Äryabaášha numeration
turns numbers into compact pronounceable syllables. Kind of genius â we already took our digits
from the Indians; why didnât we lift this as well?
Why ornament went away.
We are so back: âSo it is now possible to buy perfectly proportioned classical ornament, nearly
indistinguishable from stone, that has â if the molds and the factory infrastructure are treated
as a given â taken only minutes of labor to produce.â
Tombstone (1993). I have this pathological aversion to westerns, so i wasnât
expecting much â but once i turned off the part of me that was waiting for Richard Pryor to
show up i realised that this the ââemâ in âthey just donât make âem like they used taâ: just
a solid, well-made flick, regardless of my thoughts on the genre! I cried manly man tears at
the end. 7/10.
The Thirteenth Floor, everyoneâs fourth favourite film about a simulated world from 1999. I found it
surprisingly interesting whenever it didnât remind me too much of The Matrix, and a
bit pathetic whenever it did. (Donât try to do action, simulated world movie from 1999.
Youâll never measure up.) 6/10.
As a bonus, since nobody cares about this movie, you can just
watch it on Youtube if you
want.
Little Shop of Horors (1986). My pick for family movie night. Utterly charming
from leaf to toe â the best example since Gremlins 2 of a film where you can see the
craft that went into making every frame. Incredible effects, wonderful music, magnetic
comedic performances from the whole cast⌠10/10!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the impromptu double feature to the
above. My brain has been completely frazzled by watching this. I went from loving it to
hating it to complete bafflement to examining it like a scientist would a new species of
frog. This film may very well have invented homosexuality. Defies numerical rating/10.
Late Night with the Devil (2023). Always nice to see David Dastmalchian, even
if itâs nothing that hasnât been done before â 6/10.
The Fall Guy (2024). Ryan Goslingâs a brilliant comedic actor, but him and
some great setpieces struggle to save this film from a shoddy script and baffling editing
choices. The jokes arenât funny, the dialogue scenes linger for far too long, half the stuff
from the trailer is gone from the movie⌠the whole thing desperately needs a trimming down
to a tight ninety minutes. 4/10.
Eurovision 2024. Bullet-pointed, as per tradition:
I went in totally blind this year, having missed the semi-finals while building a new
PC. Oops!
Sweden appear to have trapped the Backstreet Boys in the Matrix.
There is no country named the Netherlands and never has been. Doesnât exist. Not real.
We begin bombing in five minutes.
Big fan of Spainâs bizarre campy cougar energy, even if the audience and juries werenât!
Estonia are frankly embarrassing.
Completely maxed out my scorecard for Ireland, who have sent in Xanthe-bait of the
highest order.
Yes⌠hahaha⌠yes!!!
Greeceâs song is the most annoying thing since Crazy Frog and it baffles me how highly
it scored.
I think the UK is just cursed at this point. We send a legitimate star with the worldâs
gayest performance (admittedly more in the âgetting sucked off in a dingy bathroomâ way
than the âcampy drag queenâ way) and not a single point from the audience?
God bless Finland. I usually hate it when acts try deliberately to be funny but i died
laughing at a pantsless man in a censored Windows 95 T-shirt
emerging from an egg while pyrotechnics go off.
Switzerland have taken Sam Ryderâs mantle as this yearâs designated golden retriever⌠a
great performance from someone whoâs clearly happy beyond words to be there. A deserving
winner if there ever was one.
Croatiaâs catchy pirate dance is great but i cannot forgive that abominable stage name.
I donât care how many records you sell; there is no excuse to call yourself Baby
Lasagna. Go back to the drawing board. Now.
T2 Trainspotting (2017). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. I wasnât so hot
on the idea going in⌠and then it was, to my surprise, pretty great! It uses the idea of the
legacy sequel to its advantage â itâs a film about nostalgia, the good and bad of
it all. It really does feel like youâre catching up with these characters twenty years
later, all wondering where their lives have gone. Some beautiful shots, too â a film from
2017 that bothered hiring a gaffer?? What a concept! 8/10.
127 Hours (2010), continuing the Danny Boyle theme. Probably the best film a
film about a guy whose hand is stuck next to a rock could ever be, it convinced me of the
occasional merit of a good biopic over a documentary â this would not and could not work if
you only had access to the original crummy camera footage and talking-head interviews. Also
perhaps the only movie in history to contain an inflatable Scooby-Doo jumpscare. I was going
to give it an 8, but then they played Sigur RĂłs in the triumphant ending scene, so sod it,
itâs a 9/10.
Chris Chibnall is dead and Doctor Who is alive! I thought Ncuti Gatwa was
playing the role too young at first, but the season proper has me totally convinced. His
Doctor, the first Doctor to Fuckâ˘, has this infectious energy and zest for life thatâs
totally new to the character, and a great rapoport with his companion â even when the new
series is bad, itâs unhinged in a fun way, rather than the forgettable doldrums of the
Chibnall era.
Got a new computer! I can run Minecraft with shaders without any lag now. We are
so back.
Hello. Iâve been to Consett. I thought you might like to hear about it. (Gosh, iâve missed writing
that.)
Itâs been
a miserable year
so far weather-wise, so wind-swept, cold-nipped, and rain-soaked that it took until April for me to
look outside and go, ah, not a bad day, letâs go for a jaunt.
The plan was simple: get a bus into Consett and head straight for the nearest hill. A short and
sweet saunter through woods and farmland; short compared to some of my previous odysseys from
Newcastle to the Wansbeck, sweet compared to the scenery in the more populous parts of the
palatinate. (It was not to be.)
Iâm at the bubble tea / Iâm at the tanning salon / Iâm at the combination bubble tea and tanning
salon
We start in the centre of town, a humble lower-middle-class affair whose high street would strike
southerners as horrifyingly dilapidated and northerners as above average â nice enough, at least,
for the areaâs local MP to choose it as his base of operations. Around
the corner from the cinema1, the pedestrianised and sensibly named Middle Street plays host to (in decreasing order of
classiness) a provider of musical instruments, an independent sweet shopâgift shopâpet shop, a
building society, a Greggs, a Superdrug, an animal rescue shelter, a frozen food emporium, a Turkish
barber, Ladbrokes, a vape shop, another vape shop which also sells computer parts and
repairs your phone (my lawyers say i canât call it a mob front), and Barryâs Bargain Superstore.
This dumps us onto a crossing onto Parliament Street, where the Galileanically
inclined can attend the charming parish church (with âmessy churchâ every month for the tots). I
follow it down its procession of historic terraces, in a rather literal sense: Briton Terrace, Saxon
Terrace, Norman Terrace, and then to spite me they finish it off with the pattern-breaking Tudor
Terrace. I suppose it could have been a later addition, going with Stuart Court across the road, as
well as Georgia and Edwardia Courts, two small cul-de-sacs i only noticed on Google Earth after the
fact⌠but that sequence gets thrown off yet again by the road whence those two branch off, Romany
Drive, which unless they meant to write âRomanâ but hired a dyslexic cartographer has sod all to do
with the other streets.
A path bearing at its mouth a welcoming sign (all caps,
âno part of this land is dedicated to the public, any use of this land is entirely at the
userâs own risk, et cetera, et ceteraâ) marks a liberating end to our onomastic confusion, funneling us down a sloping green crescent of
parkland into a reclaimed steelworks. (Itâs always a reclaimed steelworks.)
Finally, we reach the end of the funnel, where the light pours from the sky, the buildings abruptly
stop, and any wayward ramblers are left with only a gorgeous view of Durhamâs rolling hills
stretching out before them. This exact moment, this exact view â this is why i get out. To sit on
the edge of a hill, the dull traces of modernity firmly behind you, and see the country not devoid
of manâs presence, but shaped by it, over hundreds and thousands of years, from hunting-grounds to
cleared forest to farmland to steelworks to grass for grassâs sake, a place where, like the terraces
of Parliament Street, you can hear Englandâs history sing in your veins.
Anyway then thereâs a really steep path downhill where i almost slipped and fell like Super Mario
going down a slide.
Traipsing down steps iâm not 100% sure were public and over a road made of more pothole than asphalt
i wind up following a burn to the River Derwent. This is where our routeâs industrial past makes
itself seen. Every few yards a worn sign pops up warning of a âdrainageditchâ, or a graffiti-blanketed pipe crosses the rain-cleaved dene;
at the very end, a picnic table by a former pump house grants me some respite.
I take stock of myself. My phoneâs battery, always surprising me with innovative ways to run out, is
in danger of crossing the ten-percent mark. Itâs the first nice day of the year, but that also means
iâm out of shape and out of practice: i wonât be able to make it all the way.
Equally, iâd be a fool to clamber back up all that. I keep walking. The rushing burn has become a
tranquil river, its waters still enough to see your reflection. I think to myself that if youâre
going to name a pencil company after a river, this oneâs not a bad choice.2
Civilisation creeps back in with the tell-tale sounds of power tools. This is
Allensford Holiday Park, a modest gathering of caravans proudly advertising itself as ânear the outstanding Northumberland
National Parkâ. (It isnât.) When i get there itâs thronged by teen schoolboys freshly out,
chattering about video games and lining up for ice cream. (Something, something, nature is healing.)
Checking Google Maps with what power i have left reveals my worst fear: thereâs nowhere to go but
up.
The distance is short, but the slope is grueling. I convince my legs to heave themselves up along
the side of pavementless roads, ducking into fallow fields and passing places wherever i
can find them. It gets worse the further i get. By the first field, iâm a little out of it. By the
Catholic boarding school, iâm utterly exhausted. When i climb what i think is the final hill, only
for perspective to cruelly show yet more around the corner, i wonder if this is what hell is like.
But i make it â sweating and breathless, hydrating myself sip by sip, i make it to the bus stop, and
wait. The driver, when he comes, must think iâm a zombie, but iâm glad to be on my way home. Note to
self: donât take that big a break again.
Aniara (2018). I actually watched this one back in February, but forgot to
mention it at the time â a Swedish hard(ish) sci-fi tragedy, where a colony ship on its way
to Mars gets knocked off course with no fuel left to turn
back. This is unrelentingly bleak, sometimes to the point where my brain would shut off and
stopped caring, but thereâs a lot to like.
I love the idea of the Mima as a character/narrative device/whatever: a living
AI that uses peopleâs memories to bring them back visions of
Earth as it was, then gets depressed because too many people
are using it and flooding it with memories of the apocalypse. Giving the holodeck a soul?
Genius.
Unfortunately it doesnât so much end as it just fizzles out â i guess you could make a case
that thatâs on purpose, since thatâs how these situations go in the real world, but i found
the whole dĂŠnouement deeply unsatisfying excepting the veeeery final shots (if you know, you
know). 6/10.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023). Caught this one at the
Tyneside, where it happened to be the next film
on at the time i got in. This spoke to me not just because of the powerhouse performances
from Sandra HĂźller, a dog named Messi (how did they get him to do that?), and the
fifteen-year-old(!!!) Milo Machado-Graner, who i wish nothing but the best in his future,
but because it matches up with events in my life to a frankly concerning autobiographical
extent. This would never, ever be in my wheelhouse were it not for random chance, but i
teared up thrice over. 10/10, and iâm annoyed i couldnât make it my best of last year.
Ten seconds after watching⌠Wait, people online think she killed the husband? Are
they fucking stupid? What? Itâs obviously an accident. Did we watch the same film? Did the
cut they saw not have all those carefully-inserted moments where people almost fall off of
ledges or get hit by cars to hammer home that accidents can, in fact, just happen? What?? I
â am i just projecting my own experiences here and not wanting to believe that my mum would
kill someone? And then if they donât think she killed the husband, theyâre like,
oh, well the husband deserved it, he was so awful in that argument, and like, no!!! The mum
in the film near enough turns to the camera and says âthe worst moments in someoneâs life
are unfairly cherry-picked as evidence for a trail and do not represent them as a wholeâ;
again, did we watch the same bloody film? Are people stupid? Am i stupid? Is Justine Triet
stupid? Am i dying?
Reservoir Dogs (1992). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. Every time i watch
a Tarantino film i really get the sense that heâs jacking off to how clever he is writing
the script and this is that tendency at its worst. I get why it caught on, i really do, but
this is absolutely insufferable from start to finish any time someone whoâs not a cop is on
screen. I do not care about your thoughts on Madonnaâs âLike a Virginâ, Quentin!
3ž/10.
Monkey Man (2024). I have been hyped as shit for this ever since the first
trailer came out. You can tell this is Sexiest Man Alive Dev Patelâs first time in the
directorâs chair (looooots of shaky-cam close-ups), but itâs damn stylish, and he shows a
lot of promise. I can also see why Netflix did not want to touch this with a barge pole
given that the plot is essentially âDev Patel kills the BJPâ.
(It has some, ah, terroristic overtones that would be a little concerning if it
were even 10% less shlocky.)
That aside, i really enjoyed the film, and thought it got better as it went along â early
on, i wasnât super clear on the character motivations at play, but then the most me-bait
thing since The Northman happens: Mr Patelâs character has a near-death-experience
flashback and wakes up having been rescued by a hijra priest at a secret temple to
Ardhanarishvara, a half-male, half-female incarnation of Shiva. Into! my!
fucking! veins! 6½/10.
De dolende god (2018),
as seen previously on The Garden. This is pretty much designed to appeal to me specifically, and yeah, itâs really good.
Itâs sweet, heartfelt, absolutely gorgeous, and of course, extremely European. Itâs the odd
one out in this list, being a comic book rather than a film â a medium i donât have much
experience with, so itâs hard to give it a numerical rating in the absence of comparisonsâŚ
but letâs say 8/10.
I actually think in their heart of hearts all biologists want to be mad scientists. The problem is
that theyâre really bad at it. You try attaching a chimpâs head to a man â thatâs, what, half a
casualty? Thatâs nothing! Even if you put the tinfoil hat on and say, ah, but lab leaks and viruses
and whatnot â if weâre going to rank the sciences on their ability to do a pandemic, covid isnât a
particularly good showing when all most people under 90 remember of it is being really bored,
sticking uncomfortable Q-tips up their nose, and baking sourdough bread.
Theyâre in dead last because of all the sciences in this list, biology has the largest
negative kill count, having saved billions of lives and thus making themselves known as
utterly incompetent at being evil.
Like biologists, every astronomer dreams of waking up to an imminent asteroid impact. (This isnât a
particularly secret ambition, either.) Theyâve read and written all the sci-fi lit there is, and
theoretically have a pretty good grasp on how to destroy the world.
Unfortunately when a mad astronomer says the world will end it carries the same tenor
and believability of that snotty-nosed kid on the playground saying his uncle works for Nintendo. A
gamma-ray burst will end all life on Earth? Whenâs that, sweetie? Oh?
Two trillion years from now? Thatâs nice, dear. Ooooh, an asteroid that has a 0.001% chance of
passing by the moon? Terrifying.
If they really wanted to, the computer scientists definitely could kill everyone and break
all electronics forever. Unfortunately theyâd be out of a job if they did that, so i
donât think we have much to worry about.
The good news for sociologists is that they are, genuinely, completely fucking insane. The bad news
is that they donât even know how to write a paper with replicable results, let alone take over the
world. If they ever figure out how to distinguish a fake article about toxic masculinity in dog
parks from a real article about toxic masculinity in dog parks they might move up a bit in the
ranks.
Psychologists have really fallen off since the initial publication of the
HaberâHaber Scale of Scientific Evil back in 1932. They used to rip monkeys from their
families and put them in cages, get people to administer lethal electric shocks, put people in
prison for the lulz â now, alas, they seem content to let their perfectly developed evil skillset go
to waste and futz around figuring out how to make people subscribe to emails instead. Sad!
Chemists are great at doing evil. They can make poisons, kill people with radiation, pretend
âÎą-(5,6-Dimethylbenzimidazolyl)cobamidcyanideâ is a
totally normal thing to say â the list goes on! The main thing bringing them down is that they donât
seem at all interested in doing evil. They know the nega-utils from working at big
pharmaceutical companies are going to the economists here, right?
Ah, physics, the âfuck around and find outâ of the sciences, whose practitioners never met a death,
destroyer of worlds they didnât like. Ever since the atom bomb theyâve been a consistent presence in
the upper tier, and itâs not hard to see why. Even when theyâre not literally killing millions,
theyâre sticking heads in particle accelerators, developing new and innovative ways to undo the
fundamental forces of the universe, and causing chaos among the general population by convincing
them their collider would destroy the universe. Their fourth place position says more about the
quality of those who ranked ahead of them than any faults of physics specifically.
Mathematicians are barely holding on to their humanity. They havenât seen the sunlight in days. They
think quantum physics is just too soft and people-y. In this lies their danger: the possibility that
they might snap.
Take Grigori Perelman, a mild example. He was a prodigy, proving conjectures that had stood unproven
for hundreds of years â and then, at the apex of his career, the million-dollar prize⌠he just
stopped. He just left the field, became a hermit, and was never seen again. Mr Perelmanâs story is
the best-case scenario.
The worst-case scenario? Well â the real reason mathematics is so high is that they have the dubious
distinction of being the only field on this list to have spawned an
actual terrorist. If it were up
to me, iâd keep the mathematicians under 24/7 CCTV surveillance.
Geologists? What? Surely theyâd be at the bottom: all they do is study rocks!
That was my thinking too. But then i thought about it. And thought about it. And uncovered the dark
secret of geology. No, they canât make earthquakes happen on demand, or turn themselves into lava.
Thatâs theory. But what of applied geology?
Applied geology has other names. Chief among them: mining, fracking, and drilling. The geologist
plan is a slow burn. They dig, and dig, and dig, guzzling up all the coal and oil they can muster,
spewing their flames into the atmosphere. And by the time anyone noticed⌠it wasnât their problem
anymore. Oh, they say, thatâs not us, thatâs Nasa, thatâs the biologists, thatâs the economists, it
could never be us humble innocent rock nerds. But they know. They know, deep down, that when the
last forest burns itself up, when the last city falls into the sea â the geologists will look over
the rubble, and the geologists will be king.
It still confuses me a little why Minecraft doesnât have a Swahili translation. It canât be a
question of not having the will or number of speakers to do it â theyâve got Yoruba, HawaiĘťian,
hell, even NahuÄtl. Is it something to do with the prefixes? (Fudging grammatical gender is one
thing, but 13 clearly distinct classes is anotherâŚ)
Richard Eijiro von Coudenhove-Kalergi, the half-Japanese Euro-federalist count who suggested âOde to Joyâ as the continentâs anthem
and thought all races and castes would merge in the future into âsomething like the Ancient
Egyptiansâ
Star Trek: The Next Generation, season three. How did i let myself not get around to this earlierâ˝ This is soft
sci-fi running at peak performance â a crew of hyper-competent and endearing1
people on a starship, sometimes just going on wacky space adventures, other times using science
fiction as a lens through which to view our own world. 10/10. My three favourite episodes so
far:
âTin Manâ. Our character actor of the week, Harry Groener, plays a member of a
mildly telepathic species who has a small problem: he has Space Autism, thus canât turn
said telepathy off. Man, does this episode get it. Every little thing about him
is painfully relatable, the ending reduced me to tears, and i would like seven seasons
of a buddy cop spinoff show starring him and Data right now, please and thank you.
âThe Survivorsâ. The third episode in the season, this is the one that made me
sit up and go: God damn, thatâs good television. Our character of the week, John
Anderson, is the man of the house for an elderly couple who are the only ones left after
the decimation of their planet. I canât reveal anything more than that, but he sells it
like noĂśne else could.
âDeja Qâ. This oneâs just funny.
The Revenant (2015). Stepdadâs pick for family movie night. When the credits
rolled, i thought it one of the best films iâd ever seen⌠but a few weeks on, iâm not so sure.
The cinematography is epic, and Tom Hardyâs brilliant, no doubt, but i really feel more could
have been mined from the premise. Leonardo DiCaprioâs half-Pawnee son in particular is the heart
of the film, and the key role through which to interpret the conflict between the three warring
groups, but he gets unceremoniously killed off halfway through, for no other reason than to
bolster Mr Hardyâs villain cred and, i am left to infer, because the writers had no idea what to
do with his character for the rest of the story. Mr DiCaprio himself goes completely overboard
and could really take Lawrence Olivierâs advice to heart: âMy dear boy, have you tried just
acting?â 6½/10.
True Stories (1986). My pick for family movie night. This sweet and mild-mannered
musical comedy is David Byrneâs only director credit, and thatâs a damned shame. Most places
call it a satire, and i canât help but think theyâre projecting. This is a genuine ode to
small-town American life, whatever its pros and whatever its cons, and next time iâm sick, i
know exactly what iâll be putting on. 8/10.2
The Wicker Man (1973). Figured iâd watch a whimsical musical from the seventies in
preparation for the next one on the list. Great vibes, great music, great ending, great showing
from the legendary Christopher Lee3, but good heavens, is our main character ever an unsympathetic, bigoted prick. Heâs stumbled
on a conspiracy to murder, and he just wonât let go of the fact that he saw some
NEKKID WIMMEN prancing around a henge! 7/10.
Wonka (2024). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. This is a bad idea for a movie
and they should not have made it. Thatâs fine, though: lots of good films make poor ideas on
paper. This isnât one of them. TimothĂŠe Chalamet is terrible! You never once buy him as
anything other than TimothĂŠe Chalamet in a hat. Heâs far too much of a goody two-shoes â not a
droplet of the sinister nature of Gene Wilder and Johnny Deppâs4
WonkĂŚ is anywhere to be found. 3/10.
An American Werewolf in London (1981). Stepdadâs pick for family movie night. A
bit of a throwaway, but thereâs some good stuff in here, especially the titular American
Werewolf (Who Went Hiking In The North But For Some Reason Is Taken To A Hospital) In Londonâs
zombified friend. 6/10.
Iâm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). Shades of Tenet and
Asteroid City here: itâs not Charlie Kaufman at his best, but it is Charlie Kaufman at
his most, and he may have finally metatexted too close to the sun. Some really
interesting stuff spread out over a turgidly paced first and second acts and a completely
nonsensical third. I presume Jesse Plemonsâs directions were just âpretend to be Philip Seymour
Hoffmanâ. 5/10.
Dune Reloaded / Dune 2: Dune Harder / D2NE (2024).
Seen in Imax. A titanic achievement that improves upon the often unfeeling first in every way. I
take back everything i said about Wonka â Mr Chalamet is magnetic in a way that cements
him as the zoomer generationâs first true movie star. Every gushing ten-star review youâve heard
is true. See it now on the biggest screen you can, with bass that shakes the leather in your
seat, because youâll never forgive yourself if you donât. 9/10, with that final point
conditional on the inevitable third part hitting the mark.
