Snarfed from kurreltheraven.

What toy manufacturer thought that this was a fantastic gimmick?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEY0WkwGqN8]

Bloody thing would be more useful if it said: “TIDY THIS HOUSE!”

Today, because I am too lurgified to do any actual training, and also because Frood acquired an eighty litre box for storing his art supplies, thus freeing up the storage box I’d loaned him for the job, I reorganised my gear.

The thing with triathlon is that at first you think it’s just masochism. Then you discover the consequences, such as only being able to have long nails in the off-season (you don’t want to put a hole in your delicate and expensive wetsuit). One of the consequences is the sheer amount of gear you need. Not just for racing, but for training. Running shoes for varying terrains. Cycling shoes for different pedal systems (commuting on Looks isn’t impossible, but stopping at lights wears the cleats). Kickboards, pull-buoys, training goggles, paddles. Packs for carrying your gear when you run to the gym. Hydration systems for long runs. Hats for running in summer; hats for running in winter. Hi viz for running in winter darkness. Sports snacks. I have a box half-full of protein bars and carb gels.

We eat sitting in front of the telly not because we don’t want to eat at table, but because the table (as well as currently storing the stuff that should be in the boiler cupboard, but can’t be because the cold water combination valve is leaking) is storage space for all my kit.

Look.

Behind all that is my archery equipment.

Maybe I just like toys.

http://rathergood.com/plugins/content/jw_allvideos/players/mediaplayer_4.0.46.swf

Last night, for the umpteenth time, my eye fell out in my sleep.

To be fair, what probably happened was that it got stuck open and became irritated and I took it out without waking up. Usually I wake up and take it out and put it somewhere sensible, but not always.

This morning I woke up, got out of bed and put my hand to my face, whereupon I realised that the socket was empty. Thus commenced the search of all the usual places. I hunted under the pillow, in the bed, inside the pillow case, under the bed and between the head of the bed and the wall. Nothing. I searched the usual places again. Still nothing. I searched some more unlikely places, and came up empty.

Uh-oh.

I have this irrational fear that one night I’m going to take it out and mistakenly swallow the damn thing. It’s not entirely irrational: my artifical eye is made of plastic and the tear duct doesn’t work very well, so in very cold or dry weather it dries out, the eyelids stick in the open position, it collects dust and becomes irritated. When I was younger I had a bad habit of taking it out, licking it and putting it back in again. As disgusting as this sounds, it’s remarkably effective. In fact I have been known to give it to Frood and let him put it in his mouth so he can do a tricyclops impression. It has an excellent squick factor. The socket is far more infection resistant than you might think.

In other words, the idea of me putting it in my mouth while asleep isn’t so very far-fetched.

I’m not above letting an eye pass through and retrieving it for a disinfectant bath, although there’s the tricky issue of finding it once it has been, ahem, expelled; and I did have my other eye for work, so it wasn’t like I couldn’t leave the house. But it was my black one, which was so difficult to get I have no desire to lose it. The NHS will replace my “normal” eye without complaint, but they think that my black one is out of order. It’s apparently their job to “make [me] look normal” and they can’t understand why I want a black one at all.

The short answer is that as far as I’m concerned the “normal” eye exists in the uncanny valley, whereas the black one is so unusual people either ask about it or, bizarrely, don’t see it at all.

I called Frood, we hunted further and eventually found it hiding between the leg of the bed and the wall. I really don’t know how it got there. Still. Never mind. All’s well that ends well.

From Hundreds of proofs of God’s existence, which is entirely splort-worthy:

CALVINIST ARGUMENT, a.k.a. TERTULLIAN’S ARGUMENT
(1) If God exists, then he will let me watch you be tortured forever.
(2) I rather like that idea.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

I had no idea that God catered to sadistic voyeurs.

No text required:

I’m not mad! There really is a film with flying fish and an egg!

But TVTropes does it again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JImcvtJzIK8]

I’m following TVTropes on twitter, which is a very, very dangerous thing to do. I am a troper myself, although I try to stay away because it’s so addictive. I’ve wasted hours clicking randomly through that site and have occasionally been reduced to enfeebled gales of tearful, gasping laughter.

Today I made the mistake of clicking on one of the tweets and then following a link. And another. Until I came to Chekhov’s Gun. This trope is named for the playwright Anton Chekhov, who said:

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

It’s an instruction to the writer to maintain narrative concision. If the reader doesn’t need to know that the character has two buttons and a half-chewed stick of gum in his pocket, why tell him?

Unfortunately this can all-too-often lead to a certain degree of boredom. When I can see something coming a mile off, a story really has to go to extra effort to keep my attention. Don’t expect me to hang on by virtue of dramatic tension when you’ve flagged the critical component early on. It was blatantly obvious, for instance, who Kaiser Soze was, and as that constituted the main point of the film I found The Usual Suspects incredibly tedious.

Which brings us to Signs, Shyamalan’s melodramatic and ludicrous effort to pitch a celebrity death match between God and the Greys.

I mean, come on. Intelligent enough to cross millions of light years of space, and yet they pick a planet with a surface that’s more than 70% covered by water, which has the same effect on them as aqua regia does on human flesh? And not wear hazmat suits?

However, it now has one redeeming feature. This line from the TVTropes entry for Chekhov’s Gun:

Let’s face it… Signs could very well have been retitled Chekhov’s Gun: The Movie.

We need a Chekhov’s Gun drinking game.

Here’s how sad a Marvel fan girl I am.

I have now seen X-Men: The Last Stand four times.

Four. Times.

Four.

That’s two squared. Hell. That’s the first prime number to the power of itself.

It’s three times too many. I can be forgiven for scampering to the cinema to see it when it came out because X2 rocked like a Gibson Les Paul, but that first viewing really, really, really should have told me all I needed to know.

That it sucks. That it sucks harder than robot whore with a faulty pressure sensor.and an over-specced pump.

The thing is, I had to have the DVD to complete the set. And then there was no point having the DVD without watching it at least once. After that I watched it again, just to make sure, one rainy Sunday afternoon when I was alone and feeling sorry for myself. Then it was on telly last night so I figured what the hell.

I keep watching it looking for a little spark, a hint, a glimmer of something halfway good, or at least decent, or if it can’t manage decent then how about promising? You know, the way Gabriel being the Left Hand of God made Van Helsing worth watching. Somehow. Despite the hair.

You’d think, given that HJ is still in there playing Logan, and Sir Ian McKellen is reprising the Magneto role and acting everyone else’s socks off by managing to look dignified and not like a complete twat in that stupid bloody hat, that there would be something in there to save it.

But no. There isn’t. There just isn’t.

Damn you, X3. I have given you four opportunities to show me some sign of redeeming yourself and every time the fastball special makes me want to cry out of sheer frustration and the casual way Mystique is discarded causes my very guts to boil with the infuriating implausibility of it.

And yet, and yet, you are still better than Ghostrider. I’m going to pretend Nicholas Cage had a mysterious accident in the Bermuda Triangle shortly after making Con Air.