More bad movie reviews

Continuing my public service of watching bad films so you don't have to, today I bring you reviews of two of the worst films I have ever watched all the way through, and a film so scary it has persuaded me never to set foot in any building with more than one room, and never to go outdoors, either.

The Marine: Somehow, The Rock has gone from being a wrestler to being a movie star. True, he's not the greatest actor, but he's managed to be in some good roles in some good films, and actually managed to be the best thing about "Be Cool". So, it stands to reason that other wrestlers could do the same, right? And so, we get Kane appearing in "See No Evil", Stone Cold Steve Austin in "The Condemned", and me realising I know far too much about wrestling, or movies, or both.

We also get John Cena starring in The Marine, quite possibly the worst action film of all time. Robert "Terminator 2" Patrick is the villain. The plot is quite simple: the bad guys steal some diamonds and go on the run, along the way they take the hero's wife hostage, and the hero goes on a rampage getting her back. We've seen it a hundred times before, which is the major problem of the film.

The secondary problem is that the lead actor just can't, which means they've had to reduce his dialogue to about 20 lines, and replace it with big explosions. This works for Michael Bay, but no-one else has the name recognition to pull it off. It creates the problem that our hero is basically just a slab of meat, and not particularly likeable. Think Dolph Lundgren in "Masters of the Universe", but without the career-defining performance.

Then there's the villain, who is the most idiotic cliche possible. Hmm, two of my minions are bickering. One of them is loyal and reliable, the other is entirely responsible for the mess we're currently in. Which one should I kill? Hmm, we're being chased by an absurdly superhuman marine, who only wants to get his wife back. Shall we release her, and get this guy off our backs, or shall we continue to waste time and effort keeping her with us?

Oh, and a note to the film-makers: the reason the first Die Hard works is that John McClaine isn't a superhuman killing machine. He's an ordinary guy in a messed up situation. He only becomes superhuman in the sequels, where the audience is willing to accept this nonsense because the first one laid the groundwork. So, if you're not doing a Die Hard sequel, your hero is probably best served not being superhuman. Unless he's a superhero, of course.

And don't let your lead actor rap over the closing credits, unless he's Eminem or the like. That's just adding insult to injury.

Smoking Aces: When I saw the adverts for this, before it hit the cinema, I thought "that looks quite good." How wrong I was.

This film revolves around a Las Vegas entertainer nicknamed Aces, and a big bounty on his head. Consequently, we have huge numbers of hired killers running around trying to kill him. Unfortunately, the film-makers forgot to introduce most of them as characters, and managed to have the rest of them act in totally inconsistent manners by the end of the film.

The plot of the film is also packed with double- and triple-crosses, all laid out because that's what the film-makers felt they needed, rather than because they made sense. The inevitable final double-cross then neatly undoes the whole point of the rest of the film, and is founded on a twist that was obvious almost from the beginning.

Still, at least there weren't any wrestlers in this one.

Them: This film was inspired by a true story, which makes it all the more worrying. It's a French film set in Bucharest, following the experiences of one Clementine, a French teacher living in Romania. Mostly, though, it's a film about an improbably-hot woman in tight jeans being menaced by hoodies (proving that this story could never happen in the UK - the government would just give the kids ASBOs, and that would be the end of that, I'm sure). There's also a boyfriend, but he's rather irrelevant to proceedings.

What made this film so scary, though, was that the killers in question weren't superhuman. At various times, the heroine wounded or even killed them. Additionally, the film makers did an excellent job of building scenes, and the tension flowed from that. Well, that, and the fact that the killers weren't motivated by revenge, or lust, or some childhood trauma, or any of the normal Hollywood cop-outs. Oh, no. They were terrorising the teacher because they were bored, and wanted something to do of a Saturday night.

All caught up. Now what?

Since Christmas, my brothers and I have been playing through Neverwinter Nights 2. This has proven to be a less-than-satisfactory experience, largely due to the really stupid controls for the camera angle that the game has implemented (in common with most recent video games - but that's another rant), partly to do with the problems caused by internet lag, and partly due to the scheduling issues of getting the four of us together.

So, a couple of weeks ago I started the game again, running in solo mode, with an entirely different character. This had the curious effect of being an entirely different experience. My solo character is a human barbarian instead of a dwarf cleric (as I'm using in the internet game), which means that instead of being slow moving, he's very fast moving, which on the whole is a much more satisfying state of affairs. Secondly, he didn't have to share all the loot, which means he's actually got some decent gear, and isn't stuck with the club that no-one else wanted (that said, I now know where a weaponsmith is to be found - dwarven waraxe, here I come!). And thirdly, he doesn't have any spells to worry about.

Last night, I caught up. I reached the point in the solo game that we have reached in the internet game. It should be noted that I have just reached 6th level, instead of the 4th I've just reached in the other game, largely due to not missing out half of the side-quests.

But the question is: do I wait here until we advance further in the internet game? Or do I press on, on the grounds that we're probably going to have to go back and fill in the gaps? It's certainly a toughie.

Movies I have watched

One of the dubious joys of having Sky Plus is that I have recorded a whole bunch of films that aren't quite good enough to bother seeing at the cinema, or buying on DVD, but just good enough to watch when I've got nothing better to do. However, the hard disk in my Sky box is now 50% full, so I'm feeling the need to get and watch a few of these things, despite being quite busy.

Anyway, I shall now review the films I watched this weekend, so you don't need to bother seeing them.

Cloverfield: Okay, this wasn't on Sky. However, I did go to see it at the cinema at the weekend, and so shall review it anyway. It's basically "Godzilla Attacks New York", filmed entirely in the 'cam' style of "Blair Witch Project". So, not only is it a bad film, but it also set off my motion sickness something fierce. Before they even got to the birthday party scene (about 10 minutes into the film), I was already doubting my ability to make it through. However, I did find that it was much easier viewing if I closed my eyes.

Anyway, yeah, it's a bad film. Mercifully, it is only 74 minutes, from the start to the "Directed by" credit coming up. But, as with so many recent films, it runs afoul of my "abbreviated storytelling" rant: it was 22 minutes before the first evidence of the monster is heard. Apparently, it's important to have lots of character-building for random people who are never in the film again.

But where the whole experience was really taking the piss is that there were 33 minutes of adverts and trailers before the film even began. So, less than half of my cinema ticket was the fun monster-packed thrill-ride I expected.

And it gave me the boak. Avoid.

Flushed Away: It's about a pampered pet mouse who gets flushed down the toilet, and finds himself in the mousy underbelly of London. He tries to get back home. And there are French ninja frogs after him.

I liked this film a great deal.

However, I must say that it did stretch my suspension of disbelief just a tad that the crux of the film revolved around a World Cup final between England and Germany. Like that's likely. Still, they did redeem it rather with the end result, which was so utterly right as to forgive everything.

Let's Go To Prison: An ex-con plots revenge on the judge who ruined his life, only to find he died three days previously. So, he instead frames the judge's son and arranges to share a cell with him.

Does that sound funny? Well, let me just point out that it's a whole lot funnier than anything else in this supposed 'comedy'.

A Scanner Darkly: Another animation, this one aimed at adults, this is an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story, and is about drugs, paranoia and madness. It's really quite freaky, not least because of the particular animation style, which sees Keanu Reeves' character looking recognisably like Keanu, and the same being true for the other characters and their respective voice talents.

Anyway, it was a very uncomfortable viewing experience, but a very good film for all of that.

Idiocracy: A guy who has been carefully selected as being entirely average is cryogenically frozen for 500 years, and wakes to find himself the smartest man on Earth, in this very disturbing documentary by the makers of Beavis and Butthead.

I'm just not sure quite how they managed to film things that haven't happened yet...

Seriously, though, this is a comedy about the premise given above, and makes a disturbingly plausible case that that might well be the state of affairs (except that I suspect if things were to go in that direction, we'd somehow manage to wipe ourselves out first, so that's something to look forward to). Unfortunately, while the premise was disturbing, the comedy itself ran out of steam very quickly. After the line about the movie "Ass" (which was exactly what it said on the tin) winning eight Oscars, including Best Screenplay, there really wasn't much left to laugh about.

And so... out of the five movies I watched, I can only really recommend two. "Idiocracy" is okay, if you're in the mood for some cheap laughs at stupid people, but "Let's Go To Prison" and "Cloverfield" are to be avoided. "Flushed Away" and "A Scanner Darkly" are good, though.

Holey socks, Batman!

It goes without saying that when a pair of socks develops a hole, they should be thrown away. However, there remains a question that must be answered: just when should this be done?

In most cases, the hole in the socks will be noticed when putting them on in the morning. At which point, time is something of a factor. Moreover, there is the fair point that, if shoes are to be worn all day then there is no prospect of those holes being noticed.

So, the temptation is to wear them anyway, and throw them away later.

But then, there is the fact that one wouldn't want to throw away a pair of dirty and smelly socks. It just wouldn't be right. Which means, of course, that they must be washed.

But then, once you've gone to all the trouble of washing them, surely you wouldn't want to throw them away? And the cycle begins again.

Honestly, things were much easier when I was under the sway of The Sock Conspiracy.

(And another thing: why is it that my fun Simpsons and South Park socks develop holes in very short order, but my exciting Millennium socks just keep on going and going? They're like the Energiser Bunny of the sock domain.)

A tick in the box

Well, that's one of the awkward conversations done. Actually, it turned out not to be the conversation I expected to have, but it was no less awkward for all that. Anyway, done.

I have decided that the other awkward conversation relates to a chapter of my life that is now closed, and that I'm not going to re-open it. So, unless someone else elects to raise the subject, I'm dropping it.

I consider this a triumph.

Curious

Isn't it funny how a lack of sleep can really alter not just your mood, but also the entire structure of your day? Last night, I went to bed with all sorts of grand plans for what I would do today. So exciting was the outlook, that I utterly failed to fall asleep until half past one.

Consequently, on waking up this morning, I realised I just couldn't face actually executing any of these grand plans, and decided not to bother.

Speaking of band...

Four of our pipers quit on Thursday. Apparently, they had become bored and disillusioned with the band.

This is rather unfortunate, not least since it basically kills any interest we might have had in the upcoming competition season. Indeed, it may prevent us from completing at all, since a band must have six pipers to compete and we have eight left, two of whom are rather unreliable, and two of whom aren't really ready yet.

It also means I don't need to worry about not being committed enough to the band's future, though - for the next little while it doesn't have much of one.

As seen on TV

I spent much of Saturday hoping that the Falkirk v Celtic football match yesterday would be cancelled. Frankly, this seemed quite likely, what with Falkirk currently being submerged. But, no, they decided to go ahead.

So, yesterday afternoon, blissfully unaware of the events of interest that were to occur that evening, I made my way to the stadium, where I was due to play. And, after what seemed an interminable wait (at least, until it did finally end), I marched onto the pitch, took up position just outside the centre circle, and proceeded to play.

It was all very exciting.

Anyway, after a while, they wanted to start the actual match, so my band left the pitch, and let them get on with it. At half time, we went back onto the pitch, played for a few minutes, and then departed. This inspired the team to go on and snatch defeat from the fickle jaws of stalemate.

All of this was actually in aid of fundraising for the band. I suspect we did not too badly out of the day, although not as well as might be hoped, as the flooding will have kept the attendance down, and many of those who did attend were no doubt fish. It is well known that most aquatic creatures are loathe to part with their money (except goldfish, of course, who are both generous and forgetful, and so can be relied on to give both grandly and frequently).

Also of note: during the first half, we were shown to one of the hospitality suites, where we were told we could watch the match. Except, that we were told we were strictly not to touch the blinds. When we arrived, the ground staff made sure to go round the room and close all the blinds, just to ensure that we couldn't see the pitch. However, we were able to watch it on the TVs they had scattered around the room. I thought that was wonderful.

Oh, and: our half-time show was apparently seen on Setanta Sports 1. Hence the title of this post.

Tappy tappy tap tap

It was quite an eventful weekend. In particular, my experience at church last night was... interesting.

The evening began with Graeme phoning me at the last minute, asking if I would retrieve the laptop and run the projector. That was interesting, but was not the most interesting part of events.

I proceeded to make haste to the church, arriving a mere minute before the service was due to start. So, I dashed up the stairs, hooked up the laptop to the projector, and made ready. That was somewhat interesting, but was not the most interesting part of the sequence of events.

Dave then proceeded to issue me with the files for the projector - the hymn schedule and the slides for the sermon. All very exciting, especially when he noted that the last two hymns were not on the schedule. Moreover, one of them wasn't even in the laptop database; it would need to be added! That was a whole lot more interesting, but still was not the most interesting event.

More interesting still was the discovery that the hymn in question had no fewer than seven verses. Marvellous. Still, I quite like a challenge, so after the first hymn, while there was a quiet spell (technically, I think those are called prayers), I knuckled down and typed in the whole thing. Then, I checked that all the spelling was correct, that there were no typos, and even that the semi-colons were in the right place. After all, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing properly, no?

Anyway, huzzah!

Except that that still isn't the most interesting part of the story.

The most interesting part of the story was to come mere moments later, when during the middle group of hymns I decided to be clever, and add this new hymn to the schedule. A marvellous and clever idea. Imagine my horror when I discovered that the stupid machine had decided not to save those seven verses that I had just painstakingly typed in!

So, I had to re-type the whole thing. Only now, the pressure was really on.

Unfortunately, having to retype the hymn in such a small spell led to a lower standard of accuracy in the typing, and a totally unacceptable error rate. Yes, I made a mistake, missing out a space character in the third line of the hymn. Shameful, I know. (I'm also pretty sure there was a comma where there should not have been, but that one is strictly not my fault; it was in the hymnary like that.)

Anyway, I was lauded for my abilities as a "computer whiz" at this point. This leaves me curious as to what people think I actually do all day. See, although I "work with computers", my job involves relatively little actual typing. Instead, it can perhaps best be described as "professional problem solver", where I spend a great deal of time thinking about complex software systems, and the problems inherent in such systems, and then apply a fix, preferably by doing as little actual work (typing) as possible. So, while I can type fairly quickly, and with a reasonable accuracy, it is strictly an ancilliary, rather than a core skill.

Still, that was my interesting experience at church this week.

Addendum

I should note that my previous post was not intended as an attack on teachers. The education system has been mismanaged for decades, with teachers being swamped with an excess of bureaucracy, and being forced to jump to whatever trendy new educational scheme our government decide to impose.

Add to that parents who don't care, and kids who seem determined not to learn, and teachers really don't have a chance. Frankly, it's a miracle that as many kids learn as much as they do in our schools.

Lernin'

The government want 50% of all school leavers to go on to some form of higher education. At the same time, they have set a target that all schools should aim to have 30% of pupils achieve a 'good' grade in at least 5 GCSEs, including English and Maths. A 'good' grade is defined as anything better than a C. And, according to current estimates, only 46% of all pupils are achieving this target.

Something just isn't right here.

Actually, scratch that. Everything isn't right here. Firstly, the 50% figure is just plain wrong. I believe I've blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. Sending 50% on to higher education is meaningless if most of them drop out after the first year, or less. Far better to have fewer entrants to universities, but a much higher percentage of those who enter actually graduating at the end of the day.

Of course, there are other forms of further education, which I will discuss if and when I unveil my master plan for reforming education across the country. At present, they are badly undervalued, badly under-represented, and represent an area that the government really should take action on.

Then there's the target that 30% of pupils in all schools will achieve this minimum grade. Meaning that it's acceptable if 70% of the pupils in any given school reach the age of 16 without a basic grasp of Maths and English. (And, in fact, there are worse consequences of this. If I were running a failing school under these targets, I would indentify the 40% of pupils who represent my 'top' achievers, and isolate them from the rest. The target would be to get three-quarters of those 'good' pupils to achieve the required grade at any cost. As for the rest, well, no reason to bother with teaching them anything. We'll just keep them away from the rest, so they don't cause problems.) The target has to be for 100% of pupils to leave school with a working knowledge of the fundamentals of English and Maths, whether that is defined as a PASS in some exam or other, and whether or not there are other targets in place. Anything less is a disgrace.

Then there's the definition of a C as a 'good' grade. I'm sorry, but no. A C is a pass. It's an acceptable grade. Indeed, given that we're talking about GCSE level, a C does not bode well for the student's ability to achieve a pass at Higher/A-level, and so a C should be considered a barely acceptable result.

And then there's that statistic that 46% of all pupils are reaching the target. 54% do not. In other words, our education system is utterly failing more than half of all pupils nationwide.

I blame the politicians. Of both major parties. (Oh, and don't give me any of that shit about "but look how much it has improved!" I refuse to accept that being stabbed is a good thing, just because you've made sure I won't get shot.)

Living on the Landfill

I was going to post a big rant about how the rubbish collection service isn't very good. However, I decided I should have known this. It's not like they don't provide a clue...

Abbreviated Storytelling

Once upon a time, the A-team would encounter some problem, get locked in a garage, engage in some sort of 'rebuild the van' montage, and improbably fix the problem, all in time for the end credits. In another universe, the Enterprise would be attacked by some menacing special effect, red-shirted nobodies would die, Kirk would snog some alien princess, and it would all be back to normal within 42 minutes.

Gradually, though, things have changed. Series now have ongoing plotlines, where things can and do change, and characters refer back to what has gone before. This is a good thing, since it allows longer and more complex stories to be told, and allows a larger cast of characters to be developed (Star Trek only ever had seven core characters, the A-team four. The new Battlestar Galactica has about two dozen).

However, the down side to this expansion is that it has allowed a lot of really sloppy writing to creep in. This is seen most readily in Lost, where they've thrown out a huge amount of character exposition, and dozens of exciting mysteries to tantalise the brain... but refuse to actually ever explain anything or to move the plot forward. Or then there's the new BSG (again), the most recent season of which starts really strongly, ends really strongly, but utterly sucks for the 50% of the episodes in the middle.

And the same is true in movies as well as TV. The average film now runs somewhere between two and two and a half hours. However, there is very rarely any more story packed into that time slot than was the case when the average was half an hour less. Characters are just introduced more slowly, or given more 'depth'. This would be a good thing, except that the writers only have about half a dozen character traits or plot twists that they actually know how to use, so we already know what's coming. Consider: virtually any Jennifer Aniston film is really just "The Continued Adventures of Rachael" (that being why people go to see them, and that being why they get made), so do we really need to spend half an hour introducing the new 'Rachael' to the audience? Or the token boyfriend, or his inevitable betrayal while they're 'on a break'? We get it - just get on with it!

Then there are novels. I read a lot of fantasy fiction. No, more than that, I read a LOT of fantasy fiction. Problem is, no-one writes a fantasy novel any more. They're all multi-book epics, with an undetermined number of parts, each of which is now longer than "The Lord of the Rings" on average. (Insert standard anti-"Wheel of Time" rant here, except that while Jordan was one of the worst offenders, they're now all like that.)

The original "Dragonlance Chronicles" trilogy was 1,056 pages long. Each part, therefore, was an average of 352 pages in length. The Dragonlance book I read most recently, "Dragons of the Dwarven Depths", clocks in at 608 pages, and is supposed to be comparable to one of those three parts. But much less happens in the more recent book than any of the previous ones. We don't get character development of note - what passes for characterisation is generally yet another explanation that Sturm doesn't like Raistlin because he's secretive. Well, gosh, I didn't grasp that fact when I read the first trilogy twenty years ago!

It's all very annoying. It seems that there aren't any decent editors out there these days. That, or people just like having these yarns spun out endlessly.

I should note that I'm not objecting to the length of the stories - the 'eternity version' of Hamlet runs to four hours, but is well worth the running time. The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is about 11 and a half hours long, and if anything is over-abridged. If the story requires a certain amount of space to tell properly, then by all means take the time and tell it properly.

Just get on with it!

The resolutions I'm not making

As I mentioned exactly a year ago, I don't make resolutions for the New Year. Therefore, I am now going to take a moment to look back at the resolutions I didn't make, and assess how I did, and then not make some resolutions for this year.

So, firstly, the resolutions I didn't make last year:

1) To lose weight. As I stated at the time, I was determined to not actually do anything about this, on the grounds that it was too much effort.

Success? Sort of. I was all set to end the year at exactly the same weight as I started it, but on Saturday I was at a ceilidh, as a consequence of which I lost three pounds. This is, of course, a trivial and termporary loss, but it did mean that I ended the year lighter than I ended it. So, I'm counting that as a win.

2) To put an end to the singleton life. As I mentioned at the time, I held no hope that this would or could be achieved.

Success? No.

However... it was pointed out to me in November that I predicate my faith on the existence of an all-powerful and benign deity. Under those circumstances, giving up hope is not only logically inconsistent but actively sinful, as it implies a limit on the capabilities of that which is by definition limitless.

This was promptly followed a week later by a reminder that I'd given up hope precisely because it was just too damn painful.

Still, there have been certain developments that are at least intriguing.

3) To be better, generally. This was regarded as being too amorphous a statement to be considered a goal, as such.

Success? Yes.

Professionally, 2007 was an extremely strong year. Despite a couple of key setbacks, I have done a lot of good work in the last twelve months. I have also been travelling to and from France extensively, which has led to a massive improvement in my French. Finally, at least where work has been concerned, I have been more vocal than previously was the case, which has led to several of my suggestions being adopted as the final solution to problems.

In the band, I have done some teaching, leading to a massive improvement in at least one of the students, have been appointed to the committee, which will provide some much-needed stability in a time of turmoil, and have introduced a number of new tunes to the repertoire. All good things.

However, where gaming has been concerned, things have not been rosy. The year has principally been one of broken campaigns and total party kills. And Shadowrun sucks, big time. I either need to take some time away from gaming altogether, or I need to spend some time just playing. And Neverwinter Nights II is a poor substitute for the real thing, it must be noted.

Also, I visited a nightclub for the first time in December. (I'm not sure this fits here, really. However, I think it is worth mentioning somewhere, and I didn't talk about it at the time.) The experience was much as I expected.

4) To continue being practically perfect in every way. This was noted as being nonsensical.

Success? But of course. Enough said.

So, anyway, on to the list of resolutions I am not making for this year. Which, in fact, will take the form of my master 'to-do' list for the year. So, here they are:

• Move house. Seventeen months ago I moved into my appartment, on what should have been a six-month lease. The time to move has long since passed.
  
• Attend Captain Ric's wedding. This takes place in a mere 93 days, and promises to be the key event of the year. I have been asked to pipe at it, and so I shall. This leads to a small concern, in that Ric himself plays the pipes very well (better than anyone else at whose wedding I have previously played), thus raising the bar on required quality.
  
• There are two awkward conversations I need to have, and soon. I can't say what they're about, or who they're with, so you'll have to excuse my secrecy on this matter. However, both were born out of the events of the 31st of December. And speaking of secrecy:
  
• There's a gap in my skill-set that needs to be closed up before it is shown up. There is actually a quick and easy way to bridge the gap, but I'm wondering if there might be a better solution than the expedient one.
  
• Go to the dentist. Technically, I have to find a dentist first (a nigh-impossible task in Falkirk) and then go, but it is something that needs done.
  
• Visit another country. This year, it's either Portugal or Belgium (or, hopefully, both), those being the last two 'easy' European countries to visit.
  

And that will do me.

Changes

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is always a time to mark a clean boundary and start afresh. So, for example, before the end of the year, I take down the Christmas decoration I have so artfully strewn around the appartment, and I shave off my festive beard. Except that this year I have elected to keep the festive beard, and promote it to the status of regular beard. Apparently, my nephew is scared of me without the beard, but think I exude the calm of a Jedi master while sporting it.

Or something. There were certainly lightsabres involved in the decision.

I have also made a few changes to the layout of the blog, although you might need to check carefully to see them. Note the new warning about punnery, and the more stylish black Google search bar. I have also trimmed the redundant "Edit Me" links from the sidebar, and might even consider adding some real links there at some point.

Work!

This morning, my alarm went off at 7:01, and I leapt from bed, full of beans and ready to start a new year of exciting work. Around the apartment I flew, like some bizarre person who likes work, got ready, and left for work. Work beckoned, and so I was going back to work.

I got to work, signed in to work, and sat down, ready to do some work. That was just after 8 o'clock.

Unfortunately, there was no work.

Just before the Christmas holiday began, I finished off the existing issues list. And, although one issue was raised over the course of the break, it was investigated and passed back to the customer for clarification. Until we get that clarification, there's nothing more to do about it. Plus, the people who might have received that more information, or who might have more issues to raise, are still on holiday.

So now I'm at work, where there is no work, waiting for there to be work, so I can do the work. It's all very exciting.

Yeah, I should have seen that one coming

The ringtone on the mobile I brought home from work is "Flight of the Bumblebee".

Last night, I finally got to bed around 2, having had to wait until the virus scan on my PC finished (must remember to reschedule that). I woke up at half seven, not feeling terribly good about things. My own fault, really.

Anyway, after getting a long drink of very cold water, I went back to bed, fully intent on not getting up, ever.

At 2 minutes past 9, I made the startling discovery about the phone's ringtone. Apparently, there's been a problem.

This is, of course, absolutely typical. The one and only night of the year (or even millennium) that I have too much to drink, on a Friday just after Christmas no less, I get called early in the morning and required to think.

Oh my....

I appear to be drunk!

Perhaps I shouldn't have consumed quite so much whiskey...

No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die!

So, I have finished work for the year. This is quite exciting, except that yesterday we had the long-expected conversation about providing support to the customer over the Christmas break. The upshot of this is that I an on-call. Which sounds horrible, but it's not so bad. Basically, I'm getting paid extra for carrying a mobile phone for the next couple of weeks, and paid more if it should actually ring.

I have, however, brought a complete set of kit home with me over the holiday, just in case. Which has led to certain upheavals...

Since I like to pretend that I work mostly on spy stuff, I have consequently had to set up an underwater lair. Of course, since the stuff I work isn't exactly Top Secret spy stuff, this has consisted of hanging a bucket of water from the ceiling.

It's all very exciting. I look forward to explaining my fiendish master plan to any super-spies who happen to drop in over the break...

I thought I had to know. I was wrong.

On Sunday, I recorded "Are you smarter than a ten-year-old". I was intensely curious about whether they had managed to find really dumb people to ask the questions, whether they had found the five smartest ten-year-olds in the country, or whether they were just asking really specialised questions.

Well, it turned out it wasn't that interesting. A fairly standard quiz show, in the conversational mold of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", with questions that were mostly pretty simple. (I must confess that the spelling question where the word was 'supersede' gave me pause, mostly out of doubt about whether the spelling is different in American English than in the Queen's English. Also, I didn't know how many of Henry VIII's wives were beheaded, so that's a fair cop.)

Of slightly more concern, though, was this question:

What is: 5 + 3 x 0 ?

For some bizarre reason, the contestant decided the answer was 15. But that's not what bothered me. What bothered me is that the answer given was 0. Apparently, the quiz-masters of the show aren't quite as smart as might be hoped.

(In case you don't see it: precedence rules state that the first thing that you do is the multiplication, so it becomes "What is 5 + 0 ?", which is 5.)

Dear me. I didn't expect the feel dumber after watching it.

Oh no!

This is my 301st post on this blog. The 100th and 200th were about the antics of some celebrity or other, and my intention had been for that to become a tradition. I guess not.

As far as celebrity news is concerned, though, all such things have been rendered utterly unimportant today, with the news that Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. To say this sucks would be a major understatement. I just hope he doesn't go downhill too badly or too quickly - the more 'good' years he has, the better.

Debate topic...

Is it better to set modest goals and consistently achieve them, or to reach for the stars and consistently fall just short of greatness?

Wheeeee!

You know how I just posted about internal politics, and how they made an absolute mess of the latest committee meeting?

Well, tonight at band there was a big argument. It remains to be seen how the various pieces will lie. Personally, I expect to see a number of people leaving... and the band ending up stronger for it.

We'll see.

Get all your atrocities in at the outset

At the AGM, the Chairman of the band elected to step down, feeling he was getting too old, and that he didn't want the hassle any more. He nominated his successor, and then accepted a nomination to serve as Vice-chairman. Naturally, my immediate reaction to this was, "Uh oh." It's never easy taking over when you have your predecessor looking over your shoulder.

Still, things seemed to be going okay (mostly) until the committee meeting yesterday. At which the new chairman presented us with a document entitled "Chairman's Vision", and provoked a big argument. Our Vice-chairman took this as a personal insult, suggesting that the band hadn't been doing the right things thus far and, more importantly, that the new Chairman should have waited a few meetings before issuing such a document.

I'm somewhat torn about this. On the one hand, I can't agree with our Vice-chairman. As Machiavelli rightly points out in "The Prince", when a new ruler comes to the fore, if he must make difficult changes then they should all be made as early as possible, and all together. This does what needs to be done, and allows wounds to heal once the dust settles. (The alternative is to roll out the changes over a period of time. At each step, someone is sure to be offended, and things will never settle down.) This approach was also famously adopted by Orson Welles, who would hire an actor for the specific task of being loudly fired by Welles, thus establishing his authority on the set.

On the other hand, the changes that our new Chairman is seeking to make are utterly wrong in almost every particular. This makes supporting them rather difficult, despite my support for the principle that changes should be made, and should be made now. He also put things rather tactlessly in his document, but the worst offense of all was his use of appostrophe's to denote plural's in the Chairmans Vision, and not to denote possessives. I cannot support the misuse of such things under any circumstances whatsoever, even where it would be considered amusing.

Still, never mind. Internal politics are part and parcel of being part of a pipe band, and have destroyed more bands than any other cause. The key is for those of us who are apolitical to engage in a quiet revolution and improve the band without anyone noticing. Which is basically what I've been doing.

That's not even a word!

According to this article, "w00t" has been named the word of the year. Which makes me unbelievably depressed.

However, there is some joy to be had from the article, in the form of this quote, "People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A," he said. "This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character."

"More efficient"? 'O' is one character. '0' is one character. So, that would be a total saving of, um, no characters. Do I suck at maths, or is the person in question a blathering idiot?

The Quest to Recycle the Toaster (version 2, now with 100% more dragons)

On Friday, my toaster stopped working. This was a terrible disaster, of course, not least because I was hoping to have some toast at the time. Anyway, somehow I managed to survive the weekend, long enough to purchase a new toaster, whereupon I could again have toast. Thus far, my adventure of the weekend appeared not to be one of my greatest of all times. I mean, it was thrilling in its own way, to be sure, but it wasn't quite on a par with blowing up the Death Star, or taking the tourist route to Mount Doom, or whatever it is that the cool kids do these days.

However, all was not lost, for as I was checking the user manual for my new toaster (in case there was a secret ejector seat or other Bondian gadget), I found a note to the effect that, per European Directive X, household appliances should not be thrown out to landfill, but rather should be recycled. And so began The Quest to Recycle the Toaster.

Now, you'd think it was easy. There are recycling centres all over the place, right? So, I'll just hunt them down, and Robert becomes some sort of distant relation. But no! For the recycling centres have particular things that they'll take, such as CDs and textiles... but absolutely not home appliances. So, I started looking for the solution in a slightly wider context. Presumably, if these things have to be recycled, the ability to actually do this must exist, right? After all, I can't possibly be the only person in history to have a toaster that has stopped working.

Well, it turns out that the plans to actually enable people to recycle home appliances were put in place... and then delayed, and pushed back, and delayed some more. They're in that bureaucratic hell known as "coming soon".

I can only assume from this that there are a multitude of people out there, all with dead toasters, all waiting for the councils to sort out recycling facilities so that they can dispose of their toasters. And now I am one of them. Frankly, this gives me a sense of belonging such as I have never before known. Plus, I have toast.

So, it was quite a good weekend, really. Also, there was a dragon.

The Quest to Recycle the Toaster

On Friday, my toaster stopped working. This was a terrible disaster, of course, not least because I was hoping to have some toast at the time. Anyway, somehow I managed to survive the weekend, long enough to purchase a new toaster, whereupon I could again have toast. Thus far, my adventure of the weekend appeared not to be one of my greatest of all times. I mean, it was thrilling in its own way, to be sure, but it wasn't quite on a par with blowing up the Death Star, or taking the tourist route to Mount Doom, or whatever it is that the cool kids do these days.

However, all was not lost, for as I was checking the user manual for my new toaster (in case there was a secret ejector seat or other Bondian gadget), I found a note to the effect that, per European Directive X, household appliances should not be thrown out to landfill, but rather should be recycled. And so began The Quest to Recycle the Toaster.

Now, you'd think it was easy. There are recycling centres all over the place, right? So, I'll just hunt them down, and Robert becomes some sort of distant relation. But no! For the recycling centres have particular things that they'll take, such as CDs and textiles... but absolutely not home appliances. So, I started looking for the solution in a slightly wider context. Presumably, if these things have to be recycled, the ability to actually do this must exist, right? After all, I can't possibly be the only person in history to have a toaster that has stopped working.

Well, it turns out that the plans to actually enable people to recycle home appliances were put in place... and then delayed, and pushed back, and delayed some more. They're in that bureaucratic hell known as "coming soon".

I can only assume from this that there are a multitude of people out there, all with dead toasters, all waiting for the councils to sort out recycling facilities so that they can dispose of their toasters. And now I am one of them. Frankly, this gives me a sense of belonging such as I have never before known. Plus, I have toast.

So, it was quite a good weekend, really.

Feeling Especially Festive

So, there are but three short weeks until the Christmas holidays begin.

I have decked the halls with... well, okay, I have put up my one and only decoration. It is a bit of tinsel. Green flavour. It sits on top of my TV.

I have now done all of my Christmas shopping. This truly was an epic tale of love and loss, the overcoming of great odds, and a battle to the death against forces of darkness. Alternatively, I made a list of the people I have to buy presents for, I put the identity of a present beside each, and then I ordered these presents from the Internet. All that remained was a quick trip to Toys'R'Us on Friday to select a present for my nephew (he's a boy, obviously, so it's quite easy - something bright and noisy, preferably with moving parts. Beyond that, it's just a question of scale). Done.

I have also adopted appropriately festive dress, for 'tis the season. Specifically, this means that I have donned my Christmassical Trevor t-shirt, and brought my special Christmas socks back into the rotation. Well, okay, I wear my Christmas socks all through the year - the machinations of the Sock Conspiracy largely make that an essential step for all men - but I generally feel some slight twinge of embarrasment about it. But not now, for I can wear my strangely spangly rudolph-singing musical socks with pride.

Okay, so I don't have any spangly socks, and I most certainly don't have any musical socks. But the image isn't quite as amusing if I say, "mostly black, with a tiny mince pie on one side".

And that's it. My Christmas preparations are done, and now I can sit back and watch the world grow ever more frantic as they days tick on, and the to-do list never seems to get any shorter.

Ho, ho, ho.

The day I called in sick

Tuesday was a fairly dire day, with me finally dragging myself to the end of it, and going home. On Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling exactly as I had on Tuesday morning, which left me with the dilemma: do I call in sick or not? The problem was, I knew full well that I was capable of getting through the day, based on having done just that the day before. But, on the other hand, I really didn't want to go through that again.

So, I called in sick, and spent the day collapsed on my almost indecently comfy couch, watching things on TV. Mostly Stargate, the third season of which I have borrowed from a friend (it's okay, but not great, and really suffers from watching more than a couple of episodes at a time). Also, the most recent episode of Prison Break (also no better than okay), an early episode of Bones (again, just okay), and the film "John Tucker Must Die" (which is truly woeful from start to finish).

By the end of that marathon, I was definately ready to go back to work.

In the evening, just as I was about to watch the Celtic match, there came a knock on the door! Truly, this was an event worthy of note, for no-one ever visits, except perhaps to sell me things. So, I pulled on some clothes, and made my way to the door, only to be offered the opportunity to take part in a survey on people's TV-viewing habits. Huzzah!

Anyway, the most astonishing thing about this survey was that it ended with the exciting opportunity to have a ratings box attached to my TV, and thus to become one of those five thousand people who determine what everyone in the country watches. Oh yes, my friends, it turns out that our TV ratings aren't just made up numbers - they actually do monitor homes, and derive the numbers from that. What's more, those lucky people who are chosen get paid some nominal sum to take part.

I declined. I decided I don't want the responsibility of deciding the TV schedules for the whole nation. I mean, they might end up doing away with reality TV altogether, and then where would we be? Gosh, people might have to start watching other things, or perhaps doing other things entirely, and we can't have that, now can we?

On Thursday I was feeling much better, and went back to work. It turns out that calling in sick was the right decision for all involved - the company gets more from me at 90% for two days than at 20% for three, as would have probably been the case.

Under the weather

Yesterday, I could feel a sore throat coming on all day, gradually getting worse and worse. I knew what was coming. Last night, I barely slept at all, then overslept until 8:20 (I didn't set my alarm clock, deliberately).

So, today I have the sore throat, headache, blocked nose, sore shoulder (not sure that that's related) and other assorted symptoms of being NOT WELL. Yet, somehow, I decided it would be a good idea to come to work. Where all the magnetic fields could have their usual exciting effect of making everything just that bit worse. Genius! (Plus, since I got to work late, I have to finish late to compensate. Yippee!)

I don't really have any point to make or anything. Just felt like having a bit of a moan.

Corruption and Incompetence in one convenient package

I'm angry.

Last week, the government managed to lose the details of every parent in the country, by putting them in the post. So monumental was the incompetence of this, that they were forced to engineer a humiliating defeat by Croatia at Wembley to divert everyone from the fiasco.

This week, it has emerged that the Labour Party have accepted donations without going through the proper vetting procedures. In effect, they took money illegally.

I feel sorry for Gordon Brown. Most of this mess is not his doing, and he genuinely does seem to be a good statesman, and a moral man. Unfortunately, his leadership has been shown to be almost completely ineffectual, such that promises to sort out these various messes won't be greeted with any confidence. Indeed, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him removed before the next General Election. This, of course, won't help at all. Not only is there no clear successor, but it will do nothing to combat the underlying problems.

The very worst aspect of this, though, is that while we need a change of government Right Now, there is no viable alternative out there. We can stick with the current shower, or replace them with David Cameron's Tories, which almost certainly means a rerun of the Blair years. The Liberal Democrats have gone back to being a nothing party, and there just isn't anyone else.

Independence for Scotland is looking like a really good option right about now.

Breaking a rule

I have a rule that I don't start my Christmas shopping before the start of December. However, it should be noted that it is not the strictest rule in the universe, and I have been known to bend it on occasion. However, this year I have decided not just to bend the rule, but rather cast it to the winds.

My motivation for this is largely that work remains utterly insane, and December looks to be another tough month. In addition, the way the weekends fall cut down on 'good' shopping time considerably, as the weekend directly before Christmas it too close to Christmas to be of any real use. Further, with days 1 and 2 of the month being a weekend, a determination to not start until December begins would simply mean that that weekend would be wasted.

And so, yesterday I began the first planning in earnest, followed by the purchase of the first few presents. This places me at 45% done.

Better still, I now have the presents for perhaps the three most difficult people to shop for. The big dilemma now is: do I dare to get exactly the same present for three people with very similar tastes?

So, all in all, Christmas is going quite well. Next, on Sunday I will put up the decoration (yes, I only have one), and that will be my Christmas preparations all done. Huzzah!

The Resurgence of English Football

I watched the match last night. Dear, oh dear. (Oh, in case you're worried, the title of this post is not meant sarcastically.)

One good thing that comes from the game, though, is that it gives me an excuse to share my patented "5-point Universal Disaster Recovery Plan". This is the procedure that I advocate for the recovery from any disaster, big or small. As the name may suggest, there are five steps, which must be followed in order. Any attempt to skip a step, or to switch the order is doomed to failure, and will probably only make the problems worse.

So, here it is:

1. Stop assigning blame. This is mostly an instruction for those on the inside. It would be very easy for the players to blame the manager, for the manager to blame the players, for everyone to blame the keeper, or the FA, or whoever. It never helps, and just creates bad feeling, bad feeling that can utterly destroy the team. Besides, it's generally pointless; there is almost always enough blame to go around. There certainly is in this case.
   
2. Stop making excuses. Again, it would be very easy to comment on how bad the pitch was last night, or that Rooney was well outside the box when he gave away that penalty to Russia, or note that England were suffering from a huge injury load. There is certainly some truth in some or all of these. However, once again, this does nothing to help the situation. The blunt fact is that England have failed to qualify, that they failed to win the game last night, and they did not deserve to do either of these things. It's invariably better to accept this as it is, and move forward.
   
3. Soberly, and without blamestorming, work out what went wrong. In the case of England, I'm going to come back to this one. But for Scotland, the thing that ultimately made the difference was that our players froze in Georgia and failed to win that match. What this says is that the team have to go out and play every match as though it is vital to be at your best... precisely because it is. I'm not sure exactly why they froze up, but it's something that we need to sort out for the World Cup campaign.
   
4. Determine what steps you are going to take to prevent the problem from occurring again. Again, from England's point of view, I will come back to this. From Scotland's, I don't think there's actually too much to do - just make sure you go into the next campaign with the same mindset as we did this one, and make sure we get the wins at Hampden and against the supposedly 'minor' teams. Oh, and don't start thinking the job is done until it is done.
   
5. Execute the plan developed in step 4.
   

And that's it - the 5-point Universal Disaster Recovery Plan. It doesn't have a clever acronym, but that's okay - 'Universal' is such a great word that you want to say it in full anyway.

Now, about England... (the next bit may well read like a bloody Scot slagging off the English. If you are feeling especially sensitive, you might want to stop reading.)

The problems with England start at the top. It was right that Sven left after the World Cup, as his team had barely stuttered through their group, and only started playing in the tournament after Rooney was sent off against Portugal. However, the appointment of Steve McClaren was a mistake. It had become apparent that he just wasn't the man to take England forward, and even had England won last night he should have been replaced. If there is one good thing to come out of last night's result, it is that England won't waste another year on a manager who just wasn't the right man for the job.

Next, we have the players. Too many of them are automatic selections, despite the fact that too many of them have failed to pull their weight. It must be a damning indictment of English football that the best play of the night last night came from a half-fit has-been and the third-choice striker. Don't get me wrong, Beckham's cross was absolutely glorious, but what the hell was wrong withthe other twelve men (starting eleven plus three subs) who played for England last night?

A special mention must be made of the goal-keeping situation. A rookie keeper was installed for the match, and made at least one basic error. However, his selection was probably not a mistake. The blunt fact is that England have not had a decent keeper since Ronaldinho's free kick destroyed Seaman.

Oh, and finally... although they have no role in events on the part, some measure of blame should be levelled at the English media. The constant hype-ing of the team whenever they go into a tournament, followed by the inevitable slating any time they dare to not win a game 5-0 with a stellar performance does absolutely nothing for the players' confidence. There will come a time when England are genuinely amongst the favourites for a major tournament (assuming they apply a proper recovery plan, rather than just assuming that all their problems are solved by sacking the manager), but that time is a long way off. The media need to recognise that, and calibrate their expectations accordingly, or England are doomed to a repeat of last night's farce.

You'll note that I haven't discussed the number of foreign players in the premiership. There is no point in discussing that as a problem, for two reasons. Firstly, European law means that there is nothing that the FA can actually do about it. Secondly, if the English players were good enough, they would be getting games with their teams. As businesses, the various teams want to win, and that means employing and playing the best players available anywhere. If those players aren't English then the answer is not to artificially remove foreign players from the domestic game... it is for the clubs to start producing better English players. (Yes, that's a very superficial treatment of this issue; this post is already too long, and I'm only halfway done, so I hope you'll forgive me.)

So, what is to be done?

Well, in short, the answer is revolution!

As I mentioned above, I felt that Steve McClaren had to be removed regardless of the result last night. He wasn't the man to take England forward. I also felt that the successor had to be English and had to represent "a safe pair of hands". Had things gone well yesterday, said person could have shepherded them through the tournament, and then built towards the World Cup. And, my initial pick would have been Terry Venables, him being the most successful England manager of recent years. Obviously, that is now no longer an option.

Looking at the various names in the frame, I see no credible English option. That being the case, and looking at the options, I'm going to recommend the man who was my preferred option to succeed Sven - Martin O'Neill. I don't think England could land either Mourinho or Scolari (and I'm not sure either is really the best choice anyway), which puts the Irishman head and shoulders above the remaining choices.

Once a new manager is in place, he absolutely must be given time to work. In fact, I'm going to argue that England should write off the World Cup of 2010, and instead build towards Euro 2012, with a view to being serious contenders to win that competition. (Qualification for the World Cup should be considered a minimal requirement, but I think that even being eliminated at the group stage could be considered acceptable. The long game is, at this stage, more likely to produce results than any short-term strategy.)

Next up, what to do with the team? Well, the first thing to do is to look to youth. Too many of the players currently in place are not pulling their weight, and a lot of that is because they are automatic picks for the side. By bringing forward credible young players, and being ruthless about dropping underperforming established names, the manager should be able to light a fire under his stars.

As for the specifics of the game... I'm not an expert. However, it was very obvious yesterday that England played best when they were in a 4-4-2 formation, so I would go with that in all but extreme cases. There is a reason it's a classic, after all.

Up front, they need a bit more strength in depth. Owen and Rooney both seem to be unfortunately injury-prone, so the team should be built under the assumption that one or both will be permanently unavailable. So, more good players are needed. (Actually, I would also be tempted to promote Crouch to first-choice striker, since he seems to have been the most effective for England for some time.)

In midfield, England have the opposite problem, which is a surfeit of decent players. The only problem here is that Lampard and Gerrard just don't seem to be able to co-exist. So, you have to drop one of them and build the team around the other. Simply saying, "as professionals they should be able to play together" doesn't help; they each obviously under-perform while the other is playing. Gerrard was the better during the World Cup, so I would give him the nod, although neither played well yesterday.

Again, in defense England need more decent players, and they have to come through youth development. None of the players who were on the pitch last night are good enough, and although England were missing several key figures, your second eleven really need to be good enough to step in as required.

Finally, England must find a decent (no, scratch that, a superb) keeper from somewhere. Until they do, they can forget about being seen as a major force. However, looking around I don't see any candidates.

Absolutely Devastated

Well, the dream is over. Scotland have failed to qualify from the Group of Death, and won't be going to Euro 2008.

The thing is, though, it isn't failing to qualify that really hurts. It isn't even losing the match. But the manner of the loss...

The thing is, the group we were in contained Italy, France and Ukraine. The best two teams go through*, so it was always a long-shot. To have done as well as we have is simply remarkable, and we can be nothing but proud of all those involved.

And, if looked at objectively, we should probably have lost the match 2-0. The Italians had a goal disallowed for an offside that wasn't, while Scotland's goal was probably offside. And although we were actually the better team for much of the game, that only counts if you convert it into goals. So, we can't complain too much on that front.

But, lucky decisions or not, the score-line was sitting at 1-1 with 89 minutes on the clock. The Italians had spent the last ten minutes timewasting to run down the clock. A draw didn't really suit us, but it left us in with at least a chance on Wednesday...

and then the linesman gave what was clearly the wrong decision, the Italians got a free kick in an almost impossible position, and scored. And then the referee blew for full time early. Game over, thanks for playing.

Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, over in Isreal, England were getting the luckiest of lucky breaks. Suddenly, their destiny is back in their own hands. Now, officially, I don't care. Unofficially, it is somewhat galling to put the two side by side.

(On the other hand, it is worth noting that Euro 2008 will be considerably more interesting if England do qualify. So, perhaps I would prefer that outcome. Of course, the same is also true of Italy and France. I don't claim not to hold to double standards.)

* Another thing: Euro 2008 is hosted jointly by Austria and Switzerland, which means they both qualify automatically. If it was hosted by a single country, there would probably be a qualification spot for "the best third-placed team". Guess who that would be?

(Edit: well, possibly. I've just noticed that the champions from 2004, Greece, are having to go through qualification. It seems likely that instead of a "best third-placed team" spot, they would have given them automatic qualification.)

Oh well. Roll on the World Cup!

An Update

So, remember that adventure that I painstakingly wrote for Worldwide D&D Gameday? Well, it turns out that not a single person actually used it. Which is nice, obviously.

Meanwhile, things at the band continue to be incredibly tedious. It turns out that when the Pipe Major asked me to run the band on those occasions when he wasn't there, this was in preparation for a bout of absenteeism on his part. This is fine, except that the band aren't really learning any new tunes, aren't really preparing for anything, and are really really bored. So, we show up, we play, we go home. It's all very exciting.

However, we do have the Armistice Parade on Sunday, which is always an important event. It was a disaster last year, but it should be better this year. Or, I'll implement my 5-point Universal Disaster Recovery Plan. I have my poppy, although it's one of the completely useless plastic stemmed ones, so I'll have to look out my Emergency Poppy tonight.

And then it's onwards and upwards towards Christmas. Only six weeks more work to go. Yippee?

Itsy-bitsy Spider

Back in days of Yore, when I were but a lad (1988 to be precise), my extended family decided to have The Family Holiday, an event of such importance that it must forever be capitalised. So, that summer we all went to a camp site just outside of Morcambe, where we spent two weeks getting thoroughly soaked by the endless rain. At the end of the holiday we were all miserable, the children of my grandfather had all fallen out with one another, and we'd all had a Jolly Good Time. It would be seven years until many of us would see one another again, at the sequel.

We travelled home over the course of two days, stopping overnight in a little village called Lockerbie, that would very soon be known to everyone. The travel for the first day was largely uneventful.

However, an hour or so into the journey I started to feel a strange tickling sensation in my left foot. Of course, I paid it no mind, merely wiggling my toes to try to stop it. But stop it did not. Eventually, I had to take off said shoe, whereupon I found that the cause of the tickling was none other than a Giant Hideous Spider that had taken up residence in my shoe! Said Spider had spent the past hour sleeping, and when it awoke it had wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside my shoe.

Anyway, I looked around for a bird with which to catch the Spider, but none was to be found. (Besides, then I would have needed a cat, a dog, and so on through the sequence, until I got to a horse, and who has ever heard of horses in shoes?) So, instead I followed the alternative policy of waiting until the next stop, then banging said shoe against the ground until the Spider departed its new home, and continued on its malevolent way. In hindsight, it would have been more humane to seek a waterspout before evicting my arachnid squatter.

Unfortunately, ever since that day I find that, when wearing trainers in a car, I find that my feet spontaneously tickle. And there's always that doubt: has the Spider returned? Is it angry at being evicted, or was that event that finally caused it to shape up its life and make it make something of itself? Who can say?

A few weeks ago, there was a giant Spider in my appartment, at the top of the stairs. I, naturally, completely ignored it. I'm not actually scared of spiders, and it wasn't doing any harm, so I saw no reason not to leave it alone. Over the next couple of days, it made the adventurous trek down to the bottom of the stairs, where our hero keeps his trainers. At this point, I must confess to a little nervousness - no one likes to be ambushed by nursery rhyme characters while driving. Then, the Spider disappeared.

Now, if you've read this far, you may be expecting some sort of conclusion to the tale, or perhaps a moral, or something at least. Sorry, but life doesn't work like that. The Spider was not in my shoes, and I haven't seen it again. I think it might have died in the cold. As for morals, how about this: never blog while unutterably bored at work? (Honestly, if they ever revive He-Man, I must get the gig based on that one alone.)

That's it!

We need a ban on Christmas adverts before the first of December. It's not even November yet, and I'm sick of it already.

My hat of Word 2007 know no limit!

So, I finished off the adventure for Worldwide D&D Gameday last night, and there was much rejoicing. I therefore promptly uploaded it to the appropriate place, and forgot all about it.

Except...

The new version of Word defaults to saving things in its new .docx format. So, before I could upload the files, I had to convert these to .doc format. So far, so good. I checked that they still displayed properly, and they did.

Today, I tried them on an older version of Word and, lo and behold, they don't display properly. Something has gone wrong in the file conversion, causing all my text to appear as just that bit bigger than it should be... and coincidentally just that bit bigger than the text boxes will allow.

Aaaargh!

Bitten off more than I can chew

Saturday is "Worldwide D&D Gameday", which is an entirely made up holiday invented by Wizards of the Coast as a bid to introduce new gamers to the hobby. The idea being that stores would run events, usually in the form of a DM running a game for some players. It's all very exciting.

Anyway, last year, WotC managed to botch the running of the event rather spectacularly. The pre-generated adventure packs were sent out late, so that a lot of stores didn't get them in time. Worse, the pregenerated characters for the event were utterly useless (the trapfinder character's Search skill gave him a 0% chance of finding the one and only trap in the adventure!). It was just bad.

So, over on one of the D&D messageboards I frequent, a bunch of us thought, "We should do our own adventure and characters for next year!" Which seemed like a great idea. We batted around a few ideas, and some people, myself included, knocked out first drafts of adventures. So far, so good.

At that point, the project went on the back-burner. There were eleven and a half months to go, and all that needed done was a redraft, some maps, some characters, and some polish, which was a couple of days' work at best. So, I put it aside, fully intending to come back to it closer to the time.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

About two weeks ago, I did actually think, "Oh, must get that adventure finished off." It's not that I totally forgot about it, you see. There was plenty of time to do the required work in order to make the adventure available well in time for this weekend. Yep, plenty of time...

Then, suddenly, I was going to France, which knocked the plan sideways. Still, I had a whole weekend to go, which would be plenty. And, last Friday I finished off the design work, and just had to transfer everything to the PC, so people could actually use it. Provided there would be no distractions, that was plenty of time...

On Friday, Andrew phoned and asked if I could help him move house on Saturday. Ah.

Well, priorities being what they are, that removed most of Saturday from use. And that means that the job is now about 98% done. But that's all for nought if I can't complete those last 2% in the next day or two. Even so, that would be plenty of time, except for the pesky distration that is work, and then being at band tonight, and busy tomorrow night also.

I think perhaps I might not get it finished in time.

But the story gets even better than that: it seems someone at WotC actually paid attention to all of the feedback (complaints) from last year. This year, the adventure packs have gone out to most if not all of the participating stores. Also, the pregenerated characters are actually well-done, without a repeat of last year's fiasco. So, it would really appear this whole exercise is rather pointless.

Musing on recent events

I got my hair cut.
It seemed like the thing to do.
Now my ears are cold.

Much Ado About Nothing

So, JK has let the world know that the headmaster at Hogworts, one Albus Dumbledore, is gay. This announcement was then reported far and wide, as if it was actually news. In reality, of course, it is utterly irrelevant, not least because it isn't actually mentioned anywhere in the books, and most people wouldn't have had the slightest of inclings.

And yet, I'm posting about it. Why is this, you may ask? Well, I can't help but think of what might have been...

As we know, Dumbledore is quite a large man. Not as large as Hagrid, of course, but large nonetheless. We also know he is gay. Finally, his first name, Albus, could be shortened...

So, what would the Harry Potter books have been like had he truly been Big Gay Al?

Ah, politics!

How to spot a screw-job:

1) Some people will esconse themselves in a meeting. Although the topic of the meeting is one of interest to you, and although by right you should be there, you are pointedly not invited.

2) "I have asked {someone else} to {do what you were doing}"

3) This last will be paired with extravagant compliments, "because I need you to {do something else}"

The first time this happened, I was really angry about it for a long time. My opinion of those involved remains irrevocably lowered as a consequence. It would appear that I have since attained Enlightenment, since this time I'm not overly concerned.

If I were making this up, my lies would be more convincing

You'll recall that the last time I went to France, we got onto the plane on time, taxied to the runway, and then there was a "technical fault" that delayed us and set off a great odyssey, wherein I took 24 hours to get to Rennes. Well...

On Sunday, I awaoke at 20 minutes past nine, and began my day. It was a usual Sunday, with a trip to my parents for Sunday dinner interspersed with trips to Church. And not much in between. But things took an odd turn just before ten in the evening, for instead of preparing for the week ahead by making sandwiches, maybe watching a bit of TV, and gradually sliding towards bed, I instead put a DVD in the player, and settled down for a more eventful night.

See, my flight was due to take off at 6 in the morning. Being an international flight, they now specify a two-hour check-in. And, with the constant and imminent threat of terrorism (at least, that's what the government says), I'm disinclined not to follow that recommendation. But, an arrival at the airport at 4 means getting up at 2:30, by which point it just isn't worth going to bed at all.

So, I didn't. Instead, I put Hamlet on - the four hour Kenneth Brannagh version. And what a film it is! In addition to having the very best script, it was filmed on 70mm film, which means it looks simply glorious, far better than normal films. And the cast is simply astonishing. Good times.

And then, tired but ready for the day ahead, I started Monday with an early breakfast, a shower, a change of clothes, and then to the car. Driving to the airport at that time in the morning is fascinating. There isn't a soul about, and so it is almost as if the roads were made for you alone. Which is nice. (My favourite is the "Keep a Safe Distance" sign they were showing just for me.)

I got to the airport at four o'clock exactly... and found that check-in hadn't even opened! Rage! Still, no matter. I waiting, checked in, passed through security with absurd ease, and made my way to the departure lounge, where I passed the time reading some Poe. Then, to the plane!

We taxied to the runway on time, and things were looking good. The engines spun up, and we were about to launch ourselves into the darkened skies, and...

"I'm terribly sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we've had a technical fault, and we're going to have to return to the terminal building to get it sorted out."

I suspect the gentleman sitting next to me might have been a bit unnerved by the sight of me battering my head against the wall at this point. He didn't say anything, though.

(Incidentally, this is how I know I'm not secretly trapped in a romantic comedy: in a RomCom, last time I was delayed, I would have struck up a conversation with a cute but distracted girl, with whom I would form an instant rapport, but be blocked from taking action by the fact of her boyfriend. Then, on the second instance, I would just happen to meet the same girl, now unfettered by aforesaid boyfriend. Instead, I was forced to establish an instant rapport with a packet of Cadbury Buttons. But, giant ones, so that's okay.)

But better was to come: when they got back to the terminal, they found the problem had sorted itself out, but they couldn't take off until the proper paperwork was filled out. So, I missed my connection because some guy had to have a form stamped. Huzzah!

Fortunately, my route on Monday took me via Paris Charles de Gaulle, so I knew I would get there that day, provided the French trains were running. And, in fact, when we did reach CdG, they simply booked me on the next flight to Rennes, and I arrived a mere four hours after the expected time.

Thus far, things were reasonably okay, but there was a further twist in the tale. See, my trip was set up at short ni=otice on Friday, with my boss booking the flights, his French counterpart arranging a hotel, and me quickly gathering laptop and assorted kit for the trip. So, I reached Rennes, laptop in hand... and found that the details of my hotel were conspicuously absent from my Inbox.

It turned out there was no hotel. Uh-oh. Fortunately, or so I was told, there is a bed tucked away in one corner of the office in Bruz. If all else failed, I could sleep there. Of course, breakfast would consist of a sugar cube and a cup of coffee. Oh, and the heating is switched off at night, so it might be a touch froid.

However, all was not lost. There remained time to resolve this small problem, and so a hotel was found. Our hero was saved!

I don't remember anything more from work that day. The emails I sent suggest we made some progress was made, but my mind is blank. In my defense, I had been up for thirty hours by that point, so it's no surprise that things were odd. At least I didn't start hallucinating.

You'd think that that was quite enough for any one trip to France. After all, what more could there be? How about this: I had carried plenty of spare clothes with me, in case of an extension to the trip being required. I had also carried four cans of Irn Bru with me, in case of a desire to feel a bit human during the trip. Unfortunately, my bag had obviously suffered a knock, and one of the cans had proven less than robust. There was Irn Bru all through my bag, Irn Bru all over one of the books I had brought, Irn Bru staining both of my white Magical Trevor t-shirts, Irn Bru everywhere. Suddenly, I had no spare clothes at all, except for two sets of socks and underwear that had miraculously survived the orange explosion.

It was an interesting trip. So, how has your week been?

Not the One

I've been dodging and weaving in a Keanu-esque manner for months, but my l33t skilz have finally let me down. I can't dodge the bullet any more.

Yes, I'm off to France again on Monday. Worse still, I have a 6 o'clock flight on Monday.

I wonder if I'll get there in less than 24 hours this time?

A stunning return to form

Perhaps surprisingly, I'm not referring to the Scottish team's being not only beaten, but thoroughly outplayed by a team of Geogian kids (we should have had a penalty... but still, the bottom line is that we weren't good enough to win that game). I'm not even referring to England's humilating collapse against Russia (and again, in fairness they should not have had that penalty awarded against them. Bluntly, though, they weren't good enough either).

Instead, I am referring to Avril Lavigne's latest effort, which I was unfortunate enough to see last night. It is awful.

How to: Teach the Bagpipes

There are two key pillars in my strategy for teaching children to play the bagpipes:

1) Be so incredibly awesome that they cannot fail to be inspired to learn.

2) Show them new things, and expect them to learn them, at a rate that is just within their ability to keep up.

It seems to work.

Last Thursday, I had a couple of my students complaining that I kept showing them new things and moving them onto new tunes before they had fully mastered the older material. (This is intentional - mastery of the old material comes with repeated practice, and I make sure to provide that, but also with the pressure of having to play with the band, or on parade, which is provided by other means.)

On Monday, I told my student that I wasn't going to show him any more tunes until after the Armistice Parade (Nov 11th), because I want him to focus on perfecting the ones he does know for said parade. Naturally, he complained at that.

It seems I can't win.

A busy bee

I have been absurdly busy lately.

At work, we've just finished off one major piece of work, and are now finally able to start work on the next bit. There are approximately ten weeks of work to do. It has to be done by the first of December. There might be a small problem there...

At band, things are proceeding apace. A week ago on Monday, the other instructor was back. This resulted in one of my students refusing to come through to be taught by him, and in fact collapsing in tears. Apparently, the last time these two met, there were some harsh words spoken, and now the boy is terrified. The upshot of this is that I am now personally taking charge of instructing this boy on a permanent basis.

I had planned to suggest, at the committee meeting last Tuesday, that perhaps I should likewise take over teaching the other two on a similarly permanent basis... but then the meeting was cancelled at 5 that evening. Which was a little annoying. No matter - it gave me a whole evening to myself.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how things work out over the next few weeks.

Unusually, I have also been busy on Wednesdays for the last few weeks. Two weeks ago, it was the band AGM, at which I was catapulted onto the committee. Last week saw me attending the retiral social for the church minister. And this week has the football, yet another nerve-shredding game in Scotland's bid to achieve the impossible and qualify for Euro 2008. Can it be done? Who knows.

The upshot of all of this is that I haven't had time to blog lately. And, it is likely that I'll be blogging in fits and starts for the next few months. You have been warned.

Bloody Stupid People

I really need to get a job at one of these 'think tanks' - the people paid to do pointless studies, and then comment on the results. Oh, and to make up the results if they don't match what they want them to say.

Today's example is this marvellous article on Yahoo, in which a group called Foresight have declared that obesity isn't just caused by people eating too much and not exercising enough, but instead should be blamed on features of modern life. Such as people having easy access to cheap food and labour saving devices, such that they eat too much and don't exercise enough.

So, instead of the obesity problem being caused by people eating too much and not exercising enough, it is caused by people eating too much and not exercising enough. Right. Glad that's cleared up then.

The Silent Treatment

Based on the recent flurry of comments, I have detected that my female readership have clearly been offended by something, and are now giving me the silent treatment. As I don't know quite why this would be, there would obviously be no point in them telling me, and consequently there is no point in my asking.

Therefore, I am going to take this opportunity to talk about the football.

As we know, when Scotland were drawn against France and Italy for the Euro 2008 qualifiers, no-one gave us a chance, and quite rightly. This only became worse after the World Cup, when it became apparent that our group had both the finalists, and also the Ukraine, who made it to the last eight in the world.

Yet a few results on, a couple of truly glorious results, and... well, maybe. Despite beating France home and away, we still need seven points from our last three games to be sure, and those games include both Italy and the Ukraine (both at home, though).

Then, of course, there's Rangers, who got drawn with Barcelona, Lyon and Stuttgart. Again, not a group they would be favourites to progress from. And, although they won their first match, it was a home game. A match against the French champions was to follow, in Lyon, and as we know, Scottish teams never win in France...

Normality would surely be restored on Wednesday, though. Celtic had to take on AC Milan, the champions of Europe. Yes, the match was at Celtic Park, but still, that would suggest they might have a chance of snatching a draw.

Okay, at this point I must pause, and comment on the pitch invasion by one idiot fan. Regardless of the play-acting of the Milan keeper, the fact is that that so-called 'fan' shouldn't have been there, and may well have just cost his club the match (and, by extension, their chances of qualification). Good work, that man. Muppet.

Anyway, this is all obviously some sort of cruel ruse being propogated against Scots. In a couple of weeks, once the big jobs are done, we're obviously all going to collectively wake up, and find it was all a dream. Either that, or our various teams will somehow conspire to fail to qualify based on goal difference.

I got committed!

Yes, it's true, I'm now typing this from a padded cell.

Or, perhaps not.

Last night, my band had our AGM. As it all too often the case, it was an incredibly dull meeting, at which all the wonders of organisation by committee were displayed. I'm really not a fan of that structure, or democracy as a whole frankly, but some people seem to think it's a good idea.

Anyway, one of the features of the AGM was the election of a new committee, which generally involved the same people being appointed to the same posts without fuss (which is fair enough - the committee actually is doing a good job, part of the reason the meeting was so dull).

So, the 'big' positions filled up quickly: Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, Pipe Major, Lead Drummer...

but there's also a position on the committee for a "Piper's Representative", someone to speak for the little guy. And, when the selection came up, in an instant my name was put forward, seconded, and approved... all before I could say, "don't be foolish! You crazy people!"

So, now I'm a part of the system, working to oppress the common man by providing the illusion of representation. Or something.

On the other hand, this does represent an addition, if only a minor one, to my already PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS. So that's quite nice.

Oh that poor, stupid girl...

You know it comes to something when I'm expressing sympathy for Britney Spears. Undeniably, the most part of her troubles are her own damn fault. But it seems over the last little while that people have been queueing up to take their shots, it seems she may be being treated overly harshly by a judge with one eye on fame, and all the while, the tabloids gloat.

I've always kind of held the theory that Britney was so desperate for children that she persuaded herself that she was in love. Either that, or she knew fine well what she was doing, and did it anyway. Either way, to now lose her children, on top of everything else, seems extremely cruel. And, I'm not entirely sure the children can be said to be better off...

Oh well. It would be hypocritical of me to offer too much sympathy.

However, since everyone else seems keen to queue up to give Britney advice on how she should get it all back, here goes:

Don't.

What Britney really needs to do, in my opinion, is simply turn her back on the entirety of her career, and her party-girl lifestyle, and her battle with the tabloids. She needs to stop thinking about a comeback, and instead check herself into a real rehab course, that she needs to treat with all seriousness, and needs to finish, no matter how much it hurts. She needs to stop drinking, and stop taking whatever drugs she is on. She needs to make peace with her mother, clean up her life, take stock... and then take back her children.

And only then, probably in no less than two years, can she consider trying to make a comeback.

Unfortunately, I fear this isn't how this is all going to play out. I hope she's not being left alone for any length of time...

Outrageous!

I was going to blog about how it cost me £40 to fill my car with petrol yesterday (in fairness, the tank was completely empty), and about how incredibly unfair it is that the government have today imposed another 2 pence increase in fuel duty, with another rise due in April, and the third already in the works.

I was going to blog about how I have to buy petrol, because 90% of my driving is to and from work, and despite living right next to a railway station, and working right next to an airport (which should be a public transport hub) I still don't have a public transport option that doesn't take three times as long, cost twice as much, is horribly unreliable and deeply unpleasant.

I was going to blog about how great it is that this has been done to send the right signals about the government's commitments on climate change, since it's obviously not the government's place to actually do the right thing, but rather only to mess around at the edges so that it sounds like they're doing the right thing.

And I was going to blog about how I was actively considering voting Tory at the next election, just to get away from another stealth tax hike from this Labour government...

and then I remembered that the Tories are busy trying to outdo Labour in the "how environmental can we pretend to be?" game. So much for that plan.

Female Role Models

Apparently, Charlotte Church has had her baby. George Clooney has broken a rib in a motorcycle accident. And Clint Eastwood had a jam session with a legendary jazz musician, and has met with Neil Armstrong about a possible film about the first man to land on the moon.

In other celebrity news, the collapse of Britney Spears continues apace. She has now been charged with a hit-and-run, and faces the possibility of prison time.

Sigh.

At the outset, I should note that from the sound of things the incident in question, it would appear that actual jail time would be an extremely harsh punishment.

Still, this would make four: Lindsay Lohan faces jail time on drugs charges, Paris Hilton has done time, and Nicole Ritchie likewise. Furthermore, all four (and Charlotte) are noted for their 'wild child' party lifestyles, and assorted other scandal. It's really not a pretty picture.

And these are the role models for young girls.

Dear oh dear.

I mean, honestly, what the hell is going on? Do girls not see how poisonous these individuals are? Do their parents not?

Of course, these aren't the only role models for young girls. There's Jessica Simpson, who's notable for being less talented than Britney. There's Jordan. There's Jade, and Chantelle, neither of whom actually have anything to offer, but are famous for, um, something. There's the Spice Girls, and Girls Aloud.

Honestly, Avril, Christina Aguilera and Pink are looking really good about now.

Now, in the name of balance, I must state that a lot of male role models live the party lifestyle. And the entirety of the 'gangsta rap' and pro-wrestling fields are as dangerous as anything the 'fatal four' get up to.

But, also in the name of balance, you'll have to concede that in the fields of movie stars and sports stars, the males who get held up have talent far in excess of the controversy they generate. There are very few whose extra-curricular exploits have been nearly as scandalous as the lifestyles of Britney, Paris, Nicole and Lindsay. There are none who combine the same level of wildness with the sheer mediocrity evidenced by these four, and many of the others I cited above.

To a certain extent, that's an inherent unfairness in the system: women are judged on looks first and talent second; men on talent first and looks second.

But I'll submit that that has to change. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Passing the Torch

This post is going to place together a whole load of events, people and things that have no business even being mentioned in the same breath. This is not me being disrespectful - I'm drawing a thematic link, rather than trying to suggest parity. Judge me kindly.

A few months ago, I posted about the demise of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. Due to a problem with the European distributors, the final issues of each were delayed; they arrived this morning. Last month, Wizards of the Coast announced the end of the third edition of D&D, in favour of a fourth edition, due in May. Due to the nature of one of the changes that are being made, it is entirely possible that at that point I may well not only not buy the new edition, but indeed stop playing any version of the game.

Last week, Robert Jordan died. At the time, he was working on the long-awaited final volume of his epic "Wheel of Time" series, the largest continuous fantasy series ever. (My standard WoT rant is inappropriate here, of course.) Last year, David Gemmell, my second favourite fantasy author (after Terry Pratchett) died.

A few weeks ago, Luciano Pavarotti died, rendering the world a much quieter place.

And today I attended the retirement celebration for my Advisor of Studies, one of the very best lecturers I had at university. His enthusiasm for his subject was always both obvious and infectious, and the university is all the poorer for his departure.

And my jar of peanut butter just ran out.

It all feels like the legends are leaving us. And it also feels like there isn't anyone or anything to take their place. Where are our great singers of the next generation? Who is going to teach maths to the next generation? And is Dairylea really a substitute for peanut butter?

Basically, what I'm saying is that we need new legends. Now would be a good time.

My treacherous brain

There's a story from a couple of weeks ago that I can't possibly tell here. It involves a moving bus, cups of soup, and the line "if you spill that on me, I'll make you lick it off."

I'm sure you get the idea, although perhaps not the detail of why I can't tell the story.

There is a flip side story, which happened today.

I was at the retirement celebration for my Advisor of Studies from university. Having arrived, I found that I recognised exactly two people in the room. Since Dr Whitelaw, being the centre of attention, was rather busy, I joined the other person at her table. This placed me at a table with a bunch of people who graduated in the Eighties, and one girl who graduated in 2001.

As the conversation neared its end, the (rather cute) girl asked the table at large if they had any plans for the evening.

Three hours later, after I had travelled home, and while I was cooking my fajitas for dinner, my stupid brain decided to furnish me with the absolutely perfect response to this question.

My own brain hates me. Time for a new one, I think.

It's cold outside...

Back in the dim and distant past, there was a truly hilarious comedy show called "Red Dwarf". In the last episode of the first series of this show, the hologram Arnold Rimmer managed to create a second hologrammatic duplicate of himself. The two Rimmers proceeded to move into quarters together, where they were determined to go on a quest to better themselves.

Unfortunately, the petty competitiveness of the two led to them each trying to outdo the other in the most ridiculous of ways. There is one scene, in particular, where they are deciding when to get up the next morning. Early, they agree, but how early?

Eventually, they settle on half past four, a time neither of them wants to get up at, but must accept because neither can bear to be seen as weak in the other's eyes. One of the Rimmers then proceeds to head towards bed, only to be reminded by his duplicate that it's barely after midnight, and that he should put in an hour of study first...

I'm not sure why, but reading about the environmental policies of our various parties always reminds me of that scene.

Of course, there is another theory...

The other theory, of course, is that none of this is real, and I'm actually wired into the Matrix (or some equivalent). Thus, the 'dreams' are actually me starting wake up, in a Neo-esque fashion. This is the same theory that suggests that other people aren't really real (since 6 billion instanced delusions of the world are easier to code than a single shared delusion... if there even are 6 billion 'real' people, and it's not just me.)

In general, I don't put too much credence into that theory either, since it seems unlikely that I'm stuck in a computer game. However, on Friday I mistakenly received a letter intended for someone else on the street. The letter was addressed to the Sims...

Woah, freaky...

Like everyone else, I dream. Like a great many people, I usually don't remember my dreams.

However, on occasion, I'll be going about my daily life, and have the weirdest feeling of deja vu, as the events of my day bear an uncanny resemblance to the events of a dream that I have had, and have remembered, from some months previously. It's a very strange sensation, and always gives me pause.

But that's not the weird part. Of late, the dreams I have remembered are of me going about my daily life, and having the strangest feeling of deja vu. Twice now, therefore, I have been going about my business, doing nothing of consequence, and had the strangest feeling of deja vu... about having the strangest sensation of deja vu! It's all very strange and annoying.

Incidentally, I should note at this point that I don't for a moment subscribe to the notion that deja vu is somehow 'real'. I refuse to believe that, on the grounds that that would mean that the future is already written, that life is deterministic, and that nothing we do has any consequence. Which I object to on the grounds that it annoys me.

Instead, I subscribe to the opinion that when dreaming my subconscious will assemble images of the sorts of things I might do in my general life anyway, and since my days tend to look mostly the same, I eventually hit an event that mostly matches. And, of course, since I now associate dreaming with deva ju, my dreams now insert that sense. See, it all makes sense.

Oh, I almost forgot...

In all the excitement, I almost forgot...

This blog is two years old today! Yay, me!