Wednesday 28 April 2010

Full moon

I like to consider myself a writer of the old school. So, late tonight, as I sat in my rural log cabin, isolated from all civilisation, I looked up from the keys of my typewriter where I was writing this very blog post (which was, at the time, a diatribe about the value of weasels) to see the full moon hanging ominously in the sky in front of me. (Sadly, beneath the moonlight I didn't see a sight that almost stopped my heart. Looks like Michael Jackson's dead for good.)

My Blogging Cabin. Also, my typewriter has microsoft paint.

I know what you're thinking, and, yes, my typewriter can upload to the internet, actually. I installed the whole internet onto it. With a floppy disk. Also, you're probably thinking "Full moon! Why does it matter if it's full moon? Assuming you're not some kind of hippie/pagan who's planning on pulling the whole 'naked cavorting druids' thing around stonehenge, Full Moon shouldn't matter unless you're the variety of twilight fangirl who thinks Bella should have chosen bestiality, not necrophilia!" (and, trust me, dear Internet, I'm not either of those things.)

But full moon is important, and not just because it tends to make children hyper. (My mother, who is a teacher, frequently tells me so: I think she possibly teaches at some twisted version of Hogwarts for mutant wolf children.) It's because every time we look up at the full moon, we remember a tiny bit of that cavorting druid past - it's been such a central aspect in so many myths and legends that we can't help just feeling a little bit like thanking our distant Gods of the hunt when we see it...

... That, or, if you're my mother, an urge to eat raw steak and chase anything that moves quickly. Should I be worried?

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Exclusive Election News, And CIRCA

So then, the UK looms on the brink of one of the most important general elections for ages - just like they tell us every other election. The election news is the biggest story on the BBC right now, with the exception of a certain Icelandic volcano.

Anyway, here at How To Paint With Ferrets I see myself with a serious journalistic duty to the people of Great Britain, greasing the wheels of this wonderful freedom of democracy.

This is why I surveyed literally two people and I can bring you the exclusive results of my poll, which claim that the person the Great British Public really wants as prime minister is:

Harold Saxon.

I know, Harold. I was shocked too.

Sure, he's mentally unstable and might occasionally try genocide, but he shot the thinly-veiled-George-Bush-Parody and had some killer dance moves. Sorting the economy out? Once Saxon's ruling the world, no one will even care about money anymore! Plus, he has experience as a head of state...
Technically, this is after he was Harold Saxon, but do you see me complaining?

Okay, in all honesty, I wanted to jump on the "Election Comedy Bandwagon", and evidently yesterday's blog post wasn't enough to talk about Doctor Who in. I know, I know: political satire? I feel like a dirty sell out.

But, in other election news, David Cameron got egged, and was apparently stalked for a while by a giant chicken. I admit, the news made me wonder... have CIRCA broken their deep cover? Then, doing a tiny bit more research into CIRCA, I realised that, despite what I've said in previous posts, they're not dead - they just changed websites! And their blog informs me that they're accepting signups for their training camps.

So, on a closing note? This year, Vote Saxon for change! Probably change that will involve setting your house on fire while giggling maniacally, but it's change, of a sort.

I'm Prime Minister, you say?

Tuesday 20 April 2010

So then, Doctor Who.

A WARNING FOR THOSE FROM AMERICA/WHO AREN'T UP TO DATE WITH THE SHOW: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP IT.

It also may include adorable baby animals, though, so skip at your own risk.

Anyway, the new series of Doctor Who, then. First thing's first: it's absolutely incredible. Stephen Moffat is an absolutely incredible writer, and it's great to have him in charge of the series. Now, lots of mean things have been said about Russel T Davis over the last few years, and I have to admit that, while it got a bit silly at times, it was still pretty good fun. But Stephen Moffat, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan seem to be a winning combination. And this is what really set me thinking.

The new series is definitely a reboot: they're even referring to it as Series One, not Series Five. But just how rebooty it is only really stuck last week. Not only do they have a new doctor, a new tardis, a new assistant, a new sonic screwdriver, and new daleks (who were introduced just sliiiightly like power rangers), Amy can't remember one of the biggest events of Russel T Davis' tenure, the season 4 finale, even happening.

That's right, folks, Stephen Moffat is trying to write Russel T Davis' years out of existence. Well, no, that's an exaggeration, but it's certainly intriguing, and we can only assume it's to do with these not-particularly-subtle cracks in time that keep appearing. An intriguing if rather obvious lead to a series finale.

On a final note, I absolutely love the sort of steampunk aesthetic they seem to be going for this series - the weird, "I found these things in my Grandad's loft and shall turn them into my TIME MACHINE" look of the tardis interior (bathtaps? A typewriter?), the new sonic screwdriver, the slightly 'used future' look of Starship UK, Spitfires in space...

On a second final note, Matt Smith's Doctor is awesome. Tennant was going to be a tough act to follow, but he completely nails it - playing the doctor as the best nutty professor ever. This is partly due to the strength of Stephen Moffat's writing for conversational humour, but he was also pretty awesome in the latest Mark Gatiss episode. (Saving the earth with a jammy dodger is evidently all in a day's work.)

On a final final note, this is very interesting news. Also, awesome. It'll be interesting to see how Russell T Davis writes for Matt Smith...

On an absolutely, completely and utterly final note: this is the geekiest post I have written yet. And one of my others had a picture of batman fighting a shark with a lightsaber.

Oh dear.

Oh, and the adorable baby animal you were promised:

Is it just me, or is that stare kind of creepy?

Friday 16 April 2010

The Differently Alive

What is it about the undead?

Don't get me wrong, I love a good zombie as much as the rest of the internet.

This is an example of how not to love the undead

In fact, I take the business of zombies so very seriously that I recently genuinely sent this email to the British Ministry of Defence:

Dear Sir,

Of the many threats facing homeland security, it seems evident to me that by far the greatest, if perhaps not the most probable, is that posed of the reanimated dead: I refer, of course, to the "zombie apocalypse" as popular culture has dubbed it.

In the (admittedly unlikely) event of the rising of the dead, has the army got a contingency plan to protect the citizens of this nation from shambling, necrotic warriors? Since such an adversary is incapable of thought - and thus espionage or any form of tactical planning is beyond them - I feel fully justified in requesting information on your plans for this eventuality under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) so that civilians of the United Kingdom might better prepare themselves for the eventuality of serious, large scale undead attack.

Yours Sincerely,

etc. etc. For some reason, they haven't replied yet.

But, anyway, what is it about zombies exactly? Why, in the last few years, have so many of us become quite so attracted to the idea of a zombie apocalypse? It's not as if it would, in reality, be very much fun, especially for those outside countries with lots of firearms. Starving to death inside your barricaded building because you don't have enough food and are surrounded by rotting, walking corpses doesn't sound like much of a way to spend my weekend.

I think the danger is that zombies are becoming too popular. Pretty soon, if we aren't careful, they're going to hit The Twilight Point, and be remarketed in an attempt to be edgy and appeal to twelve year old girls...

And no one wants that.

Oh, finally, on the note of zombies: this is awesome.

Thursday 15 April 2010

Clowns (or kittens, whichever you prefer)

I have three Clown related things to discuss here. If you suffer from Coulrophobia (the fear of clowns and my word of the day), please feel free to mentally replace every instance of the word 'clown' in the following post with 'kitten' - or alternatively skip the blog post, which might seem a slightly better move.

Firstly, we talk about a personal hero of mine. Someone I hold very dear to my heart, and want to emulate at every oppurtunity. In fact, he's probably my personal hero, and, in my opinion, the finest mind of his generation.

I'm talking about Batman.



Only I'm not exactly talking about Batman. I'm talking about the most iconic member of his rogue's gallery, the Joker. Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Clown (kitten?) Prince of Crime in The Dark Knight was hailed, quite rightly, as absolutely genius. Unfortunately, there was one tiny snag in his whole performance: the fact that he went and died. The absolute genius that would surely have been in a continuation of Bats and the Joker's battle is not going to happen, or at least not in this series of films. We're never going to see Ledger's joker again.

Or are we?

The Joker Blogs are a work of absolute genius. One man has found that he has a disturbing similarity to Heath Ledger's joker, and written a truly brilliant set of videos that start as video diaries of the Joker's therapy sessions in Arkham with one Doctor Harleen Quinzel - and any Batman fan should recognise that name and what it implies. Where they go from there, however, is far beyond almost any other amateur video I've ever seen in terms of production values and writing. The series seems to have finished recently, sadly, but it's an absolute crime not to check them out in their entirety on their youtube channel. I'll leave it there because, honestly, I could go on about these all day.

Secondly, I'm going to talk about what I think is quite possibly the best political movement in history. I'm talking about CIRCA, or, to give them their full name, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. (For those with coulrophobia: Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Kitten Army is possibly even better) And yes, that was pretty much my reaction too. But incredibly, these are a real organisation: and not just a Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster like spoof, either.

Instead, CIRCA are trained circus clowns who use their skills to protest against governments worldwide, with parts of the movement in the UK, Ireland, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, The Middle East, Germany and the USA. There is absolutely no way I am making this up. To quote their website:

"CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin or all clowns) have embraced life's paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion - adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth."

This seems like a strange mix between the medieval tradition of the fool (which is no doubt an influence), The Joker himself, and the Guild of Fools and their Battle Clowning in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, and I for one am all for it.

Unfortunately, the website hasn't been updated since 2007, which leaves us two possibilites - either:

CIRCA has disbanded, the members leaving the last meeting while a solitary clown played a sombre "waa waa waaaaaaaaa" on the trombone.

OR

CIRCA have been forced underground by the government and somewhere out there, a band of rebel clowns is hiding and trying to strike back against the man (possibly with routines involving picking up a ladder).

I know which I prefer.

Oh, and finally, talking of clowns and politics?



Enough said.