Wyrmlog

The title says it all really.

If I may be allowed to make a plea in my defence I would like to put my general slackness down to work. It’s getting towards the end of the year, which always means a rush, and we’ve also been building a new whiz-bang Checkout process which is the kind of thing that just eats up your entire week. And we’ve got a massive backlog of work anyway because Dale went slightly mad a few months ago and booked in a lot more than we could actually do.

To deal with it I’ve been going into work early and doing one or two extra hours a day. Which is nice for the hip pocket but doesn’t really leave me with much energy for anything else. I have been up for a few things though, which I hopefully will write a bit about over the weekend. But not today, because I’m still at work (although I’ve taken myself off the clock so as not to defraud the company by having it pay for my half-arsed blogging) and it’s almost time to go home.

Two things I will comment on however are that the ABC has put Daria on again (on Friday Afternoons which is one reason I’m keen to be off home), and that there are a number of other really excellent TV shows on at the moment. Or rather there were because a few of them finished before I had the energy to write about them. Ho hum.

Sea of Souls for instance was very good. For those not aquainted with it, it’s a somewhat creepy drama featuring a team of parapsychologists working out of Glascow University. Now naturally this sort of premise runs the risk of being a complete cliche (cue X-Files theme), but I think the actors and scriptwriters did a really good job with it. Actually it reminded me a bit of Mysterious Ways (if you chopped out the requisite feel-good endings, made it all a bit more serious and boosted up the budget that is) – I mean a university Professor investigating the paranormal with the assistance of an enthusiastic young grad student*OK, I admit ‘enthusiastic’ isn’t exactly the first adjective that springs to mind to describe Miranda (apart from when watching the surgery channel at least), but she was enthusiastic on the inside! 🙂 and a dyed in the wool skeptic – it doesn’t take a genius to see the similarities (there are also some obvious similarities to the Koestler Parapsychological Unit at Edinburgh University, but I’ll leave that kind of thing to the lawyers 🙂

Anyway I only saw the last four epsiodes (dealing with reincartnation and muti killings), but they were really good. I wish I’d watched it from the start.

Also catching my interest at the moment is P.O.W, which is (obviously enough) set in a Nazi P.O.W camp during World War II (that is to say a P.O.W camp run by the Nazis, I can’t see anyone watching a show set in a camp for Nazis – at least not anyone I’d want to hang around with anyway). It’s sort of like a somewhat less rose tinted version of The Great Escape extended into a series, or a serious version of Hogan’s Heroes (if a guard caught you digging a tunnel in this camp they wouldn’t run away yelling “I know noTHING!” – they’d shoot you). It’s rather reminiscant of Changi actually, minus the various fantasy bits. Anyway what particularly impresses me is the camp Commandant, Dreiber. The scriptwriters and the actor (who’s name completely escapes me) have done a great job (in the episodes I’ve seen at least – I’ve missed a few) in making him somewhat sympathetic, without taking any of the easy options. It would have been very easy to set him up as a brutal Nazi monster, or alternatively as a good guy forced to follow orders because he has no choice, but they’ve managed to create a loyal, patriotic German (and Nazi) who isn’t on the whole such a bad guy. He generally sticks to the Geneva Conventions for instance, shows some concern for the prisoners’ welfare and treats the Allied C.O. with a measure of respect due to his rank. Of course anyone attempting to escape will be shot, and you get to see the frightening side of him when one of the prisoners turns out to be Jewish*Not brutal or vicious or fanatical – he just so obviously regards him as a nothing., but he’s not the stock Nazi usually portrayed in these kind of situations.

Thanks to sixty years of TV and cinema we’ve all got used to the idea of the Nazis as monsters (and let’s not forget there were plenty of them who were) but it’s interesting to see such an intelligent and convincing portrayal of the kind of Nazi who would have made up the bulk of the organization. Not a raving lunatic, or a fantical warrior pledging to die for the Fuhrer and the Sacred Aryan Blood, but an ordinary person with certain beliefs going about their life and military duties in a certain way. If you ask me that’s a much more mature – and frightening – depiction of what went on in Nazi Germany than a thousand bellowing stormtroopers.

So yeah, P.O.W. Check it out.

Going home now.

Here’s an interesting bit of rambling from that most entertaining of linguists Tenser, said the Tensor. Or at least it’s interesting to me because of a rather stupid activity I was forced to partake in way back in the good old days of 1989.

Back in that first year of high school the year eights were subjected to a class called ‘Music’. This wasn’t any kind of conventional music class – we didn’t get to play any instruments – and neither was it a singing class – that was ‘Singing’. No, this was sitting around in the room at the back of the gym, listening to tapes while being yelled at by a nun. There was so little educational content involved that I strongly suspect it was nothing but timetable filler to get the year eights away from the rest of the staff for a while.

In any case one of the endlessly stupid activities we had to do in ‘Music’ was learn about beat. Any decent curriculum seeking to teach kids about beat would invest in some bongo drums and let them at it, but this kind of creativity wasn’t allowed by Sister Lynn – after all, drumming reeks of paganism. No, we had to march in a big circle around the room in time to a tape apparently (to judge by the whole jingly-jangly-fuzzy-wuzzy-Barney-the-Dinosaur ‘feel’ of the recording) aimed at 6 year olds. And join in.

The words we had to chant?

(When repeated over and over ad nauseum while marching around the room in a circle the “right” and “left”s should fall on the appropriate footsteps. You do a little skip on “woopsidoo” to reset, otherwise you’d end up on the wrong feet the next time round – just so you know).

The parallels to the Gingerbread jingle are obvious.

As is the effect this bizzare activity had on growing minds – it’s 16 years later and I still recall the damn thing word for word!

Some months ago while on the train to work I had a sort of day-dreamy vision thing. Nothing particularly unusual about that except that it was particularly cinematic and sort of stuck in my head. It was of a man, dressed in a long black coat, with a somewhat grim expresion on his face walking out of an urban underpass on a rainy night. As he steps out into the rain he gestures sharply upwards with his arm (while continuing on ahead and not looking around, as if he expects this to work without checking) and the falling rain immediately reverses direction shooting back up into the sky. He continues walking along – grim, but completely dry.

After thinking about this for a while I decided that it was clearly a scene from a movie – a Neil Gaiman (or maybe Douglas Adams) type movie about ancient gods still living in the world today. And that was that really. I spent a bit of time idly trying to figure out which god – I ended up deciding it was someone Greek – but after that I basically forgot about it.

Then the other night I see a trailer for that new Russian flick Nochnoy Dozor (that’s Night Watch for those whose Russian ain’t up to scratch). And in the middle of it there’s a scene where a guy is crossing a road (in an urban setting, at night) and (with a sharp gesture of his arm) nonchalantly throws a bus over his head.

Now OK, there’s no underpass, the guy isn’t dressed in black, and it’s a bus – not rain. But there’s something about the shot that somehow’s just like what I saw. And from what I hear about the movie it is a bit Neil Gaimanish…

So, what does it mean? Maybe nothing. Maybe that I should go see the movie. I dunno. It’s just really freaky that’s all.

(Hmmm, on the subject of Neil Gaiman, Selma Blair’s right – she does look just like Death.)

Well how about that? They’ve interupted Frasier for a live telecast of the Mary, Frederick and the new baby walking out of hospital in Copenhagen. I mean really.

(For those who came in late, Princess Mary of Denmark is from Tasmania and hence the new Danish Prince is half Australian. I like that – Europe exiles her criminals halfway around the world, and we come back and RULE THEM AS KINGS!!!! *grin*).

Aha! Maybe we might finally get some kind of closure on the 1840 storyline now…

You know, I’m thinking that I really have to buy a ring.

No, I’m not planning to propose to anyone and neither am I considering a George Costanza style ‘pretending to be married to attract women’ scam. It’s because of a somewhat painful situation that has arisen at the office – a situation that can only reasonably be solved by means of jewelery. I am talking of course of that most pernicious of physical phenomena, static electricity.

Not that long ago Dale got an ergonomics expert to come in and assess the office – apparently on the grounds that she’s a member of some kind of business group he’s in and therefore cheap. After some poorly concealed gasping in horror at our work environment she proceeded to explain how everything we were doing was wrong and we were all going to end up as bitter, hunchbacked old men with osteoperosis and no hair because of our chunky old CRT monitors and far too comfortable chairs. She also made us do a variety of highly unnatural stretches and told me to get rid of the ‘clutter’ on my desk because it was bad feng-shui*Oh, all right she didn’t, I made that up, but she did say I should get rid of it because no one likes working in clutter, which I though was terribly presumptive of her.. Then she handed out some photocopied brochures on ‘Good Work Practice’ and fled before our dangerous working conditions could give her the plague.

Now that’s the kind of thing you have to put up with in business, fair enough, and at least it meant we could sit around looking attentive for an hour or so rather than working, but Dale seemed to take it all rather to heart. Hence a few days later he went out and bought me a new chair*Bevan’s was actually assessed as OK by the ergonomics lady, and presumably Dale feels that he’s unlikely to sue himself over unsafe working conditions. . This was purchased at enormous expense from an ergonomics centre and was specially designed to properly support and protect the human body – which would no doubt explain why for the first two weeks sitting in it I was in a state of constant agony. My bones eventually reshaped themselves however, and it is now quite comfortable – even though my feet do seem to have turned inwards for some reason.

But – and here we find the crux of my case – comfortable as it is, sitting in it seems to generate absolutely massive amounts of static charge. Whenever I get up to use the facilities, or answer the phone, or wave my arms wildly in horror at the suggestions of a client I shoot a large, crackling electrical discharge into the first metal object I touch, or even pass within a foot of. And the longer I’ve been sitting the stronger the discharge is. The phenomena is so consistent that I’m begining to suspect there’s a miniature Van de Graff generator hidden in the gas lift mechanism of my oh-so-ergonomic chair (either that or I’m turning into that guy from The Misfits of Science).

I wouldn’t mind it except for one fact – static electrical discharge hurts damn it! OK, sure a small spark is nothing to whine about, but we’re not talking about small sparks, we’re talking about great pulsing gouts of raw electrical energy shooting out of my fingertips without provocation. So, obviously I need a ring.

Why you ask? Because if I was wearing a ring of suitably conductive material I could earth myself by tapping it against any convenient block of metal, and because the electricity would be arcing from the ring and not my nerves it wouldn’t hurt! (And also I think it would look kind of cool :).

So yeah, on the lookout for a suitably conductive (and cheap) ring.

There’s plenty of other stuff I could blog about, but it’s 4:59pm on a Friday and I’m still at the office, so I thought I’d finish up with some inane comments about Dr Who instead.

Thoughts on watching Dr Who: Arc of Infitnity

1. From certain angles that ergon thing is damn creepy.
2. With that new haircut Janet Fielding actually looks kind of cute (even if she still sounds like Pauline Hanson).
3. Time Lord interior decor just gets worse doesn’t it?

Thoughts on watching Dr Who: Snakedance

1. It’s Martin Clunes! And he can’t act!
2. Neither can Janet Fielding for that matter – or maybe hamming it up unbearably is one of those ‘physical signs’ of Mara possession?
3. “Look at me! Look at Me!” – Kath and Kim or the Mara? You decide.

Thoughts on watching Dr Who: Mawdryn Undead

1. Mark Strickson is way too old to portray a school student – even an alien one.
2. Without his moustache the Brigadier just isn’t the Brigadier!
3. The Black Guardian may be the most powerful negative force in the universe, but that’s still no excuse for carrying on like the top-hatted villain in a Victorian melodrama – “I am evil! The Doctor is good! Mwahahahaha!” – I mean really!

OK, I’ve finally figured out what’s been going on for the last few months. Why I haven’t had the energy to do much (including emailing people and making weblog entries), why work has been such a drag, why even getting out of bed in the mornings takes a major effort. I’m depressed damnit!

Now, that may not seem like particularly good news – but actually it is. Up until a few days ago I felt like my entire life was in the toilet, which isn’t much fun. Today I still feel like my entire life is in the toilet, but I know that it’s because some neurotransmitters in my brain are malfunctioning as opposed to my entire life actually being in the toilet. And I know that those neurotransmitters can be fixed. So I have that most precious of luxuries, hope. Which at least makes it a little easier to crawl out of bed each day 🙂

So it’s Saint John’s Wort, healthier food and more exercise until I pull myself out of it.

I could go to the doctor’s and get some SSRIs (that’s Selective Seretonin Re-uptake Inhibitors in case you’re wondering – better known as Prozac) I suppose, but the last time I did that (back in 1999) it pretty much scuppered my brain. Oh, I felt a lot better, sure, but my IQ seemed to drop by about 40 points and I couldn’t write anything to save my soul (the main reason regular updates to the Tales of the Geek Underclass stopped so suddenly) or code. So I stopped taking it and’ve been fine even since. I’m hoping the Saint John’s Wort and other measures will have the same effect without turning me into a lobotomised drone, otherwise I may have to go back onto the pills for a while. Which would suck, but what price mental health?

So, if you don’t hear from me for a while, that’s my excuse 🙂

In other news England have won the Ashes for the first time in about a billion years. Well done to them. The mainstream press seems to be treating this as a disaster on the scale of New Orleans, but frankly we’ve had it coming for ages. Anyway, anything that annoys Shane bloody Warne is fine by me (I’ll await deportation for un-Australian activities shortly shall I? 🙂

Personally (in addition to mainlining herbal medicine) I’m rewatching Season One of Battlestar Galactica. I went into town on Friday night intending to buy a DVD of Firefly but couldn’t find one, so I bought Galactica instead. It’s just as good the second time around, which is to say utterly fantastic. I haven’t got all the way through yet, but I’m enjoying it immensely – probably way too much actually since I find myself with a strange desire to call people who annoy me ‘toasters’ to their faces and to mutter things under my breath about the Lords of COBOL (maybe you say they spell it with a ‘K’, maybe I say they spell it wrong 🙂

I also indulged myself in a DVD copy of Resurrection of the Daleks which is famous for being the most violent Dr Who story ever recorded, reputedly featuring more on screen deaths than The Terminator. Sadly I neglected to start counting until the last episode, but in that 23 minutes or so there were at least 16 on screen shootings and/or blowing-ups (only counting humans, you could boost the figures a fair bit by adding in exploding Daleks) which averages out at almost 0.7 violent deaths per minute (or in other words great entertainment value! *g*). If the same figure applies for the other three epsiodes (which to be honest it probably doesn’t but still) then we’re looking at a total body count of over 60 people! Mary Whitehouse must have had kittens.

Anyway, I’d better go and watch some more of the milkiest Battlestar of all! (linguistic joke, don’t be ashamed you didn’t get it – in fact you should be proud 🙂

Bah!

(I really should have blogged about this yesterday, but I forgot 🙂

Yesterday – as all should know – was the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender that marked the end of World War Two. An important date to be sure (particularly here in Australia, since the Japanese were quite keen on invading at one point and bombed various bits of the country up quite badly), and worthy of rememberence. But there’s one thing about it all that’s been driving me nuts – the insistance on calling it “VP” day.

“VP” stands for Victory in the Pacific – a clear analogue for Europe’s “VE” day. But that’s not what it was called. If you jumped in your handy time machine and took a jaunt back to August 20th 1945 and asked people what they got up to on “VP” day, they wouldn’t know what you were on about. Because in 1945 it wasn’t “Victory in the Pacific” – it was “Victory over Japan”, or “VJ” day.

Now, before anyone accuses me of raking over old wounds (sounds painful) or cultural insensitivity or other such negatives please let me make the point that I don’t object to refering to the commemoration/anniversary as VP Day. Japan after all is our friend (not to mention trading partner) these days, and constantly reminding them of what their forbearers got up to is not only counterproductive but downright rude. But by the same token let’s not pretend that people in 1945 were running around celebrating “VP” day either – because they damn well weren’t. To make believe that they were is nothing but historical revisionism of the highest order.

So, yesterday wasn’t the 60th anniversery of VP Day – it was VP Day – which is the 60th anniversary of the end of World War Two, which just happened to be called VJ Day at the time. And anyone who says any different is a liar.

Hrumph!

(Well done to ABC News by the way who neither bought into the revisionist “VP Day” or the potentially upsetting “VJ Day” and just referred to “the End of World War Two”. Eminently sensible and responsible journalism there.)

(And before anyone starts going on about how we should call it VJ Day and the feelings of the Japanese be damned and I’m too young to remember how evil they all are yada yada yada I’d like to point out that my Great Uncle was beheaded in a Japanese run POW camp – so I reckon I do have a personal stake in the issue, and a right to express an opinion about it. It was 60 years ago – we shouldn’t forget, but we should damn well move on.)