Month of June
Diary: Clubbing and Social Life
Month started off with Bert coming over to play Diablo II, although he had to disappear early so we didn't get far.
I had hoped to make it to Labyrinth for the weekend of the 5th but the people who I was to travel with realised they were double-booked, they'd intended to be at a protest about the Israeli raid on the aid ships trying to pass through the Gaza blockade without inspection. They invited me to come with but it's not a subject that I'm confident enough on to protest. It all sounded very simple and grim when I first read about it but I've yet to get a clear picture on all the facts, including whether the blockade was actually illegal or not.
The alternative plan was to go to Dungeon but I discovered, last minute, that the Gamesoc student party RABIES was on and attended that instead. Was a very hot day but I weathered it from about noonish to 2am. I tried to encourage people to go out to Edge afterwards but had no luck. I'd already drank through four bottles of wine so it probably was about time I headed home anyway :oP
Me and Bert did try to organise going out on Thurs 10th but we couldn't seem to confirm that anyone was going so we gave up. It seemed that a fair few familiar faces were going out on a Thursday on the previous few weeks but Thursdays can be much too quiet to bother with unless I knew for sure. I did go out on the following Sat 19th, which was fairly fun, even if someone did take a bizarre and inexplicable dislike to my younger brother (they couldn't even give a reason themselves yet still seems to be really obnoxious about it). Some people are just wastes of space I guess.
Spent a little time adjusting to how light the evenings are at the moment down Dungeon on Sat 19th. Can feel quite bizarre going 'nightclubbing' in the daylight but I guess I saw that every summer. Also means it's a lot warmer, which is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it's warmer outside so you can stand around in the garden without freezing but it's also warmer inside, which is just uncomfortable :oP
Lacuna_Raze was down on the weekend of the 25th but our timing was off and I didn't make Dungeon. We did make Industrial Fallout on the weekend after though, which was good. It makes such a difference that it's not wet and cold now; there was space to actually move inside due to so many people being outside :oP
I was down at LittleCyberAlex's most Sundays except for Sunday 20th were it was just me and Chris at his. Games aren't quite as interesting with just two players but it did mean that we managed to speed through two games of carcasonne, two games of monopoly and a game of risk :oP
Diary: Hospital Stuff
Re: the same kidney stuff that I've mentioned in previous entries, my next appointment was to be with the surgeon on Mon 14th. That nearly feel through after the consultant decided he wanted another meeting after reading the psychiatrist report. I didn't actually get the report until the 17th but it didn't turn out to be particularly glowing; her main problems seemed to be things like me being currently unemployed and living with parents, which ironically strike me as being a particularly good time to donate a kidney. She did repeatedly describe me as being bemused by her questions, which amused me. The main problem I had with her questions was they were oddly vague, broad or simplistic, plus I can't say that I'm ever that inclined to go into great detail about my personal life to a complete stranger.
All worked out find though. The consultant had originally cancelled the surgeons appointment and set one up with him in July, which would have put the whole thing back more than a fortnight. I managed to pass on the message that I'd be fine with just chatting on the phone rather than waiting a month and travelling to Portsmouth 'for a chat' and he basically said his doubts were because of the report and suggested that I wait six months or so (the psychiatrist thinks I should wait a few years). I was still very keen to get things going as soon as possible though and I think my eagerness convinced him that I was more serious than the report suggested, so he decided that it would be best if I met with the surgeon and we got his opinion.
Fortunately, the surgeon was fine. He was satisfied that I understood what was entailed by the operation and all the consequences. We chatted about what the operation would consist of (will be keyhole surgery) and showed me some of the results of the scans of my kidneys and which one he'd be taking. All was fine really. At the end, I had another urine sample taken along with a lot of blood samples to go off for external checking and I was told that I'd be set up with an interview with someone external just as a last check.
I got a phone call to give me the date for meeting with someone to get an external opinion, just to make sure everything is okay. The date was supposed to be the following Monday (21st), which would have been brilliant. Unfortunately, I normally get a lift up to Portsmouth from my mother and she wouldn't have been able to do that so I asked whether they could try to get me an appointment at a different time or day of the week. That turned out to be a big mistake as the appointment was rearranged to the 9th of July :o/ Bit annoying given that I was very explicit that I'd just take the train up to Portsmouth if need be and really didn't want to wait any longer than needed. Unfortunately, they were unable to undo the change. The whole thing has just put everything back yet another fortnight :o/
Films and TV: Boy George, Stand, Echanted, Lost, & Doctor Who
Watched 'Worried about a boy' (the film about Boy George) with Lacuna_Raze on Tues 8th. It seems keen to keep as true to life as possible, which obviously made it hard to be as revisiting as a fictional story but does at least make it seem a lot more authentic. It pretty much confirms the idea I've got of Boy George as being a bit of an annoying and not all-together nice character but that's not criticism of the film (it's quite good that they didn't try to white-wash his life really). It's an interesting watch in any case :o)
I'd been wanting to watch Stephen King's The Stand for a while. I think I was still in school the last time I watched it and I found it quite interesting back then. Watching it again, I'd say it has some interesting parts but is quite marred by the plot being either (a) pointless or (b) generally unfulfilling. Some plot points don't lead there and the 'Stand' at the end only seems tangentially useful or dramatic. I only really understood how it was of any use via the imdb forums and someone sharing how it was explained in the book (where it's clearer but still not very impressive). The only reason why the series has any charm for me is that it's post-apocalyptic and I've always had a fairly morbid interest in that sort of thing :o)
Enchanted was a little odd for me to absorb just because it comes from all angles. On one side you have a divorce lawyer who learns to let romance back into his life and a princess who learns to think for herself and basically achieve a little bit of depth but the mid-ground they meet on still doesn't seem that progressive. This is especially true as the princess is contrasted with the lawyer's girlfriend who is suggested as a 'strong woman' type but ends up running off with the Prince on a 'love at first sight' type scenario and abandons her previous life and career.
It's not that I dislike the idea of looking at it from both sides; the idea of not only having a stereotypical princess become introduced to the real world and start to question her simplistic assumptions about love (basically, fall in love with the first prince type that comes along), comes to want a little more and ceases to be a complete stereotype being contrasted with a cynical divorce lawyer who has much too practical and minimalist idea of what a 'good relationship' looks like is interesting and could be done very well. The problem I have is that the resolution is much too slanted towards a Disney romance type scenario; whilst it's not as sickly as some Disney cartoons, it's still paints a rather silly and arguably unhealthy picture of romance.
Finally watched the finale for Lost. I was actually quite pleased. I know that they didn't explain absolutly everything but I think it still settled down nicely. It would have been too easy to just make up 'mysterious' things that had no clever explanation but most of it did and it still had the impression of being planned from the start. The 'flash sideways' arch resolution would have been a major cop out had it been about the rest of the show but I was actually relieved that it was so disconnected from everything else; it felt wrong and hard to accept as a real 'alternative timeline' since it was introduced (I was a big fan of the detonation of the bomb being 'the incident' all along, so that nothing was actually changed).
Doctor Who's finale was a bit less impressive. I liked the fact that a number of different plot lines came together for the last-but-one episode and the finale itself threw around a few interesting ideas but it all seemed a bit forced and a bit characterless. Matt Smith is basically the only actor/character that interests me in that show at the moment. As much as I wanted to like Amy as a character, I don't. She's not only hideously flawed in ways that the show doesn't seem to recognise (instead expecting us to like her) but also rather flat as a character in general. It's a big change from the character-driven stories of RTD.
I'd seen a little of the IT Crowd on tv but noticed that it's available from the Channel 4 website so I watched all three seasons. It's got an interesting mix of deliberately over-dramatic acting whilst having some very funny moments that rely on much more subtle acting. Moss is a brilliant character as well :oD Made sure to convince Lacuna_Raze to watch it with me :oP
Games: Arkham Aslyum, Somi, Alice
I've gone off Fallout 3 a little bit since completing the main game, so decided to try out the Batman: Arkham Aslyum game for a bit instead. I'm not sure how to describe the genre because it's clearly an action game similar to shoot-em-ups except that the combat is physical (yet it's not just a beat-em-up). I like how they've approached the game from all angles though... lots of exploring and puzzle solving as well as the action (which varies from straight combat to more subtle stealth attacks). Unfortunately, it only took a day to complete the main game.
I managed to find all the hidden collectables and similar the next day, which unlocked all the challenges. I found it slightly harder to enjoy them because they're so much harder though :oP
I finally got around to playing Secret of Monkey Island: special edition. I really felt like it would lose some of it's charm after being updated but I don't think it did. When I bought an old floppy-disc copy of the game it was very fun playing through it with the old blocky pixels; very full of nostalgia. The new game tries to retain this by having an option to instantaneously switch between the new and old version at any point (there's no change to gameplay). I did occasionally use this just out of curiosity but I increasingly found that I just liked the new scenes better. The old ones were brilliant for the time but the re-imagining manages to surpass them (although a large part of that is due to them being very faithful to the original). I even got used to the new style Guybrush after a while.
It's the close-ups that disappoint me really. You can see some comparisons here: linky
The settings are all more beautiful but I really hate the style change in the close-ups. The old ones clearly needed updating but I've no idea why they decided to go in that direction. The older Guybrush suited the character of a sympathetic would-be pirate a lot more for me; someone who just seemed too innocent and harmless to be taken seriously. The new Elain may be a matter of preference I guess (although I like the older style regardless) but I can't say I like how they've both been made soo much thinner.
I also tried playing American McGee's Alice, just because the premise of a dark-themed Alice In Wonderland based computer game sounded fun. In terms of theme and atmosphere, it was quite good but I just couldn't get into enjoying the gameplay, so I've abandoned that one for now.
Books: Gulliver's Travels
Took some time to read through Gulliver's Travel by Jonathan Swift, it's been something I've been meaning to read through since watching the Channel 4 adaptation (1996). I rewatched it again afterwards.
I find the style a little less engaging than a lot of contemporary books but I think that's true of a lot of older novels and was bound to be the case in a book purporting to be a 'matter of fact' description of Gulliver's voyages. It's still a lot easier to read than a lot of old books, although I did need to refer to the appendices a few times to clarify archaic uses of some words.
I don't think I have the historical knowledge to fully appreciate Gulliver's first voyage to Lilliput and Blefuscu, although the idea of political divides ultimately boiling down to long irrelevant and trivial differences hasn't exactly lost all relevance. Although contemporary politics may not be as plainly absurd, the ideological divides between parties are certainly less than clear and politics can be daftly partisan. This appears to be particular true of American politics where the stances and ideologies associated with the parties seem to have managed to become opposite in a number of respects from their historical origins.
This is probably the most light-hearted read of all the voyages in the book I think and probably the most subtle satire, whilst later on it gets much more obvious. The Channel 4 adaptation was pretty good as well, with the major problem being that the use of blue screen was really obvious and distracting compared with what people are used to now. It does however bring the characters to life, even if it required some fairly significant changes from the source material.
Gulliver's second voyage to Brobdingnag is probably one of the most aged. We're supposed to interpret the society of Brobdingnag as being generally better than ours but this is only possible from a 18th century perspective. The people (including the monarchs) aren't as nice and understanding as we'd expect today and the economic and political system is not superior to our own. It does, however, provide a better critique of 18th century England than the fourth voyage via Gulliver's attempt to impress the King (whereas he only vaguely pretends to defend England at all in the fourth voyager)
The Channel 4 adaptation obviously felt the need to update this. Whilst it seems to retain the nation as being a monarchy, it introduces some socialist economics. The beggars that Gulliver describes in the book obviously do not make an appearance. We no longer see a traditionally patriarchal relationship between King and Queen and have the whole thing condensed down to one Queen, which also makes the nation look more progressive (as opposed to Lilliput, which does have a very traditional depiction of monarchy). The rather ignorant and callous attacks on Gulliver for being cowardly for feeling threatened by flying insects is moved to a commoner rather than the Queen so as to retain her image as being enlightened.
It's also interesting that the Queen and, seemingly, most of the aristocrats are black in the adaptation, whilst the population is more mixed. Given that Swift doesn't really mention the ethnicity of the people he encounters, it seems likely that he expected us to imagine them as being white. That seems ridiculously silly all in all, so it's nice to see some thought given to it.
Gulliver's travels to Laputa and Balnibarbi are very interesting as a critique of academics, intellectuals and reformers that have their heads lost in the clouds, although it arguably strays too close to attacking all attempts at improvement and progress. It's at this point that I felt the book started to lose it's balance and subtlety and start to become too obviously one-sided attacks (although the attacks are probably one-sided earlier too, just more subtle).
The film, unfortunately, manages to make this even worse with it's depiction of Laputa being more transparent than even Swift's, coupled with some of the worst acting in the adaptation. The problem is that we see all the flaws of Laputa in such a way that they're rendered as being simply pretentious idiots, we never see much about the persons (other than the fact that they live on a flying island) to suggest that they're any kind of genius even if they have lost their attachment to reality.
The academy on Balnibarbi is mostly taken straight from the book. I think that's almost a shame because I'm sure contemporary academics could come up with a ton of really interesting insightful examples of what might be argued to be 'pointless academics' and there must be a hundred examples of 'inventions that actually make life harder or that are silly' that we could draw from history. The important thing would be to step that line between making it clear that there's something deeply wrong with this approach whilst not reducing them to simple loons, that would be a much more interesting commentary.
Of course, Swift pretty much takes the more cartoonish approach himself when it comes to the academy, so that's more a fault with the source material.
The way we're introduced to the idea that all this interest in modernising society much too rashly has actually devastated Balninarbi has changed but suffers due to not seeing it, making Gulliver's descriptions far superior to the adaptation. I'm assuming that this was due to budget reasons but it's a shame because that's one of the key parts that makes this satire work; the biggest problem isn't academics wasting their time on silly ideas that only philosophers would take seriously, it's the arrogance of presuming to 'know better' than the common person who has been doing the task succesfully all this time. That's the theme that needs to be played up the most.
The chosen ethnicities for the adapation was Indian for Laputa and mostly Caucasian for Balinarbi, which is interesting.
It's this part of the book where we are introduced to the struldbrugs, that being immortal people. The twist being that eternal life does not equate to eternal youth so these people live forever in old age. They decay into a decrepit physical state, their minds decay until they remember little but how life and society was when they were young and their character decays until they are thoroughly unpleasant. It's probably the last that I find most interesting because it potentially applies to immortality even with eternal youth. Exactly what might happen to a person's character if they were immortal and yet eternally youthful would be quite interesting to speculate about. Unfortunately, Swift basically just provides one speculation without much argument or insight leaving it more of an interesting question rather than an interesting answer.
The tv adaptation changes the way they are introduced. Gulliver is abducted and taken to them, passed various people begging to become immortal, he offers them a gift for entrance and meets some particularly youthful immortal who offers him to drink from a fountain that will make him immortal (in the book, the struldbrugs are randomly born that way). He realises just in time that they are all blind; the only hint of other problems is one woman who is coughing blood (none of them appear particularly old).
I think the change to Gulliver having to discover the secret himself was a good move; having it described to him just wouldn't have the same punch on screen. I think they should have settled on whether people are abducted to see them or they choose to in hopes of gaining immortality (presumably not realising the full deal). I'd have suggested the latter. Obviously, there's much more that could have been done to envision the full horror of what Swift wrote. Whilst having some youthful members is fine, there should have been more decrepit immortals hiding in the shadows (etc).
Swift also describes Gulliver's visit to Glubbdubdrib, a society of sorcerers and necromancers who can call up the dead. Unfortunately, it's poorly used. It's basically Swift using speculative accounts of the dead to give a very one-sided and not very interesting support for whatever axe he has to grind about history. It's worse because he also uses it to support 'golden age' type thinking; 'society today is horrid and everyone is full of vice, whereas one-hundred years ago it was brilliant'. Of course, 'Golden Age thinking' is a silliness people are yet to grow out of. I left that part of the book feeling rather unimpressed. Moral/political messages are okay but they just can't be that blunt and transparent.
The tv adaptation does a good job of turning these occultists into interesting television by giving the story more of a personal horror twist where Gulliver has to escape the necromancers. A good move because I can't see how else they could have dealt with it.
The bit they did skip was Gulliver's travel through Japan. Of course, in the book Gulliver returns home after every voyage, whilst in the adaptation it's one long voyage (I think it works best that way, with the separate voyagers probably being a product of the books being written in various volumes). The interesting part of this story is that Gulliver is expected to stamp on a crucifix to prove that he's not a Christian, something he avoids. According to wiki, this was a real practice of the time in Japan: linky. It's possibly a politically sensitive subject but given that it's historically accurate, I think it would have been fair to include it. A change from the source material might have had it happen earlier and have Gulliver actually doing it, with the possibility being that he had 'cursed' his own voyagers.
The last voyage is to the Country of the Houyhnhnms; rational talking horses. The idea of talking horses is easier to accept than the idea of them using their limbs to build houses or otherwise act in human ways but can just about be ignored. One of the big flaws of this piece is that Gulliver's attempts to defend European society are much more transparent than when he was in Brobdingnag, which just isn't as clever. The defence is simply to thinly veiled to be at all clever. It's also problematic because it's easy to prefer the society of the rational horses to that of Gulliver's depiction of Europe when the really interesting bit would have been comparing it to a genuine defence of Europe. Put another way, if we're to take seriously the idea that these rational horses have a better society then it needs to beat a generous depiction because beating a malicious one is not impressive. It's not entirely clear if Swift wants us to accept the society of rational horses as being perfect but the above point still holds for an interesting comparison anyway.
The TV adaptation wisely doesn't try to show horses doing any of the things that Gulliver describes, although they do appear to have primitive housing (etc) anyway, which still raises the same questions. I can't honestly imagine how Swift's vision could sensibly be put on screen mind.
The TV adaptation also adds an entirely new story element in that Gulliver is driven partially mad by the events of the books and his stories are not believed. Whilst I have a little mistrust of fiddling with the source material, it does work very well to tie all the stories together and adds a necessary over-arching plot that I think a modern audience would need.
Thoughts: I hate 'Edgey' Rants
Sometimes when I write about something it's just because I find the subject interesting or fun. It's an issue of no particular importance but I like stretching my mind.
Other times it's because I think this is an important issue that needs to be got right and I'm not writing for fun but out of genuine conviction.
In neither case is it about the image I want to present to people. I'm quite aware that a lot of people find the former boring and the latter can be a minefield for offence and upset. With the latter case specifically, I'd skip it entirely if I didn't think it was important because it would probably make my life easier to not care or to not risk upsetting people.
In both cases I'm interested in uncovering truth though. I'm not arguing for the mere sake of it and I choose my positions based on what I honestly think is right,
What I sometimes notice in others is that people choose positions they think are 'edgy'.
In non-serious matters, I suppose that's not so annoying. At worst, it's someone making up some silly fluffball position on metaphysics, epistemology, spirituality or something similar and then trying to provide some clumsy justification for a position that they've likely chosen just because they think it sounds 'cool'. That can feel a bit 'intellectually offensive' but it's not really doing any real harm. Besides, at best, it's someone intelligently taking a devil's advocate position and exploring possible alternatives that they hadn't considered, which might even be a good thing.
In serious matters, it annoys me a lot more.
In serious matters, I don't think it's sufficient to choose a position based on it seeming 'cool' because it's a bit different and 'quirky'. This is especially so because 'quirky' and 'different' on serious matters can also mean deeply offensive.
One of the less aggravating examples is that I've, twice, had people make ludicrously silly arguments (in all apparent seriousness) in defence of fascism as a form of government. In both cases, by fascism they mean something alone the lines of 'benevolent dictatorship' and argue the advantages of having someone (who always happens to be a mirror copy of their own political beliefs and values) run a nation permanently and how that may be better than having 'mob rule' in the form of democracy. Of course, it's hard to get worked up about because it's too silly to take seriously.
Of course, one of those people also, on a separate occasion, tried arguing that black people were more closely related to apes. The argument was that white people have 'evolved more' due to moving out of Africa and thus are 'less closely related'. Apparently, he didn't mean to justify any kind of racist belief or prejudice, just meant to suggest that the genetic drift from the common ancestor was more in white people than black people (regardless of how much or little effect this might have on behaviour or character).
I'm guessing he thought that discovering such a controversial 'fact' that other people would refuse to agree with (and be offended at despite it's apparent 'truth) means he's more intelligent than most people. Of course, his argument rested on wild speculation as to the degree of genetic difference from the common ancestor in various ethnic groups as well as a definition of 'closely related' that seemingly is intended to offend. That means he certainly gets no points for intelligence.
But, even if he was right, is there anything admirable in saying things that other people will likely find offensive? (especially if phrased in such a crude way as to maximise offence). I certainly don't think so.
The above happened at a club but here's a case of something I saw online. A person had posted an IM conversation she'd had with a complete stranger. She turned the conversation to the morality of racial discrimination and why people thought it was bad that white people had allowed it. The stranger answered in the way people might expect. She attempted to justify the racial discrimination by noting that it is in white people's self-interest to allow and even encourage racism against ethnic minorities. The stranger asked 'what about the harm caused to ethnic minorities?' and she responded to the question as if it was a practical question of how to avoid the oppressed fighting back in case it caused harm to white people. The stranger told her that he hoped she was joking otherwise she was a horrible person and then left the conversation.
She smugly posted this to her journal with the claim that it showed that people couldn't cope with contrary viewpoints and resorted to personal attacks when having their beliefs challenged.
Of course, this too is mind-numbingly stupid and anyone other than sociopath ought to see why. He was assuming that the morality of racism was to be judged by how it affected other people's well-being, she was judging it on self-interest alone. She was apparently a philosophy student that had happened on Anne Rand's 'Objectivism' theory of ethics (basically, selfishness dressed up as morality) and decided she liked it. Besides the fact that the theory is pretty disgusting, it also means that she had to have been familiar with other theories of morality and knew exactly where the stranger was coming from and was instead deliberately courting controversy and misunderstanding.
However, rather than making her look intelligent (as she presumably thought), being too obtuse to recognise and acknowledge the value difference just make her look exceedingly dim.
Even if genuine, she choose to argue her point in such a way to court controversy and be 'edgey'. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't really believe it anyway and was just arguing it to be 'edgy' in general. I think the necessary newsflash is: 'arguing unpopular positions does not make you look cool'.
Even the more intelligent 'I'm just playing devil's advocate' would need to be played -very- sensitively here because it's not something unimportant being discussed. Racism is not something for intellectuals to discuss merely for fun, it's a real world problem that we all can either oppose or contribute to so it needs to be treated with lots of respect (and not with a complete lack of tact)
Arguing unpopular positions is sometimes necessary if you have genuine conviction. I find myself sometimes arguing uncomfortable positions about various systems of prejudice sometimes and that can go down badly because being honest and truthful can sometimes mean saying things that people don't want to hear. What I don't do is seek these situations out because I really don't want to be in the uncomfortable position of feeling obliged to argue an unpopular position.
So, when people decide to be 'cool' and 'edgy' by adopting and arguing positions about important and sensitive subjects because they're unpopular and offensive, I then find myself feeling not only intellectually offended but morally offended too.
Unfortunately, because these people have a combination of being both rather dim and seemingly feeling like they're more intelligent than everyone else, it's very hard to have any dialogue with them. Whatever you do, they're still go away with their ridiculous positions and still feeling like they're smarter than everyone else. Annoying as hell.
Month started off with Bert coming over to play Diablo II, although he had to disappear early so we didn't get far.
I had hoped to make it to Labyrinth for the weekend of the 5th but the people who I was to travel with realised they were double-booked, they'd intended to be at a protest about the Israeli raid on the aid ships trying to pass through the Gaza blockade without inspection. They invited me to come with but it's not a subject that I'm confident enough on to protest. It all sounded very simple and grim when I first read about it but I've yet to get a clear picture on all the facts, including whether the blockade was actually illegal or not.
The alternative plan was to go to Dungeon but I discovered, last minute, that the Gamesoc student party RABIES was on and attended that instead. Was a very hot day but I weathered it from about noonish to 2am. I tried to encourage people to go out to Edge afterwards but had no luck. I'd already drank through four bottles of wine so it probably was about time I headed home anyway :oP
Me and Bert did try to organise going out on Thurs 10th but we couldn't seem to confirm that anyone was going so we gave up. It seemed that a fair few familiar faces were going out on a Thursday on the previous few weeks but Thursdays can be much too quiet to bother with unless I knew for sure. I did go out on the following Sat 19th, which was fairly fun, even if someone did take a bizarre and inexplicable dislike to my younger brother (they couldn't even give a reason themselves yet still seems to be really obnoxious about it). Some people are just wastes of space I guess.
Spent a little time adjusting to how light the evenings are at the moment down Dungeon on Sat 19th. Can feel quite bizarre going 'nightclubbing' in the daylight but I guess I saw that every summer. Also means it's a lot warmer, which is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it's warmer outside so you can stand around in the garden without freezing but it's also warmer inside, which is just uncomfortable :oP
Lacuna_Raze was down on the weekend of the 25th but our timing was off and I didn't make Dungeon. We did make Industrial Fallout on the weekend after though, which was good. It makes such a difference that it's not wet and cold now; there was space to actually move inside due to so many people being outside :oP
I was down at LittleCyberAlex's most Sundays except for Sunday 20th were it was just me and Chris at his. Games aren't quite as interesting with just two players but it did mean that we managed to speed through two games of carcasonne, two games of monopoly and a game of risk :oP
Diary: Hospital Stuff
Re: the same kidney stuff that I've mentioned in previous entries, my next appointment was to be with the surgeon on Mon 14th. That nearly feel through after the consultant decided he wanted another meeting after reading the psychiatrist report. I didn't actually get the report until the 17th but it didn't turn out to be particularly glowing; her main problems seemed to be things like me being currently unemployed and living with parents, which ironically strike me as being a particularly good time to donate a kidney. She did repeatedly describe me as being bemused by her questions, which amused me. The main problem I had with her questions was they were oddly vague, broad or simplistic, plus I can't say that I'm ever that inclined to go into great detail about my personal life to a complete stranger.
All worked out find though. The consultant had originally cancelled the surgeons appointment and set one up with him in July, which would have put the whole thing back more than a fortnight. I managed to pass on the message that I'd be fine with just chatting on the phone rather than waiting a month and travelling to Portsmouth 'for a chat' and he basically said his doubts were because of the report and suggested that I wait six months or so (the psychiatrist thinks I should wait a few years). I was still very keen to get things going as soon as possible though and I think my eagerness convinced him that I was more serious than the report suggested, so he decided that it would be best if I met with the surgeon and we got his opinion.
Fortunately, the surgeon was fine. He was satisfied that I understood what was entailed by the operation and all the consequences. We chatted about what the operation would consist of (will be keyhole surgery) and showed me some of the results of the scans of my kidneys and which one he'd be taking. All was fine really. At the end, I had another urine sample taken along with a lot of blood samples to go off for external checking and I was told that I'd be set up with an interview with someone external just as a last check.
I got a phone call to give me the date for meeting with someone to get an external opinion, just to make sure everything is okay. The date was supposed to be the following Monday (21st), which would have been brilliant. Unfortunately, I normally get a lift up to Portsmouth from my mother and she wouldn't have been able to do that so I asked whether they could try to get me an appointment at a different time or day of the week. That turned out to be a big mistake as the appointment was rearranged to the 9th of July :o/ Bit annoying given that I was very explicit that I'd just take the train up to Portsmouth if need be and really didn't want to wait any longer than needed. Unfortunately, they were unable to undo the change. The whole thing has just put everything back yet another fortnight :o/
Films and TV: Boy George, Stand, Echanted, Lost, & Doctor Who
Watched 'Worried about a boy' (the film about Boy George) with Lacuna_Raze on Tues 8th. It seems keen to keep as true to life as possible, which obviously made it hard to be as revisiting as a fictional story but does at least make it seem a lot more authentic. It pretty much confirms the idea I've got of Boy George as being a bit of an annoying and not all-together nice character but that's not criticism of the film (it's quite good that they didn't try to white-wash his life really). It's an interesting watch in any case :o)
I'd been wanting to watch Stephen King's The Stand for a while. I think I was still in school the last time I watched it and I found it quite interesting back then. Watching it again, I'd say it has some interesting parts but is quite marred by the plot being either (a) pointless or (b) generally unfulfilling. Some plot points don't lead there and the 'Stand' at the end only seems tangentially useful or dramatic. I only really understood how it was of any use via the imdb forums and someone sharing how it was explained in the book (where it's clearer but still not very impressive). The only reason why the series has any charm for me is that it's post-apocalyptic and I've always had a fairly morbid interest in that sort of thing :o)
Enchanted was a little odd for me to absorb just because it comes from all angles. On one side you have a divorce lawyer who learns to let romance back into his life and a princess who learns to think for herself and basically achieve a little bit of depth but the mid-ground they meet on still doesn't seem that progressive. This is especially true as the princess is contrasted with the lawyer's girlfriend who is suggested as a 'strong woman' type but ends up running off with the Prince on a 'love at first sight' type scenario and abandons her previous life and career.
It's not that I dislike the idea of looking at it from both sides; the idea of not only having a stereotypical princess become introduced to the real world and start to question her simplistic assumptions about love (basically, fall in love with the first prince type that comes along), comes to want a little more and ceases to be a complete stereotype being contrasted with a cynical divorce lawyer who has much too practical and minimalist idea of what a 'good relationship' looks like is interesting and could be done very well. The problem I have is that the resolution is much too slanted towards a Disney romance type scenario; whilst it's not as sickly as some Disney cartoons, it's still paints a rather silly and arguably unhealthy picture of romance.
Finally watched the finale for Lost. I was actually quite pleased. I know that they didn't explain absolutly everything but I think it still settled down nicely. It would have been too easy to just make up 'mysterious' things that had no clever explanation but most of it did and it still had the impression of being planned from the start. The 'flash sideways' arch resolution would have been a major cop out had it been about the rest of the show but I was actually relieved that it was so disconnected from everything else; it felt wrong and hard to accept as a real 'alternative timeline' since it was introduced (I was a big fan of the detonation of the bomb being 'the incident' all along, so that nothing was actually changed).
Doctor Who's finale was a bit less impressive. I liked the fact that a number of different plot lines came together for the last-but-one episode and the finale itself threw around a few interesting ideas but it all seemed a bit forced and a bit characterless. Matt Smith is basically the only actor/character that interests me in that show at the moment. As much as I wanted to like Amy as a character, I don't. She's not only hideously flawed in ways that the show doesn't seem to recognise (instead expecting us to like her) but also rather flat as a character in general. It's a big change from the character-driven stories of RTD.
I'd seen a little of the IT Crowd on tv but noticed that it's available from the Channel 4 website so I watched all three seasons. It's got an interesting mix of deliberately over-dramatic acting whilst having some very funny moments that rely on much more subtle acting. Moss is a brilliant character as well :oD Made sure to convince Lacuna_Raze to watch it with me :oP
Games: Arkham Aslyum, Somi, Alice
I've gone off Fallout 3 a little bit since completing the main game, so decided to try out the Batman: Arkham Aslyum game for a bit instead. I'm not sure how to describe the genre because it's clearly an action game similar to shoot-em-ups except that the combat is physical (yet it's not just a beat-em-up). I like how they've approached the game from all angles though... lots of exploring and puzzle solving as well as the action (which varies from straight combat to more subtle stealth attacks). Unfortunately, it only took a day to complete the main game.
I managed to find all the hidden collectables and similar the next day, which unlocked all the challenges. I found it slightly harder to enjoy them because they're so much harder though :oP
I finally got around to playing Secret of Monkey Island: special edition. I really felt like it would lose some of it's charm after being updated but I don't think it did. When I bought an old floppy-disc copy of the game it was very fun playing through it with the old blocky pixels; very full of nostalgia. The new game tries to retain this by having an option to instantaneously switch between the new and old version at any point (there's no change to gameplay). I did occasionally use this just out of curiosity but I increasingly found that I just liked the new scenes better. The old ones were brilliant for the time but the re-imagining manages to surpass them (although a large part of that is due to them being very faithful to the original). I even got used to the new style Guybrush after a while.
It's the close-ups that disappoint me really. You can see some comparisons here: linky
The settings are all more beautiful but I really hate the style change in the close-ups. The old ones clearly needed updating but I've no idea why they decided to go in that direction. The older Guybrush suited the character of a sympathetic would-be pirate a lot more for me; someone who just seemed too innocent and harmless to be taken seriously. The new Elain may be a matter of preference I guess (although I like the older style regardless) but I can't say I like how they've both been made soo much thinner.
I also tried playing American McGee's Alice, just because the premise of a dark-themed Alice In Wonderland based computer game sounded fun. In terms of theme and atmosphere, it was quite good but I just couldn't get into enjoying the gameplay, so I've abandoned that one for now.
Books: Gulliver's Travels
Took some time to read through Gulliver's Travel by Jonathan Swift, it's been something I've been meaning to read through since watching the Channel 4 adaptation (1996). I rewatched it again afterwards.
I find the style a little less engaging than a lot of contemporary books but I think that's true of a lot of older novels and was bound to be the case in a book purporting to be a 'matter of fact' description of Gulliver's voyages. It's still a lot easier to read than a lot of old books, although I did need to refer to the appendices a few times to clarify archaic uses of some words.
I don't think I have the historical knowledge to fully appreciate Gulliver's first voyage to Lilliput and Blefuscu, although the idea of political divides ultimately boiling down to long irrelevant and trivial differences hasn't exactly lost all relevance. Although contemporary politics may not be as plainly absurd, the ideological divides between parties are certainly less than clear and politics can be daftly partisan. This appears to be particular true of American politics where the stances and ideologies associated with the parties seem to have managed to become opposite in a number of respects from their historical origins.
This is probably the most light-hearted read of all the voyages in the book I think and probably the most subtle satire, whilst later on it gets much more obvious. The Channel 4 adaptation was pretty good as well, with the major problem being that the use of blue screen was really obvious and distracting compared with what people are used to now. It does however bring the characters to life, even if it required some fairly significant changes from the source material.
Gulliver's second voyage to Brobdingnag is probably one of the most aged. We're supposed to interpret the society of Brobdingnag as being generally better than ours but this is only possible from a 18th century perspective. The people (including the monarchs) aren't as nice and understanding as we'd expect today and the economic and political system is not superior to our own. It does, however, provide a better critique of 18th century England than the fourth voyage via Gulliver's attempt to impress the King (whereas he only vaguely pretends to defend England at all in the fourth voyager)
The Channel 4 adaptation obviously felt the need to update this. Whilst it seems to retain the nation as being a monarchy, it introduces some socialist economics. The beggars that Gulliver describes in the book obviously do not make an appearance. We no longer see a traditionally patriarchal relationship between King and Queen and have the whole thing condensed down to one Queen, which also makes the nation look more progressive (as opposed to Lilliput, which does have a very traditional depiction of monarchy). The rather ignorant and callous attacks on Gulliver for being cowardly for feeling threatened by flying insects is moved to a commoner rather than the Queen so as to retain her image as being enlightened.
It's also interesting that the Queen and, seemingly, most of the aristocrats are black in the adaptation, whilst the population is more mixed. Given that Swift doesn't really mention the ethnicity of the people he encounters, it seems likely that he expected us to imagine them as being white. That seems ridiculously silly all in all, so it's nice to see some thought given to it.
Gulliver's travels to Laputa and Balnibarbi are very interesting as a critique of academics, intellectuals and reformers that have their heads lost in the clouds, although it arguably strays too close to attacking all attempts at improvement and progress. It's at this point that I felt the book started to lose it's balance and subtlety and start to become too obviously one-sided attacks (although the attacks are probably one-sided earlier too, just more subtle).
The film, unfortunately, manages to make this even worse with it's depiction of Laputa being more transparent than even Swift's, coupled with some of the worst acting in the adaptation. The problem is that we see all the flaws of Laputa in such a way that they're rendered as being simply pretentious idiots, we never see much about the persons (other than the fact that they live on a flying island) to suggest that they're any kind of genius even if they have lost their attachment to reality.
The academy on Balnibarbi is mostly taken straight from the book. I think that's almost a shame because I'm sure contemporary academics could come up with a ton of really interesting insightful examples of what might be argued to be 'pointless academics' and there must be a hundred examples of 'inventions that actually make life harder or that are silly' that we could draw from history. The important thing would be to step that line between making it clear that there's something deeply wrong with this approach whilst not reducing them to simple loons, that would be a much more interesting commentary.
Of course, Swift pretty much takes the more cartoonish approach himself when it comes to the academy, so that's more a fault with the source material.
The way we're introduced to the idea that all this interest in modernising society much too rashly has actually devastated Balninarbi has changed but suffers due to not seeing it, making Gulliver's descriptions far superior to the adaptation. I'm assuming that this was due to budget reasons but it's a shame because that's one of the key parts that makes this satire work; the biggest problem isn't academics wasting their time on silly ideas that only philosophers would take seriously, it's the arrogance of presuming to 'know better' than the common person who has been doing the task succesfully all this time. That's the theme that needs to be played up the most.
The chosen ethnicities for the adapation was Indian for Laputa and mostly Caucasian for Balinarbi, which is interesting.
It's this part of the book where we are introduced to the struldbrugs, that being immortal people. The twist being that eternal life does not equate to eternal youth so these people live forever in old age. They decay into a decrepit physical state, their minds decay until they remember little but how life and society was when they were young and their character decays until they are thoroughly unpleasant. It's probably the last that I find most interesting because it potentially applies to immortality even with eternal youth. Exactly what might happen to a person's character if they were immortal and yet eternally youthful would be quite interesting to speculate about. Unfortunately, Swift basically just provides one speculation without much argument or insight leaving it more of an interesting question rather than an interesting answer.
The tv adaptation changes the way they are introduced. Gulliver is abducted and taken to them, passed various people begging to become immortal, he offers them a gift for entrance and meets some particularly youthful immortal who offers him to drink from a fountain that will make him immortal (in the book, the struldbrugs are randomly born that way). He realises just in time that they are all blind; the only hint of other problems is one woman who is coughing blood (none of them appear particularly old).
I think the change to Gulliver having to discover the secret himself was a good move; having it described to him just wouldn't have the same punch on screen. I think they should have settled on whether people are abducted to see them or they choose to in hopes of gaining immortality (presumably not realising the full deal). I'd have suggested the latter. Obviously, there's much more that could have been done to envision the full horror of what Swift wrote. Whilst having some youthful members is fine, there should have been more decrepit immortals hiding in the shadows (etc).
Swift also describes Gulliver's visit to Glubbdubdrib, a society of sorcerers and necromancers who can call up the dead. Unfortunately, it's poorly used. It's basically Swift using speculative accounts of the dead to give a very one-sided and not very interesting support for whatever axe he has to grind about history. It's worse because he also uses it to support 'golden age' type thinking; 'society today is horrid and everyone is full of vice, whereas one-hundred years ago it was brilliant'. Of course, 'Golden Age thinking' is a silliness people are yet to grow out of. I left that part of the book feeling rather unimpressed. Moral/political messages are okay but they just can't be that blunt and transparent.
The tv adaptation does a good job of turning these occultists into interesting television by giving the story more of a personal horror twist where Gulliver has to escape the necromancers. A good move because I can't see how else they could have dealt with it.
The bit they did skip was Gulliver's travel through Japan. Of course, in the book Gulliver returns home after every voyage, whilst in the adaptation it's one long voyage (I think it works best that way, with the separate voyagers probably being a product of the books being written in various volumes). The interesting part of this story is that Gulliver is expected to stamp on a crucifix to prove that he's not a Christian, something he avoids. According to wiki, this was a real practice of the time in Japan: linky. It's possibly a politically sensitive subject but given that it's historically accurate, I think it would have been fair to include it. A change from the source material might have had it happen earlier and have Gulliver actually doing it, with the possibility being that he had 'cursed' his own voyagers.
The last voyage is to the Country of the Houyhnhnms; rational talking horses. The idea of talking horses is easier to accept than the idea of them using their limbs to build houses or otherwise act in human ways but can just about be ignored. One of the big flaws of this piece is that Gulliver's attempts to defend European society are much more transparent than when he was in Brobdingnag, which just isn't as clever. The defence is simply to thinly veiled to be at all clever. It's also problematic because it's easy to prefer the society of the rational horses to that of Gulliver's depiction of Europe when the really interesting bit would have been comparing it to a genuine defence of Europe. Put another way, if we're to take seriously the idea that these rational horses have a better society then it needs to beat a generous depiction because beating a malicious one is not impressive. It's not entirely clear if Swift wants us to accept the society of rational horses as being perfect but the above point still holds for an interesting comparison anyway.
The TV adaptation wisely doesn't try to show horses doing any of the things that Gulliver describes, although they do appear to have primitive housing (etc) anyway, which still raises the same questions. I can't honestly imagine how Swift's vision could sensibly be put on screen mind.
The TV adaptation also adds an entirely new story element in that Gulliver is driven partially mad by the events of the books and his stories are not believed. Whilst I have a little mistrust of fiddling with the source material, it does work very well to tie all the stories together and adds a necessary over-arching plot that I think a modern audience would need.
Thoughts: I hate 'Edgey' Rants
Sometimes when I write about something it's just because I find the subject interesting or fun. It's an issue of no particular importance but I like stretching my mind.
Other times it's because I think this is an important issue that needs to be got right and I'm not writing for fun but out of genuine conviction.
In neither case is it about the image I want to present to people. I'm quite aware that a lot of people find the former boring and the latter can be a minefield for offence and upset. With the latter case specifically, I'd skip it entirely if I didn't think it was important because it would probably make my life easier to not care or to not risk upsetting people.
In both cases I'm interested in uncovering truth though. I'm not arguing for the mere sake of it and I choose my positions based on what I honestly think is right,
What I sometimes notice in others is that people choose positions they think are 'edgy'.
In non-serious matters, I suppose that's not so annoying. At worst, it's someone making up some silly fluffball position on metaphysics, epistemology, spirituality or something similar and then trying to provide some clumsy justification for a position that they've likely chosen just because they think it sounds 'cool'. That can feel a bit 'intellectually offensive' but it's not really doing any real harm. Besides, at best, it's someone intelligently taking a devil's advocate position and exploring possible alternatives that they hadn't considered, which might even be a good thing.
In serious matters, it annoys me a lot more.
In serious matters, I don't think it's sufficient to choose a position based on it seeming 'cool' because it's a bit different and 'quirky'. This is especially so because 'quirky' and 'different' on serious matters can also mean deeply offensive.
One of the less aggravating examples is that I've, twice, had people make ludicrously silly arguments (in all apparent seriousness) in defence of fascism as a form of government. In both cases, by fascism they mean something alone the lines of 'benevolent dictatorship' and argue the advantages of having someone (who always happens to be a mirror copy of their own political beliefs and values) run a nation permanently and how that may be better than having 'mob rule' in the form of democracy. Of course, it's hard to get worked up about because it's too silly to take seriously.
Of course, one of those people also, on a separate occasion, tried arguing that black people were more closely related to apes. The argument was that white people have 'evolved more' due to moving out of Africa and thus are 'less closely related'. Apparently, he didn't mean to justify any kind of racist belief or prejudice, just meant to suggest that the genetic drift from the common ancestor was more in white people than black people (regardless of how much or little effect this might have on behaviour or character).
I'm guessing he thought that discovering such a controversial 'fact' that other people would refuse to agree with (and be offended at despite it's apparent 'truth) means he's more intelligent than most people. Of course, his argument rested on wild speculation as to the degree of genetic difference from the common ancestor in various ethnic groups as well as a definition of 'closely related' that seemingly is intended to offend. That means he certainly gets no points for intelligence.
But, even if he was right, is there anything admirable in saying things that other people will likely find offensive? (especially if phrased in such a crude way as to maximise offence). I certainly don't think so.
The above happened at a club but here's a case of something I saw online. A person had posted an IM conversation she'd had with a complete stranger. She turned the conversation to the morality of racial discrimination and why people thought it was bad that white people had allowed it. The stranger answered in the way people might expect. She attempted to justify the racial discrimination by noting that it is in white people's self-interest to allow and even encourage racism against ethnic minorities. The stranger asked 'what about the harm caused to ethnic minorities?' and she responded to the question as if it was a practical question of how to avoid the oppressed fighting back in case it caused harm to white people. The stranger told her that he hoped she was joking otherwise she was a horrible person and then left the conversation.
She smugly posted this to her journal with the claim that it showed that people couldn't cope with contrary viewpoints and resorted to personal attacks when having their beliefs challenged.
Of course, this too is mind-numbingly stupid and anyone other than sociopath ought to see why. He was assuming that the morality of racism was to be judged by how it affected other people's well-being, she was judging it on self-interest alone. She was apparently a philosophy student that had happened on Anne Rand's 'Objectivism' theory of ethics (basically, selfishness dressed up as morality) and decided she liked it. Besides the fact that the theory is pretty disgusting, it also means that she had to have been familiar with other theories of morality and knew exactly where the stranger was coming from and was instead deliberately courting controversy and misunderstanding.
However, rather than making her look intelligent (as she presumably thought), being too obtuse to recognise and acknowledge the value difference just make her look exceedingly dim.
Even if genuine, she choose to argue her point in such a way to court controversy and be 'edgey'. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't really believe it anyway and was just arguing it to be 'edgy' in general. I think the necessary newsflash is: 'arguing unpopular positions does not make you look cool'.
Even the more intelligent 'I'm just playing devil's advocate' would need to be played -very- sensitively here because it's not something unimportant being discussed. Racism is not something for intellectuals to discuss merely for fun, it's a real world problem that we all can either oppose or contribute to so it needs to be treated with lots of respect (and not with a complete lack of tact)
Arguing unpopular positions is sometimes necessary if you have genuine conviction. I find myself sometimes arguing uncomfortable positions about various systems of prejudice sometimes and that can go down badly because being honest and truthful can sometimes mean saying things that people don't want to hear. What I don't do is seek these situations out because I really don't want to be in the uncomfortable position of feeling obliged to argue an unpopular position.
So, when people decide to be 'cool' and 'edgy' by adopting and arguing positions about important and sensitive subjects because they're unpopular and offensive, I then find myself feeling not only intellectually offended but morally offended too.
Unfortunately, because these people have a combination of being both rather dim and seemingly feeling like they're more intelligent than everyone else, it's very hard to have any dialogue with them. Whatever you do, they're still go away with their ridiculous positions and still feeling like they're smarter than everyone else. Annoying as hell.