The Call of Cisco, Part 1
A Voyage to the Edge of Madness
(With sincere apologies to H. P. Lovecraft.)
It was in the depths of drear winter when I first sought to acquire that dark magic known only through fragments of ancient, incomprehensible legend as Veepee Enn. It is a dread name, and initiates speak of the thousandfold paths to attainment of its secrets, hinting often at some deep unknowable hierarchy through chains of characters concocted to discourage all but the most determined seeker. Lines of impenetrable seeming-nonsense serve to keep the novice from approaching the level of those who control the communications of a galaxy of possibilities, and unless the elect can decipher the meanings of the names of entities such as “The eight-hundred-and-seventy-seventh W, Gee Eee, K the Ninth,” he should abandon any wish he may have to attain true greatness.
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The Register Are Ballot Stuffing, Vote Fixing Frauds
The Register is currently running a poll to determine the best science fiction movie quote of all time. Now, one doesn’t expect scientific precision from online polls. It would be unwise to base any real decisions on the outcome of a survey like this. It is accepted that a certain amount of friendly hacking could easily skew the results beyond any sensible measure of accuracy, so one should never take these things seriously. At the very minimum, however, one expects to be able to actually register a vote for one’s choice. It’s the one basic prerequisite of web-gimmicks like this that a vote, once cast, should be counted, but this poll is clearly a great big fat fraud, because no matter how often I try to make the obvious choice for the best quote in that list by a mile*, nothing happens. Indeed, the dissipated hacks at The Register must have something specific against Back To The Future, because they’re only letting it register two (2) votes in total, and it’s languishing at the very bottom of this fraudulent list of lies, beneath such classics as the Jay Leno cameo in Contact. Bah. And where, pray tell, is the button for “1.21 gigawatts!?”
*Not sure what’s going on with the music there, but this was the best clip I could find of Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need… roads.
Worst. Film. Idea. Ever.
Oh dear. Someone at Warner Brothers has obviously been taking lessons from George Lucas on how to really annoy geeks. They’re trying to beat their personal record for dreadful nerd-films by attempting a live action version of Akira. Set in “New Manhattan”. Starring Leonardo Di Caprio. I wish I was joking.
There is a sliver of hope to be taken from the fact that Otomo is being retained as an executive producer, but even he is unlikely to be able to salvage this total non-starter of a project. I predict that this film will redefine the boundaries of celluloid awfulness. I sincerely hope it bombs, because if by some miraculous fluke it succeeds we’ll have a decade or two of even more appalling copycats to endure.
In Which National Express East Coast Are Smashing
Warning: the following tale contains unsolicited, forthright praise for a large corporate public transport operator. Some readers may experience feelings of dizziness. Do not adjust your browser settings, there is nothing wrong with your computer.
Last weekend an opportunistic individual, I know not whom, somehow managed to abstract a number of envelopes from the locked steel postbox that was until recently bolted to a stake outside our front gate. Said envelopes contained various train tickets for a holiday we had just booked, most of which were tied to specific trains and seat reservations, and were therefore useless to anyone other than me or my wife. One set of tickets, however, booked with National Express East Coast, were valid for use on any off-peak train for a month after the initial booking date. At some point on Saturday morning a helpful passerby found our holiday travel documents scattered around about our gate, gathered them up and replaced them in our postbox, all except the £158.80-worth of open returns to London, which I can only presume are now in the possession of some thieving, Royal Mail-molesting northern pissbiscuit.
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How To Not Buy A House
Anyone can avoid buying a house. Simply by not doing any of the things that lead to a successful property transaction, starting with looking for a house to buy in the first place, almost everyone in the world doesn’t buy houses every day. Not buying houses, at its most basic, is an easy thing, regularly accomplished by everyone from new born infants to newly dead corpses. There are, however, a few individuals in this world who have elevated this easily mastered non-skill to the level of an art-form, even to the exalted heights of a science, and it is their methods that I will detail here for anyone who might want to investigate the process of really, definitively not buying a house, in the most spectacular style possible, whilst annoying the hell out of everyone involved, and doing yourself and others out of thousands of pounds and months of precious life. (more…)
No News Is Good News
At some point in November last year, I forget exactly when, I embarked upon an experiment. Now, those who know me will be aware that, even on a good day, I am not naturally predisposed towards happiness and joy, and on top of that, me and autumn don’t see eye to eye: autumn seems to like gloom, rain, mould, death, and roadworks, whereas I don’t, so I never expect much from the soggy end of the year. But as winter approached I noticed that I was even more than usually grumpy and miserable. I won’t go into great detail, because that sort of thing is deeply boring. Suffice to say, it wasn’t pleasant, and I needed to do something about it. (more…)
Cussedness Awards 2007
- Literary event of the year: Kittenwar: The Book. The launch party was brilliant fun, thanks to everyone who turned up.
- Best book about cats not written by me and Fraser: Cat Getting Out of a Bag by Jeffrey Brown. This is a smashing little book, endearing and beautifully observed. Chronicle are clearly the quality cat-book publisher.
- Best book not about cats and not written by me and Fraser: Oystercatchers, by my mate Sue, read it now.
- Album of the year: We Can Create by Maps. Lovely.
- Most overrated album of the year: Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. Am I the only person in the world who thinks this is a load of whiny rubbish? And I liked Funeral, too. Deeply disappointing.
- Best animated feature, and about time too: Futurama - Bender’s Big Score.
- Best computer I have owned to date: 15″ Apple MacBook Pro. Not quite perfect, and Leopard is a bit crashy still, but much nicer than using Windows on some shonky PC.
- Depressing non-event of the year: our house sale. The current state of this almost eight-month long transaction is so fragile that I’m wary of discussing it in public for fear of the remote possibility that our buyers might read what I think of them and take offence, so I’m going to leave it until the sale has fallen through entirely or (unlikely, this) completed before relating the full saga. It’s a cracking story though; the whole experience has led me to believe that English property law needs serious reform, perhaps involving the statutory deployment of stocks and public floggings as deterrent measures for recalcitrant parties.
- Scary number of the year: 30.
That’s about it, see you next year.
“I love stealing, I love taking things!”
Good news everyone: Futurama is back!
Well, sort of. It’s only back if you’re American, so yet again I have had to resort to (ahem) unofficial distribution channels in order to obtain a copy of a movie that doesn’t even have a UK release date yet. I hasten to add that once Fox remember that there are a load of Futurama fans beyond the borders of the United States, I will gladly, gleefully even, cough up for a legal copy: it’s really good.
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Comedy of Terrors
Pretty much the only sensible reporting I’ve seen on the recent terror attacks
in London and Glasgow has come from The Register: firstly, secondly. That second link is an article by a bomb-disposal technician, who, having pointed out precisely why this last weekend’s attempted car-bombings were hilariously rubbish, goes on to note that the UK survived tons of explosives raining down on it every night for six years
during World War II.
Our parents and grandparents stood that kind of punishment, not to mention four times as many military dead, and got on with life. Sad though it is to confirm the oldsters’ world view, by comparison our generation - our generation’s journalists, anyway - seem a bit lacking in backbone.
Well, quite. Massive press overreaction aside, the only really scary thing about this whole episode is that some of the suspects were working as NHS doctors. If they are the culprits, that means that people who can’t successfully burn out a car full of petrol, a basic skill of the lowliest twoccer, are getting jobs as neurosurgeons. Now that is terrifying.