| Monday, September 30, 2002 |
 | The tragedy of it is, Brooke's right. Thin-skinned, self-absorbed and pretentious pretty much covers me. Ah well, I suppose something has to.
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| Thursday, September 26, 2002 |
| From me, writing elsewhere, trying to explain something very, very important:
Ah, Ultra Magnus. Dear, dear Ultra Magnus.
There is not a single "it" about Ultra Magnus. There are many "its". I mean, the D00d turned into a car carrier! That means his entire self was oriented towards helping his injured or exhausted collleagues to get around. That takes a lot of humility, and a lot of goodwill.
Most of the issues around Ultra Magnus centre on his brief but ill-starred leadership of the Autobots, so let's just get that out of the way first. It is worth noting that he was clearly not born to the purple. Like Avon, he only ever wanted to stand near the sexy idologically committed leader bloke, and was utterly mortified when that proximity meant he actually had to take over his raggle-taggle band of idiosyncratic warriors.
Unlike Avon, his elevation to command came as a surprise, not just to him, but to everyone. His "Prime, I'm not worthy" was not low self-esteem (although he was plagued by it, another rare thing among Transformers and much to be admired), just self-knowledge.
Let's think of it like this. The Autobots have never needed a chain of command. It's just never been an issue. The Decepticons haven't managed to kill Optimus Prime in the better part of four million years of fighting. Who knew they were going to learn how to aim their guns now? Or that they would actually hurt? How many Autobots died that day? Six? Seven? My God, that's more than the fatalities of the previous million years! Everyone's in shock, and if Prime appointed Magnus to steady the ship, he knew what he was doing, dagnabbit.
Although I can see Springer in the Autobot City Bar later that day, drunkenly slurring, "What's he got that I haven't? I was actually *doing* stuff in the battle. I even got a catchy line. 'I've got better things to do today than die'. Whaddafuck more does Prime want?
"Oh yeah. I know. It's because Ultra Magnus is a truck, isn't it? Fucking truckism! What, so if Hot Rod turned into a van, we'd all have to make him leader? Oh yeah, that would be a great idea....frigginfrassinfuckin trucks."
So. Yes. It's hardly Magnus' fault that Prime made him leader. Anybody around that table could have said "Guys. Not wishing to speak ill of the dead or anything, but...well, he was delusional. He was raving. He was on the verge of death, for God's sake. He was thinking of a *different* Ultra Magnus. Why don't we hold a quick vote?"
Also, although he never wanted the position he finds himself thrust into, Ultra Magnus, unlike Avon who nances off to spend more time with his rock, didn't shirk that responsiblity. He wasn't afraid to make the tough decisions. He wasn't afraid to blow up three-quarters of the ship (and actually, Mr. Fancy Pants heckler, the Decepticons *would* have blown up all four quarters. I mean, you know, they did anyway, but it took them longer, and that counts for a lot). He died a hero, buying time for others to escape, still fighting even though he had been let down by the one thing that, as an Autobot, he had always been raised to believe in - the Matrix of Leadership (and/or Creation Matrix). The one thing you would certainly take the time to take out of somebody's body before jetting it off into space. Yes.
In the comics (that is, the things of beauty crafted by Simon Furman), Ultra Magnus' role is yet more nuanced. Plainly oppressed by the fact that his commanding officers are perpetually either killed, crippled or kidnapped into dark dimensions full of mind-sucking parasites, and the fact that every time he comes up against his opposite number he gets his arse handed to him (little realising that, whereas he is just a Transformer who works out, Galvatron is the living embodiment of the dark power of Cybertron's Dark Opposite, and twenty years' more technologically advanced, to boot), Ultra Magnus was increasingly crippled by self-loathing and insecurity, leading him to overachieve compulsively, on one occasion to the point of very nearly executing Optimus Prime himself (all right, that was a bit toss, but what balls it must have taken!).
Ultimately, his redemption was as complete as it was heroic. Having realised that he was trapped in an abusive relationship in which Galvatron beat him and he just came back for more, occasioning a complete nervous breakdown (and how often do you see a hundred-foot tall robot having a crisis of confidence?), some handy-dandy relationship counselling from Goldbug (who had his own problems with Buster Witwicky before the sellout turned hetero) helped him to face up to a) his mortality and b) the fact that he may be Galvatron's bitch, but even a bitch can bite. The subsequent hardcore, balls-to-the-wall, walk-out-that-door-just-turn-around-now-cos-you-ain't welcome-anymore knock-down drag-out I-depend-on-me slapfest ended with the two of them entombed in flash-frozen molten rock. Entombed...and yet strangely liberated.
So, yay Ultra Magnus, really. Besides, there weren't many gay Transformers out there to provide positive role models. In fact, if there had been a few more happily out Transformers, Magnus may well have been a lot more freewheeling. Who knows?
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| Wednesday, September 25, 2002 |
| A little over a year ago, Matt was tellling me that Dr. Barnado's was a charity for kids too fucking horrible even for their own parents to love them. That and how it felt to have a cock in your mouth for just slightly too long. Actually, that was probably Katy's fault. Anyway, point being, it was happening a year ago, and today Matt sent me an email saying "so what was that thing too horrible to share on the Internet we were discussing?"
And do you know what? I couldn't remember.
I must be getting old - post later on the birthday weekend that actually ran some of my other birthday weekends close in the sheer insanity department.
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| Monday, September 23, 2002 |
| I love things like this. Puzzles. Mysteries. Reminders that, for all our interminable computing power and tedious storehouse of knowledge, the human race doesn't even know very much about the human race. Most importantly, archeologists making absolute arses of themselves.
There's always been a bit of needle between classicists and archeologists. We've just finished speculating romantically on these pottery shards and they come along and stick them together, which seems unnecessary. It also means that one has to form an interpretation, which coudl be wrong, rather than a sensation, which, if not right, is at least suitably dramatic.
Classics is the domain of frilly shirts, not tiny brushes, and don't you forget it.
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| Thursday, September 19, 2002 |
| Yay! I remember being terribly upset as a wee one by my failure to possess a computer cool enough to play Rygar. Well, damn it, the chickens are coming home to roost now, with Rygar: The Next Generation or somesuch. Oh yes. No more going over to my friend's house and watching forlornly as he plays Kokotoni Wilf on his shiny Spectrum (although my parents, bless them, did get a +2 later - yellow heroes ahoy!). I trust that Beatrice Collins will also at this point realise the error of her ways in failing to notice my devoted primary school bag-carrying, and will come over to make with the lovin'. Oh yeah.
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| Tuesday, September 17, 2002 |
| OK, so what if this 9:46 post is just a red herring, and Matt is still autoposting, but trying to convinvce us that he isn't? What if he has planned this all out? What if he has made his blog....self-aware?
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| On the bright side, as a dear old friend reminds me just how old I am, the world seems in so many ways a better place. I'm really warming to George Bush Jr. No, really. He's so cool. Having been thrown completely for a loop by Iraq's unconditional acceptance of weapons inspectors, expecting some qualification that would justify military action, he is now making noises, it seems, to the effect that if the UN accept that this, the thing that the US was demanding, is enough, and quail at removing a nation's head of state through military force, they are nought but a talking shop.
He has also made clear that he will not tolerate the use of "The World's Worst Weapons". Which is a bit worrying. I have some humous in the fridge. Used against an enemy, it will at best get on their clothes, and it actually washes off quite easily. If that turns out to be one of the world's worst weapons (and it is really very shit indeed), I am so screwed. I mean, even a haddock would smell and leave a greasy stain....
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| This, on the other hand, would make me throw it up. No reflection on how the egg MacMuffin might taste (although to describe it as a "hearty breakfast" sounds like the cry of the Sunny D generation), but the picture just looks like a trailer for "When scrotums go bad". Voiced by Greg Evigan.
Ben, flush with the rather shocking experience of being paid for an article the same day it went to print, insisted on breaking our mid-afternoon computer hunt to provide MacDonalds all round. They were surprisingly reassuring, although I did find the fact that meat and bread had about the same consistency and pretty much exactly the same taste a tad discombobulating...
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| If I drank dairy this would probably have made me squirt it out of my nose.
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| Monday, September 16, 2002 |
| Is it Neil Gaiman's one moment of self-knowledge? Or is it just a lying motherfucker?
And, speaking of simulations and reality, something that has come up in every conversation I have had with Anna in the last week, with growing fear and incredulity, is the whole "Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline" schtick. At the best of times, this is a moronic contention unless people have been born with some degenerative disease that makes their lips huge and scarlet. However, in the case of their diamond sparkle lip gloss, which has little sparkly bits suspended in the viscous ooze, this is particularly apalling. Nobody, but nobody, who is born with shiny, sparkly lips will last their first night on Earth.
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| I had a lovely moment with Damian when, in conversation, we realised that, all unknowing, we shared a postcode in Brighton.
And, speaking of postcodes - the fringes, in particular the East and South, are frequently a fine stopping-place for the young or low-powered professional in London. At the moment living South is doing me very well. Then again, I tend to shun staying in town past midnight, so I don't have to deal with the nightmare of the night bus except on special occasions or when I am specially silly. The longer you live somewhere, the more attuned the short hairs on the back of your neck become to how late you can leave it, as an index of how drunk you are and how much you are carrying, and still get home without undue beastliness. Like the endless algorithms of return that the pampered fauntleroys of North and West need never consider.
If I get off here and walk fast, given that I'm carrying too much to run, I stand a good chance of catching a train that will get me home in ten minutes. But if I miss it I will have missed the last tube, and will have to take train b to location and get a minicab. If I stay on the tube, I can get off at Elephant and Castle and take a nightbus, which will take a lot longer - maybe an hour - but will not take as long as the train-then-minicab option, and will not involve extra expense, which would involve itself a stop at a cashpoint, which would take five minutes.....
And so on. If the transport system of South London were rationalised, the huge mental capacity we had all been devoting to how to get to the Vauxhall Tavern would be liberated and world conquest only a matter of time. So where do you live, and why? Tell me.
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| Wednesday, September 11, 2002 |
| On September 11th a military coup, supported by the US, deposed and in all probability murdered President Allende of Chile, who had been made leader of his country despite his failure to command a majority of popular support. In his place was established the military Junta, led by General Pinochet, whose security teams, trained by the CIA, are alleged to have murdered 3197 people.
By a curious coincidence, President Bush of the USA, who has been made leader of his country despite his failure to command a majority of popular support, is currently planning to use military force to depose Saddam Hussein, a member of the Ba'ath party that seized power in a coup in 1968. Although Hussein has murdered thousands of his own people, the bone of contention is his potential capacity to employ weapons of mass destruction, using components sold to him by, among others, the US. The sanctions intended to compel him to dismantle these weapons of mass destruction were a grievance cited by Osama bin Laden after his agents crashed a series of planes into The World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the US, killing around 3,000 people, on September 11th.
I just don't know....I'm not a big fan of large numbers of people dying. Or indeed Saddam Hussein. In general, I think Saddam Hussein is a Very Bad Thing. I would rather we did not have a Saddam Hussein problem. But I can't shake the feeling that getting rid of him this way is probably not going to be very productive in the long run.
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| i was in bed asleep when the phone rang and the machine picked up. it was my sister rozy leaving a message, wanting to know if i was here in los angeles or away in new york. half awake, i could tell she was upset by the sound in her voice, it was that same sound in her voice that i remembered from when she called to tell me about the northridge earthquake in ‘94. my heart started to pound as i got out of bed to call rozy back, but before i could dial her number, the phone rang again. this time it was my friend molly in atlanta, calling to find out where i was. when she told me what had happened, my eyes began to well up with tears. was i still dreaming ? was this some kind of fucked up nightmare ? just then i heard someone banging on my front door. when i looked out the window and saw the look on pj’s face, i knew this was no dream. we turned on the television just moments after the other airplane hit the second tower. joelle arrived at my house minutes later, and we three new yorkers watched in horror as the real end of the twentieth century came to a crashing halt, live on GOOD MORNING AMERICA.
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| Tuesday, September 10, 2002 |
| Via Prandial, the 9/11 commemoration trade gets a rightly-deserved kicking at the Ground Zero Theme Park. I remember stting in a hotel room in Boston in December of last year, channel-hopping, and coming across an advert for commemorative plates depicting plane impacting on tower, crying fireman, and so on. It just seemed such a very strange way to react to the worst terrorist atrocity to have struck your country ever...rush out the commerorative plate set, with the gold border around the rim. The only thing stranger, in fact, being the market demand that was presumably being addressed.
In the face of this unfamiliar horror a desire for bloody vengeance was, if not necessarily healthy, entirely understandable. A desire for presentation crockery? Not so much.
Today feels strange - as if it's the bow wave of something bad. At 10 to 9, the tube running through the Square Mile had seats to spare. I don't think I've ever seen that before. Personally, I'm hoping for a massive sense of anticlimax as the week progresses.
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| Monday, September 09, 2002 |
| The comment section of this post is enormously entertaining, in a snarly puppy sort of way.
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| Think of it as the equivalent of wearing a low-cut top and a Wonderbra, only for ugly clever people. Not sure if it gets you laid, but hey.
Jamie adumbrates the importance of the crossword, and in particular the apex of pyrgic puzzlement that is the Times One in today's fresh new Upsideclown; it's probably funnier if you know that we went to college with Henry Bokenham, and the name has not just been cobbled together from the letters in a collection of rude words. We were also at college with a John Fullalove, but that's an exceptionally different story.
Meanwhile, good stuff going on at the Upsideclone, as Kevan begins the fightback.
My walkman plays from a thin band of white noise between stations, blocking out the background conversations, discouraging even eye-contact. Mornings are always the worst, rush-hour commuters being the most captive audience you can get. It used to be laughably unsubtle, like sitting through a bad faux-vox-pop advert from the old days ("Mmmm, these taste just like strawberries and cream!"), but natural selection has whittled it down to subtlety and implication. A comment on your model of mobile phone, your brand of cigarette, your overlong glance at a Tube poster, and before you know where you are, you've been handed a new opinion.
The Campaign for Real Advertising is so on.
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| Wednesday, September 04, 2002 |
| I hate myself for doing this on one level, but if you are going to look with wonder upon how many of your peers are unable to write good English, you should probably avoid a) using "amount" to describe a fraction or portion of a group rather than a total quantity, b) saying "either who can't spell or string a coherent, well-structured paragraph", which of course means that they either cannot spell or make a habit of stringing together coherent well-structured et cetera, c) using "it" to denote "an inability to use language" rather than "producing good written language", which it refers back to directly, or d) interchanging the plural pronoun "they" with the singular "one". And I'm not sure about the hyphen either.
This is a continuing quest for egalitarianism and mutual respect in a tough world.
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| And speaking of nostalgia, and throwing our minds back to the scary scary list of animated sexpots, which is becoming more rather than less scary as I find myself remembering having the warm fuzzies for more and more cartoon characters in my childhood, let's tee up another shaming confession. This time, as we take a walk back to my deeply fucked-up childhood, let us stop and gaze upon the vision of loveliness that was Princess.
Ah, Princess. Don't be fooled by the sober threads; essentially, Jun was all about the flares. As a wee young thing growing up in East Bergholt (where the only fashion snobbery generally available was limited to wellington boots), those candy-striped trousers, tight at the thigh and flared at the knee, combined with the minimalist thrill of a numbered longsleeve T struck me as impossibly cool. Combine that with the insanely long neck, the huge eyes, the hair that pooled and spread at the neck like Morticia Addam's hemlines and, of course, the ninja skills, and she was a prime target for preadolescent affections. Although the ridiculous pink minidress and absurd visor would have put paid at least to my Gatchaman fantasies. Maybe if Jason were free...
Some people, of course, like the bird outfit. Some people are the devil.
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| Tuesday, September 03, 2002 |
| Joe on the last throes of a giant. At a time when Transformers, Thundercats and Battle of the Planets are being dug up and reissued, it's strangely comforting to see an icon of my youth, if my rather later youth, being put out to pasture rather than revived.
I'd certainly rather have Catatonia still around and Ultra Magnus (heroically struggling with his sexuality in an intolerant culture) not selling cars, though. What next? Optimus Prime sexing up the Churchill Insurance dog?
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. Except you, sex-puppy. Nod harder!"
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| Getting the ladies the Ricardo-Montalban-as-Khan way. This method may have little to recommend it, but it beats the shit out of seduction Red Skull stylee, which primarily involves flirting with your daughter while sitting at a piano. And simultaneously adoring and hating the villainy-frustrating deliciousness of Hostess Cream Pies, of course.
Yes, my children, there was a film of Captain America, and if memory serves Ricardo Montalban played the Red Skull, although he appears to have used one of those sexy mind-control worms from The Wrath of Khan to get his name taken off the credits. And very wise too; it's probably as a result of this sack of arse that Matt Salinger rarely even gets a role with a surname, and Bill Mumy ended up wearing his ears around his fucking neck. Plus, I have a nasty feeling that he may have written his own IMDB bio. He'd better have - otherwise there is a very, very scary man somewhere out there.
The real tragedy, however, is that J.D. Salinger was probably up for coming out of hiding, smelling the roses and doing a few interviews, when his son phoned up and gleefully said, "Dad, I know you've had your doubts about my wish to be an actor, and I know the first seventeen years haven't been the easiest, but wait 'till you hear what a plum part I've lined up! And I get to play alongisde Ned Beatty! Hey, maybe in a year's time people will be calling you "father of Matt Salinger", huh? Huh? Huh?"
And that, gentle reader, was that.
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