Supergrunch

Happy birthday. I've made many a noodle-based meal recently.

I should still be good to come.

Yes, that's pretty much what I meant by "get-out clause" - the level of self-awareness in the film is at times used as an excuse for unrealistic modes of exposition that otherwise might be harder to justify. But anyway, I see what you mean about the abrupt increase in narrative focus towards the end, although I think I preferred things that way as if nothing else the random occurrences seemed somewhat more driven. However, I still think the segements without the main character present fit in, providing you consider them to be a more extreme result of playing with observation and interpretation.

I think you guys haven't yet considered the Abingdon envelopment effect, which is only a single stratum away from activation, and would put a freeze on these turbulent middlegame exchanges. If I'm not entirely mistaken, Goodge Street boxes out the LLC and thus fulfills the Abingdon conditions, so it looks like it'll now be MC in under 10.

Do you have a source on this excellent news?

So, I watached Waking Life, and liked it overall, despite taking issue with some of the philosophy. Humanity, communication and transience, eh? As a whole, I think it did come together, and the way the different viewpoints combined was done nicely. The dominating ideology seemed to be one where humans were the only significant things in the world, and this was perhaps reflected by the changing animation - they shape what happens. This also kind of fits in with the whole dream aspect, which seemed to conclude with the suggestion that life itself is a dream, perhaps collaborated by the alternate reading of the title as "Waking (from) Life." ("waking" as a present participle rather than a gerund, if you're interested) Observation also seemed to be explored a lot, perhaps as related to the communication between individuals, but to a certain extent this gave the film a degree of self-awareness that was something of a get-out clause at times. The other main problem I had was the way in which science is hapharzardly used to justify taking various angles, which is a problem in lots of this kind of thinking. For instance, the talk about linguistics was largely malformed, though the evolution theory was nevertheless fairly accurate and somewhat contemporary. I actually liked the way the speeches sometimes seemed "shoehorned" (as Dan put it) - it reminded me a lot of Murakami, especially Kafka on the Shore, where people spontaneously burst into philosophical conversations, not because this is natural, but because it emphatically isn't. Nonetheless, I agree with jayseven that some of the scenes were out of place either in terms of characters or themes, especially the bit with the four guys, but I liked the conversation with the girl where it was - it started the somewhat depressing spiral that the film used to conclude. Anyway, this film is endlessly analysable (in addition for instance, the concept of multiple levels is all over the place, and the contrast between diegetic and non-diegetic music was interesting), but I'd better wind down now and give other people a chance to speak.

So, I got up at 1am today. And had a bacon baguette - fun stuff. I'm feeling like playing some old Zelda games or something.

HRG? It's kind of part of his character. But yeah, way too many people have powers now.

I came back this holiday to find my village has a corner shop instead of a cement shop. Probably the most exciting development to happen here in decades.

I've heard some people describe themselves as going to "Brookes College, Oxford," which is pretty funny really. Anyway, Haggis, that's cool. You already know how awesome Cambridge is, right? All the more reason to have a Cambridge meet at some point.

Dannyboy, you're slightly insane. You realise that leaves you open to a Perischalt under-the-line manouevre? Actually, given your past play, you probably know this and are just going for the powerpoints all the same. Nonetheless, I hope my move at Charing Cross shows the weaknesses in your ploy. And of course it completes my Hammersmith pentagram - you'll see the significance of that later. Maase: I have no idea what rules you're playing - one doesn't capture station under '72 double santa (and mot other variations I can think of), one takes it in turn to play stations. Makes your current moves illegal I'm afraid.

So, I got round to watching both Slither and American Beauty. Slither was, well, mostly what it seemed to attempt to be - to whit, a somewhat tacky B-movie horror affair with a helping of comedy. Neither the horror nor the comedy was carried off brilliantly (though the collective conciousness thing was quite cool), but I got the feeling that wasn't really the point, and it was just supposed to be a bit of fun. Still, I probably wouldn't choose to watch it as I tend to like things that are a bit meatier. (the copious Slitherian meat was somewhat too literal) Oh well, in the absence of any serious artistic things to analyse, I'll have a look at the treatment of evolution. It seems that the topic's intentionally brought up, at least to some extent, as in her first appearance Starla is teaching about natural selection, and says the same tired old things about cockroaches as Mohinder did back at the start of Hereoes. Anyway, her basic points are roughly right, but what's interesting is the contrast with the monster thing, which is supposed to be better suited to its environment than humans are. (or is it, if disregarding the post-credit cat infection it gets "defeated" by them?) I'll break the rule of crap science fiction now and inject some genuine science, because it leads to something fun. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of organisms aren't ideally adapted to their environments, but are merely better adapted than their less successful forefathers, and organisms tend to occupy one niche and are held in check (if they're K-selecting, at least) by other things. Anyway, when a new, much better adapted organism suddenly turns up, a whole load of niches are open to it and it colonises the ecosystem like crazy - just look at, say, the introduction of rabbits in Australia. I thought it was cool that the film was unintentionally accurate in this respect, but that was offset by the "it's like a living disease!" line. Oh well, hopefully you'll forgive my mostly irrelevant digression... On to American Beauty. Surprisingly enough, I'd never seen this film before, although I nearly did on a couple of occasions previously. Having watched it, I can see what the fuss was about to some extent, and I think most people will agree if nothing else it's better than Slither. But yes, it was indeed a good film and I especially liked the characterisation of Ricky and his family and the relatively original way he was incorporated into the plot. The portrayal of reality seemed had a slightly cartoonish air to it, and while this detracted from the realism of the film, in retrospect I think it meshed in well with the themes of abnormality and unreal lives. As jayseven pointed out, rose petals were all over the place and this was a little too cliched for me (although maybe you could say that that's all part of the cartoonish aspect), but sometime they were used well, such as the (subtle) bowl of roses placed between Lester and Angela towards the end of the film. I noticed the plates too, and can only guess at what they signified - perhaps they symbolised that while life is fragile, you can make what you want out of it, or perhaps the director just liked plates because they were fun to cuddle and throw at things. My main problem was with the posthumous narration, which was ultimately a bit too silly for me, although it did draw you in at the start of the film and foreshadowed what was to come - really old trick, that. Overall, I'm definitely glad I got around to seeing this one. So then, a reasonable start to the culture club. I'll have to get the book next.

Good to see some people are getting the hang of things now. Anyway, I'm afraid it's not quite Ernlenmeyer yet Dannyboy as lazdales are still overslung, and of course the point piece trimeter is still fourfold, but nice insight! Recall that your far slung Stockholm is creeping towards the edge of the Lobowsky play parameter, so try and hold the tertiary points and you might have a chance at an endgame Kydale-type gyakuten if you keep your wits about you. Either way, you've left me with little choice but to retunnel Lazyboy's connection and end up at South Kensington.

This year I only asked for a handful of linguistics books, but my mum wasn't really happy with that so I appeased her by asking for Guitar Hero: World Tour too. Even so, it isn't going to amount to all that much - just under £100 or so I imagine. Previously I've had just over that being spent on me. But blergh, it makes me feel kind of uncomfortable... in some ways I'd rather just get a couple of books.

I'm surprised you missed: ...wow, I've finally sunk as low as ReZ. [noparse]love you really :p[/noparse]

I'm not sure how many of you play this, but it's always fun, and those who don't know the rules should be able to pick them up by observing us play. If you're still feeling really confused, try having a google around about the game... Anyway, what with it being nearly Christmas and all, I think we should start with the '72 double Santa variation: namely that craps are down, highpole snapbacks are medium, and circumlocutory comediations are permissable only on spatchcock boundaries. So without further ado, I'll pick an opening move from the Allsman set: Caledonian Road.

Happy sandwich.

Happy birthday dude, belated again I'm afraid - it comes from only being awake at night.

Syntactic Structures, by Noam Chomsky. A nice piece of awesome for when it was written.

Updated the thread title to reflect decisions. Well, it's a bit north of London. St. Albans is where you want to get to though, which is a few stops on a train from one of the Kings Cross/St. Pancras stations - St. Pancras international I think, although I may be wrong. Anyway, here's its geographical location.

Happy belated birthday to you.

Lots of popadoms with mango chutney. Chicken tikka with that mint yoghurt sauce. Cheese naan. Cheese naans are actually pretty rare, although I know one place that goes one step more awesome with cheese tikka naans. Had one of them a couple of days ago, and it was great.

You get 5 choices these days right? Depends whether there are more than 3 other courses that you're interested in.

Well I've got to get a train to Hatfield followed by a bus to either St. Peter's Street or the St. Albans station (the most absurd journey to get somewhere that's 10 miles from my house, but it's even slower if you go by bus, and you have to go into London if you go by train) so I can't meet people that early on, but should be able to from, say, 10 or 11 onwards. Incidentally, everyone should come out of the platform 1 entrance, else we'll miss you. Did we decide on a place to go? Rummy suggested 'spoons (heh left truncation) - are people good with there?