Et In Arcadia Ego

I've been trying to write this blog for - one week and two days - but the fact is, I can't really write about, or even refer to, the one big thing I'd like to write and refer about. And this, in turn, has spawned about fifteen half-finished bloglets - I can't seem to complete one.

Luckily, I found a fantastic nerdy quiz - match up the famous last words with the minor B7 characters who utter them before expiring. I could only identify 67% of them - I don't know whether to be proud or embarassed of how high that is. But together and out of context, provide some utterly fantastic sci-fi trash. It also, necessarily, comes with a very low level spoiler rating - but should only be a problem for people with photographic memories, as it's normally safe to assume minor characters never make it...

This fufils my B7 quota, hopefully destroys my writers block, and shall prove entertaining:

A roundup of sorts.

Firstly, if the text on this blog is too small for you to read easily, hold ctrl and + or - until it is better. This seems to me far easier than the horrors of tweaking the code.

Now then:

1. There is a skeeling in the house! Dad's sketches, and work jumper; the front door key, my epic kirby grip stash, and one of the telephones, have just walked. I kinda hope they're all together somewhere, contributing to some fantastical machine.

2. Settled down to watch, at long last, City of Vice - the TV show about the Bow Street Runners. Despite being set in the 1750s, and starring Iain Glen, it is not the greatest thing ever, as I'd hoped. Instead sort-of frustrating, proving that there's little separating police procedurals, no matter how elegantly dressed. It's obviously cheap, and trying hard to be edgy - and we could forgive both, but it's padded out with lazy scriptwriting. If I never have to see another Dead Whore (TM), it'll be too soon - fictionally speaking, that's all prostitutes are there for. To be killed, unpleasantly. We Know You're In London, We Know You're In The Past, but what right have they to invent serial killing some 150 years early? Like all movies with a historical basis, I'd like some solid information on exactly how accurate it is. I may not bother seeing a second episode. I don't know. I am sure it won't turn into the show I want it to be, but maybe it's worth a try.

3. I love Hamlet. And found this marvellous blog, which makes me rather wish I had got there first. It makes me think, though: I have still never seen a great Ophelia. Not one I've entirely bought. I believe she is an impossible role to play - no backstory, no development, easy to be too cute, easy to reinvent badly as kickass.

4. I've started considering charging a nominal amount for charity Tarot readings. Why not? It's fun, and for a good cause. I've been practicing on people around me - mostly TV shows, it must be said - but Friend 2 has accused me of doing some dubious stuff like attempting to read her reactions, which intrigued me because it wasn't conscious. With that in mind, I sat down and read the book on cold reading, and was astonished to discover how many of their techniques I already use, just on reflex. Including the Skeptic's Gambit: "No, I Don't Really Believe This, But It's Useful For Psychological Investigation, Like A Rorschach Test". That was the one that really stood out, but a lot of their examples are almost verbatim things I've said.

I can't work out whether to change my game or not. There are two ways this can go. I can become a "proper Tarot reader" of sorts, and I'd want to deliberately not cold read in the name of accuracy and justice. Or I can become a Mentalist/Derren Brown type of performer, in which case I'd want to cold read the hell out of people. It'd always be for fun, of course, just a party trick - but I feel I should pick one or the other and stick with it. I suppose I'll go for the former, as you can't cold read friends - that destroys the point. But after this investigation, I am far more concerned about the ethics full stop, even in a fun context.

5. I have now bought several items of costume for That Blake Costume I'm Not Making. And thinking about the reboot has made me think, why not just do a gender-swap version? And making a sign reading "Starring Katie Sackhoff as Blake" - Katie Sackhoff being the gal who kickstarted this Edgy Reboot With Male Characters Recast As Women thing in Battlestar Galactica. It'd be geekily funny too. With that in mind, fashion advisors, here is a two-page gallery of options - which costume should I go for? Which has the greatest chance of actually suiting me?

6. Token cooing, skip this if you're really bored. You probably should be, I've been doing this for a year now - but it's OK, I've only got four days of it left. Then it's just aftermath, recovery and almost certainly moving on to something else, just as irritating...but frankly, I can't believe I saw what I just saw, I can't believe it's taken quite this long and I can't believe I can still be shocked. There was a point about a season back when I experienced a kind of darkness overdose. They hit us with a very cruel triple whammy that almost bounced off, I'd got so resigned. There are a whole bunch of blog updates, I know, expressing the same sentiment, and several episodes I remember feeling strongly "I know this show began with a betrayal, massacre, legal shenanigans, mental conditioning, all implied twice over, plus the destruction of three kids, but somehow this has just got worse".

In short, I am having a fantastic time - not sarcastic, totally genuine. Obsessions always feel like the One True Obsession, but I have been proud and honoured to be a B7 fan. As you're probably aware from my almost constant wittering. And long may it remain, however bad it has yet to get, because I'm very upset, but also overjoyed that it has stayed of such high quality, and committed to it's unique tone that it can still regularly do this to me. With that in mind, we came up with a few new theories:

16. The Final Girl, possiby Vila

17. Blake (who is fine) meets up with Avon again, and they pick off where they left off getting on very well, especially because of the experiences they've had in one anothers absence, and go off into the sunset to fight the baddies together. Variation on Glimmer Of Hope from last week, but I really really like this one and feel it's within the bounds of possibility. Even had this one in a dream last night.

Likely variation:

18. Blake (who is fine) meets up with Avon again, and they pick off where they left off squabbling and tearing chunks out of one another's morality, especially because of the experiences they've had in one anothers absence which has left them completely incompatable. Hilarity ensues, and it's worse than usual.

7. I have lost my love for the piano. I'm - a bit floored, to be honest. My method has always been to play for my own delight, damn practice, damn everything else. But I have recently become aware of a) not being very good at all, and b) that this matters to me. That playing and being good make me happy. I'm trying harder, getting nowhere, and it's begun to be stressful.

Consequently, I have at long last abandoned Fantasie Impromtu as something I will never be able to play, to see if it deflates my newfound competitive streak. Fantasie Impromptu has been part of my life for such a long time, and unlike most of the things I try playing, it's actually harder than it sounds. I can basically do both hands individually, with breaks, and know in time I could play them both at once, but it's my own body defeating me. By the end of the first page - the first 20 seconds - my left hand (which hasn't had a break) cramps and loses it's dexterity; by halfway through the second page - some 10 seconds later -my right hand follows suit.

Giving up on it feels very strange indeed, because it's the first time I've admitted a limitation on that machine. I taught myself to play on Firth of Fifth and Chopin Nocturnes, songs which no beginner should touch. But I learnt them stubbornly, one note at a time, and kept at it, and after a while I could do 26-note runs and trills. Made me feel quite invincible, and informed my style ever since: "What do you mean I can't play that? Let me wade in and bash!" So I've been trying hard and regularly at Impromptu, to see if I can't get my wrist strength up. As if it would make a difference, as if I don't spend somewhere between one and four hours on the piano a day, as if I wasn't an archer-turned-poimistress. And what I discovered was actually, if I keep trying hard enough - my wrist just gives up and stings, and I'm sure, eventually sprains.

I feel like I've killed my own child.

This too will pass.

8. Finally, to end on a positive note, I'm taking part in a swap which merely requires participants to read their partners profile, and leave a comment. Quick, but cute. Anyway, one noted:

"I really enjoyed reading about your likes and you seems so interested in everything. That you love life and just enjoys the little things. "

It's fascinating how you come across on paper, and the weird thing is reading it written down momentarily made it true. I felt like I became this person. Or maybe I always have been.

In today's issue: dodgy theories about television; Sapphire and Steel; Blake's 7; a marvellous dream

Original Star Trek has set me thinking again. It's just so...shiney. Free of ambiguity. There's some gentle conflict, but all our heroes are that and nothing more: heroes. Original Galactica is just as bad; so is The A-Team. I've been busy building Sapphire and Steel into my conception of what television looks like, and it's conspicuously non-American. Again. Our "heroes" are a bit incompetant; one of them is grouchy, the other definitely not as nice as she seems; and while they're easy to like, you wouldn't trust them.

Consulting the map of television in my head, this fits neatly with what British television does. Doctor Who was at its darkest in its first few years, and while the Doctor is generally a heroic character, he shares a lot of Steel's flaws. He'll pop out of nowhere and save you from the supernatural, but he's not polite or pleasant about it, his agenda is entirely his own and if you catch him on a bad day, he may just poison you, shoot you, gas you or sacrifice your entire planet because it's the most expedient thing to do.

Perhaps the keyword here is "unreliability", which is something Blake's 7 also has in spades. These people are primarily heroic, can usually be trusted and are basically friendly - but don't count on it. The concept extends throughout their universes: the Doctor has a spaceship he can't pilot, and Blake has one which answers back. Furthermore, the program itself does not always seem to approve of its own characters actions - there is room for doubt, and often disapproval from the writers. This is also different to the American style.

Today's theory: British heroes are unreliable, British TV shows portray an unreliable world. American heroes, conversely, are reliable and live in a world which confirms their beliefs. American TV shows also approve of themselves.
Because the web is being truculent, I'm having difficulty finding other examples to expand my sample beyond six shows. I tried consulting the Guardian's Top 50 list, but it didn't seem to have any old American telly on it. Is this telling?

I looked up the BFI's top 100 TV, and all the dramas seemed to fit:

Fifties - 1984, Quatermass, Coronation Street
I'm aware Quatermass is like all British sci fi - dour, and packed with villainous establishment figures - but I can't comment on its hero

Sixties - Cathy Come Home, Doctor Who.
Lord, presrve me from ever seeing Cathy Come Home...

Seventies - Abigail's Party

Eighties - Boys from the Blackstuff, Edge of Darknesss

I was also deeply satisfied (and very surprised) to see Blake's 7 voted top of the "Shows Which The General Public Think Should Have Been On This List". This probably says less about the show, and more about the demographic most likely to vote in force on an internet poll...

While this seems to confirm my theory, statistics are difficult. As my most quoteable hero Charles Fort puts it, "there will be data". Is this merely because darkness sells, and anything positive = mainstream = trashy = not voted by the BFI?

A few things didn't quite fit: The Prisoner (but is maybe too weird to? Six doesn't have enough personality, and we never see him in morally trying situations - he is purely an escape machine) and Thunderbirds (purely for kids? Have kids shows always been shiney, both sides of the pond?)

I also found myself wondering, does America have a companion to our soap operas? Eastenders started in the 80s, Coronation Street in the 60s. British TV has always been closely linked to the social realism agenda, a naturally flawed and miserable genre. Perhaps that has seeped into all British dramas, or any number of potential correlations.

When do things change? Nowadays, angst is America's biggest export, which means there must have been a watershed point where everything changed. At the same time as cinema - you can tell you're watching a 1970s film, because there will usually be a downer ending? More likely, the 90s: Twin Peaks is 1990, X-Files is 90s-ish.

Your challenge for today: prove my theory wrong. Find me some old American television which isn't shiney, or some old Brit TV which is. For the sake of this study, comedies and book adaptions don't count.

While you're chewing on that, oh yes, let's talk about Sapphire and Steel, a rather perfect little 70s show. And all the little directory things I've thought about it in the past week.

After a gleefully incomprehensible opening spiel, which actually leaves you less informed about the show than before, our heroes arrive from another dimension to handle "irregularities" on Earth. So far, the phenomena we would recognise as ghosts. They have an array of weird powers, a talent for wandering into trouble, a mysterious agenda, and are definitely just as scary as the things they've come to chase off.

It digs out all the cliches in the damn book: nursery rhymes! Clocks! Flickering lights! Written by the guy who gave Torchwood its spooky-fairground/haunted-cinema episode But it is so marvellously constructed it seems less hackneyed, than a perfect example of its type. Friend 4 rightly identified that its special effects make Doctor Who look big budget, but cheap has always been best for spooky. Partly because it forces directors to be clever, partly because suggesting and not-showing is always more terrifying. Partly because there is something innately scary about bad special effects. They don't quite fit, they seem disjointed in some way - otherworldly - and this I have always found scary in its own right. And so these ghost stories do their best with flashing lights and ticking noises, and so somehow does it better.

It makes healthy use of sound and space. Lengthy serials fully establish the layout of the single locations on which the stories are set - the first in a creepy house, the second a railway station, and another four I haven't seen. This too is good: in it's purest form, a haunting is merely a building made notable by absence. Things not there, forgotten, hidden, so giving the location strong character is important. It's this, probably, which makes me love the show more than anything else. Hauntings, of any sort, bother me. I can't be bothered to waffle about the sound design, except there's a lot of it and it works well.

It is also notably well shot. The camera positively worships Sapphire - she always seems to stand right underneath light sources. This isn't unusual for telly, until you compare it to Steel's treatment. He's shot by an incompetant - totally in shadow most of the time, not in an arty way where the camera hits you side on and makes a fascinating mess of your face. Just out of focus, like a shadow. It's a marvellous contrast.

They are also often shot as a couple - not in a cute way, more creepily, as if they don't quite understand human interaction. Brief film studies lesson: generally speaking, there is only one reason for shooting two lead characters in close up, in a single shot:
Probably because there's no other obvious reason for two people to stand quite that close. It's the reason you can always "feel" a kiss coming in romances - the camerawork changes. In any other context, it conveys a feeling of extreme discomfort - it would be suitable for, say, two characters trapped in a tiny space. I've included the Blake's 7 scene on the right as an example of the latter working very, very well. This scene stood out as particularly disturbing at the time, even though it's only one of many arguments between the two heroes. Having recently rewatched the episode, I think it is the use of this shot that particularly makes my skin crawl. The dialogue and performances help, but it's this very intense, tight camera which conveys the feeling of attempted domination.

Sapphire and Steel does it all the time, for no readily apparent reason. But even though you'd think a man and a woman wouldn't make the shot quite so bizzare, it still feels like an alien violation of personal space. Whether they are a couple remains to be seen, and is perhaps impossible to answer - they are obviously abstract concepts of huge power who adopt human form, and presumably human limitations, when on Earthbound jobs. So whether they actually do emotion or relationships the same way we do is automatically contentious. It edges around blisteringly romantic and back into "no, just creepy..."

Not a couple. Definitely non-coupley. And the picture on the right is a perfect example of light missing Steel entirely.

The character dynamics are also intriguing. They are attempting masculinity and femininity (indeed, you could add the romance angle under that - they are attempting "couple" into the bargain). Sapphire is nice, comforting, motherly, while Steel is the "bad cop", all toughness and authority. This is curious because at the same time as this obvious polarity, I get the strong impression that Sapphire's feminine wiles are as alien to her as Steel's strength. The same goes for Lead's excessive joviality - they are aiming at something human, and almost achieving it. But not quite. I like that Sapphire provides the brawn, and Joanna Lumley's masculine qualities complete the whole bizzare impression. They also spend equal amounts of time rescuing one another.


Finally...I have returned from France much as I had hoped, with more Blake's 7 episodes, and more surviving characters, than on the fingers of a hand. But it must be said, neither is much more, so I am spending much time morbidly dwelling on the reputedly "climactic" final episode. Friend 4 has rightly pointed out that B7 finales never quite do what you expect them to, and tend to arbitarily pull the rug from under your feet - which hasn't stopped me listing everything on my brain, for your reading delight.

As I'm merely guessing, I don't think any of these count as spoilery, but if you were being extra careful you might not want to read them; it's also possible that I'm right. Here is the pick of my theories:

1. Avon's Dream - the entire series is a hallucination-under-torture from Avon's cell back on Earth, in which an imagined version of The Federation's Most Wanted rescues him, but doesn't actually like him. Kinda interesting - who else would have a dream in which everything is so awful? It'd make sense of Avon's all-consuming coolness.

2. Blake's Dream - same theory, different dreamer. Again, makes sense of the show's one brilliant stroke of luck: accidentally stumbling along the greatest ship in the galaxy. Not likely.

3. Vila's Dream - same theory, concerning the only character to appear in every single episode of the show (so far). He also seems the type to invent a dreamworld in which everybody picks on him.

4. e.t.c. - continue this theme for every other named character and sentient being on the show, those three are merely the most plausible and would pack the biggest emotional smack.

5. The Federation Is Defeated. Everything Is Well. Not beyond the bounds of possibility, but also not very likely. A better variant is...

6. A Small Glimmer Of Hope - the Federation isn't defeated, but something big happens suggesting one day, soon, if we're very lucky, they are going to fall. Probable last shot - somebody smiling faintly. I like this one, and it seems reasonable.

7. Everyone Is Caught! Seems likely, that a show that started with everyone on a prison ship would end that way.

8. Everyone is Reconditioned! Ditto.

9. Everyone is Killed! Ditto.

10. Everyone Has Been Dead All Along. It's Purgatory a.k.a. what Lost didn't do. More probable version is:

11. Sartre's Scorpio: "Hell is other people"

12. Avon Sells Everybody Out - not likely, but I did consider this at one point. Repeat with "Tarrant sells everybody out", "Soolin sells everybody out" e.t.c....

13. Blake Has Been Captured And Successfully Reconditioned As A Villain And Is Now In Charge Of Hunting Down The Remaining Cast - I think this pips it for darkest theory.

14. Universe Ends.

15. Any combo of above.

Frankly, anything confirming that Blake is OK is an OK ending by me. That's all I really want at all, ever, from life right now. God, there's nothing half so dangerous as hope...

In todays issue: Shopping and Library trip; "Look to Windward" review; discussion of allegory; The Film Project Google Is Advertising Everywhere It Owns i.e. Everywhere; Update on B7 Updates

I - Shopping and Library trip

Went shopping this morning, and accidentally stumbled across a sale.

I should add I have been swamped with vanity all week. I've started doing victory rolls for my job; they require time and effort to both create and maintain. For the first time in my life, I've actually worried about my hair for more than ten minutes a day. It's a curious experience, and very irritating; but like all things, a nice place to visit, though you wouldn't want to live there.
I love my new hairstyle, and have been leaving the fringe roll in even while not at work.

Anyway, in a rare show of actually buying new clothes from a mainstream store, I got myself a brilliant white lace shirt, and am the happiest dandy in town; I'm amazed I hadn't done something like this sooner, considering the heavyweight of frilly gents in my memory. I also got a little knitted dress, which is close to my dream-dress as worn by Jo in The Three Doctors (sorry, no photos). Though now I think about it, and my penchant for adopting the style of whoever is most in my brain, and how plain and grey and 80s it is, and how ludicrously huge the sleeves are...

I wonder if I haven't just committed my first Avon-related fashion decision. I know I do this all the time for people I adore - this just seems especially low.

The highlight for me was the library. Going to the library fufils all the fun of shopping - the thrill of the chase, the joy of something new, the thrill of posession - with none of the burdens - i.e. spending, and wondering whether your house can handle the crap-tonneage. Consequently, I always max out my card allowance - which today was 12:

• "Appointment with Venus" (DVD) - interesting! All about the Occupation, filmed in Guernsey. David Niven stars - as does my grandfather, who was a College Cadet at the time and drafted in to play spare Nazis or something.
• "Stalag 17" (DVD) - POW movie, all about manly men, stoicism and betrayal. Slashy, so LJ tells me.
  
• "Solaris" (DVD) - the remake of this movie was one of the most incredible experiences. Technically interesting, haunting and emotional, thematically rich and hyperbole inducing. When I started frothing about it online, I was barraged by people saying - "oh, but that's nothing compared to the original!". If they're right, then I should be in for a favourites-list rearranging treat.
  
• The Brothers Karamasov (Fydor Dostoyevsky), England Made Me (Graham Greene), Mr Pye (Mervyn Peake). Going on holiday next week to a house in the south of France. It's in the middle of nowhere, and people keep assuring me it will be tedium inducing - hence me glomming up books. I'll probably take the first two - I've tried reading the last before, and it didn't stick. There's something nice and clear about old fashioned books that lends them well to the bittiness of holidays, which in their turn provide the sort of desperate atmosphere required to get to the end of any novel heavier than a chichiwawa. I read Crime and Punishment in a French caravan. Quite a mistake - that book is excellent and intense, and I remember feeling intensely queasy. Perhaps that's why the "holiday novel" is so appealing - they are deliberately bad, because reading good books are a distraction...
• Fifty Key Television Programmes - a media studies textbook of sorts, listing contexts and questions. I already have the impression that I'll already know everything it has to say about any show I'm a fan of (Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Queer as Folk, Brass Eye and Twin Peaks are among those listed). But maybe not, and it might give me some new ideas.
• Postmodernism - incredible. It's a little illustrated guide, and before it gets to postmodernism it's describing all the other art movements it is post-. I suddenly understand art of all kinds in a deeper way than I ever have. It's amazing how small a nudge I need to start thinking critically about painting. Vincent and the Doctor was enough to point out what Mr Gogh was trying to achieve; this book has done the same for every major art movement since 1900. Goodness knows why I picked it up, but I'm glad...
• The Indigo Children - oh yes! Because the longer I have it out, the longer other people can't. I'll update you with juicy extracts, just as I will for...
• How to Survive 2012: Tactics and Survival Places for the Coming Pole Shift. I'd ask "WHO ON EARTH FUNDS THESE NUTJOBS?", but it's clear the answer is: Guernsey Library. Case closed...
• And my new favourite book - A Hairdresser's Guide To Period Styles, with tutorials from Prehistory right up to 1990s-Rachel hair. My poor hair has had a pretty free ride so far; it's about to get the whole flush of teenage vanity in one or two frenetic weeks as I attempt a decade a day. I'm particularly excited about the French Aristocrat.
  

II -Look to Windward" review (spoiler-free)

I finished Look to Windward, but now I wonder (with my habit for forgetting blogs) if I ever told you about it in the first place? It's by Iain M. Banks, the man who wrote my once-favourite book Use of Weapons. I can't remember much about it, beside Staberinde, the chair, and enjoying it all very much. I never read one of his books since, because they are dense and I'm easily distracted. It was sheer force of will - and four days left to my own devices at work - which pulled me through.

Mr Banks is a sci-fi genius. He creates these technologically advanced worlds packed with ideas which are just part of the scenery. This one has behemothaus, which are kinda like starwhales with whole ecosystems living on their backs. Lesser authors would have written a book just about that. It makes his universe feel complete, and real; and I love the idea that for all these changes, human problems will stay the same - love, death. And his depiction of new social mores and expectations are just as thorough. His books are worth reading purely for the spaceship names, and, bless it, Wikipedia's got a list of the lot. Some favourites are Resistance is Character Forming, Very Little Gravitas Indeed and Nuisance Value.

I have some misgivings about the end, however. I read almost up to the climax, and I cared so darn intensely that I chose sleep over ending it. I had fantastic dreams in which I explored every possibility, watched it all go horribly wrong and then gave it a happy ending: I was that worried. It rather went pfut and fizzled when I read it again in the morning. Still, good up until the point I thought "...oh, that's it then?".

I'm still a little embarassed at my mind, however. The novel started in the first person, with a soldier in a battle trying to protect someone in a trench. On this basis, I assumed the narrator was male - including after the revelation that the second character was in fact the husband of the first. It was several chapters later, from the perspective of this wretched husband, that we established that actually our first narrator had been female - and I'd totally assumed it was a gay man.

I'm sure both parts of this suggest interest things about my priorities, prejudices and expectations.

Still, Banks will do that irritating modern novel thing of showing dialogue for ages but not clearly attributing it to any characters, so once you work out what's going on you have to go back and read it again with them in mind. Often, it's a deliberate point - and are there some convos in Windward which are never clearly attributed to anyone - but I hate it because then I get confused and make big, basic mistakes like the gender of key protagonists. And the worst thing is, I held it against Worosei for the rest of the darn novel.

Lesson of the day (facetious)
Never assume you know the gender of anyone real or imaginary unless clearly stated.

Lesson of the day (serious)
On the planet Chel, the name "Worosei" is feminine.

III- discussion of allegory

It also irked me during a big exposition chapter, where my mind glued what it was telling me about terrorism, vengeance and advanced cultures meddling with "underdeveloped" ones for their own good, to the dedication "For Gulf War Veterans". And I thought, "bastard - it's an Iraq allegory!"

Oh, how I loathe allegory, and hated getting trapped in one. I know its a sci fi staple, but I can't stand them. It's an position, not the position, and it lies in my specific literature uprbinging or whatever.

Deconstructing allegory was meant to be the whole point of this post; I've got kinda distracted, and now it's 12:30 in the morning. But in brief. If you approach both fiction and art from my perspective, then allegory has to be anathema.

My feelings on fiction are that it is real, or as good as real, if you are truly involved in it. This governs my attitudes towards how I consume it - I don't like eating while viewing, I don't like people talking, I'm not interested in continuity errors, blooper reels, or actors, I hate spoilers. And also governs my responses to it: it closely influences my real world views, and I tend to have emotional breakdowns when things inevitably get wrong, as they tend to do with a greater frequency in drama, because I'm always too darn involved. An interesting byproduct of this - I don't really enjoy parody, I can't help but take them deathly seriously. I'm like the bloody Thermians off Galaxy Quest.

As for art, well - Oscar Wilde got me young, and his philosophy I can't shake. Art for art's sake alone - not to push a point, not to describe life as it is but life as it should be - to be beautiful. I like my fiction wholly escapist - social realism is a dirty phrase. And while I'm interested in media representation, to be honest I'd rather oppression of minorities than oppression of artists. Yes, any or all of them; even the one(s) I count under. I rather wish I didn't; logically I don't. But in my heart, in response to say Disney's refusal to release Song of the South, I'm always with the product over the people. My justification is that these things are fascinating because of their offense value, and in context they are important historical documents. Maybe that's honest, I don't know. It's interesting that by undertaking a movement which believes morality has no place in art, you are taking perhaps the strongest moral stance of all.

You may disagree with both of these. Often, I do. Certainly I don't believe I'm "right" - although I am right for me. Allegory hampers enjoyment of both fiction and art for it's own sake. I love Animal Farm. It's my favourite book about farmyard creatures.

The irony of this whole thing is that Look to Windward was written a whole year before "our" Gulf War, before 9/11, before Afghanistan, the lot. Which isn't to say he couldn't have been inspired by similar activities in Gulf War One and Two, and creepy foreign policy pre-2001; but it did mean that the very specific meaning I saw in it was all in my own mind. I created the allegory. I think I hate it all the more for that.

IV - The Film Project Google Is Advertising Everywhere It Owns i.e. Everywhere

I meant to take part in this, and I feel less of a wannabie filmmaker for not having done so. The premise: film your day, upload it to the 'Tube and then real filmmakers will edit it together into a documentary of this day in history.

Call me pretentious, but I couldn't possibly think of portraying something in film until I've considered what it is I have to shoot. Cinema conveys what you see through indirect means. You see, say, two happy people - but the camera will be close to their smiles, the light will be bright. You can't make decisions like that on the fly.

And I've been thinking a lot about realism too - and the artifice of documentary. Did we have to prepare a special day, worth filming? What if I went overboard, and did something unusual - is that OK? Or overcompensated and made my day unusually dull? Is it possible to just film everything that happens - the camera's presence would itself make a difference to it's realism.
I know everyone feels their life is ordinary, but mine is not of itself worthy of cinema. I'm not struggling; I'm also not about to propose to my girlfriend, or give birth to my first child, or bungee jump for charity. Nothing outstanding, and easy to shoot. I feel my perception, my imaginative life, and my friends are the two things in my life which are truly extraordinary, and may be of interest to others; but that's not easy to convey on camera.

Now I've spent my day (but not recorded it), I know how I would have done so. I may still undertake it as a project, but it'd require a lot of patience from friends and family, more than I think any of them could give on an idea that may not ultimately work.

V - Update on B7 Updates

My Blake's 7 comments are itching towards spoiler territory. Or rather, anyone is who is interested enough to want to know how I feel about it, will not want me to talk about the things I need to say. Anyone who doesn't care still won't care. So I am saving them all in one post, which I will publish eventually, and then you can decide to read them or not as you will. Of course, when it's all over and done - and it will be, they all are eventually - with I'll be to embarassed by my old obsession to let them to the light of day. I'm keeping it with the sentence-long fic fragments, another two of which popped into existence today. It's such a bizzare unintended project. I wonder how long I've been having them for, and not noticing?

Or if I've ever had this before? This is the first time I've had my obsessive process under such close observation. I'm sure this will ultimately serve a purpose. I've got all the recogniseable stages down on paper. I wonder if I could force an obsession into existance? Or keep one going? Or make one die?

In this issue: trip to a jumble sale; digression about cosplay; Mad Hatters Teaparty; good samaritans

I went on a quest to a jumble sale this morning. It was free, and somewhere to go: up in zone 3 in Tottenham. I've got rather bored of chain second hand shopping of late. Fair does to charities wanting to do the best for their causes, but if things are costing more than a pound, then it really takes the fun out of bargain hunting. Oxfam Books, I'm looking at you. In trying to appeal to a mainstream, most of the daft crap I'd treasure doesn't even reach the shelves.

The playground had been overtaken by about thirty car-boots and casual tables. Nothing seemed higher than a fiver, and it was like rifling through an attic. An electronic elephant graveyard, with boxes of broken DVD players; clothes, bizzare clothes; ugly jewellery; bad books; 8-track tapes. I loved it. Nothing was intrinsically valuable, but the enjoyment of shopping like that is the hunt: everything must have been the object of ardent desire to somebody, somewhere. Like the string of badly broken garden lights, tangled into knots with a mouse, a playstation and an old wire game. Bet no one ever thought that would be wanted by anyone.

It took me about 10 minutes to get the garden lights free, for one man's plastic tat is another's Liberator ray gun.

I've been building one for about a month now. I've got a really nice, cheap torch of the right proportions for a handle. I've a collection of five juice bottles in my room, all a little too big or small. I've been going down Asda corridors doing little Avon impressions to see if they "feel right"; I've even found the perfect shape in the Asda basics shampoo and conditioner, but alas those bottles are white, not see-thru.

I've no idea whether I should try and get the garden lamp bulb working with a switch, or dismantle it and slot the torch in, but I'm very happy with my purchase. At £2, it's actually cheaper than the Taste The Difference Lemonade experiment cost, and there are four lamps giving me three failed test runs. I also picked up a nice utility belt, and some curly black wire to attach it.

I still don't know where I'm going with all this. Cosplay being the inheritor of shamanistic ritual imitation, the vague plan is to have a bash at Blake. But he has an awful lot of things I don't have: not so much a gender-swap as Rugged Mega-Manly Man Masculinty; not so much size, as Serious Heroic Presence. I've a funny feeling the Robin Hood In Space aesthetic would translate to me as a thigh-slappin' pantomime pirate.

Calypso thinks it'll still work. Her theory is something like "If You Are More Attractive Than The Person You Are Cosplaying As, It Doesn't Matter". And I supposie that's why I make such a damn fine Sixth Doctor: because Colin Baker really didn't look good in his costume, whereas I rock it. When standing in a line of other Doctor cosplayers, they may be more accurate - but I'm still the hottest person in the room and the only one not going through a mid-life crisis. So I win.

That still leaves me in a bit of a spot, though. I'm easily more attractive than Colin Baker - but Gareth Thomas
is rather yummy in his own way, so here's a poll. If the internet thinks I'm hotter, than I will power ahead and buy tight trousers. If I lose my own poll on my own blog, then I'll go for one of the lady-characters (I don't know who this Soolin bird is - she hasn't turned up yet - but she would be instantly easier...)

So, there's the poll --------------> Vote! Vote now!

This may be academic, I don't know. I can't in good faith use a costume until I've got to the end, by which point I may no longer want to. And for now, I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to wear my fantastic coat.

As indeed I wasn't today, going to a Mad Hatter's Teaparty picnic purely as an excuse to legitimately wear all my outrageous gear at once. I took the bus back and established the route from Tottenham to London was one long retail strip with rubbish kebab shops on it. We had the angriest bus driver ever.

I stopped off at the Maughan library, for a little voluntary Latin and transform into my costume. Alas! No pictures, but I was wearing two different sorts of stripes (yellow and black + pink and white) plus the multicolour coat; a paisley cravat; the top hat complete with the Queen of Hearts, and I've developed a new style where I curl my hair over the brim of the hat and hold it there with the hatband. The result looks something between a mad powder wig and organic milinery. The tragic thing is, of course, that it didn't really feel like being in costume, as it's a combination I would have worn under most circumstances.

The picnic was in St James' Park, and consisted of caterpiller cake, cucumber sandwiches, mini mushrooms, and of course, tea marked "Drink Me". About 10 people ultimately attended - including Miss Liddell as Alice, Alzarius as the White Rabbit (he had pinched his mum's bathroom clock and attached it as a chain for a crazy huge pocket watch), and also Lady Gaga and the Black Corsair. Later, Ajax showed up. Time passed - from 4 until 9 - and for the whole time, the company kept up this appalling banter, somewhere between the language of the internet and Oscar Wilde dining room dialogue.

Perhaps it will turn out to be an expensive day after all? I got to play with the sonic screwdriver app on an iphone. It's a picture of a sonic screwdriver. You can make it move, and sounds work. That's about it - but it made me so very, very happy. It's a stupid reason to want one of the wretched things - especially because my poor mp3 player died earlier in the day, and my first thought was "Oh dear, that's a shame - but it has done three years good service, and one of those after being dunked in pineapple juice, so I can't complain". Not "I need an iphone as a replacement music player".

That would have been the end of the day's excitement, if not for some careless tourists and a little purple notebook at Westminster station. I like stationary, I like helping people, and I like being nosy - so I zeroed in on it very quickly and had a flick through. It contained very detailed plans of a holiday starting today in London, thenceforth to Paris, Frankfurt and Belsen - and had obviously just come from Korea because of the Korean hotel stationary, and had originated from Spain. Definitely an important notebook to return. For a moment, I thought their names might have been the two helpfully written in the back of the book. But I revised that estimate when I discovered a handy sheet of paper with the couple's full names, card numbers, expiry dates and security codes written on it. If not for that, I might have handed it into the station lost property box. But I always like returning things in person, as lost property boxes tend to be bottomless pits (especially if you're off in Central London and you can't remember where you dropped stuff), if there's enough information for me to do so - and I had enough information to bankrupt the pair of them then stalk them for the next month so yes, I had enough information. In a situation like that, you can only really trust yourself. I'm so glad it fell into the hands of someone absolutely morally unimpeachable...

...and I'm intrigued to discover how tricky being morally unimpeachable is when someone has handed their Mastercard, Visa and Paypal details to you. Even though I feel a sort of proxy fondness towards this pair, they are still pillocks.

Their hotel was on my route home - they had helpfully written down both the address of the apartment and the address of the check-in desk. I tried to make myself a little more presentable. By this point, I had long abandoned footware due to appalling blisters - because I made the mistake of buying ladyshoes and then trying to, y'know, walk in them. But I did my best to diminish the insanity of the Hatter costume, and arrived five minutes before the desk closed to discovered they had not yet arrived, so swapped details with the lady at the desk. I should really have left it with her, but that scrap of paper with the card information on really bothered me - besides, it was sort-of my responsibility by that point.

I worried for them a little bit on the way home - I mean, if you're on a journey that crazy you'd have lots of luggage, so why wouldn't they check in as soon as they arrived in London? I knew when that was as well...I wondered if their bizzare traveling was a once-in-a-lifetime megaholiday; or maybe they were rich folks on a run-of-the-mill jaunt, or perhaps international criminals?

I got a call from the hotel on exiting the Tube and arranged to drop it off the next day - she has a strange, hysterical voice. And quite a disappointing one too. I'm also a little crushed I won't be able to meet them; charity and voyeurism go hand in hand.

All in all, a busy, strange day.

I'd a feeling for some time that Blake's 7 would become an increasingly inaccurate title. Now that it's true, I feel a bit sick.

At the same time, I'm still in awe of it's glorious nastiness. I wish they wouldn't kill off a dearly beloved major character without warning, unfairly, out of the blue mid-season; and I wish our heroes would have some success, instead of feeling it all turn to ashes for the nth time, but as a serious student of cinema I'm pretty chuffed all the same. Chuffed and, to use a Latin phrase, suffering a sort of "gnawing" grief somewhere in my guts. I'm not sure normal, sane people with a sense of proportion and grasp of the deliniation between "real" and "not real" can understand the inappropriate sorrow that can accompany television tragedies.

Season 2 continues to be sweet and super-ace. I love that it has these layers and multipliciies to it, and that they are genuinely part of the text. In the first season, it was interesting because the crew was so cautious, suspicious and ordinary every time Blake attempted to do something stupidly brave. Yet he was still primarily painted as heroic by the show. Now, the emphasis is shifting. The crew are still objecting, but the show is increasingly agreeing with them and happily criticising its central character - fanatic, bullying, manipulative, ruthless and delusional. And best of all, none of these qualities are new. They've been there from the start, but in small ways. As time's passed, he's finding he can't afford princples, and we are being given more and more stories which show them from a bad light. How marvellous.

The only other show I can think of to come close is Galactica, and it failed by flipfloppering around too much. They'd be a shock reveal for every character in every episode, one ignored by next week. There was not a sense of slow progression. Some worked - Gaius, Gaeta, Starbuck and Laura, I think, were both pretty consistant and fascinating - but others never did. Adama didn't change, Lee was interesting but didn't make sense on the grand scale. Tigh and Ellen were messes, though I loved them all the same. Buma? Walking crisis and psychoanalysts nightmare. In fact, every single cylon didn't really hang together if you look at their acts across the series. I feel that show often used and manipulated characters for maximum effect, not because it was consistant. I suppose recent Doctor Who has gone pretty far in criticising it's hero, but that's only in comparison to what you would expect. And it still hasn't delivered the ton-of-bricks payoff the Doctor deserves for Waters of Mars. DW: Season 21 had a bash, as did Season 28, but never wholly succeeded.

Similarly, it has the courage to challenge the show's entire premise. Our heroes are freedom fighters trying to bring down the Federation - except, do we really want them to? It'd break my other heart if they were captured, but I think their success would be worse. Imagine the chaos, the civil wars that would follow. Regime change is a mess when applied to a single country (remember Russia, or England, or America, or anywhere which isn't currently under a feudal system) - apply it to thousands of planets, and we're talking billions of deaths. They'd be widespread bloody vengeance towards the old rulers and controllers, but in a universe where everyone is complicit, they'd also be snitching and old feuds coming out of the woodwork. The tightly controlled Federation systems would collapse like a card tower and have to be rebuilt from scratch - bam, there goes your infrastructure. If Blake was lucky enough to control all the rebel factions, he'd try and impose democracy. But like Kerensky in Russia, it'd be weak - and in any case, he'd soon start overruling them and making his own decisions (a la Laura in Galactica) as he already does on the supposedly democratic ship. At some point he'd lose control of the army, or be knocked out of power by another rebel faction or his own scheming sidekicks, or at worst, go thoroughly to the bad and become a corrupt Stalin type. And so the cycle would continue.

And then in about fifty years time, there would be peace and democracy. The end.

This is all my own extrapolations. But they are rooted in the characters as presented to us: I wouldn't want those seven people six people (must get used to saying six...god, what a nightmare...) to attempt to run a galaxy. It'd be like leaving the Clan in charge. And there are Federation characters who explain what a force for good it is, and you cannot wholly disagree with them.



Incidentally, me and Friend 4 had a go at bringing the Federation down ourselves, and we've a sort of plan based on the years spent studying Russia and Ireland in history. I hesitate to add that this is based on Blake's midset, which is pretty ruthless and crusader-y at present, and requires our heroes to remain uncaught for at least a decade.

We figure that the benefits brought by the Federation outweigh the negatives for most ordinary people, much like Russia for the entire period, or Ireland at the end of the century. In general, public opinion was against revolution - particularly, in Ireland. What would happen is every few years, a straggly band of would-be heroes would have a poorly organised armed revolt in the expectation of mass public support. This would never happen, and ultimately all died in pain. But the British always responded with extreme brutality, which would peversely result in more public support. The Easter Rising is a good example: about 1,000 people tried to take control of Dublin. The British responded by bringing in the big guns, and after about a week of nasty street fighting they were cornered in the post office and taken in. At this point, Dubliner support was actually aligned with the British army for supressing the trouble which disrupted their daily life, destroyed their homes and killed many innocents. However, the army then made some huge mistakes by rushing them through a shoddy and secretive show-trial and swiftly sentencing 90 to death, then executing them by firing squad. Nasty enough, but then stories started leaking out about what had gone on. Patrick Pearse's brother was executed seemingly only for being the brother of the rebel leader; John MacBride hadn't been involved at all, but was bad eggs for other reasons. Most infamously, the already heavily wounded Connelly was tied upright in a chair so he could then be shot. While the latter in particular is purely a matter of sqeamishness (you're gonna shoot him, so does it really matter if he's already dying?), you can see why stories like this would swing opinions. Yet at a trickling rate, it took some 50 years until there were enough ordinary voices to bring about change.

This seems to me very close to the situation with the Federation. At the end of the day, most regular Irish folk cared more about their homes and families than what their rulers were up to. It took a lot of foolish heroes (and two nasty famines) for them to realise the Brits probably weren't the most reliable custodians. The Federation is undeniably brutal, but it has also imposed peace which has allowed technology to flourish and eliminated day to day problems for the 99% willing to live in ignorance. And it is a fairly blissful ignorance - it's not freedom, but who wants freedom if they are warm, happy, fed and safe?

Blake will never be able to rely on widespread popular support. In his position, then, I would be aiming to imitate the situation pre-Russian revolution. I would start by gaining a huge network of underground resistance, and put them into intensive training and preperation but (for now) actively stop causing trouble. I'd institute a rule like Battle of Algiers - if captured, an agent has to resist for a set amount of time to give the others a chance to change the passwords, plans and meeting points. I'd base this length of time on their most powerful truth drug. And do that thing whereby everyone only knows two other people in the organisation, to root out traitors.

In the meanwhile, I'd tempt the Federation into a war with The System - a massively powerful force from an earlier episode. I'd do this by using Orac, the supercomputer, to mimic the effects of attacks on both sides - faking logs and black boxes, making both think the other was attacking them. It'd take time but I think both sides are stupid, proud and violent enough to fall for it. Might have to do some pretty devious and underhand stuff at this point, but all for a good cause.

Hopefully, this would duplicate the effects World War I had on Russia - draining, demoralising and extremely distracting. They would have to pull troops from all over the place. Once they were fully engaged in my fake war, I'd then set all my primed resistance groups off into toppling the outer planets simultaneously. Some would fail, some would succeed - it wouldn't exactly matter. It'd create chaos, and spread Federation forces even further. The atrocities would be catastrophic - in some cases, they'd have no choice but to wipe out whole continents. With so much going on, some of this would doubtless get back to Earth and create discontent.

But in general, people don't care about injustice. If we did, no one would shop at Primark, eat at Macdonalds and we'd all be taking the next plane down to North Korea to effect us some regime change. So about two years before the final attack, I would start interrupting supply ships to Earth on a regular basis. Nothing riles up a population quicker than hunger, as the Russian revolution showed.

Orac - the supercomputer - would have spent maybe the last decade working out exactly where all the Federation command centres are. My minions would use the teleport to go in and out and quickly mine all the important bits of the hierarchy, then blow them up simultaneously. At the same time, others would take control of the crucial bits we would want intact. This is mimicking Trotsky's takeover of Moscow.

At this point, all we'd have to do is wait for the rest to collapse. The people of Earth are fed suppressant drugs by the Federation, so we'd keep them dosed up until they got used to us being in charge. And then we'd take the wicked structures apart AND THE GALAXY WOULD BE FREE. Then see above.