Wyrmlog

The month of February always reminds me of the family holidays we used to go on down to Bunbury.

Way way back in the dim past we had some family friends living down there – the Fields. The parents were both librarians and they had two kids – Katherine, around the same age as my brother and I, and Toby, a few years younger. Their sprawling house on the outskirts of town was absolutely packed to the gills with books, and had a huge overgrown yard, complete with a pond full of ducks and geese. We’d eat fresh duck eggs for breakfast, go to the beach, sit around and read, and listen to possums crawl around in the roof at night. It was great. The only thing that wasn’t great was the journey down.

To get to Bunbury from Perth you need (or at least used to need) to go through Kwinana – the industrial strip along the shores of Cockburn Sound. This wasn’t too much of a hassel – it was ugly sure, but it only took an hour or so to get through – apart from one brief stretch where the road went past a fertiliser plant.

Fertiliser plants stink. They stink like you could not possibly believe. All the nitrates create an unholy, nauseating stench that threatens to bring up your lunch. Even with all the windows wound up and the vents closed the foul odour would fight its way into the car and hang around for a good half hour before finally vanishing. It was a part of the journey we dreaded, but was necessary to get down to Bunbury and see our friends.

So why does this remind me of February? Because in order to get to the pleasantness of my birthday at the end of the month, I first have to get past Valentines Day, which while it may not actually stink is certainly just as unpleasant and unavoidable.

Of course this year it’s not too bad. The dreaded 14th is a Saturday meaning that I can stay indoors and listen to MP3s all day and not have to put up with every single shop window and radio station reminding me of the fact that while the rest of the world has a fantastic time I personally have absolutely nothing to celebrate. As always. Bah!

I think I’ll spend tomorrow emptying the bins and updating my details on the electoral roll. I might even defrag my hard drive again. That’ll teach that little bastard cupid! 🙂

Anyway, with that dealt with onto other stuff. Like Charmed for instance which returned to our screens last week.

Well, I suppose firstly I should admit that I was wrong. They didn’t kill Leo. They just banished him to Valhalla, which against all pre-existing evidence appears to be an uncharted tropic isle somewhere in the Indian Ocean (surprisingly close to the British Indian Ocean territory actually, which may explain why the Yanks don’t like anyone visiting Diego Garcia). There the Valkyries stuck him in a flimsy bamboo cage and made him dress up like Russell Crowe in Gladiator and fight people, which is kind of weird for a suposed pacifist (he kept saying things like ‘I’ve changed’ as if it explained anything). Apparently there’s some kind of conspiracy going on between the girls’ new white lighter (…some white lighter the guy can’t even heal sounds like a warlock if you ask me…) and a valkyrie, which led to all this. I’m as baffled as anyone.

In any case the girls eventually managed to track him down, and get him out of said flimsy bamboo cage, although that supposed white lighter had to kill three Valkyries to get them there (not that they realise this, he’s keeping all the evil stuff under wraps). They also had to temporarily kill Darryl, without his permission I might add which is frankly a bit towards the dark side if you ask me. Anyway all this killing let them grab Leo and escape – although Piper went all weird (or at least weirder than normal) and got left behind. Some warriors also escaped from Valhalla and started killing people at random for no good reason at all – this lead to a whole lot of confusion and running around and Piper becoming not just a Valkyrie but a biker Valkyrie (this was pretty stupid, but at least the soundtrack guys had some fun with it by scoring them roaring down the street like Hell’s Angels to Ride of the Valkyries :). In the end of course everything turned out OK, although it’s hard to say exactly why. Piper kicked Leo out of the house, Phoebe’s now an empath and Paige is dating a dog – you know, normal Charmed type stuff.

Um…. what else? CSI is back! Hooray! Grissom (not ‘Grisham’ as I was spelling his name previously – my bad) apparently grows a beard this season. No sign of it yet, but it’s early days. Personally I think William Peterson did it so people would stop mistaking him for … um one of the guys running for the Democrat endorsement – Howard Dean maybe? There’s a banner add floating around the net for him anyway and the resemblance is just uncanny. Grissom for President I say! 🙂

(A CSI Administration, now that would be cool. Catherine could be VP, Sara could be Secretary of State, Warwick and Nick could be Presidential Advisors or Press Secretaries and Greg… well I dunno he could head up the CIA or Pentagon or something. Couldn’t do a worse job than they’re doing already)

OK, going to shut up now 🙂

PS:

Last Sunday I went and saw Underworld with Ryan and Fabian. I’d actually been wanting to go and see it because… well frankly because Kate Beckinsale looked so great in the adds. I mean let’s face it, we’re talking about a gothic themed movie where the lead is a short haired brunette who (because it is a vampire movie after all) is doing the whole pale skinned, dress in black thing and goes running and jumping around shooting at things – is this a film I’m not going to go see? Yeah, right 🙂

So we headed over to Morley on Sunday afternoon to see it. We got there a little bit late, but we only missed a few adds, so that worked out OK. We managed to catch all three previews which was fortunate because they all looked pretty good. The first was for One Perfect Day which looks like an Australian production about a guy trying to find and record some kind of universal music and turn it into a dance track. Or something. I thought it looked OK, Ryan and Fabian apparently thought it looked awesome *g*.

The next was for Once Upon a Time in Mexico which is apparently Desperado II. They didn’t say this in the preview, but we figured it had to be just from the look of it. As action films go it looked not bad, plenty of blowing things up and machine guns, and guitar cases that turn into flame throwers – the usual mindlessly entertaining violence you expect from that kind of thing 🙂

The third was for Hellboy. Frankly it looks a little derivative (X-Men, Men in Black anyone) but I reckon I’ll still go and see it. There’s this one character who looks like some kind of alien and I’ve got the weirdest feeling that it’s played (or at least voiced) by the guy who plays Niles in Frasier. I suppose I’ll have to check over at IMDB or something.

Anyway, Underworld. Well it looks spectacular. Everything is appropriately dark and gloomy and gothic, it’s always raining (if not actually water, then shell casings), the sets are magnificent, the costuming is spot on (the vampires of course all wear trenchcoats – but what else can we expect after The Matrix? Although to be fair Dark City did the trenchcoast thing long before Neo even thought of it) and the entire production oozes so much style that it’s just plain awesome. So awesome in fact that you can completely ignore the fact that the plot has more holes than a swiss cheese factory after a drive-by.

How can a vampire pass out from excessive bleeding? How can a vampire almost drown? How can a vampire get pregnant? And even if a vampire can get pregnant, how could she get pregnant to a ‘lycan’ (that’s werewolf to you and me) if vampire and lycan cells attack each other even on a cellular level? Do the lycans actually control the police? Why are there no female lycans? Or are female lycans so butch that no one can tell the difference? Isn’t Selene pronounced ‘Seleenee’ not ‘Seleen’? Doesn’t silver nitrate turn black on exposure to light? If one bite from either a vampire or lycan turns you into one, then why isn’t the world completely overrun by them? If the vampire elders are immortal, then why are they “leapfrogging through time”? Do all the vampires have blue eyes (or was I just imagining that)? And why do they all seem to have British accents? Has Craven been working with Lucian for all the hundred of years since they faked his death? Why does Craven look so much like Ron Moss when he’s played by Shane Brolly? And why does he do a Scottish accent for just one scene (a nod to Deathstalker perhaps)? Who are the two houses of vampires and why are they separated? How come the vampires can use mirrors? In all his years of unlife has Marcus seriously never tasted lycan blood, even by accident? The list just goes on and on and on.

You can put up with all this because the film just looks so damn good, but it really does start to go all pear shaped towards the end. Most of the plot revolves around the lycans trying to combine lycan and vampire blood to create a sort of super being greater than both of them. They eventually manage this and Michael (Selene’s love interest, although it should be noted that there’s absolutely zilch chemistry between them) turns into the much vaunted hybrid. So, is it cool? Is it powerful? Well frankly it’s pathetic.

Your basic complete
lack of chemistry…

Remember the old Incredible Hulk TV show? The one where when Bruce Banner gets mad he turns into body builder Lou Ferrigno in green body-paint? Well imagine Lou Ferrigno, but painted dark grey instead of green. Oh, and give him black contact lenses and sharp teeth. that’s it. No pointy ears, no wolf like muzzle, nothing to suggest that this creature has anything in common with either vampire or lycan. And how does this superbeing fight? By snarling a lot and slashing with his fingernails (you can just imagine the Scout Master standing to the side shouting “Don’t be afraid to use your nails boys!”). And how strong and superior is it? So strong and superior that the vampire Elder Viktor can completely beat the crap out of Michael without raising a sweat, and Selene has to come to the rescue by somehow slicing Viktor’s head in half with his own sword. I mean if it’s that easy to kill a vampire Elder why didn’t Selene do it earlier? And how come Michael couldn’t do it at all? Sheeze!

And on that point Viktor’s sword is a big heavy broadsword (or at least a longsword – hey do I look like an SCA member? OK, maybe I do but that’s beyond the point). Selene somehow manages to use this to cut through Viktor’s head so finely that he stands there for a few seconds gaping like a fish before the top half slides off. I could maybe believe that if she was weilding a Japanese katana, but that sword was about a centimetre thick in the middle. Unless of course it’s some kind of magic sword, which hasn’t been established in the plot up to this point.

Oh, and while on the subject of Viktor, they so should have reshot his line “I loved my daughter!!”. Performed as I’m sure it was intended this would have given us a real insight into Viktor as a character and how he fell when torn between his personal feelings and his self appointed “duty” to the vampire race. As it was performed it just made everyone in the cinema crack up. Did they honestly not pick that up in post-production? Could they honestly not get the actor back to reshoot or at least loop it? For crying out loud!

Gorgeous blue eyes and snub little
nose. Trust me, they are actually
blue. It’s just not a great shot
that’s all 🙂

With all that said though I thought it was a highly, highly enjoyable film. Stylish as all get out and well worth a couple of hours of Sunday afternoon. Of course I’m unable to actually be objective on that score – if the entire film had just been Kate Beckinsale done up all gothic and running around in subway tunnels I still would have though it was fantastic *g*. Watching her running around subway tunnels shooting at werewolves and speaking with an upperclass British accent (along with plenty of close-ups on those gorgeous blue eyes and snub little nose) is well worth any number of ridiculous plot holes as far as I’m concerned ;D

Roll on Underworld II! 🙂

OK, that’s it, I give up! They’ve gone and put Smallville (starring the delightful Alison Mack) on right after Gilmore Girls. The universe is obviously determined to make me watch the damn show, so who I am to argue? From now on Saturday night is Gilmore/Smallville night – who cares if what little straight male cred I have runs screaming off into the night in the process?

Actually talking of Smallville I happened across a hilarious Smallville related quote the other day. Or at least I found it hilarious…

Rebecca and I have a bet going at the moment.

As a result of our (that is myself, her and Dom) getting together at the Red Orchid last Saturday I’ve found myself organising a similar get together for my Birthday, provisionally scheduled in for the 28th (that is the get together is provisionally scheduled for the 28th. My birthday is going to be on the 28th no matter what I do 🙂

Now before I actually fix the schedule to this date and do more organising I need to find out if Andrew and Travis can make it or not. As such I’ve emailed them and am currently waiting for a reply…

The thing is that Andrew is completely notorious for not checking or replying to messages – be they emails or left on his answering machine. So while bored at our respective workplaces, Rebecca and I set up a pool on when I’d actually hear back from him. I (somewhat optimistically) reckoned it’d be Saturday at the latest. Rebecca went for Monday. At stake? A bag of low-fat sun-dried tomato pretzels!

Well we were hardly going to bet money were we? 🙂

Anyway, it’s now Friday night and there’s still no sign of a response. I’m tempted to just give him a call, but under the rules we negotiated any attempt to influence the outcome by contacting him results in a forfeit. Not that I’m absolutely desperate to win the pretzels or anything, it just wouldn’t be in the spirit of the thing. So, I guess I’ll wait until Sunday, at which point Rebecca will have won by default and it won’t matter what I do.

Actually talking of Rebecca and probabilities (well betting has to do with probabilities doesn’t it? Please try and keep up 🙂 I got thinking yesterday about something she said to me while we were organising last week’s dinner. We were talking via email at our respective workplaces and had just agreed on Saturday night when I remembered that I might be busy on Saturday and emailed back saying we might have to switch to Sunday instead. Her response was “Please tell me you have a date”. Sadly I had to instead tell her that I might be doing some role-playing at Fabian’s place 🙂

Anyway I was thinking about this conversation yesterday and reflecting that her question was really rather silly. After all, given my general level of geekiness my having a date that Saturday night or indeed on any given night is intrinsically unlikely. Then I got thinking about just how unlikely it was and realised I could actually calculate it. So, being a gigantic Geek I decided to do so 😀

So, here we go. How likely is it that I – Denys the Purple Wyrm – would have had a date last Saturday?

OK, let’s set up some basic starting points. We’ll assume that we’re talking about a first date since if I’d already been out on a date with someone and it had gone so well as to make a second date possible, then Rebecca would have heard about it. We’ll also assume that this first date was arranged at some point during the preceding two weeks, as two weeks would seem to me to be about the longest time you would reasonably wait to go out with someone (if they couldn’t find or make some free time with two weeks notice, they’re probably not very interested).

OK, to actually go on a date, I would have to have someone to go on a date with. This someone would have to meet some basic criteria – specifically they’d have to be female, and around my own age, let’s say 25 to 30. So how likely is it that I would have met someone matching this profile over the previous two weeks?

Unfortunately I work in a male-dominated industry, and don’t have much of a social life, hence I don’t meet a lot of women. I would say that over the last ten years (since leaving high school) I would have met an average of 5 women aged 25 to 30 a year. So, the odds of me having met a woman aged 25 to 30 over the previous two weeks would be…

5/(52/2) = 0.1923

… or about 5.2 to 1 against.

Assuming that I had met someone, she’d have to be single. I don’t have statistics on the ratio of single women in Perth in the 25 to 30 age bracket, so I’ll make a simple assumption of 50%. So, the odds of me having met a single woman aged 25 to 30 over the previous two weeks would be…

0.1923/2 = 0.096154

… or about 10.4 to 1 against.

Now, this woman would not only have to be attractive enough for me to be interested in seeing more of her, but she’d have to be attractive enough for me to overcome my various social phobias and neuroses and actually ask her out *g* (OK, I suppose theoretically she might ask me out, however that hasn’t happened even once during the last ten years, so we can safely ignore the possibility). Within the last ten years I’ve only met one woman that I found so instantly attractive as to even consider such a course of action, had circumstances made it possible. So, if I’ve met an average of 5 women a year for the last ten years that comes to a ratio of…

1/50 = 0.02

(NOTE: This is not to say that none of the other 49 women were attractive, or that I wouldn’t have liked to go out with any of them, just that for me to actually pull myself together enough to do something about it the woman in question has to be something really special 🙂

So…

0.096154 * 0.02 = 0.001923

…or about 520 to 1 against.

Naturally in order for us to have a date, the woman in question would have had to agree to go out with me. Given my social skills, general appearance and presentation the odds of this are not fantastic. However we can be charitable and assume that the qualities that made this woman attractive enough for me to ask her out in the first place (above average intelligence, good sense of humour, an obviously unconventional take on life etc.) would make her slightly more likely than average to at least give me a chance. So, let’s assume a probability of 30%…

0.001923 * 0.3 = 0.0005769

…or about 1733 to 1 against.

OK, so the odds of me having a date on any given night over the last ten years are 1733 to 1 against. What about any given Saturday night?

The likelihood of any date being arranged for a Saturday night is actually quite high, as I’m generally too tired after working all week to do anything on Friday nights, and I’ve got to get up and go to work the next morning on all other nights. So let’s say 75%…

0.0005769 * 0.75 = 0.00043262931

…or about 2311 to 1 against.

So, the final odds of me having had a date on any given Saturday night over the last ten years are about 2311 to 1 against. Not quite Heart-of-Gold-elderberry-bush-full-of-kippers style improbable, but I still wouldn’t be holding my breath Rebecca 😉

PS: I was really looking forward to the season premiere of The Dead Zone but taped the wrong channel. GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! >:-Z

Ack! It was meant to be cool this week before another hot weekend, but instead it’s just decided to be hot all through. Given my extreme aversion to heat and inability to sleep properly at anything over about 16 celcius this means that by the end of the week I shall most likely be psychotic.

So, don’t expect any updates for a while because I’ll be too busy cowering under my air cooler. Or gluing aluminium foil to the ceiling to block the mind control lasers. Whichever.

I was going to make a big entry this weekend covering (among other things) my opinion of The Return of the King, but it turned out to be 40

A few observations, comments and other ephemera…

Do not under any circumstances ever order whitebait!
On the Thursday before we closed up business for the Christmas/New Year break, the entire office went out to lunch on the company budget, which is about the one tradition we have at GTP. When I say the entire office I mean myself, Dale, Bevan, Dale’s Dad (who does accounts for us), Bernie (a Swiss guy who’s doing part time work for us at the moment) and Gail (who runs a web/print design out of one of the rooms next to us and who would have been left all alone in the building while we were out pigging ourselves which just would have been mean otherwise). Dale had selected the venue (as company Director he was paying for the meal after all) and so at 11:30ish we all ended up at Steve’s Restaurant, overlooking the river.

It was a weird day, heavy cloud cover that threatened torrential rain without ever delivering it, humidity high enough to make the view to the opposite shore foggy and indistinct, and sudden gusty breezes from out of nowhere. Nonetheless Dale decided we’d eat out in the courtyard. I don’t know why, possibly it was cheaper. In any case the strange weather may have influenced my decision to go completely insane and order the whitebait.

The problem of course was that I had no idea what whitebait actually was. I knew it was seafood, obviously, but beyond that I was a bit shaky. I think I had some vague impression of it being some kind of small shrimp or prawn which would be very enjoyable deep fried in a golden batter which is how it was described on the menu. As it turned out I was wrong. Very wrong.

Whitebait it seems is a small, sardine like fish which is cooked and eaten whole. When I say whole, I mean whole, as in head and bones and scales and digestive system and all. Ack.

Needless to say I was quite horrified when I was served a gigantic pile of these tiny fish – even if they were deep fried in a golden batter. In fact the batter somehow made it worse, it’s bad enough that your food is looking at you, let alone through crispy golden eyesockets. But, I could hardly send it back. I would have looked like an idiot. And, I suppose, Dale would have had to pay for two meals for me – but mainly I would have looked like an idiot. So I had no choice but to tuck in.

Actually it wasn’t that bad. So long as I ignored what it actually was it was kind of like eating slightly oily and mushy chips with a faint flavour of sardines and charcoal. Luckily there were some sauces provided – the sweet chilli was particularly good – so I munched away with an impassive expression on my face making carefully considered comments like “not bad” and “a little salty” like some kind of whitebait connoisseur when asked how it was. All the while suppressing my gag reflex.

I managed to finish almost all of the horrid little things before the sweet chilli sauce ran out, at which point I decided I just couldn’t face any more. There were about five or six left at the bottom of the dish, but I decided the kitchen staff could go hang if they were going to be upset by that, so I stubbornly left them behind. I spent much of the rest of the day feeling queezy and burping softly, and didn’t fully recover my appetite until late Friday.

(By the way I should point out that none of the blame for this horrible experience falls at the feet of Steve’s Restaurant – it’s all down to me ordering the wrong thing. For all I know it was really excellent whitebait 🙂

So, no more whitebait for me thanks!

If It’s Catchy, It Means You Stole It by the Sneeze
If this is not the worst song ever written, then it’s damn close. Constructing a song from the lyrics of other well know songs is actually a great idea – so long as you have a decent tune, select lyrics that actually fit the meter of that tune, and don’t sing every line four times in a row. Let’s look at an extract from the song in question shall we?

Yesterday,
Allmytroublesseemedso far away,
From Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,

When you consider that it’s sung in high weak, reedy, voices and the “Michelle” lines only have two notes (something like A-A A-A A-A-A-A-A-A A-A A-A A#-A) it’s like (and about as enjoyable as) listening to morse code. Lets have a look at another extract shall we?

Falling down like love,
Falling down like spring rain keepsfallingonmyhead,Spring – rain – keeps fallingonmyhead,
Fallingonmyhead,
Over you,
Over you,
Over you,
Over you,

Or maybe…

WhenIwasyoung,
Ineverneeded anyone those days are gone,
(yesterday)
Ineverneeded anyone,
But Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle, Michelle, Michelle ma belle,
Michelle, Michelle, Michelle-Michelle-Michelle…..

If I ever see Tom Morgan on the street, I shall personally shoot him. In the meantime I will mainline Reseda Casino and Letter to Memphis until this musical monstrosity is wiped from my brain.

I hope.

And while we’re on the subject…
… of the Pixies, the guitar riff from that new(ish) smash hit Powderfinger song (Love your Way? Sunsets? One of them anyway) is obviously copied from the b-side version of River Euphrates. Just thought I’d point that out 🙂

Dale-isms
My boss, Dale, simply cannot write. He couldn’t write a coherant English sentence if his life depended on it. He can speak perfectly intelligably – in fact everyone in the office’s livelyhoods depend on it since he does all the marketing – but the minute you put him in front of a keyboard it’s as if the linguistic sections of his brain go into to total spasm. For instance, from the email newsletter he wrote today to send out to our clients…

“Unfortunately many e-commerce sites usually needs a price reductions on your products to attract a sale”

“I would like to wish you a prosperous new year over the next 12 months and beyond for your business”

Thankfully he is at least dimly aware of his failings in this area and gets me and Bevan to have a look over anything important he writes before he prints or emails it 🙂

Website Updates
It will no doubt please everyone to hear that over the Christmas break I had sufficient rest and relaxation to totally unwind from the working year and get my writing mojo/groove back. Unfortunately I got it back on Friday, a mere three days before having to start all over again at the begining of a new work year. Believe me, no one is more annoyed and frustrated about this than myself.

With another two weeks off I could have written a bunch of new chapters for the Tales of the Geek Underclass not to mention totally revising and updating the entire site. As it was I only had time and creative juices enough to do some more work on Zurv

So, vanquished demons don’t die – they turn into plastic surgeons. Makes sense to me!