I know, I know, I said I wasn’t going to do it this year, but…

This morning I bought train tickets for London at the beginning of July. That’s right folks, Ravenbait’s doing the Dunwich Dynamo again. This year on fixed.

Well, I had to come up with something to make it challenging again, so I figured why not do it on fixed? Besides, riding fixed seems paradoxically easier on my knees.

It’s two weeks after the LEPRA Edinburgh – St Andrews, which is a nice little 67 miler taking in Cleish Hill and the (supposedly 1:6) climb out between Freuchie and Kennoway. Two weeks should be long enough to get my legs back.

So if you fancy an overnight trip from London to Suffolk, fuelled by the sort of banter familiar to all those who frequent the hallowed halls of Clubhouse and masses of jelly babies and chocolate covered raisins, please do sally forth into the Events Office and stick your name on the list.

Welcome to the Ravenfamily FAQ. The aim of this document is to anticipate
any inclination of visitors to this site towards emailing the individual
residents.

It’s not that we don’t like getting mail — we do like getting mail — we
just don’t like getting the same mail over and over again.

If you are considering emailing us, please review the topics below. If
your query is covered but you email us anyway, please be aware that you
are likely to get a hostile response. This is especially true if you email
us anyway in the belief that the answer supplied does not apply to you,
unless you are willing and able to demonstrate that you’re not just the
same dumb fuck in a slightly different wrapper. Once you’ve seen one
episode of the A-Team you’ve seen ’em all, so you’d better be the
equivalent of Murdoch being particularly fucking funny or we’re going to
switch off the TV. By putting a boot through it.

Part 1 v1. Ravenfamily in general.

• Q. Are you all called Raven?
  A. No.
• Q. Are you all sad Goths?
  A. No.
• Q. Are you all members of the Edgar Allen Poe Fan Club?
  A. No.
• Q. Anything to do with the wrestler?
  A. No.
• Q. Do you rehabilitate injured crows and ravens?
  A. No.
• Q. Keep corvidae as pets?
  A. No.
• Q. So why the fuck did you call the website Ravenfamily then?
  A. Because the creation of the website was instigated by Raven: a
  non-consensus, usually incorporeal, shapeshifting trickster entity who,
  round here anyway, gets about as either a large black bird or a Charles Dance
  lookalike in Ray Bans. Okay?
• Q. A non-consensus what?
  A. Entity.
• Q. Ah. This is one of those totem things, right?
  A. No. The word totem comes from the Athabascan word “ototeman” and is a cultural practise dependent on social context. We’re not Athabascan.
• Q. Power animal?
  A. No.
• Q. Spirit guide?
  A. You’re being irritating now.
• Q. So what the fuck?
  A. We call it Family because that’s what it is to us. It may be the same
  feeling that the Athabascans have about their totems but we wouldn’t know
  because we’re not of that culture. We only know what it means to us. It’s
  a belonging that for many of us is deeper and more strongly felt than any
  connection to our biological family, and it’s something that we’ve always
  felt.
• Q. That’s stealing the cultural principles of the Native Americans! How
  dare you! And I’ve seen you use Athabascan terms!
  A. Really, it’s not. Saying we’re stealing cultural principles is like
  claiming that any human community following a tribal structure is stealing
  culture from the Native Americans (or First Peoples or whatever they want
  to be called). Or saying that people following the teachings of the Dalai
  Lama in Germany are stealing the culture of the Tibetans, even though the
  Dalai Lama is quite public and keen for his teachings to go worldwide.
  Raven is not confined to the Pacific Northwest, although I’m sure there
  are plenty who wish he were.
  

  We used Athabascan terms for the same reason that the Welsh word for
  television is ‘television’. Or the English word for Manga is Manga. And
  for the same reasons that the descendents of the evil Western Christian
  oppressors are now expected to call the tribes who immigrated to the
  American continents from Europe earlier than them whatever those tribes
  demand to be called. Raven demanded it at the time and he’s a lot bigger
  than us.

• Q. Is this an Otherkin thing?
  A. No. While we may exist in a small pocket of outliers compared to
  everyone else, undeniably similar to each other but not to the rest of the
  population, we’re all human. Skin, hair, eyes, teeth. Legs. Ears. No
  wings.
• Q. But I’ve heard at least one of you talk about being a different species.
  A. It’s a figure of speech. The most recent medical tests haven’t shown up
  anything concrete to indicate we’ve departed from the biological norm. Not
  that isn’t still within the human distribution, anyway.
• Q. Are you all part of this family thing then?
  A. Only two of the current residents belong to Raven. One of us isn’t
  Family at all. His contract is held by a Goddess, and a very demanding one
  at that.
• Q. Contract?
  A. This is an FAQ, not a lesson in basic English.
• Q. Okaaaaay. Cranky, ain’t ya?
  A. You would be too if you’d spent ten years dealing with idiotic
  questions like this from total morons.
• Q. Is that how long the website has been up?
  A. The website was first created in 1997. It’s 2006 at the time of
  writing, and we have had the RF domain name for about 8 years. Prior to
  that we had a website hosted at Fortunecity.
• Q. That was where the Nascakiyetl stuff started.
  A. Yes, that’s right. That was what we were originally told to publish.
• Q. All that Core and Key nonsense.
  A. If you like.
• Q. Well, it was crazy, wasn’t it?
  A. By everyday standards, certainly.
• Q. You didn’t really believe all that stuff, did you?
  A. ‘Believe’ is a strong word to use under any circumstances. It’s a model
  to describe what we experienced and works pretty well, as models go.
• Q. What happened to them?
  A. Who?
• Q. Core and Key?
  A. They moved on. In many different senses.
• Q. Okay, but you know, even though it was crazy, some of that stuff really
  clicked with me. I mean, I’d really like to join…
  A. Hold it right there. No. This is not the sort of group you can join.
• Q. I don’t mean the Raven Group — well, I do really, but I understand
  that’s not your decision and you’re not the Group — it’s just that I’m
  Family. I feel I’m Family. I mean, maybe even Raven Family. I just want to
  join and hang and learn about this stuff.
  A. You’re not Family. Fuck off.
• Q. I’m sure I am. I think… I think I’m going to be the next Raven Core.
  Please help me.
  A. No. You are not going to be Core of any description, least of all Raven
  Core. You are a deluded individual who has spent too much time reading a
  crazy-ass website. There are plenty of weird websites out there, you just
  happened to pick this one.
• Q. But I am. I hear voices and everything.
  A. You’re really not.
• Q. I am! I’m just like you!
  A. –La la la la la la la we’re not listening– .
• Q. Well maybe not just like you…
  A. Are you still here?
• Q. But I want to be like you. You’re dark and mysterious and seem so
  powerful.
  A. Gods I wish I could say I was making up this crap – look. You can’t
  become Family. Either you are born that way or you’re not. That’s just the
  way it is. And don’t confuse aesthetic web design decisions with a
  sympathy for the Dark Lord of the Sith. Go away and get a hobby or
  something.
• Q. You’ve infected me with your pineal worm! That’s what it is!
  A. Sure. Right. That’s as good an explanation as any. We infected you with
  our inflatable pineal worm, making you want to join our evil gang. But you
  can’t. So fuck off.

Last night I had a dream about the sewage treatment works and pumping stations in Lower Largo.

I mean, it wasn’t actually about the sewage treatment works and pumping stations — it was about something else entirely — but certain aspects got mapped as sewerage.

That’s… just a tiny bit disturbing. Akin to the feeling one might get on discovering one’s adored boyfriend likes to sniff one’s panties when putting them in the laundry.

On my LJ profile it says:

the reason I “friend” users is because I am interested in reading what their journals say and commenting on them… I lack motivation to keep my beak shut just because my opinion is actively not wanted.

This is true. I can’t resist giving my opinion. I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to agree with it, but it’s in my nature to spout forth about anything and everything.

Recently I friended someone I hadn’t had contact with in a couple of years, because I still think about him entirely too often and it was nice to find out he was still out there and still active and I had access to his thoughts and writing again — I’ve always liked the way he expresses himself. I like the shapes his prose makes, even if I don’t necessarily understand the references.

Being unable to keep my fat beak shut, I made to comment on a particular post, only to discover that this old acquaintance of mine has set his journal so that only friends can post comments. So I can’t, because he hasn’t friended me. And, being subject to a complex series of rules and protocol regarding manners in this instance, I am not in a position to ask that he does.

I think this is cheating and unfair and I wish to lodge a complaint. I shall sit here and pout until birds perch on my lower lip demanding to be fed with corn and sunflower seeds and caterpillars.

If you email me doing the whole “Yo Sis! Teach me the ways of Core, dawg!” thing, and I respond in my usual hostile fashion telling you to fuck off (although currently this will be more polite than I would like because I’m under a brutally unfair restriction that bans me from just telling idiots to go shaft themselves with a power washer), this does not mean that I will forget your name or your email address.

If you carry on this conversation by insisting that you know better than me while at the same time wheedling at me for my godly wisdom and abasing yourself by saying you are just a lowly teenager who doesn’t know what he’s talking about and who loves it when adults tell him he’s wrong, I’m not only going to remember you I’m going to forward all your mails to my closest friends and we are going to have a good laugh at your expense.

If, after all this, you send a subscription request to Atropos expecting me to approve it, despite having demonstrated that even if you are biologically an octogenarian you have the mental maturity of a kid on his first day at kindergarten and despite being yet another one of the scores of people who try to join without following the clear instructions in the FAQ; then I’m going to blog about your stupidity so that the entire world can poke fun.

OK?

Snaffled from Abhasana.

The only reason I got this answer is because I’ve recently become obsessed with an old piece of ramshackle industrial Victorian architecture in Kirkcaldy. In true Grand Designs spirit, I keep dreaming about how I could transform this delapidated building into a luxurious penthouse studio apartment, but, crucially, without altering the skeletal ironwork and brickwork appearance of the outside. I mean, it would be majorly, massively cool to have a modern apartment hidden inside the remains of a broken factory warehouse some 7 storeys tall. The top floor is literally broken glass and iron girders. It’s just fabulous.

You scored as Industrial/Rivet-Head. You’re a rivet-head. You like industrial music, warehouses, and you are a minion of the machines. Industrial/Rivet-Head 63% Cyber-goth 63% Old-school Goth 42% Perky Goff 42% Ethereal Goth 42% Death Rocker 33% Romantic Goth 33% Anything-Goes Goth 33% Fantasy Goth 33% Understanding Outsider 29% Confused Outsider 4%

What subcategory of Goth best fits you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Just so, you know, you don’t get a surprise when you get to work tomorrow, and because you don’t check your work addy when you’re at home but you might check LJ; and because it’s Memorial Day in the US so you won’t be at work today you’ll be at the beach or having a barbie or something; and because if I don’t do this you might just hit speakerphone and then your fellow IT monkeys might wonder what freakish thing is happening in your life:

You have voicemail. Slightly sozzled, squeaky Fife Scots voicemail. And the automatic message on your phone sounds just like the ones we have at work so I imagine it’s one of these swanky Cisco Systems ones. With a speakerphone.

You probably don’t want to use the speakerphone. I believe, in my slightly inebriated state, I lapsed into what the BBFC describes, bizarrely, as ‘language’.

I was riding into town yesterday to pick up the Sunday papers, as our village shop has closed.

By the way: hi to the C+ man I met in Sainsbury’s car park. Didn’t catch your user name, but I was dead jealous of you riding across Canada like that.

I got to thinking about the fact that I haven’t done a kit review in absolutely ages. And I don’t have time to do the full waxing lyrical thing now.

So, in true good list/bad list stylee, here are my goods and bads from the past 18 months or so, in no particular order:

Goods:

• Il Pompino. What a bike
• Timbuk2 El Ocho. I know I bought it 4 years ago but it’s still in my top three.
• 2006 Camelback MULE. Major improvement.
• On-One clothing. Cheap, robust, sexy. Nice.
• Selle Italia Lady Gel Flow. Still close to a benevolent cloud after a couple of hundred miles.
• Torq energy bars. Yummy, not too dry, taste great with tea or coffee.
• Carradice Trax. It’s a good bit of kit – just wish it would fit a bit more neatly on the Pompino with the full mudguards.
• Continental GP4000 in 700x25c. Very impressive. Grippy when they need to be, still skid when I want them to, hard wearing. All I could want in a tyre.
• Lumicycle Li-Ion battery. That rocks.
• Oakley Mag M Frames. Sexy, indestructible, cooler than a polar bear on ice and no longer available so there’ll be no copycat kit queens stealing my ideas (right, Munky?)
• EAI alloy sprockets from Will at Hub Jub. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Bads:

• Cat Eye Opticubes. What went wrong, guys? Other than the little watertight 3 LED ones, this is a great idea executed in the worst possible fashion.
• Conti Ultra Gatorksins. Unless you weigh 3 times as much as I do or you enjoy sliding over manhole covers like a seal over oiled rubber.
• Panaracer Paselas. Stay back! Keep them away from me! The product of Satan’s bowels after a particularly nasty chicken vindaloo.
• On One bottom brackets. They break and they give you a dodgy chainline. Seriously, Brant, love you to pieces and the bike is my best friend ever, but that chainline solution is just jive, man.
• Lusso cycle clothing. Maybe I’m not Italian and do come from good Viking stock, but that doesn’t mean I have the waist to hips ratio of Mrs Santa Claus.
• Tyre Flies. I mean, really. Why have second best when you can get the much cooler Tyre Flares?
• Time ATAC Carbon XS. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re no better than standard ATACs and yet cost twice as much. And do more damage if they catch you on the shin.

Typically, there are a couple of things I’ve left out of my good list (e.g. the Specialized Fortress gloves) and I’m struggling to make up the numbers in my bad list because I usually put a lot of thought into my kit purchases and try not to buy on a whim. I tend to remember the things I expected to be good and found to be bad more than things that I just picked up and that turned out to be rubbish. In my mind, the latter is my fault for not speccing them out properly first.

I’m going to put in some spoiler space. Fundamentally, unless you are enough of a Marvel geek to be able to get the Age of Apocalypse team bonus in X-Men Legends II without going to a cheat site — even if you did have to go to your copy of the TPB to do it — then I’m not going to ruin anything for you. If you know that Wolverine lost his hand in AofA, and are frantic with worry about how the retconning is going to affect Cable and Deadpool Vol 6, I suggest you look away now.

Still reading?

Are you sure you want to go this far?

Absolutely sure?

Well, you’ve had fair warning.

OK.

So let me just start by saying that, while you might not think it, I’m a fan of the first two films in the franchise. I liked the first one and I loved the second. I have two copies — bought them singly then had to have the box set. The X-Men films are on my top ten list of things to do to cheer myself up; along with Alien³, the alternate version. So I’m not against the films on principle. I was so excited about this one and looking forward to it so much that we bought tickets for the opening night.

People who know my reaction to crowded cinemas will understand that this means it was a Very Big Deal and I was Super-Hyped.

The cinema was sold out. Even so it started off well enough. Jean Grey’s first line got a laugh from the assembled mass of students, which was fair enough if a bit irritating. I was expecting the fastball special to be a dodgy because Thudthwacker had said it was from a clip he’d seen. (For what it’s worth, Joe, if you’re reading, there is a reason why the Sentinel was piss-poor, so fret not about that.) Logan got his pithy one-liners and Shadowcat was there and it was all looking quite promising.

Sadly that opening sequence is the best part of the film. The rest of it was… weak. If you think you’ll enjoy a couple of hours of playing X-Men bingo (that’s the Grant Morrison storyline; there’s the Joss Whedon; oh that’s how they’re going to play the stuck in a lifepod at the bottom of the sea thing; he was only ever seen in the Evolution animation) then make a list of your favourite X-Men clichés and take it with you. It might make it more fun.

The performances were lazy, I thought. A lot of people were anticipating Kelsey Grammar making a good Beast, and maybe he would have done had he been given opportunity. But he wasn’t and was shite. Even the lovely Hugh seemed to be choking against some leash of directorial restriction. The only person who seemed to manage was Halle Berry, and that was because she never tried to do very much with her character in the first place.

Nothing was made of Archangel’s homosexuality, but then I guess it was a 12A. It was most definitely a more childish rendition than the previous two. It didn’t make even a ham-fisted attempt of dealing with the big issues. Here they are, using the “mutant cure” plotline familiar to all Marvel fans, and yet, at that crucial point when they had to choose a course of action that would define them as X-Men and there was an opportunity to look at the issues underpinning the very reason for the series’ existence, they ignore it. They ignore its implications. The X-Men do exactly what anyone else would do and therefore become just another bunch of guys in suits with mutant abilities. They walk right over the shreds of Xavier’s dream and don’t even seem to notice.

I was hoping that the success of Batman Begins would have indicated that the global audience is ready for and desiring of a return to adult superhero movies. I should not have been so naïve.

What we got was Jean Grey wandering around as an evil Willow, but without the black eyes and the witty dialogue. We had Logan suddenly turning into the biggest team player of the lot, with his internal rage and samurai spirit devolved into that of a star-crossed lover with a crush on his mentor. We had Mystique rendered 2D, shallow and pointless — literally — by halfway through the film. Rogue was simply there as icing sugar. She had hardly anything to do with anything. Vinnie Jones was given nothing to do in an appalling bodysuit (and frankly, when it comes down to it, once X-Men is dumbed down so much that Juggernaut is just another mutant because otherwise it’s too complicated, all hope of a reasonable rendition is lost).

The entire cast seemed to be sleepwalking. And I had an even bigger problem: one can reasonably expect, even if the plot gets wishy-washy and the actors get bored, that the special effects will improve as a franchise goes on. I couldn’t work out where the special effects budget had gone. Mystique looked like a girl painted blue with bits of rubber doily stuck to her. In fact, I think my granny had a pink swimming cap that they must have dyed blue and used to cover Ms Romijn’s breasts.

It felt like bad fanfic. Really bad fanfic. It was just the same old clichéd plot lines being recycled, but not even done well. If you’re going to do the Grant Morrison Planet X ending, use his dialogue: it was a singularity of characterisation that encapsulated everything you ever needed to know about the relationship between Wolverine and Jean Grey. Don’t just say: “Do anguish, Hugh old boy, there’s a dear.” It doesn’t wash.

I wasn’t expecting perfection but, given that they’d made a decent hash of two of the things already, I was expecting better than this. A lot better.

All they had to do was bring in a mass of Sentinels, get Nick Fury involved, and maybe give it a hint of reference to current global politics. Hell. They could have had Apocalypse stand in for Osama Bin Laden, even, as trite as that might have been. It would have been better than this, which seemed to shy away from anything remotely resembling an awareness of current world issues.

That is what the X-Men are about, at the end of the day. Being the outsiders. The arbitrary labelling of “us” and “them”. The desire and need both to be with your own kind, to be tribal, and yet not to stand out in a crowd. To be both in and out at the same time. X-Men is all about shades of grey presented in a subtle disguise of good and evil. The presentation of ordinary, every-day problems in skintight lycra just to make a point.

There was plenty of opportunity in the storyline they used, and an occasional glimmer of hope that they might use it. Alas, no. Not even a sideways reference to current issues with genetic testing for congenital abnormalities.

Deeply disappointing. It gets its own new category: Couldabeen, Shouldabeen, Wasn’t.

Today I was introduced to Married to the Sea by my bro Gecko. Thanks Elf.

I really, really, really needed that.