Saturation

I don’t know about you guys, but this Internet malarkey seems to be getting a bit out of control. All my time seems to be eaten up writing edgy status updates, filling out profiles or deciding if I should follow another blog that I probably won’t have time to read.
Let me explain –

I get to work and the first thing I do (before I click on my work email) is log in to Gmail. After that I’ll probably catch a quick peek at Facebook, even though we aren’t supposed to use it during office hours (I rarely get in before the dot of nine). Next up will be a quick look at Privateer Press Forums to assuage my inner gaming geek, then on to Twitter for a quick stab at micro blogging. And to find out what Neil Gaiman and Stephen Fry are up to.

Sometime through the day it will occur to me to check in with the excellent Pornokitsch (it’s not rude, I promise), and see if Joe Abercrombie has posted on his blog. Equally I like to check out London Loves Comics when I can, because although I don’t read as many comics as Dom does, he’s a good read and funny to boot.

Lunch times just seem to be a listless drifting over the aforementioned sites… unless I’m at Mod The Sims, downloading fan made content for the Sims 2, which is about to become horribly old hat now that the Sims 3 is due out.

Then of course I need to write a weekly column for the Sci Fi Channel, as well as keep you, my fellow Comrades in the Republic of Geek, entertained. Internet saturation has been reached for this nerd, dear reader. Oh yes.

And here’s the kicker – I don’t have the Internet at home. And thank whatever-Deity-you-believe-in, otherwise I’d never get any painting done. Or (more likely), no new Sims would join my odd Sim neighbourhood.

Anyway, I’d like to welcome Nuriochi_Sol, Bobaferret and Metal Head Bard to the ranks. Thanks for following – I will attempt to be as entertaining as possible. With that in mind it might interest you to know I have a new article over at the Sci Fi Channel. You can check it out HERE.

Distraction

A friend of mine, who goes by the pseudonym of Stray Carnivore, gave me a copy of Tim Powers’ rather excellent book, Last Call. The book was a densely plotted, arcane and sometimes baffling read, in which the protagonist finds himself caught up in a very strange set of card games using tarot cards, for very high stakes.



Alas, my rather short commute from Greenwich only affords me fifteen minutes of reading time, hardly sufficient to make a dent in those chapters. Furthermore, once I was at home I could usually find something else to do too – either painting or playing Sims 2 (which I swear should be controlled by some kind of narcotics agency).

I got to thinking how the Internet seems to be rewiring our brains. Rarely do I read much that is longer than 400 words these days, there is always another link to click, another blog to visit, a chance to stumble over a hidden gem or discover an emerging meme. When I read the news on the BBC website I cherry pick headlines, but rarely read to the bottom of the page. Surely my attention span is in an advanced state of decay?

As such I’m not going to write a review for Last Call, as I don’t feel it got my full attention, and I’d give an equally disjointed account of the book.

So, it was a welcome to change to have a two-hour train journey last weekend and plough in to Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold. It is a beast of a book, and I’m glad to report my attention span seems very much alive and well. That and I didn’t have any gadgets to distract me, just the Dame who was sniggering her way through Charlie Brooker’s Dawn Of The Dumb.

Perhaps there is nothing wrong with my attention span after all. It just needs lots of swearing and big swords to operate efficiently.

Fully Painted 500 Points

The latest batch of figures from me for Privateer Press' tabletop wargame, Hordes. This brings me to a fully painted 500 points.



Hexeris is a Warlock for the Skorne faction, even by Skorne standards he is a merciless leader – sacrificing his troops to further his aims.




The Skorne Extoller Soulward gathers the spirits of the fallen, and bestows supernatural powers on her brethren.



Orin Midwinter, the renegade wizard, will work for the highest bidder.

Orbital Mange Love In

Kudos to Orbital Comics for laying on a cool little Valentine’s Day event.

Sweethearts and singletons alike could venture to Orbital Manga (on Upper St. Martin’s Lane, London) and get a portrait drawn for the recession proof sum of ten pounds sterling.

Although there seemed to be an element of confusion initially when the three artists failed to materialise (due to transport problems), the event went well. Orbital, to their credit, apologised for the delay by handing out neat Qee metallic bear key rings.

In a strange twist of fate the Dame and myself were drawn by Juan Carlos Cambon, who has a fantastic set of prints for sale at Orbital Manga, and on his website http://www.nipponaisuki.com/

The Dame had seen examples of Juan Carlos’ work at the Movie Comic Media Expo last year and was hooked, so she was thrilled to be able to buy three A3 prints, which Juan Carlos kindly signed.

Cambon’s style embraces traditional Japanese art, but marries it with a selection of influences, namely graffiti, martial arts and an 80’ pop art feel. Check out his gallery to see his superb work.

Juan Carlos will be showing (and selling) more of his art at the Japanese Art Festival on 28th February/ 1st March, find out more HERE.

'Your In England!!!'

As many of my readers will know, sometimes I get a bit carried away in the moment and post new material that has typos or grammar mistakes in. However, I like to think if I was doing something very important, something I felt very strongly about, I would double or triple check the spelling and then get someone else to take a look too.

Unfortunately, not all people follow this train of thought, as I recently discovered on the social networking site Facebook. On Facebook people can set up groups, a bit like an online fan club – it’s barely any different than wearing a virtual pin badge and has no real world impact.

The group I discovered was called, wait for it, this is delicious:

“Your In England.. Speak The Fucking Language!!!!”

I laughed, I cried, I had to change my pants (that’s shorts to you American readers).

Now, in a way, I can agree with the sentiment. Many immigrants of any persuasion (including Brits abroad) frequently cluster together, speak in their own tongue and, at worst, ghettoise themselves. You need only look at some parts of Spain, where you can buy a copy of the Sun newspaper and order a Full English Breakfast from a British café bedecked with Union Jacks (without a hint of irony).

These immigrants make little effort to interact with the indigenous population, even going so far as to complain about the prevailing culture of that nation, thus creating friction with their surrounding environment like the extremist Cleric Abu Hamza.

However, politics aside, the fantastic irony of a typo in the spelling of a sentence constructed to convey anger at the decline of the English language is just too easy not to take a shot at. I confess, I still stumble on apostrophes (I even have an unofficial apostrophe coach) but this one sentence had layers of meaning, which to my morbidly discerning eye was too good to pass up.

I had a look at the various members of this group and wondered how many of them routinely used the word ‘innit’ – a particularly guttural bugbear of mine. Or how many abbreviated their text messages, omitting vowels, replacing ‘to’ with 2, and ‘you’ with ‘u’ and so on.

Everywhere you look on Facebook there is evidence of the erosion of the English language. At work, we receive lots of mail, and emails from friendly fans, but I’m always stunned by how much correspondence we get entirely in lower case, or how many emails we receive peppered with mistakes when most programs come with a spell checker as standard.

My point is, if you are (or ‘you’re) going to be precious about the English language, who speaks it, where it is spoken and why, then you had better be damn well be held accountable for your own spelling, and spoken word.

Or put another way “before you go knocking on your neighbour’s door you better clean up your own back yard.”

Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson – Film Review

Director: Alex Gibney
Running Time: 118 minutes

Hunter S. Thompson, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, is a giant of American culture. Starting out as a struggling journalist he reached widespread fame (or notoriety) after being embedded in the then nascent Hells Angels biker gang in the 60s. Hunter was also a keen user of just about any substance known to man.

“We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls…

Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

It would be easy to write Thompson off as some deranged outsider, providing insight to the squares from the sidelines, despite having a head full of acid and being wired on cocaine.

In truth he was as patriotic as any ‘respectable’ member of American society and was an intensely political animal, being a staunch critic of Nixon and a faithful supporter of McGovern (who ran against Nixon on his second term) until some serious campaign failures.

However, I’m getting away from the point. This is a great documentary for the simple reason it is genuinely entertaining and informative. It features a lot of archive footage, even tape recordings, of the man himself, and has interviews with people who’s lives were genuinely touched or affected in someway by one of counter culture’s greatest heroes. The ex-President Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine, Ralph Steadman, both his wives and his son, all give insights to the nature of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The film is at its best when it actively charts just how important Hunter was as a journalist, possessed of a savage wit, a terrible temper and responsible for some fine writing and observations of the American psyche.

The Director Alex Gibney never denies the quirks and excesses he would later become parodied for, and the lack of sugar coating make the whole affair both dignified and compelling.

The film stalls slightly when it relies on using too many (overlong) clips of Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is a fine film, but one any half-way serious devotee of Hunter has seen a handful of times already.

However, don’t let that put you off – the soundtrack is superb and well considered, the use of Johnny Depp to read passages from the books is a great touch and not over done, and the fact that Hunter’s writing suffered after his initial decade of quality is not avoided. Most of all, the scene where Jann Wenner is asked what he misses about his old friend is genuinely moving.

In short, if you have even a passing admiration of Dr. Thompson’s work you should check out this film.

Bugging Out

In 1954, the film Them! preyed upon the fears of audiences coming to terms with the terrifying - and unknown - powers of the atomic bomb. Its masterstroke lay in pinning the fears of the zeitgeist to an everyday, yet entirely alien, creature - the ant. The insects' rise above humanity, both literal and metaphoric, focused a growing sense of humanity's insignificance. The mutated ant represents the fear of civilization being wiped away by a magnifying-glass-holding child as much as radiation's genetic perversions.

To read the rest of this article, my second piece for the Sci Fi channel, click HERE

Followers

During my travels around cyberspace I came across a certain Nazi Holocaust–denying Bishop. Said Bishop has a blog, which is to my untrained eye about as interesting as watching paint dry (or watching people dying in a gas chamber based on their race/ religion).

Anyway, said Nazi Holcaust-denying Bishop is also on Blogger, the same outfit I blog with. You can recognise Blogger as it has a cutesy little orange icon. In fcat the icon is so cute it probably really frowns on people who deny things like the Holocaust. Icons are opinionated these days. Honest. After a few minutes of this paint drying spectacular I noticed he has a ‘Followers’ applet just like me.

Fifty-nine frickin’ followers!

Now, I’m not saying they’re all Catholic, Nazi Holocaust-denying, Bishop blog-followers, because frankly that would be a ridiculous sentence, let alone the fact it’s completely unfounded. What is really annoying me, is that he has more followers than me and is clearly a muppet. Sure, his proofreading is sharper than mine, he plays poker with the Pope and knows that cool Bishop that can do a wicked moonwalk after too much communion wine… but for the love of Jehovah! I bet he doesn’t even write his own jokes.

Fifty-nine frickin’ followers.

No, really, it’s fine. I’ll get over. I just need a moment.







FIFTY-NINE FRICKIN’ FOLLOWERS!!!

He’s probably not even a real Bishop, he just enjoys wearing dresses. And goose stepping.

PONCE.