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Symbolic Forest

A homage to loading screens.

Blog : Posts from May 2007

Recent Search Requests

In which we know what you’re looking for

deglutation
wemyss bay station
why forests need to be saved – I don’t know, they just do
ravens where to see them in south east england – I’d suggest the Tower, personally
steps of doing long division computer geekery definition ball gagged police
why was war between bosnia and serbia – trust me, it’s a long story
gothic and depressive computer desktop backgrounds
goose to blame if i lose my balance
the bad things about solar collectors
splosh fetish

I think that’s enough of that

Enough

In which we go away for a while

Time for a holiday – the tent’s ready, the car’s all loaded, and we’re going camping. Someone will be looking after the site whilst I’m away, I promise.

The mother was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to see at night. She didn’t think I was taking enough torches. I pointed out I had a small torch, a big torch, a medium torch, a wind-up torch, a strap-to-your-head torch, and an album by “heavy stoner pop” band Torche. That’s enough torches.

He is human, she is human

In which we don’t see the difference between genders

Yesterday’s Guardian featured a long piece, trailed on the front page, about transgender people, and how some people have, apparently, been pushed into having medical transition operations against their will. A bad, bad thing, of course—people should never be pushed or persuaded into any sort of serious medical treatment.

There’s a good reason to be a bit wary about the article, though. It’s written by feminist activist Julie Bindel, who has a long history of writing anti-transsexuality articles for the Guardian. I assume from this interview that she follows Sheila Jeffreys’ position that gender reassignment is merely a type of cosmetic surgery, and therefore automatically an Evil Thing; and she has a rather nasty authoritarian streak. She knows what is best for all of us, and anyone who thinks otherwise has been diverted from the true path by the male-driven establishment. Or something along those lines, at any rate.

It’s interesting that it comes just the day before the inauguration of Britain’s first trans mayor, Jenny Bailey of Cambridge. My paranoid side wondered at first if Bindel had known that was coming when she wrote her article; I doubt it, to be honest. The only downside to Bailey’s position, though, is the fact that it’s a news story at all. In an ideal world, there’s no reason for “Trans person does X”, or Homosexual does Y” to be a news story at all, in the same way that “Woman does A” and “Minority Person does B” are disappearing from the news. Maybe one day, people really will all be treated just as people—well, I can hope, can’t I?

Shoe Event Horizon

In which we wind the windows down and sing along

Seeing as Ian loves them so much, I went out at the weekend and bought a copy of the Johnny Boy album. Ian has good taste, I know, and in this particular case he has very good taste indeed.

Capsule review: loud, noisy, nostalgic pop that sounds like it should be pouring out of an ancient transistor radio. I’ve been playing it constantly in the car, turned up full, worrying all the neighbours and anyone waiting to cross the road. The opener, You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve seems to have no verses at all, just a catchy hook that builds and builds. Half of the songs on the album are equally catchy, jostling for space in my head, especially Wall Street‘s “300 million down the drain” refrain.

Oh, and another thing…

In which we barely recognise someone

…about Neverwhere: it features Tamsin Greig, star of a lot of the best sort of telly, in one of her very first roles – according to IMDB, the first in which they managed to spell her name right in the credits. She plays the reason why your fear of goths* is justified, and I barely recognised her, until she started speaking.

* should you have one, of course.

Richard Richard Mayhew Dick

In which we’re both impressed and disappointed by the BBC

Classic mid-90s fantasy series Neverwhere has recently been released on DVD. As I hadn’t seen it since it was first shown, of course, I had to buy a copy.

I’ve read the book a few times since, most recently last summer, so I was familiar with the plot, the characters, the occasional slight fantasy cliché in the writing.* What I’d forgotten, though, was just what a ten-year-old BBC drama series looked like. I’d forgotten all about the shot-on-video look and the slightly strange sets.** It didn’t detract from the story at all – and, in many ways, it was a very innovative series – but, as a nostalgia trip, it just goes to prove how much TV production has changed in the past ten years, compared to the thirty before that.

* Such as the fantasy character not understanding real-world idioms, particularly someone introducing themselves with both their full name and a nickname, the fantasy character thinking that this is their full literal name. As in the title of this post.

** In particular, Neverwhere has one startling yet absolutely typical BBC studio-production set. The entrance room in the Portico family house: a bare white space, so that no walls are visible, just white background, with pictures of the other rooms of the house suspended at random positions and angles. As a set, it is as close to “typical BBC fantasy” as you can get; you can imagine it being created at any time in the past fifty years.

Landscape

In which people rarely realise just how man-made our countryside is

On the radio this morning, in between interminable political stuff: a piece about conservation, and particularly about conserving a hay meadow near Cambridge. I’m not sure what was particularly important about this specific meadow – I was too busy driving to listen properly – but I did pick up the presenter waffling on about the natural landscape.

The meadow is next to a major road. “You can hear the traffic on the A14 behind me,” the presenter said, “showing just how we’re encroaching on natural landscapes like this.”

Which is utter and complete nonsense! A meadow is, frankly, about as unnatural a landscape as you can get. It’s entirely as unnatural as, say, Langham Place in central London. I’m glad the conservationist she was interviewing didn’t agree; presumably he knew better. There is a general impression people have, that if we let the land revert to a “natural landscape”, it would end up looking something like a Constable painting; it’s entirely false, and that’s exactly why landscapes such as traditional hay meadows have to be carefully managed if we want to preserve them.

Frustration

In which things always go wrong … unless we want them to go wrong

A Work Story.

We need a new printer. The MD says: “Order a new printer!” Our manager waits until he’s out of earshot, then says: “get Spare Printer X working and use that instead.”

So, I find Spare Printer X out, and do manage to get it working. I test it. It seems to be fine. But then, a strange thing starts happening.

I give it a page to print. Let’s call it Page A. It prints it. All is well.

I test a different page. Page B. The printer happily prints another copy of Page A.

A third page to the printer? Out comes Page A again.

Let’s try a four-page document. I get: four copies of Page A.

Switch to a different application. It works! It prints what I tell it to—Page X this time.

I print Page Y from that application. I get Page X again.

Go back to the first program. Still printing Page A.

Let’s reboot the printer. Let’s print. Oh look, Page A.

OK, it’s not the printer. Let’s reboot the printer, and the computer, wait ten minutes, turn them back on. Check there are no files spooled and waiting. Print something. Out comes: Page A. Now this, surely, is physically impossible.*

The boss pops down to check how I’m getting along. “It’s borked,” I say. “It only ever prints copies of the first thing you told it to print. It’s useless. Look.” I repeat my last, failed, print request. It prints perfectly. Arse.

“Looks fine to me,” says the boss. “Put it in, and see if they have any problems.”

Of course, I know it’s never going to work now.

* or at least, extremely improbable, if you follow Sherlock Holmes’ philosophy.

Running down a corridor, chased by a big scary monster

In which we wonder what career choices someone had

Two thoughts about last Saturday’s Doctor Who.* Firstly: if your name’s Lazarus, and you become a scientist, you must feel completely stereotyped. “I’m going to have to invent some cunning way to cheat death,” you’d say to yourself, “otherwise everyone’s going to take the piss.”

Secondly: why is it that all shape-shifting multi-limbed reptilian monsters, on shifting back into human form, can never quite get the neck right? Every time they shift, there’s always something in the neck, or around the collar bone, or somewhere, that doesn’t quite snap back into place; they have to wiggle their neck like a chiropracter to get it all to fit together properly. You’d think they’d have learned by now.**

H says that when Doctor Who does this, it’s a “homage to the genre”. I say it’s a dodgy cliche.

* Yes, I think slowly.

** Incidentally, has anyone heard The Queen making that sort of neck-clicking noise? Tony Blair? George W Bush? Because if noone ever has, David Icke must definitely be talking rubbish!