It seems that a movie version of Aeon Flux, the cult MTV animated series about a sexy female assassin, is in the making. So far, it looks as if the movie is going to dispense with all the surreal aspects of the cartoon that made it so interesting and original; for example, Aeon Flux regularly died in the animated series, only to be resurrected without explanation the following episode.

Still… I’ll probably go and see the movie nonetheless!

Here’s a blast from the past — the eighties goth band Bauhaus are touring again, for the first time in decades (probably).

I used to love this band when I was a teenage goth living in Sheffield, but never got to see them live, so I’ve bought tickets to one of the New York shows in November. The tickets were $40 each, which doesn’t seem too bad, but I’m completely disgusted with Ticketmaster’s gouging — they charged me $8.90 per ticket as a “convenience charge,” and then an additional $4.25 “order processing charge” — a total gouge of $22.05 (27.5%!) on $80 of tickets, just for taking my credit card payment and mailing me tickets.

I just finished watching the extended “Redux” version of one of my all-time favourite movies today, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 classis Apocalypse Now, and decided I’d add my 2 cents to the ongoing debate as to which version is better: Original or Redux.

I enjoyed the additional Redux footage very much, especially the additional scenes with Colonel Kurtz, but I’d probably still recommend the original version first because it’s a more manageable length and a more consistent pace. At 3 hours and 22 mins, the Redux version is just too long to watch in one sitting.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, so I’m just going to post a link and let you see for yourself… Dee’s Nuts is an online retailer that claims to be selling nuts that are “cleavage-filtered” through the breasts of “totally hot chicks…”

This cameraphone image of an information whiteboard at Notting Hill Gate tube station in London is doing the rounds on the Internet right now. Someone at London Underground has a very dark sense of humour. 

I took a two-day Basic Sailing course with Manhattan Sailing School this last weekend with Tina, George and Raluca, and it was really a lot of fun!

We got to sail up the Hudson River and around New York Bay for two glorious sunny days in a J/24 sailboat called “Stag Hound,” and by the end of the course we’d really learnt a lot. Our tutor was a salty sea dog by the name of Owen; he was very good, I liked his teaching style. He taught us both the mechanics of maneuvering the boat (e.g. rigging, tacking, jibing etc.), plus the various safety procedures and navigational protocols that you need to sail a boat through busy shipping lanes.

The course was fairly intensive, running from 9am to about 7pm on both Saturday and Sunday — we were pretty tired at the end of both days. We were also each sent a thick American Sailing Association manual before the course, and now have the option to take a short multiple choice test and apply for basic certification.

L-R: Tina, George, Raluca and I sailing a J/24 sailboat on the Hudson River 

I recently finished Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, and enjoyed it very much. It was very dark and depressing in places, but often very funny and always entertaining.

It tells the story of a normally disfunctional family: A cold and distant patriarch dealing with Parkinson’s, a controlling and disappointed wife and mother obsessed with family reunions at Christmas, and their three variously damaged adult children.

On a lighter note: There’s a persistent rumour going around that jihadists are encouraged to blow themselves up and become martyrs with the promise that they will receive 17 virgins in heaven.

However, a scholar at my workplace told me that the translation of the term “virgin” from the original text of the Koran is highly questionable, and it could just as easily be translated as “raisin.”

Imagine the disappointed faces of the suicide bombers turning up in heaven, only to be rewarded with a small packet of Sun Maid raisins!

So the “chilling precedent” I mentioned in my last posting turned out to be much, much worse than I first thought; not only did the Police act as judge, jury and executioner in a country that supposedly abolished capital punishment over 30 years ago, but they managed to kill a completely innocent Brazilian electrician who had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. And as if the original reports of 5 bullets to the head weren’t bad enough, it now turns out that they “unloaded” 8 bullets into him, just to make sure he was really, really dead.

I’m completely disgusted and appalled by this wanton Police slaying. I accept that there might occasionally be a need to use deadly force when there is a genuine risk of innocent people being killed, and I also accept that it’s often going to be a tough call to make under stressful conditions. But you need to be really, really sure that there’s a genuine risk before you shoot someone in the head 8 times (or 7 times, plus one in the shoulder).

I can’t imagine what the poor guy’s family must be going through now. If the state’s response to terrorism is to start shooting innocent people at the slightest provocation, then the terrorists (the ones that haven’t blown themselves up, at least) can start feeling very pleased with themselves.

The news from London today is hard to believe — armed police basically executed a suspected bomber on a tube train at Stockwell Station.

Apparently, they chased him down the escalators and onto a train, where several plain-clothes officers bundled him to the ground and then shot him five times in the head in front of terrified passengers.

Presumably they will argue that they had to kill him before he had a chance to blow himself up, along with the nearby passengers… But nonetheless, this sets a chilling precedent in a country where the police are generally supposed to be unarmed.