I Hate Spammers
I'm getting a truly staggering number of comment spams hitting the filter at the moment, and every single one of them seems to be about something utterly vile.
And yet surely every blogging tool incorporates filtering and blacklisting and stuff these days, so why do they bother? Only the tiniest proportion of the things must get through, and where's the benefit? Surely no one reads a blogs comments and clicks on the links for this stuff before the blog owner gets online and deletes it?
This Eden
Sometimes I think back to the enlightened paradise that we all looked forward to the future being when we were kids with a certain amount of strange pleasure at the thought I was once so innocent and trusting. And I wonder at what point I realised that this wasn't going to be a future I lived to see.
On the radio this morning I listened to a mother talking about how her severely mentally ill son, after months on remand after attempting to kill himself with an air pistol, was sentenced to five years in Strangeways for the 'offence'. This guy, at thirty three, had already spent years of his adult life in mental institutions, and yet was sent to prison rather than to somewhere he could receive treatment (or at least care) for his condition. And I wonder what kind of utopian society I ever thought it would be possible for us to reach.
He killed himself in prison, by the way.
Funny Hat Alert!
There are very few non-architectural reasons that I'd go to church, let alone spend three hours on a Sunday lunchtime holding an order of service and neither miming to the hymns nor joining in with the responses to the stuff.
But seeing a friend achieving her ordination as a priest is one such reason, and today Louise was doing just that. I clapped as hard as anyone else at the appropriate moment, which was pretty much my only participation.
But sitting there in the frankly lovely surroundings of Southwark Cathederal, watching more members of the clergy taking part in a service than I've ever seen before, I found myself thinking about all the extraneous clutter:
About *all* those clergypeople, every one of whom seems to be dressed in a different combination of velvet and gold, and every one of whom except the Bishop seemed to be needed for no more than two minutes (oh, and except for the man whose job was to point his finger to the point they'd reached in the procedings on the Bishop's copy of the running order - would I kid about something like this?);
About the hectoring sermon, in which the thoroughly unpleasant and patronising woman giving it kept referring to some odd concept she called 'true humanity' without ever explaining what it was and how it's different from any other kind of humanity.
And about how offensive she clearly failed to see she was being when she announced that this 'true humanity' which she clearly set great store by, was only possible if you recognise god in your life, which appears to exclude we heathens and anyone not a Christian or Jew from being 'truly human'.
Probably all of this stuff goes unchallenged when the church is full of people willing to buy into it, but it was very clear that there were a lot of 'outsiders' in today's congregation for exactly the same reason I was there, and I can't believe I was the only one who felt thoroughly patronised, offended and naggingly judged.
And another thing - the order of service stated that there would be a collection, and that ordination services are "extremely expensive". Well, here's some much-needed advice you can have for free: use fewer people and spend less on unnecessary rubbish like fancy clothes. That could save you a few bob. If your god exists, after all, it can't conceivably matter to it what clothes you wear to worship it. In fact, wouldn't it be better to worship it the way it originally intended and do so naked? Isn't covering yourself supposed to be a clear indication that you've done something wrong?
We Were Robbed
Robbed of the 45 minutes of our lives we wasted watching the first episode of the BBC's new Robin Hood, that is.
I honestly can't believe that something so flat and uninspiring is supposed to be the successor to Doctor Who in the newly rediscovered family drama field. The performances were utterly lifeless, and the story, to the extent that there was one, offered absolutely nothing in the way of drama. The fights looked worse and less convincing than *old* Doctor Who used to offer up, and the characterisation was about as thin as anything I've ever seen. Absolutely no one had more than a single note to their character.
I was assuming we'd be wanting to record it over the next two Saturdays (the day of the wedding and while we're away after), but after that showing, there won't be any need.
Very, very disappointing.
Still, only a couple of weeks to Torchwood.
I Wish Shopping There Was Forbidden
I hate Forbidden Planet. Not the film, obviously, but the 'sci-fi and fantasy superstore' or however they're styling themselves these days. Shopping there is a thoroughly unpleasant experience, made more so by the recognition that as they've cornered quite a large part of their selected market, if you need to be able to walk into a shop and have a reasonable chance of leaving with what you wanted, FP is your best bet. (And I should stress that it's the London shop I'm talking about here. Apart from New York I've never been to another branch, and they could all be fantasy shopper heaven for all I know.)
Today, for reasons that are exactly of the 'need X in a hurry' variety, I went in, and while I was waiting for a staff member to appear and lower himself to help me give them my money, I found myself next to a man and his son who were complaining. They seemed to want to exchange something, but the main complaint was that the father, who made the repeated point that he'd been going to FP since 1990, felt that the staff had been rude and aggressive.
To which I can only ask, in all seriousness - how can you have been going there since 1990 and only now realised that the staff at Forbidden Planet are rude and aggressive?
I've always assumed it's part of the job description.
Yawn
I'm having a bit of a shattered week this week. Lots going on at work, building up to a big important event today, have meant a lot of lying in bed fretting and getting up at well before the crack of dawn to try and keep on top of everything. My eating routine has also been totally shot.
I'm currently at that point of tiredness where my eyes hurt.
Roll on the weekend.
Let Them Eat Cake
Nothing to do with all this fuss over whether Sofia Coppolla's film about Marie Antoinette misrepresents the poor old love, but wedding cake. We've weren't going to do it. And we're still not, but there will be cake, and it will be 'on theme'.
Intrigued? Good.
Prickly
People keep apologising to me for jokes they've made in my general direction in a way that they just wouldn't have even relatively recently. I don't think I'm a person who takes offence for little cause, and I'm sure most of these people have happily bantered with me before, but have now somehow started reading me as prickly. I don't get it at all.
I think there's a memo gone round....
Oh Dear
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Having missed it at the cinema, and having had the DVD sitting on the shelf for months, we finally got round to watching Peter Jackson's King Kong last night. Difficult to know where to start, really.
Too long (I read somewhere that this version took as long to reach the point where we first see Kong as the original took for its entire running time), too nonsensical for words, full of disconnected details that didn't go anywhere (one example: Jamie Bell's allegedly three-years-from-feral stowaway with the mysterious background - currently reading Joseph Conrad by the way), and just generally a wasted opportunity.
And obviously, in a film that's primarily about a giant ape, it's churlish to discuss the lack of realism, but given how Naomi Watts is *clearly* indestructable, note to Joss Whedon: Stick a brunette wig on her and you'll save a fortune in stunt doubles for Wonder Woman.