Penguin Attacks

Paperback novel pioneers Penguin™ books, currently owned by Pearson PLC, have filed a lawsuit against publication competitors Virago™ Press on charges of copyright infringement.

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[Side Box]

Background: Where Did Penguin Waddle From?.

Penguin Books™ commenced publishing in 1938, using what they claim are "novel" techniques to augment the consumer's reading experience. At that time these reading techniques were described by the former Bodley Head™ managing editor, charismatic publishing entrepreneur John Allen, as "revolutionary, unique and [ahem] novel."

Allen had left Bodley Head™ shortly before setting up his first company, Albatross-Albatross!, following a dispute with their senior editors over his decision not to publish a controversial work by the legendary children's author, London born Enid Blyton. Allen was particularly concerned that her new novel Noddy™ Does Toyland(© The Estate of Enid Blyton) might precipitate legal action against Bodley Head. Readers of the Blyton typescript at the publishing house said the book was "racist", "sexist", "homoerotic" and that Noddy™ was "an unacceptable role-model for young men" due his tendency to cry when very upset.

Allen had recommended against publication. As a result Blyton abandoned her plans to publish with Bodley Head™, whom she later described as "stuffy, politically correct twats who wouldn't know a Gollie™ from a Stinkly™." She took her stilted and formulaic writing to Sampson Low and made a fucking fortune for them and herself over the years. Allen was soon given his marching orders thanks to his absent business acumen in this case.

Allen conceived of the idea of getting someone else to think of the something that became the Paperback in 1937. The result was a lightweight, rectangular, compliant reading device that would fit into the pocket of a consumer during periods of various activities which were not compatible with reading.

Famously, the story of where his neurons fired so profitably is this: He was waiting for a train in Vladivostok when a beautiful but distraught women in a dark coat threw herself under the oncoming engine. He immediately thought of the tragic climax of the novel Anna Karenina (© Penguin Books), by Russian gambler and criminal Fyodor Dostoyevski. He took pictures (© The Estate of John Allen, available for purchase in 12x10glossy prints from Penguin Prints, a division of Penguin Books [only compatible with a Penguin Paperback]) of the apparent suicide victim's bleeding remains with his Sampple iGalaxy™ as she lay dying, partially dismembered and horribly disfigured, on the tracks. He then "uploaded™" the images to FaceSpace's™ Pinstagram™ Kodaroid™ clone, DropCloud™. He wondering how interesting it would be to compare the scenes in the novel with the gruesome incident unfolding (as it were) in front of him. He wondered how the book might be made available where he was, without his having to go a library or a decent hard-cover bookstore which could be several thousand miles away in this Siberian wilderness. On his return the mangled remains of the women would no doubt be gone, or covered with a blanket, or eaten by wolves.

He MessSkyd™ his design and development team at Albatross-Albatross! to inform them that he had "shared™" the Pinstagram™ "folder™" with them, and asked them to develop something pretty quick that would make him a millionaire overnight. They produced what became known as the Paperback novel. Allen's publishing house was changed quickly to Penguin Books™ when the Albatross-Albatross! name was shot down in a private settlement with the family of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of The Amazing Adventures of The Ancient Mariner (© the Estate of S.T. Coleridge) who had heard there was likely to be money involved.

Allen took all the kudos and street cred for the development of the Paperback and was universally acknowledged as a Genius™ in his press releases. Tragically, his design and development team disappeared mysteriously in a boating accident in Allen's backyard swimming pool.

Immediately upon appropriating the credit for the Paperback, he commissioned Mr Constance Garnet to make a new translation of every school-age children's nemesis (the novel Anna Karenina: see above). Allen's lawyer (another name in the development of Allen's career that is lost to history thanks to chlorinated water) pioneered the prototype of all writers' contracts now in use universally. These have the special clauses which allow translators and authors like Garnett to be tied down and waterboarded. Publishers such as Allen can then be ceded sole ownership of the Exclusive Rights Management, the ERM™ of the work, in this case a translation, and all profits after publication. Garnett would get a pittance, if anything at all, should he live or remain sane. He drowned penniless in mysterious circumstances in Allen's backyard swimming pool after translating several thousand more unreadable novels under contractual obligations to Pengiun Books™.

[End Sidebox]

~~~~~~~~

The Penguin™ suit alleges that Virago™, by moving from the Women's Press™ niche in which they still profess to be their metier, into more general publishing in the Paperback form, had infringed its patents when they imitated what Penguin claim are the essence and implementation of their designs.

The logos of the two publishing giants currently in dispute.

Virago™ have copied the "trade form" of Penguin™, the essential look and feel of the Penguin™ reading experience, they claim. In particular, Penguin™ point to Virago's™ decision to produce a book with a soft paper cover of the size of the side pocket of a jacket, such as a gentleman in the 1930's might be wearing at a train station in, say, Vladisvostok.

Comparison of the form factor of an example of the Virago™ product (left) and that of a Penguin™ Paperback (right). Note that the Virago™ book is written by philosopher and essayist W.G Sebald, a man. The Penguin™ book has been penned by female historian Ruth Harris.

Penguin™ say that their "distinctive" rectangular shape has been implemented into the Virago product, as have the sharp, 90o corners of the Paperback. Penguin™ insist that now Virago™ are publishing Paperbacks written by men it could make it difficult for readers to differentiate between the two publishers. Penguin's™ income could be harmed as a result of diminshed sales if readers inadvertantly choose the Virago product.

Penguin™ had previously overlooked design infringements by Virago™ on the grounds of sympathy with the suffragette movement, notably by Allen's wife, [the ridiculously named] Lettice Lucy Orr. [I mean, salad. For pity's sake - Lettice Orr what? Cabbage?]

Penguin™ point to particular features of the Virago™ product that directly infringe on the patents held by Penguin™. They cite the fingertip control over the method of manipulation or turning™ of individual pages, or even groups of pages, as readers follow the writer's words, sentences and paragraphs sequentially from one side of a page to its verso, specifically turning™ it to the left to follow text. They point out the continuance of the writing to the next leaf, the one on the right side of the open book.

Finally, they decry Virago™'s "blatant theft" of the Penguin™'s ability to use a © Bookmark.

Turning™ pages and the use of a Bookmark™ [provided to E@L by the kind people at The Excelsior hotel in Hong Kong]

This latter innovation allows the reader, often using a third-party device - which may have been provided by a book-seller or a progressive and expensive hotel chain - to define the point at which she or he has reached before closing the book in order to get on with life. The reader can continue his or her reading pursuits at a later time using the Bookmark™ to determine the correct page. After using the Bookmark™ in this manner, they might then either exit the toilet area with the Paperback in their jacket pocket or leave the volume on the wash-basin edge for further perusal in the future, a typical time being when the contents of his or her bowel move into an exposition of digestion with conflict of bacteria and the peristaltic moving action in the intestines leading inexorably to an expulsory climax, then a falling action and eventual denouement, with either a satisfactory or an unsatisfactroy ending, a.k.a. closure, and often leaving the possibility of a sequel.

~~~~~~

In his The Pocket Billionaire, the unauthorised biography of the late Allen, ghost writer Woody Allen [no relation] reported the allegedly innovative and style-making founder of Penguin™ as saying he will go "V2™" on rival publishers. "They won't know what screaming had come across the sky and hit them." Allen laughed hysterically, according to Allen.

He single out the ladies of Virago™ for special treatment because of what he considered their "traitorous behaviour" in publishing non-female authors. "I'll beat Virago™ like a red-haired step-daughter," he is quoted as screaming in a board meeting. "This is our technology and male authors are OUR meteor, metier, whatthefuckever, and we will screw those bitches over and over until they agree to desist in the publication of products which are very similar to our own in my fucking opinion!"

~~~~~~

Interestingly, Virago™ have launched a counter-suit against Penguin™ for publishing works by female authors, a defence that is sure to raise the hackles of Penguin™'s lawyers.

Virago™ maintain that if such a lawsuit as Penguin™'s were to succeed it could severley restrict competition and staunch further innovation in the Paperback development, outcomes that could damage the industry in unforesable ways.

They also claim that the page-turning technology was in existance long before Allen and Penguin™ had reintroduced it, and have at least two pieces of evidence to support that claim.

Fistly, they cite the Rapid Celluloid Transmission or RCT™ (a.k.a. Fillum) in which art-house director Sir Stamford Raffles showed a character turning™ pages of what appeared to be a small reading device in his groundbreaking 1914 science-fiction epic, 1931, A Moon Odyssey (©, Lee Kwan Yew). Interestingly, this RTC™ classic was not seen in the Feelies™ until several years after its initially proclaimed release date of 1912.

This delay was precipitated by a lawsuit filed by that Frenchie artiste, Georges Méliès who claimed that the concept in his earlier RCT™ of Le Voyage dans la Lune (© IMDB™) had being illegaly appropriated, in effect mashed, by Raffles. Raffles in turned argued that his work was an "'omaaaarge," (spoken in an outrageous French accent) but no legal ruling was ever made on this form of imitation as the matter was settled out of court when Georges Méliès mysteriously drowned in a boating accident in Raffles' backyard pool in Vladivostok the following year.

Virago™ also point to a long forgotten presentation of a similar case in the International Court Of Taking Forever To Come To A Fucking Conclusion in Den Hague. They found in the TeslaNet™ Encylowiki™ records of a publishing dispute dating from the early 17th century. At that time Robert Barker, The King's Printer and member of The Church Of England™, publishers of the King James Bible (not the Vulgate which is copyright to one hermit, a certain St Jerome), sued the independant Musselman publishers Al-Jazeera™ for copyright infringement with their production of a printed version of the the Tartar holy book, The Q'uran. That case was dismissed by the ICOTFTCTAFC on what Barker called "a technicality", as the Ottoman Empire™'s printed publication was designed to be read from right to left, the oposite of Barker's left to right technology.

The judge of the case, Pope™ Richard Dawkins, said this type of dispute was harmful to young children and animals. He instructed the participants and their followers to accept the blatant (to him at least) fact, or theory™, that there is no* such thing as god [he used a small 'g'], or at least any deity that could be shown scientifically to be manifest in this world.

Therefore, he had said, these or any other gods of whatever denomination might as well not exist anyway, if they/he/she/it was unable or unwilling do anything useful such as alleviate suffering and disease. All this "sectarian publishing and violence shit..." would "...just go away - poof - if people woke up to reason and smelled this bloody strong Turkish coffee. Stop writing this amazingly impossible bullshit in the first place, then you won't have to publish it, and I won't have to get involved in sorting out the mess," he said in his summation, the records show.

~~~~~~~

In his turn, a spokeman for Penguin™ said Virago's claim was "both ludicrous and dubious" because entries in EnycloWiki™ can be edited by the members public for a small fee. He explained that a search of the records of transactions of PayPal™ could arranged. PayPal™ is the Telsanet™'s only online bank after the financial giant sued "every fucker" they could find, even the company which pioneered online payment, Adult Video Network™. The spokesman said the this might demonstrate the complicity of Virago in a potential fraud with intenttion to deceive.

Paypal™ however have pointed out that their records are "secure and confidential" and that it would take "a considerable amount of cash and lots of blow jobs" for them to hand over their customers' private records.

~~~~~~~~~

But a newcomer to the publishing world could win out here, no matter what the result of the contoversial Penguin™/Virago™ suit. Online book supplier Amazon™ are on the verge of launching a product that circumvents all the issues raised by both Penguin™ and Virago™. The Kindle™ is an electronic book reader which uses a remote image of words in the author's mind. These can be transmitted wirelessly (TeleGnosis, pat pending) through the ether to the retina, where the encoded concept of the story is captured. This can then be directly received in the appropriate cortex of the brain and the plot and characters extracted and the plot followed and enjoyed (presumably), even when the consumer is engaged in other activities, such a lubricious sex. Amazon™'s scientists warn that certain spastics and stroked out old folks with particular forms of brain jellification might not be able to use their device properly. Otherwise Amazon™ expect excellent reception™ of their product by the early up-takers, in particular trendy Starbucks™ light soy-latte drinking wankers and hipsters™.

Amazon™ dismiss/ignore the claims by recently justified inventor of both the TelsaNet™ itself and its method of transmission, the Radio™.

Nikola Tesla pointed out most vehemently that he had described the essential principles of such a technique, identical to this TeleGnosis (pat pending) "years fucking ago" in his compendium of experiments I Am Not A Nutter, But... (© Penguin Books) and that Amazon™ had stolen them to create the Kindle™.

Nikola Tesla, as himself, in the recent biopic What Does This Button Do?"
"Amazon™," he said in an interview for Cosmopolitan™, "are like that cock-sucker Marconi. Thieving my credit bastards. A bunch of arrogant shupaks who can popusis mi kurac krasni! Those fucking Limey Book Depository™ bastards used to be cheaper and world-wide ship for free, until pricks at Amazon™ bought DHL™ and jebem ce zivo i mrtvo overnight. Don't even start on me the shit-eater Thomas I-Invented-This Edison. Biggest fucking fake since John Allen."

~~~~~~~~

Your intrepid reporter and signatory to the Creative Commons Licence™,

E@L™


__________

"Samsung and Apple have been at war through the courts since April 2011, when Apple filed a suit in the US alleging that a number of Samsung smartphones and tablets used some of its patented technologies – such as the "rubber band" effect when scrolling a long list of items – and mimicked its "trade dress", the general cosmetic appearance of its iPhone and iPad, in a way that could confuse potential customers."


You have no idea how many times I typed Viagra instead of Virago in writing this self-indulgent drivel. I chose Virago's The Rings Of Saturn for no reason beyond the fact that it is the only paperback from a relatively major publisher that I have with me.

* would you believe in this? I had left the word 'no' out of this sentence for the last two days.

Dark Chocolate and Fullers Pale

DateLine: somewhere roundabout May, April. A while ago.

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I'm in a chocolate shop in Fremantle, Western Australia, wondering if this is the ideal place for me to be. Probably not.

The weight has stabilized (mostly, but not yet at the goal) and though the spirit is willing, the will, driven by taste-buds and the craving for sugar that only a previous dose of sugar invokes, is particularly weak. And driven (literally as well as figuratively) here by a lady who told me she doesn't believe overweight people when say tell her they don't understand why they are fat, because they really don't eat all that much. As I had told her yesterday. Well take this, bitch.

Hot mocha that looks like mud and something called an Afghan biscuit. It seems they like chocolate in Afghanistan. I was hoping for some resin of the poppy, but it's just a chocolate and Cornflakes (thanks Google) biscuit with chocoloate on top.

I'm not sure, either, that this is best place to write. I look like a tourist who is pretending he is a writer: MacAir, iPod, book held open, transcribing something into Evernote. Alone with my obsession, in my absorption, with my white mug perched on a matching white warmer (a porcelain chafing dish affair, effective but quite strange for someone not used to drinking expensive hot [warm] chocolate in expensive chocolate shops - really!) I look like I've never had a friend, and probably don't deserve one. But aware of this... Ostentatiously abandoned, you know the look?

This a born-again sea-farin', tourist town, with the usual olde-worlde, indie-trende market transition confusion. Thanks to this, there are a smattering ('Smatter? Nothing.) of good bookstores - several of them Elizabeth's second-handers - and one called New Edition, for, um, new books. I'll do a book signing there one day, if I ever get quadruple ear-piercings and a neck tattoo (now that will never go out of fashion). And write a book.

I'm listening to Snow Patrol (non-stop for the last five years it seems) and I'm reading W.G. Sebald's introduction to the latest Robert Walser translation, "The Tanners," which I was pleasantly surprised to find at New Edition. (And a first edition Patrick White from Elizabeth's is in the man-bag.)

Sip, nibble, read, tap toe, type. Repeat.

Sebald paraphrases Robert's brother Martin: "...he was the most unattached of all the solitary poets.

"For him, coming to an arrangement with a woman was an impossibility."

Sigh. Is it any wonder I want to transcribe this?

~~~~~~

After watching his clumsy attempt to be friendly with the only waitress in the bar with anything close to a personality, and what seemed a complete failure to close and follow-through on a certainty (no salesman, our E@L), Bruce was frustrated and amazed yet again by the enormity of E@L's ineptitude.

He sat back on his bar-stool to analyse E@L's many issues and synthesize a diagnosis. Silence for a second. Then his eyes popped wide open: "I know what it is!" he said. "You're afraid of women!"

He performed one of his trademenark chuckles as if this tragic pronouncement was, in some universe, funny...

"Yoo-hoo-hoo. Are. Afrah-ah-aid. Of. Women!"

"Wha…?"

"It's not fear of commitment. You don't want to get involved at all, do you? You stop yourself getting past any point where commitment might be a possibility, not just now or soon, but at anytime in the future, ever! Even if commitment is not on the cards at all. And you do this by not even starting! You're afraid that if you ask them, they might say yes and drag you off to lock you in their trophy room. Marriage, kids, mortgage, and then divorce, poverty and a broken heart."

"What?" asked E@L, looking down and mumbling into his Fuller's Pale Ale, "are you raving about? Anyway, I was not trying to chat her up. And yes, I was trying to put her off! She's after someone for a relationship." E@L rubbed his thumb and fingers - money.

"Bullshit. She's not looking for a relationship, she just wants a fuck, to see what it's like. A fuck with you, that is."

"She wanted me to buy her dinner."

"Then buy it, for fucks sake. And then fuck her."

"No, this was on Tuesday, when I was here with Brian and Colin. [Brian from Seoul, Colin from Hanoi, both in town for a few days.] She wanted me to buy her dinner. She kept at it. It was funny I guess, but weird. She said she could eat it after work. She was going to finish at work at 1am. She wanted me to give her the money - this was 8pm. We were heading off. I swear. When I asked for the bill, she asked me if I was going to buy her dinner or not. I asked if she was serious, and she said, like: 'Yes! Of course I yam serious!'" [E@L does not do good impersonations.] Colin thought it was weird too."

"Oh," said Bruce. He reassessed. "Maybe you dodged a bullet there. Sounds like she's looking for a relationship with an ATM, but not just for a quick cash handout."

"You'll probably fuck her before I do anyway. Is there a waitress in this town you haven't fucked, or tried to fuck?"

Bruce's body shook as he chortled again. "Yeah-eh-eh, ri-hi-hight. Ah, but no. No, she hates me already."

Bruce explained that, before E@L had arrived, he had voiced a pleasantly worded reprimand to her about a vodka tonic that came in three glasses. He had asked for a double Absolut tonic in a tall glass with a small amount of ice. Three glasses, if you can hear commas.

"I don't think she took kindly to it. My name is mud."

How could anyone hate Bruce? It must be his accent.

E@L.

Bourne Againe

Why are modern movies about (E@L has measured this) 70% car chases or motorcycle chases or people running over rooftop and down ever-narrowing alley chases? (Maybe not Prometheus, but it has other faults.) OK, Bullitt was awesome in 1968 and the 11 year old E@L was wetting his pants as Steve McQueen's Mustang flew down the hilly city streets of San Francisco.

But enough with the faux adrenalin rush already, no point - E@L is on beta-blockers. And he has grown up (and out and around) and watches adult movies nowadays. No, no, no... he means movies for adults with, you know, serious themes and deep ideas and art, and hardly any car chases.

BTW, the Bullitt chase sequence was 9min and 42sec of a 114min movie: ~12% (E@L for once did not make those numbers up) but before you know, movies will be 100% car chases. As if, you say.

~~~~~~~~~

E@L watched the latest of these Jason Bourne chase movies recently and was stunned by the height to which his disbelief was required to be suspended. And he felt that it was suspended by its most sensitive bits too. And not JUST in the chase scenes - OK, mainly in the chases scenes.

Now he can take a guy leaping from craggy peak to anfractuous rocks in the alps without suffering broken bones, serious sprains, frost-bite or loss of bladder control. He can take an injured* guy wrestling a, get this, wild wolf in the snowy forest and forcing a homing device down its throat (OK, maybe this is tough one to swallow. [Ha!] Have you ever tried to give a two year old in a tantrum some medicine?). He can take Rachael Weisz. He means he can take Rachael Weisz giving up a promising career in neurochemistry research to get lost in the Philippine Islands with someone only a viral DNA mismatch away from being a drooling, mouth-breathing Rambo (and that relationship is going to last, E@L can tell), but some things are too much to take:


a - a vehicular chase in the Manila streets. Ha! It once took E@L seven (7, count 'em) hours to move from Intramuros to the airport (less than 12kms). Needless to say he missed his flight to HK. And the next one. And the next one. And the…

b - a female resident of Manila asking the police for help! Even bigger HA! Reliable statistics indicate that (E@L has measured this) 99.9% of all crimes in Manila, etc... are carried out by, with, or at the behest of the good (excellent one and all) men and women of the Philippines Police force. Them, or political thugs and terrorists. But mainly them.

c - the surprising absence of girly-bars and other sex-tourism establishments as the camera pans up any given road, street, lane or ever-narrowing alley. Needless to say all of these establishements are owned, managed, and protected by the said Police. Nope, not one view, not one plaintive arm stretched out of a smokey-glassed door in Angeles city, not one face from behind tattered curtain in the, um, rest of the slums with the pleading call: "You buy me drink!" Some say these places are the only genuine reason for expat men to visit Manila! Ha ha. Ha. Ha... Hmm... ... OK, next point...

d - the almost complete absence of blitheful toddlers wandering haphazardly (or playing hopscotch, or marbles) on the roads (see a:). Many millions [per square km] (E@L does not make these numbers up, often) of snotty-nosed, filthy-faced, bare-feet kids in wrong-sized, hand-me-down clothes live a subsistence existence wandering the car-parks which constitute Manila's roads, streets, lanes, and ever-narrowing alleys. Now you can blame their parents and their eschewing of condoms for this. You can blame the Police (with just cause), but E@L prefers to blame The Pope. But the question remains: Where are they in this movie?

e - not every second vehicle, nor every third, was a gaudily decorated (usually with religous symbols) Jeepney. These ubiquitous (in the Philippines they are) transports are reanimated from the wreckages of abandoned US Second World War vehicles, everyone knows this.

~~~~~~~~~~

In short: yet another crap modern movie. It didn't annoy E@L the way Prometheus did… Which is not saying one hell of a lot - E@L has had fulminating sores eating the flesh off his leg that didn't annoy him half as much as Prometheus.

~~~~~~~~~~

BTW, RIP Tony Scott.

And God Bless You.

E@L


* Was he injured? Can't remember.

Dead Skin

If you want to know where all this crap I type comes from ---

I was polishing my, um, desk, no seriously I was. Obviously SuperMaid Joyce sees deteriorating timber as part of the charm of this place, and the fact that I haven't noticed the state of the pseudo-oak desk-top for seven-odd (15) years speaks volumes about me too.

So, there I was moving things onto the bed or back to the bookshelves (where 80% of the *junk* on my desk belongs) in order to gain access to the mythical and alleged wood. CHeerist - this desk has lost a lot of its...? Shine? Varnish? Value?

I shuffled the remaining stuff around, mainly computer junk, to spray the environmentally friendly (I never heard it say a bad thing about the mosquito fogging) polish on, perforce I picked up my keyboard and placed it over there, polished the wood and set the keyboard back. Now with everything looking lovely and pristine(ish) I noticed the many imperfections that previously were relatively insignificant, below the threshold of my care factor. But now...! Look at that keyboard! There's an eyelash on the 'r' key! Shock horror! rrrrrrrrrrr. Now it's shifted to the 'g' key. ggggggggggg. Still there. gggggggrrrrrrrr.

So puffed it off with a huff of my laboured breath and immediately a cloud of dust particles arose!

Woah, that's a lot of dusty stuff. Whence? But now, itchy eyes!!!

After swiping the irritants from my eye (it wasn't the spray-on polish's toxic fumes, surely not), I picked up the keyboard. I turned it over and tapped the top, now on the bottom [a Nabokovian touch there, hah], a few times on the newly polished desktop, in the process scratching a few more commemorative notches into what remains of the varnish. Sparkles of snow-dust fell slowly onto the desk. A few more taps and the blizzard continued. Obviously it was not snow, but it fell down in flurries like snow. It was more like one of those movies where they want it to be snowing but it ain't snowing so they use fake fluff to clump up on the actors eyebrows (viz: Jon Snow about half the time he's on-screen in GoT). Imagine what that stuff is doing to those poor actors' lungs!

I tapped again. And still the particles fell. A CSI - EQLGHQ delight! A smorgasbord (veritable, of course) of DNA evidence! Eyebrow dandruff, beard drippings, lashes from the other eye, finger-tip exfoliation, desiccated unmentionable nasal disjecta, fingernails, toenails, pubics, prepuces...

Softly they fell, falling softly all over the desk, falling upon the living and the dead tired.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I tried using one of the silicon (or is it latex?) covers, but, you know, it was, as they say (or are you, perhaps, one of them?) like having a shower with a raincoat on. Just no sensation, no feed-back, no fun at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thinks: Oh that's right - I have a keyboard puffer-and-brush set thing somewhere. Pffft. Who knows, somewhere here, must have lost it while I tidied up the desk just then. Maybe it's under this pile of snow?

Still, you can't beat a good tapping to get the DNA out.

E@L

Robert Hughes R.I.P.

E@L


(neglected to post this the other day... sorry.)

Molly Bloom - A Girl Who Can't Say No

via Odd Stuff Magazine

E@L

("I'd marry this girl, but would she be faithful?" asks Blazes Boylan.)

Guess Where We Were

(No matter what I did Danijel's photos were always better than mine.)

E@L

Singapore Blogger's Blog Fiddling Sends Internet Into Tailspin

Silly moi. If you kept getting a redirect notice when you tried to get here, as I just did, it was because I was fiddling the other day - not knowing WTF I was doing of course. Nothing new there.

It put up what I thought was an internal, i.e. Blogger, redirect command to double up on the instructions I had made elsewhere, that was supposed to send you FROM "expatatlarge.com", should you try to get a website of that name, to here, viz: "expatatlarge.blogspot.com".

However it looks I sent you the other way.

Because "expatatlarge.com" (for which I pay $20/year) already had a redirect command to send you to "exapatatlarge.blogspot.com", the entire internet went into a closed loop and nothing never went nowhere... I presume this is what caused the blackout in India, yesterday.

Oops. Wondered why my hits went down.

OK, I think it's sorted now, so get back to enjoying the magic and mystery, the wonder and the witticisms, the whinging and tales of whoredom that is (are?) this blog.

~~~~~~~~~

And to my friend acquaintance J******n who admitted, in his cups on Sunday afternoon(!) - in vino veritas - that he doesn't read my blog anymore because the writing is crap, I'd just like to politely point out that your lack of appreciation of my prodigious talents makes you a:

I hope there will be lots of questions about America in the pub quiz tonight so you can demonstrate to us all once again your profound ignorance of your own country.

"Which Thursday in November is Thanksgiving?"

"Der, I dunno... The fourth?"

«Crowd slaps forehead.»

-- Joking mate, I still love you, and I mean that most sincerely.* Seriously, I have nothing but respect for you. Nothing but. And not much of it either.

E@L

*And I mean that most sincerely.**

** And I mean THAT most sincerely.***

*** And...ad infinitum... or until you believe me, whichever comes first.

The Butcher of Panzano, Dario Cecchini

Tuscan morning sun, we're under its power. Danijel is feeling burnt before breakfast. We've walked to the table on the lawn and set down the dishes - cheeses, fresh Roma tomatoes - my god they taste of tomatoes! - and green peppers, and scrambled eggs with caramelised onions and a lot more of those tomatoes, chopped into the mix.

Then we rest...

~~~~~~~~~

No, hang on, that was yesterday. For today's breakfast Izzy (so domesticated these days) has set the table and is bringing some brewed coffee (Bosnian style - boil water, put in coffee, boil again. Sludge.) Vicoo has a plate of those tarts we purchased at the market yesterday The tarts are vanilla with almonds, wild forrest berries, lemon and powdered sugar. They are delicious.

~~~~~~~~~

E@L had never heard of this place, Panzano-in-Chianti. Why would you? Look at it. It's tiny.

But Izzy and Danijel had seen something on an episode of an Anthony Bourdain show about an amazing butcher in this tiny town just past Greve-in-Chianti. Butcher? We're going to a see a butcher? (E@L checks online and makes a booking at the Solociccia [trans: only meat] restaurant for a pig-fat Tuscan degustation.)

We drive along the country roads of course, view after view, this is not on the A1. The Tuscan countryside is not spectacular, it is older, gentle, comforting, calming* - reminds me of Colac. Greve is perhaps the biggest town we drive through, and that takes two minutes to negotiate in and out of - turn left here. The smaller towns are not much more than a haphazard collection of towers, castles, churches, and houses that narrow the road down drastically. The houses encroach on, sometimes replace, the footpath; bottle-necking the traffic with blind corners, and then there are the dozing animals, on-coming traffic, rickety bicycles, grandmothers (not wearing scarves, thankfully it's not that clichéd) walking oblivious, men in singlets (OK, little bit cliché) and children playing unconcerned. E@L has to slow down to 20km to get around these safely - he is a cautious driver. Terrible, but cautious.

As we start to wind around another hill, vineyards, cypress trees, stone houses, roofs the color of flower pots below us on the right, the gentle uphill rise on our left, there are parked cars by the roadside. Lots of parked cars, cramped together under trees for shade, a dozen cars here, around the next bend two dozen more. We still haven't seen anything like a town yet. "Should we park," asks Izzy. "Why?" But then the first few houses appear and the cars are parked thick along the road shoulder. Suddenly we are in the centre of town. An intersection and a market up a lane way - "that's it," calls Iz. "Up there!" But place is jammed, we have to drive on, we can't stop here, and we've passed. And immediately we are out of town.

We have to keep going a bit further, there is nowhere to turn. Around the bend there is a new housing estate up the hill on our left. We turn up, get lost, turn back once, turn uphill once more into more narrow streets, and hey, we find the last vacant parking spot in town, no shade of course, and sit for a moment. "This is it, I think," says E@L. This way? That way? Fuck it's hot. The sun, so bright and E@L has no hat. Luckily, the ozone hole is over Sydney and not Panazano. We walk up over a crest, and it slopes down again, directly into the market that we had seen. Perfecto.

The market is small, really, it's not a fresh produce market, but there are jars of sauces and condiments, cakes and cheeky tarts, lots of wines, schlongs of salami, rounds of cheese, perfect. But there are lots of people milling, as people do when they get the chance, by the stalls. Look at them: mill, mill, mill.


(beware - LOUD music)

The market stalls concentrate in front of his shop and restaurants, where else would you place them. His shop is rocking, seriously rocking, It is crowded, dense-packed with people holding up small glasses of chianti or or of grappa, pinching bread with lard between thumb and fingers, holding greasy chunks of pig fat from fresh roasted rolled pork stuffed with rosemary.

And Dario is an amazing person, a celebrity butcher who stands tall amongst celebrity chefs.

E@L can hardly get in to the shop, but they have a reservation at the restaurant in 5 minutes. Is it in this shop, at the back maybe? He squeezes through, shouting to Danijel over the blaring music and the heads of the young and old people taking all that bounty on offer, free and gratis. Incredibly loud A/DC is pumping, Angus's guitar ripping, so inappropriate, but it isn't it always and is there any other way to play it but as loud as possible? He calls again to Danijel to wait, but the others have already picked up a Chianti, bread, pig fat, and are bopping, lost down somewhere in the crowd (OK, E@L can see Danijel, he's 6'7" and has a pony-tail.) Up high in the corner in a shelf over above the butchers' display, there is a large valve-powered amplifier.

Dario is bopping behind the meat counter, and his associates are cutting more pork, scooping out more lardo. Dario has a huge grin, he is sharpening his knives to the beat of the music. There is a large statue of the Minotaur standing at one end and looming over one of the feast-loaded tables…



E@L manage to find a lady in a white (blood smeared) apron who seems to know what she is doing right at the back of the store. She understands English well enough (Dario, doesn't speak English) and tells me that we are booked at the "other" restaurant. A wave of worry rises up (E@L panics easily) - OMG are we in the wrong place? But no, she says, it's just across the street, past the wine stall. E@L, claustrophobic (pig-fat-phobic? NEVER!), squeezes back out to check if ha can find it.

Outside, blazing sun still. Is this perfect weather ever going to stop? Another of those ladies who seems to belong there is being interviewed on the ramp by a sweaty chubby guy whose hair is a suspiciously deep shade of black, holding an iPhone up betweeen their faces. Vicoo is sitting on the edge of the ramp with a glass of chianti, listening in, grinning at E@L, who stands with her to grab some of the sound bites... She is perhaps Dario's wife, and he is praising the hell out of the place, she is agreeing, what more can she do? Did someone say that Wolfgang Puck was here last week?

There is a door. Unmarked. E@L asks the women there, "Is this…?"

"Yes," she answers, before he has finished his question. "Do you have a booking?" She is checking her watch, like a school ma'am.

It's time, we just made it, 1pm on the dinger. E@L has to drag Danijel and Izzy away from all that free Chianti, grappa and pig-fat in the butcher shop as we have seats over here where we have paid for Chinanti, grappa and pig-fat. A cheery waiter, experienced judging by his age, very experienced, takes us down two flights of steps
into a stone cellar where several others are already seated around a large table and the meal has already begun. We squeeze past - it is a tight package. A mature (maybe a little older than E@L) English couple from Gigglesoworth (IKYN), an hungry English man and his Irish wife with two kids, two young (hipster?) Italians, blend with an Australian, a Bosnian and two Singaporeans. Don't mention the war. Which war,? Any war.

At first we are all shy, but as the dishes keep coming down, carried by our ever cheerful, overly generous waiter and we pass them around, we gradually open up. Theres plenty of wine and chilled water as well as the food. Simple peasant fare, fresh ingredients, simply handled and presented, nothing flashy, lots of it. Just meat and more meat, lots of meat. But first just some crudités and (stale, oh well) foccacia with olive oil, balsamic and the most amazing spiced salt (Danijel bought some jars of that, but E@L didn't get to take any home - see another blog post).

Then thick slices of roast beef, grilled, fried meat balls with frittered vegetables, rosemary up your bum (lightly seared tartare nuggets with a sprig of rosemary insterted in a red and juicy hole. The table has way too many plates of food on it, we can't eat all this, but it keeps coming. Slow stewed beef shanks, with the meat on one plate and the fatty skins and tendon on another. It's floating in the jus with soft potatoes slices (it took a few bites to recognize them!) and onions. This last one sounds terrible (it also looked dubious), but for those who braved it (on bursting stomachs) it was an wonderfully rich and satisfying dish that would have been devoured completely and exclusively by E@L if it had been brought out first. The chianti kept flowing, but as E@L was the designated driver for th week he could only take a sip or several - he watered it down, the Italian way.

The feast continued for two hours and then we were, reluctantly (there was still wine), kicked out so they could prepare for the next sitting in the evening, We rolled up the stairs with bloating bellies and greasy, satisfied smiles.

Back across the street now, Dario's butcher shop was much less crowded even though the music was still on full rocking mode. Dario was out mixing it with us, a bottle of grappa in his hands and that radiant smile on his face. We saw now that he was wearing a trousers in the Italian colours (Italy lost the EC later that night) he was rocking his sholder in a happy dance. He poured E@L a shot of grappa even though E@L indicated he was driving. We all took photos with him, he loved to pose with Izzy and Vicoo in particular, funny that, and for everything was fun and games.

Giving away wine and food, just giving it away, heaps of it. The man is genius, we all love him, he loves to love us all back and this is just a ball. Get moderately pissed, put on AC/DC blast your walls into powder and dance with a bootle a grappa in your hand - maybe then you'll get an idea of this place.

Danijel was wondering if anyone could be as happy in his work as Dario obviously is. He doesn't (seem to) give a fuck about micromanaging and monitoring the margins, money is coming in, everyone ends up buying something, small or large, lots or a little and he gets back what he gives away tenfold. Brilliant. "He doesn't use SAP I'll bet," says E@L.

What he gets back is more than money, he thrives on the fun that he is bringing to all his customers. I can't describe this, it's mind-blowing. We love this guy, he is best person E@L has ever met. He can't speak English, we can't speak Italian, but we know what we all mean, and so much more than the general symbiosis of proprietor and patron: There's instant camaraderie thanks to the obvious honesty in his enormous generosity. Either that or he's faking it pretty fucking well.

We head back to the car, our arms full of meats and cheeses and those tarts for breakfast tomorrow, and a few bottles of Chianti to make up for the drinks E@L had to forego. The thermometer in the car reads 46degrees. Yes, it is hot. It takes 5 minutes for the air-con to fight against the stifling air in oven/car. We stand around, raving about this afternoon.

Then, sated and thrilled in equal portions, we wind back through the Tuscan hills back to our villa (also overlooking rolling hills and vineyards) and jump into the infinity pool (so Tuscan), laughing and splashing.

Brilliant day, one of the best, thanks to the big smiles of Dario Cecchini.

E@L

* Where there is Nature, there is meaning. Robert Walser.

Beautiful Ice-Cream - Ugly Baby Jesus - Unwell E@L

In the town of San Gimignano there are a lot of towers. It's famous for its towers. There are a few museums (like the Torture Museum, that I missed) and there are the some bloody good ice-cream shops.

This one sells the World Champion Gelato.

And just a few metres away, this one sells The Best Ice-cream in the World. Spoiled for choice.

The pistachio ice-cream here in the second place was truly beautiful and a joy to the palate. Miraculous.

~~~~~~~~~

In the next square is the Museo Civico in which there is quite a collection of frescoes of the Madonna with particularly unattractive baby Jesus's*, so E@L wandered around snapping pic after pic...

And E@L's personal favorite (this one is from the Duomo in Siena...)

When he left the museum - the three story part in the middle here, with the crenelated rooftop - he decided, after all those earlier misgivings and the others refusing to climb it, that it would not much of a problem after all for him to climb the Torre Grossa, (as seen in Assassin's Creed II apparently) on the right, and go way up there, 57m (177ft)... No problem...

Smart?

No.

Problem. So here's E@L on the top of the tower having some pretty fucking severe angina.

Famous last words? "Great view from up here!"

Cue: Ambulance to Siena, angiogram, stents, hospital for a week... And associated drama of logistics, etc... for Izzy and Danijel and Vicky... and then for myself to get home as I was not supposed to fly for a week after discharge.

~~~~~~~~~

Sigh. Why did E@L climb that fucking tower? What was he thinking? Maybe he was thinking that the PET stress test he'd had done two weeks earlier showed normal cardiac perfusion is maybe what he was thinking.

Cardiologist in Singapore yesterday says, "Mmm, that normal test, very high predictive value, this shouldn't have happened."

E@L says, "No it shouldn't have."

~~~~~~~~~

Expect E@L to be going on about this incident a lot in the near future...

* Not to be confused with uglyrenaissancebabies.

Hamburg Street Conversation

I'm well rugged up and walking, my daily mild exercise, around the tree-lined streets of the Blankenese suburb in Hamburg close to the Elba (across which is the A380 factory). I stroll past some magnificent Hansel and Gretel mansions in large, lost in the woods gardens - this is millionaires row, billionaires, whatever.

A well-dressed man, a bit older than myself, is crossing an intersection coming towards me. He slows down as he approaches me and it seems he wants to talk.

He stops, so I stop. Germans are so polite when they are not trying to take over the world. So, thinks: I'd better do the same (it's a tit-for-tat utilitarianism thing). I wonder what I am up for here. Have you heard the word of the Lord? Some pfennig for the old guy?

He starts talking as I take my left earphone out. In German of course.

"Nick sprecker Doych", I say. "Ick hab kynner Doych." In my impeccable accent.

"Ach, vot language? You speak, what do you..."

"English."

"Ach, good."

I take out my right earphone and raise my sunglasses to look him politely in the eye.

He is wearing a classy red windbreaker (I can't make out the brand) over a warm jumper as the summer in Hamburg is not all that impressive this week; cloudy, blustery, cool (14deg), a spit of rain today, pouring yesterday. He has what look like expensive-frames on his thick-lensed square glasses, and he swipes the air with a thick cigar stub that trails noxious fumes that dissipate quickly in the breeze as he speaks to me. He might live in one of those billionaire houses.

He says: "You know, I have stopped you to talk because, one, you have your sunglasses on; two, you have those... he waves his cigar around... those things in your ears; and three, because I wish to ask you a question."

The man is, I am confident now, not a complete nutter, but pushing it. Eccentric billionaire.

"Der built zeitung, you know?" I must have looked blank because he asks again. "Der built, it is the, vat you say, newspaper?"

Ah yes, Bild. I recall some German scandal rag like that.

"The very first word in der Bild today, do you know what it was? The very first word?"

Naturally I did not know. I shrug.

"The first word on the page. It is bordell."

"Brothel?"

He doesn't seem to have heard me because he repeats, "Bordell. You know where women sell themselves. A bordell!"

"Brothel." Yes, I know them.

"Yes, yes, a brothel. The very first word! What do you make of that? What is your opinion?" He holds his cigar up at his face, takes a puff, as he waits for my answer.

I smile as I consider what his opinion no doubt is.

"Well," I say, "Germany is a very open minded country, a very broad minded country."

He tilts his head back a little, looking in my eye with a bit of sparkle as he contemplates my answer briefly. He then points his cigar at me with slight gesture and gently smiles.

"Thank you", he says emphatically. And walks on.

E@L

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream

I was in this ostentatiously unpretentious Osteria in Sienna tonight, Bongo Della Fuckit, got the sense of it being somewhat hipsterish, but then everything Italian looks hipsterish to me. I was going vegetarian tonight as approved by my cardiologist* - not sure if the almond bisuits dipped into a glass of vin santo (sticky wihte) is vegetarian or not - when there was some slight commotion on the table behind. It seems there was nothing "kid friendly" on the dessert menu for their young son - maybe 5 or 6 years old.

The waiter had to sort this out! So he went to the front door, called the kid over, took his hand and led him outside. A few minutes later the kid almost ran inside again, smiling right from tragus to tragus, bearing in front of him a large cup of multiple flavours of gelatti, wafer triangle poking out the top, from the gelatteria across the small lane.

The waiter had paid for it. All part of the hipster service - they were being nice way before it was cool to be nice.

E@L

* Not only did none of the Doctors give me any rehab exercise suggestions or any diet suggestions on my checkout, not one of the staff introduced themselves before they stabbed me or stripped me naked in front of the open doors to the busy corridor, bathed my balls or wiped the shit from my arse (when I could get them to.)

It Was The Salmon Mousse!

There was a small area at the bottom of the window, exactly at eye level, where I could see out, watch the not particularly interesting side of the road panoramas fly past. I was bemused, somewhat, as they say. Look at that high grass, those telephone poles, the square blocks of untended trees (perhaps olive trees), a nondescript building here and there. Not much of a view of Tuscany to take with you, wherever you are going.

It was cramped, my legs too long for the trolley, had to bend my knees a bit for the doors to be shut. The paramedic was chubby and was sweating, but she was nice. She told me her name. I can't remember it. She was fighting my adipose insulation to find a vein somewhere in my arm. Left, right, it didn't matter. I had them veins well hid! Something went in painfully and eventually some fluids started dripping in. (I am 30% bruised by area on both arms now). One of the fluids going in was morphine. Nice. It didn't even touch the sides, as they say, but nice.

I was calm. Unnaturally calm, you might say. Those were tough minutes, or should have been, but I was almost smiling. Maybe part of the sense of relief I had was due to the unassailable position I held, that this was not the end. Just a bit of chest pain. No collapse. No clammy sweating. No shortness of breath. Just a tightness, an interior tightness that is hard to describe. There was no elephant sitting on my chest, it didn't feel like that, it just felt like a bad back, but in the middle of my thorax. It was instantly worrying, but not threatening. Know what I mean? No? Neither do I.

There was also a touch of the SEP feeling. Whatever happened to me, it would be someone else's problem from here on in. I would be completely out of it. Something of the feeling I had when I left school and vowed that I would never attend church ever again and finally convinced my sceptical friends that I was unequivocably and inveterately atheist. All those pin-headed angel problems are not mine anymore. And so now. Porn on the hard drive? Meh. Weird porn on the hard drive? Meh. Three thousand books that nobody would want? Shrug. (Hey those Patrick Whites are all 1st Editions!) Burial arrangements: where, how? Surprise me.

However as I watch the concerned faces on Isabella, Danijel and Vicky disappear as the door to the ambulance closes, I sigh and I shrug. Guys, I didn't want to do this to you. To leave you in the Tuscan holiday idyll lurch like this. Shit, I feel my pockets, I have the car keys. These are problems I don't want to leave behnd. They are 60km from home. Danijel has not got a licence. The rental car is in the carpark, but I have the keys... My stuff is in our place (near Incisa Dell Arno - or something like that) and nothing is packed and we were to move to Volterra next day and OMFG...

But I am calm. There's nothing I can do, why fret overly?

I was calm, too, at the top of the tower, the tower we had all agreed not to climb. But I passed the gate to it as I left the chapel and museum (at least a dozen ugly renaissance baby Jesus's) and I just thought, hey, it can't be all that bad. And besides the cardiac stress PET scan I had last week was normal. It can't be that high. But it was, and higher. I made it: legs fine, breathing fine. I took a few photos and then the tightness began. It didn't go away. I sat down and waited. It didn't go away. It didn't get any worse. I thought, well, fuck them carrying me down 54 metres inside a 14th century, tight fit stone tower, I'm going down mysef as far as I can. If I feel faint, I'll sit down. I didn't feel faint at all. I started sweating heavily, but it was 36degrees and I had just climbed up the top of a mother-fuckin'g big tower. When I arrived at the reception, I told them to call a doctor. And my friends, call them please - the tall Bosnian hippy-looking dude, the small Chinese girl sketching the piazza, another one fast asleep on a stone alcove in the shade. They were found. Amazing.

Soon enough the ambulance ripped into the gelatteria (the best in the world, two of the shops proclaim) crowds, pistachio ice-cream fying, and took me away.

*insert Solzenhitzen's Cancer Ward*

So here I am, looking from the patio of my Sienna hotel, feeling fine, apart from the back cramps I'm gettting whilst typing on this awful chair, and looking at the Tuscan twilight panoramas with a shot of grappa.

And I do care. Mostly.

E@L

Fire From The Sun - Why I Dislike Prometheus

A god and hero, stealing fire from the sun [like the sun would even miss it] was only one of his accomplishments. The creation of man out of clay [sound familiar?] was another pretty big one. He MADE mankind. No-one seems to remember that part of the Bible. What? It's not in the Bible? Go figure. Quick question: if he had stolen fire and not created mankind, what then?

A trickster, like Loki in The Avengers but, unlike Loki, a lover of mankind [well he made us, all makers love their creations, right?], patron god of scientific inquiry - what's this sun thing made of? - and advancement, antecedent of Dr Frankenstein ("Prometheus Unbound"), he was condemned by Zeus, who obviously wanted us to freeze, and eat carpaccio and sashimi forever, to have a quickly regenerating liver that was pecked out every day by crows. Bound and struggling, trying unceasingly to escape from the limitations of his captivity (a metaphor) but never giving up, and no doubt in desperate need of a blowjob (not a metaphor).

Prometheus was an awesome dude.

The movie? Not so much.

Please make sure you get the correct reference here: it's the origin of mankind part, not the fire-theivery that underpins this movie.

But let me give you my opinion of the movie straight up. Ridley Scott, maker of such flops such as A Good Year and, um, others, has over-produced Prometheus into an overflowing chariot of horse-shit. This ridiculously expensive, overdue, over CGI'd, over-thought-out waste of time has no redeeming features. Whatsoever. Ah, yes, like John Carter, is does serve as an example of what not to do. Over this, over that, and I was very relieved when it was over.

Listen to me: Anyone over 12 who liked Prometheus is an idiot. [Harsh, E@L, harsh. But fair.]

~~~~~~~~~~

I don't have the movie in front of me to correct the errors which might creep into this post, as the torrents are currently in Handicam versions, but several egregiously execrable scenes and irrational concepts have burned themselves into my psyche the way X-raying my first corpse or losing my virginity (the first time) did. (Equally nauseating and frightening experiences. They were not on the same day nor in the same place fortunately for the corpse.)

~~~~~~~~~

Ron Cobb, who designed the interiors of the Nostromo ship for Alien, has as interesting opinion.

I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science fiction films are notorious for this.
–Ron Cobb on his designs for Alien.[my emphasis]

This is part of the reason why Prometheus fails for me, why I resent it. In Alien the visuals were awesome, gritty and real, and somehow tacit. In Prometheus, they have tried to do this in the ship scenes but the outside scenes of giant CGI visuals are completely distracting and unnecessarily overwhelming. Oh, look giant human-headed pyramid that no-one seems to cares about, ho hum, WGAF, it's merely CGI.

~~~~~~~~~

Woeful science in a science-fiction story grates on me. Scientists who behave illogically and without a Skerritt (sorry) skerrick of scientific objectivity and respect for scientific method drive me batty.

My disbelief has this thing about being suspended, particularly when bad science is combined with 2D characters in 3D movies doing silly and just wrong things, things a sensible or real person wouldn't ever do. In Alien, the characters moved cautiously, everything was weighed, considered, discussed. In Prometheus, people act randomly, independently and irresponsibly.

No1 Son, who has a similar if not quite as rabid as opinion as his dear old dad on this, pointed out how the scientists in good old The Andromeda Strain (which he had first seen only a few weeks earlier) acted like perfectly normal scientists. They didn't run around screaming, they were methodical, careful and observant. If science had advanced to the degree that is required for background inventions, etc... in Prometheus to work, then future scientists would have to be as just as careful, methodical and cool-headed. Unfortunately these were not the type that clambered aboard The Prometheus.

~~~~~~~~~~

Here are the 26 Things That Bugged Me Most. Don't worry, there are others.

~~~~~~~~~~

a) "Don't come in to the ship!" yells the completely unnecessary [as a character, apart from the sweaty push-ups at the start - I'd do her at this point] Charlize Theron. And then SHE OPENS THE FUCKING HATCH in order to threaten them with one of left-over prop flame-throwers from the original Alien! WTF? "Hey, don't come in through this large and impervious door which I have now opened in order to tell you not to come in through it." Just leave the fucking hatch closed you blonde idiot. Seriously. Who wrote this shit?

b) The prop flame throwers in Alien were wired together in desperation. Dallas and Ripley hope that the unlikely possibility they might work against the invisible beast might lift morale a bit. That and a holiday in Phuket. In Prometheus: "Hey, pass me the standard issue flame-thrower."

c) What's with Elizabeth wearing noting but a surgical gauze bikini. Gauze? Gauze? I mean, seriously, GAUZE? Has she grazed her nipples from running in a marathon without band-aids over them? Apart from being a corny stunt, why bother? We know from TGWTDT that Noomi Rapace has no tits whatsoever, so who gives a rats about her thorax adherent nipples [nipples WTF, male v female, worthy of a blog post]?

d) Geologist? Complete and utter fuckwit. More on this later.

e) How much did they pay Dr Manhattan to play the giant, unfriendly precursor human?

f) Surly red-headed guy with raptor haircut. A complete arsehole from word go. Don't they do psychological assessments before these long flights? The guy should be in a nuthouse, or a prison, not in a confined spaceship with people he obviously detests. The surly crew in Alien [Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphett Koto, whom this character is meant to parallel, no doubt] were troublesome to a degree and certainly disrespectful, but psychopaths?, no.

g) That spaceship is covered in awkwardly jutting spars and omnidirectional antenna like every movie space-ship since Alien. It's a future-gothic thing I guess. What's wrong with the sleek lines of The Enterprise, which was an magically simple, and the iconic design of Discovery One, whose construction made sense: living quarters at front, storage quarters middle, nuclear reactor as far away as possible. Inverse square law. The Prom is just a big brother of the CGI helicopters from Avatar, but is the ride comfortable?



h) Ignorance, and/or the ignoring, of the basic laws of physics abounds. Why are the spaceship's engines running all the time? [A common Sci-Fi movie error.] No friction in space, people. Momentum, one blast at the start will do it unless you are accelerating or decelerating, in which latter case the rocket thrust should be directed FORWARD [in the movie, it's not]. Did no-one on the set study Newton's first law? BTW did anyone check the gravity of this 1000 light year away planet (see next criticism) before we left, to check it we could get anywhere near its surface without getting crushed on landing or if we can generate enough thrust to get to escape velocity?

i) Two years asleep? Some have said that this would put them only halfway to Alpha Centauri, but that it true of you are referring to two earth years, that is, for the people back on earth. Assuming the Prometheus could approach the speed of light, to say 90% [its mass would more than double!], and overlooking the year or two of acceleration and then deceleration it would take to get up to that speed and then slow down without intolerable G-forces ripping everyone apart, one year on earth would equal slightly less than one day for the actors astronauts. Therefore, in their relativistic perception, Alpha Centauri is only 4 days away. Two years asleep at that speed? That would mean that back on earth it is now close to 1000 years later.

I shouldn't be too critical here. 2001, Alien, Aliens and Alien3, and others no doubt, all suffer from this flaw. It's a shrug now, right? It has become a cinematic cliche to put long-haul astronauts into the freezer. Shut the fuck up E@L.

If you want accurate relativity physics in Sci-Fi space-travel, read Forever War by Joe Haldeman. A big sigh coming up. Ridley Scott, sigh [there it is], has the film rights to this book and it is slated for release in 2013. Please don't fuck it up, Sir Rid.

j) I hate inappropriate adrenalin manipulation in intrinsically unexciting situations. Everywhere, but most ridiculously, when the Lunar Rover vehicles and their adherent tricycles, as seen from a soaring overhead CGI shot, seem to RACE to the big-headed pyramid to the thumping stress-inducing half-diminished sevenths and the walking tritones [duh duh DUH duh...duh duh DUH duh...duh duh DUH duh...] of a Hitchcokian horror fillum. Why? They are not being chased by anything, they are not off on an urgent mission to save humanity before the self-destruct sequence is finished or Harvey Dent blows up. They just charge out full-tilt for no reason. What is the fucking RUSH? This aeons old pyramid is not going anywhere in the next few minutes. And shouldn't you be looking out for everyone's safety and confirming that these convenient "roads" are safe to travel on at any pace? And if they are, who's been maintaining them over the millenia?

k) Why are the spacesuits more advanced than those in Alien? Lightweight and clear bubble-helmets? Luckily they knew that the planet would be relatively pleasant. Oh, look we can take out helmets off inside the cave so the audience doesn't have keep up with whether the condensation inside the mask has been wiped off recently or not. Or has the "problem" of condensation itself been solved by this time and yet forgotten by the time Alien comes around.

l) Ditto the stasis (suspended animation) pods, much sleeker. I am never a fan of suspended animation though. Do you need it? See above re: time compression. And yes, well, show me a cure for frost-bite first and I might suspend my disbelief for this. [BTW I have looked very hard the for the first cut of the equivalent scene in Alien, where they were all naked. Or was that an apocryphal story meant to tease old pervs like me...]

m) OK. Listen This is the one that completely kills me. Inside the cavern/spaceship under the giant yet ignored head, the geologist guy is hanging with red-head anti-sidekick (what does he do again?), and says in effect: "Oh look, a cute little alien eye thing on a stalk [cue: War Of The Worlds] has emerged from the black oily slime [cue: The X-Files], which itself oozed from metal canisters in suspiciously good condition considering their 30,000 years of existence in an oxygen rich environment, and this goo's sudden obsidian oleaginous icky appearance was most sinisterly triggered by our mere presence. Isn't it cute? Maybe it is friendly and speaks English."

This geologist, consummate idiot, against all laws of scientific inquiry and common sense, [I shake my head], then smiles like a moron and leans forward into the standard Leap Into My Mouth You Snake-like Creature position. Wrong! SO fucking wrong. 'Run Away' is the correct scientific response in this situation. Like the others RUN!

n) What is it with the fucking alien crappy hologram things running through the tunnels? Seriously, what? Seriously, why? BTW there is zero dramatic tension is this entire cavern sequence.

o) What's with fucking holograms altogether? They didn't need them in Alien.

p) Girls, girls. Listen. When a large hoop-shaped spaceship is rolling on its edge towards you, run... to... the... side...

q) Hey, fellow pilot, let's commit suicide cheerfully for reasons we don't fully comprehend because we were in the frackin' main cabin the whole time. I for one wouldn't do this.

r) Why is Michael Fassbinder so much more handsome than either Ian Holm or Lance Hendriksen [who isn't?]? Who later decided ugly androids integrate better than cute ones?

s) If Fassbender only needs his head to function, why does he need the rest of his body in the first place?

t) Where did the medical team appear from? Didn't Theron yell out, "Get a medical team down here!" at one point? Where did they go afterwards? And why would she not know their names? "Get Dr Frankenstein down here now, and make sure Cloris Leachman comes too."

u) Jesus, what happened to Guy Pearce? Did he fall face first into a bucket of half-set play goo?

v) Why the fuck would the do-it-yourself home-surgery machine have a set of delivery forceps as its default tool? Stunned by the inanity of this.

x) It's not just me: according to NYT's A. O. Scott - "But the virtuosity on display makes the weakness of the story — the screenplay is by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof — all the more frustrating. I’ll avoid spoilers here, but “Prometheus” kind of spoils itself with twists and reversals that pull the movie away from its lofty, mind-blowing potential... There are no revelations, only what are called, in the cynical jargon of commercial storytelling, “reveals,” bits of momentarily surprising information bereft of meaning or resonance."

y) Why? Ridley, why? Alien was fine. Leave it alone! Get back to Forever War!

z) The giant Navigator's mask isn't a hood or respirator. The dude snores like fuck: it's a CPAP mask



~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of illogical crazy SciFi movies, 5th Element was sooooo wrong, but it had the enormous advantage of taking itself 0% seriously.

It all boils down to this - Prometheus is neither Blade Runner nor Alien.

There are no moments of "It has acid for blood!" dread, no completely unexpected chest-burster scared shitless moments, no touching, awe-inspiring "Starships on fire over the belt of Orion," moments...

It's just... Not. Good. Enough.

E@L

The Eye Of The Storm

The doorbell rings just once, a short single "ding", rather than the distinctive tri-tone that is supposed to sound. It is 4am. My mother is startled awake.

About two weeks go by.

The doorbell rings just once, a short single "ding", rather than the distinctive tri-tone that is supposed to sound. It is 6am. My mother is startled awake. She is not sure if the security light has come on. She claims she can't remember. She, who calls me Greg, or Tim, or Doug.

About three weeks go by.

The phone rings in the mid-afternoon. It is a man's voice. My mother listens, but doesn't hear much at first, it was difficult to hear him, he is mumbling something. It is a young voice, a strange voice, sort of clouded, perhaps a teenager with his voice breaking. Then a few words come through more clearly - "I bet you're frightened now..."

~~~~~~~

My mother hung up. Her heart was racing, anxiety. She had the presence of mind to call my sister immediately. My sister called the police. She called me. I called my mother. She sounded very distracted, confounded. She didn't know what to do, where to go, how to act in this situation. She was indeed frightened by now - well wouldn't you be? The door bell rang, the complete tri-tone. There was an authoritative knock. But my mother was still talking to me and this sudden perception of threat upset her more, frightened her more. Of course it did.

Who was this at the door?

"I don't want to answer it," she told me. The door knock came again, even on the phone I could hear a voice calling, "Mrs E@L's Mother, are you there?"

"Relax, Mum. It's the only police, answer the door, answer it. It's only the police."

"Are you sure?"

She put the phone handset down (somewhere in the lounge) and I can only imagine how reluctantly she would have walked to the door, the anxiety that must have been reaching a crescendo as she unsnibbed the lock. Or perhaps she was more calm than I can imagine.

It was the police of course. I could hear just one man talking to Mum. I'm not sure if there was another policeman, perhaps one was in the car or looking around outside. I could hear the two of them talking softly in the electronic distance. I could hear the policeman being reassuring, Mum sounding a little lost for words at first. Well, wouldn't you be? He was asking her questions, gently, with a pleasant, let's-not-take-this-too-seriously attitude. But he was solid, firm, I could hear that. A you're-safe-now, I have the solidity of society behind me here voice. This had the desired effect and it sounded like she was calming down. Mum was repeating hesitantly what she had just told me. Their voices faded as they walked away towards the phone station when he suggested checking for caller-ID (there was none).

Mum had forgotten that I was on the other end of the line. Well, wouldn't you?

I hung up.

~~~~~~~~

Mum, who is 87 and had been living independently in her house (all paid up) forever, is currently staying with my sister. But that can't continue, not for much longer. For a variety of complicated reasons (I've counted 12 so far) that must be redacted for issues of personal, let alone national, security. It's complicated.

More complications - me living in Singapore, aiyah! That distance doesn't do much to ease the burden on my sister's straining shoulders.

However, surprisingly good timing, I was able to visit them for the last two weekends as I have been working in Australia and New Zealand for three weeks. (Perth, Melbourne, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Sydney.) We could talk, we could reassure her, we could map out the future, we could hammer through the options... Over a nice cup of tea.

We sat in my sister's over-heated lounge room where it felt colder the closer you stood to the gas-fire, even though it was hotter (think simmering frog), and we tried to discuss what we could do, should do. And when to do it.

There are good humour, lightheartedness, and just maybe a smidgen of sarcasm in our family. It's a common enough Aussie trait, but not universal. We all have it. We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we know when we are being serious about serious issues, even if we speak lightly of them and joke around. We get it from Mum.

And so Mum was sitting there between us, in the most comfy chair, as we discussed into which hell-hole of a retirement lack-of-concentration camp we should dump her. Which Aged Don't-Care, Mis-Managed Care, house thieving, pension-cheque extorting, food pilfering, illness ignoring little slice of heaven was in her (and ours, don't forget) best interests.*

~~~~~~~~~

But Mum scoffed at us, ignored us, her eyes and ears were on the TV - a movie.

Judy Davis, Charlotte Rampling and Geoffrey Rush in The Eye of The Storm. From the novel by Patrick White, Australia's only (so far) Nobel Prize for Literature winner (don't hold your collective breath for E@L's!) Directed by Fred Schepisi - remember Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation, a few others.

Patrick White - expect upper-class skewering, expect working-class ambivalence, expect bitterness, expect irony. Expect a touch of humour and the odd flash of soul-piercing humanity. Expect to be confused and confronted now and then as well. Expect something powerful.

Just don't expect us to be watching movies in the middle of our serious discussion. Except that...



Charlotte Rampling is Mrs Hunter, the very rich, snobbish matriarch of an Australian family, her mind fading, her body fast failing in her exquisite Sydney mansion (no doubt based on the White family home). The long-absent family vultures come to feed. Sir Basil, the famous thespian, star of stage and, well, stage mainly. There's no money in that, what? Princess Dorothy, the society belle from last decade, still pretentious, still parlaying tres bean French. Both broke. They need that inheritance.

But Mrs Hunter, just to be a bitch one assumes (correctly), favours her maid, the German dancer. Or does Mrs Hunter now favour the warm, caring lawyer (whom she bonked once) who handles all her affairs with punctiliousness and with scrupulous honesty?



It was bloody complicated and we all enjoyed it immensely.

So, as you might gather, after watching this 105% appropriately-timed film, absolutely NO issues were resolved at home that night. How could we? The coincidence killed it.

~~~~~~~~

Mum is still with my sister for the moment, until she feels confident enough to go back home. And so she is gathering her strength and her will by working in the garden, weather permitting, doing little old lady things around the house. Laying new roof-tiles. Putting up the ceiling roses, finally. Re-stumping the extension. I asked if an internet linked security system will make her feel more safe. A friend's husband installs them. "It'll be too late by the time you see me on the internet! It'll all be over. Don't waste your money." Sigh.

As you can tell, it is coming along, her strength, along with her sense of humour. She was almost ready to go home last weekend, she told me. She is talking herself up. She reminds us of great strength she showed in coming to Geelong alone with two young kids after our Dad died.

"I was strong wasn't I?" she asked. "I must have been stupid," she added, only half joking, so we half laugh.

She wanted to bring us up away from the influence of her father and brothers on the family farm (one brother overly authoritarian), and she never married again. This was at the end of the '50's, can you imagine it?

~~~~~~~~

Of course we don't want Mum gathering dust in some sterile, penny-pinching retirement village, no matter how close to my sister's place (where-ever that may be after those unmentionable complications are sorted). I wish is was more simple at my sister's place. I would like them both in control of their own kitchen and their own life.

We would like all, save a couple, of Mum's old friends not to have died.

We would like to be young again ourselves, not teetering the tipping point of cardiac risk and hepatic injury. We don't want to grow old. We want to live forever.

We want our Mum to live forever as well.

It's complicated. It's always complicated. It's been a difficult few weeks for all of us, my sister in particular. Despite all those other issues, she has been a rock.

~~~~~~~~

But it's calm now. It's very, very calm.

E@L



* A nurse I once knew was managing an aged-care centre, and she ended up in jail for her heartless treatment of the people supposedly in her care. She lived on their pension cheques, took the food that was allocated for them home to feed her family, let them wallow in pissy sheets overnight, you name it. Bitch.

And this sort of stuff hasn't gone away, and the management in the most disreputable Dickensian (Whitean?) places now only get mildly spanked for their transgressions.

viz: A Life So Luminous

My sometime flat-mate (a week, maybe 2 or 3 times, every few months) Cara has a great talent for drawing amusing doodle characters. She always leaves little (or big) whimsical, amusing, thought-provoking messages in cartoon form around the house. Things like this...




I mean, how could you not love her back?

Her daughter must have been long aware of this talent and she gave her a notebook for Christmas last year, I think it was, to scribble these doodles in, as a diary. Each evening *without fail* (would-be writers take note) she has been analyzing the events of the day and, instead of plodding out more words (she talks for a living), she sketches out a cute little comic that pins that day down.

When I first noticed her doing this she showed some and they just cracked me up. They seemed to be banging right on the head of some incident's nail, not that I knew what had actually happened during her day necessarily. I loved the way she appeared to get under the skin of the facts of the day and reveal in her cute illustration the soul and the heart within - they are about inter-personal politics and that ineffable wind-across-the-wheat-field subtlety of relationships about which most blokes would just go. "What?" Blokes such as me. But I found them damn amusing. Know what I mean? No? Cara could do a scribble and doubtless render a visual explanation far better than this tongued-tied stuff.

Point of post - last time she was here, she was experimenting with a new gadget (it must be contagious, come to my place, need to purchase technology), one of those things that clip onto the end of a notepad and track your pen movements across a page and then sends them off to her iPad (or wherever). She was struggling with it, and swearing at it, and rebooting this and rebooting that until, just before booting it out the window, she got it going as its designer had intended. Now she can put her stuff into The Ether (as we once called The Cloud) as well into her physical diary.

Yes, you guessed it, she has a blog now where she puts up some of her more philosophical little pics. Check it out, she has something new up most days.

It's called A Life So Luminous."

There are posts with words too but, hey who reads these days?

~~~~~

She already gets more hits per day than E@L did back in his peak, when he was a naughty boy in school.

Needless to say, she is very good at that DrawSomething game.

E@L