| Tuesday, July 29, 2003 |
 | And continuing our journey into the dark heart of geek - it seems that the gears continue to grind on the Blakes 7 revival project. They even have a website this time around, although the reportage seems not to be stressing too vigorously that this whole thing is not a fait accompli, but an attempt to drum up funds for the project. Not that there's anything wrong with that, obviously. This does have the potential to suck astonishingly badly, but at least the logo's nice. The idea of a gritty, Wild Bunch in Space, as opposed to gigantic space opera played out on one set interspersed with Servalan being just fabulous. If only they could guarantee that the new, gritty movie would begin with the following exchange:
Rebel 1: Well, lucky we managed to target the neutron blasters at that live volcano before the
entire Galactic Fifth Fleet detected our heat signature.
Avon (for it is he): Well, quite. Anyone got any booze?
followed by forty-five minutes of bitching at each other, at least it would show willing.
Meanwhile, to round off tonight's geekfest and high-bandwidth fun:
Sweary Gollum
Alias: the lost episode
The Matrix: Second Serve
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| Sunday, July 27, 2003 |
| Meanwhile, since I may be in it for a microsecond, I've taken something of an interest in Mirror Mask, Henson, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Labyrinth meets Neverwhere project. It remains poised conceptually between being the best idea and the worst idea ever. Obviously, Gina McKee's addition to the cast is a major stroke in the win column. After all, a connection to Lair of the White Worm, arguably the greatest moment in the history of British film, is vital for this sort of work, and if you can't get Peter Capaldi to put on a nightshirt and call himself Islington again Gina is probably your best bet.
This is lined up at present for a straight-to-video release, but apparently it was received terribly enthusiastically as an idea at geek Meccah Comic-Con and a theatrical release may thus be in the wind. Mind you, these very same people apparently came in a single, unstoppable wave of geekspunk at the sight of the hilarious Batman: Dead End, site of some of the worst dialogue to be crammed into eight minutes since Attack of the Clones on fast-wind, so I wouldn't start polishing your ibis heads just yet.
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| Right. Ducks. I was off to the pub after work with some colleagues (and this is a getting on for a fortnight ago now - what it is to have a proper job) when, mirabile dictu, we saw a line of ducks wandering along a road tucked just behind Vauxhall Bridge. More precisely, a mother duck and a string of ducklings. Ducklings are cuteness fuel-air bombs, and for a moment I was simply transfixed by how sweet they look. This is surely not an effective defence mechanism. Certainly, it might not be said to be car-proof, and things looked a little bleak.
But, driven on by the sheer loveliness of the tiny cluckers, London sprang into action to defend them. Somebody blocked the road with their car to prevent oncoming traffic pizzaing them, and somebody else , in a triumph for the formal office, used his suit jacket as an impromptu toreador's cape, sweeping the rather disgruntled mother duck away from her chosen path (smack into one of the busiest roads in London) and up a sidestreet, where I called the RSPCA on my mobile. I've never seen such a spontaneous coming-together of basic decency in all my years in the big city, and I rather feel that these same people would have stepped over a tramp unconscious in the gutter, but it's a start.
On the way back from the pub we passed the same way - the ducks appeared to have moved to the roof of an apartment building, or their father had sought high ground, the better to hunt for them. A mallard made his way towards the John Lewis building. I can only assume that some experiment involving the sudden generation of an awful lot of ducks had taken place nearby.
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| Thursday, July 24, 2003 |
| I keep trying to make a post about ducks, and it never seems quite to come off. Does God hate ducks?
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| Wednesday, July 16, 2003 |
| So, here's a funny old thing. I received an email today from somebody by the name of Colin, which expressed the comment that he had just found my website, and that he read Ancient Greek, but did not speak it. He commented that this did not seem a likely or a useful skill, as it is rarely spoken these days. He should try getting a snog in a university town sometime....
Nonetheless. This seems perfectly sensible, and a post about who speaks Ancient Greek these days is absolutely the sort of thing that I might find myself posting about. And yet. And yet.
I can't for the life of me think of a single comment to which that might be a relevant answer. It's *ver* strange... If you're out there, Colin, help a brother out.
Or is this the most recondite piece of spam in history?
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| Tuesday, July 08, 2003 |
| So, I may apppear to be stuck on religion at present, but on the way to the station this afternoon I passed a rather depressed-looking young woman handing out pamphlets for Jews for Jesus. I didn't get offered a leaflet, and suddenly found myself wondering why not. Was I too far away, or did I just not look Jewish? What happens if the Jews for Jesus proselytise somebody who is in fact a gentile? Would they be able to bring them into the fold, or would they have to pass you on to a qualified Christian nutjob? I love the idea of one station concourse evangelist buttonholing another and asking if he could possibly take this one off her hands...
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| Monday, July 07, 2003 |
| So, let's have a look at some of the shitwits who would celebrate what is either a retirement in disgust by Jeffrey John or a hideous and potentially eviscerating failure of nerve by Rowan Williams.
The Bishop of Carlisle is a fucking moron.
Interesting point here about the question of why the church is so quick to condemn, say, Glenn Hoddle, while happily putting the boot in on homosexuals. Answer? Because the church is an inconsistent beast. And riddled with hypocrisy. Why the rules on women and the uncircumcised need to be quietly shuffled away while we cleave so firmly to largely non-existent biblical strictures against men lying with men? Because the pigeon-chested little wankers who were bullied mercilessly for their weird smell and mad eyes probably learned long before they found their vocations that the only way to stop the mocking voices was to find a new scapegoat.
Other low church idiots are, of course, the audience of the Left Behind books. The heroes of which are so comically stupid that they cannot work out until he actually slips in the pointy teeth that the Antichrist is the bloke called Nicolae Spunking Carpathia. The bigwig at the United Nations.
What more did they want? A T-shirt saying "Dude, I'm the Antichrist"?
Meanwhile, check these guys out. Flash animations about the iniquities of the Catholic church. What Saint Teresa didn't tell me was that I was about to be sacrificed on the altar of whoredom. I know, they're mentally ill. But they're lovin' it.
This the far end of the movement that sends shit to the Bishop of Edmonton for praising Canon John's abilities, and has its origin in the respectable, decorously potty little hatemongery that seem to have generated rather more light and heat than I suspect the number involved actually justified, although driving decent, thinking people away from the church by giving in to it will redress that soon enough.
I'm not happy. That's all I'm saying.
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| Sunday, July 06, 2003 |
| Oh, you stupid fucking bastards. You stupid, stupid, bastards.
Well, Canon Jeffrey John has decided not to take up his position as Bishop of Reading. Having had his personal life rooted through, his sex life examined, a series of inquiries made into just what he might do with his penis and a miasma of innuendo and abuse raised up around him that is unlikely to disperse for the rest of his career in the Church of England.
Would John have made a good bishop? I have no idea. His suitability to be the Bishop of Reading, his relationship with the diocese, his assiduity and ability to handle the step up - not one of these was allowed to detain the stampede towards his sexual activities, or lack thereof, for more than a moment. I imagine that Oxford and Canterbury had their reasons to believe he might not do a bad job. Who knows?
What I do know is that if you are a member of the Church of England wishing to do the best for your gay colleague, the thing to do is never to mention his name. Certainly don't put him forward for a promotion. Or, before you know it, extremists will be decrying him as an abomination and demanding to know details of his sex life that a male vicar with a female partner would be unlikely to be quizzed about.
The levels of hypocrisy here are like onionskin. Of course, on one level there is the sheer insanity of the fact that, were every gay man in the Church of England to be purged, the entire instituion would, if anecdote, rumour and supposition have any strength, collapse overnight. But that is a side-issue, really - no more hypocritical than coke-snorting journalists reporting in shock and dismay the drug abuse of their quarries.
More clearly and more desperately, what we have here is members of a church notionally based on creeds of universal love, forgiveness and redemption realising that, when the moment is right and the prey sufficiently unprotected, they can have a really good turn at kicking the queer without having to worry about any possible repercussions, or to believe themselves in any way compelled to scrutinise the morality of their actions.
Thus Richard Ingrams has rather mised the point in his latest determined assault on his own credibility here. Leaving aside the suitability of the cases of Hodge and John for comparison as the random sparkings of a mind on a deadline, it seems clear that this is not a case of the Church of England foundering by attempting to dilute its creed in support of the young. Gay clergy, even in all likelihood gay bishops, have a proud anecdotal existence in the history of the Church of England. He is at least correct in identifying the importance of Canon John being a self-confessed homosexual, that is somebody not attempting to deceive himself or God. If he (John, rather than Ingrams) had only married and either gone into a self-flagellating pose of denial, or struck up an understanding with his wife, none of this awkwardness would have ensued. It is his temerity in assuming that love is universally a good thing and a cause for celebration that has doomed him. So, an attempt to appeal to the youth by diluting creed hardly seems to be the issue. The issue is that a tolerant, albeit highly traditional and arguably hidebound church, with some younger liberal elements and a modernising tendency that sees greater inclusivity as vital to the future of the institution, has found itself caught before the guns of a group of wealthy and voluble hard-liners and evangelicals (many of them perfectly youthful, thanks, Richard) who believe themselves to be defending the one universal right of the devout; the right to believe oneself better than whomever one might wish.
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| Thursday, July 03, 2003 |
| Of course, Tim, brave, brave Tim went down for the third time today, to the general surprise of absolutely nobody. Which is a shame, as I was hoping to capitalise on his unexpected, and miraculous on a quantum level, triumph at Wimbledon by commiting to celluloid a remake of 28 Days Later, but with....Henmania.
Oh yes.
Just imagine the lowering waves of humanity, sweeping forward from Henman Hill very slowly and politely, occasionally moaning "Come on, Tim!". It's a hideous vision of an all-too-possible future.
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