The Waffle Group

(credit: Malkolm Bust it Away Photography)

Watching Revolutionary Road has, arguably, changed my life.

I didn’t attempt suicide, but it is the kind of film that makes one think that perhaps suicide isn’t such a dubious option after all.

Frank Wheeler (Leonard di Caprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) decide their suburban American-Dream lifestyle is actually more like an American-Nightmare. The kind of nightmare where, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get from where you are to where you want to be. It’s like wading through molasses.

April is an actress, but the small town, amateur acting circuit doesn’t do her justice. Her acting career is over.

Everyday, Frank competes in the rat race to the top of the corporate ladder, but he doesn’t look like he has much prospect of winning. His father worked for the same company and didn’t make much of an impression either. He finds his job unbearably dull, and foresees that his fate will mirror that of Dad’s.

They have two children, and people with children need to behave responsibly and provide economically for their off-springs’ well-being.

Frank and April argue a lot and are completely miserable a lot. Their relationship is clearly going to hell, because they both hate their lives (although not necessarily each other).

The quiet desperation of their lives (quiet, even taking the shouting-matches into account) leads them to make a revolutionary decision. Let’s move to Paris, France! The art scene there is much more developed, April can take up acting again and support Frank and the children. Frank can spend the time to figure out what he really wants to do with his life, and then he can do it. This movie is set in the 50′s, so that really is some crazy revolutionary idea right there.

SPOILER ALERT

Outstanding! At this point I began to think that perhaps this movie was going to brighten up a bit. It’s Hollywood, right? It’s Leo and Kate, from Titanic. There might still be a sad ending, but at least if they go to Paris the whole movie won’t carry this burden of crushing-defeat the whole way through.

Everyone else in this 50′s setting is bemused by the Wheelers. Leaving the USA? Going to France? The woman is going to be the bread-winner? Okaaaaaay. In fact the only character, other than the Wheeler’s, who thinks extracting oneself from one’s middle-class prison is an excellent idea is a guy from a psychiatric facility (brilliantly played my Michael Shannon. The film is worth seeing just for the scenes he is in. I even recommend skipping the rest of the film in order to avoid wanting to kill yourself at the end). At one point, Michael Shannon’s character tells the couple, “Hopeless emptiness. Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

So, the crazy guy cheers them on and commends them on their brave decision. This just sets the viewer up to take a huge emotional dive into the depths of depression, mortification, and total numbing impotence.

From this point onward, shit happens. Things do not get better. Hollywood does not play its usual tricks.

April falls pregnant. Frank, because he no longer cares about his job, manages to get offered a promotion (à la Office Space, but depressing instead of hilarious). The Wheeler’s dream (or perhaps just April’s dream) of a European life spirals away and dissipates into nothing. Nothing will change. Frank will continue in the rat race that can never be won. April will continue in her suburban prison, overseen by her juvenile wardens. Even the psychiatric-ward guy lambastes them on during his final visit, and despite his enraged screaming during that scene, he seems like the most sane character in the film.

With her escape route to Paris blocked, desperation strikes April again and she carries out a home abortion. Then she bleeds to death.

The end.

—

Highly Abridged Review

A really excellent film, but not enjoyable. Too disheartening to be enjoyable.

To get enjoyment out of it, only watch the scenes starring Michael Shannon.

—

I mentioned something about this film changing my life. I think the life changes I’ve implemented deserve a post of their own, uncoloured by this black and foreboding tale.

I’ve noticed a bunch of adverts around Joburg for two expos taking place this weekend — the Sexpo “Health, sexuality & lifestyle expo” and the rAge Expo “Computers | Gaming | Technology”.

The dates of the expos overlap, but the event organisers probably weren’t too concerned that their respective target markets would.

Beat my 150 metre 50k Racewalker record and win an exciting prize!

Do you have enough patience to defeat me?

You must submit a screenshot to halfhaggis [at] gmail [dot] com or no prize for you.

****

Update: Jan 30, 2009 @ 12:20

The first entry is in! Congratulations to Kittychunk, who will shortly receive a wonderful prize. Next prize winner will need to beat his record of 180 metres!

Do you have enough patience to defeat Kittychunk?

Update: Jan 30, 2009 @ 16:20

Congratulations to Michael who has upped the stakes! 320 metres to beat to claim your prize!

Michael will be receiving his wonderful prize shortly.

Do you have the patience to defeat Michael?

Following on from yesterday’s post, I thought I’d have a look at the balanced reporting of Zimbabwe’s Herald. I was a little surprised to find that they have a web-presence, considering the state of things in that country at the moment, but I suppose Mugabe makes certain that his mouth-piece is as widely heard as possible.

However, even the Herald doesn’t pretend that anyone is having any fun in Zimbabwe.

I go on a lot about media and software freedom, but what do I actually do about it?
Realising that talk without action achieves nothing, I decided to put some of my hard-earned money behind some of my principles.

In recent times I’ve become quite disheartened by the record industry’s protection racket. Their business model is failing and, since they are big bureaucratic monoliths, they are struggling to adapt. Their approach has been to stick DRM on everything, which basically restricts your ability to do what you want with something that you paid for, and should technically belong to you.
They say all these measures are to protect their artists, but they really only protect the company profits (and seem to be failing at that anyway). This draconian nonsense caused me to boycott music. I just don’t buy it any longer.

That is, until I looked around on the internet a little and found a vast resource of independent “record labels.” A few examples are:

• emusic
• Jamendo
• Heck, just have a look at my bookmarks

I purchased two albums from Magnatune, and 50% of what I paid goes directly to the artist.
But Magnatune doesn’t stop there. They tell you to share the album with three friends. They figure that if people are going to be dishonest, then that’ll happen anyway — regardless of whether record companies try to do something about it or not. Might as well encourage sharing — cheap marketing.
Another bonus is that you, as the consumer, get to choose what you think the music is worth. The price isn’t set you decide — but the more you pay the more the artist gets.
The albums I bought are

• Nagari — by Solace; and
• Beat Generation Mad Trick — by Emma’s Mini

Take a listen. If you like them, let me know and I’ll give you the url and password to download them (or you can just come over to my house and copy the files — geography and familiarity permitting).

The other music sites have varying business models and they all work differently. Throughout though, the music is DRM-free, and that’s what really matters to me.

I haven’t stopped at music. I’ve extended my approach to software
I’m a big advocate of open source software, but I’ve never given anything back to the community. I use the software. I tell people about it. I lord its merits.
But if everyone only did that, there wouldn’t be any software to promote.

The logical way to contribute to open source software is to write some code and submit it to a software project. I suck at writing code — so there goes that one.
I’m not too bad at writing deciphered words, so I tried contributing to the Ubuntu documentation team. That didn’t last very long. Writing documentation quickly became tedious and mundane. Perhaps I’ll look back into it sometime.
No, the easiest thing to do is contribute money to a project. It minimises your time investment and optimises the value of the contribution because that money can be used to pay an expert to do what you would have done poorly.
I sent the team that develops the Firefox add-on, DownThemAll, a donation. It was really a sort of experiment. They sent me an email thanking me for the contribution. Now I intend to send donations to other open source projects which I find to be particularly useful, and well implemented.

It’s interesting to me that I was inspired to make these donation because my brother had registered a shareware application called Total Commander. It’s not open source, and it only works on Windows. Still, he spoke about how he was so impressed with it that he figured the developer deserved the money.
That sentiment seems to have had a lasting impression on me.

Angie turned 28 yesterday.

As part of the celebratory activities, we went for dinner at The Observatory Restaurant.

The restaurant is part of the Aloe Ridge Hotel which is situated in a game reserve. I didn’t properly register this fact before arriving there. The reality of a restaurant inside a game reserve was driven home to both of us as we drove there.
The tarred roads ended and we drove upon the dirt roads. Depending on where we were along the road, the quality of the road surface sometimes left much to be desired. As we drew closer we were warned to drive slowly as there might be hedgehogs crossing.
Didn’t see any though. Perhaps this was because of the next warning sign which mentioned the crossing of rhino and hippos at 40km/h. I felt a little more nervous at this point, but I figured they wouldn’t want to stampede over my car.

Once we finally reached the restaurant (for some reason I was surprised that it was placed near the top of a ridge) we got out of the car and were met by zebra.  Up close and personal. They wandered over to us and seemed to expect us to provide them with something to eat. When we didn’t oblige, they ambled off amicably.
We started to follow them since they were headed in the direction of the restaurant, but another restaurant patron stopped us.

“You can’t go there. There’s a rhino in the path.”

Ha ha. These jokers.
And yet there was a rhino in the path. I took some photos, but they came out blurry since I wasn’t brave enough to use the flash and risk enraging the rhino (who seemed a little restless in any case, especially when it started herding the zebra).
Eventually the hotel staff herded us to the restaurant and the security of brick and mortar.

Food at this restaurant is excellent, and I highly recommend it.
In addition, during the night one is called from their table to take a look at the night-sky. I vividly saw a cluster of stars on the edge of the milky-way that appeared as a fuzzy, barely discernible blob by the naked eye. I saw another galaxy, beyond our own.
My understanding was that we would also be shown a comet, and possibly other sights during the evening. Unfortunately we had to leave a little early because the Neil-and-Angie-Spawn was making Angie tired and nauseous. Even so, we both had a wonderful time and are probably going to be forced to return in the future.

Way back on the 30th of August, Angie and I anniversaried! That’s four years of married love (plus five earlier years of unmarried, sinful love of the flesh).

We went to a place called Valverde Country Hotel for one night. It’s situated in Muldersdrift, along the M5 beyond Oakfield Farm.
It being situated beyond Oakfield Farm is significant, because we were married at Oakfield Farm. Sneaky me.

I didn’t tell Angie where we were going, so as we drove past Oakfield she suddenly looked a little perplexed. Hehe. I was a sneak.
After a little while she eventually asked where we were headed, and I refused to say.

As we came into sight of the place, the first thing I noticed was the sign advertising Paintball. I was already a little nervous about the whole thing because our anniversary is special and I wanted the venue and the experience to be beautiful. I was quite worried that Angie wouldn’t like it, and since I hadn’t been there before there was no sure way of me knowing the quality of the place.
Signs advertising paintball at a supposedly romantic venue gave me cause for concern.

Fortunately, as we drove in it became apparent that the paint ball facilities were situated on one side of the property.

On checking in, the receptionist seemed to take a liking to us, and upgraded our room to the honeymoon suite (something I’d kind of asked for when booking, but hadn’t received confirmation on). Nifty!
The room was wonderful, with four-poster bed, rose petals on the sheets, and complementary champagne. Everything had dark wooden finishes, and all of the windows were fitted with blinds. When we arrived, the room was clean and tidy (it didn’t stay tidy for long, but that had nothing to do with the hotel). The only improvement I could suggest was that the on-suite bathroom be fitted with a larger bath. We could both fit in the bath that was there, but it was a little bit of a squeeze. Seriously, honeymooners want to share a bath with enough space for movement.
But even if the bath wasn’t big enough for movement, the king-size bed certainly made up for it.

The venue itself has lovely, landscaped gardens, with fountains and pillars (but no gnomes). The gardens edge towards kitsch, but stay far enough away from the full-blown cheesiness border to maintain the illusion of authenticity.

We walked in the gardens and took in the fragrances of the herbs that were planted there. It is unfortunate that the metropolis is slowly encroaching on Muldersdrift, and evidence of human activities nearby are very prevalent. Occasionally busy roads pass by the venue, and if you are looking for a complete sense of isolation, Valverde might not be your best choice of venue.
No-one was playing paintball while we were there, but I imagine that had people been playing while we were there our experience may have been a little different (although not necessary worse). Valverde is also a wedding venue, and I sincerely hope they never double-book weddings and paintball sessions. There is an open-air chapel, and the paintball area has line of sight of it. Certainly potential for a Gary Larson “trouble brewing” comic panel.

While exploring the venue we discovered two llamas in an enclosure. The discovery of the llamas played a big part in how much I enjoyed the venue, but I am a little quirky.

We went for dinner at the restaurant and, thankfully, there was no llama on the menu. I’m not sure what they keep them there for.
The restaurant had a set menu, with a number of options, which included a vegetarian selection — something which is very important to me. The food was outstanding, and I highly recommend eating there. The service was perhaps a little slow, but we weren’t in a hurry. We could excuse slightly slow service because I’d gone and been a little difficult.
When we arrived at the restaurant, we found it in a thatched roof building with fluorescent lights mounted high up. The lights cast a harsh glow on the room, and it wasn’t subdivided at all. Not exactly the most romantic setting.
I was difficult because I went up to the waiter and asked whether we could set up a table in a more pleasantly lit environment. I identified a lovely spot just outside the restaurant, where the light from inside filtered through the window providing a much more appealing, muted lighting. Out there it would be possible to hear flowing water from the fountain. The skies were clear and starlit, and the temperature that night was quite comfortable. Add some candlelight and I was certain the ambiance would be perfect.
I asked that they move a table to the desired spot, and provide me with a candle and fire with which to light the wick. The staff were completely accommodating, very helpful, and overall friendly throughout the exercise.
As I mentioned, speed of service (but certainly not quality) was slightly impacted upon, but understandably so considering how we were no longer in the restaurant.

If you are looking for a spot to get away for a night, don’t want to travel too far from Joburg,  and don’t want to pay any of your limbs, give Valverde a try.

Sunday was a most curious day of inept piracy on the low fresh-waters of the Lake of Zoo.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Latter-day pirates, especially in landlocked provinces like Gauteng, are something of a rarity. In order to spot them, it is best to seek out bodies of water where boats and other watercraft may be found.
Zoo Lake may seem like an unlikely spot to find such miscreants, but in fact it is not. Numerous pirates converged on the Lake this Sunday past. I and my kitchen-wench were amongst them.

Yaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!!

We dressed in the manner of pirates, and converged upon the lake. Or rather, the others dressed in the manner of pirates. We dressed in the manner of witches and daemons.
We set upon the boats and attempted to row. Herein lies the ineptitude of the pirate dressed in the manner of a daemon.
Rowing is all backwards, and counter to the intuition.

Yaaaaaaaaarrr! Curses!

Still, the pirate/daemon/witches eventually came to terms with the treachery of reverse-backward rowing tricks.

Alas! Witches and daemons are not pirates at heart, and partook of less rum than those who rampaged across the low fresh-waters, terrorising children and geese alike.
The rum turned the  pirates unruly, and they strayed from their noble cause of ransacking the lake of litter to ransacking fellow pirate/witch/daemon vessels of supplies. Witches lost hats. Daemons lost arcane powers of patience.

Grrrrrr.

‘Twas verily a morning well spent, and had we witches and daemons been more inclined to drink, ‘twould a well spent afternoon have been too.

Daemon

Witch

A small selection of Pirates of the Lake of Zoo

Breaking my “don’t follow random links” rule has led me to an amusing film review, by the self-proclaimed Mister Peace.

In some ways it made me think of Dodgy Movie Review. Dodgy movies were examined. But unlike Dodgy Movie Review (where an attempt is made for objectivity, and dodginess is placed on a pedestal) Mister Peace is in fact warning us to stay the hell away from films he found to be appalling.

He attacks Boondock Saints with gusto (something Dodgy Movie Review may attempt to refute at some point), and reveals something about one of the actors that has changed my impression of the film a little.
This, however, is not Mister Peace’s main focus. Mostly, he just spouts off about whatever he finds amusing. He spouts off in an amusing fashion. I was so amused I added him to my Chinese Government Approved Reading List.

Ultimately, the whole purpose of this post is to see whether or not the custodian of Dodgy Movie Review will post a rebuttal.

Dr McNinja is becoming increasingly foolish.
From the creative minds that brought you Ninjas vs Pirates and revealed the true nature of Ronald McDonald:

Now they reveal the true horror of Ninja Zombies!