Month: June 2021

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I’m Just Disappointed

I do know that it’s wrong to use your mobile phone while driving but I just had to in this case. Fortunately I was in a traffic queue and just after I spotted this advert there was serendipity. Given the hurry I was in and the distance of the bus from me I’m quite pleased with how the picture turned out.

Education Kind Of
Education, Kind Of

What surprised me about the advert was partly that Fashion History should have been something starting with a T to match the tarot part of that sentence and I think KAE missed the point of how those literary devices work. The main surprise in this advert was to see KAE advertising courses in Tarot. I don’t think they should.

Tarot is either the name for a pack of cards used in Europe for about 400 years or tarot refers to the practice of conning people with bullshit, from Wikipedia: “the late 18th century, some tarot decks began to be used for divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy leading to custom decks developed for such occult purposes.”. I’m guessing that this reference to Tarot on this advert isn’t just about the design of the cards but more likely to be about the spooky divination of said cards. Let’s see.

As I type this I’ve got another tab open [actually it’s a whole browser on my other screen] and I am going to look through the tarot information on the KAE website. The first thing I noticed in the search results is that there are two course and they don’t cost as much as I thought they would, but the socialist in me does think that if people want to further their education then it should be free of cost, however I do understand the modern world.

KAE Search Results

In a moment I am going to click on the more information hyperlinks and see where that takes me. Le Boutillier. Hmm. Le Boutillier. Very sensible choosing a name that sounds like it’s from New Orleans or of French descent. It gives you a certain credence in this realm of tarot. It could be that Le Boutillier is their birth name but I suspect not, I will try and find out.

Understanding the Tarot is an online course run out of the Tonbridge part of KAE. It’s a basic course for anyone “wishing to understand how Tarot reading can be commonly used to measure potential outcomes and evaluate influences surrounding a person, an event, or both.” So this is a course in nothing. There’s a little bit about understanding the 22 Major Arcana cards but the rest of it is absolute nothing. Oh well.

Creativity and Inspiration with Tarot is an online course [sensible in a pandemic] and it is basically learning how to make up shit in story form from the cards that you have. So I guess it’s about using your imagination. There isn’t anything about telling the future or past but just the story aspect of the cards. The tutor for this course is Martin Laya Rey. Almost definitely not their real name and made up to sound exotic. I’ll see what they say about themselves shortly.

Ally Le Boutillier. Her biography on KAE says “a Reiki Practitioner, Hypnotherapist, Bereavement Counsellor and Numerologist.” Of those things there only one is actually a real thing to do and even then, given her other practices I wonder if she can counsel people without resorting to after-life souls stuff. Now to google and see what happens. Oddly she does not have her own website, there’s some things on Linkedin and Facebook but I’m not trawling through those sites. It does appear that Le Boutillier is her last name, she mentions her late father and his name is the same. Perhaps I was harsh about that. She does have a YouTube channel and she has a playlist called Deepak Chopra. That is all you need to know. Deepak is a man who utters such vague rubbish that those who believe the supernatural love him.

Martin Laya Rey has two google results and that is the page at KAE and an advert tweet for a cook at a cafe in a cinema. This is super odd. Maybe I’m the odd older person as I have a number of google results for my name. It seems odd that no one else is called that also. So, I have no other information on this person. I could go to Facebook but I don’t like making myself busy on that site, they are immoral. In terms of names I have no idea from web results if it is their actual name so let’s go with a yes.

My conclusions. This stuff seems harmless enough. Tarot is a giggle if you take it as a bit of fun. I guess it’s like a Ouija game – which is a game and the science of it is well known – the problem is when people take these things seriously and start taking the advice of the cards. There is a false hope in the idea that there are super natural things and even more false hope that they are communicating to us through vague symbols and other people. The legitimacy provided to tarot by it being an official course on an adult education platform does not help and is one of the ways that practitioners are able to claim that they do a real thing. It’s a bit like the reiki poster up in the doctors surgery. Reiki is rubbish but gets condoned because it has a poster up in a place of goodness.

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The Last Sucker – Ministry

I really like the music of Ministry since I first heard “Jesus Built My Hotrod”. There’s a great element of chaos in the songs which I enjoy. They are pretty damn good live too. This album is the third in the series of Uncle Al Hates GW Bush. Quite a few musicians are on the left of politics and Al is there too. Maybe it comes from accepting the strange and odd, accepting those who are different, being more tolerant and having an education? I don’t know. I suspect there are definitely right wing musicians out there, much as there are right wing people in society at large. I think my view is mostly that those on the right are distrusting of difference and broadly selfish – they expect that people should be able to sort themselves out. My view is that I’m trusting and accepting of differences along with understanding that people need help and I’m happy to do my bit.

Can you imagine what Uncle Al has thought about the Trump years? I mean, it is arguable that GW was the worst president ever and entirely useless and thick. Then, Trump came along and makes GW look like a fucking saint. Can you imagine how shit you have to be to make GW look good? Bush Jr was fucking terrible. An absolute shit president. New levels of shitness have to be used when describing Trump. If you want to elevate Trump to some level exceeding “really shit” then I think the education system has failed. It’s like thinking that Johnson in the UK is a trustworthy sensible bloke. We are in the same situation this side of the pond.

I’m not sure of any song particularly sticking out on this album but I do like the sound of Watch Yourself. I’ve been listening to Ministry while playing Minecraft as the both go together. I do wish that Uncle Al would keep going but everyone dies at some point.

See if you can spot me in the crowd.

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The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

I had some time and so I decided to go to the cinema. I almost feel guilty if I don’t go enough as I pay money each month to see as many films as I like and it also gives me something to write here, these are a regular feature of this unvisited site. When looking at the list of films playing there wasn’t a great choice and so I plumped for The Conjuring 3. I haven’t seen any of the other Conjurings but figured it won’t matter a huge amount. I don’t like horror films generally but my reasoning was: why not go?

While driving the approach to the cinema I noticed the state of the tide and it was almost at max height. Whether it was ebbing or flowing was something I would have to wait to find out when I left the cinema – it was flowing. Most of the mud bank was hidden and I couldn’t see any of the channels produced by surface off-run. The weather at the time was low clouds hanging over the top of the Downs with plenty of rain during the day, it had been raining for two complete days, but this was welcome.

After watching this film I rated it on IMDB and there’s a complete guide to my rating system within this communication from a few years ago. I eventually shared the score on Twitter but I need access to my PC for that as I removed Twitter from my phone a long time ago because it doesn’t matter.

I gave this film a 4/10 and I think that was quite generous really. This film does not make it into the good-bad film. It is just a bad-bad film. This film is shit. Makes no logical sense. Has no plot that fits together. Is largely bad publicity for a misguided couple of “paranormal” investigators.

I wonder weather there’s too much in this film. Does the body-breaking look stupid and unrealistic? Do the tunnels seem excessive and un-scary? I wonder if more menace could have been put into this film by cutting out a lot of the “scary” stuff. I used to be terrified by horror films when I was younger. The Omen still makes me shiver – although I haven’t watched it for years and I ponder whether that seems shit now. I have “grown up” in then sense that I understand the reality of the world and don’t believe in god, the devil, demons or supernatural things. It’s funny how most famous ghost cases end up being shown for fraud by the conspirators when they confess but the news rarely gets out. Amityville had the protagonists admit they made it up, that famous Nessie photo was called out by one of the pranksters etc.

I get that people like being scared and I would imagine that if you believed in spirits or ghosts or god or souls or the devil or witches or any of the super-natural then this film would bother you. But the reality is that this film had a poor script, a poor plot and poor logic. A man died in reality and his murderer went to prison. This film is horror glorified wank.

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The Headless Children – W.A.S.P.

As I wait for the hottest day of the year, so far there will be warmer I think, I ponder the human experience of enjoying music and sounds. How is it that certain sounds or combinations there of can affect us emotionally? How is it that I like the music I do and not anything else? I have very little brain-time for other forms of music and as much as I know they exist I care not. I think this should be left for another day, there’s music to discuss:

W.A.S.P. were one of those bands that always seemed scary and on the edge of what was acceptable. I felt that they pushed the boundaries of acceptability and purposely went out to shock. I’ve never seen W.A.S.P. live and I should have last October but – Covid – and I still want to see them. I thin it’d be great. Their music has a proper 80s L.A. feel to it. And it also has swear words. Plenty of swear words that offend the older generation. Songs like Animal, Mean Man, DB Blues these are all great if a little immature.

The Headless Children was the first studio album by W.A.S.P. that I bought. It’s also the best studio album by them. Clearly Live . . .In The Raw is the best album. The Headless Children was the result of what happens when you quit drugs but still write good songs. It’s an amazing album.

I can even cope with Forever Free which came on while I was in the car the other day and I didn’t skip it as I would with most ballads.

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Be Nice If He Stopped

I’ve just finished watching Raised By Wolves, an HBO television series which I bought on Amazon because I didn’t want to download a dodgy version and I’ve kinda been paying for things properly recently. Why did I watch this? Well, I saw a clip of people exploding on Reddit and wondered where it came from. Turns out someone had placed a comment explaining that it was from this series which, it was mentioned, was also from Ridley Scott. That man is responsible for Alien and also Blade Runner, he has excellent form. This ten part television series follows the growth of a small number of children on a planet after Earth is destroyed. Eventually the religious zealots turn up and it all gets interesting – or as I found it more boring.

This series started well but I was mostly bored by the end. I watched it all, I paid for it after all but I found it all rather “meh”. The look of the series was great and the struggles faced by the characters seemed real enough. What I found terrible was the biology and general thoughts about faith and belief. Oh, and androids misbehaving. Oh, and white “blood” for androids. Oh, and lack of guilt for androids. We get it Ridley – you are obsessed with androids going bad and like to question faith along with thinking about the origin of human life. Give it a rest. Please.

In this series the religious are the less moral and the atheist androids – where can their moral compass come from? – are the good ones until they go and kill a load of people, virtually the last of humanity. An atheist person hiding in the cult goes mad and starts to hear things and thinks he’s the anointed one meanwhile his adopted son is making model buildings out of stones and gets elevated to prophet. Seems to me these people need some decent medication and learn to work together.

Then there’s the creatures. These are apparently devolving humans. What the fuck does that mean? It means nothing. It’s not what happens or what can happen. I found some of the writing very lazy and I know that they did it to increase the crazy and “what’s going on aspect” because they are making a TV series so you need things to stay strange. I think the bigger problem is they are writing themselves into a corner and won’t be able to explain any of it. Given the premise I think I could create a better story line and investigate the issues they want without the laziness.

If this show is meant to be a moral discussion about the “humanity” of androids then that is possible and can be done. Perhaps this show wants the morality of eating meat or of eating conscious creatures to be discussed? Then there’s the elements of crazy forcing religion and that could have been handled really well. But ultimately I think this show has missed the opportunity for a decent exploration of any one thing by making too many moralistic aspects to introduce. Androids and their role along with their moral code could have been amazing but it wasn’t.

The final episode included the birth and I’m really not sure what to think. I currently consider it an easy trick to shock people and make future series work. I almost enjoyed the idea that the newborn is similar to extinct creatures on the planet but at the same time it just annoyed me. I won’t be watching the second series because all the characters are just annoying. They come across as very single-dimensional and I don’t think the show’s creators are using the medium to their fullest.

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Land

I went to the cinema. Again. Not really a surprise I guess but given the recent Covid-times I think that maybe sitting in a room with other people isn’t a good idea. But then, I think that the cinema needs money to survive and so far there haven’t been more than 20 people in the films I’ve seen and the distancing is quite good. It’s nice to be back [I’m not counting this film].

I went to see Land and it was in screen 8 of the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I do like screen 8, it was meant to be the “posh” one many years ago but now it’s just slightly more comfortable than all the others with its better chairs and fewer seats. I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen films in there just because it was in screen 8 and not for any other reason.

As I drove along the riverside towards the cinema I noted the state of the tide and it was low. I could see all of the mudbanks and only the central channel was buoyancy-providable. The weather was actually quite nice given the previous day where it rained the whole day and I was silly enough to go for a walk to see the Medway Megaliths, my shoes were soaked but the sun dried them nicely. After I’ve seen a film I rate it on IMDB and there’s a guide to the rating system within this communication. Normally I would then tweet the result from my phone but I removed Twitter a long time ago so the tweets have to wait for the next opportunity when I’m on my home PC.

So, I had to reread my IMDB communication to remind myself of the scoring system. Then I rated this as a 6. It was a perfectly fine film but not one I’d watch again. I booked whatever film I thought looked most interesting. I had slight pangs of concern when I entered the theatre as all the people in there were women and I ended up being the only man in the room. All the trailers were for what I would call “emotional” films – as stereotypical it is I like space films and then thrillers and action films I guess although most action films are stupid. These are not my usual style of film to watch but I was here now and so it was time to soak up what was on offer.

For me the star of the film was the Wyoming countryside. It looks just absolutely gorgeous. It made me think of doing the same and abandoning all of the trappings of modern life and to head off and lead what would feel like a simpler life. When I say get rid of modern life this woman still have tinned food, knives and a rifle. I wonder if everyone feels that they would like to survive by their “wits” rather than our current world system?

The film was broadly speaking enjoyable and told a nice story, one of emotional recovery and trying to learn to live again after tragedy. I know it was for the purposes of the film for the main character to survive after the midpoint of the film but I’m not sure she would. You end up wondering “what are the odds” but it is dealt with very well although all films suffer survivor bias.

The only part of this film that irritated me slightly was that it made shooting things look really simple and easy. I’m not talking about the pulling of the trigger or the moral problems of killing life but I am talking about how hard it is to hit a target with a rifle. Films make this look much simpler and easier than it really is. The funny thing is I actually know what I’m talking about here – I’m a weapons instructor, coach and a range officer – hilarious I know but I do have those qualifications and use them regularly. Me, having official qualifications in something extreme, I find it a curiosity.

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Going Live

I’ve been playing around recently with live streaming on YouTube. Why? Not sure, I think it’s because I can. Also, each thing I do will get saved and added to my video collection. I have no idea if this is sensible or not but it seems fun at the moment.

My current plan is to fly down the west coast of Africa and then head up the eastern side. I’m hoping to get distracted by some mountain ranges and fun stuff. My general plan is to find an airport around 100 miles away, bomb up to 30,000 or so and then fly there. I’ve decided to skip Cape Verde, because islands are mostly boring. I figured that out while heading around the Canaries.

There’s not a lot that happens as I don’t commentate as I’m doing this. I’ve got the microphone off as I don’t want any house noises coming over the video. You can follow me on this map, but you’ll have to make sure you click on the link when I am flying or it’ll be boring, which even when I’m flying will be the case.

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