Call me Chilli

My chili diet is not going well. I eat the chillies and my mouth burns. Then maybe one hour later I can feel my stomach bubbling. I am not sure that I am losing any weight.

Book reading jealousy

On literature

I like to think I am a little bit well read,
however when I read the list of the best books
in 2011 compiled by writers in the guardian, not
only had I not read any of those books, but
I had also not heard of them.

It doesn't help that they don't mention any science fiction books at all, I am cut off from literary culture - perhaps I should cut down on the 99p books from kindle.

Last night I watched Detective Dee - Mystery Of The Phantom Flame
via Itunes. This was a great martial arts film set in
ancient china -- with great wire and CGI stunts. Somehow
the acting in Asian films are better than in western films,
which somehow mix ultra-violence with cheesy emotion.



The amusing things is that there is some
propaganda message in the film. At the end
of the film -- the detective swears allegiance
to the Empress -- even though he had been a
rebel in the past.

13 assassins

So continuug our theme of movie reviews,
I watched the film "13 Assassins" over the
weekend. THis was directed by Takashi Miike,
who famously directed "Iche the killer" -- one
sick fuck of a film.




The film is about 13 Samurai who are ordered
to assassinate an insane Lord. Although I may tell
people it is world cinema, it is actually more
of an action film. The fight scenes are fantastic,
but the acting is good as well. The Hollywood action
thrillers annoy me with their cheesy emotion, but
this had more honest feelings, in a made up fantasy kind of
way.

The box

I am in fine ranting mode at the moment. I also watched "the box" by I think the same director who made Donny Darko. It was not the film I expected. A couple get a box with a button. If they press it, they get a million dollars, but someone that don't know dies.

Normally I like a bit of alien stuff thrown into a film, but it was not clear it helped this film. The acting was very good and real, but the story was so confusing to the point of randomness.

The green Lantern

Since I am in DVD reviewing mode, I also rented "The Green Lantern" from Itunes. The trailers for the film looked so good on TV, but what a pile of crap the film turned out to be.

Somehow it is annoying to hear an American saying "we are a young race". The film was trying to tell high school jocks that they are the future of the planet - rather than annoying bullies. I don't have much time to work up a lot of bile and rage for high school jocks, when I have worthier targets for my hate, such as Etonians.

When I used to live in Glasgow I would quite often rent DVDs from blockbusters, I used to actually buy DVDs when I lived in Liverpool. There was no shop close to me that would rent DVDs and at some stage DVDs became fairly cheap.

Although there is a shop in the center of Wuppertal that rents DVDs, but it is not so convenient to return DVDs. So I just rent films from Itunes -- which is a lot more convenient.

Last night I watched Devil's Rock a great she-devil film with Nazis. What more could a person want from a film?

Fallen leaves means sadness

As I have pointed out many times. I live on the edge of forest. Normally, the view is great, but when the leaves fall from the trees it looks very bleak. I see a road and some small buildings that look like garden sheds in allotments. Ironically, I can see the blue of an outdoor swimming pool.

I have tried to complain to people about this, but they keep talking about how beautiful it is with the colored leaves. No I say, fuck beauty, I want the green leaves back. They make me feel so peaceful and tranquil. I am now feeling stressed and angry. I wonder If I could use the excuse of "leaf rage", to explain any future random acts violence.

Reality 36

As part of my back lash at wimpy fantasy books, I have just read Reality 36 (A Richards & Klein Investigation) by Guy Haley.

This was a story about a crime agency with an AI and cyborg. Well I liked it - plenty of action.

Final days

I started to read a novel that started with a scene with an Unicorn. I got through chapter 1, but I thought "fuck fantasy -- I need some hard science fiction."

So I started reading Final Days by Gary Gibson. Actually I thought the book was by William Gibson, an easy mistake to make. Anyway the book was great - with time travel and the end of the world. Unfortuantely, I wasted an entire Sunday on. No work done at all. Now that I look at his wikipedia page I see that there is a Glasgow science fiction group. Umm, what would have happened if I was still living there.

On dreams and project management

Although I don't sleep particularly well, I have learned that it is fatal to worry about work. There is usual nothing you can do and the next day I would be tired that would slow me down, so I would do even less work. So a vicious cycle would begin. So now when I worry about work in bed, I try to move my thoughts in a more sexual direction.

So I was surprised, when I woke up and started thinking about what I had to do today. I remembered that I had to rerun some computer program on one data set. But then I thought, who ordered that? Given that the runs were done on Saturday. As I thought about it more, I suddenly thought that the project was from a dream.

Of course there is a history of people making scientific discoveries in dreams. For example the chemist who discovered the structure of the benzene molecule. But perhaps I have been brainwashed like in the film inception.