Masters of the Universe

There were three big box office bombs this summer: "Supergirl", "The Mandalorian and Grogu", and "Masters of the Universe". In all three cases, the reason for this was at least somewhat political, or at least connected with the Culture Wars - they were basically considered too woke, in one way or another, and therefore people stayed away. In two of the cases, I was of the opinion that they weren't the cinematic abomination that I had feared - neither "Supergirl" nor M&G was a masterpiece by any stretch, but both were fairly serviceable in their own rights.

I watched "Masters of the Universe" this weekend... and I'm afraid it's astonishingly awful.

Now, in fairness, there were some things I enjoyed: the music is actually really good (and, if the law that films with a soundtrack by Queen inevitably become cult hits is true, I'd expect this to happen here too: although the soundtrack is not by Queen, it heavily features Brian May's work). The cameo by Dolph Lundgren is likewise pretty cool - although it's a really bad sign when it reminds you of an older, better, film and that film is itself pretty terrible. And having Orko appear at the end to give the moral of the story is a really nice touch - very reminiscent of the source cartoon.

(Oh, and Surprise! has declared that this film is awesome, largely because at the end Adam rides away on his big green tiger. So that's at least one recommendation.)

I guess the other thing that works is that at least the various characters do actually look like they should - the film basically has all the action figures come to life.

Otherwise, though, no. I'm not even going to enumerate the failures - it's all within touching distance of mediocrity, but ultimately falls short, to the extent that despite investing only a couple of hours into it, and despite getting it effectively free as part of my Prime subscription, I still felt short-changed.

Avoid.

The End of Summer

Yesterday was our last BBQ of the year. I still have a task to give both our BBQs a good clean and then get them covered over for the winter, but otherwise the season is now done. (I similarly gave the BBQ at work a clean last week, for the same reason.) In theory there might yet be a day or two suitable for BBQ weather, but it's my policy to draw a line of my own volition, rather than let things drift to nothing. So we're done.

This morning when my alarm went off I staggered out of bed and opened the curtains, only to discover that, for the first time since around Easter, it was still dark outside. The nights are drawing in, and the dawn is getting ever later. Of course, there's an adjustment coming when we collectively decide not to have our clocks lie to us any more at the end of October, but by then it will be dark even at the new corrected 6am.

On Wednesday it will be the 16th of September, a day of little import except for one detail: that marks the point of the 100-day countdown to Christmas. Even that's not a huge milestone, as it's far too soon to be considering the matter in much detail, except for two things: I'll be sounding out the Christmas dinner plans (at least conceptually), and I also want to have a discussion about what our "one new thing" could be this year. I have an idea, but I'm not at all sure it's a good one.

All of which amounts to one big thing: sadly, the long, glorious Summer of 2026 has reached its end.

Experimental Cookery 2026: Cheese and Bacon Burgers

This one comes from "The Handcrafted Burger". It's absolutely lovely, but it also absolutely does not warrant a recipe of its own: make some patties, cook on one side, cover the other with cheese and cook, then add bacon and other bits and pieces. And that's it.

I guess the key thing here is that none of the other options in the book include bacon as a main part (the "everything burger" being a possible exception), so maybe they thought that they needed one?

Fundamentally, while "The Handcrafted Burger" is a remarkably enjoyable book, the truth is that it's not the burgers that are the key - those are generally almost trivial. On the contrary, it's the accompaniments that are the main thing here. And while this time the accompaniment is bacon, which is definitely a worthy choice, it probably doesn't warrant a page all by itself.

All that said, we'll definitely have burgers much like this in future. So that's good.

Charting a Way Forward

Thursday's band practice was interesting in several ways, not least in that it settled in my mind that it's going to be up to me to set a plan going forward - nobody else is going to do it, so that's that.

My view is that the band is not, in the near future, going to recruit a new drum corps or many more pipers, and as a consequence we won't be taking on events. Additionally, the pipe major has other commitments that mean he's frequently absent, and when he is present he has a learner who takes up a fair chunk of his time.

All of which means that whatever we do for our practices we're really doing for us - what do we find gives the most benefit to the most people.

And that means that, when possible, I think I want to get the practices into something like the current structure:

• We should probably spend some time working on fundamentals - there are a couple of sets of tunes that everyone plays and that we collectively know very well, and if we spend some time on those we can work on things like timing, expression, and so on. Hopefully, that will help improve the general standard of play.
• We should likewise probably spend some time on our "known" tunes - the ones that we would play at gala days and other events if we were to ever take one on again. These have become very rusty, so we should correct that. I'll need to dig out the list, and we'll put them on rotation.
• I also want to spend some time on some new tunes. We've learned a few recently, and what's been happening is that we practice them for a bit, kind-of learn them, and then let them fall by the wayside. Which is just a waste. So we'll pick a few and get them moved from the "new" to "known" buckets.
• Finally, we really should commit to getting the pipes out for a while at every practice.

And that's that. I'll try to make a start on it from Thursday, just in time to miss the following week.

The Mandalorian and Grogu

This film has the dubious distinction of being the only "Star Wars" film that I haven't seen in the cinema - even the rather poor "Clone Wars" movie from 2008 isn't on that list. (Incidentally, that film really doesn't hold up, and since it wasn't particularly good even on first viewing that's not terribly good. On the other hand, it's the jumping off point for the outstanding "Clone Wars" TV series, so it's still worth the pain.)

Anyway, LC and I watched M&G over the course of the last week, and my overwhelming conclusion is that, frankly, I'm glad it's one that we skipped.

Don't get me wrong - it's a perfectly serviceable film with a handful of good moments. But more than anything else, it feels like Filoni and Favreau took their plans for a fourth season of "The Mandalorian", dropped the bits featuring Bo Katan, and then mashed the rest together and called it a film. Which is fine, but it all felt remarkably low budget for a "Star Wars" film.

In terms of performances, it's fine, but the film is seriously hampered by having one lead in a face-covering helmet pretty much all the time and the other being a puppet with almost no lines. That said, I enjoyed seeing Zeb in live action, liked Rotta and the other Hutts, enjoyed Scorsese's turn as a street food vendor... and, of course, Sigourney Weaver was excellent as ever - hopefully that's not the last of her we'll see in "Star Wars".

Speaking of Grogu, I had very mixed feelings about the effects there. On the one hand, it was refreshingly quaint to see almost all of that done with puppets and practical effects - there was something very "Labyrinth" or "The Dark Crystal" about it all, which was surprisingly cool; on the other hand, it lacked the slickness we've come to expect from CGI. I guess that was the point. (The same was also true of a couple of guardian droids later in the film - they were pretty cool, but also pretty odd.)

Ultimately, though, my impression of the film was kind of... hollow. It didn't really give us anything in terms of character growth, or much insight into the galaxy, or presented anything we hadn't seen before. Bo Katan was a huge miss, largely because Katee Sackhoff is another actor who it's always good to see in action. Basically, this was all just a bunch of stuff that happened. It was fine, but like "Solo", it was nothing more than fine.

Ah well.

In closing, I'll note that I think that ties into much of my frustration with modern "Star Wars". I'm very much not in the camp who decries everything Disney has done with it, or hailing everything Lucas did as genius. But I'm really frustrated that some of what Disney has done is absolutely brilliant: "Rogue One", much of "Andor", the first two seasons of "The Mandalorian", and almost all of their animated output (notably the final season of "The Clone Wars", "Rebels", "The Bad Batch", and "Maul: Shadow Lord"). But some of it has been utterly forgettable ("Solo" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu"), while some has been outright bad or even worse ("The Last Jedi" and "The Rise of Skywalker" - in particular that last). If it was all terrible at least I could just walk away and have done. But the occasional gems means there's motivation to keep coming back, only to be disappointed most of the time. A shame.

"Upgrade" doesn't mean "Improvement"

We had a small IT crisis earlier this week - it started with some files not being where they should have been and proceeded to evolve into a deep concern about our online security. In the event, it all turned out to be fine (just some expired credentials), but it led to yet another dissatisfaction with an upgrade to an app that has led to a degraded experience.

Which is distressingly common: we keep getting software updates, they keep getting touted as game-changing upgrades... and I can't remember the time one of them actually improved my user experience. Nor, honestly, do I any longer expect that to be the case - at best, companies seem to really not care about these things; at worst, they seem to be actively making things worse in order to try to sell the fix to the problem that they themselves have created.

This is, of course, a bog standard grumble about the progress of modern technology. I do find it increasingly amusing, however, that "The Matrix" seems to have called it absolutely right when they declared that the mid-90s was the peak of our civilisation.

Day 250: Update on Goals

Hard to believe, but we're already at day 250 of the year, and so it's time for the antepenultimate update on goals for the year:

• Books: By Day 250 the on-target progress would see me at 24.66 books. I was going really well until mid-July, when I suddenly hit a problem: I was bogged down in a fantasy doorstep novel and the "backup" novel I was reading in parallel also ran to more than 1,000 pages. That has slowed progress to a crawl, suddenly calling this goal into question. I'm still ahead of the target, but less confident than I was previously - it really depends how the next couple of months go.
• Weight: Between my birthday meal, a trip to the US, and then a family holiday, this one has taken a big step backwards. Although that damage has now been reversed, there is now no meaningful likelihood of achieving this goal - if indeed there ever was much hope.
• Church Website: There was a small update prior to Summer to note that things were largely paused for two months. There has now been a second update to put them back as they were. Which amounts to a bunch of effort to get back to where we started!
• Garden: I had really hoped to be able to declare this one done with this update, but alas it is not to be. There is one more repair needing done, and I was all set to do this on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it turned out I had purchased the wrong stuff for the job, and so was back to being stuck. But I believe I now have the required equipment, so next time... The garden will then require more effort in future years, though this is unlikely to be considered a formal goal.
• Blog: By rights, by Day 250 I should be at 82.19 posts. I'm therefore pretty much exactly on target, and that despite a somewhat disastrous July. So that's nice.

This is, sadly, an update I find extremely disheartening. Frankly, that seems to fit neatly with the way things are going generally - everything seems to have gone wrong since that trip to the US in mid-July, and I just don't see any way forward where it gets meaningfully better. Which just sucks.

Stage Management

Another week, and another rather frustrating church service: there was an awful lot going on, everyone involved was doing their absolute best, and our minister has some good ideas and good thoughts to share... and yet the whole thing just didn't quite gel.

Partly, the issue is due to simple technical difficulties. Our PC is in desperate need of some attention, as it basically gets switched on once a week for the service, and promptly wants to run Windows Update and its virus scanner, which bring it to a crashing halt. It may also require some more memory, though I'm inclined to spend some time on the software first.

But another issue is that there are just too many moving parts, and people aren't necessarily clear on what needs to be done at what times. Plus, too many things are being organised at the last minute, and by too many individual people. Add to that a last-minute reordering of events because of the aforementioned technical difficulties, and a desire to put a specific verse on screen mid-sermon (because the reading was a different translation, which meant a different interpretation)... as I said, it was rather frustrating.

I'm inclined to think that what's needed is a stage manager - someone to grab all the relevant people a bit before the service and make sure everyone knows what they're needing to do. And someone who will make sure the technology is as well-placed as possible - check the batteries in the mics, check that the correct slideshow has been loaded and it's all present and correct, and so on.

Problem is, it's easy to diagnose the problem, and indeed it's easy to fix that problem... but it's not so easy to fix the problem without being the person who volunteers to do it!

Finally!

It took four weeks, but as of yesterday I can finally hear again. To say that is a relief is a massive understatement, but at least it's now over!

The reason this took so long is largely that every step required someone new involved. As I left things, I'd gone to the GP and gotten something for the infection. Ten days later I was back at the doctor, to find that the infection was indeed gone, and that hopefully it would now clear up by itself. A week after that, with it not having cleared up, I was at another place getting the blockage removed.

And then, suddenly, everything was fine again.

The State of Public Services

It's a fairly common refrain that one of the problems with public service provision is that people in the UK want European levels of service while paying US levels of taxation. Having spent some time in both the EU and the US this year, however, I'd submit that the UK is in a uniquely crap position, and further that the problem is not where received wisdom would have it.

The thing is, in the US public services are a lot more limited than they are here: the government simply does less for people. And that means that the cost of living is higher. (There are other flaws in the system, and the roulette wheel of being bankrupted by a medical emergency is particularly horrible. I don't advocate copying their system whole cloth.) However, tax rates are correspondingly lower in the US than they are here.

However, one big difference in the US is that while tax rates are lower, tax revenues are higher, because average wages in the US are much higher than they are here. 10% of $100,000 is rather more than 20% of £30,000!

The net effect of this is that while the government does less for people, the things that it actually does are individually much better funded.

Conversely, in the EU public services are much more extensive, and tax rates are correspondingly higher to pay for them. The trade-off here is that because public services are extensive and well funded, there's no need, or indeed scope for, things like private education or healthcare. The cost of living, therefore, with the notable exception of taxes, is much lower.

But, again, there's one big difference: average wages are higher, meaning that although the tax rate is higher, the amount of money left over is also correspondingly higher - 50% of €70,000 is rather more than 80% of £30,000!

(This also means that for a UK citizen, travelling abroad becomes horribly expensive - when going to the US there's a need for comprehensive, and therefore expensive, insurances; when travelling to the EU anything you buy, and of course accommodation, is much more expensive due to the taxes involved.)

There are, as far as I can see, two fundamental problems with the provision of public services in the UK:

• Wages are, fundamentally, too low across the board. And, indeed, we seem to have set up our system to discourage people to seek better - the income gap between someone on benefits versus someone on the minimum wage just isn't high enough to justify the time and effort required to get and keep that job, and then at each step up the latter the salary increase is too small compared with the additional time, effort, and stress required. Our economy has been too stagnant for too long, and the jobs ladder has become to compressed.
• Those providing public services are also trying to do too much with just too little money, with the effect that every service people actually interact with is desperately creaking.

And it's going to get worse before it gets better, because our councils (primarily) are almost all desperately struggling under impossible debt repayments and pension commitments, while simultaneously trying to deliver too many services with not enough money. Meaning that year on year they'll have to increase Council Tax as much as they think they can get away with while at the same time degrading every service they are delivering.

There isn't really a solution to much of this. Wage increases are a key driver of inflation, meaning that increasing them will just cause more pain for anyone who doesn't get them, and the notion of councils doing less has the recipients throwing their hands up in horror (and with good reason). So, basically we're just stuck.

And yet, I rather suspect that is exactly what is needed. Well... that and central government clearing the debts incurred by councils, so that they actually have some room to maneuver...

Facing the Hard Truth

When I was preaching a couple of weeks ago, my topic was "Setting His Face to Jerusalem", with my theme being about dealing with the thing you knew you had to do but also didn't really want to do.

Unfortunately, I find myself facing exactly this situation - there's a problem growing that will be absolutely horrible to deal with, but which if left unchecked will fairly soon have catastrophic effects. And so, much as I don't want to, I'm going to have to grasp this thistle.

I can't go into any more detail here. Indeed, there was an earlier version of this post that I took down because it alluded to too much. Suffice it to say, though, that the graph says that "if this doesn't change, then by the time we get here it will get very bad."

Now I just need to persuade everyone else of the problem... and someone has to think of a way out of the mess.