Her Majesty's Secret Cashcow

*SPOILERS, SUCKERS*

Today I watched the latest instalment in the Bond franchise juggernaut.  It's called Skyfall and it's the 230th movie in the James Bond series.  Or maybe it's the 23rd, who can keep up with it all.  Bloody good flick though; back to the traditional Bond style.  And in traditional action genre style, the storyline goes a little something like this - protagonist and antagonist spend 128 minutes trying to kill each other.

While Bond creator Ian Fleming passed on in the 1960's, and other writers have continued his legacy, I think it's safe to say that during his years working for the British Government, while his fellow civil servants pretended to be engaged in superspy subterfuge while they were really just filing boring, unclassified pieces of paper and writing dull emails in that old-fashioned pen, paper and envelope retro style, Fleming's imagination was going apeshit. 

I for one am glad that he was so bored and uninspired working in an office job in the public sector, Gov'ner.  Never mind the bollocks, eh wot!  Y'allreet?  Wass goin' on?  Sorry, got distracted by British slang that no Brit says ever unless they work for Eastenders.  Circling back to topic right now, innit.

A few things I noted in Skyfall:

Everyone knows that the best special super-effect for dark movies is real-life, non-CGI dark gloomy weather, ideally so dark that the audience need to don night vision goggles to know what the heck is going on.

The inherent risk of missing one Oscar encouragement award-worthy raised eyebrow or a half-smile is that you may lose track of the entire storyline.  Although with a Bond movie it's safe to assume that if there is gunfire or mortars, someone just died, and if there is no gunfire or mortars, someone is about to die.

So, weather-wise, I was a little surprised that much of the movie was filmed in a country renowned for its fun, sunny, balmy climate.  England.  It must have been boring for the film crew to have to wait around on set until it rained in London.  Shit weather is such a rare event in England that the director must have been tearing his hair out with the stress of it all.

In actual fact, the chance of it raining in London on any given day of the whole year is literally so excellent that one would put many quids, pounds, shillings or euros on it.  Probably not euros; nobody understands euros.  That's just how London rolls, innit. 

While London's weather may be complete bollocks at the best of times, the film crew were again just really lucky with the overcast gloominess and general malaise that greeted them when the film set relocated to the cheery Scottish moors.  Casting Scotland as 007's weather antagonist is certainly not going to win any friends at the Scottish Tourism Board, what with that country's fine track record of endless, sun-drenched summer days.

For me, the movie's best kept secret was the addition of Ralph Fiennes right at the end as the new M!  As much as I loved Dame Judi in that role, I approve of his casting because I heart Lord Voldermort. I suppose now the Harry Potter cashcow has dried up Fiennes had to find a new franchise teat to milk.  It makes sense for actors to sign up to multi-million dollar movie franchises. 

It's just like the good ol' golden days of Hollywood, when actors were signed to movie studios and were therefore unable to say no when the studio said you were going to be in a movie where you were required to wear an outfit made of panels of tin sheets for months and months and your co-stars, a dog actor called Terry (stage name Toto) and a pair of red sparkly shoes became far more famous than you'll ever be. 

But Fiennes is no fool.  He has worn a prosthetic non-nose in Harry Potter, a bandaged face in The English Patient, a Tom Cruise mask to play Maverick in Top Gun, and who can forget his body of work aboard a Qantas flight in 2007.  Through those roles, Fiennes avoided becoming typecast as anything more than the guy who likes wearing rubber.

Bond goes Gaza

There's heaps of angry bird stuff going on in the world at the moment. For example, the Middle Earth terrorists are blowing up shit again, but it's going to be a-okay because Daniel Craig has got his Bond on and has negotiated a ceasefire, which will last for approximately two days. 

The mainstream media is reporting that the psychotically-challenged serial killers, Hamas, the charming Muslim Brotherhood outfit who control the Gaza Crispy Strip©, have agreed to stop bombing the crap out of poor old Israel because of a deal struck by Hillary(ous) Clinton, but we all know that 007 had something to do with it.  Have you not seen his movies, CNN?  You don't mess with Bond.

I haven't seen the new flick yet but I'm gonna guess that Bond, James Bond gets accosted by an angry pod of terrorists, the boss of which has been facially deformed by having his head shoved into a Magic Bullet blender, the Personal, Versatile Countertop Magician.  Or maybe he accidently watched the Magic Bullet infomercial on late night television and voluntarily stuck his face into the speeding chopping blades.

The terrorists, just for a new innovative script twist, want to annihilate Bond and his multi-million gazillion dollar, dirty, capitalist movie franchise and arrogantly possess the lofty goal of wanting to destroy the whole entire world, one Aston Martin at a time.  Then bang, bang, boom, boom, ouch, ahhh, blood, gross, baddies die or flee to an Adam Sandler movie. 

Then Bond gets all Petraeus-esque sidetracked by a non-English speaking, psychotic, nuclear scientist supermodel, nearly dies, and then sails into the distance on a yacht with a different bikini-clad femme fatale whorebag, because, after 25 or so films, the scriptwriters have never been able to come up with a new closing scene befitting a superspy.

The Twinkie is Sinky

The company that makes Twinkies, the sugary snack that Americans love for reasons I cannot fathom, is going bust.  And, surprise, surprise, it is the fault of a workers' union, after striking workers failed to hit a deadline to go back to work at the advice of their union, and now 18,000 people don't have a job.  A union that costs workers their jobs isn't much of a union.  Which part of the word "union" do unions not understand?

The post-Twinkie world is, unsurprisingly, causing great distress to many folk in the United States because they just don't have that many options of sickly, sugary crap to stuff their faces with.  People in Australia don't really care about Twinkies or their demise.  But I do know what Twinkies are, having been exposed to their mass marketing techniques when I was but a child, and I was just as grossed out by them then as I am now.

My familiarity with Twinkies comes from observing Jughead Jones and Aunt Hilda as they gorged themselves stupid on creamy, sponge cake goo on the advertisement pages of my Archie Comics in the 1980s.  I never felt a need to go anywhere near a Twinkie after that.  And the comic also tried to flog sea monkeys through some ponzi scheme, where you could weirdly purchase a middle-class family of midget crustaceans.  Totally freaked me out.  They still try and sell those things.

While we are on topic, let me tell you what really gets my goat.  American bread.  They put sugar in normal, average, garden variety bread in the United States!  Bread is not supposed to taste like a Twinkie.  It's so distasteful that on my recent sojourn to Florida I was forced to spit that shit out (such a way with words today).  No wonder the United States has a collective weight problem.

I admit that America is an ongoing, moving target of my cynicism and negativity, but, what can I say, it's an easy target.  If questioned I will use the 'Twinkie Defense (sic)", a compelling argument made by a U.S. man who blamed the sugar in Twinkies for giving him depression which caused him to murder someone.  Like I said; easy target.

Lawn Bowls



The best part about meeting British HRHness is telling
constitutional republicans about it and watching their heads
spin around and then explode in a fit of rage.  Heh.



Stupid Clock Face

I was at the gym the other day and something happened that left me completely dejected, as opposed to the usual depression slash melancholy of having to watch 20-year-old girls getting more lithe and more fitter than anyone needs to be. 

Note to self: you are probably at the age when it is probably best to not compare your body shape with 20-year-olds.  But, hey, I'm a chick and that's what we do, to our detriment of course.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah, that wasn't the main source of my deflation.  I was finishing up stretching and I leant on the wall and came face to face with a ticking timebomb.  Well it was a ticking clock, but it was one of those ticking clocks with moving hands that provide an annoying continuous sweep for the minute hand rather than the much slower and less stressful tick, tick, tick.

There's nothing like a minute hand flying at a breakneck pace to let you know that time is running out.  Just, you know, in general.  Now these clocks have me completely psyched out, as if I'll look over and they'll have unexpectedly bent the space time continuum and I'll be trapped in a timewarp circa June 2028.  I hope they don't wear 80's fashion in 2028.  It sucked the first time around.

That out of control minute hand caused me some fleeting widespread panic and alarm, and then I went home.

I know; blog post fail.  It really is quite mind-boggling the things I find worthy of words in blog posts.

The Luckiest Fly in the World

Cocobean may just be the luckiest little fly in the world.  What? Oh, you want some context?  Well maybe just maybe I don't want to give you any.  The End.  Oh, fine then. 

Do you remember that titillating scene of Karate Kid where Mr Miagi pretended to be able to catch a fly with a set of dull chopcticks while meditating?  Well I did that yesterday, except I wasn't meditating and I didn't have any chopsticks, but I did catch Cocobean with a Spider Catcher Unit Thingy.

Cocobean was my pet fly, for about 10 minutes, before I managed to catch him and set him free.  What I realised is that trying to catch a fly for ten minutes will drive you completely mad.  I don't know why I was trying to achieve by catching a fly.  I guess we'll never know. 

It might be due to my inability to kill shit. It's really hard for me, because I know that all the bugs that freak me out - like spiders, cockroaches and the like - have families that want to see them at Christmas time, or for Thanksgiving if they are visiting from America.

Anyway, it's hard work.  Fly-catching.  Your head starts to spin on its axis with all that bloody buzzing and your eyes start squirting blood and you start yelling and cursing at nothing but thin air as it whooshes past your ears.  Had it been filmed I would definitely have been looking at some serious padded cell time.  Why are flies so damn chaotic in their flight patterns?  There is just no thought given to navigation, moving obstacles in the sky or walls.

Cocobean is free now.  Fly, Cocobean, fly.  Fly away and piss off the neighbours who are trying to cook sausages on their barbecue.

Excellent.  Another pointless blog post to add to my collection.