| Coming to you live from the Fronds-o-Dome on sunny Scotland Road, it's the 93Q5th Annual Half-Life Malteser. Throughout the next twenty-smorp hours, constant rolling updates of the wisecracks produced as me, Chuffy, Nycke, Mingus, Markle, Joue, Roger, Giles, Hethter and Saint Francis of Assisi play through Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, the Episodes, Mirror's Edge and Portal!
( Meaty noises within. ) | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment   |
| Books read so far this year: Briam Lumley’s The Taint (read to validate opinions I already had), Ellery Queen’s The American Gun Mystery (which I actually solved before the end, so yay for me), Dan Simmons’ The Terror (could do with being trimmed to a lean 700 pages), Pablo de Santos’ The Paris Enigma (never really seems to get started), G.K. Chesterton’s The Club of Queer Trades (part of the five billion tonne European Chesterton Surplus), Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (not as brilliant as The Man would have you believe, but still full of powerful magicks), Mikhail Bulgakov's Black Snow (a little pill of bitter sunshine), Gilbert Adair’s And Then There Was No-One (postmodern puke), Algernon Blackwood's Ancient Sorceries (imported from farthest WIN), John Dickson Carr’s The Judas Window (which would be good title if it was a figurative window, but it’s literal; also, book sucks out loud), John Dickson Carr’s He Who Whispers (fails to live up to its promises of spookiness), John Dickson Carr’s The Sleeping Sphinx (adapted for television by Mr. David Renwick), Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (prefaced by quotations that make the same point much more concisely than the book itself), and Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection (which holds back its best ideas until the second half, but the ideas are very very good, although I am getting heartily sick of these muthafudging Dream Eaters, going around eating our dreams and taking bleeding liberties and what have you). AND NOW:
( Margin of Error Eleven. By Veidt. )
And you can revisit the very worst of previous Margins of Errors by checking out my Flickr photostream at www.flickr.com/photos/30396818@N08/, but for Christ's sake don't! | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm pretty suspicious of Radio 4 comedy sketch shows but Recorded for Training Purposes did manage to surprise me with a new piece of stupidity today. It was on yesterday night so I started listening to it on the iPlayer about ten minutes ago. I thought that if the show was any good, I'd keep listening, but if it were bilgepowered I would stop after about five minutes. I actually got fully three minutes in before getting to a sketch about how the BBC iPlayer was pointless and how people should damn well be able to tune in for programmes at the time those programmes are broadcast.
I have long been too much of a fan of irony to have resisted the temptation of closing the iPlayer at that point. Now I will never listen to that particular show again, which is doubly ironic given that as a Radio 4 comedy sketch show it is specifically targeted at people who think they like irony but ironically actually don't. The sketch before the iPlayer sketch had one or two good jokes in it, but like nearly all Radio 4 semi-topical comedy, RfTP (now in its third series, apparently) appears to be yet another vapid spawn from what must be a fairly huge Ubbo-Sathla-like protoplasm show called The Oh No(w) It's The Week That News O'Clock Tube in which Cecily, Hamish, Stupido and Blank take a Sideways Look at the Follies of Modernity. Although this iteration was not quite as bad as The Now Show, the iPlayer sketch still gave me the rage worms.
Normally I don't mind the fact that one or two of the jokes in a topical trendy culturally-targeted show like that would probably happen to be targeted at me and/or things I do that others regard as absurd but on this occasion they were implicitly mocking iPlayer users for being too lazy to tune in at the right time. Never mind that the show is on at 11 o'clock at night and it would surely not be unreasonable for me to be asleep by then (even though I never am) - the real stumbling block is that I have to use the iPlayer because I don't have a TV or a radio, fatheads. So the main problem is really just that (unlike in most cases) I have first-hand experience of the joke not actually working. Then again I suppose I'm not paying the Beeb anything, so it's a bit parasitic to be using the iPlayer anyway. Thank heavens that the guys at Recorded for Training Purposes have come up with such a good way of driving off tapeworms such as I. In fact, it's one of those rare examples of comedy actually instigating change: the show describes itself as being about 'modern communication, media noise and contemporary obsessions'. As it turns out, I had a contemporary obsession with the iPlayer, and Recorded for Training Purposes managed to cure me of it in about four minutes. Successful satire there! Your tax dullards at work.
Now for a list of some books what I read in 2008. ( All the ones I can remember, anyway. ) | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| Real Conversations From Genuine Life That Happened
Roger: The network router isn't working. I choose to blame this on its proximity to Hester's Christmas tree.
Me: That tree does have an odd magnetic field.
Roger: Indeed.
Me: Because, like all Christmassy things, it is from the North Pole. WHERE MAGNETISM LIVES.
Roger: Unlike the South Pole, which is where gravity lives.
Me: Down at the bottom of the world.
Roger: That's why things fall down when you drop them.
Me: Down is indeed the direction of south. | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| It’s time for the Some Moderately Culturally Significant Events Of Variable Recentness That I Experienced Reviews Roundup or ‘S.M.O.R.P.Wa.R.B.L.E.R’. Behind the cut, try to find out what I think of Fallout.3 (it does sort-of have a dot there). ( Let’s Send Ike To Washington... )
In actual news, I also recently dropped in on indecipherable jump-cutting thuggery-circus The Q.U.A.T.N.U.M. of Solace (again, yes, that is the exact official title), the plot of which (I now realize) parallels that of Fallout 3, in that they both concern themselves largely with elaborate plans to provide water to places which need it, although in the latter case it's going to be free and in the former case it's going to be extortionately expensive. Anyway, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, I wouldn’t bother; it has a title that sets you up with the first unusual word then blows you away with the second, but the actual movie is pretty phoned-in and to my surprise I was actually bored for large stretches of it. There’s one stylish scene which takes place during an opera, and there are great creamy lashings of M, but I defy anyone to find a single quamnat of sense in any of the action sequences. Daniel Craig is a droid of expressionless meat, and although the film does include scenes in which his self-involved sociopathy might be about to come compellingly unstuck in face of things that actually matter, that aspect is dropped completely at the finale in favour of a tour of the world’s first exploding hotel.
Bond’s main companion in The Something of Boris is a woman who’s out for revenge against the man who killed her parents – which makes sense - but Bond himself appears to want revenge on a total stranger for something that his own ex-girlfriend whom he didn’t like much anyway did to herself, which makes no sense to me or anyone else in the film. The whole second act is set at a Casino Royale reunion party thrown by the villain, and every time anyone asks Bond why he’s being such a maniac, he gives a totally different answer. Everyone thinks he’s meant to be conflicted and angry and whatnot, but I think he suffered concussion during the car crash in the previous movie and all the other spies are just too embarrassed to say anything. In retrospect, concussion might also explain all the giggling under genital torture. Anyway, I have ceased to give a damn and so should we all. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Planck, Planck, Planck. To deal with the extreme of malaise that seems to be setting in very early this century, many lesser men might seek solace in the bottle; my inspiration on Hierophant is waning once again, I have yet to think of anything Witty to form the substance of a missive to Parma_Violets, and so I have NO CHOICE but to annex – sorry, occupy myself by scanning the scrawl pile and posting its contents on the internet for chums. Hence, to commemorialiate not only my relatively recent change of address – into the fabled House of Rassilon, which I have yet to mention on this “web-log” I realize – but also Mr. Ledger’s excellent BAD CLOWN FILM of a little while ago, here be the last ever lashings of Nightgoat perhaps. And living proof that worth a thousand words, a sort of a spine squid is.
( I can't believe it's not MARGIN OF ERROR X ) | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| "Oooh Tim? How did your job interview this morning go, Tim?"
Well internet, I believe that the morning's events are best left to the reader to deduce using excerpts from the East of England Ambulance Service incident report, filled in at the scene by the excellent V. Lamb, paramedic.
Normal humans are (so I'm told) able to get through job interviews without ACTUALLY LOSING CONSCIOUSNESS. It is a not a luxury which is to we bad sitcom characters afforded. Still, I am alright now and Nurse Roger very kindly stuck around to make sure I didn't suddenly die a bit later like they do on The Hugh Laurie Medicine Hour. The interview will have be rescheduled, obviously. Upside, I have had a sort of 'trial run' for part of the interview and now know a bit more about what to expect; downside, WTF FAINTED.
Turns out that the paramedic incident report form is a fascinating document resembling a D&D character sheet but with a bit less detail about injury types. Sections 2-8, and indeed 10-15, include all sorts of rare possibilities. My incident doesn't sound very exciting, so if I do keep this form as a souvenir I may discreetly tick the box for 'massive cranial destruction' just to sex things up a bit.
EDITED TO ADD: Nope, that's it apparently; they're not going to bother to invite me back for another interview, as they would prefer someone who can remain conscious for periods of twenty minutes or more.
EDITED AGAIN: Except that they have now reversed their decision and will be willing to let me do the interview again! So now I have to do the second interview with the knowledge that they thought I was rubbish in the first one even before I passed out. Because it's hard to see how that might affect my performance. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| For those to whom I have not yet already blabbed - more specifically, to the few of that subset who care - after five years Jonathan Creek is coming back for another Christmas special.
Is it wrong to be salivating with GROIN JOY? If you are a fan of David Renwick then you will perhaps agree with me that Love Soup, although clearly a Product of Melancholy Genius, stirred gently the punchbowl of unrequitement on account of being, substantially, Jonathan Creek without the hook of the Impossible Crimes. Well Jonathan Creek is Jonathan Creek WITH the Impossible Crimes and if you haven't seen it, I can only possibly describe it as a quirky gothic Golden-Age crime-solving rationalist comedy-drama groaning with cartloads of topical bottom jokes. Like Scooby-Doo except in one episode, Stuart Milligan had a fight with a pig. It is quite my favourette televisionne programme thanks largely to Kylie, Scotty McMuggins and the FAT OWLS. The Creekmas special this year will be called The Grinning Man and based on that title and the teeny, teeny synopsis available I have already worked out part of the mystery. Possibly.
If you are not a fan of David Renwick then I WILL MAKE FOR YOU A BAD FUTURE. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| So, turns out that when our hero crawled out of bed again at 2am today to plug in his phone charger, the thing he unplugged to free up a socket was NOT the printer but in fact his alarm clock. Not normally that serious a problem; however this morning - timely beeping thwarted - I was stirred instead by the sounds of the letting agent bringing a bunch of chumps in to view the house with an eye to renting it after G/H/R/self have departed. Obviously they will wish to see interior of all rooms; hence I leap from bed, crash to floor, and roll around until wearing clothes, intending to be downstairs looking nonchalant before the INTRUDERS! realise I exist.
Unfortunately, insane woman from letting agency decides to tour the upstairs first, resulting in her knocking on my bedroom door, opening it while I'm standing there in my underwear rummaging round for more clothes, and proceeds to stand there with the door open to apologise at length. The prospective tenants behind her are obviously more red-faced about it than she is, but still less so than I am on account of being there in underpants et NOT ceteras.
Fun's not over though; after eventually closing the door - perhaps my torrent of expletives (although clearly directed at myself, rather than at anyone else) were a clue that I did not think the situation highlarrious - she sods off downstairs and moments later I follow, now (strictly speaking) dressed like a human. However I have been awake for less than five minutes and am quite simply MORNING MURDEROUS. That said, the most important biscuit was still in place and remained so until moments later when whatsername - cheery to an extreme which rather infuriatingly contrasted my own mortification - brings in the next group and proceeds to tell them what happened and have a laff about it. I am sitting on the sofa drinking coffee. Oh, isn't it chortlesome that he wasn't up and dressed when we opened the door. Oh ho ho how absurd LOL ROFL etc. Such forced cheeriness in response to embarressment is the product, one must suspect, of an INNER DARKNESS. There was no doubt: everyone in the room was evil, the only exemption being myself. Whenever the agent and the prospective tenants look at me, I avoid eye contact by raising the coffee mug even though it's already empty. When just the prospective tenants look at me in response to the letting agent's LULz, I try to do one of those animal glares that Mr. Glenister delights us with on the telescreen. Then sneeze. You H1 shits.
Letting agent goes on to repeat the story of how she woke me up and walked in on me getting dressed to every subsequent group of prospective tenants including several attractive young ladies (which oughtn't to worsen the sitch' but does). I wondered what I would get if I picked up the nearest object and beat the letting agent to death with it - plead guilty to manslaughter with provocation by insufferability, get seven years, out in four? As it happens the nearest object was a ceramic Dalek, so if I claim that Davros made me do it, y'r honour, I might even get a room with a view in that lovely Arkham Asylum. Of course this homicidal impulse passed quickly, but reflecting on the entire situation it was fascinating to briefly feel how a David Renwick character must feel all the time. Nightmarish really, that so large a communications gulf can develop so fast between two human creatures for reasons as tiny as timing, pollen etc. That letting agent cleerly thinks it can al be lafed of but at that moment i (of grate and furtil imajinashon chiz chiz) wish only to KIL WITH MY MIND. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Bored, bored, bored. I've got some work on (not much) but really need to find some alternative source of gainful employment. If anyone has any ideas I will be dead chuffed to hear them; bear in mind that my dream job involves signalling to an aircraft that it's clear to land, at which point it lands, a big robot walks out, hands me a huge bag of gold and jewels, and fucks right off again. That would be a fine day's work, yes sir.
I'm also stalled on my own writing projects. I don't feel like writing more Lovelace & Carter for the moment - although I'm sure I will eventually - and I really don't know what to pick up next. I tried to jump-start an old idea for a cop show but soon realized that it would just seem like a rip-off of Life on Mars. It wasn't set in the past, but the main character was a detective who was slowly going mad, which would be a bit close for comfort.
Got to thinking about gaming again after a recent w'kend in Naaarch: 'twas this year's splendid live-action zombie thingum involving many foam darts and top-quality fear. Back here in C'mbridge the crew of the Hovel are since helping playtest Of His Bones Are Coral Made and it would be nice if one of these gaming ideas could be turned into a commercial proposition but I don't have the faintest idea how to go about starting to do that. I'm pretty confident that OHBACM is as professionally written and cleverly devised as any prewritten campaign/adventure whatnot you find in published RPGs, but there are huge gaping orifices in the game system itself which probably need plugging before it could be marketable to the power-statting orc-swatting crowd. They like to be able to choose and design their own characters, don't they? The bastards.
So, not much to report really. Many would ask: why did you bother posting in the first place? Bleak. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Media Player has gone all Magic Eye on the other side of the room, and I've minimized it to avoid feeling compelled to look for a teapot. So I'm not so much "watching Green Wing DVDs in peripheral vision" as "occasionally hearing Mark Heap squealing at a tiny blimp". But you can't have everything. It's too big.
On the blimp subject - or blimpject - I recently finished reading the immense The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist. ( That's not a joke. That's his name. ) | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| Hallo, chums! I live yet. 24-hour URPENISAHOY was something of an Anti-Dad, as it turns out; stay tuned. In other news, I've spent t'day mired in Babbage Engine difficulties of the 'won't switch on' variety, and only in the last hour have I managed to look past the fake herrings (a HDD which poisoned another PC, f'r'example) to the whining power supply. All fixed now (and I quite chuffed with m'self as by this afternoon I had begun to dread that I would only be saved once the Wizard returned from Prussia and came up wiv a cunning plan). I say 'all fixed'; that is, pending a new Mister Fusion which I shall order of the morn. To any within smugging distance of Cambridge who have the ability to cry tears of PSU: for your services, my gratitude eternal.
On the plus side, the R-Dog and I managed to repair the slanting leaning toppling bookcase in our front room using only duct tape, iron sticks and moxie, so it is now at most ten degrees away from being vertical; a definite improvement, oh yes. Even more trivially I have recently read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier which really is (as it turns out) an intermission before Vol. III begins. It's not particularly good, and neither is my reading helped by the fact that the last quarter of the Doss. requires stereoscopic headgear ( and you can't BitTorrent that. ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| The sad thing about seeing the old Arch-B' to ma' C getting picked on is that he's just about the least extreme, most unsure and most cautious moral and spiritual figurehead it's possible to imagine. Everything he says is a heavily-qualified statement along the lines of, "It's a difficult issue, certainly, a sticky, thorny issue of sticky thorns, and I see my role as being one of keeping everyone at the negotiation table in an open dialogue for as long as possible, until such a time as we as a wider community are able to make a reasonable, measured and mild-mannered sensible judgement." If he says something is 'inevitable' he usually means that it's already an issue and he wants to see people discussing it rather than just mobilizing, putting on vests etc.
So the whole thing is a tragedy, really - the Bish is adopting the really-very-progressive attitude that it's no good categorizing anyone as 'the enemy', and he seems to be trying to make sure all points of view get heard (no matter how daft they seem). Meanwhile, there's a feeding frenzy going on, with the usual subtext of cultural paranoia about Britain being subsumed into a tyrannical Islamic caliphate. The people who think the Bish has said something outrageous are (in many cases, anyway) the same natters who always want as much immoderation as possible and think that in the face of the slamic funamentlist turrist conspurcy there's no such thing as too much excess. Synod members are crying out for things like 'strong, Biblical leadership', which sounds like Bolshie-talk to me.
How has this all got so turned-around? The Bish specifically indicated that he wasn't proposing changes to civil law and anyone who thinks this argument is semantically-confused because Sharia laws aren't laws has completely missed his point. As usual I am more annoyed my the inarticulacy and misinterpretation than I am concerned about the actual issue. My only question at present is, "Would Sharia law allow me to explode Jeremy Clarkson?" and regardless of the answer I wish the Bish had an LJ so I could f'list him. You heard me.
( Also, quick recent sci-fi viewing round-up! ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Down at a certain venue, looking for lost door key (accidentally mislaid during certain public event). Am aware that a key has been found by staff at said venue, but cannot be sure it is mine.
HOW THE CONVERSATION SHOULD HAVE GONE:
Corinthian: Hello. I am here about a key which I believe was left behind here last week. I believe it to be mine.
Feller: ok it wuz arownd heer somewere we canot find it can you giv us yor contact detals so we may tel you if we find out were it has bin put just right heer name adres email adres etc etc.
Corinthian: Certainly; here is my name and email address.
Feller: thankyou heer is my card wil be in tuch if we find yor kee chiz chiz. [Exeunt]
HOW THE CONVERSATION ACTUALLY WENT:
Corinthian: Hello. I am here about a key which I believe was left behind here last week. I believe it to be mine.
Feller: ok it wuz arownd heer somewere we canot find it can you giv us yor contact detals so we may tel you if we find out were it has bin put just right heer name adres email adres etc etc.
Corinthian: Certainly; here is my name and email address and FOR NO REASON MY POSTAL ADDRESS.
Feller: thankyou heer is my card wil be in tuch if we find yor kee chiz chiz. [Exeunt]
Moments later, Corinthian realizes he just gave his address to an almost-complete stranger who may be in possession of a key to his house. In other words our hero may in this instance of gone out of his way to get himself burgled, and literally for no good reason. I HATE THESE AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION VEHICLES.
Edited to rant: Oh, and today's my birthday. Did I mention that? Today's my FUCKING BIRTHDAY and still I accidentally handed over my house key to someone who may well be the secret magister of a Taiwanese cyber rape gang. There should be some kind of birthday exemption from being a twat that makes it impossible for me to be a twat on my birthday. I'd buy that.
Also edited to add: Actually now that I think about it there is one thing that can cheer me up by making you all miserable and that's THE PUNDEAD.
 | | comments: 16 comments or Leave a comment |
| "Torchwood II, this is Mission Control."
"Go ahead Mission Control, this is the Commander Chibbers on the Torchwood II."
"Commander, this is Mission Controller Davies speaking, and you're on speaker with Deputy Controller Stokes and Ground Engineer Gardner. You all set to go?"
"I certainly am, sir. There's just one -
"Good, good. Signing off then. Primary ignition in ten - "
"Sir, I just wanted to say, I seem to have..."
"Nine - eight - hmmm?"
"I seem to have rather a lot of naff on board."
"Rather a lot of what, Torchwood? Six - five - "
"Rather a lot of naff, Mission Control. Also rubbish, puke and wastes of space. Slightly less than last time, all told, but still rather a lot."
Ground Engineer Gardner covered Davies' mic with her hand and whispered to him "Russ, you didn't tell me we were putting total naff onboard."
"What are you talking about?" Russ hissed. "This whole mission is naff. The reason for going is rubbish. Chibbers himself is twerpy. The ship is made of rusty twats. The word Torchwood, in Urdu, means 'jizzblaster'!" He pulled her hand off the mic. "Four - three - "
Gardner looked somewhat taken aback. "I think we need to abort, Russ."
"TWO-ONE-ZERO!" the git shouted. "BLAST-OFF! ACTIVATE THE BOLLOCKS ROCKET!"
"Rocket activated!" bellowed Stokes, having pressed the giant Welsh button. "ARSETHRUSTERS COMING ONLINE!"
"YES!" said Russ, just as a NASA bureacrat burst into the room with an order to shut the project down and hand Russ and Chibbers over to devil monkeys who would take them to monkey hell. "Godspeed, Torchwood II! Who knows what magical worlds of space and time you will visit to colonize and spray with your cargo of spew!"
As the rocket rumbled majestically upwards from the gantry, the only noise audible above the roar of the engines was a series of gaspy strokey sex-type noises.
"He is alone up there, isn't he?" said Gardner, nervously.
"Oh, yes," said Russ, with a grin, as the chimps closed in with their monkey knives. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| The fact that I am mad-keen on roleplaying games* is not something I talk about much on this LJ because it's very difficult to explain to Outsiders. However to me it did some time ago occur that ninety percent of you muthaf'listers are Insiders in this regard anyway, so here is a quick update on the status of my current RP projects, most of which are at least tangentially connected to UEA Gamessoc and the (hopefully) up-coming annual 24-hour Roleplay event in Norwich, oh yes (UCA24HRPEINOY).
The Watcher in the Shadows, my v. v. long-running Warhammer Quest game, rambles towards its conclusion. It is not an exaggeration to say that if I live to finish it, it will be the greatest achievement in the history of the universe. No more questions about whether this is a joke.
Good Morning Paravax, a one-shot (lie!) game which will hopefully test out the new 40k RP system Dark Heresy. The rulebook isn't out 'til 4th Feb, and I don't expect the system to be very good, much less to cope with the bizarre stuff I have planned, but it's worth a try and I have too many good ideas which won't fit in anything else.
Blackbird is the working title for the largely-unfinished game rules system that Giles and I are working on because all the existing ones are poop. It will be playtested at the UCA24HRPENISOY by being used to run a game called...
Of His Bones Are Coral Made, a one-shot modern-day sci-fi thrillery-horrory-type-thang set on a scientific research ship which is under attack by...well, no-one knows what they are. That's the fun.
Hexagony isn't a roleplay game as such but a 'downtime' boardgame (i.e. it's the sort of thing people would play at cons in between more important things) of my own design. Basically you run around a constantly-changing modular gameboard, using spells to to give the other players medieval diseases. May not work.
And on top of all that I've designed a new and ludicrous 200-card adventure deck for Talisman which makes the whole game very funny. Hysterically, interminably, unplayably funny! Must try harder.
Also, because I love you all (and based on a conversation at dinner t'other day) I have drawn what I consider to be the Only Warren Ellis Comic Panel You Will Ever Need. The idea is that it includes everything that Warren Ellis fans will ever want, in ONE PANEL, so that we never need read any of his ten thousand randomly-generated miniseries ever again.
( We're from the Internet )
*The tabletop kind, not the sweaty costumed bondage kind - although yes, the sweaty costumed bondage kind too I guess, and if you want to get tabletops involved, I'm game | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
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