The noise of a metal man getting an erection

"Kashink"

I recently bought a subscription to Marvel's "Unlimited" service, in order to read the Ultimate Spider-man series that I'd heard so much about.

After a long binge session I decided to dive head first into the Ultimate universe, following a reading order found at:

http://www.comicsbackissues.com/comic-book-reading-order/ultimate-marvel-reading-order/

The Ultimate series treads the line between realism and ridiculous darkness, spread with moments of typical comic comedy.

The X-men series in particular grabbed me, having been raised on the 90s TV show and the early 200s films, I was both surprised and intrigued by the reinterpretations Bendis provided for the characters I had given hardly a spare thought. 

For the first time I had seen questions are raised such as "did the Proffesor mess with the X-men's heads", "what if George Bush jr. formed his own mutant squad?" And most amusingly "what if Collosus got horny?".

I'm less than 50 issues in, and already firmly gripped! I can't wait to read on and highly reccomend the Ultimate Universe as a read for any comic fan. 

Now here's hoping for more bikini shots of Kitty Pride... 

Relationships and races

In talking with my long distance-girlfriend, we often use the phrase "finish line" to set out a goal to keep ourselves happy and looking forward to seeing each other, and it got me thinking about this phrase, and how relationships as a whole don't really have a finish line.

Different people have different goals as couples/triples/octets etc, so for everyone it's different, but as a whole, I see a relationship as a long, endurance race with your partner(s). You meet up and start running, each lap a different stage of your relationship, whether moving in, getting engaged, getting a puppy; whatever goal is currently being worked toward. Sometimes someone falls back or lets go, and ends up with the runners needing to start the race over again with a new partner, maybe this time with different goals. 

In the end relationships in life are just seeing how far you want to run with each person, and whether you can make it another lap. Sometimes you may fall over and they can help, sometimes you find a new running mate and start over. 

Now I think about it, it's a bit grim how this implies the "true" end is when someone keels over and dies.

The Idiot Ball

For those of you who don't know, the Idiot Ball is a common TV "trope". (I apologise for sending you down the rabbit hole of that website).

What this trope means is that a character's idiocy, usually ignoring/forgetting an easy solution the viewers can see, fuels a plotline and allows it to continue. This character is said to be holding the "idiot ball" which is sometimes passed around between the characters.

Whilst wandering downstairs today I happened to watch part of an episode of "100" This show is based around a group of criminal teenagers trying to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth, whilst their parents worry about the space station they live on falling apart around them.
(SPOILER ALERT).

The ground-based plots seem to be purely based around who is carrying the idiot ball each week, either through stubborn attitude, lack of communication or just plain stupidity. The episode involved a captured "grounder" who had used a poisoned knife to poison one of the teenagers (eurgh stop with dumb teenage drama in scifi, it only ever seems to use this trope), and was being tied up and beaten up by a bunch of thuggish louts that had gained power.

Upon learning the knife was poisoned, they reasoned one of the vials he was carrying had an antidote, ok, fair assumption, he doesn't want to poison himself by accident after all; but then, after their pleas for aid (spoken in English, god only knows what language the barbarian speaks) fall on deaf, and rather bloodied ears, the leader of the thugs tears off a piece of the ship, and starts to whip the man with it.

You have to question the logic here, a buff, scary man who has lived his whole life struggling to survive in an irradiated wasteland, and you think a teenager hitting him with a length of fabric will convince him to share?

At this point I sat and thought "just cut him a little on the arm with the knife, then offer him the vials and see which he wants, if he chooses, give some to him, if he lives cool, you've saved your friend, if not, one of the other two vials can help and it's better odds than letting him die." after all, a man living like he has been must have a STRONG sense of self-preservation.

Maybe my logic wouldn't have worked, maybe it's silly to look so deep into the fiction, but when the teen girl the man had a crush on (I see that plotline going in a very strange direction) came up and cut herself with the poison, and he gave them the antidote, I felt entirely vindicated. My solution, though twisted, was used and ended the plot, leaving time for emotional talks and "character development" to wrap up. The whole "torture with belt and corkscrew" plot was just there to pad out time, making the space-based plot seem longer than it was.

The sad thing is this idiocy happens, as I said, every episode, which moved the show swiftly from "Good show idea, will watch" to "bad TV".

Maybe I should read the book it was based on and compare...

Public parenting

Today I got on a train.

I even got to sit down, with my own little table sat viewing the English countryside whizz by outside. There were a couple of children with their young(ish) looking parents nearby. The mum sat on her phone, the dad relaxing with sunglasses on, a position he didn't move from the whole duration of my voyage.

These children were happily chattering away, crawling over their seats and playing with each other, an elderly couple a few seats down were smiling as they watched.

I happily sat down, looking forward to a calm, swift voyage home and possibly a mint or two; and then I realised the mistake I'd made choosing this particular carriage.

The mum started screaming at her kids to be quiet, so loud my eardrums actually hurt. The children were making noise sure, but their mother's response was so bizarrely disproportionate it took me by complete surprise, and by the shocked looks on the other passengers' faces, them too. This continued until I escaped at my stop, 40 minutes later, my eardrums possibly perforated and my head aching. Each time she'd yell, grab her kids and muscle them back into position, then promptly ignore then and return to her phone, at which point the children would start getting more energetic, restarting the cycle.

I'm young, I'm not a parent, but is this a normal way to react to children noisily playing around? Because to me this seems like a very ineffective way to discipline children, all she seemed to achieve was thoroughly annoying all those around her.

Nature in a city

I was walking home back up the hill when I reached the Circus in Bath. I paused to take a photo of the trees that take up the centre of the Circus and was struck by the sheer size of the trees. In my first year of university my flatmates and I drunkenly ended up there by accident, and attempted to get our arms all around a tree, linked arm in arm. These trees are so large, is this what a forested England would look like? If more of our world's natural beauty were allowed to flourish?

 This picture, taken from the window of my flat shows those same huge, majestic trees, only now it looks different. Rather than the natural beauty you get from seeing them, it conveys the feel that they are a relic of a long gone past, a single green fleck in an urban sprawl, allowed to remain simply because it creates an illusion of beauty and nature.
And yet, despite the many, many yellow stoned buildings it is surrounded by, these trees are still clearly visible, rising above the rooftops. Even though, over the course of history, England's natural landscapes have vanished, these trees serve as a reminder to me, that although mankind can achieve much, so can nature, and remembering this seems important to me. We have just one world, one chance, let's try and keep those trees alive, and through that, the rest of us.

Getting older

As I lie awake, I'm remembering my days back in school, where twice a year I would get a letter from the bank, telling me my unused bank account had gained money (your £380 is now £383.80!).

Nowadays the letters I get are more gloomy; you've failed a payment so you need to pay the bank back, you've hit your limit and can't spend any more until you put money into the account, also: you need to pay us back for failing to have money. (Anyone else see a paradox here)

The fact is, our world revolves around money and possession, and though it is nice to dream of a utopian, post scarcity future where money is a thing of the past, the stark reality of the matter is that the world we live in is a material world.

Gloomy thoughts at 3am

Call centres and public service

People in call centres get a bad reputation.

Everyone hates getting cold-called, that annoying person trying to sell you something you don't want JUST as you sit down for tea. And yeah, that can be annoying, but you've gotta remember: they're a person too.

That person will get paid pittance for spending a whole day getting yelled at, hung up on and messed around by the people they are made to call, and at the end of a day of abuse, they then have to get on with their own lives, their own troubles, adding to all of that by being rude to them over the phone just seems kind of unnecessary doesn't it? How would you like it if you got yelled at for doing a job you hated, just to earn enough to get by?

And once in a while, every one of us will need to call up a customer service number and ask for help, to these same kinds of people. Will being rude get you what you want? Or will you be nice, but forceful, and have everyone come out of the call happy with a job well done?

What brings me to this is hearing stories from family and friends of cold callers, and "useless" service people when they call helplines. But in my experience, I've never had such a problem, I'm always calm and polite, and so are they (they want to keep that job after all), and as such, every time I call up such a number I seem to come out of it with what I want.

What I think I'm getting at here is: be nice to people, and see what happens, if someone's annoying you or stressing you out, take a moment and imagine the kind of problems they're having too. Everyone has their own lives, their own joys and problems, and it's important that we all remember that.