As is becoming usual, I'm not even going to attempt to play catch up. Around five full months have passed since I last posted to this blog. This is disappointing to me, as the main reason for this blog was to keep me writing while the umpteen novels swirling around in my brain coalesced into something I could actually commit to paper (or electronic document of some form). So far, that part of the plan has been a pretty dismal failure. I have more notes, certainly, and maybe even a better grasp of the characters... but the stories themselves are still entirely nebulous, and every attempt to sit down and write them - even the little vignettes, related to yet separable from the main narratives - have thusfar been impossible to flesh out. That doesn't mean I'm giving up, just that I have to acknowledge that, perhaps, the time isn't right.
I've been having similar troubles with my other blogs... I have posts that are taking weeks to complete because I can't focus on them, and I'm struggling to maintain interest in the face of some ongoing and stressful real-world situations.
I've no doubt written about the shoddy state of the roof of my flat and my landlord's reluctance to do anything about it. I'm currently involved in a legal process which is set to conclude with me giving him a large sum of money. Voluntarily, I might add. Gladly, even, given what the expenditure grants me. Nothing shady. I am therefore quite baffled at his reluctance to accept my money, when he spent several years making demands for smaller sums (excessive though they were in the context), ostensibly for the upkeep of the building, only to continually neglect the upkeep of the building. Here is a man who has actually expressed the belief that being a landlord is a profit-making enterprise... and yet here I am (figuratively speaking) shouting "Shut up and take my money!" while shaking a fist containing what's left of my savings plus a generous donation from my family.
Then there's work. When I accepted a full-time position in a small company, I thought I was ready to go back into the perilous office environment. My 11 year stint in one company proved I could handle it, while the following three years of temping left me wanting a bit more security. More fool me, then, for taking a job in the very sort of small office environment that left me in need of a shrink around 20 years ago. Small companies might seem to offer a 'family environment', but one should carefully consider the darker aspects of family life, the suffocating, claustrophobic smallness of it - both physically and psychologically - and the bubbling, brooding tension of it before pining after a workplace with a 'family environment'. Small companies have to make tough decisions on a daily basis, and frequently make choices that seem nonsensical to an outsider. Small companies also invariably give rise to tin-pot dictators who feel inclined to exert control where it's neither wanted nor beneficial, and who get away with claiming expertise because no-one else in the upper echelons knows any damned better.
I'm also at a point in my life where I find myself reflecting on the (for the most part profoundly stupid) choices I've made over the years. I have much to be happy for, to be sure, but I can't help thinking I'd be in a better place if I'd gone left instead of right, zagged instead of zigged, dived instead of ducked.
So. Forgive me, gentle reader, if I have spared you my nigh-limitless font of opinions on the movies and TV shows I've seen over the last few months. It's not that I don't want to write about them (with the possible exceptions of the utterly dire Suicide Squad or the staggeringly predictable The Girl on the Train), it's just that my mind is elsewhere, and what little bile might rise on the subject is most often eased in conversations with my girlfriend when I get home from the cinema or when we switch off the TV.
That, in fact, is one small part of the most significant change in my life to precipitate the trailing-off of this blog. Living with another person seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for over two years so far has been a pretty big deal. In many ways, it's something I wish I'd written about more... but it feels somehow too private, too personal for this blog... which has always been about me, singular. Partnership never really entered into it.
And so, ten years after the first post, it feels again like The End, and yet The Beginning. I may well post here again in future, but I suspect I won't. As an ongoing project, //ƒuƶƶy[løgic] feels like it has run its course. If I look back on old posts, I don't even recognise myself as the writer most of the time.
It may well be that I start another blog, but I really don't feel like writing about personal stuff at present. If I thought I'd have the time and the inclination, I might consider a blog wholly devoted to the movies and TV shows I'm watching. Many people have told me I should be a critic... if only anyone could pin down a subject matter, since I can generally form an opinion on anything.
As ever, it's a case of "watch this space"...Only, not necessarily this specific space...
It's been real...
Friday, 21 October 2016
Monday, 16 May 2016
Change Is The Only Constant
I'm not even going to attempt to play catch-up, and write some kind of summary of the events over the couple of months since I last wrote anything here. Way too much has been happening, both at home and at work. I'm really kicking myself for not even writing up the movies I've seen recently, so here's a brief summary:
I actually liked Batman v Superman far more than I'd expected to, given the travesty that was Man of Steel (even assuming that movie was made purely to set up BvS, it's still exceptionally poor) not least because BvS is basically the first time we've seen, on film, Batman-as-Detective, and some more serious discussions between Bruce and Alfred about the 'need' for Batman. Sure, he kills a bunch of people along the way, but Hollywood has always had trouble with Batman's 'no killing' policy, and always plays fast and loose with it. Granted, the means of pitching the two against each other is tenuous at best, but it worked in the context of the movie. The biggest problems, from my point of view, were Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor (or Lex Jr., I'm led to believe) who never managed to be the sinister, threatening mastermind he needed to be (although the "Grandma's Peach Tea" bit was awesome!), and the superfluous monster in the climactic battle. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but I actually enjoyed it.
Meanwhile, Captain America: Civil War suffered from the same malady as Avengers: Age of Ultron, in that it tried to cram far too much story into a single movie. What needed to be a deep insight into the difference of philosophy between Rogers and Stark, with far-reaching consequences in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was boiled down to a family argument that led to fisticuffs in an airport. Yes, there were consequences... but this was a story that needed to unfold over time, whereas the threat - the division amongst the costumed heroes, much like the rise of Ultron and his clones in AoU - deserved time to grow before being solved with a few all-star punch-ups. This situation is less 'solved' than Ultron, granted, with the Cap basically in hiding and Tony Stark still kind of seething about everything, but it's the kind of story that either needed to be split across a couple of movies, or to be turned into a TV series. Plus, is it just me, or was it more of an Avengers movie than a 'true' Captain America flick? Sure, there was some focus on the Cap and his attempts to rekindle his bromance with Bucky, but too much else was going on... Perhaps, what they should have done was have Civil War movies devoted to the key characters (surely there's another Iron Man movie coming along soon?), rather than one movie for the whole event...
In other news, the weird dreams still come along now and then. I had one where my computer went very seriously wrong to the point where I switched it off intending never to turn it on again, then another which involved a kidnapping in the Star Trek universe - am I right in thinking there was an episode of The Next Generation where someone was beamed away from a planet/ship the moment they were beamed there, giving people the impression that there had been a transporter malfunction, and the person had been 'lost'? This was a lot like that... I don't recall who was kidnapped, but the investigation was pretty exciting.
Other big stuff: There was a plan for my girlfriend and I to take my niece for her first visit to the Science Museum (other uncle got the Natural History Museum, last year), which didn't go according to plan for several reasons. We arrived a good 15-30 minutes later than niece and family, and the day was already so rigorously timetabled that she started getting flustered when she wanted to keep playing on some of their edutainment games when we were supposed to be heading off for a guided walk around the space section. We left quite early in the afternoon, and she was pretty uppity - due to being tired, mainly - for the remainder of the day.
On the subject of the NHM, though, my girlfriend and I recently went to the Otherworlds exhibition - photographs of (and, in some cases, from) other planets in our solar system - and were thoroughly impressed... Though the day got off to an interesting start because we were in the cue behind a certain Hollywood star and his family...
Weird thing about this blog. I'm very conscious of the fact that it will have been going for ten years, come October. I'm also very conscious of the fact that I repeatedly neglect it for ages on end. I tend to find that, living with my girlfriend, I'm not so prone to the sort of introspection this blog has embodied for the last ten years. For the most part, I can't even be bothered to write about movies, TV shows, even books that I used to enjoy writing about. One of my other blogs is getting most of my attention, so I'm not stopping... I just kind of feel that the portion of my life that brought this blog into being is pretty much over, and that either I need to start something new, or just take a break from personal blogging (which I've basically been doing, intermittently, for the last couple of years).
Watch this space...
...Or, more likely, don't...
I actually liked Batman v Superman far more than I'd expected to, given the travesty that was Man of Steel (even assuming that movie was made purely to set up BvS, it's still exceptionally poor) not least because BvS is basically the first time we've seen, on film, Batman-as-Detective, and some more serious discussions between Bruce and Alfred about the 'need' for Batman. Sure, he kills a bunch of people along the way, but Hollywood has always had trouble with Batman's 'no killing' policy, and always plays fast and loose with it. Granted, the means of pitching the two against each other is tenuous at best, but it worked in the context of the movie. The biggest problems, from my point of view, were Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor (or Lex Jr., I'm led to believe) who never managed to be the sinister, threatening mastermind he needed to be (although the "Grandma's Peach Tea" bit was awesome!), and the superfluous monster in the climactic battle. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but I actually enjoyed it.
Meanwhile, Captain America: Civil War suffered from the same malady as Avengers: Age of Ultron, in that it tried to cram far too much story into a single movie. What needed to be a deep insight into the difference of philosophy between Rogers and Stark, with far-reaching consequences in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was boiled down to a family argument that led to fisticuffs in an airport. Yes, there were consequences... but this was a story that needed to unfold over time, whereas the threat - the division amongst the costumed heroes, much like the rise of Ultron and his clones in AoU - deserved time to grow before being solved with a few all-star punch-ups. This situation is less 'solved' than Ultron, granted, with the Cap basically in hiding and Tony Stark still kind of seething about everything, but it's the kind of story that either needed to be split across a couple of movies, or to be turned into a TV series. Plus, is it just me, or was it more of an Avengers movie than a 'true' Captain America flick? Sure, there was some focus on the Cap and his attempts to rekindle his bromance with Bucky, but too much else was going on... Perhaps, what they should have done was have Civil War movies devoted to the key characters (surely there's another Iron Man movie coming along soon?), rather than one movie for the whole event...
In other news, the weird dreams still come along now and then. I had one where my computer went very seriously wrong to the point where I switched it off intending never to turn it on again, then another which involved a kidnapping in the Star Trek universe - am I right in thinking there was an episode of The Next Generation where someone was beamed away from a planet/ship the moment they were beamed there, giving people the impression that there had been a transporter malfunction, and the person had been 'lost'? This was a lot like that... I don't recall who was kidnapped, but the investigation was pretty exciting.
Other big stuff: There was a plan for my girlfriend and I to take my niece for her first visit to the Science Museum (other uncle got the Natural History Museum, last year), which didn't go according to plan for several reasons. We arrived a good 15-30 minutes later than niece and family, and the day was already so rigorously timetabled that she started getting flustered when she wanted to keep playing on some of their edutainment games when we were supposed to be heading off for a guided walk around the space section. We left quite early in the afternoon, and she was pretty uppity - due to being tired, mainly - for the remainder of the day.
On the subject of the NHM, though, my girlfriend and I recently went to the Otherworlds exhibition - photographs of (and, in some cases, from) other planets in our solar system - and were thoroughly impressed... Though the day got off to an interesting start because we were in the cue behind a certain Hollywood star and his family...
Weird thing about this blog. I'm very conscious of the fact that it will have been going for ten years, come October. I'm also very conscious of the fact that I repeatedly neglect it for ages on end. I tend to find that, living with my girlfriend, I'm not so prone to the sort of introspection this blog has embodied for the last ten years. For the most part, I can't even be bothered to write about movies, TV shows, even books that I used to enjoy writing about. One of my other blogs is getting most of my attention, so I'm not stopping... I just kind of feel that the portion of my life that brought this blog into being is pretty much over, and that either I need to start something new, or just take a break from personal blogging (which I've basically been doing, intermittently, for the last couple of years).
Watch this space...
...Or, more likely, don't...
Saturday, 27 February 2016
A Bit of a Nightmare
It's very rare, these days, that I have something that I can honestly describe as a nightmare. I have weird dreams, sure, and I occasionally have zombie dreams, but it's not often that a dream plays out like a horror movie... Which is probably a good thing, all told.
One dream I had last week was quite interesting, in that it was rather graphic in places, but included certain recognisable elements. I am, however, kicking myself for not making a few notes about it on my way to work the following morning, because I'm sure I'm not going to do it justice now...
It all seemed to revolve around the house from the TV show Being Human (that's the original one, in Bristol, in the BBC version), which was all boarded up following some horrific events - ritualistic murders, I gathered - at some point in the past. Two men seemed to be involved, one apparently a local vicar of Indian descent, the other I don't remember anything about in particular - he was just 'some guy'. The story seemed to go that some kind of TV journalist was looking into the story, and broke into the house, but ended up getting caught when the vicar and his partner somehow returned.
The graphic part involved the journalist getting tortured while tied down to some kind of makeshift altar. The main implement of torture was some kind of long fork - a cross between the sort of thing you'd use to keep a joint of meat still for carving, and the large spork-type thing you might use to serve a salad - the flat of which was applied to the journalist's eyeballs. It was about this point that, mercifully, I woke up.
Weirdly, though, this wasn't the most disturbing dream I've had lately, as there have been two separate instances - days apart - of dreams involving a former colleague (notable at the time for his somewhat aberrant behaviour - everything from deliberately cocking things up to ensure people came back to him to ask for his help in fixing it to outright threatening behaviour - and a creepy obsession with me, briefly alluded to in my very first post). In the first, sometime during the week before last, he boarded a (thankfully crowded) tube train I was already on, forcing me to hide behind my book and the crowds of people to avoid being seen, only for a mutual acquaintance to attempt to draw attention to me. In the most recent one, I think on Wednesday night, he decided to tag along - basically stalking me - while I was having a day out with my best mate, my sister and, for no readily apparent reason, Richard Branson. Bad enough that my mate was upset about Branson's presence... for my erstwhile stalker to have returned made it all distinctly uncomfortable.
The weirdest part is how and why these dreams have occurred at all - I've not seen or even heard of this guy in something approaching a decade, and he hasn't crossed my mind in years, so I'm a little freaked out by his appearance in two dreams within about a week of each other.
The first busy period of the year at work is now out of the way, and we're now in to a complete lull ahead of one of our bigger annual projects. On the upside, this means I can get in a bit of training with my colleagues. That's the idea, at least... we'll have to see how it goes...
One dream I had last week was quite interesting, in that it was rather graphic in places, but included certain recognisable elements. I am, however, kicking myself for not making a few notes about it on my way to work the following morning, because I'm sure I'm not going to do it justice now...
It all seemed to revolve around the house from the TV show Being Human (that's the original one, in Bristol, in the BBC version), which was all boarded up following some horrific events - ritualistic murders, I gathered - at some point in the past. Two men seemed to be involved, one apparently a local vicar of Indian descent, the other I don't remember anything about in particular - he was just 'some guy'. The story seemed to go that some kind of TV journalist was looking into the story, and broke into the house, but ended up getting caught when the vicar and his partner somehow returned.
The graphic part involved the journalist getting tortured while tied down to some kind of makeshift altar. The main implement of torture was some kind of long fork - a cross between the sort of thing you'd use to keep a joint of meat still for carving, and the large spork-type thing you might use to serve a salad - the flat of which was applied to the journalist's eyeballs. It was about this point that, mercifully, I woke up.
Weirdly, though, this wasn't the most disturbing dream I've had lately, as there have been two separate instances - days apart - of dreams involving a former colleague (notable at the time for his somewhat aberrant behaviour - everything from deliberately cocking things up to ensure people came back to him to ask for his help in fixing it to outright threatening behaviour - and a creepy obsession with me, briefly alluded to in my very first post). In the first, sometime during the week before last, he boarded a (thankfully crowded) tube train I was already on, forcing me to hide behind my book and the crowds of people to avoid being seen, only for a mutual acquaintance to attempt to draw attention to me. In the most recent one, I think on Wednesday night, he decided to tag along - basically stalking me - while I was having a day out with my best mate, my sister and, for no readily apparent reason, Richard Branson. Bad enough that my mate was upset about Branson's presence... for my erstwhile stalker to have returned made it all distinctly uncomfortable.
The weirdest part is how and why these dreams have occurred at all - I've not seen or even heard of this guy in something approaching a decade, and he hasn't crossed my mind in years, so I'm a little freaked out by his appearance in two dreams within about a week of each other.
The first busy period of the year at work is now out of the way, and we're now in to a complete lull ahead of one of our bigger annual projects. On the upside, this means I can get in a bit of training with my colleagues. That's the idea, at least... we'll have to see how it goes...
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