Finally I Like Google Glass.

When I first read about Google Glass I thought it would be a bit shit. It is essentially a basic computer that you wear on your face, with the ability to connect via Bluetooth to your smartphone and use your GPS and FaceBook and things. It's a cool concept, but I didn't think I'd ever want one. Really, FaceBook pisses me off enough as it is. I don't need it literally on my face at all times. I really don't.

However, the more I read about Google Glass, the less shit it seems. App developers worldwide are looking at ways that they can make it useful. There are apps designed that will identify people for you, so that you can look at them and the database will tell you who they are, for example. That's a little bit stalkery, but useful for, say, people who have a lot of contacts and aren't too great at remembering names. There are apps being designed that will allow you to take photos by winking, which is kind of adorable and will probably result in many hilarious misunderstandings.

There are already gaming apps about. One that caught my attention was StarFinder, where the goal is to find the constellations in the night sky. Doesn't that sound just lovely? The Glass technology is also already capable of supporting multiplayer gaming, even though no apps have been developed for that yet. But it'll probably be pretty cool when they are, putting the reality into virtual reality.

And it annoys me that I'm starting to get excited about Google Glass. Because I already have glasses.

I don't like going to see 3D films because it's annoying as fuck to have to wear two pairs of glasses, even for just a couple of hours. I would definitely not like to be perpetually wearing two pairs of glasses, no matter what the benefits of Google Glass. So I finally start to like it and I can't even use it because I would have to sacrifice sight itself in order to do so.

And then I came across this, in which it is explained that Google Glass can be altered to fit snugly onto your glasses, and you will look like less of a prick than people just wearing the Glass headset.

Hot.

I'm officially smitten.

Why would you pick on Disney?

When I was about fifteen, I overheard one of my classmates announce to her friends that, although she loved Disney films when she little and they never had any negative effects on her, she would never let her kids watch them. Ever. She hated it, she said, when her parents let her little brother watch them. Because of all the subliminal dick messages.

Face was firmly planted in palm for much of the remaining day.

Disney has had some unwanted publicity regarding penises, mostly from the kind of fundie nutbags that also have a problem with Harry Potter and Pokémon because they encourage devil worship or some other bullshit. Apparently, the priest in The Little Mermaid has bellends for knees and Aladdin thinks that good teenagers take off their clothes (the actual line is “Good kitty, just take off and go”).

Frankly, this kid deserves a better parent.

I never cared enough to do more than Google for thirty seconds and then shrug half-heartedly. I am still not all that bothered.

But soon I will have a goddaughter, so I have started thinking about responsibility. A little bit. Not an awful lot. But enough. Admittedly, I will be the kind of godmother who purposely teaches her that ‘clitoris’ is a good word to ask daddy to define at the dinner table. But I also want to be the kind of godmother who introduces her to things that she can fall in love with and keep hold of forever. I’m thinking Pokémon and Harry Potter. I’m thinking Adam Ant and Amanda Palmer.

I’m also thinking Disney.

Excuse for a moment that I do not think that Disney peppers its films with dicks.  I actually think that the people who see dicks in Disney films are very sexually frustrated (most of them were teenagers) or in denial about something (a lot of them were fundies) or both. Certainly, they are reminiscent of that do-gooding douche from Donnie Darko who turned out to be into kiddie porn. Or this bitch; she seems like the kind of scumbag who wouldn’t let her poor girl watch Disney films.

Suppose for a moment that it does say ‘SEX’ right here in Simba’s dust.

Well … so the fuck what?

At least it was subtle. That doesn’t even look that much like ‘sex’.

And who is even thinking about sex during such a heart-rending moment in the film?

Kids’ shows get away with a hell of a lot more than most people ever notice. Definitely more than kids ever do. More than I ever did, and I was quite an observant and vulgar-minded child.

 

Penelope Pitstop had a vibrator in her car.

Frankly, I don’t care that I saw those things. I will happily show them to my goddaughter. And when she asks why I think it so much funnier than she does, I will answer her honestly. Dick jokes are hilarious, no matter what age you are. The countless hours of my childhood that I spent watching The Young Ones and Blackadder with my dad is testament to that.

Fuck. If I’m going to worry about what will be a bad influence on a child, I am going to worry about pretty much every other thing in the world before I get anywhere near Disney. I am going to worry about bitchy magazines that make women feel perpetually fat and ugly. I am going to worry about the fact that we live in a society in which Samantha Brick is allowed to voice her hideous little opinion on a nationwide forum. I am going to worry about the fact that people exist who give a fuck about Katie Shitting Price. I am going to worry about people who think it is appropriate to dress babies in shirts that read “Daddy’s Little Porn Star”. I am going to worry that Rihanna is considered a fucking role model.

I have written a list of things I will buy for my goddaughter. At the top of the list is Aladdin on DVD, partly because the list is in alphabetical order, but mostly because that film is fucking ace. Dicks or no.

And I just can’t deny her this pretty face!

No one this cute would corrupt anyone, surely?

If I Needed Proof to Suspect We Were Living in a Video Game ... Mothafuckin' Pain Rays.

I am beginning to think that the Americans are the bad guys.

Alright, I'm not. They might be a bit slow sometimes, but they're not evil.

But they do have the kinds of weapons you would expect of Darth Vader and his dark side ilk. Over the past few decades, for instance, the US military has spent $120 million developing a pain ray.

And the fucker works.

Every aspect of the pain ray - officially titled the Active Denial - feels like it has stepped right out of some shithot sci fi. The key bit of hardware required to make it work is even called a 'gyrotron', which amplifies microwaves by rotating a ring of electrons held in place by cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets. The electrons and the microwaves resonate, and the resulting waves are passed to an antenna, which shoots the beam at the target.

That just sounds cool, doesn't it? In fact, it sounds so cool that I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't mashed together out of sciencey-sounding works by the writers of Futurama.

Actually, since the late 1980s, the Air Force Research Laboratory has been working with military contractor Raytheon Company to develop this beast of a machine.

The Active Denial target pain receptors called thermal nociceptors, which are less than 0.4mm beneath the skin. In a matter of seconds, the target feels as if the surface of their skin is being roasted. The sensation begins with a tingly warmth which rapidly becomes excruciating, a fiery torture encompassing the whole body until either the beam is switched off or you get the hell out of its way.

And then you feel fine again.

The intensity of the pain is such that the body's natural instinct will be to flee. Once said body is out of the line of fire, it just goes away. The pain subsides and you feel better. There are no measurable side effects yet seen, and research done on this gun has been exemplary in its depth and thoroughness. In more than 11,000 tests, less than ten people received any injuries from the Active Denial at all. Six of the injuries were blisters, none larger than a pea; the worst of the injuries were small burns, none more dangerous than a bad sun burn, easily dealt with and free of complications.

The Active Denial has been designed for use in prisons, war zones and riot situations. It causes less damage than current methods of subduing those who get violent, such as batons and tasers. Those currently in use have to be carted around on the back of huge trucks, but the developers have managed to scale them down to the size of a large rifle. They are working on making them more portable still, but the authorities are reluctant to use them.

All the research suggests that this thing is safe. Various experts support it. Its flawless performance is almost what makes it so scary that something with go terribly wrong. But, as far as non-lethal weaponry goes, this is some of the most advanced technology going.

And it is kind of mind-blowing.

It's a motherfucking pain ray.

Shi-min Fang; a science writer’s hero.

Alright, so I’m not a science writer, and I’m not even an aspiring science writer because I already know that I would get far too fangirly around all those physicists with their big, sexy brains to do it with any degree of serious professionalism. But I do like science and writing, and I respect more than anyone else the people who take risks to get the truth out there into the public sphere, especially when the risks are so high.

Shi-min Fang is a Chinese science writer who has risked far more than just libel cases (which are bothersome enough as it is) to expose the straight-up lies of some people in China. He has recently won the Maddox prize – which is typically awarded to people who promote science despite perhaps facing difficult or hostility in so doing – for exposing scientific misconduct in China.

Since 2000, Shi-min Fang has been exposing fraudulent ‘scientists’ who took advantage of China’s celebration of any science and technology to publicize nonsensical, pseudoscientific articles, flog fake medicines and carry out dangerous medical procedures without clinical trials. He has made it his business as a science writer to root out those who are fakers and expose them, despite whatever threats they offer him, using his website New Threads to make this information accessible to the Chinese general public.

Many have fought his allegations, no matter how truthful they were. He has been sued more than ten times and, due to the inefficiency and bias of the Chinese court, has even wrongly lost once, as well as being assaulted with pepper spray. In 2010 hired thugs attacked Shi-min Fang with a hammer with the intention of his murder when he challenged the efficacy of a surgical procedure developed by their boss as well as the heavily padded CV he used to persuade people of his worth. Shi-min Fang is responsible for opening up a forum for criticism and debate in a society that was otherwise devoid of such freedoms.

Despite all the dangers he has faced, he maintains that it was all worth it because of the good he has done for the scientific community and the general public in China. His one concern, he admits, is the danger faced by his wife and children.

Frankly, that takes balls. And he deserves that prize, and the £2000 that comes with it, and so much more.

And he is not the only one who does. He is one of many people who risk so much just to make the world a little bit more honest. Here is hoping that one day we won’t need people like Shi-min Fang. But until then, let’s just be glad they’re around.

Apparently, I Blogged Too Soon.

A couple of days ago I wrote this about what I've been doing recently, going into great detail about Tiny People Fabulous, the short film group I started with some friends. I wrote about how exciting it all was for me despite the sheer amount of delays we've suffered and how happy I am to finally have a film up. I had to regretfully admit that the first film we shot was still not edited, despite us filming it all in one magnificently catastrophic afternoon before Christmas.

Well, we edited it the next day and it has been live on YouTube for just over 24 hours now!

Needless to say, I am deliriously happy.

This film is already not our best and it will probably remain one of the sillier, clumsier films we have in our modest portfolio, but that isn't a problem for us.

"I'm Not SpongeBob" was the first film we actually did. It required one location and one actor and so it was generally quite a simple film to make. We were still getting used to being in that sort of environment and we did not really know what we were doing, and then a load of really annoying things happened that could so easily have screwed the whole thing over.

But we did it anyway.

Harry on set, wondering what
on Earth he got himself into.

And I, for one, will always cherish it as the film that properly kicked off Tiny People Fabulous. It was the first time that we, as a group, stopped dicking around and actually started doing something productive - and that felt pretty special.

I am supremely grateful to everyone who was involved in this film, and I'm not just saying that because I didn't really do a lot apart from fill a bath (with kettles; typically, my boiler decided to stop working on the day) and buy a pizza (I take care of the people in my films, dammit!).

Not really knowing what we were doing for this one, we all jumped into it with the sort of optimistic attitude that so easily could have seen us make some monumental cock-ups. We were very lucky to have some great people involved to get us through it.

A massive thanks most certainly needs to go to the star of this film, Harry Deacon. Having known us for all of about two weeks, he agreed to get next to naked and spend the afternoon in a lukewarm bath while we filmed him being pelted him with sponges. That is possibly the definition of dedication to a commitment and he deserves a hell of a lot of credit for it. Not to mention the fact that at least one person (who shall remain nameless) has admitted to watching it a few times just to look at him topless a bit more.

Then we have our very patient director, Amy, and cameraman, Lee, who put up with me, Tim and Rianna behaving like children for most of the shoot. It took us hours to get the bath shots finished because a lot of them were spoilt by us being silly. Loads of times, Rianna threw the sponges too hard or too softly or at the wall over Harry's shoulder. Then there were all the times that we talked over it or laughed at something or generally behaved like idiots where the camera could either see or hear us.

I held up my camera and said "Look like we're seriously
shooting a film". This was what they did.

The three of us then went to buy pizza, and Amy, Lee and Harry managed to get the rest of the film finished in thirty minutes, including a very dramatic toilet shot that still has me in fits of laughter every time I see it.

For fuck's sake,
Rianna!

Rianna was hiding in
the kitchen with the
intention of scaring me
while I took this.

Making this film gave all of TPF the confidence to go on, even though we didn't get it finished until the other day. At the end of the shoot, we felt great about having actually done it and, even though it took us some time to get around to editing it because of Christmas and essays and VO recordings, without it we might have let everything peter out into nothing instead of coming as far as we have - and will.

After all that, I don't think that our first attempt turned out all that badly. I think it's actually pretty good. And funny. Whether or not you agree is a matter of opinion, but that's all right. We're not trying to please everyone; we're trying to just be us and to have fun creating something we can call our own. And we are. Hopefully it will be entertaining. If not, we'll just try harder next time.

"I'm Not SpongeBob" seems to have been received well by the people who have seen it so far. I am happy with the responses we've got, at least. It has been described as being "very you" (meaning me), which I take only as a compliment.

Shaky and silly as this film most certainly is, I don't care. I love it anyway. It was a first attempt. And not a bad one at that.

Here it is!

So I Finally Feel Productive!

Generally, I spend most of my time procrastinating and / or nerding out, for that is the typical behaviour of the dorky student. But I have been doing things recently that are making me feel productive for longer than it takes to do them, which is the downfall of any work done towards my degree.

For the past few months, I have been putting a lot of effort into something that started out with a bunch of silly jokes - as do most of the things I do. But this, unusually, has got me excited in a way that the feeling has persisted since last October and it is still making me delirious happy.

Tim

Last year, as part of my degree, I did a module studying Short Film (and I got a first in it, which is a bit irrelevant, but made me super happy). Tim, a friend from the course, and I decided that it would be fun to make the films that we had written and had planned to write, rather than having just a bunch of short film scripts gathering digital dust once we had finished the semester. We also figured that this would be a good way of building up a creative portfolio before graduating from university, not only for us but for anyone else who wanted to get involved - other writers, directors, actors, editors, crew... We bounced the idea around some of the people on our course and they seemed to like it.

Then, one day, Tim and I showed up for a seminar that had been cancelled. Neither of us has received the email informing us of this, sent little more than an hour before the start of class while we were in different lessons. In a bit of a first-world-problem bitch fit (in which we bemoaned how much we were paying to be at university and still getting stood up), we decided that we did not need our teacher and were perfectly capable of writing and making short films by ourselves.

We were sort of right.

In that afternoon, we came up with a name, half a dozen potential script ideas, an email address, a Twitter account, a Facebook Members' Group and a Facebook Like page. In short, Tiny People Fabulous was born!

Terry the Toucan, the mascot
of Tiny People Fabulous

Over the next few weeks, the two of us met regularly to expand on this. We messaged people on our course asking if anyone else wanted to get their films made. We left link to our Facebook Members' Group on the message boards of various local and uni-based drama groups. We turned some of our script ideas into actual scripts.

As the weeks went on, people started noticing us and asked if they could get involved. There was a massive (but inevitable) imbalance in the favour of young actresses, so we spent an afternoon emailing anyone who looked valuable asking if they would like to get involved. Some of them did.

We started filming what was going to be our first short film shortly before Christmas of 2012. We had loads of issues from the beginning, but we had expected that we would and we approached them with the kind of optimism and eagerness typical of such newbies as us.

On set of the first film we shot!

On the day of shooting, for instance, the heating went out in my house, so we had to fill a bath with water from the kettle. It took more than an hour. It was hilarious.

Somehow, miraculously, we got the whole of the film shot in one afternoon.

Then we had to delay the voice-over recording, which meant that the editing was also delayed, and we could not get the film finished by the deadline we had set for ourselves. We had hoped that we would be able to have at least one done before the end of the year. 

We did not.

We have since been told that that deadline was wildly over-ambitious and that there was no way we could have done it without cutting some serious corners. So we chose to see our first fuck-up as a learning curve rather than a failure. This film is still not out, sadly, but it is very nearly finished, so it should be very soon!

We took a break over Christmas while everyone went home from university. I used the time I had free to get some scripts written and to do as much admin stuff as I could so that we could get right into creating when we got off our holidays. We began shooting another film (sadly also not yet edited) upon our return to London in January, which we had hoped to release before the end of the month to suit its theme.

One setback that has plagued us is our own silliness.
I had to put Tim and Rianna in the naughty corner to stop them
disturbing the process.

Again, we have been advised that this was somewhat ambitious of us, and again we decided to learn from this.

We did not.

Around the end of January 2013, we planned and shot a film designed to be released by Valentines' Day. Needless to say, it was not.

Kim, director of "Pulled"

We had all of the filming done well within our chosen deadline, but we had the same issues with editing as we did with the other films. We had very few editors and even less available technology, and we are still now sorting out putting it together. But being sorted out it is, and come together it will! It was an amazing experience making this film. Our director, Kim, was incredible and had such amazing and specific ideas - she knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was original and cool. She did great things with the script and made it very personal and very unique. We were lucky enough to be working with some devoted actors who pushed themselves to do new things for the sake of our art.

Dressing our beautiful leading lady
on the set of "Pulled"

For all of our films so far (excepting some uncomfortable friction with a temperamental director), I have worked with some incredible people, mostly students at university with me but not exclusively. Everyone has been gloriously dedicated and enthusiastic about everything; their attitude has made every process feel so much more exciting.

Working on a creative project personal to us with no other reason than that we wanted to was - and is - amazing. I have had so much fun with Tiny People Fabulous despite the setbacks that pretty much all of our projects so far have suffered. Keeping optimistic has been essential, but I think it is beginning to pay off.

Admittedly, our first film is short and silly - and so our most of the others we have planned for the future - but it is our silly film and it suits us perfectly! Tiny People Fabulous was born in silly circumstances (the first three or four film ideas we had were based purely on dick jokes of some description) and it would not have made sense to us to do any of it without a sense of fun.

Our first uploaded film, "Get Out Of My Room", is a great way, I think, of introducing Tiny People Fabulous to the world. Being based loosely on real life, it lets you all see what you're getting in for when you get into us - and unashamedly so.

We shot it in one absurd but efficient afternoon, edited it over the next few days and actually had the whole thing complete in about a week or so. It all went incredibly smooth and went pretty much how we had hoped the others would. It was a far simpler film to put together (with only one location and nothing as fancy even as voice-overs), and having both editors and technology freeing up right around the time we needed them certainly did not hurt the process.

Our modest editing crew

We are very pleased with how it turned out and supremely grateful to everyone involved in making it, as well as everyone who has watched it already and offered us some feedback.

I am so looking forward to the next few weeks and the release of the rest of our films already in progress. I cannot wait to start shooting again because I have already had so much fun and worked with some incredible people. I can only see good things happening for Tiny People Fabulous.

On set of our very late January production.

In the meantime, I can only offer a thousand of my most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has contributed even slightly to everything we have achieved so far and to offer this to the rest of the world...

Thanks!

Tim and I on set. We're definitely not messing around.

Love Story, Via YouTube

We're all vaguely aware that the fairytale/Hollywood presentations of love are a bit twisted; there's always a happily ever after and you can always sort of see it coming, no matter how long and annoying the story leading up to it might be. No one above the age of about twelve really expects that that is the way love actually is. It is generally taken for granted that the whole world isn't quite as romantic as pop culture would like.

I happen to be really into my comedy musicians. As in, beyond what is ordinarily considered healthy. And I have noticed that comedians tend to know a hell of a lot more about love than songwriters. Instead of arguing about this, I am going to take a handful of chosen songs and let you decide for yourself whether or not you agree. (This is also my way of pressuring my friends into listening to more of my silly music, but they don't need to know that.)

So. You see someone, and they make you feel like this...
(Song starts at 1.10)

And they probably make you feel a bit like this too...

And you're terribly afraid that this might happen...

But eventually you pluck up the courage to say something like this...

And if you're lucky, you get this...

Although it'd be a shame to end up like this...
(Song starts at 1.23)

And (if you're anything like me) there may be a bit of this...

But, ultimately, it's going to work out okay, because...

See what I mean? They know their stuff. And frankly half of these are more romantic than most of the bog-standard love songs floating around...

That was too easy. I apologise. I don't regret it though.

Incidentally (haha; it's a pun), I personally think that these are two of the loveliest love songs ever written and they were both written by comedians:

"Incidentally" by Scott Edgar.

"I Think I Like You" by Paul McDermott.