I'm sure there's plenty of wailing and rending of garments over Nick Griffin's refusal to return to our screens in order to debate the issues facing the constituents of Barking and Dagenham, but if you can manage to hear yourself think over the sound of an entire country gnashing it's teeth in tear-soaked rage at out loss, the news does raise one important question.
How can a man simultaneously argue that he is the spiritual successor to Churchill, destined to take power and sweep the multitudinous riff-raff from our proud nation in order to forge it into the steel-clad bastion of stiff-upper-lipped virtue it apparently always was until those swarthy colonials descended, and then go on to complain he won't slap his ugly mug back on TV to make his voice heard if he thinks it's unfair?
I have this thought about American conservatives a lot, as well. Just how long can anyone expect to push the line that their strength and resolve are too great for the "extreme left" to hold back, but also that people are cheating by making them look mean and it's not fair?
To be sure, the tactic seems to work; apparently because there are plenty of people in this country and across the Atlantic willing to believe that their superior strength and dedication would be obvious if only much weaker people weren't so totally oppressing them. And, as I've noted before (as have many other people, far earlier and far better, of course), entire nations have been run on this exact principle before (take the GDR, for example).
I guess it's just one more part of human nature that I don't get.
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Saturday, 6 March 2010
More Weight
The Salem Witch Trials have been on my mind a lot over the last couple of days. I just polished off Ser Visal's Tale, the final story in Stephen Donaldson's collection Daughter of Regals. At its most basic, it's about a country run by templemen, who are afflicted with much the same obsession as those 17th Century pilgrims over rooting out witches at all costs, but this time said witches are actually real. If I had to sum up what Donaldson was aiming for with the story, it would be this: the problem with the Salem Witch Trials was not that witches don't actually exist.
.
It's the one point Miller couldn't easily make in The Crucible. Sure, Miller's play is a far superior work (which isn't to suggest Ser Visal's Tale is bad, it's pretty good in fact, it's just being compared to true greatness), but the inattentive viewer might walk away from the play thinking that the relevant message was that it's a horrible state of affairs when the innocent are blamed for things they didn't - and indeed couldn't - do.
That isn't a message that shouldn't be considered, of course, but that's only part of the horror of the McCarthyite method. It's too easy for people - those in America especially, who decades later still decry socialism for no better reason than they know it's a bit like communism somehow maybe - to conclude that the junior Senator from Wisconsin erred only in that he persecuted those who were in fact free of taint. The full message, and this is where Donaldson has the advantage over Miller through his use of a fantastical framework, is this: even if someone had been a communist, what the fuck business is it of yours?
Sometimes things come along at just the right, or wrong, time. Even as I was sitting in my flat, reading about a fictional world's legal proceedings, and how it assumed prisoners guilty until proven innocent, and worked on nothing more than guilt by association, this ad was being played in the States (I quite simply cannot bring myself to embed the video). In it, nine people (seven of them anonymous) are vilified in the most disgraceful manner on the grounds that they have - in their capacities as legal counsel - worked for and with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
There simply is no other way to interpret this than as a McCarthyite attack. Those that defend terrorists might share the terrorists' views. For sure, it isn't McCarthyism at its worst. Yet. But a pattern is being established here. Many of the most reprehensible members of the American right have spent the last few years dehumanising the enemy by claiming that said foe are less than they are; that the enemy doesn't deserve legal counsel, that the methods which would be roundly condemned as torture were they to used against an American are simply "harsh interrogation" when applied to them.
That they are worth so little that determining they are actually guilty is too great a risk to take. After all, what if real people got hurt in the crossfire?
And now, having apparently persuaded a truly worrying proportion of the US that torture is something people would rather not use in a perfect universe but gosh shucks there's no world peace or Santa Claus so we'd better break out the thumbscrews, we see these same callous moral black-holes are moving onto Stage 2: arguing that since those languishing in Guantanamo are nothing more than blobs of concentrated evil with thumbs (which, as mentioned, can be screwed), each of whom is more evil than the last, it is obvious that anyone still prepared to defend them must be morally questionable as well. They've moved from Miller's fears over not caring whether those they charge might be innocent to Donaldson's concerns over levelling accusations that are accurate but irrelevant since they involve entirely benign acts.
I've mentioned before that slippery slope arguments have their uses, and this is one such occasion. The hideous moral outrages suffered by this world and enacted upon many of those in it did not happen in a vacuum. Frequently they were built on years of work at changing public opinion by inches, taking away or twisting one layer of moral fortitude at a time, until people no longer remembered how things had started, and only knew that something needed to be done. It's at least arguable that Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol and their cronies have already won their first battle: they've persuaded a plurality that it's OK to torture brown people so long as someone thinks they're a terrorist. What happens if they win this battle, too? What if enough people are convinced that torturing the foreigners is OK but defending them in court is a moral outrage? When people have had a little time to have gotten comfortable with the idea that there is something inherently suspicious to defending a terrorist suspect, what will follow? What gets flensed away next time? Right to counsel? Will they close all government positions to those who remember it is the moral duty of the state to defend its own supposed enemies? Which right will the American people next decide is something that some people deserve, so long as they aren't one of those horrible terrorist people, or those who sympathise with them? Remember when empathy was just a bad quality for judges and a codeword for activism? Well, now it's indicative of treasonous leanings, too.
Nor is the above the only sign of the ugliness that might lay in wait for America. We already had to sit through the overwhelmingly distasteful scene of watching Republican Members of Congress demand an investigation over whether a Muslim group might have "infiltrated" Congress with "spies", by the inordinately sinister method of their members legitimately acquiring jobs and posts. And it's not like the US can rely on the press to act as watchdog, either. After two years of "Torture: Opinions Differ", we're now at "Smearing DoJ Lawyers For Maintaining The Rule Of Law: Opinions Differ". Glenn Greenwald is absolutely right, in any sane world the comparison with Murrow should have CNN begging for forgiveness. Anyone wanting to bleat platitudes at me about how there's nothing wrong with the American media would do well to study that particular link.
To be sure, I am not arguing that the USA is headed for some kind of Muslim pogrom, or even the arrival of a new blacklist (though it's not like the latter is inconceivable at this point). In fact, by the time I left the office tonight, pushback had already begun on this most hideously objectionable of actions. What I am saying is that if we are ever to ensure that things like the McCarthy era cannot take place again, it is critical that the first steps towards it are recognised for what they are. It is critical we remember that each failure of a society's moral compass, each attempt to exchange liberty and fairness for a little temporary safety (just to throw some Ben Franklin into this) makes the next failure that more likely, once the current collapse of morality has had time to harden into the new norm. The two biggest advantages that people like McCarthy enjoyed, and the Cheneys and Kristols and Bachmanns of today can rely on now, are the twin fallacies that periods of great villainy and tragedy can only happen in the past, and that people's definition of what constitutes too far will remain stubbornly constant as everything else flows towards the darkness.
To quote Guido Carosella: "That's how stuff that could never happen happens... 'cause people are too busy saying it couldn't". And when a superhero named Strong Guy can smell what's coming in the wind, you have to start wondering just how blinkered Wolf Blitzer and friends are willing to pretend to be.
In short, Keep America Safe has decided that it isn't enough to conclude that one's access to the justice system should be inversely proportional to the severity of your alleged crime and your supposedly just punishment. Apparently, access to one's lawyer needs to be stripped away as well. And dammit, if they can't get this sissy-Mary socialist atheistic gay orgy of a government to do anything about it, they're just going to have to lean on the lawyers themselves until they get the message.
.
It's the one point Miller couldn't easily make in The Crucible. Sure, Miller's play is a far superior work (which isn't to suggest Ser Visal's Tale is bad, it's pretty good in fact, it's just being compared to true greatness), but the inattentive viewer might walk away from the play thinking that the relevant message was that it's a horrible state of affairs when the innocent are blamed for things they didn't - and indeed couldn't - do.
That isn't a message that shouldn't be considered, of course, but that's only part of the horror of the McCarthyite method. It's too easy for people - those in America especially, who decades later still decry socialism for no better reason than they know it's a bit like communism somehow maybe - to conclude that the junior Senator from Wisconsin erred only in that he persecuted those who were in fact free of taint. The full message, and this is where Donaldson has the advantage over Miller through his use of a fantastical framework, is this: even if someone had been a communist, what the fuck business is it of yours?
Sometimes things come along at just the right, or wrong, time. Even as I was sitting in my flat, reading about a fictional world's legal proceedings, and how it assumed prisoners guilty until proven innocent, and worked on nothing more than guilt by association, this ad was being played in the States (I quite simply cannot bring myself to embed the video). In it, nine people (seven of them anonymous) are vilified in the most disgraceful manner on the grounds that they have - in their capacities as legal counsel - worked for and with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
There simply is no other way to interpret this than as a McCarthyite attack. Those that defend terrorists might share the terrorists' views. For sure, it isn't McCarthyism at its worst. Yet. But a pattern is being established here. Many of the most reprehensible members of the American right have spent the last few years dehumanising the enemy by claiming that said foe are less than they are; that the enemy doesn't deserve legal counsel, that the methods which would be roundly condemned as torture were they to used against an American are simply "harsh interrogation" when applied to them.
That they are worth so little that determining they are actually guilty is too great a risk to take. After all, what if real people got hurt in the crossfire?
And now, having apparently persuaded a truly worrying proportion of the US that torture is something people would rather not use in a perfect universe but gosh shucks there's no world peace or Santa Claus so we'd better break out the thumbscrews, we see these same callous moral black-holes are moving onto Stage 2: arguing that since those languishing in Guantanamo are nothing more than blobs of concentrated evil with thumbs (which, as mentioned, can be screwed), each of whom is more evil than the last, it is obvious that anyone still prepared to defend them must be morally questionable as well. They've moved from Miller's fears over not caring whether those they charge might be innocent to Donaldson's concerns over levelling accusations that are accurate but irrelevant since they involve entirely benign acts.
I've mentioned before that slippery slope arguments have their uses, and this is one such occasion. The hideous moral outrages suffered by this world and enacted upon many of those in it did not happen in a vacuum. Frequently they were built on years of work at changing public opinion by inches, taking away or twisting one layer of moral fortitude at a time, until people no longer remembered how things had started, and only knew that something needed to be done. It's at least arguable that Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol and their cronies have already won their first battle: they've persuaded a plurality that it's OK to torture brown people so long as someone thinks they're a terrorist. What happens if they win this battle, too? What if enough people are convinced that torturing the foreigners is OK but defending them in court is a moral outrage? When people have had a little time to have gotten comfortable with the idea that there is something inherently suspicious to defending a terrorist suspect, what will follow? What gets flensed away next time? Right to counsel? Will they close all government positions to those who remember it is the moral duty of the state to defend its own supposed enemies? Which right will the American people next decide is something that some people deserve, so long as they aren't one of those horrible terrorist people, or those who sympathise with them? Remember when empathy was just a bad quality for judges and a codeword for activism? Well, now it's indicative of treasonous leanings, too.
Nor is the above the only sign of the ugliness that might lay in wait for America. We already had to sit through the overwhelmingly distasteful scene of watching Republican Members of Congress demand an investigation over whether a Muslim group might have "infiltrated" Congress with "spies", by the inordinately sinister method of their members legitimately acquiring jobs and posts. And it's not like the US can rely on the press to act as watchdog, either. After two years of "Torture: Opinions Differ", we're now at "Smearing DoJ Lawyers For Maintaining The Rule Of Law: Opinions Differ". Glenn Greenwald is absolutely right, in any sane world the comparison with Murrow should have CNN begging for forgiveness. Anyone wanting to bleat platitudes at me about how there's nothing wrong with the American media would do well to study that particular link.
To be sure, I am not arguing that the USA is headed for some kind of Muslim pogrom, or even the arrival of a new blacklist (though it's not like the latter is inconceivable at this point). In fact, by the time I left the office tonight, pushback had already begun on this most hideously objectionable of actions. What I am saying is that if we are ever to ensure that things like the McCarthy era cannot take place again, it is critical that the first steps towards it are recognised for what they are. It is critical we remember that each failure of a society's moral compass, each attempt to exchange liberty and fairness for a little temporary safety (just to throw some Ben Franklin into this) makes the next failure that more likely, once the current collapse of morality has had time to harden into the new norm. The two biggest advantages that people like McCarthy enjoyed, and the Cheneys and Kristols and Bachmanns of today can rely on now, are the twin fallacies that periods of great villainy and tragedy can only happen in the past, and that people's definition of what constitutes too far will remain stubbornly constant as everything else flows towards the darkness.
To quote Guido Carosella: "That's how stuff that could never happen happens... 'cause people are too busy saying it couldn't". And when a superhero named Strong Guy can smell what's coming in the wind, you have to start wondering just how blinkered Wolf Blitzer and friends are willing to pretend to be.
In short, Keep America Safe has decided that it isn't enough to conclude that one's access to the justice system should be inversely proportional to the severity of your alleged crime and your supposedly just punishment. Apparently, access to one's lawyer needs to be stripped away as well. And dammit, if they can't get this sissy-Mary socialist atheistic gay orgy of a government to do anything about it, they're just going to have to lean on the lawyers themselves until they get the message.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Discovered!
I have the worrying feeling this is what happens every time I play the BSG board game...
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Quz 1
Since I've now started compiling and delivering a pub quz (that's not a typo, it's college tradition) once a month, I figured it might be nice to reproduce the questions here, and let you have a pop at them. Unsurprisingly, no Googling or other research is allowed.
I'm not sure how to work this so that whomever shows up first doesn't get all the glory, but I'll post the whole thing up this time round and consider whether it needs any fine-tuning for next time.
Edit: How about this. Anyone who wishes can leave answers in comments, and I'll provide answers and marks next week. Probably Tuesday, so that it's out of the way before I'm banished to Granada.
Round 1: Word Round.
Every answer to this round is two words, one of which is a colour (eg: Charlton Heston film set in 2022: Soylent Green).
1 An acute viral hemorrhagic disease, with symptoms including nausea and fever, which is spread by female mosquitoes, and originated in Africa but reached other areas due to the 16th Century slave trade. (Yellow fever)
2 An Irving Berlin-penned song first publicly performed in 1941, and which ultimately became the greatest selling single of all time. ("White Christmas")
3 A powerful and toxic defoliant used by US forces to deny cover to their enemies in the late 60s and early 70s. (Agent Orange)
4 The name given to the second lunar opposition to the sun occurring within the same calendar month. (Blue moon)
5 An American punk band probably known for their 1982 single, and who chose their name based on their belief that it represented the opposite of surrender. (Black Flag)
Round 2: Red
1 Which Texan fire-fighter specialised in dealing with oil-well fires, and achieved international notoriety in 1962 after tackling an one such fire in the Sahara nicknamed “The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter”? (Red Adaire)
2 The Suez canal connects the Gulf of Suez at the northernmost end of the Red Sea with which other body of water? (The Mediterranean)
3. Which was the first of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s four Sherlock Holmes novels? (A Study In Scarlet)
4 In which Caribbean country was Mick Hucknall, lead singer of Simply Red, attacked by an irate young fan, whom he unceremoniously pushed into an orchestra pit before leaving the stage? (Cuba)
5 What was the name and number of the British landing craft that the ESA intended to explore the surface of the Red Planet, only for all contact to be lost with the vehicle six days before it was due to reach the Martian atmosphere? (Beagle 2)
Round 3: Cars
1 In which decade was the first Model T Ford built? (1900's)
2 Which 1983 Steven King story, adapted into a film that same year, involves a supernaturally malevolent ’58 Plymouth Fury killing those who tormented its owner? (Christine)
3 Who in 1979 reached #1 in the UK charts with the song “Cars”, taken from the album “The Pleasure Principle”? (Gary Numan)
4 Who had abandoned a planned assassination attempt and was eating a sandwich in a Sarejevo cafe when he saw the car carrying his target stall just outside, allowing him to complete his mission by shooting his victim in the neck? (Gavrilo Princip)
5 For which 1992 film did Marissa Tomei win an Oscar for portraying a Brooklyn hairdresser whose intimate knowledge of cars saves to innocent men from the electric chair? (My Cousin Vinny)
Round 4: Song Synonyms (Each of these is a Michael Jackson song written as something between a collection of synonyms and a cryptic crossword puzzle. “Atrocious” = “Bad“)
1. Go second in chess, or first ("Black Or White")
2. Male goat, marker of inheritance ("Billy Jean")
3. Frictionless gangster ("Smooth Criminal")
4. Merely a further aspect of my person ("Just Another Part Of Me")
5. Shaking winter bird ("Rockin' Robin")
Round 5: Canada
1 Quebec, the largest Canadian province, was formerly part of the area known as New France before it was handed to the British following the treaty of Paris in 1763, which ended the 7 Years War. Which three European countries were the principal signatories to the treaty of Paris, along with Portugal, who abided by the treaty but did not sign? (England, France, Spain)
2 Canada’s land area stretches over more than 9 million square kilometres, excluding internal bodies of water, making it one of the largest countries in the world. Where exactly on the list does it lie, with Russia first, and the Vatican City last? (4th, behind Russia, China, and the USA)
3 The phrase “Hollywood North” has become a blanket term for the entire Canadian film industry, but what Canadian city was the term originally applied to? (Vancouver)
4 Which 30’s born Canadian Singer won a Juno award in 1993, commentating that only in Canada could a voice like his earn Vocalist of the Year? (Leonard Cohen)
5 Which game, which has is origins amongst the Native Americans of the United States and Canada, and particularly the Huron and Iroquois Tribes, has become one of Canada’s two national sports, alongside ice hockey? (Lacrosse)
Round 6: Dinosaurs
1 In which geological time period is it believed that most dinosaur species existed? (Cretaceous)
2 Which actor and director narrated the 1999 BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs? (Kenneth Brannagh)
3 To what purpose did Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins put a hollow life-size replica of an iguanodon in 1853? (He held a banquet inside)
4 Which Dickens novel allegedly features the first mention of a dinosaur in English literature in its third line, which reads: “As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.”? ("Bleak House")
5 Which English football team has a mascot named Gunnersaurus Rex? (Arsenal)
General Knowledge
1 Whose gun did George use to kill Lennie in Of Mice And Men? (Carlson)
2 The Lipizzan or Lipizzaner horse breed takes its name from the Kras village of Lipica, which pronounced Lipizza in Italian, near which an early stud farm was located. In which modern-day European country does Lipica lie? (Slovenia)
3 Which celestial body is nicknamed the “Dog Star”, from which the phrase “dog days of the summer” is taken? (Sirius (A))
4 What chemical is mixed with hydrogen peroxide to make hair bleach? (Ammonia was indeed what I was looking for, though I am reliably informed this isn't/is no longer true)
5 Whose failure to chase the German fleet following the the Battle of Jutland was judged too timid to allow him to remain on active duty, despite former First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill praising his prudence, calling him “the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon.”? (Admiral Jellicoe)
6 Who fought Muhammad Ali in the “Rumble in the Jungle”? (George Foreman)
7 “The Butterfly That Stamped,” “How The Rhino Got Its Horn”, and “The Cat That Walked By Himself” are all stories from which Kipling collection? ("Just So Stories")
8 Which businessman, now often termed “The Sultan of Bling” referred to the products of his jewellery company as “total crap” in a 1991 speech at the Institute of Directors, which led to the company’s near-total collapse once the line was reported by the press? (Gerald Ratner)
9 In 1992 George H W Bush announced his desire to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like who? (The Simpsons. Apparently Bart hit back in a TV advert not long after in which he said "We're just like the Waltons. We're waiting for the end of the depression too.")
10 Which musical features the songs “I Know Him So Well” and “One Night in Bangkok”? (Chess)
I'm not sure how to work this so that whomever shows up first doesn't get all the glory, but I'll post the whole thing up this time round and consider whether it needs any fine-tuning for next time.
Edit: How about this. Anyone who wishes can leave answers in comments, and I'll provide answers and marks next week. Probably Tuesday, so that it's out of the way before I'm banished to Granada.
Round 1: Word Round.
Every answer to this round is two words, one of which is a colour (eg: Charlton Heston film set in 2022: Soylent Green).
1 An acute viral hemorrhagic disease, with symptoms including nausea and fever, which is spread by female mosquitoes, and originated in Africa but reached other areas due to the 16th Century slave trade. (Yellow fever)
2 An Irving Berlin-penned song first publicly performed in 1941, and which ultimately became the greatest selling single of all time. ("White Christmas")
3 A powerful and toxic defoliant used by US forces to deny cover to their enemies in the late 60s and early 70s. (Agent Orange)
4 The name given to the second lunar opposition to the sun occurring within the same calendar month. (Blue moon)
5 An American punk band probably known for their 1982 single, and who chose their name based on their belief that it represented the opposite of surrender. (Black Flag)
Round 2: Red
1 Which Texan fire-fighter specialised in dealing with oil-well fires, and achieved international notoriety in 1962 after tackling an one such fire in the Sahara nicknamed “The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter”? (Red Adaire)
2 The Suez canal connects the Gulf of Suez at the northernmost end of the Red Sea with which other body of water? (The Mediterranean)
3. Which was the first of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s four Sherlock Holmes novels? (A Study In Scarlet)
4 In which Caribbean country was Mick Hucknall, lead singer of Simply Red, attacked by an irate young fan, whom he unceremoniously pushed into an orchestra pit before leaving the stage? (Cuba)
5 What was the name and number of the British landing craft that the ESA intended to explore the surface of the Red Planet, only for all contact to be lost with the vehicle six days before it was due to reach the Martian atmosphere? (Beagle 2)
Round 3: Cars
1 In which decade was the first Model T Ford built? (1900's)
2 Which 1983 Steven King story, adapted into a film that same year, involves a supernaturally malevolent ’58 Plymouth Fury killing those who tormented its owner? (Christine)
3 Who in 1979 reached #1 in the UK charts with the song “Cars”, taken from the album “The Pleasure Principle”? (Gary Numan)
4 Who had abandoned a planned assassination attempt and was eating a sandwich in a Sarejevo cafe when he saw the car carrying his target stall just outside, allowing him to complete his mission by shooting his victim in the neck? (Gavrilo Princip)
5 For which 1992 film did Marissa Tomei win an Oscar for portraying a Brooklyn hairdresser whose intimate knowledge of cars saves to innocent men from the electric chair? (My Cousin Vinny)
Round 4: Song Synonyms (Each of these is a Michael Jackson song written as something between a collection of synonyms and a cryptic crossword puzzle. “Atrocious” = “Bad“)
1. Go second in chess, or first ("Black Or White")
2. Male goat, marker of inheritance ("Billy Jean")
3. Frictionless gangster ("Smooth Criminal")
4. Merely a further aspect of my person ("Just Another Part Of Me")
5. Shaking winter bird ("Rockin' Robin")
Round 5: Canada
1 Quebec, the largest Canadian province, was formerly part of the area known as New France before it was handed to the British following the treaty of Paris in 1763, which ended the 7 Years War. Which three European countries were the principal signatories to the treaty of Paris, along with Portugal, who abided by the treaty but did not sign? (England, France, Spain)
2 Canada’s land area stretches over more than 9 million square kilometres, excluding internal bodies of water, making it one of the largest countries in the world. Where exactly on the list does it lie, with Russia first, and the Vatican City last? (4th, behind Russia, China, and the USA)
3 The phrase “Hollywood North” has become a blanket term for the entire Canadian film industry, but what Canadian city was the term originally applied to? (Vancouver)
4 Which 30’s born Canadian Singer won a Juno award in 1993, commentating that only in Canada could a voice like his earn Vocalist of the Year? (Leonard Cohen)
5 Which game, which has is origins amongst the Native Americans of the United States and Canada, and particularly the Huron and Iroquois Tribes, has become one of Canada’s two national sports, alongside ice hockey? (Lacrosse)
Round 6: Dinosaurs
1 In which geological time period is it believed that most dinosaur species existed? (Cretaceous)
2 Which actor and director narrated the 1999 BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs? (Kenneth Brannagh)
3 To what purpose did Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins put a hollow life-size replica of an iguanodon in 1853? (He held a banquet inside)
4 Which Dickens novel allegedly features the first mention of a dinosaur in English literature in its third line, which reads: “As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.”? ("Bleak House")
5 Which English football team has a mascot named Gunnersaurus Rex? (Arsenal)
General Knowledge
1 Whose gun did George use to kill Lennie in Of Mice And Men? (Carlson)
2 The Lipizzan or Lipizzaner horse breed takes its name from the Kras village of Lipica, which pronounced Lipizza in Italian, near which an early stud farm was located. In which modern-day European country does Lipica lie? (Slovenia)
3 Which celestial body is nicknamed the “Dog Star”, from which the phrase “dog days of the summer” is taken? (Sirius (A))
4 What chemical is mixed with hydrogen peroxide to make hair bleach? (Ammonia was indeed what I was looking for, though I am reliably informed this isn't/is no longer true)
5 Whose failure to chase the German fleet following the the Battle of Jutland was judged too timid to allow him to remain on active duty, despite former First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill praising his prudence, calling him “the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon.”? (Admiral Jellicoe)
6 Who fought Muhammad Ali in the “Rumble in the Jungle”? (George Foreman)
7 “The Butterfly That Stamped,” “How The Rhino Got Its Horn”, and “The Cat That Walked By Himself” are all stories from which Kipling collection? ("Just So Stories")
8 Which businessman, now often termed “The Sultan of Bling” referred to the products of his jewellery company as “total crap” in a 1991 speech at the Institute of Directors, which led to the company’s near-total collapse once the line was reported by the press? (Gerald Ratner)
9 In 1992 George H W Bush announced his desire to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like who? (The Simpsons. Apparently Bart hit back in a TV advert not long after in which he said "We're just like the Waltons. We're waiting for the end of the depression too.")
10 Which musical features the songs “I Know Him So Well” and “One Night in Bangkok”? (Chess)
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Deep Thought
If there was a way to present surgery as a competitive sport, I'd never need to write a post on American health care ever again.
Kraken's Dance: Part Two (Of Three)
Four seconds into the duel, and Tolofsson knew he was in trouble.
Tegatchi’s blade moved almost too fast to follow. Each glittering blur cut closer to Tolofsson’s flesh than the one before.
There was no time to find an opening, almost no time to even realise that that was what he was meant to be doing. Tegatchi was simply too young, and too quick.
Except.
Tolofsson trusted to instinct. Deflecting another brutal slash at his ribs, he leant to his right, continuing the course of his knife towards his enemy’s shoulder. Tegatchi’s own weapon was already waiting. A heartbeat before the impact, Tolofsson yanked his arm upward, smashing his elbow into Tegatchi’s jaw. There was a satisfying crunch of bone, followed by an even more satisfying cry of pain as Tolofsson straightened his arm, flicking his knife point along his opponent’s chest from hip to sternum.
Tegatchi staggered backwards, one step, then two. The third step saw him firmly planted again. Tolofsson noted a new wariness in his eyes.
“First blood is mine,” he said, trying to keep the relief from his voice. “And why, boy? Because speed is nothing without experience.”
Tegatchi shrugged.
.
“Simply a scratch, old man. Your knife will rust away before you kill me with such wounds.”
.
Tolofsson cursed under his breath. His foe might be a fool and a traitor, but he was also right; the cut was long but thin, essentially superficial. Tegatchi didn’t even bother to glance at his wound before he brought his blade up again, and lunged.
Wrenching his head to the right, Tolofsson felt as much as heard the knife-tip that whistled past his ear. Almost instantly he aimed a brutal punch at where his opponent’s neck had been an instant before.
His fist hit only air.
Spinning around, Tolofsson brought his knife around in a long, desperate arc. With Tegatchi behind him-
.
His blade sighed as it passed over his foe’s head, as though disappointed. There wasn’t even time to slow his swing before his enemy sprang from his crouch, slamming his body into Tolofsson’s torso and lifting him from his feet.
Scorched skeletons shattered beneath him as Tolofsson hit the ground hard. He grunted with pain as bone splinters lacerated his back, heard the tortured screech as more shards forced themselves inside his vertebrae sockets in miniature fountains of blood and machine oil.
His knife was gone, lost in the fall. No time to find it. Reaching out, he crushed more bones, powdering them in his hands as he pulled himself upwards.
He almost made it before Tegatchi was upon him. The younger marine barrelled into him with enough force to knock the air from his chest. Once again, he fell into the pile of blackened bones. New wounds opened upon new shards; he had to bite his lip to avoid crying out in pain. Closing his fingers around a broken skull, Tolofsson slammed it into his opponent’s temple. Tegatchi’s head whipped sideways, blood flying out in a crimson curve, but he kept hold. Pinning Tolofsson’s’ right arm with his left, Tegatchi brought his knife down towards his foe’s ribcage.
Dropping what remained of his impromptu weapon, Tolofsson made a desperate grab for Tegatchi’s arm. The rest of the cathedral seemed to telescope outward into infinity as his entire world became about the fractional changes in the height of that blade.
That height kept slowly decreasing. Tegatchi wasn’t just young and quick, he was strong. He was smart, too, Tolofsson realised, it was clear the knife-point was aimed at the centre of the star of shatter-marks that were all that remained from an Ork Mek’s attempt to disembowel him a century earlier.
The knife slipped downward another half-inch. Stopping that blade was a battle Tolofsson could not hope to win, any more than he could have hoped to win this duel. He was quite simply outmatched on every level. Speed, strength, agility. All he had was experience, and at that moment it seemed even that counted against him. All experience really meant was that he had taken more damage, and borne more pain.
Except.
Something was scratching at the back of his mind.
What had he told himself?
Nothing without experience.
He had borne pain.
Suddenly, without warning, Tolofsson let go.
Tegatchi’s knife plunged downward, into his chest. The blade penetrated a little over an inch into the thick wall of his ossified ribs before he grabbed hold of his foe’s arm once more.
The younger chaplain’s surprise was splashed all over his face. For a sliver of time he slackened his hold on his knife hilt.
It was enough. Rather than continue his doomed attempt to keep the knife aloft, Tolofsson twisted his entire body sideways. The knife followed his roll, or tried to, and broke in half against his stone-hard rib bones as a result. Aiming a savage kick at Tegatchi’s left knee, and feeling the kneecap give way with a sickening crack, Tolofsson rolled off his bed of broken bones and scrambled to his feet.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the knife blade still buried in his chest, and pulled it out in a shower of blood.
“Not far enough in, whelp,” he announced coldly. “My heart is buried deeper than that.”
Tegatchi was back on his feet as well. He was still quick, even though his stance made it clear he was favouring his right leg with as much weight as possible.
In his hand glinted Svengirsson’s knife.
“Never mind. I can always just drive this through the other one.”Tolofsson let his strategy drown in his hate, and charged forwards, screaming out everything left within him.
A half dozen blows after Tolofsson reached him, and Tegatchi knew he was in trouble.
Perhaps he had made a mistake in enraging his foe. There was no doubt it had been a mistake to allow him to all but break his leg in two. Apparently he’d be taking something from today after all.
If he lived that long. Being a knife up and a leg down wasn’t really as fair an exchange as it might have sounded. It meant he was forced to hold the weapon in his left hand, the better to protect his shattered knee.
He knew how to fight with both hands, of course, but against a sparring partner as experienced and determined as Tolofsson, he couldn’t afford even a modest reduction in his fighting prowess. Nor did guarding his leg make it easy to shield his already badly damaged jaw.
Tolofsson clearly intended to take full advantage. For every lunge at Tegatchi’s face, there was another short, stabbing kick at his crumpled knee. For every low sweep of a leg, there was another savage elbow jab. Most of them were deflected, and none truly connected, but each glancing blow sent another pulse of agony along Tegatchi’s strained and protesting nerves. It wasn’t as though they needed any encouragement. The pain in his leg was already unbearable, and it grew still worse every time he gave ground across the cracked and bloodstained flagstones, which seemed to be happening with almost every blow.
Any thought of fighting back had evaporated. The best he could do was try to angle the knife into his Tolofsson’s attacks, in the hope the older man might actually drive himself onto the blade in his fury. It was a vain hope, but hope nonetheless. Certainly, it was only Tolofsson’s rage that prevented him realising he could now easily outdistance his opponent and search for a new weapon. He might even have pulled the shattered knife tip from his chest and attacked with that; even that feeble approximation to a weapon would-
Wait.
Go back.
Something was scratching at the base of his mind.
A new weapon.
Still falling back by inches, teeth clenched almost to the point of fighting each other against the agony, Tegatchi allowed himself to turn himself on his wounded leg. His eyes darted from side to side between each of Tolofsson’s increasingly vicious strikes. He risked glances at his fellow marines, each one just as still as when this battle had begun an eternity ago. He took in both Tolofsson’s Kringrimmi and his own supporters, all but indistinguishable from each other, mirror images across a broken hall.
The search grew harder as his pain grew worse. Spots of light began to swim behind his eyes, obscuring his vision, draining his hope. Tolofsson dodged inside his guard, fingers entwined, and pushed forward into a sledgehammer uppercut to Tegatchi’s neck.
The blow itself blinded Tegatchi as the spots of light burst first into stars and then into supernovae. The force of the blow almost lifted him from his feet. Instinctively he took a step backwards to steady himself, only realising his mistake a split second before his full weight pressed itself upon his left leg, which immediately conceded defeat with a hideous snap.
His eyesight began to swim back into focus as he fell, only to be snatched away once more as his skull made contact with the cold stone of the cathedral floor.
“Here we are again,” he heard Tolofsson say contemptuously. “I must confess, the appeal is more obvious from this perspective.”
Run, the voice in his head pleaded . Get away!
Running was out of the question, but the point was well taken. Blinking furiously in the hopes of regaining his sight, Tegatchi tried desperately to crawl away from the sound of his opponent’s voice. The blackness began to break apart as flickering yellow and green lights began pushing their way through the cracks.
When Tolofsson brought his foot down upon Tegatchi’s broken leg, the agony was so overwhelming that it took him a second or two before he could gather himself enough to scream.
Sadism brought more than simple pain, however. It brought clarity. In the eye of the storm of screaming neurones and crumbling bone, Tegatchi realised not every light dancing before his eyes was a trick of his damaged, violated body.
Something was shining in the wreckage ahead.
Move.
Punching his teeth together as though sheer force was the only thing ew require to neutralise all the pain our flesh has capacity to process, Tegatchi began to drag himself forwards.
Tolofsson responded by digging his heel in still further. The spots of light infecting Tegatchi’s vision began to grow, pulsing in time with the avalanches of agony running through his body, but he refused to give his opponent the satisfaction of a second scream.
“Hah!” Tolofsson barked. “I like determination in my enemies. But nothing about hopeless defiance is more important than the fact that it is hopeless.”
Move.
It appeared to Tegatchi as though the world was retreating from him. With each new handful of splintered bone and crumbled masonry, and each long scrape of his torso against the stone, it seemed the gleam of metal he sought was further from him, as though the universe had concluded that he would die here, and soon, and wanted to flee from the act of witnessing his final breath.
He's right, he old himself. This is hopeless. Better to roll over and face death.
No, some other part of his mind responded urgently. Move. Move!
Tolofsson twisted his foot again, inciting fresh paroxysms. Dimly, Tegatchi wondered whether he was screaming again. His senses didn’t seem to be working in concert anymore. Someone was screaming, he thought. Or whispering. It was hard to tell.
Above him, Tolofsson grunted with his own pain.
“Svengirsson’s blade would not have snapped like this,” he said, apparently to himself. He must have been pulling the remains of Tegachi’s knife from between his ribs. As he did so, he released his foot long enough for him to kick Svengirsson’s knife from Tegatchi's hand.
Tegatchi seized on the brief release his disarmament gave him ,and brought his agonising blood-stained crawl to an end.
The glinting object he had given everything to reach proved to be an ornate hilt, apparently of burnished gold, with its pommel carved into a leering skull. Whatever blade was attached lay hidden under an oozing pile of massacred cultists whose bodies had been tossed there after the Krakens had taken the cathedral.
It was a weapon, and Tegatchi grabbed for it. Though it was all but impossible not to lunge desperately forwards and start slashing for his foe’s innards then and there, Tegatchi fought to remain composure, reaching for the hilt as though he were simply attempting to crawl away by a few more inches, using his hand to shield the weapon from Tolofsson’s sight. As his filthy, bleeding fingers closed around the hilt (which surprised him with how warm it was), he turned his head upwards, attempting to see his foe’s face.
Tolofsson had indeed pulled the knife shard from his chest. Thick dark blood was running towards his legs, hardening even as Tegatchi watched as the genetic modifications in Tolofsson’s circulation system burst into hyperactivity.
As Tegatchi watched, Tolofsson stepped away from his wounded leg, allowing Tegatchi a full view of his would-be executioner. Tolofsson held the broken blade between his fingers, like the claws of a predator, it too was covered in blood already solid, but there was little doubt the edge could still cut Tegatchi’s throat without any appreciable effort.
“This is unfortunate,” Tolofsson said, indicating his improvised weapon. “I know you’ll be just as dead this way. But one does get attached to one‘s own weapons.”
There was the slightest hint of a shrug, and then Tolofsson was diving forwards and down, his arm outstretched, the fragment of knife screaming as it tore the air.
Kill him.
Tegatchi span himself onto his back, bellowing at the pain it caused, and pulled the hilt of his stolen weapon outwards and upwards in a long arc to meet his incoming foe. Striking at the only hope he had left.
It hadn’t occurred to him until he swung the hilt that he had no idea whether there was a blade attached.
There was. With a crackle of unfathomable energy and a burst of cold blue light, a savagely serrated glowing blade cut through the air like it was vacuum, and Tolofsson’s left forearm like it was wet paper.
In the end, Tolofsson was too surprised to even scream. All that could be heard was the muffled thud of his severed arm hitting the ground, and the hideous wet pulsing of his life blood as it cascaded from the stump. For a moment or two he stood there, swaying slightly, staring at the fountain of crimson liquid as it gushed from what remained of his limb. He might have been willing the coagulants to do their job, or perhaps he was simply waiting for the signals from his eyes to correlate with what his brain was prepared to believe.
Whatever was passing through his mind, it didn’t make any difference. After a few seconds shock kicked in full force, and Tolofssson toppled in a cloud of grey masonry dust and darkly glinting gobbets of blood.
Gradually, by inches, gritting his teeth so hard he became certain he would shatter them, Tegatchi drew himself to his feet. The effort once more set motes of light dancing across his vision. In fact, the entire world was fading out at the corners again, but this time it didn’t concern him in the slightest. Quite the contrary. This wasn’t death, it was purpose. The universe now consisted of exactly three things: Tolofsson, and the sword, and himself.
As he hobbled over to his fallen enemy, Tegatchi could just about register shouts of outages. He ignored them. The shadows that flitted through the world outside his foe and his weapon were moving again. He ignored that too.
Kill him.
Tegachi dragged the twisted remnants of his leg over to the prone form of his foe, and watched the arterial flow as it continued to weakly pump blood onto the floor to thicken the dust into dark, viscous streams.
Kill him.
Eagerly, Tegatchi raised his sword. This time he could swear it sounded less like the blade screamed as the air flowed around it, and more as though it sang.
The shouting was getting ever louder. The sharp bark of bolter fire suddenly added itself to the din. Still Tegatchi ignored it. Tolofsson, the sword, and himself.
Kill him. KILL HIM!
For a moment, Tegatchi paused. Had he not already won? Tolofsson could no longer threaten him. He could kill the old man any time he chose. It was no longer a battle, it was a formality. How did the Krakens, both his Caudan fellows and what remained of the sullen Kringrimmi, gain from the death of their seniormost chaplain?
NO! KILL HIM NOW! You cannot set aside your task! It must be complete!
Tegatchi took one final look at Tolofsson, laid as though sleeping peacefully in the spreading pool of his blood. He took one final look at the sword, viciously jagged and glowing coldly. And he took one final look at himself, at who he was, and what he was, and what he might be tomorrow.
This time there was no doubt. When he brought the blade down to strike Tolofsson’s face, the blade was unquestionably singing.
Tegatchi’s blade moved almost too fast to follow. Each glittering blur cut closer to Tolofsson’s flesh than the one before.
There was no time to find an opening, almost no time to even realise that that was what he was meant to be doing. Tegatchi was simply too young, and too quick.
Except.
Tolofsson trusted to instinct. Deflecting another brutal slash at his ribs, he leant to his right, continuing the course of his knife towards his enemy’s shoulder. Tegatchi’s own weapon was already waiting. A heartbeat before the impact, Tolofsson yanked his arm upward, smashing his elbow into Tegatchi’s jaw. There was a satisfying crunch of bone, followed by an even more satisfying cry of pain as Tolofsson straightened his arm, flicking his knife point along his opponent’s chest from hip to sternum.
Tegatchi staggered backwards, one step, then two. The third step saw him firmly planted again. Tolofsson noted a new wariness in his eyes.
“First blood is mine,” he said, trying to keep the relief from his voice. “And why, boy? Because speed is nothing without experience.”
Tegatchi shrugged.
.
“Simply a scratch, old man. Your knife will rust away before you kill me with such wounds.”
.
Tolofsson cursed under his breath. His foe might be a fool and a traitor, but he was also right; the cut was long but thin, essentially superficial. Tegatchi didn’t even bother to glance at his wound before he brought his blade up again, and lunged.
Wrenching his head to the right, Tolofsson felt as much as heard the knife-tip that whistled past his ear. Almost instantly he aimed a brutal punch at where his opponent’s neck had been an instant before.
His fist hit only air.
Spinning around, Tolofsson brought his knife around in a long, desperate arc. With Tegatchi behind him-
.
His blade sighed as it passed over his foe’s head, as though disappointed. There wasn’t even time to slow his swing before his enemy sprang from his crouch, slamming his body into Tolofsson’s torso and lifting him from his feet.
Scorched skeletons shattered beneath him as Tolofsson hit the ground hard. He grunted with pain as bone splinters lacerated his back, heard the tortured screech as more shards forced themselves inside his vertebrae sockets in miniature fountains of blood and machine oil.
His knife was gone, lost in the fall. No time to find it. Reaching out, he crushed more bones, powdering them in his hands as he pulled himself upwards.
He almost made it before Tegatchi was upon him. The younger marine barrelled into him with enough force to knock the air from his chest. Once again, he fell into the pile of blackened bones. New wounds opened upon new shards; he had to bite his lip to avoid crying out in pain. Closing his fingers around a broken skull, Tolofsson slammed it into his opponent’s temple. Tegatchi’s head whipped sideways, blood flying out in a crimson curve, but he kept hold. Pinning Tolofsson’s’ right arm with his left, Tegatchi brought his knife down towards his foe’s ribcage.
Dropping what remained of his impromptu weapon, Tolofsson made a desperate grab for Tegatchi’s arm. The rest of the cathedral seemed to telescope outward into infinity as his entire world became about the fractional changes in the height of that blade.
That height kept slowly decreasing. Tegatchi wasn’t just young and quick, he was strong. He was smart, too, Tolofsson realised, it was clear the knife-point was aimed at the centre of the star of shatter-marks that were all that remained from an Ork Mek’s attempt to disembowel him a century earlier.
The knife slipped downward another half-inch. Stopping that blade was a battle Tolofsson could not hope to win, any more than he could have hoped to win this duel. He was quite simply outmatched on every level. Speed, strength, agility. All he had was experience, and at that moment it seemed even that counted against him. All experience really meant was that he had taken more damage, and borne more pain.
Except.
Something was scratching at the back of his mind.
What had he told himself?
Nothing without experience.
He had borne pain.
Suddenly, without warning, Tolofsson let go.
Tegatchi’s knife plunged downward, into his chest. The blade penetrated a little over an inch into the thick wall of his ossified ribs before he grabbed hold of his foe’s arm once more.
The younger chaplain’s surprise was splashed all over his face. For a sliver of time he slackened his hold on his knife hilt.
It was enough. Rather than continue his doomed attempt to keep the knife aloft, Tolofsson twisted his entire body sideways. The knife followed his roll, or tried to, and broke in half against his stone-hard rib bones as a result. Aiming a savage kick at Tegatchi’s left knee, and feeling the kneecap give way with a sickening crack, Tolofsson rolled off his bed of broken bones and scrambled to his feet.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the knife blade still buried in his chest, and pulled it out in a shower of blood.
“Not far enough in, whelp,” he announced coldly. “My heart is buried deeper than that.”
Tegatchi was back on his feet as well. He was still quick, even though his stance made it clear he was favouring his right leg with as much weight as possible.
In his hand glinted Svengirsson’s knife.
“Never mind. I can always just drive this through the other one.”Tolofsson let his strategy drown in his hate, and charged forwards, screaming out everything left within him.
A half dozen blows after Tolofsson reached him, and Tegatchi knew he was in trouble.
Perhaps he had made a mistake in enraging his foe. There was no doubt it had been a mistake to allow him to all but break his leg in two. Apparently he’d be taking something from today after all.
If he lived that long. Being a knife up and a leg down wasn’t really as fair an exchange as it might have sounded. It meant he was forced to hold the weapon in his left hand, the better to protect his shattered knee.
He knew how to fight with both hands, of course, but against a sparring partner as experienced and determined as Tolofsson, he couldn’t afford even a modest reduction in his fighting prowess. Nor did guarding his leg make it easy to shield his already badly damaged jaw.
Tolofsson clearly intended to take full advantage. For every lunge at Tegatchi’s face, there was another short, stabbing kick at his crumpled knee. For every low sweep of a leg, there was another savage elbow jab. Most of them were deflected, and none truly connected, but each glancing blow sent another pulse of agony along Tegatchi’s strained and protesting nerves. It wasn’t as though they needed any encouragement. The pain in his leg was already unbearable, and it grew still worse every time he gave ground across the cracked and bloodstained flagstones, which seemed to be happening with almost every blow.
Any thought of fighting back had evaporated. The best he could do was try to angle the knife into his Tolofsson’s attacks, in the hope the older man might actually drive himself onto the blade in his fury. It was a vain hope, but hope nonetheless. Certainly, it was only Tolofsson’s rage that prevented him realising he could now easily outdistance his opponent and search for a new weapon. He might even have pulled the shattered knife tip from his chest and attacked with that; even that feeble approximation to a weapon would-
Wait.
Go back.
Something was scratching at the base of his mind.
A new weapon.
Still falling back by inches, teeth clenched almost to the point of fighting each other against the agony, Tegatchi allowed himself to turn himself on his wounded leg. His eyes darted from side to side between each of Tolofsson’s increasingly vicious strikes. He risked glances at his fellow marines, each one just as still as when this battle had begun an eternity ago. He took in both Tolofsson’s Kringrimmi and his own supporters, all but indistinguishable from each other, mirror images across a broken hall.
The search grew harder as his pain grew worse. Spots of light began to swim behind his eyes, obscuring his vision, draining his hope. Tolofsson dodged inside his guard, fingers entwined, and pushed forward into a sledgehammer uppercut to Tegatchi’s neck.
The blow itself blinded Tegatchi as the spots of light burst first into stars and then into supernovae. The force of the blow almost lifted him from his feet. Instinctively he took a step backwards to steady himself, only realising his mistake a split second before his full weight pressed itself upon his left leg, which immediately conceded defeat with a hideous snap.
His eyesight began to swim back into focus as he fell, only to be snatched away once more as his skull made contact with the cold stone of the cathedral floor.
“Here we are again,” he heard Tolofsson say contemptuously. “I must confess, the appeal is more obvious from this perspective.”
Run, the voice in his head pleaded . Get away!
Running was out of the question, but the point was well taken. Blinking furiously in the hopes of regaining his sight, Tegatchi tried desperately to crawl away from the sound of his opponent’s voice. The blackness began to break apart as flickering yellow and green lights began pushing their way through the cracks.
When Tolofsson brought his foot down upon Tegatchi’s broken leg, the agony was so overwhelming that it took him a second or two before he could gather himself enough to scream.
Sadism brought more than simple pain, however. It brought clarity. In the eye of the storm of screaming neurones and crumbling bone, Tegatchi realised not every light dancing before his eyes was a trick of his damaged, violated body.
Something was shining in the wreckage ahead.
Move.
Punching his teeth together as though sheer force was the only thing ew require to neutralise all the pain our flesh has capacity to process, Tegatchi began to drag himself forwards.
Tolofsson responded by digging his heel in still further. The spots of light infecting Tegatchi’s vision began to grow, pulsing in time with the avalanches of agony running through his body, but he refused to give his opponent the satisfaction of a second scream.
“Hah!” Tolofsson barked. “I like determination in my enemies. But nothing about hopeless defiance is more important than the fact that it is hopeless.”
Move.
It appeared to Tegatchi as though the world was retreating from him. With each new handful of splintered bone and crumbled masonry, and each long scrape of his torso against the stone, it seemed the gleam of metal he sought was further from him, as though the universe had concluded that he would die here, and soon, and wanted to flee from the act of witnessing his final breath.
He's right, he old himself. This is hopeless. Better to roll over and face death.
No, some other part of his mind responded urgently. Move. Move!
Tolofsson twisted his foot again, inciting fresh paroxysms. Dimly, Tegatchi wondered whether he was screaming again. His senses didn’t seem to be working in concert anymore. Someone was screaming, he thought. Or whispering. It was hard to tell.
Above him, Tolofsson grunted with his own pain.
“Svengirsson’s blade would not have snapped like this,” he said, apparently to himself. He must have been pulling the remains of Tegachi’s knife from between his ribs. As he did so, he released his foot long enough for him to kick Svengirsson’s knife from Tegatchi's hand.
Tegatchi seized on the brief release his disarmament gave him ,and brought his agonising blood-stained crawl to an end.
The glinting object he had given everything to reach proved to be an ornate hilt, apparently of burnished gold, with its pommel carved into a leering skull. Whatever blade was attached lay hidden under an oozing pile of massacred cultists whose bodies had been tossed there after the Krakens had taken the cathedral.
It was a weapon, and Tegatchi grabbed for it. Though it was all but impossible not to lunge desperately forwards and start slashing for his foe’s innards then and there, Tegatchi fought to remain composure, reaching for the hilt as though he were simply attempting to crawl away by a few more inches, using his hand to shield the weapon from Tolofsson’s sight. As his filthy, bleeding fingers closed around the hilt (which surprised him with how warm it was), he turned his head upwards, attempting to see his foe’s face.
Tolofsson had indeed pulled the knife shard from his chest. Thick dark blood was running towards his legs, hardening even as Tegatchi watched as the genetic modifications in Tolofsson’s circulation system burst into hyperactivity.
As Tegatchi watched, Tolofsson stepped away from his wounded leg, allowing Tegatchi a full view of his would-be executioner. Tolofsson held the broken blade between his fingers, like the claws of a predator, it too was covered in blood already solid, but there was little doubt the edge could still cut Tegatchi’s throat without any appreciable effort.
“This is unfortunate,” Tolofsson said, indicating his improvised weapon. “I know you’ll be just as dead this way. But one does get attached to one‘s own weapons.”
There was the slightest hint of a shrug, and then Tolofsson was diving forwards and down, his arm outstretched, the fragment of knife screaming as it tore the air.
Kill him.
Tegatchi span himself onto his back, bellowing at the pain it caused, and pulled the hilt of his stolen weapon outwards and upwards in a long arc to meet his incoming foe. Striking at the only hope he had left.
It hadn’t occurred to him until he swung the hilt that he had no idea whether there was a blade attached.
There was. With a crackle of unfathomable energy and a burst of cold blue light, a savagely serrated glowing blade cut through the air like it was vacuum, and Tolofsson’s left forearm like it was wet paper.
In the end, Tolofsson was too surprised to even scream. All that could be heard was the muffled thud of his severed arm hitting the ground, and the hideous wet pulsing of his life blood as it cascaded from the stump. For a moment or two he stood there, swaying slightly, staring at the fountain of crimson liquid as it gushed from what remained of his limb. He might have been willing the coagulants to do their job, or perhaps he was simply waiting for the signals from his eyes to correlate with what his brain was prepared to believe.
Whatever was passing through his mind, it didn’t make any difference. After a few seconds shock kicked in full force, and Tolofssson toppled in a cloud of grey masonry dust and darkly glinting gobbets of blood.
Gradually, by inches, gritting his teeth so hard he became certain he would shatter them, Tegatchi drew himself to his feet. The effort once more set motes of light dancing across his vision. In fact, the entire world was fading out at the corners again, but this time it didn’t concern him in the slightest. Quite the contrary. This wasn’t death, it was purpose. The universe now consisted of exactly three things: Tolofsson, and the sword, and himself.
As he hobbled over to his fallen enemy, Tegatchi could just about register shouts of outages. He ignored them. The shadows that flitted through the world outside his foe and his weapon were moving again. He ignored that too.
Kill him.
Tegachi dragged the twisted remnants of his leg over to the prone form of his foe, and watched the arterial flow as it continued to weakly pump blood onto the floor to thicken the dust into dark, viscous streams.
Kill him.
Eagerly, Tegatchi raised his sword. This time he could swear it sounded less like the blade screamed as the air flowed around it, and more as though it sang.
The shouting was getting ever louder. The sharp bark of bolter fire suddenly added itself to the din. Still Tegatchi ignored it. Tolofsson, the sword, and himself.
Kill him. KILL HIM!
For a moment, Tegatchi paused. Had he not already won? Tolofsson could no longer threaten him. He could kill the old man any time he chose. It was no longer a battle, it was a formality. How did the Krakens, both his Caudan fellows and what remained of the sullen Kringrimmi, gain from the death of their seniormost chaplain?
NO! KILL HIM NOW! You cannot set aside your task! It must be complete!
Tegatchi took one final look at Tolofsson, laid as though sleeping peacefully in the spreading pool of his blood. He took one final look at the sword, viciously jagged and glowing coldly. And he took one final look at himself, at who he was, and what he was, and what he might be tomorrow.
This time there was no doubt. When he brought the blade down to strike Tolofsson’s face, the blade was unquestionably singing.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Having Been Human
Again, with the spoilers. Oh so many spoilers.
.
.
.
Well, that was grim. And bleak. And bloody. Grim and bleak and bloody. Body counts are way up, and recurring characters still in possession of all necessary body parts or spiritual essences are way down.
It certainly deserves having a "The Horror tag" added to this post.
But was it any good. Well... Yes. Mainly. Sort of. In a sense.
There's a lot I could say about the two episodes that concluded this season, but for the sake of my fingers I'm just going to focus on one aspect to it; the one thing that bothered my thoughts the most after watching it: MaCMaFE.
When you get right down to it, I think that there are simply certain aspects of television that I am unable to entirely accept. Doubtless many of these have surfaced over the two years I've been writing this blog (almost to the day: time to order myself a cake) , but the one I'm mulling over right now is the Main Character Magnetic Field Effect (MaCMaFE).
I was lucky enough to be in my early to mid-teens when it first seemed to truly dawn on people that television shows did not have to be explicit serials in order to allow a story to run over multiple episodes, or even years. In a sense, I was growing up as television was. I remember very clearly finding an article in the Radio Times discussing those few TV series that had managed or bothered to break free of the "reset button" format (though this was back, I suspect, before that term was coined).
Even at that early age, I was entirely aware of how limiting a concept the repeated enforced return of the status quo was, and it irritated me a great deal. Either an event had to be entirely undone and implausibly resolved, or it did have lasting consequences, but they were simply (and conveniently) never mentioned again. Voyager was arguably the nadir of this concept, at least in sci-fi, partly because DS9 had demonstrated the value of allowing organic changes to the narrative and partially because of all the Trek shows (including the later Enterprise), it had the very least justification for trying to return to equilibrium each time.
Nowadays it's actually much harder to find a show that does reset each week (though that might well be selection bias on my part). This is, generally speaking, good news. True, it often makes things harder for shows by demanding more attention from their viewers (never an easy sell), and the trouble with constant movement is that you risk drifting too far from the original premise that made it all work in the first place (Gooder has argued several times, and I think rightly, that the point at which Scrubs dropped precipitously in quality was the exact moment each of the conflicts set up early in Season 1 had been resolved). On the whole, though, I'm glad for the change.
MaCMaFE is an inevitable side-effect of that shift, however. One of the advantages of at least partially serialising your show is that the conflict between the characters can become much more real and serious. The disadvantage is that real and serious conflicts often lead to people drifting apart.
It is one of life's little ironies (or my own little hypocrisies) that whilst I push for emotional and dramatic realism in the shows I watch, I tremble with dread at the thought of losing major characters. This is why I'm desperate for Annie to return in Season 3, even if she was totally wasted this year and Lenora Critchlow might well be advised to look elsewhere for her wage packet. The problem is, of course, losing "major characters" is exactly what happens in real life. It's entirely possible to have a major row with a friend and then not see them for weeks, or months, or ever again, and often, even when peace is declared, things are an awfully long way from being what they were. In TV land, where the shouting matches tend to be about whether or not someone blew up their mate's father's spaceship because he was possessed by a murderous killer parasite hellbent on galactic dominion, one would expect the rifts to be deeper than those we experience.
Instead, the opposite happens. Sooner or later, main characters forgive each other, or at least declare piece in a manner indistinguishable from forgiveness. They move back in together, or at least close enough to not need two sets anymore. Horrible, heartrending betrayals are smoothed over on the flimsiest of pretexts (I don't want to spoilerise anything here, but the first episode of True Blood Season 2 contained a particularly eye-popping example of this, which might be why it was on my mind as I watched Being Human a few minutes later). People change jobs and come right back. Relationships break up and both sides bicker endlessly without apparently considering the benefits of just not hanging out any more. Whatever it takes to keep the same people in the same situation, so the same viewers can watch without feeling alienated. It keeps me happy in the sense that we're still enjoying the adventures of the characters we love, but there's always the voice at the base of my skull, slowly growing in strength, telling me that this doesn't make sense. That these things aren't, and possibly shouldn't, be forgiven.
Having watched Being Human last night, it's impossible to ignore the strange low hum of a MaCMaFE generator once more being switched on (MaCMaFE generators are available at Currys, PC World, online at Amazon, and for those in a hurry, one can purchase the McDonald's McMaCMaFE and medium fries for £5 at your nearest drive-through). Surely, on the list of Bad Things main characters have done that will be tough to forgive, massacring an entire train carriage has to be fairly near the top. It's all the worse because Mitchell did it, at least in part, as revenge against humanity. As horrible, vicious, petty, directionless revenge. The show is called Being Human, for God's sake; it's whole existence resolves around the questions of redemption and what it means to be human. By declaring war on humanity, by destroying it utterly in the first box he found it in, Mitchell has done more than kill twenty people. He's killed his own humanity. It was already battered and bruised, perhaps even on life-support, but for two years the question has always been whether Mitchell can keep the embers alive through a squall of temptation (I can hear this metaphor starting to creak already).
But now? Now, it's simply dead. Mitchell can force the vampire within him to sleep for a while longer, but it won't be to allow his human side to surface anymore. He is now a vampire, or he's an empty box.
It's possible anyone reading this might argue I've gone too far. Well, maybe, but I'd note in my defence that I think showrunner Toby Whithouse agrees with me, at least in part. How else do we explain the last minute journey into perversion and mass murder embarked upon by the previously unflappable Kemp? Whithouse knows that you can't make your hero more sympathetic, you have to make your villain more villainous. And it worked, too, just about. I guess from a certain perspective you can understand how a man so devoted to the Bible might care little for psychics, even those he employs, and killing his clairvoyant henchman to banish Annie makes some sense in terms of a petulant swipe at Mitchell. But still, this is pantomime villainy. Once you reduce a character to killing because it's the easiest available option at that exact moment in time, you're not trafficking in shades of grey anymore. You're just in a race to the bottom. More than anything, its dramatic cheating, compensating for the darkness erupting from one of your heroes by painting everything he dislikes black, so we can still feel essentially comfortable. It's like how each episode of Hustle requires that the gang's mark be resolutely unpleasant, so we can feel good about watching criminals steal their money. Only this is worse, because it's more like someone having their money stolen by our heroes and then retroactively made into a bastard so we can claim that karma has done it's job, just whilst working along a different time dimension to the one we like to jog along.
So you find yourself watching a man of God licking the lipstick from co-workers stolen mug, and you grit your teeth through the sight of his head technician (whose name I've forgotten and will henceforth be known as Techie del Wankfest) proves to engage in acts of pointless peeping-Tom onanism (seriously; the guy can't work out how to get the internet in there?). Now they're bad, you see? They're all sexually weird and stuff. Being the latest in a long string of dead bodies is to good for 'em.
Is that true, though? Really? In the course of that facility being open, so far as we know, four werewolves have died. In each case, it was in the process of attempting to cure them. That in no way justifies either Kemp's callousness or the need to pre-order body bags (as Mitchell points out), but their deaths can plausibly be called second order; known as a likely result rather than specifically aimed for (and with an actual honest-to-God potential upside to those in question if the treatment worked). In addition, Kemp ordered the extermination of thirty mass murderers who the police have demonstrated they have no interest in actually, y'know, policing. Mitchell argued he had them under control, but we already know that this was, at best, temporarily true. He was already determined to leave. He was handing control of the group of addicts to a lapsed haemoholic, for fuck's sake, because he'd only just killed someone and now he wanted to run away. How long was the peace going to last? It's clear vampires almost if not actually invariably relapse; the very most noble one we know has killed twice in the last year.
So, thirty mass-murderers running around being ignored by the law are now dead. Again. And in return, twenty innocent human beings, none of which (so much as Mitchell knew) have so much as kicked a dog get ripped to shreds. Four failed cures and thirty stone-cold (literally) killers vs twenty innocents. Even I don't like reducing this sort of thing to cold numbers and functions, but if I did, it is to put it mildy massively uncertain that Mitchell would come out ahead when the final score is tallied.
But hey, MaCMaFE. So now Mitchell is skulking in another house, in another town,waiting for the next time he can't help but kill again. George may say he hasn't forgiven him, can't forgive him, maybe, but it doesn't matter. Time will pass and whether or not George has forgiven him won't matter at all. Eventually silence starts to sound like forgiveness anyway. Or it doesn't, and the guilt leads to a relapse, because guilt is smarter than you are and tends to hide exactly in the opposite direction to the one you assume it's heading.
Whether or not George can forgive him is irrelevant, of course. The question is whether we can. As black-hearted as Kemp proved to be, we never needed to believe anything different. What we believe about Mitchell is crucial, and I'm far from sure we can get back to where we were, or get to wherever else we need to.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)