• 00:00 The Magdalen Arms played Belle & Sebastian, Gomez, White Stripes and The Coral; loud enough to enjoy, quiet enough to talk over #ournewlocal #
• 21:48 Being John Milkovich #cowfilms #
• 21:48 Moo Velvet #cow films #
• 21:49 The Dark Calf #cowfilms #
• 21:50 The Veal Inspector Hound #cowplays #
• 21:50 'S Cream #cowfilms #
• 21:54 The Udders #cowfilms #
• 21:57
  Meet Joe Yak #cowfilms #
• 21:58 Buffalo The Vampire Slayer #cowfilms #
• 21:59 Good Bison, Mr. Chips #cowfilms #
• 22:04 Bullproof Monk #cowfilms #
• 22:05 Apocalypse Cow #cowfilms #
• 22:09 My apologies. I keep telling myself "This will be the last one", but my brain has other plans. @j4 started it, anyway. #

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• 14:22 The Pitt-Rivers Museum of Anthropology shows that every other culture has been too worried about the evil eye... or we aren't worried enough #
• 14:27 Also: life in the olden days was clearly *very* dull. Hobbies like model shipmaking & skrimshaw must stop dead once Gameboys are introduced. #

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• 20:20 Currently tinyjo has a) PMT, & b) nunchucks. Luckily, she also has c) a very sweet nature, & d) a tolerance for my smart-arsed Twittering... #

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• 15:02 Lunchtime Tai Chi, barefoot on grass in brilliant sunshine; meanwhile my scripts run unattended, fashioning a database ready for my return. #

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• 16:56 _Lines written in a epidemiologist's lecture on pharmocovigilance_
  Too few syllables
  To write haiku about this
  Without some cheating #

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• 21:12 *John Brown's Body*
  Solid but generic reggae (to my untutored ear). A bit samey & formless; like prog, except you can dance or relax to it. #
• 23:24 *Easy Star All-Stars*
  A rare example of a high concept band: they play dub covers of Pink Floyd, Radiohead & The Beatles. Ridiculously fun. #

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• 23:08 Grand Thrift Auto #videogamesiregretbuying #
• 23:15 Personal Space Invaders #videogamesiregretbuying #
• 23:20 Be-jowled #videogamesiregretbuying #
• 23:24 Goitre Hero #videogamesiregretbuying #
• 23:26 Rock Banned #videogamesiregretbuying #

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• 22:37 *Space Heroes Of The People*
  Keyboard, samples & live robot vocals over tight drums & powerful double bass. Alternate-futuristic electro?! #
• 22:41 *Night Terrors*
  Proggy, busy, layered electronica, greatly enhanced by the compelling sound (& sight) of an excellent theremin player. #
• 23:04 *Fuzzy Logic*
  Imagine a rock band fronted by Dizzee Rascal. If it's quite fun but still not an especially good idea, you're doing it right. #

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This sounds like it's either an awesome or terrible idea, but I'm genuinely not sure which. If only there were some way of getting other people to decide for me...

Wait! Of course!
Poll #1465347
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

Thom Yorke out of Radiohead forming a band which includes Flea out of Red Hot Chilli Peppers

• 20:10 Tinyjo's learning Tae Kwon Do. I plan to capitalise on this by making more enemies. Must make a list, start with the least deadly & work up. #

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• 19:32 Left early from my job of curing real diseases to get a boardgame expansion about curing pretend diseases. I probably deserve to catch H1N1. #

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• 00:42 Just put the bins out clad in only a dressing gown & unlaced army boots. That's probably someone's fetish, & they missed it. Sad, really... #
• 00:44 Though, thinking about it, I'd probably rather that than the alternative. #
• 23:32 *District 9*
  Engrossing plot, cleverly presented. Encourages discussion about politics *and* cool alien guns. The message: humanity = dicks #

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• 23:09 @tinyjo has been away for one night, & already both cats have shed their collars. At this rate she will return to find us all naked & feral. #
• 23:34 Cous cous & fruit for lunch, left-over curry w/ extra chilli & left-over crisps for tea, jelly babies & beer for dessert. #WhileTheCat'sAway #
• 23:44 One cat's curled on the pillow, the other at my feet; like I'm enclosed in ironic quote marks.
  #HelloGlastonbury, we're Furry Punctuation. #

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• 22:10 Chocolate brownie for lunch & crisp sandwiches for tea remind myself how much I appreciate her cooking when she's here. #WhileTheCat'sAway #
• 22:19 Went to the cinema on my own. Got lost on the way. Arrived after an extra 20 minutes & 3 miles, just as the film started. #WhileTheCat'sAway #
• 22:25 *Gamer*
  Ever wish for a mashup of Running Man, The Cell & eXistenZ, but more pretentious & disorientating? Apparently *someone* did... #

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I just went to see see 'Gamer' and - as one might with a dream - I want to write down my impressions in a vague attempt to form them into some sort of coherence before I think too hard and they disintegrate like a tissue in a washing machine. It's a film with many flaws; in fact, it would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as a collection of flaws tacked together into a film, as if someone - perhaps on a bet - had set out to make a cocktail of science fiction film mistakes. Let's begin with the plot.

In the near future, America avoids being bankrupted by their prison system by making convicts fight for their freedom in 'Slayers', a wildly popular blood sport. The slightly original (if nonsensical) twist is that each fighter is actually being controlled remotely by a player, using brain-replacing nanites. Of course, our protagonist is an innocent man set up by the main baddie who, for some reason, has decided to dispose of a risk to his entire scheme by making him fight to the death in an internationally-televised game show. The mind-controlling technology is also used in 'Society', which is like a cybersexier Second Life except your avatar's a real person whose body you're hiring. Oh, and there's a mysterious band of hackers called Humanz who oppose all this sort of mind-control malarkey by interrupting broadcasts with incoherent rants and crude animations.

Does this all sound vaguely familiar? It should. Slayers is basically Running Man (though having 'players' behind it all makes me think of Avalon), the grungy yet heroic rebel hackers are very Matrix, the Society costuming recalls Fifth Element, the more pretentious 'video art' bits reminded me of The Cell, and the protagonist seems to be stolen from the Death Race remake (though I only saw the trailer for that). I put it to you that any film that encourages unfavorable comparisons with that motley bunch is doing something wrong. I also counted at least two explicit Blade Runner references, which were a doubly poor choice as they broke immersion and did so by reminding me of a much better film.

It lurches between styles in a way that's all the more annoying for obviously being deliberate. The bits in the 'game' are all grimy and jerky, like watching someone else play Half Life 2 in an earthquake; the prison is a blazing white edifice of concrete and sand; Society is like a soft-fetish-porn Aqua video; and the real world is your standard-issue crowded metropolis with video screens everywhere and slightly cyberpunky fashions.

A better film might get away with condemning mindless violence while encouraging the audience to revel in it, but it just seems cheap here. No-one really has much of a character, so it's hard to feel for the hundreds of interchangeable figures that we see gunned down or blown up. The computer game aspect further robs the combat of significance. The bits where the protagonist is unexpectedly able to talk to his 'controller' could have been intriguing, but actually they just discussed winning strategies. I wonder if this 133t 17 year-old who's participating in the mayhem from a safe distance (physically and emotionally) is supposed to be an audience surrogate. Sure, he's a callous, self-absorbed prick obsessed with sex and violence who doesn't end up contributing much or learning anything, but that may well be their target demographic.

I get the impression that the film-makers fondly believe that they're making a point, but I'm not convinced. 'If everything that happened on-line and in games was really real, that would be bad'? True, but hardly insightful. 'Don't trust people who're trying to control your mind'? Well, duh. 'The masses just want sex and violence, and don't care about the consequences.' Ah, perhaps that's it. Very meta.

• 08:33 Yes, it's from his best-known film, but should Radio 4 really have begun their Patrick Swayze obituary with 'I've Had The Time Of My Life'? #
• 15:18 Analysed the problem, formulated a solution & persuaded everyone it was optimal; *then* realised I'd just landed myself a ton of work. Win!? #

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• 15:58 Oxfam has a book claiming that two of Mary Shelley's male friends were the same cross-dressing lesbian. Could the same be true for me? #

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• 18:57 Discussing #ReadingWeek10. Main plan: a week reading in a stately home. Also, given the venue: LARP Dr. Lucky - a live-action Cheapass Game. #

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• 12:22 Happy to be back at work after a pleasant week off. I like it here (& good coffee, a chocolate brownie & Muddy Waters on the iPod all help.) #

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• 14:19 I'm irritated by the cliche that Twitter is just for people to talk about what they're having for lunch, but I just had an *awesome* lunch. #
• 14:21 A hot pitta filled with squid, chilies, garlic, mild cheese & kale. If Subway hadn't degraded the term, I'd call myself a sandwich artist. #

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