The Boiled Egg of Infinity

I’m a good son. Today I helped my mum and dad move house, and did a damn good job of it too, even if I do say so myself. We emptied one house and moved their stuff into another in just under three hours. I shifted boxes, mattresses, cabinets, TVs, PCs, shelves, drawers, plantpots…you name it, chances are I’ve carried/dragged/been crushed half to death by it today. At one point I was even dodging a falling wooden camel with a spring in the neck.

As a result of all this, I swear there isn’t a square centimetre of me that isn’t in agony right now, and it’s only going to get worse tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to go be in a picture of a group of friends so we can give a framed photo as a gift. I just hope my better half doesn’t have to stick a broom handle up the back of my shirt just to get me to stand upright.

Fuck. Me. I think it even hurts to type.

I believe there are two types of science fiction fan in the world. The distinction isn’t between casual fans and obsessive fans: that’s just a matter of magnitude. It’s not between being cool and being geeky: those are just labels, as subjective as they come and correspondingly meaningless except in the very broadest of strokes. It’s not even being into literature or being into televised sci-fi: to me that’s a false distinction at best, one usually put forward by people indulging in snobbery. No, to me the distinction is between fans who enjoy what they’re into, and fans who are so protective, so po-faced about what they’re into that they’ve managed to suck all of the fun right out if it. To these people it’s like the subject has become so important to them it has stopped being fun.

Take, for example, Transformers. A toyline from the 1980s with a cartoon and comic series. They were a big thing back then, and chances are that anyone in their mid-twenties to early thirties today will remember them. I’ll quite happily admit that I like them, and have even enjoyed picking up some of the older ones from eBay. Recently two posts on websites about Transformers caught my attention and perfectly illustrated the divide between fans who enjoy, and fans who don’t know how to enjoy any more.

This post is from Botch, who writes about the subject with a notable level of enjoyment. His entire site is a labour of love really, and his enthusiasm shows. This is the kind of fan who enjoys what he is into.

This post, on the other hand, doesn’t show any level of enjoyment. It shows a level of commitment, to be sure. It shows annoyance. It shows the guy knows something of the toy collecting world…but show me where it reveals he enjoys it. Really, point me to it, because I sure as hell can’t see it.

That’s the dividing line as I see it, and I hope I always stay on the side I’m on now. I love science fiction: I love reading it, watching it and buying it (in transformable robot form). I think as an interest it enriches me, opens me to new experiences and gives me something to indulge in and simply enjoy. I hope I never cross that line and see my enjoyment turn jaded, see myself get angry at other people simply because they don’t enjoy it in a way I approve of. Quite simply I hope it’s always fun and never a chore.

…or, from the stars to the stars, via bollocks.

The web is a bad place for casual reading, especially if you have (like me) an overactive sense of curiosity. Often if I’m reading something and there’s a link, I click and follow it and never manage to finish reading what I was on in the first place. Then I click on another link. Click click, clickety click and I’m suddenly ten articles over to the right of where I started. In my experience Wikipedia is especially bad for this, and my reading yesterday serves as a perfect example.

It all started off with someone in my office asking something about Aquarius. Stuck with a boring task and looking for something to take my mind off it for five minutes in my break, I quickly popped over to the Wiki and looked it up. Click.

While reading through this, I thought “Why not check on the constellation I was born under?” So I go through the article and find a link to the constellation Capricornus. Click.

As I read about Capricornus I found out it is also known as Amalthea in Greek Mythology. The paragraph dealing with this also mentioned Cronos, the father of Zeus. Not knowing Zeus had a father I thought I would see what that was all about. Click.

Cronos castrated his father? Wow. I thought I had it bad not having much in common with my dad. Might not like the same things as he does but I’ve never gone after his twig and berries with a pair of pinking shears. Hmmm. I wonder what history there is to castration? Click.

Okay, in the thick of it now (literally). Actually turns out to be quite fascinating, I had no idea the practice went back so far or that it had such an interesting history. And practiced up to the present day? Okay so maybe I didn’t need to see the picture of a guy holding a horse testicle in his hand (that ketamine better be good stuff) but we live and we learn. While I’m working through this one and trying not to cross my legs, my eyes happen across a mention of a Marshall Applewhite. That name rings a bell. Click.

Turns out I have heard the name before and a bell was rightly rung. Applewhite was part of the Heaven’s Gate Cult, a movement that believed a spaceship was hiding behind a comet and would take them all to the stars. That, and ritual suicide. This mob were mentioned in a book I read recently called “The Men Who Stare At Goats”. I couldn’t remember what the cult believed beyond the whole comet thing. Click.

Oookay.

So, for those of you keeping score I started off at Aquarius, went through Capricorn, sidestepped through Cronus and Greek myth, passed through the joys of castration, chanced upon Marshall Applewhite and ended up reading about the Heaven’s Gate Cult, with a brief stop at the horse testicle photo. From one constellation to a crowd of people who believed they were about to get a closer view of the stars. Almost full circle. This is why I love the internet, but also why I think it needs a more disciplined mind than my own to use it for any kind of research.

Sometimes you just need to be honest, shrug your shoulders and surrender yourself to your inner geek. Such a moment just came for me when I read this post over at Kottke.org:

My eye had barely skipped over the question mark when my inner geek’s nasal, whiny voice whispered in my head that Klingons don’t have two hearts, but Timelords do. Klingon bodies have multiple redundant systems and an eight-chambered heart, but it’s still just the one heart. Timelords, on the other hand, actually have two separate hearts.

As I wept for my future happiness my inner geek did an energetic (yet still tragically geeky) victory dance.

Identity is a funny thing.

You see it all stems from understanding, which is itself a tricky concept. On the TV show Babylon 5 the Vorlon Ambassador called understanding “a three edged sword”, later explained to mean “your side, their side, and the truth”. This could just as easily be applied to identity. What I understand about myself is not what others will see, and the truth probably does lie somewhere in between the two.

Recently a few bloggers have put up Johari Windows to examine aspects of their identity and see if what they think of themselves ties in with what their readers think about them. It’s a fascinating idea, but what other tools are out there that might give a little insight into our identities?

The other day I was checking something on my Flickr page and I happened to look at my tags. I think tags are one of the greatest ideas used on Flickr: they allow you to group your photos together by theme, and allow those photos to link in with different photos from other users. It turns individual collections of pictures into a living, breathing photostream and it’s like all other excellent ideas: really simple when it comes down to it. That’s when the thought occured to me that maybe the tags I apply to my images would give some insight into how I see things and, by extension, my personality. After all these photos are from my life, and surely how I categorise them has got to show something about how I view things?

So, not exactly a Johari window per se, but maybe enough for now. Have a look at the image above (you can also click here for a larger version if you like): would you say it reflects the aspects of me that you have seen in the year since I started the egg? Would you say other things need to be added? Do the images on my Flickr page reflect the person that has been writing this blog?

Who am I? Or, more precisely, who do you think I am?

Last night I made the mistake of stopping, mid-channel hop, and caught 5 minutes of the new series of The Apprentice on BBC 2. Damn! Half an hour later I’m sitting there, hooked, watching one of the candidates getting fired. Worst of all I suspect that I’ll be sitting there next week watching it again. Damn. Damn damn damnity damn damn damn.

Why all the damnation and tarnation, I hear you ask? (well ok, I don’t really, but as a bridging device from the introduction to the body of the text it’s quite handy, so just nod and go along with me on this one)

Simply put, because it smacks too much of reality TV for my tastes. I don’t mind watching TV and I think it is sometimes looked down on too easily by snobs among us. Some TV shows are as well written, tense, involving and emotionally engaging as anything in print. That said, reality TV really is just as bad as they say, and then some. If a good book is a healthy home cooked meal, and a good TV show is a nice meal from a good takeaway, then reality TV is bubblegum. Laced with poison.

Is this the beginning of the end for me? Will I end up watching the new series of Big Brother and become obsessed with the comings, going and inane witterings of people who couldn’t even spell “Orwell” much less read the book that features their show’s title? Will I start buying Heat magazine and obsess over the latest top that Jude Law is wearing, or how hot (or not) Madonna looked on the last red carpet she was on? Will my brains actually turn to mush, dribble out of my ears and seep into the carpet, which is already soaked by the saliva dripping down from my slack-jawed face as I gaze into the glaring light of C-list celebrities and consider what I’ll put on my Big Brother audition tape for the next series?

Never let it be said that I take things to extremes though. The show is interesting and unlike most reality TV shows, it does seem to be pointing towards something and involve a degree of talent: the contestants are up for a job, and need to impress Sir Alan Sugar, a guy who seems to have built himself up to where he is today and knows what he’s looking for. And at least unlike one reality show on TV over here in Blighty, it doesn’t involve eating kangaroo testicles (or at least I hope it doesn’t: I mean, Sugar seems to be an alright kind of guy but I don’t think he’s into anything like that).

I know I’m in trouble because today I even read a blog post about last night’s episode. If this is the start of the “reality TV brain-rot” downward spiral and I end up degenerating like the guy in Flowers for Algernon then I’m sorry. Tell my family I love them, and to remember me the way I am. I would go and tell them myself, but by that point I’ll probably be glued to my TV 24/7 and the only working muscles I’ll have left will be in my thumbs – one for changing channels and one for using my mobile phone to send text messages about celebrities to others like me.

Oooooh, Katie Holmes has a new tank-top. Gotta go.

Yesterday my car went in for it’s annual MOT test, and about an hour after I dropped it off at the garage the guy phoned me to run through what was up with the car and what would need fixed. Most of it wasn’t bad: a few small bulbs out here and there, and a bit of tuning and tweaking, no problems. The only major problem was that the two back springs for the car had broken, and the broken end of one of them was resting against one of my brake lines. He explained that if I went over a bump in the road the right way it would just have cut through the line.

“I’ve never seen them break this way before,” he said, as shivers ran up and down my spine at the thought of my car careening off a bridge Vanilla Sky style. “I certainly wouldn’t like to drive it any further like that.”

A slightly afraid “No” was just about all I could manage in reply, as the horrible images were followed by feelings of guilt. How long had it been like that? Why hadn’t I noticed? How many times have I driven friends and family around since that happened? Did the car feel different lately? Should I have taken it in for a service sooner? What could have happened to break those springs?

All these thoughts were driven from my head by the next question though:

“Do you want me to fix it?”

I swear, if they ever put “Duhhhh” in the dictionary this story should be used as the definition.

Okay so this is the laziest of lazy-ass ways to add to my blog today, but sometimes you just have to bow and offer up the stage to someone with a good story. I was sent the following tale today, apparently posted up here in response to the question: what’s the worst job you’ve ever had? Whoever this guy is, he has my sympathies: I thought my summer working as a postman was bad…

Without further ado:

“I had a sucession of crap jobs as a kid mainly to fun my weed habit. Did the usual paper rounds etc but in a dope induced year out I some how got a job at a local bacon factory. This place really was the seventh circle of hell. It reeked of death and shit and all the other workers were like some Mike Leigh/Ken Loach nightmares. As if all this wasnt bad enough my actual job was to stand in line on a conveyor belt for 8 hours at a time wearing a white boiler suit holding a mecanised circular razor (looked like a magnifying glass) whilst sides of pork wizzed past. My role was to grab the mobile pork and shave of its nipples at a frantic pace which caused them to ping off in all directions often into my eyes and mouth – kind of like Pac-man but with cold dead pig tits. This went on for an entire summer, however I still eat bacon.”

The strange this is that when I read “cold, dead pig tits” I imagined it in Charlton Heston’s accent. The line he’s been waiting for all his life, perhaps?

Puerile, I know. Childish. I promise less dead pig appendages in future. Interesting question though: anyone else got bad jobs in their past that would make for entertaining stories?

One year ago today I took my first shaky step into the world of blogging with this short little piece. Looking back at it with a year’s perspective, I can’t honestly say that I have kept up my promise – I suppose I can only keep trying on that score. Over the year I have managed about 116 entries, which averages out to about 3 a day when you do the (admittedly shaky) math. I’m happy that it hasn’t died on it’s arse, as apparently many blogs do after their first few months, but I’m conscious that I could have done better and tried to write more. Ah well, all things to do as I try to shepherd the egg to that second cake with two candles on it.

One curious note that I’ve been meaning to share for a while now is that I haven’t shared the existence of this blog with anyone I know: no friends, no colleagues, no family, not even the woman I’m going to marry know about this. Or at least if they do, they aren’t letting on. What has stopped me from telling them about it? I’ll flesh this out a little more in a day or so, but it’s a question that is starting to weigh on me more and more. After all it’s hardly fair: I write about things that happen to me, things that sometimes feature people from my life, and share it with the internet: and yet I won’t tell those same people that I’m doing so…ah well. Another ramble for another time.

One thing that blogging has taught me in the last year is to appreciate the small moments in life, and not allow my focus to be drawn to things I think are important (and if you know me from my writings, you can put the word “work” in there on your own) but really aren’t. Blogging allows us to peek over the shoulders of people from all over the world, and experience a moment in their lives through their eyes. In that regard, browsing through blogs is an awesome experience, but I’ve learned that it doesn’t always have to be about huge things. I’ve read about a mother falling in love with her daughter all over again when she smiles or shouts for Elmo on the TV. I’ve read about people going to the movies. Reminiscing about childhood. Cooking their first turkey dinner. Laughing at a silly joke. Small, unguarded, vulnerable, precious moments shared with us all, and I’d like to think I’m now paying more attention to those same moments in my own life instead of always worrying about what’s coming.

One moment is sometimes all it takes. Keep reading. I’ll have more for you.

Each day in February the BBC news site is commemorating that great British institution, the Public Information Film. Made to inform children about various aspects of modern life the films ranged from amusing, to cheesy, to outright chilling and they featured various celebrities (well, of the time, anyway) providing helpful hints on how not to set yourself on fire/get hit by a bus/run into an industrial grinder etc etc. Some were more effective than others, but they have a tremendous nostalgia value to them and I don’t think you’ll find an adult in Britain nowadays that doesn’t remember at least one from their childhood.

I do remember them being on TV when I was a kid, they always showed them in the ad breaks or before a favourite show came on. However I had forgotten about this one, called “Lonely Water”. Narrated by Donald Pleasance it’s a terrifying video about the dangers of messing about near water. The BBC page I just linked to has the video file on it: go have a look, but make sure you have the light on. This film was definitely made with a “terrify the little bastards into obeying” mentality.

By way of an explanation of todays title, every time I watch Alien (a film that still scares the bejabbers out of me now as much as it did when I first saw it as a mere slip of a boy) I like to watch some Next Generation immediately after. What can I say? I just find Jean-Luc Picard intensely reassuring. He’s nice, calm, would give you tea and he has a ship with enough guns to level a planet. Take that you facehugging, acid spitting bastards! *ahem* Anyway suffice to say, mister Pleasance’s turn as the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water seems to have had a similar effect.

And yes, I am a wuss.