tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45058127009673302962024-03-17T09:39:35.304+00:00Musings of the Cosmic Calamari"I am the damage that a dream does"SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.comBlogger2346125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-92120705925694350582024-03-16T16:32:00.001+00:002024-03-16T16:32:23.004+00:00D CDs #471: Nowt So Queer As Folk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Z4Aoa62w_6G-oykRRK1vSEQWw5gAoUPHk-GeQ6K8Sj16kHZ4mgUJN1NpJmIlJ6iRO2ti0U1ZGT8tKbQKus_GYaHH99rc1OZQu62qAsaF_6LVQW_mEZf-TvIhBOPuoIyiNZ2wqNp9Ndk_slTcViLM1Lr96f34173j5RGwSPJo9v3qq0oP3CoJIILbqe6-/s316/I_Want_to_See_the_Bright_Lights_Tonight_(Richard_Thompson_album_-_cover_art).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="316" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Z4Aoa62w_6G-oykRRK1vSEQWw5gAoUPHk-GeQ6K8Sj16kHZ4mgUJN1NpJmIlJ6iRO2ti0U1ZGT8tKbQKus_GYaHH99rc1OZQu62qAsaF_6LVQW_mEZf-TvIhBOPuoIyiNZ2wqNp9Ndk_slTcViLM1Lr96f34173j5RGwSPJo9v3qq0oP3CoJIILbqe6-/s1600/I_Want_to_See_the_Bright_Lights_Tonight_(Richard_Thompson_album_-_cover_art).jpg" width="316" /></a></div><p>This one was a bastard to write. I just don't get folk. </p><p>Wait, no; that's not
it.</p><p></p><p><o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I don't get <i>my reactions </i>to folk.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Part of this is the variance. The best folk is transcendent - a perfect
alloy of history, politics and raw emotion so strong, you can fully believe
what Woody Guthrie's guitar kept telling people. Bad folk is revanchist,
ramshackle nonsense, endless self-indulgent variations of saying absolutely
nothing. White people's jazz.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>That the gap between best and worst can be measured in (bright) light years
is true of every musical genre, naturally. What make folk unusual is how
completely I can't get a handle on what makes the difference.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>It's tempting to say a lot of it is just sticking "rock" on the
end. In practice, though, that just seems to mean "a plug is
involved". Which does help, yes, and it's vaguely amusing to me that it
turns out I'd discounted the Newport Folk Festival hecklers as demonstrable
fucking idiots years before knowing the details of who they were. That doesn't
really get us anywhere, though; not when artists as diverse* as Dylan, Simon
and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, and (as a protean form) the Beach Boys all got to
claim the term.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I want to take <i>I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight</i> as a case
study. See if it can get us to a unified theory of good folk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems pretty clearly in the upper
tiers of the genre, after all. Perhaps we can establish a yardstick here, and use it to
beat the fash-loving banjo botherers unaccountably allowed to get famous on folk’s
farthing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>So: reasons <i>…Lights Tonight</i> folk rocks.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="text-indent: -24px;">It knows the past was awful.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p>Nostalgia is a disease, and not one that only hurts those infected. Fuck
folk that focuses its gaze at our great-grandfathers’ navels. <i>…Bright Lights
seems</i> to make this mistake, on a surface reading, with “End Of The Rainbow”
lamenting the state of today’s world, compared to his childhood. The point
though is that the narrator is obviously pathetic, unable to distinguish his
own problems from that of a newborn baby. Bad news for you between breast
sessions, mate; your sister’s a whore. Try not to find that too hideous a revelation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>No. This album’s soul resides not with an imagined dead rainbow, but with the poor little
beggar girl, forced to make her money briefly distracting the rich dickheads she holds in contempt. <o:p></o:p></p><p>If there's a romance to the past here, it's only in the sense we all know it; we didn't always know just how difficult it is to get through the years.</p><p>Speaking of which...</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="text-indent: -24px;">It knows the present is awful.</span></li></ul>
<p><o:p>Tossing coins to disabled beggars dancing in the street isn't something we see much of any more, but it's not like abasement to the rich as a survival mechanism has gone away. Capitalism still us. all by inches, until it chooses to kill us outright. Fascism escaped its just garrotting by Guthrie's guitar strings. "Withered And Died" tackles this head on; we emerge butterfly-like from our teenage years, and like butterflies, we're all too easily crushed.</o:p></p><p><o:p>But there's hope here, too. It's a canny move to follow "Withered And Died" with "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight". We switch gears from the misery of what life has taught us, to how we might be able to set it aside. Yes, a night on the town is a temporary solution, but they're <i>all</i> temporary solutions.</o:p></p><p><o:p>This tug-of-war between existential melancholy and finding hope in revelry is critical to the first half of the album. It's right there in the opening track; "When I Get To The Border" suggests that if you can't go down fighting, the next best thing is to go down drinking while on the run. If the album seems balanced between its twin concerns, well, just remember which song got to be the title track.</o:p></p><ul><li><span style="text-indent: -24px;">It’s clear-eyed about getting blurry-eyed.</span></li></ul><p></p><p><o:p></o:p></p><p>Alcohol is a recurring concern of ...<i>Lights Tonight</i>, operating at various times as both an accompaniment to misery, and a way of warding it away. The narrator of the title track can't wait to enjoy "drunken nights rolling on the floor", while that of "...Border" tells the friends he's leaving behind that, when he eventually dies, they can basically assume it was drink that did it. </p><p>Folk feels intimately connected with alcohol. Hang around any pub that prides itself on its collection of real ales (fake ales continuing to be one of the greatest crises Britain must face), and you run the constant risk someone will pull out a concealed mandolin, to fire crotchets at you without consent. I'm not sure what the link is between self-indulgent jam sessions, songs about hills, and people who get ludicrously snooty about their dipsomania, but it's definitely there.</p><p>...<i>Lights Tonigh</i>t touches on this as it closes out its first half. Once again, this is impeccable sequencing. "Down Where The Drunkards Roll" doesn't just round off the loose but undeniable thematic cohesion on Side A**. It follows directly from "...Lights Tonight" itself, showing us that song's narrator, and those like her, through the eyes of others. Kids looking grand until they get themselves fucked up. Lonely people who find comfort in the bottle because it eluded them everywhere else. People who crave the delusions drink delivers. There's no condemnation here, though. No simple desultory philippic, this. All we find is sympathy. An awareness of shared sadness; of wine that runs thicker than blood. They're all just temporary solutions. The lies come so easily because the truth is so terrible.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It doesn't outstay its welcome.</li></ul><p></p><div>This is a zippy platter (certainly, it's far less self-indulgent than this essay). Ten songs in barely thirty-five minutes. There's a tightness here that counts for a lot; the sprawling cycles of irrelevant variation that mars so much self-indulgent folk is nowhere to be found. It doesn't hurt of course that, the one time the album feels like it's sliding into jamland, it's with the sublime melee of solos that carries the opening track into the distance. </div><div><br /></div><div>The slimness of it all also helps with the one real criticism worth making here: it's a pretty front-loaded disc. None of the offerings in its back half are actually bad - "The Little Beggar Girl" in particular cuts plenty deep enough. Still, there's a noticeable slackening of momentum past the halfway mark, as a determined march through hope and horror slows and stumbles. You can feel the album bleeding its last energy out as it topples to the dirt just beside the finish post.</div><div><br />Still, I could never get endings right either. And another way to say ..<i>.Lights Tonight</i> collapses in the final seconds is to say it left everything out on England's green fields.</div><div><br /></div><div>Surely that's the capstone of the structure holding all this together. Surely that's folk as <i>fuck</i>.</div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>Seven and a half tentacles.</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">*Within the already established narrow ethnic corridor, that is.<br /><br />** Only "Calvary Cross" feels somewhat out of place here, though this could well be at least partially related to the <a href="https://squidfromspace.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-girl-stays-home-alone-at-night.html">extremely strong association</a> I have with that song.</p><p></p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-34740700924563251752024-03-01T07:14:00.000+00:002024-03-01T07:14:21.778+00:00Friday 40K: A Banner Year<p> Got round to finishing my Dark Angels Ancient. Behold: Old Steven.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4oHQJbt0B9488vSEePdR5eW3qT9IxMN65u48UUD6WrqY3thgfJNF-ErENtgKlRhLUHBzdSMmyJsaKkxPZekt0tTYhXalv7VcNbPIZsKwQ9vJ2BAgmIunVH54F5FJJkLXEqoQfhkmaURPr_c3M10FQ0fksQ1qBuRYuPgjiAP5d54vMBqt6VuqDccAYzu3l/s4624/IMG20240229203901.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4oHQJbt0B9488vSEePdR5eW3qT9IxMN65u48UUD6WrqY3thgfJNF-ErENtgKlRhLUHBzdSMmyJsaKkxPZekt0tTYhXalv7VcNbPIZsKwQ9vJ2BAgmIunVH54F5FJJkLXEqoQfhkmaURPr_c3M10FQ0fksQ1qBuRYuPgjiAP5d54vMBqt6VuqDccAYzu3l/s320/IMG20240229203901.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Standard uber-simple paint job, this one, to fit in with the rest of the now 44-year old army. I did a bit of shading on the robes and seals, just because there's so much cloth and parchment that the miniature would look too flat otherwise.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqUY8ZCjPBpTRaMl_g0dtTDc8-4hND5_hEGubSQn8CYZN79JyAY49PXtBejgkpzFE6JgtEmXHUd5fRBrQqP-8FhZnFUNOBUeo_eL0UwNU-C2CcBLWVQfq9fAcIpN3IrZ_J6JBQ-nYl9REcrLRnLMeu5xVM9Q24PesEsp3Slu_NF6fr-fy9xs3UWP9O2zwo/s4624/IMG20240229203956.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqUY8ZCjPBpTRaMl_g0dtTDc8-4hND5_hEGubSQn8CYZN79JyAY49PXtBejgkpzFE6JgtEmXHUd5fRBrQqP-8FhZnFUNOBUeo_eL0UwNU-C2CcBLWVQfq9fAcIpN3IrZ_J6JBQ-nYl9REcrLRnLMeu5xVM9Q24PesEsp3Slu_NF6fr-fy9xs3UWP9O2zwo/s320/IMG20240229203956.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Here's the bannerlad with my Captain and Company Champion. How he'll be slotted into the army structure is currently undetermined. Frankly, I'm struggling to be bothered, given how obnoxious the 10th Edition has been so far in terms of Firstborn marines. I was bang on in December when I predicted the incoming round of codexes would further buggerify my greenest boys. Deep-sixing some of the Firstborn datasheets was probably inevitable, and it's only my four servitors which are now completely unusable, with no "counts as" equivalent. It's the ludicrous restrictions on unit sizes and war gear that's pissed me off. Enforcing ten-men Tactical Squads already meant my Razorback could only carry a Devastator or Command Squad; now Command Squads have gone too, replaced by "Company Heroes" <i>which aren't allowed in Razorbacks</i>.</p><p>Even more bafflingly, Company Hero squads must include an Ancient and Company Champion (the latter of which cannot be fielded in any other way) plus exactly two veterans, one of which <i>must </i>have a heavy bolter.</p><p>I'm actually quite lucky, given all these ridiculous constraints. I can move the lascannon marine I used to have in my Command Squad to my nine-man squad, and swap my melta-gun veteran for a heavy bolter marine from a different squad. A quick paining session to add/remove the orange trim I use to denote veterans, and I'll have an army that's entirely useable aside from the servitors (and presuming no-one refuses to accept my Bikers as Outriders or Land Speeders as Storm Speeders). Honestly, though, I'm just struggling to justify even such minimal effort. It just feels like I'm going to be wasting more and more of my hobby time trying to rearrange my armies so they just about remain playable, rather than actually painting cool things that make me happy.</p><p>Bah.</p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-79707369318609128802023-12-23T12:00:00.000+00:002023-12-23T12:00:00.158+00:00Extended Trumpet Solo<p>Writing about totally failing to get much painting done recently made me realise I've been very remiss in keeping my legion of loyal readers updated on what I <i>have </i>been doing: writing about TV! Over the last three years I've been in three more <b>Outside In</b> books. I wrote short essays on the<i> Millennium </i>episode <a href="https://www.atbpublishing.com/product/outside-in-wants-to-believe-156-new-perspectives-on-156-x-files-universe-stories-by-156-writers/">"Wide Open"</a> and the <i>Twin Peaks </i>episode <a href="https://www.atbpublishing.com/product/outside-in-walks-with-fire-55-new-perspectives-on-55-twin-peaks-stories-by-55-writers/">"Slaves And Masters"</a>, and went off-piste with a fictional academic article written by a smug fascist to cover <a href="https://www.atbpublishing.com/product/outside-in-regenerates-163-new-new-perspectives-on-163-classic-doctor-who-stories-by-163-writers/">"The Sontaran Experiment"</a>.</p><p>Next year, I'll be in the <i>Deep Space Nine</i> book with a piece on "Business As Usual", assuming Stacey likes the smell of whatever I cook up!</p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-75442430348760292172023-12-22T22:11:00.000+00:002023-12-22T22:11:16.795+00:00Friday 40K: The Best I Can Do<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The second half of this year has been absolutely miserable for painting, lads. I've averaged one miniature a month, all of them from my oldest two armies, meaning the colour schemes on them are extremely limited. Here, for the sake of contractual obligation, are two Dark Angels Tactical Marines.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_b6qni6YwFTADbFqtQ-srSifPKSgz81clzX23OrC6WuSR2BBllh3dhu2J0BXfY67BsTYcH8T9AmcJg-PXUPf78M4-Ce-ZeJSEjWKoXQZRE8_UKcpyzmz6hA-D0BwvN7q4MvUlyd4ke0Gd68iTzAkcwSWmjdFm0vIdmBlOylnRSdlQGL5cJJ-v9iUXQdv/s4624/IMG20231222194417.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_b6qni6YwFTADbFqtQ-srSifPKSgz81clzX23OrC6WuSR2BBllh3dhu2J0BXfY67BsTYcH8T9AmcJg-PXUPf78M4-Ce-ZeJSEjWKoXQZRE8_UKcpyzmz6hA-D0BwvN7q4MvUlyd4ke0Gd68iTzAkcwSWmjdFm0vIdmBlOylnRSdlQGL5cJJ-v9iUXQdv/s320/IMG20231222194417.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Technically painted, I'm sure we can all agree. Fun fact, I only had these on my paint station because I needed them to make my army codex compliant for 9th Edition. By the time I'd finished them, we were on to 10th Ed, and a whole new set of ways in which what I have isn't fully usable. I've dutifully started a Dark Angels Ancient (current name: Old Steven), but I can't imagine being very far along with him at all before the new codex means another set of bullshit changes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Also complete is the only unit I both started and finished this year: four bases of 'Nid Rippers.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz-9iFwF64Yn23AffvkdD3551ZYaxrxdk7YPtFR5BOe56irUf4ytUMPeEawkN_1TtBkiWH6qeIlh3aPWCIDpMEsYWp63yIwfccVYxgpKEzeenpf52oicgqxtfgX5dycmZlpKWsivoupzSf9QQAE9iuW2MIFRt0YE4jWPe60bZAjx290t6hM3UIetXCb0Ef/s4624/IMG20231222194746.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz-9iFwF64Yn23AffvkdD3551ZYaxrxdk7YPtFR5BOe56irUf4ytUMPeEawkN_1TtBkiWH6qeIlh3aPWCIDpMEsYWp63yIwfccVYxgpKEzeenpf52oicgqxtfgX5dycmZlpKWsivoupzSf9QQAE9iuW2MIFRt0YE4jWPe60bZAjx290t6hM3UIetXCb0Ef/s320/IMG20231222194746.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So tiny! So bitey! They'll nom your world because there's, like, LOADS of them.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Two marines; twenty rippers. But which is best? There's only one way to tell! FIGHT!</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MfIPfeSN2WZeLDnqTTGT072UQksTGO6iLI3dQVIkmYBe9nghH9JtCzvQeckTCkJOHx18OjptyWWU1K-oWVQeHk3cFPupzs3xv2ifASJMQeojUxcsNp4i7x3-UoOAIKVzrlmLI0ArhrbGu1yiGabCacP1q4tANpQ7yp-ZFBxKZzSMKDiA5gnB7t4QpySK/s3746/dar1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3446" data-original-width="3746" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MfIPfeSN2WZeLDnqTTGT072UQksTGO6iLI3dQVIkmYBe9nghH9JtCzvQeckTCkJOHx18OjptyWWU1K-oWVQeHk3cFPupzs3xv2ifASJMQeojUxcsNp4i7x3-UoOAIKVzrlmLI0ArhrbGu1yiGabCacP1q4tANpQ7yp-ZFBxKZzSMKDiA5gnB7t4QpySK/s320/dar1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>(Ah, actually I'm being told you can also tell who's best through a series of "point scores" through which all models in <b>Warhammer 40,000</b> can be compared. Ludicrous.)</div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-21910372319166086552023-12-08T19:39:00.003+00:002023-12-08T19:40:35.154+00:00No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.18 - "F.O.D. " (Green Day)<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/18_gllCj19A?si=uMM1FTFG560CIFY1" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe><br /><br />Ah, quiet/loud/quiet/loud. Where have we <a href="https://squidfromspace.blogspot.com/2023/09/no-apologies-for-infinite-radness-1217.html">heard me talk about hearing that before</a>?<br /><p class="MsoNormal">I can’t claim I planned it, but the one-two quiet-loud pinch-punch
of these last two songs makes for a nice sign off to a playlist defined by the border
between misery and anger. It’s a long border, of course, covering a wide range
of terrain. “The Quiet Things…” is a multilayered mapping of cross-currents and
riptides, swirling just between the surface. “F.O.D” is a man telling his
about-to-be-ex to fuck off and die.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There’s a power in simplicity – “F.O.D.” doesn’t even bother
to go quiet again. The sheer broadness makes the song feel like it belongs to
you alone, and does the same for everyone. The steps may have been different
for all of us, but we’ve almost all seen a long, juddering dance lead us here. The
last thread snaps, and you're left with only the layers of Sellotape and
rows of safety pins you'd put in place to hold everything together. Just the outline of what used to be there.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When that happens, there’s nothing to do but take that last
snapped strand, that final frayed straw, and burn it to ash in front of your
new/old enemy’s face. You can’t even explain why this time was different; it
just completely, obviously, <i>is</i>. You want a justification? Justifications
are for the people I can still respect. Just fuck off and <i>die</i>. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">One thing that I love about this song is how the chord progression actually gets more complicated as the narrator lets his fury slip its mooring. The obvious thing to do would be to go the other way; to lose complexity along with composure. Inverting this makes it clear how much this guy has been holding back. How careful he’s been to present only a part of himself. It's not so much a switch as an expansion, hence the repetition of the need to destroy the bridge between them past hope of repair. Besides, we often repeat ourselves, when we're that angry. When someone has made us that angry. <o:p></o:p>Just <i>fuck off</i> and <i><b>die</b></i>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I listened to "F.O.D." while driving across an actual
bridge once, belting out the words to myself, the river, and the night. I remember that every time I hear this song, even though I don’t
remember which bridge it was, or which river. I can't even remember the car. The association remains, but not
what lay on the other side of it. Just the outline of what used to be there. </p><p class="MsoNormal">I can’t remember whose face was in my mind I as I
sang along, either. Who was it I had so completely had enough of their daring to be in my life? Who was I so desperate to have gone, hat the memory of my exhausted, burning rage has so outlasted the name of whomever I'd directed it towards?</p><p class="MsoNormal">Just the outline of what used to be there. Just <b><i>fuck off</i></b> and <b><i>DIE</i></b>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;">No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2: Louder Now</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">B-Side:</p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jn3an_Y5tGM?si=KapEWvt3eOk_Xf07" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe>
<div><br /></div><div>I don't like to go negative with my music posts, but you just gotta stand back and marvel at how completely this cover misses the point of the original song, on every conceivable level.</div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-45380676352843577852023-09-06T19:00:00.002+01:002023-09-06T19:06:46.299+01:00No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.17 - "The Quiet Things That No-one Ever Knows " (Brand New)<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qgtkPKZ2OPk" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe><p>Ah, quiet/loud/quiet/loud. Where have we heard <i>that</i> before?</p><p>Brand New were an interesting band more than they were an enjoyable one. Or at least, they were after their delightfully unselfconscious debut <i>Your Favorite Weapon</i>. Twelve tracks of charismatic emo so strong, it felt like a capstone for the whole damn musical movement. Or maybe a gravestone is the better metaphor. Brand New had dealt a slow-bleeding but ultimately mortal wound, inflicted ironically yet surgically by a band being feted as the big (brand) new thing. So this is how emo dies; to thunderous applause. </p><p>But when you've mounted the summit of the terrain you're exploring, there's nowhere (brand) new to go, except down. Not in terms of quality; in terms of <i>geography</i>. <i>Deja Entendu</i> goes subterranean, almost daring the listener to enjoy its dark, stagnant pools and echoing darkness. "Charismatic" was now entirely off the table.</p><p>The band's masterstroke was to pair this quest for the deepest recesses of their genre and their psyches with an attempt to find a (brand) new spin on the first post-fame album. If standard emo can be summed up as "You WILL recognise my pain!", <i>Deja Entendu</i> explores the pain of being recognised. The fear of it is a central theme, too, whether it be at the hands of a para-social fanbase ("I Will Play My Game Beneath The Spin Light"), a burned lover ("The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot"), or your own horrified conscience (the previously-covered "Me Vs Maradona Vs Elvis").</p><p>"The Quiet Things That No-One Ever Knows" is the central chamber in the cave system Brand New carved out here, with their teeth and nails and bile. The croon/yell formula is repurposed to brilliant effect, pressed into a parallel of the calm exterior of a man desperate to tell the truth to his partner, but knowing doing so will torpedo the relationship beyond hope of it staying afloat. "I lie for you, and I lie well". He knows they're doomed - indeed, he knows sooner or later she'll figure out he's been cheating on her - but he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. Their love is dying, but he doesn't want it to die just yet. He looks out at the glory of the Pacific, and all he can think about is the hospitals. The places we delay the inevitable.</p><p>Mixed in with all this is the stress of touring - so much sacrificed for the sake of empty hotels. "If today's the day it get's tired/today's the day we drop out". Sure, mate. His partner isn't the only one he's lying to. Which of course means he's even lying about who he's lying to. Meta-mendacity.</p><p>When this song dropped as the first single from the album, there were people who complained its traditional structure - quiet/loud/quiet/loud, where <i>have </i>we heard that before? - was a poor advertisement for the desperate sandpaper leers and expansive hollow dankness of the parent album. That after trying so hard to be brand new, Brand New had let themselves down here.</p><p>This was and is bullshit. "The Quiet Things..." was the final cut, the<i> coup de grace </i>for an entire genre they'd left bleeding on the floor. Having slammed the door, they came back to burn the building. You can't head somewhere (brand) new until you've left some other place behind, and the <i>whole fucking point</i> of the elevator into Hell is that it starts at the top (listen to that guitar shifting downward as we head into each verse; these lads knew what they were doing).</p><p>Where the elevator ended up is a tale for another time. All that matters here is the soundtrack on the way down. </p><p>You'd struggle to do any better than this.</p><p><br /></p><p>B-side</p>
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Bonus B-side (ignore the shaky first couple lines)</p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/13L2pJmaG9o" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-81096589384297412202023-08-29T09:00:00.001+01:002023-08-29T09:00:00.130+01:00Five Things I Learned In British Columbia<p>1. Both Victoria and (especially) Vancouver feel very European as cities, compared to Anchorage, Winnipeg, and Churchill, which are more what forty-three years of consuming US/Canadian film and television suggested I should expect. If it weren't for the accents and the signs warning me not to feed coyotes, I'm not sure I would have been able to tell I wasn't in an English-speaking city east of the Atlantic.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFPxz0BnGCpiMWEU2N4mdtB3ouE7ROQDOF_VpNKcirO15UU9J5vBY3pgDOjM3z_wgi5CwPFXLAtJ30HoRFalmr8iXLnLMW_SQAR9MC67SJ0y_jyHB38OkHXLHEPe5_2IX4r-R71x8rCyMbiH13UscekM6xTRqIY4VYeL0TA6BAKgdXtVhuYRrCrSbbwpyM/s4624/IMG20230807160911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFPxz0BnGCpiMWEU2N4mdtB3ouE7ROQDOF_VpNKcirO15UU9J5vBY3pgDOjM3z_wgi5CwPFXLAtJ30HoRFalmr8iXLnLMW_SQAR9MC67SJ0y_jyHB38OkHXLHEPe5_2IX4r-R71x8rCyMbiH13UscekM6xTRqIY4VYeL0TA6BAKgdXtVhuYRrCrSbbwpyM/s320/IMG20230807160911.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I felt right at home, is what I'm saying, at least until I tried to scratch an itch for a decent cider, something Canada does not appear to possess.</p><p></p><p>2. Humpback whales! They're HUGE! They're elusive! They get under your boat and you think "OH SHIT I don't think we'll win if this turns into a wrestling match"! Seeing them out in the Pacific, I had no trouble at all understanding why <i>Star Trek</i> felt comfortable basing an entire film on the conceit that an alien species would travel dozens of light-years just to check in on these fifty-ton krillbois.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVZTLqiLBN2d_dkjd2ps9UfVyaw5hJASimSu9lfo_3ii8V8ERcumh0YVsvc7PmeeJ865VALgIB_hTSJY7s3UT_0DT31xbFU8js2Q__E2OXzQS-ZLyH8dB1ZYQf1vGwQE1UlXv6tnqJFBWBcTnPQzA8igURMiLlH5t32wStc_yH7FgtU0ncBKpZpwgue2A4/s4624/IMG20230809124041.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVZTLqiLBN2d_dkjd2ps9UfVyaw5hJASimSu9lfo_3ii8V8ERcumh0YVsvc7PmeeJ865VALgIB_hTSJY7s3UT_0DT31xbFU8js2Q__E2OXzQS-ZLyH8dB1ZYQf1vGwQE1UlXv6tnqJFBWBcTnPQzA8igURMiLlH5t32wStc_yH7FgtU0ncBKpZpwgue2A4/s320/IMG20230809124041.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhoih3PGbOZYrBQNdw7YyA3Ui53BcSfdM_BPtPNrb02tqzysGpKMGvrLdf46aUjUt3sN4gWCZ73XrDwcY5xAHIyUJeeK2z2RPZ1JqCENRP-oshRIN4HvNxhH8Y0xN3GCQepVPqnx3Ruia6y-0BaDFUk-iM_klXE0roVYVlblnOgJZIRg9VdP4RrkzvIJrf/s4624/IMG20230809124245.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhoih3PGbOZYrBQNdw7YyA3Ui53BcSfdM_BPtPNrb02tqzysGpKMGvrLdf46aUjUt3sN4gWCZ73XrDwcY5xAHIyUJeeK2z2RPZ1JqCENRP-oshRIN4HvNxhH8Y0xN3GCQepVPqnx3Ruia6y-0BaDFUk-iM_klXE0roVYVlblnOgJZIRg9VdP4RrkzvIJrf/s320/IMG20230809124245.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>(All my pictures are rubbish, sorry. Have some of a buncha extremely stinky sea-lions in consolation.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpNUmFhiIgT1rzR-PvUhTLC8Rx6zE05tb7ciz92_g04Lfn4Mw_d-0_GjD1k7Pv7IOwX3E5JmAyJYZ4pxQBiiX-66TUHY2y2vuRlyF4REGJRCRezaOL-D_mFVhKeJavoHu1YNxbRlgxVRBHE3jpeyEa9aOkBn6BKBRMJfRot-75KI0w0bDGH6ZPGlGRIxu0/s4624/IMG20230809112358.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpNUmFhiIgT1rzR-PvUhTLC8Rx6zE05tb7ciz92_g04Lfn4Mw_d-0_GjD1k7Pv7IOwX3E5JmAyJYZ4pxQBiiX-66TUHY2y2vuRlyF4REGJRCRezaOL-D_mFVhKeJavoHu1YNxbRlgxVRBHE3jpeyEa9aOkBn6BKBRMJfRot-75KI0w0bDGH6ZPGlGRIxu0/s320/IMG20230809112358.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFJnRdBh5d4jumuIIY5mT4lBxQvX2n0hGsSeinxUZ5zesptidyx3JmZsze-hMIRf41AjbS9jEhVxvFeg2dFfjTc_9P9S1ye-dV2R5HJi7W_xhkCDAD4v-7pCeIEvduLWy3PJuiXWz11VeH67sgqRzuQpDWcEIjCpr-E-8FnfBGgsCx5rDIWPVo_gj5xMPa/s4624/IMG20230809112404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFJnRdBh5d4jumuIIY5mT4lBxQvX2n0hGsSeinxUZ5zesptidyx3JmZsze-hMIRf41AjbS9jEhVxvFeg2dFfjTc_9P9S1ye-dV2R5HJi7W_xhkCDAD4v-7pCeIEvduLWy3PJuiXWz11VeH67sgqRzuQpDWcEIjCpr-E-8FnfBGgsCx5rDIWPVo_gj5xMPa/s320/IMG20230809112404.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ITkRvnmeDPKSGhSymoZu8QvO45JdWSMj80a6jicoDUz3o0kQ4vFQKXeyLVQyufQTxz9G_ygEKz1Au6iXXo5ZmdYRK9j-4Yf6Gwi6YYQg_IqPHlBiIqkNUReKY7vSUGob4fB5KNhC-nw4ueAxulVZyOhDaZbbYD-4zoC5Z0OhSKaIO9MaygoJUz990lAD/s4624/IMG20230809112425.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ITkRvnmeDPKSGhSymoZu8QvO45JdWSMj80a6jicoDUz3o0kQ4vFQKXeyLVQyufQTxz9G_ygEKz1Au6iXXo5ZmdYRK9j-4Yf6Gwi6YYQg_IqPHlBiIqkNUReKY7vSUGob4fB5KNhC-nw4ueAxulVZyOhDaZbbYD-4zoC5Z0OhSKaIO9MaygoJUz990lAD/s320/IMG20230809112425.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>3. The Museum of Vancouver is well worth a trip. I'd wanted to visit the Anthropology Museum, actually, but it was shut for earthquake-proofing (another of those rare reminders of just how far from home I was). The colonial era of Vancouver is well-represented, nicely honest about the city's racist past, and clear-eyed about how its labour history is marred by rabid anti-Communism. In order to get to that section, though, you have to go through three large rooms dedicated to the First Nations peoples who own the land Vancouver stands on (having never ceded it). The result, delightfully, is to turn the entire history of the city of Vancouver into an afterthought, a bitter coda to the true story of the land. </p><p>There's a lot here; artefacts, testimonials from today's First Nations communities. The highlight of an extremely strong experience though is the film Mia, which you can see <a href="https://www.spottedfawnproductions.com/mia/">here</a>, and I cannot recommend enough. Just the soundtrack alone gives me the shivers - it feels like the music Angelo Badalamenti was reaching for his entire life.</p><p>4. Totem poles are not the cross-continental Native American practice I'd naively believed (I blame <i>Asterix And The Great Crossing</i>). They're a tradition among the peoples of the Pacific northwest, used to tell stories and mark historic events. Victoria is home to the tallest totem pole in the world; presented here with an F for scale.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyZzREMxrfwVwGM2g6MPEJyiXPBNgIMrphsSP1ab2FHN8vBk7xRkuAcKT3mn5bBTM6YlnUHvxRsfw_rQJ-YsQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>5. Best food in Vancouver: Sablefish. Also called black cod and butterfish, the former because it tastes like cod (despite hailing from a different order), and the latter because it's so high in fat content, it tastes like its been fried in butter even when it hasn't. You can get it in the UK, for about three times the price of true cod. I haven't yet felt that I can justify the expense, but a couple of times I've come close.</p><p>Worst food in Vancouver: Dutch salted liquorice. If the <i>Flying Dutchman</i> were real, this "sweet" would perfectly replicate the taste and texture of the undead captain's curs'd ring-piece. </p><p>Honorable mention: poutine, which, like pizza, varies tremendously in quality but is almost impossible to get completely wrong.</p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-55517923305159499282023-08-28T13:49:00.002+01:002023-08-28T13:50:42.900+01:00Five Things I Learned In Manitoba<p>In descending order of YAY.</p><p>1. Beluga whales are awesome, and they are <i>everywhere</i> in the south Hudson Bay. After spending almost two hours at sea off Vancouver Island before we had even our first possibility of seeing a whale (see my next post, because why would I do anything in chronological order), the belugas of Churchill were immediate and unmissable. The sea seethed with them; it boiled.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxh7iF9mO1TBrKBwuK1VknwvZqQ9bGksgKgFhDQ4r8Wabk2gCiDB8Zy1PM_kPUx9HCBZac3UYfl1BcWiWumTg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5wPh-9iRLwHELMVysYrFqUEDfwa96j0snOVLirWyUn6IbeIXvSrKGKyGcnc1CQ1DwW4bj8O_hBYK7ogUo1cSom-BjMNteaZquWVbmaQsZ1d_4jFsQCAbOuTH2K2UsN8_8YC1j0X0syHG8_NP4njwnth6w6CLFJx3qLST10HATuHVcU4YneCwswRC0hdQn/s4624/IMG20230813104046_03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5wPh-9iRLwHELMVysYrFqUEDfwa96j0snOVLirWyUn6IbeIXvSrKGKyGcnc1CQ1DwW4bj8O_hBYK7ogUo1cSom-BjMNteaZquWVbmaQsZ1d_4jFsQCAbOuTH2K2UsN8_8YC1j0X0syHG8_NP4njwnth6w6CLFJx3qLST10HATuHVcU4YneCwswRC0hdQn/s320/IMG20230813104046_03.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFnYXPFHUU9SUb-3tNxesBT3Y03lsMqy5GGgo-quYF43zDqoKUWKMKuxMtcVC1ilCp5j8W-CFxvmukTGipHVZJOe0tm7LDzxKVri7VOkE_8ZUXHrwNEu7nLUjFlOTr8xOLK28N7nMJPRqGMyshuxch_o0904FD8sExHdz64nwb_-scFXYqVHbRjl-mvnu/s4624/IMG20230813125908.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFnYXPFHUU9SUb-3tNxesBT3Y03lsMqy5GGgo-quYF43zDqoKUWKMKuxMtcVC1ilCp5j8W-CFxvmukTGipHVZJOe0tm7LDzxKVri7VOkE_8ZUXHrwNEu7nLUjFlOTr8xOLK28N7nMJPRqGMyshuxch_o0904FD8sExHdz64nwb_-scFXYqVHbRjl-mvnu/s320/IMG20230813125908.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Terrible quality, I know. Still though: WHALES.<p>2. The mega-fauna of Churchill is surely its biggest draw (it's definitely why we were there), but if you find yourself there and at a loose end, the local Insanitaq Museum* is well worth a look. It's an extremely impressive collection of First Nations artefacts and stories, along with a few specimens of taxidermy which, while I've always found animal-stuffing a queasy proposition, give a sense of scale to the local wildlife that's hard to discern when jouncing in a dingy or being chased off a beach by a bear.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8_HVz026SdLqoi-1rH0RjATqcg_boH5-UtCxgC1bQX4aoGUAXPxVetbKitYKHM-Nn_M8EJkJZyECvsz8xzq1zfwYxxp_ZTamDsb_C9HthHX8lEvbkO1dPm9kiEkyhsK-HQ19orhJdWFHYBg27xys4rIkh4UEIHnf0CjBZKe5dTSX5Rd2NE7_bR6eIP9EV/s4624/IMG20230814152753.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8_HVz026SdLqoi-1rH0RjATqcg_boH5-UtCxgC1bQX4aoGUAXPxVetbKitYKHM-Nn_M8EJkJZyECvsz8xzq1zfwYxxp_ZTamDsb_C9HthHX8lEvbkO1dPm9kiEkyhsK-HQ19orhJdWFHYBg27xys4rIkh4UEIHnf0CjBZKe5dTSX5Rd2NE7_bR6eIP9EV/s320/IMG20230814152753.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKi2CSRHz2ozxjSPTsvcn0MCryRA8v0USjzD1rTytDL9ZwG7_tk_W7BGe6BldfmxInDOkJODexLbbtA6x11xMIphAIKRFKDD1rOinRmmzY0N7Of2RC0xwGVvYao0K0vnP__0PRz5JuqnEJMK0k7xtWHG9QFWNc3RQHNlxHZjRVo3SIlI4AWz-Ibj4M2NMT/s4624/IMG20230814153729.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKi2CSRHz2ozxjSPTsvcn0MCryRA8v0USjzD1rTytDL9ZwG7_tk_W7BGe6BldfmxInDOkJODexLbbtA6x11xMIphAIKRFKDD1rOinRmmzY0N7Of2RC0xwGVvYao0K0vnP__0PRz5JuqnEJMK0k7xtWHG9QFWNc3RQHNlxHZjRVo3SIlI4AWz-Ibj4M2NMT/s320/IMG20230814153729.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXc73sG94Way9jTF-D7D27-jGzg92Drm-UdqOd6RBbWYH6lIRSej20J3ezx9VCnIYRg-X6YFNulERqsNlhPcpfPh27Whm3ciJWWg0GVl0OZO9GcdH72IaZ1F01S13JBMl8EUkdNhaylUMwu-bLb0zEwtkiDGGttTWEIcWKfMlcRZ-Fx07wZLWeufX59L1f/s4624/IMG20230814154001.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXc73sG94Way9jTF-D7D27-jGzg92Drm-UdqOd6RBbWYH6lIRSej20J3ezx9VCnIYRg-X6YFNulERqsNlhPcpfPh27Whm3ciJWWg0GVl0OZO9GcdH72IaZ1F01S13JBMl8EUkdNhaylUMwu-bLb0zEwtkiDGGttTWEIcWKfMlcRZ-Fx07wZLWeufX59L1f/s320/IMG20230814154001.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>(Look at that lynx! It's like a rejected CGI model for a grimdark Tom and Jerry reboot.)</div><div><br /></div>Of what I saw there, probably my favourite two things were a carved figurine of a Viking, strongly suggesting the First Nations had traded with them at some point, and the story about the giantess who tried to swallow a river. She'd been tricked into it by a man she was chasing, who claimed he crossed the river by drinking it dry and walking across the bed. Trying in vain to replicate the feat, the giantess drank so much she exploded in a cloud of blood and river-water. This, the legend tells us, is how fog came into the world.<div><br /></div><div>Faultless. Superb. 11/10 would relate again. Just the most perfect theory about anything, ever.<br /><p>* I kept having to bite my tongue to stop singing the name to the tune of Cypress Hill's "Insane In The Brain". I thought it might be insensitive.</p><p>3. The majestic polar bear, lads! Huge things. Mighty. Extremely lazy at this type of year, as they go into a kind of walking reverse-hibernation, but that just meant we got to check them out for longer. I saw so many of the white-furred carnage units that I lost count. Lost count! Of motherfucking <i>polar bears</i>! Ludicrous.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyiSoukppqR2YK9A6LkcVSjakrNqAMxgGCl2cuOHA8wytkYtIZJMHMbnKSSx2_c5ZD-xtW7C9yfYaDtf-a51g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzEYSIZ8rk8wmBxxsUiyrhguXmgQujpxvCJWveZ9mKmaJeeDYK3yZR3XUYqko8Or5vMKsROoP2cClriWoMirw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><p>Obviously, they're lovely to look at from a distance, but they can cause problems when up close. Churchill has a polar bear jail, where the delightfully named "problem bears" are kept for a fortnight in the dark until they stop associating civilisation with an easy meal (usually they eat the contents of people's bins, rather than the contents of people's clothing). They're starved throughout their time in the hoosegow, which might seem cruel, but is born of necessity - the first year they ran the jail they kept the bears well-fed, with the consequence that, once released, the bears would immediately attempt to break <i>back in</i> for their regular round of seal-steaks.</p><p>Despite the apparent logic of keeping the bears hungry, environmental groups have in the past attempted the prisoners in order to offer a decent meal. This is considered a bad idea by the authorities, if for no other reason than the would-be liberators are liable to feed the bears much more directly than they had in mind. In our case, this led to the wonderful spectacle of our guide explaining that he wasn't allowed to tell us how many bears are in the prison at any time, but that he was sure it was currently empty any way, all to the soundtrack of the furious bellowing of famished bears from just inside the facility.</p><p>All of which is so delightful, I'd probably have put bears at the top of this post, had one of them not been so rude as to chase me off a beach when I was trying to take a dip. Dick move, <i>ursus maritimus</i>! </p><p>4. Let's talk about the Prince Of Wales Fort on the Churchill River. Ordinarily, something like that wouldn't make it onto the blog. A symbol of British imperialism on First Nation land? Not the sort of thing that interests me at all.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdnKCBsaz4cJjc6Zdx1low20ZMKWr6hUB54-rQlSG77tSD6-3GqrlI9iZw93G9zw-_KUyk-c_DPvH59vK7uVS1xXSh17XbzlG9aN6ULGwDaDMhNw5LfskMP2w2mi89FQksuaGFb4FhxUxBoEaOG3vbiBz7Um42fu8D_khSPeJ4zajaTq9JbVfJEDwZhSR/s4624/IMG20230815102340.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdnKCBsaz4cJjc6Zdx1low20ZMKWr6hUB54-rQlSG77tSD6-3GqrlI9iZw93G9zw-_KUyk-c_DPvH59vK7uVS1xXSh17XbzlG9aN6ULGwDaDMhNw5LfskMP2w2mi89FQksuaGFb4FhxUxBoEaOG3vbiBz7Um42fu8D_khSPeJ4zajaTq9JbVfJEDwZhSR/s320/IMG20230815102340.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I'm making an exception here, though, because it's a symbol of imperialist <i>total fuck-ups</i>, which are always worth sniggering about. The fort was supposed to take about thirty years to build, but it went operational early, with the people in charge thinking they'd found a way to cut a few unnecessary corners in the name of expedience. Specifically, the walls weren't as thick as whatever STC system the Royal Navy was making use of in the 18th century. Who cares, though? Who's going to be sending the <i>really</i> heavy ordnance so far north. Thinner walls were all that was needed to keep the fort safe from bears, locals, and bit of light cannon-fire; surely that would do the trick?</p><p>The first time they attempted to fire their own cannons, the recoil pushed them clear off the walls.</p><p>Presumably due to this false start, the fort ended up taking <i>more</i> time to build than had originally been planned. Not that it particularly seemed to matter. It didn't seem like anyone was in a hurry to challenge British interests in the Hudson. It was a <i>long </i>way north, and no-one else seemed quite so obsessed with the idea of finding the possibly-mythic North West Passage.</p><p>So the fort got finished, pointed its forty cannons in every direction, and everyone figured they were sitting pretty. The only small problem was that there weren't any troops. It took ten men to fire a cannon at maximum efficiency, so they needed four hundred trained men. They had one. Not one hundred; <i>one, </i>alongside three dozen civilian workers of various trades.</p><p>So everyone was super excited when, in 1782, three British ships sailed into view. It had been a while since the last re-supply, so the small fleet was a welcome sight in any case, but there was hope that the vessels might be carrying the military men needed to actually make the fort capable of combat.</p><p>This hope was rather dashed when the fort's governor took a close look at the ships with his telescope, and realised that under the billowing Union Jacks stood dozens of heavily-armed and angry Frenchmen.</p><p>Whilst the governor had discovered the ruse early enough to give battle, though, he still had the problem of lacking 99.75% of the men he needed to actually fight. Given this, he surrendered immediately - though not unconditionally - and the British left the fort. The French stuck around just long enough to eat all the food and sabotage all the cannons, then likewise fucked off.</p><p>So ends the pathetic story of the Prince Of Wales Fort. A monument twice over to <i>almost </i>getting something right, and then ruining it all in the very last step.</p><p>5. Clamato juice! It will not do! Have you ever cooked a tasty paella and realised to your horror you've over-salted it? What do you do? Bin it and start again? Bin it and order takeaway? Force yourself to eat it regardless?</p><p>No wrong answer there, surely. The only wrong answer - and PAY HEED, North America - would be to put the paella in the fridge, and drink the juice from the bottom of the bowl the following morning. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYT0VGik3fIypfNlOltKkqiVMMarIEh27LEfSxYdnNlnPPna2AWO6lY7UsYCWxA_IKwhOQl7lBp5JSvuSYaNT2KdOAr5EoiwEXtx1XUlIz8L-KMWdY1OePZs2GWA45dPgubBbV9Q5r3GANEP839oar8uQp_od27z_lxk16WbWZIW39-j8ddL3CiD1-Q_of/s4624/IMG20230817095037.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4624" data-original-width="3468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYT0VGik3fIypfNlOltKkqiVMMarIEh27LEfSxYdnNlnPPna2AWO6lY7UsYCWxA_IKwhOQl7lBp5JSvuSYaNT2KdOAr5EoiwEXtx1XUlIz8L-KMWdY1OePZs2GWA45dPgubBbV9Q5r3GANEP839oar8uQp_od27z_lxk16WbWZIW39-j8ddL3CiD1-Q_of/s320/IMG20230817095037.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No</td></tr></tbody></table>Yeeuch.<p></p><p>Bonus anti-YAY:</p><p>Air Canada are <i>goddamn evi</i>l. They were perfectly lovely when we travelled with them, I freely admit. But F and I were in a Winnipeg bar when the news came on that the entire city of Yellowknife was being evacuated due to encroaching wildfires. Air Canada's <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/air-canada-capping-prices-flights-leaving-yellowknife-crews-battle-blazes-2023-08-17/#:~:text=By%20Thursday%20afternoon%2C%20Air%20Canada's,as%20C%24303%20(%24223.72).">response</a> to this was to take their ticket prices on the day of evacuation, and ratchet them up <i>by a factor of ten</i>.</p><p>Fuck Air Canada.</p></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-55288593243766262832023-08-21T21:23:00.002+01:002023-08-21T21:25:27.121+01:00Five Things I Learned In Alaska<div style="text-align: left;">Five things! In just 96 hours! US speed run!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6LT0emYeXblAaxJFjmQGb2rRiOduXFw3SWLfgi6JZgmDrwy9SZSCckEbCDV0PFGJEIon6wsHiPLgw6zjepYejiOXVy17IuPXds8Bp8FRF2VCePZF2wKH-gI3FPrDrGV4X2eKAonXq7rlKrBTHTJa7tKmR2p8E09GV6fTayKcYbBSqCv-A0nUONtCWF5pI/s4624/IMG20230803170338.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Alaskan terrain" border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6LT0emYeXblAaxJFjmQGb2rRiOduXFw3SWLfgi6JZgmDrwy9SZSCckEbCDV0PFGJEIon6wsHiPLgw6zjepYejiOXVy17IuPXds8Bp8FRF2VCePZF2wKH-gI3FPrDrGV4X2eKAonXq7rlKrBTHTJa7tKmR2p8E09GV6fTayKcYbBSqCv-A0nUONtCWF5pI/w320-h240/IMG20230803170338.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><br />1. Alaskan schoolkids are extremely smart. Or at least, they are in Anchorage, or at least, they are in one school in Anchorage. Or at least, they are in one school in Anchorage, and in the past. The '71 graduating class of West Anchorage High School's - home of the fightin' Eagles - pooled their dollars for a huge mural on the side of the school. The principal at the time said "Fine, you can have an eagle, but NO REFERENCE to the year you're graduating!". They said "OK, sure!". Then the little dickheads commissioned this.<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi414jxit6LvqrKkgOa6w3Pxx776unCKPf_2brCRrC7UTuEIDXKt4EnsPoARe6APfrKUHxGM6_p3WhV6fyLdVmDy0Pq_re6s135MTLfQfRX2cFkbWxLyXzv42TZpiVgkhq50gK04emetCIo1dqEyEIsCHwUjoG-4CcLfcJbOKEFoBMXYvDcfjggMU8HQRoS"><img alt="A stencil-like painting of an eagle, with the number 71 formed from negative space in the right leg (from our perspective)" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="644" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi414jxit6LvqrKkgOa6w3Pxx776unCKPf_2brCRrC7UTuEIDXKt4EnsPoARe6APfrKUHxGM6_p3WhV6fyLdVmDy0Pq_re6s135MTLfQfRX2cFkbWxLyXzv42TZpiVgkhq50gK04emetCIo1dqEyEIsCHwUjoG-4CcLfcJbOKEFoBMXYvDcfjggMU8HQRoS" width="193" /></a></div><br />I love it. Legend has it that at their 10 year school reunion, they all got given detention.<p></p><p>2. The forests of Alaska are <i>fucked</i>. And it's not just the wildfires that are already consuming human civilisation. Someone let some European bark beetles loose, and they've been munching their way through the pine forests like they're Pac-Man, and ghosts have just been ruled unconstitutional. In a lot of places there are more dead trees than living ones. As a metaphor for how European immigrants showed up and ruined everything with their rampant consumption, it's... well, it's supremely depressing and fucked-up. Which at least tracks.</p><p>3. Grizzly bear cubs are absurdly cute, and surprisingly good climbers. They also like to use road signs to scratch their backs. We'd all do it, if it were socially acceptable.</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoZzNshabOHyuA3F7Wxx6S9_ACFBMsGKeCPzgfGT7uXQw_gU_3s2VkzSu8XdABg3Kp3c3_1YSaqkAAPpGdiDMst2RajImsRNklP0HjkVXK7WKnPSCHxKDnUvjj5_u8k2eeLUZ2evAtX10_JqDE0A4YJ5vmlZf3RY-lgK5IdbQWX0tfv-4EPLj4UsclHvt/s4624/IMG20230804160133.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="A grizzly bear and her three cubs" border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUoZzNshabOHyuA3F7Wxx6S9_ACFBMsGKeCPzgfGT7uXQw_gU_3s2VkzSu8XdABg3Kp3c3_1YSaqkAAPpGdiDMst2RajImsRNklP0HjkVXK7WKnPSCHxKDnUvjj5_u8k2eeLUZ2evAtX10_JqDE0A4YJ5vmlZf3RY-lgK5IdbQWX0tfv-4EPLj4UsclHvt/w320-h240/IMG20230804160133.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sorry about the window-frame getting in on the action.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>4. There are five types of salmon in Alaska. We got taught a trick for remembering them, using the fingers on your hand. "Thumb" rhymes with "chum". Your pinkie is for pink salmon. You wear silver on your ring finger, so that's silver salmon sorted. Your middle finger is the largest one on your hand, reminding you of a "king", who traditionally were taller than most people due to having access to actual nutrition. All makes sense, right?<p></p><p>One more digit, one more fish: the sockeye. I know what you're thinking: 'Oh, OK. Index starts with "I", as in "sockeye", it must be that!'. That is because you are a REGULAR HUMAN PERSON. No such logic for the mushroom-added chancers who've inveigled their way onto the Alaskan Piscine Pneumonic Panel, though. No, for them, the link is "You wouldn't want to accidentally have your index finger <i>sock</i> someone in the eye". Rubbish. You sicken me. Zero starfish.</p><p>5. Moose are BIG. They're also more dangerous than bears. That makes sense, though. They're on a hair trigger, because they have to worry about bears. Bears only have to worry about picnic baskets, and where their next back-scratch is coming from. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipwtbE_y3EttvSJQD2KWbzU3b5qC1gxkhGtuf8Yv14GixrjpWNLSbBpF6Fl9pLlCBPiSMD8aZJxIR9jssDFwnaTYoxh-zx5mweAinVvW7mnh68XI3XepPt7Z6DIXuj6eII1cgSLkCmrVZOyDLFJYFMOwoz7IqhCDwnsEXC2S8QEReqWtqtdtZkLpS_RpJE/s4624/IMG20230804180509.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A female moose crossing a road" border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipwtbE_y3EttvSJQD2KWbzU3b5qC1gxkhGtuf8Yv14GixrjpWNLSbBpF6Fl9pLlCBPiSMD8aZJxIR9jssDFwnaTYoxh-zx5mweAinVvW7mnh68XI3XepPt7Z6DIXuj6eII1cgSLkCmrVZOyDLFJYFMOwoz7IqhCDwnsEXC2S8QEReqWtqtdtZkLpS_RpJE/w320-h240/IMG20230804180509.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />SO ENDS ALASKA.SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-45380899943414454662023-08-01T14:48:00.001+01:002023-08-01T14:48:10.038+01:00Tales Of The Far West<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh79aEZE0FTHUIdw71c4W3miH3vrPbbki9qqhWgldEqrmrdAbg9YuIdLphhElNxJufA20rLbSJZOxdZdKni9ZFLLDSCuOUkCCa_bDBLg1rap7hoi283HGOoj9t67gO245hv54oAn-mzPiICb4pymFt2pcuuzdcgNA4gbp2JsR9BcvLsOnbpMYOVP5nvxcQW" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh79aEZE0FTHUIdw71c4W3miH3vrPbbki9qqhWgldEqrmrdAbg9YuIdLphhElNxJufA20rLbSJZOxdZdKni9ZFLLDSCuOUkCCa_bDBLg1rap7hoi283HGOoj9t67gO245hv54oAn-mzPiICb4pymFt2pcuuzdcgNA4gbp2JsR9BcvLsOnbpMYOVP5nvxcQW" width="320" /></a></div><br />It's hard to maneouvre in Vancouver</div><div>When jetlag's bagged your hide </div><div>And like barracuda in Vancouver </div><div>We're sunk in synching tides </div><div>Yes, we're intruders in Vancouver </div><div>Big cats come from the wild </div><div>And like a cougar in Vancouver </div><div>To get here cost our pride</div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-55822549993704783372023-06-16T08:00:00.004+01:002023-08-01T14:36:23.865+01:00Friday 40K: Strikes And Strike Forces<p>Good morning, humans. It's a strike day today, so what better time to show you what's passed across my paint desk recently. Somehow I've found time amid all the exam board/student support jobs in the last three weeks (done at half pay, no less) to finish the last ten Orks from the <i>Assault On Black Reach</i> Boyz Mob. Very proud of these; if they're not the best squad I've ever painted, they're surely in the top five.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-mbmNkJfuy93efOoKrXBPEaylTz1GSBe8h3XUBWXp4a-qMuQsit2NjiLxfuNvus4lWowgJFrLrLhfiLHUBsr89yvddRZ29HJHqimIwiMzv1SiOZUceu7r4hQ3NsJeHk3-BnRj3626JL8s1paTahaLjUsAfb0izMMrFIb2DAVCW184f1QFO7MRkKkQ6g/s4624/IMG20230614214520.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-mbmNkJfuy93efOoKrXBPEaylTz1GSBe8h3XUBWXp4a-qMuQsit2NjiLxfuNvus4lWowgJFrLrLhfiLHUBsr89yvddRZ29HJHqimIwiMzv1SiOZUceu7r4hQ3NsJeHk3-BnRj3626JL8s1paTahaLjUsAfb0izMMrFIb2DAVCW184f1QFO7MRkKkQ6g/s320/IMG20230614214520.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEy8RweOyhBMMSj1fAYgORKtz0AVk8FuF2Gq-q1bSRMttF4mf7bSf7Ti77cBSCRFNCLhMFmvdK1DIYF-7vPcsahj8ej0I804abTG2D0bLeB9cb1-33s6ug94Yz3uFcwNYINJbnCGmyWcfy4FSGI5RGRXBw3LzrwfCiCo6E4CD8uNxC2c70wOnzyHAS_Q/s4624/IMG20230614214531.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEy8RweOyhBMMSj1fAYgORKtz0AVk8FuF2Gq-q1bSRMttF4mf7bSf7Ti77cBSCRFNCLhMFmvdK1DIYF-7vPcsahj8ej0I804abTG2D0bLeB9cb1-33s6ug94Yz3uFcwNYINJbnCGmyWcfy4FSGI5RGRXBw3LzrwfCiCo6E4CD8uNxC2c70wOnzyHAS_Q/s320/IMG20230614214531.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's all eighteen of the emerald hooligans, all of them desperate to kick yer zoggin' teef in.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3hdSBeRtRKdWF1uDUVJu_aSFZCOZOzZ0KZgfwR5NWl7Y51DX2v_4-OQ0Hv4pIESVPigj7F_a42OSe98W7PWDMVHsuWejzzGLLZaIWnbnzbvTdY-MPyOeWD0SStY3xl3_yPNWAGroHeXX1r5sVIGjaCWGsM1B3M-X6lHv87O1QufU9B3R2hZOX_phEmg/s4624/IMG20230614220115.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3hdSBeRtRKdWF1uDUVJu_aSFZCOZOzZ0KZgfwR5NWl7Y51DX2v_4-OQ0Hv4pIESVPigj7F_a42OSe98W7PWDMVHsuWejzzGLLZaIWnbnzbvTdY-MPyOeWD0SStY3xl3_yPNWAGroHeXX1r5sVIGjaCWGsM1B3M-X6lHv87O1QufU9B3R2hZOX_phEmg/w320-h240/IMG20230614220115.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Also, we once again Compare and Contrast, with my latest 'Nid Warrior painted like it's 1996. He's simple, he's bold, he's got a ludicrous gun in ludicrous colours. Ah, nostalgia.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYP6KiwSyU3k-YYhabzfoIUxcnW7OVNEkqILr_pKGdIr30nqV-_nd96KFdWuimp7KQrvpJ5yYL7Lw3sOLdjekf-OvsaLFxyC_ElrIJUmtCjIXHgoyqxs68P8fqDYDhRRwSgHIKkUiKLXAZF3DUY39vzOvjmyKd_-JkoumAC_Zw4yiNpruWl97pBlruWg/s4624/IMG20230614214401.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYP6KiwSyU3k-YYhabzfoIUxcnW7OVNEkqILr_pKGdIr30nqV-_nd96KFdWuimp7KQrvpJ5yYL7Lw3sOLdjekf-OvsaLFxyC_ElrIJUmtCjIXHgoyqxs68P8fqDYDhRRwSgHIKkUiKLXAZF3DUY39vzOvjmyKd_-JkoumAC_Zw4yiNpruWl97pBlruWg/s320/IMG20230614214401.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div>One last picture I wanted to show you: I've finally gotten every one of my painted miniatures into glass display cases at the new(ish) house. The wider cases are for 40K, with the smaller cases being taken up by Warhammer, Dreadfleet, Battlefleet Gothic, Space Hulk, and Talisman figures (along with some spare 40K scenery).<div><br /></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3pOYCDYGskzafkICy58qTN1kTWUMjob5acrTGOQ8F0MSLKlYx-kjY55mcF04tbNS3AWMd6NEGKPAXfU4OJfASmiF7M48ZM6Fy48woHuwgAAN0E5vEMAJviaOgBtMDGgjKtnSyM7rOJFtWdQB0tJsrxoTLJEKAS445mRpK3_-1hRelEsc2FbdaRQikMw/s4624/IMG20230614221346.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3pOYCDYGskzafkICy58qTN1kTWUMjob5acrTGOQ8F0MSLKlYx-kjY55mcF04tbNS3AWMd6NEGKPAXfU4OJfASmiF7M48ZM6Fy48woHuwgAAN0E5vEMAJviaOgBtMDGgjKtnSyM7rOJFtWdQB0tJsrxoTLJEKAS445mRpK3_-1hRelEsc2FbdaRQikMw/s320/IMG20230614221346.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Pretty proud of this set-up, even if a miscalculation regarding plastic pegs caused one of the shelves to fall, taking out three Blood Angels Strike cruisers and nine assorted System Defence installations on the way down. That was a sombre day at Casa del Calamari, I must tell you.</div><div><br /></div><div></div></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-28743630815634987222023-05-16T22:16:00.001+01:002023-05-16T22:16:10.598+01:00No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.16 - "Leif Erikson " (Interpol)<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SRFa9N4fGtc" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe>
<div><br /></div>The thing about Interpol’s debut is that it sounded so much like Joy Division. The thing about Joy Division is that I only really liked them when they weren’t sounding like Joy Division.<br /><br /><div>You can see the problem.<br /><br /></div><div>Sure, points for honesty. The brief, tyrannical reign of New Wave 2.0 was always about extrapolating what could have come after the 1989, had the music industry not chosen instead to wholesale recycle the Seventies with far worse fashion. If we hadn’t had the gall to mock trousers that were needlessly wide at the ankles while wearing T-shirts that changed fucking colour. If you goal was a do-over, who better to base that on than one of the greatest what-ifs of the eighties or any other decade? Let other bands hide their guiding lights under a bushel. As their first album declared, Interpol was letting you know exactly where the flame spilled out from.<br /><br /></div><div>Not that light is in evidence here. Even the night is blind here, finding what might be pinpricks of illumination through heat alone. The one mode that Prelimterpol tended to get right for me, <a href="http://squidfromspace.blogspot.com/2023/01/no-apologies-for-infinite-radness-1215.html">as we’ve discussed</a>, was the cavernous soundscape. The alien world described over a distorted connection by a feverish, dying astronaut. “Leif Erikson” nails that mode perfectly, from the title outwards; an insomniac always on the verge of falling asleep, experiencing the flow of time as a moonless sail across an infinite, glass-flat sea. Trapped in the liminal prison where everything thought circles, ripping your skin with each rotation. What was it she said about me? What if she shows up early? What if I’m as dead as she thinks I am? Everything repeats, everything hurts, nothing resolves, nothing heals.<br /><br /></div><div>There are songs you should only listen to at night, and songs you mustn't listen to at night. This is both. A hymn for the gloaming. A warning of what’s coming, on those nights where sleep is an ocean away.</div><div><br /></div><div>B-side:</div><div><br /></div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qYwuSmB180s" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-22590291889582723032023-04-30T12:17:00.003+01:002023-04-30T12:17:16.685+01:00New Load Of Balls, Please<p>Predicting a close one for the snooker this year, lads, though I'm even less certain I'm getting this right than I usually am - yesterday just felt too crazy to properly parse. Ah well.</p><p>Selby 18 - Brecel 16.</p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-75372994617570241522023-04-07T22:56:00.005+01:002023-04-07T22:56:44.340+01:00Good Friday 40K<p>Jesus! He'd probably be into 40K, innit. Likely play as Chaos, too, really wind up the SO-CALLED religous authorities. Just how he rolled.</p><p>I've been busily chipping away at the same <i>Assault On Black Reach</i> mob of Orks that I've had on the go for well over a year now. Another five of them have fallen off the end of the conveyer belt.</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMAvfUFFtad2t5M8iio9UzoNP1pCkT_ZUch7Lxfjl4ZZUD6_veqYw0hExb0crmb_BzkcNhxcw5tVjmo3au_EcW-dE854WXbO8LdbB_dF5i0DkP8mSbETJ6R0Z6thNe43ljhD1crwbXUZJfqR1koe_5CfNuOq7fQCr3MLbJRwm8Vmvhc6skqCRPsdDkrA/s4624/IMG20230403212944.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMAvfUFFtad2t5M8iio9UzoNP1pCkT_ZUch7Lxfjl4ZZUD6_veqYw0hExb0crmb_BzkcNhxcw5tVjmo3au_EcW-dE854WXbO8LdbB_dF5i0DkP8mSbETJ6R0Z6thNe43ljhD1crwbXUZJfqR1koe_5CfNuOq7fQCr3MLbJRwm8Vmvhc6skqCRPsdDkrA/s320/IMG20230403212944.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Along with the three I'd already done, that puts me almost halfway through the squad.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSbvgWda3SPBMSCYIHqAXwMRiU9lu7-3om8Vt2hU8Vht0Zh-SaZjBAqBygSisH-Vskajeu_aDUHG33CkgvojlFYyMUvXrsf1Gs8qUtxw9e7Btcr1RVkV1qfKqAecmfsjiIz0-_v44K0blNMLzJsp5NM_u6_FfCw2ZpJ0Q_7GT70lKgbHX1BC2Zu7m_A/s4624/IMG20230403213119.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUSbvgWda3SPBMSCYIHqAXwMRiU9lu7-3om8Vt2hU8Vht0Zh-SaZjBAqBygSisH-Vskajeu_aDUHG33CkgvojlFYyMUvXrsf1Gs8qUtxw9e7Btcr1RVkV1qfKqAecmfsjiIz0-_v44K0blNMLzJsp5NM_u6_FfCw2ZpJ0Q_7GT70lKgbHX1BC2Zu7m_A/s320/IMG20230403213119.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I also finished my last <i>Advaned Space Crusade</i> Tyranid Warrior too, still clinging doggedly to my bare minimum/ham fisted incompetence colour scheme that has graced my 'Nids for almost three decades now.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0X_x9ox0ZWmiGlZJHOSD0VKgHJh1x68oZUetwRQJE9vFNAYswpWk5TgdBZuNYJsc3bZllJLqbo0CxTkEjlbDpxAAeC5DDOdgl6S1BRl_bBl-ax1y8SKYe7mUUNce_OGwyRujWo1YDqyq2SISpzMe4Dt0_KmFQk05K9UiW8UuZ3xsgGnG1MdpvbMm8g/s4624/IMG20230403213236.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0X_x9ox0ZWmiGlZJHOSD0VKgHJh1x68oZUetwRQJE9vFNAYswpWk5TgdBZuNYJsc3bZllJLqbo0CxTkEjlbDpxAAeC5DDOdgl6S1BRl_bBl-ax1y8SKYe7mUUNce_OGwyRujWo1YDqyq2SISpzMe4Dt0_KmFQk05K9UiW8UuZ3xsgGnG1MdpvbMm8g/s320/IMG20230403213236.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The other big development in my hobbying is that I've finally got enough glass display cabinets to house every miniature/scenery peie I've painted since I was sixteen. I had planned on photographing them to include in this post, but one of the shelves collapsed on Monday, dropping three metal Strike Cruisers on my collection of resin Imperial Defence Platforms, causing some pretty aggravating </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I've managed to salvage two of the crusiers and all the platforms (though one of the latter looks like its had a brush with the Warp that it won't be coming back from). The last ship should also be fixable, but it's going to need pinning, and for that I need to find a drill-bit that I haven't spent a decade using to re-open superglue nozzles that have gummed themselves shut. Until I've managed that, I don't have the heart to show you the 99.5% of my collection which isn't smashed to bits.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Anyway. Happy Easter.</div><p></p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-78614720627690827232023-03-27T22:14:00.004+01:002023-03-27T22:15:08.722+01:00A Tale Of Cocktails #61<p><span style="color: red;"><b>South Side</b></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxnQ4YOK00AwLAdBgQ8ADbtd60MUT_huWWW2XbzFcruK2Boa3F6HbYJA2QRBoEXv39IHbC9UrC1w7QB4H6nkk-qEuY5fCuo1NxYljdxweIv4hJX3dVIfF0LAo656lFxEgiG4ttL35wxIzSWR5ermt1YQpb3DLYCksB_mIMuON1EHUL18mKubhUkJ7fhQ/s2048/337632509_967095897784372_6449171413870328011_n.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxnQ4YOK00AwLAdBgQ8ADbtd60MUT_huWWW2XbzFcruK2Boa3F6HbYJA2QRBoEXv39IHbC9UrC1w7QB4H6nkk-qEuY5fCuo1NxYljdxweIv4hJX3dVIfF0LAo656lFxEgiG4ttL35wxIzSWR5ermt1YQpb3DLYCksB_mIMuON1EHUL18mKubhUkJ7fhQ/w150-h200/337632509_967095897784372_6449171413870328011_n.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>Ingredients:<div><br />50ml gin<br />25ml lemon juice<div>25ml simple syrup<br />5 mint leaves<div><br />Taste: 8<br />Look: 7<br />Cost: 8<br />Name: 6<br />Prep: 7<br />Alcohol: 5<br />Overall: 7.2</div><div><br /></div><div>Preparation: Gently muddle mint leaves and lemon juice. Add other ingredients and shake with ice. Garish with a mint sprig.<br /><div><br />SURPRISE! We are EXTREMLY BRIEFLY back!</div><div><br /></div><div>A south side is a mojito without the faff or the dead wood. Half the time, twice the strength. MATHS.</div></div></div></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-59397483306686227192023-01-05T09:00:00.001+00:002023-01-05T09:00:00.194+00:00No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.15 - "Love Will Tear Us Apart " (Joy Division)<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zuuObGsB0No" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe></div><br />Roddy Woomble once said “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was Joy Division’s best single, if only because it’s the only one that captures the band’s live energy. I was four months when Ian Curtis killed himself, so I had to take Woomble’s word for it, but it certainly feels unusual – almost unique - within the band’s songs. This is one of those contrary takes wearying dickheads pretend are “unpopular”, or – heaven forfend! – “cancellable”, but I’ve never been able to get next to Joy Division. I don’t quibble with Peter Hook’s contention their music seemed to come from some other place. It just wasn’t a very enticing place, cold and distant and half-illuminated with polarised light. Extraordinary doesn’t have to mean engaging.<br /><br /><div>“Love Will Tear Us Apart”, together with equally late cuts “Atmosphere” and (so late Curtis was dead before it was recorded, and it came out as a New Order joint) “Ceremony”, represented the band moving into more interesting territory. Or, given the previous metaphor, perhaps I should say they represented a shift in how the band processed the territory they were already exploring. Songs about how it felt to traverse this strange, alien world, rather than terse reports about what it contained.<br /><br /></div><div>It’s not that this isn’t still minimalist (part of why it’s almost impossible to cover), though it wasn’t common to hear Curtis on guitar to free Sumner up for keys – the song is built around a D chord both because of its versatility and the ease with which Curtis could play it. But there’s an energy here that’s purposefully held back in the band’s two studio albums. A sense of release, as Curtis channels his disintegrating marriage, the stress of juggling new success and old commitments, and a recent epilepsy diagnosis into a piano-wire tight growl of exhausted desperation. The cliché contrast of how good/poor luck in life matters nothing compared to poor/good luck in love is rewritten to something much more interesting: “Everything is awful, but all that really matters is my marriage – which just so happens to </div><div>also be fucked”.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are all sorts of offensively self-centred ways to link Curtis’ last months with the quality of the song. All of them we shall ignore. No song is so good it is worth a human life, and no band is so good them losing one among their number is primarily sad because the music stops. Instead of inferences, then, let’s stick to the one certainty we have in this: “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. That should be - HAS to be - enough.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>B-side:</b></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3-yr9xKTcjg?start=57" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-72492765318110871382022-12-28T23:50:00.000+00:002022-12-28T23:50:22.888+00:00End Of Year Progress Roundup<p>Another quiet year on the blog, and this time I don't even have the excuse of moving house, changing jobs, or having to keep grinding out content for Geek Syndicate. So what <i>have </i>I been doing?</p><p>The short and entirely unsatisfying answer is "not a lot". My new work/living combination doesn't afford me quite the same amount of unclaimed time as I once enjoyed. Much of what spare time I've been able to claw back from domesticity/capitalism has gone into starting a book version of IDFC, something I assumed would be relatively painless until I remembered I hate everything I've ever written approximately six months after I write it. I'm <i>almost</i> done with the first three essays, with thirty more stretching out ahead of me in various stages of NOPE.</p><p>There's been a little progress on the painting front, at least. I do mean little, as well, but I've accelerated over the last few months, which is encouraging. My 'Nid army is now at around 4500 points, with these two lads rounding off a third Warrior Brood (as always, I've deliberately painted them in the same absurdly simple colour scheme I've been employing since my mid teens).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLPLCw81y30NpYSGaf5x-f3SVjLy_LbjoWhtPDyJht1mGo0mTlNxDzq1TuAIF0TOkqwCB8HcgvjHF_koxLSNjQrU1z_Ijnvj4fe6VFceNypsJ-yIJj7lf21O-sAmKhTmBUB8jlk-TjupyXSOWZuc1V2U8M5FlGzE2DaPv2jMVXG-PUyxclhO8Pr-JKZg/s4160/IMG_20221228_221344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLPLCw81y30NpYSGaf5x-f3SVjLy_LbjoWhtPDyJht1mGo0mTlNxDzq1TuAIF0TOkqwCB8HcgvjHF_koxLSNjQrU1z_Ijnvj4fe6VFceNypsJ-yIJj7lf21O-sAmKhTmBUB8jlk-TjupyXSOWZuc1V2U8M5FlGzE2DaPv2jMVXG-PUyxclhO8Pr-JKZg/s320/IMG_20221228_221344.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />(Also pictured: a piece of battlefield detritus I painted during a D&D session, just to give my hands something to do).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I've also been chipping away at my Black Reach Orks, last seen here back in August. Since then, two more Boyz have dropped off the end of the assembly line.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7vDgb1Pb9k7AnoEfvSfw_EeaaAmjloM5PYTHaobwVIF11xWYBTPL-k5N0gdaBxbYwmKrMmkjAWjHxz5czOM3vCWetzxCKrIBRVVn_j0QLSH1mbzVUQKX2EjZ6tL8BoTu-MB2eWHbl0RJMJS784aEnegrzjQZYlyG0umB0vb_LEyCEZS4Zn_7IPp2zw/s4160/IMG_20221228_221258.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7vDgb1Pb9k7AnoEfvSfw_EeaaAmjloM5PYTHaobwVIF11xWYBTPL-k5N0gdaBxbYwmKrMmkjAWjHxz5czOM3vCWetzxCKrIBRVVn_j0QLSH1mbzVUQKX2EjZ6tL8BoTu-MB2eWHbl0RJMJS784aEnegrzjQZYlyG0umB0vb_LEyCEZS4Zn_7IPp2zw/s320/IMG_20221228_221258.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The assembly line itself has moved on fractionally as well, with every Boy below precisely one step closer to completion than they were four months ago.<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdk25TNiXPMToScDGT4wWm3WBIlubBdgBb_hMkGHlvZmZabeMmIzK5su_818-8JdgwCqCJEl6RGNRDkJQ0MJWkLBufNbv6saLXmEKFafbS063ls9uJmjlig66RZ-7awnsmmaxHvnN__iMJz4FPCJxpC5PTvmf1HDOYK5sg3wIqODLB9ho9fVzGDjozBA/s4160/IMG_20221228_221936.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdk25TNiXPMToScDGT4wWm3WBIlubBdgBb_hMkGHlvZmZabeMmIzK5su_818-8JdgwCqCJEl6RGNRDkJQ0MJWkLBufNbv6saLXmEKFafbS063ls9uJmjlig66RZ-7awnsmmaxHvnN__iMJz4FPCJxpC5PTvmf1HDOYK5sg3wIqODLB9ho9fVzGDjozBA/s320/IMG_20221228_221936.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>There is one exception, as the particularly attentive may observe - the lad at the front left has a head that's nothing more than undercoated. This is due to a savage, unpredented and deeply upsetting betrayal, in which two of my family members conspired against me. First, my cat knocked the miniature to the floor from where it sat on our kitchen table, whereupon my dog swallowed the head whole.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which reminds me: we have a dog now. Here he is:</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiNviz_2mfEAqmkvVkdunyEnjrW2nQANB7hp9KMsT2JEgA4tKXqxyBxqaKUhF0dC-3SqPKsiX8IPb_Xsl5P92dI8uPUR7KehjwX8mSA9dOpk9ZGoBnohCPRzUTY5pOAkYEevlwbNUSIIKvt6K0eAyIp8zzTo_JrdagPxaK19I7aSpTRWVKsUWqAeZYWg/s1124/Quiz3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="843" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiNviz_2mfEAqmkvVkdunyEnjrW2nQANB7hp9KMsT2JEgA4tKXqxyBxqaKUhF0dC-3SqPKsiX8IPb_Xsl5P92dI8uPUR7KehjwX8mSA9dOpk9ZGoBnohCPRzUTY5pOAkYEevlwbNUSIIKvt6K0eAyIp8zzTo_JrdagPxaK19I7aSpTRWVKsUWqAeZYWg/s320/Quiz3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div>JUST LOOK AT HIM HE'S AWFUL. Except more canine-related excuses in the future, because this lad CANNOT BE TAMED. He makes Zoltran Hound of Dracula look like Lassie on general anesthetic. It's like living with a chaos god hiding inside a smelly rug. As with essentially every dog since the beginning of the domestication process, it's a good fucking job he's cute.</div><div><br /></div><div>ANYWAY. Next up on my list of things to do is another No Apologies... post, this time on a song which a) I have no strong specific connection to and b) everyboday already knows their position on, so you won't want to miss that. Afterwards, maybe I'll do a bit more work towards finishing my critical tour of Mike Carey's Lucifer, given I have at least two more other Carey/Gross collaborations to bore you about. The next essay in the book is calling me too, though, so who can say?<p>Right. then Happy New Year for those as recognise it, and I'll be back with more musings in 2023.</p></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-64349117718738348932022-12-21T23:32:00.003+00:002022-12-21T23:36:10.243+00:00D CDs #472: Things George Michael Has Gotta Have<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2A0FRKOPzL_OpFYnmUf3QMNjsDJfOF5XiMCDe_1rfu3V615etKAw1Vwr-xmiQ1MhqNrrdOBJiGAPHQrGbbGTORp_xwR13yVrmOf4g3230pk8J7k6ZhPmOjMlQ8Y1-BgTKTEQLC4za7kxoURDySs2fhxe5f2vBTp-8Vy_fXYF1nduJ_S64VsnTZ25-Aw/s1024/Faith.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2A0FRKOPzL_OpFYnmUf3QMNjsDJfOF5XiMCDe_1rfu3V615etKAw1Vwr-xmiQ1MhqNrrdOBJiGAPHQrGbbGTORp_xwR13yVrmOf4g3230pk8J7k6ZhPmOjMlQ8Y1-BgTKTEQLC4za7kxoURDySs2fhxe5f2vBTp-8Vy_fXYF1nduJ_S64VsnTZ25-Aw/s320/Faith.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><div><i>Faith </i>just isn't for me. I simply don't care what George Michael thinks about sex, or how George Michael wishes he were having more sex, or how getting more sex as George Michael can get complicated by the fact that George Michael is George Michael. It's not Michael specifically; I'd put myself as a 9.8 at least on the horny/revenge scale of "Why make art"; horny songs just don't do it for me. It sounds like a cheap shot under the circumstances, but nevertheless, it all feels a little too much like listening to someone masturbating.</div><div><br /></div><div>Michael's debut album isn't exclusively about sex, though after being bludgeoned by Michael's libido for fifteen solid minutes via "Father Figure" and "I Want Your Sex", it's hard to think about much else. There's a sense of vulnerability here which at least seasons the horndog panting. Which makes sense, given Michael a) had just torpedoed a band that had sold thirty million albums and - via a China tour - changed the international political landscape, and b) was trying to challenge Prince and Michael Jackson on territory they didn't so much own, as had sculpted from the planet's bedrock through sheer force of will. You can see why he'd be nervous - there must have been times while recording the album where Michael was wondering whether unseating Hu Yaobang would have been the easier job.</div><div><br /></div><div>So it's not fair to call <i>Faith </i>one-note, though comparisons to Prince and Jackson do rather underline the album's lack of range. It's probably not helped by the fact Michael just completely, perfectly nails what he's aiming for on the opening track. "Faith" is glorious, as tight and bouncy a package as Michael's denim-sprayed arse in the accompanying video. A rollocking stab of lust and nervousness, set to a rhythm like the heartbeat of God. The vid even sees Michael sport a jacket emblazoned with the word "REVENGE" on the back, as though the guy gets what art should be after all. It's also the shortest song on the album by a minute and change.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you've heard it, though, do you really need the icky metaphors of "Father Figure", or the knackered randiness of "Hard Day", or, the fear Michael's own success is cock-blocking him in "Kissing A Fool", or etc. etc. Given Michael's later coming out of the closet, we can at least retrospectively cast "I Want Your Sex" as an attempt to literally sing the praises of gay sex, but even so - dude, it's <i>nine minutes long</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The album works best when it moves into different themes. "Hand To Mouth", a pulsing condemnation of the failures of the American dream built around a skeletal, looping keyboard riff and Spanish guitar, offers a breather from the heavy breathing. "Monkey" is a superior example of 80s Gabriel-tinted synth-funk, a desperate plea to a a friend to kick the drugs, and huge fun both as written and when you doggedly insist on taking the lyrics literally. </div><div><br /></div><div>Neither are fit to buff "Faith"'s leather jacket, of course. Nothing else here is. <i>Faith</i> both proved Michael could write and sing with the best of them, and that there was no guarantee he necessarily <i>would</i>. So I says, anyway. What do I know? The album and its many singles did absolutely ludicrous numbers, and netted Michael critical acclaim and multiple awards. All the cold water I can muster thirty-five years later isn't going to make a difference to what caught fire here. Michael's <i>Faith</i> had paid off.</div><div><br /></div><div>Six tentacles.</div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-91789180053700375462022-12-10T12:08:00.005+00:002022-12-10T12:10:51.796+00:00Lighthouse<p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span><br /></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: verdana;">i</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-78481955482794382632022-11-30T16:25:00.002+00:002022-11-30T16:25:18.355+00:00No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.14 - "Not Up To You" (Stereophonics)<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8s9AVkuJr9I" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe>
<p>Last time this band appeared in these essays, I talked a little about how you have to accept that the acts you love will change. Some will change more than others, though. Some will age better.</p><p>In hindsight, my love affair with Stereophonics was doomed from the start. Their first album remains one of my favourite debuts I've heard, but it relies on an alchemical process almost impossible to repeat. The recipe is simple enough - two parts classic rock delivered by a frontman whose tonsils have the density and range of quasars, one part muddled melancholy as you watch the tiny community which offered you nothing as you grew up in it continue to die by degrees. </p><p>The first trick is in actually mixing those ingredients. Sad-gossip-garage-rock? Are you, like, entirely fucking sure? But it works. Or at least, it did in the context of the '90s, when British mainstream rock was crying out for a band that was willing to look past their own dicks. Or, for that matter, to not steal all their good riffs (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp5zZ5cdu98">including</a> a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI2Z0YHXlUg">Stereophonics one</a>, actually.)</p><p>The second trick, though, is even tougher. The problem isn't in identifying or combining your ingredients; it's in <i>finding </i>them. The band took a while to hit, but when they did, it was with the force of a collapsing coalmine. Catapulted into a world of stadium gigs, Tom Jones collaborations, and backstage shenanigans with Noel Gallagher (which he presumably went into wired for sound), Stereophonics found themselves in a situation where bittersweet songs about backwater bar dramas might be tough to sell, and, more critically, were impossible to <i>source. </i>The lead single from <i>Word Gets Around</i> was about a homeless man who remembers his past just well enough to seek it out, but not well enough to remember where to find it. The lead single from <i>Performance And Cocktails</i> was about a sly deal between a bartender watching who gets most drunk, and a thief who steals from those identified as least likely to notice. The lead single from <i>Just Enough Education To Perform</i>? A tuneless whine about how the music press had been mean to the band. It's almost too perfect that "Mr Writer" was (at the time) by some distance not just the worst Stereophonics single, but their worst recorded song.</p><p>Maybe you have to have a certain amount of bombastic self-regard in order to play the kind of stages the band suddenly graduated to. How would I know? All I can tell you is that without that strange, bittersweet taste of nostalgia for something you'd always resented, you may as well be listening to fucking Oasis anyway (though Jones' riffs are still better than Gallagher's).</p><p>"Not Up To You" isn't the best song on <i>Word Gets Around</i>, but it's likely the strongest distillation of what makes the album work so well (It's not quite true that there are more truly great songs on <i>Word Gets Around</i> than on their subsequent eleven albums, but I did have to crunch the numbers to check). It's too melodic to be a dirge, (just) too high-tempo to be mopey, but the song's simple structure and heavy haze still recalls shoegaze, only - and this is critical - we're staring at the shoes of <i>other people</i>. Kelly Jones is one of those musicians whose lyrical quality is inversely proportional to his lyrical precision, and "Not Up To You" is a triumph of smudged thumbnail sketches of lives no-one else was in a position to even notice. </p><p>Maybe it's just that simple The songs on <i>Word Gets Around</i> are always about other people, even if Jones' memories are our way in. An accused paedophile, a wedding barely holding itself together, two - maybe three - suicides, one drunk high-functioning, one very much not. And the characters in "Not Up To You" don't even reach those levels of local notoriety. Not even stories, just butts of cruel jokes in low lighting. All they're doing is living and lying and loving and lusting in a village that, save for <i>Stereophonics</i>, we probably would never have heard of. Even though there's an unknown village in all of us.</p><p>"Who's to know", indeed. "Who's to know; whatever".</p><p><b>B-Side</b></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/daXRlYs8OVA" title="YouTube video player" width="460"></iframe>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-75082003868049099062022-09-24T09:00:00.579+01:002022-09-24T09:00:00.196+01:00"And Bark, And Grunt, And Roar, And Burn"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdsye-yfUCmNuk9PSzTu3BRp_obCs59CgsP9UH8wHSBMmN9ieF4DEVcFmHgiF4hILBvCkuo3J9Yf5c0_dxVAw2HRexTAKjNQTZufAIekDbTkivChiu_eLifc-tnPT3ULey743OoM5ah75MFhmd8WpUQSOOBOwLJA9WbqK39lk-7BfOrZs6523jl2AEAA/s1000/IGYHtbTImage.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdsye-yfUCmNuk9PSzTu3BRp_obCs59CgsP9UH8wHSBMmN9ieF4DEVcFmHgiF4hILBvCkuo3J9Yf5c0_dxVAw2HRexTAKjNQTZufAIekDbTkivChiu_eLifc-tnPT3ULey743OoM5ah75MFhmd8WpUQSOOBOwLJA9WbqK39lk-7BfOrZs6523jl2AEAA/s320/IGYHtbTImage.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Image from Wakelet)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />(Spoilers for up to Episode 100 of <i>The Magnus Archives</i> below).<div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span>On paper, this is a superb act of trolling. You’ve reached the halfway point of not just your season, but the entire show, and you’re doing it with your 100th episode. You know your audience is expecting a blowout, especially given your show is heading into hiatus.<br /><br />So you lean in. You ramp things up at the end of Episode 99, by slinging your main character into the most dangerous situation he’s faced since the show began. Kidnapped by the Stranger in its ascendancy, without the (admittedly questionable) defences of the Institute to call on? How can our protagonist possibly get out of this one? <br /><br />There couldn't be doubt in anyone's mind that Episode 100 was going to be AMAZING.<br /><br />So does Sims deliver on what serial fiction demands and what his own set-up promised? He DOES NOT. Instead, Episode 100 is the first (and ultimately only) one to not feature the Archivist at all, with his sudden disappearance prompting nothing more dramatic than a loss of workplace efficiency. <br /><br />Like I say, obvious trolling, Only… surely the only immutable rule of trolling is that it’s aimed at piss people off. The fact this episode made it into the semi-finals of The Magnus Cup suggests this isn't the case. Possibly this is at least in part due to the episode being re-evaluated once the rest of the season/show was available, but my recollection is that fan response was pretty positive at the time. <br /><br />This is less the writing of a troll, then, and more that of a puckish fairy (a comparison I suspect Sims himself would find quite pleasing). It's also, though, and this shouldn't be undervalued, the writing of someone possessing a solid steel spine. A bait-and-switch of such audacity demanded what the audience stumbled into was every bit as rewarding as the tale of mortal peril and incomprehensible terror they were expecting. <div><br /></div>And again, the very fact this is one of the four essays I'm writing at this stage in the competition is proof that confidence paid off. "I Guess You Had To Be There" is both technically impressive, and hugely fun. Each of the four encounters here are amusing in their own way, with each visitor differing in their challenges, and each precisely paired off with the character whose buttons will get their particular buttons most thoroughly jabbed. Martin has to deal with acute social embarrassment, Melanie has to sit through a pathetic meltdown from someone who thinks the Institute is awesome, Basira finds someone essentially immune to interview techniques that came from police training rather than a fear god, and Tim - well, Tim would have been a shitty little prick no matter what, really. Screw Tim.<br /><br />It wasn't actually a secret that Sims could write comedy, of course (though here it's fairer to say he wrote comedic situations, with much of the dialogue being improvised by the performers). The show has been funny before; it's just that until now, humour has been deployed as seasoning, rather than as a base ingredient. This is a good time then to consider just how difficult an ingredient comedy is to bake into horror - at least if you want it to actually remain horrific. Jokes don't have to be bad to cause problems. Horror relies on building tension, and humour functions as tension release. Turn the wheel a little too far, and everything you've been building up will dissipate, leaving you with nothing.<div><br /></div> To some extent Sims threads the needle here by mostly not trying to make the statements scary - indeed that's very much part of the joke (as well as finally giving an in-universe explanation as to why every previous statement reads like it was crafted by a professional writer). That's not true across the episode, though. There's a reason Brian's is the last statement to begin and to end. His spiralling panic starts off funny, but it becomes increasingly unsettling as both his anguish and the unpleasantness behind it become more obvious. It's like the old analogy of the frog in slowly heating water, except the frog is freaking out the whole time, meaning initially they just sound ridiculous, until you start to hear the water bubbling.<br /><br />Via Brian's statement, then <span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span>, the episode shifts us, almost without us noticing, to the conditions necessary to throw in Peter Lukas for the first time. A dash of true Archives-style horror as the episode draws to a close, as a reminder of where we are. It's an effective intro to Lukas, too, given he only has eight lines. Not just in terms of his combination of upbeat geniality and sinister intent, but his colossal arrogance (discussed in my "Panopticon" article), evidenced by him snatching someone at random in another Fear's territory simply because he can. Not just a reminder, then, but a promise of what's to come (a promise made all the stronger for casting so well-known (and well-respected) a name in horror podcasting as Alasdair Stuart). One more plate set spinning as we wait to see which one will crash to the floor first.<br /><br />Given all this fulsome praise, then, why did "I Guess..." barely scrape into the top half of my ENTIRELY SCIENTIFIC ranking of every episode of the show's first four seasons (I never did get around to adding in Season 5)? I think it's because it's the kind of episode I appreciate rather than love. Talking about the ways it's smart and tight and brave is easy. It certainly makes more sense that this be Episode 100 than "Another Twist", despite the latter being a story I prefer. But you can't demonstrate how far you can stretch your concept without moving away from your conceptual core. This isn't a bad thing, and indeed a show that doesn't do it isn't liable to last for long. I prefer it when the Archives extend downward, though, rather than along. <br /><br />But hey. Even by my standards, that's just personal taste masquerading as critical analysis. The humans of Twitter have spoken. "I Guess You Had To Be There" is two victories away from being the greatest episode of the whole damn show, despite it featuring a minimum of the creator's writing, and precisely none of his voice acting.<div><br />I guess this puckish thing can work both ways.</div><div><br /><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] Quick shout out here to how well the editing team does its job here. One way in which the 100th episode does play things fairly straight is in how well it showcases the progress the show has made over its first two and a half seasons.</span></div></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-58871708129358589002022-09-24T09:00:00.332+01:002022-09-24T09:00:00.196+01:00"'Til The World Falls Down"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfEuE-9PRlqene4HNsvxjiqmTN3MVr9S4-2N6HCMuoRzMsMnnuX26OfRA8aoUv9BCrmzRWtgKy2XgKPX7a215w3mL_lYHaKK0_dLuiKJHh-_c7VzG4DdWhdV5jx5NcpB6dN6ye9E7PL0gT5NJ3BrSBGMqDjOJoltildooUKjFKBiHpEX6ycSEJE6fTOA/s1000/PanopticonImage.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfEuE-9PRlqene4HNsvxjiqmTN3MVr9S4-2N6HCMuoRzMsMnnuX26OfRA8aoUv9BCrmzRWtgKy2XgKPX7a215w3mL_lYHaKK0_dLuiKJHh-_c7VzG4DdWhdV5jx5NcpB6dN6ye9E7PL0gT5NJ3BrSBGMqDjOJoltildooUKjFKBiHpEX6ycSEJE6fTOA/s320/PanopticonImage.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Image from Wakelet)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>Right. Now we’re talking. <i>Now</i>, things are kicking off.<div><br /></div><div>(Spoilers for all five seasons of <i>The Magnus Archives </i>below.)</div><div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br />I said in my essay on “The Eye Opens” that, while there’s a lot to be said about how well-constructed that episode is, I wasn’t clear on how it’s taken a slot in the show’s top 2%. No such confusion exists for “Panopticon”. It has its share of revelations of its own (which I assume is what’s powering the success of “The Eye Opens, along with its ending). But it’s also better paced, more technically impressive, and makes better use of the show’s characters. It’s also making some extremely good and important points about what makes us human, and what makes us fight.<div><br /></div>On top of all of that, “Panopticon” both celebrates how far the show has come in four years, and demonstrates that progress to full effect. While it’s true every season of The Magnus Archives wraps up with either a direct attack on the institute, or at least a direct threat to it, the complexity of “Panopticon” is such that we should treat this as something essentially new.<br /><br />We can talk about this complexity in terms of the Fears; every previous finale dealt with the Eye’s interaction with one other power, whereas here there are three – the Lonely, the Stranger, and the Hunt, each of which with at least one guest star attached. We can talk about this in terms of talent; as far as I can determine, this is the first episode of the show with a cast list which enters double figures <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[1]</span>. We can talk about it in terms of structure; the need to jump between multiple locations (including the past) and juggle so many characters while building tension between every revelation and every gunshot must have been one of the creative team’s biggest challenges for the entire show. The show could never offer us a true panopticon of its own, but this is the most of this fictional universe we ever “see” at the same time.<br /><br />We can even talk about how the show has shifted the scales of its crises. Note how Not!Sasha, who represented first an ongoing lingering threat and then an imminent and extreme danger to our protagonist in Season Two, now functions as merely a distraction. Like Jared Hopworth’s assault against the Institute – something on scale that makes the infiltrations of the Corruption and the Stranger seem like momentary annoyances, but which the show doesn’t even feel the need to play out for us – Not!Sasha just isn’t a major part of what’s going on anymore. In that, both the Great Replacement Beastie and Hopworth’s malevolent meatpiles remind me of the trope in video games where a major boss from earlier in the game reappears later as a minor speedbump. Whatever is going on between Lukas and Martin, and Lukas and “Elias”, is the true threat now. <br /><br />The true threat to come, naturally, is Jonah Magnus himself. Which is something else learned (or at least confirmed) here. It’s a nice bit of footwork, reminding us of how far the show has come in terms of what constitutes a threat, while upping the stakes going forward at the same time.<div><br /></div><div>This feeling of moving upward from previous focusses is underlined by us finally learning the full specifics of Gertrude Robinson’s death. It's nice to see Gertrude was as defiantly bad-ass about her own death as she was about everything else. I also think I was wrong when I <a href="https://wakelet.com/wake/fe68f00f-8b05-4ace-b230-67d2c53f2623">complained</a> that it was something of a coincidence that Jonah Magnus got confirmation of what to do with a new archivist at the same time that Gertrude's actions resulted in a new archivist being needed. On reflection, Magnus was going to kill her that night anyway, and there wasn't any earlier an opportunity for Gertrude to strike. In fact, what I should have realised at the time, and love now, is that Gertrude seals her own death warrant because she desn't realise how much faith "Elias'" has in her. She expects him to be scrabbling in panic over her apparent failure to work at stopping the Darkness' ritual, when instead he takes that inaction as confirmation he doesn't need to worry about it, and can focus on her instead <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[2]</span>. After decades of successfully causing everyone to think she was less than she was, she underestimates how much Elias underestimates her, and it gets her killed.</div><div><br /></div>As fun as all this is, though, we've moved on. The specifics of why "Elias" killed Gertrude are tied up because the nature of his plan for Jon is finally moving centre-stage. “Why was this person killed” just can’t hold a candle to “Why does an immortal body-hopping avatar of fear want his chief minion to repeatedly risk his life” as the most pressing question under consideration.<br /><br />It’s also a nice touch that, even before we get the answer to that question, the Web is both helping Magnus reach his endgame, and planning the seeds which they hope will bring about his eventual defeat. In this way, the tape they leave Jon <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[3]</span> isn't just reinforcing the broader idea of the show levelling up, it's using Gertrude's trajectory as archivist to lock in a similar one for Jon. For an episode with as many twists in it as this one, there’s also a remarkable amount of parallels.<div><br /></div><div>While a strong structure is all very well, there's only so far that can take you if the characters aren't there. The pairings of Daisy and Basira and of Jonah and Elias both get a few moments to shine among the swirl of action, but what I really want to talk about is Jon and Martin. The Martivist. The Simswood
Brotherhood. Our Gays Under the Gaze. </div><div><br /></div><div>We'll start with the incontrovertible. Martin is wonderful here, saving his
friends by being completely true to his own character, while helping make a
broader point as well. We’ve known since “The Masquerade” at the latest that
Martin is both smarter and braver than anyone – himself included – is willing
to credit, but even so, committing to a months’ long bluffing game against The
Lonely which he fully expects will get himself killed shows just how far he
undervalues his own character.</div><div><br /></div><div>This failure to recognise his own worth makes him vulnerable to the Lonely, but it also makes him utterly unlike Peter Lukas. Lukas serves the Lonely out of ego, a conviction that he alone is enough. “No man can be an island? Bitch, I only need a boat.”. It’s a case of egomania so strong he truly believes he can single-handedly doom the entire world (and there’s a message in how easily Gertrude torpedoes his ritual). It makes sense he’d be frenemies with Jonah Magnus, then, but it leaves him completely unable to comprehend Martin’s brand of loneliness. <br /><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="MsoNormal">Martin doesn’t seek isolation because he sees no-one else
worth being worth his time. He seeks it because there are only so many times
you can be rejected before you think placing yourself beyond rejection’s reach will
be the closest to acceptance you can get. Lukas identifies with The Lonely
because it allows him to centre himself. Martin identifies with The Lonely
because he’s spent so long being pushed to the margins, avoiding the centre has
become an end in itself. Lukas loves the isolation he’s chosen. Martin has been
a hostage to isolation so long he’s grown to love it. We might call this Nuuk Syndrome
– like Stockholm Syndrome, but far further away from anyone else. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(This, by the way, is why it’s possible for Lukas to have
some limited affection for Martin – in the way, say, you can be fond of a dog
you’ve volunteered to look after for a day while its owners are briefly away –
while Martin can <i>loathe</i> Lukas, even though on paper they both should be similarly
uneasy in each other’s company.) <o:p></o:p></p></div>As a result of this, Lukas is completely correct about Martin being likely to be predisposed to self-sacrifice, and entirely wrong about the circumstances required to persuade Martin to go through with it. Martin would gladly (probably too gladly) throw his life away for something important to him personally. But the idea of the sacrifice being objectively important? That would make Martin important as well, and that’s just not an idea Martin will entertain. Simply put, Martin feels the tug of The Lonely precisely because he considers himself essentially worthless. Telling him that serving The Lonely would make him important was never going to fly. Agreeing to the former precludes believing the latter, and in trying to make Martin do both, Lukas forces him into thinking through what must actually be going on instead.</div><br />And while it’s sad that after all this time Martin still can’t escape his barrel-bottom-low opinion of himself, he’s clearly right more broadly. It won’t be a single person who saves the world. There are no Chosen Ones. There are no Great Men. There are just ordinary people who choose to do more than they believed capable of, when circumstances demand it. And while that has meaning in and of itself, obviously – ultimately, what could possibly matter more about what we do with our short lives than what we chose to fight for – no hero carries the day alone. Martin has taken a deeply unhealthy path to reaching an entirely healthy conclusion. We do what we can, and we try to help others to do what they can. And that’s how we save the world. <br /><br />Except then Jon steps into frame.</div><div><br /></div><div>Look. I feel for the Archivist, I really do. By this episode, dude has very much been having A Time. The gradual eroding of both his humanity and his (already desperately shaky) support network must have been taking a hell of a toll, even before considering the toll thirteen separate hells have taken from him as well. The problem is, he’s decided all the shit he’s been subjected to has to mean something, beyond the machinations of deluded terror-cults.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ever since “Elias” told him point-blank he chose this route for himself, he’s been desperate to prove that the choice has meaning. If he can stop The Unknowing, there was meaning. If he can save Martin, there was meaning. There has to be <i>something </i>that makes sense of the fact he woke up one day and realised he’d become a monster. Some fate the universe has in store for him, beyond becoming one more cyclopean spectre haunting one more rotting library. Why else would he have lost his humanity? Why else would he have more or less literally returned from the dead?</div><div><br /></div>As much as we might understand what has led Jon to this conclusion, though, his fixation is ultimately just one more example of someone concluding that the suffering we all experience – to whatever degree, in whatever form – was qualitatively different to everybody else’s, and therefore must have some meaning absent from the tribulations of everybody else. It’s just Great Man Theory again. Like Martin, Jon is being encouraged to believe that all the crap he’s had to drag himself through during his life in general, and since arriving at the Institute in particular, must have prepared him for something truly extraordinary. <br /><br />Unlike Martin, he chooses to believe it, and in so doing, damns the world. <br /><br />There are complications here, admittedly. Unsurprisingly, Peter Lukas proves rather less effective a manipulator of people than Jonah Magnus clearly is, which is likely part of why Jon falls into the trap set for him, while Martin sidesteps his own. Consider Magnus insisting on telling Jon it will be almost impossible for him to return from The Lonely’s domain. On the face of it, this seems unwise – Magnus absolutely needs Jon to take the plunge, so why is he banging on about the water being shark-infested? The answer seems obvious when it comes. It’s because diving into unknown waters is more impressive if you know there’s sharks down there. Your sacrifice is greater, the fact of your success (because Jon is <i>sure </i>he’ll succeed, because why would he have come all this way just to be trapped by The Lonely) all the more impressive.<div><br /></div><div>Still, cheered on or not, it's hard to not to see it as arrogance – and mistaking his success in rescuing Daisy for fate rather than fortune <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[4]</span> - that leads Jon to believe following Lukas to save Martin is something he is meant to do. The result of believing that is the collapse of reality as we know it. Because entropy is an absolute dickhead, and while you can’t save the world single-handed, you can damn well damn it alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Except... It's not <i>just</i> arrogance, is it? Jon's love for Martin is shot through every level of this too. Admittedly, even those aren’t fully separable – note how Jon never stops to consider the possibility Martin might have his own opinion on whether leaping into The Lonely's domain after him is good or desirable, or what damage Jon unilaterally declaring himself Martin's saviour might do to whatever he had planned. This is a common enough move in fiction, though – Person X tells Person Y “don’t try to come after me”, only for Person Y to totally ignore their wishes because heroism means you give you all to save the person you love, and damn the consequences. A form of arrogance, then, but one with essentially the full force of storytelling convention behind it.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's no excuse, of course. What “Panopticon” and the following two episodes do is craft a scenario in which that choice leads to absolute catastrophe. In doing so, it raises a question fiction rarely plays with, or even wants to glance at: what if love <i>doesn't </i>conquer everything, and in assuming otherwise, the damage you were risking actually comes to pass?</div><div><br /></div>This is an important question to explore, despite it likely being impossible to ever answer. Certainly, when I posed my hypothetical above about what could be more important to who we are than what we fight for, the only possible response I could imagine having any weight was “what we love”. When those two things clash? Glad I’ve never had to make that kind of decision.<br /><br />The mere posing of the question fits into one of the broader themes of the show, though. This is, simply put, that our emotional connections and interactions are vitally important despite – or even because of – them almost certainly not being enough in themselves to push back the darkness. What we love matters, and what that love makes us strive for matters too. We still own our foolishness, and we still own our failures, but we don't have to believe love will help us win to know that without it, we are lost.<div><br /></div><div>This is how you write about the power of love. Not as some pure cosmic force that evil cannot touch. Not as some ethereal power irreducible to cold equations that will somehow make a computer explode. A roiling ocean of beautiful, irrepressible stupidity that feeds, erodes, sinks, and keeps afloat, sometimes, impossibly, all at the same time. Even with the Lonely, the fear for which it would be most tempting to suggest love as an antithesis, love isn’t the weapon. It’s the reason to fight. And that’s all it needs to be. Love doesn’t conquer all. It makes us all that little bit harder to conquer.</div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">“Panopticon” isn’t just a particularly impressive technical accomplishment, and a smart and involving deployment of the show’s characters, then. It’s a rumination on the nature of glory, sacrifice and love, and one which doesn’t just avoid cliché, but works to demolish them. The closest I can come to a criticism here is that it’s one of the least horrifyi<i>ng episodes the show has ever done. That’s entirely deliberate, though; this is </i>The Magnus Archives in action mode, a cathartic release of a season’s worth of build-up before we get back to the slowly unfurling nightmares in worlds adjacent to our own. The storm before the calm.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I wouldn’t put “Panopticon” in my own top four episodes of the show. I’m not even sure if it’s
my favourite among the semi-finalists (“Do Not Open” might just pip it, but
it’s a tough comparison to sensibly make). Out of the four left to us, though,
this is the episode I can most understand having made it to the semi-finals,
and the one I expect to take what I so, <i>so </i>obviously have called The Listener’s Crown.</p></div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] “I Guess You Had To Be There” is the first episode to
feature nine characters who aren’t The Archivist, which makes it additionally amusing
that it’s the only episode in the show’s run to not feature Jon at all.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] It did bother me a little that the suggested back-up plan Gertrude had set up was never explored
further. If indeed she did have some idea of how to to reverse a successful ritual, that seems like a
pretty important thread for the show to follow. Instead, the idea is shot down in "A Cosy Cabin", and the incongruity between two almost sequential episodes is never addressed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Was it ever confirmed that it was Annabelle Cane who left
the tape for Jon to find? Whatever. It was clearly her. We learn here that Magnus
can call Jon from within the tunnels, and even if he can’t do that at longer
range, he had Martin’s descent with Peter to use as bait. He didn’t need to
reveal his true self to do that, and the lesson Jon learns about how to blow up
the Institute obviously serve the Web more than they do the Beholding. This further links to the similar trajectories of Jon and Gertrude as the Web sees it, it's just that Gertrude gets her revenge after leaving this world, whereas Jon will get his revenge after damning it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] It's worth noting here that Jon doesn't consider for a moment that being the first person ever to save someone from the "cramped casket" might in itself be the reason for what's happened to him. That isn't impressive enough. Note also how quickly he forecloses the possibility of further rescue missions, despite the horrifying eternal torture those remaining in the box are suffering. Gods forbid people Jon hasn't actually met are saved from an endless nightmare. How could <i>that</i> feel worthwhile?</span></p><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><p></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-78002640834302307562022-09-17T09:00:00.050+01:002022-09-17T09:00:00.173+01:00Boxing Clever<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggUJWsRzPWP16_mSFc7v3_fauNXMLy_cj9oBNPSQnsqEd4u1M1ebAzwmfxx6w2GOr3lqj5gehmjaXR8vqXAWDgQieT9dfwsMvbc4-InQ_fEZ3vyEp_9hux60KXb6iLAZJZDOmK7Q72kCwxcfadZM38dW44su6FTl-B3N-Il3SQi_uzQxfwlMKtcrmbJQ/s1000/DoNotOpenImage.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggUJWsRzPWP16_mSFc7v3_fauNXMLy_cj9oBNPSQnsqEd4u1M1ebAzwmfxx6w2GOr3lqj5gehmjaXR8vqXAWDgQieT9dfwsMvbc4-InQ_fEZ3vyEp_9hux60KXb6iLAZJZDOmK7Q72kCwxcfadZM38dW44su6FTl-B3N-Il3SQi_uzQxfwlMKtcrmbJQ/s320/DoNotOpenImage.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Image from Wakelet)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>(Specific spoilers for <i>The Magnus Archives </i>Season 1, and oblique references to the whole show)<br /><p></p><p>"Do Not Open" is a fun episode to take apart, because none of my usual routes actually work. There's no way to do much in the way of character study here; the common observation is that Josh is surprisingly smart is correct, but that's a plot beat rather than a character note. Semiotically, the statement is unusually (and ironically) lacking in depth. This in itself isn't a complaint. Not everything needs subtext, and a twenty-minute horror story can certainly do enough other things for it to not need powerful thematic undertows. I guess you could try and link Joshua's experiences in Amsterdam with his time struggling not to open the box, twisting the whole into some commentary on alcohol/drug recovery. Importantly, though, that would be tasteless. Even more importanly, it would be shit.</p><p>No. Let's just take this one at face value. It's certainly pretty enough. Essentially, and this delights me, "Do Not Open" is a locked-box mystery where the goal is figuring out how <i>not</i> to unlock the box. As I've said, <i>Magnus Arvhives</i> fans talk a lot about how smart Joshua's solution is, but that's just one peak among many. Joshua calmly works his way through figuring out the basics of something entirely inexplicable, and keeps himself alive as a result.</p><p>This also means the box's contents aren't revealed to us. Yes, we return to it next season, but this early into the show, where there's no firm evidence there even <i>is</i> an ongoing plot, never mind where it might lead, there's no reason to think we'll ever learn what lies inside the box. This is probably, for me, even smarter of Sims than the solution he cooks up for Joshua to delpoy. The need to open the unopenable box for the audience is Horror 101. No, it's more general than that. It's woven into the most basic levels of storytelling, from poor Pandora onwards. If you set up a box whose contents cannot be released, someone's going to do just that. It's just too obviously a source of entertainment, however bleakly defined. We might call it Chekov's Fun.</p><p>But no. While it seems very likely that John opens the box at the end of the statment, he does so leaving Joshua - and hence the audience - with no clear idea of the consequences. the mystery is deliberately prioritised over the satisfying reveal. This is true more generally here, too. Why does the box scratch when he puts orange juice on its lid? Is there something specific about it being liquid, linking it to the mellifluous moaning when it rains? Why <i>does</i> the weather affect the coffin, anyway? What lay within the dreams Joshua no longer remembers? And over all of this, just why <i>did</i> John pick a Brit in Amsterdam to look after a coffin?</p><p>I've heard Sims talk about the difficulty in providing enough answers to play fair with the audience, while avoiding giving them so much the mystery is lost. It's a problem every serialised story which trades in mystery has to grapple with eventually, and Sims stakes out his position quite early here. Even with the entire storyline resolved, much of what I've pointed to above <i>still </i>has no answers. Sure, we know now that torrential rain and the flooding it can cause lies within the remit of The Buried, and that the scratching Joshua heard was probably some poor soul desperately trying to escape. There are still far more questions than answers, though.</p><p>For instance: just what actually <i>was</i> going on with John? I've not listened to every Q&A Sims has done, so it's possible he's explicitly ruled this theory out, but I'd always assumed the original plan was for John to be an avatar of the Buried, rather than the Stranger. The way he's described as very short, with a strange aura of density, and the way he refers to himself as being "inside" a foreign land, all point that way. So too does the fact the first victims of the Buried we learn of are both called John. My theory circa Season Three was that both lost Johns eventually became avatars, with one getting killed by his own God for not feeding the coffin, and the other one going on to... well, there's a question. Here's another one: isn't it odd that we never actually meet a contemporary avatar of the Buried, literally the only of the fourteen fears that this is true of?</p><p>Maybe this is just an example of <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarlyInstallmentWeirdness">early installment weirdness</a>, or external events forcing a change of plans (such as the intended fates of Tim and Sasha). Or maybe it's neither of those things, and I'm just playing around in one of the corners of his world that was always meant to remain dark. My point here, once again, is how well Sims manages to make it difficult to tell what's been shifted around. <i>The Magnus Archives</i>, on top of everything else it is, is one of the most coherent serialised stories I've ever seen, even among single-artist works. Part of that is no doubt careful planning, but it's also about the savviness of keeping so much in shadow, you can rearrange things when people aren't looking.</p><p>As a horror story, this episode doesn't hit quite as hard as its predecessor (though that says more about how strong the show was, straight out of the gate). Follow ups are always hard, of course (is that why Joshua references <i>The Lost World</i>, Michael Crichton's first sequel, at least under his own name?). And really, in almost every other way, this is a clear step forward. "Angler Fish" immediately showed that Sims could write an effective horror story. "Do Not Open" proved that he knew <i>why </i>what he was writing was effective.</p>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-56736729701503971902022-09-17T09:00:00.048+01:002022-09-17T09:00:00.172+01:00Fifteen To One<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbOHTC0G5tzUtNL4lCCEqCxHQEqNam9DHVrMMFzwz4fLs4BI0A1Yui4BiVTFh2QyvGdopabHnMGPH8JQcPfiXmpcQwr2807wSSY-SMwBONCV6mwUWSlRox44y3wGALMYeKVOPgppwHXTjvXLFQgVEber8Pdl1J70TZ8kDfPupZMoqUWG9w3ZvhRuYVPw/s1000/TEO.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbOHTC0G5tzUtNL4lCCEqCxHQEqNam9DHVrMMFzwz4fLs4BI0A1Yui4BiVTFh2QyvGdopabHnMGPH8JQcPfiXmpcQwr2807wSSY-SMwBONCV6mwUWSlRox44y3wGALMYeKVOPgppwHXTjvXLFQgVEber8Pdl1J70TZ8kDfPupZMoqUWG9w3ZvhRuYVPw/s320/TEO.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Image from Wakelet)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>So. The first of four essays about the four semi-finalists in the Magnus Cup. For those not in the know (and if this applies to you, you might want to rethink their life choices), <i>The Magnus Archives</i> is effortlessly the best horror podcast I've come across in the last seven or eight years. So good that I spent about nine months in 2019/2020 writing a Twitter thread about an episode <i>every single day</i>. Some of those threads were <i><a href="https://wakelet.com/@SquidFromSpace">not short</a></i>.</div><br />When even that wasn't enough (and I wrote up the fifth season too, week by week, as it came out), I'm in the process of using the SCIENCE of polls to SCIENTIFICALLY SCIENCE the best episode of the whole damn shebang - all two hundred episodes of it. Check it out on Twitter: the hashtag is #MagnusCup (not the one about swimming) and it's been going on for FUCKING AGES.<br /><br />Explanations out of the way, I'm gonna chat about "The Eye Opens", judged by humans who press buttons to be one of the top four episodes of the show. It's also the Season Four finale, so if you've not come across the show before, or even if you just haven't worked through the first 160 episodes yet (and again, I did one a day <i>and wrote about it</i>, so save your excuses), I'd stay clear of what unspools below.<div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>There's no sense reinventing the wheel. Well, maybe there is, if your first wheel was total dogshit, but I think my 2020 on "The Eye Opens" is <a href="https://wakelet.com/wake/66266c16-c206-43c7-a0c9-35600ac44691">broadly accurate</a>. It's fun revisiting my theories about what the Web was up to, with the hindsight of a finished series. I would - entirely objectively - give myself a B- for my thoughts on the matter (disappointed I didn't see the parallel with Magnus' little band, but then that's the best kind of twist, isn't it - the one you <i>know</i> you should have seen coming, but, er, didn't).</div><div><br /></div><div>Sticking strictly with the episode in the context of what came before, though, nothing has really shifted in my thinking. "The Eye Opens" still reads to me as structured as a series finale. Indeed, with the series fully finished, the degree to which you can see the first four seasons as <i>The Magnus Archives</i>, and the final one as a closely linked spin-off (like, say, <i>Bosch Legacy</i>) is noticeable.</div><div><br /></div><div>In part, this is because of how many doors at this point have closed, or been burned to cinders. The institute is gone, with five characters with their own voice actors presumed dead (admittedly, the strength of that presumption varies between cases). Martin is apparently free of the Eye, having switched allegiance to the Lonely, only for (the irony!) the companion who tied him to that entity having gone too, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[1]</span> . Now, our two protagonists get to spend some time alone in their remote Scottish love nest, making good tea and discussing good cows, while Jon grazes on stale but nourishing statements. As actual endings go, I've seen much, <i>much</i> worse. Not even thirty episodes earlier, Jon was terrified he'd been locked inside a supernatural torture-box that would crush him to coal every twenty minutes for eternity. At the start of this episode, his biggest concern is whether he has sufficient wardrobe space. He might hate <i>The Archers</i>, but you have to figure that after the last three years, ending up there must feel like something of a relief. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've never summoned the courage to ask Jonny Sims this directly, but I've always wondered whether there was a point at which this story was intended as being an alternate endpoint. It's not hard to see how to do it - Magnus' plan has relied on gamble after gamble (including one literal bet), and there'd be no small poetic justice in his whole plan collapsing because Martin overheard Jon reading the trigger statement and tearing it from Jon's hands. It wouldn't even been the first time Martin had thrown a stick in the spokes of Magnus' plans by daring to be an actual human being.</div><div><br /></div><div>This would fall short of a perfect ending, I'm very much aware. Anabel's endgame would be completely ignored, the last and most important door remaining would be bypassed. Even more important, an end state where Jonah Magnus is implicitly reduced to Dick Dastardly, dreaming up ever-more ludicrous schemes to get Jon to accidentally read his ritual words ("Martin, this fortune cookie seems to be <i>papier mache</i>, are you sure it came from Jade House?") </div><div><br /></div><div>Still, though. It would <i>work</i>, in the sense that using paper-ties for your dress shirt because you left your cufflinks at home would work. You know there was a better option, but no-one can claim you didn't finish getting dressed.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the parlance of 90s genre TV, then - my first critical language as surely as English is my mother tongue - "The Eye Opens" reads as something very close to <i>Babylon 5's </i>"Rising Stars". The penultimate episode of that show's fourth season, it designed to lead into a season finale or a <i>series</i> finale, depending on circumstance. A universe in which <i>The Magnus Archives</i> ended forever with "The Panopticon", "The Last", and an iteration of this episode where Magnus didn't get his own way is not one too dreadful to contemplate.</div><div><br /></div><div>(There would even be the option of <i>letting</i> Jonah get his way, and end on the collapse of reality. I'm on record as fucking <i>hating</i> last-minute bullshit sadtwists, but Sims' meticulous planning would have blunted that particular razorblade. The biggest issue with that approach would be the show ending on the realisation that the world would have survived if Jon had chosen to abandon Martin to the Lonely two episodes earlier. That's too sour a taste for me to recommend this particular change of dessert <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[2]</span>.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Since I brought up the 90s, though, and keeping one eye firmly on my thread from 2020, the episode "The Eye Opens" seems closest to in ideaspace isn't <i>B5's</i> "Rising Stars", but <i>The X Files' </i>"The Truth". While Chris Carter wrote the latter in the certain knowledge his show wasn't coming back <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[3]</span>, there's an obvious parallel in how both episodes grapple with spinning drama from exposition that takes up the majority of the run time.</div><div><br /></div><div>And it sucked. Just a total mutant liver-pecking turkey in every conceivable direction. To this day, it remains the worst finale of any show I've seen. Our two heroes, characters we'd watched fight impossible odds and impossible entities both, fictional people who both individually and as a partnership we just <i>had</i> to see succeed, just listened impotently while the web and secrets and lies spun before and around them over the show's history was revealed. <i>This</i> was what nine years of alien abductions and shape-shifting mercenaries and quisling alien collaborators and sentient, parasitic oil had led us to? A proto-Powerpoint-presentation entitled "What Was Actually Going On, Actually"? FUCK.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wasn't alone in feeling cheated. The finale was so poorly received that when Chris Carter (somehow, ridiculously) managed to persuade enough people that his show deserved a second movie outing, the entirety of what was revealed during "The End" was ignored. Next, when Carter (somehow, even more ridiculously) managed to persuade enough people that his show deserved a second television outing, the entirety of what was revealed during "The End" was explicitly dismissed as an obvious lie.</div><div> <br />In short, an exposition dump finale is a risky enough approach, even without a specific example we can point to of it failing disastrously in practice. And yet while "The End" is generally regarded as one of the lowest points of a show that basically only had low points left, this post only exists because "The Eye Opens" has made its way into the semi-final of The Magnus Cup. Ninety-eight percent of the show's episodes have fallen out of contention while this one keeps on tickig, and for all I know, it's going to eventually win out as this particular field's GOAT. So why is that? After all, Sims has basically taken the same approach Carter did - replacing our heroes investigations, chases and occasional near-death encounters with a lecture on which particular truth turns out to have been the one that out there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, there's a clue in how I structured the question. <i>The Magnus Archives</i> only occasionally moves into the model in which Jon or Martin (or anyone else) gets down to the runnings and the shootings and the general doing of derring. This show has been building in confidence and complexity since the end of its first season, but the swirling, adrenaline-drenched chaos of "The Panopticon" is still a noticeable deviation from the standard model. "The Last" is (ironically) a little closer to home, with its extra-dimensional hostage rescue at least broadly similar to something like "Entombed", but we're still clearly some distance from the model the show used in its first two years.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The Eye Opens", in contrast, represents a return to the baseline- Jon reading out a statement alone. There's a sense of things coming full circle - another good trick to pull if you're wrapping things up. Especially, of course, if you contrast it with the total collapse of essentially everything your show has been built on since the beginning. I've noted a few times before that, so long as you accept "Stranger And Stranger" as a season finale, and "Eye Contact" a kind of coda, each season finale of <i>The Magnus Archives </i>represents a narrative collapse, in which the threat is not just to the characters, but to the very ability of the show to continue functioning. In season one, this came in the sudden switch from anthology storytelling to flown-blown audio drama. In season two it was the show moving outside the Institute. Season three saw The Unknowing saw the breakdown the conventions of audio drama itself, and saw the infectious madness of the Stranger's ritual spread out into the show's opening theme. And each time, the show never truly restores itself to the <i>status quo ante</i>.</div><div> </div><div>"The Eye Opens" continues this tradition, and then some, threatening to upend the board so completely it was hard at the time to guess how another round might even be played. There's a constant background pressure working on your mind as episode unfolds - the growing question of "What the hell is going to happen next?", as opposed to "The End" prompting viewers to ask "How can this <i>possibly</i> be it?". This is heightened by the awareness that "The Eye Opens" has an emergency lever it can pull by having Martin burst in. As I've mentioned, the dramatic implications of tugging that particular rip-cord are not encouraging - though there would be a certain delicious irony in Magnus' plan being reliant on Martin as a lure, and unravelled by Martin as a human. As we spiral ever-closer to planet-wide catastrophe, though, the urge for <i>any </i>solution to be presented can't help but build.</div><div><br /></div><div>Taken together, this is the story of a boulder gaining speed as it tumbles down the mountainside towards an unsuspecting town, with the only possible source of salvation showing no sign they need to act as time grows ever shorter. And, of course, this isn't the kind of show where salvation can simply be assumed. As I've said, the narrative collapses that end each year of the show are never fully averted. The fear of how far matters will go, and how conceivable it is that they can ever be wound back, generates a sense of propulsion pleasingly at odds with what, in theory, is simply an extended supervillain's gloating plan-reveal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, maybe not "simply". There's also the author themselves chucking aside their metaphorical DM screen, to proudly show everyone look at the notes they've been working from for the last few years <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[4]</span>. What strikes me here is how enjoyable that process is. That's largely thanks to how successful Sims was in putting together four seasons that work as a cohesive whole. I know the journey wasn't precisely as planned (who got the Not! is one example, and I'm also convinced there was originally a rather different plan for Lost John's Cave), but whatever cracks there were have been so well papered over, they're indistinguishable from the stumbles his characters make simply because they are (or were) human. The sense of cohesion is honestly impressive, and that combined with the chance to finally get inside Elias/Jonah's mind does a lot to sweeten the fact that fundamentally, we're watching fourteen minor variations of the same magician's trick.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or perhaps that's the wrong metaphor. Maybe this is more like watching an evil wizard finally finishing a cursed jigsaw, one which we've only just learned the rough shape of, and still can't quite see the picture on the box. Not until the final moments, anyway, making this episode a literal eye-opener (Sims never gets enough credit for the strength of his pun game). </div><div><br /></div><div>All of which is to say "The Eye Opens" works much, much better than anyone could have realistically expected it to. Certainly, it's orders of magntiude (Magnustude?) beyond "The End", which felt less like seeing a master sculptor rip the sheet from a masterwork, and more like watching a man stuffing money into his pockets as read out fanwank theories <i>for his own show</i> direct to camera. Even so, though, a remarkable success with a (self-imposed) nightmare brief doesn't in itself imply a top-tier episode. Indeed, I'm actually surprised this episode has made it to the semi finals of The Magnus Cup. The analysis above amounts to an explanation as to how Sims made the info-dump model of season finale work as well as it possibly can. In that context, it's an absolute triumph - far more high-profile and more experienced writers have done far, far worse with this cursed approach. But the approach still <i>is </i>cursed, and for good reason. Two years ago I described "The Eye Opens" as doing it's thing "competently and efficiently". That remains true, but crucially, "competent" and "efficient" aren't the adjectives you most want applied to your fiction. Obviously, they're better than their antonyms, but when you praise the structure of a cake, people start wondering whether that means it isn't as delicious as you were hoping.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>"The Eye Opens", It needed to be done, and it was definitely done as well as it possibly could be. It's certainly a great example of Sims' abilities as a writer. I just struggle to see an argument for it as a great example of <i>The Magnus Archives</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1] I'm kidding; the reason Martin has escaped The Lonely is obviously Jon. I do wonder though how the Lukas' god feels about the fact you can only escape The Eye by blinding yourself, while freeing yourself from The Lonely involves running away to Scotland with a hot piece of ass. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[2] It's true that, no matter what happened in Season 5 (and I'm deliberately trying to be as oblique as possible on that front, for anyone reading this without having devoured the show's final year), it remains true that Jon's love doomed the world. It's also true that, of all the powers Magnus had to inflict on Jon, his trap was probably the neatest with regard to the Lonely. After all, had Jon refused to follow Martin, would he have not ended up alone?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3] Though that decision did get reversed, temporarily, which brings "The Truth" and "The Eye Opens" even closer together.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">[4] Not quite all the notes, admittedly - the specific actions and motivations of The Web are left mostly unknown, to serve as the basis of season five's mystery.</span></div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4505812700967330296.post-59548466016934444122022-08-26T09:00:00.001+01:002022-08-26T09:00:00.176+01:00Friday 40K: The Littlest Waaagh!<p>Not done this in a while, innit. It's been... fucking hell, <i>sixteen months</i> since I last finished a model. Partly that's moving house, changing jobs, etc., but also it's because I've been in the process of painting eighteen Ork boys at once (along with three Intercessors, three Plague Marines, a Tyranid Warrior brood, a Tyranid Ripper brood, a spy from Talisman and five miniatures of various sizes from <i>Dreadfleet</i>), in a manifestly stupid way.</p><p>Look at them! All arranged in step order, in a most un-Orky manner. I had hoped to have this picture set up so the first mini was entirely unpainted, and the last completely done, but tragically my painting process ended up having nineteen stages rather than seventeen. Thus was my otherwise brilliant and sensible plan dashed upon the rocks of reality.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNwmIG1NXJ-eLmNdGMffURswlopvzePldsr3v21EUph6DmYYQiBz5-V1_jxRmpGPYn0al7w16RxOuWUuoKx_9AukfiGDWz8KBMcG9N_MJSmL5prMcx4L-XIPsHuIbBulrTYkveDzgCbRFVnOiUrYnpsb1x7fpJPYvCfamtbKTmHa-ffOSWuSfXOsCHw/s4160/IMG_20220824_202627.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNwmIG1NXJ-eLmNdGMffURswlopvzePldsr3v21EUph6DmYYQiBz5-V1_jxRmpGPYn0al7w16RxOuWUuoKx_9AukfiGDWz8KBMcG9N_MJSmL5prMcx4L-XIPsHuIbBulrTYkveDzgCbRFVnOiUrYnpsb1x7fpJPYvCfamtbKTmHa-ffOSWuSfXOsCHw/s320/IMG_20220824_202627.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p>Not to worry, though! After taking the above photo (in my brand new collapsible lightbox, which thus far is significantly less dogshit than both my previous collapsible lightboxes), I took the dude at the front right and finished him to completion.<br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPE2HqM2XfKw-jueajrSFbRKmYLzMiXVs_hBOcYFJh5M4QLxO76mRRWznyCjoZlUx3OLISBo9YEoh4OKrxfQ1UpUiuHCcTNZh6Y0zYg8UabNtKXrxHlfDmPQ7dg7m5jD0hf8sT1b0xuzmVmPA7RHyeWtlY7QBzNwHcmm1zljSDRa-dejYzbozCPdCQnQ/s4160/IMG_20220825_183010.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPE2HqM2XfKw-jueajrSFbRKmYLzMiXVs_hBOcYFJh5M4QLxO76mRRWznyCjoZlUx3OLISBo9YEoh4OKrxfQ1UpUiuHCcTNZh6Y0zYg8UabNtKXrxHlfDmPQ7dg7m5jD0hf8sT1b0xuzmVmPA7RHyeWtlY7QBzNwHcmm1zljSDRa-dejYzbozCPdCQnQ/s320/IMG_20220825_183010.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Rather proud of this guy - it's the most thorough paint job I've ever done on anything other than my first four <i>Dreadfleet</i> vessels (well, maybe my Hammerfall bunker, depending on how you judge these things). Certainly it's the most ludicrous ratio of time expended to points cost, with this guy being worth... <i>FUCKING HELL</i>, just eight points. Half a point a month is taking the piss even by my standards.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Still, a major milesone. My first Ork model from <i>Assault On Black Reach</i>, released just fourteen years and four <i>40K</i> editions ago. And hey, the next one is already 84% painted! I'll have a proper Waaagh! together before you know it.</div>SpaceSquidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760939592584995876noreply@blogger.com0