While I've been a bit rubbish about blogging recently (hah - try this year! At this point, I've done less blogging throughout 2015 than in the first year of this blog, which was actually only the last three months of that year) I couldn't possibly go without mention of seeing the new Star Wars movie - Episode VII: The Force Awakens - without seeming to make a lie of my geekery and long-term love of the series.
Pretty much as soon as they went on sale, my girlfriend got us tickets to see the movie at the IMAX screen at the Science Museum. It's a bit out of the way, considering we have several cinemas closer to home, but it seemed like the right thing to do: one of the greatest franchises is Science Fiction movie history returns to the (very) big screen, and the Science Museum's IMAX screen is (apparently) the only screen in the UK showing the movie in its 70mm format... What could be better?
I'm going to try to keep this spoiler-free - I'm sure there are plenty of spoilers online already (not least because my girlfriend mentioned that Reddit moderators have had the movie comprehensively spoiled while trying to remove all Episode 7 spoilers from myriad Reddit threads), so there's no need to add my own.
The Force Awakens, unlike The Phantom Menace (just as an example) is a fairly low-key movie. It's all about introducing new characters and (after a while) catching up with some of the old ones, rather than grand CGI spectacle. The roller text at the beginning sets a simple scene, rather than spewing out hyperbolic political history which could have made for a vastly more interesting story had it been part of the movie rather than being reduced to introductory roller text. The opening banter between the first two characters - one of then being the "daring pilot" Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) - serves as a quick link between this movie and Episodes 4-6 before our new villain is introduced. Other than this action taking place planetside, Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) entrance is remarkably similar to that of Darth Vader in Episode 4. We stay with this situation long enough for more introduction the characters of Finn (John Boyega) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), as well as hinting at the rivalry between Kylo Ren and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) - both reporting to 'Supreme Leader' Snoke (voiced by Andy Serkis), before skipping to Tatooine-analogue Jakku to discover Rey (Daisy Ridley), the scavenger. From then on, the story moves very swiftly as paths cross and - just the first example of Star Wars déjà vu - critical information makes its way to its intended recipients in time for the climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance.
For all its Sci-Fi trappings, there's always been a huge element of 'Swords and Sorcery'-type Fantasy to Star Wars (at least, in the good films - Episode 1 tried to smother 'the Force' in the pseudoscience of 'Midichlorians', a factor wisely abandoned in Episodes 2 and 3), and there's plenty of that in The Force Awakens. The title very subtly alludes to a particular character who, more than any other, seems to be swept up and along by events. A critical relic of the war with the Empire (seemingly thought to been a myth by some of the younger characters) turns up not in a high-tech holding facility, but in a battered wooden box in a dank, dungeon-like forgotten underground storeroom.
There are also plenty of references to the original trilogy, not least in the planet settings of the movie - from the desert planet (not-Tatooine) to the forest planet (not-Endor, and cause of a great line of dialogue from desert-dwelling Rey) to the ice planet (not-Hoth) - and some specific scenes hark back very clearly.
One of the best things about The Force Awakens is that it allows itself to be intentionally funny, without resorting to the visual slapstick or the comically exaggerated double-takes that plagued Episodes 1-3. There are a couple of moments where it goes too far (in my opinion) - Poe Dameron occasionally comes off a little too cocky and care-free, Finn's bluster in a couple of situations goes a little over the top, even considering the way his character is presented - but, for the most part, the balance is good. The same can be said of the visual spectacle - it's all there, but it's never unnecessary and never overwhelms the story to the extent of the sickly CGI visual opulence of the prequels. The first flight of the Millennium Falcon (shown briefly in the very first teaser, so I think it's safe enough to mention here without straying into spoilers) is truly a sight to behold... Though I'm none the wiser on how it actually flies given the way it moves in-atmosphere.
But there are downsides. Practical effects were used wherever possible, for the spacecraft, the creatures and the droids (BB-8 is a triumph of practical special effects - as believable as an autonomous droid as R2-D2 and C-3PO, both of whom had people inside them) so, wherever CGI comes into play for the finer details - be it a crumbling building, a particularly detailed alien face, or a towering communications hologram - it still seems incredibly false. Perhaps not to the extent it did in Episodes 1-3, but those kinds of effects have been done better. There's also a great long sequence, shortly after the re-introduction of Han Solo and Chewbacca, which very nearly strays into Prequel Slapstick territory with its CGI monsters. My main CGI gripe would be the wasted performances of a couple of actors, in particular Lupita Nyong'o. While I'm sure they captured the movement of her face to animate Maz Kanata, the end result still looks eerily like a pumpkin wearing goggles... And there seemed to be no point to her having that sort of appearance (except as a character possibly analogous to a certain diminutive Jedi Master). Granted, many actors lend their voices to all kinds of animated characters in all kinds of movies and TV shows, but I didn't see any obvious reason why Maz Kanata had to be CGI rather than Lupita Nyong'o in costume and makeup, and the end result of the latter would surely have looked more convincing.
Also, with so many new characters to introduce, none really took centre stage... that may have been intentional, with all the relationships and rivalries to be explored more fully in the next couple of films, but it left me wanting more from this movie. So many questions are raised about each character's identity, I felt that they could have split The Force Awakens into two movies and done both the enigmatic characters and the story better justice. It's very light on plot - possibly not even as much plot as Episode 4, which The Force Awakens seems to recycle on a lot of points - doing little more than establishing that 'First Order=BAD, Resistance=GOOD', with a few hints at the underlying politics of this region of space at this point in time after the fall of the Empire.
TL;DR: The Force Awakens is a worthy follow-up to the Star Wars I grew up with. I was utterly awestruck and, for the first time in ages, keen to see a film a second time, just so I can digest it properly (and also, hopefully, be somewhat less overwhelmed by the IMAX presentation - we arrived at the screen with about five minutes to go before the movie started, and had to sit right near the front as, bizarrely, it was free-seating throughout). I'm excited for the next installment but, with so many characters still shrouded in mystery after their screen time in The Force Awakens, it's difficult to know where it will go from here.
Sunday 20 December 2015
Monday 14 December 2015
Almost The Old-Style Bondage
By which I mean the new Bond movie, Spectre, which I finally went to see over the weekend with my best mate. He'd already seen it, but is usually willing to indulge me when I'm late to the game with movies. There honestly can't have been more than a dozen people in the IMAX theatre (as one of the other punters pithily observed "I guess this has been out for a while...") but that at least meant that the only interruptions to my enjoyment of the movie were the - not excessively frequent - coughing fits I've been experiencing lately.
When the movie first came out, I heard some mixed reviews. I work with a hardcore Bond-nut who went to see it on its opening night, and he reckoned it was the best Bond movie ever (I wonder now if his opinion has changed at all in retrospect). I also work with a guy who's ambivalent toward Bond movies, who asked me if Bond ever has a plan when he starts his 'investigations', because it seemed to him that the character was winging it all the way.
I'm more in the latter camp but, having seen all the others (yes, even the George Lazenby one - weirdly, that's actually one of my favourites), I know that Bond does tend to wing it once he's started, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
Spectre has also been described as "a 'Best of Bond' compilation", which seems a little unfair given that everyone knows what to expect from a Bond movie these days, and it must be getting difficult to be truly original within the constraints of the genre of spy movies and, more specifically, Bond movies.
The opening scene, which plays out as one long shot, following Bond through a Day of the Dead celebration, was excellent. It's a trick you rarely see in movies due to the difficulty in getting everything to work in the one take, and one I'm particularly fond of. After that, it dropped into generic Bond territory (action, laughs, more action) quite quickly and then topped off the intro with that terrible song that's just too insipid for a series that has had songs sung by Shirley Bassey. The title sequence is certainly full of tentacles, representing Spectre and it's seven-legged Octopus insignia, but it's basically typical of the worst kind of 'tits not quite out for the lads' title sequence I'd hoped they'd left behind when I sat down to watch Casino Royale.
After that, there is quite a lot of stuff that has happened in older Bond movies, just starting with his suspension from active duty and the inevitable carrying on anyway (License to Kill). There's an awful lot of travel, and an awful lot of wasted actors (Monica Bellucci is in it for about five minutes, then never even referred to again, Dave Bautista's henchman role - very much in the style of Oddjob and Jaws, where he has a unique way of killing folks - is inexplicably silent until he's finally disposed of, when he utters a single word - my mate and I couldn't decide whether he said "shit" or "cheat", but that doesn't really matter... The most baffling part is his introduction, where he's supposedly taking over a seat at the Spectre table from a lieutenant of sorts, when he's clearly just a henchman.
There's a sense that the writers have been following current affairs, to a degree, but also a sense that they've nicked ideas from other movies - Captain America: The Winter Soldier sprang to mind, with its focus on intelligence paranoia. A couple of points really ruined it for me. First and foremost, it's a continuation of what I liked least about Skyfall - that the filmmakers, after fifty years of Bond movies, saw fit to force a backstory onto the character - and it takes the idea much too far, in my opinion. Giving Bond family is one thing, but the guiding force behind Spectre's central villain turns out to little more than an adolescent grudge. It also goes back on the idea that Bond was so traumatised by the loss of Vesper Lind on his first mission that he lost all interest in women beyond using them as tools for his purposes. Somehow, within moments of meeting the daughter of one of his former enemies, he's so taken with her that he later wants to spare her the truth of her father's death. Not only that, but we're expected to believe that she's so taken with him, she actually doesn't mind.
On the upside, while the end reminded me somewhat of the last few minutes of OHMSS (minus a certain critical event... so far as we saw...) that I can't believe they won't bring Daniel Craig back for at least one more... but, if they don't, it's easy enough to consider Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre as a self-contained mini-series, quite apart from the main Bond franchise, if only because they cover his development from rough and ready new recruit to seasoned - and refined - master spy... That said, Craig's Bond has retired twice now (before the beginning of Skyfall and, presumably, at the end of Spectre), so I'm not sure where they can go from there.
...But certainly having only just introduced one of the Bond franchise's biggest recurring villains, they can't really close it off entirely.
When the movie first came out, I heard some mixed reviews. I work with a hardcore Bond-nut who went to see it on its opening night, and he reckoned it was the best Bond movie ever (I wonder now if his opinion has changed at all in retrospect). I also work with a guy who's ambivalent toward Bond movies, who asked me if Bond ever has a plan when he starts his 'investigations', because it seemed to him that the character was winging it all the way.
I'm more in the latter camp but, having seen all the others (yes, even the George Lazenby one - weirdly, that's actually one of my favourites), I know that Bond does tend to wing it once he's started, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
Spectre has also been described as "a 'Best of Bond' compilation", which seems a little unfair given that everyone knows what to expect from a Bond movie these days, and it must be getting difficult to be truly original within the constraints of the genre of spy movies and, more specifically, Bond movies.
The opening scene, which plays out as one long shot, following Bond through a Day of the Dead celebration, was excellent. It's a trick you rarely see in movies due to the difficulty in getting everything to work in the one take, and one I'm particularly fond of. After that, it dropped into generic Bond territory (action, laughs, more action) quite quickly and then topped off the intro with that terrible song that's just too insipid for a series that has had songs sung by Shirley Bassey. The title sequence is certainly full of tentacles, representing Spectre and it's seven-legged Octopus insignia, but it's basically typical of the worst kind of 'tits not quite out for the lads' title sequence I'd hoped they'd left behind when I sat down to watch Casino Royale.
After that, there is quite a lot of stuff that has happened in older Bond movies, just starting with his suspension from active duty and the inevitable carrying on anyway (License to Kill). There's an awful lot of travel, and an awful lot of wasted actors (Monica Bellucci is in it for about five minutes, then never even referred to again, Dave Bautista's henchman role - very much in the style of Oddjob and Jaws, where he has a unique way of killing folks - is inexplicably silent until he's finally disposed of, when he utters a single word - my mate and I couldn't decide whether he said "shit" or "cheat", but that doesn't really matter... The most baffling part is his introduction, where he's supposedly taking over a seat at the Spectre table from a lieutenant of sorts, when he's clearly just a henchman.
There's a sense that the writers have been following current affairs, to a degree, but also a sense that they've nicked ideas from other movies - Captain America: The Winter Soldier sprang to mind, with its focus on intelligence paranoia. A couple of points really ruined it for me. First and foremost, it's a continuation of what I liked least about Skyfall - that the filmmakers, after fifty years of Bond movies, saw fit to force a backstory onto the character - and it takes the idea much too far, in my opinion. Giving Bond family is one thing, but the guiding force behind Spectre's central villain turns out to little more than an adolescent grudge. It also goes back on the idea that Bond was so traumatised by the loss of Vesper Lind on his first mission that he lost all interest in women beyond using them as tools for his purposes. Somehow, within moments of meeting the daughter of one of his former enemies, he's so taken with her that he later wants to spare her the truth of her father's death. Not only that, but we're expected to believe that she's so taken with him, she actually doesn't mind.
On the upside, while the end reminded me somewhat of the last few minutes of OHMSS (minus a certain critical event... so far as we saw...) that I can't believe they won't bring Daniel Craig back for at least one more... but, if they don't, it's easy enough to consider Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre as a self-contained mini-series, quite apart from the main Bond franchise, if only because they cover his development from rough and ready new recruit to seasoned - and refined - master spy... That said, Craig's Bond has retired twice now (before the beginning of Skyfall and, presumably, at the end of Spectre), so I'm not sure where they can go from there.
...But certainly having only just introduced one of the Bond franchise's biggest recurring villains, they can't really close it off entirely.
Sunday 13 December 2015
A Hat Trick of Weird Dreams
My girlfriend tells me that she has dreams where she's cheating on me - in a variety of ways, and with a variety of people - on a semi-regular basis. Some she has described in detail, others she waves away as another symptom of her pervasive anxiety. It's quite strange from an outsider's point of view, and particularly because the closest I ever had to something similar was a dream (which I thought I'd written about here, but couldn't find quickly) in which it transpired that my girlfriend was secretly married to Simon Pegg. More recently, however, I had one where I was on my way to some kind of event - possibly a lecture - with one of my colleagues (marking the first time in a long while that I've had a dream involving anyone I've worked with). It was dark evening and, for the most part, we seemed to be walking through parkland - that is, there was lots of grass either side of a tarmac path, and streetlights regularly spaced along the path. We were walking along and chatting about work and geeky things, when we realised we could cut through some kind of shopping centre as a quicker route to our destination. The most direct route turned out to be through a shop with lots of glass cabinets - possibly one of those weird 'gift shop' things that has everything from dragon/fairy statues to model cars to novelty clocks to candles - run by a pair of young women. My colleague - actually engaged to be married - got chatting to one of the two while I browsed the shop on the way toward the exit. As he caught up, the woman he'd been talking to kissed him. I wondered out loud what his fiancée would make of that, and why I hadn't had the same treatment. There was no response to the first question (other than my colleague looking extremely pleased with himself), but she said I didn't get a kiss for a reason... I can't remember the exact phrasing, but it was along the lines of either "because you wouldn't have appreciated it" (and make of that what you will) or just that she "didn't think it would have gone down as well" with me as it did with my colleague. We made our exit and headed off down into what seemed to be a kind of underpass in the park on the other side of the shop... but I woke up before we reached our destination.
There are actually times, in real life, that I think I'm a terrible friend for my best mate - it used to be that we'd regularly go to the cinema (obviously depending on there being something worth seeing) or to conventions or other events. This year, due to my finances being quite precarious, generally feeling quite tired, and fairly often doing other things with my girlfriend, I haven't spent quite as much time with him as I used to, and I'm occasionally a bit worried by this. Most of my weekends seem to rocket by, either working on one of my other blogs, idly surfing the internet or just watching television, and it's not as if my girlfriend would mind if I went out... So there's a guilt element building up as well. That said, it's only been in the last week that I've had a dream where all this came to a head. I don't remember the details of the second dream at all, but I remember meeting up with this friend of mine and being all chummy as usual, but he was almost instantly hostile, pointing out in great detail how bad a friend I'd been lately - cancelling things, not being available for things, generally being a dick, those kinds of things - in such a vehement tone that it pretty much shocked me awake.
Rounding off this trio of strange vignettes was a little horror story involving possibly giant mutant/ghostly rats in a forest surrounding a cross between my old high school and Hogwarts. This dream appeared to come with a prequel or intro of some kind, where two young children (one evidently me) were wandering through a spooky forest at night, either with our father or looking for him. There was a sunken stream through the forest, small enough that we could jump from bank to bank, and we carried on, getting deeper and deeper into the forest until we came upon what must have been a nest of the creatures, as they started flooding out toward us. We ran, got out of the forest, and then - in true movie style - it cut to a sort of '30-ish years later' thing were I was attending a high school reunion, where the school buildings were a cross between those I remember of my actual school, those school buildings I've seen in TV shows and movies, and some kind of huge, sprawling, gothic castle. At one point, I was walking through the Science department, possibly hoping to meet some of my old teachers. At the end of the main corridor, the staircase I remember from my own high school lead down to a grand entrance hall, made up of ornately carved stone and lit by candles. A spiral staircase from there lead outside, to the non-existent foundations of the building - it appeared to be suspended only by the spiral staircase at this end, while the main part of the building was on a nearby area of raised ground. While it was sunny out, I noticed the forest nearby, and remembered the dark and spooky night from my youth, and headed back toward the entrance to the forest not quite sure how I hadn't previously realised how close the two places were... but woke up before reaching the treeline.
There are actually times, in real life, that I think I'm a terrible friend for my best mate - it used to be that we'd regularly go to the cinema (obviously depending on there being something worth seeing) or to conventions or other events. This year, due to my finances being quite precarious, generally feeling quite tired, and fairly often doing other things with my girlfriend, I haven't spent quite as much time with him as I used to, and I'm occasionally a bit worried by this. Most of my weekends seem to rocket by, either working on one of my other blogs, idly surfing the internet or just watching television, and it's not as if my girlfriend would mind if I went out... So there's a guilt element building up as well. That said, it's only been in the last week that I've had a dream where all this came to a head. I don't remember the details of the second dream at all, but I remember meeting up with this friend of mine and being all chummy as usual, but he was almost instantly hostile, pointing out in great detail how bad a friend I'd been lately - cancelling things, not being available for things, generally being a dick, those kinds of things - in such a vehement tone that it pretty much shocked me awake.
Rounding off this trio of strange vignettes was a little horror story involving possibly giant mutant/ghostly rats in a forest surrounding a cross between my old high school and Hogwarts. This dream appeared to come with a prequel or intro of some kind, where two young children (one evidently me) were wandering through a spooky forest at night, either with our father or looking for him. There was a sunken stream through the forest, small enough that we could jump from bank to bank, and we carried on, getting deeper and deeper into the forest until we came upon what must have been a nest of the creatures, as they started flooding out toward us. We ran, got out of the forest, and then - in true movie style - it cut to a sort of '30-ish years later' thing were I was attending a high school reunion, where the school buildings were a cross between those I remember of my actual school, those school buildings I've seen in TV shows and movies, and some kind of huge, sprawling, gothic castle. At one point, I was walking through the Science department, possibly hoping to meet some of my old teachers. At the end of the main corridor, the staircase I remember from my own high school lead down to a grand entrance hall, made up of ornately carved stone and lit by candles. A spiral staircase from there lead outside, to the non-existent foundations of the building - it appeared to be suspended only by the spiral staircase at this end, while the main part of the building was on a nearby area of raised ground. While it was sunny out, I noticed the forest nearby, and remembered the dark and spooky night from my youth, and headed back toward the entrance to the forest not quite sure how I hadn't previously realised how close the two places were... but woke up before reaching the treeline.
Thursday 26 November 2015
On "Manflu"
One thing that has bothered me a great deal, for many years, is the average bloke's tendency to describe the slightest of sniffles as 'flu. I once had a colleague who repeatedly claimed to have "that 'flu-y cold-y thing that's going round", whether or not there was anything 'going round' at the time, and pretending to make light of it while simultaneously making a virtue of the fact that he'd struggled to come into work at all while so terribly unwell. The whole thing was a cynical and, frankly, predatory performance designed to garner sympathy from those female members of staff who could be relied upon to coo and fuss at the slightest hint of distress, and the most offensive thing about it was that it actually worked.
This morning, just as I sat down on my train into work, I received a text message from a colleague, telling me he wasn't going to come in because he'd woken up feeling "fluey", when he'd appeared perfectly healthy the day before. Also not helping the 'flu side of the story ring true was the fact that it was a well-composed and comparatively long text message.
Whenever I hear guys talking about have 'flu, I start getting a little snappy. In my four decades of life, I have had 'flu maybe four times (I've probably written about it here), and each time I was in no fit state to handle any kind of technology more advanced than a duvet. The first couple of times I was under my parents' roof, and I've had it twice since moving into my own home. I consider myself quite unlucky to have had it that often considering how rare it actually is, if one can see past the NHS scaremongering that is the 'flu jab which gets publicised around this time almost every year. 'Flu is no joke, but it can cause some pretty funny hallucinations while it's busy debilitating you utterly. It also has the (admittedly rare) potential to be fatal if it gets bad enough that you can't take care of yourself - I seem to remember hearing some years ago about one of my former teachers, living alone, and found near death with 'flu-related issues (dehydration amongst them) after being out of contact with friends for an unusual length of time. She pulled through because a concerned friend went to visit her, and happened to have keys to her home.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the proponents of "Manflu", even if they claim to be playing it up 'for a laugh'. I have no idea why so many guys claim to have 'flu when their ability to move around and string coherent sentences together proves otherwise. Is it somehow offensive to their macho pride that they have a cold? Do they believe themselves so healthy that it must surely be 'flu that their immune system is so valiantly fighting off that they're muddling along with a blocked nose?
Seriously, if you're unwell, that's fine... But call it what it is. Taking time off work is probably a very good idea, not least because you won't end up making your co-workers ill later on. A blocked and/or runny nose, sticky/sore throat and a headache are symptoms of that most virulent of plagues known as 'the common cold'. It's annoying, but it's not really debilitating, is it? See a doctor if you must but, unless it turns into an ear infection (which happened to me just about every time a few years ago) or a chest infection, it's very likely you'll be told simply to take some paracetamol, drink lots of water, and get plenty of rest.
This morning, just as I sat down on my train into work, I received a text message from a colleague, telling me he wasn't going to come in because he'd woken up feeling "fluey", when he'd appeared perfectly healthy the day before. Also not helping the 'flu side of the story ring true was the fact that it was a well-composed and comparatively long text message.
Whenever I hear guys talking about have 'flu, I start getting a little snappy. In my four decades of life, I have had 'flu maybe four times (I've probably written about it here), and each time I was in no fit state to handle any kind of technology more advanced than a duvet. The first couple of times I was under my parents' roof, and I've had it twice since moving into my own home. I consider myself quite unlucky to have had it that often considering how rare it actually is, if one can see past the NHS scaremongering that is the 'flu jab which gets publicised around this time almost every year. 'Flu is no joke, but it can cause some pretty funny hallucinations while it's busy debilitating you utterly. It also has the (admittedly rare) potential to be fatal if it gets bad enough that you can't take care of yourself - I seem to remember hearing some years ago about one of my former teachers, living alone, and found near death with 'flu-related issues (dehydration amongst them) after being out of contact with friends for an unusual length of time. She pulled through because a concerned friend went to visit her, and happened to have keys to her home.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the proponents of "Manflu", even if they claim to be playing it up 'for a laugh'. I have no idea why so many guys claim to have 'flu when their ability to move around and string coherent sentences together proves otherwise. Is it somehow offensive to their macho pride that they have a cold? Do they believe themselves so healthy that it must surely be 'flu that their immune system is so valiantly fighting off that they're muddling along with a blocked nose?
Seriously, if you're unwell, that's fine... But call it what it is. Taking time off work is probably a very good idea, not least because you won't end up making your co-workers ill later on. A blocked and/or runny nose, sticky/sore throat and a headache are symptoms of that most virulent of plagues known as 'the common cold'. It's annoying, but it's not really debilitating, is it? See a doctor if you must but, unless it turns into an ear infection (which happened to me just about every time a few years ago) or a chest infection, it's very likely you'll be told simply to take some paracetamol, drink lots of water, and get plenty of rest.
Saturday 14 November 2015
Well, That Escalated Quickly
One thing I do try to do, as often as possible, with this blog is document my weird dreams and I've had a couple this week which would be outright disturbing on their own. Together, there's a sense of escalation, despite the fact that the first cast me as the 'victim', while I was the 'villain' in the second.
Since I've left it a few days before getting round to writing about the first, I don't remember much beyond the impression the dream left with me. Essentially, it boiled down to being kidnapped by a trio of eastern Europeans in a what seemed to be a small car. I was with a former colleague - someone I intensely disliked, so I've no idea why they'd have kidnapped the both of us - and, at one point, we seemed to come to a silent agreement to attempt an escape. The driver - someone else I believe I recognised, but don't remember who it was - turned round long enough to impress upon us what a painful mistake it would be as the two sitting in the back of the car with us (may have been a taxi... or some kind of many-seater people mover that simply felt claustrophobic under the circumstances) were rather more alert and dangerous than they might have appeared... and that they would reach their guns before we did.
We resigned ourselves to whatever fate awaited us, and I started thinking that there was lots of stuff in my cellphone that would be of great use to anyone attempting identity theft, and wondered if I'd be able to get it out of my pocket to delete the offending notes before they noticed. It did dimly occur to me that, if I could do that, I might be able to phone or text for help... but I woke up around that point.
Thursday night's dream is somewhat fresher in my memory, though the details are no less confused, to be honest. It seemed to begin with me playing a first-person shooter game, looking about the same quality as GoldenEye on the N64 (which is to say, a bit rubbish by today's standards) and spending quite some time laughing at the game's expense. At some point, though, this low-res, low-poly game blended into reality... or I stopped playing and moved elsewhere in the building I was in - the problem was I couldn't really be sure in the dream, partly because of the extreme nature of what I did next...
...For some reason, my girlfriend's family (including the dog, but it wasn't their actual dog as far as I can remember) had gathered together in a large-ish, glassed-off area in one room. It looked almost like a large shower cabinet as the glass didn't reach the floor or ceiling, so perhaps they were just checking out various parts of a large hotel apartment, and decided to see if they could all fit into the shower..? On a whim, I decided to chuck a grenade in with them.
I have no idea where the grenade game from, other than the game...
The next bit I remember was walking down a road heading back towards the scene of the crime, imagining what state the police and forensics teams would have found the room in - glass and human giblets littering the floor, part of a wall blown out, people in clean suits milling around taking samples of DNA, that kind of thing. I distinctly remember thinking I could get away unpunished... and that either my girlfriend wouldn't mind that I'd killed her family (and dog), or that I could at least get her to keep quiet about it. Weirdly, that's when reality started to trickle into the dream, and I realised there was no way I'd ever get away with it, one way or another, and that my girlfriend would never approve... So I decided to turn myself in to the police just before I woke up.
I wonder if that last part was a reaction to my utter disdain for that plot device most frequently used it detective TV shows, where the killer says "I had no choice but to kill that person" (sometimes almost being presented as a sympathetic character, for example, killing someone to protect a friend/lover)... Because, let's face it, whatever the situation, ending someone's life - whether one's own or someone else's - is not the only choice. Perhaps it's the intention to portray all killers as so divorced from reality that they can't see an alternative but, far too often, these characters are portrayed as everyday people up until they're revealed as the killer.
But what's worse than that, in those same TV shows where the killer committed murder (occasionally several) to 'protect' another person they supposedly care about, that person invariable shows disgust - as opposed to dismay - that this person they've supposedly known for ages would behave that way... and I don't believe for a moment that such a dramatic act could be utterly unprecedented.
Now I'm on this televisual digression, I'll mention that I've just started watching Mr. Robot... and have been very impressed so far, both with the story (even if it is a little derivative) and its presentation. The odd camera angles, the use of focus to represent the main character's state of mind and attention make it very interesting to watch without even paying attention to the story. The protagonist's warped morality and the internal dialogue - directed, amusingly, at an imaginary person who is the viewer - are compelling. I like the way his best friend and his shrink can both tell when his attention has drifted (presented briefly as a flashback or a more honest version of the conversation he's having) and snap him back to reality. The best friend also impressed me by striving to avoid being a damsel in distress, insisting that the protagonist let her succeed or fail on her own abilities, rather than step in to support her in the workplace.
Since I've left it a few days before getting round to writing about the first, I don't remember much beyond the impression the dream left with me. Essentially, it boiled down to being kidnapped by a trio of eastern Europeans in a what seemed to be a small car. I was with a former colleague - someone I intensely disliked, so I've no idea why they'd have kidnapped the both of us - and, at one point, we seemed to come to a silent agreement to attempt an escape. The driver - someone else I believe I recognised, but don't remember who it was - turned round long enough to impress upon us what a painful mistake it would be as the two sitting in the back of the car with us (may have been a taxi... or some kind of many-seater people mover that simply felt claustrophobic under the circumstances) were rather more alert and dangerous than they might have appeared... and that they would reach their guns before we did.
We resigned ourselves to whatever fate awaited us, and I started thinking that there was lots of stuff in my cellphone that would be of great use to anyone attempting identity theft, and wondered if I'd be able to get it out of my pocket to delete the offending notes before they noticed. It did dimly occur to me that, if I could do that, I might be able to phone or text for help... but I woke up around that point.
Thursday night's dream is somewhat fresher in my memory, though the details are no less confused, to be honest. It seemed to begin with me playing a first-person shooter game, looking about the same quality as GoldenEye on the N64 (which is to say, a bit rubbish by today's standards) and spending quite some time laughing at the game's expense. At some point, though, this low-res, low-poly game blended into reality... or I stopped playing and moved elsewhere in the building I was in - the problem was I couldn't really be sure in the dream, partly because of the extreme nature of what I did next...
...For some reason, my girlfriend's family (including the dog, but it wasn't their actual dog as far as I can remember) had gathered together in a large-ish, glassed-off area in one room. It looked almost like a large shower cabinet as the glass didn't reach the floor or ceiling, so perhaps they were just checking out various parts of a large hotel apartment, and decided to see if they could all fit into the shower..? On a whim, I decided to chuck a grenade in with them.
I have no idea where the grenade game from, other than the game...
The next bit I remember was walking down a road heading back towards the scene of the crime, imagining what state the police and forensics teams would have found the room in - glass and human giblets littering the floor, part of a wall blown out, people in clean suits milling around taking samples of DNA, that kind of thing. I distinctly remember thinking I could get away unpunished... and that either my girlfriend wouldn't mind that I'd killed her family (and dog), or that I could at least get her to keep quiet about it. Weirdly, that's when reality started to trickle into the dream, and I realised there was no way I'd ever get away with it, one way or another, and that my girlfriend would never approve... So I decided to turn myself in to the police just before I woke up.
I wonder if that last part was a reaction to my utter disdain for that plot device most frequently used it detective TV shows, where the killer says "I had no choice but to kill that person" (sometimes almost being presented as a sympathetic character, for example, killing someone to protect a friend/lover)... Because, let's face it, whatever the situation, ending someone's life - whether one's own or someone else's - is not the only choice. Perhaps it's the intention to portray all killers as so divorced from reality that they can't see an alternative but, far too often, these characters are portrayed as everyday people up until they're revealed as the killer.
But what's worse than that, in those same TV shows where the killer committed murder (occasionally several) to 'protect' another person they supposedly care about, that person invariable shows disgust - as opposed to dismay - that this person they've supposedly known for ages would behave that way... and I don't believe for a moment that such a dramatic act could be utterly unprecedented.
Now I'm on this televisual digression, I'll mention that I've just started watching Mr. Robot... and have been very impressed so far, both with the story (even if it is a little derivative) and its presentation. The odd camera angles, the use of focus to represent the main character's state of mind and attention make it very interesting to watch without even paying attention to the story. The protagonist's warped morality and the internal dialogue - directed, amusingly, at an imaginary person who is the viewer - are compelling. I like the way his best friend and his shrink can both tell when his attention has drifted (presented briefly as a flashback or a more honest version of the conversation he's having) and snap him back to reality. The best friend also impressed me by striving to avoid being a damsel in distress, insisting that the protagonist let her succeed or fail on her own abilities, rather than step in to support her in the workplace.
Sunday 1 November 2015
The Fiction Dichotomy
It's been quite a while since I wrote anything significant about the books I was reading... that was probably the Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, which took up far too many posts due to an excess of enthusiasm for a genre I'd never really tried reading before.
With Science Fiction, I'm on more familiar ground... Or so I thought, until I encountered Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction. It starts out all nice and properly Sci-Fi, with a maverick space trader discovering an important artifact of a long-dead alien race, and with some families arriving on a reasonably human-compatible world having been shipped there to turn it into a halfway decent colony, only for things to go tits-up when a weird satanist convict happens upon some weird energy-virus-thing that gives him terrible powers. The writing throughout is compelling, and actually became quite unnerving as the antagonist tortured people to open them up for possession, and the internal electronic systems of various soldiers started to malfunction under this malign influence...
...but all that forced a disconnect from the story, when I found myself wondering "why is there Supernatural Horror in this Sci-Fi story?"
Because this isn't possession by some weird alien energy virus, as it's first thought... it's possession by the eternal souls of long-dead humans, given inexplicable powers. And it gets weirder than that.
I'm currently about three quarters through the second book in what's called The Night's Dawn Trilogy, and one of the primary antagonists by this point is Al Capone, the Prohibition era American gangster, assisted by the futuristic equivalent of Lady Gaga. It's very confusing to have this level of batshit insanity in a Science Fiction story, even one which seems to be trying to explore some measure of theology by focusing on the nature of the afterlife. Bad enough when the souls of real people from real history are described as returning from some kind of purgatory from which they have been enviously observing life for millennia... but now the first major antagonist has discovered the existence of ghosts as well.
Yet, while all this weirdness is making me question why I'm continuing to read such a bizarre mixture of genres, the quality of writing and characterisation is keeping me utterly hooked. I want to know what happens next, even though I genuinely dislike the story.
It also helps that some elements - such as the human augmentations, the 'affinity' links between people and bio-mechanical machines, not least the Voidhawks and Blackhawks - are very interesting and well-implemented, and the 'living spacecraft' idea has intrigued me since Farscape, if not the likes of Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who... novels. It's also unusual for a Science Fiction novel to acknowledge how ridiculously difficult it would be for fleets of spacecraft to effect a planetary invasion from another solar system except where the planet is wholly undefended, and that a space battle would tend to last a number of minutes if planned and executed in any sensible way, rather than the way movies tend to do it. There are also several stories going on at once, as one would expect from a novel that spans several galaxies, with the Possessed progressing their grand agenda, as well as a few fighting against it or, at least, progressing their own personal agendas instead, as the living come to terms with the terrible concept of the afterlife as described by the Possessed and struggle to find a way to contain them and, eventually, fight back against them... With one of the alien races hinting that fighting may not be the answer at all.
The thing about reading for oneself, rather than watching a TV show or a movie, is that the experience becomes less vicarious because it's playing out directly in your head rather than in front of your eyes... This series, so far, has been hitting all the right notes, even with the more outlandish characters. Their behaviour is believable, given their circumstances (which is rarely true of television these days, let alone movies!), and the galaxy-spanning implications of all areas and types of conflict involved are quite palpable.
So I guess it's bravo, Mr Hamilton...
With Science Fiction, I'm on more familiar ground... Or so I thought, until I encountered Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction. It starts out all nice and properly Sci-Fi, with a maverick space trader discovering an important artifact of a long-dead alien race, and with some families arriving on a reasonably human-compatible world having been shipped there to turn it into a halfway decent colony, only for things to go tits-up when a weird satanist convict happens upon some weird energy-virus-thing that gives him terrible powers. The writing throughout is compelling, and actually became quite unnerving as the antagonist tortured people to open them up for possession, and the internal electronic systems of various soldiers started to malfunction under this malign influence...
...but all that forced a disconnect from the story, when I found myself wondering "why is there Supernatural Horror in this Sci-Fi story?"
Because this isn't possession by some weird alien energy virus, as it's first thought... it's possession by the eternal souls of long-dead humans, given inexplicable powers. And it gets weirder than that.
I'm currently about three quarters through the second book in what's called The Night's Dawn Trilogy, and one of the primary antagonists by this point is Al Capone, the Prohibition era American gangster, assisted by the futuristic equivalent of Lady Gaga. It's very confusing to have this level of batshit insanity in a Science Fiction story, even one which seems to be trying to explore some measure of theology by focusing on the nature of the afterlife. Bad enough when the souls of real people from real history are described as returning from some kind of purgatory from which they have been enviously observing life for millennia... but now the first major antagonist has discovered the existence of ghosts as well.
Yet, while all this weirdness is making me question why I'm continuing to read such a bizarre mixture of genres, the quality of writing and characterisation is keeping me utterly hooked. I want to know what happens next, even though I genuinely dislike the story.
It also helps that some elements - such as the human augmentations, the 'affinity' links between people and bio-mechanical machines, not least the Voidhawks and Blackhawks - are very interesting and well-implemented, and the 'living spacecraft' idea has intrigued me since Farscape, if not the likes of Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who... novels. It's also unusual for a Science Fiction novel to acknowledge how ridiculously difficult it would be for fleets of spacecraft to effect a planetary invasion from another solar system except where the planet is wholly undefended, and that a space battle would tend to last a number of minutes if planned and executed in any sensible way, rather than the way movies tend to do it. There are also several stories going on at once, as one would expect from a novel that spans several galaxies, with the Possessed progressing their grand agenda, as well as a few fighting against it or, at least, progressing their own personal agendas instead, as the living come to terms with the terrible concept of the afterlife as described by the Possessed and struggle to find a way to contain them and, eventually, fight back against them... With one of the alien races hinting that fighting may not be the answer at all.
The thing about reading for oneself, rather than watching a TV show or a movie, is that the experience becomes less vicarious because it's playing out directly in your head rather than in front of your eyes... This series, so far, has been hitting all the right notes, even with the more outlandish characters. Their behaviour is believable, given their circumstances (which is rarely true of television these days, let alone movies!), and the galaxy-spanning implications of all areas and types of conflict involved are quite palpable.
So I guess it's bravo, Mr Hamilton...
Wednesday 21 October 2015
Coincidental Anniversary is Coincidental
Well, good grief... It's been over three months since I last posted anything on here - clearly my life has become ever so hectic, or something - but I could hardly miss out on posting something today, as it's this blog's ninth birthday!
It's also, by sheerest coincidence, Back to the Future Day - the 'future' date that 'Doc' Emmett Brown brought young Marty McFly to in an effort to prevent a disaster involving his son in a film released in 1989 (or 1985, as it happened right at the end of the first film, technically). Cue all kinds of internet wackiness, and police forces all over the world tweeting warnings about travelling at 88mph, or hoverboard usage, or something to do with DeLorean cars...
...Even our histrionic Prime Minister got in on the act, with a feeble attempt at a joke about his counterpart in the Opposition going back to 1985 where his policies supposedly originate. Nice one, Dave: try to engage with 'geek culture' and show what a twat you are.
But I digress.
Honestly, lots has been happening over the last few months. So much, I can't possibly hope to mention most of it here because I'd like to get this done and go to bed, thank you very much. It is somewhat regretful that I haven't at least documented some of my telly viewings because, since my girlfriend moved in last year, we've had Netflix and Amazon Prime keeping us amused whenever regular television lets us down. Which is most nights.
After becoming addicted to Bridezillas while visiting her best friend in LA last year, my girlfriend and I have been... if not actually pleased or happy, then at least gratified to see it turn up in ITVbe's schedule recently, and one of my colleagues introduced me the the festival of schadenfreude that is Channel 4's First Dates. Then there's the recent return of Doctor Who, of course. Meanwhile, on Netflix, we regularly watch Fringe, amongst other things, and the likes of Castle and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Amazon.
I've even been somewhat successful in getting my girlfriend to give a damn about TransFormers through Beast Wars and TransFormers Prime on DVD, and her interest was piqued by Weird Al Yankovic's voicework on TransFormers Animated.
Speaking of the inimitable Mr Yankovic, we attended his recent concert at the Hammersmith Apollo (I make no apologies for using its old name, since Hammersmith station has two signs directing people to the Apollo, both of which feature different names, neither of them the current one!) followed within a week by the Barenaked Ladies performance at the club inside the O2 dome.
But before all of that, we had a week(ish) in Chicago, where we did lots of cool stuff, saw lots of cool things, ate lots of amazing food (well, not so much me, as I had food poisoning for the first half of the holiday) and generally had a grand old time on our first 'flying solo' holiday together - staying in a hotel rather than with friends or family, and finding our own way everywhere via public transport. Which was fantastic, I must say - very similar to London, with their Ventra cards and halfway decent buses and trains. Since my first 'proper' international holiday about 20 years ago, I've visited quite a few bits of the States - places like New York, Washington, New Orleans, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles (a couple of times) and Florida - but nowhere so far has felt quite as familiar and comfortable as Chicago. I've described New York in the past as being "like London on a bad day, populated by 9 million of the world's most impatient people", but Chicago was more like London on a good day, and populated by some surprisingly friendly and open people. Not least, the day we arrived, having got confused over how to get to the hotel (the bus we thought we were taking only runs during the week, and we arrived on Saturday), a lady on the bus we ended up on, who interrupted her phone call just to ask if we knew where we were going, where we'd need to get off, etc. and then offered advice on some of the sights to see.
So, basically, it's a case of having way too much to write about, and not enough time to write it in.
Weirdly, though, I have decided to start another blog on another subject... It shouldn't require much input from me as it's on a very specific subject. At least, that's what I'm telling myself...
In other news, work has been pretty crazy in all kinds of ways I probably shouldn't write about (yet). It's just getting to the almost slack period in the monthly cycle before it all goes nuts for Christmas and the New Year... but it should all be OK. And who knows what the New Year will bring? I have a few ideas, at least...
I'll try to get back to this blog before then. Honest.
It's also, by sheerest coincidence, Back to the Future Day - the 'future' date that 'Doc' Emmett Brown brought young Marty McFly to in an effort to prevent a disaster involving his son in a film released in 1989 (or 1985, as it happened right at the end of the first film, technically). Cue all kinds of internet wackiness, and police forces all over the world tweeting warnings about travelling at 88mph, or hoverboard usage, or something to do with DeLorean cars...
...Even our histrionic Prime Minister got in on the act, with a feeble attempt at a joke about his counterpart in the Opposition going back to 1985 where his policies supposedly originate. Nice one, Dave: try to engage with 'geek culture' and show what a twat you are.
But I digress.
Honestly, lots has been happening over the last few months. So much, I can't possibly hope to mention most of it here because I'd like to get this done and go to bed, thank you very much. It is somewhat regretful that I haven't at least documented some of my telly viewings because, since my girlfriend moved in last year, we've had Netflix and Amazon Prime keeping us amused whenever regular television lets us down. Which is most nights.
After becoming addicted to Bridezillas while visiting her best friend in LA last year, my girlfriend and I have been... if not actually pleased or happy, then at least gratified to see it turn up in ITVbe's schedule recently, and one of my colleagues introduced me the the festival of schadenfreude that is Channel 4's First Dates. Then there's the recent return of Doctor Who, of course. Meanwhile, on Netflix, we regularly watch Fringe, amongst other things, and the likes of Castle and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Amazon.
I've even been somewhat successful in getting my girlfriend to give a damn about TransFormers through Beast Wars and TransFormers Prime on DVD, and her interest was piqued by Weird Al Yankovic's voicework on TransFormers Animated.
Speaking of the inimitable Mr Yankovic, we attended his recent concert at the Hammersmith Apollo (I make no apologies for using its old name, since Hammersmith station has two signs directing people to the Apollo, both of which feature different names, neither of them the current one!) followed within a week by the Barenaked Ladies performance at the club inside the O2 dome.
But before all of that, we had a week(ish) in Chicago, where we did lots of cool stuff, saw lots of cool things, ate lots of amazing food (well, not so much me, as I had food poisoning for the first half of the holiday) and generally had a grand old time on our first 'flying solo' holiday together - staying in a hotel rather than with friends or family, and finding our own way everywhere via public transport. Which was fantastic, I must say - very similar to London, with their Ventra cards and halfway decent buses and trains. Since my first 'proper' international holiday about 20 years ago, I've visited quite a few bits of the States - places like New York, Washington, New Orleans, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles (a couple of times) and Florida - but nowhere so far has felt quite as familiar and comfortable as Chicago. I've described New York in the past as being "like London on a bad day, populated by 9 million of the world's most impatient people", but Chicago was more like London on a good day, and populated by some surprisingly friendly and open people. Not least, the day we arrived, having got confused over how to get to the hotel (the bus we thought we were taking only runs during the week, and we arrived on Saturday), a lady on the bus we ended up on, who interrupted her phone call just to ask if we knew where we were going, where we'd need to get off, etc. and then offered advice on some of the sights to see.
So, basically, it's a case of having way too much to write about, and not enough time to write it in.
Weirdly, though, I have decided to start another blog on another subject... It shouldn't require much input from me as it's on a very specific subject. At least, that's what I'm telling myself...
In other news, work has been pretty crazy in all kinds of ways I probably shouldn't write about (yet). It's just getting to the almost slack period in the monthly cycle before it all goes nuts for Christmas and the New Year... but it should all be OK. And who knows what the New Year will bring? I have a few ideas, at least...
I'll try to get back to this blog before then. Honest.
Thursday 9 July 2015
Definitions of Insanity
Having worked in the Publishing industry (in one form or another) for close to twenty years now, I can confidently assert that a large proportion of those involved exemplify a wide variety of lunacies. Divas of one kind or another are extremely common - everything from those who bang on and on about how they "come from [big name publisher]" (but get very cagy about which titles they worked on there) to those with a sideline in AmDram or similar, and perform the full range of human emotion on every press day. Dependency on everything from caffeine to alcohol to cocaine is pretty much rife. 'Editors' have a wide range of ability with the English language, from flowery excess to functional illiteracy. People in various areas of the work fully expect 'deadlines' to be as fluid as their average lunch, safe in their ignorance of the unavoidable fact that print itself - be it Litho or Digital - is a mechanical process which cannot be hurried to make up the time lost by dicking around on press day because they didn't bother checking any of the layouts over the preceding days or weeks.
But, in many ways, the insanity of those directly involved in publishing is nothing compared to some of the clients of Publishers. Where I work at the moment, we occasionally take on the task of publishing items for our advertisers, sponsorship partners, etc. One such recent example is a certain listing.
Things went a bit off the rails quite early on in this job when, at the behest of the MD, my boss met with the client. It was meant to be a simple introduction and conversation about the job - which was essentially 'acting as Print Brokers' - but ended up with my boss agreeing that our sales team would handle the advertising, and she would redesign the product for them, bringing its look and feel into the 21st Century. The MD was not pleased, and we're now basically losing money on the project.
So, Insanity #1: My boss presumes creative control over everything that comes our way, frequently upsetting the client. On this occasion, the client had a perfectly serviceable-looking product, but my boss dislike the 'marble effect' background image on each page, or the fonts, or the formatting... so, without asking anyone, set about redesigning the entire thing. The end result does look cleaner, I'll admit, and more consistent its alignment of text... but why reinvent the wheel when it only needed tidying up?
She's also decided recently that she wants to see every advertisement we design for our clients. This is all because, after more than five years, she finally noticed that the background on a particular client's ad was rather dark, making the text (very slightly, and really only for her) hard to read.
Thing is, this wasn't an ad we'd designed anyway, and the fact that the client had been reusing the same artwork for at least five years tends to suggest that it was working for them. Nevertheless, without consulting the client, she instructed changes on that ad and, since that day, my counterpart and I have to run a first draft past her whenever we create artwork for a client, before we send it to the client. Head of Sales thinks that would have been a fine idea with our predecessors, who created every ad to the same - very basic - template... but feels it's a waste of time with a couple of guys who have repeatedly proven themselves capable of creating excellent ads for our clients, not least because we have a relationship with the clients that our boss does not.
There's also the time involved. On the most recent occasion I sent her a client ad, it took four and a half hours to get any response out of her, and it was only that quick because I prompted her. If she's not in the office, we can't prompt her as easily... and, since we most often have to set ads for clients right at the last minute, because they've been unable to supply anything ready-made, that's another huge waste of time we can ill-afford to lose.
But I digress. Going back to the big client job, we have Insanity #2: My boss presumes her way is the only way. After meeting with the client whose job we're taking on, my boss set up a schedule for the work we had agreed to do and distributed it via email to the relevant people in the office and to the client. The client immediately notified her that they intended to keep their original schedule and plan of action, within our prescribed schedule. By this I mean that they had set a deadline date for compiling their listings, at which point they would be passed to their designer, who would lay them out in the correct format for the print job, send out proofs, and get it all signed off before passing it on to us. I read that as "we will be setting this part of the job, you're only dealing with the advertising", so I queried it with my boss, since it's her schedule they seemed to be ignoring. She agreed that it was nuts for them to do all the work for themselves, but only because she'd redesigned their templates, and not given the client access to them...
This leads us neatly to Insanity #3: The client is laying it all out for themselves, they're only doing that to see how much of their allocated space they're actually taking up... and then passing it on to us to lay out all over again in our own template. Utter waste of time.
But the craziness doesn't end there...
Insanity #4: After falling to pieces on her press day - doling out her work between me any my counterpart, before doing some clothes shopping on eBay, only to burst out crying later on when arguing with her Editors - boss announced she would take a day off the following week "to recover from the stress". Nothing necessarily unusual, except that it was a day that she wouldn't be in the office anyway... and, in general, we can't tell whether she's working or not when she's not in the office, because we virtually never hear anything from her between the regular "Good Morning" email sometime between 8.30am and 9.30am, and the mad flurry of emails that generally starts at about 2.30pm. However, when I spoke to her that morning, she mentioned that she would shortly be driving to "an event", and it turned out she was spending at least that day at Boodles... There's no way that was a spur of the moment thing, so the idea of 'taking time off due to stress' was just a smokescreen for 'bunking off work to ponce it up at a posh tennis event'. She's previously taken time off sick, then denied it was sick leave, so I wonder what will happen about this.
Then we have the joys of 'Housekeeping' and Insanity #5: Things keep going missing when the boss 'streamlines' our library of files, and it's never her fault. Actually, I could remove the bit about 'streamlining' and it'd be equally true, as she's accused my counterpart of deleting files he hadn't been anywhere near, but when she's been clearing our duplicate files in particular, it often transpires later than she's removed all copies of some files. Sometimes the 'correct' version is still available, but it's been renamed, and she's forgotten doing it. For example, one of the designers recently emailed her asking after a couple of brand logos, and she emailed my counterpart and I asking if we knew where they might be. Then she emailed my counterpart, telling him that he'd made the logos, so he should know where they are. When he pointed out that, actually, he hadn't she asked me... my response included the word 'streamlining', which was enough to remind her that she had recently been moving things and renaming things and deleting things. Rather then point the designer in the right direction, though, she insisted that he email her the document he was working on so she could relink them herself... despite the fact that he'd likely have to relink them again because she works on a Mac, we all work on PCs and, because they don't connect to the network in the same way, paths to linked files don't work the same way.
Since having a meeting with my counterpart, as a follow up to his appraisal (because things that didn't come up in the meeting were included in the notes, and much of it was bullshit) she's toned things down a bit, and even joked at her own expense when things go a little adrift... Her attitude seems to have softened somewhat, and she has made verbal reference to some of her less impressive character traits... but there's still a lot of time wasted due to poor self-management, let alone her management of the department.
This month is fairly quiet, though, so it's a good time to try to get ahead... Next month features a couple of nightmarish weeks where, due to terrible scheduling (all the regular magazines plus two guides, a supplement, and some client projects), we have at a couple of instances of two and even three publications going to press on the same day.
It's going to be almost like the good old days of my last job...
But, in many ways, the insanity of those directly involved in publishing is nothing compared to some of the clients of Publishers. Where I work at the moment, we occasionally take on the task of publishing items for our advertisers, sponsorship partners, etc. One such recent example is a certain listing.
Things went a bit off the rails quite early on in this job when, at the behest of the MD, my boss met with the client. It was meant to be a simple introduction and conversation about the job - which was essentially 'acting as Print Brokers' - but ended up with my boss agreeing that our sales team would handle the advertising, and she would redesign the product for them, bringing its look and feel into the 21st Century. The MD was not pleased, and we're now basically losing money on the project.
So, Insanity #1: My boss presumes creative control over everything that comes our way, frequently upsetting the client. On this occasion, the client had a perfectly serviceable-looking product, but my boss dislike the 'marble effect' background image on each page, or the fonts, or the formatting... so, without asking anyone, set about redesigning the entire thing. The end result does look cleaner, I'll admit, and more consistent its alignment of text... but why reinvent the wheel when it only needed tidying up?
She's also decided recently that she wants to see every advertisement we design for our clients. This is all because, after more than five years, she finally noticed that the background on a particular client's ad was rather dark, making the text (very slightly, and really only for her) hard to read.
Thing is, this wasn't an ad we'd designed anyway, and the fact that the client had been reusing the same artwork for at least five years tends to suggest that it was working for them. Nevertheless, without consulting the client, she instructed changes on that ad and, since that day, my counterpart and I have to run a first draft past her whenever we create artwork for a client, before we send it to the client. Head of Sales thinks that would have been a fine idea with our predecessors, who created every ad to the same - very basic - template... but feels it's a waste of time with a couple of guys who have repeatedly proven themselves capable of creating excellent ads for our clients, not least because we have a relationship with the clients that our boss does not.
There's also the time involved. On the most recent occasion I sent her a client ad, it took four and a half hours to get any response out of her, and it was only that quick because I prompted her. If she's not in the office, we can't prompt her as easily... and, since we most often have to set ads for clients right at the last minute, because they've been unable to supply anything ready-made, that's another huge waste of time we can ill-afford to lose.
But I digress. Going back to the big client job, we have Insanity #2: My boss presumes her way is the only way. After meeting with the client whose job we're taking on, my boss set up a schedule for the work we had agreed to do and distributed it via email to the relevant people in the office and to the client. The client immediately notified her that they intended to keep their original schedule and plan of action, within our prescribed schedule. By this I mean that they had set a deadline date for compiling their listings, at which point they would be passed to their designer, who would lay them out in the correct format for the print job, send out proofs, and get it all signed off before passing it on to us. I read that as "we will be setting this part of the job, you're only dealing with the advertising", so I queried it with my boss, since it's her schedule they seemed to be ignoring. She agreed that it was nuts for them to do all the work for themselves, but only because she'd redesigned their templates, and not given the client access to them...
This leads us neatly to Insanity #3: The client is laying it all out for themselves, they're only doing that to see how much of their allocated space they're actually taking up... and then passing it on to us to lay out all over again in our own template. Utter waste of time.
But the craziness doesn't end there...
Insanity #4: After falling to pieces on her press day - doling out her work between me any my counterpart, before doing some clothes shopping on eBay, only to burst out crying later on when arguing with her Editors - boss announced she would take a day off the following week "to recover from the stress". Nothing necessarily unusual, except that it was a day that she wouldn't be in the office anyway... and, in general, we can't tell whether she's working or not when she's not in the office, because we virtually never hear anything from her between the regular "Good Morning" email sometime between 8.30am and 9.30am, and the mad flurry of emails that generally starts at about 2.30pm. However, when I spoke to her that morning, she mentioned that she would shortly be driving to "an event", and it turned out she was spending at least that day at Boodles... There's no way that was a spur of the moment thing, so the idea of 'taking time off due to stress' was just a smokescreen for 'bunking off work to ponce it up at a posh tennis event'. She's previously taken time off sick, then denied it was sick leave, so I wonder what will happen about this.
Then we have the joys of 'Housekeeping' and Insanity #5: Things keep going missing when the boss 'streamlines' our library of files, and it's never her fault. Actually, I could remove the bit about 'streamlining' and it'd be equally true, as she's accused my counterpart of deleting files he hadn't been anywhere near, but when she's been clearing our duplicate files in particular, it often transpires later than she's removed all copies of some files. Sometimes the 'correct' version is still available, but it's been renamed, and she's forgotten doing it. For example, one of the designers recently emailed her asking after a couple of brand logos, and she emailed my counterpart and I asking if we knew where they might be. Then she emailed my counterpart, telling him that he'd made the logos, so he should know where they are. When he pointed out that, actually, he hadn't she asked me... my response included the word 'streamlining', which was enough to remind her that she had recently been moving things and renaming things and deleting things. Rather then point the designer in the right direction, though, she insisted that he email her the document he was working on so she could relink them herself... despite the fact that he'd likely have to relink them again because she works on a Mac, we all work on PCs and, because they don't connect to the network in the same way, paths to linked files don't work the same way.
Since having a meeting with my counterpart, as a follow up to his appraisal (because things that didn't come up in the meeting were included in the notes, and much of it was bullshit) she's toned things down a bit, and even joked at her own expense when things go a little adrift... Her attitude seems to have softened somewhat, and she has made verbal reference to some of her less impressive character traits... but there's still a lot of time wasted due to poor self-management, let alone her management of the department.
This month is fairly quiet, though, so it's a good time to try to get ahead... Next month features a couple of nightmarish weeks where, due to terrible scheduling (all the regular magazines plus two guides, a supplement, and some client projects), we have at a couple of instances of two and even three publications going to press on the same day.
It's going to be almost like the good old days of my last job...
Monday 6 July 2015
Big Days
I've known my girlfriend for a little over three years now, we've been dating for about two and living together for just over one... And her folks had been asking about meeting my folks for quite a while. We finally got it all organised a couple of months ago, and it actually happened the weekend before last.
The build-up had been quite stressful for me, for no real reason... I mean, my folks tend to be fairly laconic, while my girlfriend's folks are extremely talkative. Both fathers have a tendency toward being stubborn and opinionated. Both also have military backgrounds, in traditionally rival outfits (my father spent some time in the TA, her father was in the RAF) so I imagined all kinds of potential sparks-flying situations. I also had a nagging little voice in the back of my head wondering why they should all meet up, but I tried to put that down to my preference for the life of a hermit.
Perhaps it is an important step in a relationship... and I'm sure it'd be weird if a couple's parents' first meeting occurred, for example, at the couple's wedding... but why now? And why did it keep coming up just about every time my girlfriend spoke to her parents..? Couldn't we, y'know, leave it a little bit longer?
Still, it happened... My parents took a weekend trip to Lincoln (though my girlfriend's parents had offered to put them up, that seemed to me to be taking it all a little bit too far), and a table was booked at a restaurant we'd visited over the Christmas/New Year break (that little voice in the back of my head kept telling me that was a terrible idea, since the restaurant is out in the sticks, and needed everyone to be driven over... it felt that, for the safety of all involved, it would have been better to get together in a place we could walk away from, if necessary). The precise timings were only pinned down on the day, via text messaging, but we met up with my folks at their hotel, in town, and they got into my girlfriend's parents' car while she and I rode along with her sister.
Dinner was actually perfectly friendly and, while there were a couple of RAF jokes at the expense of paratroopers, my father actually saw the logic of the argument (possibly not even seeing it as a joke) rather than being upset by the sentiments expressed.
Histories were exchanged between both sets of parents, but my folks tended to simply answer questions, offering little in the way of elaboration. The didn't give the impression that they felt interrogated, just the usual sense that they don't really 'do' chat... Even so, it went quite well... as far as I can tell. Now I think about it, I don't think I've spoken to my folks about it since we got back... Hum.
The strangest part of the evening was when my girlfriend's mother, peering intently at my parents and at me, wondered aloud who I most resembled, and my girlfriend and her sister simultaneously named different parents. My girlfriend thinks I look more like my mother (I have her nose, certainly... and her teeth... but I've actually been mistaken for my father (at a distance) on occasions when I've word a beard), while her sister had apparently said that my father and I move the same way. That's actually something I've noticed myself, on occasion - the way we walk is scarily similar, and some of our facial expressions and quirks are basically identical.
My folks, unsurprisingly, did not engage in a similar examination of my girlfriend and her parents... but I have to say I normally struggle to see any resemblance in her to either of them. When she got her hair cut most recently, there was a moment when I thought she almost looked like her mother... but, for the most part, all they seem to share is an approximate shape and a certain chubbiness of their cheeks when they smile.
So I guess that's another milestone passed...
There was another momentous occasion this last weekend, after my girlfriend snagged a couple of tickets to a live revival of one of her favourite TV shows, 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' (she proudly says that she's seen every episode of the US version, and quite a lot of the UK version). To celebrate, we had planned to go into town a little bit early, visit Forbidden Planet (where we first met after corresponding for about a year... but also just a really cool shop for geeks like us), grab some dinner in Pizza Express (to make use of a voucher she received) and the pop along to the Adelphi Theatre for the show.
Just for the sake of spontaneity, there was a late-ish addition to the day's scheduled activities, in that a new Sherlock Holmes movie - titled simply 'Mr. Holmes', but based on the novel 'A Slight Trick of the Mind', by Mitch Cullin - has been released recently, but was already being phased out of the big cinema chains to make way for Terminator Genisys. We ended up booking seats at the Picturehouse cinema near Piccadilly Circus - a completely beautiful venue, as it turns out, with very nice seats.
The film was brilliant and, while it had some quite affecting moments, it didn't quite manage the emotional impact of a Mitchell & Webb sketch with the same basic idea (seek it out on YouTube - it's the 'Old Holmes' one, not the other one about two bickering actors - and I defy you to keep a dry eye to the end). Still, Ian McKellen played the part brilliantly, the three storylines intertwined quite pleasingly and, if Laura Linney's variable accent was the only problem with the movie, it didn't cast too dark a shadow over the proceedings. I may have to look up the book, as I'd liked to have had more insight into Holmes impressions of the devastation of Hiroshima, since that was touched on only briefly in the movie. I also quite liked the conceit of casting Nicholas Rowe as the cinematic version of Sherlock Holmes in a movie about Holmes' twilight years, considering one of his biggest roles was as the titular character in the 1985 movie 'Young Sherlock Holmes'.
Forbidden Planet yet again received some of my hard-earned money, though I was slightly weirded out when a foreign tourist urged me to look up an old TransFormers TV series (Cybertron, aka Galaxy Force) when I grabbed the last Generations/Thrilling 30 Sky Byte on the shelves. I'm never quite sure what to say in these circumstances because, as a fan of TransFormers for 30 years, I'm well aware of Cybertron - and have even seen a few episodes - but it didn't seem polite to say so... I also picked up the talking plushie K-9 I'd intended to get my girlfriend as a birthday/Christmas present, but failed to find at the appropriate time... I'm sure they weren't in the shop last time I was there, and they never seemed to be in stock on the website... but it was nice to finally find one. We also found a Sherlock Holmes-based card game, and brought it home with us... though we've yet to give it a try. Could be fun... but possibly not as much as the game of Cards Against Humanity we played at my sister's house earlier in the year...
Since we finished our dinner slightly earlier than necessary to get to the Adelphi in time for the show, we popped in on Orbital Comics as well. Only a brief visit, but long enough for me to put another dent in my wallet, picking up a twelve-year-old TransFormers convention exclusive set.
Whose Line..? was a hell of a lot of fun. We've seen live improvisation comedy before, but this was almost structured as a game show, with Josie Lawrence, Brad Sherwood and - two of my girlfriend's favourites - Greg Proops and Colin Mochrie on the 'panel'. While Clive Anderson was meant to be hosting, a sign in the entrance hall announced that he was 'unavailable' that evening, and was being replaced by one of the creators of the show, Dan Patterson (later in the evening, a note written by a member of the audience was revealed to say "I wish Clive were here"). Highlights of the evening were Lawrence belting out a song about an industrial sander in the style of Celine Dion, Sherwood serending a member of the audience in the style of a Rock Anthem, and the enthusiastic fangirling my girlfriend exhibited throughout. It was also cool that the two musicians from the US show were 'special guests' at this live event. The only disappointing aspects of the show, for me, where those where members of the audience had to take an active role, because the folks who were chosen to go on stage really didn't seem to get into the spirit of things... Either that, or they were trying to be funny themselves, and just making a mess of it.
It was quite a long day, all told, and our tentatively planned visit to a Zen garden in Acton (there's a juxtaposition!) on Sunday was put off because we were both exhausted, and the weather was a bit rubbish until the early evening.
The build-up had been quite stressful for me, for no real reason... I mean, my folks tend to be fairly laconic, while my girlfriend's folks are extremely talkative. Both fathers have a tendency toward being stubborn and opinionated. Both also have military backgrounds, in traditionally rival outfits (my father spent some time in the TA, her father was in the RAF) so I imagined all kinds of potential sparks-flying situations. I also had a nagging little voice in the back of my head wondering why they should all meet up, but I tried to put that down to my preference for the life of a hermit.
Perhaps it is an important step in a relationship... and I'm sure it'd be weird if a couple's parents' first meeting occurred, for example, at the couple's wedding... but why now? And why did it keep coming up just about every time my girlfriend spoke to her parents..? Couldn't we, y'know, leave it a little bit longer?
Still, it happened... My parents took a weekend trip to Lincoln (though my girlfriend's parents had offered to put them up, that seemed to me to be taking it all a little bit too far), and a table was booked at a restaurant we'd visited over the Christmas/New Year break (that little voice in the back of my head kept telling me that was a terrible idea, since the restaurant is out in the sticks, and needed everyone to be driven over... it felt that, for the safety of all involved, it would have been better to get together in a place we could walk away from, if necessary). The precise timings were only pinned down on the day, via text messaging, but we met up with my folks at their hotel, in town, and they got into my girlfriend's parents' car while she and I rode along with her sister.
Dinner was actually perfectly friendly and, while there were a couple of RAF jokes at the expense of paratroopers, my father actually saw the logic of the argument (possibly not even seeing it as a joke) rather than being upset by the sentiments expressed.
Histories were exchanged between both sets of parents, but my folks tended to simply answer questions, offering little in the way of elaboration. The didn't give the impression that they felt interrogated, just the usual sense that they don't really 'do' chat... Even so, it went quite well... as far as I can tell. Now I think about it, I don't think I've spoken to my folks about it since we got back... Hum.
The strangest part of the evening was when my girlfriend's mother, peering intently at my parents and at me, wondered aloud who I most resembled, and my girlfriend and her sister simultaneously named different parents. My girlfriend thinks I look more like my mother (I have her nose, certainly... and her teeth... but I've actually been mistaken for my father (at a distance) on occasions when I've word a beard), while her sister had apparently said that my father and I move the same way. That's actually something I've noticed myself, on occasion - the way we walk is scarily similar, and some of our facial expressions and quirks are basically identical.
My folks, unsurprisingly, did not engage in a similar examination of my girlfriend and her parents... but I have to say I normally struggle to see any resemblance in her to either of them. When she got her hair cut most recently, there was a moment when I thought she almost looked like her mother... but, for the most part, all they seem to share is an approximate shape and a certain chubbiness of their cheeks when they smile.
So I guess that's another milestone passed...
There was another momentous occasion this last weekend, after my girlfriend snagged a couple of tickets to a live revival of one of her favourite TV shows, 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' (she proudly says that she's seen every episode of the US version, and quite a lot of the UK version). To celebrate, we had planned to go into town a little bit early, visit Forbidden Planet (where we first met after corresponding for about a year... but also just a really cool shop for geeks like us), grab some dinner in Pizza Express (to make use of a voucher she received) and the pop along to the Adelphi Theatre for the show.
Just for the sake of spontaneity, there was a late-ish addition to the day's scheduled activities, in that a new Sherlock Holmes movie - titled simply 'Mr. Holmes', but based on the novel 'A Slight Trick of the Mind', by Mitch Cullin - has been released recently, but was already being phased out of the big cinema chains to make way for Terminator Genisys. We ended up booking seats at the Picturehouse cinema near Piccadilly Circus - a completely beautiful venue, as it turns out, with very nice seats.
The film was brilliant and, while it had some quite affecting moments, it didn't quite manage the emotional impact of a Mitchell & Webb sketch with the same basic idea (seek it out on YouTube - it's the 'Old Holmes' one, not the other one about two bickering actors - and I defy you to keep a dry eye to the end). Still, Ian McKellen played the part brilliantly, the three storylines intertwined quite pleasingly and, if Laura Linney's variable accent was the only problem with the movie, it didn't cast too dark a shadow over the proceedings. I may have to look up the book, as I'd liked to have had more insight into Holmes impressions of the devastation of Hiroshima, since that was touched on only briefly in the movie. I also quite liked the conceit of casting Nicholas Rowe as the cinematic version of Sherlock Holmes in a movie about Holmes' twilight years, considering one of his biggest roles was as the titular character in the 1985 movie 'Young Sherlock Holmes'.
Forbidden Planet yet again received some of my hard-earned money, though I was slightly weirded out when a foreign tourist urged me to look up an old TransFormers TV series (Cybertron, aka Galaxy Force) when I grabbed the last Generations/Thrilling 30 Sky Byte on the shelves. I'm never quite sure what to say in these circumstances because, as a fan of TransFormers for 30 years, I'm well aware of Cybertron - and have even seen a few episodes - but it didn't seem polite to say so... I also picked up the talking plushie K-9 I'd intended to get my girlfriend as a birthday/Christmas present, but failed to find at the appropriate time... I'm sure they weren't in the shop last time I was there, and they never seemed to be in stock on the website... but it was nice to finally find one. We also found a Sherlock Holmes-based card game, and brought it home with us... though we've yet to give it a try. Could be fun... but possibly not as much as the game of Cards Against Humanity we played at my sister's house earlier in the year...
Since we finished our dinner slightly earlier than necessary to get to the Adelphi in time for the show, we popped in on Orbital Comics as well. Only a brief visit, but long enough for me to put another dent in my wallet, picking up a twelve-year-old TransFormers convention exclusive set.
Whose Line..? was a hell of a lot of fun. We've seen live improvisation comedy before, but this was almost structured as a game show, with Josie Lawrence, Brad Sherwood and - two of my girlfriend's favourites - Greg Proops and Colin Mochrie on the 'panel'. While Clive Anderson was meant to be hosting, a sign in the entrance hall announced that he was 'unavailable' that evening, and was being replaced by one of the creators of the show, Dan Patterson (later in the evening, a note written by a member of the audience was revealed to say "I wish Clive were here"). Highlights of the evening were Lawrence belting out a song about an industrial sander in the style of Celine Dion, Sherwood serending a member of the audience in the style of a Rock Anthem, and the enthusiastic fangirling my girlfriend exhibited throughout. It was also cool that the two musicians from the US show were 'special guests' at this live event. The only disappointing aspects of the show, for me, where those where members of the audience had to take an active role, because the folks who were chosen to go on stage really didn't seem to get into the spirit of things... Either that, or they were trying to be funny themselves, and just making a mess of it.
It was quite a long day, all told, and our tentatively planned visit to a Zen garden in Acton (there's a juxtaposition!) on Sunday was put off because we were both exhausted, and the weather was a bit rubbish until the early evening.
Sunday 21 June 2015
Intense Dreaming
Over much of the last year, and particularly in the months running up to her exams, my girlfriend had been plagued by "intense" dreams. She rarely remembers all of the details, but had been waking up as exhausted as she was the night before, and often more stressed than the night before. The likeliest cause was the combination of her medication and the heightened stress levels she has been experiencing over the last year or two. She's recently spoken with her GP about the constant tiredness she has been experiencing, and that will now be investigated with a view to determining whether it's a matter of adjusting her medication, or if there's an underlying medical condition which has yet to be diagnosed.
I'd not had any particularly interesting dreams until Friday night, hence the lack of blogging about them, but I had a doozy last night, and it seemed similar to the kinds of intense dreams my girlfriend has had.
Essentially, I woke up within the dream to find myself strapped to some kind of hospital bed. The straps were being released and was told I was 'ready to go', but had no recollection of how I got there in the first place. As I met up with my girlfriend and various family members after leaving the hospital, it slowly transpired that I'd has some kind of breakdown at least a year before. I had been deposited at this hospital by concerned family members, who had described something very wrong with me, and begged one of the doctors to "do something about it". The doctor had confidently assured them that she could "fix me", and my release into my girlfriend's care was the final part of the process.
I had no recollection of any 'therapy', nor the events that had led to my incarceration in the hospital. No-one would tell me anything specific about what had happened - perhaps for fear of undoing the doctor's therapy. Gradually, I was overcome by a creeping fear that some necessary part of me - something that either made me who I am, or that allowed me to do my job effectively - had been taken away, yet I couldn't identify what. I didn't feel incomplete, except that I had at least a year's worth of amnesia, and that alone was enough to start me panicking about returning to 'real life' and work. Much of the time, I was wondering "what if I can't do my job anymore?" and picturing common office situations, trying to remember how I'd have reacted 'before' and figure out how I might react 'now', which just exacerbated the panic.
Waking up 'properly' was a bit weird.
I'd not had any particularly interesting dreams until Friday night, hence the lack of blogging about them, but I had a doozy last night, and it seemed similar to the kinds of intense dreams my girlfriend has had.
Essentially, I woke up within the dream to find myself strapped to some kind of hospital bed. The straps were being released and was told I was 'ready to go', but had no recollection of how I got there in the first place. As I met up with my girlfriend and various family members after leaving the hospital, it slowly transpired that I'd has some kind of breakdown at least a year before. I had been deposited at this hospital by concerned family members, who had described something very wrong with me, and begged one of the doctors to "do something about it". The doctor had confidently assured them that she could "fix me", and my release into my girlfriend's care was the final part of the process.
I had no recollection of any 'therapy', nor the events that had led to my incarceration in the hospital. No-one would tell me anything specific about what had happened - perhaps for fear of undoing the doctor's therapy. Gradually, I was overcome by a creeping fear that some necessary part of me - something that either made me who I am, or that allowed me to do my job effectively - had been taken away, yet I couldn't identify what. I didn't feel incomplete, except that I had at least a year's worth of amnesia, and that alone was enough to start me panicking about returning to 'real life' and work. Much of the time, I was wondering "what if I can't do my job anymore?" and picturing common office situations, trying to remember how I'd have reacted 'before' and figure out how I might react 'now', which just exacerbated the panic.
Waking up 'properly' was a bit weird.
Saturday 20 June 2015
Impulsive? Moi?
Perhaps its a sign of a mid-life crisis (hah - as if being in a relationship with someone 16 years younger than me wasn't evidence enough. Ahem. Joking, obviously) but I seem to be becoming rather more impulsive these days. After work yesterday, I decided - on a complete whim - to experiment with a new route to get to a toy shop that's otherwise been rather frustrating to get to. Located in Friern Barnet, getting to my closest Smyths Toys has previously required a trip via Brent Cross (and, therefore, Toys'R'Us). It occurred to me (quite at random, during the day at work) that the Piccadilly line has a bizarre route through Greater London that eventually almost doubles-back on itself, with Cockfosters actually not that far away from where I live, as the crow flies, despite me living at virtually the opposite end of the line. I work not far from Kings Cross St Pancras, though, which is only about a 20 minute journey from Bounds Green which, as it transpires, is only about a 20 minute walk from the Friern Barnet Retail Park. Leaving a little early on Friday, I decided to try the journey, to see how it would go, and to see if I could get anything cool while I was there (obviously because it's my niece's birthday soon, and I fully intend to shower her with TransFormers again, not so I could load up on plastic crack myself).
As it turns out the route is almost annoyingly simple, and the walk from Bounds Green is quite pleasant compared to the hellish bus rides involved in getting to Brent Cross and then on to Friern Barnet. There's even the possibility that getting back home the Brent Cross route - either picking up the Piccadilly line at Park Royal or the Metro at Wembley - would end up quicker than simply walking back to Bounds Green and hopping back onto the Piccadilly line before it picks up the Central London crowds. That would be vastly more expensive, however, so I elected for the single-train route... Only to realise (after letting three Heathrow trains and one Northfields train to go past) that I could probably shave about 20-30 minutes off the journey time if I switched to the Metro at Kings Cross. And, having had that realisation, the train after mine when I got off to transfer at Kings Cross was, naturally, the Uxbridge service...
Still, I even got a seat on the Metro, and managed to finish my current book - a sort of biography of the American astronaut Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom - on the journey home.
This week has been quite an eye-opener in many ways. I have been surprised, over the past year, by several things I have in common with my boss (penchant for sci-fi, reading Asimov while growing up, listening to rock music, etc.) despite us being very different people (and not in a way that guarantees anything complementary... or complimentary, for that matter) with very different styles of management. This week has shown the entire team that she's not necessarily as incompetent as we have thought, because her second magazine has now been taken on by the editorial team that have always operated her first... and their first month was such an unmitigated disaster that it eventually stumbled to press right at the end of the day after their press day.
What I found bizarre is that, despite the apparent lack of any proofing of the editorial pages at any time before press day, our boss decided to later praise the lead editor's piss poor performance, telling me that he'd done well, for his first crack at the magazine. I have to bear in mind that, for non-work reasons, she wasn't in the best emotional state for a press day, so perhaps she's just being too forgiving... but this editorial team just seem to be getting worse in their attitude toward 'press day'... and, given the lack of noise from our boss yesterday, I'm suspicious that Monday's press day will be similarly abused.
And, on the subject of abuse, just when I was making ready to leave, I had an email from another editor who is 'managing' a client project... and when I say 'managing', I mean that she is merely interfering in the most annoying way possible - there's a third-party designer working on the artwork, I was dealing with the advertising artwork, and my boss was dealing with the print side of things, so quite what she thought she had to do, I have no idea. Nevertheless, it seems that the designer, having received all the advertising from me on time that day, decided to contact her rather than me when it transpired that we were two pages short (and this, after she had contacted me regarding what she thought was an extraneous ad because she hadn't scrolled to the top of the list I sent her). The salesperson who had been working on this project didn't quite know what to make of that initially, but soon realised that she had 'agreed' the additional two pages earlier this week... over a fortnight after we agreed a page total with the designer.
And no-one thought to tell the guy who was dealing with the advertising artwork.
So two extra pages had to be found for the job in the few minutes before the end of the day, simply because this editor got unnecessarily involved at two points in the proceedings, and didn't communicate all the necessary information to all the relevant people.
Last night, the end of a remarkably busy week at work, brought a rather curious 'anthology' dream, which started with a white mouse being loose in my home. Weirdly, 'home' was a blend of my flat and my parents' home, so that my bedroom was actually their back bedroom (the 'guest room' now), my bathroom was seemingly located in my old bedroom (now used by my niece whenever she visits) and certain current furniture was replaced by stuff from my distant memories. The upshot of this section was that this mouse (possibly my girlfriend's pet?) got loose somehow and was intent on coming into the bedroom. I kept batting it out with what seemed to be the wheat sack I stick in the microwave to heat up for my back, and it kept hiding underneath a wardrobe. When my girlfriend announced she needed to get to the toilet, I warned her not to let the mouse in, but get in it did... So I had to bat it out again more vigorously (no real animals were harmed during this dream... I don't think I even disturbed my girlfriend, a notoriously light sleeper).
The next phase was either very brief, or I've forgotten too much to make sense of it because all I can remember is finding little caterpillar things - much like the moth larvae I had in my kitchen a couple of years ago - crawling around part of my toy collection.
To conclude this night of - frankly exhausting - wackiness was a return trip to an exaggerated Perivale Wood. The straw bale visitors' centre was complete... and surrounded by legions of travellers and assorted unwashed folks who wanted to live 'off the grid', as it were. They were rowdy, they had arranged themselves into little streets, like some kind of mediaeval village, some of them were drinking and saluting the hill (or something else in that general direction which I couldn't see)... and they only had three portaloos to service the entire community.
As it turns out the route is almost annoyingly simple, and the walk from Bounds Green is quite pleasant compared to the hellish bus rides involved in getting to Brent Cross and then on to Friern Barnet. There's even the possibility that getting back home the Brent Cross route - either picking up the Piccadilly line at Park Royal or the Metro at Wembley - would end up quicker than simply walking back to Bounds Green and hopping back onto the Piccadilly line before it picks up the Central London crowds. That would be vastly more expensive, however, so I elected for the single-train route... Only to realise (after letting three Heathrow trains and one Northfields train to go past) that I could probably shave about 20-30 minutes off the journey time if I switched to the Metro at Kings Cross. And, having had that realisation, the train after mine when I got off to transfer at Kings Cross was, naturally, the Uxbridge service...
Still, I even got a seat on the Metro, and managed to finish my current book - a sort of biography of the American astronaut Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom - on the journey home.
This week has been quite an eye-opener in many ways. I have been surprised, over the past year, by several things I have in common with my boss (penchant for sci-fi, reading Asimov while growing up, listening to rock music, etc.) despite us being very different people (and not in a way that guarantees anything complementary... or complimentary, for that matter) with very different styles of management. This week has shown the entire team that she's not necessarily as incompetent as we have thought, because her second magazine has now been taken on by the editorial team that have always operated her first... and their first month was such an unmitigated disaster that it eventually stumbled to press right at the end of the day after their press day.
What I found bizarre is that, despite the apparent lack of any proofing of the editorial pages at any time before press day, our boss decided to later praise the lead editor's piss poor performance, telling me that he'd done well, for his first crack at the magazine. I have to bear in mind that, for non-work reasons, she wasn't in the best emotional state for a press day, so perhaps she's just being too forgiving... but this editorial team just seem to be getting worse in their attitude toward 'press day'... and, given the lack of noise from our boss yesterday, I'm suspicious that Monday's press day will be similarly abused.
And, on the subject of abuse, just when I was making ready to leave, I had an email from another editor who is 'managing' a client project... and when I say 'managing', I mean that she is merely interfering in the most annoying way possible - there's a third-party designer working on the artwork, I was dealing with the advertising artwork, and my boss was dealing with the print side of things, so quite what she thought she had to do, I have no idea. Nevertheless, it seems that the designer, having received all the advertising from me on time that day, decided to contact her rather than me when it transpired that we were two pages short (and this, after she had contacted me regarding what she thought was an extraneous ad because she hadn't scrolled to the top of the list I sent her). The salesperson who had been working on this project didn't quite know what to make of that initially, but soon realised that she had 'agreed' the additional two pages earlier this week... over a fortnight after we agreed a page total with the designer.
And no-one thought to tell the guy who was dealing with the advertising artwork.
So two extra pages had to be found for the job in the few minutes before the end of the day, simply because this editor got unnecessarily involved at two points in the proceedings, and didn't communicate all the necessary information to all the relevant people.
Last night, the end of a remarkably busy week at work, brought a rather curious 'anthology' dream, which started with a white mouse being loose in my home. Weirdly, 'home' was a blend of my flat and my parents' home, so that my bedroom was actually their back bedroom (the 'guest room' now), my bathroom was seemingly located in my old bedroom (now used by my niece whenever she visits) and certain current furniture was replaced by stuff from my distant memories. The upshot of this section was that this mouse (possibly my girlfriend's pet?) got loose somehow and was intent on coming into the bedroom. I kept batting it out with what seemed to be the wheat sack I stick in the microwave to heat up for my back, and it kept hiding underneath a wardrobe. When my girlfriend announced she needed to get to the toilet, I warned her not to let the mouse in, but get in it did... So I had to bat it out again more vigorously (no real animals were harmed during this dream... I don't think I even disturbed my girlfriend, a notoriously light sleeper).
The next phase was either very brief, or I've forgotten too much to make sense of it because all I can remember is finding little caterpillar things - much like the moth larvae I had in my kitchen a couple of years ago - crawling around part of my toy collection.
To conclude this night of - frankly exhausting - wackiness was a return trip to an exaggerated Perivale Wood. The straw bale visitors' centre was complete... and surrounded by legions of travellers and assorted unwashed folks who wanted to live 'off the grid', as it were. They were rowdy, they had arranged themselves into little streets, like some kind of mediaeval village, some of them were drinking and saluting the hill (or something else in that general direction which I couldn't see)... and they only had three portaloos to service the entire community.
Sunday 14 June 2015
Not a Dinosaur
And so, twenty two years after the original and a full fourteen after the third movie, we finally get another movie in the series where scientists resurrect the dinosaurs by mixing-and-matching their DNA with those of contemporary animals, and no-one sees the inevitable bloodbath coming.
It's actually a funny thing: you get movies where science is held up as a sort of 'new God', scientists are the wisest and most benevolent people in the story, and where they're responsible for everything good that happens in a world which is being torn apart by superstition, and then you get movies where, for example, scientists can say, for example, "Oh, we gave this dinosaur some cuttlefish DNA for this reason, but never dreamed it would inherit that cuttlefish trait as well!"
It's also funny that, in literally creating a new dinosaur, through more extreme genetic engineering than was used to bring back the dinosaurs in the first place, they have created a film which is a damning indictment of Hollywood sequels generally: everything has to be bigger, cooler... and with more teeth.
Before I get too far into what seems to be slagging the film off, I would like to say that I really enjoyed it - the dinosaurs (and the locations) are, with a couple of exceptions, every bit as spectacular as they were back in 1993, when I saw the first movie. It was nice to see a sequel that properly acknowledged the passing of time (someone mentions that it's taken over 20 years to get the Jurassic World theme park off the ground), and the setting in a fully-functional theme park populated by dinosaurs made it slightly more compelling, for me, than that of the 'proof of concept' setting in the first three movies... However, given that Jurassic World is operating in the same old location as Hammond's original Jurassic Park, one has to wonder how they managed to build a theme park on an island already populated with dinosaurs.
The film presented more questions than answers throughout, as if conscious that it's not really a movie in its own right, merely part of a series which is, as the old television cliffhanger goes, "To Be Continued".
The casting was excellent, but there were a couple of occasions when Owen Grady/Chris Pratt's look of surprise/shock veered a little bit too far into comedy mugging (then again, this was a kids' movie - rated 12A - so a lot of it was pitched toward lightening the atmosphere), but he was otherwise a believable and sympathetic character, particularly in his dealings with his four Velociraptors. Bryce Dallas Howard played a fairly stereotypical character - Jurassic World's operations manager Claire Dearing, very efficient at her job, terrible with her family - pretty well, and had some good comedy moments, my favourite being the bit where she pulls her blouse out of her skirt to tie it round her waist, rolls up her sleeves and poses with her hands on her hips, only to be asked why she'd done that and, looking rather put out, responds that it means she's ready to go. It's also worth noting that her character apparently survives the entire film wandering around in all sorts of terrain in high heeled shoes. Never once slips, falls, breaks a heel. Surely a first?
There were some pretty massive plot holes and character inconsistencies, but the film moved along fast enough that they didn't have much of an impact. There seemed to be several subplots, too, though resolution will evidently be happening in a later movie (or not at all, in the case of the park's slightly dodgy financier, Simon Masrani). Probably my biggest gripe about the film would be the unnecessarily protracted demise of 'the assistant' (played with a delightfully plummy English accent by Merlin's Katie McGrath). It was obvious the moment she got picked up by one of the flying dinosaurs that she was done for... but watching it happen so slowly, with so many moments where she might have escaped her fate, just seemed like a kind of torture porn.
On the subject of the flying dinosaurs, I felt they were the only special effects that didn't convince: some looked like something out of How To Train Your Dragon, others looked like the sort of flappy rubber thing you'd have seen in a 1970s Hammer Horror movie.
The trouble with making a sequel to such a phenomenal movie after such a long time is that, in spite of their many attempts, there's no way to match the 'wow' factor of the original. The grand confrontation at the end of the movie was fairly predictable (as was its outcome), but it mostly left me thinking that Jurassic World had given us the Godzilla movie we all wanted out of the 2014 movie...
It's actually a funny thing: you get movies where science is held up as a sort of 'new God', scientists are the wisest and most benevolent people in the story, and where they're responsible for everything good that happens in a world which is being torn apart by superstition, and then you get movies where, for example, scientists can say, for example, "Oh, we gave this dinosaur some cuttlefish DNA for this reason, but never dreamed it would inherit that cuttlefish trait as well!"
It's also funny that, in literally creating a new dinosaur, through more extreme genetic engineering than was used to bring back the dinosaurs in the first place, they have created a film which is a damning indictment of Hollywood sequels generally: everything has to be bigger, cooler... and with more teeth.
Before I get too far into what seems to be slagging the film off, I would like to say that I really enjoyed it - the dinosaurs (and the locations) are, with a couple of exceptions, every bit as spectacular as they were back in 1993, when I saw the first movie. It was nice to see a sequel that properly acknowledged the passing of time (someone mentions that it's taken over 20 years to get the Jurassic World theme park off the ground), and the setting in a fully-functional theme park populated by dinosaurs made it slightly more compelling, for me, than that of the 'proof of concept' setting in the first three movies... However, given that Jurassic World is operating in the same old location as Hammond's original Jurassic Park, one has to wonder how they managed to build a theme park on an island already populated with dinosaurs.
The film presented more questions than answers throughout, as if conscious that it's not really a movie in its own right, merely part of a series which is, as the old television cliffhanger goes, "To Be Continued".
The casting was excellent, but there were a couple of occasions when Owen Grady/Chris Pratt's look of surprise/shock veered a little bit too far into comedy mugging (then again, this was a kids' movie - rated 12A - so a lot of it was pitched toward lightening the atmosphere), but he was otherwise a believable and sympathetic character, particularly in his dealings with his four Velociraptors. Bryce Dallas Howard played a fairly stereotypical character - Jurassic World's operations manager Claire Dearing, very efficient at her job, terrible with her family - pretty well, and had some good comedy moments, my favourite being the bit where she pulls her blouse out of her skirt to tie it round her waist, rolls up her sleeves and poses with her hands on her hips, only to be asked why she'd done that and, looking rather put out, responds that it means she's ready to go. It's also worth noting that her character apparently survives the entire film wandering around in all sorts of terrain in high heeled shoes. Never once slips, falls, breaks a heel. Surely a first?
There were some pretty massive plot holes and character inconsistencies, but the film moved along fast enough that they didn't have much of an impact. There seemed to be several subplots, too, though resolution will evidently be happening in a later movie (or not at all, in the case of the park's slightly dodgy financier, Simon Masrani). Probably my biggest gripe about the film would be the unnecessarily protracted demise of 'the assistant' (played with a delightfully plummy English accent by Merlin's Katie McGrath). It was obvious the moment she got picked up by one of the flying dinosaurs that she was done for... but watching it happen so slowly, with so many moments where she might have escaped her fate, just seemed like a kind of torture porn.
On the subject of the flying dinosaurs, I felt they were the only special effects that didn't convince: some looked like something out of How To Train Your Dragon, others looked like the sort of flappy rubber thing you'd have seen in a 1970s Hammer Horror movie.
The trouble with making a sequel to such a phenomenal movie after such a long time is that, in spite of their many attempts, there's no way to match the 'wow' factor of the original. The grand confrontation at the end of the movie was fairly predictable (as was its outcome), but it mostly left me thinking that Jurassic World had given us the Godzilla movie we all wanted out of the 2014 movie...
Wednesday 3 June 2015
Sleeptalking
My girlfriend has told me that I'll occasionally talk in my sleep (nothing entirely coherent, by all accounts, but she admits that she's normally half asleep when it happens) and occasionally snore (though apparently not as much since we've had our new mattress and a couple of new pillows). Meanwhile, she fidgets like crazy in her sleep, and occasionally twitches quite violently. Only a few days ago, she woke up in the early hours of the morning with an intense cramp in her leg, quite probably due to one such muscular spasm.
But nothing could have prepared me for what happened in the early hours of this morning.
She woke me up... by giggling.
I should put this in some context: Over the last year, she's been having a terrible time with the first year of her Open University degree. She'd purposely selected some quite random subjects (Mental Health, Geology, Archaeology, Planetary Science) as a break from the Physics she'd spent the last few years focussed on - kind of a clean break from her second attempt at studying at Imperial College, which had done her mental health and self-confidence no favours at all. Trouble was, the OU turned out to be not much better. The subjects were not as interesting as she'd hoped, and the way her progress was assessed seemed at odds with what little I know of higher education: everything seemed to want her focussed on the course materials, not researching beyond it. This led to frustration, and difficulty keeping her attention on the work, which led to anxiety about "not doing enough", which then exacerbated the problems which had given rise to the anxiety, thus exacerbating the anxiety itself.
It has been quite horrible to watch at times, with spasms, much agitated shaking of her hands, recoiling from any sudden movements - even attempts at hugs - self-recrimination, stammering, aversion to making decisions, constant, heart-breaking repetition of "I'm sorry"... basically, a whole shopping list of depression/anxiety symptoms... but I've done what I can to keep her calm, to encourage her, and to give her the benefit of my dubious, uneducated 'wisdom', particularly my philosophy that one learns far more from one's failures than from any number of successes, and so it's always best to embrace a failure and use it to one's advantage in every way is possible. And throughout the year, her grades have either stayed more or less stable, or improved markedly thanks to the feedback she's received on her assignments.
But as the exams drew closer, the anxiety really took hold. One of the side effects of her anxiety medication has been some exceptionally vivid (and occasionally quite nasty) dreams. Over the last couple of months, things have been so bad that she wakes up more exhausted that she was the night before - which, naturally, makes studying harder, which ramps up the anxiety even further - and, having virtually weaned herself off caffeine, she got straight back into drinking tea, coffee and cola just to keep herself awake during the day.
Her first exam was yesterday and, as far as we know, it went OK. She didn't have a panic attack, she was able to write, certainly completing a sufficient quantity of text, so it's only the quality that remains to be seen. While very little of the stuff she was hoping for came up, she was able to remember the stuff that did come up... and she hasn't seemed overly stressed since, aside from the odd twitch.
So when I was woken up in the early hours of the morning by the sound of her giggling, I was curious to know what was funny. I don't remember her exact response, but the gist of it was "It's a Google Mail template... No, no, not GMail..." with that last bit accompanied by the familiar agitated shaking of her hands. Being half asleep, I struggled to make sense of this utterance but, having thought it through, I realised it didn't make any sense, so I asked her if she had been laughing about something that happened in a dream.
"No," she said, most insistently, "I don't think so." And with that, she was fast asleep.
I asked her about it when I got home from work today, and she had no recollection of the incident whatsoever...
But nothing could have prepared me for what happened in the early hours of this morning.
She woke me up... by giggling.
I should put this in some context: Over the last year, she's been having a terrible time with the first year of her Open University degree. She'd purposely selected some quite random subjects (Mental Health, Geology, Archaeology, Planetary Science) as a break from the Physics she'd spent the last few years focussed on - kind of a clean break from her second attempt at studying at Imperial College, which had done her mental health and self-confidence no favours at all. Trouble was, the OU turned out to be not much better. The subjects were not as interesting as she'd hoped, and the way her progress was assessed seemed at odds with what little I know of higher education: everything seemed to want her focussed on the course materials, not researching beyond it. This led to frustration, and difficulty keeping her attention on the work, which led to anxiety about "not doing enough", which then exacerbated the problems which had given rise to the anxiety, thus exacerbating the anxiety itself.
It has been quite horrible to watch at times, with spasms, much agitated shaking of her hands, recoiling from any sudden movements - even attempts at hugs - self-recrimination, stammering, aversion to making decisions, constant, heart-breaking repetition of "I'm sorry"... basically, a whole shopping list of depression/anxiety symptoms... but I've done what I can to keep her calm, to encourage her, and to give her the benefit of my dubious, uneducated 'wisdom', particularly my philosophy that one learns far more from one's failures than from any number of successes, and so it's always best to embrace a failure and use it to one's advantage in every way is possible. And throughout the year, her grades have either stayed more or less stable, or improved markedly thanks to the feedback she's received on her assignments.
But as the exams drew closer, the anxiety really took hold. One of the side effects of her anxiety medication has been some exceptionally vivid (and occasionally quite nasty) dreams. Over the last couple of months, things have been so bad that she wakes up more exhausted that she was the night before - which, naturally, makes studying harder, which ramps up the anxiety even further - and, having virtually weaned herself off caffeine, she got straight back into drinking tea, coffee and cola just to keep herself awake during the day.
Her first exam was yesterday and, as far as we know, it went OK. She didn't have a panic attack, she was able to write, certainly completing a sufficient quantity of text, so it's only the quality that remains to be seen. While very little of the stuff she was hoping for came up, she was able to remember the stuff that did come up... and she hasn't seemed overly stressed since, aside from the odd twitch.
So when I was woken up in the early hours of the morning by the sound of her giggling, I was curious to know what was funny. I don't remember her exact response, but the gist of it was "It's a Google Mail template... No, no, not GMail..." with that last bit accompanied by the familiar agitated shaking of her hands. Being half asleep, I struggled to make sense of this utterance but, having thought it through, I realised it didn't make any sense, so I asked her if she had been laughing about something that happened in a dream.
"No," she said, most insistently, "I don't think so." And with that, she was fast asleep.
I asked her about it when I got home from work today, and she had no recollection of the incident whatsoever...
Thursday 28 May 2015
My Worst Year for Blogging
...So far, at least...
I'm not quite sure what's causing it, but I really haven't been inclined to document any of the cool stuff I've been doing so far this year - not even the visits to the cinema for such wonders as The Avengers: Age of Ultron (pretty good, but with a few plot holes... though it may simply be that I missed some important information in there somewhere). Nor have I been wittering on about the telly I've been watching (Gotham: going a bit crazy with the source material and going rather too far with some characters - notably Gordon's 'compromises' and Bruce's investigations - but Sean Pertwee and Jada Pinkett-Smith are an absolute joy to watch, and really bring the show to life; Agents of SHIELD: still really enjoying it, and liking how it's tying in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; oddities like Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) or the books I've been reading (recently finished the final book in Stephen Donaldson's The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant... and was slightly disappointed by its saccharine ending, which reminded me too much of the way the Lord of the Rings movies ended). Nor have I felt like writing up the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, which my girlfriend and I attended last week (suffice it to say it was awesome, but felt too short, and the four Daleks, four Cybermen, four Silurians and assorted other monsters looked a bit lonely in the massive space of Wembley Arena).
I've been doing some blogging, just not here, and not as much as I'd like.
The most likely cause, at a guess, is that work is starting to seem a bit rubbish. I've mentioned before that the department head is... less than efficient and prone to 'pointing the finger' when things go wrong (pointing anywhere but herself, for preference) but, more and more, she's coming across as a plain old bully. None of her more extreme behaviour is directed at me or the older, male designer I work with - I suspect she knows all too well that neither of us would tolerate it, though she did recently give me a telling off (effectively) for taking on an entire block of work she'd divided between the team, because everyone other than me was busy - all of it is distributed, quite evenly, between our younger colleagues, one male, one female. The designer is accused of being inefficient, despite working more effectively than our boss ever does (the boss has needed the rest of us to muck in on her two magazines, on press day, for the last couple of months... neither of the other designers ever need help, and we can't figure out what the boss is doing with her time if she's not setting the magazines). My counterpart is told to work more on his own initiative, then villified for doing so. Neither quite have the confidence to pull her on it, or complain about it to what passes for HR in this very small company.
When I first started there, and fucked up the very first magazine I worked on, the MD took me aside and, having asked about the cause of the problem and been satisfied with my answer that "it was my fuck up, pure and simple" (OK, there were more details about the actual problem, why it happened, and how I now avoid it, but I see no reason to bore anyone with that), he asked me to tell him about my idea of the perfect working environment - based on my considerable experience - and how his company could achieve it. I still haven't passed on my thoughts because, more and more, I suspect a full report would have to be received as my resignation. The MD is part of the problem, because some of his behaviour means more of my boss's behaviour is tacitly approved or normalised. Another part of the problem seems to be that folks just aren't encouraged to solve problems on their own initiative... Quite the opposite, from what I hear. The weird thing is, he presents himself as completely amiable and, unlike our immediate manager, doesn't go in for finger-pointing when things go wrong (such as today, when it transpired that our printers had bound a 12-page booklet incorrectly, which is a real achievement... just not a good one).
I'm not yet sure what I want to do about this... Ideally, I'd present my 'findings', then leave if it seemed most likely that nothing was going to happen. Trouble is, this is looking like a terrible year to put myself out of a job without something else lined up first. The ongoing situation with my roof doesn't seem to be progressing (the landlord is already sounding doubtful that the roof will be renewed this year, despite his assurances last year that it would be done - he always cites money issues... but, having paid over-the-odds service charges several times now, I don't believe a word of it), so now all the leaseholders have banded together to fund a thorough investigation of the building's finances with a view to taking over management ourselves. While all this is going on, I need to renew my lease... and I've heard from one of the other leaseholders that the landlord is being very uncooperative. Unsurprising, given that we're looking into his 'management' of the service charges, but annoying nonetheless.
Life at home hasn't been plain sailing, with my girlfriend getting very stressed and depressed about her Open University degree, finding it difficult to study, and questioning the necessity of a degree (a question to which I cannot adequately respond, since I am uneducated beyond a mostly-failed attempt at A-Levels). Things have actually been going fairly well, from my point of view - she's working part time, volunteering part time and mostly coping with studies and assignments, albeit often with some reluctance because of the trouble she's had focussing, and her results have been improving steadily - but the exams coming in only a couple of weeks and a couple of recent disappointments (rejections from an internship and another paid job) have compounded the existing study stress. She assures me I'm helping and 'looking after' her, but I can't help but feel a bit useless as I don't seem to be making much difference.
I was actually quite surprised when, on the day we were due to head to the MCM London Comic Con (last Friday, that is) she did not reconsider her attendance, and even wore the blue ('TARDIS') dress she'd previously sworn she would not wear to a convention because she's still overweight. She did start to panic a little while we were there (even with ticket presales hovering around the 1/3 capacity mark, and occupying a larger space than usual, the event was very crowded... though not the sea of elbows it gets to be over the weekends), but a quick tea break outside the halls brought her stress levels down enough that we were able to go back in. She did also stress about "spending too much time" looking at certain stalls (cough cough jewellery cough) but, to be honest, her more meticulous approach to the event probably benefitted me in the long run. Normally, when I go to these events, I'm out by lunchtime, having glanced at everything and bought everything I want/... This time, we were there till after 5pm... and we didn't leave because we were bored, we left because we were very tired after a hard day's retail therapy.
In other news, there's another new addition to the household... And I'm hoping my girlfriend doesn't get jealous about this, but... there's another woman in my life...
This is the utterly beautiful Square Enix/Play Arts Kai Variant Batgirl (now there's a mouthful!), which I bought online after the Comic Con because the Square Enix stand didn't have any in their little warehouse, and the few I saw around the show were (a) very much more expensive than SE's RRP of £55 and (b) sold out by the time I got back to them. It's an awesomely detailed figure... but it's possibly not as poseable as I'd hoped, and absolutely will not stand on its own. However, now I've got it, I'm half tempted to get a couple more in the series... And it's tempting to start a secondary blog to write about these oddities I keep picking up...
I'm not quite sure what's causing it, but I really haven't been inclined to document any of the cool stuff I've been doing so far this year - not even the visits to the cinema for such wonders as The Avengers: Age of Ultron (pretty good, but with a few plot holes... though it may simply be that I missed some important information in there somewhere). Nor have I been wittering on about the telly I've been watching (Gotham: going a bit crazy with the source material and going rather too far with some characters - notably Gordon's 'compromises' and Bruce's investigations - but Sean Pertwee and Jada Pinkett-Smith are an absolute joy to watch, and really bring the show to life; Agents of SHIELD: still really enjoying it, and liking how it's tying in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; oddities like Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) or the books I've been reading (recently finished the final book in Stephen Donaldson's The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant... and was slightly disappointed by its saccharine ending, which reminded me too much of the way the Lord of the Rings movies ended). Nor have I felt like writing up the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, which my girlfriend and I attended last week (suffice it to say it was awesome, but felt too short, and the four Daleks, four Cybermen, four Silurians and assorted other monsters looked a bit lonely in the massive space of Wembley Arena).
I've been doing some blogging, just not here, and not as much as I'd like.
The most likely cause, at a guess, is that work is starting to seem a bit rubbish. I've mentioned before that the department head is... less than efficient and prone to 'pointing the finger' when things go wrong (pointing anywhere but herself, for preference) but, more and more, she's coming across as a plain old bully. None of her more extreme behaviour is directed at me or the older, male designer I work with - I suspect she knows all too well that neither of us would tolerate it, though she did recently give me a telling off (effectively) for taking on an entire block of work she'd divided between the team, because everyone other than me was busy - all of it is distributed, quite evenly, between our younger colleagues, one male, one female. The designer is accused of being inefficient, despite working more effectively than our boss ever does (the boss has needed the rest of us to muck in on her two magazines, on press day, for the last couple of months... neither of the other designers ever need help, and we can't figure out what the boss is doing with her time if she's not setting the magazines). My counterpart is told to work more on his own initiative, then villified for doing so. Neither quite have the confidence to pull her on it, or complain about it to what passes for HR in this very small company.
When I first started there, and fucked up the very first magazine I worked on, the MD took me aside and, having asked about the cause of the problem and been satisfied with my answer that "it was my fuck up, pure and simple" (OK, there were more details about the actual problem, why it happened, and how I now avoid it, but I see no reason to bore anyone with that), he asked me to tell him about my idea of the perfect working environment - based on my considerable experience - and how his company could achieve it. I still haven't passed on my thoughts because, more and more, I suspect a full report would have to be received as my resignation. The MD is part of the problem, because some of his behaviour means more of my boss's behaviour is tacitly approved or normalised. Another part of the problem seems to be that folks just aren't encouraged to solve problems on their own initiative... Quite the opposite, from what I hear. The weird thing is, he presents himself as completely amiable and, unlike our immediate manager, doesn't go in for finger-pointing when things go wrong (such as today, when it transpired that our printers had bound a 12-page booklet incorrectly, which is a real achievement... just not a good one).
I'm not yet sure what I want to do about this... Ideally, I'd present my 'findings', then leave if it seemed most likely that nothing was going to happen. Trouble is, this is looking like a terrible year to put myself out of a job without something else lined up first. The ongoing situation with my roof doesn't seem to be progressing (the landlord is already sounding doubtful that the roof will be renewed this year, despite his assurances last year that it would be done - he always cites money issues... but, having paid over-the-odds service charges several times now, I don't believe a word of it), so now all the leaseholders have banded together to fund a thorough investigation of the building's finances with a view to taking over management ourselves. While all this is going on, I need to renew my lease... and I've heard from one of the other leaseholders that the landlord is being very uncooperative. Unsurprising, given that we're looking into his 'management' of the service charges, but annoying nonetheless.
Life at home hasn't been plain sailing, with my girlfriend getting very stressed and depressed about her Open University degree, finding it difficult to study, and questioning the necessity of a degree (a question to which I cannot adequately respond, since I am uneducated beyond a mostly-failed attempt at A-Levels). Things have actually been going fairly well, from my point of view - she's working part time, volunteering part time and mostly coping with studies and assignments, albeit often with some reluctance because of the trouble she's had focussing, and her results have been improving steadily - but the exams coming in only a couple of weeks and a couple of recent disappointments (rejections from an internship and another paid job) have compounded the existing study stress. She assures me I'm helping and 'looking after' her, but I can't help but feel a bit useless as I don't seem to be making much difference.
I was actually quite surprised when, on the day we were due to head to the MCM London Comic Con (last Friday, that is) she did not reconsider her attendance, and even wore the blue ('TARDIS') dress she'd previously sworn she would not wear to a convention because she's still overweight. She did start to panic a little while we were there (even with ticket presales hovering around the 1/3 capacity mark, and occupying a larger space than usual, the event was very crowded... though not the sea of elbows it gets to be over the weekends), but a quick tea break outside the halls brought her stress levels down enough that we were able to go back in. She did also stress about "spending too much time" looking at certain stalls (cough cough jewellery cough) but, to be honest, her more meticulous approach to the event probably benefitted me in the long run. Normally, when I go to these events, I'm out by lunchtime, having glanced at everything and bought everything I want/... This time, we were there till after 5pm... and we didn't leave because we were bored, we left because we were very tired after a hard day's retail therapy.
In other news, there's another new addition to the household... And I'm hoping my girlfriend doesn't get jealous about this, but... there's another woman in my life...
 |
| My girlfriend hasn't even complained about Catwoman (behind right) yet, so I think I'm safe... |
Sunday 22 March 2015
Work Stress
OK, even I'm a little disappointed that my first post since the beginning of the month is just another dream thing. I really need to get back into the habit of writing up the positive (and, I suppose, negative) real life things that happen but, frankly, I'm doing more stuff elsewhere, and generally don't feel like adding to this blog at the moment.
Which is a shame, because - just for example - my girlfriend and I went to see Treasure Island at the National Theatre last weekend, and it was completely fantastic - the elaborate set was very clever and adaptable, the cast (including Arthur Darvill and Patsy Ferran, the latter having previously appeared in last year's stage production of Blythe Spirit starring Angela Lansbury). My main thought throughout was "I hadn't realised this was supposed to be funny!", as I've only ever seen movies of the story, and the only deliberately funny one seemed to be the Muppets version... though it's always possible I misremember.
But anyway.
Work has been quite fraught recently, with a certain exhibition taking up much of everyone's time over the last couple of months. I worked on the show guide, as I did last year while Temping, and things like the signage were split between all of us, despite all working to essentially the same template.
Throughout this time our manager has been exhibiting certain... aberrant - not to say abhorrent - behaviour, focussed largely on my counterpart. In an assessment meeting they had a while back, she told him he needed to stop asking so many questions and do more on own initiative... but, whenever he's followed that instruction, she's become angry and told him he should have discussed things with her first. Contradict much?
Most recently, she got he and I to 'help' her on one of her regular magazines, which had been running late due (we were told) to the editors supplying their copy late. Thing is, she's recently been complaining about being busy with freelance work, so we suspect she's not as focussed on office work as she should be when she's working from home. She asked us to handle amendments supplied by the editors, and I ended up doing most of it because my counterpart was too busy doing his own work on that magazine. I gather the editors had an argument with her after I'd departed for the day, and that she'd threatened to cry (which was described by one of the designers as "awkward"... most likely, I'd guess, because it was being put on). The next day, when my counterpart arrived in the office, he found an email from her accusing him of deleting files and thereby causing delays. Considering I'd done the majority of the work she referred to, and I'd certainly not deleted anything, this seemed unfair. He hadn't gone anywhere near that stuff, and it wasn't as if she'd veiled the accusation with a question ("did you delete any files from x folder?"), she went straight for saying "you have been deleting files". Naturally, he protested.
She then claimed that she could see - via some software sorcery - that he had deleted files (which tends to suggest to me that the files weren't deleted) and insisted that they continue the discussion 'offline' since she wasn't in the office that day.
And, of course, when he spoke to her on the phone, she sounded drunk.
I've started to think that I should do something (and I know precisely what) about this situation, because it upsets me that my counterpart is essentially being bullied... and in exactly the same way that our predecessors were bullied by this same manager. The question is how this has been allowed to continue, so I really need to ascertain what passes for HR at this company and make some enquiries.
Cut to last night, when I suddenly had a dream about all the work I did for the exhibition, which is now well behind us.
It began - if I remember correctly - with a post-mortem meeting about the show guide, which revealed it was littered with spelling errors. And not just simple ones - we're talking mistakes that were utterly obvious, and honestly looked like whoever typed it had suffered a seizure mid-flow. Naturally, my boss was apoplectic. I couldn't understand how that had happened, so I went back to the source file to check. At one point, my boss seemed to start hyperventilating, so I tried to calm her and she got even more angry. After quite a bit more that I no longer remember, I woke up, briefly... and then drifted straight back into the same dream.
As a form of reparations, my boss got me to work on a new project which appeared to be a wine label. In real life, this is darkly amusing, considering her drinking. She was quite bitchy about the work in progress, focussing on my use of standard line weights for something or other. Thankfully, I didn't go through much more of that before waking up properly.
In other news, things flat-related aren't progressing a great deal... a set of light fittings and switches were recently stolen from the communal areas, all because the front door wasn't closing properly. The landlord has dealt with the latter issue, but the former - hopefully - will get dealt with today. We shall see...
Which is a shame, because - just for example - my girlfriend and I went to see Treasure Island at the National Theatre last weekend, and it was completely fantastic - the elaborate set was very clever and adaptable, the cast (including Arthur Darvill and Patsy Ferran, the latter having previously appeared in last year's stage production of Blythe Spirit starring Angela Lansbury). My main thought throughout was "I hadn't realised this was supposed to be funny!", as I've only ever seen movies of the story, and the only deliberately funny one seemed to be the Muppets version... though it's always possible I misremember.
But anyway.
Work has been quite fraught recently, with a certain exhibition taking up much of everyone's time over the last couple of months. I worked on the show guide, as I did last year while Temping, and things like the signage were split between all of us, despite all working to essentially the same template.
Throughout this time our manager has been exhibiting certain... aberrant - not to say abhorrent - behaviour, focussed largely on my counterpart. In an assessment meeting they had a while back, she told him he needed to stop asking so many questions and do more on own initiative... but, whenever he's followed that instruction, she's become angry and told him he should have discussed things with her first. Contradict much?
Most recently, she got he and I to 'help' her on one of her regular magazines, which had been running late due (we were told) to the editors supplying their copy late. Thing is, she's recently been complaining about being busy with freelance work, so we suspect she's not as focussed on office work as she should be when she's working from home. She asked us to handle amendments supplied by the editors, and I ended up doing most of it because my counterpart was too busy doing his own work on that magazine. I gather the editors had an argument with her after I'd departed for the day, and that she'd threatened to cry (which was described by one of the designers as "awkward"... most likely, I'd guess, because it was being put on). The next day, when my counterpart arrived in the office, he found an email from her accusing him of deleting files and thereby causing delays. Considering I'd done the majority of the work she referred to, and I'd certainly not deleted anything, this seemed unfair. He hadn't gone anywhere near that stuff, and it wasn't as if she'd veiled the accusation with a question ("did you delete any files from x folder?"), she went straight for saying "you have been deleting files". Naturally, he protested.
She then claimed that she could see - via some software sorcery - that he had deleted files (which tends to suggest to me that the files weren't deleted) and insisted that they continue the discussion 'offline' since she wasn't in the office that day.
And, of course, when he spoke to her on the phone, she sounded drunk.
I've started to think that I should do something (and I know precisely what) about this situation, because it upsets me that my counterpart is essentially being bullied... and in exactly the same way that our predecessors were bullied by this same manager. The question is how this has been allowed to continue, so I really need to ascertain what passes for HR at this company and make some enquiries.
Cut to last night, when I suddenly had a dream about all the work I did for the exhibition, which is now well behind us.
It began - if I remember correctly - with a post-mortem meeting about the show guide, which revealed it was littered with spelling errors. And not just simple ones - we're talking mistakes that were utterly obvious, and honestly looked like whoever typed it had suffered a seizure mid-flow. Naturally, my boss was apoplectic. I couldn't understand how that had happened, so I went back to the source file to check. At one point, my boss seemed to start hyperventilating, so I tried to calm her and she got even more angry. After quite a bit more that I no longer remember, I woke up, briefly... and then drifted straight back into the same dream.
As a form of reparations, my boss got me to work on a new project which appeared to be a wine label. In real life, this is darkly amusing, considering her drinking. She was quite bitchy about the work in progress, focussing on my use of standard line weights for something or other. Thankfully, I didn't go through much more of that before waking up properly.
In other news, things flat-related aren't progressing a great deal... a set of light fittings and switches were recently stolen from the communal areas, all because the front door wasn't closing properly. The landlord has dealt with the latter issue, but the former - hopefully - will get dealt with today. We shall see...
Sunday 1 March 2015
Not Even The First Weird Dream Of The Year
I made an unconscious decision, when I turned forty (yet somewhat flexible, as it turns out), to avoid live music concerts as, I feel, they are more for the young 'uns than for middle-aged folks like me. This goes against my own experience, and I suspect it's more that the aforementioned young 'uns are actually kind of embarrassing to be around at a concert, even if I don't know them (for example, the bunch of teenagers at a Jane's Addiction gig I went to years ago, who were confused by any song from an album prior to Strays, who were playing with matches before the concert started, and whose female contingent was quite literally falling out of her clothes). Of course, this misses the point that most of the bands I like are now made up of middle aged members... Nevertheless, I passed on the opportunity to see Queens of the Stone Age again last year, pleading financial worries, and now rather regret it... And when my girlfriend recently discovered that Weird Al Yankovic will be playing in town this year, I encouraged her to obtain tickets.
Perhaps that's why, last night, I dreamt of a Nine Inch Nails concert which seemed to have been split into two parts. One, the kiddie-friendly part, seemed to have been staged in a school assembly hall, with all the kids sitting cross-legged (and laden with all kinds of cool boxed electronic gadgets, for no easily discernible reason), patiently awaiting the start of the concert. I was with my best friend and another old friend who now lives in the States (in fact, it seems likely, going by the accents of the other folks in the dream, that the concert was happening somewhere in the States), just wandering around the hall.
The venue was well-lit and the stage unadorned with the usual lighting accoutrements of a NIN gig, but none of us were in any doubt about the headline act. While my friends and I were wandering around - possibly looking for seats - a man crawled over to one of the kids and indicated that the concert was about to start, and that everyone should be encouraged to wave their gadgets (in-box) in the air, the way some folks like to wave cigarette lighters in the air during a cute song at a grown-up rock concert.
OK, brief digression: now that electronic cigarettes are a thing and lighters are no longer as necessary... what the hell are people going to wave in the air during a cute song at a grown-up rock concert?
Back to the dream now...
This one kid spread the word throughout the blocks of seated kids, but my friends and I moved on before the concert started... as far as I can recall.
Moved on, it would seem, to the grown-ups NIN gig in a huge stadium nearby... Only it almost wasn't a stadium, but just a random section of a city, as I'm sure I saw public seating and shopfronts, pavements, roads and alleyways as we wandered around. In fact, thinking about it now, it kind of reminds me of the Disney venue my girlfriend and I visited last year...
Weirdly, once we'd found our seats, the first part of the concert just seemed to happen without any music being played - the lights came up, we cheered, and it was all over for the first half. I'd noticed a large number of teenagers wearing red hoodies, and put it down to them being from the same 'yoof group' or school or college, but it transpired that they were later to be part of the events on-stage, as all of them left their seats and started making their way backstage during the intermission.
My friends and I took this as an opportunity to find better seats, and so wandered off down one side of the 'stadium'. We found better seats, certainly, in that they were less crowded... but they were also far off to one side and too close to the stage to really have a good, comfortable (non-neck-craning) view of the stage. I protested on just those grounds and headed off, further back and toward the middle - close enough to our original seats, I thought - for a better view of what was likely to be another stunning NIN light show during the second half (going by the lighting rigs being moved into place on and around the stage).
In fact, when I finally took a seat, I felt pretty sure that I was back in my original seat... though the gentleman I'd sat next to (clearly not of the mind that rock concerts are for the young 'uns as he was even older than I) disagreed. He first reached into my shirt pocket, only afterward explaining that he was after my ticket, so he could clearly indicate that I was in the wrong seat. Pulling my ticket out of another pocket - firmly believing that either I had a duplicate of his ticket, or maybe he or I had come on the wrong day - I realised that he was right - his group were in seats D16 and above, while mine was clearly D9.
I got up and went in search of the correct seat just as the main lights started to go out and the lights on stage started to pulse and flicker. When I reached what I thought was seat D9, I found it occupied by a baby, wrapped in a blanket and looking rather confused. I leant over the seat back and asked the lady next to it - who appeared to be the child's mother - if there was any chance I might squeeze in (the thought having occurred to me that I really didn't want to sit on the baby), but she indicated that the row was crowded (which it was - suddenly all of them were).
And so, as the droning intro to The Great Below began, as an announcer boomed over the PA that NIN were playing the venue "for the first time in fifteen years", accompanied - in celebration of the momentous occasion - by several assembled youth choirs ("aha - that's what the colour-coded hoodies were in aid of!"), I made my way back to my friends with my tail between my legs...
...And the sinking feeling, as I passed through groups of red- or white-hoodied teenagers right in front of the stage, that I was probably intruding on a filming of the event. I'm not even sure I reached a seat, let alone the seat with my friends, as the concert started and the dream moved on to a shopping trip with my girlfriend where, walking through what appeared to be a market set up in a town square, I thought I recognised a nearby building and said "Now I know where we are!", then decided to make a detour, crossing the road to properly explore how the area we had come to connected to the nearby area (somewhere on the Bakerloo line, going by the brown London Underground sign on the station I saw) which I was already familar with...
...Only that was the moment I woke up and told my girlfriend (still half asleep, the both of us) that I'd just had a dream about being at a Nine Inch Nails concert, and decided to get up to write about it here, lest I forget some of the details.
Such as, now I think about it, as we were approaching the market in the final segment of the dream, I'm certain I saw the three presenters of Top Gear lurking in the crowds, no doubt making pithy remarks about the quaint British street market for one of their 'travelogue' shows...
And yet that wasn't the weirdest dream I've had so far this year..?
No, that honour would probably go to the one where I was being driven, along with my mother, to a family camping trip in a wooded area around a lake, sometime in Autumn going by the coverage of brown leaves on the ground. When we arrived, I found my mother wasn't sleeping after all... she was actually dead. Nevertheless, I carried her over to a deck chair by the lake and next to my father, and claimed she was still very much asleep so we could all carry on enjoying the holiday, and everyone would think that she passed away while sleeping peacefully at the lakeside, rather than in the stuffy car on the way.
But still, it was pretty weird. And the first thing I did before starting this write-up was check the dates on the two NIN live DVDs I own, to see if the last concert I went to could possibly have been fifteen years ago...
...but it wasn't. It was only about eight years ago at most.
Perhaps that's why, last night, I dreamt of a Nine Inch Nails concert which seemed to have been split into two parts. One, the kiddie-friendly part, seemed to have been staged in a school assembly hall, with all the kids sitting cross-legged (and laden with all kinds of cool boxed electronic gadgets, for no easily discernible reason), patiently awaiting the start of the concert. I was with my best friend and another old friend who now lives in the States (in fact, it seems likely, going by the accents of the other folks in the dream, that the concert was happening somewhere in the States), just wandering around the hall.
The venue was well-lit and the stage unadorned with the usual lighting accoutrements of a NIN gig, but none of us were in any doubt about the headline act. While my friends and I were wandering around - possibly looking for seats - a man crawled over to one of the kids and indicated that the concert was about to start, and that everyone should be encouraged to wave their gadgets (in-box) in the air, the way some folks like to wave cigarette lighters in the air during a cute song at a grown-up rock concert.
OK, brief digression: now that electronic cigarettes are a thing and lighters are no longer as necessary... what the hell are people going to wave in the air during a cute song at a grown-up rock concert?
Back to the dream now...
This one kid spread the word throughout the blocks of seated kids, but my friends and I moved on before the concert started... as far as I can recall.
Moved on, it would seem, to the grown-ups NIN gig in a huge stadium nearby... Only it almost wasn't a stadium, but just a random section of a city, as I'm sure I saw public seating and shopfronts, pavements, roads and alleyways as we wandered around. In fact, thinking about it now, it kind of reminds me of the Disney venue my girlfriend and I visited last year...
Weirdly, once we'd found our seats, the first part of the concert just seemed to happen without any music being played - the lights came up, we cheered, and it was all over for the first half. I'd noticed a large number of teenagers wearing red hoodies, and put it down to them being from the same 'yoof group' or school or college, but it transpired that they were later to be part of the events on-stage, as all of them left their seats and started making their way backstage during the intermission.
My friends and I took this as an opportunity to find better seats, and so wandered off down one side of the 'stadium'. We found better seats, certainly, in that they were less crowded... but they were also far off to one side and too close to the stage to really have a good, comfortable (non-neck-craning) view of the stage. I protested on just those grounds and headed off, further back and toward the middle - close enough to our original seats, I thought - for a better view of what was likely to be another stunning NIN light show during the second half (going by the lighting rigs being moved into place on and around the stage).
In fact, when I finally took a seat, I felt pretty sure that I was back in my original seat... though the gentleman I'd sat next to (clearly not of the mind that rock concerts are for the young 'uns as he was even older than I) disagreed. He first reached into my shirt pocket, only afterward explaining that he was after my ticket, so he could clearly indicate that I was in the wrong seat. Pulling my ticket out of another pocket - firmly believing that either I had a duplicate of his ticket, or maybe he or I had come on the wrong day - I realised that he was right - his group were in seats D16 and above, while mine was clearly D9.
I got up and went in search of the correct seat just as the main lights started to go out and the lights on stage started to pulse and flicker. When I reached what I thought was seat D9, I found it occupied by a baby, wrapped in a blanket and looking rather confused. I leant over the seat back and asked the lady next to it - who appeared to be the child's mother - if there was any chance I might squeeze in (the thought having occurred to me that I really didn't want to sit on the baby), but she indicated that the row was crowded (which it was - suddenly all of them were).
And so, as the droning intro to The Great Below began, as an announcer boomed over the PA that NIN were playing the venue "for the first time in fifteen years", accompanied - in celebration of the momentous occasion - by several assembled youth choirs ("aha - that's what the colour-coded hoodies were in aid of!"), I made my way back to my friends with my tail between my legs...
...And the sinking feeling, as I passed through groups of red- or white-hoodied teenagers right in front of the stage, that I was probably intruding on a filming of the event. I'm not even sure I reached a seat, let alone the seat with my friends, as the concert started and the dream moved on to a shopping trip with my girlfriend where, walking through what appeared to be a market set up in a town square, I thought I recognised a nearby building and said "Now I know where we are!", then decided to make a detour, crossing the road to properly explore how the area we had come to connected to the nearby area (somewhere on the Bakerloo line, going by the brown London Underground sign on the station I saw) which I was already familar with...
...Only that was the moment I woke up and told my girlfriend (still half asleep, the both of us) that I'd just had a dream about being at a Nine Inch Nails concert, and decided to get up to write about it here, lest I forget some of the details.
Such as, now I think about it, as we were approaching the market in the final segment of the dream, I'm certain I saw the three presenters of Top Gear lurking in the crowds, no doubt making pithy remarks about the quaint British street market for one of their 'travelogue' shows...
And yet that wasn't the weirdest dream I've had so far this year..?
No, that honour would probably go to the one where I was being driven, along with my mother, to a family camping trip in a wooded area around a lake, sometime in Autumn going by the coverage of brown leaves on the ground. When we arrived, I found my mother wasn't sleeping after all... she was actually dead. Nevertheless, I carried her over to a deck chair by the lake and next to my father, and claimed she was still very much asleep so we could all carry on enjoying the holiday, and everyone would think that she passed away while sleeping peacefully at the lakeside, rather than in the stuffy car on the way.
But still, it was pretty weird. And the first thing I did before starting this write-up was check the dates on the two NIN live DVDs I own, to see if the last concert I went to could possibly have been fifteen years ago...
...but it wasn't. It was only about eight years ago at most.
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