My mind must be very odd indeed.....

Browsing round the news sites over lunch at work and chuckled when I saw a headline on the ABC News Website:-

EU Ministers to Hold Meeting on Turkey

Am I the only one that now has a very bizarre picture in my head ?

Too...good...to...resist.......

Banking on quality gifts.

For anybody reading the post-Bouchercon post(yes, I know, I could have phrased that better) you may have picked up on his generous nature regarding gifts for his esteemed workmates.

To quote:-

Hershey's mini-choccy things. Otherwise known as shit chocolate.
Waxy. Yeah, I think I'll be bringing them into work...

Well, to close the circle on this I can report two facts.

1) He's slightly inaccurate in his description - they actually taste of vomit. Small foil wrapped chunks of milk infused liquid sick. The 'waxy' bit was right though - kinda like dog-chocolate except worse.

2) 95% of the large bag he brought into work has been eaten. This means that even if each person here just took one little bar each, some must have gone back for more. More.

I was tempted to put a picture of the bars next door to a picture of what they taste like but I get the impression this might not be the best incentive to make people return visit.

Kinda like the taste of the chocolate.....

Wickers world Mainely wrong.....

A few of us in this here blogging circle like our movies and also like the odd rant about things. Sometimes we manage to combine the two in something very satisfying. Here comes another one though, in this case, it's more an air of disbelief and a "let sleeping films lie" attitude.

It's over this remake of "The Wicker Man", the quintessential island-in-a-realm-of-it's-own tale that has been sleeping it's way into cult status over many years.

For those living on the said island, the original starred Edward Woodward as a puritanical police officer sent to a remote island to investigate a young woman`s disappearance, and Christopher Lee as the mysterious pagan Lord Summerisle, in a role many believe to be among his best.

It's crazy enough that all the new promotional material, press releases and official web-sites have got Robin Hardy, the director, listed incorrectly as screenwriter for the 1973 original - Anthony Shaffer was the actual writer.

What's really bonkers enough to cause anybody with half a brain and a heart for movies many sleepless nights is that the new version moves the action to Maine and stars Nicholas Cage with Ellen Burstyn in the Christopher Lee part.

Read that last bit again. Nicholas Craig in Edward Woodwards part and Ellen Burstyn covering the Christopher Lee duties.

Hardy himself has been recently quoted as saying 'I don`t quite understand what they`re doing - it appears that not only is the lady involved, but there are also attacks by killer bees, which sounds like a really old-style horror film.'

Yep, killer bees added to the list. I'm starting to wonder if there will be a "Wicker Man" in it or whether it's be a bronze scorpian or jello Martian.

Sometimes, mainly on days ending in "y", I really despair of Hollywoods seemingly bottomless pockets. It not so much the fact they exist, but more what seems to be found in them......

Small Venue + Big bands = Zero chance.

"The gigs been moved to The Cluny - it's really small - a great place to see the show"

I should have had alarm bells ringing.

"Have you been to the Cluny before ? It's small in there - damn it's gonna be loud"

Nope, still didn't think ahead.

I turned up pretty stoked for the show but found out about 100 yards that it was cancelled. We nearly turned round and wandered off somewhere else but decided to pop down there for a pint all the same - glad I did.



Incantation
(Joe Lombard, John McEntee, Kyle Severn)

Having nattered with some of the guys from Incantation (Kyle is a gent) and Nile (Dallas's dedication to doing it right rocks) I've got maybe a more chilled view of things than I would done otherwise.



Nile
(Dallas Toler-Wade, Karl Sanders, George Kollias)

Hearing them talk you could tell they really had a genuine desire to play. No bones about that. They were there, the kit was there but the venue simply didn't have the size to get the show going. The Cluny is a nice place, quite easy going and Dallas was even saying as such, but the logistics of getting the kit in place simply wasn't there. Seems the size of the space needed to get the backline setup was never checked fully with regard to the venue when it was moved there.

It was quite nice in a way to hear somebody in a band actually talking about not wanting to take fans money putting a shitty show on, to feel that they were somehow screwing the people who'd turned up for something half-assed. That would have been easy but they weren't into taking the money and running.

The bands hung out there for a good few hours, both in the bar and outside on the grass, talking to fans and generally just meeting anybody who wanted to go up and say hi. They didn't have to but stuck it out. Seemed good people, one and all. Annoyed at not playing but trying to be as chilled about it as they could.

Yeah, if I'm honest, I'm gutted they didn't play but now I've heard their view on the why and what I can see that in the cold light of day it was the right choice.

They'll get some grief from fans who've either not gone or haven't thought it through but I'd say for those fans to think if they'd rather have an honest response or a rip-off gig.

In these days of the money speaking for some bands I know which means more in the long term.

Whirled in action.

I was feeling a little out of sorts so trawled round what other people were blogging to get some sort of inspiration. I read this post over here and it got me thinking. As ever that got me blogging again. Funny how that works.

Anyway, back to the post itself.

With all that's going on at the moment (war, bombings, tsunami, Katrina, bird flu, etc, etc) I find myself more and more thinking that it's simply the ecosystem finding ways to balance itself out.

You know all those "foxes and chickens" simulations that have been around since the 70's ? That's the sort of thing. Whenever one single thing becomes too big nature finds a way to scale it back. Sometimes it's controlled from within and sometimes from an external force. Always controlled though.

It's all at different scales too. Mould on a surface, families in a street, empires on one or more continents, species.....all subject to the same thing.

As much as we think we're superior enough to have full control over our world we're still animals on the planet. Yeah, we have bikes and cushions and tanks and jello but we're still part of the system and not above it.

With the rising population is it no real wonder that something gives ?

I'm not absolving us from blame though. We're obviously doing all we can to accelerate things happening to us - that is where our stupidly blind human superiority complex comes in. Still though I wonder if even that, our actions, are part of the system in place.

I guess I'm in the sort of period in my life where I'm already looking for pointers towards the what's, where's and how's and all these things - all automatically given the "disaster" tag by lazy media without even checking a thesaurus - focus my view outside my own situation.

Only natural I guess.....like everything else.........