So it's all kicking off at the moment. Radiohead have caused the music industry a collective heart attack by letting fans decide how much to pay for their new album; Sonic has crashed headlong into Super Smash Bros. Brawl, allowing twentysomethings the world over a chance to settle the highly important "fast hedgehog versus athletic plumber" debate; and being fat is as dangerous as climate change.
In Rainbows, the offending album, is certainly a landmark release as far as the future of selling music goes, and it doesn't hurt that it's a damn good album too. I only downloaded it yesterday, and a Radiohead album is not something that can be fully appreciated in that amount of time, but so far I'd say it beats out Hail to the Thief and Amnesiac - whether it eventually finds itself even further up the echelons of excellence remains to be seen. And good lord that was a long and winding sentence.
It'd be interesting to find out the average price paid for it - I went for £7.99, the usual cost of a download from iTunes, although I forgot the 45p service charge so it actually cost me £8.44. (The service charge only comes in if you pay any money at all, so you can get it for free, but if you try to pay 1p you end up paying 46p instead.) I noted a guy on the BBC website saying he got it for free, but he doesn't like them and he was apparently trying to prove some sort of point (not quite sure what the point was, he confirmed that he didn't like the album and deleted it). The couple of friends I've spoken to both said they paid a tenner, so it looks like honesty may well pay off.
Arguably the most entertaining thing about the Smash Bros. excitement is that suddenly Sega's Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games has suddenly lost most of its raison d'étre. I've always been of the opinion that it's looked pretty good but not great, but then I've always had a soft spot for Track and Field-style games. And the brief videos of Sonic in Brawl immediately carry a lot more pizzaz than the whole of M&S (heh).
As for obesity, yes, it is certainly a problem now and will be a much bigger one very soon, but it's a ridiculous comparison to make. One affects one species in a few areas of the world (i.e. most of the developed countries and a few undeveloped ones too - I seem to recall that Samoa has the highest percentage of obese citizens) whereas the other affects every lifeform on the fucking planet (excuse my language, and yes I know there are reports of various species doing quite well out of the shifting climate, I'm striving for effect here). It makes me distinctly angry when people push global warming to one side like that.
In happier news (of a sort), I saw Pan's Labyrinth the other night and it was very good. Recommended.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Our work is never over
Meant to say this in the last post (apparently writing lengthy things straight on the Blogger word processor confuses and intimidates me and causes me to leave things out), but one area of realism in games I do approve of is physics. The best boss in the recently released Sonic Rush Adventure, hardly the most realistic game out there, is one that uses inertia to a degree of realism (it's a robot that dangles big spiky balls at you, and you have to hit the balls hard enough to cause them to swing back and slap him one).
Meanwhile, what I really wanted to show you was this.
(I just spent ten fruitless minutes trying to embed the video, but Youtube apparently does not like the concept of someone trying to highlight and copy the entire, lengthy embedding code, and only gave me the first bit. Then it wouldn't let me scroll onto the next bit of the code, so I couldn't copy it in chunks. If anyone has a solution that doesn't involve "throw computer out of window", "swear until you pass out" or "take plane to Youtube headquarters and beat the site programmers around the head and face with their own severed legs", I'd be grateful. Until then, here's a boring old link. I now have a headache.)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq--Nw
Meanwhile, what I really wanted to show you was this.
(I just spent ten fruitless minutes trying to embed the video, but Youtube apparently does not like the concept of someone trying to highlight and copy the entire, lengthy embedding code, and only gave me the first bit. Then it wouldn't let me scroll onto the next bit of the code, so I couldn't copy it in chunks. If anyone has a solution that doesn't involve "throw computer out of window", "swear until you pass out" or "take plane to Youtube headquarters and beat the site programmers around the head and face with their own severed legs", I'd be grateful. Until then, here's a boring old link. I now have a headache.)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq--Nw
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
When I push it, it falls over!
Anyone who's met me will be aware that my life basically revolves around five things:
- Books and comics
- Music
- Computer games
- Films
- All of the above
I'm on a particularly virulent gaming kick at the moment, and have been thinking about realism in games, fuelled by this article and a piece in this month's NGamer magazine.
My five favourite games of all time are NiGHTS Into Dreams..., Christmas NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force III and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Which is to say, games involving flying androgynous harlequins, dragons, bird-men, rock-men, centaurs, fairies, monsters, wendigos and a goblin in this really nifty steam-powered armour-robot-suit thing. (Admittedly if you didn't allow Christmas NiGHTS to the party because it's essentially a glorified demo disc my fifth game would be ultra-realistic talk-to-people-and-feed-a-kitten-'em-up Shenmue, but bear with me.) I tend toward the fantastical, the weird, the stuff that you can't actually do in the real world.
I enjoy realistic games - hello, Shenmue - but the thing is, quite apart from the fact they look a lot older a lot quicker than games that have no grounding in reality (boot up a Mega Drive and Sonic 1 has dated a hell of a lot better than Desert Strike), realistic games are almost always po-faced games. And that's rubbish.
I'm a firm supporter of UK Resistance's "Blue Skies in Games" campaign. I'll play Ultra-Gritty Super-Real Angry Marines Shoot People Or Maybe Some Aliens In The Face And/Or Proboscis 7 if it's any good, but given the choice between that and this:
...I know which looks more fun. They're called video "games" for a reason.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Words and maybe observation
Actually, I kind of wish I'd called my blog that now.
I'm back, and I have made some links. For your information - Scott Pilgrim: website for the second-best comic ever made (after Calvin and Hobbes); Mellenhead's Weblog: Mary's blog that I am digitally pimping in the hopes that she will return the favour; Homestar Runner - essential viewing for young and old; Dinosaur Comics - a comic about dinosaurs.
I caught a bit of a BBC London news report on this, and couldn't help but notice that the guy selling the stuff and saying "g'head, use it" did not use it himself.
On a totally unrelated note (I'm basically browsing BBC News because I can't think of anything to write about), I've just discovered that the South African version of Sesame Street has an HIV-positive Muppet to encourage kids not to shun people with the virus. I think that's several kinds of brilliant.
Yeah, I'm really drawing a blank here. Superdickery to the rescue!
I'm back, and I have made some links. For your information - Scott Pilgrim: website for the second-best comic ever made (after Calvin and Hobbes); Mellenhead's Weblog: Mary's blog that I am digitally pimping in the hopes that she will return the favour; Homestar Runner - essential viewing for young and old; Dinosaur Comics - a comic about dinosaurs.
I caught a bit of a BBC London news report on this, and couldn't help but notice that the guy selling the stuff and saying "g'head, use it" did not use it himself.
On a totally unrelated note (I'm basically browsing BBC News because I can't think of anything to write about), I've just discovered that the South African version of Sesame Street has an HIV-positive Muppet to encourage kids not to shun people with the virus. I think that's several kinds of brilliant.
Yeah, I'm really drawing a blank here. Superdickery to the rescue!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Spirited Away
Man, I don't post here for three months and stuff changes. I mean, honestly.
Right. Since these seems to have become something of a movie review blog, I thought I'd go the whole hog and do a bunch of 500-word reviews for my all-time favourite movies. And we start off with my very favourite of all:
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Starring: Rumi Hîragi/Daveigh Chase, Miyu Irino/Jason Marsden, Mari Natsuki/ Suzanne Pleshette, Yumi Tamai/Susan Egan (voices)
Country: Japan
Year: 2001
The first time I saw Spirited Away my mouth hung slightly open in astonishment the entire time. Spoilt ten-year-old Chihiro’s (Hîragi/Chase) rite-of-passage in a fantasy land that plays out like Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter and company replaced by Shinto gods and the Queen of Hearts’ castle by a vast bathhouse that serves these gods is so, so brilliant – epic and intimate, dramatic and calm, funny and scary, alien and universal. It deals just as well with big set-pieces (Chihiro defending a dragon from a swarm of enchanted origami birds) as with low-key character moments (a tired, hungry, bewildered Chihiro sitting in a flower field, wolfing down breakfast as tears pour down her face). This balancing act continues through the characterisation – as is typical of most of Miyazaki’s screenplays, no-one is exclusively good or evil (Yubaba dearly loves her baby son Boh, even if she doesn’t always express it well; Haku, her reluctant apprentice who helps Chihiro, abandons her completely early in the movie when he has to feign ignorance of her, rather than acting cold when necessary and reassuring her when safely away from prying eyes), which makes the baffling spirit world sometimes seem very realistic.
You’ve no doubt noticed that I’ve credited two people to a role – my rule for watching foreign animated movies is that if I like the English dub enough I tend to go with that and save my eyes from constantly flicking down the screen. As such, Chase, whilst shrill (I challenge you to watch that first pigpen scene without wincing) is excellent, charting Chihiro’s progress from whiny brat to polite, thoughtful, resourceful girl deftly. Pleshette clearly relishes the roles of twin witches Yubaba and Zeniba (although I fear for her throat) and Egan, arguably the best of the lot, finds the precise midpoint between cynicism and concern for bathhouse worker Lin, Chihiro’s confidante. Marsden, though, is a little bland as Haku, but it’s by no means a bad performance – just a little plain.
It’s a Studio Ghibli movie, so of course it’s so utterly gorgeous you could take any frame from it and sell it as a painting. It has to be said that as wonderfully designed and animated as the characters are (and they really are: it’s incredible how much personality is poured into the tiny figure of Boh after his transformation into a mouse) the real visual stars are the backgrounds; exquisite, highly detailed watercolours that look like you could step right into them. And so beautiful that you wish you could. And backing it up is an astonishing score from Miyazaki’s go-to musical man, Joe Hisaishi. His score, ranging from bombastic to delicate and filled with childish curiosity and regal poise, is arguably his best ever, and that is saying something considering his work on previous Ghibli titles like My Neighbour Totoro and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I remember walking home on an October night in 2003 slightly amazed. Spirited Away had had a profound effect on me and continues to do so every time I see it. It’s remarkable.
Right. Since these seems to have become something of a movie review blog, I thought I'd go the whole hog and do a bunch of 500-word reviews for my all-time favourite movies. And we start off with my very favourite of all:
Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Starring: Rumi Hîragi/Daveigh Chase, Miyu Irino/Jason Marsden, Mari Natsuki/ Suzanne Pleshette, Yumi Tamai/Susan Egan (voices)
Country: Japan
Year: 2001
The first time I saw Spirited Away my mouth hung slightly open in astonishment the entire time. Spoilt ten-year-old Chihiro’s (Hîragi/Chase) rite-of-passage in a fantasy land that plays out like Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter and company replaced by Shinto gods and the Queen of Hearts’ castle by a vast bathhouse that serves these gods is so, so brilliant – epic and intimate, dramatic and calm, funny and scary, alien and universal. It deals just as well with big set-pieces (Chihiro defending a dragon from a swarm of enchanted origami birds) as with low-key character moments (a tired, hungry, bewildered Chihiro sitting in a flower field, wolfing down breakfast as tears pour down her face). This balancing act continues through the characterisation – as is typical of most of Miyazaki’s screenplays, no-one is exclusively good or evil (Yubaba dearly loves her baby son Boh, even if she doesn’t always express it well; Haku, her reluctant apprentice who helps Chihiro, abandons her completely early in the movie when he has to feign ignorance of her, rather than acting cold when necessary and reassuring her when safely away from prying eyes), which makes the baffling spirit world sometimes seem very realistic.
You’ve no doubt noticed that I’ve credited two people to a role – my rule for watching foreign animated movies is that if I like the English dub enough I tend to go with that and save my eyes from constantly flicking down the screen. As such, Chase, whilst shrill (I challenge you to watch that first pigpen scene without wincing) is excellent, charting Chihiro’s progress from whiny brat to polite, thoughtful, resourceful girl deftly. Pleshette clearly relishes the roles of twin witches Yubaba and Zeniba (although I fear for her throat) and Egan, arguably the best of the lot, finds the precise midpoint between cynicism and concern for bathhouse worker Lin, Chihiro’s confidante. Marsden, though, is a little bland as Haku, but it’s by no means a bad performance – just a little plain.
It’s a Studio Ghibli movie, so of course it’s so utterly gorgeous you could take any frame from it and sell it as a painting. It has to be said that as wonderfully designed and animated as the characters are (and they really are: it’s incredible how much personality is poured into the tiny figure of Boh after his transformation into a mouse) the real visual stars are the backgrounds; exquisite, highly detailed watercolours that look like you could step right into them. And so beautiful that you wish you could. And backing it up is an astonishing score from Miyazaki’s go-to musical man, Joe Hisaishi. His score, ranging from bombastic to delicate and filled with childish curiosity and regal poise, is arguably his best ever, and that is saying something considering his work on previous Ghibli titles like My Neighbour Totoro and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I remember walking home on an October night in 2003 slightly amazed. Spirited Away had had a profound effect on me and continues to do so every time I see it. It’s remarkable.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Children of Men
By far the best film I've seen this year, whether in the cinema or at home.
2027: the world has been gripped by mass infertility, and has gone to pot as a result. The only country to halfway survive is Britain, which has been turned into a totalitarian state where refugees are rounded up by the hundreds and thrown into war-torn "villages". Theo (Clive Owen), a low-level government worker steadily succuming to alcoholism, is contacted by his ex-partner Julian (Julianne Moore), who is now head of a terrorist organisation. They have a young refugee woman, Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), who needs to be got to a ship docked in Brighton. The catch? She's eight months pregnant.
It's a little heavy-handed at times with the subject matter ("look we are talking about IMMIGRATION YES WE ARE") and the opening twenty minutes are a bit bald in their expositionary dialogue, but otherwise it is astonishingly good. The performances are uniformly excellent, the set design is incredible (you need multiple viewings just to see everything that's going on the background) and the direction is superlative. There's a ten-minute section that's already warranted some column inches all shot in one continuous take, where the camera follows Theo all round Bexhill, now a substitute for Iraq. He's persuing an abducted Kee through a pitched battle between the army and the terrorists, and it's utterly astonishing. Heaven knows how many months' preperation it needed. Oscar for director Alfonso Cuarón right now please.
Right, next thing to do is read the PD James book it's based on...
2027: the world has been gripped by mass infertility, and has gone to pot as a result. The only country to halfway survive is Britain, which has been turned into a totalitarian state where refugees are rounded up by the hundreds and thrown into war-torn "villages". Theo (Clive Owen), a low-level government worker steadily succuming to alcoholism, is contacted by his ex-partner Julian (Julianne Moore), who is now head of a terrorist organisation. They have a young refugee woman, Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), who needs to be got to a ship docked in Brighton. The catch? She's eight months pregnant.
It's a little heavy-handed at times with the subject matter ("look we are talking about IMMIGRATION YES WE ARE") and the opening twenty minutes are a bit bald in their expositionary dialogue, but otherwise it is astonishingly good. The performances are uniformly excellent, the set design is incredible (you need multiple viewings just to see everything that's going on the background) and the direction is superlative. There's a ten-minute section that's already warranted some column inches all shot in one continuous take, where the camera follows Theo all round Bexhill, now a substitute for Iraq. He's persuing an abducted Kee through a pitched battle between the army and the terrorists, and it's utterly astonishing. Heaven knows how many months' preperation it needed. Oscar for director Alfonso Cuarón right now please.
Right, next thing to do is read the PD James book it's based on...
Monday, September 04, 2006
Random thought
If he were in any other movie, Mr Kusakabe from My Neighbour Totoro would be the worst parent ever.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Jonathon Ross has nothing on me
Apropos nothing, brief reviews of the last three movies I've seen. The viewing times range from a couple of days ago to about a month ago, so bear with me.
Battle Royale: violent satire from Japan in which a law is passed wherein school classes are picked at random, taken to an island, and forced to kill each other. Quite excellent.
Rather than voyueristic thrill-killing (although there is a fair chunk of the red stuff), it takes a psychological standpoint. Examining the effect of the situation on the students, from those that team up and attempt to escape the island, to those that actively enjoy the killing, it's a great example of a "what would you do?" film. Especially effective is a scene where a closeknit group of girls, having taken in the injured protagonist Nanahara to their lighthouse hideaway, turn from unbreakable trust to killing each other in about three minutes.
The performances are universally excellent, with Beat Takeshi a particular high point as the world-weary ex-teacher with a vein of extremely black humour who oversees the whole thing.
About the only real criticism is that with 42 kids to look at (the film's based on a novel, which in turn had a lengthy manga adaptation), it's understandably rushed in places.
Sin City: comic-book adaptation starring lots of Very Serious People doing horrible things to each other.
Possibly the most po-faced film ever (aside from a couple of comic-relief goons and a gleefully silly section involving Clive Owen's Dwight having a hallucinatory conversation with a dead body), its unrelenting steely-eyed pomposity had me in fits of laughter at the most inappropriate moments. Of particular note was the bit where Mickey Rourke's bruiser Marv got repeatedly run over - it just looked so daft. Mind, the aforementioned Dwight, a man with the personality of a grey Tupperware lid, lighting up a cigarette whilst covered in dried tar came a close second.
Oh, and the dialogue is the worst of any film. Ever. Ever. You can smell the Stilton from the next country as all the men try to out-glare each other whilst the women have a competition to see who can wear the least amount of clothing (Carla Gugino, who spends most of her time on-screen naked for no reason at all, wins). The only people who come out of it without sounding like complete imbeciles at least once are Jessica Alba (stripper Nancy), Brittany Murphy (waitress Shelley) and Elijah Wood (who plays a mute, so he doesn't count).
But it's actually pretty good! It looks gorgeous, with all sorts of fancy effects to make it look more like the comic and an excellent washed-out noir style. Despite being forced to portray a group of walking clichés, the cast manage to inject proper character into their roles (except Owen, bless him. He probably had his hands full trying to maintain the American accent). Wood's especially memorable as psychotic cannibal Kevin, who appears to have injected his veins with flea DNA. The seperate stories, whilst being very similar, keep the film from becoming boring, even if the three main threads have the same basic lead (Dwight, Marv and Bruce Willis' Hartigan are the same guy with a few personality tweaks). Overall, worth watching. But why some people have proclaimed it Teh Best Fing Everz is beyond me.
Princess Mononoke: eco-obsessed fantasy Japanimation from Studio Ghibli, the finest production team in the world (as proved in over twenty seperate scientific investigations). Frequently declared director Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece, but to be perfectly honest nearly all other films of his I've seen (Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro and Best Film Ever™ Spirited Away) get a higher rating in my book. I'd say this is of a similar quality to the slightly over-whimsical Kiki's Delivery Service. It's still damn good though. If massively confusing. Plot: everyone fights everyone else in and around a magic forest for increasingly complicated reasons. Then there's a lot of hoo-hah about a Deer God as hero Ashitaka gradually loses control of his cursed arm, Evil Dead 2-style, and the titular princess (although her name is actually San; complicated wordplay I can't be bothered to go into here) battles with her hatred of humans. Since it's a Ghibli film, it looks so beautiful it's like bathing your eyes in heaven-juice, although the music isn't quite up to Joe Hisashi's usual standards. To be honest, I need to watch this more before I can form a proper opinion, but I've got a feeling it'll prove a grower.
Random aside: whatever happened to Cool Spot?
Battle Royale: violent satire from Japan in which a law is passed wherein school classes are picked at random, taken to an island, and forced to kill each other. Quite excellent.
Rather than voyueristic thrill-killing (although there is a fair chunk of the red stuff), it takes a psychological standpoint. Examining the effect of the situation on the students, from those that team up and attempt to escape the island, to those that actively enjoy the killing, it's a great example of a "what would you do?" film. Especially effective is a scene where a closeknit group of girls, having taken in the injured protagonist Nanahara to their lighthouse hideaway, turn from unbreakable trust to killing each other in about three minutes.
The performances are universally excellent, with Beat Takeshi a particular high point as the world-weary ex-teacher with a vein of extremely black humour who oversees the whole thing.
About the only real criticism is that with 42 kids to look at (the film's based on a novel, which in turn had a lengthy manga adaptation), it's understandably rushed in places.
Sin City: comic-book adaptation starring lots of Very Serious People doing horrible things to each other.
Possibly the most po-faced film ever (aside from a couple of comic-relief goons and a gleefully silly section involving Clive Owen's Dwight having a hallucinatory conversation with a dead body), its unrelenting steely-eyed pomposity had me in fits of laughter at the most inappropriate moments. Of particular note was the bit where Mickey Rourke's bruiser Marv got repeatedly run over - it just looked so daft. Mind, the aforementioned Dwight, a man with the personality of a grey Tupperware lid, lighting up a cigarette whilst covered in dried tar came a close second.
Oh, and the dialogue is the worst of any film. Ever. Ever. You can smell the Stilton from the next country as all the men try to out-glare each other whilst the women have a competition to see who can wear the least amount of clothing (Carla Gugino, who spends most of her time on-screen naked for no reason at all, wins). The only people who come out of it without sounding like complete imbeciles at least once are Jessica Alba (stripper Nancy), Brittany Murphy (waitress Shelley) and Elijah Wood (who plays a mute, so he doesn't count).
But it's actually pretty good! It looks gorgeous, with all sorts of fancy effects to make it look more like the comic and an excellent washed-out noir style. Despite being forced to portray a group of walking clichés, the cast manage to inject proper character into their roles (except Owen, bless him. He probably had his hands full trying to maintain the American accent). Wood's especially memorable as psychotic cannibal Kevin, who appears to have injected his veins with flea DNA. The seperate stories, whilst being very similar, keep the film from becoming boring, even if the three main threads have the same basic lead (Dwight, Marv and Bruce Willis' Hartigan are the same guy with a few personality tweaks). Overall, worth watching. But why some people have proclaimed it Teh Best Fing Everz is beyond me.
Princess Mononoke: eco-obsessed fantasy Japanimation from Studio Ghibli, the finest production team in the world (as proved in over twenty seperate scientific investigations). Frequently declared director Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece, but to be perfectly honest nearly all other films of his I've seen (Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro and Best Film Ever™ Spirited Away) get a higher rating in my book. I'd say this is of a similar quality to the slightly over-whimsical Kiki's Delivery Service. It's still damn good though. If massively confusing. Plot: everyone fights everyone else in and around a magic forest for increasingly complicated reasons. Then there's a lot of hoo-hah about a Deer God as hero Ashitaka gradually loses control of his cursed arm, Evil Dead 2-style, and the titular princess (although her name is actually San; complicated wordplay I can't be bothered to go into here) battles with her hatred of humans. Since it's a Ghibli film, it looks so beautiful it's like bathing your eyes in heaven-juice, although the music isn't quite up to Joe Hisashi's usual standards. To be honest, I need to watch this more before I can form a proper opinion, but I've got a feeling it'll prove a grower.
Random aside: whatever happened to Cool Spot?
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Okay, starting properly...
Hello and welcome, gentle reader, to the first (proper) post on this most monumental of internet-based weblogs. I hope it will fill with wisdom and wit, but chances are it will consist of 90% lies and trickery and 10% bad jokes.
This is impressively hard to write - being all proper and serious and whatnot. I already have an LJ, but that is reserved for swearing a lot and TALKING IN ALL CAPITALS IN AN IMPRESSIVE SATIRE ON INTERNET ETIQUETTE. In other news, I have recently discovered that it's quite hard to spell "etiquette" correctly when you're typing it all in capital letters.
So since this is a "serious" blog, without emoticons or anything (see how long that lasts...) I guess I should say something thoughtful. I'm tempted to talk about Israel's current "Hey, let's blow up everything!" attitude, but to be honest I haven't been following the situtation closely enough to actually know what's really going on. Apparently there were wrongdoings and shenanigans? One thought I would like to elaborate on (read: one opinion I am going to bullishly thrust into your face) is the Grand Prix. Or Prixes. Or whatever the plural is (Prii?).
It frankly astonishes me that everyone is running around screeching "Global warming! Global warming!" and no-one has stopped for a moment and said "Wait a minute...these races we have in cars and on bikes where they go around and around and around in a circle and waste lots of petrol...do we really need seventeen million of them?"
In my lifetime I think I have met two people who avidly follow F1 racing. Avidly that is, not just tuning in on Sundays because ITV's showing it and they can't be bothered to find the Sky remote. So do we really need so many? There are how many different Grand Prix(es)? European? Japanese? Australian? Liverpudlian? And how many races do each have - fifteen, isn't it? What a monumentally wasteful concept. You only need a few per contest! Heck, you only need one, but I'd be happy to compromise - three, say. Sorted. The viewers' ratings shoot up because that's few enough to snag the casual watchers, and how much oil is saved? How many emissions are reduced? Not to mention the massive savings to the manufacturers - don't they have to spend a couple million every time one of these things blows a gasket? (Incidentally, what is a gasket? Does it really exist?) So there you go. Cut back and East Anglia stays above water for a few more years. And I haven't even mentioned NASCAR, Monte Carlo, Manx TT, um, Robot Wars...
We're the Planeteers, you can be one too, 'cos saving our planet is the thing to do.
This is impressively hard to write - being all proper and serious and whatnot. I already have an LJ, but that is reserved for swearing a lot and TALKING IN ALL CAPITALS IN AN IMPRESSIVE SATIRE ON INTERNET ETIQUETTE. In other news, I have recently discovered that it's quite hard to spell "etiquette" correctly when you're typing it all in capital letters.
So since this is a "serious" blog, without emoticons or anything (see how long that lasts...) I guess I should say something thoughtful. I'm tempted to talk about Israel's current "Hey, let's blow up everything!" attitude, but to be honest I haven't been following the situtation closely enough to actually know what's really going on. Apparently there were wrongdoings and shenanigans? One thought I would like to elaborate on (read: one opinion I am going to bullishly thrust into your face) is the Grand Prix. Or Prixes. Or whatever the plural is (Prii?).
It frankly astonishes me that everyone is running around screeching "Global warming! Global warming!" and no-one has stopped for a moment and said "Wait a minute...these races we have in cars and on bikes where they go around and around and around in a circle and waste lots of petrol...do we really need seventeen million of them?"
In my lifetime I think I have met two people who avidly follow F1 racing. Avidly that is, not just tuning in on Sundays because ITV's showing it and they can't be bothered to find the Sky remote. So do we really need so many? There are how many different Grand Prix(es)? European? Japanese? Australian? Liverpudlian? And how many races do each have - fifteen, isn't it? What a monumentally wasteful concept. You only need a few per contest! Heck, you only need one, but I'd be happy to compromise - three, say. Sorted. The viewers' ratings shoot up because that's few enough to snag the casual watchers, and how much oil is saved? How many emissions are reduced? Not to mention the massive savings to the manufacturers - don't they have to spend a couple million every time one of these things blows a gasket? (Incidentally, what is a gasket? Does it really exist?) So there you go. Cut back and East Anglia stays above water for a few more years. And I haven't even mentioned NASCAR, Monte Carlo, Manx TT, um, Robot Wars...
We're the Planeteers, you can be one too, 'cos saving our planet is the thing to do.
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