Wyrmlog

Well golly gee! I’ve been drafted!

Now I realise that most of our governmental policy comes from Washington these days, but I wasn’t aware that things had got to the point of letting the US Armed Forces have their pick of our citizens. Well I suppose there’s no point fighting it, so as soon as I can actually find out where the local recruitment office is I’d better turn myself in (either that or flee to Canada, eh?).

It could be worse. I’ve got a perforated eardrum, so that’ll excuse me from frontline duties. And if things get too onerous I can always try for a Section Eight. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to wear a dress, but I could certainly claim to be a worshiper of the Great Shabu. Yes, I think I’ll go out and stock up on druidic robes at the first opportunity. The Age of Shabu begins!

(PS: Suffice to say I deleted the email. So if you never hear anything more from me Lieutenant Spark has probably hauled me to off to Guantanamo Bay).

Well how about that, Here Comes Your Man is about the bombing of Nagasaki. Suddenly all that talk about shaking boxcars, lands falling down and big stones makes sense. Even the title is a dead give away. Well, you learn something new every day.

Yes, I’m back. I woke up this morning with an urge to write – and there’s certainly enough stupid things going on it the world at the moment to write about.

For example the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. Some people would say that in the current political climate it was stupid to publish them. I don’t know about that. A bit foolish perhaps not to anticipate the reaction, but not stupid. Some people would also say that it’s stupid for (some) Muslims to get so upset over a bunch of drawings in a newspaper. I don’t know about that either, after all it’s a religious issue and religion is something religious people (surprise surprise) tend to consider highly important. What I do think is idiotic however is the way the newspapers are making it worse.

More and more newspapers all over Europe are republishing the cartoons in the name of “defending free speech” – even a few in New Zealand have joined in. Now that really is stupid. Republishing the cartoons achieves nothing useful (except perhaps sell papers, oh dear you don’t suppose that’s why they’re doing it do you?) and pours more fuel onto the already merrily burning fire. Free speech is one thing (one very important thing), but using it in such a way to provoke a section of society is another entirely. Yes, under free speech newspapers should be free to publish a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. But that doesn’t mean that they should. And if they do choose to do so then they should accept the consequences of their action (ie: a million or so angry Muslims) rather than holding up ‘free speech’ as some kind of get out of jail free card. Their attitude seems to be one of “You can’t be mad with us! It’s free speech!”. This is a defence of the same dubiosity as “You can’t blame me! I was just following orders!”. If the papers want to publish things that will make people very very mad, then they should accept responsibility for what those very very mad people then do (like cancelling trade deals for instance). Full stop.

Also fairly stupid is the Prime Minister of Denmark, refusing to issue an apology. I quote – “The government refuses to apologise because the government does not control the media or a newspaper outlet; that would be in violation of the freedom of speech”. Now I actually agree with him on this. But he could still have issued an apology. A polite statement along the lines of “I’m sorry that you’ve been offended by this, we should all work together to understand each other better” shows concern without backing down over the free speech issue. Something like that could well have worked wonders to defuse the situation before it reached these levels of insanity. Now they’re burning down embassies. Well done!

Anyway in other stupid news, the State Government here in Western Australia has decided to ban denim from state schools. This is apparently because the Education Minister (a rather – in my opinion – sour faced woman by the name of Ravlich) doesn’t like it. When pressed for reasons why, she said it looks “scruffy” and that denim is a fabric for recreation and gives the impression that students are coming to school to have fun. I see. So students cannot possibly ever be allowed to have fun at school. I presume this is because learning itself can never ever be fun. Learning is horrible, onerous work and if the students enjoy it then it’s not being done right. Well, it’s good to see the Education Minister has such a firm head on her shoulders then (next it’ll be inquisitorial squads and prohibition of quidditch).

I mean c’mon! The Government is banning a fabric. When Governments start passing laws like that then the end of civilisation can’t be far off. Idiots.

(I think there should be a day of action where every state school student comes to school dressed in non-banned fabrics. Such as velvet, and muslin, and satin, and cheesecloth, and hessian. See how many more we can get on the banned list before the day is out 🙂

OK, I’ve had enough of castigating idiots for now. Anyway I’ve got a solid three hours of Canivàle to watch before tonight’s installment (I taped it the last two weeks and haven’t got around to watching it yet). And a stir fry to cook for dinner.

Oh yeah, I’ve also added a new bit to the site. Nothing exciting sad to say, but very geeky. I’ve thrown together some rules for putting dragons in Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings battle game. Since GW is gearing up to release their Battle of Five Armies supplement sometime soon I figured I’d better get them online before they’re totally superceded (hey, if they release a Battle of Five Armies supplement without rules for Smaug then it ain’t the Battle of Five Armies mate*Yes, Smaug wasn’t in the Battle of Five Armies but c’mon, his death sparked it didn’t it? It would be just plain cheap to leave him out.). An unexpected byproduct of my dragon rules are rules for burning terrain features and aerial combat, which should spice up games a bit. I’ve also got a “Defence of Laketown” scenario half written, which I may or may get around to completing and putting online, so that’s something to look forwards to (or not as the case may be :).

Well, bye then.

It’s Australia Day. Australia Day is a public holiday. I’m spending said public holiday slaving away in the office because someone (whose name may or may not rhyme with “vale”) managed to enrage a customer by ignoring him for months and as a consequence said customer’s site now has to be completed by the end of the week to pacify him.

Australia Day is also the day Triple J play the Hottest 100. As I do every year I was planning to sit at home and listen to it, but obviously had to change my plan to sitting in the office and listening to it. I considered bringing in a radio but then remembered that this is the 21st century and I could use the office broadband connection to listen to the online audio stream. A good plan all round.

Only thing is, it turns out that the Triple J audio stream is having “technical difficulties” which will be “resolved soon” (by which they seem to mean “tomorrow”). So, until they get off their backsides and resolve them I’m stuck here missing the Hottest 100 – one of the yearly highlights of my sad little life.

It’s just as well I’m the only one here, because I’m in the kind of mood where I’d gladly stab someone in the throat with a ballpoint pen. Preferably someone from the ABC’s website support department, but right about now anyone will do.

OK, no real updates for months and months. This is entirely my fault as I will attempt to explain below. If you don’t feel like an in depth explanation of what the hell is wrong with me, please feel free to skip down to where I start carrying on about Harry Potter in my usual flippant and idiosyncratic style.

Anyway, why I haven’t managed a proper update in ages. The problem is, frankly, one that affects every aspect of my life and at times I’m sure makes me an extremely frustrating person to deal with. It’s one of motivation – a serious issue with the things that motivate me to actually do things instead of just sleep all day.

Normal people out there seem to be motivated by a variety of things. Money, praise, prestige, concern for their fellow man, a sense of personal achievement, power, doughnuts and the promise of more doughnuts, etc. I on the other hand am not moved by such thing. The only things that get me up and going, and making an effort are Guilt and Terror.

Guilt over not doing things that I think I have an obligation to do, and Terror at what would happen if I didn’t do the things I have to do.

Work for instance. I get up in the morning and go into work not because I love what I do (actually I do love what I do – mess around with computers – but I’d like to do it on my own terms for my own goals rather than for eight hours a day, five days a week for idiot clients), but because the company (by which I mean my boss and my fellow workers) gave me a job and put up with me on a daily basis. Hence I feel obligated to go in every day whether I really want to or not – and would be consumed by guilt if I didn’t.

From the terror angle there’s the terror that if I didn’t go in I’d lose my job, have no way to pay my mortgage and end up out on the street. So this combines with the guilt to drag me out of bed, into the shower and out the door every morning – even though most days I feel like phoning in and asking Bevan to tell my clients where they can shove their updates.

So I spend my days riddled with guilt about the past, and terror about the future. Cheery eh? Well it gets worse.

If for some reason I don’t quickly deal with something that’s making me guilty, the guilt continues to build until it reaches a threshold beyond which the sheer gut-churning horror of it is just completely unbearable. So rather than deal with the horror face on I find myself avoiding it, generally by pushing it out of my mind entirely, and things tend not to get done.

And worse than that it’s contagious. If there’s something I’m avoiding thinking about because of the monstrous guilt associated with it, I can’t think about anything related to it either, because that’ll remind me of it. So I end up with these great trees of related projects and ideas that I can’t think about or complete because even thinking about them for a second feels like a hard sharp kick in the gut.

Real word example – Abandoned in Perth. While I was in the UK (not long after setting up the site) I got an email from a girl back in Perth who was doing an arts degree based around urban exploration and abandoned sites. Once I got back we exchanged quite a few emails on the subject and she even ended up including a few bits of my emails in a performance piece she put on at the Verge. Then (not long after I explored the South Fremantle power station on her recommendation) she sent me an email which I was too busy to reply to for about a week. Then something else happened that meant I didn’t have the time to reply for another week and a half – by which point my guilt over ignoring her had hit the threshold and I couldn’t deal with it. The reply never got written and she (understandably) didn’t write again.

But – because the site and urban exploration in general now bring all of that guilt rushing back – I haven’t even been able to think about doing any updates. And so the site is essentially dead. Well done me.

(By the way, if you happen to be reading this Alexis, I’m sorry.)

Now, no doubt all this is some kind of well defined anxiety disorder that I should probably seek treatment for. The problem however (apart from the fact that without guilt and terror to motivate me I would happily stay in bed all day and lose my job) is that there’s only two types of treatment for this kind of thing. SSRIs and CBT.

SSRIs are Selective Seretonin Re-uptake Inhibitors, or (to put it in English) Prozac. I have been on Prozac in the past – for about four months back in 1999 – and while it did make me feel a lot more relaxed and happy about life it had some very deleterious side effects. For a start my IQ seemed to plummet by about 50 points*As a side note my IQ is up around 150 normally so if my estimate of the impact is correct, then me on Prozac equals the average person on the street. If this is the case then I can see why the world is in such a damn mess most of the time.. I just couldn’t seem to think properly. And on top of that I had absolutely no motivation to do anything. My days consisted of getting up, having breakfast, pottering around the house achieving nothing, having lunch, pottering, watching some TV, eating dinner, watching some more TV and going to bed (I was unemployed at the time, God knows what would have happened if I’d been working).

CBT on the other hand is Cognitive Behavior Therapy, which is a technique of monitoring one’s thoughts – suppressing negative ideation and such – until the monitoring becomes automatic and you don’t have to think about it any more. A nice idea, but I’m far too deeply cynical for it to have the faintest effect. The whole thing reeks of sticking one’s head in the sand and whistling a happy tune while Rome burns (to recklessly mix metaphors). It’s making believe that things are wonderful so hard that you delude yourself into thinking they are wonderful, even when they’re not. And my brain won’t let me do that.

So, fundamentally I’m screwed.

In any case that’s why my weblog and assorted websites (Abandoned in Perth, Tales of the Geek Underclass, the Beginners Guide to Zurvar etc) haven’t been updated in ages. I’m hoping that doing a public mea culpa like this will relieve enough of the guilt for me to get back to them. Or at least make me sleep a bit better at night 🙂

So, onto other subjects.

I finally got around to reading Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince yesterday. I was planning to wait until it comes out in paperback but the temptation got to be too much. That and I’d been inadvertently picking up spoilers from time to time, and decided I’d better read the damn thing before I figured out the entire plot. So I bought a copy while killing time at the Morley Galleria (I’d set off a bunch of cockroach bombs and couldn’t risk going home for two hours without poisoning myself) and ended up staying up until midnight finishing it.

That Snape eh? You can never figure out what he’s up to. I’m still not entirely convinced he’s gone back to the dark side though, even if he did do in Dumbledore. I mean Dumbledore could well have been fatally poisoned anyway and Snape just decided to give him a quick and merciful death while scoring some major points with Voldemort. If he’s actually dead that is. He could be – J.K’s a good enough author to kill people off when necessary without pulling rabbits out of hats to save them – but if Dumbledore did make a reappearance it wouldn’t surprise me.

On top of all that there’s some other stuff I enjoyed. Like Tonks and Lupin. That’s sweet. I have to admit to falling for Tonks a bit*Insomuch as one can fall for an entirely fictional character. back in Order of the Phoenix, so it’s nice to see her get together with someone. Then there’s the opening chapter which very neatly sums up the exact relationship between the Ministry and the Muggle Government. We get a whole lot more information on Tom Riddle – including what the heck was going on with his diary, and Moaning Myrtle (always one of my favourite minor characters) puts in a couple of appearances too. So it’s a pretty enjoyable read all up. Moreso than Phoenix anyway, which (Tonks not withstanding) could have stood to lose a few chapters.

Still on the subject of Harry Potter, Ryan and I went and saw Goblet of Fire the other week. He actually wanted to see the Narnia movie, but I still haven’t got over my sense of betrayal from figuring out what the Narnia books are all about and am refusing to see it by way of protest. There wasn’t much else on so we ended up going with Goblet. I quite enjoyed it, although (even with all the stuff that was cut) it was still a bit long. If anything about it disappointed me it was the Quidditch World Cup – there’s all the build up, the teams fly in… and then you’re back in the Weasley tent with it all over – what the heck was that? I dunno, maybe I’m just a Quidditch tragic (I can’t stand sport – watching or playing – as a general rule. But if Quidditch was real I would so be into it *grin*)

I don’t know what Ryan thought of it, he’s never read the book and if I’d never read the book I would have been confused as hell. A lot of the establishing detail was left out, presumably because they needed to cut as much as possible due to time constraints and anyone going to see could be presumed to have read the book. But still – a movie should really be able to stand on its own I think.

Oh, and Cho Chang has a Scottish accent. How about that then?

After the movie we headed up to Fabian’s place and hung out till midnight not doing a heck of a lot and then dropped into the Fast Eddie’s at Morley for an extremely late dinner around 1:00am. A good night, and probably the latest I’ve stayed out in ages (I’m very sad aren’t I?)

Hmmm, there’s tons of other stuff I should write about, I mean in the last six months two of my best friends have got married (not to each other, I’m talking about two separate weddings – and have probably just mortally insulted their spouses by suggesting they’re not my best friends…) four of my best friends have got married and I haven’t said anything about it – so expect some wedding round ups shortly. I’ve also (thanks to one of said best friends who’s best friend status is currently undergoing review as a consequence *grin*) just got involved in something… well something different anyway which I may or may not write about at some point in the future. It’s all a bit of a pain at the moment to be frank, not because of what they did, but because they managed to screw up what they did in a very clever and intricate way that I now have to sort out, but I’ve done what’s needed and hopefully it should all run smoothly from here. Hopefully. We’ll see.

Anyway that’s probably the most I’ve written in months so I figure I should go and have a lie down now. Staying up until midnight reading Harry Potter can really take it out of you *grin*)

Favorite Beatles song: Very hard to pick, perhaps “All My Loving”.

Favorite solo song by a former Beatle: “Watching the Wheels” by John Lennon.

Favorite Rolling Stones song: “Ruby Tuesday”.

Favorite Bob Dylan song: “Hurricane”.

Favorite Pixies song: “Alec Eifel”.

Favorite Prince song: “Little Red Corvette”.

Favorite Michael Jackson song: “Billy Jean”.

Favorite Metallica song: “Master of Puppets”.

Favorite Public Enemy song: I have virtually no knowledge of Public Enemy apart from that they did a very good job of frightening white, middle class Americans some years back – something for which they should be applauded.

Favorite Depeche Mode song: “Blasphemous Rumours”, naturally.

Favorite Cure song: Either “Wrong Number” or “Lullaby”. Or perhaps “Friday I’m in Love”.

Favorite song that most of your friends haven’t heard: Ye gods, ask a hard one why don’t you? I’ll say “The Jeep Song” by the Dresden Dolls for now.

Favorite Beastie Boys song: “Body Moving”.

Favorite Police song: Either “Every Breath you Take” or “Message in a Bottle”.

Favorite Sex Pistols song: The immortal “Anarchy in the UK”, natch.

Favorite song from a movie: “The Ruby Rap” from the Fifth Element 🙂

Favorite Blondie song: “The Tide is High”.

Favorite Genesis song: Every song I think is by Genesis turns out to be by Phill Collins, none the less I shall say “Invisible Touch” – if only because the chorus is so uninteligable you can have enormous fun singing “She seems to have an invisible tonsure”

Favorite Led Zeppelin song: Don’t really know much of their stuff really. I’ll avoid the cliche of “Stairway to Heaven” and say “Kashmir” because it has such a cool riff.

Favorite INXS song: Has to be “Don’t Change”.

Favorite Weird Al song: “Smells like Nirvana”.

Favorite Pink Floyd song: “The Turning Away”.

Favorite cover song: Right at the moment “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” by Little Birdie, although that will no doubt change once I hear some other good cover.

Favorite dance song: Depends on what is meant by “Dance”. If it’s referring to the so-named (and generally completely banal) genre of the early to mid 90’s, then about the most telerable example was “Rhythm is a Dancer” by Snap. If it’s being used as a term for electronic/club/house/etc in general then it’s a toss up between “Last Train to Trancentral” by the KLF or “1990’s – Time for the Guru” by Guru Josh, which is electronic music extended to its ultimate (and quite ridiculous) conclusion 🙂

Favorite U2 song: “Angel of Harlem”.

Favorite disco song: Either “Ma Baker” or “Rasputin” by Boney M. Actually make that anything by Boney M.

Favorite The Who song: “Baba O’Reilly (Teenage Wasteland)”.

Favorite Elton John song: I can think of plenty of his songs but consider most of them to be mild background noise as opposed to music. Hmmm, “Crocodile Rock” maybe because of the extremely silly chorus.

Favorite Clash song: Undoubtedly has to be “London Calling”.

Favorite David Bowie song: I can only choose one?! Either “Ashes to Ashes” or “Modern Love” I guess.

Favorite Nirvana song: “Lithium”.

Favorite Snoop Dogg song: If I ever willingly listen to a Snoop Dogg song I hope someone ‘busts a cap’ in my head.

Favorite Ice Cube song: Ditto.

Favorite Johnny Cash song: C’mon! You all know the words! “Ahhh fell in tooour burnin’ ring o’ fiii-urr!”

Favorite R.E.M. song: Another tricky one. Either “What’s the Frequency Kenneth” or “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight”

Favorite Elvis song: “Suspicious Minds”.

Favorite cheesy-ass country song: “Love is Like a T-Bone Steak” by the Sensitive New Aged Cowpersons 🙂

Favorite Billy Joel song: See Elton John. I’d either have to go with either “The Longest Time” or “Uptown Girl” – which is actualy really well constructed musically once you get over the fact that it’s “Uptown Girl”.

Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: “The River”.

Favorite Big Audio Dynamite song: “Rush”. It should be noted that this is the only song of thier’s I even know.

Favorite New Order song: It’s a huge cliche but “Blue Monday”.

Favorite Neil Diamond song: Humiliating as it is, I’ve always had a soft spot for “Sweet Caroline”.

Favorite Squeeze song: I hate to expose my ignorance, but who???

Favorite Smiths song: Either “How Soon is Now” or “The Light”.

Favorite Tragically Hip Song: I’ve heard of them, but don’t know any of their music.

The African Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla) is a large, hairy primate mostly found in central Africa and Carteret New Jersey. It can be distinguished from the more numerous American Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla Gorilla Lindbergii) by its darker pelt, more thoughtful expression, powers of psychic invisibility and passion for basketball (the American Gorilla prefers football or hockey).

The chief notable feature of the Mountain Gorilla is its aforementioned ability to become invisible at will. This power is estimated to work upon roughly 97% of the human population and is put to a number of uses. Those documented include escaping from predators, trapping food, shoplifting, avoiding photojournalists, stalking, disappearing spookily into the mists and operating “haunted house” rides at funfairs. Its most common use however appears to be unobtrusively attending basketball games. It has been estimated that Mountain Gorillas are present at over 60% of all high school and college basketball games in New Jersey, with major games in other states attracting a more sporadic turn-out due to the difficulties the average Gorilla has fitting into airline seats.

The presence of these Gorillas goes unnoticed by the majority of attendees, who are succeptable to the invisibility suggestion. The remaining three or so percent who do notice the Gorillas either write them off as some kind of college prank, drug induced hallucination or visitation from God, or merely keep quiet for fear of ridicule (there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that certain narcotics may reduce the effectiveness of the invisibility power, however until properly organised double blind tests are carried out it cannot be ruled out that such drugs merely cause vivid hallucinations of Gorillas that aren’t actually present).

The increasing problem of Gorillas being caught on camera while attending televised games has been dealt with by advances in digital image processing, which allow an editor (usually – although incorrectly – refered to as a “Monkey Cleaner”) to remove Gorillas from the footage in real time. Claims that unusualy ugly human attendees are also removed from broadcasts remain common, although unproven.

Most Mountain Gorillas are perfectly capable of speaking English. They remain silent because of what humans would do to them if they found out.

I was woken up in the early hours of this morning, not (as I was a few weeks back) by some idiot bashing on the door under my bedroom window, repeatedly informing the world in general as loud as he could that he was “Going to party like it’s 1999!!”*This is 100% true. The people who live below me are sociopaths., but by the following poem rattling about my head, which I can only presume I composed whilst sleeping…

There once was a CSI Sidle,
Who hunted down folks homicidal,
She worked in the lab,
But seldom looked drab,
And her intellect never was idle,

Kublah Khan it ain’t.

But honestly, what in the name of all that’s sane and holy goes on in my head when I’m asleep? Composing limericks about characters from CSI? That’s pretty damn deranged. To be fair I’d just watched the season finale of said show (the one where Quentin Tarrintino does the world a great favour by burying George Eades in an airtight perspex box*I jest – Nick may not be my favourite character but I don’t bear him (or George Eades) any particular malice.) but that’s no excuse! I’ve never composed poetry about any other TV shows in my sleep. Sheeze!

(I did say on Friday that over the weekend I was going to write about what I’ve been up to – well that sort of fell through after a very frustrating Saturday which I may or may not write about tomorrow. So there! 🙂

The title says it all really.

If I may be allowed to make a plea in my defence I would like to put my general slackness down to work. It’s getting towards the end of the year, which always means a rush, and we’ve also been building a new whiz-bang Checkout process which is the kind of thing that just eats up your entire week. And we’ve got a massive backlog of work anyway because Dale went slightly mad a few months ago and booked in a lot more than we could actually do.

To deal with it I’ve been going into work early and doing one or two extra hours a day. Which is nice for the hip pocket but doesn’t really leave me with much energy for anything else. I have been up for a few things though, which I hopefully will write a bit about over the weekend. But not today, because I’m still at work (although I’ve taken myself off the clock so as not to defraud the company by having it pay for my half-arsed blogging) and it’s almost time to go home.

Two things I will comment on however are that the ABC has put Daria on again (on Friday Afternoons which is one reason I’m keen to be off home), and that there are a number of other really excellent TV shows on at the moment. Or rather there were because a few of them finished before I had the energy to write about them. Ho hum.

Sea of Souls for instance was very good. For those not aquainted with it, it’s a somewhat creepy drama featuring a team of parapsychologists working out of Glascow University. Now naturally this sort of premise runs the risk of being a complete cliche (cue X-Files theme), but I think the actors and scriptwriters did a really good job with it. Actually it reminded me a bit of Mysterious Ways (if you chopped out the requisite feel-good endings, made it all a bit more serious and boosted up the budget that is) – I mean a university Professor investigating the paranormal with the assistance of an enthusiastic young grad student*OK, I admit ‘enthusiastic’ isn’t exactly the first adjective that springs to mind to describe Miranda (apart from when watching the surgery channel at least), but she was enthusiastic on the inside! 🙂 and a dyed in the wool skeptic – it doesn’t take a genius to see the similarities (there are also some obvious similarities to the Koestler Parapsychological Unit at Edinburgh University, but I’ll leave that kind of thing to the lawyers 🙂

Anyway I only saw the last four epsiodes (dealing with reincartnation and muti killings), but they were really good. I wish I’d watched it from the start.

Also catching my interest at the moment is P.O.W, which is (obviously enough) set in a Nazi P.O.W camp during World War II (that is to say a P.O.W camp run by the Nazis, I can’t see anyone watching a show set in a camp for Nazis – at least not anyone I’d want to hang around with anyway). It’s sort of like a somewhat less rose tinted version of The Great Escape extended into a series, or a serious version of Hogan’s Heroes (if a guard caught you digging a tunnel in this camp they wouldn’t run away yelling “I know noTHING!” – they’d shoot you). It’s rather reminiscant of Changi actually, minus the various fantasy bits. Anyway what particularly impresses me is the camp Commandant, Dreiber. The scriptwriters and the actor (who’s name completely escapes me) have done a great job (in the episodes I’ve seen at least – I’ve missed a few) in making him somewhat sympathetic, without taking any of the easy options. It would have been very easy to set him up as a brutal Nazi monster, or alternatively as a good guy forced to follow orders because he has no choice, but they’ve managed to create a loyal, patriotic German (and Nazi) who isn’t on the whole such a bad guy. He generally sticks to the Geneva Conventions for instance, shows some concern for the prisoners’ welfare and treats the Allied C.O. with a measure of respect due to his rank. Of course anyone attempting to escape will be shot, and you get to see the frightening side of him when one of the prisoners turns out to be Jewish*Not brutal or vicious or fanatical – he just so obviously regards him as a nothing., but he’s not the stock Nazi usually portrayed in these kind of situations.

Thanks to sixty years of TV and cinema we’ve all got used to the idea of the Nazis as monsters (and let’s not forget there were plenty of them who were) but it’s interesting to see such an intelligent and convincing portrayal of the kind of Nazi who would have made up the bulk of the organization. Not a raving lunatic, or a fantical warrior pledging to die for the Fuhrer and the Sacred Aryan Blood, but an ordinary person with certain beliefs going about their life and military duties in a certain way. If you ask me that’s a much more mature – and frightening – depiction of what went on in Nazi Germany than a thousand bellowing stormtroopers.

So yeah, P.O.W. Check it out.

Going home now.

Here’s an interesting bit of rambling from that most entertaining of linguists Tenser, said the Tensor. Or at least it’s interesting to me because of a rather stupid activity I was forced to partake in way back in the good old days of 1989.

Back in that first year of high school the year eights were subjected to a class called ‘Music’. This wasn’t any kind of conventional music class – we didn’t get to play any instruments – and neither was it a singing class – that was ‘Singing’. No, this was sitting around in the room at the back of the gym, listening to tapes while being yelled at by a nun. There was so little educational content involved that I strongly suspect it was nothing but timetable filler to get the year eights away from the rest of the staff for a while.

In any case one of the endlessly stupid activities we had to do in ‘Music’ was learn about beat. Any decent curriculum seeking to teach kids about beat would invest in some bongo drums and let them at it, but this kind of creativity wasn’t allowed by Sister Lynn – after all, drumming reeks of paganism. No, we had to march in a big circle around the room in time to a tape apparently (to judge by the whole jingly-jangly-fuzzy-wuzzy-Barney-the-Dinosaur ‘feel’ of the recording) aimed at 6 year olds. And join in.

The words we had to chant?

(When repeated over and over ad nauseum while marching around the room in a circle the “right” and “left”s should fall on the appropriate footsteps. You do a little skip on “woopsidoo” to reset, otherwise you’d end up on the wrong feet the next time round – just so you know).

The parallels to the Gingerbread jingle are obvious.

As is the effect this bizzare activity had on growing minds – it’s 16 years later and I still recall the damn thing word for word!