last orders

Running around yesterday really made me appreciate just how many public houses we are losing. Visitors to the UK often remark how many pubs there are; thinking we are all therefore alcoholics. They of course don’t realise that at one point in history the pub was almost the only place to get fluid to drink that wouldn’t result in Cholera or some other nasty disease/infection, and that beer was only the strength of today’s Shandy.

On one short stretch of Barking [opposite Abbey Green] I noticed that the Lion has been culled [residential], the Bull has gone to the abattoir [boarded up], and the Horse sent to the knackers yard [boarded up].

GONE RUNNING

Plastic People

Out Zappering Zapper? Still going after 40 years +

squashed

Loving this concept. Squashed.

I only have one other game that I think can be called 3D in the same way.

I have dreamt about collecting all the major abstract strategy board games into one collection for years now; and making a 3D ‘table’ system to make the collection as compact as possible.

One of those bucket ‘to do’ list things that you never seem to quite get around to doing. The problem of course is that it would be unlikely to be marketable, so would be by design a one off.

Riddley Walker

I have finally managed to find a copy of Russell Hoban’s book from a library. I did of course see the book back in the 80s, with the bright Mr Punch cover, but never twigged what the narrative was about’ I think I believed it to be some kind of political satire in the Yes Prime Minister mould, kind of Spitting Image.

If I had known it was post-apocalyptic …

A good source of info.

ex machina

Movies about AI seem to e becoming more mainstream? This looks like it might be fun? Wonderful what they can do with green screen and computers these days. I wonder if anyone will ever go back and digitally alter older films, to update the clunky [but good for their time] SFX?

There were tweaks to the final final final director’s super special final cut of Blade Runner [director’s final cut], so perhaps the idea isn’t too fanciful? I seem to recall an A. C. Clark novel where a character was an editor who went through old films to remove all instances of smoking [hard to do for Noir], unless I am imagining that?

umbrella academy

 

A very interesting graphic novel in the mysterious births, super powers children, secret society mould. Beautifully coloured, witty, surreal.

vanitas

Part fashion shoot, part Grey’s Anatomy. Brilliant. Fernando Vicente

Día de Muertos

Looking at the posts of this past week makes me realise they may seem rather grumpy? I think it is merely this remembrance time of year that always subconsciously gets me thinking about past lives and attitudes; a time of respect, honour, duty, sacrifice, common values; all things that largely seem out of fashion these days. Or perhaps that is merely a mistaken and romantic view of the past?

No one asked anyone to give their lives to fight fascism, to toil away for the common good, to be bound by truth and honesty above self-satisfaction.

Perhaps the concepts of reflection, contemplation, empathy, are simply being breed out of the human psyche? Perhaps they only have a place in a slower moving world?