The proposed new Iraqi flag is far too similar to Israel's flag for many Iraqis liking.

It's been three weeks since the last entry for this. The reason being there has been very little to write about due to an abnormally normal few weeks. I don't know if that makes sense but what I mean is that there has been very little incident worth writing about.

So why am I writing now? What the hell has happened to wake you from your stupor Mr. Inca?

Nothing really apart from the most easily spotted lie that I hear on a regular basis from customers.

I've seen all of those films

When what they truly mean is none of those films are of interest to me.

Why do they lie? Do they think I'll be offended if they tell me the truth? I really don't mind if they decide not to see what we are playing. But it pisses me off to hear them tell me they've seen everything when the choice is so diverse that only a true cinema freak would have done so.

Then try Amazonwhacking.

Same concept as Googlewhacking but harder in my opinion.

Do a search at Amazon using two words to result in only one product being found.

For example a search for dandy impeachability will result only in the book First In His Class : A Biography Of Bill Clinton

Because I obviously have too much time on my hands I have made a Listmania! list at Amazon.

me: How would you describe the look on your face this afternoon when you came round from the tranquiliser and realised you were still in the boot of my car?

he: It was a look of delight you were so kind to leave that dead girl beside me she really was satisfying.

he: Passed out next to a castrated limbless paedophile in the rain. How about you?

me: I'm very depressed but getting better because of leaf chameleons and red haired girl's smiles.

he: Oh man those reds are the best, enough to keep anyone alive. I love you beautiful brother.

Well not really but that is how it is being reported in the popular press. The typical kneejerk emotive reaction when what we really need is some logical thinking applied to the situation. God I sound like a fucking Vulcan. It's not even cloning a human anyway just human genetic material to harvest stem cells.

Read the BBC News story here. Dolly scientists to clone embryos.

Professor Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, wants to use cloned human embryos to study motor neurone disease (MND)...

A noble cause for sure but is it the first step on a slippery slope?

I don't think so and I certainly don't believe that banning this research is the solution. Prohibition has never worked in history what is needed is regulation. What is the nightmare scenario that people fear anyway? So someone clones a human being what we will have is a human which shares the same dna as another human being, but doesn't that happen in nature anyway with identical twins. In fact the clone will be more different to their genetic twin than identical tweins are because the environmental factors which go to create a human will be different.

We won't have clones created for spare parts because those clones will be human and will have the same rights as a human created the natural way and if they don't then taht is a legislative problem not a scientific one.

Will we have clone armies like in Star Wars: The Attack of the Clones? no we won't that is just science fiction.

In addition we cannot at the moment create human clones the science hasn't been developed that far yet, we may never get to that point. We're not even very good at creating clones of animals, the ones we have created have had congenital defects in their organs and have died prematurely.

I just ate a chocolate covered flapjack and I'm very disappointed with it. Whilst eating it I thought that it wasn't quite right the flapjack was fine but the chocolate just didn't taste like chocolate. I looked at the ingredients and there is the usual oats, glucose syrup, hydrogenated vegetable fat etc. and then chocolate flavoured topping. It doesn't even list what's in the topping and certainly didn't taste like chocolate. Fucking cheap bastards.

I always knew my daughter Emily was special but my wife has discovered she may be more special than either of us thought. Emily is an Indigo Child!

She is very intelligent but has had difficulties at school. She is considered a disruptive influence and we had been told she probably had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I wasn't convinced though; Emily is clearly a very able student who just wasn't being stretched and thus became easily bored. In addition like her old man she has little regard for authority.

I had read a book called Children of Chaos by Douglas Rushkoff in which he theorized that the short attention spans of today's youth is a product of the overwhelming mass of information they are exposed to. Their exposure to multi-channel TV, the Internet and video games has forced them to acclimatize and evolve to process it all.

But recently my wife became aware of another book with an alternate hypothesis called The Indigo Children by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll. She believes that our daughter is one of these Indigo Children a new evolutionary step of humanity.

I can't say that I am fully convinced by this theory and it hasn't affected the way I am with my daughter but if it is true then the next couple of decades are going to be very interesting.

In addition I note that the owner of this site who goes by the name electricinca exhibits many of the attributes of an Indigo Child as well.

It occurred to me last night having watched an episode of Six Feet Under that a dichotomy exists in my mind over the death penalty. I oppose the death penalty but would kill anyone that hurt my family.

Why do I oppose the death penalty?
1. I have a distrust of the State and feel that the authority to take life should not rest in its hands.
2. It fails as a deterrent, countries or states with the death penalty do not have a lower incidence of capital crimes compared to those without it. The deterrent argument is a poor one that doesn't bear up under examination.
3. I actually think that life imprisonment is a worse punishment than a quick easy exit for the criminal.

Maybe it's because I've been rereading Preacher recently but I have a strong sense of personal justice and revenge, particularly for those who wish to hurt me or my family. Actually to tell the truth I feel this strongly for my siblings but not so much for my parents. Growing up in a family of 5 kids where I'm the eldest I always felt I should be there to protect my younger brothers and sister, but my parents can look after themselves.

Article from Wired News: Make It a Wario Party.

A GameCube version of the critically acclaimed Game Boy Advance game WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames, Wario's gameplay revolves around more than 200 "microgames" -- tiny, simple, sometimes bizarre games that last for less than five seconds each and are played in rapid succession...

...It's clear from playing these games that Nintendo is proud of its history. What's more subliminal is the underlying message: Ultra Hand is still fun, Beam Gun is still fun, Game and Watch is still fun. In the right doses, the right context, we have not lost our ability to be entertained and engaged by simple, imaginative, nonlinear toys and games.

I have been saying something similar for years. Game producers have been concentrating on style over playability in a lot of games in the last decade. Just because the graphical power of game consoles and PCs have increased phenomenally doesn't mean that better graphics in a game make a better product.

I still play games that I played 15-20 years ago using an emulator on my computer and Tetris is still probably the game I play most on my GameBoy. Modern console games are very different to their early counterparts. Epic games that take many sittings to complete as opposed to say Tetris where you might play the game many times in one sitting. Would it be worth dusting off the games of the 80s and 90s and releasing them very cheaply.

The rise in gaming on mobile phones has opened up an untapped market that could be extended elsewhere. With the Internet capability and hard disk the Xbox gamer would be in the position of being able to download the games easily without the need for the production of game discs and packaging and the retail outlets required for new games.

Labels: Games

Children's cartoons are a lot different to how I remember them. Just watch this episode of Poor Monkey.

In addition if you are fans of Alysson Hannigan why not visit this excellent site devoted to her. Some fun facts that I didn't know about her.

- Alyson has a morbid fear of the circus. This stems from her childhood, when her parents were eaten by a clown.

- At High School, Alyson was voted Student Most Likely To Be A Bond Girl.

An excellent article about man's closest relative the Bonobos of the Democratic Republic of Congo, by Sally Jewell Coxe of the Bonobo Conservation Initiative. Read it here.

Excerpt: The first day I had direct contact with Panbanisha several years ago, we went for a walk in the forest surrounding the lab. Panbanisha loves to play hide-and-seek, and she wanted to hide with me. We found a secluded spot on the riverbank and huddled together under a bush. Panbanisha kept very quiet and still. When the researcher on the prowl yelled, "Panbanisha, where are you?" she turned to me, her eyes alert and cautious, as if to say "shhh, don't move!" I experienced the same kind of intimate camaraderie I did as a child, hiding out in the woods with my best friend avoiding imaginary foes.

Due to the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bonobos are under threat.
Learn more about these remarkable apes and aid in their conservation at http://www.bonobo.org/

Just a quickie about a query from a customer I had today.

"Could you tell me how to get in touch with Mel Gibson so I could congratulate him on his wonderful film 'The Passion of the Christ'."

I suggested that she send a letter via Icon film distribution and then she got really shirty with me telling me that I was being no help.

Like I fucking know every single film director's home address in the whole bloody world. What the fuck do you expect from me you psycho bitch.

Discover here, or if you would like to be a superheroine try this one.

Luther Blissett is an orthopaedic surgeon and SF fan and is now a contributor to this weblog.

The Memespread Project
A study by Computer Science student Sam Arbesman to trace the spreading of a meme, specifically in this case a webpage. Injected into the blogosphere by getting linked to by prolific weblogger Jason Kottke.

I'm sure Sam Arbesman did this for a genuine scientific study but the cynical capitalist inside can spot an opportunity here. If the project succeeds then the Google PageRank for arbesman.net is going to go through the roof. Having achieved such a rank he could then profit from the Googlejuice by selling outbound links from the site.

Casually browsing through the Internet Movie Database I discovered a comedy gem, this review of Tonya and Jeff's Wedding Night by user SanDiego.

An excerpt from the review:
"...Gillooly's directorial style is free flowing, letting his co-star improvise. He understands the camera is a voyeur and sets the film in a small claustrophobic room...Gilloohy pushes the envelope in his first documentary featurette by showing us full frontal nudity of both Tonya and himself. This bold move is so truthful we really feel for the ill-fated couple. And Tonya Harding is cute. Nude, she looks a bit like Sally Field in her nude scenes in "Stay Hungry" and perhaps she will have a career someday to match."

A mere day after I start this thing and I've had the worst day at work ever, and it was supposed to be my day off today.

I got a frantic phone call this morning from the projectionist; today's duty manger had called in sick and both the senior managers were away for the weekend. This meant that I had to go in as no one else had keys to the safe and thus access to the float and the keys to the tills. The staff had managed to struggle through the morning's kids show with the change in their pockets.

Not a good start to my day but things were to go slowly downhill.

Incident 1: Two kids having just sat through the crap known as The Cat in the Hat (great book, poor movie) decide to let off a stink bomb in the auditorium. Thanks a lot guys, goddam bloody kids.

Incident 2: Yet another staff member goes off sick leaving us further understaffed.

Incident 3: A customer enquiry about The Passion of the Christ.
- Are you showing the Mel Gibson Jesus film?
- No not yet I'm afraid. It starts next friday on the 9th of April.
- I've heard it's quite violent.
- Well yes it is very violent. There are graphic scenes of torture and then there is the crucifiction. (Best to be totally honest with customers about violence as they are likely to complain. I can forsee us getting lots of complaints about the violence by customers who will blame us even though we didn't make the film and it was they who made the informed decision to come and bloody watch it.)
- There's those people that have complained about it haven't they. (I think she is still talking about the violence but oh no.) What do you call them? Oh yeah the Jews.

Incident 4: Even though the system doesn't allow it to happen we oversell Screen 2. We have customers that have booked tickets turning up to find we have no seats for them. Fucking hell. Much apologies, refunds and complimentary tickets later we look through the ticket stubs to find four tickets for an earlier show. Should have bloody thought this would happen as I knew we were four tickets down for that show. Had the cashier made a mistake and sold customers tickets for the wrong show? Later as I watch the customers leave at the end of the show I notice four customers that I knew for certain had bought tickets for the earlier show as it was a ticket sale I had done myself. They had just decided to come for the later one instead, unfortunately this just fucks us up if we are busy, but it is hard to stop them doing it.

Incident 5: To cap off the day from hell the fucking electricity goes out halfway through the last shows of the day. A split second of freaking out before I realise that I can still here the sounds of the movies playing. Luckily the projection boxes are on separate circuits from the rest of the cinema so the customers are none the wiser. After scrabbling around a bit in the dark with torches the projectionist and I are able to sort the problem.

End of the day now and I'm typing this just before I leave for home. Roll on tomorrow and further chaos.

Anime made flesh as it were with the creation of Kaneda's motorbike from the seminal movie Akira. See pictures from the Tokyo Motorcycle Show. This is a fully working cycle with twin-steering system and 249-998cc water-cooled 4-cycle engine, and on its cockpit is DVD-navi-system + trackball & ten-key + custom computer-controlled LED meters - all licenced by the author and the publisher of Akira. See the manufacturer's site.

Let me just begin by stating how much I loathe Ulysses. I hate Stephen Dedalus. I hate Leopold Bloom. I hate Molly Bloom. I even hate their cat. They're all fatuous and arrogant and dull and dishonest and insecure and insincere and superficial and greedy, and they all take part in a story that's a boring, tedious, frustrating, incoherent, big fat waste of my time and energy. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a massive liar or a sick masochist who deserves to have a bag slipped over their head and be taken away from society. As such it remains one of the most astoundingly honest and ambitious works in modern literature. There is not a book currently existing which is simultaneously as repelling and compelling. Is there a more divisive stirrer of passionate debate in the field of art? Normally a very relaxed, some may say apathetic and pacifistic, individual, I once heard my English teacher saying that Ulysses was nothing but complete garbage. I calmly stood up and punched him in the throat, and I received polite applause as I was escorted from the classroom. Later on, when I reread a section of Ulysses near the middle, I discovered that he was completely right. But you know what? That's life. And that sense of living pours off Joyce's pages and through his eccentric mouldings of the English language like a waterfall. It's almost too much to bear at times. We eat, we drink, we urinate, we defecate, we sneeze, we fart, we stink and we have sex, and after a few decades we die. No hidden wisdom. No great awakening. No grand nobility. No spiritual nirvana. That's LIFE. And the sooner you come to terms with that, the more depressed you'll be. Wonderfully, wonderfully depressed.

Found and published in an act of bizarre serendipity.

Labels: Sex

Inspired by True Porn Clerk Stories and moved to action by the increasingly bizarre customers who are enquiring about The Passion of the Christ I have decided to create a journal of my days at work. I may even spin this off into a separate blog.

The home of hooch, monkeys and CGC graded mint quality comics.