Dust and Must

A few years ago I saw an elderly lady do a poem in a talent contest which has always stuck with me. I think she'd written the poem herself and it was definitely called Dust. I even thought about approaching her and getting a copy but it didn't happen.
I'm not 100% sure it was this poem, I think hers was better, but it closed with the same concept.
I suspect many dust related poems may have touched on similar ideas.
Universal concepts and all..
Still.... it's nice

Suspended in a Sunbeam

Anti-Gravity

Well I've just been to see Gravity in 3-D. It was the final screening at the cinema and I'd had it in mind to catch because the world has been raving about it for so long.
Best film, best film of the year (last year), BAFTAs, Oscars.
"If you see any film in 3-D, it has to be this one".
"This film has to be seen in 3-D"
A score of 97% on the Rotten Tomatoes respected film review. A huge score of 8.1 on the Internet movie database.
Etc etc etc.

So what's it like?

Well...

It's claptrap.
And not good claptrap. Because I do like a bit of good claptrap.

Why is it so overrated? Presumably because the visual effects are first-class.
Does it look like an accurate representation of a space station been hit by debris. Yes. I'm sure it could not be bettered. So what? Who cares about that? Visual effects are supposed to be invisible when you're watching a movie?
You might believe a man can fly, but we are really only interested if he's going to kick General Zod's arse.

Is there a plot?
Well, I'm going to tell you the plot. Two people are working on space station when some debris comes along and one or both of them might find enough stuff that still works to make it home.
Okay are you with me. Because that's it.
Now there's nothing wrong with been able to summarise the plot of the film in one sentence. But you have got to play it for thrills and spills haven't you?

So it has a really good script to sell it, doesn't it?
The script is pathetic. It could be written by a fourth grader and I don't even know what a fourth grader is.

So the casting is really good, right?
It's George Clooney. Now I know this is a divisive thing but I'm not a huge fan of George Clooney. However, I once liked something he did (I can't remember what) and I liked him in this as he wears a helmet.
This prevents his head from nodding side to side like a schizophrenic Churchill dog, so at least he has a little, well, Gravitas. In fact, come to think of it, I like him in all his other movies where he doesn't waggle from side to side. If there were any. Which there aren't.

And alongside him. Oh dear. Oh dear, deary me. Sandra "Miss Congeniality" Bullock.
Now I love Miss Congeniality.
But staring at her padded bra and padded lips as the heroine of our space drama? Really? Please!

Early in the movie she gets launched into space without any way back.
Isn't that an acting gift to portray certain death?
Not to Sandra. The vacuum of space had more emotion.

So should it win awards? Yes, of course. Best technical achievement or best special effects.
But anything else? No way.

So what have I learned?
Never believe anything Mark Kermode says on his film reviews.
I never need to see another film in 3-D because if Gravity can't do it for me, nothing will. (I knew this already and I'd already broken my ruling going to see this. Thanks a lot, Mark Kermode) It ruins the film - the 3-D takes out half the colour as you watch it through grey lenses.
In exchange you get the occasional mild surprise of some debris coming at you.
I got two words for that. Seen it!

You can't even look around the movie in 3-D. You can only focus on the 3D bit that the camera focuses on. I don't think I'm the only one to predict 3-D's latest demise. The other two people in the cinema might agree.

But even with the three of us one managed to bring something to rattle noisily. Damn you, Skittles. Damn you to hell.
They played the three of us 25 minutes of adverts totalling 75 minutes of wasted time.
And the premium seats I was in smelled strongly of beer and piss. But because I couldn't decide which I didn't change seats.
Still, after 90 min of a barely tolerable movie, due to an unexpected sweetness. I couldn't really tell if it was more beer than piss or more piss than beer.
Either way, when I dropped my bottle top, I knew I wasn't going to be taking the rest of my Evian home again.

You're welcome.


Addendum. Having checked the IMDB again, I can see a lot of popular reviews agreeing with my apparently minority view and rightly holding Apollo 13 as the space film to beat. One tag line I perverted myself a few blogs ago was adapted similarly by one:
"In space...no-one can hear you ask for your money back".
Wish I'd thought of that.

A Cheery Bugger Off

All too frequently, the modern driver can approach the modern petrol pump, draw up alongside, and find a 'Sorry Out of Order' sign. Yes, we have no petrol.
Reversing out of a position in a petrol station isn't the easiest of tasks and may well be nigh on impossible. They are frequently designed for driving through and not turning around or worse adjusting yourself into another lane that does have petrol.

So, yesterday I decided to broker a suggestion that such signs would be more helpful on the end of the pump for the oncoming driver.
I had a good crowd for this presentation because there were three people in uniforms when I entered the crisp shop including a couple of mature British gentleman.
I handed over my cash and gifted them my suggestion.
One (the one who was checking the books or cleaning the floor or picking his nose or something) immediately shouted out "Nobody ever looks at signs!"
"Right OK" I thought to myself. "Let's park that".
The man who just taken my money offered a further suggestion. "The only sign you can get around here is this..", he laughed, as he displayed his favourite two archery fingers.

Now fortunately I haven't entirely lost my sense of humour, so I joined in with a chorus of  "Yes I could see today's service suggestion was falling on several sets of deaf ears".
And left.

Mercifully, in this age of letters, complaint and general points of view, I was laughing and the shop assistant was laughing (possibly a little harder fearing a complaint). By the time I was driving off I was still smiling and glanced up.
He was grinning at me through the window and was waving at me as though he was sending a close relative on a world cruise. All that was missing was the ticker tape and the brass band.

Free Parking

A couple of days ago I was in the shopping centre and descended from the top deck parking area in what we now know in the UK as the elevator, sorry lift. Either way it was going down, so it seems poorly named.

There were three key choices on the lift buttons 

- the P - the parking area from which I was descending, 

- the M that I was inclined to head towards and which I thought might mean Mall or Middle or perhaps Main

- and B which I speculated might mean Basement or Bottom.

But the fact I wasn't quite sure was really quite rubbish. (Of them, not me).

On my return (following an exchange of trouser) I summoned the lift (nothing anecdotal here, just the usual sort of thing you're familiar with) and despite getting on at M there were already two older ladies aboard.

Now unless I was about to go in the wrong direction I trusted they must have come from B.

'Going up?' I asked. (I wasn't being familiar, I was genuinely looking for validation).

We were already on M so I hoped there was only one place we were all heading.

'Yes' said one of the old ladies 'We're going up to P'.

'I'm afraid there's no toilets up their, love' I said. 'It's parking only'

Sometimes....

.... you just don't know what to believe...

....or do you?

I Fought the Law

I haven't had too much contact with lawyers so far in my life.

Except I lived with one for 18 years.

I now feel for those who go through divorce or anything where their personal life is raked over by people with an agenda.

I feel it is the opposite of everything I've worked on privately and professionally my entire adult life.

All our impressions, our working "models" of the world are wrong. We know this to be true. 

My. Your. Our internal map of the world is wrong. (This is not a new idea. It's fundamental Level 1 brain mapping).

But at least your map is better than it used to be and not as full as it will be.

There's nothing wrong with that sort of wrong.

It's right. 

It's only.

At times, after life, or death, we reassess our lives and our relationships. We might have friends and family to help us. There is even a process known as grief. People have written about it. Look it up if you like. Or don't.

At the very, very least it's an awkward, unpleasant time. 

Maybe your friends will stick with you. Maybe they won't.

Maybe your family will have some words of succour, or support, or context, or texture.

But somehow, if you keep looking under enough rocks, you will find something to flesh out your story, your reality.

You'll touch up your map.

And unless you give up, you'll go on. Your sands will settle. 

Your wounds will hide themselves underneath scars.

You will make sense of things. 

Not the sense.... but a sense. One that serves you. Inside. A commentary that will "do".

Unless of course someone comes to pick at it, to post maggots on the rotting flesh and keep it inflamed, to feed ammonia to your nitrogen-fixing detritus. Unless you invite the legal eagle to daily eat your liver.

Enter the lawyers to make your sense into unsense. To make it arguable, debatable, profitable.

Selling what you thought was the truth of your life as a commodity. As a writing exercise.

Hawking it between left and right, adding pinstripes and creating nothing of substance in the middle.

That gift you bought your relative? That was proof.

That kind word? That showed you "owe". Why would you have done it otherwise?

That holiday you sent them on? That was evidence.

That agreement you thought you had with them? Well, that was just a cynical ploy. (And they're not here to argue, anyway).

That commitment you gave? Oh, that was actually an indication of a right to an estate.

That time you went to a party? That was somewhere to troll for witnesses to testify to a new post-apocalyptic reality. To rewrite history in a land where the louder or most annoying voice wins. 

And the prize? A revision of your understanding of your life so far. (And cash, of course).

And everybody's opinions in our new revisionist world are equal, morally equivalent. When there is no test for proof, there is no test for honesty. Not for the first time in society, honesty is laughable, meaningless.

Only this week we've seen judges free terrorists because they bring a piece of paper (posted to them in error) that they can wave in court. I felt guilty playing my get out of jail free card at Monopoly.

Only today, I watched a youtube video today of a man punching a mentally ill person dead with one punch in the street. Four years, he got. He will be out in two. And we can watch the video. The dead man never raised his arms. The aggro was one-sided. He just got punched dead. That's all. In Britain, on our streets.

For the rest of us, on the milder end of the market with the law, for a four or five figure sum you can be given their opinion of what your relationship with, for example, your father was.   

And you better agree to it. Because "nobody wants to go to court".

And as the knives come out, you can convince yourself that maybe they're right. Maybe what you'd previously seen as shadows was the real reality. 

In time, you can rewrite an event.

In enough time, you can rewrite a lifetime.

Downgrade your thoughts, downgrade your memories, downgrade you. Who you think you are. And who you think you were.

It casts a shadow over every sunlit day you thought you had an understanding. And every day you wake up, the hungry eagles are still there.

And they peck for so long, with such attrition, with such patience, with such slow cruelty, such inhumanity, that resolution becomes impossible.

You don't even know what to believe any more.

You have lost track of who you are and who you have been so far.

In probate as in space, no one can hear you scream.