I was just waiting for the appropriate amount of time to make the previous post that much more ironic.

Hey hey! I’m posting this from work, just round the corner from my desk. They installed a couple of terminals so we can slope off and surf the net more conveniently and not have to tramp downstairs and waste more time than if we just had the net at our desks like reasonable humans. Still, meh and pah. The one weird thing is that the keyboards are about the size of a postage stamp. If my posts are littered with typos and stray punctuation it’s because I’m here and not at a normal computer. Sorry about that. Still, hello! Posting from work!

Sweeet.

Regular readers may have been able to work out that it was the third anniversary of Moth ‘n’ Flapjack last week. Or not. But it needed saying. THREE YEARS! That’s a long time. Not in the grand scheme of things, but the longest relationship I’ve ever been in. And hurrah for that.

Okay, so Thomas has just moved to Blogger and his link is now fixed ->

Because I don’t do it because I think no-one’s watching, here’s a spur-you-on list of people in my links who haven’t updated in ages. C’mon! I need updates!:

Kemi: July 14th
Mein Host: May 31st, but he’s been updating flickr so That’s All Right.
Corinne: July 7th
Marv: May 8th
And the big shock? Adara’s blog has vanished. Like an old oak table.

I don’t know if I have that much to say about this weekend’s jaunt to Bournemouth, but when you’ve got a cracker of a post title like that you don’t keep it to yourself.

Um. Well, Flppy’s Mum invited us and so off we went on the coach and it was a hot day. Bournemouth is a proper seaside town, not your trendy Brighton-type place or your seedy, broken-down Blackpool. It’s like a 1950s postcard only current. A family resort, where you feel quite happy munching an ice-cream and paddling with your trousers rolled up without once thinking “Oh, is that clubby guy over there judging me? Are the natives even now loading up on alcopops and preparing to happy-slap me?”. I ate candy floss, dammit, and walked up a pier (50p to go on the pier! A scandal!). It was nice. And I think I may be slightly browner. Not a lot, but a touch, a shade.

Hurrah, it’s the obligatory Lost blog post.

Up to episode four now and I – like the rest of you – have no fucking idea. Hobbits! Yay! And mysterious pasts for everyone! And a Polar Bear? Sure. Why not? Polar bears live on tropical islands, right? And some kind of big metaphor skulking around pushing trees over and eating pilots.

Still, the important thing is that I’m watching and therefore am involved in communal telly experience. No, wait! It’s because it’s good. I’m actually properly hooked, in… maybe a new Dr Who kinda way. Definitely not a Buffy-style hookage, that was one of those moments when you know a show is built for you. I.. honestly, so long ago, maybe I felt like that with the X-Files. I certainly went a bit mad for it. And, you know, I didn’t even notice that Gillian Anderson was the most attractive woman on telly until the second series. I think that says a lot about the awesomeness of the first series. Or the badness of her hair in that series, anyway.

Anyway, yes. Lost. I hope it doesn’t lose its way, 24-style, in the middle of series one. I’m up for a new show. Telly’s been a bit random since Buffy left.

Best. Cover version. Ever.

Best clip ever. It makes me so happy. As happy as Bill Withers and his happy drummer.

Or this.

They painted Foxhole pink! What’s that all about??

I mean, nice to see that the trees have grown – as they promised, the twigs planted have become a hedge – but pink? I bet they say “it’s.. a kind of salmony colour..”

Zombies. Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t ignore ’em. That may well be the message of Land of the Dead.

Of course it’s allegorical. It’s not about real zombies, it’s about movie monsters that are really your friend, your teacher, the guy next door. More likely; the guy at the petrol station, the girl at the checkout. The great and the good, Romero’s undead thesis runs, are bolting themselves into ivory towers and throwing away their keys. While that’s very pretty for a while, everyone has to eat so you need a serving class… sadly, most of those are dead and the ones left alive would tear your tower down if given half the chance so they need to be kept busy. Happily, there’s a threat right outside the walls of the town that’ll keep them down, keep them more worried about them than you.

And right in the middle of all this sits the military, the police, the forces of law and order, here portrayed as a rag-tag militia more concerned with nabbing canned goods than keeping the peace. Still, they have the guns and they dispose of the dissidents and that seems to be all you need. Someone for the rich to send out to hostile environments and acquire for them what they desire. Trouble is, this might upset the natives… and what if the people you spent money on training turn on you? Oh, you see the allegory do you?

Trust me, you won’t fail to notice it. Especially when Dennis Hopper says things like “We don’t negotiate with terrorists” or when John Leguizamo promises to “go jihad on his ass”. Yup, it’s post-911 zombies, guys. With a little class war thrown in for good measure (it’s no accident that the leader of the zombies is clad in blue overalls for the entirety of the movie).

And, you know, it works. In that was the seemingly clunking satire works in, say, Dawn of the Dead, here Romero once again dances along the tightrope between schlock and awe as he throws his politics at the screen via liberal doses of quite literally visceral horror and mordant black humour. Oh, and the gore! You should see the gore! For a 15, it’s really full-on, with beheadings, disembowellings, cannibalism.. well, you know the deal. It’s gross.

I’m looking forward to a repeat viewing. I think the satire will click better a few times in, as with Day of the Dead – at first viewing a bit of a clunker, it improves immensely each time I watch it and piggle away at the flesh of the meaning. This time out, I need to acclimatise to the idea of smart zombies, ones who can use tools and feel pity, anger, hatred. When the undead horde discover a yard with still-moaning zombies strung up for target practice, it’s a suprising moment – for the first time, one empathises with a zombie. You feel their revulsion… revulsion directed at us.

Holy crap! Look at the shiny! If it wasn’t for that fact that I couldn’t give two fucks about FFVII, I’d be super excited. See, a FFVIII movie… now you’re talking. Oh, I know no-one else would like it, but I would. I’d go and see it all on my own and be the only person in the world that liked it – like the The Spirits Within. Oh, man. Was I ever on my own there!

I think today will be all about sandwiches. Apparently there was a suspect package in benjy’s and now we’ve been given free sandwiches at work. Coincidence? I think not.

London gets bombed.

London’s response – “Alright, come on, come on, get back to it you bunch of wimps, stop yer cryin'” It’s pretty impressive. There are a lot of pedestrians, a lot of texts flying, the odd stunned-looking person, but generally Londoners are getting back to the routine (adapted) with speed. Amazing. My plan now? I’m going to get a bus, then catch a train home. My normal commute. Which, 6 hours ago, were shut down.