When Grown Men Wear Costumes

Currently watching Wrestlemania, according to editorial fiat (i.e. demanded by B). I believe the apposite phrase is: "WTF"?

Update: I should mention that if your particular brand of fakery involves a sell-by date by "defeat", then there is honour in bowing out, however fabricated the method. Goodbye Ric Flair.

Shit-Start Second

Finally began the task of working my way through the DVD's I was so kindly given over Christmas by my lovely friends, who really deserve a higher percentage chance of use from their well thought-out presents than I generally tend to offer them.

Actually, there are presents specifically tailored to someone's sense of enjoyment, and then there's presents specifically tailored to someone's sense of sadomasochism. "Blood on Satan's Claw", a seasonal offering from Vomiting Mike, is most certainly in the latter category. Knowing of my dogged insistance on watching the crappest, campest, schlockiest (if it wasn't a word, I submit that it is now) horror films I can get my hands on, he managed to drag what looked like a true abomination of cinema into the light, presumably from out of whatever pit of Hell the mighty Beelzebub has reserved for 70's Hammer Horror knockoffs (the "critical essay", for want of a better term, which came in the box, claims that the film is often mistaken for a Hammer effort, although I would think it's probably more often mistaken for a cheese-induced nightmare dictated by a lisping, weeping child to a drunken idiot desperately trying to write shorthand with a wax crayon whilst wearing boxing gloves).

So, given I knew the film would be terrible from the start, I decided it might be an opportune time to play my Squid-patented "Shit-Start Second" game. The rules are pretty basic, you simply attempt to pinpoint the exact second in a film's running time at which it reveals itself to be total shit. Still with me?

To be clear, some films make you nervous from the get-go. You can have a bad feeling from opening credits for instance (or to go at it from the other direction, Big G swears he realised he was going to love "Brick" from a single shot only 54 seconds in). The idea here is to find the moment where your fears crystallise into certainty (the arrival of a given name in the credits does not count, an actor might not need to speak to ruin a film, but as a general rule we should at least give them the courtesy of waiting for them to arrive).

The current holder of the SSS record is the nightmare of celluloid men refer to in choking whispers as "Spawn". I was too traumatised by the experience of watching it to remember the exact timing, but it was the moment the evil clown started making fun of Martin Sheen. Somewhere around the four minute mark, I think.

Not that it matters, because I can now report that BoSC is our new reigning champion. The scene is as follows: Roger Dawltrey look-alike Ralph Gower is tilling a field when he notices some crows a little distance off. Finding the appearance of a small number of naturally-occuring fauna overpoweringly suspicious, he abandons his work to investigate, and finds that they've been bothering the decaying remains of some hideous quasi-human face. Except of course that what they've actually been doing is standing indolently atop a plaster-of-paris replica of a gargoyle's face with added blue paint and a glass eye. I know it's generally bad form to mock a film from the Seventies over its effects, but there's cheap-but-imaginative, and then there's stealing your props from children's parties (strange, twisted children, who grew up to go clubbing with chloroform and , but even so).

Time-stamp: 98 seconds. This will be tough to beat, I think.

Note also that you can sing the game title to the tune of "New York Minute" by the Eagles, which I stubbornly maintain is both cool and awesome. "In a shit-start second (oo-wee-ooooh) every film can change."

Suit yourselves.

As for the film itself, it was atrocious beyond belief. The increasingly ineptly named critical essay (if ever a film needed criticising, it was this one) claims it was originally written as three short stories hastily rearranged into one narrative, which certainly explains why the crazy-eyed sappy woman with the worrying similarity to T showed up, went nuts, got some kind of awesome claw-thing and then disappeared. Really though the problems were two-fold; firstly the plot didn't really go anywhere (kids go all witchy, try to resurrect Satan, fail), and secondly the "erotic" quotient of the film consisted of two topless women (one of whom, in fairness, was tremendously attractive, but even then attractive in the graceful beauty sort of way I've always liked that doesn't really lend itself to grubby gratuitous tog-shedding) and a profoundly disturbing rape scene (beyond the standard level of unease, obviously). Disturbing a) because the victim quickly started enjoying it (which you can wave away as being SATAN'S INFLUENCE, I suppose, but if there are films that can get away with the idea of a woman enjoying sexual assault (A History of Violence? Opinion is divided) it most certainly can't be one that already treats its female characters as all being hapless victims, bothersome old maids, and vicious conniving temptresses with big tits) and b) because the victim was Zoe from Doctor Who, and that's just not something my dreamy childhood memories can really sustain. The scene really wasn't helped by watching Betty from "Some Mother's Do Have 'Em" apparently reach orgasm as she watches all this, nostalgia really took quite a beating.

So a miss, all things considered. The only real highlight was learning that the DoP was named Dick Bush, which is probably my favourite name since Tokyo Sexwale.

Diamonds

Like a lot of people, I find myself somewhat confused when it comes to my love of my family, in that whilst I would be devastated should anything befall any of them, I can really only tolerate them through the mediums of alcohol or of distance.

Regardless, I wanted to note that today is my paternal grandparent's diamond wedding anniversary. A slap-up meal awaits me, presumably to be held in awkward silence.

In all honest my grandparent's marriage, insofar as I am able to judge, having been alive for less than half of it and possessing no real metric upon which to judge it for perhaps half of the remainder, is remarkable in no real way than its sheer longevity. At present their marital recipe seems to be 60% fighting and 40% sleeping, which they presumably do in increasing fear that one of them will finally snap and claw the other's eyes out whilst they lie prone. On the other hand, it's worth noting that there is nobody in my generation (with, just maybe, the exception of C & T) who are liable to reach their diamond anniversary, not because all my married friends are headed for divorce (although a number of them have already fallen by an increasingly packed wayside), but because no-one did it early enough for both parties to realistically be alive long enough to hit the aforementioned milestone. I recognise that a long-lasting marriage is not necessarily the same as a happy one, and that getting married before you're old enough to drive a HGV is probably not the best idea society ever came up with, but it's still worth noting that until we find some way to live forever as cyborgs, or at least how to grow replacement organs from stem cells, my grandparents are liable to have achieved something their descendants will find very difficult to replicate.

Assuming, of course, they haven't got divorced before we've gotten to the fish course.

SpaceSquid (plus R) vs Hollywood No. 1

Title: Cod Almighty!

Hollywood Formula Pitch: (Bonfire of the Vanities + Jaws) x From Dusk Till Dawn

Synopsis: The touching yet hard-nosed story of how the executive at the No Catch cod farm pissed away a small fortune snorting cocaine off hookers' tits rather than engage robotically in the far nobler aim of continuing the genocide of an entire fish species. Goggle with nauseating jealously as the suits fritter away their expense accounts, and engage in golf games during the working day. Then watch with smug satisfaction as their immoral but faintly boring antics lead them into a spiral of failure and self-recrimination.

Oh, also; the director of the company is secretly developing mutated zombie cod that attack humans on sight, leading to a ludicrous twist in the third act where shoals of cruelly twisted gadidae attack the hero (whomever he is), and the big-titted heroine who is probably a journalist or something.

This will also be lead into a tacked-on romantic subplot which will give the ladies something to enjoy.

Money shot(s): A low-speed golf-cart chase ending in one cart careening into a bunker and detonating unconvincingly. A secret underground zombie cod factory in which several one-hit-point characters meet a grizzly end. A gratuitous sex scene, filmed underwater in a cod-hatchery.

Tagline: Time to get battered.

Shah Shah!

Soon doubtless to be filed under "Spoke too soon", I just thought I'd put up a quick post to celebrate the completion of my first academic paper. It's already been reviewed, this was just me responding to their comments, in addition to trimming the paper to the editor's increasingly far-fetched demands for brevity. I may have it back at some point if spell-checking sets bells ringing, but seriously, how hard is it to spell inhomogeneity, anyway?

It's not a very good paper, in truth, although I'm reliably informed that it will read better to the economists who read it than the mathematicians that wrote it, but it does mean that I will soon no longer be working towards being a published academic, I will be a published academic, albeit one with only a single published work which a lot of people think is a bit shit.

Clinton's Coup

OK, I went back to work for, like, three minutes, and it didn't end well. On with the ranting.

A lot of people on the left (and for all I know, the right, although I find it hard to believe they really care one way or the other) are concerned that Clinton's only successful strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is what's being referred to as "coup by super-delegate". Now, if everything stays the same as it is right now, those commentators are almost certainly correct. And the general feeling seems to be that if she did somehow pull that off (which can safely be considered a Hail Mary play at this point), it will rip the party apart, because the super-delegates will essentially have looked at which candidate won the most primaries, the most caucuses, the most states, and the most actual votes, and said "Fuck you, American citizenry". Of course, that part the right really is interested in, much in the same way I'm interested in getting laid tonight. It isn't something I'm really expecting, but I'm certainly prepared to consider as a pleasing hypothetical.

But the key phrase in all the above is "if everything stays the same." There is a second method by which Clinton can get the nomination, and that's by Obama being completely destroyed by some upcoming scandal. The Reverend Wright situation proved that there are chinks his armour; he has so far weathered the latest storm fairly well (in fact in my view at least has become a more attractive candidate), but the idea his campaign is an unstoppable juggernaut is clearly incorrect.

What it is, is unstoppable by Clinton directly (and she needs to give up on some of the attempts she's been making recently; Clinton > Obama is an entirely reasonable strategy, but Clinton = McCain > Obama most certainly isn't). But that doesn't mean something else won't take him out between now and the convention, and whilst it's hardly fair on him to point out the odds of that are increased because he is black, it doesn't make it any less true, and that's hardly Clinton's fault.

So she keeps doing her best to remain competitive, and (more importantly at this stage) to remind people that she exists, and no-one has to feel like it's Obama or nothing at this point. Is just holding on until the convention in the hope Obama goes aground somehow a feasible strategy? Not really. But at this point I don't see it as demonstrably less likely to work out than persuading the super delegates to snatch her out of the fire will.

The attractiveness of this theory is that Clinton obviously can't say that she's doing it. If at any point she throws up her hands and says "Fine; I'm only still in this race on the off chance Obama's horse might tread on a mine", then she really has had it. Her share of the primary votes will plummet, and even if lightning does strike the Republicans will never let her forget that that's how she secured the nomination (not that they would anyhow, but it would be a lot harder to shrug off once she admitted it herself). If this is her plan, she would do exactly what she is doing; fighting a state, then trying to minimise the loss of face if she fails, and making overtures to the superdelegates. Delaying tactics, essentially. Many are calling for her to give up, so that we know who our candidate is going to be and we can start gearing up to fight McCain, but I've never really bought into that. Continuing the primaries robs McCain of some of his air-time (and the recent gaffes and irregularities that the media have bent over backwards trying to explain, forgive or disappear proves that lack of attention on him is probably the best we can hope for right now), and it would be a poor political operative indeed who found themselves unable to create strategies and talking points for the coming general that wouldn't serve either candidate. Notwithstanding the constant low-level sniping from Clinton, which as I say she should knock-off, and the fact that I personally am tired of the whole thing and want it over with, I genuinely see no compelling reason why this has to be wrapped up ASAP. It's also worth noting, as many have, that the only reason Clinton is still running is the number of super-delegates who have yet to endorse either candidate is high enough to mean the coup strategy (whether it's a bluff or not) has legs. She's still running because she wants to be president and that isn't yet impossible to achieve. The undecided super-delegates are deliberately extending that run, presumably in the hope that they won't have to come down on one side or another if Clinton finally gives up. Which, since it's pretty much their job to pick sides, makes me wonder if Clinton is the right target for the anger of those who want this settled sooner rather than later.

Of course, I'm pretty confident it won't work, and Obama will make it to the convention without imploding. (or, alternatively, will eventually pick up enough super-delegates for it to finally be a done deal). It's only then that we'll get to see whether or not Clinton's strategy is genuinely what so many people believe it to be. She may just use her first address to the conference delegates to tell them she's packing it all in, and thanks for the memories, which will make everyone who's convinced her political goals are more important to her than the democratic party (and let's not forget that she needs the latter to gain the former in any event, because her goal is to become President, and that requires more than the nomination, a fact she is certainly aware of) look pretty stupid, and somewhat mean-spirited too.

The short version of all of this is: perhaps we shouldn't assume Clinton is too batshit insane to care about starting a civil war until she starts a civil war. I'm not discounting the possibility, but I certainly object to it being characterised as a self-evident truth.

Update: The Daily Kos agrees with me, too. So there.

In Which "Dick" Puns Are Avoided

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Richard Cheney:

" "The president carries the biggest burden, obviously," Cheney said. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us." "
(Quote from ABC News).

Leaving aside for a moment my general feeling that one has to be careful about treating the military as a completely infallible and immaculate entity that one cannot criticise without being unpatriotic, it's a pretty hard sell that President Bush has a harder time of it in the war than the soldiers do. Especially when you consider that Bush mentioned only a week or so ago that he thought fighting on the ground war must be somewhat romantic.

Seriously, if a Democratic administration tried to make the case that war was tougher on them than it was on the troops, they'd be rounded up and fired into the sun. Hypocrisy is pretty hard to avoid in politics, but germs are pretty hard to avoid in bathrooms, and you should still have enough sense not to gargle from the toilet bowl.

PS: Note also the emphasis that the American soldiers volunteered to join the military. Well, sure, if you ignore the number of people who sign up to the army because they can't get a job anywhere else (well, I guess the women could become hookers, but let's put that aside), and you ignore the fact that signing up to a job doesn't mean anything your boss decides to make you do is automatically OK, then yes, these men and women did in fact volunteer. But how is that relevant here? No-one forced Bush to become president. In fact, a metric fuck-ton of people actively tried to stop him becoming president, to the point where his party had to cheat in order to get him over the finish line. Linking "it's harder to send people to die than it is to be sent to die" to "and anyway it's not like they didn't have a choice" is a pretty distasteful attempt to simultaneously engender sympathy for the guy that demands the sacrifices and lessen the relevance of the sacrifices themselves.

Anyway, I really should get back to work.

Update: I just read an interesting article that suggested that for a lot of people signing up for the army "economic need" equates less to "serve or starve" than it does "serve to break through into the middle class". It's an interesting distinction, so perhaps we should change "hookers" to "call girls" in the above.