Extract

'I feel I should thank you, ' said Oats, when they reached the spiral staircase.
'For helping you across the mountains, you mean?'
'The world is... different.' Oats' gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy.'
For the first time since he'd met her he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she'd heard.
'That's a start, then, ' she said.
Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett

Resonance. Exchange 'beautiful' for 'holy', and you have my basic mindset in a nutshell.

My Eurovision 2005 highlights

Forget the winners - Greece - as you probably already have done. Forget all but a few - notably the energetic Zdob [shi] Zdub from Moldava, who got my vote - of the 24 other finalists. Forget even Terry Wogan, whose normally achingly sarcastic voiceovers seemed to lack something of their customary bite, except for the truly memorable Ant and Shriek epithet he coined for the Ukrainian presenters and his genuine concern for the Granny drummer. The most memorable aspects of my first Eurovision were all about the intermission show and the technology!

When the body artist began his routine while Europe waited for the votes to be tallied, my initial response was, "Oh, god, interpretive dance." I was about to put the break to good use and hop up to pluck my eyebrows or something when he lifted himself into a handstand from splits and then folded himself over into something resembling an angular Viking rune while still on his hands. My jaw hit the floor and held me in place for the rest of the routine, long enough for it to lock open and my tongue to dry out against my bottom lip. He was paragonal! See! I needed to invent a wholly fictitious word to describe the awesome feats of strength and balance on display. Extreme handstands, countoured body spins on a single hand, even the simple handless stand from splits that he enacted effortlessly and that - I know, I've tried - takes immense power and control. Throughout, he made it seem bonelessly graceful and puppet-simple, one of those moments that turns kids into gymnasts and dancers. "I want to be just like that man, mommy."

For once, Google has let me down, or I've just not tripped across the right search string. I was too stunned to take note of his name during the show, and so this artist has been reduced to a mere third person pronoun, and I'd like to fix that.

Two things struck me about the infrastructure behind the show. Firstly, that wondrous raised-glass stage, underlit by hundreds of glowing rods, presented a real conundrum during the first performance (Nox, from Hungary). The men were doing this fantastically hypnotic dance, reminiscent to Anglophiles of the Lord of the Dance shows, and seemed to be doing it between raised lightrods. Only when they clearly passed over the staves did my brain finally parse the image and, for the rest of the show, this phenomenon kept stealing my attention from the admittedly lacklustre artists. Good stage. The other appealing spectacle was the live scoreboard they used to keep track of the cumulative points. All that exciting swapping of places and scrabbling for the top was riveting.

The only comment I have about the contest itself boils down to a simple observation. The War never ended. The battleground has merely been moved. With partisan bloc voting rife (as, we are informed by the lackadaisical Terry, it always is), the entrants from Greece, the United Kingdom and Israel - virtually indistinguishable - received wildly different scores, with nothing more than their geographical location and political status to set them apart. More fool I for thinking it was about fostering burgeoning talent. Then again, as the winner's song effectively becomes the theme tune to Europe for the next year, I suppose In my empty life you'll be the only reason is more apposite than Burn all your troubles say goodbye to yesterday or I am spiraling down with you. I suppose it depends on whether you're Barroso, Blair or Chirac. [/political]

Other random spewings:

• Vanilla Ninja (Switzerland). How apt. Pretty 80's soft rock in white.
• No Name (Serbia & Montenegro). Reminds me of the group in Soul Music trying to be musicians, eventually known as And Supporting Bandes so they could get on the playlist
• Feminnem (Bosnia & Herzegovina). Bucks Fizz Lesbianism (thanks to kitty for the quote)
• Natalia Podolskaya (Russia). I don't know why it is that producers have gone for their female artists showing just about, but not, all of their lovely breasts, but I do hope it continues. Can't remember the song, though!
• Luminata & Sistem (Romania). Deserve a special mention for their fascinating use of props.

If only!

Why has no-one told me that Terry Gilliam was trying for a film version of Good Omens, starring Johnny Depp, no less? A quick Google shows that the planning for the movie dates back to late 1999, but got shelved in 2002. Now it looks like it may very well go ahead after all. I'll paste my forefingers together if crossing them long enough will make it so.

Cosplay, queues and cake

This weekend marks the first time I spent longer in the queue for an event than in the event itself. And had more fun in the queue! Attending the MCM show at Excel seemed like a brilliant idea when it was raised just last Thursday. A friend of a friend was a show artist, the entry was only £6 each and it was round the corner from home. Opening was slated for 11pm so, with the kind of cool logic that, in hindsight, is fundamentally flawed, we determined that arriving after midday would have us missing the long lines of slavering fanfolk and walking straight in. Hah! As we walked into the main hall of the centre, a tinny Tannoy voice apologised for waits of up to 2 hours for Hall 3. We laughed, and pitied the poor visitors waiting to get into Hall 3, and did so all the more when we realised that Hall 3 was our destination.

Vodka smoothies and a pair of interesting signature hunters in the queue with us made the time fly remarkably pleasantly. As did the large number of people asking Zara for pictures of her outfit. Having heard there was a cosplay event in the programme, Zara had decided to dress up, not strictly for the event, you understand. Large numbers of less astute visitors were sure she was the winning entrant and wanted photos to memorialise the encounter. It only took one quick glance from a real cosplayer to puncture Zara's bubble, however. "You dress like that all the time, don't you. It's too generic to be cosplay." Watch this space for more news about Zara's future outfits, though. She's been bitten by a new bug i.e. she has a new reason to shop.

A brief wander through the expo, and we were on our way to the truly pleasant part of the day. The late afternoon consisted of (un)comfy cushions, padded arches and gorgeous cake with naked men and women in various degrees of discomfort and arousal around us. This is the delightful basement of Coffee Cake and Kink, an inspired idea well-executed and wonderfully run by the friendliest staff EVAH^tm! Going back there, oh yes we are. The birthday party started off a little slow and relaxed, which was nice, and then kicked into high gear when we reached Auberge, our restaurant for dinner. I think they must have been extremely happy to be rid of us by the time we left. We were just the teensiest bit noisy. Hey, we were having fun!

So, an excellent Saturday, on an excellent friend's birthday. It's, like, fate, man.

Advertising

A colleague raised an interesting question regarding a radio ad we both heard and, by extension, all advertising. He felt that the tone of the ad (his interpretation of the tone, that is) was not in keeping with its content and that, if it were changed to agree with his take on the content, it would have a broader appeal and garner more listeners. It must be pointed out that the ad was for something in which he has no interest at all, but he felt that the changes he proposed might make him more likely to pass the information on to others who might be interested.

I was a little perplexed. I am interested in the topic covered by the ad, and had a totally different take on the tone used to convey the content. Where he found dissonance between the two, I found them to be perfectly suited and consider myself among the target audience of the ad, being interested in the topic and having chosen the station because of its specific music genre. I pointed out that, since he didn't have the same take on the ad as me, he probably wasn't targeted by the ad and it would be senseless to change it to appeal to him, thereby possibly gaining a 2^nd hand audience by sacrificing the primary target group.

I was accused of being unable to be objective about the ad because of my interest in the topic, a statement which I can't, in all fairness, reject. If I am biased, how will I know how much that bias informs my opinion? So I put it to you; if an ad doesn't appeal to a member of its audience, should it be changed to include that person in its target group, or can it be assumed that the ad has already been tailored to its target audience and that the unwitting exposee who doesn't like it is irrelevant to the purpose of the ad? My stance should be clear.

For specific context (should it really be necessary), I refer you to the ad in question: the BlueCrashKit radio promo on Catnip Radio

The (main)stream widens

I was delighted to see yaoi featured in today's Metro. Definitely a putative sign of an increasingly tolerant inquisitive zeitgeist. Next step: yiff.

My metier is running

Big up to the Scrivener for pointing me this way. Someone's taken the scribbly nastiness out of stripping and I've not been able to stop:

• World's Funniest Joke (popular in kindergarten and football crowds)
• Organ Grinder (just when you were sure of your supply/demand cycle)
• Robot Heaven (guess it's about to find out!)
• Figure of Speech (which one, exactly?)
• more to come as inspiration strikes

There's a lot of real rubbish, if you're going to browse through other attempts, but a few gems are to be found among the rubble too.

Wants to live forever?

Apparently, according to Dr Aubrey de Grey, scientists are within a generation of an immortality breakthrough. Great news, if he's to be believed. That's not the funny bit though. It's people's response to the prospect that had me in hysterics while reading the Metro this morning.

If you start making changes there, where do you stop? Why not add new things like wings and completely change humans?

This reported in a tone of disgust and outrage. Taken out of context, however, it seems to me a fabulous idea. Let's tailor humans to live underwater. Or in space. Certainly, wings and immortality would be the least of the changes I'd like to see take place.

People don't mind growing old.

Um. Which people are these? The most people hope to achieve is a kind of wise acceptance of their mortality by the time their end becomes an incipient possibility. Give people the chance to live as long as they want, though, and they'd all be vying for the chance to be the first bicentegenarian triple-jump champions. Or the desired equivalent in 200 years.

My personal favourite was this offering from the University of Belfast:

people with high IQ results from 1937 were much more likely to be alive 60 years later than people with low ones.

No, really? And being equipped to deal with the consequences of a 2^nd World War, the concomitant technological explosion and the various vagaries of modern capitalist economics requires a 60-year study to be deemed beneficial to longevity?

Scientists! Gotta love 'em. Bless.

Thought for the day

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging; it is the skin of living thought and changes from day to day as does the air around us.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

What a very clever man.

Wanna filk?

No, I'm not being rude (well, maybe a little rudeness, if you insist). I tripped across this on another journal, and I don't understand, given the circles I travel in, how it is I haven't come across it before. It's fantastic! We do this for laughs, and here there's an entire community of people with their own collective term for what we're doing! Weeeee!

You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll hurl!

People have secrets. This site has left me totally wrung out. Be warned.

The shame

Barking is a BNP stronghold.

There. I said it. It's true. In the final count, Barking has the highest proportion of votes for this practically neo-Nazi party of any constituency in the UK. In fact, they came very close to being the 2nd party after Labour in the count, losing it to the Tories by around 100 votes. Eeep!

It does make one stop and think. What the hell am I doing here? I belong in one of the constituencies that swung LibDemwards, goddamnit! That's it. I'm moving to Richmond like all my friends.

Seriously, it's quite a bizarre result, if I simply look around at my neighbours. The old fussbudget across the way has been voting Tory since her parents were born. My terrace neighbour is an Indian primary teacher. My street neighbours are a household of Nigerian immigrants. Who the hell is voting for British Nationalism here?

Dreams are not real

I tripped across a comment while browsing, and it reminded me of a current pet peeve.

I don't know if you've seen the recent spate of ad's from Honda? Their slogan (Yume No Chikara) translates to something like "Making Dreams Happen", which is all very well, but the ads themselves go on to say, "What's the point of a dream if you can't make it happen?" Grrrrrr! What a stupid thing to say!

Web comic

New goodness, especially for cat people. Go look and, for heaven's sake, make sure you've got your giggle-girdle on.

Mind dump

Life the last few weeks has been a strange mixture of frenetic and withdrawn. There's the usual Spring fever of increased physicality (squash, skating, etc) and sudden thunderous depressions of apathy and disinterest. I missed most of the May bank holiday weekend through a debilitating malaise of unknown origin and nature, but managed a grassy knoll comeback on the Monday to compensate. Although I haven't managed to finish a Wednesday night Londonskate yet, due to Winter Atrophy, I'm increasing my endurance each week, and can see completion on the not-too-distant horizon.

Tomorrow's the general election and, for the first time, I get to vote. So I'm voting. The same arguments apply to an abstention now as did during my Uni days, but now it seems churlish to throw away the opportunity to "play my part". I wonder if the politicians saying that realise they're asking their constituents to amuse themselves with the process, rather than "work their part", but I doubt it, somehow.

Extract

And there were others, not as vivid, but they all had the same unshakable belief that they were doomed. And she had it, too. A terrible hard-bitten pessimism, an absolute gloom. She never foresaw a future in which she was included.
A psychiatrist he met over the years confessed one night at a private moment that he wrestled with the impulse to commit suicide each day. He got up every morning and it was a task as certain as shaving and going to the office: he must not kill himself.
Scott Turow, The Burden of Proof

That last sentence, it was a task as certain as shaving...he must not kill himself, is desperately poignant. It's a place I - and I'm sure most of us - have been, and describes the dread routine of despair better than I have ever read, or heard.

Hi. My name is Greg, and I wrestle with the impulse to commit suicide each day.

*wry grin*