The road less travelled

Wii (or Wi-i) strain

Irony Boy has availed himself of the latest console from Nintendo, so yesterday while we were waiting for the womenfolk to turn up at his house, we played a bit of virtual golf and baseball. Today I have a slight strain in my right elbow when I straighten it. A definite case of Wii Strain.

On a different, but related note, Abz tells me that up in Geordieland people call the Wii the 'wye-eye'. How fantastic is that?

Burton on Burton

Back when Planet of the Apes came out in 2001, a great number of people left the cinema saying "What happened at the end? Did you get it?"

Reading Burton on Burton, a collection of interviews Tim Burton has done through the years, it would seem Tim Burton doesn't really know either, except he didn't want to copy the Statue of Liberty ending:

"We just went back to the overall mythology of Planet of the Apes, of the book, even the other movies. For me the whole thing has got a sort of circular structure to it, it goes round on itself somehow - parallel universes, time travel, man/ape, evolution, religion. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Do we just keep re-evolving? There was a feeling of wanting to do something where it was a parallel world but it was all apes, and there was something about that I liked - I had this image of a weird twisted parallel universe. I thought about it in a big picture - even though I couldn't give a shit about sequels, but if you do something like this you think about a bigger picture of the material. So there was the idea of going back in a sort of twisting of time, and again going through this juxtaposition of human/animal, and coming back into a world where you think its normal, but something has happened."

Or you could just paraphrase it as: "Hey, I had to end the damn thing somehow..."

Geek film note: Nightmare Before Christmas afficionados might be interested to know the scarecrow designed to keep everyone away from the Ape holy site (which is actually the crashed spaceship Oberon) is modelled on the King of Halloweentown, Jack Skellington.

Aim for the hand

At the culmination of Ian's stag and Viv's hen weekend we went for a picnic to Rest Bay. It was sunny enough to colour me pink and we introduced lots of new people to the simple pleasure of throwing stones.


After experimenting with a variety of targets like Coke bottles, I set off down the beach and found a plastic pole and a 'skatch'-type beach game shaped like a hand, which we then set up as a target. And very good it was too until Tim destroyed it with a well-aimed throw.

Black Gold (film review)

Occasionally I'm asked why I'm involved with fair trade. Films like Black Gold remind me.

The contrast between the impoverished lives of the coffee growers and the fetishization of coffee in London or New York is thrown into sharp relief by the head of a coffee co-operative, Tadesse Meskela, who travels the world trying to sell his farmers' coffee. The film throws up a few other surprises as well. Did you know there's a world barista championship? Or that the area of Ethiopia Starbucks 'ethically' source their coffee from is on the brink of famine? Or that Ethiopia relies on American grain hand outs - from subsidized American farmers...?

The only problem with Black Gold as a film is the people who need to see it - the indolent, uncaring people who regularly irritate me in conversation - won't go and see it. If it's a bit tooo much to ask people to consider their fellow humans when they buy their coffee, then there's no way they'll go and see this.

But they should.

Jongudmund's rating: 9/10

Brevity

I'm happy to say I've completed my own blogging challenge - to blog ten posts in a row with one word titles. You might think I'm just being a bit dumb, but writing short copy is harder than writing long copy. And writing short titles, which either sum up or accurately preface what you're writing is even harder. It's a good writing exercise to set yourself, but I'm tired of it now.

VILE

Following on my recent post about becoming vegetarian I had an interesting back and forth in the comments with Clare. So I sent her this link to a recipe for Squirrel Melts, which kind of proves my point about the animals you eat being a rather arbitrary choice.

Her response: "That is VILE!" (Hence the title of this post)

And if you do go get the recipe for Squirrel Melts, note the part where she adds the pecans, because "you know how squirrels love nuts".

Yes, when they're ALIVE.

Optimism

You know morale is bad when you have a conversation that runs something like this:

Team member 1: "Well it would be nice to be kept in the loop..."
Team member 2: "Instead of loop, think 'death spiral'."
Team member 3: "A noose is a loop."

Influence

My brother has succumbed to the lure of blogging, and, perhaps rightly, he blames me for it.

I have no doubt he'll make a splash, but will he sink or will he swim?

Nutshell

A pithy phrase Matt coined today:

"We're cow-tipping sacred cows..."