Sad News

While talking to my mother earlier this evening, I learned that my great aunt died recently - about two weeks ago, we think.

We're not sure because various family members had been trying to contact her over the last couple of weeks, with no response. One relative popped round, and found her at home, dead. It was supposedly clear that she'd been dead for some time, but an autopsy is necessary as there is some mystery surrounding the circumstances. She was old, but not obviously at death's door.

Making matter worse, attempts have been made to contact her cousin - of a similar age - but she's not at her last known address, and the person running the place only started recently, and has no knowledge of her. We're attempting to track her down...

I hardly knew my great aunt - only remember seeing her briefly around Christmas time - but this death is far more upsetting than that of my grandmother last year. The circumstances are bad enough on their own, but she'd been living alone for quite some time having lost her husband a few years ago.

This leaves my other grandmother - my mother's mother - and I'm not sure how we're going to go about telling her, considering she has Alzheimer's...

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A Triumph of Optimism Over Experience

Had to get the train home tonight as my boss was working late and, while waiting for the train on the station platform, I saw a woman using hairspray.

Bearing in mind that she was heading out of town and, past that station, everything was above ground, the fact that rain was pouring down should probably have put her off such extravagance.

People Are Weird.

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Shaggy Dog Stories

Not sure quite what's going on with Hollywood these days, but the trend towards remakes seems to be gaining momentum. Horror seems to be the focus right now, with the Halloween movies already rebooted, Friday 13th prolonging its existence with fairly regular reboots/sequels, and even Nightmare on Elm Street (minus Robert Englund, Freddy is played by the diminutive Jackie Earl Haley, most recently of Watchmen).

But it's Universal who have the greatest stock of the true Monster Movies, and The Wolfman is a remake of the 1941 classic starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Claude Rains. And, if this remake is anything to go by, roll on future Universal Monsters movies.

I have to admit, it's a bit of a patchy film. I dozed through the first half hour or so and, to be honest, I didn't find any of the performances particularly electrifying. Benicio Del Toro does a good enough job as the man cursed to become a werewolf at the full moon, but it's not a particularly compelling character. Anthony Hopkins lends the film some weight, but is equally unsympathetic. Even Hugo Weaving as the Scotland Yard Inspector looking into the mystery doesn't really capture one's attention. He does slip into Agent Smith delivery once in a while, but not enough to ruin the film.

The main problem, at the heart of the movie, is that there's very little story, and it's played out very much by the numbers. It's all very functional. A leads to B, leads to revelation C, leads to climax D. It's not bad, and it is a remake... but it seemed rather flat.

While out, I managed to remember some of the DVDs I was after... Well, one anyway. I picked up Surrogates (missed in the cinema, but it looked intriguing), Them! (ancient cautionary tale about ants grown large following nuclear bomb tests which inspired the old Amiga game It Came From The Desert), Gran Torino (missed in the cinema, but recommended by a friend), The Good, The Bad and The Weird (Korean Western, featuring the guy who played Storm Shadow in the recent GI Joe movie) and volume 6 of TransFormers: Animated (they didn't have volume 5, though).

I have watched Surrogates and Them! today, but reviews will have to wait - giving myself an early-ish night due to a headache.

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Territorial Pissings

So there's this new system, right? And the Project Manager is very keen to get it all up and running 'as it should be'. But the system contains elements that are at least a step backwards, if not wholly detrimental to the work at hand. What happens?

The system gets adapted, right?

You keep the bits you like, ditch the parts that cause problems, and circumnavigate the inevitable glitches along the way.

Oh, no. Not with our Project Manager. She wants everything up and running 'as it should be', going so far as to bury news of problems so they're never properly dealt with. She has repeatedly tried to force us into using parts of the system that are broken and increase not only our workload, but our turnaround times.

Thank God for a department Manager who (a) gives a damn about staff and their workloads and (b) is enough of a control freak to know what works, what doesn't, and what we do at every stage of our process. Hell, she wrote the process.

But Project Manager kicks up a storm because not using the system 'as it should be' could be considered a failure on her part (and burying the bad news couldn't?). This gets passed on to my MD, who then passes it down to my Manager... Who then kicks up a whole new storm in retaliation... and successfully proves our case, winning a significant victory in the name of sanity. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Because it's not about the system. It's about who thinks what about whom, and other such dreary office politics. The retaliation wasn't about the system, it was about being forced into using something that we have already shown is of no benefit, by someone who has shown not the least bit of concern about the workflow.

Watch for the signs, lest you be caught in a similar crossfire!

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Halfway Between The Gutter and The Stars

After a reasonably foul day at work, my boss took me to a presentation by WOLAS (the West Of London Astronomical Society), in which a photographer told all about a project he worked on for the International Year of Astronomy (being 2009). Largely a collection of portraits of the leading names in UK Astronomy.

At least, that's how the project was conceived. It then got hit by Political Correctness, and had to include a diverse range of folks in related fields, a certain percentage being (a) Female, (b) of an Ethnic Minority and (c) below A Certain Age. Oh well.

The rest was a 'narrative project' following things and locations relating to the field.

Interesting subject... terrible speaker... and some of his Photoshop work was dubious, to say the least. Nevertheless, a diverting hour.

The other folks there tended to fit the usual stereotypes: unwashed, unkempt and generally obvious geeks with the kind of elaborate hair styles that can only develop through neglect rather than active styling. I'm sure they're very enthusiastic, though... but I'd be nervous about actually engaging any of them in conversation (partly because I'm a complete novice, partly because they'd most likely get overexcited... or perhaps they're not that close to the stereotype).

I've now spent rather too long watching a Let's Play of Batman: Arkham Asylum... which is still looking very linear, albeit quite visually impressive. Much of the Grant Morrison/Dave McKean graphic novel has been utilised in the storytelling, though many of the more disturbing elements ("I looked into the doll's house... and the doll's house... looked... back... at... me") have been removed. Shame... it might have been fun to have access to the full Amadeus Arkham flashbacks, but it probably would have detracted from the game.

Anyway... Time to sign off before the clock ticks into tomorrow.

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Technical glitch?

I'm currently using Flock as my Browser of Choice, largely because of its Blog Editor... but it seems to lose track of its connections to Blogger intermittently...

It's also lost a few saved, incomplete blog entries... thankfully nothing critical...

I may have to get involved with the discussions on the Flock forums. Not tonight, though...

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Still not quite according to plan...

...But slightly better.

I'm trying to work on a short story, as a challenge from a friend. It originally came from a friend of hers, and has since spread to others. The brief was to "write a ghost story" and, in a fairly short space of time, I went from no ideas (it is an incredibly broad, yet restrictive canvas) to two ideas (neither of which are ideal as they feature characters I'm aiming to use for other things), and yet I'm still unable to do much more than jot down an outline.

This is partly my intermittent apathy, and partly the result of coming down from the high of having read and been inspired by a couple of books on writing. I felt like I was on the right track... but now my thoughts won't become coherent enough to write down in the form of a story.

Of the two ideas, I prefer the one for two of my 'critical characters' - those I actually want to do something with - because, who knows, it might well become a chapter in a novel. On the other hand, the idea involving two of my 'non-critical characters - players from a story within a story, and so ideal for such exercises as this - has no less merit, and is liable to be quite entertaining. Chances are, it'll be one of very few chances to explore these two.

In other news, I've spent a good chunk of the weekend watching Let's Plays on YouTube - specifically Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (having got to the end, I have to say the title is a bit of a clue as to what's going on, but its true meaning does not become apparent until the very final act... at which point, it slaps you in the face, and makes you re-examine many of the earlier events from this new perspective), Bayonetta (OK, I confess, I started watching it because the main character is a sexy, sassy, gun-toting witch... so the game is, in some ways, what I'd hoped Bullet Witch would have been, though I do have to wonder why they named a gun-fancying witch after a knife), Resident Evil Remake (a beefed-up retelling of the original, with more dangerous zombies), Batman: Arkham Asylum (seems a bit linear but, let's face it, I'm watching a walkthrough), and Wet (ultraviolence featuring the voice of Eliza Dushku).

I'd also intended to watch one of the three movies from my recently-purchased Coen Brothers collection... but couldn't quite fit it in between my many idle moments.

I did manage to pop out to restock my fridge and get some cash out... and, wouldn't you know, that was the time my mortgage advisor chose to call to discuss things. He said sometime between 12 and 4pm today. Who knew it'd be almost bang on 12pm?

And here I am, up late again, just as another week at work is about to begin. The second week of February, and I still haven't fixed up my CV and started looking for another job.

Not quite according to plan...

So now I have my nice new PC up and running on the interwebs via its fancy new modem, I'm sure I should be posting more. Certainly I should be getting a move on with other things...

...But, for whatever reason, I'm feeling generally quite apathetic, and am doing very little.

Other than visiting YouTube, for such wonders as Mr B., Gentleman Rhymer and various Let's Plays...

Really not doing well on my New Year's Resolutions, either...