Shark!!!!

Just when I had managed to calm myself down from thinking about George Lucas’ assault on my childhood, I came across this advert from the animal rights group PETA or, to use their full name, ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’! Could this be the most ridiculous fucking bullshit poster that has ever been produced in the history of advertising? Aside from the usual crap we expect The Daily Mail (other equally shit and offensive publications are available.) will make of it, about how its release is offensive to those few unfortunates who have recently been attacked by Sharks, the one thing we must (I can’t believe I’m about to say this!) agree with ‘The Mail’ on is the utterly pathetic and fatuous message it conveys. I mean, do these moronic fucking hippies really think that if we all sit around in cotton shirts and hemp slacks eating nothing but Tofu and Soya milk then sharks will give up being predators and happily live fin in fin with all the other fishies as if it’s some kind of Disney-esque magic land?

I’ve never had anything against vegetarians, or vegans for that matter, but if they just look at their own argument, they had better start praying that the scenario in ‘The Day of The Triffids’ doesn’t become a reality ‘cause those fuckers will be first in line for some chlorophyll fueled slaughter! If these vegans are so worried about hurting living things then perhaps they should stop eating plants, after all we have scientific proof that plants have moods, of sort, that they respond to certain types of stimuli, such as music, which effect their growth rates (I hear they're particularly keen on Take That). In fact, if this poster truly reflects PETA’s view towards humanity then my suggestion is for them to stop eating entirely, there are far too many morons on this planet as there is without them churning out shit like this from their intellectually bankrupt minds, so perhaps it’s time for them to sit around a camp fire and sing Kumbya continuously until they can no longer draw breath. Not because I hate vegetarians or vegans but because I hate people foisting their own views on me by using nonsensical, sensationalist and illogical arguments dressed up as some kind of Gaian retribution!

Yours sincerely,

Mr. P.I. Stoff

Walton on the Naze.

Rewriting History or The Art of Perfection?

Something I have been struggling with recently is the notion that certain forms of art can be a constant work in progress. I manage to get my head around the fact that in some cases this can be an interesting form if applied to some visual and tactile arts: Painting, collage, sculpture and such like, and it can certainly be applied to storytelling, but I’m having difficulty understanding its application to a story told. Can a story, a finished, published, viewed, loved and acclaimed story be tinkered with after the best part of 35 years? Obviously the physical act of doing it is possible but does its author, its creator have a right to go back and change facts within the story that change one’s perception of a character or of a political climate just to make life easier for future writing? This act of going back and changing events and or characters within a story arc is known a Retroactive Continuity and is a fairly recent literary device which uses the concept that the future is not merely a consequence of past actions rather that history flows from the future into the past. I have seen it work both well and not so well within some comic book worlds. It is within this type of storytelling that ‘retcon’ works best but that is only because its readers come to understand quite quickly that Comic Book and Science Fiction worlds and their tales evolve in a different way to most other types of writing. Indeed Retroactive Continuity was first used in the DC Comic ‘All Star Squadron’, the ‘retcon’ applied is the setting of the story in an alternate universe in which normal physical states apply, for example: The character of Superman (or, indeed, any major character) has not aged very much over the years within his usual comic book world, but in his ‘retcon’ world aging is now a factor, so in the All Star Squadron universe of ‘Earth Two’ circa 1980 one would see a Superman well in to his Sixties. 

A sixty three year old Superman

This works because the reader is aware that the story is set in a different ‘universe’ and is safe in knowledge that, if it is not to their taste, they can buy other titles set within the normal Comic Book ‘universe’ or that they can go back to older editions and re-read the stories set therein. Retroactive Continuity can be a refreshing change when reading a series of comic book stories and can give different and interesting perspectives, but I view it mostly as a last resort for a novel writer who is having difficulty or is just can’t be bothered to keep track of facts within the world he has fleshed out. It was created by comic book writers a way to keep storytelling fresh in an industry that must produce multiple editions per month, and there it, for the most part, must stay. There is, however, a more sinister type of revision at work at the moment that has started with one man but threatens to spread amongst the more arrogant storytellers and it is with this that I am struggling.

 George bloody Lucas! He just can’t leave stuff alone. I can just about understand the visual changes he made to the original Star Wars trilogy, the C.G.I. during the assault on the Death Star being an obvious improvement, but one thing I cannot forgive or forget is his tampering with, what in my view, is a very important character trait of Han Solo. Oh, and before I continue, I must confess that… yes, all of this long windedness has purely been for the purpose of setting up a rant about how George Lucas raped my childhood. You see, with a completely ridiculous and, let’s face it, half arsed bit of computer generated tampering, the Almighty Beard destroyed an important part of Han Solo’s character. In the original version of the cantina scene, Han Solo coldly murders the bounty hunter named Greedo, he knows that Greedo was prepared to kill him to get his bounty so Han guns him down before the bounty hunter gets his chance.

Han Solo, like Clint Eastwood with a Wookie

 This scene sets up Han Solo’s character brilliantly as a man who moves in dark circles and is prepared to do whatever it takes to stay alive in an unfriendly place, it also shows us that he is a fair man, he actually wants to pay off his debt to Jabba and resolve the conflict peacefully even though his loss of the cargo was not entirely his own fault, this shows us a man who has the potential to redeem himself of his past misdeeds. But what does Lucas do twenty years later? He inserts a crappy computer graphic that has Greedo taking a shot at Solo and Solo dodging jerkily to the right like he’s found himself as an 8-bit avatar in an equally crappy game on some spotty adolescent’s ZX spectrum. And so, in a blink of an eye, years of intrigue have been made redundant, years of wondering about Han Solo’s dodgy past, If he can murder a guy in a crowded bar and show absolutely no remorse then what else had he gotten up to? But alas the wondering was all in vain because the Powerful Bearded One deemed it too dark, besides, he had always felt that it just wasn’t in Solo’s nature to do something like that and he had always envisioned it playing out that way blah blah fucking blah, bullshit blah blah. Ok, I might have been a bit childish there but the point stands, if he had envisioned it that way then why not just film it that way? Did he really accidently film a scene that was far more interesting than the one he had actually written and then twenty years later decide to replace the lucky stroke of genius with a banal self defense plea, or did he fall foul of corporate thinking and replace it because it sends out a bad message and therefore sensitive parents may frown upon it and not take their kiddy winks to see its re-release which would have jeopardised his raising of cash to make the vastly inferior prequels? Truth be told, I’m not sure I care, I just know that what Lucas has done has changed my view on a character I have known and loved almost as long as I’ve had cognitive thought. It’s isn’t just this scene I have issues with, there are so many throughout the whole saga but I have shagged myself out with rage at just thinking about them. I suppose what I really want answered is does he have the right to rewrite history in this way and not give a choice whether to buy into his vision or to stick with what was a master stroke of storytelling, because Darth Lucas has vowed that this way is the true way and the original will never be released to the public that has put him where he is now. It would seem that Papa Beard knows best, and if you don’t like it…. too bad.

I know it has been fourteen years since he made these changes but it still stings. (sniff sniff, blub blub.)

P.S. I hate you George Lucas you stinky head!

Nigel Hammond age 33 (nearly 34)

The Iron Angel

The iron angel, beautiful in stillness

passively resplendent

aged and ageless

her benevolence shines yet  her nature betrays it.

To hear her roar may have meant the end of you

to feel her spit made it certain.

A protector to a generation, a symbol of defiance.

Now she sits, waiting to return to the heavens,

the freedom she gave taken from her.

The STAR TREK Legacy

On this very day 45 years ago a television programme broadcasted its first episode to the world little knowing the impact it would have nearly half a century on. As STAR TREK celebrates its 45th anniversary I want to take a look at what it has left for us not just as enjoyable 50 minute teleplays but how it has shaped our world, and believe me it really has!

       Not a moment of modern day goes by when your life isn’t touched by this often ridiculed but much revered piece of science fiction, in fact I challenge you to look around the very room you are sitting in and not recognise something that has been directly influenced by someone sitting down of an evening and watching STAR TREK! The fact of the matter is that modern computing itself has a direct link back to STAR TREK with computing giants such as Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates citing STAR TREK as part of the reason that they got in to building and programming computers in the first place. Don’t believe me? We have to look no further than the current trend in Apple’s armoury, the ipad.

 Touch screen technology seems like an obvious leap forward in computing but would we have got to it as quickly as we have without being influenced by STAR TREK the next generation’s every present prop called the PADD (Personal Access Display Device)? This hand held tablet computer could be seen every week on T.V. 20 years ago (yes TWENTY YEARS ago!) and now you can see similar devices being used in coffee shops up and down the country, hell, you can even buy one if you pop in to Tesco. It’s not just computers though; it’s also the way we communicate with each other on a daily basis that STAR TREK has transformed. Consider the mobile phone, the little box in your pocket that beeps now and again informing you that you have a message on Twitter or that your loved one really needs to talk you about what’s for dinner. Modern mobile phone design started, quite simply, with Kirk and Spock’s communicators.  If you show me a man that has owned a flip phone and says he hasn’t flipped it open Captain Kirk style (yeah, you know what I mean!), then I’ll show you a liar. Every facet of technological life has been shaped in some way by STAR TREK, from household to hospital, from laptops to microwave ovens, from flat screen T.V.s to medical scanning equipment, most of our daily living owes something to Gene Roddenberry’s creation. I could continue with a long and boring list of equipment to further prove my point but I’d like to look at what I consider the most important part of the STAR TREK legacy, the ideals and morality.

       I have been an unashamed STAR TREK fan for as long as I can remember. So long, in fact, that I cannot pinpoint where my love for this show started no matter how hard I try. In many ways, when I look back at my childhood I get a sense that this show raised me, it molded my philosophies and my morality. Yes I learned right from wrong from my parents, but I have always felt that it was the many ethical questions that the original series and later the next generation threw at me that really shaped my view on certain things, especially things like how to treat those around us that are considered different and what it means to be human, but most of all it taught me that green chicks with big tits are awesome. 

You see STAR TREK has changed our world and there are many people who take it all way too seriously, but when it comes down to it STAR TREK is a great work of fiction from a man who had a bold vision of a future where the human race put its stupid differences aside and decided to explore the universe together. Where some have allowed themselves to go after watching these stories, that’s the impressive thing. I’ll continue to enjoy these stories until I die, and I do hope that it continues to touch our lives and influence us forever.

 

Live Long and Prosper

That is all.

Freedom

Freedom.  As seven letter words go this is by far the biggest, but what does it mean? Does it mean the same thing to you as it does to me? It almost certainly doesn’t. Is one man’s freedom another’s captivity? Most definitely. So where is the middle ground? Where is that place we can all agree freedom for everyone sits? Well if I knew that I would surely be ruling the world with a velvet gauntlet (Assuming of course that I’d be nowhere near as lazy as I am). The one thing I really wish we could agree on, as a collective race of people, is that everyone is free to do, think and aspire to anything one can think of but, alas, there are too many places in this world where that very sentiment would be considered dangerous. All I can do is give my point of view on events in the hope that you would use your freedom to consider what I am saying. God knows I don’t expect you to agree with me but I would hope that you’ll consider my position before shooting me down. By the way, it’s not all going to be like this it’s just that this is my first Blog and I wanted to set my stall out early.

If you hadn’t guessed it by now (what the hell is wrong with you?) this first entry will be looking at freedom using events from the past week or so. I want to keep it reasonably short so I won’t be touching on events in Libya or such like. A bit of a pussy move I know but I’m just settling in. So without further ado.

Abortion Debate

Nadine Dorries’ proposed amendments to the abortion laws have been shot down in the parliamentary vote today. Let’s get this very clear, the vote was not one on whether to abolish legal abortions but to take away publicly funded counseling for those women seeking terminations. These counseling sessions are a legal requirement for any woman looking to terminate a pregnancy and are there to make sure that the individual in question is of sound mind when seeking the procedure. They are not there to dissuade or to affirm they are there for the wellbeing of the woman. I would find it slightly more understandable if this was a notion tabled under the Conservatives financial austerity measures though still abhorrent, but Ms. Dorries has her own agenda here. She is an advocate for the abolishment of abortion and has herself admitted that the only way to achieve this is by chipping away at the law instead of calling for its abolition outright. We also know that her feelings on this matter are directly linked to her religious beliefs. Now calm down! As I have stated before, I believe that anyone can think, do and wish anything they want, but can we allow religion and politics to be bed fellows? A strange question? Maybe, seeing as some would argue that religion has shaped our societies for millennia, and they would be right but today’s society is extremely complex and we are all being pigeonholed in to minorities. Surely the logical conclusion is to have politics look at everyone equally and try and treat them fairly instead of letting our religions dirty the waters of freedom, if not there is a danger of an American  Republican style political party rising where persecution is rife and the almighty dollar is king this, in my opinion, would mark the beginning of the end of what I see true Britishness. We as a nation have managed, somewhat, to keep these two states of thinking (Logical and Spiritual) separate since Cromwell died and I would hope that it could stay that way all the while learning from each other to make society balanced. Two of my favourite people are both far more religiously minded than I. I know their beliefs and they know mine, do they conflict? Occasionally but we both love and respect each other and that’s why it doesn’t  come between us, now all we need to do is apply that sensibility on a bigger scale and lose the need prove ourselves to be right all of the time.  I know, I’m an idealist. A man can dream can’t he?

Blade Runner

Oscar Pistorius, nicknamed ‘Blade Runner’ because of his artificial running limbs, angrily walked out of an interview with the BBC today after being asked if “he was an inconvenient embarrassment to athletics”.

I’m not entirely sure what that question means or what the BBC expected after asking it, I can only assume that the question was inferring that Mr. Pistorius’ inclusion in the World Athletics Championship, the event itself usually being an ‘able bodied’ championship, was perceived as an embarrassment to the IAAF (the sport’s governing body). But what did the interviewer expect the reaction to the question to be? This is a very tricky topic. Who of us is to say whether Oscar Pistorius isn’t able bodied? After all he did win a silver medal in the 4 x 400m relay therefore he is able if not ‘able bodied’, but there lies the other side to the debate. Do his artificial ‘Blades’ give him an unfair advantage? Is he Bionic? I say a fair competition is on a level playing field and, as harsh as it sounds, there is no flesh and blood from his knees down and there for the playing field is about as level as the ground at Underhill. Mine, thankfully, is not the opinion that counts, so if Mr. Pistorius is happy being second best amongst his ‘able bodied’ peers and not top dog amongst his ‘limb deficient’ peers then good luck to him.

Where the puck’s gonna be

You may be wondering what this means. I was watching Kevin Smith’s televised Q & A ‘Too fat for Forty’ last night and in it he tells the story of one of his low points in life when his movie ‘Zak and Miri make a Porno’ was released and did poorly at the Box Office when, on paper,  it should have done very well. It’s a very funny but touching story that I wouldn’t do justice to by retelling it. To summarise though, he took solace in a series of documentaries on the history of Ice Hockey eventually coming to the saga of The Great One, Wayne Gretzky.  The greatest player in the history of the sport. During the film it covers Gretsky’s amazing statistics, not only did he have the highest score rate of any player but also an assist rate that was double his goal tally. When asked about these incredible stats Wayne related the wisdom his father gave him. ”Don’t go where the puck is son.” Said his father Walter “Go where the puck’s gonna be.” In essence, don’t go chasing what everyone else is after, try to stay ahead of the game and let the puck come to you. It may seem like a rhetorical sentiment but it’s what Gretzky says he owes his career to and it can apply to life as well as sport. I have decided to try to apply this to my life, to use my intuition and experience to put myself where I feel is right instead of chasing everyone else’s puck. Those who know and love me will find out how I intend to do this very soon and will hopefully support and or be a part of these little things. On a final note, I will be back very shortly with another blog in which I will be reviewing the movie Red State from the director, Kevin Smith.

I apologize if i have rambled but this is the first time i have written anything intended for others to read in a long time. I hope you stick with me, i promise to get better.

That is all.