My Readership

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Hello you randy bastards.

Watership Down

I had an adventure.  A body like this doesn't just happen, it takes the perfect combination of shameless neglect and a few coincidentally healthy hobbies.  One of these is walking home from work.  I walk about 3-4 miles a day from the office to my house along the canal bank.  I really enjoy walking home from work; it gives me time to think, to listen to podcasts and see the wildlife.  The canal's been good for wildlife recently, the hot weather's brought out hundreds of fish, ducklings and herons.  Tonight I walked through a massive hatch of what I think were mayfly, thousands of tiny insects that chased each other and fucked in the air.  It was a little weird to be surrounded by so much sex, like being in the first year of university again.  Today there was a rabbit.

It was swimming down the middle of the canal, bobbing its head above the water, all least it was at first.  As I drew closer I saw that the thing was struggling, each time its head slipped under the water it took longer and longer to return to the surface until I saw it start to sink through the cloudy brown murk  Before I really knew what I was doing I was kicking off my shoes, and preparing to rescue the thing.

I unbuttoned my trousers and jumped into the water not realising my smart office wear was still entangled with my ankles and my phone was in the pocket.  I barley noticed, the rabbit had been underwater for an long time now, I thrashed around under the surface, trying to find it but it was no use, the rabbit was gone, lost in the brown murk.

That was when I noticed my trousers floating behind me.  I hurriedly threw them out out the canal, mercifully everything I'd had in my pockets had stayed that way.  That was when the old woman walked past.  I was standing in the canal not knowing what to do next and she quite reasonably asked what I was doing.  I mumbled something about trying to save a rabbit.  She scolded me for not looking after myself and carried on walking, not realising that I have my silver cross open water life saving badge and as such I was obviously in no, danger the well meaning fool.

Finally I got out of the canal.  I stood on the towpath in my waterlogged socks, boxers and shirt holding a soaked through pair of black work trousers.  It was a 2.5 mile walk home.  Fortunately today was maybe the nicest day of the year so I dried off pretty quickly and temperature wasn't an issue.  Embarrassment was.  I hobbled my way home past a bemused collection of joggers, cyclists and narrow boat captains looking like Walter White at the start of Breaking Bad. 

So I showered, put my clothes in the wash and slathered myself in antiseptic.  My phone's in a bowl of rice on the windowsill, hopefully the rice will soak up any of the filthy water that got into the machine and I can turn it on successfully in the next few days.  I can't find my glasses so I'm using a spare pair.

I told my dad about all this and he said I was an idiot.  He's more practical than I am, he was raised on a farm and has a much more straight forward attitude to the food animals.  Not that I'm a great animal rights campaigner; I eat meat unapologetically and like to think that I would kill my own food should the need arise, though I never have. 

I am a massive hypocrite, I tried to save the rabbit today when the weather was brilliant and I wasn't in a hurry.  I'd probably have left the bunny if trying to rescue it would have required more effort.  I feel genuinely upset that I failed the rabbit but I know I'll eat cheap meat again without any guilt.  I guess I feel bad for the rabbit because its death seemed so pointless, I can't overlook it's unpleasant final moments for some tasty sausages.  I was being an idiot, I lost a pair of glasses and I've probably written off my phone for a rabbit I didn't save, but at the time, I didn't think about that, all I thought was that I didn't want to watch a rabbit die, and I'm proud of that.

I'm a complicated man

So here's what I did this evening

Pizza in the oven, beer in the fridge and Sons of Anarchy on the laptop.I'm such a lad.
— Tom Healey (@TomHealey88) March 30, 2013

and here's something I said this afternoon.

Hey everyone @okcomics are giving away Easter eggs! Mine's a pink Disney princess one!
— Tom Healey (@TomHealey88) March 30, 2013

What the Duck?!

My friend Andy sent me this link (don't click on the link or any of the others if you don't want to see an un-bloodied, apparently pain free duck impaled with a crossbow bolt) today about a duck being shot with a crossbow in Barnsley.  The duck was, if not fine, well enough to avoid being caught by the RSPCA.  Apparently this mallard is Rambo.  Anyway when I finished reading the article I noticed the related stories box at the bottom of the page.

So two more ducks have been shot with crossbows, in Lincolnshire and Derby.  I read these articles and found a similar story reported in Cornwall.  In total the BBC has reported six incidents of crossbow attacks on ducks, in Herefordshire and Leamington Spa in addition to those listed above.  The RSPCA reports an additional duck being crossbowed in Cheshire, I have no idea why the beeb failed to cover this story.  Eight ducks were shot and two were killed.  Ducks really are crossbow proof.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, I guess mostly out of surprise at the number of duck crossbowings I've just discovered.  Who knew that all across the UK people are united by there shared love of using medieval weapons to spectacularly inconvenience mallards?  At least I hope that's the case, what if it's all one person?  What if it's one shadowy individual biding his time, spreading his crimes over years and hundreds of miles to hide his guilt, perhaps conducting some satanic ritual?  Why do I feel like I've only uncovered one dark corner of a massive web of water foul murder?

It's because I've watched too many serial killer movies, that's why.

Play the game, play the game, everybody play the gaaaammmmeee!

I like video games.  I wouldn't really call myself a gamer and I haven't bought one since 2011, because I'm a proper grown up with grown up things to do like sitting in my pants and watching repeats of Stargate SG1 on Pick TV. But as I say I like video games, I watch Zero Punctuation every week, subscribe to Rock Paper Shotgun's RSS feed and lose embarrassingly to my more gamery friends at Halo.  It's not beyond the realms of possibility that I could be convinced to part with money for a shiny entertainment fun disk.  Then I see something like this, or this and I think fuck the video games industry.

Do they really think so little of their customers to believe that this sort of stuff is what they want to buy?  (Obviously the answer to that question is no, as evidenced by Valve's frequently wonderful ad campaigns but it's much less fun being nuanced).  What sort of mindset thinks that people will want to pay extra for a statue that suggests they are a dangerous pervert?  Ed Gein should think that bust looked a bit tasteless.  I don't want anything to do with anyone who thinks associating their brand with horribly violent sexual imagery is the way to get my cash.  I can't believe that this needs saying but don't advertise your product with a serial killer's wank fantasy.

Deadbeats

Deadbeats is a graphic novel by Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey with art by INJ Culbard. I was familiar with the writers form their work on the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast, an insightful and amusing examination of the great horror writers work that combines literary criticism, interesting triva and dumb jokes. I first encountered Culbard's artwork on the Brass Sun strip that ran in 2000ad last year and was impressed by his beautifully clean, European style cartooning.  Aside from his work for Tharg Culbard has adapted a series of Lovecraft stories into graphic novels published through British publisher Self Made Hero. Given this shared interest in the Lovecraftian it comes as no surprise that Deadbeats is a weird tale with a twenties setting.  However, the comic is more than a pastiche, the creative team have taken some of the core ideas of Lovecraft's work and created a story around them that could only have come from these three people.

Lovecraft's work focused on mood, atmosphere and concepts rather than plot or character and he told his stories through dense, beautifully purple prose, Deadbeats is a story centred around a strong core of characters who are constantly on the run with little time to pause for breath.  Long drawn out descriptive paragraphs are replaced with pact chase scenes and moments of slapstick. The story focuses on three jazz musicians on the run from the mob who run straight into Lovecraft country. The central characters are all well defined and most of the time likeable. They have distinct voices and feel like believable prohibition era people.

The comic contains perhaps the best use of music I have seen in the medium.  As comics are a silent medium the use of music can often feel awkward and take the reader out of the story.  Alan Moore in particular seems unable two resist derailing a masterpiece by having the characters burst into song. However the authors of Deadbeats succeed not by recreating a song lyrically but by using the medium of comics to represent the feeling of different pieces of music in a immediately recognisable way. 

Deadbeats' greatest success is in recreating the most enjoyable aspect of the author's podcast, its sense of humour.  The book never quite becomes a farce or a parody as the various supernatural threats are presented seriously and remain scary but the authors allow plenty of moments of humour.  This is aided by the art which manages to combine some exaggerated facial expressions and almost farcical schemes with the moody terror of the entities menacing our heroes.  The story feels like it could easily exist within the Lovecraft cannon, you believe the Dunwich Horror could be happening a few valleys over from our heroes' adventure. In the same way that Scrubs, House and Bodies are all successful hospital stories.

Deadbeats is an action packed, funny and scary romp right through Lovecraft country and its well worth reading. The comic is available world wide from the book depository or from retail sites such as OK Comics and Travelling Man in the UK (I'm certain you can find it in other places as well).

RIP Gerry Anderson

Gerry Anderson died today and that's a right shame.  I haven't given the man or his work much thought in years, I think I might have watched a few episodes of the CGI Captain Scarlet a few years back but that's about it. However my Twitter feed's been full of tributes to the man and as I've watched the opening credits to some of his shows and thought about the likes of Stingray, Thunderbirds and even Space Precinct I've started to realise just how into Superanimation I was as a kid.  I had the toy's and the comics, my mum made me a Virgil Tracey dressing up outfit and I once had a Thunderbird 2 birthday cake.  I didn't just build the Blue Peter Tracey Island, I built it twice.  Thinking about it now I realise that Gerry Anderson's work was probably the first thing I properly geeked out over as a kid, setting me on the path to become the endearingly pathetic man child I am today.  

I've posted some videos of the opening credits of his various shows and I think they pretty perfectly sum up the appeal of his work.  Everything Anderson created was bold and exciting and unique.  His work featured big Sci-Fi ideas in bold, optimistic pop art colours.  He created worlds with square jawed heroes, evil villains and amazing machines, vast industrial installations built to launch rockets or hide underground from the Aquaphibians.  I loved how methodically these creations were filmed, so many shows would skip over the launch of a spaceship or have the crew embark a vehicle between scenes, Thunderbirds and Stingray and everything else revelled in the Heath Robinson, domino track like qualities of their creations and as a child I couldn't think of anything more exciting, Britain would probably have a lot fewer engineers without Anderson's work.

Gerry Anderson created some incredibly loved, utterly unique television, distilling the 60's adventure into something timeless, probably his greatest achievement was creating puppets that weren't utterly terrifying,  he'll be missed.