Category: Reckons

Diagnosis : Chronic Heart Disease

Morgan Avery

Today I made a "Diagnosis: Chronic Heart Disease," it was delicious, you see a "Diagnosis: Chronic Heart Disease," is a new kind of sandwich I’ve invented, I call it that to plainly illustrate how very healthy it is.

I’m pretty sure it’s safe for vegans and Jews (I’m pretty sure the three different kinds of pork cancel each other out, right?). But I’m not sure about Muslims – I think Allah dictates that all sandwiches should have an olive stuch to the top with a toothpick. I guess that’d be called a "Diagnosis: Chronic Heart Disease (with bonus Halal olive)."

They say a picture is worth a thousand calories, I reckon this one must be worth 5 times that much.

They were awesome. I couldn’t even eat my dinner tonight. I was that full, just all day. I’m still full now. Oh my Bully!

Oh, if you want to make your own "Diagnosis: Chronic Heart Disease," here are the ingredients:

  1. Awesome delicious grainy bread.
  2. Spread of your choice (I used canola).
  3. American style mayonaise.
  4. Half a sausage (cut once length-wise)
  5. 2 slices of spicey salami.
  6. 1 & a half crispy rashers of bacon
  7. Fried egg.
  8. Aged cheddar
  9. Thick & Rich Watties Tomato Sauce.
  10. Optional: olive on a toothpick.

George could see I was distressed and decided I needed comforting. He’s such a sweet, handsome, love.

War of the Worlds.

Morgan Avery

Went and saw War of the Worlds on the megascreen last night, and let me tell you…

While this is an old (old!) story, which many people probably already know the outline of, I don’t want to spoil anything for the most super ignorant out there, selecting the blank bits below should reveal what I consider most likely to be spoilers.

*** There are spoilers here, if you don’t want to know what happens, you’ll get a face full of ruination! ***

I haven’t watched the old old movie for a long time, so while I of course remember the surprise twist at the end, I don’t remember much of the rest of the story, so I don’t know how much this diverges from the original… But so the fuck what? It rocks!

Amazingly, Spielberg manages to make the kooky Mr Cruise seem like a real guy, freaking the hell out, really confused and scared, and totally fixated on saving his kids from these monsterous blood sucking alien invaders.

He’s so human and vulnerable, I could sort of imagine myself doing many of the same things. Though I probably would have been straighter with the kids about the alien invasion they were fleeing from, with the death rays, exploding buildings, tripods climbing up out of the ground, etc.

Speaking of the death ray, that was by far the scariest death ray I’ve ever seen, what with the arbitrariness of it, the whole f’toomp thing, with the exploding body just leaving clothes fluttering in the air. That was… Awesome… Scary.

I guess I’m getting ahead of myself… The real coolness started after the storm (which was awesome in itself, but only due to the reaction of the characters, hiding under the table and so on) when our man Ray goes for a walk and finds his way to the cracked up intersection… I thought the whole crowding around thing was a bit strange, but fine… But when the tripod started to rise, slowly cracking the ground, and the nearby buildings, then when there was that big surge and the ground sort of collapsed and then jumped up again… That was really, just… Super awesome.

What a terrifying scene, as the crowd panicked and started running… With people not being picked off just for being slow, stuck at the back of the pack, but almost randomly no matter how fast they were running, no matter if they’d run to hide in a house or a shop… *f’toomp* *flutter*.

Now, a lot of other stuff happened, and you’ll need to watch it to see all of that, I’d just like to get onto the lame and the good now, rather than go through anything resembling a play-by-play…

The weirdest, most lame, most inexplicable character, I thought, was Robbie… Just what the fuck was wrong with that kid? I mean, he was fine when he was just a dumb teenager at the beginning of the movie, but what the fuck was he doing trying to jump a ride with the national guard? And why the hell was he all "please dad, I have to see it, I have to watch, let me go." I’ve got to tell you, I would have smacked him one and dragged him down the hill away from the artillery, soldiers & tanks on the ridge overlooking (what, Boston?).

Oh, but wasn’t it awesome when all the choppers arrived and started letting rip with their Hellfires, and the jets that blasted overhead launching their own tasty little missiles.

So, let me quickly sum things up.

  1. Characters: cool, except Robbie.
  2. CG: awesome.
  3. Sound design: awesome (that huge horn that the tripods used, I want one on my RVR).
  4. Alien ships: Scary. w00t.
  5. Aliens: The rear leg was a little bit strange, but on the whole they were very very cool. The CG really was extremely nice.
  6. Rocking?: You bet.

Oh, and I couldn’t help myself but have a gigantic bucket of Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha… Soooo good.

Bored with writing this now, gonna have me some rissoles.

Goodnight, nurse.

Nausea in a Blanket.

Morgan Avery

To follow on from the new cocktail invention, I invented a delicious new snack this afternoon, I like to call it ‘Nausea in a Blanket’ — they’re really easy to make: unwrap a cheese slice, smear a teaspoon of American mayo on half of it, put a nice crispy pickled gherkin on the half without mayo and roll the cheese up over it. Now crunch that little baby up real good in your slavering mouth. Oh yeah, you know you like it!

(They don’t make me nauseous, but Claire doesn’t like pickles, so they’ll be unpopular with her.)

Ginger Bucket.

Morgan Avery

I invented a new cocktail (I doubt this is true, I just can’t be bothered checking who else has made the same thing) last night I call it the Ginger Bucket, basically it goes like this:

Pour as much VSOP brandy into a large bordeaux glass as you like for me I guess this about a double double, then fill the glass with Schweppe’s Ginger Beer (not ale).

Done.

Crikey it’s nice. Oh, for bullies sake, don’t use your nice Hennessy or anything, just a normal brandy does the trick perfectly.

Batman finally begins to kick some ass.

Morgan Avery

This post includes loads of references and spoilers for the new Batman movie Batman Begins. I don’t know that I give away anything that isn’t a bit obvious, but still… I’d hate to giveaway the fact that it turns out that Batman was dead for the whole time, and it was his ghost in the rest of the movie.

Now, this doesn’t take the form of a polished review, I haven’t editied or copy-checked or anything, this is really little more than a stream of conciousness ‘my thoughts on this’ format, so don’t expect more than that.

So, we went and saw Batman Begins, we caught a screening on opening day at the megascreen – we figured, hell, we had fun watching one of the Matrix sequels there, and the price is the same as seeing it at any pissy little normal cinema, so why not?

Bloody nice big screen, I thought the sound level was set a touch too loud, not quite to the point of peaking, it was just a little uncomfortable – still, it was nice and visceral to have some of the sound effects really getting in there and shaking the seating. Oh, and we made sure to be quite far back (it sucks being too close to the screen, having to look left and right to see things) 3rd row from back, in fact, which was pretty much ideal, maybe 4 or 5 seats closer to the centre would have been perfect, but I didn’t book our tickets very far in advance, so can’t complain about being in as good a spot as we got.

— Spoilers Begin —

I really enjoyed the movie, I liked the way they explained a few things which I wanted to know about, for example the stupid ears on the cowl were from the opera he was scared of when he was a child, the blades on his forearms from his ‘nija’ training, etc.

Speaking of the cowl, it was great to have little features and background trivia, like the mention of manufacturing faults in the cowls, and having to order so many thousands of them to avoid suspicion, and outsourcing distributed manufacturing around various companies in different countries. It was a really nice, realistic touch — you know, for a super hero movie.

I think Bale was great as Bruce Wayne, though I didn’t like it quite so much when he forced that throaty voice whenever out in his guise of Batman. Indeed, I think they did a great job with the whole cast, I thought Morgan Freeman was a real stand out, but he has such screen presence that’s really a given, his character was exactly who was needed to explain how Bruce gets his high-tech toys. It was nice having some very quick back story on him as well, gave him motivation (and obvious forshadowing for his later takeover), being shunted down to the storehouse, then being fired off in a very convenient (timely) manner. I also thought Michael Caine did a great job, and he has a lot more potential for arse kicking than the frail older guy they had previously. Have you seen Get Carter? Yeah, like that.

I didn’t understand what Bruce was doing when he was playing with the memory material making it into claws – they obviously didn’t use it later on in any fights or anything, so perhaps it’s forshadowing for use in a sequel. But it was a stupid idea anyway, when the claws weren’t in use, they dangled from his fingers like meter long pieces of string, which doesn’t sound very useful to me… Sounds like they’d just get tangled around things and be annoying.

I thought the Batmobile was (forgive me) RAD! But it was also involved in my least favourite event in the movie, the destruction of the monorail – that was stupid, did you see how big those towers were? How many people do you think were killed by the wreckage? It was just an outrageously stupid scene which simply didn’t gel the the (realtive) realism, perhaps that’s not the right word, maybe believability? of the rest of the movie. Internal consistency is completely vital when dealing with superheroes.

Speaking of the monorail, I thought the city design for Gotham was great, it was clearly such a sprawling metropolis, but with real looking buildings, real pollution, and a literal undercity. I didn’t like the deco (or whatever) styling that was given to the earlier movies, and I’m glad they reset that aspect of it. I’m expecting that they’ll use the monorail as part of the symbolism of the cities improvement, they obviously had the monorail as a shiney lovely thing when Thomas Wayne was still around, and how decrepit and graffito’d/vandalised it had become, so expect it to look nice again in the later movies. (I’m assuming it’ll be repaired following the Batmobile attack, that seemed to only effect a few spans.)

Oh, and that’s another thing, how the fucking hell did Batman manage to stay dangling on his cable underneath the monorail? His monofilament would have had to be magically passing through numerous solid supporting structures, but he just hung on, as if nothing was happening. If they were going to have him do that, they should have either made the carriage dangle from a rail above, or find some other way for him to hold on that didn’t involve magic.

Actually, that grapnel gun was the source of one of my other quibbles, at one point (I think it was right after he was set alight) he seemed to attach it to thin air, fired it straight up, or at least it seemed that way. I didn’t like that. Just have a fucking girder, for bullies sake. Perhaps if I watch the movie again some time it’ll be obvious that I missed something, but it didn’t seem like it on first viewing.

Last big quibble before finishing on a couple more positives – the psychoactive substance in the water, it needed to be inhaled through the lungs, sure is lucky no-one ever has steamy showers or makes coffee or shaves or washes their hands in the city, huh? Now, as the inhabitants of Gotham clearly do do those things, why wasn’t the city already chocka with nutsos?

It was nice to have Gordon in there in his pre-commissioner days, obviously he’ll be slowly climbing the ranks and helping Batman gradually clear up the worst of the corruption in the city until he’s finally a straight and reliable commissioner running things and being nice and sympathetic to our mate in a cowl, probably with an asshole mayor or unsympathetic press (maybe an opportunity for an ideally very brief appearance of Vikki Vale) or something like that.

I also liked the way they included the evil villain (Scarecrow) as a scary but non-campy, non-comical, psychopathic nut-job. He seemed to have motivation and at least a little bit of depth. And I loved it when he was shrieking like a girl after getting tazered in the face, that was awesome. I hope they manage to do something similar with The Joker when (it opened number 1 in the box office in the U.S., and seems to be going strong, so unless Bale isn’t in to it, surely they’ll have to make several?) they make the sequel, I don’t want to see a capering giggling clownfaced guy, I want to see a completely psychopathic brutal criminal. He can have a lunatic grin, sure, but I’d prefer he not have the big red clown lips – please?

A murder has been done.

Morgan Avery

I went past the scene of the Eden Tce dairy murder on the way to the po box this afternoon. This whole thing is really horrible. The guys body was still inside. There were a few TV news cameras around, but I think they were in the middle of the long waiting game they must have to play in these situations.

I spoke to a couple of people watching, everyone was pretty much in a state of disbelief that anything like this could happen.

I think I may have killified George. With love.

Morgan Avery

Righto. If you want more evidence of my silliness, I felt a bit cold tonight, so I fired up the heater, as you do. It got nice and warm. So warm that I soon removed my jacket. A little while later off came my shoes. Then George collapsed into a happy canine coma. Finally my laptop started beeping that it was overheating. Then I… turned the heater down.

If you want to know who is causing Auckland’s near-future power problems, you need look no further than me.

Oh cool, George is able to open his eyes again. Don’t worry Georgie, I won’t withdraw your feeding tube.

Scammer ‘Hygienist’.

Morgan Avery

One of my favourite things is when someone doesn’t try to rip me off. So today I got to have one of my least favourite experiences, when I visited the ‘Dental Hygienist’.

Remember when I said this?

To celebrate I bought 4 bottles of merlot, and booked myself in for a horrible ripoff of a tooth polishing session with the "hygienist."
— June 2, 2005

Turns out I’m clairvoyant.

Cleaning of the old teeth is something that dentists used to be capable of, but when they flicked the job off to a considerably less skilled labourer, dentists didn’t drop their prices, did they? And it’s not like the less skilled hygienist is cheap, today I paid $135 for a single hour.

Now, if she’d actually done the job as I expected I would have sucked it up and said "look at how shiny my lovely teeth are," but she didn’t.

And it went wrong right from the beginning – well, that’s not true, the receptionist ([name removed]) is a lovely professional and charming young woman, and she was great – so maybe it’s more accurate to say it went wrong from right when I sat down in the hygienists chair.

She introduced herself, of course ("Hi, I’m Name Removed ,") in the rough English of what sounded like an Eastern European, but her name card looks more like, maybe Spanish or Portuguese or something like that… Then proceeded to tell me that the X-Rays I’d just had done a couple of days before indicated that I’d have to have at least two visits with her… "Hold on," I said, "I haven’t had an X-Ray taken in over 6 years."

"Oh, fuck," she seemed to think, "I’ve been caught out in my most popular lie, trying to scam more money out of this sucker." She then says "Ahh, 6 years, then it’ll be even worse, won’t it? So we should book another appointment now."

"Don’t you think it’d be a good idea for you to look in my mouth before we book any more time?" I asked, a hint of incredulity creeping into my voice. "Oh, you want to do it that way around? Ok," she finally agrees.

Anyway, we get down to business, if you know what I mean, she gives me a super nasty mouthwash, if you know what I mean, she clips on a bib, if you know what I mean, lowers the chair into an almost upside down position, if you know what I mean, then proceeds to scrape the plaque off my healthy and strong, if perhaps a little unclean, teeth.

I feel like something a bit funny is going on, when she stops at the middle of my jaw, then goes back and does the same teeth she’s just done. Then she gets out the instrument of satan himself, the super high-speed water pick-cum-grinding head… Again, she only does half my jaw, and then goes back to do bits she’s already ripped the hell out of already. Then she does some of my top teeth, then she goes back down the bottom and does teeth she’s already done again.

Then she decides it’s time to take a break, and thatI can relax my jaw… I clamber up out of my still upside down chair and spit a mouth full of nasty bloody spit in the bowl, then relax again and watch what she’s doing.

I’ve been known to waste time at a computer, if you know what I mean, so I can recognise it when I see it. The aimless scrolling up and down of text fields. The incredibly slow typing. She takes fully 5 minutes (there was a clock on the wall, which had robotic arms that reached down and tore twenties out of my lovely Italian made leather wallet, then set them alight and used them to light expensive Cuban torpedos, which it then failed to enjoy, just letting them burn down to pathetic, smelly little stubs.) to type out, 1 fingered – and I noticed she’d taken off her gloves for this, and was pleased that she took the ‘hygiene’ part of her title seriously – a single fucking line of a text.

She was done with that, and pulled some new gloves from a sterile packet, now this is an important point, these are lovely new sterile gloves she’s just put on, so now she pushes the light out of the way, crouches down low on the ground and removes what looks like a pressure bottle full of… drainings… From the bottom of what I guess might have been the suction machine. She takes it and pours it out in the sink, then screws the now empty pressure bottle back into the bottom of the machine… Now, without missing a beat, she grabs her instruments and proceeds to fondle around inside me lovely soft lips. ("Holy fucking bacteria," I thought, "now this is definitely going on my website, what the fuck is this woman doing?")

There are just 20 minutes left in our appointment, and I’m now feeling detached and helpless, aware that she’s been wasting time going over the same teeth over and over again. She do some scraping or whatevering on the top, then go back to do a tooth that was already (painfully) done.

This proceeded for another 20 minutes, then she gave me a brochure "Taking care of your teeth" or whatever the fuck, I saw a great big Oral B logo on the cover, opened it up, and there you go – turns out that to take care of your teeth, you’d better buy an Oral B, I put it back down on her bench and walked out to the reception, where the receptionist was once again lovely and helpful, I considered making a fuss, but instead told her that I was really disappointed, and that I’d only make the (now mandatory, as she made bloody sure she only did half my fucking mouth) second appointment if it was with a different "hygienist."

So, 6 years ago I had a good cleaning, both sides of my top and bottom jaws, and a good old polish, and it cost about $60 (as far as I recall.) this time, I’ve paid over twice that much already for LESS THAN HALF THE FUCKING SERVICE.

I’m not going to name my dental practice or the hygienist at this stage, as I’m going to send them an email and give them a chance to make right, if they don’t do that, I’ll tell you exactly who to avoid.

If I have to pay what I’m now expecting – $270 for a tooth cleaning – I’m going to go completely fucking moonbat ballistic.

And no, I didn’t want to post this, I was planning to sing Pizza Hut’s praises — they’ve done something super cool. You’ll see.