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narcasseHaving woken up at around 5am here, as per usual, per the jetlag I'm resorting to my usual tactic of sitting in bed with my laptop for a while. It usually does the trick, though does mean now that I might well oversleep when it comes to breakfast. Considering that I went to bed at roughly 2:30am GMT that's not surprising though. I've had a fairly stress-free journey at any rate. This year everything seemed to move just that little bit quicker too, to the point where I was at baggage collection on this side before they actually started offloading the baggage. That said, maybe my whole demeanour was radiating exhaustion this year because I wasn't even asked if I was bringing alcohol into the country. Usually, I get asked every year as they check my passport at immigration. No one ever asks me if I'm carrying tobacco for some reason and I've accidentally managed to bring in more than the limit on a few occasions as well. Normally I'm over the limit if I'm not planning to pick up any at duty free, so pack some, and then notice that they actually have something I want at duty free and pick that up as well. This year it's a sleeve of Sobranie Black Russian, another year it was a box of Davidoff cigarillos. But for some reason nobody thinks that I smoke. I ended up wearing two nicotine patches the other day, and I take snuff and smoke Belomorkanal generally. I also smoke cigars and shisha. And yet, apparently, I 'don't look like a smoker' whatever a smoker is meant to look like. I've evidently been giving off a mostly harmless vibe or at least an exhausted one, though I'm still not quite sure what to make of the knowing look the air steward gave me when I ordered a whisky and coke as the first round of drinks came through the cabin.
In flight, I learnt that the Boeing 767s are so small that they don't have a first class section and that Brighton Rock is a surprisingly boring film. It ought not to be, considering the original material, but it reached the point that I had to pause the film and do something else for a few minute every now and again while I was watching it because I could feel my mind wandering. The only other film that's managed to have that affect was the disaster that was Alexander, where I watched it at home and paused to go do my laundry and ironing at several points because that was more exciting. The older cast steal the show and somehow the two young leads don't quite live up to that. It wasn't a bad film, though I can't comment on the precise details because I've not yet read the novel, but it wasn't particularly riveting either. Unfortunately, it was about the only film in the line-up that I really had any interest in watching.
Other than the one film, I managed one and a half documentaries. The first one about Facebook being interesting if only for explaining the reason behind its creation and for the interviews with the real people portrayed so irritatingly in The Social Network. I'm still not thrilled with the idea of opening up everything to everyone but it seems like there was some reasonably well-meaning intent behind it. Though I am of the opinion that, while the idea of making interacting with your friends easier via online interactions is a decent enough suggestion, it also takes time and effort to maintain real friendships and that time and effort ought to consist in the majority of realtime communication. I may have friends that I don't speak to on the phone often but those phonecalls are still massively important, more so than seeing a status update on Facebook. Similarly, I have friends that I only see once a year but talk to on gchat almost every day and those realtime conversations, that allow for spelling mistakes on my part and silly comments and planning for what we're going to eat on the first night when I arrive, have a certain flow to them that posting on a glorified BBS message board simply can't compare with. The second documentary, that I only managed half of before we landed, was about the wider business of online interaction. It raised several of the fears that parents have about children spending far too much time online but didn't really address them, and would probably come up with some conclusion in the final segment that I didn't get to watch. On one hand, the idea that children will lose the ability to tell reality from fantasy seems laughable, but in smaller increments there is a certain desensitization that does occur due to online interactions. I used fandom memes as an example when I was telling the friend who picked me up from the airport about it. It's very easy to talk about fantasy or extremes online and because you're talking about it online, be insensitive to the vast triggering possibilities of certain things. But then the nature of fandom memes falls into the category of instant gratification that the internet provides. Perhaps then, what's really being damaged is the ability to research or show patience in many places, because I've forgotten the number of times that I've seen people say that a certain piece of information is unavailable when it's a mere few clicks away. The data is useless unless you can filter it, evaluate it and render it into a format to suit your purposes after all, and I'm starting to realise that being able to do that yourself is now actually some kind of skill-set.
On the topic of fandom, I've been supposing that I was moving towards a great hiatus, because I've been telling myself that I'm working on winding up some unfinished Sherlock pieces so that I can be rid of them and then stop posting to AO3 for a while. With that in mind, I have started anon filling some of the requests on the Cabin Pressure meme. I've filled four and come clean on this one simply because my urge to write cross-overs refuses to be diminished. And it also doesn't hurt that I'm discovering a fondness for Roger Allam's voice on this particular occasion. On the other hand, perhaps I should just buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged instead of skirting the point via Bioshock constantly, just to get it out of my system. In fact, I meant to load the audio book version on my MP3 player before this trip but forgot for the same reason I forgot some clothing and to set an out of office message on my work e-mail. Still, if I do want to decide a stance on objectivism I probably ought to make the effort to actually read Ayn Rand's work. From the introduction to Atlas Shrugged she has a comment that when she'd arrived in America nobody had helped her, and she hadn't asked them to, and regardless of any opinions on her philosophy, that attitude alone is worth admiring for its self-sufficiency and determination. All that said, beyond probably needing more synonyms for 'sea' if I'm going to finish this Bioshock/Sherlock/Cabin Pressure crossover that I started writing with my pre-flight glass of wine yesterday, I'm going to need a pretty comprehensive review of objectivism specific to Rapture if I'm going to deconstruct it. Knowing what the differences between the two versions, while academically laudable on its own, might also be a good idea to be able to work into the narrative too. After all, I'm pedant enough that I can and will cite The Wealth of Nations when anybody tries to suggest that Adam Smith said any of the myriad of things that he didn't, so writing a character that might do the same is a natural expansion of said pedantry.
Lastly, more as a note to myself than anything else, while I'm busily accumulating Pride flags, this year the one I buy is going to stay in Canada to await my return, in opposed to coming home with me to be forgotten for next year. Similarly, next year I'll just order fois gras on toast rather than the salad for breakfast while I'm waiting for my flight, because the arrangement of broken piece of fois gras on top of a seafood salad really is not all that appealing to the eye. Sadly, other than that forward planning, there's no real way to avoid being stuck in a 24 person cabin with a bunch of rowdy journalists, but hopefully that was a one off occurrence this year.
In flight, I learnt that the Boeing 767s are so small that they don't have a first class section and that Brighton Rock is a surprisingly boring film. It ought not to be, considering the original material, but it reached the point that I had to pause the film and do something else for a few minute every now and again while I was watching it because I could feel my mind wandering. The only other film that's managed to have that affect was the disaster that was Alexander, where I watched it at home and paused to go do my laundry and ironing at several points because that was more exciting. The older cast steal the show and somehow the two young leads don't quite live up to that. It wasn't a bad film, though I can't comment on the precise details because I've not yet read the novel, but it wasn't particularly riveting either. Unfortunately, it was about the only film in the line-up that I really had any interest in watching.
Other than the one film, I managed one and a half documentaries. The first one about Facebook being interesting if only for explaining the reason behind its creation and for the interviews with the real people portrayed so irritatingly in The Social Network. I'm still not thrilled with the idea of opening up everything to everyone but it seems like there was some reasonably well-meaning intent behind it. Though I am of the opinion that, while the idea of making interacting with your friends easier via online interactions is a decent enough suggestion, it also takes time and effort to maintain real friendships and that time and effort ought to consist in the majority of realtime communication. I may have friends that I don't speak to on the phone often but those phonecalls are still massively important, more so than seeing a status update on Facebook. Similarly, I have friends that I only see once a year but talk to on gchat almost every day and those realtime conversations, that allow for spelling mistakes on my part and silly comments and planning for what we're going to eat on the first night when I arrive, have a certain flow to them that posting on a glorified BBS message board simply can't compare with. The second documentary, that I only managed half of before we landed, was about the wider business of online interaction. It raised several of the fears that parents have about children spending far too much time online but didn't really address them, and would probably come up with some conclusion in the final segment that I didn't get to watch. On one hand, the idea that children will lose the ability to tell reality from fantasy seems laughable, but in smaller increments there is a certain desensitization that does occur due to online interactions. I used fandom memes as an example when I was telling the friend who picked me up from the airport about it. It's very easy to talk about fantasy or extremes online and because you're talking about it online, be insensitive to the vast triggering possibilities of certain things. But then the nature of fandom memes falls into the category of instant gratification that the internet provides. Perhaps then, what's really being damaged is the ability to research or show patience in many places, because I've forgotten the number of times that I've seen people say that a certain piece of information is unavailable when it's a mere few clicks away. The data is useless unless you can filter it, evaluate it and render it into a format to suit your purposes after all, and I'm starting to realise that being able to do that yourself is now actually some kind of skill-set.
On the topic of fandom, I've been supposing that I was moving towards a great hiatus, because I've been telling myself that I'm working on winding up some unfinished Sherlock pieces so that I can be rid of them and then stop posting to AO3 for a while. With that in mind, I have started anon filling some of the requests on the Cabin Pressure meme. I've filled four and come clean on this one simply because my urge to write cross-overs refuses to be diminished. And it also doesn't hurt that I'm discovering a fondness for Roger Allam's voice on this particular occasion. On the other hand, perhaps I should just buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged instead of skirting the point via Bioshock constantly, just to get it out of my system. In fact, I meant to load the audio book version on my MP3 player before this trip but forgot for the same reason I forgot some clothing and to set an out of office message on my work e-mail. Still, if I do want to decide a stance on objectivism I probably ought to make the effort to actually read Ayn Rand's work. From the introduction to Atlas Shrugged she has a comment that when she'd arrived in America nobody had helped her, and she hadn't asked them to, and regardless of any opinions on her philosophy, that attitude alone is worth admiring for its self-sufficiency and determination. All that said, beyond probably needing more synonyms for 'sea' if I'm going to finish this Bioshock/Sherlock/Cabin Pressure crossover that I started writing with my pre-flight glass of wine yesterday, I'm going to need a pretty comprehensive review of objectivism specific to Rapture if I'm going to deconstruct it. Knowing what the differences between the two versions, while academically laudable on its own, might also be a good idea to be able to work into the narrative too. After all, I'm pedant enough that I can and will cite The Wealth of Nations when anybody tries to suggest that Adam Smith said any of the myriad of things that he didn't, so writing a character that might do the same is a natural expansion of said pedantry.
Lastly, more as a note to myself than anything else, while I'm busily accumulating Pride flags, this year the one I buy is going to stay in Canada to await my return, in opposed to coming home with me to be forgotten for next year. Similarly, next year I'll just order fois gras on toast rather than the salad for breakfast while I'm waiting for my flight, because the arrangement of broken piece of fois gras on top of a seafood salad really is not all that appealing to the eye. Sadly, other than that forward planning, there's no real way to avoid being stuck in a 24 person cabin with a bunch of rowdy journalists, but hopefully that was a one off occurrence this year.
