A world of guilty pleasures

Today Mgb complains and raves and raves and rants about Revenge of the Sith. It's not great storytelling. I'd personally give it a 6/10, but the fact is that some things are not like the others. I suspect some who didn't experience SW in the cinema from day one will find the whole hoopla completely overblown. Which of course it is! For those who were there first time out, the shadow of the first(s) cast everything afterwards in a false glow. Yet, still it glows.

As Joss Whedon might have said, "Unto each generation an Oasis is born"

Also, this weekend rte was showing Frequency at the same time that BBC3 were showing Pulp Fiction and it prompted me to remember some of guilty pleasure movies that I will happy stop changing channels for and just drop into no matter where in the movie we find ourselves.

Frequency

The idea is cool and I feel consistent enough for sci-fi but it’s really just a McGuffin for the father son interaction which in part makes this so good.

The American President

Power! And I’ve got something for a thing for Annette Bening. It's not a big thing, though it does get bigger when I watch this!

Late for Dinner

I was in Japan when I saw this and I seem to recall being quite broody. Which was odd enough in itself. I really suspect it was the feeling of lost time that hit me most, the loss of loved ones through being absent is quite odd.

Field of Dreams

More Father and Son happiness coupled with the oddness of marriage and adult responsibility. Also, Amy Madigan as the feisty, take no prisoners Annie Kinsella.

Annie Kinsella Terence Mann was a voice of reason during a time of great madness. Where others were chanting, "Burn, baby burn", he coined the phrase, "Make love, not war". I cherished every one of his books, and I dearly wish he had written some more. And if you experienced even a little bit of the sixties, you would understand.
Beulah: [indignantly] I *experienced* the sixties.

Annie Kinsella: No, I think you had two fifties and moved right into the seventies.

Class!

Bring it on

Cheerleaders! Faith, Glory, Spiderman’s girlfriend! What more could you ask for? Even More Cheerleaders!

They live

The sunglasses, the subtext, that fight! Sadly, too many people on Indymedia actually think the elite are this organised to really be bothered to do anything about social justice.

Below are others that have a similar effect on me but which are less likely to be considered such guilty pleasures by others by virtue of they are


Fight Club

And with the "limber" Helena Bonham Carter.

The Big Sleep

Dames, and a plot that can make your neck ache if you don't pay enough attention but with a young Lauren Bacall who wouldn't be paying attention.

GoldenEye

Just the opening showed it was all back on form. Up there as one of the best Bond's ever.


The Maltese Falcon

Dialogue so sharp you could shave with it the following morning. Dames so untrustworthy, you'd go to the bathroom after relations to check and make sure they hadn't removed anything in the process. Bad guys so sleazy, it was hard to imagine their hats didn't slide off their heads. And the ultimate McGuffin.

Aliens

The sands of Io Jima! And typical the fight between the ladies involves Prosthetics.


Gone with the Wind

The scope, the clothes, and Vivien Liegh. Elegant, haughty but naughty too. A force of will like a storm at sea.


The Big Lebowski

The dude abides! hmm.... I've not bowled in a while.

Great ideas I've had but not used or why I'm not rich.

Another great idea that I had either too late, or wasn't able to do anything about.

I've always had a thing, since secondary school as it happens, about
getting some type of projector device that doesn't need a screen. My personal
idea was some system that magnetized the individual water vapour in the air
and reshaped them such that they would each act as a prism for daylight.
OK, it was a bit sci-fi. I was thinking about it again yesterday evening when
looking at my phone and how small the screen is and later on did a quick google
and found this

In the mean time I wonder if I could afford one of
these?

Ah well, there is always Vagsec Industries....!

Another one that all the cool kids are doing

so why shouldn't I? Oh right, I'm not cool.

Who would have thought it, talented, perhaps gifted, but some might say wasted it all away on creating a sound economy and being the seducer of unsound women, that and a tendency to be needy.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

and were I a movie I'd be

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Attention seeking

So flickr is a place to put pictures of interest to some and none. It seems like a good facility. I'm really only testing it out for the moment. For more storage you have to pay, what is intriguing is it is not clear whether you are paying for the software that allows you to organise pictures or for the space you are renting to store the pictures. It would be great if all my photos were digital and I could do all kinds of organising, but most of mine are plain old filim! I might scan a few. Of course, there is the issue of whether placing pictures of people you know on the net that they may not find too flattering will damage a friendship. You may see nothing wrong in the picture but they may be incredibly self-conscious about something that you hardly notice. I suppose it's about respecting their opinion above all else. Unless, you don't respect them at all or have lost all respect for them then you can put up all kinds of skanky and sleazy, dragged out of the bushes backwards, pre-hungover, bad hair day , doing illegal things and just plain lame images and see what fun ensues!

I've also decide to examine some of the places to drink or booze in Limerick . It will be very much a viewakance look at hostelries in the locality. The opinions will be irrational and sometimes even just totally wrong, take note of them at your peril!

Pics and flicks

Just testing to see if this flickr thing works for me





I've been looking for a good pic of the Dog in Shibuya. Of course, the first time I went there I had been told by a friend to meet him at the Dog in Shibuya so I was looking, naturally enough I thought, for a pub called the Dog.



Not sure who she is but I'm not going to cut her out of the picture for chewing gum!

As David Niven might have said

chaps, to catch a rat, we have to learn to think like one.

hmmm smeellyy nice, cheese

Going down, south of the border, down mexico way

So it happened. Palace were relegated. I watched the WBA game on rte, while getting tortured by the commentary crew as to the state of play in the other matches. And there it was 10 minutes or so to go and Palace were leading Charlton and we were staying up. Then we concede a goal from a set piece and we're down. It was very hard to take. I think that Palace will, if they can hold on to their players, bounce straight back up. That said, it seems all too likely that a number of players could be pinched by the big clubs, Andy Johnson, Routledge, Kiraly amongst them. Going down and still being able to reproduce your best performances can be a challenge for anyone. You really need to assured of good guidance to navigate the environment, something I suspect not all ladies are completely conscious of. Many are though, and they are richly rewarded for being so.

Other news is that the barbie at 205 has been me thoughts to testing the barbie at the back of our place. It is dangerous work but someone has to do it. Given the responding success I've had in organising things in the recent past, I'm not very confident that anyone will come if I do get it working.

Sweetness

V for Vendatta is getting made into a movie. I just hope the folks behind it don't do a Martix Reloaded/Revolutions on it. I really like V because it has a strong political aspect and much in the manner of old style derring do. Some parts are very ambigious, and the broadcast about how we have been letting the firm down and perhaps it's time to let us go is pure brillance. Humanity isn't ready for real responsiblity as we keep demostrating day in day out.

Birth and its attendant problems

I'm going to join Miku-chan in offering birthday Salutations to his fellow Yoganite, though not of the Sun kind. My leg is still tender. I was sadly unable to do so in person or attend any of the many, many, festivities due to not knowing about them in time, (or at all as the case may be).

And for our competition entrants, the attendant problems of birth are aging and birthdays (reminders of aging). A Batdan figure to all those who guessed correctly.

Believe in me!

If only I did...

One of the strangest thing about us all is that no one is quite as they seem to be. Oddly enough the biggest culprits we can find are ourselves, we lie to ourselves about who we are and how people see us. It's normally a harmless thing, though if you let it get out of hand you will start to see yourself as significant different to how you are. This differential (I'd call it a delta only there may be non-nerds reading this at some point) will lead only to pain of various types.

The really severe pain comes when reality clashes with this personal world view in some dramatic manner. Essentially, you suddenly realise that you are very far from this picture you have created of yourself. and you are attempting to do something that the real one has no hope of suceeding at. We can all get away with the occasional white lie to ourselves about who we are, but not really big whopper. Morever this is the case where other people are involved.

Along with this I should point out that I ascribe to the view put forward by the guide which is that "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also talks about love. It says: avoid it!"

Very, very true.

That Election and those bets

So, I had €4 on the SNP to get five or more seats at 7-4 which is a win
So, I had €4 on the LDs to get between 61-70 at 7-4 which is looking like a win, but Paddy's not paying out just yet.

Sadly, I had €8 on the LDs to get more than 70 at 15-8 which is a total loser. (Somewhat like me)

I'm not too confident about my €1 at 7-1 on the UUP to get 3 or more seats either.

Still on balance I'm up and I think my guess on p.ie was pretty accurate too.

Never try to let just the one of your emotions out of the box

Never try to let just one your emotions out of their comfortable little box or they will play 'pass the key' and before you know it they will all decide to come out for a dance, around your head, near the pain centres. This naturally leads to headaches and a desire for drink, which I'm currently trying to avoid for a variety of reasons. Some of which would take too long to explain and others which are likely to land me in more trouble than avoiding the drink is doing.

I normally prefer to take the advice of Marge Simpson and squish them all down in the box and never let them out. Long term it's not healthy but who is thinking long term these days. The other problem is that when they all come out at once like they have, the ones, that for want of something more descriptive and simple, I will say live on the dark side are so much stronger, enticing and just plain easier to access than the positive emotions. Anger, hate, rage, (not sure if rage is an emotion, but since it's here I'm not going to point that out to it) those guys can really carry an argument when they get going. And the other positive guys, who do they think they are anyway? The whole "Fear is the path to the dark side... fear leads to anger... anger leads to hate.. hate leads to suffering." misses the crucial point of what is it that causes fear, huh? I'll tell ya, it's those lazy positive emotions that's who. Yeah. Those guys will undermine you everytime. You're going along ( I wrote alone first instead of along, what would Freud make of that!) all fine and dandy and suddenly the presence of one of those positive guys or better yet being reminded of the absence of one of them will knock you for six and before you know it, you're afraid you'll never experience another positive emotion. Oh yeah, you betcha! It's all love's fault. I'm blame love, down with love.

It's the dark side for me, oh yes. Better outfits too.

I'll leave the last word to her blondy goodness.
"We all need help with our feelings. Otherwise we bottle them up, and before you know it, powerful laxatives are involved. I really believe if we all reach out to one another we can beat this thing. I'm always here if you need a hug, but not a real hug! Because there's no touching, this school is sensitive to wrong touching."

Of course, it wasn't even she that said it. It's nonetheless kinda true.

And she did say this. or part of it." Who are you?"
" Let's just say I'm a friend."
" Well, maybe I don't want a friend."
" I didn't say I was yours."
never were truer words spoken. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, the rest you could avoid if at all possible. It's all just a matter of working out who you can trust to be which.

Some one stole my idea!

I had an idea for a novel about 20 years ago called the lov'ng time Or The Love in Time. The basic premise was a social sciencist travelling back to study 1920s Ireland from a thousand years in the future, meets and falls in love with the landlady of the guest house he has to stop in periodically at the end of his journey down the timeline. These stops are to allow him to acclimatise to the diseases and socialisation patterns of the period he is heading to. The idea was to have 2 chapters setting out his life and her life, and then alternating each of 11 chapters (one per visit) with her viewpoint and his viewpoint. Starting with he meeting her for the first time on his first visit where she is in her late fifties and he in mid twenties and continuing until she was about 20 and he was still in his mid twenties. The idea was that he and she get to know each other better as the other gets to know them less. Confused? I still find it hard to follow sometimes. Of course, the big problem is that the last jump he has to take will leave him spending years in a period slightly before she was born and how to end the whole story. Personally, the ending always depended on my mood. And right now I’d be inclined that he carry on as he originally intended and that he writes it all off as a fling and that she die alone and miserable. Oddly enough that was my humour when I first mapped it out and I was encouraged to leave it as a bitter ending by someone who I subsequently found out had been involved with someone I was smitted with at the time. Strange advice to get, I work on something bitter and twisted and one of the people who had me in the bitter and twisted mood advising me that this is the way to go!.

Tomorrow, I might prefer the heroic answer which is….

If someone asks for it I’ll tell you. Otherwise, it is best left to the imagination . Which is another ending idea too. you are left wondering what choice they make. Of course as the writer you really can't leave it unknown in your own head. It would drive me nuts not to know.

Here is the printed version of what seems on the surface to be similar to my idea.

The Time Travellers Wife

Steal my precious will ya, Ms. Niffenegger?

To tell the truth

It is often noted that what we dislike about others is usually something we secretly dislike about ourselves. So what does one say about things that we actively dislike about ourselves? I've found that I'm very good at arguing something irrespective of whether I believe in it; fact is I enjoy it so much that I can lose my own opinion in the heat of a discussion. And if it ends up being one of the few things a person is good at they will tend to derive greater enjoyment from it than might otherwise be the case. Though I might prefer to say that I see it as an ability that I can see more than one side to any issue and that being able to see the other side is an aid to being able to empathise with others, I really think of it as a weakness. Someone people would just call it lying. So I value the truth and trust in others above a lot of more sensible things.

So, how does that affect my opinion of others? Well, it makes me incredibly aware of and sensitive to other people saying one thing and believing another. It is what I refer to as hypocrisy. I think there is a big difference between saying one thing and doing another even if you still believe in what you said, and saying one thing and doing the opposite because you never believed in it in the first place. The latter is truly hypocritical and the former is just plain old human weakness. In large part for that sole reason, I much prefer to surround myself with people that have beliefs and that are prepared to be consistent about them. As one expression goes, it is something that really gets my goat. I like to be in a position where I am able to trust other people in large part because I don’t entirely trust myself. And finding that trust or presumption of trust was misplaced ends up being a double blow, because the decision as to who to trust is mine and in making a mistake I’ve demonstrated to myself that I can’t trust my judgement. So, I have to mind what I say and do, and who I trust. After all who knows what I might say tomorrow.

One day to the British General Election

I've got a few bets on but who knows if they'll come off.

And I'm quite annoyed about something, though I can't quite put my finger on why. Ok, I probably can but I'm not telling anyone likely to be reading this.

In other news.