WYRMLOG

Curses!

Wednesday July 30th 2008

The other week it was the season finale of Spooks , a show that I rarely get to watch because the ABC puts it on at such ridiculous times. I decided to stay up and watch it this particular Friday however as the plot involved the Thames Flood Barrier - a feat of engineering I've always generally approved of, and the flooding of London, something I've generally approved of (at least in fiction) ever since I started reading FreakAngels.

(And yes, readers in the UK will at this point be scoffing and making general noises of disdain about how the Thames Flood Barrier episode is old and how the UK has got much better episodes now and Australia is so backwards. Well, when it comes to the ABC's showing of Spooks I wholeheartedly agree.)

Anyway at one point during the episode one of the characters - the one who lost his wife a while back (I see the show so rarely that I don't know the names of any of the characters so that description will have to do) - is having a nervous breakdown in the bowels of the Barrier (do flood barriers have bowels?). This is indicated by the well established trope of fixing the camera on his face, and having him go spinning around and around, so his head remains stationary while the background whirls around wildly. An effective visual metaphor for a mind gone out of control.

Except that it didn't do that for me. All I could think of while watching it was "da dadada da dadadada da da dadada da da dadadada da DA DADADA DA! These are the surprising adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar featuring me, Sir Digby Chicken Caesar in my ongoing quest to find my nemesis, some bastard who's presumably behind it all...".

Another perfectly good cinematic communication method ruined by comedians. Curse you Mitchell and Webb! :D

From .yu to .me

Thursday July 24th 2008

Is it just me that finds it amusing that the .yu (Yugoslavia) top level domain is being replaced by the .me (Montenegro) top level domain?

Probably.

(OK, yes .yu is also being replaced by .rs for Serbia, but you can't make a pun out of that)

Dream Band

Wednesday July 23rd 2008

Rule 1: You must designate a Lead Guitarist, a Rhythm Guitarist, a Bassist and a Percussionist.

Rule 2: You may designate up to two additional musicians playing any instruments you feel appropriate.

Rule 3: You must designate a Lead Vocalist. The Lead Vocalist may be one of the already designated musicians - as long as their instrument would allow them to perform vocals - or one additional band member may be added. This additional member may not play any major instrument, but may play a minor percussion device such as a tamborine, triangle or cow bell if desired.

Rule 4: You must designate between one and three Backup Vocalists. Any band member whose instrument does not preclude them from singing may sing backup vocals.

Rule 5: No more than one band member may be selected from any one real-world band.

Rule 6: All band members must be alive.

Rule 7: Neither of the surviving Beatles may be selected, because that's just too easy.

OK, so for Lead Guitarist I'll take Slash, because any band that can't do a decent version of Sweet Child of Mine isn't my dream band. For rhythm guitar I'll give the nod to Mark Knopfler. Oh sure, he may complain about playing second fiddle to Slash, but what's a rock band without some internal tension?

On Base Guitar I'll take Kim Deal - for reasons I shall reveal later.

Percussion? Hmmm, that's a hard one. I can only think of three living Percussionists and one of them is Ringo Starr (rule 7 violation!). So it's a toss up between Meg White and Doktor Avalanche. While I hold Ms White in great personal esteem I think I'll go for the Doktor, because after all Meg only has two hands.

Extra instrumentalists. Well I think the band needs a trumpet, so they can do decent CAKE covers. Since I can't think of any trumpeters offhand I'll just grab the one from CAKE, which Wikipedia informs me is Vince DiFiore. Welcome aboard Vince!

We also need a keyboardist, otherwise how would the band do Whiter Shade of Pale? I'm going to be devious and select Tom Waits, who is skilled in the organ, piano and harmonium. The reason for such an unlikely choice is that I really want him for his voice, but he might as well do double duty.

So that's Tom Waits on lead vocals. On backup vocals I'll have Kim Deal. See? I said I wanted her specifically for something. Sure, she's a great bassist, but the Pixies wouldn't have been the Pixies without her ghostly voice creeping in behind Black Francis's deranged screeching.

Band complete! Now it's your turn...

Train Follies

Tuesday July 22nd 2008

There's an old wive's tale, sometimes bandied about in "did you know?" type lists, that every breath you take contains an air molecule once breathed by every single other person who's ever lived.

I do not believe this for a second.

It seems possible to me that the number of molecules in a single breath of air is greater than the total number of humans that have ever lived, but I find it unlikely that the air breathed out by every person in history has been so perfectly distributed that every breath one takes contains a molecule breathed by (to pick some names at random) Caesar, Hiawatha and Yul Brynner. I just don't see how the necessary air-distribution infrastructure could exist.

I suspect the story came about based on the (provisional) fact mentioned above - that a single breath of air contains enough molecules to give one to every person in history and have a good number left over. It's a short leap from that to the idea we're discussing - a variation on the fallacy that since many cats are black, anything black must be a cat (I'm sure there's a better way to put that, something about Cretans being liars, but I can't think of it at this time of night). It's probably a fairly easy mistake to make - until you start thinking logically about it anyway.

(If any mathematicians or meteorologists want to correct me and prove that I am breathing the same air as Hitler, please feel free).

As unlikely as everyone in history sharing their air may be, I think it's fair to say that a bunch of people crowded into a railway carriage do, in fact, breath the same air. And this brings me to the main thrust of this article, which is an extremely attractive girl on the train tonight.

She was fairly gothy (which I have to admit is a look I like) with long red (dyed) hair, and was standing more or less right in front of my seat on the journey out from the city. She was accompanied by another gothy chick and from what I could make out of their body language I think they may have been together (which is fine). She was really remarkably beautiful and quite captured my attention for the whole journey to my station.

I spent said journey entertaining the kind of melancholic thoughts that plague the lonely nerd - how I would more than likely never see her again, how I'd almost certainly never get to speak to her, and similar jolly imaginings. Then, when we were getting close to my station, I stood up to fight my way to the door, and she sat down in my seat!

So that's my story. I didn't speak to her, I'll probably never see her again, but we breathed the same air, and she sat in a seat warmed by my buttocks. And in a strange, silly and probably slightly disturbing way that made me feel a little better about the whole thing.

(Of course some people are now going to suggest that I should have offered her my seat - providing a perfect opportunity to speak to her, and creating a good impression all in one. Yes, well, a stuttering, sweaty nerd offering an attractive woman a train seat always goes over so well doesn't it?)