Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest

I shan’t bother with any spoiler warnings. I’m not going to reveal the oh-so-unpredictable twist in the end or anything like that because, frankly, I can’t be arsed. The film isn’t worth spoiling. You need to wrest any crumb of enjoyment from it that you can.

Although it turns out that Munky was correct in his assessment that I would not enjoy the film, it was not the Disneyness of it that was the problem. It was, to put it succinctly: over-long, over-indulgent, overly-visual and short on piracy.

Depp is still the best thing about these films, but he was muzzled in this one. Many people have said that his performance was even more hyperactive and extreme than in the last one — Fear And Loathing‘s Hunter S Thompson with a hat and a square-rigger. To this I say: bollocks. There was a total inadequacy of badinage, as Frood so rightly observed. The film clung to its quite sumptuously fantastic special effects (even I thought the tentacles were good), expecting them to deliver the coup de grace, when what matters in a pirate film is the cheesing piracy.

I don’t care how big the giant bleedin’ squid is, even though only the corvidae outstrip cephalopods in terms of my obsessive geekery. I want to see Jack drunk on rum, plenty of double and triple bluffing, much buckling of swash and, well, pirates!

I was clock watching from about an hour and a half, knowing how long it was and wishing I’d brought some concealed-carry alcohol to relieve the tedium.

Bill Nighy did a great job. He really did. Apparently he based his character on Chewin the Fat. This explains a great deal. Johnny Depp looked to be sleepwalking through a role that had been choke-chained and hobbled by a studio who wanted everyone else to get more of a role — or maybe he was so disappointed by Keith Richard’s non-appearance that he just gave up.

I don’t even want to discuss the rest of the cast. It’s too boring. Although the voodoo woman was quite good — could have used smoking gunpowder in her hair, mind.

We’ll probably go and see the next one. You never know. It might be a film that does not exist moment.

I learned last night that Sappho was the first poet to describe the moon as ‘silvery’, something that these days we apparently take for granted.

But it’s not cheesing silver, is it?! It’s sort of an off white!

I am depressed.

No, I don’t know why.

Well, I do sort of but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I am in need of retail therapy. Yesterday I ordered the entire back catalogue of the Dandy Warhols.

I can’t think of anything to buy to cheer myself up. Even the mini-sized 4-colour pen I bought in Tescos for 68p this afternoon failed to bring a smile to my face. Now that sort of thing nearly always works. It was stationery, it was a stupid size, it was 4 different colours, it came in a translucent purple wrapper and it was less than an ailing mollusc. The only thing that would have made it better would be if it had been metallic gel ink, and we can’t have everything.

I should have asked Dominic to recommend something small, hairy and equipped with adamantium claws.

The pocket pokemon from the Psion Guild or Katie for encouraging them. You know, in some countries tormenting morons like that is considered illegal, young madam. And you thought our pineal worm was cruel!

You’re a sweetie, gecko. I really needed this today.

If that’s Stan Lee and Larry Uber then we’re talking 1980s. I don’t think I own the original of this — it’s a Spidey strip, not an X-Men or Wolverine one. But, like The Magic Roundabout or Badly Dubbed Porn, I suspect this works better if you don’t know what the original dialogue was.

Dear Fife Council,

I have just attempted to attend my regular thrice-weekly swim session at the Fife Institute of Physical and Recreational Education.

You will note I said ‘regular’ and ‘thrice-weekly’. That’s right: I am one of the regular customers who use this facility all the time and help pay for its upkeep. I am one of those people you should be trying to attract, instead of letting rumours get round that you’re planning on demolishing it, along with Kirkcaldy, and building a new one on the Randolph Industrial Estate in Kirkcaldy (which I couldn’t get to of a lunchtime) owing to lack of popularity.

You will also note that I said ‘training’. This means not splashing about in the shallows, using the pool as a wallow, or doing an impression of an entire troop of macaques on speed suddenly discovering the joys of an unattended diving board. Nor does it mean using the pool as a handy perfume-removal dip. It means trying to fit in as many lengths as I can in the limited time I have available during my lunch break.

Currently I am on a three times a week schedule. That may increase. I am even planning on using the gym.

However, I have just gone to the pool for my regular lunchtime session — we can’t all be early birds every day — only to have to stand in a queue for 20 minutes because half of reception was inexplicably closed, to be then told that the pool was full and I couldn’t get in for another twenty minutes. As I had to get back to work this was impossible and thus was my lunch break wasted.

Why has this happened? Because, in its infinite wisdom, Fife Council has decided that under 16s should get in free all day every day for the entirety of the summer break.

Is this really necessary? I understand that it’s excellent to promote healthy activities for kids, and I’m all for that, but would it not be possible to have a couple of hours during the day, including one at lunchtime, for those who use the pool as a serious health and training facility to do so without having to contend with screaming children who don’t care about lane discipline or even, apparently, swimming?

Is that really so much to ask? I buy a Fit Fifer card, which means effectively that I am paying for my swim sessions in advance, and because of the way the scheme works, I have a limited time period in which to use up my pre-paid swim sessions. If I go to use up one of my pre-paid sessions only to be told that I can’t because the pool is full of children who haven’t paid at all, and no provision has been made to make sure there will be a time when I can get into the pool, I’m going to feel pretty hard done by.

Which, for the record, is exactly how I do feel.

As I said, I’m entirely supportive of schemes to get children engaging in healthy, active pastimes, but those of us who carry on using the facilities even when we have to pay, and doing so regularly to a schedule, would greatly appreciate some consideration as well.

Yours etc,

Little Miss Cranky

It is very hot here in Fife. Not as hot as it is in Portland, but they have a continental climate over there. I don’t like heat. I certainly don’t like spending my days poking about in skips wearing full PPE [ObNonHealth&SafetyAware;: Personal Protective Equipment, i.e. hard hat, hi-viz, steel-plated rigger’s boots] when the weather is like this:

Don’t like the heat. It makes me irritable and cranky and I don’t sleep properly. This makes me tired and grumpy and means I find it difficult to get up in the morning, especially when I’m having a bout of vivid and violent dreams, as I am at the moment. This in turn means that I miss my morning swim because I have to get to work, and that leaves me with either missing the swim or fending off screaming brats. Either of these things has a further negative impact on my mood.

Right now I’m about as grumpy as a razorback with PMT and a ringworm infestation. Bizarrely this means that everyone thinks I’m cheerful because they don’t realise I cope with this level of irritation by forcing myself to be superficially chirpy. I’m also relatively unstable, as was evidenced yesterday when I sampled some of the Bosnian Turkish delight someone had brought back from holiday and it was like I’d been drip-fed a full score of chupa-chups in the space of ten seconds. I can’t even remember what I started wittering about but I think it was something to do with puffins being rabbits in disguise and drunk pigeons. Either way it caused the office ladies to ask me what I was on.

“Sugar.”

Well, sugar and warped biochemistry anyway.

Oh gods. Screaming brats. Can I really face it? I did go out on the bike last night. You can tell it’s the Tour — normally you’d be ignored, treated as street furniture. At this time of year people lean out of passenger side windows, screaming at you. I think they mean it as encouragement, but having been a cyclist for as long as I have I instinctively take preparatory steps in case they are about to hit me with something. It’s like being overtaken by a motorised barnacle, grasping tendrils thrashing wildly in the search for morsels to sift from the air.

It’s a bit like the crowds at the top of Alpe D’Huez, only everything happens at 25 mph.

Please don’t. Just give a friendly wave once you’ve passed. Screaming and leaning out of windows is terribly distracting and somewhat nerve-wracking. I am not a morsel. You cannot eat me. Go be a barnacle somewhere else.

I was in the pool at 08:00. Anyone who knows me will be shocked.

I am not a morning person.

However Fife Council, in their infinite wisdom, have made pool access free for all under-16s for the rest of the summer holidays. This means my lunchtime session on Wednesday was hampered by a plague of Biblical proportions. Small, squealing, slippery creatures paddled about like some Cthulhoid spawn recently hatched from a giant egg-sac, goggling eyes staring while mouths gaped vacantly, no doubt searching instinctively for some netherworld teat from which to suck all the goodness out of life, the very marrow of existence fuelling their tiny, pasty-white bodies.

The floats on a rope will not keep spawn such as these out of the training lanes. No. Nor are they affected by the screeching whistle of the lifeguard, merely turning to stare balefully at the red-clad pool attendant who would dare interrupt them in their newly-hatched quest, scoffing at the foolish assumption that the shrill sound could possibly force them to do anything they did not wish to.

But my training programme has been, well, programmed, so a sudden invasion of demon brats into the pool is no excuse. Thusly I found myself churning up and down before work.

I am not amused.

Unfortunately Bob thinks this is a great idea and is now cheerfully talking about maintaining my pool sessions at this time even after the brats are gone.

How I hate him.

Snaffled from Ythy: