Edging into Darkness

I didn't leave the office at all today, which I think was a mistake. I try to take a promenade around the building at least once a day, to stop my mind and body seizing up, but I was too busy today wasting energy on arguing the toss about spreadsheets, and not spending enough time justifying my existence.

Bar Rescue

When I was last in Seattle I accidentally addicted myself to Bar Rescue, a reality TV series where a big shouty man goes to a failing bar, and gets angry with the proprietors for letting their bar fail. It's a bit like Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, but with an enormous American ogre yelling at people rather than a constantly swearing Scotsman.

Fist Of Fun

Today I finally received my incredibly well-travelled Fist Of Fun DVD: it had been posted from Wales to London before Christmas, then forwarded to Hong Kong, where it sat in the post office, unclaimed, for two weeks, then returned to London, then posted on to Singapore a month later when we got a permanent address. At this speed, it would have been quicker to construct a time machine and return to the 1990s.

All you can eat

We got up much too early today: I only had about ten and a half hours' sleep, which was hardly enough. Yesterday I'd had the world's grumpiest man serve me the world's smallest pastry for breakfast, so today we went to an Italian restaurant on the top of a shopping mall for all you can eat pizza and pasta.

Why The Wire isn't as good as people say it is

It's a few years now since The Wire finished, but like a dread necromancer, the hordes of zombies it masters are still blindly blathering its brilliance have not succumbed to the ravages of time. And they cannot be reasoned with. In their Manichean worldview, there are only those who love The Wire unreservedly, and those who have not seen it yet. Oh, and a group of perverse untermenschen who have seen it, but fail to praise it to the heavens because they're just contrary, or idiots, or both. I'm not sure if black, white and one shade of grey is so much better than seeing things just in black and white after all. I'm not saying it's terrible. I'm not saying it lacks redeeming features. I'm not even denying that, in the main, I enjoyed watching it. But for it to be the best thing ever? Why all the fuss? It is, after all, a television series, and there's quite a few of those. And people can accept that you don't worship at the altar of Sex And The City or The Sopranos without branding you as a venal idiot.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Last night ended later than I expected; after the show I went to see some friends in Sheung Wan, shortly leaving for Singapore, and not wanting to have to transport their accumulated booze with them.

The Wire - Season 1 (Abridged)

Apparently "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love The Wire and those who haven't seen it. Yet." (The Daily Telegraph et al)

[I have to assume that there's also the small category of a few million farmers in Western China, a man on a boat off the coast of Somalia, and maybe a few pygmies hiding out in the Amazonian jungle.] There's also my friend Barry, who says he "watched the first 5 episodes and nothing of interest happened."

Now, if you are one of those people who haven't seen it yet, and you're not sure whether you should sacrifice around 60 hours of your life on an altar created from a box of DVDs you spent a hundred quid on / a handful of badly-remastered DVDs you bought from a man in a pub for twenty notes / some random intellectual property infringement you brought back from Shenzhen last week, then I have a gift for you:

The Wire - Season 1 (Abridged)  
[may contain spoilers, ad hominem attacks and displays of ignorance or hubris]