Re-using actors and the occasional failure to suspend that disbelief.

Do you ever find that casting choices can sometimes spoil your enjoyment of films and TV shows? I don’t mean the casting of someone in a role they don’t suit – that happens all the time (*cough* Stallone *cough* Dredd *cough*), but because of a role they previously had. Does it bug you that Chris Evans is both Captain America and The Human Torch? Even though both Cap and the Fantastic Four technically inhabit the same Marvel universe? Usually I can manage – the fact that Indiana Jones and Han Solo are the same person is fine, but just occasionally something like that will make me double take and cause me to fall out of the story.

I can find no real reason why this happens in some cases, but not in others – Whedon, for example, re-uses actors all over the shop, but this tends not to faze me – the casting always seems pretty bang on, but then when Tonks got her kit off in season two of Game of Thrones it smashed that suspension of disbelief to tiny pieces. The fact that Johnny Depp has played Willy Wonka, Sweeney Todd, The Mad Hatter and Ichabod Crane somehow doesn’t faze me. Martin Freeman and Ian Holm are Bilbo Baggins at different stages of his life, and that I can handle, but the next time I see the prologue to Fellowship and Holm is playing Bilbo at the Freeman age, I get the feeling it’s gonna bug the shit outta me.

This mini-rumination has absolutely no point to it, but I’m intrigued as to the reason why sometimes particular casting choices just intrude on my enjoyment of the story, and sometimes they don’t.

Voting and the problem with not doing it.

So, unless you don’t have the Internet you likely know all about Russell Brand’s recent Newsnight interview, during which he advocated not voting and revolution. His reasons were good ones, and true ones, but the action recommended is, in my own opinion, reckless. I think it would be difficult to argue against the notion that self-interest and the interests of the corporate world far outweigh the need to take genuinely effective action against the very immediate and urgent problems of poverty, climate change and wealth disparity. I’ve mentioned it before and it’s still true that our democracy, so-called, isn’t really a democracy at all, more an elective oligarchy. There is no real alternative. At least not yet, although the Green Party occasionally show promise.

But. There are consequences to withdrawing your vote. There are differences between the parties, albeit small ones. One of them is accused of indulging in the demonisation of the poor, vulnerable and disabled. Another is criticised for being seemingly unable to keep a single promise it ever makes and shows no sign of the smallest backbone. Another has huge problems, is too much like the others to offer a genuine alternative, but doesn’t do quite so many of the unpleasant things the other two do. While some things won’t change regardless of who is in power, some other things do. And it is important to choose which side of that line you want to stand on. You choose that side by voting.

There is another reason, a better one. If enough people stop voting (and we are already not far from the cusp of this), then there is the risk that those who do vote will vote for parties wholly abhorrent to the majority. There seems little chance at the moment of the British National Party enjoying the level of support they had a few years ago, and if the English Defence League ever decide to become a political party, it is unlikely they will get widespread support, but, and it’s a big but, if we all make like Brand and stop voting, it’s leaving a crack in the door for them to get in – they don’t need a percentage of the population to support them, they only need a percentage of those who vote. The more likely proposition is the BNP-lite UKIP, who have enjoyed an up-swelling in support recently, despite having no real manifesto for running the country other than wanting to blow a big raspberry at Europe. If you find you are having trouble bringing yourself to vote because of the discomfort of seemingly arbitrarily supporting a system you know is unworkable and the very definition of the modern phrase ‘epic fail’, then simply vote to halt the spreading of the far right. All those of us who are not racist dicks have a duty to our country, to vote and stop this ugliness from taking over. While it is perhaps an extreme comparison to make, it is nonetheless noteworthy that in 1930s Germany, the Nazi party gained power even though they weren’t particularly popular and never gained more than 37.4% of the vote. There is more than one type of revolution. The same applies in America. Whichever party is in power, little changes. But there is still a choice to make; an ideological line to stand on either side of.

So what is there to do? Brand was open and honest about the fact that he has no solution and is certainly not the person we should look to to provide one. Is there one? Well, maybe there’s the start of one. Make your mark on the ballot and choose your side, safe in the knowledge that it doesn’t matter much either way. Do it even if it is for no other reason than to neutralise a vote for the far right. And then, focus on your local community, for this is where your power to change truly lies. Be involved as much or as little as you like. Whether you run for a councillor’s spot, become a Community Support Officer, donate to a local homeless shelter or volunteer in a food bank or merely support your local library and businesses, you are a potent force for positive local change. And it’s like a ripple in an ocean; on the face of it there seems no way it can make a real difference on a grand scale, but we have the numbers, and if there is enough of us, we have the collective will to force those who purport to lead us down a different path.

Viva la revolución!

Children.

Kids, right? Selfish, greedy, dirty brats who think only of themselves with nary a sniff of empathy. It’s all about them, all day long. All they want to do is mess around, have fun and never be responsible. So selfish: if someone’s got something they haven’t got, or if there’s something they can’t have it’s just the world being unfair. They should get whatever they want, and screw everyone else. It’s tiresome.

Oh, wait. THEY’RE CHILDREN. THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT. *gives everybody else a long, long, look* WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR EXCUSE?

Yeah, I have a job. And yeah, there are other people that don’t. And yeah, out of all those people out of work, there are some who would rather not get a job, and would rather be supported by the state. Seriously, who the frick cares? Who decided that our society should be geared so intensely towards working for the majority of your life? If it really bothers you that other people don’t have a job while you do, perhaps you need to find another job. Perhaps you need to find another way to live your life. Perhaps you need to walk a mile in their shoes to disabuse yourself of the notion that they are living an unpressured charmed life at your expense. Besides, even if they are, the expense is such a vanishingly small fraction of your total tax payments that it would make no appreciable difference to the life you live if that money appeared in your pocket. It’s all about your perception that they have something that you don’t, and your instinctive feeling that they shouldn’t. Like a kid in nursery who has noticed another kid playing with your favourite toy.

I heard once on a BBC documentary that you don’t lose that knee-jerk selfishness until you are in your 30s. It seems to me in a good deal of us that it’s never truly lost. Not that I’m not childish. The hours wasted on Xbox exploring Cyrodiil, shooting Locust or shaving precious seconds off those lap times testify to that fact. I just don’t see the fun in getting all annoyed at a misguided sense of privilege derived from a feeling that everybody should live their lives the same way you do. I don’t mean that everybody should be able to do whatever they like with impunity, or have no sense of civic or moral responsibility, I mean that the Jam lyric “Work, work, work ‘til you die, ‘cause there’s plenty more fish in the sea to fry” are not necessarily words to live by.

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

Well. I’m still less than I was. But the progress, it is also less than it was. I kind of ran out of steam on the regime I was on. If it’s supposed to be a change for life, then it can’t be something you get sick of, right? It’s gotta be sustainable. I didn’t so much as fall off the bandwagon, it was more like I was being crushed under its wheels.

So, I’ve altered it a little. I’m now going for more of a gradual long term improvement, rather than quick de-chubbing. I no longer feel quite like King of the Toads. It’s a bit tricky at the moment, because there’s not enough money to go on with the swimming, but it isn’t like there aren’t cheaper, nay free ways of getting exercise, so I reckon I’ll manage. Like they say, slow and steady wins the race. And loses the chins. Eventually.

A quest to find a haircut that doesn’t make my heart hurt.

Not too difficult you’d think, right? Apparently where I live, it is a bit tricky. A little while ago I resolved to stop going to the hairdresser I had been going to for, well, for a long time. It’s local, but only for the house I grew up in. Since I moved out it’s been a bit more of a trek, but I continued to go not out of some strange sense of loyalty, but just because I’ve always gone there. Then, as it ruins so many things, this long-standing arrangement was ruined by The Daily Mail. It had always been there, sitting on the side for waiting customers to peruse, should they wish. But then it began to inform her worldview. Seemingly unknowingly, she went from the friendly hairdresser I’d always had, to friendly but with a nice line in unpleasant conversation.

Our town is, supposedly, being overrun with foreign people. And not just those brown ones that are easy to spot, oh no. Polish. They’re everywhere. A factory that someone she knows works at, or someone they know, or possibly... (you get the idea; there might not have even been anyone in the first place, but anyway). This factory is, she says, something like 70% Polish, workforce-wise (gotta love the research that must have gone into coming up with that guestimate). And they’re making the pleasant, hardworking English people feel uncomfortable, like strangers in their own place of work. It’s why someone else she knows (probably) has a kid that can’t get a job now he’s graduated from University. She doesn’t seem to have noticed the flaw in this Mail-informed illogical position; that graduates tend not to apply for jobs at factories, unless either they need something temporary, or their degree meant nothing (like mine). It makes for an unhappy haircut. Now, I could engage in some political debate in an attempt to show her how much bollocks she is spouting. But I do have to travel a fair way to even get here, so I let it go, and resolve to find a hairdresser closer to home.

There’s a barber within walking distance, so I start going there. Seems reasonable. Friendly chap, decently priced. Yep this’ll do. For a bit, at least. Until one day, when over the radio comes the speech made by the unfathomably brave Malala Yousafzai when she addressed the UN in an attempt to progress her worthy goal of helping to provide education to girls in places where they don’t get it. The girl was shot in the head by someone who, at best, can only be considered an utter fucktard of the highest order, at 15 for campaigning for education for girls. Because she is fucking amazing (or because the cunt who shot her is, as mentioned, a fucktard) she survived, and was brought here to the UK for treatment. Now, if that isn’t a statement about how our health care system is world-beating, I don’t what is. Anyway, during the radio broadcast of part of her speech (is there a more eloquent way to sum up the nature of the world’s ills and the way forwards than “Education is the only solution”? No. No, there is not) my new friendly barber, calm as you like, declares his fervent wish that she just “...fuck off home.”

Now, what followed this is a rather awkward silence. Until my new friendly barber proceeded to dig himself in deeper, declaring that “I’m not being funny” while trying to point out that yes, we should treat her, but then simply ship her back, because we already have enough people over here that shouldn’t be here. Perhaps I should have pointed out that in doing that, the most likely outcome would have been said fucktard doing his damndest to finish the job, so why even bother treating her at all? Unfortunately, I had been focusing all my energies on trying to stop myself bursting into tears from the first moment he’d spoken. One of my problems is a distinct lack of balls in situations such as this. Maybe I should have responded with ‘no you’re not being funny, you’re being a cunt’. As it was, I stayed quiet, paid for my haircut, left and resolved not to return.

Luckily, I’m not yet out of options, as there are about another four hairdressers within walking distance, including one with a rather attractive young blonde lady who was very pleasant when I went for a haircut once. That, in addition to a lack of horrifying bigotry, has got to be worth a few extra quid, right?

Why? This is why.

During my Interweb adventures recently, I came across a strange thing. One of those single people, waxing lyrical about how amazing being without a lover is. It would seem this person considered being in a relationship pretty much equivalent to death. Why would anyone want to be with the same person for months, years, or, worse, their entire lives? While I was glad this person was so happy with their state of affairs, I felt it might be worth exploring that question. Why would anyone want that? Well, in my case, here follows just a couple of reasons.

Because she couldn’t step on an insect for any amount of money – she could not live with the guilt. Because she loves to run for the sheer love of running, not for competition, not for ‘self-improvement’ (ugh), but for fun. Because there is nobody she won’t see the best in – a skill with empathy unmatched by anyone else I’ve ever known – a skill I’ve learned much from. Because even after 16 years, I still want to jump her bones every single time I see her. Because she loves me for (or in spite of) the silly things I spend time and money on. Because she saved me from all the other lives I might have lived without her. Because when our daughters are grown, they will look back and consider what their mother did for them, and what she instilled in them, and they will be overwhelmed with gratitude.

Service. Or lack thereof.

You might have noticed a minor interruption in content this last month or so. Well, you see, my laptop developed a fault some time back. Problem with the screen – couldn’t see anything but flickering static when online. Since I bought the thing from a leading retailer I’ve been forking out money each month for a sort of insurance thing where they would fix anything or replace that which proved unfixable.

So, off I pop to hand the thing over. Turns out it’ll take nine days before I get it back. That’s quite a bit longer than expected, but maybe they’re busy. I hand it over and leave, muttering a little under my breath.

Nine Internet-free days go by. By now the number of funny cat pictures I’ve missed must be astronomical. The previous day (that is, after eight days), they figured out that the laptop is still under the manufacturer’s warranty so they need to return it to them to fix –they can’t touch it. Eight days. To figure that out. So that’s another week to wait. And the monthly payment turns out to be wasted money because we would’ve got this anyway due to it still being covered by the manufacturer.

We wait another week, through gritted teeth. We head on in. It was picked up yesterday. So once they knew it needed returning to the manufacturer it took six days to arrange a pick up. So that’s 14 days so far, and now they’re telling me it shouldn’t be more than another five in a tone that suggests I’m expected to be impressed by this. The pleasant person behind the counter telling us this didn’t seem to understand why we found this surprising and frustrating. Where in the world would this be considered decent service?

We finally get the laptop back almost three weeks after bringing it in. We’ve learnt a few things in that time. We’ve learnt that we are cancelling the payment we’re currently making in case anything goes wrong. As the laptop is junk anyway, we’ll be glad of an excuse to get a new one. And we learnt that there is a major retailer of electronic goods and services that will have to manage without any more of our money. Not that that’s likely to bother them much, but even a minor protest is still a protest.