When Two Sides Go To War
by botherer on Apr.09, 2008, under The Rest
Potential polarising sides for the next world war:
1. Right Handers Vs. Left Handers
2. Vegetarians Vs. Omnivores
3. Scrunchers Vs. Folders
Results:
1. Oddly, the Lefties. You’d think sheer force of numbers would win it for the North Paws, but all those so-called products for left-handed people? Scissors, corkscrews, anti-tank missiles? All secret war weapons in disguise. They’re plotting, people.
2. More obvious this time, as the Omnivores win. Not only because the Veggies will all start going pale and begging for a vitamen pill about ten minutes in, but because the right-minded Omnis will bite them with their canines designed for tearing flesh.
3. I think this one’s the most likely. It’s that bubbling undercurrent of hatred that lies beneath every society, every culture, every race, sex, age, class. Those who scrunch the toilet paper. Those who fold the toilet paper. The hate is in place. The difference insummountable. The day will come.
Brain Gym: Flipping Out
by John Walker on Apr.03, 2008, under Rants
Ben Goldacre points out a wonderful moment in last night’s Newsnight, where Paxman introduces a clip about “Brain Gym“. This is some utter bilge being taught in primary schools where children are encouraged to wave their arms around in such a way that the electrical circuits in their bodies connect balancing the left and right halves of their brains… Oh good grief.
You can watch the clip by following this link, which you really ought to. It starts about 21.30, unless you’re Stuart Campbell, and then it starts last Tuesday.
What I most want to share is the interview with the inventor of Brain Gym after the report, in which Paxman is at his sneery best.
Paxman: You say in your teachers’ manual here when you talk about hook-ups that they connect the electrical circuits in the body. What exactly are these electrical circuits please?
Paul Dennison: Well it’s my opinion that we are electrical, that we do have circuits and connections, and when we bring our energy to the midline, to the central point, we are breaking out of the reflex to go from one side or the other to bring things back to the centre where we can be calm and relaxed.
Pax: You say that it’s your opinion that we are electrical, Mr Denison. Are you medically qualified?
PD: No, I’m not medically qualified. I’m an educator. But I study and read and uh. The uh. There are studies to show that we do have electrical… acupuncture and other procedures are based on the fact that there are electrical circuits in the body. And we are building on the shoulders of these people who have been doing these things for thousands of years.
Pax: Is the fact that you’re not medically qualified explanation enough for statements in this teachers’ manual of the kind that “processed foods do not contain water”, which you know is apparent nonsense.
PD: Uh… So the… We’re interested in helping children and these things work and we explain them the best we can and we are going to edit the manual and rewrite it and we appreciate your help and helping us point these things out. [obscured by Paxman] to the best of my ability to help children and help teachers have a context to why they are doing the movements.
Pax: But if your manual can contain idiotic statements like that, is there any reason to believe anything else in it?
PD: I do believe those statements are true and I will prove…
Pax: You believe processed food contains no water do you?
PD: I had a context for that statement meaning that pure water is more immediately active and available to the brain and that I’m not attached to either, but that was the explanation I had at the time.
Glad that’s being taught in schools then!
Hell’s Back!
by botherer on Apr.02, 2008, under Television
There’s often discussion over which is the better show out of Bravo’s Top Chef, and Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen.
The former takes respectable chefs and puts them through some peculiarly low, er, fashion (to compare with Project Runway) tasks in a friendly environment. Then there’s Hell’s Kitchen’s collection of novelty humans, taking part in enormously complex challenges in the most hostile environment imaginable.
But there’s a simple way to separate the two, and that’s to describe how the fourth season of Hell’s Kitchen began last night:
We get a resume of the previous three seasons, the regular voice-over guy narrating the events as if in a horror movie. This finishes with Ramsey standing in the kitchen, lit in purples and reds, a skull flickering on and off his face, and the voiceover booms,
“AND THE DARK LORD REIGNS AGAIN”
Right, that’s all you need really. But it gets better. The contestents gather and get onto a bus. Joining them, in prosthetic make up, is Ramsey pretending to be a contestant. Why? Because it will frighten them more when they find out.
Top Chef is obviously a nicer show, but you couldn’t trust the winner with a significant restaurant. They learn very little, and there’s rarely a sense of progress. The ones who are good at the start are good at the end. So it’s not surprising that the prizes don’t take any risks – some money, a stall at a show, etc. For the new Hell’s Kitchen the winner will be executive chef at Ramsey’s new “London” in LA. That’s a giant risk, especially with Ramsey’s restaurants having so many problems at the moment. So this will be a process of breaking them down, cracking those that will crack, and building up any who prove strong enough. The difference by the end is remarkable.
Anyway, I only brought you here today to say: He wore prosthetic make up, and they said, “AND THE DARK LORD REIGNS AGAIN”.
Pointless Lying Day
by John Walker on Apr.01, 2008, under Rants
I detest April Fool’s Day. It’s a vile and stupid tradition that essentially boils down to, “Telling Slightly Plausible Lies Day”, rendering all news sources utterly useless, and entirely contrary to their purpose.
“HA HA! I wrote something that could be true but isn’t, and YOU believed it!”
Yeah, er, well done. That’s lying. You’re a liar. Shut up and go away.
However, it seems I can be swayed by good CGI. Screw you, BBC, that’s quite good.
(I also don’t mind that the two decent cartoon sites (and Questionable Snoretent) have mucked their URLs about – that’s not lying, just being daft).
Next
by botherer on Mar.31, 2008, under The Rest
My life, if plotted on a graph, would reveal a series of whims. It would indeed be an esoteric graph, capable of displaying such ethereal concepts. Overall, it’s a very clever graph. But that’s not the point. The point is the whims it so clearly reveals.
I’ve whimmed my way through a bunch of ideas, peculiar and different, eventually settling on two key whims: journalism and youth work. I’ve been astonishingly fortunate to have both these tumbled-into worlds work out for me, albeit with youth work on the back-burner (ie. ignored) for the last two or three years.
Point is, when I get a new idea, history says I tend to go ahead with it, and see where I end up. I was tempted to write, “throw myself at it,” there, but that would be a terrible lie. It’s more a lackadaisical stumbling, sourced partly in laziness and partly in arrogance. Is arrogance the right word? Maybe it’s naive confidence. A sort of peculiar assumption that I’ll be able to make something of it, probably. (I’m intrigued by the sense of internal conflict this statement creates, confusing me with an inherent lack of self-esteem somehow combined with an inherent assumption that I’ll be good at something. Boy, blogs really are for the wanky, aren’t they?)
There is a reason for this. I think I’m on the way to my next stumble. I’ve been thinking about this 826 thing, talking about it, and finding myself crying whenever I try to explain it. (That last part: very weird. Also awkward when you’re in a coffee shop, trying to have a conversation). So I figured, using my keen, analytical mind, that I should probably look deeper into it all. I emailed the 826 people to ask if there were any information packs, material, etc, that could help me in giving the matter more thought. They replied telling me that the project’s founders, Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari, are doing a one-day seminar in San Francisco this April.
So, well, I’m going. After approximately half an hour’s thought. This is thanks in part due to the… let’s go with “providence” for now… of being told that I’m owed a bunch of money by Future that I should have been paid in December, and thanks (such big thanks) to my parents being willing to help fund my whimming, even at the age of 30. Flights are booked, hotel is awaiting confirmation, and I’ll be going to SF for three nights (any shorter and the cost of the flights goes from £356 to £1456 – the extra day seemed sensible at that point), to meet the creators of the project I’m increasingly convinced could work in Bath.
I love life in whim form. I mean love. I’m so ludicrously blessed to get away with it, and while it’s meant I’ve never had any financial security, nor perhaps respect from people who wear ties, it means I reflect on the last ten years and don’t feel any significant regrets.
Merry Easter
by botherer on Mar.23, 2008, under The Rest
So John, what’s up with you?
How kind of you to ask. I’ll tell you.
Life’s changed a bit of late. And I get a strong feeling it’s going to keep changing really rather a lot. My brain’s been in a bit of a sleepy rut for a couple of years, and appears to be waking up again. Which proves a positive experience.
A rather huge part of this is involving myself in a church for the first time in a long time. An unpleasant time at the church I worked for until nearly three years ago left me pretty bitter, and pretty unforgiving. This in turn led to a peculiar hardening of my faith, which petrified into a primarily intellectual, and fairly redundant rock. With this, my passion faded: passion for almost everything. I’ve always been, and for the foreseeable future will always be, a hefty ranter. But what made such exercised moments worthwhile was the passion behind them, rather than the mindless anger that replaced it. Angry rocks aren’t very good at much. I disappeared up inside my own anxiety, and haven’t been the most enthusiastic friend to many.
I’ve not been completely shit. I’m a decent enough person. But I think even friends who would rather I minced myself headfirst than was involved in Christianity will agree I’ve faded. I guess I’ve learned two aspects of myself: What matters when it’s gone, and what I suck at when I try to do it on my own. So what’s this, this overtly personal post on a public blog? It’s a form of confession. It’s a declaration of intent. It’s a deeply embarrassing thing to write to someone who Googled my name after disagreeing with a review in PC Gamer.
Ok, so two topics.
1) Church
Give me a millennia, and I’ll give you a lecture on everything that’s wrong with church. But tell me to shut up and stop being such a moron and I might listen for long enough to remember everything that’s right about it. However, one lament that I’ve always had, and is probably even valid, would be my frustration at the mediocrity of the teaching. I wish to be challenged, to be charged to think. Not reassured and patronised. I have been phenomenally fortunate and found a church (thanks entirely to Jo) where the teaching is just fantastic. Theological, intelligent, difficult, and set in reality. This is doubled by the remarkably warm and welcoming nature of the place. There ARE decent churches out there. This is my message to the world.
2) The Future
So, I have this first class honours degree. It’s in Youth And Community Work & Applied Theology. I really haven’t done anything with it. I haven’t really known what to do with it. I still don’t know. But I’ve always had one passion, one idea I know with a certainty is a good one, and one I really should get on with. A phenomenon of this country is that we offer nothing for teenagers to do after school. I mean nothing. The immediate face of this problem are the media and parliament’s favourite complaint: “youths”. Hanging around outside our Spars, scaring the elderly with their hoods. But these are the groups that are addressed, and joyously so. Projects, as few and under-funded as they are, exist. People are noticing. But there’s a group that aren’t noticed. The kids who aren’t upsetting the neighbours or nicking the KitKats. To have a heart for these young people is remarkably unapproved of. They’re rich and comfortable and fine! Some are. But they’re also bored out of their brains, living in a cycle of school, homework and school again. These teenagers have powerful minds that we utterly ignore. Others aren’t, and they’re struggling, and we won’t step in to support them until they’ve cross the dangerous lines. I have a passion for these people – PEOPLE – who deserve attention.
Something I’ve always wanted to create is an after-school space for young people to hang out in, with one key phrase to define its tone: “A place where young people feel safe enough to do their homework.” It’s an odd phrase, but for me it’s always defined what I’m after. So every time I read or see anything about Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia project – a San Fransisco based after-school programme for local high school kids where they can do their homework with one-to-one supervision – it calls to me like a beacon. He’s figured it out. He’s created that space.
I think the same is possible here.
Below is a video of a lecture Eggers gave to the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference after he won the TED Prize. It explains 826 from inception to its current state as a project that’s appearing all over the States, and is associated with many similar enterprises. (I’ve been to the one in Chicago, The Boring Store, and took many photographs).
Obama: Sounds A Bit Like A President Should
by botherer on Mar.19, 2008, under The Rest
In reply, Hillary Clinton donned blackface and hid her clan cloak.
Eli Stone
by botherer on Mar.14, 2008, under Television
I LOVE Eli Stone. I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff wrong with it, but it doesn’t make any impact of 42 minutes of just lovely television.
Concept: A lawyer develops an aneurysm and starts seeing visions – visions that turn out to be prophetic. He had been a very successful young attorney, working for a large law firm that deals with big money cases. Stone won on behalf of the corporations, and won well. But the visions directly challenged this position.
Part of the joy of the programme is the nature of the visions. It begins with George Michael performing live in his living room. Then other people start singing Michael songs, with accompanying dances. Then he’s in World War 2, hiding in bunkers. Or at the beach. Or being chased by a dragon. As each vision finishes we see Stone in a compromising position, whether it’s hiding under the table in a board meeting, or dancing in the middle of the firm’s foyer. Unlike nearly every show ever, he doesn’t get away with this. Sam Beckett talked to an invisible Al for nearly a decade without being sectioned. Eli gets more than weird looks – he instead has to fight to keep his job after he’s nearly disbarred.
He has one believing confident – despite openly telling his now-ex-fiance and his brother – which is unfortunately his acupuncturist. In a rather lame plot device, he need only have a needle tapped into his forehead and he travels back into his childhood to recall moments of his father having similar visions (but in his case, accompanied by alcoholism). Pleasingly, the acupuncturist all but admits he’s a fraud, with a fake accent for his other clients, and a seeming surprise that the needles help. He’s also the person who suggests to Eli that he’s likely a prophet, and draws the connections with God’s involvement.
It really isn’t a stand-out show. It doesn’t have a brilliant script, and while the cast are all excellent, it isn’t mindblowing acting. Visually it’s the pastel colours of a daytime hospital drama. But it’s just lovely. Early on Eli is warned that he’s not going to win every case, and he doesn’t. He wins a lot because he’s incredibly good, and rather because he’s being guided by the Almighty, which is something of an advantage. But often when he loses it’s because he realises he’s fighting for the wrong side. It’s cheesy, sure, but dammit, it’s a show about fighting for what’s good and right, and that’s a great thing to watch between episodes of The Wire and Dexter.
Freakish-Handed Child
by John Walker on Mar.14, 2008, under Photos
I took these pictures ages ago, and then completely forgot about them.
I was in town with my sister, and she was paying for parking. I took the opportunity to put my gloves on my nephew, Wil, and then laughed until I hurt. Crappy phone pics, but click on them for a larger version. It’s officially the funniest thing ever.
Lewis Black’s The Root Of All Evil
by botherer on Mar.13, 2008, under Television
Lewis Black is a funny guy… the first time you see him do the material. The second time, on a different show/CD/DVD, it’s ok. The third time, you begin to realise he’s a man who shouts a lot without much to say. The weather’s messed up you say Lewis? Yes – you were shouting that a decade ago, with the exact same words. (Kim is so going to kill me for Black hating). So, he’s got a new show, which is, and you can just hear the meeting at Comedy Central, Lewis Black complaining about things. “You know my stand up act I’ve done on your station for the last decade? I want to do it again, but stretched out to half an hour, with guests.”
The concept is awkward, but not inherently bad. Black is the judge of a nonsensical battle to find out which of two subjects are the “root of all evil”. Guest comics present the argument for why their subject is said root in the form of stand up/pre-recorded VT. It’s a neat way to get topical comedy into a half-hour format. Except, on your launch show, maybe the subjects Oprah vs. the Catholic church are a tiny little bit miserably tired and obvious.
Oprah? OPRAH? Is it 1992? And not some new insightful commentary on recent actions, but that she’s fat, and gives away cars. The Catholic church? What could it be?!! Shockingly, “boy fucking” and having tortured people hundreds of years ago. Yes – medieval topical comedy!
Except of course this is Comedy Central – a channel that so desperately wants to be free, but is rammed so far up Viacom’s backside that it bleeps out the word “ass”. So it’s not jokes about “boy fucking”, but about “boy BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP”, screeching far more offensively than any curse word ever could. If you have an FCC-based system where you’re not allowed to swear, then for crying out loud, don’t swear. Add The Root Of All Evil to The Daily Show for programmes that make you think you’ve got tinnitus.
So once Black’s shouted, joke-free opening monologue is over, the two comics perform their routines. Which is fine. The subjects are pathetic, but the material is reasonable. The highlight would be visiting a high school to ask the students whether they’d prefer a new iPod or a $46m school, after Oprah announced she would be building a school in South Africa because she believed the kids of America would rather the toys. Her stupidity was pleasingly highlighted as the inner-city high school kids all picked the school.
But then, halfway through, the format takes over. Black goes back and forth between the two comics asking them to defend their positions, in a horribly over-rehearsed and under-written sequence, that descends desperately to crappy puns. From there on there’s no reason left to watch, as the prescribed banter reads itself out loud until the credits roll. Of course Oprah is the greater evil over the Catholic church, because, er, she’s fat?
It’s a Comedy Central love-in, and reeks of long-term contracts that needed a show to justify them. Perhaps if they can find some topics to cover that aren’t between 2000 and 20 years out of date, it may fare better.