorry, i don't read all garbage, i shouldn't need to). the "remove tag" link is 'hidden' further down the page (it's below the fold on my browser), and instead of removing the tag and having done with, it brings up this ridiculous window:

the options are not sufficient - i need a "mu". why should i have to say whether this is a picture of me or not? i don't want to give facebook more information about the photo, i want to remove all information. if i don't want to confirm it (yes it is actually a picture of me), i have to claim it's something against facebook's terms and conditions. lie, basically.

i am a reluctant and passive user of facebook. i'd rather it didn't exist, but since it appears to be the only means by which i can communicate with certain people (and several of my bands have message boards on facebook) i'm 'forced' to have a profile. i absolutely don't want any information about me on facebook. nothing at all. so tagging me in photos is a prime way to piss me off, especially now.

the easiest solution is probably to just unfriend/ban/whatever the people who keep doing it, but nothing about facebook's interface and policies is simple anymore. i stopped trying to keep track of their labyrinthine ways years ago. the whole thing is a fucking joke. perhaps i should just keep clicking the "hate speech" option, that seems like the fairest thing to do.

and so in conclusion, perhaps i will just delete the whole thing. in as complete a way i have the ability to.

wait, wasn't anonymous going to do that on november 5th last year? oh nevermind

we just lost the racoon to the toilet.

a self-hating anarcho-primitivist

emoware@gmail.com

"these are the good old days" i keep telling people. but no one understands what i'm trying to say. maybe it's a bad sentence. nouns and adjectives need reconsidering. a substantial verb is required. fucked, if i know.

run-on blog posts. like i will ever finish anything at this rate. i wrote about four words every night between 20:00 and the time my brain shuts off. it doesn't help that i don't have anything to say. apart from the three long posts that actual have a point/theme and have been sitting half written for weeks now.

anyway. watching small creatures learn is just incredible. marika just grabbed the frog and pulled it, all by herself. after weeks of training. ribbit ribbit ribbit. except now she's just pulling it in rage.

i guess i'm training her a bit like a dog. with a bit of encouraging i can get her to grab my fingers when i hold them out above her and say "grab". when i then say "up" she pulls herself up into a sitting position. for about a week i'd been doing all the pulling, but now she anticipates it and pulls herself up with her own arms. i'm not pulling her up at all anymore, it's all her own work. it's brilliant. and it probably makes no difference what i'm actually saying to her, but it's fun anyway.

her best trick is falling asleep at 7pm precisely every evening. she's like clockwork. but for just one hour a day.

she's also being trained to put the sut/dummy into her mouth by grabbing it when i dangle it infront of her face. she's getting there, slowly but surely. also in the pipeline is 'thumbs up'.

"we have come to a point in history where we are losing both photographic recording mediums and iconic photographers", excellently put.

"let's open up this pit!"

the state of things at 4am

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i am a bucket of sleeploss. a mouthful of knives. raindrops making metallic symphonies against the roofing. rhythms as old as the weather itself. the music of the spheres is chaos.

four in the morning and my mouth is 32 springs clamped tight in a vice. the tension goes from the back of the neck up to the top of the skull, then all the way down to the base of the spine. i'm waiting for that feeling when the water finally runs from your ear - the warm wet pop of resolution as the bubble of dullness suddenly clears and you can hear again.

my new favourite sport is racing against other parents' barnevogn in the courtyard - our child will sleep out longer than yours!

all of a sudden i'm totally entertained by baby videos. it may be tacky of me. but either way, you can't deny the cuteness of this girl being asked who her favourite is. that's what the internet was designed for (not cats).

and nicolas cage put it best when he said "oh no not the bees! not the bees!" - 30 japanese hornets kill a whole bunch of honey bees, in brutal bullet time. probably the actual best video i've seen in months, or longer. this is what happen when seperately evolved emergent behaviours collide. or when evolved behaviour meets something unnatural, like wolves slaughtering sheep flocks. or old people wandering around supermarkeys, how grilly put it.

also this collection of movie poster trends is great.

why did no one tell me rastamouse was a real thing?

happy new yeehar

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new years morning is for kid a, because seemingly being the only person in the world without a hangover never made the streets look so lonely. everyone's garbage, drained champagne bottles and firework carcasses, all lying in puddles in the road. and another danish tradition - rain on new years day. it's grey and dulled like you forgot days could be.

but i felt inspired and thought i'd do my own "best of 2011", except i couldn't find a starting point. did i see any films worth talking about? finish any good books? did i listen to much new music? did i see many gigs? (actually i think i played more gigs than i attended, if that's at all mutually exclusive). i could probably list my favourite youtube videos of the year, but i'd like to give the start of 2012 a little bit more respect than that. especially since it'll be our last.

don't take the end of the world so literally. thing of it more like the death card in tarot.

anyway, i guess i've had more important things going on. and if my guitar playing can lull my daughter to sleep my life is somewhat complete.

now i have a sudden urge to watch the neverending story. or read it.

did i miss christmas or fucking what?

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there's something cosy about cycling to work in the dark. like cycling the inside of a pearl buried deep below the ocean. the silence of a beast not quite yet waking. and everyone in the street is there with a purpose, even it's a rubbish one like trying to earn a living. and it's completely unlike cycling back home in the dark again - eight hours later and you've missed the seven hours of sunlight. it's still pretty out across the harbour, the sunset gradients and the moon still hovering out there somewhere (does it even dip below the horizon during decemeber? amongst other stupid questions), but it's a sad and tired beauty.

i guess what i'm most reminded of is the dual societies from chuck palahniuk's rant (proof that writing a few uninteresting and repetative books does not mean you've "lost it", not quite yet).

some more random stuff to fill up your christmas holidays with, if you even got any this year:

if you haven't seen it yet, the girl complaining about pink princesses and other coloured superheroes is one of my new favourite videos. much better viewing than the masturbating dog. she will be president one day. i hope.

i've travelled many times with crimethinc books, they're very good for reading on the move (in terms of structure and content), and that simply carrying a book or other political materials can get you stopped from boarding a plane is somewhat terrifying. but hey, we all hate ryanair anyway, as if that was the point at all.

(too much) content from the chaos communication conference, unfortunately probably all essential viewing/listening.

it's a shame the heath ledger photo is a fake though.

finally, it would have been somewhat of an honour to receive just an honourable mention in Chris TT's top 10 list, but top of his best played gig list? that's just some magical shit right there. (the trick is to give your guests the whiskey bottle and let them get on with it.)

did i really just say "in a proto-hipster kind of way"?

silversun placebo

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this lack of sleep throws me a kind of sadness that only the silversun pickups can simultaneously understand and remedy. like a tangible thing that needs playing with. something that needs dragging into the sunlight and skimming through the air. and it's just fine.

this girl protects me like armour. transcendental and irrational.

looking at photographs of myself at her age, for the first time i can see the younger version of me as a different and solid entity. my memories have become third person. i was a boy i could have touched and talked to, if only time wasn't quite so cruel. and it breaks my fucking heart.

"inside of me and such a part of you", etc.

but look at how happy i was. this crazy child. so much joy and sadness all mixed up, and of course none of it could makes any damn sense. how could it when you can't pin reason onto a single thing. i may have come across differently, but i was never a child who thought he had it all figured out.

this rambling all stems for a project i started a few weeks ago, some misguided attempt at recording all of my earliest memories. this is something i'll write about at great lengths another time, when it's finished, which will probably be never. so nevermind.

shooting reindeer

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the office christmas dinner is something i always both look forward to and dread just a little. getting plastered at the expense of your employer is always good, but having them there at the same time? it's not that i lose astute-ness, if that's a word, it's just that i stop caring so much. unless that's the same thing. apparently i needed telling "dude, don't talk about that here" quite a lot. but no worries.

so that's my yearly schnapps quota filled - glasses topped up before they're even finished. all in the name of physically punishing your employees in the only legal way. and i had it especially tough, since the food was as traditionally danish as you can get. my main course was rye bread with butter and raw onion. and i'm not even joking. a few days earlier my boss had enquired about the vegetarian options for me and the restaurant had replied with "maybe there will be some cheese", but that only came out with the dessert.

it's my own fault, i should have followed through on my threat to go out for pizza.

there was also a pre-dinner surprise activity. isn't the thought of that just enough to make you feel a little sick? especially if it involves guns. at first i was extremely unimpressed. don't get me wrong, i'm not a pacifist, i just don't really like the idea of me shooting guns. but there's nothing worse than a kill-joy at the christmas party, so i just grumbled about us not being allowed to drink alcohol yet (after a painful five hour meeting some of us were in serious need to get drunk) and got on with it.

it turns out all that time playing point blank in the birmingham student union building didn't just get me my name at the top of the scoreboard for all time, it made me a mean shot in real life too:

or at least i am when i've got a rest for the rifle barrel. nevermind. in the wild we have trees to lean against.

semi-random sentences

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listening to the crackle of the rain over the baby monitor. little baby noises. dum dum diddy. a constant humm from somewhere up in the roofing, a drill or saw, lost in the wind and static.

"spiritual distress should last at least ten minutes at a time."

this paragraph (from the wiki) says so much about rugby:

"The first, named Chiming Clock, was originally designed to chime and play music on the hour and half-hour as a tortoise and hare raced around the dials, reenacting Aesop's fable. The clock has since suffered issues in timing the sequence, now occurring almost randomly. The second companion clock, following a train theme to symbolise Rugby's famous railway, was installed on the opposite side of the shopping centre, but was soon dismantled and scrapped to make way for shop extensions."

also, why does rugby shopping centre have it's own wiki page?

i'm missing the days when i actually had stuff to write/blog about.

beer and roots

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i've been saving up all year (since last new years, when i bought myself a bottle of brewdog's paradox smokehead and a bottle of mikkeller's beer geek brunch weasel) for the black tokyo horizon. i couldn't resist the collaboration that includes my two favourite knobby pretentious breweries. i'm somewhat scared to drink it. the question is, who wants to join me and what can you bring to the table? (insert evil smiling emoticon of your choice right here).

i actually have an insane amount of beer stockpiled. what with the influx of all the christmas beers (i hate to say it but brewdog's is by far the best so far, especially for the price, although i haven't touched the norrebro bryghus or mikkeller beers yet) and a few too many trips down to fish n beer. i got my smokey stouts and i don't want to waste them on a non-special evening. (but laurence, every evening is special.)

i'm also on a bit of an autumn/winter root vegetable roll. first i magicked up an amazing parsnip, butternut squash and pumpkin gratin/crumble. yesterday it was creamey mash and homemade mega-burgers, with the cheapest bakedbeans danish money can buy. tonight we'll be having roasted potatos, jordskokker, parsnips, butternut squash and pumpkin (again). a cascading dinner menu. it seems like ages since i've really been into making food - you forget how brilliant it is when you're busy working it nine to five (or eight to four, in my case).

cube party

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no more cubes for me. not this year at least. with the acquisition of a latch cube and a dayan bermuda earth cube, which is unnerving to look at, i now feel complete. so who wants to join me for a cube party? my max capacity is 40 (unless you bring you own cube), and then only if someone doesn't mind being assigned the dreadful barbie cube (kenneth perhaps?). sign up quickly!

i now have cubes by all the big names in cubing that you've probably never heard of (lanlan, witeden, dayan, mefferts, etc), but the coolest cube i've played with recently is the one i bought anne and jens's as a moving-in present (because every respectable household needs a rubik's cube) - a hungarian cube made in the original rubik's cube factory. it's not that it turns particularly smoothly, or has perfect colours and durable stickers, but it just feels right. it makes me miss playing with my old original cube (currently part of the cube-mobile).

um, on a more serious note though - don't touch my cubes.

photos coming not soon enough..

different things about hands

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i almost forgot to mention that the regulars played in helsingor the other day (a thursday, just to be awkward), probably because i didn't have much to say about it. safety dance, that's about all you need to know. but it seemed to go well enough. in some strange way i miss the punk venues, trash strewn around everywhere, so many empty beer bottles and graffiti'd walls, a huge mac sitting ready for anybody to use in the band room.

any venue that pays in ale no.16 is good by me.

you can dance if you want to, etc. it was the best song i've played on stage since sesame street, but it's not exactly the best song for a set opener. apparently we didn't care, but my hand did. there's no way you can be warm for that amount of disco octaves. but anyway. punk and all that.

the marika update: she's really beginning to discover her hands now, mostly through the act of trying to eat them. the cleverest thing is how she's learnt to put her right hand infront of her mouth. this serves two purposes, if a sut/dummy is in her mouth then she holds it in, if there isn't one in her mouth then she can suck her hand. she'll be moving on to rubik's cubes soon.

dealing with the righties

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a short while ago some guy was commenting to me how maternity/paternity leave isn't fair, that it's our own decision to have children and the state shouldn't give us money to be away from work and look after our child. or, since he's decided to not have children, he should also be entitled to the same money. i'm having trouble reconstructing his arguments here, because they don't make sense to me, but he was being serious, and you get the gist of it - why should i be given his hard earned tax-payer money for something i've choosen to do. or in other words, only the wealthy should have children (i think it was explicitly said, "if you can't afford to have kids then you shouldn't have kids").

had i been quick-witted enough i might have pointed out that he did receive the same money - when he was born. the state isn't giving me money for my benefit, it's for the little future citizen i'm caring for. but fuck it - these people can't be reasoned with.

this is the same guy that told me the most fucked up thing would be someone being both vegetarian and gay (he'd obviously forgot about the muslims that day). i'm not sure what he was thinking broadcasting such thoughts in the direction of one vegetarian and one homosexual, but nevermind.

and on the subject of vegetarianism, it's become the acid test for the quality of the nurseries we've been visiting. if you want someone to bring their baby to your kindergarten you don't tell them their dietary choices aren't suitable for their child. the place we saw on thursday told us that they cater for religion but not lifestyle choices, whatever the fuck the difference is. i didn't like how she tried to pass their inability to provide adequate nutrition as a failing onto us as parents. beans and pulses aren't difficult. i'm just glad that i was brought up vegetarian, which means that if anyone wants to judge us for raising our daughter on bark and foliage at least i can say i'm not inflicting anything upon her that i haven't already suffered myself.