Important Lesson

I learnt this lesson the hard way today.

“Don’t touch an electric fence”.

You’d have thought it was a fairly obvious sort of lesson, once which perhaps didn’t need learning… but no, I still had to do it…

Life and/or death

Funny thing happened last night. We got back from the pub and check on the fish. We notice that one of our fiddler crabs is floating upside down and has apparently died. Very sad… so we fish her out (no pun intended) extremely confused by the fact she’d lost all her pigment when all of a sudden we notice another crab running across the bottom of the tank!

“THEY’VE HAD BABIES! AND THEN SHE DIED” we exclaimed.

Then our senses came back (and, I imagine, the beer wore off a bit) and we realised that actually Itchy (the female crab) has just moulted. But it was quite bizarre because the exoskeleton was a perfect replica – it was literally as if she had unzipped it down the back and just sort of crawled out.

Amazing. I’ll take a photo later and post it up here…

P.S. Gig later. Quite nervous.

The Matrix: Reloaded

I finally got round to seeing it, last night. I think they should rename it: “The Matrix: Barrel Empty”.

It’s a good film, but that’s it. It’s not a great film, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. The first film was a classic. It showed us things on the big screen we’d never before seen. This one was more of the same, which was a good thing, but it was too much trying to be a big budget all action blockbuster. I don’t think it was true to the original, story, the fantastic way in which the story was presented. It had too much in there, for the sake of putting it in there.

OK, some of the fight scenes were awesome and I’ll be the first to admit that I think Keanu has actually matured as an actor (let’s face it, he’s always been nothing more than diabolical) so for that I’m pleased. And Carrie-Anne Moss looked amazing.

The love scenes were unnecessary, “The Matrix up-the-skirt-scene” was unnecessary. What they did to Agent Smith was downright appalling. Some of the crappy cheesey slapstick comedy moments were out of place.

Worse though, it didn’t feel connected. They have bastardised Morpheus’ character. Xion was the not the haven we all expected. And Keanu doing his flying thing… hmm.

I’ll watch the third one, definitely. But sadly, and I do mean sadly, I feel The Matrix: Reloaded has been badly afflicted by the disease of the sequel. Let’s just hope the final one doesn’t get the Robocop 3 treatment.

Nice, but weird, feeling

Was out “in the field” yesterday doing fieldwork for my University studies. It basically involved wandering about in the middle of Dorset with a GPS measuring stuff.

More accurately, I was out in the rain, getting soaked, smelling the smell of fresh wet vegetation, surrounded by large trees and lots of mud, wearing clothes that stank of sweat and mud and feeling very tired.

Why was this weird? Because, for whatever reason, it reminded me of being back in Tanzania. OK, in Tanzania, I was in the middle of a tropical forest, pangering my way through dense tropical vegetation. But nevertheless, the feeling was the same. That sense of achievement through intense physical fatigue, being covered in mud and soaked to the skin.

I can’t explain it, really. But it had a profound affect on me. It was a very strange, but ultimately very nice feeling.

Though it made me sad, as I reminisced over the time I spent in Africa.

Maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to go back.